Like well-kept secrets

A wrecking ball plunging forward
independent of control,
unmistakable and unforgiving.
Destroying creating,
thumping down grounds of thick sludge and concrete,
making way for itself but soon others can see
the amalgamation of things, the particles now the prairie, the landscape forever changing, the eye but a moment, the then never recurring, the multitude of movement, the vicinities of thought, the remoteness of complexion, the stupidity in comparison, the drive, the need, the must of unique, the race to know nothing and feel everything at once, the occasional pause
the despair to erase memory, the effort to preserve it, the wonderings that seep off the lid of Pandora, the momentous physicality, the false connection, the primitive musk alive as the heat which sustains it, the ephemeral sense of freedom, the fading of fear, the consequence of time tumble and rumble under its spherical weight, lost in momentum this unstoppable force.

It's Five in the Morning: Do You Know Where You Are?

I am what nature made me. I am the centre of the universe.
I am nothing and all things speaking really, really fast.

      Sometimes I embrace the spirit Walden left behind.
To up and go from the carbonate lulling of the tide;
to take up arms alongside - the humming of the oak,
the scent of thoughts.

Other times I become
Patriot of cities, lover of hedonism;
a romance short lived
as to question the truth behind romance and tricks.

Cut like a cantaloupe,
in half - I exist
as you who are bold and soft.

You live your days on electropop.
Make it good, make it loud -
whatever's on, whatever's hot.
Like creatures of myth riding into war,
for tomorrow when you are closest to death
lapsed memories come to fade in your head.
Bangitty bang the battles you have fought
like wrapped sheets shrivel back down the melting pot.

It's five in the morning: do you know where you are?

You leave the darkness from whence you came,
some kid comes along and asks you for change.
Ragged clothes, no shoes on -
How about that vodka you just blew fifty on?

It comes back to you one hit first:
     what would your father think?
     Is this why your mother gave birth?
Had you been clear you'd think for love,
equality; maybe an end to poverty.
But tonight nose runny and eyes like a dome,
you just wish the child had never left home.

The dark at its worst 
he should be sleeping for school.
But who are you to know which 
way leaves bend when they meet with summer hue.
Mouth with him as he goes: "It's five in the morning,
you look like a fool".

Cold sweat like caverns in spring - 
you could tell him your truth
to up and go from where you came, all he does not know.
"I can't speak to the concrete"
your voice a godless whisper, should not have played in the snow.

You reason with youth -
you are what you are and that makes it okay
to live through this night and sleep through the day.
For tomorrow when you are closest to death,
      you'll think of leaves lapping gently on trees by the riverbed.

October

How delightful it is to see squirrels
scuttle around grassy graveyards,
making tiny rackets over auburn
leaves, playing hide and seek behind tired
 tombs. Fresh in the morning,
dew still loitering,
the child sun seeks out cracks and crevasses,
phantoms and little girls with little flowers –
unaware of the greater depth that
this ground takes – which from above,
remain faithful to the loveliest of autumn days.

The Little Sections that Relieve Me

Bending gently the small twig that made up mankind, I sit at that bench and wait for the 63 bus, in sunny hue underneath park trees.

She mellows her hands in tepid little waterfalls, rinsing the porcelain platters made of her grandmother’s bones, and if she turns the right tap two and a half times, it sings out alone, alone, alone.

He says a sneeze carries one percent of the soul, its fleeting particles dismember you into the travelling winds; and as he sneezes onto her that is when she knows, that is when she knows she will be sleeping with the stars tonight.

She seemed delighted when you experimented with submerging your ears beneath the shadowy waters of the darkly blue pool to see if the day would collapse any differently. Twenty-three years have washed and you remain breathing into the waters by the eroded banks; fleetingly through our eroded days. If only you could remember her name -

You drop your hair long, long on the same earth the lilies sprang from and you smile like you’re used to being told that you’re trouble…

They waved their hands in time; in time to see the waves come back; in time to see her skirt’s quite short; in time to see the waves had gone again, and then it wasn’t amusing anymore.

Remember the day you remembered you never really spoke to your father, but by then you were too large to ask the silly thing you thought of that summer when the last soap bubble kissed the grass.

In the Attic

The boy speaks in tongues
and sometimes it is hard,
it is hard sometimes, to relate -
if he will grow up
what is the point.
If he will grow out of his toys,
if he should grow up
what is the point of there being a boy?

Under the skylight he sits and spatters,
he listens intensely to bits and matters -
crackling the spine of his phases,
caressing the eyars. Brushes his cheek
on old wood pine pages,
and flicks, twitches, picks and splatters,
and dims, switches and licks his lips faster -

the sun shines through his wood pine hair.
He likes the warmth, and sits and looks
lightly, light binding his boyish stare;
for it glares too brightly, for it is forever there.
So he lays on old wood pine and shades
his little face, hands and girly nails,
as he rolls and grunts, tries to whistle and slumps,
and scratches and picks the earth
in his nails and licks, just to see what
earth tastes like; and he does as he does
because he knows nobody knows.

And he does as he does because he knows an awful lot -
alas, as suspected, just as he thought!
It tasted of bubbles and mud, wars and chicken like
spud. And he sits where he sits, the sun is his enemy,
but the stuff is still stuffy, his hands getting clammy -
so he rubs and he pulls and he coughs and he tugs, and
he stops to think maybe he does not know all that much.
But one scowls at the rubbish – it is hard sometimes,
as his palms shower down in thundry drums and he
hums and he hums and he hums and he hums.
Such delightful rhythm but speaking in tongues;
his language is daring, his eyes domineering,
and all the while he imagines Peter Pan peering -

badoom, badoom the glory of noise!
Badoom who would have thought he was coy.
His mother will love him more than he does -
but what is the point of getting there first.
Little drummer he is, stardust his toy.
If he hummed in a man’s world,
no one would hear this little boy

Nocracy

Soft, soft, the ground caves in.
And the calendar shows you’ve been running thin,
for the letters in your head are all shapes in a cave
meandering slightly,
forgotten but secretly safe -

and your grandma is bellowing “Oh my days!”
As if it weren’t enough to remind you of when
you weren’t there and the town was another place,
if only you could have seen her smile then.

Pagliuca, Pagliuca! Stop sipping that Snakebite.
Your attendance is poor and your focus is shite.
If only you tried a little harder you might,
but the ways of the world are clear and drole,
and you are left to believe in a satisfied soul.
That is easier than raising your voice,
even more so than ignoring the chore of a choice.

Despair is little when you are lairy oh Larry numb.
The anaesthetic which spreads from finger to thumb,
in a rattle of what sounds like African drums
and the clicking and the typing and the silence of the Texum.

A whale of a time for a while in a way,
gets you thinking of all them other days
where you felt and flicked, not scurried and clicked
and in the loving of Nabokov there was no shame.

But the digital, digital gunning of sin
crept up as those gangrened from cancer of skin.
Soft, soft, the ground caves in
and the calendar shows you’ve been running thin.

But lo, and behold, the Emperor is dead -
If I’m losing the benefits you may as well take my head.
For the books have set fire, for you have made your own bed.
Reluctantly shadow behind those who have shed the remorse,
the passion, the purpose, the regret,

Seemingly reasonless to reason what seems,
the intolerable arrogance of those who tolerate and deem
well, the lines of the high stands of the pitches of Win,
But soft, soft as the ground caves in
and the calendar shows my friend, you are running thin.

The Country

I want to leave my heart in the country,
and learn from the art of living.
I want to part from self induced cynicism
that numbs my longing for the simple.

That’s not it.
I want to be special and unspecial enough,
to dispense the namecard, the contracts and the mind lard.
I would rather feel the velvet of the sky instead.

More than that,
I want to be content in knowing that others are growing
by pitying my simple-minded lost soul.
I long for the longing to let go of scrutiny and laugh
alongside human insecurity.

No, that isn't it. I wish them well
despite the jealousies of this condescending city life.
I condemn the frail spirit that keeps me
from ploughing the garden or reciting Yutang,
without having satire stinging my tongue,
and guilt weigh upon
my already heavy, hollow heart.