Slack

Trap him with whispers
And beat him with taunts.
Ridicule that which
He flounces and flaunts.
Rattle his bones,
And watch him twitch,
Make him hear voices,
Those that bewitch

Both the meek naïve
And the steadfast wary.
Invoke those dreams
That recur, never vary
And instead pray upon him,
His outlandish ideals.
Test what he thinks,
Second-guess what he feels.

What's your reality?
What do you see?
From all of his doubt
He will never be free.
Hear our winds call
And speak to his fears
Until his resolve is broken
By a faint stream of tears.

Burn him inside out,
Words drenched in acid.
Now he is ravaged, far from
His past, tame and placid.
He's changing before us
Into something never seen.
Nothing to recognise, gone,
From the wreckage we cannot glean

A single memory. Down and out.
His body is slack.
But amongst this ruin
His voice still speaks back.
His voice fights back.

The Chase

I am no hunter

So why partake in the chase?

I drop my gun -

This is no hunt. This is no race.

Nor am I the hunted,

The weak. I am strong, running free

With no more constraint because

Nature is mine. To live is to see.

I am not waiting like prey 

Fearful of the bite,

But I am not ruthless by

Dancing and leaping amongst the fight.

A bullet cannot hit me anymore

Or at least leave a scar.

Time is a shield

That I have not used so far.

The hunting ground is small

But I have no role in this war;

For now I seek safety,

Seek to wander No Man's Land no more.

I hope the wounded seek it soon, too - 

All in good time.

I have watched these hunts, but it is time I turned

To find a land that I can call mine.

Season's Grievings

The chatter falls away
And with it the mistletoe dies.
The Christmas spirit diminishes,
The season's grievings survive.

To the New Year ahead we look
With every intention to forget this past,
But that which haunts me is that which takes me there,
Where every misgiving and every mistake will be my last.

Saying goodbye would be a dishonour
To everything which has given me what I need to know
And marked every change on the path I have taken;
If I said goodbye I would never again say hello.

An altered date fixes nothing at all
Except the number of which I write in my script.
Each negativity cannot be erased by one little digit,
Nor will it be changed by magic, through a flick of the wrist.

So many smiles twisted by all that strain,
Nights full of worry and days full of passion,
Every indecision alongside the insane -
What does it take for all that to happen?

The season's grievings survive
All a part of true living.
"New Year, new me." Lies.
My own spirit remains, and that's why I'm winning.

Casualty

A violet smoke manifests the room,

Arising from slumber as the dawn approaches.

The dreams are cloaked in haze

And extinguished as this smoke reproaches

 

All that lived the night before.

Reality awakens to hide away

The falsities of reverie, believed

To be true, never spoken beyond the light of day.

 

The fumes are fatal, as suffocating

As truth. The truth should never

Be a fight, but a casualty of happiness,

The proudest of any endeavour.

 

Wherever this fine art may be found,

The conjuring of dreams –

Let the truth be known to oneself;

The smoke is not as toxic as it seems.

Praha

Founded circa 1306 BC; population 1.26 million, annual tourist population 8.08 million.

Cigarette butts glow like candles along the curb,
Still flickering after those last intense puffs
That took away the stresses of the daily grind
And replaced them with smoky satisfaction.

The fumes of the Underground infuse
With the toxicity of those spirals of smoke
That are caught in the rush of passing cars.
An urgency prevails amongst the timelessness

Of the amblers, travellers, flâneurs
Who search for the deepest rooted culture
In this permanent wave of exigent travail
Crashing through the delicate history towering down.

The cobbles are eternally awake
To welcome the next pilgrim, at leisure or otherwise.
One after the other they fall into this sea
And are swept away

To become part of the city, the oxygen that it breathes.
Everyone is faceless, native or nomad,
Lost and, alas, found in the ashes of burning tobacco and racing cars,
Oblivious entirely to their neighbours lost beside them:

This endless carnival of vague apparitions parades the streets,
A choir of angels, a celestial congregation from around the globe.
Their voices, low and reaching, soft and stark,
All call in unison, joyous in measure,
                               'Welcome to Prague.'