Album Sores

Transparent, cold, faded,
Hesitates to reminisce,
Openly, longingly, no loner jaded.
I feel the past
When I close my eyes
To the present;
Motion picture lies:
You're still around
Though only album-bound
I'll have you forever.

Bridgewater

I once loved a tree —
(Every one else had cute little furry bunnies) —
She was beautiful, so graceful and
She grew tall with my love that poured like the water,
Which I gave to her as a mother would,
Whenever she was thirsty.

But I always had to keep her
Within a pot,
Because every time we were on the move,
Drowning in the fumes of the ticking time bomb,
That we called our ride,
We never could discover home.

Home was where I could plant her and
We could be free to finally grow together
In peace.
But as it happened
Home was but a disaster greater than greed:
A crooked builder,
a house crumbling at its seams,
at the shock of its own continued existence,
defying gravity's lust but only just.
A tormented father, impoverished where once
Money was less of a consideration
Than a breath before an excited exclamation.

The day that I left that home
And my tree behind
I grew up to the world
And its injustices;
I wondered how she could possibly prosper.

I drove past once;
It took a half an hour to reach
The only home I'd ever had.
I didn't even know my own tree,
So I never went back.

Forbidden Reality

Logic-bruised haze,
The wistful gaze
Of a dream-betrayed eye,
Distrusting the reality
Of another's forbidden perception.
To some,
Every thing is certain, fixed, immutable,
Even love.
Yet love's velvet feel
Seals its cut made,
The favourite material of deception
Specifies the grade
Of pain.
When stroking reality,
From one directive's perspective,
Some are easily fooled.
But I'm a predator,
Watching, waiting for the reverse stroke
To be of telling time:
When all that comes around
Goes around,
With a recoiled touch,
That will destroy certainty
With one blink of a winking eye,
Encapsulating dreams in the mind,
Bound forever, without reach for realm.
I'm at the helm,
Driving this beast,
That smothers,
Like the last breath
Of the drowning sea.
A wounded lover's mentality,
Grasping, gasping,
Forbidden reality.

Hard Cover Classic

The pages of my book
Fill with the years of my life;
Some pages are dog-eared and well-worn with fond memories,
Some pages are neglected with the flush of shame,
Some pages still elicit tears in both joy and sadness.

The words form motion pictures in my mind:
Silent mouths bobbing life's passing pantomime,
In an encore performance just for me.
Yet all the actors are fundamentally affected by my memories
And my eyes' souls reflect the wounds of the past,
Even though my mouth plays at trickery around the edges.

They say I shouldn't need pretend or make-believe,
That we should all go beyond these things,
(These childhood pantomimes),
Eventually.
And they are frustrated because
They cannot see my eventually ever arriving.

They can try to tear the pages from the book
But the book will still have the same title,
And it's becoming a real relic...
My hard-cover classic of me.

Her Face

Her face
is a careful place
of wisdom
laced with
the fear of life's surprises
and time's scars lining the rutted tarmac of flesh
which we all eventually possess,
marking the joy-rides and thrills,
the folded take-offs and hindered departures,
the mystery flights,
the secure destinations,
the smooth landings,
then finally
the clambering of little hands
struggling to hang on to mummy's wings
as the world begins to spin faster.
These all weave the majestic flight
That is the lasting thread of Earthly life.
Binding the memories
She bears every part of herself unto this task,
Accepting the weathered parchment of her skin
As the perfect fabric to sustain
The patient love of time's gain.
She cannot vanish her life's meaning,
Nor hide her truth,
And why should she want to?
For with the smile of her wrinkled eyes
She writes the sentimentality
Into each generations life.

Just holding on...

Slats in my mind: shutters always opening, never closing, and
Yielding countless sleepless nights,
Without even the familiar, comforting sheep
Of other unchosen insomniacs' device.
I must suffice with
Supersonic props in my eyelids,
Electronic sensors in my sleepiness radar,
To curb the curve of the tell-tale eye-lid droop.
Bullets of determination rip through night silence,
Shattering the still of too many cosy thoughts,
Of quitting to yield to the easy life,
Of knitting long eventful moments
Rather than perpetually catching chaos and pain,
For a hopeful one day dream,
That more often that not seems,
More than a life-time out of reach.

Killing Time

Killing time.
Here I fall
To sit:
A cold hospital bench,
Waiting for a lift to life,
In transit from
A place of wasted time,
To a place of further wasted time.
Because no matter of the haphazardly captured minute,
My arthritic heart is fractured,
By the betrayed hope within it.
There are no resolutions
To my eccentric need,
No cure,
No sustaining soul feed.
I try
I pray;
I just cannot live this life
This way,
As you, as them, as any one does.
I cannot even imitate what's shown,
Play up what's known
As normal.
There's a telephone box a mere half a metre,
Arm's stretch away.
Shall I place a call to God?
Is there a cost?
Take me away.
Drift I may
Drift I might,
Never the fight
Even though as reality bites,
I simply leave it be.
I'm a victim and
Time is killing me.

Memories of You, Memories of Me

It seems
That all of the memories I have of you
Are incorrect of the current you.

You imagine me
Watching TV, (Bold & the Beautiful),
To escape daily truths,
Reading a novel, (with a fantastical plot),
To escape daily truths,
Working harder than ever, (away from what I truly desire),
To escape daily truths....

At escaping daily truths....

I try so hard.

But somehow you are correct across time and space,
With your derivation of the law of my life.

How I remember you,
Attaches you to places, faces, things,
Where you no longer belong, as,
Unlike me,
At least you've moved on.

Pain

Like a blanket,
Heavy and smothering.
Like a wall,
Tall, looming, and endless in its encroachment upon daily life
Like handcuffs:
Shackled,
Autonomy lost.

Except this pain breathes,
This pain grows;
It lives under my skin,
Where you cannot see it,
Neither can you feel it,
In fact, you could not possibly get it right.
But yet you can still find the means to tell me,
That I can't seem to get my own pain right.

And so my skin must
Grow thicker
To your pain.

Photo Album

Umbrella
To weather
The sentimentality.
We're pages
Of smiles,
Across the ages
Of the irrationality,
Of a history's heart;
It's such a fine art
Of chance —
Chaos danced
Within and without of my life,
Storming without warning
Into the calmest reach of solace.
Disheartened you left me.
The negative of loss,
Rolls across the retina
Of blinking cost,
As the tears stroll
Their familiar Sunday walk,
Weathering their lonesome terrain —
The chalk of hop-scotch rising to the wind,
With a choke of dusty pain.
I wipe the cement away,
With the sting of salt-claimed sandy skin,
Watching the sunset suddenly begin,
The resting of a weary day.
And I somehow stroke my inner-self sincerely,
Growing a smile right down
To my trembling hand,
But I'm merely reflecting on
A heart's demand;
Touching upon, flicking through,
The tireless memories
Of the wonder of you.

Regret

Is this regret,
As real as a sigh?
Or is it just
A figment of my
Symbiotic perception?
I have a mistrust for my own revelations.
You moulded me
Too fit… or so they exclaim:
I don't know,
What's right or wrong,
Or if these exist beyond their words?
But then perhaps,
The mortal struggle
Of endless confusion by living day,
Is testament to their influence?
Only death is the eternal truth;
For now I just embrace your memory,
Itself as immortal
As our breeding.

When 14 Was Old

My cupboard was lavished
With expensive new wood,
A treat for my new world.
A much better proposition
They said, than you.

The walnut stain curls the
Tiny little hairs hidden in their nostril beds,
Raising their heads momentarily,
In recognition of a familiar smell.
Sending signals to tell neurons,
To extend the finger-tips of their processes,
Hugging the memories of you.

And alike the smell,
Of the stale mothballs within,
They keep the old renewed
For my eyes; within my heart,
Drumming the solitary but poignant
Loss of you.

The shirt hangs,
From its equally dusty hanger,
Like an aeroplane wondering,
When it shall find its wings.
Today brings the time
To rediscover those old ways —
It's chequered black and grey;
Flannelette was cool back then.
But as it happened,
It was only a fashion for too few;
The life-style of the wanton night
(Veins throbbing with fright of greed).
Told of your need.

Once encapsulated with laughter,
This material now captures run away tears,
Forever after soaking up the salt of yesteryears...
When 14 was old.

Who?

Cold and dark…
And You.
Too true;
The history,
A mystery.
Was he Elvis reincarnated?
James Dean without his flesh?
An enigma;
Gatsby all alone
Contemplating his last
Moments of time.
I never knew them
But I tried to learn:
Shared their shoes,
Walked their blues.
Or was it just my father,
Whom I knew forever less?
I'd hazard a guess,
But for the pain.