july 2021

                     (i)

...a feather is weighed against the heart

and the centuries fall

carrying away the truth

meteors sweep through the void 

shredding the skies

and humankind burns on

its ashen insouciance

no longer enough

no longer a choice

these dust-words

these trapped amber-words

these formulae, odes and axioms

that merely bruise the clouds

and turn the rivers black

for the weight of a single feather is irreparable

yet the truth still sweeps the void

searching for itself

a vagabond, a stray dog

snapping at specks of dust

growling at the strange faces

it thinks it sees

grinning in the dark...

                     (ii)

...first came the smoky voice

then the glossy, sequinned skin

flashing its coloured algorithms

in every conceivable direction

then came the borrowed self

the hollowed self

with its wrap-around suffering

its addictive concealment of the soul

for if I am, yet I am not

what then am I really

but a brief criss-cross of shadows

a knot of fibres

that draws insignificance

like a garment over my head

this brief, sequinned consciousness

flashing in every direction its midnight eyes

its smoky costume

its hollow costume

those smiles that are of an unsettling, strange sadness

of a love borrowed, a love denied...

                    (iii)

...wounds will always ululate

ballads will always come with swords

but still this music will rise

bringing to all a discordant heaven

an empire of unwavering kitsch

with its passwords to euphoria

its ever-promising, compulsive logins 

at the gates of paradise

to some new type of darkness

this impenetrable banality

these shadows of women

burnt into the walls

but these stairs, these steps are impassable 

there are just too many misconceptions

too many memories to climb over

and wounds cannot  be silenced

verses cannot be stilled

and the truth cannot exist alone

with this music

this indelible banality

this dance macabre

on the last few steps...

                     (iv)

...behemoths rise and behemoths fall

and all of nothingness returns

a widow, a cloud, a veil

trailing this cortege of indecisions

that was once called life

this mother of every mother

this uterus to every star

every face, every fact

these altitudes, these divinations

left hanging in the darkness

that unfettered, crimson darkness

which embeds itself so closely

so seamlessly into the soul

the mother to every mother

the widow to every widow

this beast coiled by fire

burning its way into my skull 

just to prove it exists

to prove that should I ever return 

it will be as nothing...