A Half-Hearted Poetry Anthology Part 1 of 327
HERE IS SOME POEMS.
Sonnet of Ironic Things and Bunnies.
So that night we smoked below the doorway,
While smoke that we blew danced up to the moon
Rabbits stumbled, with myxomatosis,
Cut dying shadows while we smoked on immune.
From far afield an engine had started,
It drew closer on the back of each tune,
Its reverberations sang, we soon would be parted,
And our lifestyles, our thoughts it seemed to oppugn.
“You’ve wasted your time, your lives and your minds,
Smoking and drinking each day until dawn,
Health is a gift, and thought is a blessing.”
And then all were silent and still and withdrawn.
The irony was, the rabbits kept stumbling,
Throwing dead shadows across smoke on the lawn.
***
Synesthesiac.
Because of that feeling, the bass moving through arm hair,
Throbbing through walls and floors,
Altering heartbeat.
Because of that, feeling and colour bleed into the world,
The multitudes find solace in selfish expression,
A few are very rich.
How the kids love it, throw spasmodic bodies onto
The floor and into each other,
Slick with sweat and love.
How their loins heave with promise in time
To liquid caramel grooves,
Nullify thought with tension.
Because of it there is a poster on my wall in vivid blue
And deep magenta of myself and fellows
Immortalised in ink.
And a single photograph that grimaces nostalgia
And a sense of time forever wasted
And myself in the infinite.
***
Pilgrimage to the Heart of Sunrise?
Over fields yellow rolling and silent I was forced
By some natural peristalsis that rose up called
From fragrant summer grasses and the acne of cowpats.
Miniscule on that plain, the dying light picked out and swallowed us.
Columns legion fell, into the terrifying open maw of the universe.
But this process was disguised,
As individual senses of occasion within us all,
In all those who strolled and prayed and ran drunkenly enthralled
To the west where light seared the blackening cumulus fractus,
The exact point where oceanic blue had been broken
By the shortest nights paling fade.
Then by silent indomitable monoliths,
That rose ancient from the plains.
Towards the stones rising, grey teeth of a celestial jaw,
A straight fist of humanity trudged scattered and awed.
We strode through the heavens for what could have been miles,
To an audience with a sun temporarily exiled.
A Couple before me came to worship,
Twins in matching hemp ponchos and worn hiking boots,
Their brown hair watered grey by time,
Faces hard and wizened like bark, resolute.
Her hand was tiny encased in that of the man,
Save for half an inch of purple nail varnish
Illustrating where he ended, and where she began.
Suddenly an explosion of teenagers occurred,
One seconds consideration was all it took to decide,
To raise his fist and his voice up into the air
In violent profanity completely unaware
That behind him, now alone in all that sky,
Her hand hung miniscule and limp by her side.
While somewhere to our right iron traffic flowed
On the A303 westbound, my thoughts were enclosed
Around her fingers, and all they now symbolised;
That in his self-righteous fury he had failed to recognise
That his convictions and beliefs could no longer disguise
The fact there was no difference
Between the children and him;
And that the Hare Krishna’s he raised his voice to sing,
Were the same as the chattering screams of the sprinting youths,
And his tiny act of abandonment only showed the truth
Of how completely choice had failed us all.
Of how he had left no room for what was truly important.
And finally how our different ideologies all shared the same downfall.
Because whether we came to pray, drug or drink,
The moment that golden disk began to sink
Below the horizon and monoliths loomed,
Our reasons meant nothing, we were there to be consumed
All together, all as one.
Ants dissolved by heat in the gullet of the sun.
***
(Ode to) Amsterdam
I often try to recall the beauty that I know I have witnessed;
The gothic spires penetrating a taciturn grey sky,
Cyclists abundant and unapologetic,
The smell that coats nasal hair at a hundred feet and lingers.
Call it sin; it will call back to you in the voices
Of the thousand manifold pleasures of flesh and mind
That cluster in plain sight on the pavements
And in the shop windows and in the hands and bodies and thoughts
Of the people; those backpackers, trust fund children,
Aged hippies, Yoots, Rastafari, Ladies of the Night
They are ripe for the taking! And the unaccustomed mind flails;
It takes one toke and is pulled into the maelstrom
Emerging three days later sprouting confusing new venereal diseases
And a permanent sense of being somehow altered.
Stepping out of Centraal Station and it hits you;
Vibrations in the network carry it along
Then something screams “Prey!”
And all its hands are on deck, all the matchstick figures
Of the whores and pushers slide out from under
Red neons and along cobbled pavements then coagulate
With an empty crackle like fat burning.
And then the city has you.
Stepping inside the first coffee shop of too many,
The name escapes me,
‘Animals’ leapt from the PA and embraced us,
Although in retrospect it seems a dirge droning as a prelude
To the descent that began with the first touch of flame
To Rizla, the first inhalation, the first taste.
Arriving at the hovel, the decrepit den of misdemeanour,
That must have been a divine warning
In the pile of soiled bed sheets that greeted us on entry,
Neglected by room service and in dire need of shelter.
The lack of pillows, the overwhelming greenness,
The only sink mere inches from my head,
The ironic lip service of a television, disconnected after eleven.
It all seemed to scream danger! Danger! Get out!
But we were caught up in the decadence of the situation,
We didn’t stop to question the filth, the degradation.
And after the days chemical odyssey the room hummed with warmth,
The Sink! … It stood at the pinnacle of our achievements.
The dispenser of water! The sponsor, progenitor and sustainer of all mankind!
All kinds of new meanings imbued all kinds of new concepts,
Logic and proportion fell sloppily dead into the corner and I slept.
In the mornings it all began again with the first flutter of consciousness
The first sighting of the hovel bathed in anaemic orange light
Somehow transfigured. The seconds blissful forgetting and then
Pow! Up and out and onto cobbling and under the shadows cast
By buildings too high on streets too narrow, Sky too grey and rain.
Up and out to the realisation that it wasn’t only our hovel changed
But the entire city, metaphysical haze hung in the air like a cataract
As if the veil of perception itself somehow tightened around our necks
Or as if the conflagration of crackling crackheads and courtesans
Crept in at nightfall and superimposed an image, a hologram
Merely half a millimetre to the left of reality, to confuse the senses,
Make the mind reel and the predatory act easier.
Everything slightly sideways, too much of the left;
The average human mind can’t take it, falls screaming, paralytic
Into the nearest coffee shop, where it orders a muffin with all politeness,
Skins a joint and falls outside of itself once the veil finishes tightening.
And once the individual falls outside of itself all sorts of options open up.
At the plateau of the Mushrooms, Columbian naturally, the sink was no longer
Simply at the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements but at those of the myriad
Deities of the cosmos. Using its manna teeth brushed away for hours,
Must’ve brushed all night, brushed a path of cool blue flame through the evil
Of Plaque. Plaque occupied but one part of the undulating mirrored surface
Of my understanding. If I focused, I could see them; ice-cold blue crystals frothing
And expanding over a fetid blackness that coated pure white icebergs
With filth. It was thrilling, stood as a testament to all we have accomplished.
After a while, became convinced that this was not a simple cleaning of the teeth I saw,
But the cognitive manifestation of myself on some astral plane,
Sweeping a brighter path through the radio static of screaming and prancing from
The Craftsman, besheeted and absent with psychosis, blank eyes communicating
Everything and nothing all at once. The emptiness. The joy.
And all of a sudden the horror leaps from his eyes,
He bolts. The sheet billows to the floor on a gentle breeze
Entirely unnatural indoors on this continent this time of year.
In his absence we speak of Chinese food, of Bruce Willis and of his flaws
And I brush, each bristle stroke the rapture in motion, until he returns
With holocaust on his proverbial coat-tails spitting damnation
And horror into every corner of the room from blackened lungs,
Yellow lips and eyes voided by that whom none knew. Il Miglior Fabbro.
He who crept in at dawn with the whores and coffee shop owners and pushers,
Transfigured the place and kept silent when the Inquisition came.
He who coagulated them; drew the best parts of Amsterdam together
And allowed them to facilitate and then watch The Craftsman barricading the door
That opens outwards with the soiled bed-sheets, gave function to every
Molecule and painted the veil opaque with any colour you like.
In the mornings he begins it again with the first flutters of Consciousness
And the first images bouncing inside the eyeballs strobing surrealistic nonsense
At a thousand revolutions per second, pictures of some divine Craftsman
Spinning his malevolent machinations inside bed sheets and down lurid
Green corridors too narrow and low. Images of sheet wearing maniacs
Pirouetting until dawn and raising dirty brown drugs to yellow lips,
Pores gagging for oxygen under the tar of tobacco pestilence, the eyes
Of millions resting upon one inch of burning ash stubbornly refusing to fall.
Sonnet of Ironic Things and Bunnies.
So that night we smoked below the doorway,
While smoke that we blew danced up to the moon
Rabbits stumbled, with myxomatosis,
Cut dying shadows while we smoked on immune.
From far afield an engine had started,
It drew closer on the back of each tune,
Its reverberations sang, we soon would be parted,
And our lifestyles, our thoughts it seemed to oppugn.
“You’ve wasted your time, your lives and your minds,
Smoking and drinking each day until dawn,
Health is a gift, and thought is a blessing.”
And then all were silent and still and withdrawn.
The irony was, the rabbits kept stumbling,
Throwing dead shadows across smoke on the lawn.
***
Synesthesiac.
Because of that feeling, the bass moving through arm hair,
Throbbing through walls and floors,
Altering heartbeat.
Because of that, feeling and colour bleed into the world,
The multitudes find solace in selfish expression,
A few are very rich.
How the kids love it, throw spasmodic bodies onto
The floor and into each other,
Slick with sweat and love.
How their loins heave with promise in time
To liquid caramel grooves,
Nullify thought with tension.
Because of it there is a poster on my wall in vivid blue
And deep magenta of myself and fellows
Immortalised in ink.
And a single photograph that grimaces nostalgia
And a sense of time forever wasted
And myself in the infinite.
***
Pilgrimage to the Heart of Sunrise?
Over fields yellow rolling and silent I was forced
By some natural peristalsis that rose up called
From fragrant summer grasses and the acne of cowpats.
Miniscule on that plain, the dying light picked out and swallowed us.
Columns legion fell, into the terrifying open maw of the universe.
But this process was disguised,
As individual senses of occasion within us all,
In all those who strolled and prayed and ran drunkenly enthralled
To the west where light seared the blackening cumulus fractus,
The exact point where oceanic blue had been broken
By the shortest nights paling fade.
Then by silent indomitable monoliths,
That rose ancient from the plains.
Towards the stones rising, grey teeth of a celestial jaw,
A straight fist of humanity trudged scattered and awed.
We strode through the heavens for what could have been miles,
To an audience with a sun temporarily exiled.
A Couple before me came to worship,
Twins in matching hemp ponchos and worn hiking boots,
Their brown hair watered grey by time,
Faces hard and wizened like bark, resolute.
Her hand was tiny encased in that of the man,
Save for half an inch of purple nail varnish
Illustrating where he ended, and where she began.
Suddenly an explosion of teenagers occurred,
One seconds consideration was all it took to decide,
To raise his fist and his voice up into the air
In violent profanity completely unaware
That behind him, now alone in all that sky,
Her hand hung miniscule and limp by her side.
While somewhere to our right iron traffic flowed
On the A303 westbound, my thoughts were enclosed
Around her fingers, and all they now symbolised;
That in his self-righteous fury he had failed to recognise
That his convictions and beliefs could no longer disguise
The fact there was no difference
Between the children and him;
And that the Hare Krishna’s he raised his voice to sing,
Were the same as the chattering screams of the sprinting youths,
And his tiny act of abandonment only showed the truth
Of how completely choice had failed us all.
Of how he had left no room for what was truly important.
And finally how our different ideologies all shared the same downfall.
Because whether we came to pray, drug or drink,
The moment that golden disk began to sink
Below the horizon and monoliths loomed,
Our reasons meant nothing, we were there to be consumed
All together, all as one.
Ants dissolved by heat in the gullet of the sun.
***
(Ode to) Amsterdam
I often try to recall the beauty that I know I have witnessed;
The gothic spires penetrating a taciturn grey sky,
Cyclists abundant and unapologetic,
The smell that coats nasal hair at a hundred feet and lingers.
Call it sin; it will call back to you in the voices
Of the thousand manifold pleasures of flesh and mind
That cluster in plain sight on the pavements
And in the shop windows and in the hands and bodies and thoughts
Of the people; those backpackers, trust fund children,
Aged hippies, Yoots, Rastafari, Ladies of the Night
They are ripe for the taking! And the unaccustomed mind flails;
It takes one toke and is pulled into the maelstrom
Emerging three days later sprouting confusing new venereal diseases
And a permanent sense of being somehow altered.
Stepping out of Centraal Station and it hits you;
Vibrations in the network carry it along
Then something screams “Prey!”
And all its hands are on deck, all the matchstick figures
Of the whores and pushers slide out from under
Red neons and along cobbled pavements then coagulate
With an empty crackle like fat burning.
And then the city has you.
Stepping inside the first coffee shop of too many,
The name escapes me,
‘Animals’ leapt from the PA and embraced us,
Although in retrospect it seems a dirge droning as a prelude
To the descent that began with the first touch of flame
To Rizla, the first inhalation, the first taste.
Arriving at the hovel, the decrepit den of misdemeanour,
That must have been a divine warning
In the pile of soiled bed sheets that greeted us on entry,
Neglected by room service and in dire need of shelter.
The lack of pillows, the overwhelming greenness,
The only sink mere inches from my head,
The ironic lip service of a television, disconnected after eleven.
It all seemed to scream danger! Danger! Get out!
But we were caught up in the decadence of the situation,
We didn’t stop to question the filth, the degradation.
And after the days chemical odyssey the room hummed with warmth,
The Sink! … It stood at the pinnacle of our achievements.
The dispenser of water! The sponsor, progenitor and sustainer of all mankind!
All kinds of new meanings imbued all kinds of new concepts,
Logic and proportion fell sloppily dead into the corner and I slept.
In the mornings it all began again with the first flutter of consciousness
The first sighting of the hovel bathed in anaemic orange light
Somehow transfigured. The seconds blissful forgetting and then
Pow! Up and out and onto cobbling and under the shadows cast
By buildings too high on streets too narrow, Sky too grey and rain.
Up and out to the realisation that it wasn’t only our hovel changed
But the entire city, metaphysical haze hung in the air like a cataract
As if the veil of perception itself somehow tightened around our necks
Or as if the conflagration of crackling crackheads and courtesans
Crept in at nightfall and superimposed an image, a hologram
Merely half a millimetre to the left of reality, to confuse the senses,
Make the mind reel and the predatory act easier.
Everything slightly sideways, too much of the left;
The average human mind can’t take it, falls screaming, paralytic
Into the nearest coffee shop, where it orders a muffin with all politeness,
Skins a joint and falls outside of itself once the veil finishes tightening.
And once the individual falls outside of itself all sorts of options open up.
At the plateau of the Mushrooms, Columbian naturally, the sink was no longer
Simply at the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements but at those of the myriad
Deities of the cosmos. Using its manna teeth brushed away for hours,
Must’ve brushed all night, brushed a path of cool blue flame through the evil
Of Plaque. Plaque occupied but one part of the undulating mirrored surface
Of my understanding. If I focused, I could see them; ice-cold blue crystals frothing
And expanding over a fetid blackness that coated pure white icebergs
With filth. It was thrilling, stood as a testament to all we have accomplished.
After a while, became convinced that this was not a simple cleaning of the teeth I saw,
But the cognitive manifestation of myself on some astral plane,
Sweeping a brighter path through the radio static of screaming and prancing from
The Craftsman, besheeted and absent with psychosis, blank eyes communicating
Everything and nothing all at once. The emptiness. The joy.
And all of a sudden the horror leaps from his eyes,
He bolts. The sheet billows to the floor on a gentle breeze
Entirely unnatural indoors on this continent this time of year.
In his absence we speak of Chinese food, of Bruce Willis and of his flaws
And I brush, each bristle stroke the rapture in motion, until he returns
With holocaust on his proverbial coat-tails spitting damnation
And horror into every corner of the room from blackened lungs,
Yellow lips and eyes voided by that whom none knew. Il Miglior Fabbro.
He who crept in at dawn with the whores and coffee shop owners and pushers,
Transfigured the place and kept silent when the Inquisition came.
He who coagulated them; drew the best parts of Amsterdam together
And allowed them to facilitate and then watch The Craftsman barricading the door
That opens outwards with the soiled bed-sheets, gave function to every
Molecule and painted the veil opaque with any colour you like.
In the mornings he begins it again with the first flutters of Consciousness
And the first images bouncing inside the eyeballs strobing surrealistic nonsense
At a thousand revolutions per second, pictures of some divine Craftsman
Spinning his malevolent machinations inside bed sheets and down lurid
Green corridors too narrow and low. Images of sheet wearing maniacs
Pirouetting until dawn and raising dirty brown drugs to yellow lips,
Pores gagging for oxygen under the tar of tobacco pestilence, the eyes
Of millions resting upon one inch of burning ash stubbornly refusing to fall.