Carriage - I

Had I been driven,

Not by someone I nearly met,

By a phone call specifying,

A pre-arranged lack of defying,

Get in the car at whatever hour,

Going to a place I have already chosen,

My freedom in stasis, it stands frozen,

Waiting for the crack to shatter it and shower

Hundreds of pieces, hundreds of days,

Rules unbroken that have now

Wasted away, like thorny tears on my face, hour after hour -

I would have been given,

At least some vague reason,

To still be the same, after

So many seasons.

And in that car,

In that passenger seat,

In which of course, I would fasten my belt,

Strap myself to my habitual retreat,

The same safety which I've always felt,

Or rather, pretended to feel,

As there has been some ground beneath my feet,

Although it is always moving, unlike

My rooted legs, proving

That the straps are real.

I would pass by roads

Which I had already looked for,

And I would point to them,

And in that same bright baritone explore,

How I thought, that the buildings

Seemed perhaps taller,

Then realising that I had taught myself

To see that they had once been smaller,

And that there was no change,

My own construct, my home,

The contents re-arranged, at most

A timid shuffling forced on the décor,

And all this time wheels turn on the road,

And all this time heels burn on the floor,

And all this time is too much to unload,

Everything is after, but I am still before.

Quietly Close

It takes the hammers,

From the keys,

And drums a tuneless beat,

Into me.

So when I try and play,

The only sound, is the echo

Of an empty space, on 

Shaky ground.

And when my fingers let go,

The silence starts to take action,

It follows me, the sickening stroke

Of sadness, its clinging caress

Up through my arms, and 

It holds me, it hugs me to itself,

And with its wordless voice,

It sings to me, and it promises me

That I can stop, lose, and collapse

Into the recess.

And I sink into it,

And it is now everything,

The return to being speechless,

The regression in full swing, from flesh to stone

Knowing I will reach less, now deaf to the phone,

Not hearing the future's faint ring.

No more fear of fault,

Mistakes I make start to decay,

All put to a halt,

When there is nothing that I say.

And all the noiselessness, 

It can be kept away, my frightened fingers,

Where the fight once hid,

But now no courage lingers, as

They close the lid,

On the mute piano.

February

It's not that much.
It's a layer, or rather, I hope it is.
It's the blanket which is still too cold,
Too thin, yet too heavy, too cumbersome,
Too pure and yet too dirty upon the
Indifferent, weary, ground.

It's the single-sided sleeping bag,
At a time where most are
In their beds, Or at least,
Attempting to be.
Darkness is now the norm, and the
Moon in the sunlight seems to be
Something of typical modernity,
As I wrap my coat of many colours-
-Many shades of off-white-
I am broken from the gaps in the
Pavement
Gaps in the roads, potholes
I fill with expectation and not release,
The creation of real obstacles and the
Not so real breeze, my home-made
Tornado lifts me up

And it brings me down so close
Away, back right down to the pre-paid
Sounds, the pre-frayed rounds of
Cotton kisses and sudden misses,
My aim made so effortless by the foundations
Of this flaking, settling comfort.

This is my seat, the unexpected under zero,
The near impossible frozen hero, this is my feat,
I walk as if I cannot feel throughout
The air which steams in fury whenever I open
My mouth, as if my heels set fire to what is real,
The jury of falling ice leads me back
I began here, yet I must end here,
But at this time it doesn't matter,
I don't need to jump on the glossy puddle,
To know that it will shatter,
The consequence is my only friend here,
And this muddle of my thoughts,
And what I could have sworn
Was the patter of
Mild rain and nothing more,
Has torn the shame away from my door,
I mourn the games I used to play before,
In what seemed like the snow, that's what I
Thought was it's name, I must have dreamed
That new start so long ago,
From where I came, and it's too late,
It's almost spring,
But this warmth,
It doesn't mean a thing.

The Way Back - I

I can feel the engine rattling through my tired bones. I've never broken one, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like; that shock of displacement, the fracture of wrongness inside one's own body, the what possibly could be short sharp pain coupled with the prospect of shaded recovery. I want to feel the warm, hard, bandage pressing against my skin, as it brings into existence that unsettling and yet so pleasant desire to itch away at what covers the cracked foundations which lie beneath.
I got on this bus on a whim, and I always sit at the back when it's empty, but even if there's one other person, a meek schoolboy, eagerly reading a textbook filled with twice as much words as are necessary, a loud, rude-sounding girl on her faux diamond-studded phone, or a humble middle aged woman in a slim fitting work suit... I just can't bear the thought of being in that almost detached space behind all the other seats, with someone other than myself. I like the slightly dented seats at the back. People have opted to sit there so many times, I almost feel like I'll sink into them and become one with the worn and faded patterns on the cheap, bought-in-bulk slightly grizzly fabric, the red and blue zig-zags now criss-crossing in all the wrong places, like some five year old's take on post-modern art. But I've been thinking lately, perhaps that's simply what all post-modern art is like.
That's not to say that I don't enjoy other people's company, but at times like these I prefer to be by myself. I can lean the left half of my face against the window and let it's plastic hand hold my head up, my mirror mother, scratched and scored with people's deepest desires and shallowest stupidities. I sometimes count the vulgarities and then the love hearts, and compare how many of each there are. Then I take my eyes outside, and let them lose focus on the endless blur of everything. The thin sheet of perspex is another pair of glasses which I wear, cancelling out the effects of the first. Now although nothing is clearly seen, everything seems to me clearly felt. The sounds can be heard much more easily, and although people's faces can't be made out with clarity, the way they walk reveals the way they feel.
But none of this matters, not now, not any more, as I can feel the floor shaking, and the pane pulsing against my flattened cheek, so I slowly lift my head and I knew it before I saw it, that someone else had also had the idea of sitting at the back, had put down their crocodile green, and most likely crocodile skin bag, obese and overflowing with mascara, foundation tubes, and various pencils, none of which appear to be intended for use on a form of canvas other than the face. As the bus stutters back into movement, a brush casually slips out from one of the outer pockets of the chunky bag and falls to the floor with a small, but distinct, patter. Not as rain would, but more like a rehearsed mother's 'tut', practised and developed over time to indicate disappointment or irritation. It rolls almost perfectly in time with the buses stumbles over the potholes, and lays to rest against a lime green, rounded closed-toe heel. It reminded me of a one of those glossy pull out pages in the otherwise dull and wafer thin cheap fashion magazines, the ones that people never admit to reading but rush through intensely to find the photo of that one coat, cardigan or clutch  bag which had the honour of being printed on that shiny, almost liquid-like, surface. As the bus coughed over a speed bump, the pencil miraculously managed to wedge itself in between the heel and the sole. The owner of this bright piece of footwear must have either seen this, or noticed it in another way, for a few seconds after this minor misfortune, I heard a real 'tut', one which either implied a cold or sore throat, or else belonged to a deep contralto, maybe a mother whose years of smoking had deepened her voice greatly, a mother who was immensely annoyed by the actions of her eldest daughter, the heel, and her youngest, the pencil, and had spent years rehearsing that one syllable, only to perform it now on an almost empty bus with someone desperately trying to avoid eye contact as the single member of the audience.
But it seems this person, with their electric green shoes and bag simply millimetres away from bursting it's banks, is determined to get in my field of vision no matter how hard I try. Just before I lift my head, intending to strategically take a long blink until I can feel the harsh hard coldness of the window against my cheek, thus reducing my chance of looking at this mystery heel-wearer to a single digit number, a hand, slightly larger than average, scrambles around on the floor like a desperate, bald, pale five-legged tarantula, and I notice that the nails have been lavished with layers of grassy colouring, translucently sickly in the late afternoon light. So perhaps a five-legged tarantula, wearing five pairs of grass green pumps, in keeping with the theme of the post-modern, and performing an interpretative dance, with the stimuli being the blurred and battered patterns on the seat-covers. It's not long before the long, slender fingers make contact with the slightly more long and slender barrel of the pencil, and in one sweeping simultaneous movement, they grasp it at their tips and the leg which until now had been like a dormant pillar, rises smoothly, and the pencil is now firmly in the palm of the hand which saved it from another embarrassing, annoying, tumble to the grainy linoleum-like material of the bus floor.
So I follow what seems to now be this floating spider, flying up from the feet through the air, or maybe climbing some invisible thread, until I see the arm which it is attached to, hidden under a cylindrical sheath of slate grey wool. Of course, the assumption is made that it's an arm. For all I know it could be a rattlesnake, which would explain the almost festive jangling which seems to emanate from an area above the knees, above the thick skin colour tights which hide all skin from the foot to the knee, where the lower legs themselves meet an oppressive end in the mesh of a dark blue, almost black, chiffon skirt. Maybe beneath the sleeve there is a snake, maybe the entire person is just a interlocking collection of snakes and nothing more, hence the skin colour tights, giving the impression that underneath the delicate fabric there lies indeed human body parts, and not a conflagration of serpents.
Strapping the chiffon tightly to this possible half-reptile is a dull, dusty grey belt. This noose-around-the-waist   seems out of place against the meticulously near neon shades which surround it. Even the black elasticated waistband manages to outshine it's buckle's grim feeble grin. It simply sits there, an old, unnecessary and abandoned airport runway in the midst of a tropical forest, nearly lost in the swathes of leaves and ways of the trees. I can already imagine the response were I to enquire about it, a long twisted story involving half-lies and half-His and half-Goodbyes, with the word vintage shoved relentlessly into ever single gap which remains. As the pencil makes it way up and beyond the runway, I can see that the navy-esque colour continues on both sides of it. The nib accidentally grazes the bottom of the silky shirt, nearly being caught by it's lowest visible button, and it tilts towards the window, and for the split-second before the tubular anti-submarine continues it's submerged journey dislodges itself from the circular, ridged reef, it glints in the late-afternoon sun, almost winks in my direction, but then all too quickly the moment is gone, the button's shine lost in the sheer slipperiness of the ocean which it drifts on.
I count four more buttons before they abruptly end, but those four seemed to last hours to pass me by, the deep blue gloss never rising, never falling, the vertical horizon never disturbed.
The shock of skin (which seems indeed to be human, and not reptilian) nearly hurts my eyes, the paleness which is almost glaring at me soon fades to a comfortable, neutral caucasian. The collarbones too seem to be thrusting outwards, like the safety bars on a roller-coaster, comforting and yet so confining in that box-like, excited space.

Halloween

Upon this day, all the ghosts of fear come to play,
We hide ourselves in masks and capes, the tasks
We undertake to fake our way through it,
Make our way through it, those childish scary games,
I promise in the past, I'll blame, I'll fix
Myself for the people I wanted to meet,
Myself for falling for those tricks,
Falling for those treats.

Eating jelly beans, and it's Halloween,
Knew I'd return to those sweets--
So many flavours I have already tasted,
So I suppose the surprise of the new
Has already been wasted.
Sometimes I close my eyes, and pick out
A small fistful. Shove them in my mouth,
The blind rainbow, I can never know
Which is which.

Beginning not with the first, but the second
Bit which the night has not cursed. I hope
By not starting at the top, I won't be
Broken by the unseen drop.

But I will plummet wearing wings or not.
No costume is needed --
Before this eve, I know that what
I should have wanted, I exceeded.

Just you - no more than that.
No beast, bride or banshee.
You didn't need a witches hat,
To cast a spell on me.

Hothe

Through the gap in my heavy curtains,
Halved by the plastic window frame,
I can see that now unused place,
The blue brick bottom standing, surrounded
By broken or breaking bike stands, dull grey
In the quickly fading day.

Just underneath the cracking windowsills,
The blue suddenly lightens, and on this outside landing,
What was once white is founded, but in the corners
Of the house, the door set in a obelisk jutting out
From that otherwise typical double L shaped build,
Where once loud conversations would have sounded,
The floorboards trembling and the carpets tutting,
But now through the flimsy glass panes, the dust and musk
Handing each other whispers of the past, as the
Vague sunlight illuminates their distilled exchange, still
The wooden sashes, like rotting hot cross buns,
Yellowing like the apron, crippled as if branded
By time's age-old lashes, the muntin seems old and deranged,
As the darkened reflection inside plays on my mind,
Whispered nothings banded together, this charmbracelet
Of this early winter weather, worn and worn out
Now disbanded.

The upper continues until the roof, once so shy,
But now too decrepit to be anything actively. There
Still are some pyramid like prisms, if they can exist,
Like carelessly added on parts and ways of living, casually ripped,
Casually not free, casually not discerning,
Towards other homes, although to be
Fair those shapely things they were always there,
The folded peaks of these mini-tops, like canopies of
The most-able trees, green not with health, but perhaps with
Moss and rot, and in the night the creaking ceilings reach my ears
Like the small, simple, goodbye shake of children's hands
When they do not yet understand, that something,
Which when gone leaves you with an empty burning, that something is
Leaving, and never returning.

There is a light on, above the entrance.
It must have been placed there quite recently,
It's metallic mesh cage and plastic coating seem naked
Amongst the forlorn walls. Too clean, yet still covered
With layers upon layers of dirt.
There is no path to the front door,
No indication as to where the start is,
I would loathe to live on those floors,
Hothe is not where the heart is.

Succession

Your promises went punting down that small stream,
Written on that paper boat which you set afloat,
Gave it a gentle push with your right and off it went, on it's way -
Left to fend through smallish rocks and your hand returns
To curl again those curly locks of hair on your head,
The mind underneath morphs in thought at my sojourn.

And from what you say are mountains, that small trickle,
Travels down through forests green, and soon
The trees will feel the tickle, of the driven dew
And clarity up until then unseen.

And from what I like to call motions, slowly
The words written in such minute letters begin
To fade away, the woodland potions dilute the ink,
Almost like the waters most holy, this once creak
Now leads you to abandon your notions, now the future seems bleak -
Now stronger than your ship, now it will sink.

But still I follow it, but I cannot tell
Whether what I am seeking are those sentences,
Now washed away, or that bracing brook,
But it leads me to a well, and I, chasing changing,
Plunged my senses in the bucket, and something I took,
From the very bottom, a wasted page, wrinkled and rage
And sadness and every feeling filled my eyes,
Ranging from every look.

There it was, in my hand, a shrivelled scrap,
I only knew it from the shape,
What you once wrote, what I once thought
Would skim around the sea, my castle's moat,
But now I drape it around my throat, caught
Up finally, with that fluctuation, and I run
To the nearest river, I run to the nearest bridge,
And even with the shifting scarf slipping around my neck,
I still shiver, and then I look over at it, on the very edge,
And I see your face in fabrication, I stretch out my arms
On this different deck, jumping up, down, in
But it's not deep enough to drown in.