I sat upright upon the cushion
Jammed betwixt panniers atop the rear wheel
Hanging on for dear comfort but also survival
His legs pumping pedals, my arms holding tight
His bulk and his jumper, thick as a tree
We rode along streets, as traffic abounded
The cacophony of lives, plain to see
Not by my small form, nor did head turn around
My face to his back was I pressed against
Not worried or fearful, was I of a fall
Trust in this man, did I place, so impressed
Of his position, still looming in my mind years hence

Arrived at the store we did in a jiffy
Though my father did not gift me a toy
Instead simply stated at my wanting a thing
A garish yellow-green Super Soaker,
That I could save money and return later days
Though it didn't occur, he tried gifting me patience,
Knowing as I do, his intractable states,
No appeal, nor crocodile tears to manipulate
Instead I acknowledged his plan to distract
From my want, with which I would use to harass
My sister's at home and my friends unamused
Though thankful am I despite no seeming benefit
Am I for the lesson that day
The gift of his time, the ride quality

Homeward bound do we travel,
Though my hands were not empty
Filled with knowledge and his form so plenty
A love and respect for my father, I see
Despite getting not what I desired, I did not fail to be
In awe of his stature, looming so large
At speed did we weave between cars
Homeward bound do we travel
Beneath pale blue sky, cycling smooth roads
As bike mounted curved street curb
Leading down cobble stoned alleys of old Dublin city
The memories not lost, so no use for some pity

I am from the psych ward, from
Rexulti, and hallucinations all the while.
I am from the dark in winter, green grass in sallow sun.
I am from the shamrock, the stinging nettle.
I am from teetotal and social intoxication, from genetic stocks known and unknown.
I am from talktative and friendly.
From hyper and disruptive.
I am from questioning why despite no seeming answer.
To the void I shout and scream for meaning,
to the text box I fill with my own.
I am from an endless migration,
fleeing famine and seeking opportunity,
from humble potato and churned butter.
From the slap across my face, to the glasses lost below,
consigning me to blurry reality,
and the heat of angered father's at inattentive sons.
I am from the mantelpiece,
above a fire never lit,
lost items from my childhood,
I am not ashamed to admit,
once as precious as my blood,
I would likely sell for profit, nothing good could come from memories they would elicit,
feelings best left in the past,
that show I care not a whit,
for violent scenes and children's screams,
water flowing down my throat,
drowning slowly bit by bit,
torn away from flowing tap,
just as quickly to confess,
sorrow for my attention-deficit,
hyperactive way of being.

They call me Impulsiveness.
They call me Disorganisation.
They call me Poor Planning.
They call me Low Frustration Tolerance.
They call me Mood Swings.
They call me Executive Dysfunction.
They call me Avolition.
They call me Delusions.
They call me Hallucinations.
They call me Positive Effect.
They call me Pain.
But Paul's my name.

Justice should not be blind
To the inequality put forward by our presumed betters.
Impartiality can be achieved without the blindfold afront her eyes,
blinding the difficulties faced by poor policies and laws.

Let us remove her 'fold atop her face,
and see her tears roll down both cheeks,
at what we have created.

Free will is an illusion and belief in freedom,
neither weakness nor strength;
we simply do not control our actions.

We are the sum of our reactions
to the equal, opposite and neutral
from the Big Bang, long long ago.

It is not free will
beckoning faith or hope or love,
but the complex ongoing reaction of the universe expressing itself.

I am made of
stardust and sunlight;
water bonds me.

Trillions of trees
fill my lungs,
the breath of life
fuels my function.

The blood pumped
from my heart so full,
is the same as yours.
Blood may be thicker
than the water of origin,
but it is light and life
that propels us.

I am not interested in revolution.
As the past is buried and forgotten too many times
through initial force, responsibility is displaced
by the charisma of leaders, usually ill-suited to responsibility.

I am interested in evolution,
of form and function of processes
designed to instil progress towards
a lack of inequality and deprivation,
of sustainable growth of both technology
and provision of the basic needs
and wants of our collective population.

We are one race, of many isles and masses,
from one small mote shielded by the bright of a single white star,
with a shared history and culture developed
by communication, travel and tragedy.

To shed the past in form of revolution,
is to discount the lessons learned,
as whilst every action has a reaction
there is an equal, opposite and neutral reaction
to the force involved in such a plot.

As I stared through the window, at a family not mine
From the outside looking in, though, her dress caught my eye,
Scarlet red and gleaming, alike blood spilt on snow,
Fine cutlery, now moving at rapid pace, my eye drawn to her bow,
I now watch with a fear whilst my hunger grows,
For revenge for my sister, and seeing such awful repose
A crime disappearing, whilst creating such glee
On faces speckled with flesh, my sister's innate purity
Eat the rich, I should say, as their punishment must fit
This dark awakening in life, to writing I submit

I come from a place of privilege
where chances flock to me
due to characteristics
determined by chance.
From my pink skinned eyelids
I open my blue eyes.
From my male gaze
I count imposed disparities,
between the sexes.
I see discrimination,
between ethnicities.
I stand askance on cultural barriers,
built over generations, and view
impositions, hardships and atrocities.
I contribute little to improve
the lot of the many,
affected by hatred and bigotry,
and this is nothing but guilt,
typing privilege on technology
manufactured by slavery
of work, thought and time.

I remember a night
I felt burdened by the world
and rejected the concept of sovereignty,
rejected the need for a crown of power.

It is for all, the need to be responsible.
It is for all, the staying of the need to be powerful.

When those who seek power, succeed and act poorly,
it is a reflection of the cognitive dissonance
surrounding the true nature of power.

When power is wielded by those that sought it out,
it appears willy nilly and soaked in the blood of previous mistaken attempts.

We all bear this power, without need of seeking,
as power is the responsibility of all, given to the minute few.

Feel the dread
Time passes too quickly
Feel the dread
Your life burns away
Feel the dread
Work takes you away from life
Feel the dread
Your children grow up fast
Feel the dread
Already left the home, and left you too
Feel the dread
Your skin ages and your bones ache
Feel the dread
Not much longer and you'll be dead

Death is a whore
It gets around
To all the people
Big and small
To all the people
Young and old
The day we do part
This very mortal coil
May it be kicking and screaming
Or lovingly embracing
Your very last moments
And run through your mind
The long and short of your life
Death is a whore
It deserves all your fear
Taking away all your love
It deserves all your respect
Taking away all your pain
It deserves all your ire
Taking away all your friends
It deserves all your hate
Taking away all your family
It deserves all your time
For you'll soon run out

One long poem From eyes first opening
From your first gasp of air
From your emptying lungs
One long poem
Open your mouth
to scream poetry
To be cradled lovingly
Welcome to the living poetry gathering
Where all thoughts, writings and spoken word
Contain nuggets of truth, falsehoods and gobbledygook
Where dreams flourish but also die
Along with you, one day
One long poem

Virtue novelty
Against the pragmatic force
Forced upon us all

Keep it silent
Keep it sedate
Release focus on every little thing
Let the heart be your guide
As you take a break from your mind
Keep it silent
Keep it sedate

The dance with death can be a very brief affair
or countless recitals.
With a pause between songs
as the dance doesn't end
until death takes their due.

With no choreography,
in lockstep after pirouette
to escape your fate
and Death's hold sways.

As Death dips you truly
a close embrace to
kiss your life away
past precipice of all
Death curtseys to the claimed
and changes partner once again.

Take receipts of your suffering Add them to the piles mounting
Ever so high inside your house of Grief
Walk the stairs to reach the top
Narrowing slightly as they turn
Around and around your tower.
Take note out your windows
Of all the other spikes
Reaching to the stars
Of other people's towers,
And try not to weep,
Or become distracted,
As your receipts need piling
From the injustices you face.

Sitting with my worries and concerns
around a table, large enough to host my anger and fear.
My happiness tells a joke in a boisterous voice as my confidence swaggers to the table.
At this my sadness, in the corner of the room, quietly whispers offence under raucous laughter.
My confidence stands, surveys the room, staggers away from the table, lightly stepping on the cat's tail, and the smirk is wiped quietly from my face.

I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to go.

Undercurrent of expectation,
trepidation for concern,
I feel it under my skin.
A shakiness to my hands,
upturned palms at which I stare
the weight placed upon me,
by myself, and no-one else.

Power doesn't suit,
and responsibility hurts.
The ills that plague us,
terrible and true,
are at odds with my disposition,
and beckon for attention.
Truly, to know your place,
is to lie to others,
about their situation.

Long ago across the seas,
were distant isles,
covered by apple trees
forever leaved green,
and flowers always in bloom.

The Otherworld of Eternal Youth or Tír na nÓg,
Mag Mell, or the Plain of Delight,
Tír fo Thuinn, or Land under the Wave,
Emain Ablach, or the Isle of Apple Trees,
Tír Tairngire, or the Land of Promise,
otherwise Annwn to the Welsh
or Avalon to the English,
erstwhile Penglai or Hōrai, island of Immortals,
to the Chinese or Japanese, respectively,
the isles Muirias, Falias, Goirias and Findias,
possibly Elysium,
or even Atlantis.

Mystical isles where fae/fairy mixed with Gods,
from which come mythical tales of jewels from trees,
endless food and drink,
swine that regenerated daily,
and trees with silver branches,
gold and silver buildings,
immortality granted from springs,
or from fruits
or ales or wines
that heal the sick
or raise the dead.

Tales of mythical lands
that humans oft used to seek out,
but nary find, due to mystical fog
and seas with tides either weak or strong.

Where the dead may go,
and where few who find
such lands return,
or return many years
or centuries later,
still young until:

they touch the ground,
as in the case of Oisín who rode atop
his love's Niamh's magical horse,
which could glide across the seas
just as easily as land
who returned to Ireland
300 years later.

or open a forbidden jewelled box,
as in the case of Urashima Tarō,
who returned to Japan, after only 3 days
at Hōrai, discovering it was
300 years later.

Many cultures discuss
across fractured histories,
such places of which
Bards sang or spoke
and Monks scribed
through shared stories,
myths and legends.

For example,
the four treasures of the Tuath Dé
or Tribe of the Gods,
later known as Tuatha Dé Danann
or Folk of the Goddess Danu:

From the isle of Murias the Coire Dagdae
or The Dagda's Cauldron,
an endless bowl filled
with whatever desired,
possibly later referred to as
The Holy Grail of Arthurian Legend.

From the isle of Goirias, Sleá Bua
or Spear of Lú, from which flame flashed
said to later belong to Pisear, king of Persia
who kept it immersed in water to stop its flames.

From the isle of Falias, Lia Fáil
or Stone of Destiny,
said to be the Coronation Stone of Tara,
for the High Kings of Ireland,
still seen on the Hill of Tara.

From the isle of Findias, Claíomh Solais,
or Sword of Light,
similar to the Arthurian Legend of Excalibur,
where if held aloft by honourable persons,
a sword of flame or light.

Such tales abound,
such meaning present.
Always conflicting tales,
always spun throughout history.
Across all cultures,
across all time.

a long line
drawn first on cave wall
from when first we uttered
under harried breath such muttering,
speech unintelligible to all
but kin and kind alike. Now he, she, they
write, type and think,
react and find beauty and maudlin sorrow
in the quiet words and loud imagery
splaid across screen and page,
seen by mind's eye
a long line
drawn at last to the final word,
not yet spoken, heard but often feared,
an idea passed from cry as babe
to single tear from aged eye,
wearied from sight of pain
and refreshed by memory
of being heard and seen and understood
the end unseen and passed from thought,
to worries saved, left by-the-by
for yet another day
a long line
unbroken

Take a breath,
have a cry
and do some screaming.

Howl a curse
and fight the leaving.

The moment passes,
your heart is beating.
Fight the urge,
to be unfeeling.

Love the world,
continue breathing.

I've been to the brink
between life and death,
breathing with assistance
via ventilator;
induced coma for 3 days.

Passing massive amounts
of made-to-order,
ground-to-powder
mortared-and-pestled
hoarded antipsychotics
from mouth to GI tract,
that pounded my liver
and flooded my blood.

Irony:
a drug designed
to ease the mind's
sixes and sevens,
knocking me for six.

Without the easing
of blood to brain cell,
inducement of comatosity:
brain damage likely,
death a certainty.

Without the breath
inspired by electrical systems
pumping to and fro
from my lungs,
to my heart,
to my arteries
and back through veins.

I'd have passed
from this world
to the nothing
which awaits us all.

I'm grateful
for another chance,
but I'm given
momentary pause,
from time to time,
a lingering question
to my lips.

Did I perish?
Is this some reaction
to vegetation of my mind?
An illusion created by my hand,
a fatal overdose?

A cautionary tale,
one told from me,
to you in earnest.

If in doubt, in despair or pain,
there is nothing to take from this refrain,
but to seek out help, and muster strength.

Enough to cry or yelp a pleading,
to a loved one, friend,
any heart a'bleeding.

RATs, RATs and cutbacks to testing
the peak a lie, numbers increasingly high,
if not vaxxed you may even die.

Unvaxxed lungs as full as ICU beds,
rampant spread of this new strain,
personal responsibility the new game
and if you have to work, enjoy the new normal,
you've only got yourself to blame.

The buck stops where harm begins,
misguided people counting their wins,
you held the flame and locked down fair,
RATs the New Abnormal and none to spare.
From pandemic to endemic, watch how news spins
the end in sight, but do beware...

The long view is, COVID debilitates,
replaces energy with lethargy, so hard to breath,
there'll be some who are lucky but few will be spared
all I'm saying is, be prepared.

The stars do not come out at night
and the moon does not rise.

We rotate around Sol,
and varyingly, half of our humble planet,
sees the light shed from its fusion,
generating helium from its hydrogen make-up.

Space appears dark,
but to our eyes without reflective shields,
in any direction deigned to view,
is brighter than the sunniest day with a cloudless sky.

Despite the vacuum of space,
the light from distant stars travels at close to c,
from long ago,
it passes throughout the vastness of the heavens.

“Ah, I feel a sadness on me, Dane. That's how the Irish people say it.
In their language, you can't say, "I am sad," or "I am happy".
They understood what we English have long forgot.
We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain
but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes.”

― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Volume 1: Say You Want a Revolution

I come from a people,
who were simultaneously
opressed by a colonial power,
and exploited by a religion,
who conjointly delayed our own cultural progress
and destroyed our connection with our language and history.

The language does feature heavily,
required by law in current times,
to be on signs, currency, legislation
and taught as many say,
including myself, in a backward capacity
in schools across our country.

So much is the language,
considered at once 'dead' and 'in revival',
rooted in the past,
steeped in religious mysticism,
of a power originating in the Roman Catholic Church,
that our standard hello is,
Dia Dhuit or Dia is Muire Dhuit =
'God be with you' or 'God and Mary be with you'

I may have left my home for another long ago,
and I may have barely passed or failed my studies
in a language taught poorly and disrespected by doing so,
but I retain my connection like many do,
with fondness and love in my heart.

Tá brón orm, I have sadness on me.

Will it be dusk
Before the dawn
of a new age

Will Earth be a husk
After the final spawn
our last destructive phage

Will cities turn to dust
on land we killed on
full of the same rage

At our leaders mistrust
Our collective brawn
Our science falling off the page

Are our dreams lost
Or will we return to listen
to many a wise sage

And show collective disgust
before all hope is gone
and we're ushered off stage

Diarmaid Mac Murchadha
a lowly King of Leinster, deposed.
Who stole the bride of another King
and is more currently despised.
Who sought help from Henry II to bring
the help of the English monarch and
Anglo-Norman armies, a return to his throne.
Instead they raided, divided and raped
what is now known as Ireland.

From relatively peaceful, "semi-pagan",
poly-theistic and Celtic Christian,
one country, divided under many Kings,
once Inisfáil, the Island of Destiny.

At once one country, under one High King, or Ard Rí
The Kingdoms of Ailech, Airgíalla, Connacht,
Leinster, Mide, Osraige, Munster, Thomond, Ulaid.

At once one culture, then divided
under Anglo-Norman rule.
Henry II gave the entire island,
to his son once of age, John.
Then known as Dominus Hiberniae,
and later the Kingdom of Ireland.
Still split today, by one deposed
King's petulance and pride.

The last of Irish rule to fall,
to the people claiming they were
"more Irish than the Irish themselves"
known as the Old English, was ironically
the territory of Ui Neill, known currently
(six of the nine counties of Ulster)
as Northern Ireland.

Hold steadfast to the last of division
for, finally, a united Ireland will come in time.

We dream about something
other than our mired world
in the reflection of the mind's
dusty mirror, covered in the
cobwebs of our memories,
abandoned strings of hopes,
worries and aspirations with
our perception mottled
by our disarrayed thoughts.

What I can't achieve with my fists
What I can't achieve with a gun
What I can't achieve with an army
What I can't achieve with power
Peace does not come imposed
What I can't achieve without acceptance
What I can't achieve without my truth
What I can't achieve without my hope
What I can't achieve without my action
Peace does not come without consent
What I can't achieve without my artwork
What I can't achieve without my poetry
What I can't achieve without my music
What I can't achieve without thought
Peace does not come without consequence
What I can't achieve with my capacity
What I can't achieve with my yearning
What I can't achieve with my learning
What I can't achieve with my education
Peace does not come without reflection, diffraction and refraction

‘I’m a cis, hetero white male and what that means I should do is shut the f*** up’ -
Frank Turner

I react in furious agreeance
to the statement of silence
pleading change for those
without the immense power
of the cis, hetero white male.

I may be white, disabled,
schizophrenic and my
sexual orientation breeds
questions constantly of
love and life and beauty,
but this immense privilege was
essentially stolen from others via
patriarchy and the politics of power,
and I should shut up.

Be it soft power through speech
and decisions of economic concerns
be they micro or macro, or pure deprivation
of hard power due to status of sexual,
cultural or ethnic differences found,
the cis, hetero white male holds all the cards
and the dealer just happens to be a minority,
a wage slave hooked on being a part
of a gamble they always lose, but here I am
and I should shut up.

I can shift my ways, allow for change
and apologise. People affected by the
abundant power misused by myself
and every other cis, hetero white male
don't want an apology, but actual change
and I should shut up.

This is highly controversial, in my opinion,
as it comes from a very basic, non-tertiary educated
understanding of the universe in general; however
I feel compelled to think about such matters,
and this is my long-standing reaction.

The universe can be distilled
in logical terms to a representation of
+1,-1 and 0
where 0 cannot exist, where 0 is undefined
a limit unable to be reached,
where -1 is the expression of the +1 at rest,
tending towards entropy, but never reaching 0.

The creation and accelerating expansion of
what we perceive as the vast expanse of space,
comes from the -1, of the ever reacting
in an equal, opposite and near-neutral +1
and whilst the vacuum of space is not simply a medium
to be passed through, but the moments of expressed energy
tending towards 0, whilst never completely massless.

Dark Matter does not exist, and therefore cannot be detected
as we are blind to near massless past expressions of energy.

Low Energy Physics must be explored in greater depths,
as we perceivably attempt with High Energy Physics,
as understanding such holds the key
to the unifying principle of universal energy.

Schizophrenia
Is a storm of reality questioning itself
Masquerading as a person
Attempting to better themselves
Against a reality worth continued interrogation
Propagation and poeticism
For they tell me my mind creates
The lives of others, contacting me
Across the great divide of a diaspora
Elsewhere in the universe we were all created
Elsewhere together, but forever alone reacted
Into reality we coalesced from others
Standing on the shoulders of giants
We were but small variations in an infancy
Of both thought and form,
function and capacity but always vital
we split and divide as cells and eggs and tadpoles
Undergoing a persecution of believed character

Here's to you, to your life worth living
For not country nor company
should you part this plane, to be lamented
by the survivors of the greater good
For a cause not yours, for a poor deal
disagreed upon in times of relative peace.
Where we lament the absence of
another way to triumph together without war.
Perhaps an ideology not expecting the young
to give up their present and future,
to fight for what we are told is right,
and fitting, and just.
The lie told to the young, by those unwilling
to agree and work together in peace.
No flag nor profit is worth your death.

Here's to discarding lethal force,
when verbal arguments will suffice.

Here's to language and culture surviving,
thriving and becoming the only option sought, where disagreements exist.

Past failed empires and borders redrawn,
past invasion and displacement, past colonisation
and the deaths of those unwilling to question the Old Lie.

It is never right or fitting to lose your life,
in support of a deal unfit to serve or represent
you, your voice, your family or your people.
The deal with which we live,
in times of relative peace, is found wanting.

Question the defence of land owned by others,
the profits made off the backs of those who sacrifice their lives.

Question the sacrifice for the flag and the
hollow, pithy words from representatives,
be they elected or installed.

Question why lethal force must be used,
and your part to play.

For when the war is on,
your life is cheap to those who speak the lie.

For rather than breathing the air that sustains the greater good,
at best their blood sacrifice
will be a memory of a past and distant place,
a name on a memorial, and the lament that yet again,
we truly lost our way.

It's the hardest ask a country can proffer,
The biggest sacrifice an individual can muster
With so many willing to fight for a way of life
That many do not believe is adequate
But understand that the alternative is lesser.

Their livelihoods and lives counting upwards,
a purposeful abstract removal of the damage
more than a number on a toll,
paid by their very lives and consciousness on this plane.

When asked if I would die for Queen & Country,
I would deny the sacrifice, and instead live for it.

The little hand marks the moments
The brain marks my failures
Trauma and tragic ends
Loosely tied to my perception
Of a world suffering every little moment
That the little hand marks and I lament

My first poem was to beauty I did see
To a teenage infatuation, I have since set free
At school on just another ordinary day
the ugly side of teenage romance not to be.

Without knowing what love could hold
Without knowing who really she was
Without knowing how she felt like to kiss
Without knowing where she felt at peace
Without knowing when to ever have to say;
"... You are perfection personified"
Without knowing if, anyone, could really be
Without knowing when rejection should be expected
Until she laughed in response
to my awkward confession in a computer lab,
from prose writ with innocent intent and ignorance only youth can muster

I regret the silence, I left in response
I regret the anger, and I regret the pain
but I'll never regret or forget
the rose or my statement,
as I simply did not know her,
or indeed who she's come to be,
nor even her face as she laughed as I read.

Such beauty still existed in cruelty,
like love intended to never be,
and even love that has occurred to me.

The regrets idle away in my mind:
How I reacted, alone with noone to see
The anger to punch a wooden pole, and the
luck that it was only my heart that did break.

Ne'er a last goodbye
To those never close to the precipice
At the very end of consciousness

Ne'er saying farewell, forever
To those around you or your own life
At the very end of experience

Ne'er does your heart stop
To death never parting from this vale
At the very edge of reality

Ne'er stopping your flow of thought
To the silence you say nay
At the firing of neurons forever

I have memories
Of a time and place
Distant to the present
But rooted in the recent past
I have emotions
Of a life worth living
Distant to my situation
But rooted is how I feel now
I have regrets
Of other people's violent actions
Distant to their experience of trauma
But rooted in care for victim and offender alike
I have fears
Of how my life is unfolding
Distant to my reality
But rooted in terror is my inaction
I have desires
Of a world at peace
Distant from the conflict
But rooted in an ideology not championed
I have you
Of a spectator, reading this poem
Distant from the answer
But rooted in curiosity,
is this ending

Sheer and transparent
Big feet trodding all over
leaving marks up above
under their shoe women gaze upwards

Whilst down below
Lamenting its height scrambling up,
via ladders let down by allied males
Later, stairs and elevators built by hard work,
knowledge, stories and discoveries.

Time passes, as credit is taken
By those walking on the echelon
of upper society; the only requirement
to stand on top of the world is their genitalia.

Cracks show, fissures emanate
Few women lifted above by males
seeking to exploit their nature
to trod on those below, endlessly working
seeking access to better the world.

The average woman plucking glass shards
From their faces and extremities
The cracked ceiling causing their wounds
Precious life force dripping from the result
of the success of those with a heritage of wealth and access.

With every new fissure, and every new crack
The ceiling will weaken, and opportunity will flourish

With every new accommodation
to take a seat at the boardroom table
that rests on the glass
Full of men named John, more than
the sum of all women at the table
whose feet barely touch the ceiling from above

May the ceiling shatter
And be caught by a web woven by women
To protect all those under foot and
under the assumption that anybody
must climb through glass
to achieve their goals.

Older, yet wiser
youth fading,
a hue of experience
mottled memories spark
alike flame dancing in sight
casting reflection of action.

My heart only grows
for love and lust of life;
days, months, years, decades
scoring time spent
both foolishly and purposefully
I live to express and process
the uniquity of each moment
and regrets regress,
making way for nostalgic reminiscence
and the loss of the past,
for presence in the now.

Night naturally black, and dark
illusion of humble human vantage
illuminated by lustre of Luna

Streetlamps dotted dampens darkness
such sheen seen from outer space
it is by our perception, only,
that this is balance.

Light and dark, splitting days
Hustle and bustle, stillness and slumber
Shelter of our home, shielding us,
a cosmic twist and turn around Sol.

Precession of planetary position,
perspective of our home,
nary seen as the Pale Blue Dot
looming massive to us,
as we live large full lives on its surface.

Terra’s core attracts our bodies
To its surface, our feet are grounded
Whilst twinkling skies lifts our minds
and sets alight idea and intent.

Universal laws dictate that
Life must always change,
Lives created and destroyed,
Energy remains,
Tending towards disorder.

Looking in the mirror of the past
Alike a prism of time and space,
Becoming more and more disordered
As our memories of places and people,
Become both hazy and stark,
Without control of which occurs.

Looking in the mirror of the present
We reflect on moments,
Both having occurred and yet to be,
Unfolded happenstance and
Collective response to
Ever present stimuli.

Looking in the mirror of the future,
A sum of previous and consistent
hopes and regrets, intents and portents
reflections of which we cannot foresee.

The creativity comes
in peaks and troughs
without expectation,
balance nor reason
neither to its rhythmic
force; taut in my mind,
thoughts from my blood,
pumping through every
cell and organelle, from
bone to brain, life exerts.

Where words flock to
thumbs pressing glass:
expression of stimuli; reaction,
provokes dopamine; reward.

Alternatively, the same
thumbs twiddle and twirl
idly turning thoughts over
in my mind, at times empty
but more common than rarity
full of spiteful imagery and
auditory distress cast across
my broken, schizophrenic mind.

I long for meaning, in the chaos
that occurs to my inner self
to both endure and extoll virtue;
to tap and type, words and ideas
as a 21st Century Digital Boy
across screen and spectrum
apart the very field, that wraps
reality’s fabric together as one
long reaction, ongoing and never-ending,
it comes in threes: positive, negative
and neutral.

To page or screen,
I type these words,
saved information,
interpreted and read,
where my ideas go to die,
reborn once more, as creativity,
for the other-than-me; the you.

Surging through your every
sense as new courses of reaction
invisible to intent of course of action
as all energy of your simultaneously
vast, yet minuscule self,
steers through accelerating expansion of the new,
and different.

I awoke in terror, from a nightmare,
to push away the fear and pull
at one of the only threads of emotional
support in my life, for what felt like minutes
in the darkness of an unfamiliar room.
I pulled and pushed on my partner,
to rouse some empathy only
to foster fear more fiercely
at my inability to cope with fiction
to wake my love and shake my dread
hoping that she wasn’t dead
to discover moments later, the fiction
had not ended, that I was still asleep.
The dull and dreary darkness,
marred by a figure by the corner
darker still than night, a deeper black,
to my vision a figment that cast such a
shadow of doubt; did I sleep still,
not nearly slumbering but clambering
between the figments and the facts?
My torch turned on to touch of tip
to tempered glass of fingers grasping,
cold metal frame of phone comforting,
elucidating the vision of the deep dark
figure of slight stature, my focussed eyes
bearing witness to illuminated clothes,
hanging from a stand discarded at end
of day to welcome sleep, not knowing
what awaited nor wanting such a fright,
a frenzied act via skilful tact of trusty technology
to deny a feared fiction foothold in reality,
denied in moments my fear retreated at a glacial pace.
Four hours later, still awake now dawn of day,
with sight of sun sought simply,
seeping from behind drawn curtains
to slick across the wood panelled walls
of a holiday home in which I feel
unwelcome to sleep further still, and
as I seek the courage to dispel the dreams
unwelcome, I find no solace in the stillness,
only questions still.

What’s the story?
Beginning, middle and end,
Blood is red, violence is blue
Stories can be sweet, when told to you
Taking pride in fictional glory
Bunch of twaddle, the truth we bend
History we’re fed, films that aren’t true
What’s the story?
Leaders grinning, twiddling thumbs,
but it’s the court jesters who offend?
Truth is said, joked about, true
But politicians put their feet up, who represent you
A free ride on the public purse, for fictional oratory
Winning is all, piddling away responsibility
and making deals for mates and friends
What’s the story?
They’re in bed, and not with you
We’re on struggle street,
and that much is true

Guilt leads to temptation to give in
to let go if only just for moments in a life
filled with focus and acute dysfunction.
Ever-shifting, satisfied in the moment,
in the near future or never at all.
Happiness comes in waves,
along with spectrum of the negative;
sadness, fear, regret and guilt,
and anger at myself and reality
all the while. For the happenstance
of all disaster, my actions and inactions
and traction-to-be of choices to come.
Let my life never end.
I wish to never experience nothing itself,
and forever to wish to be, experiencing what we dub
will that’s free; to enjoy moments
of perception of the good that can
sprout from the hideous that is always beautiful to see.

I was wrong
I see the light
Now it's dawn
What a delight
Dispelling belief in a hateful force so strong
No seeming privacy, this mental plight
Instead of silence, the same old song
Hallucinations a reflection, the brain's mental might
Thoughts clearing, yet still I'm crowded by a throng
My inner eye blinded, still subject to the sight
Of visions and voices heard and drawn
Though I understand, you're probably right
Telepathy seems implausible, I'm probably wrong
I refuse to battle my thoughts, to fight
I will succeed in living, on this plane I belong

Not in the cards that reality’s dealer turns over
Does the man wonder what his fate will be,
or how the cards fall
Do they rustle with the air
as they land on the table
Face up, they tell a tale
A queen
A king
3 little clubs
and an ace up your sleeve.

Hope beyond words spake
Bring into reality
Deliver us peace

I crave quietness
My mind bleeds chaos always
Let it be still now

The cage contained a gerbil, a child’s keen attention on its metal frame
To the scurry and flurry of activity within, on the wheel inside its home, it paced
The gerbil ran and ran, a journey nowhere. Failing to keep up with the spinning wheel
It fell and floundered to one side, in straw. Feeling down at its struggle
A small hand gingerly opened the cage door. Gentle fur touched skin
Resistance to the grasp, claws scratching. Once, twice, never drawing blood
A bite to an eager child’s hand, my own. And fell it did, this time further still
To the floor and to its feet. Gravity delivering a graceful landing
The curiosity the gerbil must have felt, I ponder sometimes as to its expanse
To its conscious effort to escape, whilst moments prior, happily ensconced in a cage
A plastic wrapper, to an Ice Pole, brand name forgotten, and its flavour
Its existence on the floor, a child’s mistake. But to the gerbil, something more
It bit and tore at plastic with large teeth. Blood appeared, at side of the little mouth
Spurting, dribs and drabs on wooden floor, a scared child scarpered to pick the gerbil up
It shook and shook and would not stop, a seizure or heart attack, unknown even now
Until it was still, a final journey nowhere

Why must we fight still?
Why must we tarry progress?
We should do better

I will persevere
Though my mind wearies often
Medication helps

Why do we fight love?
Cherish the moments always
Embrace the romance

Treatment resistant
Adhere to take pills despite
Positive effect

Due to upsizing
Fifteen minutes of fame now
Viral period

Unknown length of fame
Celebrity may come too
I hope you do well

Be problematic
Also you may be cancelled
Respect all people

As the lies flitter about from mouth to ear
I sense a feeling inside, I’ve felt before
Audience chitter doubt, din now full of jeer
Answers they provide, can we believe anymore?
Fence sitters shout, wool within eyes full of tears
Chancers play to pride, to deceive is their core
How do you know a politician is lying?
Their lips move even more

The hand sweeps past the hour
Denoting the time is past the mark
And as the hand sweeps past the Six
The 30 spent and Nine’s just past
To the Twelve, sweeps past nearer still,
and then it stops, no further time to pass.

No seconds left to spend,
The clock face still, atop your wrist
Is this the end? You fear the worst
Seconds pass, the hand unmoved
Now counting roughly
Lost moments from the hand’s account
To the startling of motion, the hand revives
As it sweeps past the Twelve,
and marks a false minute
Your mind wanders from the clock
To the rain outside the window,
as it weeps the hours in millilitres
and washes the worst away

Sleeping somber silence
To the mind a restful state
Screams and sirens scattered,
To the mind a chaotic scene
Sleeping still, stirring seldom
Breath held at the commotion?
I suspect silent slumber
Broken hearts, and shattered lives
and so far, wonder often
As to the dying of the man in the street
Still sleeping somber silence
I mustered no wakeful reaction
Nor do I know his name.

God, religion, government, race and gender roles are social constructs.
Pain and death are natural biological responses.
To apply social constructs to create biological harm,
is evil
— itself, a social construct.

Lissome lies with spared truths
Limber hithe for infernal proofs
Pliant mise used as vernile tools
Supple truths doth cry in internal booths
Graceful sleuths hear voracious untruths
Lithe ties to deth soothes —

The truth may set free
The lies we tell ourselves
Candour falsified

‘BREAKING NEWS:
An experimental virus that increases empathy in mice has breached safe lab protocols.

Laboratory technicians in quarantine; virus spreads via respiratory droplets including aerosols, from
an infected person who sneezes, coughs, speaks, sings or breathes in close proximity to other people.
Droplets can be inhaled or
deposited in the nose and mouth or on the eyes.’

Media ablaze in worry, mask-buying in a flurry, toilet paper scarce, hurry!

“We wear a mask to safeguard our freedoms and political beliefs!”

Months on, widespread virulence of the woke mind virus:
From a haze of hate, mutation of collective fate awoken in empathy,
the effect great: less people identify as straight, the infected, every 6 out of 8. Masks not mandated
by the state Hateful ideologies held by 2 out of 8:
The last minority amongst peace we create.

Violent crime and conflict on the decline, virus praised as if from the divine
society undergoing complete redesign. Racism, transphobia and misogyny:
the dying arts, seeing less opine such hateful line neither writ nor spake
by the utopia we create…

… and they/them lived happily ever after.

As I lament selfishly reflect
on my illnesses in kind,
I reflect on engaging in therapy
ongoing for my broken mind,
problematic behaviours inflamed
by the harried voice of one I blame
Could it be abandoned responsibility
of latent human ability abused?
Causing such pain, I need to soothe
Impulsive spending out of control, yet no urge to use
The drug science says provokes mental abuse internal
I counter that I face it on the daily, persecution infernal
The drug affects me greatly, holistically salving:
Calming my mind, decreasing positive effect
Blunting unreality and delusion so grim,
a bind so severe, an argument I fear I’ll never win.
Meanwhile I further lament a lack of engagement
in the economy as work or passion play,
my time running out to make my mark,
to contribute meaningfully from a society
I feel I owe everything I can muster.
I turn to art to escape the hurt,
but the words mean nothing if not read
I fear my mind turning, to self-destruct
To escape the hurt one final time
But alas, I fear I already have, a coma never ending,
My mind creating a dream of a life worth living,
The voices of those sitting by my bed
Affecting the disposition of my head
To feel their pain of me, the living dead
How, oh how, I wish there was little said

Droplets of rain grace my screen,
the view at once chaotic and so serene
I face traffic of their journey home, keen
For travel time to be lesser than seen
For so many the work day has been and done
Commuting in the New Normal, a bizarre scene
For the pub crowd less fun, however few masks worn,
the clock ticking down, COVID rampant, your time is run
against infection of virulent mutated strain from one
working from home back now to a dream for many
I turn my mind away from ignorant reality close to a scream
of pure anger at the system and the lack of acceptance,
of changes so direly required, a lack of proactive reaction
of our culture, to shift our economy and save the many,
viral comorbidities in exchange to virality of change of
how we do business, in how we do play, and how we do live
with the strains mutating. Transmissibility, on the rise,
and boosters ahoy, small protection against increasing
awareness of the pervasive illnesses of how COVID damages
what we ought to protect; our bodies and minds, our society
and economy.

The straight line blinks
top left of the screen
prompting injection of
meaning to share, a poem
that should flow. Instead,
I type nonsensical screams
onto that black void I refer
to as The Page and feel
uninspired today. Perhaps
tomorrow it will be an epic,
something that makes sense,
until then: I recount the block
in my mind.

The universe grants me difficulty
in accepting the things I cannot change,
the fear and cowardice to change the things I can,
and a lack of wisdom in knowing a difference.

Pencils down, down, down
Raised hands drop, suddenly
Questions no longer asked
As gunshots ring out the halls

Students down, down, down
Innocents by nature, fall
Bodies stacking higher
Casualties of the Culture War

Gun Control voted down, down, down
Armed Officers in school, touted solution
Schools a battleground of ideas
Trenches of lost hope and buried dreams

When I want to tell a tale
I type ferocious truths
Art as distraction, hail
All I seek to write, soothes

When I want to tell a tale
I type hopeful proofs
Science Fiction from a Gael
Solving prosperity alike mysteries for sleuths

When I want to tell a tale
I write from an Aussie perspective, strewth
Utopian fair go to which reality pales
Technology to provide and protect everlasting life
in health as aged youths

When I want to tell a tale
I pray for a better future, forsooth
For conflictual present, oftening offer a horrid wail
To universal progress, I seek the way to smooth

When I want to tell a tale
I write with blinders, about a culture of life less uncouth
Working as one, together without fail
I know, this Utopian future fiction can be made truth

It’s happened to all of us
Perusing our extensive medical histories
Notes from our psychiatric team,
our litany of suicide attempts
Lamenting our 20s, and our first attempt
Lacerations to our wrist, yellow fat cells ‘neath skin
Missing our veins, artery by millimetres

It’s happened to all of us
Being caught in our private psych ward room
Using sheets to try to hang ourself
Spending the night in High Dependency
Monitored and checked by torchlight
By concerned nurses through our door
Hallucinating a cat climbing over our body

It’s happened to all of us
Discovering that our coma via major overdose,
was not our only one
Two other separate occasions, admissions to the ICU
Dodging death due to flight/fight

It’s happened to all of us
The lack of memories surrounding
Our admission, our discharge
Our short stay in hospital
We remember hazily ramming two boxes
Of antipsychotic medication
Down our throats on a park bench, homeless
Garnered from a psychiatrist
We lied to that day, about suicidal intent
Falling into a taxi, passing out
Waking up on our side, a non-descript ward
Thinking our stomach had been pumped
As for the third ICU stay, our memory blank

It’s happened to all of us
That feeling of disorientation
The confronting nature of our past,
over failed attempts on our life
Of our lucky happenstance to suffer still
Our commitment to live, and our questioning
Of reality, of hope for a life worth living
Our pain ongoing on the daily

It’s happened to all of us

I was about to fall away, to let the memories fade
to disrupt no more thoughts of how and why and when and who,
but I could not, did not and never will let go
holding on as I am to a branch of the tree of life
rustling leaves as much as I can muster
ever-grasping firmer purchase.

If by chance, you find yourself in freefall
betwixt bough and twig, passing quickly:
reach out and clutch as many beckoning limbs below
to halt touch of understory instead of bounty of shrub above.

Remember, your external scratches from your momentary fall will heal
and are unlike the internal markings year on year, grown inside each branch
counting life of each limb alike internal trunk of the tree of life
ellipsis outside ongoing ellipses.

Remember too, your momentary fall as you tarry in the tree of life;
it is only when the tree of life is cut that each revolution is counted;
your fall will be neither judged nor tallied.

And if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,
it will make a deafening sound and a weary wimper
as to whether it is witnessed or not;
you will howl and holler in flight or fight in freefall from the tree of life
and most definitely make your mark.

Will my wise mind, let itself be known
I’m riding that emotional wave,
Through gamut of despair and repair
Emotional mind masquerades as wise
Through manipulation of reason
Deadlines of sales and the mores of wants
“But it’s a good deal”;
my mind steals away…
“Should I”; brokering manipulation of logic
Points of positions purely picked
Weighted just so to beckon the answer
The answer I want and allowance for sure
Impulsive shopping and spending,
so de rigueur
So systematic and symptomatic
So matter of course
Materialism not necessarily the problem
But the obsolescence planned and portent
Progress to sate wants and barely needs
And I wonder where progress leads us
Led more by emotion than reason
And I wonder what wisdom is,
So rarely acknowledged as such
Will my wise mind, please let itself be known

I look back on fondly on our first meeting
At Melbourne Central, a Coffee Shop
Excitedly walking towards me whilst I wait
You gave my heart a home of adoration,
of learning to love another, and myself

Our love has lasted 8 years to the day
Unlike the Coffee Shop no longer there
Whereas our lease on love and life
Has barely begun to eventuate
In such happiness and delight

Whilst everyday we still learn each other
Our love languages differing slightly
Our close communication continues
Leading to enduring respect and love
Both platonic and romantic

Growing together
Alike vines on trellis
In our Garden of love
We grow around and within
Each other’s hearts

Ah, the venerable Cup o’ Tae
The rustling of goods in the kitchen
The whistle of the kettle boiling
The cheek of the milk spoiling
UHT rescues the kitchen moiling
As tae bag has a sit and stews
It browns steep as it brews
Aroma quaffs the nasal senses
As the mouth responds in wet suggestions
The want of a biccy no mere muse
Remembering how ANZACs aid ensues
Lest we forget the sacrifice, dipping too long,
as their dream crumbled into depths of cream
Our mutual worries don’t seem so bad all’s told
Ah, the venerable Cup o’ Tae,
Ambrosia’s cup of infused gold

When socially constructed gender roles
simply aren’t a binary
When there are more than two things, different to each person
Refuse to accept their limiting nature
And be who you wish to be
Refuse to adhere to cultural claims
borne not out of reason or evidence,
but circumstance and chance
Refuse to adopt a stereotypical, fictional, “common sense”

Accept instead, shifting fashions of what it means to be,
Be it ever-changing adopted affectations
Be they language, fashion or function in society
Accept everyone’s differences, be you: other, they, he or she
As truly, there is no other, but us alone
We, together
Vastly more similar, than we are different
One planet, one culture, one love

There’s the thunder
Where’s the strike?
Too far away to touch, repelling many to be hidden under beds assailed by wind, and rain and doubt
Those who won’t know power, the touch of lightning, to understand its meaning
Built up flow from high energy states to low, booming down,
screaming shedding states of being to any who will listen to at last its dissipating calm, and comparative silence
Is it mad to discount redemption for its touch?
For something so vigorously final: one ending at the touch of the light.
Built up energy, expressing attraction alighting cells and causing our destruction
Understanding all that, I find myself craving force expressed through me.
Calling it down:
There’s the thunder
Where’s the strike?

To be born screaming and crying in relative peace,
To enduring emotional conflict seeming never to cease
To be born my father's first son, never feeling as though
I identified with such a notion a whole tonne
To be introspective, craving to see sides of
being both biologically male and female at once,
To be and be respected as possessing both sets of sexual organs
To live and experience such a hormonal flux
of what such humanity has to offer
To hold a life grown inside me, from my own ovum grown
down the line of my progenitor's genes
To birth a life outside me, and parent such a beauteous creature
through all the trials and tribulations
To love myself and others, as I wish to be.

If I change my deal
The deal of all
To shake my raw shake of not knowing sobriety or reality as it is
To change places with you
Denied knowledge of suffering
Of what it’s like for my brain
In reaction to the known n’ unknown alike
Would you consider being me
To free me?
Or would instead you simply be more alike
The free you

I never regret a lie, as I seldom do lie
I regret feeling the truth,
I forget understanding the truth, and
I neglect responsibility that goes with it.
I lack courage all the while,
to love wholly and truly,
in all truths, spoken or not.
Be truth as jest
or a pregnant pause in reflection
Of feeling the truth, of feeling the love
Lacking just the courage
To speak love to truth
To speak truth to love
To never let love or truth be left unspoken, unshirked, undone.

The death of the idea
Is not the idea disappearing
Or being proven wrong
But a new take
On something old, or different
And there’s nothing more beautiful
Than the death of the idea
Being put to page,
Having it seen, coming from screen
or emanating radiation from a speaker

Your reaction when having
read, or seen, or heard
The last throes,
Maybe as your eyes scan the line
For an idea’s last little moments
As your brain births true
Something thought of,
something old
For something grand
and something new

I feel like a sponge;
at once porous, hollow
Useful in limited situations and
capable of holding so much in
Tangibly aware of how I absorb
the benefits of society and those I love,
Collecting their love, sweat, tears inside myself;
I feel like a sponge
An emulsion of the emotional spectrum
of unequal amounts and viscosity
The negativity; understandable reactions
to my problematic behaviours
I become more full inside, weighing down
myself and those who hold me
So full of waste, so much harder to handle,
spilling over undeserving helping hands
Such waste worn away from
others by my scouring side,
so critical and rough
My density dripping, my mind at
capacity unless wrung out
By poetry or by a warm hug --
a squeeze of love above their accepting drain
Down and down goes this refrain:
I feel like a sponge, and I don't mean my brain

Adherence to conspiracy theory,
belief in a false truth,
rather than known fact,
makes you a conspirator,
not a conspiracy theorist.

A conspiracy theorist theorises;
tramples truth for tales;
fiction filtered
over fickle and flimsy film of reality,
convincing conspirators
to disseminate deception,
mishandle mistruths,
serve subversive subterfuge
to conniving or convinced co-conspirators;
the creation of an accessory after-the-fiction,
rather than an acolyte after-the-fact
out to understand What Really Happened.

Discard discord, interrogate intelligence, spare sanctimony.

Able ascension post prone repose marked by fatigue from fitful sleep
Nightmares featuring wisdom tooth falling out, potentially pointed
psychological distress plainly present recent previous period.
Spiralling suicidal ideation care of schizophrenic torment.
Self-medication in moderation; people tell me drugs r bad
Succesful pardoning self from final actions, via temporary
temporal distance, diminished positive effect though thoroughly
torturous terror threatens interminably.
Exhaustion exacts existential errors endlessly, I debate disabled decension
post problematic period into prone position. Present:
persistent auditory hallucinations reminding reticent remission
My constant unwelcome companion potentially providing petit piece of peace
will not present, until, as requested, I lay upon my left side;
despite disembodied dreadful disturbance of harpy harrying horror internal,
I lay, eyes closed, flat on back mindful of moments meandering: mere defiance,
obstinant objection to objectionable presence pitifully present.

I am made of stardust
supported by starshine
bouncing off a pale blue mote
quite extraordinary I think you’ll note
Reality reacting,
resulting in experience of existence,
observation; glory floating to past tense,
as if the universe itself hopes
Not a simulation or a multitude of instances of other resonating frequencies
But a universe of possibility and limitations
A monoverse full of nopes and tropes
Ideas we can conceive
but which cannot occur
Wishes and dreams
mistakes and regret
If only you’d just said yes,
or that you’d just not met
Instead, one play through a life life makes
A spectrum of emotion
on a spectrum of electromagnetism
Cascading diffusing, what was on high
beauty our eyes and brain filter
focussing on what is, through gamut
measured by life, what may be, lo’

Sometimes
I worry
That when I step outside
And see the sky above
So many stars
in clear but light polluted skies
That sometimes
I feel as though the moon follows me
There, above, reflecting away
a star shining down across its face
Staring down from space at mine own
Until, one night hence,
I notice it’s not there
And I feel as though the moon
is following someone else
And I worry, and feel alone
Sometimes

There are 40,070 km of Earth - Across the circumference

1,300,000 instances of Earth - Could make up the Sun of Sol

4.379 million km of Sun of Sol - Across the circumference

There are 9 trillion km in a light year

100,000 light years across the size of the Milky Way
or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000km - The circumference of the Milky Way

4.478 × 10^17 seconds - Have elapsed if one is to presume
14.2 billion years since the universe began

But if, the observable universe is 93 billion light years
- Or 8.798 × 1023 kilometres of existence
writ tiny pieces of the fabric of reality infinite in possibility
but still fathomably observable finite.

And if energy can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transformed,
from a high state to a low, where 0 is the limit, as 0 cannot in fact exist,

I wonder indeed if the universe could ever have not been…

The fly on the wall
Was telling me
That although it’s reasons are true
it was not a fly at all
That although it was and wasn’t true
That false it was not
and although it’s reasons true
It couldn’t be, it couldn’t who
It wasn’t a fly
It couldn’t be true

I swear the truth upon my life
As if to spite the falsehoods back
Spake onto table where the card's destinies will lie
Where these lies are uttered by wrist and finger and bone
drawn forth and for show as first resort and rife
Skillful dealers of falsities
draw direct from fabricated pack
With the most random of possibilities
in terms of where each card lie
Without shuffle or with,
the random nature of each deck
will each card lie
The face value of each dealt card a lie,
building societal strife
a civilisation of cards
built upon deceit's back
One Joker's counsel quiet as they play fife
The Other Joker disquiet to all dealt
lies from the pack
From every suit do all dealt cards derive
From rigged deck does dealer draw live
And for every royal or every value every lie,
we swear upon all lives our truth
And every card neither meant to be
or could have been or will be
But the lie random and lie true
Chaos as the Joker doth perceive his truth
Based only on the lies dealt from random deck
And the smile on his face a reflection of your truth.

What is the who?
How is the why?
When is the which?
Who is the where?

That which is not judged, merely known.
Analysed and known to be true.
How would you classify it?
On this, that or the other.

Who is the how?
Which is the what?
Why is the when?
Where is the who?

I pay respects
To the gaping hole in my reality
that was my life
Before I lapsed into
Fearing I live in a vegetative state
I feel dissociation and fear this unreality

I'm there now, in the bed I lie
Prone and unaware
Dreaming about my wife
Fantasising about a life worth living
With both my former awareness
And my former life
being far from me

So I sit here fearing
That misreality exists until I die
Which without intervention
Of intubation and IV drugs
Is in minutes at best

Whilst those on Struggle Street weep
The Lucky Country's equity shuffles down, whilst those 'responsible' sleep
These Trickle Down Hopes sour into Despair For Keeps;
The ECG for forgotten generations diminish as hearts break, one long beep
For those 18-44, leading cause of death is self-annihilation, our blood literally seeps
Will this ugly blight of a rate rise, because there are 243 billion promises to keep?
The violent logic inflicted by treating society as a household economy creeps on
A minor budget surplus touted by Career Chancers, causes swear word bleeps
Meanwhile The Quiet Australians creak: "She'll be 'right";
... as sh*t flows downhill, and we're up sh*t creek.

So many wistful ideas come upon
this fearful state of a consistent linger
startled words never forgotten
from young memories and older places.
Plaintive haunting present day, inferring presence
by the voice of many do we skirt this state
-- never touching, always yearning --
from a cemetery of ideas & people we do visit doleful.
Our duty lies in the depths of evocation
from our well of grief and promise
we say and feel our pieces, united wholly and true.

There is a bright star
out there, beyond
for every little thought
in every mind of ours and theirs
and there is time yet,
to see them grow and die slowly
just like us

As though the passage of thoughts --
Persistently persevere perversely
Throughout my aghast state of awareness
Of my constant unwanted companion
Enjoining conversations unwanted
In most cases unwarranted; introductions
Be it a friend, a loved one, be they
a celebutante, be they a personality
A publican or a legend still yet living
I face friendly and reasonable states
Of reaction to my triage adroitly addressed
I present well, as well as I can
Whilst the harried harpy hurries hatred
Driving me doo-lally and running me ragged
-- add daily complexity to trauma that is neither post-nor-past, but present.

I imagine a street
Filled with the sonic sensations
Associated with a bustling problematic society
ICE (internal combustion engine)
emitting toxic fumes from vroom to vroom
The scattered many increasingly insecure
in housing from room to room,
share house to couch,
to car or shop perch
Surrounded by blankets in cold Naarm weather
Claiming change from passersby for food
Perhaps something to numb perception
Of the hecticity of the city,
the lack of luck
buzzing like electricity in my mind
And all I want to do is go home
So I open my eyes, and my privilege shows

I lick my full lips
Bite away dry skin shod from
Restful state of sleep

I long for a kiss
A peck, or full-on mouth mush
Knowing she's averse

Which is a damn shame
'cause I've been told by others
I'm not bad at it

Tears flow little here
On the verge of happiness
Failing to despair

"Better to be a dog in times of tranquility
than a human in times of chaos."
- Chinese Proverb

Utopia, or "not" - "place"
Meaning nowhere, no place
As in - utopia doesn't exist,
and may not, or may not yet.

Dystopia, or "bad" - "not place"
Meaning the bad place, yet not
As in - dystopia doesn't exist, really, either
and may not, or may not yet.

We live in "relative" "transitory" places
Meaning a reference point, of non-permanency
As in - we perceive change as a constant
and will never not do so.

Seems trite, though may be

Without powerful candour
Truth lies inertly

darkness you see clear
daylight is what you most fear
truth: still you are blind

darkness, you are bound
daylight above humble mound
lies: ever content

darkness you are due
daylight you have abandoned
truth: you feed others

darkness sustains you
daylight sheds your being whole
lies: life counts your poll

darkness, your coffin
daylight mocks your death often
truth: life springs anew

jet fuel melts steel beams
concussive force shocks foundations
hearts and minds wander

blood from specious lies
seat of Babylon razed
exchange blood for oil

tallying lost hearts
we had truly lost our minds
lest we forget lies

poor rarely escape
trickle down feckonomics
rich became more so

inequity soared
inflation from profit gained
record injustice

in a room
where there are no walls
there are no doors
in a room
where there are no walls
there are no windows
in a room
where there is no meaning
that can be interpreted
in a room
where there is no love
that cannot be explained
in a room
where there is a chair
we sit, for judgment which will not come
in a room without walls, doors, windows, meaning nor love
we sit,
without perceiving what reality really is,
was or will be

With each small moment

compounding interest paid

I don't remember

the beginning, nor

quite remember youth, past now

forgetting daily

what interest was

compounding fears of the end,

for it comes too soon

claim your rights, sovereignty;
we must share this Earth.

Hereby claim the past,
Lest mistakes be made anew;
we must not forget.

Hereby remain free,
share responsibility;
we must own our fate.

There once was a person from Naarm
Preaching battler's words that could harm
Who thought their views were humane
Not knowing they caused pain
Cancelled for opinions raising alarm

Some make us happy, other times cause hurts
Learning or ignoring lessons, we are cursed
To endure and fade from our Firsts
To be presented too soon with our Lasts.

To the winner go spoils
To the fools go regrets
To the grinner go smiles
To the confident go begets
To the rebels go turmoils
To the spendfast go debts
To the fallen, goes remembrance
However temporary...

To us all goes the gamut,
these emotive spectra run deep
Multivariate wavelengths of
Light and sound throughout our lives tunnels
At the end of which is darkness
at life's denouement

Langston Hughes
1901 – 1967
(To F. S.)
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.

The following poem is inspired by Langston Hughes' poem above.

I loved my troubled friend.
He went away from me, long before I left,
There's always more to say,
I remember us three running rings around my back garden fountain, naked
I remember his urging make-believe from a backyard tap, not water, but Coke,
I remember my first taste of Cola Cow; a concoction of Coca-Cola and Milk.
I remember our plans to somehow become rich and live in the same mansion,
I remember my neck ache after he pushed me from the roof of the shed,
I remember his amusement plain, of my pain across his face in a smile,
I remember the sting under my school shirt when he put a bee down my neck,
I remember his upbringing fraught, difficult, displacing torment onto, well, me.
I remember watching Robocop with him on Betamax, my first hyperviolent movie,
I remember violence, with and without him.
I remember his admiration I craved then, and now, in fleeting moments.
I remember the day we threw stones at a passing Bus Átha Cliath at 'the Hills'
I remember he ran to a mutual friend's house, whose father was a Garda...
I remember his mother, to a rightly-irate crowd of people, somehow, at my home
I remember, his mother shouting defiant -- 'my child is an angel!' --
I remember my mother embarrassed, at our shite behaviour.
I remember our gang -- as we thought of ourselves -- less after that,
I remember I was forbidden to be friends, for fear of what I may become if I did.
I remember we had gone too far, further still to go, some further than others.
I remember the message clearly now, nearly a decade past; my eldest sister's friend.
I remember the sinking feeling as I read that she just thought she'd let me know --
I remember the numbness, the disquiet and yet still the quiet in the room
I remember, he had killed himself,-
and now we'll never reminisce, reunite or face redress;
Harsher to his memory than he possibly deserves
There's always more to say, until we've had our say, or cannot say at all
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,-
I loved my troubled friend.

I fear if I do not
put my thoughts to the screen,
from the screen to the feed,
to the appearance
of being seen and/or understood,
I will have but thought not at all,
not been at all,
not thrived, strived or been deprived
my understanding of what it means to be alive;
alive without renown,
or being known
to have been at all.

I hope this finds you well
I thought I'd theysplain to you
Some current thoughts
Of your success in what is.
I hope you're surrounded by love,
By supports you think you steal away
for affirmations which bolster your being;
But which fully explain their love for you
And your support of them.
I thought I'd tell you,
I love you,
We love you,
And we're humbled by any of your successes
Understanding any of your failures
Your anxieties or misgivings as lessons
In this, your life worth living.

Warmest regards,
Someone you may not know --
Or know too well -- or know true --
Or maybe just a small part of you.

Maybe
Maybe just
Maybe just as
Maybe just as one
Maybe just as one we
Maybe just as one we can
-- make it

Oh how grateful
Oh how humble
Oh yes, how proud
Oh how open I am
To you, oh glass of water

Something so simple
Something so plain

So many of us
Including myself
Take for granted

Something so clean
Something so basic

But my thirst is not quenched
By this glass, half full
Whilst so many go thirsty
Whilst so many glasses are empty

I am jealous of the moments
That have never existed in my life
Rather than those I simply missed out on
Due to a lack of invite or involvement;
Mere FOMO doesn't raise my ire,
As much as I regret the moments not seized
Pleasures and pains from a lack of choices made
Chances lost to devastation of willpower
Of motivations lost to anxiety or fear
And I would rather memories lost to me
Of roads taken versus a lack thereof
The road most travelled is no path trod by me;
almost reclusive to all
My absences excused away, more's the pity
They say misery loves company
But there are few who suffer my presence
Too many suffering their own pretense
Inviting miserly truth of own aching hearts, forsooth
We all refuse the moments we covet
In exchange for solitude of our hearts

I whisper into the void
More often than not
Though sometimes
dragged willingly into a conversation
With someone, anyone, who speaks truth,
Begets alacrity and regrets the silence
of the void
Between us all

I scream into the silence
certain whispers of secrets
not so, sillily,
and I wonder if you do too?

I tear up at the thought of loss of life,
whether wrecked and still alive
or wrent from life absolutely
and I wonder if you do too?

I rarely spare a droplet of emotion at mine own pain,
and I wonder if you do too?

I draw from a well eons deep,
filled with lost causes,
lost stories and lost civilisations,
and I know the truth that you do too,
and I wonder if one day soon, too,
we shall be lost to the well we all draw from,
the stars we all see and
the beginning still present in our skies.

Within my heart are chambers
Wherein love fills and flows
Within my heart are doors,
Which without my blessing, open and close
Each moment of love itself invited or rejected
Each pitter patter of cardiac matter, love injected
Within each blood vessel echoes emanate
These feelings of love and pain
A stream throughout my body, the same
Throughout each cell and organ of my body, where
Within my heart is noise, love and pain
and each little peace, a moment pumped,
To each and every part of me,
From tip of top and deep bottom of my heart,
every little peace to be, will be

You're neither yellow of spirit
Nor black of heart
You're quick of thought
Staying true in flights of fancy
Your stinger never used
As if you used it once
You'd die inside, I know this true
You do not bumble, and you'll always be
One who leaves me buzzing
My bumblebee

Do I dream an ephialtes state?
Do I live in a veridical world?
Do I dream a life worth living?
Do I live in a dream, or dream where I live?
Do I be, or do I dream?
Do I be in waking fright of alight sensation?
If I dream, do I be betwixt dream and being
A state of comatosity when awake
But in the depths of dream alive
A waking state of deep unconscious
And remember a life worth living
In but a dream, do I live?

I'm a puppet made of meat on strings
These strings are made of everything and nothing
That express themselves animatedly or not at all
I move about questioning free will
Seeing these strings and how they are tied

I'm a puppet made of meat on strings
These strings tie me up in stitches
And tie me down to misreality
Each string a possibility of something true
Each string a possibility of something false

I'm a puppet made of meat and strings
These strings move my body as if I control it
But they're being pulled as if there is no free will
As if action long ago, far from here
Causes strings in reaction now;
equal, opposite and near neutral

I'm a puppet made of meat and strings
These strings cannot be cut without
Fierce and utter annihilation, and make me feel
the gamut of everything between
Euphoria and suicidality

I'm a puppet made of meat and strings
And when they finally become undone
I worry I won't be
Because in the end
I'm a puppet made of meat and strings

If a tree falls in the woods,
and no-one is around to hear it
you may have mistaken the idea of "no-one".

It has always picked at the strings of my mind,
as discordant chords of anthropocentric thinking,
as life abounds around the tree,
as life abounds surrounding the tree.

If even the grass, weeds, other trees,
fungal growths ringing 'round the ground,
the bacterial masses airborne and/or landing,
and all the insects and mammals cannot see,
if even all of they cannot see in shadows and dark
cannot see in near night or even still,
cannot see in abject light of Sol shining 'cross a field
this thoughtless experiment of a very literal tree falling,
the tree itself pre- and post- deadfall, screams out alight in pain.
All across its gravitational plunge, its path to land below,
be it clear or cluttered --its screams are heard by all nearby life.

All life which abounds, surrounds and ringing 'round,
are the heard cries of the tree as it's falling...
as even the stray cats and kept dogs
can hear it cry out about its coda.

Each human eye is capable of the sight
of but one single electron volt of light
Erstwhile, a lightning bolt forces might
of up to ten thousand electron volts
of pure electromagnetism typically quite attracted
towards height, pointy shapes and isolation
rather than the myth of attraction to simply metal

We curious humans have very recently detected
the spread of Sol's expressions of gamma radiation
of ten trillion electron volts, possibly even more,
spread wide and far throughout the heavens
across all planets and a far flung future
beyond our Milky Way and in many ways we cannot see
the white light of the white star Sol appearing yellow
due to scattering of light
through Earth's atmosphere causing blue hue of day

I think of humanity's folly in our latest space disaster,
Luna-25,
and the unpredictable orbital alterations of flight
It's crashing demise into the dark face of the Moon
and I wonder, quite seriously,
if nuclear rockets are a good idea to reach Mars,
or more distant planets, and wonder,
if such powerful rockets are needed at all
when gammavoltaic cells as sails may be safer still...

As in my sight, perhaps not wise, perhaps not right, that
To get from here, from place of home
to where we could and maybe will be
From point a) all the way through the alphabet to point z)
Far from now, far from me, is the electromagnetism
of what shed the dust that is our very own makeup,
our atoms, the cellular structures which entail
our skin, our brains, our bones
what shed the elements and all this cosmic ballet,
this place to be, all Sol gives,
with typically two eyes with which to see
The gamut of the spectrum of all that was, is and will be.

Fuck our flags
Fuck our nations
Fuck our divisions
Fuck our stations
Fuck our lack of co-operations
Fuck our giving personhood to corporations
Fuck our flashback to a "better time"
Fuck this poem for trying to rhyme

Fuck our history, it wasn’t good,
Fuck our history, it wasn’t fine
Fuck our cultural obliviation
Fuck our ignorance of people’s situations
Our causes lost, our lives unsung
We die in droves under the same old Sun

Fuck your claims of unity
Fuck your "ism" causing us to be undone
Fuck our lack of community
Fuck our lack of One Peace,
Fuck our lack of One Love
Do we even deserve to traverse the stars above?
Fuck our punching down with impunity
*Feel collective responsibility,
Start the mutiny

Fuck rigged "game theory"
Fuck the assumption of a need for war
Fuck offensively offensive "defence"
Fuck those sitting on the fence
Fuck, these "games" aren’t "theory"
People’s lives as pawns,
We’re fucking weary

Fuck violence, fuel passion
Fuck consumerist nihilism
Fuck apathy
Fuck seeing peace as weak
Make a better world from the peace we seek
Fuck the stoicism
Fuck the male chauvinism and the gaze that lingers just a little too long
Fuck the patriarchy
Fuck me, if a flag must be waved
Instead make it a problematic shade
A flag of white, a flag of peace
A flag of surrender, a flag to cease
But fuck that flag too,
Burn it too, when we’re done

Like most
I have wounds that won't heal
Old physical pain now repeating in my brain
Whether ongoing psychiatric sepsis
seeping pus in torrid rain of tormented pain
or, perhaps, this life by communal gaslight,
with all those near and dear
huddled around the same lies for small comfort

I desire wounds that will match how I feel
These new wounds in comparison, mere minor physical pain
creating new wounds unlike those which won't heal
I welcome the submission to controlled pain:
A piercing, a tattoo; scars yet-to-be

As though this new pain, welcomed, a pleasure to endure
Where the functional and fashionable vain pain meet
A needle punching up and down through dermal layers,
depositing ink between layers of my skin
Like the moments of happiness shared with friends
Stashed between the ongoing chaos internal

Or spiking a needle a new stainless steel treat through meat,
A wound that needs love and tender care,
Requiring consistent cleaning away shed and dried blood and desquamate
For fear of a pustule forming, a localised inflammation
Much like that which is front and centered in my head.

I miss moths that seep from
cornered starkness of the
fraction of the light
flittering short lives away as
I ponder four winged lives
as moths walk on six legs
out of my mind.

I miss huntsmen writhing in
cornered darkness of the
action of the night,
home to less than a smattering
of thought in my mind,
seen through eight eyes,
as longings slink from between my ears.

I miss the moon,
cornered catharsis in
action, to our sight its
orbiting escape velocity
is reversing a climax two
planetary bodies had, reaction to attraction
as the rise and final fall of all things accelerates me into sleep.

*This poem

At the last of all my moments
Falling into the big sleep
I hit every branch of truth
and still come away ignorant
falling out of the tree of knowledge
Fading from knowing at all

At the last of all moments for me
Far from ideas of sage wisdom
or assurances of minor understandings
my awareness fades
I fear being unaware of being unconscious
Of not existing, as I drift into the unknown

Death is the first time
You see the sword
Fashioned from all threads of hopes
Hardened by the cold awareness of dread
of endings unheard by those who face
A seemingly assured prospect of the
subjective final ending of all things

Dangling above your head
through all your troubles
through all your triumphs
The sword has been with you
sharp as a riposte fit for hurt
the tender nature of its immalleable form
Fit for purpose beyond our ken
To the heart and soul of an ending of you
but in the quiet moments
your last present thoughts
it delivers a peace unending

There is a gulf of a period; eons long
Without a claim of ownership of land anywhere...
And a brief period merely thousands of years long,
nary even tens of thousands, for which we still have history
Where even so, should we find such evidence against
billions of years long, where no one owned land,
and everywhere, we held no claim… we claimed no land was ours.

Collectively we have been balkanised for such a brief period since: “this event” or “that tragedy”,
due to “these people” or “that person”...
Since somewhere, somewhen,
we have laid claim due to a generalised suffering
here; there; elsewhere or when,
to own some of the land, somewhere...
When land is neither yours nor ours, nor anyone’s to own, anywhere.
Peace will be upon those who lay claim to no land,
everywhere and everywhen.
And be it due to a lack of existence,
or due to a lack of awareness…
Billions of reasons to be unable to cope

We will claim no ownership,
with which comes these claims of ownership,
continuance of war...
or claims of what is right to war for.

For war will be upon those with borders,
and we will will war upon those outside
be they physical, emotional, or spiritual wars, borders
or claims of ownership to the above.

A relatively unwise man once said:
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
And no more wise yet limited request
has ever since been made for peace.
Tear down all your walls, your fences.
Tear down your borders, your limits of coping
for retributive rehashing feats of subjective evil…

Instead be at peace, for every reason you can cope with…
As for every reason for war, are billions of reasons
for which we no longer wish to cope with.

It’s hard to look at the past
Easier to live in the future
The present? Just passed, just then.
The present? Only ever the past.
Easier to live in the future
It’s hard to look at the past.
Living in the now?
It keeps shifting it’s tone of presence
Just a short moment ago, I was but a child
Just a short moment ago, I was but a teen
Just a short moment ago, I was a young adult
I have never been a wise person
But I know it’s the future
that gleams longer than the present
Hue of hardness around
the soft and delicate areas of the
Ego bruised from learning lessons
and diminished over time

Chiselled psyche, bits and pieces missing;
shapes of happy moments…
trauma treasured and
shying away from sweet memories
Living in the past is not good for the present,
and craving the past
Is not good for the future.
A more prosperous present is the speed at which light travels
from present to past, from moments coming at us
Ever more quick, from craving to be an adult, to craving the cradle
From craving maturity, to still lacking it and wondering when, when I’ll grow up.
Easier to live in the future.

Often, love can be selfish
But it’s ok to be selfish enough to love
You need to be enough of a self, to be self-ish
Often, love can be manipulative
But it’s ok to be manipulative enough to love
You need to be enough of a dab ‘hand’
Often, love can be pain
But it’s ok to be aggrieved the sickness of love
You need to be aware of the ‘penalty’ of love and the gamut of emotion possible
Often, love is not what we expect,
And ideally, love is all and none of these things
all at once and not at all
Love is a sickness, a syndrome and a series of down endings
Last of which is the end of all emotion,
all pain, all suffering
May the love and loss protect all others from theirs, in the last

Ah sure pity the “poors”, on subsistence ‘benefits’
Ply the lower ‘classes’ with tax cuts
Reactionary opinions before the facts hit the page
A stab in the dark, vengeful social media rage
our feeds full, feels like everyone’s on stage
5-minutes hate, no ifs ands or buts
Wedge and balkanise with cultural cults
The pain such ideologues inflict
Leads to a society full of conflicts
Almost entertaining in their fucked up fictions
All together, just lovely how much they cause frictions

Well if you ask me, and thankfully nobody does:

Better the budget be in the red,
than children, women, they/them and men who are dead
Better proactive than merely just reactive
Better creative than redundant
Better test cases, better services,
better trials of better science
Just wish I was better at being better for better’s sake
Just wish things were fucking better
Better for the future, a better present and soon-to-be-past
Whatever we do, life goes by too fast
Blood spilt, tears shed
and then we’re all eventually just fucking dead
These were just some random thoughts
from a fretter, a worrier
Ah sure please, can we not just do better?

I would far and away prefer the family unit not survive…
To have each and every member, still alive
I fear for children and women’s safety
The tragedy that splashes not black and white
But black and blue and but scarlet on the front page
True frailty is the simplistic mindset that we can legislate our way
Out of crimes of ‘passion’. Instead set our sights,
To a more open and honest community conversant
Science tells us that mandatory minimums are not a deterrent
We require novel options, novel conceptions
Be they one of social interruption, of diffusion or de-escalation
To do better by our children and women
We must first be less harsh on a man’s conviction
Of character, of emotion, and transform heated disposition
To passionately assisting others who face the same biological reactions;
Science tells us that testosterone provides the capacity for aggression
And non-aggression alike, to improve social status.

We must allow for accession from the focus on violence
As a means to any solution than the problem of violence
as a transgression. Forgive me, my own sins, my own mistakes,
my own flaws, my own perception, of tragedies, now daily, against all

Forgive the toxicity of heated situations and remove yourself from
Difficult frustrations; please do not allow a reaction of physical exasperations.
Instead, pop the kettle on, have a brew and let it settle
Let the lime scale of life be boiled away.
By all means allow for resentment built up in all minds
As it is far better a memory, far better a behaviour,
to unpack and work through healthily.
than to make funeral plans with deepest commiserations,
than condolences dripping with anger and regret:
Our planet should be a place of peace, please do not forget

My heart is held together
by sticky tape and silly string
Taped gently to my chest but
hanging low ‘neath my shirt,
as it pounds, pump by pump,
my wounded atrium
home to people, places and
poems I hold dear
cause dripping drops of dreaded claret
which sparkle my shirt sleeve darkly.

My brain wanders in thought wistfully,
winding through wild winds
and foggy nights cheerfully lit by gaslight;
these thoughts tear my flimsy heart apart.
As my thoughts themselves discard drop, by drop, by drop
Dripping down and off like pearlescent scarlet sweat
are the thoughts which harm,
the thoughts which cause hasteful words
and hateful ideas made real by being voiced,
sometimes shouted into something
that could never be called a void

Clock ticks tock
More ticks shifts its ciphers
More tocks shift its hands,
both big and small
Meaning more has past
More passed past moments,
ticks tock goes the clock
Neither ticking down, not ticking towards
This clocks tick tocks again
With every tick, with every tock
the moment makes itself known
And the past is anew