The Violence of Parting

A shudder, sudden
A vehement, violent, viper's sting
I was nothing to you
And yet, I thought I was everything

You fragmented before my eyes,
Transformed into everything I dispise
Hatred emanated from your face
Telling me to begone from this place
Get out of my house, you cried

Sudden, searing, a lightning strike
I was a mere child
Just like your little girl
And yet you tore me in pieces
Emotional limb from emotional limb
Frail, fragile enough already

You recocognised my condition
Without realizing it - madness
People are afraid of it
I realize this as I stumble
Half-unreal, across flat grasslands
And through crowded streets

I tense my body for death
My body tenses for death
Contemptuously, it passes me by
Those who don't want to - die
Those who do - don't

It still burns
It still turns
Revolved inside
Everytime my eyes
Fall upon you.

A Comment On the Lawz Episode

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Well, I hear you went up to Saratoga
And your horse naturally won
Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well, you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not, you're with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife of a close friend, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you

You're so vain (so vain)
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

Dedicted to Lawz and MusicBoy (who also doesn't count 'Honour' among his many virtues)

A Heavy Voice Hangs In Her Head

Preoccupied With Death

Preoccupied with death
Especially her own
Simple and repetetive
The bottle of pills
On her bedside table
Beckons her

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said

Food holds no answers
Starvation holds no answers
Purging, then running, hiding
The monster that lives inside
She rips her skin open and
Her sluttish coloured blood seeps out

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said

The sun comes out
On Christmas day
She watches it though
The sealed window
The grimy glass
Of her hospital room

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said

No Cure

Ruby Residue

Your corpse is riddled with ruby residue
My friend, there is no cure for you
God would not be appeased
The spirits could not be pleased. No prayers
Or sacrifices or religious rituals would do
And, once again, I look at you.

What drew you to this troubled region,
This zone of apocalyptic restlessness
This land replete with death
What reactionary pedagogue
Instilled the altruistic madness that resided
So stubbornly in your head

Above, the clouds resume their duel
The wind screams across the land
You walked into the storm
Fearless while we slammed our windows shut

Already I can hear your spirit
Walking above me
Today is the first day of your death.

The Rain

Celebrating the Rain

Turning to the sky,
I welcome the rain
It runs down my cheeks
It drives the sun away
I celebrate the thunder
I revel in the lightning
I frolick beneath grey skies
While others run like horses
Across the tortured ground
Of a desolate moor
Will it strike me?
If I have the audacity
To curse God and his monopoly
Of the sky, of the heavens
For I am Satan, you see
And I live in a walled city

Random Thoughts 2

The Triumph of the Sun

Turning to the light,
Away from the dark
It enervates me
It banishes the void
I have created for myself
The moon falls down
From the sky
And we celebrate
The triumph of the sun
The victory of day over night

Random Thoughts

Do You Believe in What You See?

Do you believe in what you see?
Disinterested in what lies within
How can we grow?
How can we flourish?
In this land of degredation and decay
Can life emerge from death?
A mutilated vision of myself
That emanates from the mirror
Grasping at the moon
It remains forever beyond my reach
I curse those from whom I was born
I dread the coming of the dawn
But they gave me a gift
And I have wasted it.

The denial of God
The denial of the light.

Slay That Tiger

The Second Slice

I took a second slice
To slay that tiger: hunger
But the pain does not lessen
While mourning a lost empire
I consume a blueberry muffin
Some strawberry shortcake

Trauma and memories
Illustrated perfectly
They accept no allies
They show no mercy
I feed the fear
I feed the hostility
The world within
Is clouded and gloomy
A long and steady fall awaits

Consuming sugar coated junk
Sweetness turns sour on the tongue
I am left with anger and nausea
I look around and see
Another wasted day
I miss my voice
Where has it gone?
It clots around my core.

Candles

One Hundred Candles

One hundred candles burning down, slowly down
A flame at a time. Until there is nothing left
But melted wax. Useless as ashes in a grate
There is no one left to manipulate

Evil emanates from me. A stream of obscenties
It devours me and everything else around
The flames of hatred and resentment and rage
Then it departs and I remain
Agonised by shame
Evil is my name

I have driven those angels away
The very antithesis of me; awash with purity
Howling like a wolf
in the wilderness
And my dreams have moved
Far beyond my reach

NewBorn

You Came

In the midst of May you came
We were as one, seeking the sun
Awaiting the cock's crow, the streams flow
Over bristling, frosty land. Milky clouds
Over still and silent cattle, glory-bound
Before the daylight becomes faded, jaded
Across a calm sea, a quiescent ocean

Your tears- each droplet - glistening gold
You emit guttural but glorious sounds
I elevate you to my lips to drink
That surge of emotion. I am at one
Within and without, the heart and the flesh
This deep river was born
To be in motion

Involunatary Fugitive

Runaway

A runaway,
An involuntary fugitive
His eyes, an insult
Wide pools of chocolate
God's hand reached down
And snatched him away
He has gone and now
No one believes that there
Was ever anyone there at all

Summer

Summer...
Yep, how I adore it. Surrounded by smelly, sweat-soaked bodies and flies that commit suicide when they hurl themselves at your car windscreen. Delightful. Told you I was weird.

Summer

Alienated by this landscape
Illuminated by the sun
A casual stroll
And beads of sweat, they roll
Down my forehead

And wild birds, they scream
At one another in their trees
This is a climate
Everyone adores
Everyone, that is, but me

Summer is slovenly; it tortures me
Mercilessly, and I long for winter
I long for the purity
Of frosted ivory, of crystallised water

I was not intended to flourish
I was intended to remain
Frigid, precise as an icicle
Suspended above the ground.

....See, told you I was nut-so...

Old Lady Cat

Bella the Cat

Old Lady Cat. Multi-coloured feline.
How do I halt her decline?
Attention seeking brat cat.
She clings - How she clings!
A white sea with black and brown islands
A rumbling ball of fur
A sweet sleeping semi-circle
The colour of liquorice and caramel and snow.

My Creation

Crack In Your Skull

A crack in your skull as deep as the sleep
I am imprisoned in. Mementoes of you to keep
Beneath my pillow as you are hauled up
To heaven on invisible wire. I remain in the mire
Of grief. I curse God, the thief, who stole you from me

I miss your affection. I miss your touch
You are hurtling through the air. I am anchored
To the earth. You leave me with a heart, shrunken, charred
It did not occur to me that you were perishable
You came from me, you see. You were my creation.

My Father's Rise to Superstardom

Mr Father, the Fascist Dictator


As a child I witnessed my father's rise
To superstardon. He donned his disguise
And marched out onto the stage. Some
Had called his rise meteoric but I know now
That he did it by stepping over the bent backs
Of peasants and beggars and orphans

His obsessive, possessive love
Drove us away. And now all that is left
Are his memory of those glory days
Are hundreds of faded photographs
Scattered across a shattered no-man's land
And shreds of music from a ghostly
Regiments' marching band.

I recall him repeating a thousand time
The words his own father passed on
'He said, 'Remember son,
'There is no action without consequence'
And then I wonder whatever did you do
Before you found a cause to attach
Your megalomania too?

And I remember that towards the end
As drooping and drooling he stumbled
down the street and the people began
to laugh, talk about him and the crowd
Which had once parted before him
Now spit contemptuously into his face
And now the people They laugh, they talk,
They cry, they gorged on his downfall

But he did not beg, he did not cry
You do not beg for absolution
You do not consent to a cease-fire
You believed that you were Christ
And could walk upon water
But instead you sank beneath the ocean
At one with the creatures who live beneath
A monstrous ogre under the sea.

The American Princess

The European Night and the American Poetess

The European night is unfamiliar to this American poetess
In a way that she cannot define. The stars are brighter somehow
No matter, it is indeed divine. A lamp burns in her window
It is the star that beckons us home. It seems to smile. At what?

And the full fat moon is visible through the glass
And beyond this room yesterday calls once more
And the moon gloats
At the stars she overshadows
Like a brilliant big sister

Are the trees overwhelmed too?
Their fingers reach up, up, up to touch
Her dangling there for all to see
What a narcissistic show off she must be
That full all-effacing (rather fat, actually) moon.

Bleak But Strangely Appropriate

Blackened Rose

A rose, once red, now blackened, charred,
Only half alive, too delicate to touch
Still embedded in the earth

Pied Piper Bombers target beauty
They fall, they call, they turn, they burn
They are unworthy of my concern

I wonder what the flowers felt
As the bombardment began
My arms spread out

A plane swoops down
The pilot eyes me - a withering look
Why waste your worries on insentient beings?

If I pick them I will kill them
If I leave them I will kill them
So I pluck that solitary rose

And look up at the sky, it is blue
It is bright, it is clear and for now
The bombardment has ceased

I look down at the blackened flower
In my hand and then make a fist
It is mine to kill and so I crush it.

A Little Late

Autumn Trees

Made up of long and short bones
The tree's innards are exposed
Charred black branches are fingers
That reach up up to the sky

The winter is merciless
It rips away the leaves from those trees
Like forcibly removing
Some octogenarian's mask of make up
They look down with regret at the
Leaves scattered around their feet

Green was not everyone's colour
But autumn was a ball
Clad in rainbow gowns
October for those trees
Was, most certainly May week

Bereavement

Bereavement

Winter
Announces its arrival
It whistles. It moans
But it means no harm
It hurts unintentionally
Our blood freezes
And the bones of the old crack
We are without protection
Without umbrellas
Without raincoats
And sorrow runs deeper
Than they’ll ever know
But not as deep as yours though

A winter funeral
Tear ducts do their work
Hands lean on shoulders
And grief mingles with
That damned rain
Will it ever stop?
Then laughter is liberated
All smiles unleashed
For we are off to the wake
Where we’ll feast,
Drink and remember and I’m sure
That your laughter will be
The loudest and most raucous of all

Dreams

The Proprietor of Dreams

I ride with my horse unsaddled
Onto the field of battle, wondering
Who is the proprietor of my dreams
Is it the moon, corrupted by trees
Whose branches reach up and up

To caress it. This usurper of the sun
That once witnessed two towers fall
Those ineffectual elements
Each rock is eroded by its sister, the sea
These are the songs all children sing

As our ghosts depart to join the ancestors
'We'll be back one day,' we cackle
Others sway to the wind's aerobics class
I drift with the river instead
Grey waves, grey waves, they greet us

We are oh so theatrical. A world away
From soft rugs and eiderdowns
I encounter my own impossibilities
My God, how they laughed
Our lives like jelly congeal

And we pour blue blood
Over the red of some pauper
I tried to die countless times
But I was always dragged back
By the stench of that trench.

My Only Companion

My Calling

Writing poems is my calling
My stanzas are my children
My only companion is my muse
I do not know her name
But I think of her all the time
She visits me in sleep, in verse
In rhyme. I sample her strange soul
My reason represses her
The door slides open
And she glides out
Crippled and stunted
How distant she has become
We grow drunk in the sun
Her day is almost done

Beneath a Dark Sky

Madam Prozac

They call me Madam Prozac
All night outside my window
Cats shriek, fight, cry
Beneath a dark sky

I am the wallflower at the party
Sweet scent blossoming
I float on the outer circle
My perfume grows repellent

Like a kitten I curl into a ball
Sleep leads me into dreams
I hide beneath my dark veil
My memory of the sun is dimming
The sky grows greyer every day
No light is strong enough to shine through

Rubies

Red Ruby

Black cat orders ebony fur to shine
She steps back, radiant and above
Her the white stage lights wink
I exhibit my endless skills baking
Cakes for weddings, cakes for wakes
Cakes for christenings

Evil creates storms from my thoughts
The secret is in my hand
I bring up each buried head
This is the point at which
I embrace the sky, knowing
That the ocean will never be beaten

A white robed ghost in a high window
Cooling like a apple pie on a wire tray
He stands beneath wet with dew
I am being evaluated for marriage
And he concedes that I am indeed
Exceptionally slender

And the ruby stains the centre
Of my forehead and my wedding cake
Crumbles at the Christening
We pull away, we dissolve
And our minute fragments
Fly for a moment and then descend.

Eye to Eye With Their Ally

Saboteurs

In the milky light of the bleak dawn
Agents and saboteurs awake
Preparing to assassinate
Some dark lieutenant
Of the occupying power
They will not be acclaimed
They will not even be named
They will remain
Unknown, a footnote
They dislocate our fate
We wait. Where are they now?

Missing, presumed dead,
He said. Martyred
Wanton devastation
The butchery of me.
They took lessons
In the art of destruction
Sabotage is a craft
They were taught
How to kill
With their bare hands

A veil was drawn
Over their future
They did not know
What their mission was
Until the final moment
When they were despatched
By air and by sea
Smuggled in by gunboat
And parachute
Eye to eye with their ally,
With their enemy
Upstart amateurs
Armed only with cyanide
Inside a suicide pill.

Dedicated to member of SOE
(see soon to be established on Drowning In Academia)

Dead Celebrities

Army of Dead Celebrities

Army of dead celebrities
Marching across your wall
Once in a while you exhume them
Respond to their call
In life
In death
They have no voice
Revived every now and then
Loved then despised
By turns
Icon and iconoclast
They are absorbed into your myth
A character in someone else’s story

Academics

The Supercilious Sorcerer

The night slithers along so agonisingly slowly
And so I burst impetuously upon conversation
With the boy beside me.
He is a pedagogue, draped in florid
Wreathes of knowledge

A supercilious sorcerer. My ignorance
Appals him. Our conversation is sluggish
With the odd jagged edge
I don’t think you like me, I said
Our discussion is a wintry scene

Ridden with ravens. Ice coats the river
As pure as a premonition
Imprisoning last summer’s foliage
And to shelter from his superciliousness
I plunge into that ebony lagoon

And insensible and beyond reason
I escape his overcast intellect.

A portrait of my parents' marriage:

Marital Bliss

I did not conjure him up, he simply arrived
And then suddenly we were married
And, just as suddenly, we are pleading with God
Asking him to let it end, please, let it end
And hot blood red anger swells the house
That simple, suburban house we remain
In our hellish togetherness to retain
And then, of course there is the dog
That yapping, yowling post-man eating dog
(But we love him just the same)
And any affection that remains
Is lavished on that spoilt brat feline
And so we proceed, we go on marching
To the rhythm of the drum of martyrdom
Oh, isn’t it fun. And did I forget to mention
That we have a tribe of hyperactive children?

The Hoarder

I am a hoarder
All of my yesteryears
Are locked up
In a trunk
In the dust-choked attic
A feast for all
Tomorrow’s mice.

They will gnaw holes
In my old schoolbooks
And in my battered diaries
That encapsulates all that I am
Stained by so many years
Chronicles of family madness
But, you must see that all this
Is not the only me

There is more
Much more

Poem: Sunset

Sunset

Evening and the sunset’s compress
Soothes our inflamed flesh
And I am stunned
By its sudden incandescent flare
The mud, the silt stretches for miles
Encompassing everything.
We watch the ocean rebound
Its sounds, its historic hiss
Slaughter all other sounds around
Injuring the air and to verify your existence
I grasp your hand. And above the elements
Bicker with one another and the sky
Is turning into a shade of sluttish red
Our cheeks are pinked by the wind.
And the watery colours
Bleed into one another. Diffusion –
A catalyst for confusion, for fear.
And the wind, once a gentle exhalation,
Huffs and puffs with all its might,
Grabbing hold of our hair, hauling us in.
And visions emerge from beneath the waves
Where a ship ran aground,
Where demented sailors drowned
It rises up. It bellows. A black cat shrieking,
Competing with our own blood pumping.
The gulls flee from it and fly, fly, fly into nothingness.

Anger

ANGER

Even from this far away
I can feel the heat of your anger
Like an approaching summer storm
You collude with the elements
It is still, silent, humid at first

There is something brooding
Beyond the clouds and fury gathers
In the distance sending the birds
Screaming through the sky, they fly
Through the heavy air

On the ground small animals scurry
Back into their burrows. For your anger
Is as vicious as a wild cat. It bares its teeth
It tears down the walls of my town and fells
Every tree in my forest.

This Is Not A Love Song

This is Not a Love Song

You told me I changed your life
But, in the end, it was I
Who ripped the stars
Down from your sky
Once we watched, awed
Gold and silver butterflies
And pale edged birds
Coated in stardust
We joined together, we danced
We dissolved into one another
But now I wring my hands
You yawn, you whistle, you sing
Your final, poignant note
Before collapsing and like a petal
You flutter down and down and down.

Poetry

A Mocking Bird Calls

A mocking bird calls to me, warning me
As we stand before our house on a winter’s night
About the silent shadows that stalk as evening falls
The black sky is so smooth no single star penetrates
The outline of yesterday is fading in my head
It ripples like the full moon reflected in the fishpond

And some gypsy somewhere peers into her crystal ball
And I ask what it is it she sees. What is depicted there?
‘Look up into the sky there is where you will find
The grand dome of a cathedral ceiling. I peer and I
Enslaved by the prosaic see only a darkness
Of the black night sky. ‘This is more,’ she says,
Than an eerie dark, more a stark stillness.’

And dark around me deepens, deepens
I don’t reveal my fear, after all, everyone
Except maybe someone’s eccentric little sister
Accepts that the dark is simply the dark
That the moon is simply a guide to lead us
Through the night. And that the stars
Are just glittering for our celestial entertainment

And, one by one, the relatives retreat indoors
But the eccentric little sister hugs her secret to herself
She had commandeered that green lawn before her
And she stands before the patio doors, dancing
On the spot, ready to leave her secret kingdom

Lost On Me

They take your abuse
And then they beg for more

They come crawling back
When you’ve shown them the door

You poison everything you touch
You corrupt it to the core.

Your reputed charisma is lost on me
I have witnessed your fallibility

You prey upon the weak
But I am strong

I wish I were a weapon
So that I could slay you

I wish I were a God
So that I could strike you down.


For more poetry go here

Apathy

Apathy


Would you have stood by,
Watched those synagogues burn?
You bet you would
And there’s nothing wrong with that
Because if we’re honest,
I mean really honest
I mean ripping open the skin
Until the cartilage and blood
And bone beneath is revealed
We’d have done the same
Because we’d like to have resisted
We really would
But we had to get that roast on
And then there were the kids to feed
And what the screw
Were we meant to do?
Just get on with it, that’s what
Because, speaking for myself,
And everyone gathered here,
Whatever fascist dictator is in power
At the moment
As long as he remains
On the periphery of our existence
As long as he provides the money, the food
The entertainment, the women,
And, oh yes, the men
As long as all that happens
We will be content to go to bed
With full stomachs
And empty minds
Perfecting our boundless capacity
For wilful blindness.

For, oh how we love our propaganda
Wine with that, Sir?
Sugar-coated or sour?
Do you want the truth
Or do you want the lie?
The Very Big Lie
Do you want to keep your A1 Jew?
I’ll make an exception
Just for you.