Sadness
those veins through the heart
Thick sad blood
milk like
The longing
Extends itself along memories
Settling into mood
routine
Rains come
Invited by our hearts
to wet eyes
pity
You a small town
A mainstreet abandoned inside you
forever night
silence
tuesday sluggish anchovy
A pizza a comfortable mess
A packageable meal
A scrape at sanity
T.V meal and the rules slid down
The do what I say not what I do
A withering angel that was about to grow wings
The soda drink and crust indigestion
The simplicity
The bragging brothers
not knowing their father
not knowing their place
Pizza for novelty children
Up to that humid capital
to bring some back
In the hour of the trophy
Children kick the backseats
necessary hinderances
part of the trophy life
The pedigree dog
You could lose your way on elizabeth street
The only road inland for quite a distance
The public house full of gambled lost souls
Rural haunt
Those hills like brothers and sisters
In a big family that understood itself
looking down over that convenience store
Their shape like fathers face
Oh to walk to that convenience store
That southerly getting in on an angle
The wind a kind of thief
taxing our steps and cooling our hearts
The grass all the way up the lefthandside of the road
tickling ankles until winara
The ghost avenue a root tongue under driveways
A backbone of snobbery and sherbet smelling camelias
Those old boards painted and creaking in summer heat
Holding the convenience store together
Seddon street smile as the sun let it
School children wander
It´s there like my grandfather
A stones throw from brother church
a murmur of civilization
neighbors almost unseen
Hey long haired child
Coming out of the land newly created
the grey blue womb as it were
Those places big for you though
You are on the run
homeless like father
Yet knowing where to go
I´d follow
Rucksack on the end of your staff.
Determined eyes looking ahead
your steps full of answers
echoing up and healing our woundlike doubts
You dig into the sand forming the shapes of arrows
Do I know blaspheme by mentioning it
As it was the confirmation of an understanding god
Legs in step upon roads ahead
All things holy tell of a journey
some right journey
somewhere beyond our conclusions
Just to see a piece of my own mind out there digging
Speaking to me through action
Nodding his head matter of factly
Cutting the pine down
middle of the trunk blackened
Planting a small cutting of it
a gleaming new green growth spurt
A shoot out of an old black pot of dirt
telling a tale of the sun
without even seeing it
The bull filled with bullets
The grand stinking carcass
The bill of the vulture full of carrion
spilling out wormy and muggy
The snake symbolically strangles the bull
Cocky and brazen then lost in grimey intestines
appearance of victory
A clumsy reptile
Yet inside the old bull is a fouler species
one from past battles a rough soul inside a drop
a disease distilled
it bit the snake infecting it
Spreading through it like a million fire ants
Then bursting out as bullets and falling into the nearby lake
the bullets formed the shark and the shark weaved through the water
The cake and pastries she consumed
In the front seat of the old orange car
The hotel quirky, front office window reflecting a green glee
The itinerary was being planned
Like a stunning restaurant hall
afore a closed off dark mouldy kitchen
That is the servant the eternal disappointment
A scoulding waiting to exist
So out to book the various tours
There´s only another three days of sun
And then everything will be gone
You will cease to exist
So in your panic and failure to book the tours
You find yourself stuck in a glass elevator
Not even aware of which floor you are on
The doors wouldn´t open
It was providence
The world can just admire you
In your conndensation over ridden glass cabinet
You make your way back to the parking lot
Western californian oversized pine peaking down
at you and your parents
Your mother overeating your father making fine excuses for her
Truth was hidden in dollar store somewhere noone could identify it
Outside conflict attempts to distract us from the glaring blue sky
The grinning reception
The jittery waiters and hotel staff
Father dreams of chopping that pine down with his axe
Providing 4 months of firewood
cold should be over by then
Vacation certainly will
The old fellow wasn´t in any of the four forests
and even the children who came after and before me
never worshipped the forest the way that I did
each one, the pine, the eucalypt and the native mountain forest
Not even the river forest.
The fat long grass sweeping the trunks of the eucalypts
The grey red needles of the pine forest floor
The mossy bruised rocks creating the echo under the native bush
They are the child, the potential for feeling
The broken sky wounded by the southerlies
Not hugging both islands the way romanticized
Hovering over the canopies still smiling despite it´s injuries
It talks to those forests and witnesses the child
wayward lost in those woods
The clearing allows the panicked heart to palpitate
after the forest shade fosters the doubts of real life
Never hiding the truth and brutally brewing it up
and serving it like a demonic tea
The clearing speaks
It shouts the sky into your face
dew still humidifying the low grass
Inviting the child in the form of fungus
The eyes are pushed back into the light
The nose brought under the fury of pungent bracken
Oh to be lost here, not found by the badly programmed humans
who reach for order at the expence of spontaneity
who sacrifice adventure for structures in time and expectation
Their definition of the world covering their piece of the carpet
The forest a profanity
A million middle fingers
that the ambitious gut wants into timber
or pasture
The coal fart of adulthood
The pawn mangoe side
Just waiting for the knife
The cut is an opiate
The separation of flesh a rush
a relief for the desensitized
It´s succulent juice collected
it´s blood drops, so does the care for the world
The wool gets in the way
the interconnected sheep lain down
Shaven on it´s side
Readying itself for the blade
The cliff´s edge has been well ground down
polished by the shoe of many a desperate trend clinger
That summit sundried and dusty
Yellowy gray clouds of dust infecting the screenfed eyes
As they march or scoot toward the abyss
A cackle like a constipated assault rifle
The collective nodders lovable apathetic maniacs
Unbeknownst, to the risk of total destruction
The blinding lights of nukes may shine a little light
on their sheepish future
Back to the street
failed Brent still kicking around
His father dwarved but still alive
Using his arms as legs
And red face to communicate
No big hedges anymore
Open driveways
Just waiting for curious locals
their skeletons ready to hug you
The factory has an emotional mother
Decaying kelp
and a lost brother somewhere in the backroom checking his interests
A ghost factory infact
tears and wails as embraces are enclosed between mother and son
The small village shape shifts
As old characters disappear and new ones take their place
No place at all
Old Brent responsible for all those little tasks
The once integral life broken splintered
like one beautiful shin bone
Split and then fucking shattered
narrow roads and local gossip
phone lines empty
Everything in waves now
Transmitters interrupt your feelings
The old white bearded basketcase
lumbers somewhere near Te moana road
lifeless inside, ashamed
broken yet struggling to pass dawn into one new day
The human squiggles we are
The randomness of our perceptions and desires
Our propensity to get lost in ourselves
taste the flavors of delusion
And be given a taste of high scoville insanity
Coffee and cloud and the urgent jingle of the news channel chiming
what relevant novelty popped your attention
distracted you and created one of those driveways
So you can lean on a well built fence and spit about the current affairs
The useless redundant issues that bounce in and out
of euphorian journalists
Like throwing small aquariums across a factory
Old Brent will catch them
And echo some recent rhetoric
Luke warm stale watered down coffee
sweetened by milk and a lost dirty bottle of sweetener
that fell down the back of an old bench
Brent found it, handy that
His soul an abomination
The old factory hand abandoned
As if he traded place with the sweetener
like some overgrown recluse insect
Longing to change its inner skin
as the town outside him does painfully every year
Misunderstood you ask
Both the town and it´s legs no doubt
But where does ignorance cut into raw sin
comrade the sea is not so far off
climb this building and find a vantage point
vehicles lay randomly strewn
armored troops crawling through
The ongoing storm brushes us into flooded shanty towns
heavy weapons tiring our unfed arms
Confusion and agitation teen soldiers solemn faces
We the turtles as bombs shatter rooftops
refugees are caught halfway through the medievil corridor
wet hay and darkness
Russia a jailer smirking with a fist full of keys
each one unlocking more pain in the east
antique furniture like sacred scripts
Tipped into the bonfires of pillage grips
huddling and praying for a victory before spring
Poison and sabotage to drain and follow them
External armor is the joke
when they have no internal protection
For the wounds incurred
by the shrapnel of conscience
Words cut this page open
They are the very blood hitting your eyes
they are red and staining your eyesight
ridiculing death and injuring themselves into existance
The source of all pain is your heart
these words tickle the veins
that blood always trying to surface to the skin
To the paper of the page like wayward inconvenient words
These words cut I swear they are rude and destructive
disappointing you of structure and comfort
smashing open your illusions of grand lifestyles
just to reveal the master we refuse to bow to
The human clay being formed
Each year a dagger wound
A few million words to convince us
to send a few bricks to the tower of bable
a few righteous words to the bible
How arrogant are my digiting fingers to declare
They have the power to transcend this page
To nestle up there in your current mind
still bleeding all over you
Will you stitch them up?
seek comfort in the world of cushion and neon image
mute into some screen
administiring relief and entertainment
Life is a sword cutting into you
Cutting from this page
As each comfort tires your purpose on earth
As each manipulation positions you
Onto a padded conveyor belt factory grey
A thousand zoos, choose your cage
Homeless father
where do your steps take you?
the cities of the after life
So full of god´s glorious glee
But a different universe molded us
none of these streets hold a residence Dad
Nomads inside our skulls old man
This world couldn´t vibrate us into it
Homeless father do you have enough clothes
Does it get cold up there?
The sun half unwound
The ramp of heaven
Your many faces
like these lands
getting by as a spirit
the apathy of paradise buddy
Could we shake hands once more
I guess not
And the lawns and sunlit roads
That your slim soul abides
Is there any goal there
when this life has been served and devoured
I can tell you they are writing a comedy on earth
less funny with you all the way out there
Not even a lense to see us
Just a few awkward glances
in passing dreams
my example has gone
that box of important documents
Now traversing a city not of this earth
Are we the living flesh graceful
and entertaining
The riddle a few moments out of reach
not communicable to the living.
we have to read into life
like it was dropping hints the whole time Father
And you have no more than a rucksack
some direction not known to our compass
Grey english day colonizes the sky
Outside bar where beer and bragging meet age
Old stories of glory and clinginess to fixed identity
Broken purses in the garden stting there like labels
Not a coin but a spider
Understand the oldest part of yourself
striving to provoke some sort of virtue streak
hairs in his beard, white and passed
each one a plan in the past
matching the cloudy weather outside the bar
The addiction is not in your hand
It is already inside your veins
written into your blood like a hieroglyph
Jumping up and down when its overcast
You should see those old friends
Who had gone up to the taps
Dressed in their lives and aspirations
So they wouldn't have to give any long accounts
But how did they get here and what are they celebrating?
she was the house
middle aged and suburban
Big front yard white concrete driveway
The need for suburban walls
chalk white driveways and garage doors
lawns that curve up to the front path
Some polished car halfway in
A sea of conclusion
radios and lawnmowers
A sense of conformity
dropping each one debt and badges
Life is simple they say
As they turn down the volume
on the mystery of life
We become bricks in our own homes
