the demons of eastlington
reigning on the badly lit streets of manchester
flying down awkwardly wings almost not sustaining their landing
grinning up at the black sky and hurling objects at houses and stores
citizens run from their houses in shock
Attempting to leave but under the grip of darkness
they may never the whole night turns into the unsafe realm
and all that can be heard was infernal howling
your mother and father picked out a vacation spot
you all got obsessed with following the weather
plan ahead for the trip of course
handle your bags and things with care
you are on the road for just long enough
to create the kind of curiousity
That makes it all worth it
even if you have to feign amusement as you arrive
Picking out your bed
your place to sleep like a gravestone
Choose that spot under the railing
The rain will clean us
We will sleep on the hill on the concrete
Under the rails
Your mother and your father here on holiday
Aren't you excited
Never to return from that holiday
the death of all is the accepted end
the sunset and soft rain
feign sadness and eat finger food
the long haul has ended
and you all speculate about the worth of the valley
This damp green shadowy cul de sac
put down the tools and prepare for bed
Ask yourself as you pull the blankets up
is this the best way to expire
The bay of people between those big block buildings
ever the extroverted herds humming like bees
Ill go refill my coffee
reheat it, its getting cold
Crowds that somehow evolved
the brands and colors and smiles and smirks
we gotta put these conformists straight to work
once occupied the machine can start churning
Ill get my coffee hot
and the whole block will be rebuilt
theyll buy what they can
and get back to their screens
Oh what a gift the modern mess seems to be
all want to belong, I just want to sip my coffee
They extend like two perfect gold bars humming lust
curling summer bracts calling me
flowers shameless and fruitforming as we witness
contrasting yellow soaking the air with sensual aromas
These smiles and legs belong to the sun
The outrage burns as they all sit in the shade
The skin not fully bared the mouth not properly seen
obscured in part to grease arousal
and arousal lands like a vulture from an extended flight
stomach food
Heart love
The rest hangs in the blance of chemistry and perception
Lakes of boiling desire
Intimacy of sunworshppers
The body accelerates somehow
without a flinch
My arms and legs are too big for me
I've been brought up in the drama pool
school washed it off
But i'm still dirty
I take this view of the world
my voice and words have a grevious and volatile tone
That reverberates into all that disagree
the shaking rage keeping me up nights
grasping coffee and pig sipping it down
slurping it until I get the feel
The raise of the brow automatic
the call to start the day
for waking I must life arms that have hungover the bed
I must ponder my eternal monday
numbers in my head making my eyes tire
I must remember to stretch
Fractured also I feel the weight of the land
I've merged with the roadside scrub and trees
pushing over the powerlines and strangling the posts
just a little fraction of odin
I have grown from a stick
I am a clump of this thick reed
I am the violent thump
Deep unconscious lively pond
light invites awakening
powerful lightening to extinguish one self
to revive me verily
for a moment of bliss wayward to death thrown bck into life
A piece of earth inside me
I am a tremendous explosion with no cause
I've merged with the tall expansive tropcal evergreens
I soak up the heavy rains the excess of humidity
I grow over all of your boundaries
fences and walls and ruins of ages already done
consumed by tight shoots and long leatherly leaves
stealing the sunlight
I the slithering vine reach out
rooting across bark moss and shaded embankments
above the bogs and swamps a stationary serpent
a piece of Odin
webbing it all up
giving shelter to beasts of claw sting an fang
a piece of my eye to see them move and hunt
inside it all season after season infinite infinite infinite
The library moves to a busier suburb
walking on tight brick columns
cars veering out of the way
It sits somewhere convenient to the reader
we are lost several neighborhoods from there
Trying to make our way back to the library
through our own routines
confused theories of how to follow the map
Rivers and roads and busy intersections
high murmur distracting the mind
displacing it
stalling the engine
and we find ourselves once again
miles from the library
that quiet limelight
the sanctuary of it
the peace we crave
as we take flights of steps to find the city again
each one an emotion curling into the next
from laughter to whisper
from whining to giggling
gasps of disbelief
to long sighs of relief
each toll booth telling us to return
giving us false direction
cheerful deception
and new fancy insights into oblivion
Hope the undying organ
still pumping us forward
the refinery within
crude to combustible
let's find this library
Not at all costs
strange humility requires we pay
even if it distances us from coveted destination
Their date palms were full of huge round dates
The fruit sticky and sugary in the courtyard
Their heavenly house somewhere in the capital
of heaven
Their house so stately and impressive
Why did the old one avoid it
Only meeting casually outside the house walls
Repetitive jovial anecdotes
People measure themselves by their architecture
the size of their house the make of their car
Some see themselves as thoroughbred
unlistening except for flattering
Never understanding the sweet flavor of the date
The absent dromadery
The blessed wood hidden under thick pastel paint
those three palms on each side of the courtyard
The etiquette hidden inside the pattern
A symmetry that destroys me until I am rebuilt
That never accepted me with heinous and prejudicial rejection
As if an oversized gallon of sweet juice
I could glimpse my older queen matriarch like figure
sharing something of the line if even a morsel
Yet the Older king would not visit this place we dwell
ignoring us and rolling onward far from us
green car abandoned infront of the building
life is on those steps up a head
between columns go there
Enter the large glass doors
open door on the green car
you look back half way from the steps
Life has great periods of ascension
The alarm sounds
The car abandoned
the cradle
The older house
the vehicle
God's echo
We happened on the enemy
Can we destroy them all
their structures their bodies sending them
to oblivion? dying and appalled
My aim was true
when I threw the grenade
No truce we swore
here we are appeasing
Like unpaid whores
our salacious teasing
My aim was true
The bomb burst excitement
Here bargaining to make it even
with enemies we see as demons
this process of false respect
If we could just burn it down
Throwing ourselves into a future
where we would fly into fragments
The dogs and bats flee making tracks
with pigeons and rats still clinging to their backs
and smoke like vision sees us waiting for death
infront of long high fences we are pests
if we could just admit by pulling the pin
This is the future we cooked and coveted
embodying the pride we once fussed over
That caged us in and marinated us all over
For the well aimed bullet's art
it's destiny our heart
By now he was earning a greater share
Like many of his type he had collected many valuables
The young man who accompanied him
A happy crisis born for drama and euphoric peaks
A relationship that played out like a war
Naiive and gay bipolar in nature
Never quite fronting up to the
transactional nature
and in the illusion they drank deep
inebriated and self absorbed
desiring nothing more than the sunset on mankind
As from within them a subtle destruction seeded
On days of loss
On day of losing each other
The creative ultimatums
The emotional blackmail
Their perfect private hell
That seemed for lack of a better word... Edible
A slow release poison
Tiring them for their predictable tantrums
That seemed to circle the weeks and months
intensifying and disappating
Both wounding and joyous
painful and numbing
Two such deserving victims
in the chasm of their own unforeseen torment
The place that man has built
a thousand years ago
protruding from the hillside
a disgusting holy ruin
Neglected over centuries
cursed by the region's low ones
The young enter out of curiosity
Only to feel bewitched and ashamed
The wanderer uses it as temporary shelter
absorbing the abstract energy
and carrying it forth for the remainder
Of their solitary passage
To the empty modern ones
It is a place to be avoided
nightmarish and contaminating
Reminding them of dark pasts
So many of you are new to the world
struggling to see in the daylight
as if eyes were glued shut and thick blindfolds
controlled your life
as if the sea was your womb and you were thrown ashore
In a state of total confusion disorientation
rubbing your eyes in disbelief
wth crowds in the same state next to you
You observe the land not how it really is
but through some colorful fable in dream like state
from far before when you had not emerged
from this figurative crysalis
Stunned at world set infront of you
like a banquet
Unable to create a purpose
Unable to see a deeper meaning
and so you amble
with these peers calling them friends
when all just cradle their own interests and egos
as if armagaeddon had struck
You walk the sands of time
on this unknown beach
Unwilling to know the land
as the only familiar thing to you is the shore
so like the babe on the breast you cling and feed
as if clutching for a mother
the waves her sweet whisper
the sand her delicate hands
It's the very best time of your life
excitement and elation goosebumps on the temples
sunshine forever a warm glow winning smile
a handful of friends wishing you well
Crossroads and dark nights of the heart
torment us into making concessions to our own conscience
replaying a few humilitions pride becomes a stakeholder
Our very own illusions in a colorful box around the brain
Yet the euphoria now takes hold
everything is dressed in good news optimism
A thick layer of mask over any disparities
in the absence of crisis how the soul delights
The inevitable fall and regret lay in wait
predatory and self aware counting down the hours
for misfortune to land you back on the ground
to test the tonic of the trembling smile
The poles of you drastically suck all energy
from overly wonderful to starve them out doom
Ive copied them all to get a sense of self
Not a drop of myself toasting daily health
faceless baseless merry I tell you what i've heard
my gestures are well rehearsed though thoroughly absurd
they've been learnt for survival
The real fell during subsidence
like cliff rock into the sea
bread into the stew mouths of glee
Turn to the mirror briefly
just to get an ounce of relief
I don't recognise anything
A method actor lip synking
so deep into the new role
the old me vanished as a whole
got washed out like a stain through the steam
no matter how unique I really seemed
I think to myself huddled in demand
what a beautiful shell
I'm in the tree with a hundred owls
hooting the night out screeching power
fear induced entities crawl surrepticiously
upon the forest floor
avoiding these hypefocused eyes
that survey all that moves or cries
Up here its any sign of movement
and these ones dive into the blackness
just to surface with prey in mouth
beak wet with blood spelled
something for the hungry chicks sounding
begging for what vanished from the ground
These owls decide among living and dead
with which phantoms to converse with
close to Royalty yet supernatural nearer
The rodent shakes persecuted in terror
across the leaf littered forest wings tear
lifting the loose matter into the air
like a sea wake behind it
pitch darkness
one hundred owls speak
eye
claw
beak
Now they are friends
They used to bomb and burn our homes
Used to mock us to no end
We have been designated for the title of bigger man
To leave and let the past transgressions lie
to be akwardly polite as old offenders pass by
No knife tucked under hungering for fingers to wrap
and present for a chance at miraculous rectification
just bow your head
shrapnel still in the wall
old leaflets half stomped into the mud
still readable denigrating your people
Fire took the clumps of suburbs
instead water they sprayed more bullets
No real exit as they culled us off
Like a common pest
Like the nazi did the jew
the hutu to the tutsi
death by popular demand
we just bow our heads
praying not to be slaughtered
yet the hour has passed and now we are few
vengence occupies the space
where the heart was
The killers have denied their part
photographed themselves in handshake clasp
local blogs and rags show peace has been brokered
At the cost of people who once lived
a famous politician with support from abroad
sets it all up to repeat
As you bow your head
go about your business
