Wednesday 25 June 2008

this should have been burnt years ago

(this is about the last piece i wrote that i want to read more than once in my life, no more than annually though)

The Earth is not a cold dead place.

Heavy slash death speed blood metal death machine guns
from the stereo, bullet holes the skin
across my ears.
Forcing down the brown hops into my gullet,
I get up and stagger through
the kitchen door.
Take a mug and watch the cold liquid glass pour
from the tap into the ceramic depths
And across my hand.
I wander blind through darkened rooms away from
The raging voices
Into silent parts I fall.

I have not seen a great event,
From the viewpoint of a single eye,
Have not witnessed man’s descent,
Not heard a soldiers dying cry.
I dreamt now a man walking,
followed by these demons’ stalking.

His head drags behind,
Leaving trails in the dust of his path,
Great burdens on his mind,
Being the one alive in the aftermath.
Brain filled with sights of destruction,
The world is gone through human corruption.

All but one saw god,
When they pressed the last button,
And that missile flew.

He walks now from here to there,
Bleeding feet through worn shoes,
There is no place but nowhere
Now except for dead houses.
Hauling his head through the shell remains,
The pulse of memories through his veins.

He wanders in a foreign land, the
Land he knew as home, the green green grass of
Home. A wasteland strewn with the hollow cars
Filled with hollow bodies. Now this giant
Headed freak is the norm, the only one
Left becomes the average, divided
By himself. He loots the stores of corpses
Taking everything at first, now
struggling to survive in a pointless
Spiral down, screwing into the ground. The
future of the species screwed by this great
Deformity of thoughts upon his brow.
The final destruction is stored there, one
Last twist of ironic hatred from the
mother we destroyed.

High stone walls bent to his eyes, this castle
Of insanity that housed infirm minds,
Loose anchored in the sea, of psychosis
And lunatic mentality. No current
Means no closed locks and a heave opens the
Cages. Inside one a single figure huddles
Clutching to its chest an unknown bundle,
A collection of rags, a precious jewel,
sobbing, weeping, crying out its eyes,
But still, motionless, unable to move.
Elation and joy unbound, another
Being, an explosion of thought, a riot
Of emotional colour and life.
he pushes at the figure, Its skin drops
away in flakes from its bones, charred like ash.
His own hands char, the infection of fire
Spreads like disease through his infernal frame,
An unfelt breeze blows through the cell taking
The corpse ash from the bones and the skin from
His body up to his neck he can only
Watch as the blackened carcass drops its jewel,
A doll, missing an eye, a plastic one
Stares into his, its voice box cry dies away.

He awakens with a start of fear, shame,
Burnt limbs wave in the air around his body
Grabbing at parts lost to the inferno,
Trousers soaked with terror forced urine,
He rises. Outside a barrow filled with
Charred earth, a single sprouting plant, green life.
Digs a hole with teeth and hand, places life.
Cups soil around this rebirth, an earthen womb.
He places his head upon the barrow
And pushes it forwards toward the dawn

The oval of a stadium, the roar
Of crowd and wind that now rushes through the
Stands, down the aisles. From out a pouch
A powder snuffed and from out his mind a
Twinkling star dances in front of his eyes.
His head starts to shrink now and he can stand,
Hold his head above his shoulders, now see,
The bodies strewn about him, swords in hands.
These fallen warriors locked in the fight
At point of death. He takes up a blade
Wiping the blood and mud across his sleeve
The crowd roars his name, roars like a beast,
The beast roar closer now, lions and bears.
From out the walls they set upon him.
He kicks at the lions leap, sending it
Flying to the ground, thrusts at the bears jaw,
Blood pours from its mouth and head, brain spiked
On the swords tip, wedged firm in its skull.
The lion once again, he holds its mouth
Apart, it snaps at his face, the dripping spit
Falls into his eyes and the smell into
His nose like fire the pain in his arms with
The strain finally the jaw snaps and the
Lion falls he takes another blade and
Plunges deep into its head and falls to
His knees. His head grows larger, the drugs fail.
The last of the powder now caked around
His nostrils.

Into one man’s mind,
The world’s history condensed,
Stretched like rubber.

Memories, the screams,
Forced into the head of a man,
He cannot bear it

barely damaged home, windows hardly cracked,
storm forms overhead, shelter from the rain
that sizzles, scorches, burns the flesh of men,
taps an acid fandango on the roof.
Upstairs another body lay in state
A wasted female form, famine death
But still whole, and hole. Temptation rises
For sins of the flesh where flesh can be found
He unbuttons and pulls down the covers.
The stench makes stiff men flaccid and unsure,
His resolve broken by the maggots about her door.

Takes himself in hand,
The burden of swelled organs,
Onan’s juice let free.


Not knowing his path,
Wandering straight on the road,
Instinct guides his feet.


Another man he has not seen since the
Last bombs fell and now high atop a cliff
Looking out across the land and sea afar,
A fall is the last step he will take into
The great unknown. A mystery that holds
No fear for one who has the seen the final
End of humanity. He lifts his head
And prepares to throw when out of the left
A figure pushes him from the edge and
Out of deaths grip and to safety of a sort.
He runs to this beneficent form but
Impaled upon the cart handle it dies,
Its last breath, “to the water, to the sea.”

The deepest blue washes towards him, he
drops to his knees, his head falls from the cart
onto the sand he crawls, pushing ever
onwards into the surf that tumbles on
his frame, pushes head from body. His heart,
clasped to his spine and lungs and stomach
wrench from his wasted bones into the surf.
The burden now is taken by the sea,
A new life swims in the soup. He is free.

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