Composure

We appear together only in the negatives of past portraits.
Features wash away 
Like delicate watercolour.
The familiar faces 

Usurped upon by artificial fade.
Shade shrouds increasing contours, 
Periorbital darkness, the frowning brow.
Our endless rehearsals never mend

Her poor posture, your damp cheeks,
My unceasing restlessness.
Composure is as fleeting
As the final flicker of light

Before the shattered filament.

I Spy

A globe of polished sapphire,
Glossed over like a technical textbook
By a tired pupil.

Fragile as glass, stained 
By shades in the periphery.

A black hole spinal core;
Unseen continents consumed.
The rivers run red.

N.B. Must Finish

So the same old story plagues the morning; 
A new death director, Memento Mori.
Gather hired mourners, 
Dutifully mourn!
Solace they promise.

Ever present like our early Friday 
Echoed warning, that dolorous siren
Always calling. 

...

It will rain again tomorrow.
Once more you will hide behind the blinds, drawn shut
With a sigh. Why oh why
Must it always interfere?

But you are right, that it is no cause for worry and
You are content, are you not?
Confined, maybe...
Still, you always longed to feel this way.

Welcome to the true divide
O wide-eyed child.
The horizon is unobtainable,
All is, but always was.

Only into the empty air do we whisper our sincerest prayers,
Knowing none will hear and none will care.

At the Gates

Oh, Great Deceiver!
I, the wooden horse

You should have burned to the ground.

I am no gift, my splinters

Hidden inside
Like cracked ribs. 

Light the torch. Bring me down. I am no gift.

Cups & String

'Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, 
And to its lips thy story tell, 
And they thy comforters will be..' 

It’s a pity you have no beach,
For we could teach the shells 
To retain our words,
To console when we cannot speak.

We could tie two together 
With fishing line wire,
Conspire like children,
The shore silencing our whispers. 

A Tourist Memento

Frame the portrait of this libertine,
A familiar sight on Parisian streets.

Perched, gazing into emerald glass -
Half empty, the thick liquid drifting
Then crashing like waves into
A ship of crimson sails,
Carrying the tainted fruit
So that he may fall further and further from the tree.

In Albion, he lingers at the well,
Carelessly casting stones into the dark.

Penniless, slumped over the forgotten wall.
There is hope at the bottom, but he knows not
How deep the torment goes,
Only the mockery of passersby
Who, with pockets heavy, turn on heel.