Page 7

Don’t look into his eyes,

He’ll see how black your soul is.

His icy pools of blue

Suck me into despair.

Observing a glimmer of curiousity

Flummoxing the mind –

Bollocks

​

​

​

Page 8

Human Life is a lit match:

igniting at birth and having the

fixed distance to travel until the

fuel that sustains it is no more.

 

Once the match is fully burned out, nothing

remains but dust.

 

In this case, the flame has been

snuffed out before the fuel has run out.

​

What is left is the remaining splint,

a reminder of the time and possibilities

that could have been achieved; whatever

their length of life used to be.

​

​

​

Page 9

I KILLED

THE CLOCK –

I PUT HIM IN

THE MICROWAVE.

 

SHE MELTED SLOWLY.

​

​

Page 15

Pathetic Indulgence = Distraction

ΔΙΕ      Γ Ζ

Endless entrapment in the

                        Elevator shaft

            Four hundred metres.

They want me to snap

So I smashed the lens;

The Kaleidoscope followed.

There are pins in my left leg.

I take each out and stab –

​

​

​

Page 24

She was out behind the bins. Fangs bared,

Reflecting the fluorescent illusion

Of sunlight; her body nearly ripened.

To leave her would be an act so inhuman…

I should test my soul. Amidst my confusion,

The vixen attempted to leave. Hardened

By hunger, an orange tail now a ruin,

Defeated, her eyes started to darken.

I pull her aside and pull out my knife

Cutting into her fruit, blotting her life

For the births still beating inside her.

I pull them out, not poor for an amateur:

Two of them dead, the other three scrawny,

But we were all friends in our juvenile glory.

​

​

​

Pages 26 & 27

ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART

IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS

DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD

ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART

IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS

DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD

ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART

IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS

DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD

ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART

IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS

DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD ART IS DEAD

​

​

​

Page 29

My fundamental purpose is to entertain, and

in that I have failed. I’m now the sad,

dead clown, unwanted by a public that

once loved me. Worthless, no… worse – Valueless.

I fear the Queen will relegate me to the

shadows. I was too overt with my

capabilities; I should have been careful; I should

have been political. Now, I lack diversification.

The poor man’s Feste, the poor man’s Joker:

How to separate? How to differentiate?

I pissed on all the books. Somehow I

thought it would change the situation, instead

the Library reeks of urine. ART IS DEAD

 

​

​

Page 32

I

 

                        Abused

 

                                                You.

 

                        I

 

                                    Didn’t

 

                                                Mean

 

                                                            To

 

                                    I

 

                                                Forgot

 

                                                I’m

 

                                                            Sorry.

​

​

Page 33

Curled up infants, frightened by the snow.

Tightly I hold their peace, but her labour’s lost

Nevermore found in the walkways beyond

WONDERLAND. Return to my asylum

With my children in my paws? No. Let them go

Into their liberty, rather than tossed

Deeper down my dire rabbit hole. Spawned

To give me joy, I don’t deserve my cubs.

Their playful nips that make me bleed; their fur

That friction burns me warm at night; but my

Face is red while they turn orange –

I’ve lost my stasis but not existence.

I took off my hat to give them their bed

And they’ll kill the Rabbit to save my head.

​

​

​

Page 34

Self-delusion is the greatest self-infliction

Let imagined success take the place of a razor blade

And the cut will be forever deepened...

The image never appears because reality is cruel;

The Gods despise Prometheus and hide his light

All the while they stifle his life.

“Let him bleed out”, they say:

It’s the best form of ENTERTAINMENT.

I paint my smile because it conceals my pain;

My broken body is too terrifying for any applause

So I must bathe in both make-up and fantasy for

their praise or acceptance.

Let me bleed out tonight.

I’d be happier if I could.

It’s better than the Knowledge that

I am Worthless.

​

​

Page 35

IN

TECHNICOLOUR

            SWATHES

I           PAINT

ELASTICITY

​

​

​

Page 36

I stack gutter coins to

pass the time;

 

The rat’s meat was cold.

 

I didn’t remove the entrails and

took an accidental bite:

 

The fumes were sickening.

​

​

​

Page 37

Wishing to be amonst

            Chameleons

Yet surrounded by

            Mimes

​

​

​

Pages 38-41

At Midnight he creeps

In through the window;

Crawling out from the vents

Or under the doorframe.

He is always unseen

By the body he penetrates.

His hands traverse his victim’s anatomy

Finding their holes and

Choosing the best

For his Art.

Tonight, on this street,

It was you who forget to bolt the door;

Seal the window;

Close the vent.

Tonight he rakes along your ear canal

And into your brain

And down your spinal chord.

You shiver.

He is inside you.

And he has control:

Your mind flails;

Your body remains perfectly still.

The images appear without sequence

Grotesques hound and

Wail inharmoniously

Her words like bricks break your heart

Walls and ceiling are interchangeable

Breath is scant

HARDER

COLDER

IT HURTS

Another brick another curse

Your bones are contorting

The pressure shattering your muscle sinews

Simple tension now complex

IT HURTS

you're being crushed

By her by him by everything

Realising the insignificance of respiration

You feel him dancing inside of you

Until you’re bolt upright

Sweating

Screaming

All the while he is salivating,

Consuming your terror;

And yet, he was already full

Yours not the first bed he entered tonight.

He leaves, contented with his sport,

But he’ll return when boredom strikes,

His external existence,

And soon he will be ploughing you once again

Hoping to reap what has already been stolen.

​

​

​

Page 43

Light is high in the sky

                                    at night

 

                        And I melt again

 

            I die cause

 

                        I can’t face

                                    the day

​

​

​

Page 45

Their tears for eons passed

My cruel lover, done are the restless nights

A butterfly on the wall

The ceiling is covered with moths

 

They love me because I turned my

pain into beauty

 

They love me turning

pain into beauty

​

​

​

Page 46

We kissed: I painted her barbed

wire red with my lips.

Blood stains on her satin scarf, dripping on

her oriental furs.

The Black Queen, my chaos angel,

A ghastly apparition stalking my vision.

From the mist of my mind

She whispers such dreadful acts.

To escape, to replace, my paramour must rise:

Even with her cruel love

And my banishment.

If my Red Queen falls

The nightmare will consume me.

​

​

​

Page 48

Happy things encourage a destructive space.

We believe we are safe when we laugh as one

But reality causes isolating dissonance

Between our lonely voices.

 

Ugliness is all that is beautiful.

Beauty has become artifice.

All that is artificial is ugly.

The cycle goes on as I paint my face once more for the cameras.

 

He’s still at the window, ravenous.

She cuts the universe to watch me through the scars.

If I were happy, I’d be in danger

If I were beautiful, I would be ugly.

 

Instead I slide my tongue against

corrugated iron,

Obsessed and depressed with the carboard

I lie on.

​

​

​

Page 49

My former public tarnish my reputation;

Gleefully gossiping as they crush it between their

teeth

And digest what was once my pride.

Their acidity scalds my skin, corroding through

muscle and sinew

As they snigger and keep their distance from

the “mad” one

I am to be judged. An anecdote to make my

past lovers

Feel superior. I compensate for what they’re

lacking.

I want to be beautiful in everyone’s eyes.

I want to be glorified.

I want to be loved.

​

​

​

Pages 50 & 51

Art is Dead. The typical loser nonsense striving for relevance in an ever crumbling culture where mirror shards make shallower cuts than the mirror’s reflection. I see you seeing me. I’ll kill the rabbit once Art has stopped kicking and screaming. It won’t be too long now, the frosting is almost dry. The Gods are afraid of what they created: freedom is dangerous, so instead they control. The media is no longer ours. Our voices have been stolen and replaced with monotonous drones repeating every last word repeating every last word repeating every last lie. I die. We loop culture because we prefer our cages to be definable, familiar, friendly, comic; a place where our arteries may be sliced and we can laugh away the pain of 5 or so litres repainting the TV room’s walls with a unique shade of red. Horror and violence disturbs but if we bubble wrap ourselves we’re merely deceiving ourselves into suffocation. The pancakes are nearly ready so I crush another one of her eggs. Are you afraid? I’m always afraid. But it’s not because of the fairytales I was told as a babe or of the monsters I fight every day. No, no, it’s the beast. The beast of manicured lawns, its illusion of perfection. What did I say about loser nonsense? Anything more and you’ll be a leper because when we talk we are shamed and when we’re silent we’re blamed for not speaking out or for baring our souls, the souls that no-one wanted to be shown. I carve out appetiser sized cubes of chunks of flesh from my side to make a profit. They’re still squeezing maggots out of Bill’s gums. Diana’s still locked up in her dollhouse torturehouse. Patient is still patient. Martha is dead. Terrence Loves You but Meredith told us that from the start. They never found Elektra’s charred corpse. I smell bacon. I smell blood. Gorging on roasted hips and the nearby saucy sweetness; ravishing they find. These souls are not sensationalised. They’re kicking and screaming because they are the children of Art. They beg to be seen. They plea to be heard. No-one will let them because happy closed doors hide away truths. We want to look at the gorgeous façade, and in our distraction, the kitchen has caught alight. Dinner is burnt, my flesh, overcooked. I’m no longer appetising, if I ever was, but the fantasies (lies) remain bittersweet like lemon candies, melting in the summer sun, waiting to be licked off abandoned park benches by the people forgotten by the little blue bird. We only tell our children about those who are like us because we never want them to think about people who are not like us because those people are bad, and will cause us harm and destroy the minds of those who are young. This is a lie. This is the media shaping your mind and preparing you for your surburban utopia. The middle class Eden, segregated Paradise where all that is ugly is hidden away from our eyes. My eyes are different, I blame my father, because that which is ugly to my eye is beautiful. My rotting corpse, with sunken black sockets where my eyes once were, my half eaten ribcage where my heart once beat, my muscular thighs where now larvae become flies. My intestines were taken to be turned into strings they now sing as a part of a first violin tremolando like the days when I used to sink into misery, despair, all painted with ink. Cling film suffocation. My wife can’t tell me if I’m twisted or insane anymore, she can’t tell the difference. I must cut htis insanity out but I have no more flesh to cut. I rip into my skull to use my brain juices as paint: the canvas is torn, failed fluids drip to the floor. I inhale stardust so my lungs might one day glow like diamonds. Art was my only God. ART IS DEAD. I weep in technicolour swathes. When my love means nothing more is when I find it’s time to die. Life. Death. Life, again. Reality is cruel. Reality splinters. I shatter myself, easier than being whole, easier to be seen as bricks than a skyscraper. The skyscraper isn’t appreciated. It is loathed. I should sink my circuitry in Mercury but Jupiter’s cries are so eloquent. We are controlled in every way: our tastes, our views, our binaries, our non-binaries, our incessant need to label each soul to deem the untouchables, what is inappropriate, what triggers. We will all die. We are all deeply unhappy. We are all alone, in our four walled prison cells with the fifth wall, the glass wall, staring back at us, destroying our eyesight with its unnatural glow. My friend, my love, can you touch me in cyberspace? From beyond the waste paper basket? I need you to tell me Art is Dead so I can defy your printed lies. I’ve begun to believe your philosophy.

​

​

​

Page 52

We sit staring up at the moonlight’s warmth;

A white disk, a lump of rock floating past.

My cubs nestle in my breast looking North

To the celestial bodies outcast.

Midnight cripples us, we know no allies;

The wind sits on us, light refracts strangely.

The holes remain dug . We never chastise

Ghostly passers-by, they’re fading faintly.

The Factory’s smoke pollutes all our lungs

But cancer’s safer than loneliness here.

I crack beneath the night sky, speaking tongues

To satisfy my children who endear.

They grow everyday now, I shrink inside

And when the day comes, they’ll toss me aside.

​

​

​

Page 53

Lilac skies and dark blue lies:

An amphetamine dream.

 

She’s found herself a partner who

Reciprocates what I never could.

She doesn’t deserve such betterment.

I want her other half for myself to make me

Whole. If I’m never happy then no-one else can be.

 

I wear sunglasses all day

Because if they can’t see my eyes

They won’t know if I’m crying.

 

Sex is easy.

It’s dull and ungratifying.

 

I want the fragments of his broken skull to cut into his brain.

Bone piercing flesh.

Mutually assured self-destruction.

​

​

​

Page 54

If you cut out

my eyes

 

 

 

Would I still

see stars?

​

​

Page 55

I haven’t eaten. The stench of booze and piss

Burning acidic cuts deep in my tongue

Instead of keeping my mind whole

And my body satisfied.

My diamonds leak, my infants have left me.

Sunglasses obscure my oblique tear drops

But clouds block daylight, soon rain will conceal

How I feel It’s unnatural to plant

Metal shells inside our skin, or organs,

But my temple begs and my brain agrees.

I lift the pistol, alone here again,

Preparing the shaft to kiss my iris.

I shoot. The bullet would have brought me peace

If I hadn’t murdered the little girl.

​

​

​

Page 57

I’m back,

But this time with rose thorns growing

From out of my brain

Piercing my thoughts, wrecking my mind,

And filling my skull with wasted rose petals

That will inevitably dribble from my ears, and nose, and eye sockets

Fluttering down to the earth in steady drops

To dry, and stain, laying seeds that will never grow

As they did within me.

The rose is my constant companion:

In my lapel, my body,

Clutched between my clasped palms

In prayer.

A religious affair.

The crucifix leaks rose petals.

They all do, four nails marking the exit wounds.

Eternal external love in excess,

Abounding across the spiritual plane

And growing like a flower.

Beauty and pain in harmony

Unlike my soul, ugly and numb to whatever surrounds me.

I will cut the image of the rose into my skin

So further petals may bloom for you.

I will thread the stalks, thorns and all,

Around each notch of my spine, along each rib,

Transforming my body

Into the rose garden.

​

​

​

Page 58

I had a companion who left before my journey's

end.

​

I sold my soul for thirty three cents.

At last I feel empty.

​

There are palm trees growing in 

Alaska.

​

Leaves of green pass by in

splendour.

​

There are fewer bees

Than there used to be.

​

Aqua coloured grass pierces my skin to lay its eggs

inside me.

​

The little pink Victorian townhouse has begun

to sink deep into the

Earth's oesophagus.

​

​

​

Page 59

Even the grass isn't real here

It laughs, it cries

It sighs

Artificiality

I don't have any happy memories.

I scour my brain

Furiously attempting to scrub it clean and yet

Nothing

Nothing more than pain and misery and neglect

and suffering and violence

Oh, such violence

Beautiful in a way I could never be

Blooming bruises with yellow purple green flowers blossoming

On a stalk of blackened veins

The glass tiles shimmer like rain water from a storm

​

​

​

Page 61

Droplets of morning dew magnify the

Freshly mown grass on his chest.

His quivering heart disturbs the tears,

Letting them run down his frame until they drip.

Let me wallow in the light a little longer –

​

A gasp

A breath

A dream

​

​

​