arduous spite
the day they laid the brickwork
and two hundred staff
we settled on the ocean’s floor
belly up like BP
too young to know
our exams had taken place
in a house of straw

spoke through the fire
we rode babylon 999
like school children making for the intersection
a horn blared
triumphant screech of capital
and we tumbled through the air
the last image reflected in our eyes
coca-cola no sugar

at the horizon of sleep
the empty palm of war stretches indefinitely
a profit-margin rounding the ennui of
all our profane martyrs and saints

history wreathed in the thorns of labour
the mistletoe we ****** beneath
putrid, damp, abject
mirror-images of our parents

and under the skylight of the mall
i found in you a whistling hole
where all the birds caught within
choked.

fly mouthed
cavalier
the toppled past
runs
rope through my grip.

thief
impostor
saboteur.

ive been finding it hard to place myself
lapses of concentration
intentions dissipating in the moment of execution
staring into the root directory of my computer
unable to figure out where to go

i found something in sans soleil
a wandering drift of memories replicated in the sleepless dead
the empty motions of an enervated nation
at the brink of collapse

holdover from the air cools bitter awash of dark and a turning horizon without centre. where i entered an empty frame across distance and skin like smoke. ive been having nightmares of cosmic terror a sublime loss of control like paper tearing in the chaotic drifts of broken eddies and other everyday things an inward open mirror a sunlit line wavering to heat disintegration dispersal erosion and death. ive been reading uncanny fluctuations in the sign of things in a power too great and sparse to comprehend overwhelmed by haunting finitude as time veers into collision and the fleeting panic of yesterdays blood. i find myself shaking at the thought of contact the electromagnetic law of repulsion built into the fabric of my flesh eyes turned away like a promise all language from dead stars. dragged along these orbits my skin trembles and i am hateful. faces blur in passageways half-lit rooms smudge across the surface of my memory until i see nothing but the colour of what was tightening the cords of my ribs stumbling inflexion. in the precession of traffic light blurs through my sleeve and i realise i was invisible all along and that i did this to myself and that nobody can help me and that i did this to myself and that i will retreat further and further and further because if it hurts to be abandoned it hurts more to be approached and misunderstood. the masks the words the acts the plays and beneath it all fear cruel mounting hopeless wretched fear eyes turning fingers running over and over until they break the lines of my face a *******. i turn the clocks upside down. i take the batteries out of all my electronic devices. i break the locks on my door. only then does morning come.

will you mark the    bridge on your passing    stanislaw catching in the eddy beneath    where i came apart    water circling into the sky    i was    somewhere else in the ether    alone    beneath a great canvas of static    vacuum    a cosmic blot of existence    what have you    lost in the canals of mars

iv 5-2-18

wrest the black tang the cosmic vacuum of background static and an ungainly dream of walking down a mountain path with my father we descend the silent belly of campus seats filled with mounted bodies lolling the inside stench anna walks ahead of me her voice cuts the waking body of midnight shuttles a hydroponic plant and the sparse parking lot of a supermarket radiating cold.

the fright, the nervous flesh, the stuttered pace of cars, the empty lot, the empty hour, the empty admission of make-belief, collapsing into precession at the peak of worthlessness.

ii 22-1-18

An endless stream, the back of an apartment block, fingers twine across the powder red of brick and sunlight.

I try to catch a glimpse of myself in her eyes, but beyond recognition there is nothing.

I see my father behind a sliding door. He moves further into the kitchen to take pictures from a tripod.

Clothes litter the ground. Nothing fits.

iii 4-2-18

the cracked linen STOP the momentary arrogance STOP the surfacing violence STOP the weathering STOP

A YELL torpid stultifying CRASH cruel ******* trace of the same

and all i can do is shrink as green tea soaks the tablecloth.

i 31-1-17

The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human. The problem is you were born human.