Now that I have your attention - those few who may care - I’ve finally caved and set up a blog just for my poetry. It is therealesthergreenwood and I’m starting by going through my archive and posting my older work first. 

So if you are inclined, please do follow. 

I fucking love rivers. Probably an odd, disproportionate amount. I just find them to be so enthrallingly beautiful; I can’t walk over a bridge without staring down into the great flowing murk, brown or green or grey with age. They change every day and every minute: stroked and brushed invisibly by the wind one moment and mystically placid yet enigmatic the next.  I could sit for hours just looking into the water thinking, watching its life go by and admiring the vista of the city along the ever-flowing, dissecting vein.

This house stood alone among others, too grand in a lost time, something incomprehensible of a foregone season. Inside there was a mantle of mahogany steady with the weight of life, covered as it was in dull cinders and dust, faded sparkle that deflected the light and obscured the truth of the objects and souvenirs which it blanketed. They were relics of his life dull like the day that parted before him. Dull. What did that mean? He knew: lacking zest or vivacity; lacking sharpness of edge or point. A pain with no edge. To them: a pain with no point. The point pressed down. The edge hidden layer deep. Low in saturation; low in light. Each day it darkened. Cloaked in his highest endeavour he strode forth with intent as his companion but they all looked on quiet in knowledge of his actions’ futility. His cries and torment emptied silently into the vacuum as he became cemented to his ruin. Life was perfunctory now. It tasted like a thousand horrid cigarettes smoked too quickly as it melted like plastic and the toxicity filled the house, fumes running like the innocence of children to extinguish all light. And blinded as he now was by it all he was left to feel but the heart, still beating. 

A withered mind
draped in a vintage dress pale blue 
she glides forward leaving time far behind.
To catch up with her…one day. 
Her hair frames her melancholy, 
her bangs falling and forming enigmatically,
heightening the mystical smoke in her eyes. 
Her irises veiled in shimmering pools of mercury and
if you looked closely, you could almost see her soul floating in the murk. 

She sank herself into an oblivion as she swayed and flitted 
high up on the table she shone like a sun 
which lurks low in a glacial morning sky. 
Glacial in her fluid movement, 
tender as the sweetest touch 
she abides in my mind’s eye
gone forever, 
gone never but for one moment in time. 

And it’s one of those nights again where I cannot be alone.
It wraps me in its vice, gears turning. 
Cold and brittle I shatter under the pressure.
I search for my veil but it flew away last night
on a wind of questions and thoughts
over the heads of those whom I despise  
and now it lies lost 
in the ether.
I cannot face them
and so I crawl into the heat
to wither but for a while. 
I must wilt and start again.  

I hate regret. 

It’s the stench I can’t escape; the hubris of my Greek tragedy; the fly in my Chardonnay.   

That’s why the beautiful things exist in life, 
to lessen the pain; to ease the fall.
They distract from the beasts that claw
at our hearts, at our minds;
the ones that want to overburden us and to poison.

That’s why we drug ourselves;
we crave the addiction as a distraction.
Each day we shoot up; nicotine, caffeine, amphetamine,
in order to veil the pain; to smoke out the shit, 
if only but temporarily.
  

I wish I could suck the venom out for you
I would suffer the pain tenfold, for you.
As you have done for me
yet all I can do is lie here on the kitchen floor
and cry,
as the water boils 
and the pasta cooks
and the world passes me by
without knowing at all. 

Y’know when you hit a downward spiral, your life starts to sink towards rock bottom like a mossy pebble descending into lurid, stagnant water. You feel completely at loss for control in life as if you are a pawn in some cruel game the fates are playing; a lifeless counter trapped in a monopoly board of bad moves and trips to jail. Not even your best conscious efforts can exact a change and so the pace speeds up as you futilely try to ward off the passing failure until one day the light goes out. You have finally reached the bottom. It stops. But then something clicks, somewhere inside you. A rush kills the fatigue and the waining; dislodges you from the sediment as you somehow find a way out. It is difficult. It tastes of blood and sears of pain as if your hand were stuck to flame but you endure because you want the freedom, the freedom to choose your choice.

Now you are your own counter, the decisive individual who chose to swim and sink no more. 

 I have some fairly horrible poetry to put up later. It could probably be moulded into something decent if I had the time but I’ll just stick it up anyway and redact it later. 

(Sidebar: don’t you just love the word ‘redact’? It is so much more lyrical than ‘edit’, which sounds so monotone; computerised; uninspired. I love words, ok?)