Tuesday, August 31, 2010

In Zombia

I shuffle like a bad movie extra
around the cold dark kitchen
you know the type of place
written by a hack and furnished by a ham
only an orange street light illuminates monsters
a devildog from the toaster’s shadow and a
scaly gremlin in the sink of dirty dishes
the soundtrack is provided by
a not-too-distant motorway strip
wailing banshee-like and the refrigerator
humming mindlessly because he has
nothing left to say to me after all these years
This is the realm of the lidless eyes
where the Sandman
like an evil Santa Claws stealing the gifts of
drowsiness and yawns leaps from rooftop to
rooftop keeping you alert for fear
downing warm milk and hoping for good dreams
dire dreams
any dreams
even mares with flames and toasters behind
I pack my eyeballs off to the bedroom
where the sheets have somehow pulled themselves
back in a sarcastically smug manner
and facedown flop into the soft infuriating
fluffy madness

Ephemeral Fruits

Even stone withers
akin to the face of an old man
worn by weather and toil
given enough time
it hollows with pockmarks and wrinkles
names chiselled by hand and iron
dissolve into it’s surface
leaving only indistinct scars
faint bumps of secret code under the
fingertip
fading eventually to nothing
like a memory dying in the brain
forsaking all calls to enjoy its pleasures
one more time
just a ghost in a field of crooked stones
choked by grass
then soil
then gone
buried
built on
renewed and forgotten completely
all who fought and loved and lost
they ate the ephemeral fruit for
a chance of brief bitter-sweet life
the touch of the Gods
compels the eternal consequence
not even a whisper to tell the tale
of all who lived
and lay here
in this flat empty field