Abraxas, find me sullen and scathed. Take thy mighty vengeance and bury my soul with all the rest, deep below whence it won’t be found. And bellow my name from your golden walls, cast my pain in chromium steel upon … Continue reading Abraxas. A poem.
Pain is my best friend. He lurks in fibre and ligament, playing hide and seek amongst time-worn bones and weary blood. He enters my thoughts and hopscotches through my brain, tugging on discontent and dreams better left alone. He wanders through my cells, arteries, and veins, grasping at the walls of my heart in a gentle bear hug of regret. He is the one friend who will never leave. Eventually, he will set the table and dine upon the last of me. My first book of poetry, The All or the Nothing, is available now as an e-book from most … Continue reading Pain. A poem.
Renewal. A haiku trilogy 1. Passage Please, grant me passage that this testament should see another sunset. 2. Buried And here I lie, buried underground. A cadaver for your amusement. 3. Daybreak I will claw my way back from this … Continue reading Haiku Friday. ‘Renewal’, a haiku trilogy.
Today, she gave me bliss. I was confounded but content, my feet mired in tar, holding me firm. My mouth unfrozen this time, heart quickened but not expired. Conversation played across a court; a sporting event, a contest of champions. I would send the ball, she would receive returning service like a tennis pro. So perfectly matched, like two people moulded from the same supple clay of our sculptor’s eloquent fancy. How can such beauty be real? Does it only exist to haunt my dreaming and waking hours? I wanted to profess to her ghost my wants and needs, how … Continue reading Bliss. A poem.
Each day in this cell passes like a film cel, a moment captured in acetate, rinsed and repeated, on perpetual loop. The subtle changes in aspect of each textured frame, a motion blur of constituent parts, every event a cinch mark. If only we could edit our dailies, to make sense of the narrative, to remove the chaff that haunts like a dime-store critic in the background of every shot. The emulsion soon grows thin, the script is pure melodrama and the cues are overly-theatrical. It can’t be saved in post-production. This life, winding in 35mm, fed through perfs before … Continue reading Cel. A poem.
Down again, in November showers that wash the sin from my crown. Out walking my black dog in the rain, skirting hills and wither deep. Just another day in here, Under my skin Under the hood Where the engine strains and groans as it drags my weary chassis to the finish line. Where I’m content to lose again, to choose again. And choose life this time. Even with its witless overtures and empty virtue, it holds the one thing that burns like fire and wakes me from my bitter sleep. Continue reading Finish Line. A poem.
Being a poor student I don’t often buy new CDs (how times have changed—in my previous middle class existence I would buy two albums a week). Being a guitar player I (sometimes) gravitate to guitar-oriented music. Such is the case … Continue reading The Search for Everything. An album review.
That overbearing, all pervasive dark matter, the swollen river that floods my heart and breaks my banks, chokes my throat and pierces my brain stem, that sticks it’s bamboo needles under mental fingernails, creates tattered meat from perilous fortune, twists my will until my spine shatters like crystal and leaves me a pointless fool. All because of you. Continue reading All Because Of You. A poem.
I recently read two John Green books, Paper Towns and Turtles All The Way Down. For those of you who don’t know, Green is a top-selling writer of literate young adult (YA) novels with a flair for smart, sassy characters … Continue reading Two John Green Books. A review.
Lost Muse. A haiku trilogy 1. Purpose When it takes its leave. Gone: the purpose, the will and the testimony. 2. Black Where do we exist, now that the sun is dimmed, fallow and so spent. 3. Steps What I would give to hold her hand. Another step beyond this despair. My love for the 5/7/5-syllable majesty of Japanese haikus will never dim. As will my longing for my muse, no matter how hard I try to extinguish it. Steve 🙂 Continue reading Haiku Friday. ‘Lost Muse’. A haiku trilogy.
Porcelain, sheer and shining. Untouchable, lest you break. Cracks irreparable, iceberg deep. You/I are/am my/your porcelain. Continue reading Porcelain. A poem.
The sadness creeps over, a ponderous behemoth, encompassing my lands and being. It seeps into my streams, polluting them with its murky ill-will, making a mockery and a mire. It kills off my grass and trees, turning my greens to blight, leaving animals once proud and determined now abject and homeless; caricature mascots. It crawls over my buildings, infesting every room and board, making inhabitants into castaways with the shore so near, so far. And everything collapses under the weight of its load, a gravity far too serious for this light head(ed) over heels, a Hercules turned weakling, bent knee … Continue reading The Sadness. A poem.
The road smouldered as steel-tread fingers ran over it, each car an indifferent lover. Nothing was out of the ordinary but the extraordinary. I could no longer look upon you, the pain too sharp, a constant thorn. My cannibal hypocrisy consumed me with self-deception. One last glance (you, the diamond amongst coal) and I drove away into the hazy mid-afternoon grey. That was the day. The day I let my muse fade. The day I turned from you, away. I realised dreams were mirrors and reflections, untouchable and jaded. I wanted tears, but an empty shell holds no water. No … Continue reading Fools’ Gold. A poem.
I live in surreality, not quite alive, not quite dead. I wander from one point to the next, a confused and weary traveller, conspicuously without intent. The pleasures of the material and the impractical align in tacit disapproval. I am a wanderer in confusion, lost in the blizzard of bodies, grabbing myself for warmth like a frost-bitten seeker faced with his last insurmountable peak. Someday this journey will be done, and the last thing I see, may be the first I ever saw. As if all that mattered was the concentric circle I travelled in and the hoarfrost patina on … Continue reading Frost. A poem.
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is Wizard of the Coast’s (WOTC) official new rules supplement for D&D 5e. Its 192 pages contain new sub-classes, racial feats, spells, magic items and lots of tables, including expanded magic items, random encounters and character … Continue reading Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. A review.
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