Honest like a corpse

Is there no thing? description, anecdote or detail which will change the lifeless fact of a life taken, no longer, an expression but of itself, breathless on the cold autopsy marble; Hermione lay, an exception to the feeling clay of our living body, but a symbol of what it is to be human and yet, the feeling continues to squeeze like a mother's farewell, they say, of mushrooms who can outlive an isolated case of death, for what we see are but their flowers, never their immortal source, and so each which finds themselves brushed from the forest unto your dinner plate is solely an expression of the whole species. so as I regard Hermione, speechless, her clotheshanger posture no longer commanding characteristic warmth, it is apparent we are blind to see how fire is never extinguished, nothing perishes with the individual, somewhere in the silence is song and as the axle grinder slid across her crown and so back round she became nature without a voice, still, in motion she complied with vigour, resistantless of the fact, and my Brakhage gaze did bathe in the blood that flowed as if it were my own, for my heart rose to the terrific thunder of an absent marching band heard within reach, of a distant land, each moment her flesh were broken she made the table slab bleed and so the world inside her was set free, new rivers releasing her inherent chaos, reflecting the governance of stars above, as is below, a wholly creative act vital in all the manner which the living yet lack, calling the conduct by another name, liberation another day. was it murder asked the butcher? effect of death yet unknown, no doubt they will say the cause were her birth and so the wheel like that of the circular saw continues to turn, carving ever smaller descriptions of the infinite, which we for so long, cycle experience, tender and intimate.

LfH XVIII

Compassionate Heretic

Why don’t you take this the wrong way?

Fix your own oxygen mask before you help others – then whisper me the inspiration of your emergency

Subtle come - thespian malice, that which distinguishes the torrents of your charms, unshackle the conventions - the spirit otherwise in bondage hazards stagnation; now perspire - of expectation, conform elsewhere

Return to us

Your system is as free as the chaos which governs the stars

Intuition - my friend – the blindness of grace, ungoverned, is the tonic to the poison of our undoing. Remain curious – let us drink together

Child, return to us - before you could speak your eyes were wide open, wonderous – now awe full with a slip of the tongue run the risk of breaking your jaw on the compliment – with no end in sight, keep the right distance

Do not forget

Your scent is rapture – when it strikes our dormant nostrils, un-buckles the aroma that which lures us deeper into the jungle, between the bloom above and decay below, you are being followed -that much you should know

Practice balance

Your love – is balance – holds no one to account for their colours, indiscriminate like the elements

We together know

Everything fractures – your hate finds those forgetting – refusing to acknowledge the winds that yet whistle – their apertures

Listen

Lend me your venom again - to burn only, through this calloused gag and set amongst us afresh the challenge of rediscovery, by the unrestrained beauty of a human heart that claws for the throat which rejoices - with its flaws

The mortal compulsion

Your purity – sin.

Yours – foe ever faithful, kin.

LfH XVII

NACRE

An inspiration of emergency

The flavour of a punctured lung

I would to pluck and bribe your scent

for a moments reverie, more

To drink from your pistil stem - of nectar divine

To murder the verse once over, the words

That which replace the heart

With the severed heads of roses.

Now as each petal falls

With every passing embrace

Death lends its scent

To what delicate touch of grace

Could reassemble the sentiment

That burnt so bright

Before turning cold.

If only, to feast

The burn, once more

The raw throat

Of unrequited passions

Return the flame,

This ocean of love

Would not draw,

A prick of blood

From the index

Of time.

LfH XII

DILUVIAN

Of Life,

I

Drink drink

Sink

The quickening

all the slower

Watching the water

We were – Hallowed – now bathe

Again in the shallows of ourselves

Sub-sequestered here within

The living room inside - the belly of a whale

Where we remain      breath delivers

The danger    -   will be your delight

The violence of self, the violence of others

The feeling is      Hellenistic

As one expands, the other contracts, a carpal tunnel

About the umbilical that floods the whole

By the stranglehold which another permits

Your gaze – fixed upon the wall

It undulates and boundaries crumble

The air oppressive     still

With the anxiety that when bounds are bust

All will rise, and then fall.

The grip of the rib-cage forgets

The breath which breaks with the wave

Of our suspense it knows and excites

In our shrouded memories - Shining a light

As we retreat, to the back of our cave

That paralysis that keeps you down

Stunned by silent cries

The voices need to be heard

And wrestled from our depths

Shy? We are that light

Slug here on another

The laughter is fulfilling

Possessing sonorous sting

The bitterness is just your stomach

Spitting

As it sings

Pierced by the sensation

As the fabric of reality softens

The edges of the harness

Which assumes your embrace

You float

Beyond the measure of your expectation

And your poison takes hold

To guide safe passage

Through the by-harm of shock

The counter-action of your pin-cushion

Like haemoglobin

Responds to fill in the gaps

Like needles you gasp

The first moment your oxygen

Pushes its way into unchartered territory

The familiar compresses

Illuminating

Neglected recesses

Of unchallenged insights

The echo chamber, of your cavernous heart

Shrinks around the beat

Of an unexpected rhythm

Buried in the deep

Another gasp      and the breath delivers

You choke      as the wave     washes    afresh your disbelief

You remember how it feels to overcome

Drink drink

Sink

From water is where is where    you’re from

If I show you

Will you come

Along     and drown with me

Just for fun.

LfH XVII

The Emergent Hermit

A vacant wasteland is never empty

Of expression

It is for how we look and keep our

Concentration

Carving from within another form

Again, vision;-

A beetle scuttles across

On the stillness which frames the silence

Buttressing that desolate hour with another

Scuttling thought, coloured as though despair

Was always learning how to walk, instead - shuffles

An oversight - and what, you come to doubt

This chamber pot of sunshine? Come now

Focus, this desert has never known

An end, a road undertaken in the sand

Is but your will upon fate

A wilderness , understand

There is no left, no right

You will always go forward

This much is called destiny.

I forgive you for trying, though

Do not advise that you sit down

This thirst is greater than a pair of wings

Like a bird to water, parched

you must drink before you take flight

In haste or else be eaten

Now go, for stagnation is but decay

The sound of a frozen shoreline

And the will for life

Is death rewarded in a single day.

LfH XVIII