road kill

it was hard to tell what it had been      just a pool of blood and gore    plastered to the side of the road    another failed crossing?     or perhaps a suicide?       success or failure    are often hard to divine      is that my destiny?      it seems pretty bleak    that’s the stuff I’m made of    animated flesh and bone     spilled and spoiled     all dreams and aspirations      flattened by a truck     

I’m stumbling from crisis to crisis      with no clear outcome in sight       but I’m not defined by my problems     I rise against the wind      and swim against the tide      I rail against my fate    I will not be denied through inertia     or assuaged by momentary pleasures      I refuse to be another sudden impact       I want to leave something more than a stain in the road behind           

narcissus

I am my own religion    selfish cruel and beautiful     all who touch me wither and die      I’m the cat who got the cream      and I cut up nice     when I’m nice    but a little self love can be a dangerous thing       I bit too deep from forbidden fruit      my love is a burden to me now     love without theatre is a sad device      you can sacrifice too much      and have little else to give     but love without sacrifice is simple theft       I stole with my tears    I owe myself for misplaced trust    

I’m too old now to care what others think     my opinion is the only one I count       no one is ever as clever as they think they are       but I’m always right      except when I’m wrong      and I turn up wrong more often than not         on a purely subjective level     I’m a bonny liar      I lie to myself      night after night       but I won’t be diluted      or poisoned     I won’t be validated by others    I’m my own worst enemy      and my own best friend       I’m my alpha    and omega        in the forever amen

 

icarus (grounded)

 not all birds winter in the south      some of us are flightless       moribund and exhausted       some of us are accidents        car crash victims      veterans of unhappy wars       long since wounded    and purple hearted       they say having flown      you’ll forever walk the street       with your eyes on the sky       for there you have been and long to return       not to reap or sow       but to soar without constraint         beyond imagination

I have wounds       hidden scars        but all my surfaces      such as they are       present spotlessly clean      at least to the naked eye     but I’m filthy         by decent human standards     and my wings of wax     drenched in lust        fucked up and sorry         have failed me        in the hour of my disillusionment      forever fixed in space     in the moment of crashing         I am leaden now       and planted in the soil of my woeful discontent     

plastic gods

more than sometimes      during a powerful lunar phase     I get the spiritual impulse     to make my own bible      and live by its verses     to blow my own trumpet       till the walls come tumbling down      I am alive and always changing      the crown of creation adorns my brow     I’m truly living the human experience     the high of all highs     the most holy of holies     the revelation of incarnation    has lit me up     a beacon of truth      in the fog of ignorance

I’m getting into the world     and everything in it      riding the waves of existence    through the ever expanding now      where  everything ever imagined is real      we create ourselves from that mosaic of fancy      but we’ve evolved into plastic gods     makers and breakers of private worlds      each is imperfectly cast in their own distorted image   we are the graven idols in the temples of babylon    the worship of self is the religion of hubris     and hubris precedes disgrace     sure as the ebb and flow of every lunar phase

solipsist

it was written in the stars       that we were doomed from day one     life has called the tune and beckons us to dance     the universe will unfold as we always knew it would      no one can change the past        we can’t even change the future       I curry favours in the here and now       planting seeds in adjacent lots    I glimmed for a moment there    and exercised the will      to fancy myself something special        at the centre of the whole enchilada       but I was lonely in the universal    and  I wondered     has our god deserted us?       or were we always all alone?