Craft

Lost I thought in the three halved darkness,
An ending open, closed and incomplete.
A frenzied game of hide and seek.
Misguided rails provide the hardness,
The tenderness we'll never meet,
Divided sails, they break the fleet,
I sway between wall and water,
I sidestep through emotions sweet,
The metal chair their colder daughter,
Selfish steel where I rest my feet,
The corruption sought to break it;
My heart whom fought her, and eventually
I hold it at arms length over the edge,

Where hope and hopelessness fills its vessels

In equal measure, where my mind wrestles

This damned pleasure, this damned treasure,
The murkiness kindly threatens to take it,
As my feet tiptoe on the ledge, potentially
I could let go and all I had taught her,
That iron grey mass, the lifeless tumour,
The malignancy which I dare not name,
Clinging onto the thing which my hands held so tightly,
Seems more like the brain, as daily and nightly
It is the dominating darkness which shines so brightly,
And I no longer can play this childish game,
From the verge, backwards it is snatched.
But this crux and it's cancer are the same,
Never separated, never detached.

Fineliner

All the pages, paper cuts
Red streams of what is right,
What is wrong,
Between thin lines, nearly invisible on my palm,
Read too much, know too little,
Scores of ink, a river leading to the sea,
Everlasting stormy calm, it awaits

Or so they say, but right now,
I can only remember those few words,
I tell myself I hate it, hate them, but if I do
Why do they hesitate to be forgotten.
So much bolder when compared
To what I should have prepared,
My open exit, my way out.

I take what would be a rusted tin,
About seventeen centimetres in circumference,
Brown and boring basic rim,
Copper crust around the one side of the circle,
But inside,
Hot melted dark ruby liquid,
Take the cylinder with both hands,
Like a shot-put of change, fling it,
And yet never let go, the tuneless bell, ring it,
Feel the smooth imperfection shedding, flaking, shaking
Under your skin.

The walls,
The floor,
The ceiling,
The door,
All painted red.

And those pieces of paper,
Nothing matters any more.
Can't see anything, can't make out anything.
Words have become hidden
Under the frantic fear.

Crossing

I tiptoe maybe too loudly
Across the rocks in the river.
Too broken to be a bridge,
The sharp sound of water as it
Cuts around my feet.

Sometimes a splash, the bitter freshness
The cold on my skin, the clear blue smell,
The stable sameness and saneness
Momentarily gone in a flash, at the back
Of my throat, of my mind,
The sweet stolen shifting spring,
Sought out, the sash of the spray,
The sheer shifting snake, running glass,
I'm running fast, hissing whips in a perspex mesh,
Everything so clear, and yet so different.

After a while, everything drained.
No contrast between the crags and the course,
Both seem so still now. Still humble, yet
My motivation lags, and maybe
I should accidentally stumble,
Fall into the brook. Into the mystery mirror,
One first, final, look.