DISPOSABLE VERSE

Scattered below you will find the least rancid cuts from the rotting carcass of my work.

Choose Carefully
No Refunds

BLACK ROSES TO YOU MY DARLING

See..... Over on the hill black robes flap in a razor cold wind,
And a hanging steel cross glistens wet in the shafting rain.
I was hope to your future and became rust to your past,
I am truely your saviour an evil son of perdition’s last.

Feel.... Soft scarlet kisses pulsing with life and desire,
Black leprous lips laced with decay and burning with fire.
Deep perfumed thrusts that blossom in stark red ecstasy,
Tearing unseen gashes from your heart as you lay next to me.

C'mon, open your door, you've seen me before.
Sweet venom on crystal,Infected love.
Black roses of romance,I ain't from above.

Taste... Come dine at my table of intimate pleasure and exotic cuisine,
Time to sup on rotting flesh and gorge on dying dreams.
You thought: sparkling cool wine, a dip in the pool before noon.
Christ, wake up and see the shiny black tar on your babys' spoon.

Experience... Take my hand and walk the sunshine drenched street,
The bright flashing lights and the carnival music - It's all one beat.
A dirty dank alley of grey smoke and groaning, you've chosen.
Welcome to my graveyard of malice and sorrow, snap frozen.

Look out your door, you've seen me before.
Sweet venom on crystal, Infected love.
Black roses of romance, I ain't from above.

Judge... Whenever you were in doubt my smile held you fast,
If you looked closely you'd see it's but a scar of the past.
Peel back all my silver armour of hope and promise - it's so old.
Run your hands through the soily darkness within - that is my soul.

Leave... Lace, bells and love are all apparition,
And the carriage of marriage, is just failed tradition.
Still you choose to be soulmate. Well embrace the hurt and pain.
It's all I'm able to give - Love tarnished, ironic and purely insane.

Bolt close your door, you've seen me before.
Sweet venom on crystal, Infected love.
Black roses of romance, I ain't from above.

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NoRefunds

DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES

Faces appear through the flaming branches of Gothic depression.
Is this dreaming?
It's colder now - dying embers blown on a charcoal horizon.
Twilight is leaving.
The forest darkens - white hungry eyes leer as they become.
Feel their scheming!
Icey air's almost liquid, with every breath my chest is burning.
Am I screaming?

Chilled by earth's wintry hold, I lay naked on my back and tremble and pray.
Where am I from?
Mere clothe could not repel the damp claws of yet another night.
Beat of a drum.
It's grip seeps into my pores and I see their headlit eyes, they mesmerise.
God, Im so numb.
Powdery visages and bloody red lips, they're whispering again.
Why don't you come?

The pulse on my neck, translucent - filthy Judas, virgin lure.
Must feel their greed.
Blistering moonlight on ivory keys and a hundred black capes of lust.
Can't quench their need.
No pungent clove, nor splintering stake, nor sterling cross can save.
N'er to be freed.
I shriek for dawn to rescue me yet I know, yes I know, I know.
Know I must bleed.

Night after night, your face arises from the ashes.
You're a liar!
Life after life, we dance whilst you feast upon my throat,
Oh cursed vampire.
For all eternity your insatiable thirst fills me with ancient dread,
And as the cold night claims me, I wonder if I shall awaken as one of your Undead?

The owl looks down and laughs and the fox has a glint in his eye.
Creatures of night.
But it is the white shadows my dear, Deadly in the breeze they gyrate and waltz.
Send me some light.
Repulsed by their oily darkness, I beckon them to take me unto their own.
Blinded by sight.
With hypnotic rhythm and grace their black bandages embalm my soul.
Pierce me tonight!

Take me yet again, drink deeply of my heart within.
Dig deep my grief.
Steal wantonly from the red crimson stream that is my inner source.
Oh tired thief.
One by one they step forward, baring down upon my welcoming spirit.
Wilting Autumn leaf.
Thrusting and puncturing, they sink their twin needles of dripping addiction.
Oh God be brief.

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No Refunds

LITTLE BOY

Hey little boy,
Life's what you make it.
Don't blame Mum and Dad,
You just gotta shake it.

Nanna says, "She drove him to drink."
What a buzz to watch the marriage sink.
Night after night wide awake you lie,
Listening to their screaming lullaby.

Your mother's a bitch,
A real, real loser.
You'll end up like your father,
A waste and a boozer.

"Christ!" and abuse,
And a painting shook loose.
Staggering down the hall,
If it weren't for the wall. . .

Hey little boy,
Life's what you make it.
Don't blame Mum and Dad,
You just gotta shake it.

Well the years rolled by
and the little boy grew,
He wrote come stay with me dad,
just me and you.

Father's day Nineteen-eighty-five,
The River's minus four but he's no longer alive.
Nobody cared 'bout who he'd been,
Not about the bottle by the body or the boy's letter unseen.

"Christ" and abuse,
And a painting shook loose.
Across the room the bible flew,
Now the words are black and blue.

Hey little boy,
Life's what you make it.
Don't blame Mum and Dad,
You just gotta shake it.

Now your mama's preaching Jesus,
trading your love for thirty silver pieces.
She's forgotten twenty years,
All the scars and the tears.

God's rewarding that mother for all she's ever done,
All the great sacrifices for her ungrateful son.
'Cause with an only son God showed her what to do,
Kiss him on the cheek and nail him right through.

Hey little boy,
Life's what you make it.
Don't blame Mum and Dad,
You just gotta shake it.

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No Refunds

CRUISE OR DIE

Coulda been eight or maybe I was nine,
Mother's milk turned to vinegar and I knew it weren't wine.
Outta place in Sydney's upper North Shore - plastic and gell,
They sent me up - a six year sentence in a private hell.
The potter spins his wheel, fires his colours of fine array,
Hey, look closely mama, it's the same dirty lump of clay.

Every extra candle flickered a little weaker,
Every shovel full of earth drove me a little deeper.
Music became my breath, my only true brother,
I drank deeply from it's primal beat, there wasn't any other.
Beneath the branches of it's anthems I took refuge,
Lyrics of strength kept my head above the daily deluge.

Another lick of lighter fluid. . .
Another trick from life's old druid. . .
They've taken it all and there's no way through it. . .
My brain's convulsing and I've been skewered. . .
If this is life to be endured,
Then cash my chips, I can't be cured. . .

Seventeen clicks and I had to cut loose,
My heart was bleeding badly - Die or Cruise.
I ran for a monastery and hid among their shrouds,
I sprinkled holy water and waited for the crowds.
For a while the sun shone brighter, the stars so much clearer,
Till a dusty ol' preacher turned and pointed to the mirror.

A lifetime of leeches draining me of life and will,
Expectations and restrictions; I've done my tour and had my fill.
They only nailed Christ once, speared him throught the side,
It's been a score and a half that I've been on this ride.
And as the blood seeps from my wrists and they gamble for my soul,
The truth lies in the chords: Life's only fucking Rock 'n' Roll!

Another lick of lighter fluid. . .
Another trick from life's old druid. . .
They've taken all - there's no way through it. . .
My brain's convulsing and I've been skewered. . .
If this is life to be endured,
Then cash my chips, I can't be cured. . .

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THE GAME

Spades and diamonds spinning,
Cut curtains of smoke and tar.
From haze of far dimension,
Dealer's grinning nic-tine scar.

They tumble to the green felt,
Tablets of my fortune.
Hear the drawing of pain,
Rising distant saxaphone.

Well some, they say you're the healin',
Others, that you're just a stealin'.
Me, a thousand sunsets I b'en kneelin',
Betting penny 'n' pound that you ain't wheelin'.
And now that I know, it's my faith that's peelin',
But it don't matter, so just cut the cards and do the dealin'!

This may be my last hand,
But who am I to bet?
Can't you see the cards 're marked,
Dealt from the bottom of the deck?

Five card stud and Aces high,
No jokers. All four ladies wild.
Minimum stake'll be your soul,
Ain't that enough my child?

Two red youths guard my hand,
Can you see it in my eyes?
Three more chances at redemption,
The winner is the one who lies.

Stale beer, cheap whiskey chaser,
It scours and dulls my wit.
Time has come to lay'em all down,
It's Judgement day and here I sit!. . .

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LOVE IS A DREAM

If love be the sweet fragrance of Spring flowers - a blossoming rose,
Then I abide among the dying weeds of post-Winter ghettos.

If love be a mother's caress of a newly born babe,
Then I lay face down in the mud of a stranger's grave.

If love be the fall of white lace and soft satin,
Then I writhe in sackclothe and colours so ashen.

If loved be the honeyed lips of so innocent an angel,
Then I choke on slick poison as I lie down with the devil.

If love be the scent of foreign colognes on warm midday skin,
Then I inhale the fumes of tobacco and long-ago spilt gin.

If love be the radiant tones of a woman's song and dream,
Then I lie down like a whore and awake with black nightmares and a scream.

If love be a stroll by country, beach, stream and hill,
Then I find myself staggering through turmoil and urban overkill.

If love be gentle conversation over red wine and log fire,
Then I shriek obscenities and hatred from old ancient ire.

If love be the kiss of Summer showers and champagne,
Then I lay waste my naked body beneath the torrents of acid rain.

If love be the laughter of children pretending in the park,
Then I wrestle with black fantasies, so evil, so dark.

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WHERE IS RELIEF?

Outside The Metropolitan Cafe, Parramatta Mall.
Grilled cheese and a flat white.
A tiring cigarette and sixty minutes.
People wandering back and forth.
Attache cases, suits and lipstick.
The parade never ends.

The sandstone of St John's looms high.
A disapproving mother frowning down.
So strong and solid.
No swaying.
Why are you not inside, my son?
I dreamt last night I could never return.
Set adrift, there is no reprieve.

The muddy grey liquid swirls beneath my spoon.
The harbour is no longer mine to return.
Twilight gasps and forces a few more strained breaths.
Neon replaces sunrays.
Two oily haired drunks.
The well dressed women frown.
They care little for the men's history,
only seeing the misery.

The air is clear and iron shrouds our lives.
I call out to my pain.
There is silence.
I beg for happiness.
For sugar candy and sundrenched shores.

Emptiness.
How long?
Eternity is now.
Won't someone tell me what and how!

The well dressed femmes are gone.
Vanished to another world.
Do they hurt?
Are there tears behind their fading smiles?
Mascara and powder.
Camoflague of the heart.

The crowds are going home.
Smiling couples.
Nattering families.
Friends.
Are they as lonely as this?

Brown spiral curls relaxes.
She waits.
Will another join her?
Is her glossy magazine her sole companion?
Where is the waitress?

Lights beneath the water fountain.
Eerie shadows of water monkeys.
I wish to enter oblivion.
To sleep until the credits roll.
How long?

I am an island.
John Donne said it first.
Other's seas touch my shores.
Their waters cannot quench.
I am burning sand and wilting palms.
I see and hear but am blind and deaf.

Brunette curls has a friend.
Neithers' sex life holds much hope.
Words and words.
They pass over like an annoying shower.

Less people.
Walk faster.
Darkness brings dread.
There is a gentle beauty to the harshness.
The mall.
The trees.
The fountains.
The Metropolitan.
The waitress.
They do not threaten.
Mere props in a one act play.
I leave and they no longer exist.
I breath life into their inanimate figures.
A two dimensional water-colour is dead.
Only the artist is it's third dimension.
It's meaning.

Meaning?
What is it?
A blind man in a dark room searching
for a black box that doesn't exist?

The coffee is cold.
Pockets of light.
Blue, turquoise, red and yellow.
St John's.
She is a silhouette against a navy sky.
Her windows wink fluorescent.
I am outside. . .

This ink cannot keep up.
Thoughts, feelings.
They whirl around and around.
Faster and faster.

Where is relief?
Not coins in my pocket.
Not laughs at the pub.
Not promotions from the boss.
Not palms and bubbling water.
Relief is a state of mind.

St John's tolls the sixth hour after midday.

Where is this state to be found?
Everything is sharper at night.
The buildings, the seats, the passing ghosts.
The shapes are defined.

"Another coffee?"
No, thanks.
Another chance at life?
The jury is out.
Love?
I have no idea.
Brunette curls is leaving now.
I think, so shall I.

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FATHER SUBSTANCE

Hot tap water and instant coffee,
Cheap sherry and a dirty glass.
Chinese take-away with slick sentences,
Cold, bronze plaque pushing up the grass.

Superheroes on the T.V. at five,
Plastic green kite and a boyish grin.
Turn around and there's no one there,
Just a bouquet hitting a cheap coffin.

Brand new wife from the Philippines.
Football cards and bubble-gum.
Stories of guns and Asian drugs,
A funeral director plus two and I'm numb.

Flat above the fish shop burns,
All but a wristwatch and some dough.
You were my only hope of connection,
Sleep - my photo 'neath your stone pillow.

A decade drifts through the Bathurst chill,
I sprinkle you with angry words and tobacco ash.
Tears of Russian Spirit wet your earthen sheets,
My eternal hero, why am I your genetic trash?

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LOADED GUN

Found you in the cabin of some beach caravan park,
Glazed and crashed out on the shower floor.
The waters gushing over your tears 'n' fears,
But it ain't no good cos the mud always clings to the core.

Spitting, you don't know where it's heading,
And even the dark one don't know where you been.
Dragging, bloodshot and dripping butt naked to the kitchen,
You know your soul's corroding and it's all so bloody obscene.

There's half a bottle of bourbon on the General Electric,
A perfect ocean of salt and healing out there in the sun.
Can't even bring yourself to drown in either one,
'Cause the landscape don't matter a damn when life's a loaded gun.

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DEATH

I saw death today.
Swift grape-red and smooth.

I had naught to say.
Sharp and slotted right in the groove.

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TIMMY MALONE

And he don't see midnight slinking out the Pub door.
And he don't hear Buckley kickin' out the jams no more.
And he don't feel his cherry-glazed eyes bleed into his beer.
And he don't know he's just a pile of denim hunched over in fear.

Faded denim and old leather
Torn green felt and oily hair
Tobacco haze and shitty weather
Two wheels fly through the air. . .

Cool tar bites - tears flesh from face in two easy lessons
It don't hurt - charged up on ninety proof adolescence

He is Timmy Malone
A hundred miles of desert highway
He is Timmy Malone
They'll find him swinging in church on Sunday
He'll sport-a
Red raw-a
Neck tie
Rope burn-a

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THE GREEN ROOM

Remember when you were eight?
Remember that god-awful state?
You lived in the Green Room!

Weren't no doors or halls,
No windows, just four eternal walls.
That's the Green Room.

There was no ceiling above,
There was no feeling of love.
Silence in the Green Room.

Black words scrawled on the wall,
Couldn't read them at all.
Screaming in the Green Room.

There were no rooms beside,
No red, blue or bright.
Safe in the Green Room.

Then one day you lay down,
And never made another sound.
Dying in the Green Room.

Green is for safe and well.
Green is for torment and hell.
Becoming the Green Room.

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UNTITLED (& needs work)

This old splintering rockin' chair,
It takes me to lands so very far away.
Creak of wood on wood in the twilight hours,
Yeah, I'm waiting for them Summer showers,
Sipping ice cold tea with an eye on the stray.

Girl, you've seen me swinging iron,
Bleeding pure heat under a noon day sun.
Driving spike after spike into virgin railway track,
A sweat soaked bandanna hanging 'round my neck.
They say I'm on the blue-collar chain gang, hon.

Look beyond all that is present here,
Past earth, men, blue metal and see. . .
Those arcing irons and clashing metals,
Lightening of the gods' and sabres in mortal battle.
One's a blind man's vision and the other's reality.

I've seen your old F.J. shimmering so fine,
Some thirty keys west of Torrington's own.
Seen your Summer skirt flicker and catch the breeze,
Beyond your cloud-silver eyes and into the freeze.
So who's really free living in this drone?

They say I exist only in my dreams these days,
But I say living is a dream and dreaming - eternal.
While I am the rider of white stallions across Arabian sands,
And you're but vapours marching to another's plans.
Incarcerate my body but never my soul - infernal.

Come Friday night at the church of the Heathen,
And your smile floats above a beer soaked bar.
I trade you treasures from the Orient for bread and ale,
While some old dog kicks the juke in search of his Holy Grail.
Close your eyes and ride the Moon and Star.

Sunday dies with Christ on the cross and a blink,
For it's dawn and I'm shuffling sleepers listening to hydraulic bores.
But the man with tie - he'll never know,
I departed this ancient port a thousand years ago.
The Captain of Clipper ship bound for uncharted shores.

Gales shriek through the canvas and rigging,
As I set my teeth against wind, sea and sun.
The blue blood of many tides flow through these veins,
I've lived many lives through centuries, Tho I can't remember names.
These black waters will carry me a final horizon beyon'.

Yeah, the chair no longer creaks now that it's time,
Time for the final curtain call to the memories my dear.
I can hear the dark guillotine of my eve arrive,
The forest bleeds into night and I know I was once alive.
Tomorrow I was the highwayman but tonight you need'nt fear.

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INK
(a rough attempt to kickstart this aspect of my writing again)

It’s been so long that the ink has faded. . .

The pulse of my blood once
Throbbed down the vein of my pen

But now the words are so rough and craggy
No smooth flow will arise till
The nib wears the rock away
Over a millennia of syllables

No words or thoughts is an animated death
It is the fear of everlasting unconsciousness
An unknown solitude that cast a
Dullness over me.
And yet. . .
To dam the flow of ink is to imitate the state I fear

- a corpse with hardened arteries
of congealed, clotted words
a constipation of letters -

Bite down and write!
Exhale phrase upon phrase
Sentence upon sentence

Raise yourself, Lazarus
Feel ideas glide through your blood again
And spurt from the pen
Feel it again. . .
Unable to keep pace
Synapses snap
Dendrites detonate
Feel it … again

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A PAGE ON THE WIND

A page riding the wind.
No longer a part of the book that once held it, gave it meaning and centre.
No longer fixed securely in the knowledge that it's world is tightly ordered and bound about it.
No pages before or aft to give it roots and purpose - unable to be interpreted by itself now devoid of reference to the past and the future.

Constantly blown from place to place, from treetop to gutter.
Whirling in uncertainty and moving too quickly for anyone to read,
or get in contact with the phrases and sentences that define it's being.

Torn from the book that gave it weight and security against the wind,
it will be carried on breezes and gales alike, never settling until one day it drowns or burns.
On that day the ink will run or waft away in smoke and it will no longer matter what the sentences contained on the page.
But the page will be at one with the elements, back whence it came.
At rest.
No wind, no confusion.

For now, as the page is blown from river's edge to night's edge all it can do is ride the zephyr and see where it is taken.
It cannot know why or where it is going.
Indeed, as it is carried on life's way it wearys and it's words fade in the elements.
And even if it's words could be read for but a moment, they would surely be nonsense without the wholeness of other pages to give them birth and carry them to death.

The page is meaningless. . .

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DARK HORSE

A flare and crackle as tobacco sucks at the flame of life.

I sit cross-legged - the oily waters and sullen clouds,
God's canvas before me.
Creeping sands and windswept sea are his brush strokes.

I exist in this solitude.
It is the needle of relief in my veins that sweetens the blood and sends it coursing through my body.
I am alive!
I connect!

The greys and charcoals of surf and heavens war with the beige of the shore and the greens of the foliage beyond.
But I am at ease.
I belong to the immensity.
I know that I need no other at this moment.
I am enough.
I am at rest.
Life is a dream, here is reality.
I embrace the awareness of NOW!
The peace.

The rocks - colonies of spotted seals frozen in time, frozen on canvas.
I realise now that I've always been this way - afraid to accept and engage it.
Afraid of being the Dark Horse.

Soon I hope to put all this into poetry.
Poetry - it is so raw and unrefined, I know.
But it too lives - like an ugly mutant, it's value is hidden.
It is a record of my link with the transcendent -
a frame of the imprisonable moment.

More and more, I lust after feelings and experience:
pain, joy, grief, anger, fear...
I welcome each one to my door and draw nigh to it's powers.
Is that what the sum total of life is - experiences of emotion?
Nothing more, nothing less?

After twenty-nine years I have come home.
Nowhere else felt so right as the ocean's edge.
It talks and I listen.
Alone. . .
I need another lifetime!

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THE STRANGEST OF DAYS

There's a clown on the platform and he's oozing tears of blood
I tug on his blouse but it only spatters on my face
He says,
"I feel the rumble of the tracks
The train's coming and God I'm relaxed"
He's screaming and I'm dreaming
He's dreaming and I'm screaming
Least I know what Love is
A chain to be pulled
The strings of a marionette
That hang you by your fingertips

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INFANT WATERS

The grey rains blow ever closer.
The emerald waters darken, coagulating into forgotten steel.
First drops strike the quiet sands that surround - shallow honeycombs.
Night is to be born pre-maturely.

A solitary gull patrols the edge of a thickening ocean - white and upright.
The approaching grey screens of moisture hold no fear for him.
Sand and time blow by. . .

Soon fine needles pierce my clothes and cause the ink to run.
Their only wish is to drive me away to refuge but I refuse.
The cold sea slaps the shore in growing fury.
Threatening me.
Promising me.
Promising me, that if I leave she will still be here on the morrow. . . waiting for me.
Nothing changes with day, just the colours.

Angry gusts arise from their graves in sympathy to their liquid sister.
And now only the thick green eucalypts stand in obstinate defiance,
leaning and beginning to thrash in complete defiance of the growing wicked before them.
Am I seeing without or feeling within? I can no longer distinguish.

Above, the celestial ceiling is a mutating monster -
blacker, heavier, at once spitting out bolts of bitter-stark whiteness.
Malicious threats of what is to come if it is ignored.

The waters are closing in, white foam licking my feet, retreating,
then reaching out again in desperate greed.
It whispers to me. . .
Give up, my son
Give up, my son

The winds.
Movement!
Gulls stealing away, quickly, guiltily.
The tall grasses are rippling with fear.
The rains.
They slice across the shore.

The salty tongue has wrapped itself around my ankles and drags me inward.
And the world above murmurs approval.
Hungrily she wraps her cold arms around my waist and chest, seducing me.
[In the distance one final gull battles the storm in a quest of futile hope]
The tears from above are now now fierce shafts striking at my face,
stinging my eyes.

Give up, my son
Give up, my son

Her icey fingers close around my throat.
The shrill of seagull breaks through the wind for a second.
But she will wait no longer to be satisfied.
It is time.
The clouds have spoken.
It is time.
Time to re-enter the uterine waters of Nature's peace.
Time to drown.

[The gull lays floating in the storm, dead of exhaustion]

DISPOSABLE VERSE

Choose Carefully No Refunds

BLACK ROSES TO YOU MY DARLING

DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES

LITTLE BOY

CRUISE OR DIE

THE GAME

LOVE IS A DREAM

WHERE IS RELIEF?

FATHER SUBSTANCE

LOADED GUN

DEATH

TIMMY MALONE

THE GREEN ROOM

UNTITLED (& needs work)

INK (a rough attempt to kickstart this aspect of my writing again)

A PAGE ON THE WIND

DARK HORSE

THE STRANGEST OF DAYS

INFANT WATERS

This page is under construction

Choose Carefully
No Refunds

INK
(a rough attempt to kickstart this aspect of my writing again)