Four more from late 2006-2007

The great sadness of the city
fills her heart with a grey gloom.
Its grit and filth have tarnished her
golden locks and dimmed her bright green eyes.

No longer do they sparkle
with pious lustre; the black
voids of her pupils have since
been filled with a jaded grey.

Her radiant skin faded
to a morbid complexion,
once smooth skin now pitted with
the scars of this cursed pox.





He wanders down the narrow,
winding alleys: a derelict
district in a bereft borough.
His right hand clenching a mobile
phone to his ear, his left
thrust deep into his pocket.

That threadbare suit is
so unbecoming; the tatters
of once haute couture now
resemble the slow embalming of
his rotted flesh.

A sorry sight; a scarecrow
in a fallow field slowly
torn apart by solitude and the
constant scratching of beaks and claws
rendering his old,
unwanted clothes a patchwork tragedy.

This ragged soul left alone
in this fallow field to
slowly rot; the epitome of one such lost soul.





The last embers of a great
bonfire now gently smoulder
on their infinite ebony
country. The embers nearest the
centre of the fire glow
brightest, whilst the scattered
lone embers at the fringes
grimly hang onto their existence,
defiantly preserving their dull glow
in the blackest hinterlands
of the fire.

Eventually, even the largest cluster
of the embers silently expire,
leaving tiny flecks of smoke
trailing into the atmosphere.

Despite having been starved and suffocated, the fire
leaves a lasting, blackness where
nothing will e're grow forth again:
one peaceful lifetime has so
ravaged its earth that it will
spend its infinite existence
alone and barren.





Unfounded allegiances
born of inadequacy
married with insecurity;
such an unholy union.

Cackling crows
harp relentlessly
eyeing their quarry.

The alpha female
governs her lacklustre chimps:
monkey see, monkey do.

Their sharpened claws
hack and rake their
unwitting prey, as
the hired teeth
lacerate its thick skin.

Yet they are startled by a growl.
The prey flees, lacerated and sapped;
such fortuitous escapes called upon far too often.

A note on XIII

I thought that I would omit the title for this poem, for aesthetic reasons. It is the only one of this first collection that I gave a title to. It is called:
The Jade Signet.

XII-XV

In the quiet of the still night
the windswept barrens lie dormant
beneath the ebony mantle
of the serene ochre empress.

Her glistening teardrops
adorn her sombre attire,
embellishing her infinite sorrow.
Her tears shall ne'er be dried,
yet their eternal source stagnated long ago.

Her sightless eyes perceive only blackness.
Ignorant of her own radiance,
she only remembers sentiment:
memories now dearer than her lost sight.







She glides silently over
the tranquil grey waters,
beneath an angry and sullen sky.

There is no sun to glow on
her pure, crystalline plumage:
only her natural radiance
evokes a warm lantern-light
to guide her through the
thick closeness of the mist.

Her tranquil wake gently
trails out behind her;
she hardly makes an impression
on the still waters as she
moves wrathlike towards the
distant shore of the lake.





Seeing the faded victorian
bricks and dusty high rises
fade into a blur of green
is now a novelty.

The textured verdant mass soon
retreats back, yielding to the
monotone grey of humanity;
even the neat rows of
silver birch cannot mask the great
scar where their brothers used to stand.

The dull glow of existence
never fades for even the sky is
still an unforgiving dark grey:

It's still just the same;
the rain and gloom follow you
wherever you go.

A dull reminder of an extravagant past.





Reliving is always far harder
than leaving.
On leaving the shackles are
shattered forever yet the scars
they leave will never fade.

Those sentiments of leaving
and the action of returning are
the same if not identical;
the fresh wounds having been
closed are willingly rent open
again: it is our own
choice this time, such is the
hilarity of our double standards.