Thousand Year Syntax Tree

Thousand Year Syntax Tree

Subconscious automatic membrane pulse

Aphasic mumbled belief in choice

A thousand year syntax tree

Dropping nodes sporadically

Recursive scan through the grammar

Beating iron with a hammer

Till it comes, total control
And the beast has crept out from its hole

Its muzzle digging for the fruit

The one obsession claims the brute

With reddened eyes and shredded paws

The blood drips slowly from its claws

Taking control through sacrifice

To jolt the wheel and load the dice

Erase compassion, halt your sighs

And fix the dealer with your eyes

The Horde Marches

The Horde Marches

The idea should be

Specific and universal

The syntax should be multiplexed

Using form that suits theme

Felicitous choice of language

Should render meaning apparent

Without need for extraneous verbiage

Character defines tone and tone defines character

Delivery should be unaffected

We march to the pig skin beat

A sound that has echoed for thousands of years
Bouncing off the hills

Then concrete

A superstructure penetrates the mind

Like a mammoth tusk through a brave

And no more can be said

For the trampling of the horde

Each footstep a droplet

Drowns the voice

No one can hear

No one will know

No one.

Forget Me Genero

Forget Me Genero

The prints in my flat are appalling
My landlord surely has no taste
A sailboat floats by under sunset somewhere
And men nap while they're building the empire state

Genero, Genero
Forget me Genero
'Cus I'll forget you
Once I've packed up my case
I'm going where life is not mediocre
Where I'm struck with meaning
Like lightning from grace
Forget me Genero,
Forget me Genero,
Forget

My songwriting style is banal
I'm a teenager wearing a dress
All I do is moan about the same things
And I'm not even bothered to try to impress

Genero, Genero
Forget me Genero
'Cus I'll forget you
Once I've packed up my case
I'm going where life is not mediocre
Where I'm struck with meaning
Like lightning from grace
Forget me Genero,
Forget me Genero,
Forget

We used to drink so much together
We'd fight all the night until dawn
Now we've been partitioned according to schemes
That the dullest line manager would greet with yawns

Genero, Genero
Forget me Genero
'Cus I'll forget you
Once I've packed up my case
I'm going where life is not mediocre
Where I'm struck with meaning
Like lightning from grace
Forget me Genero,
Forget me Genero,
Forget

Shit Or Dirt Or Blood

Shit Or Dirt Or Blood

I was reading Bukowski again

when I noticed a fleck of

shit or dirt

or blood

on the page

and I thought

it fitted there

as good as

any word

The Only Fruit

The Only Fruit

I

When we were young we looked to you
For pleasure and for pride

We tried to climb your blackened limbs

But your thorns stabbed our sides

Older then, we looked again

But now for fuel and frame

And so we thought to cut your trunk

Yet axes bounced back lame

We left without a meaning clear
For we will ever fail

And the dire wind that drove us home

Filled your autumnal sails

The only fruit, those dried up leaves

Blown from your dreary tree

We catch between a string of sighs

And crumbling ennui

II

The village spat until you moved 
To dribble on the town
The mangle of the city clamped shut
Your jaw and you drowned

Friend, you could have been the darling
Light of every shore
But you were chained up on the rocks
Before the sea's cold roar

Yet I'll drink until a mirage
Smiling comes to me
And I'm caught between a string of sighs
And crumbling ennui

The only fruit comes in a glass
That's swallowed with a grin
And the dire gale that drove us here
Blew from within.

Crop

Crop

A crop has grown within my brain

The harvest of a neural strain

It bears the rotting of our faith

I pluck the fruit to fill a space

To crowd the horror of the void

That nectar drowns my empty hive -

Pour those weepings in a cup

Drink up, drink up

Here's a drink for every wasted hour

That you spent with me

Lap it up and don't be sober

Drink that crop of misery

I wear my own mammalian skin

It feels like I'm an alien

An insect crawling in the sun

Beneath my conscious light I run
From brightness to the dark alone

To safety in the closing gloam -

Pour your madness in a cup

Drink up, drink up

Here's a drink for every wasted hour

That you spent with me

Lap it up and don't be sober

Drink that crop of misery

That sheaf feels rough held in your hand

You've grown the crop of this bleak land

And though the mill stone grinding is

The only music left for us

We will never leave this hated

Plot dried out emaciated -

Pour your struggle in a cup

Drunk up, drink up

Here's a drink for every wasted hour

That you spent with me

Lap it up and don't be sober

Drink that crop of misery

Planet

Planet

Islands sink and sailors drink and

Land flows into the sea

As rigs explode, the set is closed

Around the river and me

I try to write yet it drips life

From depths I'll never beat

A pattern sewn by Earth alone

My stitching cannot pleat

From cycled waves of maelstrom graves

For bodies overboard

Come insect young, born on the tongues

Of heads that wash ashore

I can't begin to comprehend

The rules that spawned this hell

My thoughts wear down and circle round

Like convicts in their cells

We scuttle on this astral skull

Before our solar Ra

But human lips will never kiss

The tongue of the enigma

Our planet sets its hunting nets
Of time and patient pace

As one who floats among the suns

And far from human grace

Drunken Poem

Drunken Poem

gleaming shards form
polished lines upon sheets sewn
with hazy mist
dark raingathers
awaiting purpose:
the tumult
slashes, flows
slips the realisation.
the storm
blasts apart humanity
denying their grip on meaning
like a confused kid
with a razor blade
praying to the deity
for creation's end