The Farm.

I fucking hate this. Regular meter and rhyme scheme is really uncomfortable. The worst part is that the final stanza is pretty good but the rest is shit.

A petting zoo where you all chose
To settle down for now
In passing, in the future you will
Feel such shame, and how

"What a place to grow!" says I
Above the primal din
But they've walled themselves in mud and lies
They're walled completely in

The animals, they never stop
They honk and yelp and screech
But worst of all, horrifically
They often seek to preach

Agglutinate into a sound
A single fragile phrase
A scream, a buzz, an all-consuming
Auditory haze

Cacophony of pigs and asses
Braying out of tune
The vultures paralyze with sound
And no one is immune

The Skin.

Bare white hands soaked
In mud, made
Of my own skin
And bloody handed guilt
In execution
The flower wilts in strained confusion
Covered in blood-
No, mud, and rotting skin
A sludge of dried up dermal sin
Flint and vinegar to the flesh
Acid for the bones, that hide under the muddy mesh
The skin's the thing
I'll catch my fear therein, and sing

True Neutral.

Jason did a thing about what he was thinking and now I want to as well because I never do that. Not directly. Hey! That's one of my things in DB. Circle of life, etc. One day we'll stop this literary symbiosis and find that we can stand on our own independent forms of expression without falling into solipsistic stupor. It might happen. Horrible as that sounds.

It's been a big couple of months. For several and varied reasons, but most of them are about me, so maybe they're not so varied and I'm just desperately self-justifying. It's all good. Uni begins and I'm shunted into uni life. It was hardly jarring, seeing as how I'd already foisted myself in there, pre-ingratiating myself into the larger social circles that I now operate in. It was really easy, the clubs I joined were full of people I was already familiar with. That's not to say that I'm not forcing myself to meet new people, I am. I'm in a bloody show, for God's sake. But none of it has been that nerve-racking for me. I've had two auditions so far, and despite first-year status I already knew several people in each, including the directors. And I'm going to have another in a few days, and I know both directors. Is this how student theater works? Semi-insular webs of wonderful and theatrical people all telling each other how great they are? Fuck. That sounds brilliant.

Uni is easy. Well, the parts that everyone says are difficult are easy. The work is child's play, just that there's a lot of it. No, settling into uni life was smooth and efficient, and gratifying for someone who's had trouble in the past finding a niche. I had a niche pre-found for me. How nice.

On that note. It's not entirely smooth-sailing, if I'm honest with myself. I do actually have to work hard to get everything done. And I am getting everything done, even if I've been lacking in attendance some times. Assignments get done and tutorials get attended, and I get my marks, and it's a very strange experience. I get marks pretty much exactly proportional to how much work I've done. Weird, right? Those distinctions don't make themselves, you know. I've gotten assessments back and gotten less than I'd hope for. And I've gotten assessments back and done so much better than I might have dreamed. And when I do badly (read: credit or less) I don't really mind.

It's been a few months of personal growth, of accepting weakness, and gross faults. Because they're there and I'm here to do what I'm good at while being forced to do things that I might be shit at because they're mandatory parts of the course. But I chug through them and get them all done, because I have to. And because I have to I don't really have an emotional investment in any of them. Statistics (I know, right?) is not something I really care about, so if I just barely scraped a pass I'd be okay with that. Now if I failed biology... that's a different kettle of fish. There's always more time, though. I've got 4 years to complete this double degree but we all know that I'll take more than that. I'll complete half a minor and then get bored of it, or something.

But that's just it! I'm letting myself accept small failures. Because in the long run, who fucking cares? I've listened to stories of successful post-grad students fucking up their first year, of people completely changing direction after two whole years of arts; I'm at uni to grow intellectually and personally. And I certainly am. Letting myself accept failure and mediocrity is a huge step. Hell, it's fucking colossal.

I'm forcing myself to meet people. I'm a regular in both the theater and queer student haunts, people know my name. Some people even know me before I know them, which is strange. It's not something I'm overly comfortable with, but it is supremely affirming to have somewhere to go in my spare time that isn't the lawn or the library. Where do other students even go in their breaks? I can go into either of these places and be engaged in active discussion with people I enjoy the company of (and some I might not so much) and it feels wonderful. There are people I can go to immediately and talk about how I'm actually feeling. What's uncomfortable is the fact that all of the walls I built during high school to protect myself from all of the teenage bullshit that those fuckers are still working through are being torn down, mainly by me. I can be me, because the people I see on a day to day basis aren't busy trying to become some idealised teenage wunderkind, they're just fine being themselves as well. That makes me want to cry with joy, even if the objective fact is that I'm completely back-flipping. Being withdrawn in high school was necessary because they were all so stupid. Breaking out in uni is necessary even more so because everyone is so wonderful and genuine, and I can only respond in kind.

I'm doing and saying things that I wouldn't normally do. Hopefully, in future, these will become the things that I normally do. My nature is shifting.

The Forest of my Youth.

The forest of my youth
Is littered with broken limbs
And solitary tears
Silent nameless fears
That eke out a hopeless trapped existence
Locked in my time machine mind
Relieved are the trees
Of the burden of longing
I’ve removed the happy memories from the trunks and leaves
They stay with me, they never leave
Even after I escape to the clearing
Away from the forest of my youth

The forest of my youth
Pearlescent in the past
Temporally locked in the stupor that once was mine
Host to the terrors I felt as a child that
I’d deign to bring with me to the bright future
(Or present
I’ve never really been too sure)
Concrete feet and grey sky eyes
Wait for me there, and I
Can never return to the forest of my youth

The forest of my youth
Is luminescent
But only in my present mind
On closer inspection, though I dare not try
The evergreen terrors bare their pine needle teeth
(How ever as a child
Did I ever sleep?)
Deprived of the child that once was me
The monsters that lurk in the forest of my youth
Seek to devour the later-day me

But I can never return
To the forest of my youth
Why on this green Earth
Should I ever want to?

Alacrity.

The drench is coming
And his jolly old friend the tide
I've no time to hide, so I suppose I'll fall
Tired, sick of it all

Clipped.

If my wings were clipped
I'd jump off a cliff
If I couldn't fly
I'd prefer to die
But not like a chick who wishes to learn
I'd much prefer to die
Than be impotent forever.

Nosferatu

Everything doubles itself and back again
Multiplying, dividing my eyes in two
Dividing my vision in two, and switching
Back again to one
A sewer rat, hazy like a cloud
Of poisonous fog in through the vents
Presently within your dreams
Fortunate to be invisible
While breaking at the seams
Clever enough to be too quiet
For a mortal's ears
Don't fret, I run the gambit from end to end
Playing inside, playing out
The mortal fears
Lovely enough that a single mangled fingernail
Might seem a treat, in the dark, over the noise
Now, calm down, boys
You'll be callous enough that you won't care
And calloused enough that no one else would

People.

The room is cursed, possessed
Of divine or otherwise
Littered by the fragments, torn
Off the body every night
You leave every day and the people take in
The parts of your body you're willing to show
And return and tear
At your own skin
Yes, every night I long
To tear my skin off
The desire comes from underneath my follicles
The people gawk-
The people, bah!
Can we call them that?
Is that fair on them?
Is that fair on us?
The people gawk at the patches bare
They're the patches I long to tear off
Tainted by a lecherous stare
I spend so long scraping them off
With razor wire
With knives of fire
The weapons I pull out of my own head
The weapons I know that will soon make me dead
But will they kill me?
Or is removing them the thing that will eventually
Tear me apart and destroy me?
I might be me
I might be you
I might be someone else all through
I might even be happy with what I would be
But after I've flogged myself to death
And risen like a phoenix
There'd be no more weapons to use
They'd all be pointed at me
After I always had them pointed at you
People? People!
You bastards
I'm through

We're All In Cahoots.

Thunder and bright lights, kings pure and dark
In Scotland, by the moor
A woman with bloodstains all through her hair
In Scotland, by the moor
Though horrid and dreary it may be
And afterwards, oh, I am sore
It's here I've sought refuge
In joy, from the deluge
In Scotland
By the moor

Taxing these ordeals
And repetitions
They may be
From other duties
I'd prefer, these ordeals
Unto me

Three slimy witches that swirl in the fog
Come down here to the moor
One brings a banshee, another great joy
Descending on the moor
With a cackle of prophetic doom-speak
The eldritch world's foresight-ful lore
This horror revives me
From toil, and I'm free
In Scotland
By the moor

Another land, cold as all Hell here plays host
To Scotland and the moor
Inviting this danger into your home
This Scotland and the moor
If they catch you, dear, you would regret it
Hear terror crashing through the door
But we all protect you
From those who'd inspect you
Our Scotland
And the moor

Words in words
Deliver us
Poetic ecstasy
Despite our battered
Bodies, minds
From other things we flee

Strong now together, through horrible weather
Not Scotland, or the moor
Play on my brothers that we might see sunlight
For our country, here once more
And it's strange that I would solace
In these foreigners' struggle and chore
But Macbeth and his kin will
Fight with you to standstill
From Scotland
By the moor

If Music Be The Food Of Love.

If music be the food of love
Then poetry's the drink
Let not a drop of eloquence
Slide wasted down the sink
If music be as such
Then I plan to get quite drunk
Throw the bloody pearl
Into my verbose glass- kerthunk

Give me great excess of this
True wonder in your phrase
And let me stumble blindly
Into linguistic haze
Shut off by fustian barriers
Anomalous and vain
Cover me in honeyed words
And shield me from the rain

.

These words are wonderful
Would be wonderful
I mean
If they weren't so wrapped up
In themselves
A phrase within a phrase
Is that lovely or disgusting?

Lucy.

Lucy blinked an ancient eye
And saw the future spread out
Ahead of her
She, the sire, the siress, siren?
The centuries of progeny
The branches of her family tree
While she, the roots
Festered in the mud

Honoured mother
Lucy and her children
And their fingers and their toes
And their brains all for the thinking
All the better to be alive, my dears
Stood there in the mud
But blinking
But blench and we all cease
But trip and be mother
Only to the billions deceased
But don't dwell on these things, mother
For there may well be another

But were there not
Just be careful, love

Chorus.

Four great stones split and our palms turn
All white and chalk
A circle is drawn and we let it grow
As it plays roost to the mighty son
Mighty Hawk

Hawk and Tommy
Are seldom seen to cry
Or even graze themselves
Physically precocious I've heard
But Hawk glows at night
Where Tommy just collapses

When they're older they'll join us
And we'll make a mighty chorus
Hawk will take the center of the chalk circle there
And Tommy will stand in the front row

Weep to see the whirlwind envelope
Hawk as his wings grow
Tommy, you will weep to see your brother grow to a man

But, what the hell are you?

Punch Drunk Lamb's Blood.

Settle your stomach
In this wild hurricane my love
Comb back your hair
In that picture frame
My love
Have another drink
To the gods up there
Throwing us around
From their golden chair
Have another drink
My love, my love
Have another drink
My drunk turtle dove

Give it a minute
Till the storm settles, my little lamb
I'll shelter you
From the rain and lightning
And be your solitary man
Give it another go
And get shot down again
Give it another go
In your prison den
Gve it another go
My little lamb
Give it a go
And I'll be your man

Novella.

Like malod'rous leper
Or the crows that come
To pick at my dead flesh
(Despite my objections
Apparently, I'm dead)
We're unwanted here
Our short sharp bursts of vanity
Don't satisfy like an epic seems to

Revised Strychnine Blues.

I fill myself with poison
Every morning
Every day
To the top of a little green glass
It gets into my head
I realise I'll be dead
And I live every day like it's my last

A shot of strychnine
Keeps my going until sundown
When it's night I find I need a little more
I get inside
And pour myself
Some arsenic and cyanide
And I let the poison fill me to the core

The strychnine blues
Have got me by the gut
And the throat
I've got no more poison left to give
Down here in oblivion
Seated next to Death
Is the only way that I know how to live

Your tobacco and your alcohol
Ain't no use to me
I don't go at all for standard fare
I sleep in a gas chamber
I bathe in a septic tank
I scrub myself with acid till my bones are bare

What's more is I can only really deal with other people
When I've forced my heart to stop still
My nightshade nightcap is much stronger
Than all my force of will


The strychnine blues
Have got me by the gut
And the throat
I've got no more poison left to give
Down here in oblivion
Seated next to Death
Is the only way that I know how to live

Like Magic.

Shazam
And everything goes up in flames
Mice are spreading the valiant fire
Ducks throw themselves into funeral pyres
Cockroaches, in their haughty might
Cannot escape this all the same
Like sludge across the mire
But with alacrity and sight

Prison.

Prison
Have you ever been crushed by the tide?
It's like a deluge
But direct, but oh my lord
It erases everything else
Involves, like the ever almighty tide,
The entirety of being

Lucky Day.

"Small Change got rained on with his own .38."


Lucky got unlucky down on 5th
Lucky's seven shots left
Didn't get him very far
Hit the pavement on the corner of 6th and Hammersmith
Fell like a raincoat
Onto the hood of his car.

The inspector was downtown at the time
Watching an ice cube unravel itself
In vitro amber choke chains
Got a call from officer Moore
"Pavel? Lucky's hit the floor!"
The inspector whittled his way off down the lane.

Moore and the inspector
Tarantino over Lucky
Circling like career vultures
With an eye for leather and youth club cards
Inspector goes through his pockets
And takes another drag
Ambulance speeds up
Brakes on the corner hard

A wallet, two lighters
A key to a downtown pad
No smokes though, funny that
First thing you'd think he had
A cutout from the Herald
For a call girl called Sherry
Had a thing for the redheads
Apparently, our boy Lucky

Moore finds his phone lodged
In the Pontiac's exhaust, covered in fumes
Grime, can't even see the time
Goes through his messages
From his mother and the boys
And a warning from pretty Sherry
From yesterday, same time

"Lucky, you better run
Small Change's coming for you.
I love you, Lucky
That kiss we shared put me in heaven
But Change wants me all for himself!"

In his back, inspector finds the shots
Fired from whose gun?
"These are .38 bullets, Moore
Looks like Small Change's the one."

Moore looks at the bullet wounds
And throws up round the corner
Not a new kid, by any means
But the gore doesn't sit right with him
He couldn't understand
What drives a man to murder

"Boy, people kill people
All the God damn time
For reasonable reasons.
I'd kill a man quick smart
If only I could manage it.
People love more unpredictably.
Shit, I don't know why they do it,
For the worst reasons you've ever heard."

"Do you reckon that she loved him, boss?" Says Moore.
"Looks like love between them two."
"Kiddo, just because you kiss a whore"-
Inspector lights his cigarette-
"Doesn't mean she loves you."

Hu(m)bble.

The world is tiny and mountains
Fold into my palm, seas
Flow out of my eyes, and clouds
Escape my nostrils
With a puff of black I carve up
A thunderstorm
The world is kept within my eye
O'er steppe and stepping stone we
Launch ourselves and fly
The universe is tricky
I find it rather small as well, you
Cannot shake its size
You see the stars and nebulae
Collide
Magellan's clouds are just
My fingertip, spinning
Andromeda on my little finger
The eagle, horse
Crab and cat's eye
Embedded underneath my skin
And I
Bear emphasis much greater than
A spiral arm of twinkling stars
My eyes black holes, and fingers
Interstellar lightning bolts
Or is it me you fear?
Will I pierce my skin and release
The cosmos on your
Trembling hands?
Double back
Reveal the stars
Terrible and beautiful
Lost beyond the event horizon
Of my darkening black pupils
Never to return
If I were the universe
Or the world
Or an ocean
There'd be no escape

Hellfire.

Black heart
Please
Hellfire in my heart
But I'm not weak of mind
And body
You know well

No holiest of holies
Bears aloft my chains
I take chest and stench and sweat
In place of brimstone's fiery smell

I'm not weak
As much as drink would fool you
Though I be meek
Of certain matters of good faith
Though I don't seek
A burden of my soul upon you
Perhaps I'm weak
And my strength be just a wraith

Is the Devil that much stronger than a man?
Or is a man the Devil, and the weaker part his plan?

For we find solace in this chaos
In primordial wonder
Swirling into the infinite sea
And being there
Just being free
And being dead
What would that leave me?
A coffin full of my own limbs
And regret
For all eternity

Like fire
Hellfire
Promises are stashed
And my bones are being gnashed
Away to dust and ash
By more than simple human
Earthly needs
The bridge toll is quite large
And the largest charge
Of all
I've found only fully will be paid
By me

Strychnine Blues.

Those first two lines have been petering around inside my head for about a week and I finally found a use for them. Immensely satisfying.

That post last night was utter tripe, wasn't it?

-

I fill myself with poison
Every morning
Every day
Filled to the top
Of a little green glass
It fills my arteries and veins
It gets into my head
My brain begins to bleed
I realise I'll be dead
And I live every single day like
Like it's-
No
Because it is my last

A shot of
Strychnine
Keeps me going
Until sundown
But sometimes I can't stop
The midnight bell tolls
I'm still shoveling it in
I poison myself all the way
Straight to the top

The strychnine blues
Have me by the gut
And the throat
Until I have no more poison left to give
Down here seated
Next to death
On the verge of oblivion
Is the only way that I know how to live

A Whole Fucking Universe.

Your heart's on fire
Your body's burning
Smoke rising from your lips
And your hips
And your head
And a whirlwind envelopes
What remains of your soul
And I don't even care
That you won't come out whole
Because the fragments mean more for you, I know
And I want to know more, I don't care that you know
How much I want to know

I want the world inside my head
To erupt out again
When I'm to be dead
And everyone will see
All the colours erupting
Chaotically
The floodgates leave quite an impression, I hope
Just know that they're there when I start to mope

Whatever it is, it might just work
It might collapse
And with it my smirk
But it might just go fine
I hope
In time

Wind in barley.

Through Gothic licks
Riffs and kicks
And puffed up pricks
Who want my dick
I'll try not to drown
I play the clown
And the fool
When the odds are down
And the chips are chalked up
Down the roulette wheel
To Venus' furs
And the chance to spiel
And perhaps I'll spurn
And spur them on
Simultaneously
In this elaborate con
I've not set this out so well
But they all play their parts as planned
And I've made a little Hell
For me or them?
I'm not so sure.