The Morning Rose



there is an intellectual squall
that eddies around the same pond
it is self enclosed
self perpetuating
we are not allowed
to get our feet wet



the legacy of history is our brutality.
And here is a quick flash – a medieval court,
where vassal and courtiers adopt the language of etiquette,
a parlance of higher order.

return to their grim fasts, to descend into butchery
they feel their right, their duty to perform.

The towers rang with screams
in church they bemoaned their sins
and were granted forgiveness
and composed poesies in their studies.


Look to Rome, the Evidence stands


despite the sadistic dreams of barons
bereft of nobility, or the stations
of compromise
despite the conspiracies of Now
counting out each primed seed

No system can be so perfect, no
Empire is set to rule forever
The motions of perpetuity
Confound such earthly dreams
As do dreams of tyrannical children
With dollar signs for hearts
Who ration entry to their little
Boys' clubs, attempting to hide
The squalor of their design
Behind myth and symbolic regalia
(Chinese whispers for the lower
echelons, to think they in
and on the rise).


how can we ever reach out
beyond the grasp of ourselves
if our spirits are shackled
by the poverty of language
or religion, or the selfish
sightless drives of the covens
of our peers, lords and ladies
blood rancid with heritage
foundations made of bones

the doom of the world
hot on their breaths

when the world is a graveyard
their mausoleums of temples
and caskets filled with produce
the clones are happy at prayer
plastic rosary beads made
in China, candid libations
of child fucking priests
as callous and corrupt
as any Gilles De Rais

how many end times, 9-11s
departmental conspiracies
lizard men, falling down
prohibitions, dictators, regime
changes, black sullen evenings
of hurtled silence
how many one night stands
hungry relationships, strong
jealous hearted, burning
longing, losing, falling
like powdery snow

how many deaths squads
Escobar, kamikazes
Cameras, scandals, hopeless
Trends of consumers fashion
Before, before
We begin again?

Nature will beat us around the ring
She will fold us, compact us
into a grimy strata
across a sightless cliff
pounded by oceans
teaming with life.




have you listened to the sun?
have you danced to the moon?
Have you gasped at the chaos
Of it all?

Have you heard Timothy’s ghost
Laughing in the machine?




I do not pretend to understand the wind
How it moves me, how I am surrendered,
Sundered, betrayed, vilified, exulted to rise,
Collected regrets cast away, the expectations
Of every little sigh, your flighty laughter

The porous minds of brothers and sisters
The deluge contained in each raindrop
The essence shifts, contextual chameleons:
Truth is in essence an unobtainable hunger
In our foolish breasts, filling our thoughts
Our books blemished with truth, as though
To expel the idea in abstract words and bind it to
The page deems it ‘true’

Do not pretend to know the rain
Or the dust that glitters on the moon
Or the flowers bursting through skulls
Or the way, when his last breath left
The old man was a husk cast in cold mud
Jaundiced, lifeless and empty
And the birds still sang outside the window
The grey skies still fill within you.