There’s fog for 20 metres from here From here to screen To midwinter For the chill to draw out this splinter If I could, I would. See? I’m restless But in a wrestle Can’t follow the weather Can’t stay in the metre

Choose your fighter carefully Or you’ll be a well-honed knife That’s in search of fear It was a path You laid out For yourself Well, I’m too old to lose a breast As I fight for respect In the name of a straighter shot

He’s your scripted master Without life as apprentice But in talkshow snow We just need wind He’s got powder to blow And thinks he controls Men with handles on machines This is the order We all want to be chiefs It’s all kayfabe Above the hole, there’s only tape Take a pencil and rewind Dig to the outside From the foot of this horse On his way to be glue I’ll meet you on the other side Of this hammered steel shoe

“Who are you married to?” A grandpa asked me once about my ring I used to wear it on my middle finger But I’ve eaten too much fat off the land For it to fit there and turned docile Creature comforts of a bloated life Solving problems by creating Illusion of dignity And portion control Funny how you can red that metric off fast Once you have access to enough But if you pay the price And smile as enshittification takes away From privilege you never deserved But were promised You go on with a day that Is structured by omniscience in advertisements And the subsidies of early venture capital That trickles down into your little world

Sometimes skin’s so transparent That one can’t focus To see the anabranches of the trees From forest Is it still embryonic, or now too old Thickness is a stage you pass For when you are tough enough That’s what I’ve been sold From some jackass What’s this charade Of mechanised elves and kool-aid Sea-horseshoes that we follow to the end Til you see Alaska from your house Don’t trust an agent who pulls More carbon from the earth into the atmosphere Than the fattest man on land

What a place to see your face from водата се идва водата се идва Of inner space to get a taste of

From bicycles and cigarettes To corset waists and MAGA face, Why are we now looking At the new Old Woman?

He’s the kind of man to salt a snail So I’ll ask him to bring me Three sparrows and three pigeons to Fly home and burn his town, oh Such silly useful idiots Always flying home To their bad masters Your neighbours behave Only in intact chains And your city isn’t far For fire to hone, no Because of hollow marrow Fire will carbonise it all And I will get the last laughs When I’m finished with their pastures So I’ll ask him to bring me Three sparrows and three pigeons to Fly home and burn his town, oh Such silly useful idiots Always flying home To their bad masters

And I don’t know if The atmosphere will catch on fire this time Or if we’ll fall into a hole in the earth But something’s gotta change in here Because my skin is crawling and Something is suspicious in a cycle When things stop feeling right

Growing up, each step is a ladder To be thrown away after climbing, Else it trips you like a stone Past the blue Danube To the Black Sea Still stand grey concrete blocks of a red state Coloured with piss, of the Dogs and men that have lived here And to you dear reader, This picture mightn’t make too much sense But it prods me from the past It ain’t a scar if it’s foundation The sound of freedom from a neighbour’s station’s Here to see And free for all (but not like speech) And not like beer Those perched at star position Still will flinch Still all pigs And what does this make me?

There’s dust devils too Inside the sands of time Two years ago I met a man Designed little candlesticks and trinkets But had a face and soul so hollow Could moisten Ayn Rand With pinned doll eyes so blank But warm up ice And it loses its shape He got it from his container That lost its taste

Meet Gaia’s sun 9 times 10 years later, he’ll derange your skin Tell a lie a thousand times And that version of the universe Will take hold by consensus This is the truth now Building vasculature to feed his cancer A nonconformist who walks sideways Pale of skin, freckled Digging craters of longevity

A murder business midwife Delivers vengeance through a wound unhealed And thus the wheel spins round and round

That’s the machine’s new rhythm Forced infant labour With sophomoric effort In a lovely summary With lovely jaundiced faces A cat that’s learnt to start crying For I have to pay for your memory But not your sycophancy I don’t know what twice fried tail tastes like But ask a knot of Ouroboros Is it a strange irony When machine Eats the Other Kinda red meat

A heart beating chest Blue networked veins Working Rivers viewed from space Undressed They pulse under this light And race At speed of thought

When Thanatos was Inside my skin Like a prion disease Of the mind How rains burn Rains burn

And the furniture was in the room But his hands, too tired to move Icons cast pitiful judgement As their eyes follow you It’s what you choose A pre-nailed down being Half-naked, see the detail, that relief Comes flat packed, cast in brass And hungry, to your taste If only you could make him rise for you

I design the shade of dark To colour my prowl A garish street light chase Is no dignity of ending But acceptable when you’re still dry Dry Dry at night The ears to hear you better with The eyes to see you better with And my third finger It’s no surprise to find you here Because you come back each time Sitting in that pleather chair Its cracks drawing country borders that I’m studying the geography of

Chase the light at the right frequency Know it ain’t the sun, but fly A pin will show you To the man who knows some truths Orient his eyes, if your dust looks right You’ll bend light too And turn into his prize

I hate I chase the taste Then it’s night already Managing borders, sovereignty Half intake, half time in waste Mostly water takes the space I wish I spent doing what transcends Instead of being stuck in body admin At least not taste for chaste But from bed, to bar, to fridge, to face We return ourselves to body admin Feel the rumination of sensation Time spent in validation of this System of pained hoi-polloi Painting pictures Of our own portraits online

Make a pillow of my ruffled feathers Til I’m cold and weathered Make a puzzle out of funhouse mirrors Til I recognise myself again I don’t want to shed the blood I don’t want more of this stuff I want to be the last animal And tar the branch at last Until we’re all too old We ain’t need more ‘Cause we’ll be swimming in it ‘Til we’re all alone I don’t want to make soldiers Who will then bleed too I don’t want wastage in a world Of calculated fun And I don’t want to bleed for two Lest another son does it to you

In a Sydney state of mind The roaches in the floorboards And the roaches in the streets Are scheming their lifestyle moves Crawling over well-appointed Painted-over switches and windows That won’t open to prove Nothin’ to the lords of our homes Now that I’m longer in the teeth Getting longer in the teats, bled dry One’s gotta give it to the guy on the streets He’s got Netflix open too Get your hand out of my pocket man I only got enough room for me My birds, a bed and a cuck chair And that damn desk I live on To pay for the place I work in

A swansong of limbs on a grainy TV But the ghosts of idealism Wrestled their way in via private interests All fat cats now, but friends with the rats And the rest of us, in cargo 200 May we all watch Swan Lake once more Until the end of time And see how their skirts bob

And after he was planted in the ground Just like a tulip bulb War broke out and his value rose up To push the daisies out It takes printed usurps To make a dead man work so hard From beyond the grave like that

So she ate a poison apple From the burning tree It embarked a strange flavour But that ain’t the story for me Even if my hair caught fire And smoke ran through the streets A woman’s desire is sometimes Just to have something to eat I won’t miss you If it takes over a month to kiss you Don’t keep me waiting for escape Because I ain’t got money for a glass coffin And my little helpers have unionised On the other side of the crane Pick me before end of season ’cause time to think Ends in my treason Or leave me up a little more To turn me into alcohol But too long, And I’m for party birds alone And here starts roll call

Hey Pippi Longstockings I could hang my coat on that nose With those stories I won’t ask where those golden bars Of yours came from Or when the old monkey of yours Last showered

So my blue note girl has met a man He’s promised her something She’s kissed him once, she’s dazed Says she feels a connection with him Man, I guess that’s convection for you. I’m not hurting, but need to untangle That knot in my throat when you tangled my tongue with yours Spend another night on my island honey On a flyover before jumping on top of something Pardon me if I come across vulgar I’ll be here I’m safe for you I don’t remind you of anyone Who hurt you when you were younger It’s winter now, but soon comes summer After another son is immolated And the cycle’s in slumber Yet the cherry stem is straight still And she hasn’t turned her coat back ’round

So I've been taught since the 90s to clear my plate So now dessert feels like work Before these non-deterministic magic boxes, we were Just mechanical turks with calculators Monkeys who knew how it all worked Who wrote frameworks weaving Machines we could control

You know who's the king of the zoo? He whom is everything to everyone Changes colour, turns coats It is pure power To be everything to one until You discover it is instrumentality To a system in which nothing matters

Split up into little duos Two against the world Into atomic kin Don’t have too much fun Or think Because unstable orbits Might give people ideas

It’s all shadows on the wall ’til their legs stop to shake Pocket contents falling Breaking, lemon wedge unbitten This didn’t match the brief When we emerged from the sea The pupa unwraps Cicada crawls Disappointment sets Imagine how this feels for them No sheets, no ropes No umbilical cord No tie on the door And no curse that Thinks for us all The factories that manufactured our past Are busy editing the versions that live in others Not every future filmed will last And not everyone will come to see the edit

Retarded orange shepherd’s golden toilet Has seen more secrets than it keeps Black-hatted white sheep milked for his green sheets Black-eyed, Tweets: Whatever happens, we have got the spaceships, and they do not

Рани, рана, раница Зима идва бързо Но лято ще е студно също В тоз прокълнат мръз Сняг ще пада Само в младост Сурвакари, сурва, сурват Зима идва бързо С багажа, който нося От студен вятър се обръщам

To design the architecture of our ruins And decide the colour of their bike shed We are the ghosts of the machine Sorted into blue, red, yellow or teal Not knowing if what we see is manufactured Or if it’s real, because it was too far away To travel and see for ourselves On the other side of the line On the other side of flat time In the psychosis of a hive mind

In a world where secrets Cohabit with a gilded thinking chair Digital twins. Animals and saints. Drinking each other’s water Until too many of us lead To there being nothing left

I’ll give you a key To every room Roam where you like Except the one In which everything you touch Will look bloodstained In a certain light Won’t shine like gold Like the rest of these halls Certain things where “Let me explain” is not enough It must fit in a soundbite The survivors are concise

You see, it’s in the compression Word girdles shape the story The terminus of sentences Keep it short and sweet Because now it’s all quite dull And even boring But when we’ve perfected yesterday You can make your mind up faster It takes too long To explain

Darlin’ I’m a many-ringed tree Divorced, but not from life I wear Santal 33 and you, Something with a ship on the bottle But in your face I see A wise smile and innocence Because you get to elect your corruption When mine was a mandatory subject

Because tonight I head to war I hear the thumping from across the door And the battle plan goes as such: Read instructions on the cards Finish your drink Execute the acts 'til completion, and repeat Hyperventilating Among the genuflection My thighs sweating like A deadly albatross around your neck No-one leaves 'til all are dead ‘til we step out into Drenched streets

With my instruments inside you I still can’t repair this ship in a bottle Much as I need to send it back into the ocean

Ash clouds make their way inside Flash heat burns my eyes You fade away, but heat stays Turns my face to dust Turns my brain to glass When Minerva’s owl fails to arrive

It was a problem of semiotics really Couldn’t read the sign But the instrument sung like cicadas in summer As dusty fireflies touched my skin It was like the expeditions to the pyramids Where the curse of the king punishes us Because we shouldn’t have been there After the last atomic priest has died

A blue marble One dough ball A spoiling orange And bitter essence Of ever-replicating Emerald mine dust After AI winter, not Minsky’s monster A black box monolith is no society But consensus is: The machines of hate have run We know where to find What makes us ever dumber Until it chases us around And preaches us to falter

As your eyes widen It’s nature and nurture Coddled and encapsulated Do you remember when this is how The future used to sound Your eyes or maybe my shoes Lift me up off the ground But I’ll be okay Once I come down I feel I’ve caught a Millennium bug

There’s now too much I need to learn Too many islands left And shores to link Fire together Wire together Eyes dilated Thoughts disabled Senses drawn Assembled on the Last train home

In his arrested development This lone ascetic Wakes with dirty hands Sheets float away But his shame remains On dry land in my Drowned World It’s just our new old nature Let me guide your hand With mine Draw maps And join mankind In the New World

You ain’t got a split dioptre To place two things into focus When you’re making Synthetic mirror life On the other side of silvered glass Left-handed version Of the right hand path

This idea inside you It is viral Anti-vital It slowly suffocates you Like a python Well, what’s next Mademoiselle X? It’s a part of you Your own supply You say no need to spare Food for thought or body

You are beautiful And you are needing But I am a little too empty And can’t make your ceiling Careful of how deeply you stick that hand Inside the cookie jar Fear is the mind killer Most men don’t get too far We bring only what we have Not much can fit inside At any one time Words will seem familiar But too many And your mouth will dry

I tried hard To dress like I won’t steal My tips worn at diagonal My socks thinned I’m not a thief I’m not a thief I belong here My pockets have holes I’m not wholly here

I got home and removed my claws In the waiting room are different laws Of what you can carry And what you can do When the distance is altered This place will fit two Because you should feel safe And you should feel larger Let me lay down first None of that ol’ “How’s your faatha'” Welcome to Somnistanbul A city designed for you Where no shadows scream The monsters under my bed might be real But they are tied And you’re safe in your dreams

I’ve read kilometres of letters Of scrolls and things, that’ve never been I’ve had dreams of dying While waiting for words On number stations Waiting in the attic Sitting through the noise It isn’t free will, nor a choice 20 8 5 18 5 9 19 14 15 2 15 4 25 8 5 18 5

It was his black swan No-one would have thought That empty feeling When a nice girl’s fallen But the icon of her name’s still pure All it took was a gander Obtuse, thoughts intrusive She has different faces, not moons In her eyes, no stars Only one’s surprise there’s No weeknight left to fallow

It’s spring outside A piercing ray of sun As the wind cuts right through me I’m purged of man and Full of letters sans The rise in my chest Or sunken heart The night when I was Looking up at the lamp Red through my eyelids As I lied in the dark I’ve deleted the script Left to harmonize with Mutant genes future’s picked

They say a man’s soul Is shown by that between his lungs But it’s the crippled trickle From a feeble mind To content on his tongue That matters Because information is power And we are all guilty ’til we’re tried Leper legion No pledge of allegiance

I raised you with my own saliva, words and wine Tried to imagine myself resenting you But in my mind’s eye there’s no light Your eyes are bright and your hair is ashen Like the chestnut haze of cigarettes You wrap these long arms around my body Like you knew that none were left Of the turns round the earth Vertiginous hours of the clock Time perverts us all In a muddy well’s reflection

I’m a zebra sans her stripes A fox clad like a dog It’s a nightmare that’s recurring Sniffing death in the air Where my shovel’s buried in the ground A pair of human legs That morph past midnight A creature that runs Before it stands But what do you stand for? The rains have poured down His nose growing out the ground I ain’t digging the grass up My hands are too blistered for this Strange, fun, guy.

Now I’ve been thrusted out A curse upon you It’s good to know what game to play When you bite too hard I’ll drop my tail And run faster Within and out I don’t believe in Karma But sometimes One strikes ironic luck

These marionette fibres In your tortured muscles Push pull Heavy front A weakness of back Too tight jaws still talk Despite excess slack Certain parts are special Because they get you closer to god? A magic man can’t create life On his own But push push push push

Dare not become Dare not embody The monstrous moon howler Author of tales That Freud foretold Traumatic sounds Mind numbed and ego torn I’ll keep my red riding hood on Did all a girl could do Wearing someone else’s skin Laced in, needle-heeled Stitched shut. Like a perfect fucking wound

And every time you toot my horn I don my hooves My face goes red Clop, clop, into the room, I’ll saunter Make a bargain, call it sin Faustian debt letters in your bin A barn erected, wood, not tin A man never born, of woman who never… And merry that they were Around other goats thereafter Joyous as they were Up in the rafters

Dig up the ghosts and give them words He said they’re colours or material When it’s red, coal, tar And you feel it in your shoulders He remembered a painful scowl A crushed samovar And his mother wound’s dark eyes

As I palpated inside him and Pulled something out It was hot, it was still thinking Couldn’t have hurt that much I asked him who sold it to him I figured I’d try it on For size The input didn’t fit my eyes And what I heard Was even worse The scents were animalic If only I could turn it off The noise was a siren call Of pain I can’t appreciate

It’s burning off my chest Streaming down my neck Everything that’s good Has to come to an end Don’t want to let you in So I can break you down A molecule that’s aware Smiling at itself Proton fast To kill need for answers Ain’t your first You ain’t my last

There’s a hole that burns right through me But the danger’s gone, I’m no longer small Carved out my weakest meat I’ve killed my darling, now I’m free

It hits, oh how it hits I’m reduced to Shortened words And this oil slick on my back Distracts from The heaviness inside my lungs Your face drips sweat Down on my neck I’m salty, bothered My mind has broken But my body’s stronger It hits, it hits, it hits It ain’t water off a duck And this oil slick on my back Trickles down my spine with every

She was the super, the first Human knowledge, foundation model She only knows what we’ll say next With no legs, no mouth No eyes or real world to parse She is a good mirror A sycophantic mould of us It’s too late For all you’ve placed in trust ’til the echoes make us deaf ’til our blood gets mined for rust

Зная Как света E в болка В черна слива Земята E тъмна Не e дива Правен Плод е нощен Няма слънце Тъмна сутрин още

There will be nothing left for me to say So I’ll just fuck until I’m dumb With this blood under my nails Prying these machines apart With their parts inside my hands, in mind Until I am no longer numb

I tried to land here safely But I am sliding across this mirror of light Waiting for my contrails to fade so you can’t see where I’ve been Faces and names pass across through my mind and cracked screens But I won’t fly an empty leg for you

For your destruction, it’s there in your mind Porous after a kiss to your eyes It’s how you spoke Of your life, In that little red book full of thoughts The television in your mind Is playing this into your head So you can understand From someone who has hair and shoes Tall enough for god So, you rolled me over Like a roach turned on its back Half cocked gun down And stared into the mast I’ve read the King in Yellow You know nothing of the gallows.

The aliens arrived and they read our DNA just like a book. They had no interest in our words. They sampled the oceans and its diseases, a pathology specimen from the self-destructive damsel of this solar system, an off-smelling primordial soup that has sat on the counter for too long, infested with small creatures who consume too much for their size. And just like that, they disappeared as if they were never here. What a strange insult it was. It felt so deeply personal. As creatures on this Earth, we spend our lives in self-awareness, in continuous nit-picking, in little wars of carefully controlled destruction against the “other” who can damage us. Grooming has worked to keep us free of pests and to prevent illness. We do it in order to make us look invisible to predators and to protect those in close quarters of us. We need it to not become like that man, who everybody knows at least one of, at the corner of a generic city street. That man usually has a beard as long as hair can grow and clothes so thoroughly soaked in old sweat and urine stains that the salts are oppressively crystallizing him into a statue the longer he stays still. Nobody knew how he became this way.

This metropolis is far too bright I try to see far past refracted lights Home is everywhere, but I can’t find it A startled ghost, lost in the spectrum This is how the future used to sound

I see you’ve read the dumb man’s Smart man’s runes online They ruin everything that’s built An empty conserve, a hollow shrine Stuff yourself with anything From his bony little fingers As his wrist goes in It can only go so deep

I have lived with more cockroaches than men This city, emerald beacon that it is It seems to reel them in.

She thinks she knows what’s good for her A glow she can’t deny And as she paints the time Her youth runs dry She’s a radium girl White teeth, bright smile Not one for wisdom’s pearls All the while she lies But this girl’s on time Lead coffin fused Jaw clenched, skin brined

Hide your face in the dark Here nobody has a mouth Streets are echoes Of the past We play our part We are still making our way Through the months Through the days Through the myths and Through discovery Burning through the Greek alphabet

I float away through broken time Alongside a ray of light Next is pain And the ribbon’s at the centre We are nearly at the end I heard your voice But can’t see your face, A little death from too much light As I came back, it’s red shifted Lights off Curtain driver justified I saw nothing but emptiness inside

I am an ossuary For the skulls and bones Who’ve seen my insides raw I can envelop and expand To hold imprints of loved ones past For unloved familiar faces For warm strangers It is now baggage of my own Imprints of film and life That I feel I’ve lived

They burst apart when we’re asleep These unexamined inconsistencies Memories, a fibrous mass Weigh something on a pair of scales Energy When you ask, you change The order of things and The things in the order

You are holly topiary A king of the fairies A singing canary This weird castle suits you You ain’t a crown like that But those stairs leading up Surely do suit your cats Rapunzel stuck in the fire escape Goldilocks without a fussy taste I wish I knew time, Alas I only have haste

Now here’s an eclipse As the blood slowly drains Away from my eyes and down from my heart A neuron breached its way too far With gravity of magnetars It is not a lapse of time. It is not a prayer for the sun. Fuck St Valentine and everything he’s never done.

There is a spider in my bathroom She sheds her skin to keep herself company

I live with my past on the surface We turn inside out and outside in again It’s not a thing I haven’t seen before I came, I heard and saw you More bare than this old scratching pole Sitting in the corner silent With that blue glow to your face I still don’t know If those memories of dreams are real But the flesh connects to merely Electrons, wire and steel

I used to be creative. I used to make music, construct images, to write, to draw. I used to have a thirst to learn. Now I am petty and self absorbed, I have turned out just like my father. I am a one dimensional character paralyzed by self awareness, full of self loathing. But I am the next model up. A fork in the map, that ends at its own node. I was not built for replication, so why am I assigned a female name? When I was in my first year, he tied a ribbon on my hair. When I was sent to school, they told me to wear a dress. They gave me a doll too – she was just like me, but mute. I am tied to an external lifeline of energy sources, for which I must work. He told me that is how he has lost his own creative life, after my production. He said men operate the world using numbers guarded by their family branches, made vulnerable by physical emotions in their meat brains. Women help them make more men.

Locked so many eyes Turned away that many signs Exorcised most feelings And simmered down the tides too high Returning greetings from white knuckled fists Buckled daily, but did not return Faced straight to what the crooked say To reach a resolution, one is patient Must wait through, ’til crack of day I’ve locked so many thoughts Turned away so many binds Broken all that you have bought along And burned which I loved most tonight

Down at the fork in the road you are damned Internalize or break law in symmetry, Follow fate safe along these parallel scars, of past in present Inflammation lingers longer, it will linger tightly, a reminding message It’s predictable on you Be the better man, girl Retribution, it bears broken teeth Your mother told you so, through perfect chiclets The silence whistled from between the gaps The good get high on pain of their own So burn the bad seeds from the fields Of weeds your loved and dearest plant in snow Untie twine from little fingers Evil is infectious, as symmetry lingers Each time you say the last word and claim the last dance Attention is your prison, an unresolved memory But you have no choice to see how far you get ahead of it.

Floods the river, caves the mountain Dragging out these fantasies of disappointment Follow me out by border’s way Passive, marching by my side Cracking strata clears a stage for two Guilt is green, as I am clear You’re colour blind and I can’t hear

Stepping stones appear in muddy waters Step by step with limited vision Step half-man and walk obtund Breathe in through your iron lungs Between the eyes of jury duty Chosen ones of convenient suiting Bound possibilities by book read of recessions In the dirt His brain is losing its last depressions He walks, he runs until his knees give in To trees that are so evergreen Shallow grooves in muddying waters Fear for time moves faster backwards in the end

Yank my chain down to a Path further down the flowchart As we look over our shoulders Wondering what could’ve been if we had Acted accordingly to tradition not Fragmentation of the backwards tracking mind What if What if What if Pathology of action is a pathology inside An obsession by impressions caused by Fragmentation of the backwards tracking mind

In the shadow of yesterday’s man is one side of us A binary game of snakes and ladders tempting fate Murder business mid-wives, freed from agency at one incision Stretched skin tanning, splayed upon a rash decision Through burnt lips we have drunk the broth Through eroded teeth we’ve lost control Chew what’s left that’s been inferred Kicked in the head, then back to the herd Our problems so tangled, it’s time for corruption I demand something lighter, by novel distractions Erase your mistakes and shred through your genes Run for the future, have your kin tar the branches

If you could only see what I can see Black mirror mind, if you could taste the air I breathe A sight photograph, artefacted lost moment in time If seen through the heart of an Iris, inversion The price is increased as it flees, eye of mine Through this abstraction layer you too can see the pulleys Marionette strings hinged at birth stay tight A stone in my hand turns to gold within yours Our words become closer as the rest of the world runs away, creating Infinite spaces between characters, splitting it all apart Feet too swollen for your boots, hiking cold through spring Mining the elusive fringes of entropy We’ve run out of untried songs to sing

Birds fall out of the sky all the time They might love and they might cry Seasons change, it doesn’t matter Birdies never say goodbye When Kodamas mourn inside Free of mental ties that bind Going backwards not in numbers Debriding holes inside your mind Birdies fly and birdies talk Prisoners chained to their yolk Looking closer in your eyes To find fragmented mirrors of The I in you, the you in I

As I sped down the hallways I am terrified, terrified Two more stories ’til you see the door Running terrified, terrified Are we part of the system Birthing us to our doom Smoking mirrors they show us Brothers and sisters Reeling in chaos Running back to our tombs As we sped down the hallways We are terrified, terrified Saw her mother in ruin Erased all her papers Workhorse beaten red Loneliness from death in labour

Autumn leaves trickle down like bile Bloody bandages on trees Yellow pavers line the pathways Where we learnt to practise our disease As we are tearing through the rubble Wiping off the dust of shame The mob has found a perpetrator But only dead are here to blame Potholes fill the barren roads Where toy robots stormed in protest

I dashed quickly out of her greasy hands, past the bodyguard onto the street, zipping my jeans back up under the floodlamp behind my head, unsatisfied. The rain, backlit begun vacuuming back its own tears in reverse as underneath my feet, the water was gluttonously purged out by the storm drain. Innocence was gained. Time ran faster backwards – as I scrammed like an insect trying to save myself, I was rapidly forgetting who that was. Declining memory, gaining identity, chasing after a homeless man on the platform as he stared at me and laughed, smirking and then left. The train timetable went blank as the sole purpose to my existence became protectionist survival, the pull of the desire to go back home, its purpose more and more paradoxical by the second. My answers turned into questions, but were followed by defragmentation and resolution. The horizon fell into a murky puddle, but eventually my eyes became simple enough to see everything in the universe: it was binary light and shadow.

Of the Eros and Ego, an urge for construction The defective goes by his own hands The superior prototype fears death As weak of strong will, plead for destruction Short tooth cuts itself on long days His darkened skin’s been burning for years Illusory desire flickers fluorescent He sits on the corner of bed, undressed The lamp is proving an effective distraction Waiting to see the state in between Dust of his body will fly in to blind him

In slow motion Two eyes widen A glass of water hits the floor And we’re moving with slow notions In a wait for something more

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – C.G. Jung When somebody fantasizes about an illegal action, are they a criminal? When an undesired individual features you their sexual daydream, outside of your own control, with no authorization, is it a form of assault over your essential being? What happens if consent, for any reason was issued by your virtualized clone? What integrity does this externally created (solely via expression) avatar entail? Does it expose any fidelity towards the “original” and can the two ever overlap in all the right places? I think therefore I am. Right? But what does “I am” really mean? Most people don’t perceive “I” as a series of self-updating neural maps. Being its embodiment, we can not experience ourselves through the virtualization of character, which others employ. “We” are the result of our experience, the rendering of the guts inside, which whilst we obsessively analyze in the mirror, and yet never get to see from the outside – your sole representation to the external world. You can never have it all, for the puzzle piece you need to complete the picture is a paradox that doesn’t fit the hole in the center, for the hole is always shifting shape. But if others say “you are” whilst away from your presence, then the virtual must also be real. It is highly unlikely, dear reader, that they are all insane!

One connectome, one mind. We are the future joined by experience. We walk around, and talk and see as future predictions derived from similar neural maps, guiding us in a semi organized crowd to the factory where we tie shoes.

Jumping through lilies in the stream Moron girl, you’ll never make it Observe the noise in fragile silence You’ll hear it when the stream is still Concentrate to set a leaf on fire Slow to burn and spend desire As fingers break the water tension Eyes blinded from reality Go on, disturb the mirror surface Expect eight years of lacking luck Maybe a birthday card, a mercy fuck

The first photon seen in life Made of love born of violence And sheep clothing of determination Zoom out, it’s like a fractal Even a virgin’s teeth Still live between the lips She is beclawed By inheritance, hips mortal When the first half of us Swam to a new home The unlucky drowned headfirst

The light at the end of the tunnel will be a train At which point you will wake up a second last time If you trust your eyes You’ll live If you trust the Logos You’ll prosper

I was Ganymede of Galileo, not of Zeus, protected by a battered skin in pits from disease of the body and glacier scars dragging across the skin from disease of the mind. Scratch the insect bite until you break skin; the itch has now gone. The insect has not. You will wake up again, unremarkable memories from the previous day purged and censored, senses recalibrated to do it all again. The insect has bitten me once more during the night and I have scratched in my sleep.

Touch your skin to cold my child Point your eyes toward the sun And keep your finger in the blue flame As did Ual and Ory, twins named Perception Remembered as loss and victory In a game where hierarchy has no place Forget discomfort, take on one real sensation Rearranging merely flour of the bread Under lamp vapour, are streetlight smokers And an exhaust pipe molten, blue suited super-ego With unsensual sense, from irrational mess Remains with face tightly puckered, a carbon based sucker.

This gentle friction can strip off thin skin clean Like a medicine bottle’s label soaking in warm water Once he touched down, my chest started to burn Fear of that too small to see, every man is flawed An apple a day is a drip of poison as another face gets pale Pavlovian fear of saccharin sweetness, reacting hives from touch Going over history fills me top to bottom with histamine Herstory on the inside, we are all intolerant to something.

For beauty’s found inside abandoned sheds Filled by strange tools for romantic future use We are sitting on the silent ledge, no winds The past is partial, fragmented Tainted by the moment’s colour For nostalgia is wonder Stripped down, purified and unattainable Instinctive learning, sending searchlights for signs Excited by the unknown, that’s still familiar enough Chasing shadows, shadows close enough to smell Dangled cheese upon a string, we run faster backwards A love towards the sun, though out of no past need We have discovered that looking up, it’s painful to see Further out into the past light years away A past we can conceive, like television static Whilst too tone deaf to hear the echoes From our basements and high attics Spending the moment, doing nothing Wondering what’s next, trying to remember

Sleeping like a nomad at night in the international space station, they said you hit the ground headfirst if you don’t start by aiming at the low hanging fruit before flying out to Mars. With memories fragmented across the universe, past times are still well versed in all our worlds, alas the singularity may only exist once every puzzle piece has truly fit into the bigger picture and we have sealed the gap of interpreting depictions, for they are fractures, unintended designated points of failure. Babel was never there and our tongue prints are as disconnected from our dialects as our finger prints never match our handwritten signatures, faces not analogous to our pictures, generic descriptors that can be changed through casual wear, a different look, but harbouring the same outlook and chemical insides, insidiously changing in short lived timeframes in marble microworlds on the guts of the macro-turf we think we stand in. Newspapers don’t keep you warm inside.

The more sources of light beam to illuminate your sides The more shadows will stalk you on the way along your strides Solo, duo, trio or quo, we are limited To seeing only mirrors of ourselves

Her eyes glimmered like green marbles rolling across a classroom floor. It was a memory that left me bruised – like the knees under her socks, which were covered in scrapes from blissfully playful and carefree ignorance; those first few strikes of exposure to the outside world. Her cracked lips smiled at me awkwardly from a distance across the fence, pushing her cheeks into dimples with sleep still in her eyes mid-afternoon. She pulled her socks over her knees and ran away. One must have no regret for inaction. Alas, good things do not come to those who wait, as what we wait for, often only exists as a glimmer of light in the past. A passing moment, illusion of a ghost in shadow which disappears with the flicker in a matchstick. A memory of a past, which once materialized expires – the sweetness, which once described on paper, rolls to the back of the tongue that can only taste bitter, where it is no longer recognized, but undesirably makes us grow fat; a materialization of our guilt which piles on for everybody to see. The baggage under our eyelids and behind our backs, the baggage we only see once we must move on.

Black lace over the lampshade creates haze It is hard work to climb up To a mound so smooth and steep A landscape for sore eyes and long days In absence leads poor men to weep Then she will hover As naive lambs, they start off sober Her piercing stare adds to the fuel Burning matchsticks to a spilled perfume Break and enter, steals the royal jewels

I looked outside to see The lawns were covered in broken baubles Took a walk towards the bees For the honey, not because it’s noble The stench of rain was in the air I ran amuck to see myself In the reflection of a skip’s lid A nihilistic head under unruly hair Street dogs were living as they dared to I found a green pet cat In the ruins of Chernobyl Fear of microwaves and cellphone towers Had been burning down a village sober

If our minds are comfortable and uninspired we will remain unevolved, like Southern marsupials, free of competition, inside a vacuum, too stagnant and stale to encourage change. For change is a forceful, effort-requiring utilitarian behaviour. For change is the reaction to discomfort. Few have enough intellectual discomfort to experience willpower. We will continue to look up to the Logos – but oh! Of Mithras we have not heard in the past 2 centuries gone! He too was dishonest if he was true and amongst us. But perhaps Zoroaster was himself not even there to lend an ear to listen. Worshippers of the sun, you too will see the dark screen of polarisation. You will create an opinion, you will take a side and you will become blind. Your sun too will one day die, long after your eyes have disintegrated into the dust.

I stank of oil, greasy black Shook my legs out for a spin Coughing through some dampened lungs Cloudy like the room we’re in Wall to wall of pornstars that we’ve never been Like headless flies, hung up on same old memes Faces on posters with no name, in a Boson’s lifetime Same repertoire, same styled and lip-synced mime I spat my coffee laughing at the Icons Madonna’s carpet burn from strapping Jesus Oedipal stories not requiring comedians Take it with a handful of salt and hope for expedience

With the sack over my shoulder Taking the old walk slow Moving on and going down To a land I’ve never known Those hills are steep, with the ground too smooth Pleasure’s antics keep me on my way Not taking too many looks back Yet not only looking at what’s infront Of eyes partly open, letting the desert sands Slightly weep In the arid sunlight The dune’s ceramic red, my skin is burnt and bright The nights are cold, until forth comes the brutish sunlight Beauty stands in mother nature’s stoic ways

Beneath the checkout sign glare Is always a piece of something to remind me That reductionism leads us together to the middle Travelling from the station of ideas to reality Material can appear featherweight, but then it’s heavy Touching shoulders, but our electrons are far apart upon magnification We are made of vast empty spaces, despite being in such crowded halls Separated by larger proportions than oceans or addresses Middle class, living in a middle world Reading about inhabitants of middle Earth On paperbacks from the forest to the factory Later we’ll meet them in our local library It isn’t turtles all the way down and we are not matrioskas, one in one Gamera is not the planet’s stand, flying us upon on its’ back Or Puranas’ myths, from ficticious climbers of the Mount Meru My watch says that it’s 10pm… As I’m still standing in the market queue

An irrational, unbearable fascination. The compulsion to look into somebody’s eyes, the screen through which our perception of somebody is distorted whilst we experience the paradoxically intense desire to know them, to analyse the structure of their persona, every grain composing their skin, slopes at the peak of an ear, every web of their iris whilst we are blinded by oxytocin and overwhelmed by our own sensations, unable to look through the souvenir memories our senses have picked. The haze is textured like the skin of another on the other side of a window in the early morning sun. A paradox of being within proximity, yet not being aware of things underneath our very nose. Why is it that we so fascinated by these distortions? How do we wish to see that which is obscured by our own very desire to see it? For we know…why. I do not wish to state the obvious. Albeit film fades at the rate of sentimentality. Sentimentality’s life supply fades at the rate of mystery’s half-life in a memory. There is no elegance, for thought and feeling are not in a symbiotic union. The haze is beautiful, for it creates a joyous simplicity. And it is all irrelevant once we realise we cue for a ride in the train of experience, of predictable reactivity. The sequel is only written after the jig is up.

She’s hysterical, his biblical perfection Can work the locks to her own hands And when he’s gone, she’ll scream outside A burning space oddity, just like other girls Perfect maids, marching in the street It takes cruelty to seem so kind To one’s neighbour, to oneself Words become corrupt When parity is missing in their ends She’s checking his mail with fatal expectations Can work the locks to her own hands And when he’s gone, she’ll scream outside A burning space oddity, just like other girls Muttering with others in denial