Flowers for the Wild Ones

Loss of Innocence 

A new pair of antlers are growing and I'm shedding the velvet. Life at the seam. Only innocent when I dream. I will never be the same, with treacherous pictures burned into my brain. The train smokes down the xylophone. I buried the past in a shallow ditch, with lambs, in the mountainside, with fresh eggs and picked flowers. We meet ourselves time and time again in 1,000 different disguises on the path of life. We seal our fates. Fooled by a baby face. Star-shaped. Frogs slip off the mudguard, candytufts in Venice. Madly in love with what the night was, not necessarily knowing exactly who I am, the person I'm supposed to be, not quite yet at least, so why do I feel hateful and thrown to the side when I think of the things I lost? My purity. My reasons for believing I have a purpose. 

I open the windows to let the fresh air in, to feel the cold alive on my bones, wind in my hair. I put the remnants of your feeble existence in a hole I dug for my flask of feelings, down by the river, in the woods, by the long forgotten bench, the place I go to hide when I feel like I'm suffocating and I can't take much more of reality. Where there is no electricity and I have littoral epiphanies. I peregrinate, through seasmoke, the flush of yesterday's unwanted memories. Widdershins, in a one way street. Swept away with every landslide in an airtight laboratory. Can I be uncorrupted? Can I be uncorrupted by the moonlight serenade? When it happened I was caught off guard. As surprised as you are, reading from the Song of Songs. I have flowers for the wild ones, for Socrates. I can't imagine what he felt drinking the poison of the hemlock. 

Almost forgot my own identity. Knowing. I don't believe in the new gods. Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom. Clip my wings and let me fall, into fires I can't control. When I seen the world through the eyes of a child, every rose petal, futures soaked in the effulgence of life, the liberation of phlogiston, cocooned in your arms, before anything bad happened, before everything fell apart or fell into place and I was sent into seas, everything seemed right. It was the way it was meant to be. So why did you have to take my youth and replace it with tears, moonbeams I will never get back? Still I am madly in love. Madly in love with the idea of existing on this turning sphere, even when I'm afraid of the stories you've told, and all the things I've seen, and my head is under water.

I don't know how to tell you exactly how I feel without returning to my infancy. A former state of being mute. I get shy when I'm around you and the words never come out. It's almost as if there's a mental block which stops me before I can break free from it, or an invisible string holding me back, and I'm worried before I can overcome the wall I've built I won't get the chance, before we fade into time and become history, before I shatter from crystalline grief, never getting to see you again, never getting to hear your voice, when you tell me I'm wrong for what I've said or done, knowing you're somewhere I can't go, where my feet can't rest, beyond the sky. One of these days I will break the barrier of love, I will shoot it down and glide with the breezes, for the hopeless romantics, the soft touches.

Wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart. Wept for the nights when they get dark. Wept for my mind in the gutter. I can't talk to the thimble. For that matter, I can't talk to anyone about anything. I live in my silence, when life begins and I come undone. At midnight I pray for the morning sun. Beams off the reel for holding thread. Butterfly loops. Winsome foibles. I am a dreamcatcher, I shine through. Dreaming of picnics at the palace of Versailles. The ephemera dies with alacrity just like candle lights. I've barely stopped bleeding. The truth has been drilled into my cranium and I am as lonely as the night. Dreaming of kisses. Dreaming of him. With each abrasion I remember. Chasing after dollar signs, on a train to Paris. Going back to innocence I lost. 

Pleasure We Can't Forget      

My crystal visions, tongues of serpents, glitter like stars in my mind and heart. Echoing voices reverberate through the paper-thin walls. I can hear the impassioned crowd at his advent, pleasure we can't forget. Cogent excuses in perfect conversations. At platforms waiting for trains, people come and they go. On streets with tessellated pavements. I seen a man wearing his winter coat with guilt etched on his face, the mess my mother had to clean when I would pretend to be ill just so I didn't have to go to school when I couldn't bare it. Now I am older, looking over my shoulder. I see shifting blues. Marked with an impressive amount of melancholy. We imitate each other. Papery bracts surrounding the bougainvillea. We boil our kettles and pour our coffees. Keeping my mouth shut when I want to say something the most. Whalebones in tinfoil. 

Last night he was in a city full of cats, driving around. I had clouds in my mouth. Thought I would fall into the silk of the quagmire and long lost chagrins haunted me. A miasma of despair formed and punched a contusion on my confidence. When I left in the blue hour, the twilight, and made my way into the starry night, I felt free. Free from the thoughts which have been present for over five years, since I have been the shadow of a hermit, flippant and binging. Only happy when I'm on drugs. Sheets of white snow and bouquets of foxgloves. I put my writings in fragile vessels and I notice accidental notches on the nucleus. At gas stations or in graveyards. In my Kodak gatherings. Holding my burdens and secrets close to my chest. Submerged in the music.

At the top of a rocky inselberg. I see foggy orange mornings. Moans of pleasure bounce off the walls and back to the original flame. I shout but no one hears me. No one cares. No one understands how I feel, or saved the rabbit from the wolf. Buttered knives and splinters of light cut blood lozenges deep into my flesh. The telecommunications came to a stop when the icy air foundered me. My fingertips went numb playing on the piano. Sandstones lept from the novel red sun, orchestrating all vagaries in the weather. I looked for shade, sweating. Serene in gingham. 

Slices of lemon equally cut into the same size on the oven tray fit perfectly. I knew they would, and when I seen my breath leave my body in the mirror of the night I thought, I could be yours, and you could be mine. I imagine us, entwined in love thoughts, in bed sheets. I imagine every little thing. Every little thing I imagine like ripe fruit in my head. We could be those lemons, flawless designs in our minds, cosmic explosions. I put my pen onto the paper and my words come alive. They are fugitives, wirry-cows in acres of pond. I am the steering wheel, creating songs for a Wurlitzer. Sheets of foolscap and A4 have stuck to the hot needle. Glued to the lion's share. A peel of thunder strikes the glade, and the tyre marks are traced back to 2020.

Tarpaulin over the duckboards. Telling ocean stories by the beach. My dirty laundry is on the floor, and I can't stand the paper cuts anymore, like I can't escape my memory. I remember all of it, every moment. Silver floods the waxy tube. Connected to me, and connected to you. I am running out of breath like an hourglass, looking at the lily of the valley. Split the ewes from the flock. Even now, I place letters in envelopes but nothing much happens. I cut tulips from the yard, and when I'm in isolation I think about all the times I never said, I love you. Bosom ornaments have up and disappeared like dead letters and the tusks of elephants, and the beached seagulls of solitude are sleeping like babies somewhere. Injured by a hill, stiff-necked. Secluded and wooded.  

He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not. I go back and forth, aligned with the stars. I polish the organs in the viscera. Been blue for a decade. Hanging onto the thoughts of my relatives. I stand like Hawthornden, like the apocrypha. Holding onto my memories. Holding onto the reeds. Loving them like the Theotokos. This afternoon, in the greenroom, in my birthday suit, I seen a vision of the time to come. Allotropes of ancient figures collected at the bottleneck, in a basket full of odds and ends, always in the red. All the castles I've ever fabricated have melted by now. There is no reason for me to smile and wear my best clothes, I can't get out of the camphor. The azimuth compass is pointing towards the pleasure we can't forget. Lambs reversed into reef knots in bedlam. Listless whirls from the hearth are as sappy as I am with teardrops on my cheeks. Tired of life, but not wanting to let go.

I spend my time sewing wounds shut. It was never the plan but they burst open. All my cognizance has come undone like my shirt after a day of work. On a laborious journey to the zenith. I seen innocence. Took cat naps and emitted milky saps. In the rain. I thread the eyelet. Something must have happened in my mind when I went and kissed the monkshood.

Youth and Decay 

I can't ignore things going to ruin, the self-destruction, the present moment. As hard as I try to remain footed I fail, with my lips sealed. As silent as the urban decay, body decay, all the things we never say, gray fields, empty seas, dead malls. Sheets of melting ice, gone. On the coast of something bigger than me, all the mountains I drew from, all the glimpses into worlds I've never been to, have been reduced to nothing. Reduced to a monsoon in my floral bedroom. In a snowy street or hailing down a taxi, going west back to sanity, far from the madness I was wrapped up in. Haven't had a good night sleep in so long, I've forgotten what it feels like to have no worries.

When I'm weak, behind the overgrown hedges, worried and speculating, the thoughts in my head never rest and let me have a moment to myself. I wager breaths into steel mouths. I turn taps until they're stiff and I'm sure they won't move. I get out the way when there's a storm, and stay out the way of poppycock, propaganda which has been put in the howitzer. I have seen Buchenwald, the beer halls, the lifeless men, the camps, the autobahns, the barracks, the fallen soldiers, when the moon shined on Marienplatz in April. The ichor in the veins. The famine, as expected. I got the message loud and clear. Seen the apparel hanging dead on the racks. Men leaving and never coming back. A coup d'état cemented in Jewish blood. Had dreams of them choking in the gaskammer. At intersections, ventilators were stuffed with bachelors. All quiet on the Western Front.

Footsteps on No Mans Land were deliberate mountebanks. Ribbons of something that could've been, but never happened, sparkling Kristallnacht. Glaciers of the Shoah. Water from the duct, stolen dreams. Pages from the ration book never marked. I heard of the death marches and begging for the Seventh Army. At bay in Kokoszyce, trying to make midwifes laugh. Trying not to disintegrate when I'm an iceberg. I go to bed when I have headaches and can't cope with the pain, and when I see Nazis dressed for murder. Bee sting after bee sting I claw at the stamen, the nostrum I stick by, never leaving the city. I seen the Statue of Liberty like a giant in a sea, and ellipses sparkle like cat eyes in darkness. Falling over the curtains furbelow. I plug away.

High up on a tor, cushioned by rock plants. I tell people my name and talk about plans, and they say they are graven from the woodwork. My pulse races and my heart beats like a song. When the cold winds come in and the fire in my soul is burning and I remember all the dope I've smoked, all the roads I've taken, I wish I didn't remember anything. In a lump of debris, picking up my hiccups and putting them in my pockets. Drifting off to sleep. I think I've been poisoned by berries, boxed in this atelier cutting the rye crop. In an apricot sky wandering off with the cigarette smoke. For a moment I felt like I could lift this cordillera holding me down, and hoped the sun would shine into the crestfallen face of my shoe, but I can't, and my hopes never come true.

Golden antiques sit on the mantelpiece, as quiet as the posters but as loud as the writing on the wall. In a state of emergency. Delicious breves and kaput books save me from ending it all. When there is no moon and all I feel is the gloom and I am mourning I find a nook in the night and I have a feeling the seed capsules will blossom as planned. Water drizzles from the carafe. Everyday I perform my errands and at the eleventh hour I glom consternation, praying for the fishwife. I thought I was in an infirmary. The pollen count is high in here. 

The lambent flame of the candle sways like a ship at sea, and the desire rooted deep in me is no longer a Sleeping Beauty. Writing endless rigmaroles. Lonelier than the moon on a starless night, there's no point in crying over split milk. The milch cows are ready and waiting. All night long I think I am assured what I want will somehow materialise with daisy petals in my eyes. Time is evanescent. 19th century bone ash. Blue moon dust. I would swap the pain for pineapples or a seat at the Pythian games, but I've been turned into the whipping boy. A waxwork in a honeytrap. I empty my bowels and wait for Samhain. Taking my anger out on everyone, even the people I care for. Spending days bathing in the sun. Restless in all directions.   

With the grocery list in my hand, waiting for the dust to settle. I dangle over the dunes of Las Vegas with a million things to do. Fortissimo, fortissimo. Wonderful, wonderful. Bloodshot. The barrier cream washes off. The V1 hits the tugboat and the lancet windows give in. I run through quantum fields, through dream factories. Before I pour in the isinglass, I mop with cigars in the museum, at the place of abandonment. I went for a walk and had a long talk with myself. Seen things I wouldn't see anywhere else. Cast new landscapes. Vacuum roads of loafs. All my thoughts are intertwining into a haze, into a heart, and the heart is beating. Chinks of light get into the shadows but it doesn't matter. Under the veil I am distraught, only the clock knows.

Words with no meanings can't cut me to the quick, can't cut me like Goldsmiths. Day by day I grow. Murmurs echo on public transport. I'm ready to eat, no resources. Every jerk is as loud as a dying scream. Crashing waves in silent towns. When no one is around I croon. Thinking about how my life has been ruined, how I fucking hate it when I feel maimed. There's still so many things I have to heave to the front of my face, on this track of poppy seeds.

I can't breathe with this toxicomania around my neck. Feeding my sweet tooth. I take two pills at a time. Underneath this bravado I've built I am aberrant. Laying with my eyes open like the habiliments on my floor or the thoroughgoing attempts I've made. The moon looms, the lemon char's steam. In a pile of untruths it's axiomatic I tinker things and resort to the extreme. The ocean has left me by the seaboard. In extremis. I devour rich macerated strawberries, catcalls from the lighthouse, the quietism, the nunatak. Through ghost towns, dragging the milk wagon.

Please Wake Me Up

Fresh grass is growing by the river, by the shine of newly polished cars. Sparks are flickering in the recesses of my heart for every dream. When my troubles disappear like soft ice cream the feeling of happiness is irreplaceable, like being on Spring Break with no cares in the world. Summer is in motion. Waves ripple in the water all night long. I'm holding onto the root of the trees forever, reminded of the orange waves, how the river rushes and leaves behind the creek, the way you shine in the moonlight. Intentionally aspirant. Releasing the crumbling earth. The flatline on the cardiograph. Every heart sings a song, incomplete until a heart whispers back. The clouds part for the sunshine when my eyes are closed. The happiness comes and goes. Don't leave me sleeping. I want to live a million lives.