Thursday 30 May 2013

Who is the happy soul?

Who is the happy soul
Lost in his own sense of importance
Never knowing that behind his admirer’s eyes
Are blue irises of fear?

Who is the happy soul
longing for an affectionate touch
A kiss that never could be his
A love that never was?

And she’s afraid to close the window on his pleas
and she’s afraid to tell him what she thinks
and she’s afraid to feed the coiled spring lest the
creature bites and opens its true eyes
and shows the other side

And yet she must admit that this other animal
Is really what she wants to see
For unlike the miserable happy soul
This thing is real; as real as real can be

And the time bomb ticks in her hands
And she must decide whether it is her or him
For even the coldest hearted person knows

It’s too late once you’ve pulled the pin…

Wednesday 29 May 2013

I Get None

It is funny
The things we say
The things we hear
The promises spoken
Those that are broken
Kisses stolen
Each to their own lies
Kept inside

All the while
I sit here watching
And I get none

All the while
Time is passing
And I still get none

Somewhat ironic
The games we play
The web we weave
The promises spoken
Those that are broken
Hearts stolen
Each to their own lies
Burning inside

All the while
I sit here watching
And I get none

All the while
Time is passing
And I still get none

                These last few hours
                Watching the hands of the clock
                Sweeping slowly
                Every so slowly
                And endless dance to nowhere
                A race without an end
                A bullet fired from sniper’s rifle
                A highway without a bend

All the while
I sit here watching
And I get none

All the while
Time is passing
And I still get none



Tuesday 28 May 2013

Albatross

I remember being told I don't care
While you turned your back on the small
Things we shared, packed the kids in the car
And drove out of my life
You with the tall stories and the changing colour
In your hair, your tunnel vision
The stacked up life's tragedies, a 
Catalogue of woe, woe, woe...
Poor you.

How I'd listen to these stories, empathetic ear
A million times, all told
Until I could recite them word for word
Only to be told I've got it wrong
That's not how it goes, I don't want your
Sympathy, but feel sorry for me anyway
Because I want to imprison you in these bonds
The handy ex-partner who knew what to say
To cut deeply and how to hide the bruises
So you say

Or the explosions of tears and the rage
The flight of a mug, or a hand
Exploding on a wall in a tea stained SPLAT
Or the red starfish mark across my cheek
When I disagreed with your latest outrageous claim
Or the old faithful wall of icy silence
And the mile wide chasm between sleeping bodies in bed
Or the exile to the lumpy couch in the spare room
Because you said

Then, the barbed tongue when I talked of friends
And the question: "Did you fuck her?"
Green eyes, pouting mouth, hands like claws
More screaming; always screaming
While you talked at length about your sex life
To anyone who listened, making up what didn't happen
Just to get that reaction, that interest
That you pretended not to see in
My eyes, which only ever looked at you

Here I am now, having taken the hit, and
Taking the fall, blameless, not I
Innocent, maybe. But who knows?
My heart has been scarred and broken and frozen
Too frozen; I'm the actual used goods you
Purport yourself to be. But that's okay
No sooner than the ashes of our love have grown
Cold you find solace in another
And fill his head with the same shit about
The ex-partner...


Sunday 26 May 2013

Speak No Evil - 11

11

A spear of golden light woke him some hours later. He blinked in its brilliance, lost for a few seconds before the world closed in around him once more.
            “Half an hour,” an excited voice chirped.
            Jordan peeled open a sleep heavy eye and glared across the carriage at the source of the voice. Melvin stood at the window with his back to him, his gaze taking in the vista that swept past. What he saw impressed him, if the occasional “ooh” and “aah” were sufficient indicators.
“Half an hour,” Melvin repeated without turning to face Jordan. He threw a quick glance at Jordan’s reflection in the window before returning to his vigil of the world outside.
            Half an hour, Jordan thought. Instead of feeling Melvin’s excitement, he instead felt a hard lump gather at his throat. No matter how many times he swallowed, the lump stayed right where it was.
            He peered past Melvin, out at the great city of Ma’arnar. What very little Jordan saw, obscured by the thin apprentice assassin with his designer bum fluff and pig sticker knife, did not fill him with the same sense of wonderment. There was row after row of tenement houses, all clad in the same insipid grey, and all looking as if a heavy sneeze would set them tumbling into ruins. It wasn’t exactly inspiring. The monotony was broken every so often by the sight of huge chimneys poking up into the sky, plumes of black smoke pouring from their gaping mouths. These buildings were also insipid grey, except where they were touched black and brown with soot, giving rise to a despairing sense of melancholy inside Jordan.
            Such was the reality of Ma’arnar, supposedly the crown jewel of the kingdom.
            Jordan rose to his feet slowly. Yet more tenement houses and another monochromatic factory passed before him, but by this time, he’d lost interest in the crown jewel of the realm. Instead, his attention was drawn to Felipe Belsair, sitting on his bunk with some papers held in his gnarled hands.
            “Hope you are well rested, my friend,” he said. “For as our young novice has stated, we are but half an hour from our destination.” He ruffled the papers in his hand, not so much sorting them rather than using the gesture as a dramatic device. “I have here a telegram which arrived early this morning via sympathisers travelling in business class.” Here he dropped a wink, the corner of his mouth curling into a brief smile. The papers, he held out for Jordan, who took them slowly, his gaze darting from their crisp surface to the dark wells of Belsair’s eyes.
            Curiosity ate at him. He wanted to know how, and why and where and when. But to ask would not only be impolitic, but also downright rude. He was trapped in a bubble of blind faith, a situation that was tolerable and yet, cut against years and years of meticulousness and serving the age-old adage of looking after number one. Then, seemingly in direct contradiction, was the other catchphrase: the plan first, the plan last. In this moment of time, with half an hour to the rendezvous point, Jordan was caught between the two, a fact that he didn’t like, but had to accept nonetheless.
            He returned to his bunk, aware that his mouth and throat were suddenly parched and his heart was beginning to race inside his chest. Across from him, Belsair watched, his face giving away nothing. Jordan unfolded the paper, which felt coarse and cheap against the skin of his fingertips, and read the missive.

SIGHTSEEING TOUR TO PROCEED AS SCHEDULED STOP MEET YOUR GUIDE AT PLATFORM D STOP MORNING TEA AND REFRESHMENTS SUPPLIED TOUR MAPS TO BE DISTRIBUTED

ALDERNON

            “Tour guide?” Jordan asked, raising an eyebrow.
            “Coded message,” Belsair explained. “Precautionary, really. We can’t have the wrong set of eyes proofing the message.”
            “Fair enough,” Jordan replied, allowing a grin to touch his lips. He folded the piece of paper and passed it back to Belsair, who spirited it away within the folds of his robe. “So, we can surmise that things are on track?”
            “As well as they can be,” Belsair said. “We won’t know for certain until we reach the safe house.”
            “This Aldernon...?”
            “An old associate. Very trustworthy, very honest. He has as many fingers in as many pies as I do. If not more. Once this mission broke, he was the first to begin countermeasures. Let’s just say that with him watching our backs, we’re in safe hands.”
            Jordan swallowed. In a voice barely above a whisper, he asked, “There will be no more leaks?”
            Belsair shook his head. “As I stated earlier, the leaks have been sealed.” He paused then, and Jordan could see storm clouds chase across the contours of that man’s face. “Should any appear now, with but specks of sand remaining in our hourglass, then the effects will be catastrophic.” A smile creased his face after these words sunk into Jordan’s brain. “If you’re a praying man, then maybe you can ask God for deliverance...”
            “I doubt God has time to answer the prayers of assassins, however noble their cause.”
            Belsair nodded, still grinning. “Am I to assume that you are without faith?”
            “You’d assume correctly. I have seen too much to believe in a God. As for forgiveness... my soul is too tarnished for such as that.”
            They sat in silence for a few seconds after that statement, each lost in their own thoughts. Questions of faith were raised often by those in the practice of assassination. Jordan himself had been proposition frequently about his own faith, or lack thereof. Most times, there was acceptance in personal difference, sometimes, disagreement; whichever the case may be, Jordan never entered into theological debate. He was a killer, after all, not a priest.
            “These are Godless times,” Belsair said. “And faith only heals so much. At the end of the day, people have to help themselves.”
            “That is certainly true,” Jordan replied.
            Belsair smiled again, albeit grimly. Outside, the dingy grey of the industrial zone was slowly giving way to the larger buildings of the inner city. A different kind of shadow now fell over the train as it wound between these high rises. Whereas in the outskirts, it was the heavy palls of smoke that blocked out the light of the sun, here, it was man’s own living quarters, his buildings, poking towards the heavens like row after row of concrete fingers. You couldn’t help but feel humbled standing underneath these buildings, craning your head back to try to see their lofty summits. After a while, though, awe was replaced with something akin to scepticism. Jordan doubted life inside these monoliths was conducive to easy living.
            “Not much longer now,” Belsair commented.
            Almost as if by cue, they felt the engines beginning to wind down. Unlike the moment that brought Belsair into their lives, the process was gradual this time. Before long, they rolled slowly into the railway station itself. It was unlike anything Jordan had seen in his lifetime. There was a multitude of trains at various platforms either disgorging people in countless masses, or being boarded by yet more countless masses. It was a veritable ocean of people, moving in one mindless surging tide.
            “Human cattle,” he observed dryly.
            Belsair grunted in reply. Melvin said nothing, but Jordan noticed the colour draining from his face. The country bumpkin was within heartbeats of venturing out into a real city. And the thought of it was simply too much.
            Jordan smirked, at least inwardly. He, too, felt uncomfortable just witnessing the mass of humanity outside of the relative safety of the carriage window. The idea of walking around out there was indeed frightening, but Jordan couldn’t afford to be anything but pragmatic. He was here for business, and should he make a clean attempt at this, he would be on another locomotive back to Tor.
            All in good time, he mused.
            At length, the locomotive drew level with the platform. There was a slow lurching halt, a final jerk and then, a hiss of steam. Shortly thereafter, Jordan heard a shrill whistle and a stentorian voice exclaiming, “Ma’arnar! Final stop!”
            For several seconds, there was an eerie, total silence. And then, with the casualness of a regular train traveller, Belsair, complete with heavy suitcase, said, “Let’s go.”
            They followed the Master of the Knife in single file towards the exit. What was already slow progress due to the Master’s bulky suitcase was made even more so when they reached the vestibule at the carriage’s end and the doorway that spilled out onto the platform. But even before he hit the crowd gathered within this tiny area and the associated noise, he was hit by a wave of heat from outside; and then, the smell.
            He coughed as the scent assaulted his nostrils, a pungent, swampy smell borne on a stiff and torrid breeze. The smell was foetid, powerful. In the initial exposure, Jordan would have used the word evil to describe it, but after a few minutes exposure, it lost much of its power and intermingled with the tang of tobacco smoke and sweat. In the tiny almost airless space of the vestibule crammed wall to wall with departing passengers, the smell became a potent potion, almost a physical force cramming itself up Jordan’s nose.
            When finally they stepped onto the platform, all three of them were visibly sweating. But their ordeal was far from over. No sooner had they gained the platform that they were jostled by the pedestrian traffic, heading this way and that, every soul in a hurry as if they had to reach their destination seven minutes ago.
            Unperturbed, though, Belsair pushed on, the suitcase thrust before him, splitting apart the jostling crowds like a wedge through wood. In his wake, Jordan and Melvin followed, but not without their fair share of shoulder barges and agitated scowls and gesticulations.
            “Get out of the way!” they were told, and often, by some surly chap or another. Others were less polite, adding expletives to their orders.
            They bore this as best they could, aware of just how out of their depth they were. How they would have managed without the steady hand of Felipe Belsair was anyone’s guess. When eventually they burst free from the throngs at platform D, it was as if they had forced their way out of an impenetrable forest and into a clearing. But any respite they thought they would get was short lived.
            As soon as they were free of the crowd, they were approached swiftly by a group of four men, all of whom wore dark cloaks similar to that which Belsair sported. There was no time for introductions, just a brief shaking of hands between Belsair and the man Jordan assumed would be Aldernon, and then, the group—now numbering seven, that Jordan could see—pushed once more through the throng towards the turnstiles that would take them outside and into the city proper, and from there, towards their destiny.


Is it really you?

You stand on top of your mountain
and you look down on me.
But I see your mask is breaking, your
lies get harder to believe.
Very soon the earth beneath your feet
is rumbling like an earthquake,
and your mountain will come down
and you won’t have the time to scream
before you hit the ground.

You say you’ve fought the bravest lion
with only a sling and stone.
You dragged its skin away with a carving knife
and brought it to your home.
You say there is a spirit buried in your heart. 
The only spirit I see comes from the bottle nestled in
the cradle of your hands.
A shot of instant illusion
to escape what life demands.

And I listen with an open mind
at the stories that you speak.
Life is stranger than fiction, but
at least I practice what I preach.
Your bravado like your mask crumbles,
you try so hard to become someone else
and you fall into the sea.
But Icarus had an excuse; for you
There’s none to see.

So I put up with your actions
and look the other way.
I’ve heard it all a million times
I know what you will say.
Sometimes life is hard, harder than you know.
But you might as well try
before you let it go.
Don’t let the mask you made
take over the rest of your life.
Allow yourself some breathing space and it’ll be all right.
Next time you look into that mirror and
see the person you try to cover up
with the lies and the illusions...
is it really you?


Is it really you?

Saturday 25 May 2013

I saw a girl

I saw a girl, with hair of shining gold
In a summer dress, that girl
She held my soul

I saw a girl, with eyes of darkest blue
Of ocean tides, that girl
She held my soul

What can I do? Where can I go?
I’ve fallen over and over once too many times
To let it show

But I know I have to let it go
And take another step forward

I saw a girl, she sang to me
A siren’s song, that girl
She stole my soul

I saw a girl, with a hand, she beckoned me
To my destruction, that girl
She stole my soul

What can I do? Where can I go?
I’ve hit the ground running before I could even crawl
Doesn’t it show?

But I know, lost in this world, lost in her eyes
Immobile, I cannot take another step forward
Paralysed I can only watch and pray
That tonight
I will be fine

I will be fine


There are no answers

As the house faded into the night,
And I turned the corner onto another street
Couldn't help but wonder why my heart beat so cold
And my dry eyes counted the miles on the odometer
As the next town sign lights up in the headlights
Couldn't help but wonder, "Why?"
Because why is an open ended question, and there are no answers

What do you want from me?

Derailed conversations and awkward silences
And the pretence of art
Knowing glances are not enough, but the ignorance
Of silver screen moments and the cold space, a no man's land
Perched like bookends on an empty shelf
Couldn't help but wonder, "Why?"
Because why is an open ended question, and there are no answers

What do you want from me?

Scores from an unknown orchestra play those treacly ballads
In the barren theatre inside my mind
And the centre line on the highway hypnotises
Pull over at a rest stop under a sky haphazardly painted with tinsel stars
To implore those heavenly pin pricks of my choices
Couldn't help but wonder, "Why?"
Because why is an open ended question, and there are no answers

What do you want from me?

Dawn, gold and red in the eastern fringes
I wonder what dreams you have had tonight
My sleep is without such visions, desolate, blank
No painter works that canvas
It's too much to ponder grief in and out of consciousness
So I forego this perpetual need to wonder, "Why?"
Because why is a hurtful question and the answer is a twisted knife

I can't help but wonder
What do you want from me?

Friday 24 May 2013

Wiser After the Event

It didn't hurt a bit
Not as much as I expected, anyway
It's behind me now, the past
I'm moving forward, achingly
Never felt as old as I do now, but
Knowing it's for the best
Doesn't make it any easier
Nor do I feel particularly blessed

Wiser after the event, isn't that the truth?
Say you're truly happy now
As I cradle the telephone and blink back the tears
That threaten to bring me down
I'd like to shoulder the burden of blame
Because that's what us nice guys do
But there's two sides to every story, my dear
And neither side is the truth

So this chapter I write off and consign
To being another bitter lesson learned
I dust off my jacket and mask my face
Rationalise these new stripes I've earned
But bitterness is a jagged pill when you know
You've done nothing wrong and
Contemplating ending everything
Belies your belief that you were the strongest one

Monkey Song


Any monkey can, and most monkeys do
The monkey in me is the monkey in you
From the common pot we each draw our ladle
And break common bread on our common table

We come, we go
We sink or we swim
It doesn’t matter to me, to you
Or to Him
Uncaring, your God sits
Does he smile, does he frown?
As we pick at our fleas in this dirty little town

Any monkey can, and most monkeys do
The monkey in me is the monkey in you
From the common pot we each draw our ladle
And bow our head in common prayer and share the common fable

In truth, we lie
We argue, we fight
It won’t bother him at all
Who is wrong or right
Uncaring, He sits and benevolent, waits
Does he think, does he feel?
You can’t see him, yet you say he is real

Any monkey can, and most monkeys do
The monkey in me is the monkey in you
From the common pot we each draw our ladle
And toe the common line as soon as we are able

                Is it too late for the monkey
                To close the book
                Or to read between the lines?
                Is it too late for the monkey
                Stretched out in the sun
                To stop pretending he is blind?

                Monkey see and monkey do
                The monkey that is me is the monkey that is you
                Monkey goes through the motions, one, two and three
                For to be contrary is just blasphemy

Any monkey can and most monkeys do
Hold to the monkey line the monkeys tell you to
And just when monkey thinks monkey is above it all
You find out in the end you’re just another fucking animal


Thursday 23 May 2013

in the end...


…and in the end there is nothing left
There is no sadness
no grief
There is no joy
no relief
There is nothing to say
No one to speak to
There is no cold
There is no sun
This was how it all begun
There is no shadow
There is no light
no wrong
no right
There is no Saviour
There is no town
There is no wind to
Tear the curtain down
There is no pain
no discredit
There is no saving us
to our merit

All that is left in the end
is something that we will never comprehend
Just a ball of matter tightly curled onto itself
This ball of matter with thumb in mouth
An embryo ever breathing, living to be free
To open its closed eyes to try to see

In the end there is nothing
There is no hope
There is no sorrow
In the end we simply fade away if we must
Our dreams and illusions become only dust.

LOCAL LeGEND


Jimmy’s a Local Legend
He talks to me every day
Imbibes the cheapest of spirits
He says, “It keeps my demons at bay.”
Sometimes his words are poetic
Mostly, they’re just so profound
He will say such pearls of wisdom
Until they dig him a hole in the ground...

He says, “don’t be like me...
Don’t be like me...
Don’t be like me...

I’ve done nothing...
I’ve done nothing...
I’ve done nothing with my life.”

Jimmy’s a Local Legend
He’s there when the band comes to town
He has always floated the highest
He always came crashing down

He says, “don’t be like me...
Don’t be like me...
Don’t be like me...

I’ve done nothing...
I’ve done nothing...
I’ve done nothing with my life.”

It’s hard to be humble
No one can truly be meek
Pride is the vessel
The soup bowl of the weak
He has seen the bottom of many a bottle
He might have his whisky neat
But his eyes always look into damnation
Local Legend, needle freak

Jimmy’s a Local Legend
You can see him hanging around
His twitching facial expressions
The voices that make no sounds
He talks to the dirt of his memories
The names from his past won’t forget
He’s sure that he’s already died, twice
But Heaven don’t want him just yet...


Wednesday 22 May 2013

Speak No Evil - 10


10

That last night, Jordan slept fitfully. While his tired body clamoured for the peace of slumber, his agitated mind couldn’t surrender the thoughts churning inside. In a seemingly never-ending cycle, his eyelids would grow heavy, would close, and just as the welcoming darkness would begin to assert itself, Jordan would snap awake as a new revelation burst like a firework inside his brain.
            Across the carriage, Melvin had no such issues. Even now, his snoring rose and fell in irregular patterns, interrupted every so often with a rough snort. Beneath him, Felipe Belsair snoozed—Jordan couldn’t entertain the notion that a man such as he would actually sleep. Nonetheless, the great man had stirred not a jot for well over four hours. If any of this last minute reorganisation affected him, it certainly didn’t show on the exterior.
            Jordan, though, found himself in an entirely different position. It was the first time such a scenario had played out in his life, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether to welcome this heightened state of awareness, or to dismiss it as nervous folly. Sure, the breeding ground for this sleeplessness was the change of plans, but that fundamental notion was nothing new to Jordan. Plans are made to be changed, and several previous plans had been altered mid-mission with nary a thought. You did what was needed to guarantee success, even if it meant pulling the pin entirely and walking away. Despite popular misconception, an assassin’s record of achievement was measured in successes, and not all of these include leaving behind a corpse.
            So, what made this mission so unique that Jordan found himself tossing so many disconnected thoughts around inside his mind?
            It wasn’t just the fact that Julian was sovereign. Such a concept was indeed moot; after all, beneath the robes of state and the crown perched atop his flowing locks of blonde, Julian was a man. His blood would flow as red as Jordan’s, and a knife drawn across Julian’s throat would render him dead as surely as the next person. No, Jordan had long ago divested himself of the burden of empathy. A crowned prince Julian might be, but from now until the deed was complete, he was just another man.
            Then what was the source of this insomnia? Anxiety? No. It wasn’t aspects of the mission that stirred in his head. The plan, though not set in concrete, was satisfactory enough to eliminate undue stress. Even if it involved some spontaneity at Ma’arnar, Jordan was confident of his abilities to adapt. After all, your livelihood as a Black Hood depended on your ability to detect trouble and take necessary evasive action...
            ...so, why couldn’t he sleep?
            His mind kept throwing back images from that final half hour of conversation. He recalled the visage of Belsair in the window, a wraith-like figure floating on a mirrored reproduction of their carriage, speaking softly of impending doom. While the topic itself was reason enough to make Jordan’s flesh crawl—especially delivered as it was by Belsair’s master storytelling—there was only now, some hours after the event, the first niggles of... well, doubt.
            The most obvious doubt was the importance of Jordan’s mission. To have so much extraneous weight attached to the mission gave proceedings a surreal feeling that rang warning bells inside Jordan’s head. King Julian’s growing ego was common knowledge to anyone with an ear to the ground; the extent of such growth, though, was somewhat enigmatic, if not outright spurious, at least from the outside looking in. And this, Jordan realised with the sudden giddy sensation of falling from a great height, was the crux of his current misgivings.
            To offer insights from the standpoint of a collective consciousness with such powerful insights that Belsair demonstrated, and to attach to these an empathy far removed from that of a casual bystander led Jordan to believe that Belsair’s proximity to a certain Darellion Kraithé was more than their being passing acquaintances. Even the information itself—much less the personal anecdotes of pulling fish from the Ma’arnar River—reeked of a complicity that made Jordan apprehensive. He didn’t think Belsair was pulling the wool over his eyes. But he was more than one hundred percent certain that the Master of the Knife was holding back more information than that Jordan could surmise with his own meagre bank of knowledge.
            Jordan was therefore a minion, a position that he hadn’t found himself in since his fledgling days as a Black Hood novice. It was like suddenly finding himself in Melvin’s shoes, minus the inexperience, the puerile braggadocio and the wispy curls of bum fluff on his chin. Part of him rallied against this pseudo-demotion, that obdurate part of his nature that fed off the pride of having worked so hard to get so far. Yet, he also conceded that given the dire nature of the mission,
            (your mission has been compromised)
            he couldn’t allow his pride to reduce him to the same level as his protégé. Not if he wanted to come out at the other side with his neck unbroken.
            Wisdom therefore dictated he toe the line. And while there was a certain level of safety in doing so, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat exposed. After all, he was supposed to put his faith and life into the hands of a person who was, until the last two days, a figment of his imagination. Furthermore, his only colleague was a naïve street urchin who would have felt no compulsion at opening his throat just for the sake of doing so. Even now, they were wending their way towards the largest city in the Empire, the ancestral home of the man they sought to assassinate, a place that was doubtless loyal to their patron, if only to maintain their pre-eminence in a status quo that was very quickly reaching a tipping point.
            Each way Jordan chose to view this situation, the odds were long. He was either a lamb being led to the slaughter, or the knifepoint upon which salvation had been vested. The last thing he ever expected to be, though, was a martyr to a cause that, quite frankly, held little personal interest to him. He cared little for the machinations of state, or the liberties of the people. His status outside of society meant that whichever way the supposedly ensuing civil war should fall, he’d come out smelling like roses, unscathed and still capable of garnering meaningful employment. Yet, in less than twenty-four hours, Felipe Belsair had unloaded a raft of concerns that gave the potential knife thrust far more value than Jordan wanted.
            He closed his eyes briefly, and the carriage, clothed in shadows, disappeared from view. His world then was blackness filled with the steady chug of the locomotive far out the front of the train and the various creaks and groans of the carriage. Somewhere over this he detected the regular pulse of his heart and the oceanic rise and fall of his breathing. In his mind, the perfect darkness behind closed eyelids became to refocus. He saw colours, an imagined vista of Ma’arnar, seeing as he had never before in his life ventured this far east.
            He envisaged narrow cobbled streets and the bustle of multitudes of people. There was a smell, too; an over ripe smell that could have been sewage, but was most likely the noxious vapour from the factories. This mixed with the briny odour of the Eastern Sea and the heavy scent of the river’s estuary to form a terrible concoction that would stab knifelike into Jordan’s brain if it were real.
            In this crowded urban sprawl, they walked as a trio: the Master of the Knife taking the lead, with Jordan tailing close behind and Melvin, somewhat the gawking tourist, lagging several paces at the rear. They moved briskly, as was wont in such a place as this, pushing through throngs and jostling as much as they were jostled. Jordan knew that they were heading for the main Palace, but also knew, in this dreamscape, that they would never reach their destination.
            Instead, they were destined to walk through endless streets clogged with a surging tide of humanity. All the while, Melvin would gape and gawk, and after sufficiently taking the fill of his wonder, scramble after Belsair and Jordan to catch up with them. It was during one of these escapades that Belsair suddenly stopped, turning his hoary body around in much the same manner as he had when first coming into Jordan’s life, fixing him to the spot with those eyes of slate. For several seconds, the whole world was as quiet as a graveyard; Belsair was moving his lips around words that Jordan couldn’t hear, but as the throngs about him began to move anew, and their sounds washed over him, he realised he didn’t have to hear Belsair’s words. He could understand fully just by lip reading.
            “Deliver him to his destiny,” Belsair was saying.
            Deliver him to his destiny.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

No Fear


You float from dream to dream
No angels wings for you
Playful puppet master behind the scene
No fear for you

No fear for you

Fate, a gilded chalice
In your fingers grasped
A symphony on a storm
A shipwreck... dance

There is nothing you can say
No place to make a change
No doom for you
No doom for you

A scream without a sound
Someone lost but never found
No peace for you
No peace for you

Love, a jaded flower
In your fingers crushed
Time, a crystal glacier
But in your hands, rushed

There is nothing you can say
No place to make a change
No doom for you
No doom for you

A scream without a sound
Someone lost but never found
No peace for you
No peace for you

You float from dream to dream
No angels wings for you
Playful puppet master behind the scene
No fear for you

No fear for you

In the end
When the costs are counted
You’re found short

Tarnished halo
When the costs are counted
Your soul is sold

Monday 20 May 2013

Celestial Voyager


"Are we alone in this universe?" I hear many people ask.
"Why; of course," many reply.
But they cast their eyes above and beyond,
Looking, searching, hoping to find
an answer.
An answer to their problems, an answer
to their prejudices.
A bond to dissolve.
"We want to talk."
"We want to communicate."
"We want to open our doors to the universe."
We want rockets, satellites, space stations
aeroplanes on Mars,
We want space colonies, international co-operation
Star Wars... so we say...
There's not a care out here, only our junk,
From thirty years of exploration of the outer worlds
and S.E.T.I.
And even if we do, in some cosmic future,
manage to make contact
With some alien race on another Earth, a race
Who happen to speak English, or Mandarin,
or Greek,
Would we invite them to visit our beautiful world
that lacks ozone
Where our friendly neighbours point with their ICBM fingers,
itchy on the trigger,
Over some wrong caused to them a thousand years ago
Who'd rather kill you than shake your hand,
but proclaim that they come in peace?
Would we open our doors to these creatures, to let
them see our follies and mistakes
Would we let them criticise us? 
Would we let them culture us?
Would they make us their slaves?
What would we say to them, if indeed they understood?
            "Welcome to Earth,
                        we're a superior race,
                        in need of a quick fix, a holocaust,
                        to return us to what we should have stayed."
Primitive.