Stoicism in the face of Caprice
is a skill
that still
evades more than it is exercised.
Long term goals require long term planning
and I'll be damned if anything more than the now exists for me.
(Toxic) mindfulness (a problematic paradigm that leaves me powerless in the face of troubling times) is pushed by gurus and gym bunnies alike.
All reaching for a blissful blank.
I recommend a floatation tank.
Counting down the days and ways that I have missed you.
The moments that we haven't shared.
The times I know that I was scared
but to others it looked like anger.
To others it looked like idiocy,
like flippant avoidance of serious thought.
The objects and experiences I bought
after you bought the farm.
It took years
and it's only now,
drowning in the hourglass
that I realise how much time has passed.
And how much
I have left.
The swoop of this pendulum gives me vertigo.
Up I go!
And down.
And how far down depends on things entirely outwith my control.
Slower in the midsection,
feel those little swings like antipodean inflections;
teasings of an inverted world.
There must be equilibrium.
What we lose on the objects we gain on the experiences
or so they tell me
but the distance between stuck and free
is light years.
And I'm in darkness,
still searching for a light.
It’s heady times we’re living in!
Full pelt, high tilt, heading for oblivion,
watching the numbers on labels go up and
pounds in pockets go down.
See the same all over town;
Three pints and a game of pool is now
One pint nursed over an evening.
Only there ‘cause it’s cheaper than the heating.
Choice between bus fare and eating.
Fancy portmanteaus to hide reality of meaning.
They call it Shrinkflation.
I call it profit-motivated, cronyist complicity in mass starvation.
Theirs is catchier.
Whatever.
Have you eaten jelly babies recently?
When I opened my packet last night,
The fright!
The horror! The drama! The scene!
Half the kids had been kidnapped!
I reached for my phone,
I had to call the police!
But then I remembered - they’d already know.
It’s been happening for decades at least.
We can talk about Freddos, too,
or car parts, or diesel, or booze
but my first glimpse of this dastardly practice
was mightily unsavoury -
you’ll have to forgive me for this.
How do I put this without getting banned?
Do you know what an eight of an ounce is in grams?
It’s 3 and a bit.
An eighth of an ounce once cost twenty quid!
And pound for pound we’re weaker than ever,
Tenuously taking steps while the tensions tighten in our tethers.
More debt, more struggle, less hope,
no matter how you rearrange it.
Recognising failures in the system doesn’t change it.
Standing idly by,
blithely buying into blindfolds
blinged beyond belief
Offering ornamental oblivious relief
from all the
actions and inactions and reactions
and rot.
What’s it all for anyway?
We are sinking in the mire of our own making.
Taking too long to make choices,
fry replaced the song in our voices
long ago. It’s starting to show.
The foundations of civil edifice begin to splinter.
Yet to arrive are the fuel privations in the midst of bitterest Winter.
Still Summer,
still sunshine and clammy.
No bees, no insect bites from midges this year.
Just pollen dusted lashes and cheeks streaked with allergic tears.
Instability of emotion,
plankton massacres in oceans,
death cult levels of devotion
to illogical half baked notions
and the over saturation of fear.
One in 6 adults here are on medicines for depression.
When will we admit there’s nothing wrong with us,
but this path is cobblers
and we’ve broken heels.
It’s time to fix it.
Here’s the deal.
Leave the drama to the actors.
Consider the possibility of favourable factors.
Candles give both warmth and light.
Emulate them. Stop this simulation
of projected self and merely
hold your own.
Solidify you source of ignition,
find truth lies in your intuition.
Be forthright,
Try, try, try, try again.
Offer help to strangers and friends.
We’re going to need it.
Another one gone!
Brothers left without brothers
and mother's with hands so wrung
they become the bell that tolls for grief.
Rare and not so rare
their share of hard won wisdom
is gone.
Vanished. Lost.
And what a loss it is,
The lessons they shared with us
lessen the din of
disharmonious hum into
sympathetic resonance.
This year is brought to you by the word Marvellous.
The more I use it the truer this becomes.
It's funny the way things go, sometimes
it feels the rain will never end.
And yet the brief kisses of sunshine leave ghosts of sensations
you can almost taste.
It's marvellous.
And so it is! Despite the rain,
despite the Teran's rage,
despite the pain of losing another of us,
we're choosing to be just as much of us
and keep our humour high.
The days fly by, unfettered,
ever bettered
by the promises of flowers planted
in the hours nothing was granted
gracefully, but striven after,
relentlessly.
The crown effect guarantees ends don’t quite meet in the folio dome of this cathedral.
Timorous squeaks and piercing pleas out of reach to uncaring ears.
As atheistic as I am, I recognise the prayers of the prey,
the pleasures of the predator.
Withheld warmth brings my uncaressed flesh to shiver.
Croaking, he hops. Eyes sharp, beak sharper; unobscured intelligence.
He’s come for my liver.
Head dips, gore drips and I am reminded of life’s
carbon carousel.
Scream if you wanna go faster.
I had screamed, but what came after was not speed.
What came after was
dilated
time.
I aligned myself with the smallest of beasts.
Ants. Watchmen beetles. Dispassionate and industrious.
Clouding eyes fixated on them; skittering, chittering.
Unmindful of the violence above.
Dry twigs and my bones were indistinguishable
snapping beneath brutal boots.
Roots remodelled cheeks
deep lividity carving the caved contours into violets
blooming in darkness.
Ragged jagged breath and nails, too, tear
for any available oxygen.
Desperation transforming
grunts to glossolalia;
debutante to cooling cadaver.
In the post-orgasmic vacuum, psithurism roared.
I seeped through dank earth
and releasing claim on physicality,
observed from without.
Gold discarded by the falling sun
floats on the crests of waves;
caught on unpopular opinions;
rocking hopeful rafts of dreams.
beams lashed with limited means.
Instability constant,
crows wheel and croak their intentions.
Under the surface, scales flash.
The waves splash, waking desperate instincts.
Instead, the raft disassembles
and this pharaoh is buried
with natural treasure bestowed
by sunshine's dying glow.
New brooms sweep burned bridges into piles of ashen regrets.
Some say this way wipes slates white,
writing “self awareness” in sinuous curve of tear tracks.
Blackened hands, blackened eyes,
scorched skirt rough against barbecued thighs.
Choking on the dust in the deserted river bed of ambition.
Dreaming of the days you played pooh sticks.
Wandering this wasteland
weaponised with witty lines
lifted directly to remind us
April is the cruelest month
as if we didn't understand.
As if the death dates didn't loom each year
bank holiday conjunctions functioning
as klaxons calling forth old traumas.
No chance of resurrection.
And who would want it anyway?
Watch all your loved ones die or decay.
Quickly, slowly, pass the days
in dreadnoughts of anticipation.
The plunder of our collective memories
by the passing of its guardians
marks the changing of the guard,
the evolution of the yardstick of civilisation.
To stall is to suffer.
To stagnate is to suffocate.
For us, to survive has to suffice
for the briefest of blooms still bless us with their beauty
and it is pity I feel for those who don't fill their eyes.
All my friends are sick.
In different ways, of course,
individuality being their unifying constant.
But sick, all the same.
These weirdish days of waits and delays and ever worsening pain and malaise is just what they deem normal.
This dawdling decline into decrepitude is hastened by atmospheric insolence,
thunderheads sulking heavy hunches into agonising lightning strikes.
Limitations shackles dragging back our aspirations into effigies and imitations, bonsai prototypes of dreams.
Making mockery of wellness, these once vital shells dress their despair in decadence and call it art.
Our Kinsugi-ed hearts are stronger for the mending.
And each creation spawned through desperation for distraction gifts the world another opening- beyond which one may escape.
So keep producing wormholes
of connection, of reflection.
Imbibe the time defying expressions
of ancient artists. learn their lessons.
Problems shared are decimated
Perceptions are deceptive and underrated
in their role as shepherd of experience.
Never follow the Judas goat of self pity.
That's a slippy slope into the spiral of shame,
of self neglect, frustration, sorrow and blame.
Instead adopt Marlowe,
“Quod me nutrit me destruit”.
Hedonistically strategic cultural retreat,
driven by necessity of horrors to defeat
Fury’s furnace fuelled, the flames are licking at our feet
until we dance a desperate dance;
the two step tightrope tarantella.
And this corporeal existence passes
out of bounds and interstellar.
Being inclined to the over active mind
makes you vulnerable
in ways unimaginable
to folk who’ve never been waifs or strays.
Every step on the back foot,
drawing predatory thoughts and hungry looks
to scurrying attempts at connection.
This world seems so simple,
to those who find it simple.
The stacked deck favours the dealer.
Beg, borrow, steal
mimic, mask. Never reveal
the hollow homunculus you feel,
or worse! Intensely solipsistic;
the only real person in a sea holographic
and loneliness becomes it's own sad satisfaction.
A “rebellion is better than tears” reaction
that eats at your happiness and interactions
until you're accustomed to numb.
You watch others’ battles won,
disaffected, trying to work out how it's done
or at least avoid pitfalls in the future.
And with time an illusory feature
of other people's lives, who can plan anyway?
Why strive to do more than survive
when that's all you can manage most days?
And that's pushing it.
The path out of the shit is too well disguised
and buried behind the sharks’ smiling lies.
Societal standards seem illogically unwise
and they play the games with loaded dice
and rules they won't explain.
Every minute gain is minimised
by mistaken intentions. Subtle knives
and not so subtle, wasted time
of trauma born. Mistrustful eyes
turn away from the world.
and back to the half life of disconnection.
That way is safer.
This world is simple
to those who find it simple.
By all means, take advantage of your advantages,
but notice the disadvantaged are taken advantage of
by systems they can't get a purchase on,
and people they dared to rely upon.
And every dismissive assumption you hold
in hands that have never been burned by the cold
is a nail on the bed you told
us we made on our own.
So we'd better lie in it.
I'm not buying it.
This dance of the butterflies
is so despised despite it's beauty.
Our average age on day of death is only 12 plus 40.
Disparities so distant instances of juxtaposition jarr intensely out of rhythm and with lyrical precision present suffering as noble when it's not.
It's not.
Applauding us for overcoming obstacles you placed
as if adjudicators in some Ninja Warrior race
feels disingenuous at best.
Gladiators, ready?!
Potential lost is our Roman empire.
No one here dreams of paradise.
This world is simple
to those who find it simple.
Not the ones you label simple.
They're the most complex of all.
And so here we go again,
Pitting flesh swollen with unshed tears.
You'd think after all these years we'd know
The earlier signs, the first parts to show
The strains.
But no.
Our ignorance remains
And where once there was shame
There is pride in the same.
I'm aware in the greater timeline
That this is merely a detour.
That everything anyone has ever fought and died for
Is just footnotes in the fossils.
Can you conceive it to be possible
That all your actions, however ignoble
Don't mean anything?
Not really.
And we take everything so seriously
Losing lifetimes to violent fantasy of justice
But it's just this
bloodied blindfolds and broken bliss
Chasing leverets of honour through
Corn fields riddled with mines
And sometimes I think it's all worth it.
As once razed we could rebuild it perfect
And we'd know that we truly deserve it
Because we had suffered to earn it
It calls to me at night.
The soothing hush is no match,
for the draw of the same pulse and roar.
It mesmerises with its might.
And I might, (I just might)
slip off down the alley,
bed-robed and barefoot,
pick over obstacles,
ghostfaced and quiet
to arrive tea in hand to:
the bench on the harbour.
The distant clang of buoys,
the slaps of seductive slop
against darkened hulls.
The water is black and so is my desire to jump;
to swim, my flukes guttering in the moonlight.
Master Frank lolls, experience bestowed
and impossible to surprise,
but young Sea Pie of Cultra stirs;
once sleeping eyes now peephole wide
at spying Poseidon’s Daughter.
The water calls to pour down delighted spine,
shivers controlled by a peaceful mind.
Sensation of flying freely sublime.
Expansion of perception and deceptive passage of time.
The sea is all loving, all taking, all giving.
I am it and we are we
but duty calls me back to shore.
My tea is cold.
My cigarette: ashes.
My odious feet and unforgivable legs are numb.
Land sick, land locked, land thrown.
Gravity greedily reclaims my blubbersome, goose pimpled flesh
I stumble home; graceless, ungainly, exhausted.
Guiding unwilling, unnatural limbs up stairs of all things!
But, to bed; satiated, salinated, and sanctified.
Suffocated
by the solidity
of the Earth.
I am swallowed by my bitterness
and I swallow it
in this fractal frame of failed relationships.
Cynicism soothes my wounded seat on shelf.
I can’t stand going out.
I’d rather sit here by myself.
I’m past all the politics,
all the pitifully petty pecks of poison.
I’ve destroyed some neural pathways -
traumatic mistakes in my past days -
I’m taking small steps to start to fix them.
Small steps are fine, but small talk is a human affliction.
Fill the air with comforting fiction:
soulless banality hosed down and repeated as wisdom
by those who love to speak but have never learned to listen;
giving advice even they don’t believe in.
It’s deceiving
telling everyone you’re
Fine
all the time. It’s not
Honest.
Holding back - substitution of feelings in place of facts.
Illogical reasoning misleads and distracts.
Choreographed outward expression to avoid exposing inner lack
of belonging.
This wrongling has always felt that gap.
When I started reading Phillip K Dick
I felt seen. Something in me clicked and it all made sense.
Let’s just say, for argument’s,
that you understand
how it feels to live life as a grain of sand.
Watch unreactive distracted citizenry
wail and gnash and wring their hands;
apathetically prophetic taking knees
instead of making stands.
Trembling. Waiting for breath.
And when it comes, the hurricane howl ignites the spite that underlies society.
Sparks to the skies, and hang sobriety!
Times of extremes clouding clarity of conviction.
If we’re all victims,
Then surely we’re all, too, perpetrators.
Ears filled with these half-baked statements of journalistic tinnitus
pushing the same old them-and-us.
Propaganda pervasive; twas ever thus.
Psychological soundbites and deep cuts.
And as above, so below.
On a personal level, it’s starting to show.
Look among you! Do you even know
how many are masking? How many know?
For all of the feeling that’s public displayed
how little is shown when the mind’s whirr is stayed?
This adrenaline engine is seemingly binary:
tectonic plate movement rate
or warp times infinity.
Where is the nuance? Where the gradations?
Where are the plateaus and smooth undulations?
Youth speaks in infinites, we speak in finalities.
Counting up daily accounts
of fatalities.
Powerless but to bear witness
to all of it.
You said I could be anything
As long as the words you wrote were the words I'd sing.
You said I could be anyone
If I'd do exactly what you'd want.
They said "You could be a star
If you lose ten pounds and change who you are".
They said "You could have this part.
Come sit on this couch, you know where to start".
Oh my little one, you're prettier
In ribbons, dresses, ruby slippers,
Glossy pout and frilly knickers.
Oh my little one, your innocence
Now bought and sold, preserved pretence
With pain and pills you're recompensed.
You said I shouldn't use my mind;
Smart women aren't hired and the world is unkind.
You said that I shouldn't frown;
Because wrinkles are ugly, ageing's not allowed.
They said someone should shut me down.
So they gave me more pep pills, trapped inside their playground.
They said I was a doped up mess;
NDA silenced, I could not confess.
Not so little one, the time has come
To climb the beanstalk, get the gold,
Write off all of the lies they've sold.
Not so little one, no one's gonna come to rescue you
No woodsman, fairy, crystal shoe.
No no no no no no no no.
You said you'd cut another deal,
But your Faustian pact just does not appeal.
You said I'd never work again,
That I'd stumble through life and end up round the bend.
They said I would change my mind,
Come crawling back, leave my freedom behind.
They said they would write me off,
Slander my name, tell the world I'm insane.
La, la la la la la la la.
You're the little one, you come to me
On bended knee with palms outstretched
As if I'd forgive, as if I'd forget.
You're the little one.
You cast me as your princess,
I became the femme fatale.
I say you shouldn't follow me,
For I am the giant, this beanstalk belongs to me.
I say you couldn't take control
Of my future. I've paid with the years that you stole.
I say mutual exploitation
Cuts both ways. I'm banking those days.
I say "You avaricious fool,
You were just a tool now I make all the rules."
No more little one, you can't climb trees in ruby slippers.
You'll get a slap in the face from the hand that feeds.
You're the little one
I've been where you'll never go;
Behind the curtain, beyond the rainbow.
No more little one, the time has come
To take the less well travelled road
And follow it, wherever it goes.
Listen/Download Little One on BandCamp
https://empireof.bandcamp.com/track/little-one-original
I am so sick of all of it.
The corruption, the lies, the statistics.
I once was able to warn allegorically
but now I state baldly, in fact; categorically
That dystopian nightmare has crossed to our waking.
We're inside a hellscape of our own creation.
Cassandra I, scribed. The Mistress of Mince.
High on a hill girt by oceans of ink.
Foretelling it all in bouquets of verse
presented with the flourish of the under-rehearsed.
For now the flourishes will wait.
I'm overwhelmed and overweight
and spending all my energy
on the one who means the most to me.
Hermitage and happiness go hand in hand.
Watch my tail feather shake as I stick my ostrich head in the ground
It's more important to make memories.
Too late to warn of the future.
Green grow the shoots here in my witch's garden.
Tiny green tendrils that reach to the light.
The fox wears the bells here in my witch's garden;
Atropa bells nod. Keep watch in the night.
My heart is purple as hellebore
that blooms in cold and rain.
My colours warm with pleasure
to thaw your frozen pain.
Tall grow the trees here in my witch's garden.
Higher than headheight, verbena in your eye.
Short grow the shrubs here in my witch's garden.
All thyme is creeping, at least in your eyes.
My heart is purple as hellebore
that blooms in cold and rain.
My colours warm with pleasure
to thaw your frozen pain.
Perfume hangs heavy in my witch's garden;
Lilac that lingers long after the sun.
Firebird foxgloves in my witch's garden,
mend broken hearts but could break them for fun!
My heart is purple as hellebore
that blooms in cold and rain.
My colours warm with pleasure
to thaw your frozen pain.
Pity invaders in my witch's garden;
unwittingly playing with death at each touch.
They nourish the ground here in my witch's garden.
Of blood meal and bone meal there's never enough!
My heart is purple as hellebore
that blooms in cold and rain.
My colours warm with pleasure
to thaw your frozen pain.
Listen to the song here;
https://on.soundcloud.com/JyyjV
I've been waiting so long.
I said, I've been waiting so long.
But like every man or woman that ever has been, you're running late.
You never call, never phone or write.
You just don't show up for our date.
No, no.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was One Good Man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love
That's deeper.
So I met a poet at the Chelsea, he said
"I'll be your Bobby, you can be my Brigitte"
So I lent him my head and he gave me a hand, baby
Get It While You Can. He
Promised me poems. I said, "Catch Me Daddy!
Go read to old ladies instead!"
Yeah yeah.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was
One good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted Was
A love
That's deeper.
I'm just A Woman Left Lonely
Singing in this empty room.
I've gotta Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) to wait
My cigarettes burned out too soon.
So I'm out here walking in the rain
Little Girl Blue with her Ball and Chain.
What Good Can Drinking Do? Oh.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was one good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love, a love a love, a love
That's deeper, yeah.
So I found myself a new man.
He's tall and he's thin.
Not much of a looker.
His countenance is grim.
He's only got one outfit, his smile is wide.
No Mercedes Benz, just a horse to ride.
Under this Half Moon it's finally time
To stop my Misery'n. Oh!
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was one good man.
All I ever wanted, ever wanted
Was a love, that's deeper. Yeah.
So this Summertime
I've found my love
I've got one good man!
And he's the Reaper.
New poem, new song.
Find it online: Empire of - Deeper.
Listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/pjvTD
Download/stream everywhere now.
https://on.soundcloud.com/LR83k
Some of you may have been wondering why I have been quiet recently.
I have been busily working on a new project, which is starting to come to fruition.
Above is a link to the first track of my forthcoming album. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Love always. Xx
I never thought the I would side with an aggressor.
“Never let the means unjustify the ends"
But it's hard to have honour suffocating under pressure
When the enemy of the enemy's temporarily your friend.
12 step. Goose step. Misstep. Fall.
Fatalistic, impotent.
Flailing fetid firmament.
Perpetually panic-perched
In fight or flight frozen.
But the show's on.
So it goes on.
Mask in metaphor, mask in reality.
Putting on the face of a sunny personality.
Scars in metaphor, scars in reality.
No more question of my strength or my sanity.
Crossfire massacre of crazed masculinity;
No Man's Land is my permanent vicinity;
With extra helpings of aggression at Christmas,
“for old times’ sake" it's a sentimental sickness.
Threat-making, bear-baiting sarcastic cowardice.
Rage-churning, bridge-burning emotional terrorist.
Promises vomited into pits of lies, bilious
dismissive, supercilious
and sneering in your bitterness, you're hideous.
My defence is the simplest;
nullifying narcissistic assaults on my peacefulness
by finding you ridiculous.
You're piteous and less than this.
I am the carapace that weathers every storm.
I'm the arrow-struck, 4ft thick, besieged fortress wall.
I am Horatio standing on the bridge.
I'm a nanny-goat protecting her kid.
You are a buzzing gnat,
A toxic stinking sewer r*t,
A remnant of an era that
is over and I won't go back.
I've lost count of the times you've tried to inspire suicide
But my success is measured in the things I have survived
and every time I smile I know I'm breaking free of your control.
My laughter is the fanfare at the rebirth of my soul.
I am stronger now that I'm free.
I am seizing liberty
My choices are my own (inside constraints of living)
My future is unwritten.
It's only just beginning
And my life's my own,
My life's MY OWN.
(In case anyone was wondering, we don't use the word R A T in this country. It brings terrible misfortune.)
I write to still my inside songs.
But words escape, they flutter fecklessly away.
I grit my teeth and bite my tongue.This body of water
My mother always shushed me when I went to her and said
This year, of all it's hardships
This year, of all it's woes.
This year of lessons, battles, losses, hurt and heaviness and sorrow.
