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Underground > Creation >

Daily Poetry

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12:53 / 06.03.08

Before taking your medicine

Before Citalopram Hydrobromide
containing mannitol,
microcrystalline cellulose,
anhydrous colloidal sillica
and magnesium stearate

Before the prayerless communion,
20mg twice a day,
or the sterile confessional of the Doctor’s office,
silently handing me the tissue box
and diagnosis umbrella

Before the pew worn knees and silently mouthed supplications of
‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?’
are moulded into the certainty of
‘Something is wrong with me,’
I want a black bullet to fire into my head

I want to call It Obsidian Ouroboros
this thing inside me
but its black tarn name bubbles
cannibal unpronounceable
all the horrors of prehistory

My lips kiss the ceiling of the drowning room
a gulp of clean air
before slurry rolls in
and the last thoughts that are me are
It's coming
It's coming and I
can't stop it, I can't
stop it

Because before selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors
and the bleeding of humours;
before rough carpenter’s hands cast
demons into swine
and Jacob wrestled an angel till dawn;
before Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl
and long before long ape knuckles clenched
the first jawbone into murder,
there was civil war in Heaven.

Whisky Priestess

17:04 / 06.03.08

Oooh, good stuff.

Except (IMHO) for "Obsidian Ourobouros" and the last line, which feels to me like a let-down and doesn't seem to relate very much to the rest of the piece.

13:05 / 07.03.08

thankee v much.

Re the last line, I guess you can take the boy out of the catholic church but you can't take the catholic church out of the boy : )

A Hu-Li
(prev. Darrell Rivers)

17:01 / 07.03.08

I strapped on my tall fetish shoes
And strutted down the cat walk
To find I fell and broke my leg
A bit like the fiery doom of the Cutty Sark.

Arrogant it may seem
To compare one's light misfortune
And achy breaky leg to the
burnt carcass of a sexy old ship
It felt like that though.

11:59 / 23.03.08

In a dim and idle expanse
of throbbing living matter,
excited fizzes of electricity
throw desperate shadows
in oblique geometries,
thickening in the dank folds,
dancing across the lucid stretch
of fabric encasing the myelin flows.

Quavering spurts of shapes
sailing into the seas
of delusion
and docking in unison, locking their tailored edges

to allow disembarkation of another
batched squidge of juice in portioned precision.

A pathway engraves itself within the flotilla’s realm,
a trafficked ecstasy inscribing communication,
Reflex, perhaps.

Or hard won information, scrambled and rescued,
shattering and reassembling like a troupe rehearsing,
from the top, and again.

And again, until the performance,
reality,
where illusion and mirrors instil devastating despair,
anguish and jubilation in equal part, or perish.

Sentience hails thither, brute living
ugly as hell and irascible.

03:46 / 25.03.08

The land of neither

Where the judgement is wrong
on both accounts of the law.
And the rightwing maggots feast
on the leftist side of things.

This where the redbird sings
and the cruel beer flows like water.
This is where a foreign mother brings
her offspring to the slaughter.

Where the last bit of tolerance is fleeting
about the state of enlightened doubt.
And our rights are being dismantled
before we’ve had the chance to sort it out.

We live in the land of neither
of powerplay and arrogant forces.
Where the cruel beer flows
and the tortured redbird sings.

undecided and divided
not knowing where to go

velvetvandal FTW!
(prev. velvetvandal)

11:39 / 29.03.08

In light diffused by clouds of ice
he stands and holds his shining heart:
a pewter gimcrack, cracker-hatched
and carried, over frost-sharp grass,
to this quarry where he stands in ash,
surrounded by discarded cans.

The shadow of the monument,
black cousin to the Parthenon,
just seems to fall across the sun.

He parts the blades of grass and digs,
one-fingered, quick, an opening.

At sunset, on the first day of the year,
his heart is buried.

velvetvandal FTW!
(prev. velvetvandal)

16:41 / 12.04.08

Bollocks to Jesus

You sit and curl your fists in prayer
in the centre of the mall,
trying hard to keep from looking
at the hipsters, bellybars and thongs;
the toiletry shop that helps ungodly causes;
the music store, the place that sells those games;
the sinners holding out collecting jars
for yellow heathens half a world away.
Their small change will not save them.
You are sure.

You’re watching a boy in a circle of girls,
a shrill little fruit with a pretty boy smile.
You think about the winepress of His wrath,
and how that fag will laugh
on his spirit’s other side come Tribulation.
And you’re certain – St Paul said
that Jesus said so. It’s all there.

It doesn’t matter who you are:
Gandhi, Princess Di and Clarence Darrow are in Hell,
with Buddha and that lying raghead Prophet,
and Hell is this mall only redder,
where demonesses dance in thongs and
pretty boys shake booty for the pitchforks
and the devil laughs
like change against blue plastic
until you just can’t take it
and you barge the fag aside
and you knock down the charity whore,
climb the terracotta tiling
on the shut-down fountain
and start testifying, crying out
that good works cannot save us
and we must embrace your Jesus
only yours

Security are soon in full effect,
and a woman helps the boy up to his feet,
his girlfriends cooing; I’m picking up coins
with the charity girl, when she turns to me,
quietly shaking, and whispers
‘well, bollocks to Jesus, if that’s what he wants.’

12:41 / 20.04.08

night tethers itself to the moon
and recriminations begin.

you, cloud, where was the rain, then? all promise,
and fucking dry as a dingo's, like bleedin' cocoa. sod off then.

you, tree, whisking the air, sounding like rain with
your leaves husking themselves together, fuckin' crickets can do better.

you, daytime, all light and no cigar. 'storms likely', right,
like it might happen. or might not. bloody weatherman, tosser.

like, i went and bought an umbrella 'cause my last one is on a bus
somewhere, going round and round the suburbs. like i care.

ok now cloud, don't snip the cord. ok, i said. oh all right, let it go,

sail away o moon, o moon of no promise - faultless moon. sail into the darkness
inky galactic soup, go. but leave the tides, please.

13:25 / 20.04.08

I actually quite like this. Not so much raging as swearing at the heavens.

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