POEM: 'Automobile'

Crumpled carburettor caresses the curves
Horn rings out a slow tuneless death knell.
Door cuts into thigh
Blood coats metal.
A leg stretches backwards
Unspeakable angle
Covered in purple and crimson remembrance.
Head lolls like a twisted Newton’s Cradle
Drowned in the ocean of a comatose curse.
Body through the windshield
Sliced like so much cheap ham
Bizarre meat sculpture
Glass reflects in eyes, blind, gone.

POEM: 'Protecting The Memory'

Protecting the memory
As one might protect an injury
Turning to the darkness away from the harm.
Those black nights filled with coughs and sighs
Silence only coming when bodies gave up.
Soon replaced by brief sobs
As the corpse’s bed was searched for hidden crumbs.
This was no time for ceremony.
Survival was a grey routine
The ashes of comrades falling through the air like demonic snow.

Loved ones already crossed off the list
And sent to the gas
No water from the showers
No way out
No God.
No God.

POEM: 'The Stare Stares Back'

I’m trying to rescue me from myself
But I have no strategy.
I have incentive to paint
But with words not pictures.
Masterpiece gift tied in a bow
A present, not a restraint.
Holding ‘The Morbids’ at bay today
Though they captivate me so.
Trapping me in their vampiric gaze
And rarely letting go.

I’m beginning to think less now,
It’s getting better.
The feet on the floor, arise,
The victory of leaving the pillow.
Yet I’ve had enough of adventures
Intelligence destroys my brain
And opens my heart to the point of breaking
A shell of emotion unprotected.
Creating, photographing, destroying,
Life’s a collage of bloody remembrance.
Curled into a cellar of self reflection
Pushing the locked door, silently.

History has boiled the egg faster
Sucking joy into a vacuum
And positivity is only reflected in the broken mirror of one’s past endeavours.
More than seven years bad luck for sure
How many more before the shards begin to cut
And the image is forever mutilated?

POEM: 'Tinysmall IV: Xmas'

Was spending a December night
Relaxing and aloof
Swinging my little wooden legs
Whilst sitting on the roof.
Singing my song “I’m Tinysmall,
A little boy, but good.
I’m friendly and I’m happy
And I’m simply made of wood.”
I laughed as I sang my tune
Thinking it really great.
But my shimmering and wiggly dance
Had loosened up my slate.
I slid with speed into the air
And feared that I may die.
But a sleigh arrived and picked me up
We soared into the sky.
“Hello there, Master Tinysmall
I hope that you’re okay.”
A reindeer turned to look at me
Nodded and just said “hey!”.
Santa gave me sticky sweets
I wolfed them hungrily
He disappeared down chimneys
Had no need for a key.
We carried on for hours
Delivering the toys.
Dolls and trains and teddy bears
For all the girls and boys.
Suddenly I wondered
If there was anything for me
I had been a good Tinysmall
I always made the tea.
Before I could ask Santa
I closed my tiny eyes
I woke inside my bedroom
To the smell of warm mince pies.
Had I dreamt the whole shebang?
I imagined my friends mocking
That’s when I looked beside the bed
And saw the giant stocking!
A note said “Thank you Tinysmall”
Attached to a toy piglet.
An orange and a bouncy ball
And of course…a bag of Twiglets!

POEM: 'Wake Up Like A Fish'

Wake up like a fish
Hook in mouth and without eyelids.
Try to raise my arms
Looking down to see they’re missing.
Gasping for breath
Feeling my heart burst with horror.
I’d drop my head
But it’s fastened to a back board
Only allowing the slightest movement
Anything else provokes more pain, if that’s possible.
I hear someone laughing
Their face covered
Body quivering with joy.
I try to kick out
Where are my legs?
Where are my fucking legs?
It seems I’m just a terrored torso
Blood dripping like tears
Life draining slowly from me.
I’d pray
But I have no god
And they’ve cut out my tongue.

POEM: 'Epitaph'

Spin down in a circle
Shades of Dante,
Of pain and suffering.
Emotions pulled to the surface,
White lines become scarlet
No tears,
Only screams. (Silent)
Open your mouth to find your lips sewn together.
No way to explain
No giving or finding an answer.
A whip to a broken back
Salt in the wounds
Get up! Get up!
Pummelled again
Hit the ground hard
Looking through blade-cut eyes.
Handed the knife, blind,
You can’t see the other figure nodding.
Plunge it into your emaciated chest
Retrieve the broken heart
And throw it out.
Throw it out!

POEM: 'Evil H'

They photoshopped evil in your eyes
Disguising the real hate
Or making it seem watered down.

Across the table
She’s like any other girl.
Flirty, funny, intelligent
If you didn’t know what she’d done
You could lose your heart to this one.

Invitation to her flat.
Kiss her softly and stroke her bleach blonde hair.
“Put on some tunes”, she purrs.
I pick up the first cassette I find
I hear nothing but screams,
The cry of the child,
The roars of the ravaged,
The pleas of the expiring.
I leave before she returns with the tea.

Tomorrow
We will get together.
I’ll pull your coat tight to shut out the cold
Then pull the knife tight to shut out the life.
Leave you next to K.B.
A puzzle without a map
Forever in the cold chill of Saddleworth Moor.
They will feel you in the air.

No one photoshopped evil in your eyes
It was born and it died there.