The rain falls
Grey skies meet grey streets
A torrent of tears from above
Kinetic rhythm floods the world
Music to tired ears
Listen well
Poetry
Chapped Lips
They say that if you shrink the world down to the size of an egg,
Then it’s surface is smoother than a brand new snooker ball.
The godly peaks of Everest and Olympus,
The sunken depths of the Mariana Trench,
Or the towering structures of man,
Are all insignificant,
Unnoticeable despite their majesty.
Just as every crater, canyon, and mountain fades beneath scale,
So too do the cracks and gaps in red lips that are chapped.
In the cosmic scale of souls adrift in the universe,
The lines of your lips go unnoticed,
Behind the interlocking of soft sweetness that is your kiss.
But then beyond the infinite is more,
Your lips planets of their own,
Each ripe with wonders to explore.
Those chaps are maps of hidden places,
Pathways through the Goblin King’s Labyrinth,
And journeys across mountains of mist.
They draw me in, gateways to the soul,
Every strip of peeling skin a mark of life lived
Like wrinkles, laugh-lines, and scars.
So call me Columbus setting sail for new lands,
Your body a temple that calls to me.
I’ll let my heart lead as we entwine hands,
And forget the ups and downs of this insignificant world.
For nothing could ever eclipse,
A kiss from your chapped lips.
A Voice Through the Wires.
Do you remember when we used to talk?
Real talk. Talk with sound.
Vocalisations from our heart and through our lips
That crossed the distance between us no matter the miles
So far apart yet bound together
Tethered by coiled wires that we twirled dreamily between our fingers
Each curl and swirl reflecting the giddy loops of our heartbeat
As we laughed and traded secrets
In those quiet moments we could snatch
Like thieves in the night while parents slept.
Even now, I hear your voice,
The memory trudging up a smile,
Or occasionally the ghost of a shiver down my spine.
Your breath in my ear,
Like whispers of what could be.
.
We still talk now, I guess.
Idle words through the ether
That materialise before us on glowing screens
But the electrical warmth is no match for the warmth of your voice.
These words now slide from thumb to glass
Rather than from those soft lips that smiled
Yet, at the tap of a finger we could reconnect,
A light brush of that imitation green receiver
An icon of that plastic crescent I held so tight
Because I couldn’t hold you.
But now, not only distance separates us, but life
Different turns in different roads
As we shed the fragments of our childhood selves
Until little of those lovesick dreamers remained
And our hearts hardened with the years.
.
Still, each pinged message summons your face in my mind
And the photos you post for the world fill my screens.
I see you more, know more than ever before
But somehow it all seems hollow without that static buzz
That once was the backdrop to every word.
Somehow, that old, yellowed phone had stripped us,
Undressing our struggles and hangups until only our souls remained
Meeting somewhere in that tangle of wires
Our private haven where only we existed
Without anything but our truest selves
That the rest of the world could never see.
.
My finger hovers over the call sign now
And you are but a tap away,
But why?
Why would I call you? It isn’t like the old days.
A call is an event, especially out of the blue.
Would your voice still sound the same?
Mine certainly doesn’t. Would I interrupt the new life you live?
The life you built where I’m just one of many sets of words on a screen?
And how would I stay calm without that blessed wire to fidget away anxiety?
.
Maybe we, like those old phones, are a relic of the past.
The coil that bound us has gone wireless, severing us,
Setting us adrift. Setting us free.
Or, perhaps there is still a chance.
I desperately want to hear your voice again,
So I breathe,
And bring my finger down as though to reach through the glass to you,
Searching in hope that your hand is reaching out too,
As the first rings sound.
Will you even answer?
The Lost Watchmaker
God
The Father, the Son and the bastard ghost
The mirage in the sweltered landscape of humanity
As true as anything in a false world
Of false people who wander through life
Like sheep to be flocked
Wish away our problems
Wish away our responsibilities
To dwell in the darkness of our minds
Lit by a flickering bulb of yellow
When the sun is just outside
Who are we to deny the Lord
We the animals grown beyond our bounds
We who are gods and madmen
Warped mirrors of ourselves
As we are warped mirrors of Him
And He is a warped mirror of us
All powerful in a powerless world
All seeing among the blind
All knowing to those bathed in ignorance
Never forever the one and only collective
Love is the sacred soul spread thin among us
Eternal like a legal contract wrought from toilet tissue
The Lord our savior
Our Creator
Our creation
Our damnation
Free will gifted as a catch twenty two
Excuses for abandonment
Blood and flesh is wine and bread
Artificial constructs created to appease our wants
Needs augmented to suit our tastes
A need for answers embodied by our minds
To fill our forms and childlike search
For guidance from the wise infallible parents
We left behind to become who we are
He who burns cities, floods worlds
And requires the blood of children
This thing that we call Father
This king of men who died for our sins
Yet still we suffer and always sin
We hate like we love
With a passion burning from unnatural fires
Yet never do we stop to think
To think is to find thoughts that we fear
And fear is to realise we are but beasts
Beasts in the dressings of a civilised society
Under a civilised God pissing enlightenment
Like the Bible cursed rich who piss money to the poor
God’s chosen children orphaned
As their father is dragged drunk to the insane asylum
Babbling at the walls
Screaming for a mother never had
Lost in a sea of faith that none can know
Because who could know the unknown
The flows of life and death
That bind and separate us in chains of fate
Chains that we as humans make
To live, to die, to procreate
Beneath the eyes of Heaven
The eyes so misted by the time
Between each blink eternity
How could we comprehend it all
The vastness of the universe
And how could the universe possibly feel
Comprehension of an ant in space
An ant, a man, a race
A myth to our own imagination
An idea blowing in the wind
A cry to God and Allah and Buddha
And to Thor and Superman and Santa
And the ghosts who lurk in the peripheral vision
The visions of madness and glory and destiny
The ravings of the lost souls
Desperate for a hand to hold.
The Hymn of Humanity
I walked down the streets and the only thing natural I see is the sky.
Stone walls surround me, tarmac ground supports me
and fake people are everywhere I go.
Am I fake too? I never knew.
What is fake and what is true?
My eyes look up and I spy a cloud, or is it just toxic smoke?
I don’t know. Do I even care? Does anyone?
Is that why God no longer guides us, blocked from us by our own poison fumes?
Is that the deal we made, equivalent exchange?
The world for our comfort is so obviously fair?
I cast my eyes down to avoid more philosophical thought
And try to spy ground between the carpet of waste.
I despise all this scum. What have humans become?
Just when will it end?
A drop hits my hand and my head becomes raised
Another and another and soon the clouds pour.
So fast does it come that it obscures my view
Covers the buildings and cleanses the floor.
Even the heavens cries for the Earth’s pain.
Rain keep a coming and wash the world clean
Because no matter how hard we try it is too late for us
Rewrite the wrong that became our undoing
And sing us a song for the start of our ruin.
Smile
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because it is your job.”
“But I do not feel like smiling.”
“Nobody does. Act. Put on a mask and smile.”
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because that is how you form social interaction.”
“We form bonds through lies? Wrap ourselves in deception to deceive the deceiver?”
“Yes.”
“What about reality? The truth?”
“Truth is what the masses believe. If everyone is fake it becomes reality.”
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because you are having your photo taken.”
“So I must grin like a fool?”
“It is a moment locked in time forever. You must look happy.”
“Like a wax model? Constructed by others? Locked in falseness forever?”
“Wax and photographs last while flesh rots to dirt.”
“I surrender to opinion.”
“Cheese.”
So I must smile. Wear the face that is kept in a jar by the door.
Coat up in my imitation leather jacket and synthetic shirt,
Walk among the dyed hair, bottled tan and altered bodies.
Eat the processed meat and drink the juice untouched by fruit,
See the reality shows that could be from another universe.
I question life and life questions me. I question myself.
You can do anything you want in life if you try.
That is what they say as you are forced through school,
Forced into a job that you hate. Forced to grow old and die.
I use to watch the wildlife from my window as a child.
Rabbits ran through hills, frogs swam through ponds and I smiled.
Then the bulldozers came. Nature was replaced with housing
And left me stranded in a sea of humanity.
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because you are alive.”
“A smile is just muscles that are used to express emotion.”
“Do you not feel happy?”
“I am happy. There is no need to express it every second though.”
“That is what is expected of you.”
“I do not understand.”
“Good. We are making progress.”
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because the world is watching.”
“Watching what?”
“You, me, and everything. Nothing.
“But I am unimportant.”
“That is why you have no right to frown.”
“Smile.”
“Why?”
“Because I have told you to.”
“I am my own man. I will be passive because I am free.”
“You will smile because you are a puppet of society.”
Ode to Education
I realise why we students drink
Bullshit
Lest we remember all that
Is shovelled uselessly into our brain
Idiocy in academia’s robes
Oh, why but we the tortured souls
Who listen to minutia incarnate
Pretentious intentions
Interpretations
Intervention for the love of Dog
Drink to dull the ache
The ache that bullshit must create
To me the curtains are forever blue
The interpretation as clear as the vodka in this glass
Reflection
I stare out into the night-drenched countryside beyond the train window
But there is no world to be seen.
All is gone, like the hopes of youth.
The black pool of glass stares back at me with my own eyes
A ghostly reflection of my own cursed visage
Bathed in the golden light of fluorescent strips from decades past
Like the holy aura of a lauded saint
Effervescent before the sins of man.
Those eyes accuse me of a wasted life
And I accuse them of dreams outside my reach
While darkness mediates between us.
Our silent complaints are lost to the void
Like the lives of men in the choking night.
Then, the birth of a cosmos in a thousand lights
As stars of humanity cast away the other me
Scouring my soul of reflection
And leaving me to face the tides of reality alone.
Reminiscent Futures
Our lives extend out around us as a nexus of interconnecting paths of chance,
Shining golden threads leading off into unseen darkness like jellyfish in the ocean’s abyss.
A million unknown directions and encounters, each a siren singing us to an eventual demise.
Some we see with dread, others we paint as opulent images of bliss,
Grasping for the right threads to cling to as we drag ourselves from present to future,
Over a concurrent chain of neglected days that pass away beneath our calloused notice.
Dreaming of the future like a precious childhood memory,
Even as we twin these thoughts with past nostalgia that never was.
Always we flee blindly from the cliff ledge of death,
Yet are keenly aware of its creeping presence as the void erodes the earth.
Final, inevitable, it follows at our heels and awaits us at our destination,
But we continue to run, some thrashing with life while others are numb,
Chasing a tomorrow that never arrives,
Or a dream that never dies…
Drunk in the Amber Moonlight
I sit here in the amber darkness, pleasantly drunk on fruity toxins that tug on my thoughts like children on their mother’s skirts. Two decades and more have not immunised me of that harsh orange glow that outlines my midnight world.
I stare from my window, my portal from comfort to the outside world. All that I am rests at my back while nature’s shaded husk greets me through the glass. There are no stars, only an indistinct blur of civilisation that consumes the heavens like oil on water. What was once fields, woods and marshes now stand in regimented rows of brick and plastic watched over by tall guardians of fluorescent light. Darkness is but a ghoulish shade of our minds.
Before me, blocking my view and blinding my jaded eyes like God upon Mount Sinai stands one such guardian. It fills my mind and my world with amber imaginings even through closed curtains and eyelids. All that it truly protects is my insomnia. My insanity. This beacon of society surveying my sovereign kingdom, as foreign as the square sun that rises in my dreams, as familiar as the eyes that have looked upon it their every damned day.
Matthew Roys 