No Escape

There is no escape...

There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide

There is no comfort in dreams, I've been there, I've tried

It knows where to find me, there's no refuge, no sanctum

As it walks through those locked doors and appears like a phantom

There is no peace in my head...

There is nowhere to run, I cannot take flight

And the worst is to come when I switch off the light

It's a shape-shifting shadow, it's a ghost made of smoke

It's the insanity inside me that chooses to cloak

There is no hope for my soul...

There is nowhere to hide when I look in the mirror

For the effervescence of life is receding and dimmer

So I stand there and stare and sometimes I'm laughing

Because it's impatiently waiting, as I confuse it with chaffing

There is no respite, so I jump from the fire...

As I slumber it's slinking and opening a gate

And hunting my reveries, with a nightmare the bait

But now it's sluggish and floundering in my paralysed head

For on the flip side of sanity I have chosen to tread

There are increasing moments in time away from its clutches

In the numbing embrace of when insanity touches

For there is nowhere to run and there is nowhere to hide

And there is no comfort in dreams, I've been there, I've tried

...there is no escape

The Hurricane Season

Out there somewhere, afar, too close

In a cerebral cortex the vortex grows

A quiescence descends upon the event horizon

The calm of a dawn, of a storm arising

Consanguine to a biblical depiction ascribed in scriptures

The unfolding cataclysm, is transferred within, via TV pictures

I glance outside to leaden skies and a passing squall

Knowing that the internal turmoil is in a temporary stall

I cannot, or will not, find any rhyme or reason..

Regarding the delirium of the hurricane season

My thoughts despair, as if I've been cast adrift..

As the maelstrom drowns me in a siren's tryst...

Wind whipped and rain roiled reporters with climatic science

A remote control, a button pushed and I sink in a sea of silence

Somewhere, out there, the rattling wind's a menacing dirge

In a dark place, the slough of despond, for now's the scourge

Inside, outside, afar, too close

In my cerebral cortex, the vortex grows

It's charcoal black, or shades of grey on greys

As the storm surge rises, I'm lost in waves

Like A Robot

They're the windows to her soul

And they told me everything

But everything was nothing

Only what I knew and need not know

For what she said was not on show

A pause, a thought, a hope reopened

But then I heard the mechanical words that were spoken

...like a robot

Those three intimate words of affection

But her eyes were focused in a different direction

...empty, soulless; like a robot

Then a silent moment, a reflection to share

An embarrassed half smile that I couldn't bear

No qualm was allayed by her gliding touch

Her averted gaze, or her rising blush

And they told me everything

But everything was nothing

For in the windows of her soul the truth will unfold

...in a crystalline stare; like a robot

Beyond This Oasis

All the flora and fauna existed on a water fed basis

But the springs are now dry beyond this oasis

There're no clouds in the sky; no fruit on the trees

As the temperature rises above 60 degrees

I'm the last of my kind, but my spirit's a thread

And I don't have the strength to cover the dead

I've devoured the last fig; I've supped the muddy water

As I wither away in the pitiless slaughter

I slouch on the ground amongst the dust and the stones

A sickly sack of skin over a framework of bones

The last man alive in this hideous heat

Measuring the gap between every heartbeat

I've abandoned the prayer; abandoned all sanctity

This was the last stand; this was the last sanctuary 

Marooned in a desert, there was nowhere to run

So alone I will die under the blistering sun

It bleached as it baked and laid waste with a drought

Seared all the crops, so nothing could sprout

Turned the copious fertile from verdant to foresaken

And destroyed the refined so it couldn't reawaken

The colours all drained leaving desolate plains

Starved of the elixir that poured down as rains

Pastures were poisoned by soil erosion

With evaporating seas and a growing sand ocean

Weeks turned to months and months turned to years

But the time has long passed since I shed the last tears

My breathing is laboured in my shrivelled up chest

Come the final exhale is when I'll be blessed

I'm prone on the ground in the shade of a shelter

Slipping from life as I sink in the swelter

All my dreams were delusions in the fog of the fade

I'm the last man to die, I was the last man afraid

All the life that existed was on a water fed basis

But the well has run dry, within, and beyond this oasis

There're no bugs, no beasts, no birds in the trees

There's nothing left living beyond 60 degrees

Back & Forth

She's rocking in her rocking chair, back & forth

East to west and south to north

When she's there she's there, but when she's gone she's gone

And with those that haunt her she'll be among

From where she was she's now amiss

As she falls into the black depths of the abyss

Deep into the choking smog of her delusional obsession

Free falling through the silver lined clouds of her past life regression

Forwards she rocks and then she's back

Time's meandering and she's losing track

Back & forth, sometimes here, but mostly there

She's somewhere, someplace, in a place elsewhere

All those delirious fantasies they gradually crept

Up to a cliff edge of blind faith, a place from where she leapt

Into a time tunnel of malevolent myths where The World reversed

Into a vortex she tripped; in absurdity she immersed

Backwards, forwards, from side to side

She's slowly slipping without time to bide

She's back & forth, as she sits there mumbling

In her lost eyes her sanity's crumbling

Has she finally found for what she longs?

For she's somewhere else when she speaks in tongues

She frowns, she drools, for where she is cannot appease her

For she crashed and burned with FMS and cryptomnesia

She's rocking in her rocking chair, back & forth

East to west and south to north

When she's there she's there, but when she's gone...

And with those that haunt her, she will belong

This is The End

And what was to be, it all came to pass

From the rivers of brine to the burning grass

The guilty, the indignant, the impassive all hexed

With all of our destinies predicted in texts

So unclasp your hands and with fingers form a steeple

And pray for the deliverance of the unquestioning people

Pray for yourself, the dupe, the mute, another easily led

For it's never too late to embrace the nonsense that's said

This was utopia, but 'twas always coveted by Hades rising

And if you hope for nothing, in the hereafter, then that's not surprising

For there's no hope in salvation, there're no magical tricks

When the clocks are all locked on six, sixty six

But the clocks are still ticking and this isn't our time

It's just a fanciful forewarning and the end of my rhyme

So let's swear our allegiance to the books that are cooked

For our flat Earth is not blighted, it's just being rapaciously fucked

So ignore a madman's tale (and others) but be very wary

For there's an evil eye watching over us from a dragon's eyrie

But, for now, wend your ways and to your flocks attend

For when the pen has run dry, then... this is The End

A Sea of Sand (No Man's Land)

Empty dwellings, along empty streets

And a soulless souk, where no one meets

No ears to hear the echoes from minarets

No eyes to see, a sea of sand repossess

Weatherworn stonework, the dust swirls and rises

The desert wants what it despises

A cloud of angry ochre writhes in the wind

The filtered sun opaque and dimmed

Hills of sand creep up to crumbling walls

Tops sailing over in wind whipped squalls

Piled and sculptured, the transforming dunes

Will never live, but will consume

A lizard watches, atop, on dancing feet

A cold blooded sentinel assuaged by heat

Riding the shifting sands, like a desert pilot

A sure footed surfer bathed in ultraviolet

All the scurrying scorpions and venomous vipers

Will no longer be juxtaposed against those outsiders

For those that were are now bones in the dust

A presence diminished by the grains in a gust

Nothing passes; therefore nothing dwells

As the sands, in time, replace the water in wells

In the desert wilderness there is no oasis

That can withstand the inherently invasive

Sand filled ruins, stand by sand filled streets

And a sand swamped souk, where only ghosts now speak

Maybe there's a haunting call from the empty minarets

As a conquering plume of desert whips and pirouettes

It's all reclaimed, it's now no man's land

Repossessed by a sea of sand

And beneath a cold full moon all is quiet

As nothing stirs, not even a desert pilot

The Profits Vulture

Oh what dumb sheep and blind fools are we

To vote for those who empower the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie

For those suits, in hi-spec ivory towers, with their obscene salaries and bonus culture

Feed like fat cats on society's corpse, with their friend, the profits vulture

Austerity will bite in tenement blocks, far and wide, amidst winter's chill

Behind electronic gates the privileged few will luxuriate at St Georges Hill

Same country, but several mi££ion miles apart, across a yawning chasm

Where, obscenely, money seeks money with inappropriate enthusiasm

Leaden skies loom from the countryside to the concrete crush of the metropolis

Because deaf ears hear naught that's said, from those oppressed, amongst the populace

And so they'll gather and rise, for they've nothing to lose, and they'll kick down doors

A raging throng, who've had enough of platitudes, of a zero hours contract corps

Those suits should abandon their ivory towers, for there is a smell like sulphur

And make amends, all those fat cat feeders and their friend, the profits vulture

If not, one day they'll be found and bound as they play their insidious power games

And dragged through the impoverished streets where reality festers and ends in flames