Seasons

I'm waiting for this broken clock,
It's hands refuse to move.
I try and push them past midnight,
To see only time disproved.

I'm waiting to start drifting north,
My compass points towards a star,
Should it alight, or it ignite,
It seems the same when I'm this far.

I'm waiting in this redundant room,

The lights strewn across the christmas tree,

As the emptiness around is consumed.
By the flashing compliant colours, unpredictably,

I'm waiting to open the present, vacantly
And in preparation I take a guess,
As to what would be inside.
But nothing's waiting under the tree,
Nothing sitting set aside,
Nothing that I can access,
And nothing has been left untried,
There are no knots to be untied,
There are is no failure, and yet no success,
The clock's at zero, I must confess.

Bauble

I carry it so carefully,
So fragile in this crowded procession,
It's smooth spherical surface slipping
Through my grasp, though I still clasp,
I can almost feel it's frailty,
Nearly cracking through my suppression,
But without it lacking any cause,
Just a simple object of obsession,
The virtually utopian orb, another
Ornament, happily smothered
With practically perfect progression,
But the quartz is counterfeit,
The gold in imitation,
The silver, just a simulation,
And all tacked on without support,
Sold to for another cunning celebration,
So when I forget and let go,
And as the silent tears run from all around,
Such an ersatz Earth falls to the ground,
And it shatters without so much as anyone making a sound,
And the lights in my head, all aglow,
What matters is what was inside such a shell,
Thought to be the sounds of the sea from so long ago,
Or the sights on the summits where the sun bid farewell,
Or the touch of the trees which now rest down below,
But there was simply nothing in that shattered mess.
It was wholly overflowing in emptiness.

Stell

I haven't been sleeping.
Outside, it always seems dark.
It's the cumulative curse,
The divide I had been keeping,
Which seems to have cleared,
What's night, and what's day?
It's this detachment that I feared.

My hierarchy lives, or lies in its hearse,
But the service is set to replay.
There's no time to rehearse,
So just bury it halfway.

At any time of midnight,
The alignment seems adverse,
Maybe it's the clouds, but
I can't see the stars. Condemned,
Forever shining but from this distance,
The prejudgment cannot be stemmed,
Everything is similar, nothing so diverse,
I admire them from afar,
But aspire to be obverse,
This almost identical illumination,
Isn't better, but rather, worse,
Due to my objective expectation.

And what of these connections,
Do we determine dislocation?
Maybe everything's just sprawled,
And we think of things in reverse,
But still I'm so enthralled,
By this celestial separation.

Depletion - Clime

I
My guilty feet don't stop walking,
They crush the snow on which they stand,
My guilty mouth cannot start talking,
It's rush of words turn my tongue to sand,
Now a rock-river, it's crystals chalking.

II
I'd feel too ashamed to look down,
The clinquant desert of silver-white,
Soon, in the dry heat they will drown,
The brilliance will fade into spite,
And our heedlessness will redound.

III
When it is here, it is ivory incandescence,
A blank canvas in it's purest essence,
Then tarnished by our fallacy.
The argentate becomes anthracite,
And we see no difference in it.
It devolves into charcoal overnight,
It is the bloody ink we try to overwrite.

Hail

As the strangers walk past me,
I almost have a sudden urge,
To shout and see if they respond,
To the boy whose feet shuffle on the verge.

True, a slight rain was forming,
The hazy drops feebly fall,
The lazy wind fails to correspond,
As if the water has no weight at all.

But they make no difference, those clinging crumbs
Of moisture. Usually they just drip off the coats.
Sometimes, they get caught in your hair,
Or they paste themselves to your face,
But how you brush them off, with such haste,
The beads now unchaste,
The trail of the skies tears retraced,
This endless tautology of comfort's comforting,
Yet needless embrace.

And I wonder, what would it be like
If I stepped out from under, my stoic and solid
Shelter, and for the first time felt
The trickle filter through. Welter
In the climb, but yet a descent, heroic yet squalid,
If only I could misrepresent this brick box
Where I dwelt.
What is this ascent,
In which all that is warmer can't melt?
Stuck in this stone-stable state.
If I were to fly I would be a liar,
The pattern won't shift as I get older,
But as I reach higher,
I only feel colder.

Eventide

This longest night leads me back,
To the shortest day with the most effect,
Still feel your delayed touch on my shoulder,
The lasting light faltering, yet still it can ignite
Your absent smolder.

I can see it setting just beyond the fire,
Lit to illustrate the year which has passed,
The cinders soar out of my sight,
Higher and higher.
They move at last.

Like an burning butterfly which spreads its wings,
Like a sallow skylark which is suffocated as it sings,
Like a barren bell which rusts as it rings,
It is the ashen harper which strikes sorrow on its strings,
My sovereign remnant, my crown of kings.

I wrap it in discrepancy and seal it with desire,
I carefully lay it in its cold coffin box,
This the unopened gift of which I never tire,
My useless hope of the equinox.

Plastic Tree

My hand slips as I try to slip the star
Onto the top of the tree. This year,
I've gone for a different approach.
This year, the tree glows white,
And it won't take traditionalism's reproach.

Interspersed with almost transparent bristles,
This fir immersed in it's own mild light,
No need for extra bells and whistles,
As my hands run through it's hair,
It makes it's own Christmas night,
Although perhaps it's role reversed,
It stands out, well in sight,
Dives headfirst into public dismissal,
And dries itself whilst being submersed,
It's black and white dizzying with delight.

My upside down, wrong way around,
My rotting, misguided, vulgar pine,
Has my undivided attention unbound,
It's provided endless decoration, unconfined.

So when I missed the top,
And as my star fell, down a few degrees,
I let it perch there, perkily askew.
And for once, it seems that I am pleased,
With my not-so-impressive debut.

Inimical

For which reasons I allow myself to ascertain,

I do not know. I allow petty prospects take over again,

My hand wrist-deep in winter snow.

Surely once before is enough to make me maintain,

That it is too much. It is the broken records' refrain,

I'm too cold to feel the frigid touch.

Pretty soon only what's left from the last time will remain,

Though the distinction weary. Perhaps too tired from trying to sustain,

The chill and its burn become bleary.

I should have guessed, but instead confessed what I chose to retain,

My keepsake. My memory of predilection intrinsically abberant and arcane,

My star-crossed snowflake.

Mirage

It came, in an apparition clear,
Or perhaps in a breach of observed trust,
The motive melancholy, so sincere
But still I feel it so unjust.

From far away, it may appear,
Glimmering with wealth and worth robust,
But dare to get closer, the notion austere,
And all you shall see is distorted dust.

And how can such prosperous pretense shed a tear,
When your eyes are drawn to it's waters of lust,
Everything saturates into a veneer,
As the flood within begins to rust.

Defrost

Your thoughts like dancers, sliding across ice,
Unwilling figures leaping towards answers,
It's the shallow fall which led them into hiding,
But the composition's not concise.

They claw their way through dignity,
Their footsteps leaving lacerations,
Scratching through what you could be,
The water-ice bruised in oscillation.

Though still pretty in this softened state,
All that was grazed restores in the thaw,
A chance to remunerate, recreate
But the art is lost on the melting shore.