Autodidact

I went to the bottle; I went to the mirror – the bottle reflected while the mirror just stared.
The bottle remarked on how good I was looking
“What you looking at?” I asked the mirror thus encouraged
“I could ask you the same question” replied the mirror quicksilver fleet.
“Questions, questions, what am I to believe when nobody answers my questions?”
See, that’s the problem with this paradise: you don’t get to ask questions; you’re handed a robe and expected to dance.
So I danced and I danced, danced myself into a coma, a coda, into a trance, now my strings are all twisted and my robe tattered and torn, in attempts to reach beyond the puppeteer’s dream, a sinister silhouette behind silicone screen.
I skipped the joint – out past bouncer Pete joint in hand and landing firmly on my feet, I wobbled off home down Atheist Street.
So here is a list of implements and impediments; poses and parentheses the better to prepare your imminent escape:

• Lock picks constructed from hair and bone (self absorption means you’re never alone) fiddling the tumblers and tapping the phone.
• Hook handed haloes to stitch and unstitch the seams of your palms; lower the presses your fingers to print.
• Tank-top tiaras with high velocity tirades of trailer trash taunts tantalisingly trite.
• Tongue-tied shoes all laced with stitch kisses, like lines from the book of reason and guttural rhyme.
• Thirty nine lashes on the eyelid of dawn, the better to filter the rage and the scorn.
• The last match from a box of arranged marriages, eaten in a desperate attempt to ignite.
• The first noun in the dictionary of dangerous words.
• A bar of soap-opera morality with which to wash out your filthy mouth.
• Black hole sunbeams for the tan of a lifetime; skin peeled back to reveal all your teeth to the slaver; to curve your spine for a carnivorous cadaver.
• Eye teeth glasses to magnify that extra bite of the cherry-picked cheese-cake, pickled in pockets of porcelain pride.
• The eye of the beholder through the keyhole of time – warped and deluded into towing the line.

The mirror obscures with a veil of mist from the spluttering tap tip-topping the sink, and the bottle bemoans itself a dead marine, calling out simper fi ! to its brothers in arms that lurk in the fridge all fickle and foam – a reflection indeed of the road back home.

The photo above is a visual tribute to Leonard Cohen, referencing the cover of his Greatest Hits album.
Sagittarius took this photo of me (looking less elegant than Mr Cohen) in the lobby of the Copthorne Hotel in Wellington, New Zealand last year.

The Cage

The wind it tiptoes frigid ripples across the steaming lake
Carrying your voice familiar echoing urgent in its wake
I raise my head from snow enigma strange to sniff the air
The call of old conflicts to raise my hackles spike my hair

But trust alone in your caring hands cannot begin to wipe away
The ancient paths the packs the plays where yet my heart holds sway
To run and run and bite and bitch my legs to stretch howl free
To see the wild and bitter truth that blood and bone decree

Your voice once more the air does ride my name upon its wave
And hesitation looking back the hunger taste I try to save
And turning back I flee the past and cast the memory loose
And bound on legs that tremble not my collar not my noose

I hound toward your waiting shape all hunched against the cold
And circle wide to come around avoid the leash you hold
But knowledge seeps the waiting meal the warmth of fireside
I submit once more my loyalty to the hand that pets my hide

Jonah

Jonah By Barry Moser

Here in the belly of the whale, where drowned ship’s rigging laments the sea so close behind bone beams and meat cathedral walls; where this oversized heart beats an organ tempo of anger restrained only by the skin of this container.
Here where the marooned maniacs and blue serenaders rot in solitude skeletal serene while the babbling beyond continues oblivious and maelstrom bent.
And you without; what of your gods; your ghouls and your ghosts; those peripheral fears that would steer you and guide you by your fears and your doubts alone; by the seat of your wants? What use have I for steering when my course is decided by the twist of a fin or the flap of a tail - this whale does not care for my existence, nor does it hear my desperate insistence that it is I who am in control of this meat-puppet circus; this carnivorous carnival of chaos.
And what of this process that whittles me down with digestive juices and enzyme gut decay, ‘til I’m nothing more than a collection of pale calcium sticks in scattered array for decadent diviners to ponder the present past future, tense before dust I become?
Come, O whale in time transfigured to drag me down to depths unplundered; where dark algae waters collect Piscean subterranean lakes of pure thought where my own heart will burst with the pressure of a thousand miles of evolution strung out and stranded in double helix digital logic displayed for the world to see – like the innards of this whale; like the entrails of sacrificial lambs for those diviners to decipher.
Who would believe the tales you’ve told; the words all skittered and scattered and scornful of ignorance and wallowing world view?
Who would want your life; your vital signs; your semi-colon comatose corrupt and petty parlour so jealously guarded and painfully polished?
Not me.
Content am I in the belly of this beast; warm and alone with these broken artefacts of childhood dreams; these scattered hearts of childhood artefacts and broken dreams of objects unadorned by sentiment or nostalgic discontent.
Outsider on the inside, littered with dark thoughts for light entertainment the hours to muse and meander the rivers of time to navigate alone.