17. Dregs

Seeing as there has been no new work, I shall attempt to post here a few poems I thought not worth damning.

This Is Hardcore

It started with noise - beat of blood, the grain
of electricity, the pleasure of the riff:
my sole belongings. I gathered arcane
details: the arc of sweat, the gloom of pub
backrooms and dusty jewel-cases, sheer
pushed air. The time I've spent with speakers loud
and louder... think, what living I might have
done instead! But no; with an old
confessor's air, I scratched out the skull-map

of an obsessive. Why this mania
for show-and-tell? What? Shock-taxonomy,
unslaked thirst, lust for discord.
Was it a way of unaccepting all
of circumstance's condemnations; or
is it the lure of the blunt instrument's
connection, dead resentment's solace? This,
indeed, is hardcore. The dialectic
knots; life, that Afanc, whispers and then roars.

On a Bookshelf Containing a Copy of Like A Fiery Elephant

You taught, with slashes, life could be feared. Your
memorial, breezeblock in leaves, began
something else: this. The weevil nests and bores
in pulp. The generation never stops.

One (Mud Rain Snow)

The cold ground mutters to itself, the leaves
crackle with winter's impact. Farther than
this glazed hole slows to land-drift pace. One half-
expects the soil to sprout resurgent hands.
The homes become, without an effort, widows.

Foreign Voices

We spoke, just once, though it escapes me what.
I can't say I'm sorry enough for this:
in memory lives what in life cannot.

Control - in anchored homes, loves lasting not
less than a day - is what I'll always miss.
We spoke. Just once. Now it escapes me what.

Madness has owned me once before; it got
inside, never quite budged. It will hiss:
"in memory lives what in life cannot".

I know it's nothing to boast of: a knot
of scars, zero fucks, (I admit) one kiss;
we spoke, just once, though it escapes me what.

Self-pity's never been attractive, not
while real life stays graspable. Well, I missed.
In memory lives what in life cannot.

Redemption never quite gained form. We got
nothing, then. Blood won't cease its raging hiss.
We spoke; I can't remember about what;
in memory lives what in life cannot.