With Reference to Reverence.

Another devil dies a sainted death,

Mothers, lovers, renamed regret,

Worship the words that undermined.

Undercover sins, repentance reminds.

There is no good, no bad, just ugly.

And you're getting uglier weekly.

The earthly memories remain, fainting

And your corpse will be your oil painting.

And all you were will be replaced

by a benevolent close-up of your face.

Revered relief in innocent exits

Then pillaged away 'til life forgets it.

Insistence Upon A Setting.

A condom, calculator,

Paperback, box-set and Lynx bodyspray

All took a trip to a barren landscape

Devoid of colour or contrast,

Lacking in intrigue, despite the implied intricacies.

All the girls wanted to fuck it anyway.

It Was Never Really In Doubt.

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Can

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

You

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Tell

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

What

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

It

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Is

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Yet

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

?

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

I

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Suspect

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Nothing.

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines.

Another Beautiful Dud.

Behind the panes of this great glass demonstrator

Lies the trek between ten foot walls, adorned

with self-designed salad for the eyes-

so deluded and so unhealthy,

Yet so apparently necessary,

On the trek deserving all my scorn.

I pass a pompous welcome sign,

proudly displaying governmental credentials:

"This was taken, and all this granted.

And all you see that's residential

Comments on your existence"

Yet as my feet chase each other between the walls,

All I see in every instance,

Are rows and rows of pretty pictures-

Each the work of a pornographer,

Each with a prostrate philistine lost in adulation.

Just pictures:

Barren countryside,

Coppices, barns, strictures,

Barren women,

With breasts overflowing from the nothingness of how they were justified.

"Another Beautiful Dud."

(c. some irrelevant time)

Oil and thoughtlessness on canvas, surrounded by wood.

If this were art then the medium would be blood.

Further along come flashes of disembodied colour,

"Man, this lad must've suffered."

- Being paid for a botched white wash?

But still a prayer from a philistine,

As he worships at this voiceless shrine...

I pass on, approaching a rabid rush.

As I come to a brooding face,

I'm caught with the stare

of a long-cold monarch.

The colour of his flesh has faded toward blackness.

Immortality, I assume, was the reason,

Yet the atmosphere has committed treason,

The last of his legacy evaporated to the air.

"Vision"

(c. Now) my imagination on mental illness.

With half closed eyes -

The kings face becomes mine -

The colour bleeds from my cheeks -

And the corridor reeks -

Of nothing at all.

Here comes the fall.

My blood pools on the ground,

And seeps up the walls.

The beige and glass become my scarlet surrounds.

Fervently my paw dives into my pocket,

The content mauled,

Before it re-emerges, with incendiary intention,

And I become the mains socket.

From my fingers- come a flame,

From the flame- comes ablaze,

As all my blood just fuels a fire

And the ascendant time to expire,

With my flesh melting into the ground where I belong,

The breasts of the women boil their farewell song,

And the coppice burns as it surely must,

I find my only useful form:

As dust.

Apropos of Nothing.

Apropos of nothing, the heroes get their parade
Whilst the dead are met by the grave.

Ticked off and forgot,

With flecks of tape,

The final fatalities fall to the parting shots,

Marked by the failure to finish, and a failure to escape,

With anything but dignity.

Yet the victors malinger a sense of pride

and a philious rebirth-

From nothing it was magnified,

And precisely nothing is what it's worth.

Without grace,

Without awareness,

Arrogance infests success's resting place.

The moment of greatness has already flickered,

By the moment their face has even snickered.

When the marathon has been run

And the lap of honour has begun:

Every step is disconnected,

Every breath is disconnected,

and no achievement should be respected.

It's all recorded in this broken tape.

Those cheers of the billion,

They drown the sorrows of the million

That are left to the shade

Of a foreign pavilion

With their rusted crusade

And a single consolation: That there still might be time.

And indeed there will be time.

There will be time. There will be time.

But will there be my time?

Haste to haste with attending lords,

After the cups and the gatorade,

After the trophies, the crossed swords,

After every story is dressed as pre-ordained,

Will it be worth the suffering?

When the firework's flicker was pre-ordained?

And despite the fight, will it be worth the struggling

When my ashes are pre-ordained?

There's no choice but to button up the hatches,

And hide the flesh,

In funeral dress,

And march towards a certain demise,

As this triumphant moment and this triumphant memory is certain to die.

We'll endeavour to be better

For no reason whatsoever,

Since exertion is all that's left to give

And all this blood just wants to live

And find a distant cousin's covering it's owner's hands.

My angle may be obtuse

Or may be acute,

But the shape I trace is still an oval.

The shape I trace is still an ellipse...

And the conditions of my boundary will always be fixed...

The champions' triumph is always over.

And the conditions of my boundary were always fixed...

Always falling short.