Get Lit

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


It’s been hot for a whole week and
the anxiety of these endless roads has been
keeping me up like a goddamn
scarecrow

I’m here with all my suitcases,
34 years of age with the pay check and
the cat and the bills and a murderous office,
And now this,
and my surprise at feeling just a
pencil snap away from tears,
When all there should be are high fives and
cheers

I know it’s just ghosts leaving,
Pulling at my hair with their fingers,
Brittle and pill whitened…
Swallowing bitter gulps of leaf tea to
quench dry lips convinced that this was
how it was before the sink….

Well..this is….it…isn’t it

This sickness…
I’m so sick of this,
Should I choose stick or twist?
or just stick and miss…
When will the ‘fear’ card get cut from
the bridge so I can GO AT IT like a
six pound rocket screaming roof tearing
Motherf….yeah ok ok calm down before
you get lit
……Right?

Because right now…
I’m a mouse in hole…
Afraid to go out in the day with no
goal but to avoid the cat fights and
enjoy the rigmoral
Well plate it up,
Pile it up
Dish it up and I’ll eat it up
Relish it even…it’s predictable sup
So blandly filling my cowardly
cup

I just want to live…like you
and escape this view,
This life’s delay
It’s not too much to ask?
Just a day with out this and
the fear kept at bay


Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Requiem

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Summer came today…
It taunted me in my fools tie and
grinned at my thirstiness

I walked in it,
The evening ants winged and
hellbent on neck thrusting a
sweat sharpened sting

The sun gaped like a puncture wound,
Bleeding its death in the skin of the sky as the
numbness of withdrawl sang its requiem

An old friend hollered; liquorice rolling paper so
lip sticky it drew my eyes from the
grey stubble that was absent in
our salad days.

He’d carved his life from a tough loaf and
seemed happy..’least I thought so

And as for me,
I caught a glimpse of my growing paunch in a
smeared window begging sales,
Remembering the skipping ropes and the
slap of gloves and the sweat that used to
draw some real fucking rage

I thought about June romances and
making love in the fields,
Throwing caution to the wind,
Swigging Vodka ’till it was time to
go to work

Bottle glass green crunched underfoot and
the seasons cusp suddenly seemed so perfect for
lighting fires,
To sit porch boozing with the late night stars

I was waking up…
It was leaving me…
What else was there to lose but time?

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Copyright S.McPherson 2012

The Descent

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


The night-time hypnagogia,
Its blue murk spilling from a
bedframe oceanic and
lapping at the carpet

A beach,
An island so far from
anywhere but the
stomach sinking rinse of
barrelling horses in
a riptide

A descent into a
sweat soaked pillow curse
The visions of paper piles,
of starched shirts,
Of grain veneer reflecting the
prints so desperately pinned
in front of me

Heroes voices
Blunt brush strokes
Poetry…

The qwerty concertos
singing for my last crimson
droplets

I lay and listen for the
yelping cubs scratching the
dirt gutters,
Vixen in tow
Living…
Loving…

And in the half in half out,
I wonder why dreams have
to die

Why time sprints away with
my gratefulness…

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Carpentry

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Whose design?
To fell us like trees,
Workshop bound for a
carpenter’s sketch and plan

Prepared and stripped,
Sapling branches clipped
Bark bare; dragged to the yard,
To the stack waiting for
despatch

But whose design?
Who draws the sketching line?
The lathe for some then polished in
chestnut caramels

And the woodman’s estrange
Some shaved,
The planes angle deep
Damaged grains and pencil thin,
Snapped and kindling ready for
the hatchet

So whose design for you and I?
As trees, as lumber to endure
The tools so wielded chisel trunks
And all wood warps,
Despite the lick of stains and
cures

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Filigree

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Oak doors and filigree
Thick with generations of cheap gloss
Chipped tulip red and sticky with thoughts and
the first summer flies
(Amongst other things)

The whitewashed picket fence,
Peeling and wind grazed,
Seemingly sentimental for the plumes of old engines
All clouds and dust and charcoal cheeks

I longed for nothing but inertia…
The rock and roll of time
and space

‘Till the carriage crept to the
platform edge with all the glamour of a
salt licked battleship; its approach full of the
buckled cycles, the fresh blossom blooms,
Last year’s old leaves trapped in an
unswept glasshouse; the lock syrup thick with
that damned paint

Within the swarms and rattling litter,
The brittle sepia newspapers,
The threat of the dipping brush…
Things must change

 
Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Little Webs

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Eight eyes not two and a
room full of possibilities for a
young spider

Bunched like a fist,
Spring coiled,
Ready to balloon a mother’s rough
wool through the afternoon gaps of an
empty house

And the weave,
Eight limbs not four anchoring
gossamer threads with a
nervous scuttle,
The secret shadows safe,
The apricot beams ablaze and
tumbling with dust

From ornament to handle with a
machinists precision,
Suturing left to right,
Up and down,
A room dissected and
ready for the dumb flies
to bob

A lounge webbed purple,
Heavy with silence as he
settled cross-legged; A spider
king impetuous and defences
impregnable in his
fibrous lair

Until lung-like, the swinging door heaved the
room with a pull push smash

A tumble of glass and a mother’s slap on
a bored boy’s ear

Dethroned,
He still hissed with a
mandible rasp,
Red cheeks rolling
with tiny spider
tears

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Bright Eyes

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


I tasted you with a thorn throat,
All ‘what ifs’ and pill powder,
Bitter mouths kissing like
adrenaline teens so
electrically

Others held you aloft like an angel,
Accounting stories love lanced as
you drew poison with the
ease of plush lips on a
yearning nape

I fell for you…

Rushing like damwater spilt from an
exploding highball
Sickening me sometimes,
Dizzy
Sleepless as you touched me,
Old dreams of razors fading like a
bed-rattling God sworn
exorcism

And then our plateau,
Vast and sexless atop the dust bowl,
Waking to kiss you in the cold with
nothing but a pale mask and
numb nerves

So it’s time for you to leave…
Like lovers resigned,
Because my blue eyes are
too bright,
Even for you

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

For Adam Yauch (MCA) 1964- 2012

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Nine years old fools gold around my
neck like a snake in a chokehold wearing
ripped jeans and Pumas, suede clean from
the box and laced with the fattest yellow
laces you EVER seen

Eighty eight mentality, a fathers fragility to
purchase the vinyl so raw and real to me
and your voice spitting rhymes and
basslines; a thug in society’s eyes, your
hip hop in my head, my schools demise,
my friends surprise at my new disguise

And at age fourteen a punk in a scene
I saw you rap at a festival unclean,
Reading nineteen ninety two, i’d never been
before, and when MCA jumped the keyboard, my
jaw just hit the floor and I felt something spark
in the dark of a stomach raw, soul searching for
something more

Punk rock through and through and
yeah hip hop too I guess, but more to me,
not to digress- but I needed that something to
call my own and a big ‘fuck you’ to my
home life’s disgrace, the pain that sat behind my
face and eyes; I needed to rise above
this place

And you were there at the start for me and even now
At thirty four a black jackdaw, not lonesome but
belonging to, the thousands refusing to bow to
life, and MCA it started with you (and Mike D and
Adam H too)

But today you died aged just forty seven, and I
want you to know i’ve STILL got this hate, like a
coal lump, a fist fight, and yeah this is quite trite so
I’ll wrap it up now it’s time alright?

Just remember there’s no sleep ’till Brooklyn okay?
And rest peacefully our hooligan, our
M,C and A

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

R.I.P MCA (picture courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

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The Ghost Of Me (A Clarian Sonnet)

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Maybe the light that bounces off the glass
of damaged lenses, dirty scratched and fast

to send these ghosts to play their games, and pry
in corners deep, my visions scope it lies?

Or did I sense someone stood next to me
I glance, my neck it cracks and twists to see

my room familiar; by window its bed
I lay to stare at stars that swarm my head

Whilst dreams of violence they filled the night
And I saw a small boy so scared take flight

His spirit tiptoed to a leaf blown tile
he pondered alas and sat still a while

Until vanishing there small eyes so blue
Escaped the ghost of me I then once knew

Copyright S.McPherson 2012

Take Me Out Tonight (f.t.w)

Posted by poemsofhateandhope on


Morrissey put it best,
About the light and the music,
And I guess for a while that the
bulb in my chest had dimmed
somewhat

The copper cords connected to
the emails, the numbers, the rags of my
soul rip torn and sold like last
seasons old clothes

Jump-wired to a tide of bills,
screwed straight into the get up/get ready of
the every day meaningless blah
blah blah like a bat to
a melon head

Until I saw you again,
Put you to my lips,
Gasped like a dirt alley alcoholic
splashing back the bitter spirits

The hootch of youth
My jealousy
Your contradictions and my
loving acceptance like liquor
on a dry throat

And even though I’m plugged into a
passionless room, thinking about
nothing but Morrissey’s swagger as he
sang those words,
I can still taste the ghost of you

Maybe they can’t see it,
But this light, a battered old lamp,
Is still furnace bright and
ready for the
shovel

Copyright S.McPherson 2012