The_Ouroboros_Project_#42_The_Future

{26 June}

You. I want you.

The voice drips like an androgynous, digital landscape; a green maze of pulsing characters, its trees, walls and foliage dripping with explicability; glistening with it.

I know. There is so/too much.

It continues to pulse and it promises to change us all; to wash our import; to expunge us all.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#41_The_Wall

{25 June}

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The wall again and I ask you what are we to do.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#40_The_Words_iv

{24th June}

The words didn't arrive today as the wind caught them and they were cast, upward, up up and away; effortlessly of course. The worst was worse and when they finally fell back to the dusty valley floor they were crossed and cursed, the worst, the worse, the ripple, purple, dappled stallion; the words, they rode back in on a pale locust, giant, dripping muzzle with blazing smile as it set its mind to it and devoured us all.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#39_The_Prophecy

{23rd June}


And in this time there will be much comfort, juxtaposed with much suffering, not of a physical kind.

Mindlessly the age will chatter with knowledge and wisdom; the lies sewn amongst the undergrowth shall sprout wings and spawn anew, mutated into something soon forgotten.

People will love themselves and no value will be placed on communications; on the word, the very power of a word.

Commodity will be as the great flood and they shall drown in its bloody glory.

Facelessness. 
People will slander one another and their ever-loving souls will be weakened and become fueled by a secret hatred of their own inadequacy; secretly, unknowingly they will lust for the truth, as always; the word and the light. 
Peace.

Conversely, they will fruitlessly grab at everything that a sentient demon passes before their eyes; and effortlessly they will hold on as they are battered by the endless tumult.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#38_The_Nani

{22nd June}

Rules

1. Who cares? These words are for me.

2. Perfection? Not required.

3. Just write man.

4. Words. This won’t be easy - But nothing worthwhile is.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#37_The_Overuse_ii

{21st of June}

Black, so black. So deeply black.

It leaves me Wide eyed; 

Nodding and pointing.

Waivering, Wavering though, through the torrid

Blackness and beyond.

Comma.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#37_The_Overuse

{June 20 - My editor, Phil, will like this}

Black.

Wide eyed.

Nodding and pointing.

Waivering, Wavering though.

Blackness.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#36

{Tuesday June 19 - Birthday haiku for Hannah}

love, trickles past us.

washing earthly endeavour

whilst we climb mountains


Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife, Hannah.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#35_The_Situation

{Monday June 18 - The Ouroboros Project # 35 - The Situation}

The Door. Ajar. Close. Repeat.

Gaping.

The Door. Something given, gone.

Replete.

The maw, behind, senseless defeat.

Overcome, forever.

The Door. Open. 

The_Ouroboros_Project_#31_#32_#33_&_#34

{Sun June 17 - #34 - The Night 2}

I moved, sentience, moved, fluidity, moved, rhythm, moved, banality. 
I danced, magnificence, danced, serenity, danced, my prison, danced, finality.
I walked, penitence, walked, calamity, walked, schism, walked, hilarity.
And there she sits at the end of the night, an old lady, diminished in the looming floral armchair.

{Sat June 16 - #33 - The Night}

I sat. She lay flat. 
So much prevarication.

{Fri June 15 - #32 - The Haiku 2}

Stationary sun
Light kicking screaming onward
Towards a dull song

{Thur June 14 - #31 - The Memoir}

A few days ago I bought a latte
It tasted like the fruitcake my mum used to make at Christmas time when I was a child.
I cried because it tasted so wonderful.
It was an expensive latte.
I complain about western excess.
My mother isn't dead, she is alive and well.
I actually hate fruitcake.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#30_The_World

Here’s something to smile about

Heroic is the day as the sun shineth through greying meadows where pixies gaily frolic with bulging pockets, softened tussock giving way underfoot, avalanche down

The pixies and their suits and their ties and their fictitious flip charts; they are heroes of the newly blackened soil

And why are the fat kids crying? Oh, it’s because they don’t have enough presents. They want more. They always want more 

Through their dirt, skinny kids with flies on their faces laugh and smile; their tears are dust, their pockets are their guts

The pixies are with them, pockets bulging, prancing, smiling, suit tails flaring; their hideous smiles are black, dripping and black like the earth

And then butterflies pierce the murk of the sky through through the sun that shineth—Oh and the soft bodies of the skinny children that stand in their way

So they explode

They explode for some time

They explode forever

Red mist, red mist and its dripping red rainbow glowing through the now sunny haze

It floats, serenely, like a slow-motion deluge, down, avalanche, down

The pixies faces are red now—smiles intact—looking skyward, then downward; skyward, then downward; grinning sickly, sweetly, so deeply my stomach empties

Pockets ever bulging, ever bulging, ever bulging, ever bulging - ever bulging. Mine bulge too, of course

The fat kids stand with umbrella dripping red. They're, of course, still crying; they want more presents, they need more presents, they never have enough presents, someone get them some presents. For the love of god, the presents, the presents

Deluge now becomes sea, the rainbow gone, the pixies gone

The red sea rises around our ankles; ever higher, ever higher, smothering the black earth

The_Ouroboros_Project_#29_The_Haiku

{Tuesday June 12)

love is not silent

its rhythm roars like the sun

silencing the rain

The_Ouroboros_Project_#28_The_Past

{from Monday, June 11}

It beats me again again again, 

thudding at my mind, 

the past and its eloquence, 

its flaming desire, 

you cheap… 

words, they fail me.

As does the thud thud thud of regret.

The_Ouroboros_Project_#25_#26_and_#27

{Friday June 8 - #25 The Flagrancy}

Don’t you people speak American?

Did Hitler play golf with the melted-down gold clubs of the masses?

Do you have to breath so loudly?

Why is that baby crying so much?

Did that wave have to come in so strongly?

Why are you in my space?

Why do you have to say such things to him, he’s only young?

How can people be communists?

{Saturday June 9 - #26 The Stereotype}

In they come, marching, like saints into the breach, not quite an infinity but a mass, no less and they sift through my life, this new land, maybe my periphery; saving me from cognitive expenditure with all the substance to fill the greatest canyon; so it must be me that is lacking, shellacking the colours of the immensity, limitless intensity beckoning.

There he goes, the man I’ve seen a million times on this, that and the other-the stupid box. All his friends are here and the colours blur by sending me forward, leaving me face-to-face with:

The ex US marine barks chest out, accent thick, genuine as sin. Him and his Japanese-American wife are lovely and we speak of war and being stationed and back again and then here, forever, and war, and there’s never enough time to complain about how different it is and how ungodly, how heavy, the invisible assault rifle on his back now is.

The cop from the slums of Chicago studies me with cold eyes, like a bitter Chicagoan winter night. Eyes that I’d surmise are usually searching for danger – fulfillment – danger and physically aggressive mandates are enlisted to survive, I mean, serve the way they do. He insinuates his hurt on the rope-soled lost and he feels like he’s in danger, as he’s missing his piece, strapless and hapless without it, I’d say of mind, but I don’t need an invisible pistol whip to the brow and we laugh and the birds fly through the trees, jostling mid-air like lovers. “We are conflict,” he says. “You are my stereotype,” I reply. “I can’t believe that fuckin Canadian asshole,” he rants endlessly, conflict dancing in the blacks of his eyes, candless.

New Yorkers are so New Yorkerian. They exude it. What it is, only the poem can tell. Hopefully the words are liquid enough and lack viscosity. But they’re good folk; worldly, clawing at the edge of it all and not giving a dang, not giving in, stubbornly leering into the future the casm of humanity, limitless again and I envy him and his world. Apparently jostling people on the streets of New York is enough to get a man shot, stabbed, hanged, drawn, and quartered, like a boy I know. Gazuntite. That other guy is Jewish, wow, he sure is. “Where did you go to school?” People ask that?

And then there is the Japanese, barely a stereotype to by found here, as I hadn’t invented them at all. What a lie. They run in a very straight line is all I can say. Tiny steps. Onward. Oh, they also have this downcast eye thing at times. But I’ll be honest, TV didn’t clue me up on this one. The stereotypes I know never did the things I see.

And what about me? I am a stereotype? There is a slot for me, surely. Maybe the friends and buds and quasi-acquainted citizenry above are cramming me in, next to ‘down under doofus’ or ‘antipodean asshole’? Maybe sliding me snuggly next to Steve Irwins corpse, rest him, rest them all.

Stereotypes terrify me, they are the yawn of existence; the laziness of reality; a hole into which we all fall.

{Saturday June 10 - #26 The Future}

Slapped in the face with it again and again until I’m desensitized and numb like the moral compass of a Nazi officer, his finger twitching from the rabid acts of the day.

Meanwhile, dancing dead heroes throb through minute worlds, the static doors of colonies of light leading us, the living into stupefaction. Slapped in the face again. "Here I am."

The world of belonging, the yester-year begs for forgiveness, as it’s all so small in this village now, and everyone is both the nosy neighbour and the arrogant, puffed up town mayor, also everyone plays the martyr but no one can get that last nail in.

And our globe, our megamegalopolis, our endless city of madness and inadequacy and love and malice and apathy and mainly apathty and always apathy even in love and malice and malice unfortunately broods.

Yes, slapped in the face over and over until I’m desensitized and numb like the moral compass of a Nazi officer, his finger twitching from acts of the day. Oh, dear me another holocaust fragment; where’s the future in that?

The_Ouroboros_Project_#25_The_Idea

Stark, yellow folded against a sharp, dark vision, the blue sub-reality of the cube, the crass white room.

And then an idea slides through my mind, like a blade of light through a dank, dusty room.

Reversed now.

Black sliding through the white now, not so black.

Shine your light. If light were dark, that is; if black were day;

dusty black, slick and murder the movement.

The Ouroboros Project #24 - The Wind

Let the wind fall from the sails.

Let them drop, just for today.

Let the gale, the roaring wheeze charging past your ears, stop.

Let it go, let it go, just for today.

The Ouroboros Project #23 - The Prime Minister

{Interview with Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key}

I am the five-year – eight-year blip, the cancer of the poor, I am that and I am the future for the fewer and fewer. But it’s not that we don’t care. It’s just that I am John Key.

But, we have a present for Nuzilind this year – a big fat zero for you to chew over, a big fat zero and there goes your lower class hope, while we rope-a-dope you in the corner, beached like a tongue-in-cheek tanker upon the sand bars of the wretched spotty coast a coast, a bird-landian paradise till you came along black liquid spewing from your gullet. Snicker.

But I digress.

Come on, everyone, hand-in-hand, Shipley, hand-in-hand we go.

Come on, Helen, you're welcome too. We've got it all planned out. Bill, kick your feet up, give a trill, a trill, to eight years of vision, revision of failed, competition and, oh, the glory I will see, maybe, even the growth of our stupendous GDP. The only thing growing more there is our child poverty rate, snicker.

No, but we care.

Because, I have the key, the John Key, snicker, our 70 dollar glass of Bollinger jostles in the flute whilst somewhere the chug from that last bottle of an alcoholic's highly taxed Tui bubbles away, the light brown liquid jostling round the upturned bottle, violently now, and then, empty. Snicker. A fag is lit, overly priced too. 

No, but we do care.

We do though. We have a vision. We are creating a future for Nuzilind, we often think about the average Nuzilinder. We also have the children at the front of our mind too. I am John Key and I am the future for you. Look around, isn’t everything great. I said, look! Why would you worry about education? It worked for you. But not you, but that's okay.

No, but we care. 

Yeah, growth isn’t great, but we promise it will be. I'm John Key. I can do that. You can be John Key too. Clandestine high-fives all round. Pow! Ha ha, they voted for us. Even you. Yes, you. That section of New Zealand we fooled by making you think rapid unyielding capitalism is the only way for us to move forward as a country. I know! Vacuum the resources of the needy; toward the tower in the sky! Surgically remove the teat from which they cling; toward the tower in the sky! More Bollinger, please.

No, but we do care. 

But, we did it great, didn't we? People stabbing a successful New Zealand government in the back, effortlessly slitting Helen's innocent throat for good measure. Gurgle gurgle. Snicker. In fact, most people are so ignorant they already had this idea in their head. "Aunty Helen has had her turn," they mused, pans-democratically with all the knowledge of policy to fill a spatula. “Yeah, she’s had her turn.” We just popped the knife in their hands. But, fuck her martyrdom, as we took it to the vaults, the banks, the uninterested minions locked away, pat pat on the pocket and now I'm luxuriating on all the stereotypes your little mind can foster. Just luxuriating.

No, but we really care. 

Nuzilind is doing fine, we lead them like a blind man, in the dark, fumbling down the hallway. I mean our politics have failed again and again, so that means it has to work this time, right? God, I do love politics though. God, this country loves me. God, I love doing whatever I want. Go, me. 

I am John Key and I want you to know I do care about the average Nuzilinder. I really do. God, I wish I could be an actual socialist.

The Ouroboros Project #22 - The Bridge {ii}

{Monday, June 4^th}

something about water

something about a bridge

sometimes two futures collide

something about the grass being greener on the other side

and I can’t get it out of my head

that nagging feeling

yeah, something about a bridge that is supposed to yawn away

I can’t find it and don't even know if I should

I’m alone on the embankment, truly alone

well there are people here

something about strangers though really

there’s the bridge now

firm, dark wood, polished and yet with a film of light dust

unused, not a tread, not a footprint marks it

and it stretches into a green blur

and there I stand

the grass, the future, the swollen ruptured suture

the wound, I can’t fix, clean, heal or even feel it

guillotine drops and the bridge stays still

an age and a day, an age and a day

something about water

something about a bridge

and I can’t get it out of my head

something about a future with rotted sutures

that nagging feeling, the lack of healing

yeah, something about a bridge, something about a bridge,

and it makes me wonder is the grass really greener over there?

And then Hemingway punched Orwell in the gob!

So, things are going well.

My first novel, Caught by the Storm, which is in its final draft, is with Penguin, Random House and Allen and Unwin which is an exciting albeit daunting and, yes, maybe a little testing, experience. They say this kind of thing can take two to four months and in Penguin's case they don't even get back to you if they don't wish to proceed, which is a bit naff, but fully understandable given the volumes I'm sure they receive.

To keep myself occupied I am conducting The Ouroboros Project where I write a poem a day for as long as I can. It's quite a good challenge and gets my mind flexing quite nicely. On top of that I have taken to writing a chapter of one of the greats each and everyday (three days so far). I've been just straight up copying it word for word into an empty text file. Thus far I've written a chapter of Down and out in Paris by my concise hero, George Orwell, a chapter by the big dog Hemingway from For Whom the Bell Tolls and one chapter from a modern master (my opinion of course) with  Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. I would rather copy out The Road, but I just don't need that level of bleakness in my life at the moment to be honest. The focus of course is not to rewrite it word for word, it's more of a meditation exercise to honest so catching mistakes etcetera isn't paramount. Just practice, I suppose. I'm starting to think about an exercise where I rewrite the chapter after I have copied it down as that could flex my writing muscles further.

But yeah, I am totally enjoying these two creative endeavors whilst I have on the back burner, numerous novel ideas and a couple of short stories bubbling away.

The Ouroboros Project #21 - The Day

Not really a Sunday,

like you would have thought,
like you would have been lead to believe,
but then again, that is the past,
and a piece of me goes “argh,” as they leave,
not a bad “argh,”
quite a good “argh,”
sometimes it is good to remember where you are from,
where we have been, together,
kind of,
and in the photos his face is a miracle to me,
I meet him once in my childhood, infant hood,
Ever present smile,
Hers is there too, her smile, but not today,
it's gone today
I wish I were there too to help her smile.
Maybe a reflection would show her the truth again,
The truth that was brutally taken from her, 
so quickly, so slowly snatched,
it had better not be forever.

The Ouroboros Project #20 - The Sleep

{Saturday Jun 2^nd}

Awoke a day late. 

Slept through an argument I was supposed to apologize for. 

“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” it went, “but I’m not sorry to have said those things.” 

Said it to the cloud in me, my eyes. 

No, not sorry, mainly because they, the words, rang truer than the sound of a waterfall slowly crushing rocks into oblivion. 

Slowly falling from the river’s of the past. 

But what do rocks know, anyway? 

Words heavier than the galaxy; 

sorry; heavier than the black draped fabric weighing down the mortal soul; 

heap abrasive wool scratching the back of significance. 

So, yes, I was sorry for hurting you. 

It went. 

But I wasn’t sorry to have said those things. 

There I go.

The Ouroboros Project #19 - The Morrow

{Friday 1st June}

Tomorrow, definable, today. With its parade, its pestilence and more besides, collides, derides, confides because you know it’s to blame for all the sorrow, tomorrow to follow the ghost of the morrow and deny, supply and sprinkle salt delicately in Satan’s eye, hole, soul, fleeting, bleating, lost and concussed amongst the shards of his in eloquence, his excellence, sees more, among the scattered seeds; the ones man says will never amount to anything and you know, it’s okay, it really is okay to say that I know the saviour and he confides in me, soft whisper, soft whisper, and tells me everything I’ve ever know, and you're doing fine, you're doing fine. And also burn religion burn.

The Ouroboros Project #18 - The Surety

{Thurs may 31^st}

I’m just not sure anymore (repeat X 5)

I once was.