released December 13, 2023

Cape Scott

An ink beyond the time of men
Unseen in a deep ocean storm
Bloomed seething towards
The cold skull of a lonely moon
But no one dares to say
We’re somewhere out in the night, don’t you see?
There are places that I care for
Now that I find myself on
the edge of the world
When as strangers that I confessed to know
A silhouette of love, a spectre there
With this sight we vanished but
to see we did not know where

Screaming in Mid…

I met a man who said he was from the future
With skeletal hands he grasped down
Wrecking the singing Earth, the ground convulsed in waves
A rendering of long-hidden worlds
He destroyed cities, Up from the basements
Came a fine concrete rain
Revealed their rotting lives, a million starless eyes
They cried our illusion is gone
Hurry up and get dressed, run to the giant
Drawing his last gasp
Cut pieces off his legs and chest
Let’s hew, slice without rest
After what he’d done, after what he’d seen, darkness muttered in his breath
After what he said, over centuries he slowly drank himself to death
And who could blame him?
Who I ask?

Buried in Suburbia

I wish that I could be a stranger to myself
An unknown shadow on its way
Sick of how slowly the night comes
Eyes full of the tears of the nowhere ones
Buried alive in the wreckage of suburbia
In the twilight, figures move in the fields of bones
Under skies last seen wrapped in sheets of sepia
A world that will slumber for a billion-year sleep
Eyes full from the dust of the stars
Burying the lights of suburbia
The dawn melts in the river, like clockwork
As night breaks our hearts again

This Machine Knows

For thirty-five years, I pressed that button and watched it smash flat the iron
It became a word, at first yelled a cry
Then it was voices who told me it had watched my expressions
It knew my loves and when I had been a disgrace
Once upon a time, the machine says
I know
Your secrets lie alone, underneath the chemical, chemical
I know
The depths which you seek, the horrors of which they speak
Lies in an entire world underneath
The mountain there you climb is made of your faces

I Am The Stud

I was the stud
I am the man who’s flush full of blood
Planting the seeds of my ego
Into the chasms of an endless winter
What a lovely smile she had
Standing there like my undying drama
It was always a bust
I was always a charmer
Even when they found me
Hugging the bushes in the carpark
Bruised and battered in my leotard
I gasped hard trying to confess
In front of my invited friends
and their uninvited guests
Through an unblinking eye
Trawling through the trove of my anxieties
In the museum of my memories
In desolate rooms, the paint is flaking away
On the fading pictures of long-forgotten kingdoms

Named after a dead queen/He is Doom

Oh Canada, oh Canada
For the serene life, let’s a find a wife and live in moribund Victoria
Where living is average, but sky high
Let’s cross the road to avoid the crazy guy
On our way to eat overpriced sushi
Wes and Qs, cut the lawns
Don’t admit to watching porn
And a force a smile at offensive border dwellers
Twenty dollars for a coffee
A time ago someone loved me
It’s difficult to know where the grey buildings meet the sky
Oh Canada, oh Canada

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, you were a mystery to me
Children’s fringes cut with rulers
Let’s hold another meeting,
Plan away every tick of your day, of his day, of their day
No, that’s not the weather outside
But the sighs of your loved ones
Sit alone on the silence of sterile domestication
While the sunlight reflects through the empty bottles
Gravity extends you sideways, faces drop like leaves in the rain
In twenty years you’ll stand there, and they hand you a broken golden clock
All this time I wasted, all along the world did not care
In the doorway I’m not standing, it’s like you were never there
Once upon a time, you were a mystery to me

Roll on, roll on,

The armies are coming
Home
Across the shivering plain
Shaking and shuddering at the sound of its own barren words
Uncoil and recoil as we spread across
The map of the unknown world
With sorrow do you remember when we ran with knives?
Across the countryside?

Smog and Ash

I woke up one morning with
the taste of embers in my mouth
I had been up all night
singing the leper’s song
Grace said she’d follow me, anywhere
Here are the breadcrumbs to show your way
Seen in the distance
The shimmering white city
A dream of a winter on
The face of a devil so sour
Grace said she’d follow me, anywhere
Here are the breadcrumbs to show your way
We’ll sit on our thrones
In the city of smog and ash
They would have loved you like no other

Under Seething Neon Waves
On a whim when I fell into an irreverent love
That was doomed by devil drama
Come to downtown Haiphong she said
Stand on my hands while I gripped the edge
Under seething neon waves
To forget who they are
Meimei and I watched the world go away
Wishing we’d never be strangers
The people all wore suits of horsehair
Without a word to warm
That love won’t find a way
in the wreckage of...?

Bruise Coloured Pacific Fields

When he was young he shouted up to the stars
Echos slept somewhere out in the evening light
The streets they rang with wave of metal wave
In a dentist chair, I traced where I would go on a map
At once everything I knew had vanished into the mire
There were swirls of light, I tightly gripped her hand
The weight of history, embalmed torsos in tombs
The ghosts writhe near the giants' graves
Severed heads serving as bait
I could see from a tiny window
The stories preceding us
Of invisible armies coming from across the frigid, frozen seas
Bearing the flesh of our brethren between rotted crooked teeth
Let’s flee
To bruise coloured Pacific fields
Stop to listen here for a while
With a sigh that shivered throughout the boughs
In the half-light I saw the writings of lives
Scratched in pain, fragments of nails
Time eventually scrubs all out, how do we remain?
Cowed, embrace a verse and concede
That fiction lived is stopping to breathe
Truth be told of hearts that broke
Riven and wicked crawls the smoke from
The sparks of a fire that lashed bright
In the wilderness of the night
The only sound that can be heard
Are the twitches of sleeping eyes
As they disappear into the
depths of life’s unrequited dream