The Racketeer

The Racketeer

Slip a sum of money,
some will make it past the cops.
Slip a silver cigarette
to make the checking stop.

Wrap the contents neatly,
place a T-shirt right above.
Wrap them in a rubber band
and pass it past the Gov.

Hide them in the lining
of a jacket or your coat.
Hide it in your brolly
"Nothing's wrong" is what he wrote.

Written on Tuesday, 15th September 2009 while waiting for the dentist.

Break the Oath

Break the Oath

I dare not break the circle.
I dare not break the oath.
Sworn to secrecy,
thievery breeds thievery.
Hide your face from the crowd.

Do you believe in a heaven or hell?
Is the game in your favour?
Maybe you'll be better on the front lines.
A soul illusion in an empty shell.

Walls are crumbling,
fire burns away the sky.
Rebel defender of the faith.
Rage sets in,
take control of someone's life.
A separate existence in your mind.

Will the luthier snap his strings?
Can Obama play bass?
Tribal markings that decorate the face.
The dream of failing divine.

Written on Monday, 14th September 2009 on the bus on the way to MCA.

Abstain

Abstain

Abstain from your self-fulfilling fate.
Before you know it, it's too late.
Revolt.
Resist.
Reform.
Concealed spate.

Refuse to state your case in silver,
mainly copper, sometimes gold.
Redundant causes leave you blinded,
stranded streams untold.

Destroy the entrails, morphine figures
dance the very night away.
Symphonic sunsets clad in purple.
Silhouettes with strings attached.

Abstain from your self-fulfilling fate,
where divine love leads to treacherous hate.
There's nothing left for you tonight.
There's nothing left alright.

Written on the 30th of August, 2009 in Marsalforn, Gozo.

The Warlord

The Warlord

Clenched fists and AK47s
waving in the air.
Where a face draws a blank
and you're just part of the crowd.
A riotous affair.

A saviour dressed in black arrives,
he speaks the very truth.
He won't waste time on frivolities
or trivial pursuits.

A year has passed; the people, gone;
the land a ruined mess.
The warlord sits and ponders life,
he's clearly in distress.

(Speed written on Saturday, 29th August 2009 in Marsalforn, Gozo.)

Riot

Riot

Hail-fellow-well-met my lord.
Message for you.
The king is dead, and you're next.

(Written on Friday, 28th August 2009 in Gozo. Bernard and I were trying to create Boeing poems, a variation on haikus with a pattern of 7-4-7. Here's my result.)

Angostura

Angostura

Sensory perception, defining, dividing.
A grenadine illusion to your ears.
Silver chords that pop and crackle
way into the night.
The angostura bitters of your fears.

Phantom feelings leave you stranded.
Severed thoughts that reprimanded
me, I should know
the bittersweet taste of your soul.

A floral congregation; illusion, contusion,
a sickening parade of pink and green.
You've covered up the dreams,
and you've shown your condescent.
The puppet master found behind the screen.

The stifling hand of the dungeon master,
the sweet sweet lies of the small frail pastor,
the dextrous poise of the brigand rogue.
The silverback nightmare reviled.

(Written on the 12th of August, 2009 on the bus on the way to work at MCA. It's strange how one particular song can bring back so many memories. It's even stranger when that song happens to be a trance remix.)

The Light In Your Eyes

The Light In Your Eyes

Silverpine rifles that riot with smoke
to take out the light in their eyes.
Like stars in the night,
they flicker; they're gone.
Success.
Defeat.
The butcher has sold his meat.

An eyelid sunset fights to stay
in the twilight of their eyes.
Where reddening seas take you by surprise,
they gleam.
Success.
Defeat.
It's now that we'll finally meet.

Written some time in June at night.

String of Hearts

String of Hearts

Certainly you're meant to recognize
the friends, the foes, the enemies.
But there are no shades
of black and white
and every grey
is green.

Where at the time you promised,
that friends we'd always be.
Now a year has passed,
time's much too fast,
now you're just
a memory.

One's much too old,
One smiles too much and laughs at everything
One's insecure with low self-esteem,
One would simply be a fling.

I wear a necklace string of hearts
round a starlit neck aligned.
A pavement freshly built today,
already found defiled.

Yesterday, the day has gone,
Today, the day that is.
Tomorrow, the day will never come,
I'm consoled for I know
that I'm not the only one.

(Written on the 9th of February, 2009, just before I went to sleep.)

Perdition Fiction

Perdition Fiction

Clouded thoughts in stormy minds
where new opinions cannot shine.
Peering through the liquid darkness,
searching once again.

Greasy bolts and slickened cogs,
grinding in man-made machine.
Gazing past the murky ocean,
yearn to understand.

Hyperbolic ideas
become a framework for belief.
Pure invention,
writing stories as you go along.

Deus ex machina tonight.
Unlikely answer for us all.
Getting past the stifled blackness,
the Thought Police that order us.

Phantom relics, illusion saints.
Mind ruled by a Boolean false.
Believe the picture that everybody paints,
after all, perdition fiction awaits.

(Written sometime in early November or late October, on the bus.)

The Pyrambulist

The Pyrambulist

Treading on the hot thin wires,
Entertainment at its very finest.
Walking amidst the funerary pyres.
Hardened feet, with resistance to heat.

Thinking on the lines of a tightrope walker,
Balancing your act for the crowd.
Begging at the mercy of the flame invoker.
Reddened scars, burns, a charred masquerade.

A torturous apprenticeship,
bandages as companions.
Defying the edge of life and death.

An incendiary existence,
Born from the warmth of the forge.
And fire is fought with the fire itself,
committing the theft of the flame.

An unnatural resilience
to the furnace's sweltering heat.
The bonfire ablaze, try to look past the haze
of a grim caloric lifestyle.

(Written on the 19th of September 2008, on my way to Birkirkara.)