The Poet

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).  
 
Carry-on with me 
Carrion to clean 
Bleach as good as new 
Flesh to cook and chew 

I saw you lying down in 
Vulture Street 
I slowed to sniff the scent 
Upon the breeze 

Carry-on with me 
Carrion to clean 
Bleach as good as new 
Flesh to cook and chew 

I found you flying free in 
Vulture Street 
Your soul was circling high 
O’er still body 

Carry-on with me 
Carrion to clean 
Bleach as good as new 
Flesh to cook and chew 

I left your bones behind in 
Vulture Street. 
Polished clean they shone like 
Ivory. 

Carry-on with me 
Carrion to clean 
Bleach as good as new 
Flesh to cook and chew  

American Scholar

“The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out of him truth. It came to him short-lived actions; it went out of him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). 
 
It’s the last 
Roll of the 
Dice 

Gather round children I’ll 
Tell you a tale.  
About an old man who was 
Destined to fail. 

Obsessed with his leg he’d 
Set fast the sail.  
On the hunt for that white 
Spectral whale 

It’s the last 
Roll of the 
Dice 

Driven obsessively  
into the tide  
Hang all the crew 
‘Fore turning behind 

It’s the last 
Roll of the 
Dice 

Onwards to plunge like the  
harpooner’s spine  
Til the beast sinks  
Defeated in brine 

It’s the last 
Roll of the 
Dice 
The last 
roll 

Defence

“Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls, open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. […] Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). 
 
Bask in the rays of the nearest star 
Stretch like a vine farther than you are 
Time has stopped to open up this 
Door 

Push on through to the summit peak 
Follow the water to the higher stream 
Not another soul at all that we can 
See 

We carry on  
You’ll carry on  
Like the waves from the 
Shore to the sea 

Carry on, 
Carry on, 
Like the  
bird that is  
borne on the breeze 

Cut like a stone from an ancient well 
Turn in the light in the blaze of hell 
Time bleeds black to open up this 
Door 

Push on through  
to the summit peak 
Follow the water  
to the higher stream 
Not another soul  
at all  
that we can see 

We carry on  
You’ll carry on  
Like the waves from the 
Shore to the sea 

Carry on, 
Carry on, 
Like the  
bird that is  
borne on the breeze  

Biographia Literaria

“Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect, and to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogenous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery. […] GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, FANCY its DRAPERY, MOTION its LIFE, and IMAGINATION the SOUL that is every where, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
 
Burn of the morning fire of light.  
Skinning the earth of paragonite.  

I am a- 
wake to follow 
Thee. 

Pull on a shell of diamond and coal 
Stumble to floor of burial hole.  

I shall be 
braced to follow 
Thee. 

So will I wake, so will I rise,  
So will I offer up my eyes 
Awake to follow thee 

Tapestry’s tear in bin lorry’s jaws.  
Reek of a well; blood bandage and gauze.  

I 
wake to follow 
Thee.  

Pull on a cord the colour of spine.  
Until an answer crawls from the tide,  

one that is  
braced to follow 
Thee.  

Appendix

“in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether the composition be in prose or in verse, they require and exact one and the same language.” – William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
 
Braced to the ice wind 
Clasp ‘gainst the Brine 

Gold set obsidian 
Night’s yellowed eye 

Plowing 
On we 
Keep 
Only to  
Wake the deep 

Earth crack like egg shell 
Black yolk will rise 

Poached in the dark sea 
Exhuming time 

That we may 
always reap 
Long may we 
Wake the deep 

Other Poems

“The objects of the Poet’s thoughts are every where; though the eyes and sense of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge – it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours of Men of Science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the Science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet’s art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective Sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were ,a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.” – William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
 
Break fast and rise, a shatter of ice 
Gone in the blink of an eye 
But all you could save still led to the grave 
And buried unanswering why 

A call from the clouds, the buzzard cries out 
The spider devours the fly 
But the junky’s alive in the machine tonight 
A spirit of heroin’s line 

Tame the shame,  
cast the blame 
Pour decanters of wine 
Barren of trees in  
hurricane breeze 
Gone in the blink of an eye 

Old Robert Burns inside his grave turns 
A body breaks down by the lye 
Still would he grin at the state he’s in 
Caught in the roots of the rye 

Tinder the spark that flints from your heart 
Til flames catch and dance as they rise 
But all the while, remember my child, 
That soon the smoke gets in your eyes 

Tame the shame,  
cast the blame 
Pour decanters of wine 
Barren of trees in  
hurricane breeze 
Gone in the blink of an eye 

Pastoral

“Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespear hath said of man, ‘that he looks before and after’. He is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.” – William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
 
Chicken Little said the sky is 
Falling 

A thundercloud and a blitzkrieg 
Bombing 

Deafened hell for leather by the weather by the wethering in 
Vain 

Holding my breath, for bright lighthouse 
Flame 

Lead me 
Home 
Leave me 
Alone 

A murder of crows, watch the tide climb their 
Tree 

And drowning I’ll die, letting inside me 
Sea 

And oxygen is smothered and the heart keeps pumping acid around 
Me 

And burning I’ll go, down to the darkest 
Deep 

Lead me 
Home 
Leave me 
Alone 

Lyrical Ballads

“I will not take upon me to determine the exact import of the promise which by the act of writing verse an Author, in the present day, makes to his Reader; but I am certain, it will appear to many persons that I have not fulfilled the terms of an engagement this voluntarily contracted.” – William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
 
Waking into dark waves of silence 
Ninety-thousand leagues below surface 

Her eyes cannot see,  
a shine or a shiver of me 

There comes a tear, a subtle unplugging
Flushing me through the blood-rust of piping
Out on a beach  
of dried eels and blistering weeds 

I cannot hide, I cannot recover
My shaking arms, her palms stabbed with fingers
Naked I flail,
Lobster imposing a scene 

And I wish to die, and the sun it came rising
With pistons so high, the steam scalding smiling 
Bleeding me dry 
My eyes jellied run into sea 

And there they’ll find, a body uncovered 
Virginal free, a choral of lovers 
Devouring me 
With eyes closed in deep ecstasy 

Her eyes cannot see,  
a shine or a shiver of me 

Preface

“I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those Poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and, on the other hand, I was well aware, that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike.” – William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
 
You are just my violin 
Played quite out of key 
Screaming loud and stuttering 
Fastened to your tree 

Radical and biblical,  
tyrannical and pure 
Satisfied and compromised  
hollowed out unsure  

I will be your herald bird 
I will be your wren 
I will cast the darkness back 
With dawn’s song that I bring 

Walk upon my gravery 
Stand before my stone 
Say you will remember me 
Til all flesh falls from bone 

Radical and biblical,  
tyrannical and pure 
Satisfied and compromised  
hollowed out unsure 

Fine Art

“This we take to be the general character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, as the three relations of the Idea to its shape in the sphere of art. They consist in the striving for, the attainment, and the transcendence of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
 
Between the morning and the dead 

I watch 

Nightwaking dream-slake catch 

Caught 

The portal has been opened but it won’t stay open long 

Prolactin for lactating 

My teets they fill with milk 

A river cutting stone 

An endocrinology all their own 

Smoke and piss and lovers bliss and rise 

See neighbours in their gardens of moonlight 

Love and pray reflect upon your dreams 

Hold and roam the rich fathomless deep