Author Information
Single Up All Lines
Now single up all lines, brethren lost in the same seas Ahab sought
Call them all Ishmael, confusion on deck always sparks interest anyhow
Good Morning all ye wasteful and decrepit souls, washed and
Cleansed by Dove commercials in sinks stained by putrescence
Good Night all ye lonely suicides, huddled in the bleakness of null
You all wanted it too stop half way through but it was too late
Last breaths are for the weak, ready for commercial breaks
Optimism is the new pessimism, down is the new up
Haven’t all you freshly birthed hipsters seen the news banners
In-between your condescension and pursuits of identification
Have you not heard the tale that was never told
The story sinisterly placed in the empty white within syllables
Let me open the vellum ripped from the hair lines of the stick figure
Painted on pulp as he holds dear to the nuclear family beside him
He was born knowing everything he ever needed to know
Knew how to die before the placenta let go of its grip
Releasing another unknown soul to suck up crowded air
He learnt how to walk on linoleum floors that fed off nostalgia
Sponges for a nativity scene lacking all the drama
He grew to be a boy of stature amongst playground politics
The arbitrator between two playful house with kooties to boot
Can you see the ace of spades opening his mouth wide
As wind destroys the hairdressers perfect and deliberate…cut
The card changing into third gear as it flaps against the spokes
Of a Huffy that only remembers him when he was young and mature
A time when staring at the sun the longest was a past time
Amongst the after school boys and girls, ready for sweets
Handed out by the straining smiles of mothers with too much to bare
Waiting for the surly fathers and callused hands too good for metaphors
When did we break and become scattered to the four corners of doubt
These are our twisted lives, crawling like ivy up a dead tree
We are Ancient Mariners searching for our bird
And maybe the alabaster albatross was once glorious
Wings touching both sides of all things
The spectrum complete
The complete finding bottom
And staying there, dining together with certainty
Ouroboros resting its jaws on Orion’s belt buckle
A trinket to him, but a reality for the man next door
Because when his heart died
The worms feasted then felt empty
A lesson to gluttony and all his friends
So let me stumble, be foolish with life’s grammar
As my similes smile, wink in silent jest
As they compare your Jesus to a thief
He took my blood and turned it into wine
And now misfits are drunk on my memories
We are brittle things built on shoe strings
Trying to tie knots to feel snug in small shoes
This funeral of ours is lacking taste, too much nicotine
It’s time to suit up, become black tied and call the florist
For I must impress the mourners
Life got the best of me, and then it got all the rest
Because living is a cliché, my dear hipsters and don’t wannabees
If to die then is mainstream than plot my coarse through redundancy
For I’ll live a cliché rather than die as an original
