1. |
The Burning Man
00:45
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Lost in the heather
In the longest hour of the bloody moon.
Wicker crackles cinders
Of what we once were;
Charred remains of blinded love.
In the tangerine waves we drown
And there is no sacrifice
No custom-made charade
That can save us now.
Twig by twig we have built him up
from our mistakes
Our fear gan ainm
A force of habit
And now we watch him burn.
Tonight we are heathens
Tomorrow misleaders
And more fool us
for believing.
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2. |
Chrysalis
01:12
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Winter wasteland has unrolled-
a nation in perpetual hiver,
All sound oppressed in blanched hush.
The reels freeze revolution-
Life is a photograph,
not a movie.
Hail crashes the barbed-wire cage
We are the prisoners of the ice age
Rising from hibernation.
The world has been Tipp-Exed out,
It is our blank canvas.
Washed out in Magic Marker,
Saturated in Stabilo, embossed in Sharpie
We can colour it any way we please-
The edges have been erased.
We jump borders as though they were fences
But no fence can hold us in
No border can hold us back.
We redraw the atlas
Of our own design
Marking every page along the way.
We are the generation of reclamation
The ice age is over.
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3. |
Atlantis In Technicolor
00:52
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Reality
Vanity
Banality
If you can turn it to water, I can turn it to wine.
Down the rabbit-hole and through the looking-glass
I emerge into existence-
a cheat of optics.
Dependency? Impossible!
Weakness? Never!
Syllables abhorred and shot on sight
The irony was wasted on you
For how could you deny my strength now?
Dead euphoria pricked the layers
Of frosted-glass
Blunted rims
No definition
At least, not yet.
Bubbling below the surface
not, of what I am,
rather of what I am to become.
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4. |
Marker
00:41
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Behind bars of self-infliction
I force letters into words
that implode on impact.
In darkness I become an animal
Drifting in sub-oceanic paradise
You were king of the world
Now you’re king of the sea-
a miry skeleton.
I am anchored
My thoughts run aground
Off world’s end.
Port beckons through the mist
of a thousand lost dreams
Green marker guiding me home.
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5. |
The D-Word
01:29
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A gangrenous infection
Cut out
Amputation swapped for
A placebo
So I can trick everyone
I’m just like them.
I can harness it
Control it
In time even cure it
But I am hazardous
to keep around the house.
I germinate disease
wiping out the
purpose of our being
But never fear-
it isn’t catching.
A knee-jerk reflex
To the D-word
Quarantined for the nerve
of thinking
I could be like them.
In my isolation unit
I watch the world unfold
Yet cannot touch
What belongs to others
Cannot share
In what will never be mine.
I level the imbalance
Redraft reality
Fashion normality
For the price of wilted words
“Talk about it, talk about it
But not to me.”
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6. |
Kaput
00:59
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Somewhere along the line,
I forgot I was real.
Something broke inside
But not how
I expected
Kaput
Past repair.
Rhyming couplets
Of unstringed pearls
Chasing an end
that never would come.
Perhaps I was waiting
for you?
Reels of film
That would never be real
Never be mine
Not without you.
You led me through screens
Predestined-
you knew me all too well.
I awoke as a ghost
The clock chimed my corporeality.
I consoled myself with baby steps-
the marathons would come later.
You knew me too well
To simply let me be
Kaput.
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7. |
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There was a reason I called- but now I forget.
A reason- or an excuse
To escape the estate of minds
Into the empty space
for life left to be lived.
The savage airhorn
Of a passing truck a war-cry
From a distant star
Protesting
There is no salvation
in the last glass of ginger ale
No more than the soggy promise of
redemption
in vodka tears.
I have returned
Back from the dead
Boasting the spoils of
vermillion tail-lights
vanishing into the fog.
Rainbow-spattered oil puddle
Mirrors all but its reflection
Left behind.
I cannot make head nor tail of it.
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8. |
Given
00:40
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We will meet
In half-forgotten streets
The shadows outweigh the real
Now there’s nothing left to feel
But alone.
Back and forth
We chase the north road
Out of here
Out of time
We’ve lost.
What drove us to this?
That fucking Yaris
With the rattly exhaust
No trick
mechanic
Can repair at any cost.
I paid out flat broke
To keep us on the road
But we steered
Off the pier
Of the lake I always hated anyway.
Take it as a given
That I’ve nothing left to give.
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Natasha Helen Crudden Dublin, Ireland
Punk-influenced poet and guitarist, photographer, author of poetry collection Barbed-Wire Cage and novel Empire Evolution and certified space-cadet. I am obsessed with blending raw punk with crafted poetry and am an avid fan of the current slam poetry scene in Ireland. ... more
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