A year in the life of a paedophilic tree - a poem.

I've just started growing and greening; how I spruce.

I like to feel the children's tyre swing and the rub of the noose.

The northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun.

Come here, little child, to touch my wooden bum.

I like to shed my leaves and stand nude in the park.

Come hither, wee child, to feel my bark.

I'm losing my leaves - my tree version of hair.

The weather's growing colder - how I despair.

And now there's not a single child.

Winter's not easy for a tree paedophile.

This is just a joke which escalated from a conversation point. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone out there - I'm sorry if you are a paedophilic tree or perhaps a paedophile who has masqueraded himself/herself as a tree in order to lure in children. I'm also sorry if you've been personally affected at the hands of a paedophile - no pun intended; it's just phrasology, for frick sake!

I should let it be known that the incidence of paedophilia has remained more or less constant in 50 years; it's just our kids who are growing more wary of adults - it's just our kids who are beginning to feel more separate and alienated from a young age. We're not facing a paedophile resurgence, all you middle-class, child-doting, idiotic, safeguarding parents out there.

To gauge what feelings a typical reading of this poem might elicit, I read it to my parents. They weren't amused. Nor were they understanding. They became quite hostile, in fact. I had to explain to them the absurdity of the idea that a tree might bear paedophilic qualities. They agreed.

Does this sort of thing serve to highlight the daft, ultra-PC sensibilities which pervade in 21st-century Britain? What do you think?

A treatise on the nature of human nature.

Nature: red in tooth and claw. The ceaseless fighting and courting must go on for ever. There will never be a victor. We are merely animals. We fight, but over silly novelities and tribulations. When did we become so pathetic?

Why can't we love with the fullness of our hearts and ply with the strength of all our muscles? We love - as any animal does - and yet we feel human love to be something special; something spiritual. We see with oft-pessimistic and pejorative eyes and yet we feel outbursts of love and affection.

We mostly never consider consequence. We are merely little bundles of egotism and idiocy trapped in the human form. We are merely loved-up creatures unable to feel love. We have hands but we can't touch. We have eyes and ears but we see merely the immediate and the pressing.

We have hearts, lungs, arteries, brains, skeletons, skeletal muscle, blood, bile and other tissues too numerous to mention - like all mammals.

We are holistic-seeing creatures dissecting the world piece by piece. We've dissected the human form - at least in its physiology; its physicalities. When will we be able to leave on the table the very essence of the human?

Never, I say. We are merely pieces strung together and we work as a whole. The eyes and skin and bodily feedback systems feed the brain, the brain feeds the nervous system, the nervous system feeds the respiratory system and we nourish ourselves with the very produce of the Earth - the Earth's earth. We feed ourselves with our animal brothers and sisters 3.9 billion years in the making. We feed ourselves merely to sustain our ability to feed.

Education.

I wear my A*s like a badge of honour. But what do they mean? Are they, as some people say, worthless compared to the worth of qualifications twenty years ago? Do they indicate a hard-worker or merely someone who's worked hard at absorbing the wrong ideas and ideals?

Such a person's grades will certainly guarantee them a good career - if they want want such a career and think it worth their pursuance.

Is such a person better than the man on the street just because of the fact that from an early age they've suckled at mummy's teat and plumbed daddy's pocket?

Education shouldn't be about competition; it should be about the joy of finding things out, enlightenment and self-improvement.

I grew up in modest circumstances. I still live with my parents - I'm twenty; give me a break for frick sake! I attended a state school. I've always been a C-student - but one who promises brief scintillations of brilliance.

What's the use in getting nothing but A*s if one comes out with a level pegging in each subject? One might as well've not seeked education at all for one has found out nothing about oneself. The word education, after all, comes from the Latin 'educare' which means to seek - especially from within.

Education requires interest and uninterest. What's the use of plying the trades of every subject if all one accomplishes is a finding out that one finds no one subject palatable to one's liking?

Ideas aren't bricks and mortar. They're not absolute. They're progressive - successional. They shouldn't be implanted*; they should grow from the seeds which have blown in the mind's winds since restless youth and now wish to be granted settlement.

There's no rush; a flower doesn't bud any old inopportune moment - it needs to be met with the right conditions at the right time.

*I am of course not talking of such things as Euclidian geometry or, as a matter of fact, most areas of mathematics!

Saturday night on Brighton beach.

I went to the beach last night with my best friend, Adam. We had a few beers and a tipple of wine.

Summer brings out the best and worst in people. I say this because it encourages a closeness and a feeling of sharing that no other season really allows - apart from a huddling 'round the fire at Xmas. It also encourages a brutish selfishness and disregard for other people.

Bottles, cans and chip trays were lain strewn about the beach unconcernedly by bastards of a seemingly untappable degree.

The people were most probably wholly out-of-towners who have no regard for our city's well-being. Why aren't they made to pay congestion charges for clogging our roads? How can we let them get away with defacing our city without making them pay in some way? How can we let them get away with it, full stop?

Relax, man, it's summer - don't be such a stiff. Get a bloody backbone! This is your country. More importantly, it's our city. It's my city, and I happen to like it. Dispose of your trash properly or take it home with you.

Adam and I chatted and mused on life, death, love and our non-existent love lives. Summer - the time for myriad gorgeous girls. They all terrify and invigorate me at once. They all inflate my male urges and calm me at once.

Why must people be so careless and horrid? I feel sick to my stomach, but in the morning I'll awake with a renewed sense of hope.

In the morning I'll feel the sting of a body purging itself of alcohol. I'll feel a shagpile. I'll feel befuddled and bitter. But I'll go down to the community scheme. I might go to the beach and maybe I'll help to clear the litter if some poor, glorious buggers haven't already done it. I'll fight with inveterate compassion those who give little thought to consequence.

An update on the community garden.

Yesterday, we built a panelled fence after some ruthless children knocked down part of the mesh fence - children I was similar to as a child; children who we'll try to educate and entertain.

Around 20 people came along at different times yesterday - a collection of odd, beautiful souls; a homeless man from the Isle of Wight; a girl who's had a troubled life who writes poetry and who finds solace here; and Anouchka's daughter: an eighteen-year-old, beautiful girl who seems somewhat troubled to me - she podium-dances to pay the bills but hopes to become a police constable.

When she brought up that fact, Anouchka brushed it off as if it were nothing but an unconcerning discrepancy, stating that she, too, worked as a podium dancer in her youth.

I like Anouchka. I like all the people who frequent the place. One lady - a scouser - keeps talking about the yet-to-be-done deeds (such as maybe creating a children's area). She's got a bee in her bonnet, but I'm okay with that. She has two lovely children. She also donated a parasol.

I de-weeded. I sat in the sunshine like a king surveying his domain. I let contemplation drift by. It's a beautiful feeling to bathe beneath sunshine in undemanding circumstances.

I was told that King Sturge doesn't plan to build on the land for another five years. Now we not only have community hope; we now have time on our side.

I planted some dill with Lily and we hope it will have grown by November. Some bricks, wood and compost have been donated by various people and now accumulate in a promising heap. There are more flowers here now and two more benches. I donated a table after the previous one was stolen.*

*I was at loggerheads with Anouchka after publishing this because I got a few certain details wrong and she also disagreed with its publication as some comments I made were sourced from private conversations. However, I have apologised in full. I will leave it up for now, after amending a few details. If anyone asks for it to be taken down, I'll do so immediately.

Books.

We'll go to a record shop and buy volumes costing three pounds. We'll buy novelisations in HMV for a pittance. We'll buy buy-one-get-one-free books in Borders. We'll buy books. We're eager for self-fulfillment. We're hungry for the self-worth contained in the slim volumes of popular prose. We'll read just to keep the demons at bay.

We cite authors like they're type-cast. We cite them in platitudes. They're just the icons and pin-up boys of our self-disgust. They're immediate idols we can conjure up just to feel as if we're widely read or as if we know anything at all of the maelstrom of knowledge contained in a classic.

We read our shit-poke books written by the shit-poke authors of the day. A book is a treasure of limitless power. Books are becoming a defunct and prosaic platform for imparting knowledge. Take your time - you have your life. Ask around. Buy books because they're books; not because you want a vain sense of self-fulfillment you think you may find lurking in the pages of a Paul McKenna or some other dross self-help guide; self-help guides are the last refuge for the helpless.

A book is a journey. It's a mirror of society and the human condition. A book can be dangerous and revolutionary. A book can be a window into the soul or a chute which leads straight to hell. A book is what you make of it.

Sylvia Plath, Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Heller, Charles Bukowski, Pat Barker, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, The Bronte Sisters, Bill Bryson, Jack London, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, Franz Kafka, Vladamir Myakovsky, Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus....

These are all but a few writers I know of quite scantily. I don't profess to be well-read but I admire these authors none-the-less based on what I have read. I know that many of you reading this may've read all of these authors, but, for those of you who haven't, the pages wait eager to be turned.... If you have any favourite reads I've neglected to mention or comments on points I've brought up please fill your boots.

My son.

I'm more proud of you than you could ever know. All your misgivings, slurred words and impurities make you a broken treasure to behold.

As you walk down the path of youthful self-destruction I see in you myself walking the same path thirty years ago. The path will eat you alive and yet, at the same time, you will devour every square inch of it which falls under your feet; like the Egyptian snake devouring itself. You need to grow, as I have and as others before me have.

The road is long and laid by another's hand. The question is this: will you walk your own road? Will you have the courage to flout the compass and the stars and walk with the faint murmerings of the heart? When I die I will see you on the crossroads of your life. I will hold a sign. I will hold a sign and you will know what it means; you will know the direction to which I point.

One day you may see in the mirror your old man. But you're not me. I have shaped you out of dough and set you baking. May you rise in the oven of life and fill with the effervescense of experience. You will see me in the mirror next to you but we will never merge.

I will kiss your head like I did when you were a child. Words come few and actions are often impotent but you have been taught well. You have been taught well because you have been taught that there is no one way to live. Carry on, my son. Carry on.

One day you will love. You might marry; but, in your case, maybe you won't. You might have a child and question why. Life might seem meaningless but it's all we have. We must carry on, like dust blown from the great unknown. Having a child is just another experience. Life is renewal. Life is a many-faced beauty which shimmers golden light in a hall of mirrors. Life is a many great things and yet nothing at all.

An accomplished writer.

There is no such thing as an accomplished writer. A writer must be a formlessness; a facelessness; a shapelessness. A writer must hold dear his values and morals whilst wrestling with the ghosts of feelings past and the echoes of feelings future which rebounded way back when and only now re-arrive as fuzzy distortions of future consequences.

An accomplished writer is merely a writer who's given up the pursuit; a writer who's accepted that he is merely a penner of prose and knows nothing of the art form.

A writer must ever-develop and never lose the spark of fire born in the first fumbling, impassioned expressions of his heart. A writer must be the phoenix. A writer must never look back in shame but merely look back at what could've been but now is and what could be. Feelings have no bearing on time or destiny. Just strive and try.

If you try to write, you won't be able to; you'll merely force out the words like miserable excess - like excreta weighted with the insoluble fibre of an idiot's load. Don't try to write; just write.

A bit on UKIP and the Euro-election.

Today, at 6.25 pm, UKIP launched their 5-minute-long party election broadcast on channel 2. They brought up such issues as the increase in traffic congestion, resource depletion, EU expansion, and cut-backs in the public sector.

First, to point out the obvious, I'd like to say that three years ago there weren't as many people in Britain. That's due to immigration and natural increase, of course. The formula time + people = more cars highlights the basis of the issue.

However, that wasn't stated because it was implicit that the problem lies with the addition of more member states - such as Poland - three years ago. The use of such disgraceful points backed up by zero statistics highlights the fact that they're reaching out to a very ignorant few.

Second, they say they're a non-racist party. That sentiment is going to lure in a whole bunch of on-the-fence people.

It's funny how they say they're against racism when their policies imply they aren't - they're the antithesis of the sentiment stated by them. I, too, am reticent about the joining of Turkey to the EU, but only because of its human rights record - my reluctance has no bearing in the fact that Turkey is a Muslim nation.

So, UKIP say they're non-racist. The use of the phrase Non-racist, of course, suggests that there are racist parties out there. Why didn't they say 'not racist'? Are they trying to draw over BNP enthusiasts* or, perhaps, are they trying to distance themselves from the BNP?

One thing is certain, though: they stand for ancient English values from our colonial days that need crutches to stand up. If anything highlights this more it's their use of Winston Churchill giving the peace sign on their billboards. Two are scattered along Lewes Road - a third was destroyed. They're using Churchill - an idol of immense national pride - in vain. They're a party stooped in dishonesty and cowardice. They're imperialist. They may not be a racist party but they certainly appear to be xenophobic.

They stand for a select group of people who are confounded in their senses of national and personal identity and European policy. UKIP will get a good turn out on June 4th. I for one am voting Green. The wolves are at the door and it seems we may be about to grant them their first meal....

For everyone who wants a bit of pep and faith in the human condition, listen to Steve Earle's 'City of Immigrants'. I live in Brighton and the song seems to embody our city's spirit (even though the song is about New York!)

*It seems quite obvious that BNP enthusiasts are dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate racists but one has to assume there are a few mislead, conscionable people out there numbering in the thousands who could be swayed by UKIP's misleading sentiment.

It's just not my time, babe.

I could be whatever I want.
I could study, I could strive to exert.
But why let myself be over-worked?
It's just not my time, babe.

Am I ready for the changes yet to mould me?
Or will the coming changes merely scold me?
Well, I'm scared. Won't you hold me?
It's just not my time, babe.

My future's a watch-face that's broken.
Time's irrelevant and the days are unknown.
I'll try what's palatable to my condition.
I'll cut my flesh, but not down to the bone.

It's just not my time, babe.
One day I may feel ready to accept
The changes I must take to inter my regret.
But for now it's just not my time, babe.

Walkin' 'round the edge of the park.

The following is the lyrics to a song I've written. I used to write poetry but now I write nothing but songs - apart from the odd piece which I can't put music to!

I 'opes you enjoys it, me lovers!

Walkin' 'round the edge of the park:

Here amongst the verdant space of my life
I'm surrounded by concrete and neon signs.
Don't go out after dark; walk within the shade.
Walkin' 'round the edge of the park's where I feel safe.

I used to know the path that led across the green expanse.
But now I know only the edge around my hazy plans.

Walkin' 'round the edge of the park, I see people on the green.
I see faces I think I've seen but hear things I've never heard.
I could walk through the trees around the boundary -
Where I cannot see and I cannot be seen.

I used to know the swings when I'd dream that I could fly.
If you'd push too hard I'd cry; if you'd let go I would sigh.

I used to know my hands like the savant knows his palms;
Like the couple know their qualms; like a winter-city dream.
Walkin' 'round the edge of my destiny,
I'm skating on the ice of a boundless sea.

I can view a time in summer in which I'll thrive.
I will maybe one day feel free to be able to be able to dive into the sea.

Bugs.

I stopped looking at bugs when I was ten. I thought I'd never see them again - the woodlouse carrying its eggs or the scuttling ants. But I didn't stop looking; I merely changed the subject. The bugs grew larger to human proportions - to humans.

With our nests, our queens, our prey and predators, our enemies, our rituals - we're no different. We're just bugs being bugs to the extreme. We're no more than the wasps and hornets of the world - only flightless.

Aren't we glorious?

But rather than retreat to subterranean realms, this bug will try to escape its chrysalis stage. Many bugs the world over are doing this. One day, maybe we'll all grow wings and take flight and see horizons unavailable to our ground-based forebears.

To the insects, arachnids and arthropods - the many species* of human - I say may we one day lose our limbs, our fangs and stingers, our shells, our pessimistic feelers; may we one day become one with the air.

May we feed on the pollen of progress and the nectar of spirit. May we rest in love's sanctifying shade in summer whilst the grand, yellow plasma orb suspended in the sky nourishes and tortures the very earth it gave scope to exist.

*I am of course using the word 'species' figuratively here.

The curious case of the mischievous boy in the Pelham Street library.

Upon walking to college this morning I had a spring in my step; walking to college, but not for college. Alas, there is but one lecture today from someone imparting their knowledge of the exciting world of public affairs. Beach and sunshine or public affairs? Beach or public affairs? Well, I think I'll just take my revision notes down to the beach.

Anyway, the reason for my walking to college was to do something for my dear mother. If you must know, I had to book her flight details so she could fly to Dublin to see her daughter's wedding dress being fitted. About 200 metres from the college building I suddenly recollected that I'd forgotten the damn piece of paper on which the passport numbers were written. An impromptu 'Fuck!' would serve the occasion well at such a point.

Luckily, my mummy knows me well. She has initiative. 'Don't forget your phone, Rob,' she calls out. 'Oh! Actually, take nan's, but don't lose it or else she'll skin you alive!" So when I arrive we have a little bit of correspondence. I put on my helpless son voice and she replies in a dark, menancing, fretful tone that only a mother with three bastardly children and 30 years of porridge-cold love could embrace.

I sit by a computer. 'Bing! Bing!' goes my phone. I saunter off to the counter phone-in-hand to request the borrowment of an ink-containing vessel for the implementation of hand-written type - a pen to you and me. However - and this is where the story gets juicy - the lady there has no interest in granting me this most perfunctory favour. 'I'm sorry but you're going to have to take that outside,' she says. 'But I need a pen and paper,' I reply. 'Well, I'm sorry but you can't take office equipment outside the library,' she says, much to my dismayance. 'For fuck sake!' I think. The thought expresses itself quite apparently across my face. 'Excuse me, but what am I to do?' I reply. 'I need to take this - it's important - but you won't give me a pen and paper,' I say.

Finally, my quandary is broken and shattered - along with her morning resolve - when she hands me my desired items and exhales in exasperation. She best find some other schmuck to try her office bureaucracy on this morning. I take down the passport numbers and walk back in. 'I'm sorry,' I say, as I hand her the pen. I throw her a little smile. She doesn't like the throwing of my little smile so she reflects it with an upside-down version of said smile.

I sit down again with a brief smug look before the following thought occurs: 'Shit! I'd best get back to finishing the damn flight document.'*

*I wrote this piece mostly in the present tense to convey the immediacy of the event. Sorry to you if you're a tense pedant but I shall flout the past-tense just this once. I should also let it be known - to avoid confusion and deliver my readers from unremitting suspense - that I attend City College in Brighton

Love - a super-position of the heart & a sinking of the soul.

We're like two teenage delinquants fervently bashing from each other the fusty, cherished spirits of our youth.

I love you; you love me. But what is love? Is it the unrequisited binding of two souls? Is it a biological imperative? - A necessity of no further compulsion than the ebb and flow of the air and seas?

Is it the ending of happiness; a giving in to a crushing despair and the attacks of an amourous beast?

Do I love you because I'm touched by the hand of some higher power? Do I love you, or what you resemble? Is love, rather, maybe the spines of some great formless, snarling, pearly-jawed beast with jangles reeking of the fusty ardour of passion?

Well, all I know is that love is standing on the edge of oblivion and staring into the eyes of the abyss whilst standing aloft the precipice of glory; a point reaching no higher, with the sullen depths of perfunctoriness all about it.

Well, love is a being lost on a path whereas unlove is a being lost in an ancient wood. It's a welcome lost; a lost with a sense of direction.

Lead me where you will, love, for I will rove your paths 'til the very sinews of my being are made void. I am lost within the grand scheme of her. May she keep me contained - her prize; my master.

She is my path through the despair and half-light confusion. And when I think the path ends I discover that the mechanisms of change make paths anew.

Is love the projecting of certain unpossessed and unpossessable qualities onto another? - A realisation in another what one can never possess? When you find that person who you'll deify abreast the altar of the human heart you will feel an unworthy dog. But she sees in you a man 10 feet tall; a man of morals and kindness and sanctity.

When you find her, you may both eye the fickle nature of love. The pieces may not naturally fit. You must re-search the box for pieces you thought previously discarded. But don't let it pass you if you find it. Love is a sinking despair and a super-position of the heart. Love is a thankfulness for the blessed futility of our pathetic lives.

A feature piece on a community garden scheme in Brighton.

A Story of Decay and Renewal

by Robert Head

IT’S FAIR to say that the Lewes Road area of Brighton has seen a certain amount of dereliction over the past few years.

Shops hither and thither open and close like ephemeral sign-posts which read: ‘Warning! Danger ahead’.

The warning signs come in the shape of small shops. A few have closed, but a majority have down-sized. Only a handful of shops still cling on.

However, the largest, albeit now non-present, indicator of the last ten years has been the closing of petrol stations. Stiff competition and other market factors meant that two former garages on Lewes Road and a third by the Hollingdean viaduct began to close one by one, leaving only a single garage on the gyratory opposite J Sainsbury’s.

The site of a long-since gone petrol station midway along Lewes Road which was left derelict six years ago has seen a recent burst of activity in the form of a community garden scheme. The project, championed by Duncan Blinkhorn, 47, is dubbed the Lewes Road Community Garden, and its roots are only just beginning to take stock. Duncan is a Brighton resident of 26 years and campaigned for various peace movements in the 80s.

On Sunday May 10th the lock on the gates was broken by Duncan's brigade. From thenceforth a clean-up operation was started. Sacks of rubbish, broken glass, and other bits and pieces were cleared from the 20 metres-squared area which is owned by agency, King Sturge. Unlike the land at the bottom of Coombe road, this land has been left undeveloped for six years.

It started with a re-shuffling of the stones strewn over the site and then grew to encompass several large, plant-filled, concrete bollards, a huge circle of turf which sits neatly in the centre of the site, and a portable toilet.

Local passers-by were encouraged to help out and that’s just what they did. Plants, and other items such as a pine bench, were donated by members of the public and friends of Mr Blinkhorn. It has even been said that a few members of the police force have been actively contributing to the project.

When asked what spurred him on, Mr Blinkhorn said: "I deserve better walking past this every day. I find it an insult that anyone could let this space rot and not intervene." He also cited a recent study which showed that, on average, residents of Lewes Road die 9 months earlier than the national average because of pollution problems.

A launching party on the evening of May 24th was amply attended and saw the ‘official’ opening of the area to the public.

A group of students sat relaxed on a section of the turf chatting away. They were Thomas, Becky and Dan, of Sussex University; Simon, of the Brighton Film School; and Thomas - a young man from Brittany, France, visiting the south coast of England for three weeks.

Thomas said that his home town is quite a small student town with few green spaces and, like Brighton, most of the green spaces are located out-of-town. He commented: "there is a nice ambience here and good community work is being done."

Earlier on the same day, Mr Blinkhorn exerted a half-day effort of asking passers-by their thoughts and he was met with unquestioning support. "I asked 40 or 50 people," he said, "and I videoed around 20."

Thomas Turbine-Tree, of Sussex University, said that he’s hoping artists from the university and Brighton will get involved and showcase their work - which may involve sculptures and paintings - for free.

An acquaintance of his, Daniel, commented: "it’s wonderfully symbolic that the site was run by a petroleum company and now it’s for the community."

Sarah Bargiela, a student studying post-graduate psychology, is the face behind the website. She was cycling past when she saw the site and enquired to satisfy her curiosity. She felt the scheme to be important and thought it deserving of some good publicity.

She commented: "using a derelict site to create a communal, green space has brought a fantastically diverse group of people together and resulted in a sharing of skills and a beautiful space to spend time - a focal point for Lewes Road residents."

The police have no qualms, but there have been a few petty grievances expressed by the Franklin Tavern pub, opposite. During the afternoon of May 24th, many drinkers enquired about the scheme with a certain degree of pessimism. Mr Blinkhorn commented: "the pub is supportive with regard to the spirit of the scheme but they fear anti-social behaviour."

Chris Lewis, the owner of the pub, has worries about the security of the site and the fact that drug users may congregate there. She said: "shops around here stay open ‘til 2 a.m. and I’m worried about the site’s not being monitored. It’s good that there is a toilet, though, as there are very few facilities around here."

When quizzed about the upcoming Euro-election of June 4th, a majority of people said they’d vote Green and support MEP Caroline Lucas. Although it sounds like the question may needn’t have been worth asking, many cite the need for urgent green action and feel that the only party representing them is said party.

For more information on the scheme and how to get involved, go to: www.lewesroadcommunitygarden.org. Alternatively, you can join the Facebook group of the same name.

Words.

The words envelop and inter me,
Forcing me down into a non-descript crypt.
I choke, unable to form a single word.
Every syllable is foamy and glottled;
My tongue is weighted with the lead of a lolling giant.
I cry unknowingly as I wonder why these words possess me.
Why must they, like parasites, inflict their long, drawn-out punishments?
And so down into blackness I go, groped by the hands of invisible ghosts;
Spectres of a long-dead part of me.
I'll let my maggots eat away the decaying flesh,
Leaving just the once-ripe centre to glow and unglow into nothingness.
Seamless clarity gives way to a shapeless void.

War.

Land is the canvas on which war is painted;
War: the product of minds tainted.
Deluded with delusions of self-grandeur,
And couched in feelings of splendour,
Men will claim their gods in candour,
And ask for valour to fight their contenders.
The points they fight upon are ownership
And the memories of an ignorant few;
They'll claim their spoils for themselves
And cite the texts that grant them their actions.
When every last square yard has been claimed,
And every spot is peppered with their ruddy, vessel-bound fuel,
Maybe then they'll rest easy.
Maybe then they'll know the actions of fools.