SKINS OF THE FLESH

BOOK 11
[THE DARKSIDE] A BOOK OF POEMS BY DERMOTT O' DOWD

DEDICATION To Barbara Cormack, round a far brighter star, orbiting now.

CONTENTS Introduction.......................................1 Stonehenge.................................2,3,4 Departure..........................................5 Hospital Death...............................6,7 Niburu.............................................10 Growing Old...............................11,12 Pornographic Model....................13,14 The Illumination......................15,16,17 Antique.............................................18 To Be............................................19,20 I, Creator.......................................21,22 Doubt................................................23 There Is No Death........................24,25 Further Out...................................26,27 Good Advice....................................28 Ode To Bill...................................29,30 Eulogy...............................................31

1 INTRODUCTION Themes of death, loss and change pervade this second and final book in the series whereas my first book dealt with resolution and understanding. Herein you will find an exploration of the dark side. Not only the changes that occur in emotional relationships but the raw pain of grief and the generational and earth changes that we all have to deal with in our everyday life. It it not presented to depress the reader but to acknowledge the sometimes painful journey we all make on this fermenting planet. Poetry cannot write the truth but it can point towards it. I hope the direction signs presented here are clear and meaningful to you and the light, although dim and fragile at times, still shines strongly through.

2 STONEHENGE Stoned pillars Suncentred. Eyed icily the festering Babylon That blistered onto green skin, Tents mushroomed and musical Belling the molten air. Stoned killers Of tradition Carved the forest For their pestering fires Bleeding wild anger at generations Pressure cooked and crippled Year upon year upon year. Swordwhite Druids Blue hilt guided Knifed the blackness, Clasped by a fist of rogues, Blind, blind warriors Sensing a kill. Mercury mounted

3 The blade spun out and round Burning a perfect ring Gemmed magnificent. A low hum lipped out As if the very soul of things Cried voiceless Untongued melodies, Mad water undoing the Universe Scouring the wet corded night Moulding sacred steel Out of fired flesh. At its highest Hymen burst its banks And flowed red rosed thigh. The rabble struck dumb! Orgasm tore Emptying silver screams Into the mist thick air. He/she touched the snow Seeing in terrifying visions The Earth, no more manlived

4 A bigger place for fish. Angels, Hell laden Abused the curse that hung them out to dry The whitemen had won Stepping down to Babylon Empty and full. No stone or half drunk can Could touch them now, No nails of space and time Could touch The gold inside, The Grail that shone The life that lived And never died, That lay inside each moment Untouched and perfect Being.

5 DEPARTURE Gone! A planet removed from its orbit To disappear without trace. In another space Round a far brighter star Orbiting now. That world you were Left vacant With servants masterless and lost Waiting for a new life to fill But its not the same Its never the same. What brilliant surgery removed? So much, so cleanly, so quickly From hearts, minds eyes Chairs tables pots Now empty of you, It will not be the same No! it will never be the same.

HOSPITAL DEATH Called to attend To mourn before the black And watch from tearful prisons As they took her down the steps of days Beyond the bedside curtains With their fringed hems, Taunting the unknown. Small talk, short walk, no chalk To inscribe a worthy poem, Prometheus bound and gagged On stones of hesitation. My hearts voice a nervous beak Pecking at sanity And pushing, rushing over Her bed and down the walls of severed lives That flowed into theatres Acting out her only death. Anger at the butcher and his assistant Pursued them like an eyes knife. For she already dead, Their hands, their heads Left bloodstained cloth

7 And bits of sacred body In some squalid BurkeHare pot. So you killed me with your eyes of love Because I could walk Down corridors and into air With tears so heavy, No iron cup could hold. The days light ran embarrassed into night People were doorkeepers and clowns Rules written down Times to be kept In shallow structured rooms While that which was left Lay empty of you And all the mighty force of my love Could never bring you back

8 NIBURU Bullroar and tumorous Grinds the hindcreak Earth Off axis Bulging weakly Round and round the empty pathways Of Sun held space. Skin poxed and riddled With maggoty man Mineworming the black the blue Pissdrinking and shitstinking Curdling stewguts Teeth diamond driven into Enematic mud. Dying planet pulled to feces People brimmed and filling still Tearskinned nature gaped raw With death devouring diggers Feasting full and farting forth While fucking turd world Elephant man.

9 What is this terror that creeps? Crapwetting the shirtseeves Its blood red eye in the Sun As its dragons tail whips out, Ancient bully bouldering through space In berserker mode Taking our poles and shifting them Global warming the asphalt lanes Barrelling towards The micro chipped cities No escape possible For the unpassported masses. Pandora opens cunt to sky As the bottom falls out of the world Stone cut and guttered Gashes a mile deep A thousand long Criss crossing eating cities Washed down by monster seas, Plates shift, crack, bend shatter As plains become mountains Mountains sea, Orbit stopped Rotation halted

10 Onesided sunsided Onesided nightsided As the skin reels off Billions of mouths hang open As the banshee scream Ejaculates from root nerves Obliterating organs in its wake On the verge of neck release Screeches into silence As spirits leave their bodies With a memory A thousand lifetimes Will not erase. New Morning New Orbit New Nature New man New Sun New Space New Light New Dimension New Peace New Love.

11 GROWING OLD It seems I am growing old The machinery of nature has ground me down To humility at last. I can make no more new efforts To be this To be that Too tired for sleep Too quiet for peace The worthy causes that grew, Sacred missions for Grail and Glory Lie Lucifered and vanquished By goodness so low and pure It makes me last in the queue Last to finally come home. It seems I am growing old When emotion Which once was iron maiden held Springs open like the boiling rose blossom At each multi coloured leaf that falls The time of day that remembers The stars that blink and are gone At each minute trivial thing That years ago got trampled

12 Under youthful innocent boots Ignored and brutalised The asphyxiated bees in a jar The torn wings of a Red Admiral, Are all children such murderers? It seeems I am growing old When building dreams Is work for younger souls And losing is as good as winning And the golden statues of my art Lie dusty and forgotten In an unused festering corner of my loft, I let others now More eager eyed and restless Punch the times of day While I prefer to sit and watch The autumn leaves turn crimson gold Then fall in rainbow colours Effortlessly To the ground.

PORNOGRAPHIC MODEL Like a she thing wild Heaved and curved Spine bridged and nippled skyward The woman on show Showing nothing Ribs ridged high Breasts finger caged and squeezed Dry bulbs for eyesuckling males No childs food The woman on show Showing nothing Mouth tongued and dripped From some elusive core Mind locked on what the money will buy The fools are easily pleased With the woman on show Showing nothing Legs thighed wide Pink cut ham burgered out Wet silk cords stewed and grooved

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The woman on show 14 Showing nothing Orgasmed money Blowing the twin leaves apart Mouthing the black O Toothless and gummed dumb The woman on show Showing nothing

HUMAN I yearn for the awkward thing The imperfect word The embarrassed silence Badly done things I do not wish to be made easy In an uneasy land Fooled by professionals slick and smooth Preaching false security The news read flawlessly Hiding the aching stories, Unbroken skin

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I would rather cry when no one else will dare Fall down, make the worst mistakes Bump and knock Along the multi coloured corridors of time Stammer and bluster, be a total bufoon For I am hu- hu- hu- human after all

16 THE ILLUMINATION What world is this? Where blissful ignorance permeates the clay Fermenting the restless soil for pyramids While the dark and unseen masters Enslave us all In our labyrinthine hierarchies Eyed from their illumined capstones Invisible to sheep. How long have they had control? Sucked our energy from our bones Kept us in our darkened rooms Fed us lies and made us mad Wrote our history to their tune Promised those who serve the most That one day, they will, be set free Lies upon lies upon lies. What have they done to our children? Wiped their minds and poured in poisons Expendible, only for the use of Educated to be dumb

Never to wake up 17 Or get out of the box Be dependant on the machine That feeds its hooked money To its mindless fish. The few must drive the many Darklord shepherds and their brutish dogs Sheep terrorised by money medicine markets Now this way now that way then back again Sometimes over culling cliffs Oft times underground to mine the treasure Useless eaters foraging in the night. If they wake up, kill them Food for the dogs. Where will they go? When this world falls over on its axis When their ivory towers come crashing down When the earth devours them with its mouth gaping quakes and monstous waves For there is no place to hide Nowhere to run to No new Empire to inhabit No golden throne to sit upon

No sheep to do their bidding 18 As the black dogs they once controlled Turn in their tracks and face their ancient masters Tearing them to pieces. For this is the end of the bad seed The darklords that have ruled for 12,000 years The murderers of the innocent Their pyramids lie broken and scattered Their souls taken to some distant place To fester amongst their own kind Imprisoning and defeating each other Paying off their karmic debts till time itself grows old.

18 ANTIQUE Its a rare antique Very valuable Hundreds of years old Smiling at the folly of greedy dealers I pick up a common stone Hold it reverently in my hand What do you make of this then? How old? How rare? What price?

19 TO BE If I could die Maybe I would do it But like the breath that goes out Must come back in again Not of lungs or air But of who I am. Can I deny that I am? To do so would end The pictures that surround me The lives that breathe in every Major, minor thing. If I cannot extinguish the flame Then what would be the point in trying? Rather leave it to the ignorant and uninformed Who play Godgames with too close relations Believing they hold their soul like a knife. If I could live

Maybe I would not do it 20 Yet I am there before I am here Even though I strip the outer edges Leave them crumpled on the ground I stand beyond definition Embarrassingly there. So then what power to live or die? When only arrogance and ignorance Commands the choice Rather let me continue becoming And unbecoming In every milisecond Raw raw raw The puppet and the puppetmaster Here there and everywhere At once something Then nothing at all.

21 I, Creator Colours of my pastel past Fade into shadows Shadows that are memories Hooked and clawed Fish death throed On the slimey deck of my soul. Bosch buggered and broken Not sure which head speaks what Mother mouthed, Father eyed Priest riddled, teacher poked Barborous conglomeration of Medievil venom Bursting in so many oily blossoms On the plush white snowed canvas Of my present. I have run out of paths And come to the corner of my nightmare Once more. Run out of time Out of mind

Exorcised the dead from a thousand secret 22 places Yet, there are more Always more to be released. Thy kingdom come In pastel shades Prick of a broken pastel pencil The image I could not face Stares back at me From my monogrammed mirror. Now I know what pain is, Watercoloured tears Dripped and sundered into crime Holding the iron fast memories of the future What I have made What have I made? Only me! Only Me!

23 DOUBT Between the image and the shadow Lies the doubt Hung silent and poised Before the beginning and the ending Always there But not quite. Between the fire and the ash Lies the doubt Hung silent and poised Before the building and the burning Always there But not quite. Between the soul and the body Lies the doubt Hung silent and poised Before the birthing and the dying Always there But not quite

24 THERE IS NO DEATH There is no Death For Being could not hold Such a heavy shadow On its wings. There is only Life into Life Into Life into Life Saturating itself with time, Growing and shedding its skin Layer after layer for each dimensions meal Over and over again There is not just one life now But before and after Male, female multi faceted Tracking round the spiral steps of growth Devolving, evolving Seeking every corner of desire To be what we are, ever were Could ever be You are eternal as am I You will never cease to be

You can always 25 Change your body Change your mind Change your sex Change your time Fill your wardrobes full With overloaded lifetimes Till night becomes day Planet becomes Sun Heart becomes one

26 FURTHER OUT I go further now Further than I've gone before Beyond the freedom of my prison Where only fools can bare their faces In the too revealing light of night I am not afraid now To care too much for nothing so important To hurt the innocent when they are wrong No! I am not afraid to walk away to seriousness And be crucified on a clouded sky And though I may be in the wrong world here Where rules hang down their curtains into day My icy body burns away the cobwebs That hold the moon in desperate waters play If you want to lose me Find the edge that sharpens into bluntness Whisper silent screams across the rainbows Till this is what I am, am not, Revealed

27 A coward and a monster Sewing mailbags for eighty cents a day

28 GOOD ADVICE The more you love The more you will grieve Be careful of what you want Be ready to let it all go Desire begets suffering Understand the planet you are on Accept the darkness with the light Enjoy the simple things But don't be dependant on them As I drew breath to continue I quietly heard you say Oh! Fuck off You patronising bastard.

29 ODE TO BILL On every other Thursday Poets pipe their particular tunes Dug well in Digswell Pied piper Bill Leaves bad verse in ruins From Blake to Byron How they rant on No quarter given Praise where praise is due Bill's finger will pointedly accuse Slack lines in Dylan, Eliot or God forbid Hughes How we've learnt to write and rhyme Masters of our craft are we Writing stuff that is sublime While taking time to have a pee Bill's the best there ever was Master poet, critic, gardener And homebrew beermaker Masterpieces from manure

30 Cultivating words, plants and wine For the conoisseur How we'll miss when he goes Digswell left bereft Is there any chance we will survive? Or will we wind up writing Poetry like Louise Thank you Bill for all you've given From Dermott Martin Tony and all livin Having put us on the right track Come and save us when we might crack. For you are master captain king And we just hapless birds who cannot sing Now left forlorn outside the gate Of Digswell House, on Thursdays at eight

31 EULOGY Do not cry for me, you tearful strangers, For I am mirror born and died, Looked and lived in from afar, An old boat on an older river, Laden down with the usual stories, Nearing home at last.

26 FURTHER OUT I go further now Further than I've gone before Beyond the freedom of my prison Where only fools can bare their faces In the too revealing light of night I am not afraid now To care too much for nothing so important To hurt the innocent when they are wrong No! I am not afraid to walk away to seriousness And be crucified on a clouded sky And though I may be in the wrong world here Where rules hang down their curtains into day My icy body burns away the cobwebs That hold the moon in dry waters play If you want to lose me Find the edge that sharpens into bluntness Whisper silent screams across the rainbows Till this is what I am, am not, revealed A coward and a monster

27 Sewing mailbags for eighty cents a day