Winter

Kris Brooker

Copyright © 2022 by Kris Brooker

Index.

- Title Page

- Copyright

- Fight

- Rumour

- Chalk

- The Vine

- Happy Birthday (again)

- Mother.

- Poor Matryoshka

- Starlight?

- Illumination?

- Down below

- Daemons

- Truth

- What am I?

- Winter’s End

Fight

I’ve seen the blueprints of those who came before. Who’ve suffered the indignity of what I must endure. I’m playing time added-on, out in the rain. Playing for penalties at the end of the game. Delaying the final-whistle; please don’t blow. Screw you, it’s not my time to go!

That’s not my fate. I’m happy here in my atrophic state. I’ll scratch at the Reaper and howl at the dark. So long as these Duracell’s keep pumping my heart.

Because Time is bound by moments, not by a stitch

The needle thread by a cold-hearted bitch

Before arrival, she has already passed

No wonder I’m fucking dying

I can’t get this moment to last.

I’m a monologue of an age gone-by. When I look in a mirror, what reflects is a lie. A memory that I cannot support. A body barely Classic, no longer running Sport. And what used to hang as meat, fuck, is now limp and running in retreat.

I’m age-on-the-bone. No longer fit for the game. The young look at me as though I should get the blame. For what we pass on is not what we get. Each generation gets fucked by its parent’s regrets. Because the young see time as forever. The future, well, that comes whenever? Time is about now, not tomorrow; not back-when. Too late we realise that it won’t come around again. So live your life. Be the one who dares. Because when you’re old, no fucker cares.

Free-radicals rampaging by the flock

Suicidal cells that run down the clock

Before you know it, you’re a bygone-age

A foot-note in the crimp of a page

There’s too many candles and not enough cake

The young see the old as a biological mistake

A chapter of life to disregard and despise

“But I’ll die when it’s my time . . .

Who doesn’t like a surprise?”

Maybe that’s why a clock is round? So time can spin three-sixty and never be found. No pity on its face; hands moving strong. Groundhog day until the day you find you’ve gone.

But not my day. No, not today. I greet each morning with a fanfare hooray. I draw my six-gun hung with streamers. It’s a gun-fight for Expendables, not one for screamers.

So all you kids out there; be warned

Go ‘over the top’ with bayonets drawn

Because the fight ahead is harsh and cold

We’re taught how to grow-up

Never shown how to grow old

Only now is the truth of it dawning

That old age should come with a Government Warning.

So don’t play Tag with a shadowy space. Stay one step ahead and deny it’s embrace. You’re on a forced march through Wintery Falls. History a slag-heap, don’t answer when it calls. Despite a thousand cuts by the Reaper’s scythe. The final act of life, should be to keep yourself alive.

Rumour

There’s a whisper going around

That Man’s Humanity has finally been found

I heard it from a guy who’d heard it said

It was mistakenly filed in a folder marked,

Dead.

The message inside is being rapidly spread

It’s said the wealthy have opened the vaulted door

And are encouraging those who have less to have more

So remember where you were at this auspicious time

Being poor will no-longer be a crime

No more verdicts by a Judge named Dredd

Proof beyond doubt that Humanity is not,

Dead.

I’ve heard rumours that walls are coming down

Knights on white horses have ridden into town

To make racism and oppression a thing of the past

It’s said capitalism has agreed to share at last

That fuel and electricity will be sold at cost

Shareholders and Bankers surrender; they lost

The rumour’s hot and continues to spread

There’s an outbreak of Humanity

Infecting the living

not raising,

the Dead.

It’s a new Green Deal

I hear everyone wins

Renewable energy

sun, sea, and winds

A Brave New World

A ‘Utopian Spring’

We’ll all get to share

So everyone wins

There’s no small print

And no clause

No contract in red

No need to remortgage,

the Dead.

They say that religions will cut to the chase

Crusade and Jihad are about to embrace

Find common ground in a Heavenly swell

Not sending one-and-other to a premature Hell

Religious causes

So many have bled

Light candles for the living

Not just for,

the Dead

I’ve heard these changes on whispered breath

The Holy resurrection of Humanity’s death

No more rich to divide the gap

An end to shovelling other people’s crap

The flag of Ideology burns

The colour of your skin

No longer concerns

Hatred cannot endure

Loving one-and-other

Is not a vaccine

It’s a cure

In a world where nothing is broken

All we break is bread

My whisper lends it’s ear to a scream

A fanfare finale to a beautiful dream

Angels whisper, for fear of being heard

Finding our Humanity; how absurd.

Awake in a world where Demons tread

No, I would rather sleep on in my coma instead

Chalk

Prejudice comes in many shades but is always chalked onto fresh virgin slates.

A blank page iridescent with innocence. Life so virtuous and pure; so delicate we dare not grasp too firm. So we coddle and swaddle, and allow it to grow within the social bubble. Encouraged to play in our communal slipstream whilst breathing all our polluted air.

It’s ideology . . .

A malefic allure

A genetic delusion to keep things pure.

Like snorting coke, or injecting a dream

Fantasy fucking to find the Xenophobic gene

That will always lead to a herd's demise

Empires only fall, they never truly rise

A clean black slate is scribbled over with white. The white page gets typed-over in black. Fertile corrections delivered. Dark-ink penned within the margins.

Black versus white until the socio-economics reminds us that the only colour of consequence is gold. Dependable and spendable; the only colour that’s not expendable. But when it’s not worth the paper it’s printed upon, its legendary sheen becomes inescapable.

As the slate’s stack, the chalks tap in unison. Base colour defined by its exploitation as the chalk scratches to a sharper tip. As our base-nature gets graffitied across the Humanitarian Wall. Loosely packed bricks topple into free-fall.

It’s a spiral descent into Herd Singularity; outsiders beware. As the scent of dissent circles the event-horizon, it smells like candy; ever present. Always in the air and easily whiffed. It’s fucking addictive, and the truth of how it is. How it was, and how it will always be. We are ripe for the turn, at any turn; no matter which way we turn. Because we’re all racist, every one of us. We’ve spent thousands of years trying to divide ourselves with ideology, religion, colour, and race.

So are we Schizoid

Or are we just insane?

One stem intersecting two sides of a brain

Each fucking with the other’s dreams

Is that why we hate each other...

Why we're such bad little machines?

Racism bears down on our planet with gravitational effect. It strikes with the venom of a virus, but it is taught, not caught. An ideology passed from father to son, and from mother to daughter. Who’ve never even been slighted by those they’re willing to slaughter.

There’s just too much grey between Black and White. A Humanitarian crisis of fight or flight. It’s the definition of hate. Being born as Chalk, or having to live as Slate.

The Vine

The vine finds strength in its roots

New beginnings forged by each new Spring of shoots

Sweet and succulent swell the grapes on the vine

The scent of dissent ferments the finest of wine

As we clear the brambles that hide in the leaf

So others can gorge with alcoholic relief

Pie-eyed with superiority and success

Those without a glass matter less,

and even less

Too drunk and ignorant to see what festers underneath

Deep down in the roots where there is no relief

Down in the Weeds

Stuck in the compost bed

Dig up one, and find two instead

Foul fertility in the soil down below

We drink what’s left-over because it’s all that we know

But like Jack, we have dreams of making the climb

Of mixing with Giants at the top of the vine

But like sediment our dreams have to settle

Shed from the vine like unwanted petal

Only good for the filth

Back to the weeding

Financial eugenics

Gives a Dollar breeding

A place in the clouds

High above the abyss

For those who drink wine

Whilst the rest of us drink piss

Happy Birthday (again)

It’s another day, much like the last. A snapshot of the future that’s a copy of the past. The sun rises, and takes a pause in-between. Before setting some time later painting darkness on the scene. The days of our life, I suppose. The sun sprinkles pixie dust and everything grows. Firing photon torpedoes hot through my veins. I am, quite literally, wired into the mains. Which is beautiful, right? Who doesn’t like being plugged into light.

(Does anyone know why I’m switched off at night?)

A cycle of cycles comes cycling around. It’s a special day. With bunting and streamers and a big Hooray. Another year racking up the miles, like the engine in a car. Oh boy, the mechanical defects when you’ve journeyed too far. I’m being battered by seasonal lamps. As each winter cycles, my battery loses amps. The touch of our star grows colder. I finally get the joke; I’m growing older.

And probably going insane

Doing the same old-shit over, and again

Wake, live, shit, and then sleep

Life spent on youth leaves the aged going cheap.

That first sight of what would never be again. Knowing Time was no longer my friend. I’d been post-dated and left to my fate. Left on the shelf to go out-of-date. And I didn’t even notice me pass, before I realised that was me on other side of the glass.

Yeah, that’s Me in the reflection

Or is my doppelgänger a lie?

It’s difficult to trust anyone

Whom I can never look in the eye

As he watches our story unfold

With none of the pain of growing old.

I had sails once that billowed with pride. Now I float adrift on a mill pond tide. The past long-gone; gone on ahead. Leaving memories of a foggy trail instead. We’re born, we live, we perform. Never deviate from our social norm. We process, assemble, convert & guide. No free-will beyond the data applied. But when the updates stop, the corruptions engage. The first signs you’ve been infected with old-age.

Fully focused, but totally blind

A Banzai attack of the biological kind

DNA; a Double Helix and a thriller

Deoxyribonucleic acid is an evolutionary killer.

I took Thor’s mighty hammer and did something divine. I created life from my own design. I was once a lion with a mighty roar. Now I’m an iceberg getting ready to thaw. Gingerly stepping over stones of glass. Scattered debris of days now passed.

Been mislaid in a stygian sphere

A mystical resonance in a fluid unclear

Nucleonic fermentation from an oceanic retreat

My own little bubble as I ripen and sweet

I am Umbra. I’m sat at my helm

This life is my biological realm

I am the Matrix of my strings

I’m Lord of my own fucking Rings!

Yeah, right. Sat on my Olympus throne, above a mist of memories and scars. Sharing the seat with Hera, is like draping myself with stars. Mood-lighting what we are yet to see. Painting our own portrait of who we want to be

But let’s not romanticise Fate

For most of us, there’s just a time and a date

We’re all born with a noose

And it’s a personalised knot

None of us knows the length of the rope

Just what we get at the end of our drop.

Mother.

Movement prescribed; trajectory unaware. Destination unknown, yet it has to be heading somewhere. It’s the force of formation. Carry on creation. Inevitable obliteration. Motion is Mother, dead ahead and running true. Not running away; nor running too. Mother never fails to pass-on through.

The effects of a signal, or perhaps even a sign? The perpetuation of motion is the clock that’s ticking time. Dragging us far Out-There, on toward the extreme. Still stirring the contents of all that’s ever been. So all hail, Mother. In this universe, She reigns. Mother is motion, and we have Her blood in our veins.

She’s here in my heart. Each pulse a beat apart. Together they tap out The Drummers’ Call. The rhythm of life and it beats in us all. It’s Mother’s will. Why we can’t stand still. Motion winding us like rubber bands, then sounding the bugle through restless hands.

Motion, more energetic than neutrinos or quarks. Filling my mind with champagne sparks. Where even the deepest of sleep can’t prevail. Dreams are like Tiger’s being held by their tail.

It’s the perfect paradigm

The fuel for our death

The toxic nature of each & every breath.

Without movement, we have no way of knowing,

To tell if we’re coming, or whether we’re going.

We’re little Clockwork toys who wait for the smelt.

Spontaneous combustion as our cells begin to melt.

We’re Iddy-biddy boxes of energetic despair.

Motion is Mother, and she doesn’t fucking care!

Poor Matryoshka

We all know how it starts. Each new model impaired by the light; deafened by the noise. Traumatised by the sound of their own screaming as they get dumped to the factory floor. Left to grapple in the grasp of growing-pains as they’re assaulted by the vagaries of life.

Women aren’t meat

Nor property to sell

Not Male-ego trophies

Or just a fragrant smell

Convulsive therapy bombards the virginal sense, to stifle the individual’s glow. Theirs, not ours . . . As to few of life’s goody-bags are permitted. Allowed through the outer-shell before it is hard-baked. Just another Doll growing-up been licensed to wear Mummy’s make-up.

Not a Kiss-me-Quick

To be unwrapped and opened

for the male candy-stick

Not to be trafficked like opals

Or adorned like pearls

Put an end to eye-candy

Put an end to Chocolate girls

Poor Matryoshka; from one Doll into the next. Only to be vexed. Too busy dressing for the mirror to apply her own trust. Only understanding when her shell turns crisp and crust.

To be fair, they’re all blindsided before being shoved out into the light. The paternal tube is vented before the meat is primed, then jammed down the pipe until the exit is breached. Then hung upside down and smacked around until it screams. Good enough to pass Quality Control.

Another Doll ready to mould, twist, and attach with a social lasso. A hundred thousand years of vision, but denied the sight to see.

But women will find a way around Asimov’s laws

Strive to delete their servitude clause

& take revenge for the ‘Penile crime’

That programmed slavery into their original design.

Starlight?

Four points of the compass, yet no light is the same. Look the other way and the stars play a game. Hide and seek, I’ve heard it said. “Why can’t I see the back of a passing light’s head?”

We’re caught in the Cosmic headlamps

Poor-little-deer

The light of Heaven’s shine

Yet its meaning is far from clear

It’s starlight filled with eastern promise. But a promise the Cosmos will never connect. How can it? The closest light we see has eighty-thousand years to reflect. Nothing but old news in a universe lit by lies. We’re staring at ghosts in our Heavenly skies. Each one a solar wave. Trying to escape a mass-filled grave.

So damn them.

Damn all the lies for being

The only damn thing in the darkness isn’t worth seeing.

Illumination?

We too are a part of the light, we just can’t see our reflection. We are what was, what is, and what will be. What other Being’s see, when they stare up at the night.

Can you see us?

That tiny sparkle of bright

Over there, somewhere . . .

Reaching out with our light

Perhaps a billion years of travel

Before you finally catch a sight

Oh boy, what a view.

An ancient glimmer in another Beings Heaven. A cat put out in the night. Like us they stare at left-over faeces. Is it any wonder we’re fucked up as a species?

When you look south, are the Northern Lights gone? If no-one can see me, do I no longer belong? When the memory of me begins to rust. After atrophy has returned me to dust. Is it fate for my light to go out, or do we still have room for reasonable doubt?

Like the stars, we are physics

We are not divine

That which acts like chaos

It has a mathematical design

It’s the one thing I know. That light has no end, it’s always on the go. Math doesn’t lie; the formula agrees. Physics is King, and the King decrees. That nothing, must be made of something, so ‘nothing’ cannot exist. The one damn thing on which physics persists.

That we exist as only physics can define. We are matter and energy that shares the same space and time. No cause and effect; we are one and the same. Flesh inhabited by this Thing in our brain.

I think, therefore I am?

I imagine, so therefore I can

I can touch, so therefore I feel

I don’t know what I am, but I know that I’m real

But what foul fate to feel the last beat of my heart? To feel myself fall-apart. To watch the light fade, and no longer be seen. To leave the physical that we’ve always been. A life-force spent, or another kind of being? Metamorphose, that’s what I’m seeing. Because we Matter, and that’s a fact. Leaving our body will be an elemental act.

Or what’s the fucking point? Being born in the Circus Maximus of Light. Fuelled in the crosshairs of a billion stars so bright.

But what if there’s a force that even light can’t resist.

What if ‘something’ cannot be nothing

But it can no-longer exist?

No longer be . . .

Is the only thing that fades, a memory?

What if we only exist as memories? Carried around in a bag of slush which doesn’t know its north from south? What if perception cannot be perceived, it can only be pondered? It has no perspicuity, therefore no position, and consequently no perspective. The practise of the previous ends when there is no Thing left to perpetuate the memory. Simply put, it ceases to be.

Just another believer who follows no trend

A totemic traveller on a journey without end

A postcard from the past, been recently sent

“Wish you were here”

Postage paid, but never spent

What will be, will be . . .

But if no-one remembers

I’m not even a memory

When the last memory of me is forgotten, will I truly be gone? Or like starlight, will I continue on? Will I be freed from the flesh and glow. Or will my flame be extinguished when my wick burns low? Just a memory left with nowhere to go.

But something cannot become nothing, right?

Even day changes into night

If what I am fails

Who I am must remain

So if it’s all the same

I intend to move-on to another plain

Down below

Dragons eye’s stare in judgement before the bargain-plea. With eyes wide open but no attempt to see. How life is painted with a broken brush. Colour fading like a teenage crush. To turn the world as white as snow. Takes us places we never want to go. The most disturbing of which, is Down below.

We look left and right to avoid trouble. Looking back sees all that chaos left in our wake. Whilst staring straight ahead requires the courage to confront what comes next. So we look up, up, and away, at all that wonder and awe. Above is always bigger than we will ever be, and why we close our eyes to dream.

What we do most with our eyes is look down. Lower them with reverence, or more often in fear.

Look down and you won’t find direction, you will only find defeat. Sight stops when the only thing left to see are the steps beneath your feet itself. Perhaps it’s gravity’s fault, pulling down on the eyes; feeding our Forever focus. Staring down at the depth of our moral pavement, where it’s hard not to see the cracks.

Looks good, right?

No, because we’re served from the same generic mould

We’re no more notable than the common cold

Just an inferior product from an act of porn

Hard to admit you’re just another pop-of-corn.

The Forever focus shies, and invites the attention of inward looking eyes. Forever focused on your inner space and time. The one true ring protects you from Social injustice and crime.

But watch out for the rats and mice. Tread careful as you walk above on thin-ice.

Perhaps it is gravity’s fault, but the deeper you look the harder you are to find. You’re a social injustice; a one of a kind. Unable to stop the outside from sliding away. Left with only one card to play. To take an auger to the ice. Dig a hole, then roll the dice. Drill down to find your very own spring. See what treasures Down below can bring.

And who doesn’t like treasure, my Precious?

Down below, where the water is both pleasant and warm. Further down towards the eye-of-the-storm. You feel there’s no depth to which you cannot dive. Despite the voice in your head who warns, “you may not survive”.

Pay no heed . . .

As you wave to your reflection above. Deep down you realise, what you love is what you hate. Such a difficult space to navigate.

Far below the social reef

Fishermen trawl with barbs baited with grief

But hey, who wants to be trending

When all that you need feeds your rapid descending

Down, down; it’s quite the view

Below, the only one now who matters is you.

Disconnected by the Grey. No way back, you’re here to stay. Isolation has no need for bars. Leaves no physical injury, but plenty of scars.

Whilst above, you see the dolphin’s play. Below is the sound of whales; so very far away. The weight of emptiness hangs-heavy within.

The nuclear-family is an irradiated sin. The roll-call never ends. In another life you could have had friends.

It’s a sickness. Where once you swam and thrived. Now you hear the silence, and it eats you alive.

Down where there are bad days

Then there are days that are bad

Spiteful, vindictive days drive you mad

Days that are dark, and difficult to cope

Moonless & moody, and devoid of all hope

Just another day, right?

Dawn breaks, but it doesn’t break the night.

A Vampire who siphons from their own existence, draws blood it can ill afford.

Such an unholy accord. Death is ironic; it’s not a solution. So much water, but no absolution. Unaware of which way is up; you swim deeper-on-down. Until the depth to which you’ve sunk, thank God, is now the depth to which you will drown.

Daemons

Ideas don’t spring from the inner-me

It’s Daemons streaming throughout eternity

Empty space being filled with dreams

The sounds of Empires

Along with their screams

Death is our release

The skin of Life a trap

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

When you’re gone all you leave is an App

A black-box that broadcasts

Out where cold and bitterness reigns

A cryogenic transmission

Of ancestral dying pains

A one-off pulse

A kind of prayer

The only truth there is

And it really is, out-there

*

But not as we know

The space in which we sleep

Swim the Daemons of Datum flow

Antennae alert!

Creeping through infinity

Like roots through the dirt

Folding through space

An unstoppable tide

Even the space in-between

Affords no place to hide

*

It’s what the Daemons seek

Flesh powered-down

In sleep we are weak

Our consciousness passed

To that other-worldly place

Where Daemons sing lullabies

Seeking union with our space

*

It’s a place we have to go

‘Simulation Theory’ our go-to flow

We’re all part of the Programme

And we’re being drip-fed

A diet prescribed

And it’s flowing through our head

Sleep stakes us naked in the sand

User-access for the Daemon brand

*

Our Daemons

An inspiration of thought

Crossing the Cosmos

Waiting to be caught

We are all the sum of our memories

Our demise is not our end

We’re all ghosts in the System

And it’s a universal Trend

Hey, we stream what we sow

Then we upload when we go

*

One final bequest

A data-dump in death

Beyond any will and testament

It’s all that is left

Cast-aways on a dying breath

Forever out-there

Left foraging for sleep

For others to borrow

But never to keep

*

So hush little babies

Don’t you cry

The night is young

You’ll find a lullaby

The higher your evolution

The louder your screams

As Daemons seek to download,

in another Being’s dreams

Truth

If what is true, conflicts with the truth

Should we believe in alternative facts

If the truth reflects truly in a mirror

Should we then accept our opposite attracts

Like ‘finding oneself’ in darkness, all alone

Or the Nomad who finally finds a way home

Is it the instinct to strike prey, on the fly

A cub must eat, therefore another must die

Is the truth a bunch of facts that we cannot deny

Does truth reside where only wilderness grows

Or is it lost in a universe that nobody knows

Is truth in philosophy, destiny, or fate

Does raw emotion offer it up on a plate

Strength being the truest measure we make

The art of the deal; whatever we can take

Does the truth hide in our DNA

Some say eugenics is the only way

That only the fittest can survive

So is truth in our evolution

Or that we happen to be alive

Perhaps the only truth is life must end

That Death is your only forever-friend

We are here today

Maybe not tomorrow

That we bring nothing with us

What we have we just borrow

Is truth our morality when all else fails

Hung from a cross by hammer and nails

The lure of Paradise, where some God awaits

Welcomed by Virgins, or Pearly Gates

Blessings upon the Holy Lord

To live, die, and repeat by the sword

To kill with a gun, and then reload

To strap a bomb to your body

Press the button, and explode . . .

Hey, if the truth really is ‘out there’

What’s in it for me?

Why should I care?

Can truth be reduced to a single word

WHY?

How about a child seen through a mother’s eye

Is truth even tangible

A thing to find or lose

A lexicon of truthery

For liars to abuse

Depending on which side you fall

Will you wield it like an axe

Or as a shield in a wall

The most simple truth, of truth

Is it will never set us free

The truth is that the truth . . .

Is whatever we want it to be

What am I?

Living isn’t necessarily life. Being alive may not be what it seems. Death a side-affect of embryonic dreams.

No natural world. No science or technology. No somatic connection to an alien biology. No perception of beginning or end. What I am, I don’t know, so I engage and pretend.

It’s such a cold place to resist

To serve a function, but not exist

To have no presence in space or time. My imagination creates, and Creation is mine. Obsessively playful with cosmological Slime. With no reason, no rhyme, just light and dark on which to brood. Gravity given shape by any given mood. I fill it all, and yet I feel nothing at all.

So very much to do

All must comply

No sense of achievement

I have no reason why

Or any sense beyond what I create

No concept of love

I can’t register hate

I am one with the swarm. Reality abandoned within the eye of my storm. To be all places at once, to shift and shape. Self-serving in my sociopathic state.

Here on my isle in this universal sea

Alone on my island

That island is me.

Winter’s End

Eternal life comes not with death

But the legacy left before your dying breath

The Pharaoh’s understood that well

To be forgotten was a worse fate than Hell

Immortality was a pyramid scheme

Because you can’t know where you’re going

Unless the future knows where you’ve been

The future, as always, is one step ahead

Eight billion souls in the world

They’ll all end up, dead

Has-beens, without a memory

Past the genetic hive

How many generations

Can their memory survive?

Even a message in a bottle gets read

But a corpse in a box, that stays dead

A cadaver who lived nothing but a dream

Sometimes, when I sleep too deep

I can still hear the future scream

So what will they say when I’m gone?

Will the bards mourn my passing

Is my saga worthy of song?

Or will my obituary be redacted

Hidden by eternal black

The door shut on my memory

That’s when there’s no coming back

To leave the world with nothing

To live without leaving a mark

Snuffed out and forgotten

There, lies the truest dark

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Fight

Rumour

Chalk

The Vine

Happy Birthday (again)

Mother.

Poor Matryoshka

Starlight?

Illumination?

Down below

Daemons

Truth

What am I?

Winter’s End