The Trigger

Back to front, front to back
Recursively unraveling
The tail swallowed between serpent teeth
Dislocated jaw
Endlessly reborn

A time traveler
Reliving 10:55pm
The same screech of tyres
The same broken windows
The same sudden sound...
It cannot be stopped

Bypassing fate
Studying The Plan
Just made it that much easier
To pull the trigger
The dead man's switch
The blinking light
Took care of it all for me.

by James Reid

Interpersonal Relationships

Alarm bells have rung
A piercing metallic nuisance
In my ears and down my spine
And even at my calmest
Still, I hear the panic
In the distance, I hear it
rising and falling

But it does not seem to stop.

Keeping me focused
Ready for a fight!
Yet I exhaust myself
Before the first round can start...

I'm looking to lose
To fall flat on my face
To remind me what I am.

"What's that?" I'm asked
Sincere eyes peering upwards
Shrill voices climb my defenses...
I should have built them higher.

By James Reid

What it is to be Born

Simply replicate the soft invisible
And place it to one side
It matures with age, you see
Circa 1989.

A good year to be dragged
Quietly, violently
Into the light
Revived and held up high
"The first!"
Perhaps they proclaimed.

...But to spend a life
Clutching straws
Skirting walls
Locked away
To avoid the falls
Well, that is not a life at all...

Pulses through the heart
And through the bones
And through the skin
And through the air
And into the ground
Fork lightning stabs
Breaking the silence
Forever.

By James Reid

Meteor

The colour drained
Before I could protest
Red and then we were grey
It was such a tiny feeling
That blossomed there that day

It never left me

With a shrieking, scratching
In the distant distance
You came home
And settled right in
Prodigal, poisonous
You rode the tide of your own impact
Boasted how much the ground would shake

And how it shook

How could I ever ask you
For what I truly wanted?
We sparked and ignited
Luminous!
And so short-lived

By James Reid

The System Works.

Taken on its own merits
The system works.
Constrictive
Painfully so
But you won't hear me complaining
No!

I want a knock at the door
Like a bomb in my bed
Pistol under the pillow
Pills on the desk
Let them come, oh, let them come
I'll take them one by one.

Jaw clenched
Hands raised
But not in anger
Not in vengeance

This is just a dance
And I think you missed your turn.

But don't worry
Don't worry
It'll come round again
Like the endless carousel
No horses and no music
And definitively
Nothing close to a child.

By James Reid