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

We Are Kind People

We are kind people
We have worn our diamond voices
Down to coal and breathed fire
In the spring our love letters
Are aching from the rain
The light from our sun embalms us
And the breeze seals the bodies away.

The touch of a nail
Or a tooth
Electric in our veins
Red-eyed in the night
While the day just passes by.
It is not anger, but love.

I promise the next time I open this door
I will walk through it.
I will close it behind me and never look back.

Is This It?

Freefalling, our strings undone

we’re voodoo dolls with seams that split,

unheard shouts inside our mouths

and silent screams…

our tongues are numbed.

One falls faster than the other,

perhaps by necessity,

to test the impact of the ocean

or to escape the tangled cacophony

that holds them together.

I peer into my own eyes

and the ocean is there,

two tiny lovers floundering among the waves.

{ Citizen Erased }

I Don't Make Mistakes

We’re taking this
Too far.
Getting awfully carried away

I don’t make mistakes.

Stagnating
The past flaunt of power
Impressing on me

Disgust.

Help the poets and artists in filing cabinets
Find their river
And sink

I don’t make mistakes.

Through the waves come signals
Pincers cutting deep
Eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes
Screams
Floundering silent in my mind

Call out the fury of the warm summer days
Follow the smells
Only flashes that envelop the breeze

I don’t make mistakes.

{ Citizen Erased }

A Thousand Words

The voice veers right
and lies alone.
Left behind a mark of dust
the strands of time wrapped
around each word.
Another sound
drifts and echoes
on the sullen grey until
words,
intelligible and absolute,
become leaves
which wither and die.

More lives become
entwined.
Noise.
It swells into a dance
of bright swirling colour
over which an image
originates.
While the voices increase
the colours run
and the image distorts.
The words collide
and shed their meaning.
The canvas
is grey
once more.

{ Citizen Erased }

Newborn

Docile
I sway from place to place
Dragged by sheets of coarse paper
Gliding
My feet barely scratch the ground
The threat of stumbling ever-constant.

Trying
Oh, I’m trying
But there is only so much information
I can absorb
Before I begin to leak
The shimmering pools on the ground
My sanity
Drying up.

Heavy
Their words upon my eyelids
My vision impaired
While only vague shapes
Convey the ideas

I am supposed to understand.

{ Citizen Erased }

This Room is too Big

Twenty times my eyes crossed his gaze
I counted
The mistakes were heavy
Cracks in the ceiling
Ready to split
Shredding, slicing
Emotional wreck

The distance grew
And for all I knew
This would last all night

So I made my excuses and left.

{ Citizen Erased }

The Desert

If I said these words
Out loud
Could I listen to myself?
Smell the venom on my breath.
Tuneless grace notes sing
Telling me I’m still alright,
Telling me I’m still alive.
Melodies lost through windless haze

Stepping from sigh to honest sigh,
Under clouds perspiring dry,
Wistfully aware of their own mortality.

“You’re next, you’re next”
Sung the vultures.
“Rest your heavy head
For when you drop dead
We feast on breathless flesh.”

And still the desert of my mind
Surrounds the periphery of my eyes
With yet no end in sight.

But open windows
Let air both in and out,
Grey lights enveloping natural colour,
While closed curtains lock me away.

With legs like weights,
The taste of sand,
I stumble on stray emotions.
The stream of consciousness
Contaminated.

“You’re next, you’re next”
Still sing the vultures.
“Rest your heavy head
For when you drop dead
We feast on breathless flesh.”

And still the desert of my mind
Surrounds the periphery of my eyes
With yet no end in sight.

It’s been this way for quite some time
And yet no end in sight.

{ Citizen Erased }

Dreams of Wealth and Fame

Money
Vampire bat smiles
Kitchen tiles
Double glazed heart
Sinking miles
Speedometer
3, 2, 1
Start.

Finish.
Underneath
Bittersweet
Can't afford
Sinking teeth
Releasing red
Bleeding change
Fall

Down.

{ Citizen Erased }

Cage

Late traveller
Sitting in your space
Reclined and complacent
Trusting in Godless wonder
And thunder-clap romance

And the door is locked.

Nothing in
Nothing out
Nothing in
Eyehole glass, distorted contact
Lasting image
Voices in the corridor
Ethereal, leeching
Energetic
Callous

Loud

Electrified
The flash of the eyes
Palpitations and grey mornings
Transparency of hung material
Letting days leak through the window
Unnoticed

And the door is still locked.
And the door stays locked.

{ Citizen Erased }