Broken Beauty

This is an inner cold. Bone deep and freezing blood.

Sick again but not alone.

Misery loves company, eh?

When its there in front of you there is no control

Morpheus guides your thoughts

And sets his bitter snares.

Then the pain is gone, the worries are gone,

Somewhere a needle pierces the moon

And you know it will be back.

And you know it will be worse.

You’ll regret it in the end.

But you do it anyway.

Now I’m filled

With an inner-cold emptiness

Stretching miles of black ice darkness

And in the North

Night stays awake every day.

Alone & clean

With no direction

No sense, no love, no fix, no meaning.

I miss the days we had no cares,

Walked around town

Strung out at 6am

Watching the ghostly sun

Rise up through pale fog.

Vacant stare as thoughts flee. 

Ghosts hover over the top of the pond 

Dancing like sparks in the corner of my eyes then gone.

Every time I try to make something beautiful

It ends up a horrible, broken mess.

That’s all I’ve known, so

I guess broken messes can be beautiful too.

–Jack Blare

Archaeology

Why do I feel so old?

It hasn’t been all that long.

Has it?

Born in autumn.

Born to watch inevitable decay

Of the Autumn of Society.

Intelligence slipping into blank sheets

Empty storage boxes for defunct data.

Every so often eternity touches reality.

That’s all there is to live for.

Those stolen moments that despite anything

Linger on in memory forever.

Because this castle is crumbling under the weight of its own excesses

Don’t let yourself crumble with it.

–Jack Blare

Through the Doors

Everything outside comes from within

False peaches smell wonderful

Arms and clarity lock in a cracking window

Moments live again and again

Wild netted emotion emerges

A magnetic killer in dreams behind grins

A compass swinging to absent warmth

Can they be bright enough?

Options rain down their clouds

What sense is there in ladders?

Thought a room of dusty planets

What is there to pick up is what is there is to be found

As it waits the patterns shift

Left alone in the universe when the doors close

A faded impression of simple bliss

The trust gained from windstorms and post-mortem terminals

A thousand meetings barely remembered

The fool and his shaky knife wandered off

To the way out as he came in.

–Jack Blare

The Longest Costume Party

Our suits and dresses may be crisp and

Colourful clean but

Don’t let that fool you.

It’s just one more layer of defence

To cover the scars, the tracks,

Emotional trauma

And open wounds.

–Jack Blare

Burning Straw Armies

People reading violence into nothing

Only creates more violence.

The era of the popular movement is over.

Society is splintered into factions

Fighting over scraps of meaningless ideology

While that boot Orwell warned about comes down

Unopposed.

–Jack Blare

What We Became

Get out of my head

I don’t love you anymore

You’re with someone else

I’m an arsenic apple core

You flicker through my thoughts

Of desire and jealousy 

Haunt my nights like a ghost

Howling insecurity.

I’m still stuck in a world

That never was.

A sweet young dream,

A suffocated love.

So many memories

Congealed by age

Time passes quickly

‘Neath November skies

Still nothing really changes

And everybody lies

The sky is slowly weeping

Tears of blood for the land

As time has unfolded

You could never understand

The worst wounds we can receive

Are dealt by our own hands.

–Jack Blare

No Sunflowers This Year

February rains

Cold fire on warm cities

Armies march

On empty fields

No sunflowers will grow

In the shell holes.

Next year.

March rains

Blood in the mud again

Generations of bones

Marching as one.

The inevitable ghost

Of the 20th century

Comes back to choke us

Blind our minds.

With ashen rain.

If we cannot learn

It never changes

No sunflowers will grow

In the East this year.

–Jack Blare

Zero Returns

Unrequited Love is a tired cliché.

Take it from me,

It’s a bloody waste of time.

Unrequited Love

Doesn’t leave room for heroes,

White knights charging in on white horses.

It is ashtrays filled to the brim & overflowing,

Pills, pot, pins & needles

Hungrily hunting for a vein.

Unrequited Love

Is absolutely boring.

A very long build-up to an absent climax.

Unrequited Love

Will drug you like a patient in a psych ward,

Kill all the other feelings

Left in your mind.

–Jack Blare

Trust Issues

Don’t trust anyone more than you trust yourself,

Else you’re bound to be screwed somewhere along the road.

Left in the rain, suitcase soaking, clothes soaked through bone chill deep.

Don’t trust anyone more than you trust yourself.

Only you can screw yourself over then.

Take confidence in the fact that there’s no one to blame but yourself,

Blame never mattered anyway.

There are many routes to hell.

–Jack Blare