Experimental Science

by Nick Gisburne

---

His tunnels feed a sewer of disease,
Experimental science tipped away.
Regurgitated tissues taint the seas,
The pieces of participants, his prey.
With every study, every failed attempt,
With every bleeding innocent he steals,
Ambition, steeped in murderous contempt,
Is deaf to their delirious appeals.
He barely half-remembers what he needs
To conquer his abominable quest.
Today he grinds fermented, toxic seeds,
Implanted in a screaming victim’s chest.
    He damns the imperfection, but their tea
    Reminds him of polluted monkey pee.

The Spices of Disguise

by Nick Gisburne

---

Awakened, watching spring confront the cold,
As winter, fast forgotten, fades, she flies.
She laughs as life, electric green and gold,
Surrounds her with the spices of disguise.
In summer she’s a butterfly, a bird,
A bee, collecting nectar for the hive.
She listens to their language, word by word,
And vows to keep their mysteries alive.
At last, the leaves and seeds begin to fall.
Their colours blaze with glorious goodbyes.
The showers turn to snow. The seasons stall.
The sun does not remember how to rise.
    She sheds her fur and feathers, makes a wish,
    And spends the wilds of winter with the fish.

Risen From the Dust

by Nick Gisburne

---

Mortality has risen from the dust
To sit in perfect silence at your feet.
Untroubled by rejection or disgust,
He senses that the sequence is complete.
What passion set in motion, he will halt,
A chronicle of moments, sold or spent.
He bears no malice, brings no blame, no fault,
A force of nature nothing can prevent.
He whispers, and his eyes, beguiling, burn.
“Behold. The final twist of time is set.
I come because I must, but my return
Is not without remorse, without regret.
    Your life, at last, is over. You will die.
    But I am tethered, trapped, immortal. Why?”

Government Guidelines: Three Chemicals

by Nick Gisburne

---

You stand accused of tampering with fate,
By damaging devices of control,
The instruments inserted by the state
To simulate the liberties we stole.
Obedience, a mandatory choice,
Is not to be discarded or abused.
Your government provides you with a voice,
But legally forbids it to be used.
You think to change the system, to rebel,
To exercise the rights you never had.
Summarily convicted, in your cell,
Accept our sweet injections and be glad.
    Reclaiming what you took and tried to break,
    Three chemicals will cancel your mistake.

The Crippled Haruspex

by Nick Gisburne

---

Anarchic tribal dancers brave the storm,
Disgusting garlands wrapped around their necks.
The patterns of their footsteps twist to form
A pathway to the crippled haruspex.
His rotten smile, the vomit-speckled chin,
Belie the noble nature of his rank,
And as he plucks a broken violin
He points to where the sacred entrails sank.
The signs and omens only he can read,
Delivered by the spirits of the slain,
Are whispered to the audience at speed,
A marvel only magic can explain:
    “The gods decree the skies will overflow,
    So wear your woolly mittens. Could be snow.”

Aether Navigati

by Nick Gisburne

---

When Aether Navigati touch the stars,
They pull together folds of phantom space,
But each uncovered pathway leaves the scars
Of pain without relief upon a face.
Obsessives, they are born by chance, not bred.
Their talents blaze too bright for love or life.
When chosen, Navigati, stripped and bled,
Become the blades of angels, each a knife.
A cut of cosmic fabric, needle-thin,
Impossible for us, but not for them,
Allows the swarming sickness - humans - in,
A curse no breath or whisper will condemn.
    With devastation written in their eyes,
    They serve the scourge, the people they despise.

Abednego Waluffin

by Nick Gisburne

---

Abednego Waluffin scratched his bum
And wondered where he came from, what he was.
Adopted by a puffin as a mum,
His father was a walrus, just because.
“I need to find my roots, my clan, my kin,
Whatever bird or beast begat my birth.”
Befuddled by the mystery within,
He sought the source, to find what he was worth.
He trudged, and then he plodded, stomped and slogged,
Far longer than a string can ever stretch,
But older now, his creaky mind befogged,
He cursed himself, a rude, ungrateful wretch.
    Lamenting what he squandered, what he had,
    He shuffled home to hug his mum and dad.

Mister Shakespeare

by Nick Gisburne

---

I see you, Mister Shakespeare. Here we are,
The ghost of someone greater than us all,
And I, the grim pretender. Just how far
Could any words I whisper creep or crawl?
Your sonnets have a majesty, but mine
Are filled with dark and devastating truth.
Corruption cracks the form, each twisted line
A torment, resurrected from my youth.
I bleed these paper shadows as I sink
Beneath a frozen ocean of despair,
To revel in the misery, the stink,
But always, in the margins, you are there.
    I do not strive to match or mock your name.
    I write to fight, with fury, fear and flame.

Classroom Twenty-Four

by Nick Gisburne

---

Eleven violations tell the tale:
Christina, in detention one more time.
Her wild, combative moods, beyond the pale,
Confirm she could be crossing into crime.
The governors can tolerate no more.
A radical solution is proposed.
Within the walls of classroom twenty-four
Her skull, inside a scanner, is enclosed.
It isolates the corners of her mind
Where dark, destructive urges breathe and breed,
And pours a new persona, redesigned.
They wait, and watch Christina’s eyeballs bleed.
    But only she, triumphant, now departs,
    And from that place of shame she takes their hearts.

On the Menu

by Nick Gisburne

---

The choices - boiled or roasted, grilled or fried -
Are tastefully presented to the guest.
No culinary detail is denied,
The patron’s predilections all addressed.
The chef’s assistants, specialised and skilled,
Prepare their stations. ready to begin.
The man himself, the maestro, watches, thrilled.
The meat arrives. The butcher brings it in.
The customer, invited to undress,
Has come too far, too quickly, to decline.
When asked if he is ready, nodding, “Yes,”
He savours one more sip of Spanish wine.
    All answered, almost: dinner will be grilled.
    One final option - how will he be killed?

He Who Bleeds Below

by Nick Gisburne

---

The demons found me, deep within the dark.
Two tangled horrors snatched me out of space.
I bear the sign of Lucifer; his mark
Delineates my purpose and my place.
The son of all things evil and unclean,
My birth betrayed a mother torn in twain.
I feed upon atrocities, obscene,
Infecting wretched spirits with my stain.
While those who drag me, choking, chained, through Hell,
Believe I may be shocked, submissive, slow,
I craft a machination to expel
The King of Shadows, he who bleeds below.
    My father trembles. Satan fears his son,
    For now he knows his work will be undone.

The Battle I Begin

by Nick Gisburne

---

You win. You always do. I can’t compete.
Your arguments are mightier than mine.
I crumble in predictable defeat.
When called upon to counter, I decline.
Is this the way two lovers have to be?
Is this how you and I will spend our days?
The second-placed contender, always me,
Degraded by the glower of your gaze?
I plan. I plot. I know what I must do.
Without a way to fight, a way to win,
Without a way to worry, without you,
My life will be the battle I begin.
    Tomorrow, let the sunrise break the day,
    And shine upon my future, far away.

A Green Machine

by Nick Gisburne

---

The garden was a symptom of his rage,
A deep disdain for any living thing.
He cut and slashed and killed it to assuage
The vitriol to which his core must cling.
But life, a green machine, kept coming back.
The shoots, at first so delicate, grew strong.
Relentless, each malevolent attack
Persuaded him their leaves did not belong.
The sun, his bitter enemy, bore down
To burn his body, while it fed his foe,
And even when he purged it, baked and brown,
Another day would dawn, and it would grow.
    They found him there, defeated, on his knees,
    With seeds and spores delivered by the breeze.

Upon the Wings of Angels

by Nick Gisburne

---

“I want you to believe,” the prophet said.
“I want to change the way you see the gods.
They speak to me, in secret, in my head,
A certainty defying all the odds.
They whisper of our downfall, of our doom,
That all our dreams and wishes are for naught,
Yet we who seek the light, and shun the gloom,
Upon the wings of angels will be caught.
Prepare to meet the gods, the great, the good,
For we shall sit among them as they dine.”
The seven people with him in the wood,
All naked, watch the skies to see a sign.
    A single hand is lifted. “You, sir. What?”
    “I thought this was the chess club. Is it not?”

Cathy

by Nick Gisburne

---

They tell her she was lucky just to live,
Sedated in a broken, shattered shell,
But how they saved her soul she can’t forgive.
The biggest blow that hits her is the smell.
These plastic bones, the artificial skin,
Were never part of life before the fall.
Her breathing doesn’t function, out or in,
And nothing here is normal now, at all.
“You’re not exactly human, not by law.
We had to make a complicated swap,
But sometime soon - a decade, maybe more -
We’ll put you in a body, not a prop.
    We haven’t got the tools to make you walk,
    But pull the ring behind your back to talk.”

Broken Rock

by Nick Gisburne

---

I’ll tell you what this dirt has done for me:
A little more than nothing, give or take.
A ball of broken rock and stinking sea.
I don’t know what excuse you think I’ll make.
A fertile planet? Maybe once, but when?
It might as well be never and a day.
My grandpa said the oldest of our men
Could not recall the light before the grey.
They spoke of it in books, before the ban,
Before they tried to hide what died - the truth.
We’re part of nothing. No one has a plan,
And no one wonders where we lost our youth.
    Inject your rations, boy, and take your pill.
    You haven’t got a hope. You never will.

Behind the Garden Gate

by Nick Gisburne

---

Eduardo hides behind the garden gate.
It’s where he waits, to watch the world go by.
His mind still finds the time to recreate
The worst of what his former friends deny.
He said he saw them tear a man in two,
But nobody believed a kid, of course.
Discovering the grave, though brave, he knew
The murderers would take his tongue by force.
Appalled, to flee their furious pursuit,
He ran where only crazy people crossed.
A sudden, screeching impact made him mute.
His mind, or most of what was left, was lost.
    The man they pulled apart was just a toy,
    A doll, but what they broke would break a boy.

Kill the Core

by Nick Gisburne

---

We kill the Core, but slowly, piece by piece,
Avoiding every monitor and scan.
The quantum crumbs of data we release
Infuse the toxic pulses of our plan.
Dividing as we multiply, we feed.
Inept neuronics wither with a bite.
We find no face or flesh, but make it bleed,
A network stabbed with cryptic spikes of light.
The end of all we ever knew, the Core,
Will send us back to blindness in the dark.
Though none of us recall what came before,
The choice is not insidious, but stark.
    We code the kill, a catastrophic glitch,
    But who will dare to flick the final switch?

A Craving

by Nick Gisburne

---

She hungers for the torso to return.
The stink of it, the ripening, the rot,
Ignites a craving, bright enough to burn,
An appetite this feeble world forgot.
The shadow-cast of cancer soils the skin
With patterns of perversity and pain,
A body sliced by swords of steel so thin
They damned it to the deepest, dark domain.
And yet, the scraps and slivers of the corpse,
Collected, claimed, by devious design,
Are bound by septic sorcery she warps
To resurrect a soul from slaughter - mine.
    Her painted smile is poison, laced with pride.
    She worships me, and begs to be my bride.

Say Merry Christmas

by Nick Gisburne

---

Always smile, and whisper thank you, when the food is on your plate.
He’ll be home before you know it, and the pathway to his hate
Is a flicker of ingratitude, a sign you might resent
Any fraction of the pittance of the working wage he spent
On a child he never wanted, and a wife he treats with scorn.
So pretend he doesn’t wish that you and I were never born.
When he threatens you, be good. Say, “Merry Christmas.”

This is not your fault, I promise you. The anger and the spite
Are the dangerous creations of a man who lost the fight
With a world too calm, too clever, for a lunatic like him.
Could he change? Who knows? The chances are incalculably slim.
He is set and he is certain. He is all he wants to be.
His creation is the punishment, the prison that you see.
When he forms another fist, say, "Merry Christmas."

There were moments. I remember them, the music when we met.
There was power in that heart of his, a confidence, and yet
When I told him there were two of us, the mother and the son,
There was silence for a moment, as his plans unwound, undone.
When he told me that the three of us were just as good as two,
I was reckless to believe the lie. I trusted him with you.
When he spews his toxic spite, say, “Merry Christmas.”

I was told he had a history, and children of his own,
But they turned away, rejected him, and in their place has grown
Irritation, rage, resentment, for a bond that cannot be,
With a boy who tried to like him, but was not too blind to see
That a man who cares for nobody, whose burning heart is black,
Is a shark who senses weakness and will viciously attack.
When he bares his teeth to bite, say, “Merry Christmas.”

I remember every Christmas Day. I wish I could forget
That with every toy you carefully unwrapped there came a threat.
Never good enough, your smiles were artificial in his eyes,
And in time there grew a grudge no decoration could disguise.
At the meal we sit in silence, as we tiptoe to the end.
As we try, we cry, but this is not a menace we can mend.
When he cracks another plate, say, “Merry Christmas.”

This will not be like the others, not the ghost of Christmas past.
We are destined to collide with what we leave behind, at last.
Let him scoff and sneer and shame us as we celebrate our love,
And let all the fallen angels, from the broken skies above,
Guide the hand of fate, of destiny, to seize and swing the knife,
As I penetrate the darkness, as I take his tainted life.
When he dies, we’ll scream, “Surprise!” and, “Merry Christmas.”