The Sweet Smell of Chaos The frantic fizzle-frazzle fanatic, pounding the sidewalk proposing splintered logic and energised by hypertrophic rhythm. Pulsating patterns propound a maelstrom mindset, a confused calibration housed in a chocolate-stained cabinet. The metallic clang from a spoonful of sympathy is mixed in a sunlit side room. Sudden alchemy from a cobalt portal. The succulent sound of ozone. The taste of psychic salvation. Someone crunches on a red apple and starts to cough. Dark Matter There was a hippy unreality in my dream. I was in an online echo chamber where thoughts queued for attention and words were bending into a black hole. The background was populated with pixelated memories of the 90s rave scene and pieces of leftover pizza. There was anxiety when conversational voids appeared in a debate concerning early climate change warnings. The galactic rulers filled the space with free streaming particles and announced that cosmic microwaves would be available in all new-build cosmic houses. In the corner of a park, a man was standing on a box and yelling into a broken megaphone, asking: if we can’t see it, does dark matter really matter?
Category Archives: BLADON
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Do Nihilists?* Do nihilists believe in God? Do nihilists fall in love? Do nihilists believe in love? Do nihilists have morals? Do nihilists want to die? Do nihilists hate life? And the ultimate - what’s the purpose of nihilism? *Google questions Death to… Death to poetry collections Death to politics Death to golf Death to tea towels Death to garden trowels Death to tempests Death to cheap wine Death to digital self-optimisation Death to tennis balls Death to iPhones Death to pornography Death to weeds Death to weed killer Death to fresh fruit Death to decaying fruit Death to bigotry Death to satellites Death to aphorisms Death to potatoes Death to politics Death to sunglasses Death to gilded assertions Death to magazines Death to guitar picks Death to clocks and watches Death to death… Amen.
Henry is a poet, writer and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. His work has appeared previously in Synchronized Chaos.
Poetry from Henry Bladon
In the House of Insomniacs Freckled phosphenes flicker through paper-thin skin as corpuscles bounce onto egg-shell sensitivity. Salty eyes survey the scorched screen where fragmented images have been laid by hessian brushstrokes and monochrome shadows dance to throbbing visions in the hall of half-sleep. The distant screech of a lone owl befriends the anonymous night. Atonal phrases, reversed images, neologistic nattering magnifying words while ignoring the fine art of speaking, where permission to rest is withdrawn. Voices whisper noisome nothings as the sleep prospectors mindlessly mine another far-flung valley or scale another grey wall. Worthlessness I was walking along a winding tarmac path contemplating my own inconsequentiality and that I find it best not to dwell on a pointless search for purpose. It doesn’t matter to me whether existence is like an intergalactic vacuum. Am I any more important than tiny transparent spider? Do you know how the world ends? Is it with a cloud of honey-scented candyfloss? Maybe it just heats up so much we all melt. I could be an important politician. I could say something like “Imagine yourself in my shoes, I have all the power of the free world.” But actually, it makes me feel much better to acknowledge my own worthlessness.
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Do Nihilists?* Do nihilists believe in God? Do nihilists fall in love? Do nihilists believe in love? Do nihilists have morals? Do nihilists want to die? Do nihilists hate life? And the ultimate - what’s the purpose of nihilism? *Google questions Death to… Death to poetry collections Death to politics Death to golf Death to tea towels Death to garden trowels Death to tempests Death to cheap wine Death to digital self-optimisation Death to tennis balls Death to iPhones Death to pornography Death to weeds Death to weed killer Death to fresh fruit Death to decaying fruit Death to bigotry Death to satellites Death to aphorisms Death to potatoes Death to politics Death to sunglasses Death to gilded assertions Death to magazines Death to guitar picks Death to clocks and watches Death to death… Amen.
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Your Hands Have Blood on Them
From: The Bird of Paradise (RD Laing – 1967)
Men can destroy the humanity of others,
remember your hands have blood on them
you’ve been told as much
that will corrupt you and destroy you
with unadulterated compassion.
How do you plug a void?
Just don’t ask for trouble
remember your place in the hierarchy
and that last desperate clutch.
Do not despair – the soul dies before the body.
Thanatophobia
When the writer from Rio
lost his treasured notebook
his head started to feel
like a blood-filled bath.
It wasn’t the loss of shopping list
or the plot for his next novel
that most preoccupied the mind,
just the writerly thought about the
paper-based metaphor for death.
Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. He is the author of several poetry collections and his work can be seen in Pure Slush, Lunate, and Synchronized Chaos, among other places.
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Future Version of Myself
What if the tragic future version of myself
has never experienced happiness and joy?
What if the beautiful future version of myself
grows old and frail too soon?
What if the bored future version of myself listens to Mercy Me
and decides that things ain’t what they used to be?
And what if the anxious future version of myself is forced to choose
between a better life or a better death?
What if the future version of myself never exists?
Lay-by
polystyrene cup/ fast food wrapper /
broken glass from an accident /
a stray L-plate / a crushed tin can /
along with / forgotten memories /
of past liaisons /
Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. He is the author of several poetry collections and his work can be seen in Pure Slush, Lunate, and Synchronized Chaos, among other places.
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Narcissist
Don’t tell me to roll with the punches
and don’t lecture me with
supercharged sepulchral rhetoric
about the curses and blessings of life.
Posturing is the seedling of toxicity
and gesturing is the mother of pomposity,
but you wouldn’t know about that
existing in your world of endless personal imagery.
Your lime juice sense of entitlement
and distorted chilli pepper logic
congeals in your bubble gum brain
like acid pips in a rotten core
Take your arrogance for a long walk
and watch the filament of your empathy
uncoil behind you like a rusted fuse wire
I know what you are and so do you.
The Denial of Darkness
While contemplating
the hypersensitivity of others
I became hypersensitive
to modern etiquette
and subsequently terrified
of transgressing a rule
about which I am
yet to be informed
so,
I closed my eyes
only to discover that
the complete Book of Revelations
was written in pen
on the inside of my eyelids.
Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. His latest poetry collection is a collaboration about mental health with Dutch artist Marcel Herms and is available from Egalitarian Publishing.