The Writing of William Cook: Book Cover Design and Poetry

The Writing of William Cook: Book Cover Design and Poetry: "This has just been listed on Amazon and i'm proud to have been included with a handful of my illustrations, a poem, and this cover illusta..."

procreation

Clockwork Wizards
Everywhere
Wasting No-time
With-rhyme
Weaving music, Madjick
In laboratory of Bee’s
breeding
Flies  

Pregnant

Stripped To the bone  

Flayed with sound
& masks, Symbols
meanwhile
Funeral Tunes drown all

Wedding Whistles & bells
The organ pumps
Carnival excellence through smoke
Turns Dixie-land
Bayous
Ragtime
Charleston
Skull-shake Can-Can
Jazz jive &
All the frogs die
In ecstasy & go
To sulfurous Moon

Roaches skittle through the crumbs
Scavenging Hyenas pissing in the dust
Make the Highway  

To cast spells  

Hexes, on the unwary
Bleary
Travelers of the dawn

While on the other side of morning
Approaching fast . . .
Rats hungry for blood
Thousands
through the corn, 

running like the Wind . . . 

the distance of acrosticy

The first time when

he was fourteen, it was

either that or suicide

or ultimately, matricide

death is love, love is death

or deep in the heart of nothingness

rude exhumation of earth

eclipsed by an exciting deposit

[new trash dump.

new treasure trove.]

Red sunsets cloaked with black cloud 

- dragging night

over the need, blanketing the blood

born-new every day & growing with

every waking minute of the hunt

red soaks the future

the end switches sides with each raging hammer blow

Broken rag-doll is the canvas

underneath, so limp & pale ~ Tabula Rasa

nothing left but not enough

death, when the object of hate is dead already

you shall fall with my breath upon you

Flat lands of the mind

This magic now
Has been undone
No new night
Will break the dawn
And spread the sky
Across its face
Its bloody orb 
Blinkless, dilating
Bloodshot with mystic sickness
Then bloodless with the fall
Of tears, smudged mascara
As it peers across flat lands
Of the mind
This third eye explodes
Unraveling time
Like loose spools of red cotton
Dancing in the ancient winds 

Art by Ben Templesmith

Last night, again today

 running thru a large deserted factory
broken glass explodes beneath my feet
refracted light
breaks across the floor thru a broken door
where shadows sit hunched, with death

insipid yellow green swamp light
from a cordoned perimeter of council barriers
floods the inner sanctum
blasts across the cold-gutted room
like a strobe-light

flash

when running, past the windows

the stairwell blackly looms
filled with gasping spectral screams
and somewhere deep down inside
something moves with a throbbing lilt
as the building breathes a death moan

dying, and the fear
runs you out through the concrete shell
to the black white sunlight of day
where you can see the burnt horizon
mushroom, absolutely.

The Inviolable Trace

your memory

a spreading pool of blood

the dichotomous moon

of your eyes, reflects & relates

the tales you told so lucidly

burred edges

burnt pages from your life

fell like ash

across furrowed plains of mind

your glow is eternal fog

to my nights

pregnant with secret rain

i am waiting to be drenched

your shadow is black silence

your presence is sonar

to my pointless revolutions

i try to cast hope

into your murky depths

with you as bait, the hook is pain

yet this notion seems dyslexic now

in light of the slow dissolution

of your memory.

Someone I knew

her face, like a flower
in a closed fist
wrinkled against time, adversity
a patronising counterpart
settled in for a long lag

& the drugs don’t work, all the time 
cigarettes, booze, pills, smoke . . .
you name it, it’s viable
as long as it’s a substitute
for reality, three dimensions

a quiet cup of tea
but the dogs are barking

cars growl down the thin streets
sirens screaming, intermittently

a broken tap drips

drips

drips

across the room, nestled amongst
dirty plates piled high
flies buzz amongst the scraps
on the kitchen bench
a few ragged photos litter the walls
& the money’s all gone
two cigarettes ‘til hell

no substitutes immediately avail themselves
as each thing becomes a part of her
like broken crockery strewn across the floor

a flower, in a closed fist.

Zombie 's Lament

This time the wind blows

Wild and hard

Along the lonely road I went

Blown memory all away

Into the clouded skies

Until I met

Another, born of time & place

I see the signs as they are signed

O my god

this increase in life

now on my plate

My hunger gravitates towards

This feast in front of me

Border Lines

This time it’s gone
all gone
the bells have quietened down
their song now
the brook that babbles right along
has shed itself of slippery stones
& imaged skies all darkened high
littered along its tumbling tides

ashen leaves, all up & died
not to float
not to be

a crease of light across the fields
dips into day, withdraws to night
then it’s gone again & with it you
apparent in a subtle hue
of memory, deep as blood
embittered with the dawn anew

& the wind whips coldly through the trees
the house now stands, cold as stone
the paths we walked
all overgrown
this time it’s gone
all gone now, gone

the truth of everything
disappeared
except for what went wrong

when all these days are dead & buried
the temple of love dissolved
the broken ring you stood upon
now dust between the trodden stones
I’ll twist & turn another page
& read along the border lines
searching for the words
to bring me back to you
my love.