He spent numerous days in his pyjamas. If he recalled correctly and sometimes he didn't, he hadn't left the house; at least physically for 3 days. His skin seemed to weigh on him like a polyester suit. He had a constant itch and feeling of being enclosed, obsessing over people had never really known or liked. They seemed to live so effortlessly. Their social media posts and photographs projecting a warmth and a coherence that he felt unable to match in his own life. He wanted to leave no trace, live a blameless existence. He had many plans but no intention to execute any of them. She lived a noisy life in the attic above him. His day was filled with her footsteps and musical choices. He viewed her positively although their contact was functional in a practical sense; upbeat energy in otherwise gray days. It was a surprise when she invited him for a cup of tea. "It is weird that we live under the same roof but are otherwise strangers". There was no time to be surprised as the car skidded out of control and hit them, he tried briefly to grasp her hand, one last reflex. Although he lived an extensive life in his thoughts: he didn't have time to think a final thought.

Eyes split like a cat hair,
The oncoming cessation of light ,
A suffocating debt,
Not in gold, bodies quartered or the matted hair of children,
No longer may we prostrate ourselves,
Nature is brandishing its power,
A vengeful god with its teeth bared,
A vicious landlord deaf to the bleating of its thankless tenants,
Centipedes, snakes and flora do not cower,
The burden of knowing is ours,

Abandoned children with eyes cut out, lungs stained and bodies burned,
Our illusory thirst and desires have cut our throats,
Our backs broken,
A demise that was our own doing,
We consumed and did not create,
Accumulated but did not come together.

A strange kind of intrusive ambiance; voices in several languages, forced laughter, technological functioning; human activity intermarried with machines. The volume rising perfectly in sync with my cortisol levels, I interrogate  my past for signs of the path that led me here; it remains blurred. I did not dream of working in customer service; but here I am regardless, moments of my life that I will never ponder again; a cascade of  the present moment repeating as long as my employment contract exists. An event-less horizon, memories are stillborn here and true ingenuity stifled. There is much and nothing that has led me here. It is hard not to feel like a horse bred for performance in this place; everything is monitored, quantified, reviewed and collaborated. Performance reports produced with the fervor of medieval scholars translating the bible.  I look to the sky, what else is there to do; only to see smoke alarms and aesthetically neutral lighting arrangements. There is art work on the walls, but is generic, created to defy analysis. The colouring of the walls is chosen to exude a neutral sort of trendiness; on brand for the overarching corporate image.

Oh goodness me,
It happened so fast,
powdered cappuccino on the bench,
a faint smell of petrol hanging in the air.

His marriage imploded; smoke and insinuations. It was a shock that he always knew was coming. His conscience sent him North; a man and his bags. He was 38 and had gained weight. A once handsome face melting away into middle-aged near-obesity. Ruing over what he was not proud of, every human interaction was endlessly scrutinised. He felt that he had a true essence that he had not yet uncovered. If he could discover it then he would build a new story around it, one that would get his life back on track. His meals were no hopers; microwaved, industrial and sodium filled. His meals and his days did not nourish him. Feeling lonely, he had started to go to the pub. Although he stuck out, he found the locals rough but friendly enough. They, the 3 lads, were going to come around for a smoke. A little bit of companionship might stop the walls from eating him up. They were all in their mid-twenties, he'd guess, so younger than him but not oddly so. He flipped between politics today and sky sports news; chain smoking like it was a vital function. He drank a can of san pelligrino blood orange, slowly, his mouth overwhelmed by the sugary taste. He sighed from the tip of his toes to the crown of his head. Within an hour, like his marriage he would no longer exist.

It started off innocuously enough. An argument over the correct length and shape that parsnips should be cut. Differences in vision over simple practical matters can quickly expose much deeper fissures. She felt compelled and her brain quickly went into overdrive; feeling consumed by a clarity of vision that she had rarely had since childhood. She opened an incognito window on her web browser and started looking at flights to Irkutsk, Florence and newcastle upon Tyne. All places she had a fleeting connection to. She updated her CV, and checked her eyes with a pocket mirror, noting that her eyelids had a slight purple tinge. She went downstairs to get a glass of water and saw that she was alone.

We must not neglect,
each other's tenderness,
pushing forward,
the unknown is a moment,
in the midst of everything.

His back was slightly hunched, but not to the extent that a stranger would notice. His lip jutted forward, like an animal edging towards a precipice. He used his voice instrumentally. His clothes were generic. People would not remember him after a fleeting meeting, he was not regarded as a charismatic man. He was born in Gateshead, England, although his name was Schultz.

He entered the hotel with minimal fuss, neutrally. Schultz did everything with the air of a man who wished to leave no trace after him, unaware that he was being pursued and plans were in place to put an end to his existence. The youth at the reception desk, looked out of place, exceedingly handsome but in an androgynous way. It was very difficult to read the youth. He was all function. 'I have a reservation'' the youth opened his mouth to respond as the chandelier fell. The impact was fatal. A noteworthy end to a monotone man.

A piece of cake with a waxy fatty layer,
our eternal laughter,
my bald head then frizzy haired,
endless possibility,
tea as weak as can be fathomed.
following a man with a narrow gait and greasy hair down the road,
beautiful unintentional times.

The roaring passage of shadows
concrete intrusions and sunrise deterred,
here where the stars are obliterated
and the sky is no longer spoken of,
People shriek and whisper,
night comes like a monolith
Sickness is yellow and blue,
metal is like loneliness,
everywhere and cold,
trees grow wherever the eyes goes,
roaming the dead,
a stiffness to the spirit,
that cannot be resolved,

A reddened messianic figure babbling inwardly,

A drunken guardian shining a petulant light

Doomed gymnasts performing blasé sequences in wainscoted rooms of unverifiable vintage

Half gassed pigeons circumnavigating the vestibules of burning trains,

A white noise amphitheater in the kingdom of heaven, an audience of oxygen impoverished capitulates heir thoracic ducts screaming,

Delirious children stalking sickened cats, Their feline ***** dripping from their mouths

My skull gassed and pliant Government of the absolved

My fingers do not know this new body,
passed through a transformation,
as quickly as the noon obscures itself,
our words seem to more deeply take root,
there is something humming and brewing,
beautiful as warm déjà vu,
let it be born of fury and love,
the king of our bridges,
the wriggling feature star of our thoughts,
let him grow in majesty and fervour,
rule over our hearts like a peaceful tyrant.

In 2008, the British Home Office lost the data of 84,000 English and Welsh prisoners. Catastrophic events can follow on from the humblest of beginnings, in this instance the data was downloaded to a memory stick by Home Office Consultants and deleted.

He was not involved, nor in any way was he linked to it. Nevertheless, he feared these types of occurrences and built his life around guarding against them. He subscribed to the business maxim ‘’How you do anything is how you do everything’’. He approached all facets of his life with a fanatical fastidiousness. He lived an almost monastic life dedicated to the eradication of risk and error. Life, as most people know, can throw up its own unpredictable events. Any conceivable eventuality can transpire. As he finally choked on the apple, he didn’t quite have time to think of the horrendous banality of his end.

They could barely relate to each other. Unpolished as is the human
way when observed dispassionately, but like humans they tried to
seem certain. Thinking they could carry out their plans, manipulate
and get their own way. Their eye contact had become forced and
staged; their smiles of acknowledgement were masking
estrangement. When the woman choked on the hard part of a
tomato; they were forced into immediate action; one of them applied
the Heimlich manoeuvre while the other called the emergency
services. We do not have to get on to compliment each other
perfectly

Sometimes his attention seemed to split apart. His consciousness seemed to visit different dimensions simultaneously. He felt like, at times, he was living inside a kaleidoscope. Although he often lacked the means to describe his lived experience to others. When he tripped over the old Dutch woman; her hair disordered and her body cramped up like a day old hot dog, he experienced his head hitting the last step of the escalator, but his mind was also elsewhere compiling a shopping list. His thoughts were still something briefly as his body became nothing. His eulogy mentioned his numerous professional accolades, but nothing of his trivial end.

Moments ash-the sun is giving up-cowardly like flailing arms--it is a monster dropped----slotted together bodies, corseted and franked----undulating beams of fury---an old man groans in a polo shirt, wait it is the seer----he passes by -full of quintessential humanity---he was the heir to the steam engine---alloted time emitting smoke----hands massaging ducts----frankly nothing will stop---the onward march of nonsense---blue eyed and confused---angels caked in syrup

You should have seen it,
Quite the spectacle,
So it was,
Insides spilling out on national TV,
Schoolkids watched in fluo vests
Their eyes like spot lights.
The stink was abhorrent,
And seemed to chase the people around and came back in their dreams,
But that was the least of their worries,
It was cut into slices and transported to Gent,
Some say pieces of it were sold on the black market,
You don't get many whales in these parts.

Your marble skin
stone bearing,
unbound from time hidden,
is the milk of derision,
your lion's teeth,
strewn in your caviar black mouth,
unravel the threaded sun.

Sometimes I feel like a dust-mite,
time will badly use me independent of my courage,
all of the moths I have ever seen are shadows contained,
A fine memorial for the nothing man,
layers upon layers if those layers could speak
caught tongues, blabbered words,
there is no way to be certain of anything but the weeping,
a collective of the unseen
I would like to cover everything in pre-emptive gauze,
prevention is the best cure for ruin,
shrouding my words in illusion.

Of all the eccentric ways

tongues given to the withdrawn ,

As the day becomes a disease,

never quite what it should be,

Numerous guises intertwined

there is a flippancy of rhythm

Knowing but not,

mouths are soiled and numb,

Passing in valleys and sunrises,
Setting and withering away,
There is no monotony housed in
The skin of naked daydreaming,
Some things are never quite finished,
Dancing in the full view of the congregation,
Asking to run it back,
Asking the same questions,
Going somewhere else but returning.

I should have thought,
It would be easier,
Somehow haha,
It is neither here nor there,
A coincidental chain of things,
Setting in motion
Something akin to,
A dreamless day,

A wooden sort of way
Of going about,
Cumbersome,
Turtled,
Thiking about,
Nothing while,
Fixing blye eyes,
Analysing speech patterns
A superior sense of spatial awareness
Coupled with sartorial elegance,
That could be counted in kilowatts,
He/she is the incumbent ruler of a blank,
Where are our chaperones?
This is not the kind of party I had envisaged,
A monster is as much as you allow it to be,
So take me to solitude.

A carpet of hands,
heart beats marking time indelibly,
A sneering man with a jutted out lip,
A suit too-tight at his breast
proclaimed everything kind of Corbusian,
then sped away in a three wheeled robin reliant
his elbow leaning a quarter of an inch out of the window
nobody really cared
he was not entirely audible in his proclamations,
and people had largely lost interest in 20th century architects,
the sky was an ocean of jade antique Chinese vases,
or at seemed to be,
people had stopped being very sure of anything,
but they did eat kelp noodles,
and encouraged each other to become exorbitantly physically fit,
analyzing each other enviously,
like roman senators plotting each others demise.

It sticks to me like heat and syrup,
Having no answers and understanding,
Whoever you are I love it,
We will be the same and different
Matched and divergent.

Drought began to colonise the air, like a daytime ******,
He, sat, in a prayer like position counting his few blessings.
Blood drenched, a speck of dust in a daydream.
At odds with the cycles of nature and life itself.
Or so it seemed.
He dreamed of a life made up of sunlight and half-clear images of picture perfect happiness.
His throat ached and his feet were mangled like tree branches confused.

He did something in the shipyards, but I was too young to know what. Those times, in any event, had long passed. His hair was white and he had spectacles with thick rims, that is much of his appearance as I recall. It was hard to imagine the time in which he had worked; things around there were beginning to accelerate, melting into air and the past was exactly that; should he come back now he would recognise very little.

I learned much later that he sometimes visited the Chinese takeaway to talk about communism; he believed in an equally high standard of living for all, not death camps and suppression of the individual. If one man has a nice suit, all men must have a nice suit. His presence was not a political one for me, I was a child, he was someone who we visited. He greeted me on me and my brother's visits with a smile and a jig; "Not bad for 85 year old'' he'd say. He made us ice cream floats, slipping the ice cream out of those individual paper packets that ice cream used to sometimes come in. He was a vital man, there was something to him that made him exciting to be around. Although he had been educated to a low level by contemporary norms he was well read and informed, I came to learn in later years. He never had a child, that I learned too.     What does that do to a person to be childless? What does that do to a person to have a child? Time passes and things happen regardless. I think he died in the same week as my grandma, but I could be mistaken. The exact details of one's life sometimes become muddled. An enigmatic figure in a bigger picture. Forgotten by many.

****** are calcifying words,
the metronomic marching,
of the new world,
in utero,
Static will bring to bear,
the new frequencies
metallic angels
choking out their celestial messages,
ears deaf to the
shifting of the blood current,
gabbling gods computing
as the future is weaning.

Barely do my Wednesdays fill with longing,

Lost observers rendering August whims to the scrapheap of infinity,

Galvanized entities downing tools schematically,

A posse of awareness pronating towards incandescent light,

Mostly everything a prolonging of jest and belly laughs,

Dawn brings the sick belly of listlessness,

Hordes of happenchance and imaginers of silence dancing,

The chitter chatter cadence does dim for a minute stretching yonde

Some half baked dubious ******* that I wrote on a train headed in the direction of Kortrijk:


''An endless stream of not arseds to hang your ***** washing on/Ya forebearers are all mutts, your pallbearers will be too/You are a kazzoo blowing *******, an idiot's tac nightmare/seen two or three of your alleged family members puffing their chests out down the backtrack, propa knackas/Ya ma is very particular, your sister is as cold as a fortnight in the briar dene (although a fine dancer when she sets her mind to it/
Getting older or more toxic? Shushhhh, be kind/started hearing normans and lennys settling betting slips while I'm on the netty/dettol and despair- the golden duo made good/I'll be bed ridden in time for christmas- flannel pyjamas and sentimentality/heard your kid slagging uz & saw demons in the mist on the windee (window, *******)/cutting my losses/tobogganing hopes/
the left side of my chest is 85 the last weeks/the streets in Brussels speak to me and are canny this time of year/I am not a francophone by predilection/making a secret pact with the universe not to mourn its passing/Every social situation is becoming like a casino for *******/Starting to feel a little bit more Panzram than Ghandi/Flanders is flat cos someone trod on it while under the drink/I might have fitted better into a bygone era- a bewildering lack of manual skills- what came first the dial up internet in your ma's back room or my cack handedness/Don't have owt to tell anyone anymore, don't give two shites nevermind one/Your step brother watches hollyoaks and eats ****** snacks while your step sister hums songs of unknown origin''.
A bumbling idiot's invented history of tyneside:
''I saw 3 cats attack a pigeon in heaton park as bobby thompson, aka the little waster, danced suggestively with the setting sun, a serviette tucked down his front to catch his dinner....................mike neville cried in the dark, while suckling away at a glass tizer bottle from the arcade chippy in whitley bay, that day there was no news on tyneside......T Dan Smith liked a snack as much as the next man...but what he really liked was to drink a pint of water everytime the clock struck 36- that way he could **** the toon into oblivion at his own behest or the behest of occult forces.....I found Gazza, shellsuited, eating a child's portion of cod and chips in St Paul's church yard, in his ruddyu red hand was a 6 pack of socks from winners (the flagship store). Abandoned between his feet were 50 notebooks from the fisherman's mission.....don't get me started on sting''.

I will make windows from your daydreams,
Assemble your loved ones,
By a body of water,
Hideous is dust to me,
There is a swank and a swerve to your
Outward ways,
He thought about this too,
Never much of a god,
A vessel for fragility,
Make plans of glass,
Raindrops anxious of the coming,
Stretched out and white.
Moments are dismembered,
Filled in with beating hearts and then racing away,

You ought to do so,
Really
Just to keep in time with the setting sun,
What do you have to lose?
For the sake of a clear mind,
Time is ticking
It is the sign of an expanding conscience
It will make your vision less cloudy
Your days more intense
Get involved in it
Reluctance is a straight-jacket,
You want to be all you can be?