jamie-townend
Herzegovinian
It goes round and around, never leaving me alone. I can't drink enough to shut it off that way. As he said: 'sometimes we need to park the damn thing.' If I stop, I know what happens -The sickness, the jealousy. 'GIVE ME A VENT' I scream. Everyone turns around to look. They understand, but they don't know how to say it. They know how to stop it, but I'm not interested in that. I don't want the distraction, the meaningless prose. I want to beat it all. To beat them all. I want this sickness to transpire into a sentence more violent than a cold steel bar to the base of the neck. I want the guilt to evolve into a sentence more emotive than any tears all of the conformists have ever shed. I want this lack of faith to breed into a sentence that stops you all, and in that silence you will realise that moment is mine. It is yours as well, because I finally became good enough to give something back. Why do i do this? Because I still don't have the courage to face what happens when I stop.
I have to wipe
the **** from
the toilet seat
before I sit down
to write this, and
outside the drunks
are drunker than I
remember.
They slur their nothingness
so that once again
I sense comfort
in an accidental,
quick death
away from it all.
There is no chance
of joining in again;
at the best of times
it is a test
of toleration.
This game is hate
filled envy
for the ignorant.
Their confidence,
quirkiness, complaints
and compliance
are the holes
in my weary armour...
For, the few occassions
when I am truly alone
I am god himself
staring down at the landscape
as if it were bare,
with a face consuming grin
as I write away
their worth
and, with it,
mine.
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 25, 2010 at 3:30 AM UTC
I don't know how long it has been,
but it seems long enough
for it to have been a while.
You should see them outside
as if they all came
from the same septic *****
The females become pregnant
before they cease being girls
and litter this town
with more philistines for me to breathe in.
Meanwhile, the men are sordid
excuses for fathers
who glare, hoping
that they can pull
the alpha male trick
once again.
And they will,
because the scare tactics
are deployed
and we are afraid of everything
whilst nothing much
ever really happens
except our passive demise.
The beer tastes the same,
the jukebox continues singing
the same idiot's song.
Everything is the same
putrid plod along disaster,
but there is much more of it.
Those who NEED to change remain
the most stubborn of all
as they push us further
in to this age of idiocy.
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 25, 2010 at 3:29 AM UTC
I can foresee now,
that from here-on-in
I am due to hear
nothing more from them
other the absurdities
caused by that old
bastard's will.
No one knows where it is,
apart from the two
who don't want anyone
to know where it is.
No one knows a thing
about it's contents
apart from...
I could go on.
What baffles me
is the ease
at which
they cast stones
and snake around
each other knowing
that this place
only exists
because of that dead object
and what those not
quite so dead objects
didn't or did do
for him
and to him.
Now there is a corpse
and that is evidently not enough.
They want more:
A monopoly over that corpse,
the complete removal of blood
from veins that now sit,
charred, in a tasteless urn.
It is a senseless battle
between unintelligent mourners,
where, once upon a time
there stood my father.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:27 AM UTC
I never really put in enough thought,
or spent any time
finding the perfect word
or the ideal pace.
Enough people have said
that I am a great writer,
only occasionally missing the point.
Right now, as my head rests heavy
without rest,
I don't feel like that great writer,
who amazed the bars
and spoke of sincerity
combined with profanity.
I don't feel as if the pen
belongs in my left hand
or the stacks of notebooks
are worth anything more
than an hour of heat
outside in the cold.
I think hard and heavy
about my surroundings;
how the people waste away
never earning enough money
to live,
but earning just enough
so as not to quit.
Everyone has a hand
around another's throat.
I have written
with myself in mind
and with myself
as the topic
of my writing.
This is no different
to slamming a fist
in the face of the innocent
due to impulse,
or taking a country to war
for personal wealth.
With only the 'Denial of Death'
sitting open at the end of the preface
and a sunken brow
I think about packing it in:
Until I live more
I have nothing left to write.
'I may be gone for a short while,'
and once again I turn the tables
to myself.
Writing as if I capture importance,
when in reality,
I merely offer the few readers
myself, captured
by myself.
Life seems to be phases
upon phases upon
phases.
From music to prose,
to alcohol, to poetry,
to now,
where the cold air outside
weaves its way
around us
and we grow sullen;
full of questions
that can't be answered
until we forget them.
This is no time to attack
the poets or the obese
child sat among her obese family
with a bucket of chicken each
and two hours of prime time television.
A brief realisation it may be,
but right now it seems
that I have done no more than them:
I am not fighting against poisons,
I merely pen my opinion
as if it is worthy of your consideration.
And so, until I have gained something new
or lost something I didn't think I could be
without,
I must rest my pen
next to a pile of books
that I plan to read
in order to gain something
whilst I lose something
I didn't think I could be
without.
For a while,
perhaps until I become
just like my father is now
I have lost it.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:26 AM UTC
Getting to know meShare
Today at 1:23pm | Edit Note | Delete
I wasted years
discussing future employment;
taking the name of that college
and turning it in to a pretty university.
I got half way there...
Did three years of time
under the teachings
of socialites
and successful suits.
That was when
I realised that
the women, the music,
intoxication and the word
meant more to me,
and very little to them.
It seemed to me...
Be successfully dry
or struggle through
with fire.
So now,
I work my *** off
for a meagre wage,
I spend what I can
in the bars,
whilst those I used to know
take out their mortgage loans
and start planting the seeds
without considering
exactly what is left
-or not left-
for them to grow in.
Well, waking up
at noon
with a head on my chest,
a hangover that drags
me to the bathroom
then puts me back
where I started...
Knowing that nothing
takes preference over
personal enjoyment,
decency and honesty,
and knowing that all those struggles
reaffirmed this:
It's a bubble,
one that I know
is now
far too thick
to be burst.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:25 AM UTC
It is very strange
when you realise
that, once and for all
they are gone.
They are no final words,
no goodbyes,
just a blank space:
no chance of filling it.
And the poets continue
attempting to put the word
down, but they miss
the point.
Every sentence
has been blown
straight out of my head.
Everything has evaporated
in just a few words;
That one phone call
'he is gone'
and he is.
And so,
to my father
who is no longer anything,
just a few things i can remember:
Rest
in
peace.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:24 AM UTC
Why the journey
to this extreme?
Where all achieved
illusions of self
are pounded down
in to the gravel
where the footsteps
are **** heavy.
Two young scoundrels
stopped and stared
as I walked
past them:
Intimidation tactics.
Who are these people
and what are they
prepared to do,
and for what?
All I know,
is that I am becoming
less and less;
this fear
that drives my creativity
is strangling me.
This is a plea
to an impossible god
as tears run down my face.
I am afraid.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:24 AM UTC
For six years,
since I was eighteen,
I have been carrying a white rat
inside my left breast pocket
in a long grey coat.
I have paid attention to no one,
just that rat.
When I ******
two **** victims
who thought they loved me
in two nights,
the rat was there.
The rat was there
when I told them
to ignore the guilt
and remember that
no one needs to know.
The rat was there,
stronger than ever
when I got drunk
and ****** her
in the back of her partner's car
right on the seat where her child
usually sits
whilst someone loved me
from an empty bed.
The rat was there
when I got drunk
and threw him over a table,
and when I threatened to **** myself
if she did this
or she did that.
My rat is currently looking
at a place in the record books
as the longest living rat to date,
and he has survived
in a coat pocket
nibbling at bits of me
when I give him the chance.
No one knows he is there,
they just think it's me.
I tried to show someone once,
but he wasn't there
and we fell in love
for three years,
but the rat
came back
and now I sit
staring at these walls
or pacing frantically,
whilst the rat continues
nibbling away
at the last few remaining
morcels
of
my
heart.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 6:23 AM UTC
Outside the hotel room window
the children are screaming
whilst the shell of my father
waits in a box
to be burnt.
Why am I here?
I am nothing like these people,
they have nothing to offer me
apart from more news
of their mistakes.
Teary eyed stories
of entrapment
that make me wonder
how.
How can I be like this
with all that sludge
in me too?
Nov 2, 2009
Nov 2, 2009 at 8:42 AM UTC
sitting on the toilet
the morning after.
Hollow
Beaten
Staring at the walls
as if THEY were them.
That was the last moment
of me.
Now, it is back to work
to keep the cogs rotating,
whilst my own
**** themselves
within a violent ****
shortly before
the wind sits quietly
in the corner
watching the sun
grow old
and wave goodbye
to starving cattle.
Nov 2, 2009
Nov 2, 2009 at 8:41 AM UTC