I am still awake at every 3am
Because I get scared of my own imagination
These meds are making me mad
I dreamt the other night of torturing a girl I used to know
I beat her blind with a belt with no control over myself
And I woke up and I saw her face throughout the day
Unable to stop thinking about what I’m turning into
I dreamt the other night of an elaborate funeral
I was the main attraction
Walking up to the open casket
Only to look in and see myself
My mother had dressed me in a skirt I’ve always hated
I dreamt the other night
I was staring death in the face
But really it was just a mirror
Tinged with seven years of bad luck and depression
It has broken me
I can only be found in shards of anxiety
Brush me up from the floor to stop anyone else hurting themselves
Throw me away
Throw me into the sea
And see
How long it takes for glass to turn into sand.

for the past months
the thin veins in my arms
have been ruptured and scarred
due to unhealthy habits of distasteful breakdowns.
drunk on absolute insanity
intoxicated from the feel of misery
i always hope for this to take it's last turn
unfortunately it is one straight road
a long road of wretched nights and messy sinks


- m.n.

It’s that awkward time between 5 and 6 pm where his eyes are the colour of mocha brown stained novel pages and finger tips callused and crinkled with years of practicing and gripping too tight on a black biro pen.

He turns the corner of the street and we make a narrow escape to the highway where careful mothers have their children strapped to seats wailing with voices so shrill yet so untouched and pure..

And I turn and I look out the window and plaster on a sad look like I’ve been copy pasted out of a sad music video about boys and breakups and lost loves, reminiscent of the paraphernalia of stories and soaps and television shows my mother used to watch.

Slowly I turn and I feel a tap on my shoulder blades and he asks me if I’m ok but secretly I’m wishing and hoping that there’s more to life than this god forsaken city but I still say I’m fine anyway.

"The city looks really nice this time of day" he says and I just don’t see it because everything around me is illuminated in fake fluorescence and wired in with the hands of a man who’s just lost his wife and swears his depression is just a phase.

"Squint and you’ll see it" he insists but I can’t because the world is in monochrome and the concrete of the buildings are the tombstones of chivalry and manners, filled to the brim with office workers hunched over stacks of papers and lists.

He turns left at the third intersection and laughs at a man squabbling drunk cursing the world on the side of the road and I hope he doesn't know that it was what I'd do if he let me grab the bottle of Jack from the trunk.

"Goodnight and godspeed," he laughs and I say "*******" in exchange for a hug and so another day passes in the presence of car windows and rolling cityscapes.

Getting on
through a trying work hour in the night-time rush,
groped by strangers with dark eyes
the color of neglect and whiskey.
Men with knives under their sleeves,
calling you back and back again,
refills for their poison and pretzels for the table,
don't be a *****, darling.
I only want to feel those hands trembling
under mine.
All you ever knew were the bruises and the burns.
Gliding closer and closer to
your face, your hands,
inching towards the skin that gleams, exposed
and invokes the shame you feel from
fetid breath on your neck, these
animals with moldering livers.
but another round for the men in the grease and grime.
Green bottles and a smile that said
'I like the taste of your weakness,
You like the abuse.'

Just hanging around stuck in the background where Echo and the Bunnymen sing sad songs,they're not funny men and I'm not one too.
Going to take my Queen and fulfill a dream,dine in style at Mile End,wend my way down to Nandos,pay for chicken,sticking less to the plan because I'm only a man I travel to Hackney where the wild men of Shoreditch come out to attack me with rolled up newspapers,their capers amuse me until I blink twice, and I see, that my Queens seen it all and goes off in a huff,
Puffs of smoke are no joke when you're born as a bloke because the magic don't last,blast it nearly passed it,the turn off for middle age,junction twenty six on the revolving glass mirrored stage,but I made it and now I'm back in the sun waiting for my Queen to come,my apology accepted along with the promise of a day trip to Poundland,stand and deliver while we shiver our timbers and limber up for the party on interstate four,
sore from the laughter we take a bath shortly after because we like to stay clean,my Queen thinks I'm ***** and men go that way after thirty but I'm not so sure.
I have pure intentions and clean underwear,does she care? I think so but it's so hard to know what she's thinking,she tastes of melons when I'm drinking her in.
In this flotilla where the will of the one doesn't win,we all stick together, whether it's a good thing or not,
but I've got a plan and because I'm only a man it's a good one and so I carry on and she carries me,I meet her mum and she marries me..sounding obscene,I mean I married my Queen,not her mum.

It's all in the spaghetti which I'm sure that SHY YETI'S BEST OF BRITISH - PART 1 doesn't cover,so it won't keep me warm but no harm in me looking through this facebook and cooking a dish,should I wish, for some it's back to interstate four,where the cops will be waiting with a ticket to the potteries and a fine for the finder of the stopped timex watch winder.

where was I
in Mile end?
yes,
going to spend but stay lean as I talk with my Queen,
and so it goes on.

this day was not like any other.
hot air from her lungs
swirled steam in the death
of November.

I felt trust for the first time.
I trusted her to leave.

I crack a corny joke out of sheer anxiety,
I say: "Well, it is the fall."

She doesn't smile, or speak, of course.

She does the talking with her eyes,
and all I hear is goodbye.

the great awake
through
the nightingale's span
and the yesterday brook
the tomorrow lights
that today mistook....




....for something more
than it really was...




...it always happens like that
with us, cardinal versus cat...




...people like you and i...and no one else has ever felt like that...






...