Why err on the side of caution when I can
Breathe in vast amounts of cold air without a jacket on
So I intentionally freeze
At midnight;
Get back home and invite the bed bugs to bite?

Why err on the side of ******* caution when I can
Talk to strangers in the dark and
Walk home along the train tracks,
In the hopes a spark will shock me back to life?

*

I just want to feel something.
Anything.
To feel anything other that the weight of my duvet,
Holding me still, but threatening to pull me back to rock bottom
As time draws in and tells me
“What a waste”.

As the Eternal Footman looms over me and peers into my soul-
He laughs.
This is not a life worth living, but it’s also not a life worth taking.

I cannot help but wonder tonight if the archangels have abandoned me.
The universe has a plan for me but executes it unsympathetically.
My nocturnal nonchalance convinces me that I have nothing to lose,
and no one watching over me-

But there is always the moon;
There’s the moon.

I wonder if I will be happy, soon.
If all the lunar rays
I harvest through my labradorite will serve me well.
Whether I’ll hit the ground running or just simply
hit it like a meteorite.
Will I reach for the stars or throw myself
in front of the metro.

I seek solace in the sun and safety in the stars
but the sun no longer shines and the
stars no longer give a **** about my safety.
I have been plunged into darkness and led
astray.

Wandering aimlessly,

using the world as my own ashtray
because what other use does it have for me now that I am drowning,
with my head in the clouds?

Churchill called it the black dog,
I fear I will die within this brain fog.

My grandad used to buy
Wall’s vanilla ice cream and
Robinson’s orange squash for me
When I’d visit him as a child.

For the longest time, food of any kind
Was just food and nothing
Was a treat or
Had to be earned.

Now I yearn for a lackadaisical meal,
For squash and ice cream,
For food to be food and it all to be good.
For when calculators were used in maths lessons and not to pinpoint the exact moment I overstep and
My figure becomes
Mathematically incorrect.

I want to re-learn how to exercise for fun and not punishment,
How to be happy and grateful for my fuel and nourishment.

I like to stare at the blinds until faces start appearing in the fabric. Smiles, noses, eyes-
they all jump out and morph into one. When they start mouthing things to me, that’s when I tend to look away. Sometimes, I look for faces in the shadows of objects lying around the house.
There’s a particularly amusing silhouette of what could well be queen Victoria that
pokes out behind the curtain ruffles. I go
looking for her sometimes on purpose, because I know she’ll be there and it’s
something to be certain of.

If I could inject a feeling into my body every day, it would be that of certainty.
I fear I am an addict to the art of prediction and delusion,
so much so that I have developed an intolerance to uncertainty.
My therapist would like that I’m using that,
that’s one of her favourite lines.
I live my whole life in a recurring conspiracy. I firmly believe things are going to happen and am genuinely shocked when
they inevitably don’t.

But there is something so tantalising about allowing myself to drink up an illusion of certainty.
I like the control and
I love the power it convinces me of.

“Remember me when you are at the beach, and above all when you paint crackling things and little ashes. Oh, my little ashes! Put my name in the picture so that my name will serve for something in the world.” ~ Federico García Lorca

                                    *

It is ironic, Salvador, because
I am afraid of many things in the world and
When I am with you,
I feel safe,
Yet your company is the one thing
I fear most.
I know that I love and need you
More than you will ever love and
Need me, that
One day you will be free
With another woman and I will be
Left paying for my sins against God. And
My rights against the state.

I thought that our love would have
No limits; you
Said that I am a Christian storm but
I know that you can brave this tempest and
Save me from myself.

I am a poet, Salvador, but
Whenever I sit down to write a poem about you,
Or even just how I feel about you,
I am unable to because
I am lost for words.
I speak only of what you and
Your paintings tell me;
I can no longer express myself.  

I remember the beach.
We would lie there for hours-
On its sand we would kiss not just with our lips but
With our eyes. The
Water will miss our visits;
Its body seldom taken by another,
As opposed to being engulfed by
Two artistic lovers.
Having received my seaside medicine
(Via touch of tongue
And word of hand)
I have come to the realisation that
You have, in fact,
Poisoned me.
I shall never be cured now.

The smoke from silent guns has risen,
I hold one in my hand.
Yet I am severed from the call
In a fight against myself.
A conflict to choose between
God and you.
I hear you say you are one and the same.
That, I cannot stand.

My focus is distorted.
Distracted. Abstracted.
We are too many miles apart;
You have replaced my words with your art,
You have broken
My heart.

Where is your warmth now, Salvador?
I am alone by the sea trembling with the cold
That you swore I would never feel again.
Winter will devour me as a
Result of your failing to
Relight the fire that is supposed to
Ignite me.
You promised me life with a portrait machine
But in all honesty
What I want to be
Promised with,
Oh, Salvador Dalí,
Is your faith, in me.

My first cigarette was at twelve years old,
under the climbing frame,
after my turn on the monkey bars.

My mate told me not to do it-
he tried to take it off me but
was too late.
I’ve been trying to quit ever since.
Soon after, that little climber
discovered cider, yearned
for something wider and
ended up with alcohol poisoning by
the end of the year.

My first stand-up gig was Lee Mack.
I was 13.
I sat right at the back on the balcony and revelled in the
happy faces below me.
Ending with a slow motion impression of Eric Morecambe,
I could’ve sworn it was the fastest hour of my life.
I can’t believe I was
So naïve.

When I sat my first exam at sixteen,
an hour seemed a minute.
Crash forward to A-levels and I
was being examined in a
therapist’s office-
how the tables had turned.
Ticking boxes to be assessed and there’s no way I can
pass this test because a
high score can only mean
very bad things.

How can life be so virile, yet so lacking and sterile?

I was told I’d find myself at uni
But I’ve ended up losing myself at twenty.

Pastel blue sky longing to
Hang over wheat;
There is only grass.
Green.
Green with envy at white clouds as
They pass.

                  (A different journey)

Poplars strive to touch
Shrunken, grey clouds that
Recoil at the very sight.
Ah, the plight of an
Innocent gesture.

               (Nowhere else to go)

Wind snears:
My train moves it so.
Grass is merely in the past
As I am slung
To and fro.

                          *

The seat next to me is empty. A passenger of invisibility kindly agrees for my bag to rest on their featherlight lap. Reservations elsewhere have been made.
Durham can wait.

                            *

In my lecture, there were four empty seats next to me. All other rows were full.

                            *

Last Monday, I got ****** at Stone Roses Bar. Stumbled along to ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.’
Hands were all over me:
Creeping and
Touching.

                     Why is it that when
I want company, it flees?

When I embrace
                            Loneliness,

             It molests me.