I met a wilting ***** by the roadside,
she was barefoot and drowned by the riptide,
she said,
that had swallowed her up
over the course of her time.

I sat down beside her in the rubble,
hubble, bubble and a load of trouble,
she said,
that business must come first,
so she doesn't waste my time.

I told her I was just another waste,
another scrap of food without the taste,
I said
that I would stay with her
and live without clocks and time.

She waved off kindness with her ruined hands,
she knew not love but customer demands,
she said,
no man has kissed me since
my father ran out of time.

We talked for hours more in summer heat,
she was hungry but she refused to eat,
she said,
to find beauty I must
keep thin and defy all time.

At night she stumbled back onto her feet,
for some loose-skinned man she'd promised to meet
she said,
“tonight I have found love,
as if gifted from all the stars above,
but the city bells have begun to chime
and I'm afraid love cannot stop the time.”

I tell myself that I am beautifully bruised.

I hear the subtle sound of heartache
calling across the quay,
young lovers spell Joni's words
with the catkins of the tree.

I feel the heavy weight of lover's wake
as we dream on through the day,
old demons used to poison me,
before you took them all away.

I taste the blood in chocolate wine
and it's sweetening my mind,
it's telling me of fortune's treat,
when good intention is combined.

I smell the human in our longing sweat
as I press into your skin,
steady as my doubts are perished,
all happiness, lived again

I see the poetry in street-lights
imitating the moon,
telling  me when darkness falls,
light will follow soon.

I know there's more out there
than ever I've seen,
more than whatever I am
and whatever I've been.

Come meet me at the bar
and I'll slip you a drink,

upon the condition that you will
slip me a pill

to make it through another dream,
another push and get-rich scheme.

Stand with me in the pouring rain
and I will hold your hand,

upon the condition that you give
me life to live,

to make it through another day,
where loneliness will come my way.

Would you press me to the kitchen wall,
help me feel just anything at all.

I have tended to my garden,
I have offered up my hands,
my hometown streets have
changed their face
to more profitable demands.

I have clung onto my mother,
I have fallen in my stride,
all childhood friends
have learnt to love
through the many times they've lied.

I have waited at the doctor's,
I have wasted teenage love,
all music found has
brought to me
old promises from the dove.

I have kept the fresh olive leaf,
I have fallen from your mind,
your hometown heart has
spoiled in time,
and you have left me far behind.

I have twisted in these bedsheets,
I am lonely and I have cried,
as I leave this place,
to ventures wide,
I think I have already died.

I'd like to speak to you
about the Taming of the Shrew,
and how you've suffered in silence
for too long.

I'd like to hear you say
that you were happier that day,
when you were gifted with answers
that you knew all along.

I like to hear you call,
or say anything at all,
I just need to know you've found
where you belong.

I'd like to talk with you,
sat on the wall by the avenue,
where we kissed under the street-light
in summers rushed and long.

I'd like to be your friend,
drunk under morning light's slight bend,
as we talk under the dawn-break's
hopeful song.

I'd like to eat with you
at a breakfast diner for two,
we'll lust away the hangover
in a memory lifelong.

I'd like to speak to you
about the sadness of the few,
about how you're disappearing
about how I need you
to be strong.

I think it's finally happened.
I'm functioning again.
Thawing out on a deckchair
in my concreted garden,
the sky is thinning and
promising March.

It's finally happened.
I don't have to pretend.
I had forgotten the taste of air,
now I walk through the book shops,
peeling through new volumes
and nesting for my own.

I think I'm getting there.
All barriers descending.
Misery is not ending
but changing, forming
to constellations of doubt
in the vast expanse of space.

I'm finally getting there.
I'm functioning again.
The papers are stacking
and news is coming in;
we have thrown down our arms,
crossing continents in the sun.

The staircase creaks, the horns will blow,
the old shepherd joins the unemployment line,
claiming he has nothing left to show.

The poet weeps, the squeeze-box moans,
there's a reflected face pleading to be mine;
he sits and he sighs in heavy groans.

The cathedral stands, the tears fall,
percolating misery of stale breadline;
I return to you, cradle and all.

The reason's weak, the will is slow,
still I offer my hands and declare 'I'm fine',
before falling to ash and to woe.

The reaper reaps, the boy atones,
the new shepherds are turning water to wine,
they're selling their souls for pay-day loans.

The empire stands, the heroes fall,
they turn to sound-bites and faded sign,
to infant orphan – cradle and all.

This poet weeps, these tears will glow,
I will walk this police state and toe the line,
until I have nothing left to show.

I have started walking again.
Questing for the Atlantis
that has claimed the truth
of ten thousand men.

It's a simple process really,
of one foot and then the other,
whilst talking to the ghosts
that whisper clearly.

Each faceless name and nameless street
is a straw-man companion
of endless attention,
but never shall we meet.

Old tales go by in monochrome,
I'm a writer turning tricks,
walking paths of others and
claiming it as home.

I have started walking once more.
I watch the branch twist in wind
and beacon shelter
from reciprocal war.

They're counting scarecrows in moonlight
across the arid fields.
Men smoke cigarettes found in jackets
they've not worn in twenty-two years.

They're talking about Old Wisdom Street
and of getting into clubs.
Women are researching old lovers
they've not spoken to in years.

They're praying for the friends now gone
across time's limited field.
Children dress up as the Israelites
they've modelled in early years.

They're raising glasses to toast the present
and the fable of the past.
I have begun to listen to the lessons
they've not taught me for several years.

Let's dance to this tune,
let's lie like adults.

Let's manage our profits,
let's fix the results.

We'll fall to the ground,
we'll fall for each other.

We'll fall for the fire,
we'll fall for the smother.

Don't think of the morning,
don't think of the slaughter.

Don't drink for numb feeling,
don't drink all the water.

You'll pin me to bedsheets,
you'll pin me to death.

You'll pin me behind glass,
you'll pin down my breath.

I'll kiss you in cupboards,
I'll kiss you in pleasure.

I'll kiss you, my lime tree,
I'll kiss you, my treasure.

They'll witness our marriage,
they'll witness our fall.

They'll witness new life,
upon infancy's call.

I have stopped dreaming
I stopped a while ago
and during that time
put it down to wine
and the misery of money
After thinking it over
I remember a picture
from a could-be memory

I have found the reason
I have found the root
to all despair of age
and vanishing friends
It came in the moment
I stopped chasing my shadow
It came in the acceptance
that it would never walk away

I walk past windows to restaurants. I watch as people talk over small portions of seaweed and shrimp, sipping white wine like a false prophet. There's this place towards the Quayside with a grand piano in the entrance. I have come to think in my novelty wisdom, that I shall never make an entrance so grand.

Lovers draw cash out of fat wallets. They're white and healthy with smiles that almost reach up to the corners of their eyes. They stare across silk flowers, drunk on the positive affirmation spewing from the weak-kneed waiter, bursting dullness like the fat around his waistcoat. In routine exchange of his verbatim stand-up act, both parties part without sentiment, but in comfort.

Straws sit in cocktails. Even they're paired up and bathed in elusive spirits, far beyond anything my bank account or inner eye could afford to indulge. Passing joys are ripe, donated amongst the thick-skinned royalty to passers-by like myself, who cannot experience happiness, but can at least know that is exists. Each joy temporal in the promise of another, they don't cling to their memories and instead lay anew, anew – all the time.

I am a ****** of pastoral care. I know that now, after looking in. I have noticed that windows are there for observation. Each window a chance to witness creation, found in science, in art, in conversation. For too long I have stood here, thrown dizzy in the wind. For too long I have been waiting for nobody, hoping that somebody will pick up the pieces. I am in pieces. It's plain to see as I walk away.

You have appeared again.
I know I'm nearly home
because that's when you
come to take the air from me.
You come into dialogue
and leak memories over tea,
sweetening the taste that
I've long since grown out of.

I am quite different now.
At least I like to think I am.
I let my beard grow a while
whilst tiredness films my face.
I take the bus places now,
no more bicycles over the estates,
reliving anecdotes like old videos
and drawing your name in leaves.

I don't want to listen anymore.
I don't want to remember.
I don't want to go over ground zero
with a ***** and expect the past.
You have appeared again
and I can't handle it.
You have appeared again
and I am a shell.

You once called me callous.
You once said love is bunk
and lives in the spaces
between happiness and death.
Now you're signalling regret
like an echoing mantra,
thundering my loneliness
in the wake of you
and the way you are growing up.

Never could I fall in love
and not fall for another,
I would kiss a ******* the mouth,
but end up with her mother.

Never could I reach a smile
without finding a splinter,
I would stretch out into the sun,
but still curse the coming winter.

Never could I have a drink
and leave it all at that,
I'd drink until the new day breaks,
until everything fell flat.

Never could I hear a song
without thinking of the weather,
I'd hear the rain in deep sleep dream,
until falling like a feather.

Never could I write to you
and report without complaining,
I would cry for the price of air
and all the illness I was feigning.

Never could I enter the room
and fill up all the doorway,
I would fall at the feet of life
and always hide myself away.

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A tight-jowled youth
of the twenty-first century,
tan-white skin of olive grove
and modest treasury;

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A heterozygotic individual
walking over the glass floor,
I watch women on computer screens
and I walk them to the door.

I sign off to the world at night,
laptop glow polluting the stars,
I fall asleep to a lullaby hum,
the mating calls of intersecting cars.

Eyes roll at the demands
of twenty-first century life,
I curse the death of all poetry
in the elimination of strife.

Oh, I have no reason to moan,
please forgive me this.

Information genies commentate the world.
Screens deliver me lands fractured
in drought, oh, disconnected reality
and always living in doubt.

I weep at the sights of sadness
and I purge all longing onto paper,
I watch as the sky returns my tears,
polluted air and puncturing skyscraper.

In modern joy, I curse all comfort.
Through art I pretend to praise,
I pretend to feel real emotion
beyond my usual haze.

But still, I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

Old Leonard sings his ******* poetry
in clumsy awe and wonder,
he sings to me as I count collected tips
and he always pulls me under.

My greatest ailments require cocoa butter
and my greatest rival is myself,
my rival is my best friend too
but he doesn't take care of his health.

But the curtains will close in the night-time
and they'll open again come morn,
and in my comfortable surrender,
I plead only for innocence reborn.

With that I know, there's no reason to moan,
you'll have to forgive me this.

So for love undiluted and pure,
I will call out my miserable answer,
I will walk these streets,
grow old in the face
and fall in love with a dancer.

I will dream of forgiveness
and of yesterday's returns,
I will dream of stirring the flame
that rather gifts heat, than burns.

And in the process of waking dream
and suicidal kiss,
I ask only that you understand
and that you forgive me this.

Do they sing to the stars of freedom,
just to celebrate their place?

Do they learn the universal laws,
just to decorate their wisdom?

Do they scar themselves with angry words,
just to bring about completion?

Do they shake under their wealth of love,
too much stored to ever dispose?

Do they donate their sorrow outward,
too much to keep to themselves?

Do they dream of death in waking day,
too much doubt within their brains?

Do they take solace in the half-light,
just to see anything at all?

Do they keep all friends close in mind,
just to feel anyone at all?

Do they keep returning to nowhere,
just to find anywhere at all?

I have become the cartoon of misery. Meditation only goes so far before western medicine is needed, before old Johnnie Walker comes to visit me at my desk. He does nothing but sit and keep me company, faithful friend, whilst I go about polluting the internet. I have let myself go. I think Johnnie helped with that, for better or worse. I bid him goodnight at my bedside, faithful friend, knowing that I'll not want him there in the morning.

I have become something wasted. Old pill packets pile on the side, ailments beyond cure or at least, beyond care. Hats scatter the room, never to be worn but optional costumes for future selves. Change collects in big proportions in a coffee mug, left to waste in rust as another day passes in daily interviews with the mirror and no plans. It's crazy, I know, spurning vital energy in not exerting any of it all.

I have become the morning after. Eyes buzzed with new light, temples now ruins of Dionysus, I search for the window of perception. Roman blinds flirt truth in waves of indeterminable information and so I call up old Johnnie to help me understand things again. He flavours ice with half-truths and old, old cravings. I dial in old numbers, old, old, old, until I feel new again, once I realise they can't talk to me anymore. I have become the teenage dream realised as I take to independent waste and whiskey slur, long-shot attempts at fame and periods of silence with the family.

I have become the cartoon of misery with no audience. I can live with that.

This body is not mine.
It belongs to another time,
it belongs to the living statues
in the rain-soaked streets,
it belongs to mute manikins
feigning beauty;
it belongs to the old faces
that line my dreams,
that elude my touch,
that fade to elements of shapes
and voices, now but passing seconds
of memories lost.

This aeon is not mine.
I belong to another time,
I belong to the mountain's edge
and paradise beach,
I belong to locked diaries
feigning secrets;
I belong to the strong women
that better my mind,
that elude my touch,
that burn to elements strong
and sentiments echoed eternally
in memories never lost.

I have been looking for truth in silence,
I have stayed up all night long,
I am waiting for new information
of which I knew all along.

I have been trading in all of my secrets,
I have been fishing for a life,
I have been falling in love with strangers,
whilst searching for wife.

I have been thinking of quitting smoking,
oh, you've heard that one before,
but stagnation sets in with old habit
and temptation closes the door.

I have been studying great romantics,
I have been drinking in the bath,
I have been coding all troubles to words,
and reciting Sylvia Plath.

I've heard that truth will be found in silence
and solace within a song,
so I've been framing my life in artwork,
I've been faltering to belong.

Come, paint me by the fruit bowl,
power me with cheap coal,
keep me running for as long
as I could care to stand.

Come, walk along the mountain,
we'll meet beside the fountain,
I'll give you back that hour
you gave to me back then.

Come, talk to me over coffee,
in the softness of the city,
in the sweetest desperation
of a tune.

Come, listen to my sadness,
and preferential madness,
come listen to me play
my autocratic flute.

Come, indulge all my sorrow,
all the poetry I borrow,
from the poets with the sense
to avoid the 'I love you's'.

Come, meet me in the canopy,
high atop the balcony,
be the one to make
all my lucid dreams come true.

Come, hide under the bedsheets,
we'll play criminals and junkies,
we'll play until the birds
begin to sing over our ***.

Come, relax in my eyesight,
born upon the morning light,
come, kiss me in my new self,
on lands where only love,
is ever considered wealth.

He's clutching his cash
in the torrent of the market,
she's dreaming of friends
just to keep them in her sight.

She's getting to work
when the sun is non-existent,
he's thrashing in his sleep
the whole time before that.

He's talking to her
with one eye upon the cradle,
she's ordering wine
just to keep him in her sight.

She's dreaming of Paris
and the sighing violinists,
he's watering down
all the drinks at his bar.

He's a drinker most nights
when work is non-existent,
she's smoking all day
just to tolerate this life.

She's opening her legs
to the thud of empty guidance,
he's kissing her neck
to dominate the land.

He's looking at ****
and jerking off in bathrooms,
she's painting her nails
a deeper shade of lime.

She's fouling all her make-up
to cover tender eyes,
he's nervous in the aftermath,
he's playing out his time.

He's playing with her hair
as she's cradled on the couch,
she's covering her *******
from authoritative eyes.

She's hiding from her father
in the cellar of the house,
he's looking for his own creation
that has somehow gotten out.

She's shaking in the hallway
as he holds her by the throat,
he's laughing at the daughter
he claimed to love the most.

Oh, blessed eyes of infancy,
unknowable love of misery,
I will lend to you my fatherly face,
for your sleepy breath
and all sin erased.

Be still in sight, make a man of me,
let me tend to you, my mimicry.
I will lend to you mistakes of my past,
to devour a lesson
that is built to last.

Oh, brand new eyes of innocence,
Impatient love of my descent,
I will hold you with strength I’ve never possessed,
I will tend to your soul,
I will beat in your chest.

I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about anything at all. It’s a new methodology I’m trying out. It involves pacifying wants with better hydration and sipping green tea like a whiskey sour. I couldn’t tell you if it works, it’s Day One. It’s always Day One. The only thing I ever truly understood is this: that everybody is guessing their way through life. Homeless preachers, mothball billionaires and the child bride on stilts; all as baffled as the next. What is the use in regarding winter, when it will pass like some face in a crowd?

So I’ve stopped thinking of you, too. I have stopped thinking of you and instead, I listen to hours of positive affirmations play through headphones. I’m told I radiate joy and positive energy, but the voices don’t register the ground up cannabis in my nails. There’s no census of friends, only the binaural beat of false creation but still, I am told repeatedly of my brilliance. It’s enough to go to anybody’s head. That, coupled with old fortune cookie prophecy, leads me to believe in a signpost reality.

I have stopped lending misery to others. Look at my face now and you’ll see absence. It’s an old trick of Buddhism and the new one of fashion. I’ll not smile painfully your way, nor will you catch a scowl in the small reflection of the window. Impassive through and through, I assure you there is a beat somewhere in this chest. It’s still going. I know that because the drinks are still flowing for everybody else but me. I serve you and your friends. You thank me, tip me, pour me over your ice and then forget me by the next song.

I have stopped caring greatly about friendship. Coffee shop dreams and foreign coastlines are imagined only in solitude. Faithful book and the illusion of depth. All inept artists do the same. When nothing else is blooming to art, just turn yourself into it. So, I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about you, and them, and the times I took off my shirt. It’s Day One, but already I am liking what I see. I will wear this indifference like the patterned scarves I’m soon to leave at home.

For the passage of tomorrow,
I cut myself a key.
Hoping that by walking on,
I will come to see

all the beauty frozen in place
and all postmodern lust,
the temples left to ruin in sun,
now covered in ancient dust.

For the promise of a taxi,
I walk on through the rain.
Hoping that I’ll sober up
In time to catch the train,

that will take me off to Europe,
that will take me to my room,
that will undress me by the window
and kiss me like a groom.

I plan to marry Bratislava,
kiss Amsterdam on the cheek,
run away with Budapest,
away from times so bleak.

For the programme of education,
I grew myself a tree.
Under the eaves I dreamt of you
and all you were meant to be.

I hope you’re living at frightful speed,
I hope you’ve learned to shout.
It’s been far too long since I’ve heard your voice
oh, it’s been far too long without

your words grunted in the morning,
your words in any form at all,
I see your ghost in every corner,
And I see you in the hall.

I spoke to a doctor in the City of David.
He told me to be kinder to myself,
he told me to roll in mud to save my skin,
to sleep deep through the night
and wake to infant skies.

I spoke to him over a flagon of wine.
He told me that the game of words is bunk,
that mathematics is the new empire of tongue.
He said: “Ed – reinvent yourself
in the language of galaxies,

why write of escape and sonnets to the skies,
in words chained down upon the Earth?”
He said: “the universe is no country song;
it'll take more than whiskey
to understand it all.”

I spoke to him over too many cigarettes.
He told me not to worry so much.
He told me that the weight of my sighing
caused greater threat to  life,
than these poisons ever could.

I spoke to the doctor outside Fingal's Cave.
He wept for the kindness of current sight,
he wept for all the miseries of time.
He told me: “never stifle
what is meant for expression.”

He spoke to me about indefinite time.
I heard him mention God in brief passing,
but in hindsight, it may have been a sneeze.
He said: “Ed – find Jacob
and ask him for a ladder.”

Upon the sorrow of the newspapers,
I turned to my faithful doctor once more.
I asked him: “why do I stutter through life?
Pray, stay here and tell me please,
why I take your advice,

for a happier life.” He shifts in his suit,
he shrugs in my gaze, he ruffles his hair
and walks from the frame. I am left with a note
and a pill to ****,
he wrote me:

“We have distant memories of older wisdom,
we are the bringers of divine intervention.
Do not focus upon temporal wealth,
nor come to me for your mental health.
Forget set memories of old advice,
all dogmas are but melting ice.
The books cry out from upon their shelf:
'to stay alive, be kind to yourself.'”

No more withering in the flames,
no more tales of running away,
this coast is too bleak to see the breadth
of aurora paint and consciousness,
and yet all I can think of in this grey mass,
is how all of despair, must come to pass.

I watch as the white clouds settle in,
pushing storm out of the sky,
passing it on to another sorry state,
as small paradise emerges in my wake,
and so I cling to the vapour of desperation,
pleading for adaptation.

I watch as clouds crash into cities,
pushing life out of the streets.
I dream of war and tambourine men,
and of what latent content could mean.
Yet with each nightmare of my waking mind,
I return to sleep in nature's umbilical bind.

No more singing of yesterdays,
no more faces stained in the clouds,
this glass is full and overflowing
as good intention spreads to all;
I turn to the world with arms stretched out wide,
to speak of my terrors, in which you, I confide.

The banks circulate
all debt in subtle silence
and malignant woe.

Tomorrow you will witness no surrender,
you'll see me turning all those ***** tricks again.
I'll coast on through,
kiss the morning dew
and welcome back the energy I once had.

I have waited far too long in transit,
I think I've waited my whole entire life.
But tomorrow I'll be strong,
tomorrow I'll play along
to the red-tape parade of our age.

Tomorrow I will walk the streets with purpose,
you'll see me as I'm passing along the way.
I'll bless this ground
and the welcome sound
of the world still spinning in its place.

Nameless is the land I walk upon,
despite the flags mounted in wind
and the bloodstains on every front door.

This body is borrowed from the stars,
both a million years old and barely new,
despite the gathering of age in my face.

All money is spent in vacant assumption;
as if these inventions of value do anything
but strip all items of their worth.

Dreaded is the will I place in travelling,
knowing intrinsically about arbitrary birth:
that if I was not born on land, I would simply drown.

I have paid for the sounds of my guitar,
but I lose ownership in their effortless travel
through the air - left to sound through the aeons.

This house is nothing but Earth upon Earth.
Watch as the weeds emancipate through the wall;
it is the people who have forgotten their place.

These old friends are not mine, but obsessions.
Memories of idealised time that I cling to,
as toys are swept up and sold in parts.

Passing are these clothes upon my back,
despite the fashion of my walk
and your letters in my old blazer pocket.

Rationed is my life upon this planet.
All that I meet will fall away,
and all that I take, is returned.

Inspired by Lisa Hannigan*

Love is a gamble
reliant on loaded dice
and polluted drink.

Love is birthing joy
and a mother's surrender
upon your new breath.

Love is Oscar Wilde,
this time loving openly
and openly loved.

Love is detachment
from fairytale promises
and peace in living.

Love is in the talks
we have, endlessly littered
on my lonely walks.

Love is honesty:
I think of you so often,
and live with the cost.

I feel like taking a tab of acid
and disappearing
to town in my worn suit.

Buskers bathe in the eternal winter,
clamouring sounds at passers-by
until Jericho falls in on itself,
money spilling out of its sides
like a fast food waiter
on his cigarette break.

Trawling through the record shops,
I feel as if I've travelled through time;
each bootleg, a manuscript,
each seven-inch, a sonnet.
Pulling fingers through Venetian sounds,
I have found my place
in the library of New Alexandria.

The pigeons are swollen at the ankles.
Like humans, they are losing height
at the promise of another meal,
at another chance to rifle through the crumb.

School kids are waiting for the bus
as I go walking past.
They're unaware of the ease of tread
they have over land,
unaware of how quickly it can fall
and the scathing jealousy
I feel for each of them.

In eyes wet and wide, I turn to go home,
I walk in the rain, before settling for the bus
and returning to that familiar, lofted view
of the world passing by through a maniac's eyes.

It is only then that the world shifts in focus
and lotus flowers crop up through the carpet,
the world outside has grown far too unreal,
to the point hallucinating makes sense of it all.

You walk over tile,
you tumble through life,
you falter to smile
through all family pictures.

Because, home is now lost
and your mind is a mess,
no plan of the future
and no stable address.

Still, open your arms
to all that you see,
until you discover
the sweet unity

of hearing the rains
fall onto the sheet,
and boarding the trains
to take you away.

Away from this state
of eternal disrepair,
to make a clean slate
and to find you're still there.

Do not say to me
that in life, is offered freedom.

Do not lie to me
and tell me everything is okay.

I am finished with the sacrament of stories,
I am done with lying through my words,
this world is falling apart in maladaptive chaos,
through the will of man, of companies and debt.

Do not sing to me
our prostituted freedoms.

Do not give to me
the ******* you've been fed.

I am past the need for fair and approved judgement,
I am beyond words for the injustice displayed,
from the cruelty of man to all species,
to the decimation of a low-income estate.

Do not offend me with
the policies for tomorrow.

Do not pin your bias
to the colour of your tie.

I am tired of fighting through this longing,
I am exhausted in the mere light of day,
because each day in your power is bereft of all hope,
each day in your power, we're enslaved.

They're hysterical in the streets as the power goes out,
whilst we peel through the volumes of our love.

They're twitching in their sleep with caffeine on the blood,
whilst we twist through the veil of our thoughts.

Some call to the Lord for the all-promised cleansing,
others poison themselves just to get by.

Some forget old friends in the luxury of living,
others see ghosts out in the marble hall.

Laura is waking to the lofted smell of coffee;
Jack is *******, late for work again.

Laura is nursing back her life to take it slowly;
Jack is shooting up all of his tomorrows.

They're selling bags beside the old abandoned temple,
whilst we sit inside looking at the rain.

They're feigning love and gaining innovative profit,
whilst we pick at the scars of yesterday.

Some pin string on maps to plot out their escape route,
others settle for feeling far away.

Some build up their biceps to bring about beauty,
others waste in chairs, hoping for reprieve.

Mary pacified want through the ohm of the river;
Joseph touched wood to keep his mind at peace.

Mary paraded in her soft and fragile spirit;
Joseph ruled the land with an iron fist.

You are the one I turn to in all eventual outcomes;
I have turned to a preacher at your door.

You are the limitless fuel for this vital ache;
I have turned to a shadow of before.

Dear reader,

I've not addressed you for quite a while.
You see, I've closed myself off.
Completely. I've handed myself over
to the crooks of television and the dealers
that pass by the street on occasion.

I'm living a sort of hybrid life,
melodramas in my spaced-out mind,
whilst inactivity spreads like algae
across the pond of ***** laundry
and cigarette papers, to the curtained window;
all sunlight extinguished.

This is no excuse to disregard others,
but life gets polluted as I'm sure you know,
and in the vanity of my own displeasure
I have recently conceded to hibernation;
thawing out my near-frozen, cynical heart.

To you, with all my perishable inexpertise,
I offer this:

That to your eyes, I falter - dying for attraction.
To the rhythm of moving lips over words,
I fall. To the plague of tomorrow, I stutter,
but in companionship of readership, I survive.

Oh reader, in your cerebral mist,
please hear this, my heady call:

Of bleak and miserable Novembers,
the threat of life impaired,
of times when all love is but sorrow,
of times when you're barely there.

Please, still sweeten at the sunlight,
rejoice in your daily waking bloom,
for, in you lies my love of a lifetime,
for, in you is the writing on my tomb.

All my love,
Someone Or Other

I am not a denominator of original sin,
some remnant or aftermath of fallen grace.
Indeed, I am hardly human at all.

I live in the spaces between breath and mist,
where gravity dares suspend its hold
and all matter slips away until nothing matters.

I pour drinks so I can afford to drink.
It pays my way towards the dead-end
now occluding the avenue that used to stretch

beyond it.

I am not a believer in disorganised action.
Each moment spent in self-destruction
was thoughtfully done to bring about art and demise.

I live in the moment between charm quark and decay,
where gravity falls to weakness
and all that matters slips into temperance.

I eat only to satisfy appetite.
It tastes of nothing but the dead-ends
that now occlude the avenue that used to stretch

far beyond me.

I keep waking up
to greet the day,
to strangle thought
and keep away
all the doubt within my mind,
of perished hope
and truth confined.
I keep waking up
to find the beat,
to find where reason
and reality meet,
to find a place of simple joy,
of lantern light
and reading boy.
I keep waking up
to do the same,
to plant my crop
and learn my name,
to call myself a useless part
of human waste
and vanity's art.
I keep on waking up
without a cause,
without a flame
to light the gauze
of life's shadowy stage
for platonic dreams,
of Aquarian age
and pyramid schemes.
I keep waking up
to find myself,
to read the books
left on the shelf,
and of all the doubt within my mind,
I promise to you
that I shall find
a way to keep going,
as I fall to a mess,
a way to keep showing
the way that you press
belief to my being
and hands to my chest
and now, all that I'm seeing
in dreams never whole,
is how you alter my state,
how you fill my bowl.

So for you I'll keep waking
and for you I'll stay here;
in the hope that somebody
will hold me so dear.

All that's still living
is in the sigh of my soul,
how you keep me from sleeping,
and how you fill up my bowl.

Maybe I was not meant
for life uninterrupted,
and long years spent
in solution.

Maybe I was not born
to feel lasting friendship,
old faces now torn
from my devotion.

Maybe I am not here
to be a whole person,
instead but a tear
of half emotion.

Maybe I am just air
falling from the bridge,
never seen and barely there
in all of life's commotion.

My sweetheart once told me
about the passing of the moon,
how it takes an age to burn so bright,
then gone away too soon.

My father once told me
about the whisper of the wind,
how ghosts are soldiers left to die,
in brutal war's rescind.

My shaman once told me
about collective memory loss,
how it takes an age to build a kingdom,
which swiftly turns to moss.

My teacher once told me
about coincidental beauty,
how love is found in patient bliss
and custodial duty.

My pen-pal once told me
about how all of life is work,
how you must toil, toil, toil the fields,
only to end up hurt.

My mother once told me
about the truth found on the coast,
how in landlocked state, she buried thought
and missed my father the most.

My blackout friend once told me
how he re-invented sin,
how truth is but an echo of thought
and great delusion's twin.

The news anchor once told me
about the falling of the towers,
how brothers fell under the mythic spell
of dehumanising powers.

My electrician once told me
about the sounds of abandonment,
how a million memories within the halls,
are now but histories spent.

My garden gnome once told me
about God within the weather,
how we traded in moonlit ponds
for car seats made of leather.

My psychologist once told me
about living with depression,
how it takes an age to face the day
and a second for night's oppression.

My failed love agreed with this
as she turned to walk away,
and for all the words I'd written down,
I had nothing left to say.

Another shattering of illusions,
as I sit here in cocktail mist
and cannabis descent,
staring with guilt at the nicotine gum;
all the time applying lotion
to care only for exteriors.

Gold *** in apple juice,
I unsettle the ice in partial decency.
Half-baked notebooks scatter
amongst the stray tobacco leaves,
neglected books, tablets and glue;
it's little wonder my life has
fallen
apart.

Old jazz queen,
she's rolling trills and cigarettes
and reminding me of my spine,
the way it twists to the bass-line,
sending chakras to bedlam
and returning to me
my recently lost youth.

Keep it off the record,
as I tumble on through another night
of poison and medicine equivalence,
a summum bonum of forget-me-do's
and elimination of both
the future and past.

I clear the leaves from my autumnal porch.
After the dead slate of winter,
I will emerge, sober.

We were lovers once, for all of time eternal.
That's no fabrication, says old Sugarman;
but that's a concretal fact.

We spoke as friends, atop the canopy of rainforest.
Costa Rican insight, we speak in tongues of delight,
pushing, pulling, pushing upon desire - all the while
smiling serenely into your ***** cocktail,
aware of the pressing concerns
into your later freedoms.

We love. We love and love instantly.
Skin baptised in humidity and rains rising in abundance
across the steep
valley of further treetop,
fading to cloud
beneath us.

Beneath us is the world: unbounded and plenty.
I settle eyes onto yours, stomach knotting, yet ensured,
as smiles weep to emancipated longing,
and this sheer belonging now felt
for this; our Eden, cast upon Astral shores.

In prophetic view of paradise, I pour water from a jug.
Clear as mind, I see through solar nourishment,
the expanse of all life, the life that crescendos
each time you sip on your straw.

Memory cleansed of all magnitude, now but fragmented
thoughts of nothings and second-hand sentiments,
I remember only the passage of our time up here,
the balcony of heaven and of Earth combined.

We kiss in the rays of Astral sunlight,
brighter than the longest of our day!
We sip red wine leant across the railings,
your dress clings emphatically
to the motions of your body.
It becomes as if brutality never existed.
I concede to life
and its offerings for all.

I kiss you greedy in the fast-fading sunlight,
as the sky is re-birthed in the conception of tomorrow.
I kiss you ******* the mouth
as we survey the old kingdom of man,
and these dying moments
before our next subliminal fall.

Please stay with me now in suspension,
this devoted region of nature, of plumage
and the removal of all sin.

I am done with whiskey slurs
and cigarette burns,
of chasing zeros
and memories unconfirmed.

I am done with complaining
about all of tomorrow,
about all of the pound
pound
pound of the heart
that resides in this chest,
this useless vehicle of flesh,
of matter born to die
and innocence always corrupted.
Please stay with me now,
as I go down
down
down...
please stay with me now,
my new sight.

I'm coming to meet you, travelling swiftly,
drunk on this: my escape from the city.

Escape from want and relief from this bleeding,
from gravity's hold, my soul receding.

I come with the message of all life restored,
upon the cycle of Tibetan chord,

I come with the song you thought I'd never sing,
of kingdom's passing, celestial ring.

Too long a cynic and too short a season,
I have learnt this living;
I have found a reason.

A reason for waking so dutifully,
to tread the Earth in sweetened loyalty,

a reason for thinking in patterns too deep,
for talking aloud to you in my sleep.

I'll tell you of the hum I hear in still breath,
the vanity of of seeking life through death.

I come with a great message of bound duty,
I come with childhood memory in tact,

I offer up my unitary wisdom,
to consciousness and the potency of fact.

My old teacher, she taught me of sunlight.

She taught me
of the energy waves,
crashing through the window.

She browsed
over distorted polygraphs
bleached in daylight;

oh, crashing black mark.

She wandered
through the courtyards at break,
eyes off and into the distance,

and always she,
the bleak reminder,
of memories turned to black.

She read in down-turned whisper,

lips twitching
the words, all for herself;
making sense of life

through ornamental verse.
A rapture of cerulean eyes,
she took my teenage heart

to town, just to pay the fare.

She taught me
of impossible love,
of all beyond the walls.

She taught me
of the paradise-life,
where memory unfurls.

She taught me
of matriarchal health,
in the strength of her stare,

explaining in her youth
eternal, that is etched
into my mind;

that not all that is loved, is fair,
and not all that is valued, is mined.

Teach me how to touch you
upon your heart's consent,
throw me back to the gutter
that I'd given up for lent.

Audition all this longing
to measure out its strength,
its lack of sense for fear and time
but that of shadow's length.

Show me how to miss you
without weather turning bleak,
show to me your eternal youth,
bound in memories I seek.

Demonstrate all living joy
as you wake again today,
birthed into the curtained sound
of Atlanteans at play.

Teach me how to hold you
in my sober sight,
allow me to accumulate
all of nature's might,

as I coast on through the avenue,
as I tumble through this plain,
please teach me how to love you
without expecting any pain.

Coffee shop of small-screen fame,
playing fields for hunting game,
winter's dominance is sanity's gloom
of life extinguished in this eternal room.

Oh, this world is slain
by capricious men,
but one day soon,
we shall live again

Please fall, oh gracious snow!
Soften the ground under hardened feet,
slow the day to the pattern of my heart
and restore in full bridal gown,
the promises of yesterday.

I awoke this morn in a fit of grey sleep,
of grey walls and air and nocturnal keep.
In these days of all-taste and no flavour,
please fall to Earth, oh prophecised saviour!

Please settle to the concrete
and decorate our lives,
leave winter upon the mantelpiece
and all these troubles underground.

Please settle all my longing
from engineering sighs,
winter falls from heaven's masterpiece,
yet lands without a sound.

Lucidity returns to me.
Another brief, lucky reprieve
of the torment, the shattering
of mass into this wretched,
hairless body of a child.

Malnourished eyes catch mine
in the stained hospital light.
Familiar face of vanity
now thinned to skull,
tarry naked for the young nurse, as
suspended strings play out this;
my marionette existence.

I have become the aftermath.
The end-point of cancer's feast,
seasick infomercials praising
my false bravery,
ignoring my persistent desire for life
and all the Gods I have turned to
in the past six days
and then tomorrow, I rest.

Cancer's feast. Flaying me to bone,
to awful bone and thoughts giving way
to the heave of my poisoned lungs,
the tide rolls and floods
of blackened deserts,
of shadows and malignant force.

Toasting 'lack of spring', I am devoured by it.
Each day is spent in the fly-swat region of summer,
multitudes eating at me in the Indian air,
in air of parasite, of larvae, of virus and pollution,
of all that smothers life and light.

I am tired of hospitals.
I am tired of lifting my *******
at the maternal call of the nurse,
of hacking purpled guts
in the dead of night,
in the light of day,
bile now a resident of taste.

Oh, wasted image,
oh, redundant beast;
take me to the back,
to the cut-throat choir
behind the curtain.

Oh, winter's passing,
sing to me in my demise,
a dove-salute of olive branch,
as far land's arrival
and plains unexplored
approaches,
approaches,
approaches as pain subsides,
as Laura comes with baskets of ****
and covert return of appetite.

I am barely living. Dying star of eros
and factory philosophies of truth,
there is only time left to crawl to the bath
and to fly through the avenues of memory.

In a life half-loved
and in a life half-gone,
comes a dream unbounded
and yet, finally lived.

Please, sit with me.
Talk to me of travels far
and scandals now settled.
Load me up on gin,
as you give me
my first piano lesson.

You press elementary chords
with the expertise that appears
to flood, flood in all your motions;
in all commotions of doubt
and in the brilliant glow of hair,
that has so stolen my heart.

Please, bear with me.
Crest of a tolerant smile
as my clumsy fingers fail,
loaded with gin and fear
of all inadequacies,
of all loss of melody.

These deficient hands apologise,
as they ***** in your blessed wake.
Unholy pilgrim (whiskey on the sly),
I temper doubt in suspended life
as you squeeze lime into my shot,
oh, my saint and shaman of poisons.

Please, do remember me.
Recall ease of laughter
and all of the moment's poetry.
We're loaded up on gin,
as I drink for safety,
as I drink for old scars
and as I drink you out,
before the start,
before a career of future hurt

in the fear of love found through Chopin:
an eternal, unsatisfied infatuation.

All this,
as you give me
my first piano lesson.

You are a stable's door
and all childish fable,
you are the wine on my lips
and the bread on the table.

You are a thought in the sky
of all melody assured,
of accomplished escape
to the imminent fjord.

You are a seasonal change
of all warmth from within,
of all memory erased
and the recession of sin.

You are walking companion
as I slip out the door,
you are an echoed reminder
of all that is more.

You are a thought-twisted spine
of all questions unheard,
my irrelevant heartbeat
of love so absurd.

You are headlight at night,
a dream's sordid landmark;
all majesty's kingdom,
with you to embark.

You are the flutter of heart
upon each high plain,
the redemption of water,
the bodies once slain.

You are the constant reminder
that all else is true,
so long as the sky burns
in that azure blue.
So long as there is hope
for memories anew,
I shall foolishly release
my heart unto you.