“You and I”
he says,
“we're meant for better things than this.”

When I ask him what he means
he says,
“we've been holding this factory up
for the last seven years-
look at you:
you look like ****.
You're ******* twenty-six
and you look like you've
gone at least two years
without regular ***;
always staying in to catch up on lost sleep,
but you forget about all the hours
you've lost in between.
When was the last time you made love
to anything other than yourself?
When was the last time you drank a beer
to start up the evening,
rather than to **** the night?”

When I told him
that it's not like I'm a boring ****,
he agreed and
he says,
“no, no, and that's the issue,
that's why, you and I,”
he says,
“you and I,
need to get out of this place.
Haven't you ever just thought
about walking out?
Like the money ain't enough
to keep you tethered to what you do?”

I answered yes, of course,
and that it's like the common cold;
it's a load of horseshit,
but it won't **** you too often.
To that he says,
“we gave seven years to make money for someone else,
and we got ourselves what we wanted...”

He was right,
as we drove up to our old spot
in our company 4 X 4.
He lit up the joint
as we looked over the old railway bridge and
he says,
“we used to come here all the time when we were kids.
Spit down to the bottom,
watch it splash into the floodwater
around New Year's.
We had our first cigarette,
and then our next and then our next...”

he zoned out and we fell to silence,
smoking by the old haunt
and not for the first time it occurred to me
how much I can live like a ghost at times.
Even now I was passive
as someone echoed my daydreams
with psalms of escape;
even now, at this featherbed point,
I slip into a conservative's tongue
and express my comfort in the working day
and feeling over-the-hill,
despite all the conversations similar to this
that I have rehearsed so passionately
inside my head.
After a while
he says,
“you and I,
we're better than this.
Better than this drug
or this routine bliss;
better than a monthly slip
that disappears on rent,
or popular thoughtstreams
that make no sense.

“You and I,
we're different than most.
We hold onto happiness
like sand in our palms,
dispersing it everywhere we go
without ever having enough for ourselves,
or concentrating it on anyone important;
we just spend it like we spend our money-
on all of the escapism to forget
that our lives are a lie-
a pie-in-the-sky theory
that says we have to work hard
to live happy...”

He stopped,
gave a watery smile
and he says to me,
“You and I
are similar,
but you are younger
and kinder than me.
Get out of here
and find that slower life,
before you begin to see what happens
when you grow into your apathy...”

With that he turned
and walked off the edge
of the bridge as if he was
slipping out for a ****.
He slipped out of life
without another word.
Maybe he thought he was a bird,
that he would find some wings
at the bottom of a tragic fall;
either way he is gone
and only his words remain,
in the lazy imagination
of a young stoner's brain.

They turn the music on in the bar
just as I am deciding to head home:
when did I become
the first one out of the door,
yet still the last one to leave his room?
I tacked a map of the world
onto my bedroom wall
to echo a song lyric;
tried to plot worlds of my own
based on the chaos of the present.
But I cannot muster the effort
when scaling the oceans,
when I know there are stars
in their death throes,
putting on a show no Jumbotron on Earth
could ever come to replicate.

They turn on the music
to fill out the films of silence
that separate crowds of people;
all clans and colours,
brands and rags-
this disconnected town
is landlocked in yesterdays.
A market town with nothing
left but charity shops
and punctured breath;
I cling to poetry
to stop me thinking about death,
about who would miss who,
and who would appear
in the breathing spaces
between dancing and drowning;

the fear of the fallen leaves browning;
browning in the dirt
as we all must do,
whilst I ***** my wage
to buy some green
to decorate my windowsill ashtray,
the embryonic apples
hanging from the tree.
I replaced my torn clothes
and bought some new shades
that blot out the sun
I once so aggressively craved,
through my years spent
sleeping with the moon;
a temporary insomnia,
as I slowly,
so slowly,
found my retreat into a poet's tomb.

I am packing up my belongings,
I am falling in love with everything:
all the things that pass my way too soon.

I tried to keep my focus on the out-breath,
to the things I can offer
rather than what I keep inside.
I have tried yoga poses
at the crack of dawn
with nothing but my underwear on;
I tried to drink eight pints
of water a day
to ensure that my veins do not rust away,
to fill myself with the basic essence of life-
but I could not handle the broken sleep
each time I woke, desperate for a ****
in the depths of the night.
I tried to blu-tac unfinished songs
to my wall, emulating product-placement
but with nothing left to sell.
I know I cannot keep smoking ****
to emulate a stalwart companion.
These broken streets
look more second-hand to me,
and I have tried to find
that sober sleep,
that wide-eyed wonder
outside of these stale, chemical dreams-
but all I get are cold sweats
and cold shoulders;
people growing all around me
like stalks in a cornfield,
blocking all but a circle of light
that hangs over my head;
the bottom of a well,
the bottom of the world.

I am doing my best to keep on top
of all the things
that threaten to bring me down.

I have a tendency to distrust
anyone who has their **** together.
How the peaceful sleep at night
through wars on the television
and skeletons in their dreams.
I have a tendency to avoid
those who are whole;
those who possess a truth,
a faith that transmutes
all intention into each moment of chaos
that no human heart could understand-
those that stand on the hill
and work up their throats,
without saying anything much at all.
I have a tendency to fall in love
with the passing stranger,
clutching their phone
and all alone in the concrete streets.
Those who freeze in fear,
those who can barely eat;
those who still find the strength
to tap their feet
to music, and its restoring beat.

I remember the first time I *******,
I thought I was having a seizure-
or that I had somehow malfunctioned the Matrix
and had broken through
a fold of reality;
some white-noise ladder to greater plains,
throbbing, animal convulsions,
and a peak that only death
could overpower.

I remember crashing into shame
upon my return, versus the smug welcome
of oxytocin and my adult life;
not knowing to what extent
my ***** would dominate my mind;

you know, I cannot write a poem
without noticing my loneliness,
all the ******* I have left behind.
For that moment, in my New Found ******,
I was paralysed at the thought of a sober life,
and ever since that moment,
ever since that night,
I have been searching for those higher plains
in the lowest branches of myself.

Now I smoke my fill and redden my eyes
to bleed out old anxieties,
dry up old tears whilst softening scars
that I have collected over years
spent indoors, hiding from danger.
I remember the first time I *******,
how it came to me by accident,
a repeated motion of unknown emotions;
the undulations in her breath;
even now I still sit by myself,
and make love out of whatever is left.

You are beautiful.
That awkward gait of yours,
the way you check your pockets
every score of steps
to ensure nothing will slip out from you
that could never be returned.

The shifting weather
can never keep up with your moods.
It is beautiful how you rain in the sunshine,
how you can stretch out in the snow
and sleep like it is late August.
You understand the difference
between weather and climate:
that day-to-day failures
cannot make up the bigger picture.

You are doing well.
Climbing to places no one can reach,
you look down from the walls you built
to keep people out;
aloft from the crowd,
you find love in the faces
of all the people
you will never come to meet.

My fingers stumble over the strings,
over the flicker-book of life;
missing half of the important things
going on around me
until they have been and gone
and never to return again.
Childish lapses cause me to stare at the ceiling
through important demonstrations
that could save my life some day-
I always begin to imagine
my fatal accident
at the hand of a misplaced floor sign
as I sign the contracts
for those I feel no loyalty for,
in a signature my jittery hands
can never replicate.
My feet gain their own volition
when approaching anxiety,
and so I never know
if I will run away,
or run into the storm
of half-familiar faces
and half-tolerable anecdotes.
I am still a child, I know,
beyond my lanyard
and half-grown beard,
always dreaming of escape
whilst keeping close to home.

I guess I'm lonely.
I guess I'm a little arrogant.
I guess my collar turns up to the wind
whilst blocking out the adverts
in my periphery.
I guess I blinkered myself
to keep things moving forward,
detaching from people
to find an honest word,
beyond fear of detection,
beyond hurting others
whilst I shatter into pieces;
making the stage the only place
where I can find a voice
choosing solitude,
as if I had a choice-
you know I never learned
how to drive a car,
I have walked so many miles
but I have never got very far.
I guess I'm lazy.
I guess I'm a little broken.
I guess I'm just a skeleton
of all the words I've left unspoken.

Do you take the path of least resistance to get through the day?
Do all those leaflets make zero sense to you, too?
So you take a beeline route to avoid
anyone that is trying to sell you something;
the missionaries by the charity shop,
old lovers in the beer garden-
do you take worn paths only to lament
the lack of changing scenery?

Do you get ****** up just to calm down?
Do the seasons creep up on you, too?
In one moment, are you walking through the autumn leaves,
only to find yourself buried in snow?
Buried in the hue of the darkest blue,
where only melodies can reach you beneath the soil,
a tone-deaf beat that gives cause
for you to wait out the winter,
until something starts to give,
until something comes to change,
until the old warehouse of memories
is finally rearranged.

Do you miss the moments that matter
only after they do not matter anymore?
Do you always hope for friends
only after you have locked every single door?

I thought I had found my love
but she was just a name;
a series of letters
that held up all my words.

I want to write a pop song for you,
To spiral and loop in your head
As you apply your shampoo,
To constantly reappear
Through the airwaves,
Drowning out your lunch break
With force-fed thoughts
Of you and I
In that wet afternoon,
That train-stop goodbye;
Darling you were the last breadcrumb
I ever thought
Would leave me behind.

They say James Heron has a daughter now.
He has done for a couple of years. Last time I saw him
we were drunk in the day, and the time before that,
we were eleven.
I spent that last fragment of innocence
sleeping in a thin duvet case,
hoping it would pass as a sleeping bag: it didn't.
Since then I have slept rough in softer places,
and he has been on harder stuff
than I could ever sustain.

They say Faye owns a green grocer's now.
She put green in her hair and became a vegan.
They say she's never bought a McDonald's
and avoids Palm Oil like crowded places.
When she was twelve,
she'd punch me on the arm just to prove
that she could make a mark.
Now, she treads so gently across the ground,
the sprawl of the supermarkets;
imminent in swallowing her whole,
and still she'll go quietly, quietly,
so as not to cause a fuss.

They say Rhys Campbell has a missing father
who left town and changed his gender;
now a mother of two refugee children
and in love for the first time in her life.
Rhys Campbell couldn't get past his tough-man image,
and so his mother lost a son
when regaining her life.
Now ol' Rhys lives in a high-rise
and descends to the pub,
gives into the drug, and batters his wife.
Thought I saw him once
but my eyes were a blur:
I was drinking through my unemployment,
whilst he had given up on work.

They say Amy Thompson lost her wedding ring
and by the time she found it, she had left him.
She fell in love with the idea of the sea,
how it nurtures her
through the breath of a baby.
Now she lives alone and dines out for one,
treating herself after years of divorce
from who she was,
who she had to be,
and the remnants of her teenage self,
hanging limp from a cemetery tree.

They say Jessica Reynolds stays inside,
determined to one day, move things with her mind.
She collects crystals and panflutes,
Tibetan bowls and scented candles;
braiding wallets for the hipster crowds
just to pay her way through art school.
She communes with the dead
as she talked to the flowers, aged eight;
always fairing better in silent conversation,
and those long vigils in the shower,
reciting words she would instantly forget
when shown a human face.

They say Jessica Reynolds is crazy.
They say Jessica Reynolds believes in fairies.
They say Jessica Reynolds is a closet lesbian.

Now I don't know much about anyone,
amongst the faders and my inattention;
my lack of memory for names and accents.
All I can do now is to keep track of the tracks
that I have parted from.
Our common unity;
our communal drum.

It's been a while,
so off-the-cuff
with my sweet remarks
for the coffee rings
on the mantelpiece-
how it symbolises
entropy;
the debris of living entities,
the **** at the bottom of everything.

In reality I'm too lazy to clean,
too obsessed
with my lack of legacy
to notice the dust
that collects from old memories;
skin particles from parties long-gone,
all those fast friends
in the mirror,
sharing a tenner
across the kitchen floor.

The Drug took hold of me
from where love had left off,
throttling me
with its day-to-day panic
through my most tired routines,
the pillow-talk white-noise,
the anti-substance regime.

And now I'm tired of you,
you who I get high for,
you who brings me
to steady lows,
a subtle submission
only I can witness,
and only I can bleed out.
The Drug took hold of me
because you didn't;

because everyone let go
once I found a job,
once the money came in,
once my clothes weren't torn anymore.
They thought I was reborn.
A sober sunrise,
a cigarette at dawn,
slipping into the shower,
slipping into that
professional smile;
the bright whites
of the working day-
I have learned
to write and to cry
in the tears
of a crocodile.

A man becomes a calamity
without a woman,
or at least a love
that loves in return.
I have grown soft
in my bleak recovery,
waiting in the trash
of my poetic failures,
no longer looking
for those angry words,
no longer hoping to see
the city come to burn.

I am still trying my best.
Stretching my legs to the coastline,
lactic shackles of inertia
are cast off.

I remember the ease
of animating these young limbs-
concrete strut, woodland walk;

it is hard to think of you much these days,
even in the confines
of unread books and filter coffee.
I have forgotten you, your blue dress,
your punting on the Thames.

There are harder habits
than caffeine and rich women.
As Ol' Tom Waits says,
“you don't meet nice girls in coffee shops.”

The glass roof of the arcade
offers translucent sunlight,
a high-street retreat from the nature of the sea,
all mankind's institutionalisation,
all these walls and closing times,
bigger names over bigger signs.

I am still a rare sight of youth
amongst the patient, ringed eyes
of those book-shop loyalists;
a choir of silver on their heads,
acquired wisdom of faded routines,
old laughter etched like the Nazca Lines
in their faces, lips eroded and pale;
sexless in the fluorescent lighting.

Breathing spaces where life exists
are always held closest to the fear of death.
I am still finding a clean way of living,
a way to accept my place, my face
in the mirror of my self-hate, anxious words
and half-conscious recollections;
the remnants and scars from asphyxiation – old drownings:

the sorrow that separated myself from others,
the sorrow that separated you and I,
you and I.
Your pursuit of a well-ticked time-sheet,
my love for sentiments that rhyme.

I have learned the patterns of the waves,
the way money is exchanged.

Oh, my dearest depression,
my ache for acceptance.
My endless, endless ocean of blue
can be sad, so sad,
but it can be beautiful too.

You *** so fast;

using Snapchat
to *******.

Strung up by new beginnings,
I am well known for being nowhere at all,
disappearing through drunken intervals,
no taste on her tongue,
but she memorises
my self-indulgent drawl.
I have found a knack for solitude,
craving fame in the eye-line of no one.
I am well known for my melancholic air,
my toxic love; fettered philosophies
and the snare of my postures-
my fatherless past.

I am well known for beating myself
to the rhythm of the Blues;
old country songs sung for the new,
love found in the words
of a loveless life-
the first cut of the summer,
the last drink of the night.
Strung up by old affections,
I am well known for falling apart;
disappearing into a haze of silence,
then falling victim once more
to stolen words and bad art.

**** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
take me from this wonder,
this blindness in the night.

Anger me in morning
with the refusal of ugly ***,
sleep still on our tongues,
whiskey on my breath.

Treat me to your body
when I am true and I am good,
dance me through your questions
until you are finally understood.

I can hear your longing
though I cannot hear your voice,
you know that I choose you,
though, I never really had a choice.

Tease me with your movie scenes,
your folded, anxious legs,
a calf born into the slaughterhouse,
the conveyor-belt, the hatchling, the egg.

I was doomed to your misfit puzzle,
I was sentenced to decay,
skin seared by your magnificence,
by your gratuitous delay.

Delay from a fulfilment,
a delay from inner peace,
the incremental recovery
whilst dreaming of the sea.

Now I'm drowning in the wishing well,
in the steady clamour of home;
the pill-box in the aquifer,
the faded reference to Rome.

I can memorise your breathing
hair fawning over your chest,
there are countless decent lovers,
but you know that I loved you the best.

So **** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
I am tired of words and meaning,
those blind entries
into the night.

The prophets are corrupt.
Tablets that are easy to swallow
but impossible to tolerate
in the swarming ache,
accelerating climate;
the act of being human at all.

Human at all
in the face of the clock,
the tick, tick, tock of progression,
incremental change;

the feeling that you are heaving a boulder,
only to wake, to shave,
and to do it all again.

The drinks are cheap here,
and old habits live easy.
I am doing better than most
in the humdrum collision
of everyday living.

I am doing better than most,
but still I climb into the canopy
only to wake up ******, alone,
and at the bottom of the world.

Follow the echo of dissimilar climbs,
wavering landscapes, silhouettes;
undulating skies of cloud and shadow.
Old peaks left to weather,
as pills carve the plateaued mind,
all ribbon and bows,
all the flowers left by the roadside.

There is a blanket of darkness
and yet always a small box of light.
It illuminates the path, allows for a splurge
of words, of honesty - after all the lies,
after all the pills that gave sleep;
a soft defeat, the irregular streets
and the memories left by the roadside.

Follow me through my choices of word,
shifting coastlines, marionettes;
a body moving in a slow disease,
mental health ailing; the red, red wine.
Those pills came and yet still I remain,
stubborn as a **** on a concrete street,
perfecting the Bojangles walk,
the drunken fool,
the wanderer left by the roadside.

We smoke by the canal,
getting high;
lamenting our lack of a decent broken home,
British hip-hop in the static of the upper classes.
They're doing more with their time,
old analogue transmissions, sleep-filled afternoons;
a paperback revolution, a snail's pace progression,
those ancient roads of forgotten travel,
the routes we had given up too soon.

I am too impatient now,
seeking The High
over inner peace, those new-found techniques
in favour of old habits; instantaneous retreat.
It's okay, this interludal existence, high-wire dependency
for a feeling ill-placed in sober routine.
We give up on chasing women
to chase heights we know we can never reach.

We smoke some more,
an artist's tomb;
the coffee table piano, old acoustics
with malformed necks, waning ligament of string.
Let's fill the emptied social scene,
appear red-eyed in the daylight,
pawing for a comfortable release.
We talk about hitting those unsung chords,
then we roll another, another,
until we cannot sing anymore.

Two escapists converge
to hustle the prison;
get high on the prospect
of getting high in the future.
We smoke by the canal,
feeling low, unstrung.
The out-of-tune white man blues,
pleading for acceptance
from the crowds we love to criticise.

It is 16:18. It is April.
Winter has thawed and all feels new
now that I can sit outside without discomfort,
without pale, immovable hands
and a wind to unsettle my thoughts.

My first beer of the day,
no idea of when the last will be.
An ashtray of previous cigarettes;
two of them are my own.
Always the follower of better men,
of charlatans and well-travelled fools.

I refuse to be a consumer,
yet I live to consume;
the pavement beneath anxious strides,
the warmth between her ethereal legs,
the drug still in my system,
the cold sweats in a half-empty bed.

My first crisis of the day,
exchanging money for a quiet place to sit.
To find my poison, toast my newfound health;
a wealth used to line my stomach,
or else to devour a box of cheap wine.
My last day off work,
last chance to sour in a sulk,
to gawp at the shapes in the ceiling,
to stay up through the Sandman's song.

When will I learn to turn with the world?
To not cling on in desperation
through each changing, unfolding scene.

When did loneliness in a crowded room become a goal?
Eavesdropping on inspiration; indolence.
Like my art, pockets of brilliance are found
in the wreckage of a market town
with nothing left to sell. All those discordant
ideals of escape and of nothingness.
Still waiting for that ***** of light
which must always break through.

Isolation becomes a component of personality;
a need for space in overpopulated surroundings.
Like my art, pockets of living
congregate in moments torn from the clock face,
in lines of laughter and grief; the five o'clock champagne.
All that revel in maladjustment,
all who laugh at death,
those who had given up on The Lie.

When did my life reduce to words and symbols;
stealing poetry from the street-preacher's leaflets?
Like my art, pockets of reason
form amongst the senselessness of meaning;
how love sits different on every tongue,
how wine hits sweetly only in the need to run.
I have grown tired of running away,
this stalwart need for acceptance.
A want for a panic room,
a need to fall to pieces, undisturbed.

****** in the afternoon,
Orphans brawling in stereo,
hometown ballads of unseen terraces,
bar stool swallowing peanuts, pretzels,
salted anti-depressant,
the foul smell of life amongst
folded towels, synthetic apple,
the Magna Carta of Suburbia.

The allotments buckle and spread,
fragile sexuality, the April sun;
quick to heat, quick to tears
after a long winter of recovery.
Grit in the carpet, art in the air,
it comes too thick to catch a breath,
too thin on the lungs
to turn it to a song, or prayer.

This G-dless drug,
hippie theories, old self-harm habits,
slanted handwriting to prove a point;
intelligible fears for acceptance
as words form like train tracks
in my disappearance from this:
the peak of the day,
at the bottom of the world.

I **** the mood in a sour June,
opulent misery, scorched Earth,
exchanging platitudes with old faces,
full of *******; full of hot air.
Both sides of the fence
at war with themselves,
feigning inner peace and profit
across the beer garden table.

I talk of hangmen and floods,
child brides and dressing gowns,
my hometown under the mythic spell
of collective memory loss.
We have forgotten our place
in the comfort of our urban sprawl;
sirens caterwaul past the high-rise,
past the vacant church with locked doors
and the homeless on the street.

A commonplace emergency,
young male suicides, women *****
in the safety of their homes,
taught a kindness through physical force,
the way the gun drops to civilians
in countries saved through the filter
of television screens; of dust and distance.
I sit and write and think of ****,
of old loves, anxieties-
they call me crazy all the while
for not committing to the scene.

Now Afghanistan is a blueprint,
extended diagram of steady-state destruction,
a conspiracy of white man dreams,
farmlands bruised by machines of war,
by the ******* Boot,
the feeling we have been here before.
All the while, the illusion persists,
car parks filled with smoke, professional escapists
with their 9% lager, bags of tobacco,
and the megalomania of art.

I **** the mood of a whitewashed June,
advertised freedom, a mortgaged Earth,
exchanging currency for a chance of peace,
the zen garden smoker, the looted mind.
Both sides of the fence are collecting bones,
at war with themselves, whilst my eyes are red
and my philosophies, ******.
They call me crazy for dreaming of escape,
whilst never leaving the confines of home.

Since I started full-time employment,
I have been seeking out moments of release
amongst the wreckage of the working day.
Looking for that kind of place to meditate,
somewhere to find a peaceful completion.
I have turned my attention to toilet cubicles,
scrawling verses over awkward thighs,
ankles bound by the descent of my boxers;
pockets of inspiration flourish as the by-product
of Newcastle Brown Ale and work stress
pollutes what's left of the open air.
But I don't care.
I never had a sense of smell.
And there's ******* flying everywhere.

Train track sonnets, the drunk piano,
old trumpets and dreams of West Virginia;
gold tobacco in an antique pipe,
finding a new look in outdated surroundings.
Patients of self-hate stand in bandages,
long sleeves, and in brickwork formation,
all this to the beat of the white man blues,
a country guitar, harsh vocal, the sleepless smoker
on the bedside; new speakers for old tunes.
A new look amongst past disguises, ancient lies,
angry blisters on the road to recovery,
pathetic bottle of emptied red wine.
Tom still sings Hold On through bad hands and lotteries,
he will stay to drink with me, when on a winning streak.

You have not grown gills.
You have just grown used
to the feeling of drowning.

We were just hanging around.
The car park with a cardboard fence
to separate us from **** Alley,
treble bars playing noise
from speakers that faced the street,
enticing the bingers, the splurgers,
to throw up on their cocktails.

A couple walked past,
talking about the morning after pill.
We listened close from a distance,
eyes reddened in the street-light glow,
crime silent for the night,
only in our eyes,
only in our eyes.

We were just hanging around
in our semi-darkened corner,
beer in the back seats,
a box of superkings,
your queen-size bed
our eventual destination,
after the **** and the rain,
after taxis and broken heels.

The moon shone in malignant pain
through the neon and the stalactites,
traffic fumes and traffic lights;
we leant undisturbed on your car door,
a long journey, no direction,
endless travel without motion,
without emotion.

We were just hanging around.
The misfits in a flat-pack world,
half-functioning lighters,
your lipstick still untouched,
the stain of rain on the cathedral.
We were just hanging around
when I fell in love with you,
the way you remained a stalwart blue,
your happiness, and your sadness too.

I am sat here alone now
on Table 36. Still ****** in the afternoon
and maliciously lacking function.
Now eyes stray to the barmaids
without a grain of guilt;
indeed, with thirst and *******.
These words come fast and easy
in the humdrum silence
that followed from your chaos.

I have given up on hope,
sat at Table 36. Only placed in the future
and in the absence of action,
for the years I lost myself to you
I combed the mirror of life
in the hope to clean up my act.
Now words come easy
in this newborn retreat,
free from your pain,
free from your deceit.

Spun out and liaising with The Smiths,
slow death of living, a decay into night-
this incomplete ******, tend to album sleeves,
wearing the dismal heart
as a tablet for communion.

A choreography of chords and isolation,
a steadied high, sleepless eyes of longing
scratch faces in the ceiling print.
Anxious plots of escape,
the paralysis of a song lyric.

Bludgeon of chemicals, the sunglass confidence
of a new summer, a winter spent inside.
There is calm in desperation, missed chords;
imbalance amongst the infrastructure.
We wait for it all to come down.
Reduced to word,
reduced to sound.

You push me under
the river water,
the rumble strip,
the war-torn manger.

Appear on the small screen,
you slow me down
in this inch-drawn recovery.
We are still human.
Still human.

You pin me down
to distant dreams,
to the patient quick,
the train-stop silence.

Appear in the doorway,
the hangman's wedding;
homeless ribbons and bows
for the missing persons of the world.

You gave us our depression.
We wore it as a badge of honour.

You keep me far
to relinquish confusion,
a hall of mirrors-
empty basket in the bulrushes.

Appear as a melody
spinning loops through my wrists,
a one-way confession-
loose confetti, falling ash;
ash after ember,
warmth after rain.

Another cup of coffee,
another last cigarette,
waiting to get over that something
I had never managed to hunt
and pin down in a display case.

Chase the thoughts with endless distraction,
habitual reactions to commonplace panic;
the skin on your milk,
the lines in your face-
the colonies in your bedsheets.

A futile blur of words,
ancient shapes and poems,
I scour neurotropic fields of sunflowers:
some organic high,
a steady-state escapism.

Houdini would be proud.
This brave escape from detection,
'till only odour and circumstance
can pick me from the crowd,
this red-eyed happiness,
this stalwart blue.

Chase love down with a box of wine,
old methodologies to find something new;
the drunk-dial confession,
the marks on your arm-
the lies in your back pocket.

Another cup of coffee,
another chemical cloak;
another hourglass intervention.
Meaning slips through hands like sand
when you decorate your life

with obsessive mirrors
and uncontrollable smoke.

I build my new life over graveyards swollen,
each journey stolen on paths walked before;
the oak church door, the adolescent postures,
first breath of ****, first taste of flight
amongst grounded freedom, amongst polluted nights.

I trade eyes with women over numbered tables,
contriving fables from coffee cups, loose-tongued gospels
for manufactured apostles, remnants of mistreated advice;
last pocket of ****, last drink of the night,
I have learned when to swallow, I have learned when to fight.

I found myself in the ground-zero wreckage,
last vestige of meaning and useful obsession,
those drunk-dial confessions, aftermath of silence;
first smoke of the day, last image of starlight,
I have forgiven my failings, I have kept them in sight.

I walked past her again.
Annihilation glance-
one thousand exposed memories
of teenage years
and exaggerated fears;
how stupid they appear
now we've learned misery well-
how to keep silent in its tenure.

How to fall at its knees
in gratitude of its brief release.
Hopeless captor,
impatient platitude;
we catch eyes on purpose,
to relinquish the delusion-
I still want her,
and she is still unsure of me.

I have not changed my costume
since those dress-rehearsal years,
still pacing streets in black coats,
still conversing with my fears.
The core of walnut in the bannister,
the stair-lift in its cage;
I walked past her again
with ****** hair and awkward gait;
an ******* full of tricks
and a folk-song made of hate.

How she falls to her knees
in cigarettes and ashes,
hopeless captor
of old bad habits;
we catch eyes on purpose
to speak beyond tongue-
I'm still singing on the hill-side,

she's still tired of my song.

We never found each other
amongst the traffic of our lives,
though I waited for you
in a pauper's tomb;
overgrown with pre-existing grass
and violent rosebush.

What is left after old sentiment?
After the nights spent hoping
for your uncertainty,
for any kind of sadness
that may bring you back to me.
I have not found the answer yet

and I have stopped asking the question.
I just work the day,
collecting free moments
as ash mounts the incense burner,
over-thinking each word exchanged
across the pillow of my mind.

The television news keeps rolling,
the world keeps turning.
Despite atrophy in routine
and the absence of you;
that deficit I cannot absolve
when left alone in its entirety.

Love arrived once I wrote it off
as a folly of forsaken selves;
freedom reduced to paranoid glances
at inactive screens.
I am ready for pain again,
if you are the one delivering it.

I have been singing for forgotten things,
beer bottles hidden in the hedgerows.
The opera singer, the strangled vibrato,
ash-filled cokes cans; the afterparty sunrise.

This recovery has been long, fickle.
Reckless optimism and the science of failure
collide into the colour
of a Daniel Johnston cartoon,
or a songwriter's sense of humour.

Disused pencils stand as monuments
to old dreams of grass-roots art,
the fragility of neurotic *******
drawn with innumerable straight lines
that composite a woman's naked body.

I have been drawing on memories
and hoping for a brand-new image;
dissolution of old borders - a strangled voice
in a room full of opened tongues.

The Hawaiian shirt made light of depression
in darkened hours and wax smiles.
Plastic cocktails, the pending brides;
desperate men - the post-work demise.
I have learned a lie ever since.

This recovery has been imperfect, a fraud.
Swollen truths to satisfy the concerned,
only myself left to fool.
I have found the early morning
but cannot reach a sober conclusion.

Redundant habits mildew my mind
with the backwater of yesterday,
familiar street names to mourn
those who became strangers,
the negative bias of my mind's eye.

I have been writing words of action
from the safety of my desk;
all that the desk-lamp can illuminate,
all of which words can make sense.

This half-lived recovery is bunk, irretrievable.
Working poverty and untied knots
are co-morbid in meaninglessness;
chains to hold me in Plato's Cave
whilst her skin freckles in the sun.

Disused and living outside of love,
morning curtains open to a sheet of light
that obliterates loneliness
in the presence of shared heat,
only for it to return again, come night.

Let's feel alive after the first cut;
the bloom on your wrist,
the white line on the mirror
separating where you have been,
and where you want to go.

You laid down in a blanket of snow
and rocked yourself like a river boat,
turning sleep in fits and waves,
to wake as a fraction of yourself.

Let's feel alive at the steep passing;
the sheer drop below,
the winter that thawed in your mind,
that first hit of love-
first taste of smoke and sugared ***.

I became vacant at the shop-fronts
and pinned myself to sleep
with **** and binaural beats;
the sea-wall to my mental health.

Let's feel alive in our life's passing;
the intersecting plot-lines,
the echoes of old suffering
that will dissipate as we make our way
to where we want to go.

I have discovered the sober sunrise.
No longer the bringer of pill-drawn sleep
or the sick brightness of morning
as I walk home via cigarette butts
and misleading signs.

Who am I, to walk amongst the living,
after all the times I have died?

I saw myself at the end of the world;
strategic scar on my upper left wrist,
the extension cord and the lower branch
of the Tree of Life.

The taste of cheap red has become a phantasm;
salted mirage of clean streams and reservoirs
in the backdrop of dry land.

Now only cigarettes or accidental love can **** me.
I have discovered the sober sunrise
but have no idea what to do with it.

My love is now a swamp
in the Poem Factory.
See, I've been keeping mean
on lack of sleep and ****,
******* at yesterdays;
an old dog's tricks,
an old man's routine.

The lung of water is thick
with chemicals; still-water bleach.
I've been trying to clean up my act,
you see;
bend my back into a yoga pose
and question what it means to be free.

I haven't found the answer yet,
but it comes in the moments
I don't question it.

It comes in the wake
of a happenstance lyric;
some eloquence through anxiety.

My love is angry heat,
a mirage across the street.
See, desperation leaves a scent
and an aura of hopelessness;
my dreams of ***
lift up from my tea,
steam buffeting from me.

The pipeline swallowed air
in the Poem Factory,
solitude, the hopeful dream;
isolation, the reality.

Once I held you in my arms,
I loved you in my sleep,
above the traffic
and the circumstance,
above the slaughter of the sheep.

You made me sing at my guitar,
a grown man falling to defeat.
Now I cannot find The Answer
in the company I keep.

The game is rigged, we know it is,
in a hustler's *******,
the bank cartels
and corn-fed chicken
descend upon the weak.

I held you in my arms
on a precipice brave and steep,
above the breadlines
and the cannibals,
above the slaughter of the sheep.

You have me writing poetry
about landscapes left unseen,
you kissed the addict on the mouth
and now he's looking to get clean.

But the day is long, you know it is,
forgive me for sounding bleak,
a sucker for
those sad, sad songs,
and that chemical retreat.

I am not working on perfection
in a lifetime stretched and brief,
but I am working on a promise
that for once,
I intend to keep.

See, I've got a knack for giving up,
for feigning inner peace,
I've had my fill of oil spills
and the slaughter of the sheep.

You've felt it too, that burdened love,
the dead-end of familiar streets,
you lay down with him,
habitual ease;
lilac skin now a slab of meat.

The dignitaries come,
the friends you have to meet,
a compromise of ancient ties,
amongst the ******
and the thief.

Words are falling fast for you,
though I lack the skill to piece
all the fragments you paint for me
in this temple of disease.

The race is run, you know it is,
a pace we couldn't keep,
our lungs are full
of cigarettes,
our tongues of old deceit.

The Lie is out amongst the crowds,
but I have no time for war and peace;
I am slipping into
my lover's robe,
into your twisted sheets.

Once I held you in my arms,
I loved you in my sleep,
this wolf's disguise,
those bells that chime
at the slaughter of the sheep.

I have been living on a diet
of cigarettes and digestive biscuits.
My bowels empty into the System
and my hunger concedes
to the supermarket glow;
bigger names
under surgical lights.

The operation was not successful.
You can see it in the grey faces,
upturned collars;
that manic headphone stare.
The lone smoker skulks a bus-stop
like angry eczema
on a bride's upper lip.

I see it for myself now.
How crowds congregate by light,
stamens of fat and sachets of salt,
then separate as sadness
cuts through the delusion;
working poverty and panic attacks
on the hard kitchen floor.

The ache of anxiety
caught up with you again.
Self-imposed catastrophes pile up
as you find yourself walking against
the grain of lunatics passing your way.
The pupae gather and slaver
at their freedom;

you broke through The Promise.
I followed the path of your recovery.

Finding a living is so hard,
so difficult to sustain
without a reason to sustain it.
Beyond personal dreams
and a need for greed.

An ocean of eyes follow me
through the working day
until I crave isolation.
Only to stumble into
my blank-walled retreat
and realise what isolation really means.

What happened to our potential love?
I cannot read your last letter,
too scared to hear
that you hold a happiness
that bears absolutely
no reliance on me.

You found our distance
lost its charm. You have him,
with his immediacy
and a history to draw upon,
to justify.
I am a teenage folly,
left in the scrap of old photographs
and even older emotion.

A disused, defunct muscle
left to atrophy
as you find your comfort
and your way in life.
But you are a stray, a stray
with the desire
to be led astray;
with the want for a longing.

You know I can fill your days with poetry,
your bed with flame,
your winters with heat.

We’ve got a lot in common,
we share the same disease.
We’re thankful for our belongings,
though we fall down to our knees.

And the Israelites are coming,
they bring their funeral song,
a one thousand petalled lotus
is burned in the Gaza storm.

Oh, I don’t want to hurt you,
but you know that love is pain.
You find yourself in its absence,
just to lose it all again.

And still, I’ll come back for more,
like some ***-starved, pointless slave.
Fixate on you in the darkness,
and forget you in the day.

And I do not need this devotion,
I know not what it is for,
I waded through the ocean,
just to fall down at your door.

I gave myself to religion,
I gave myself to war,
I fought for all of the peace,
that I’d lost on your bedroom floor.

And I do not need this devotion,
'cause I know not what it is for,
I waded through the ocean,
just to fall down at your door.

And the soil swallowed me whole,
whilst I’ve been searching in the skies,
A motion of light in the treetops,
a love before the lies.

I do not need this emotion,
I do not need your pearls,
I’m looking for a brand new woman,
now I’m tired of spoiled little girls.

We’ve got a lot in common,
how we tend to impossible dreams.
The way we stand up for freedom,
the way we fall down to our knees.

The way we fall down to our knees.

You gave your love to the government.
Your liver to the greyhounds
and the squalor you live in.

The Asian district disappoints you
with its inaccessible women
to whom you are flaccid and unlovable.

The pub is full of students,
air humid with *** and youth-
all those impossible frames of reference.

You, proud emblem, are confused by it all.
The drawl of the six o'clock news:
“there is a war at your own front door.”

The Golden Age was taken for granted,
a party spoiled by strangers,
strange music, strange clothes;

the symbols you cannot understand.
Tradition fades to dementia, greyscale,
redundant colour, and jaded patriotism;

you raise the mourning flag alone.
A country died in your lifetime,
your romanticised vision of home.

Oh Blythe, you were always in the wrong,
you lived your life as a sad, sad song.
They say addiction starts and always ends in pain,
great Sisyphus, heaving the boulder again.

We're hooked on all our broken dreams,
suspicious of love like it's a pyramid scheme.

Oh Blythe, the world couldn't compete with your mind,
I talked to you, but it was the blind leading the blind.
When you took your life I had almost took mine,
feeling the pain, even once I've left it behind.

They found you in a sorry, sorry state,
oh, I know how it feels to always be afraid.

Oh Blythe, I know I shouldn't call you my friend,
and I can't pretend to know what drove you round the bend,

I won't preach colour into your world of grey,
and I can't say that "you just have to be brave"
but we're more than these words,
more than a pattern of breath.
You were bursting with life
despite your eventual death.

Oh, where did you go,
my ghost in the snow?
Oh, where did you go,
my dear ghost in the snow.

I've been looking for a place where I can lay in the rain,
it'll be a while, my friend, before I see you once again,
I hope I don't see your face again.
Wherever you are, I hope you don't have to pretend.

Where did you go,
where did you go,
my ghost in the snow.

You tell me to get a grip
but I have got nothing
to hold on to.

I want to be loved for one night,
then I shall be content in isolation,
comfortable in the lack of weight
on the other side of the bed.

One night, to be kissed brand-new
by foreign lips; a familiar fear
as she leaves her dress on the chair,
and our inhibitions on the floor.

Absence of physical touch, heard words;
no tangible proof I exist, or should exist
at all. I miss the fatigue. Brief sensation,
some energy - our collective heat;

the way we sweat beneath the sheets.
The way you need to call out to me.
I have not heard my name in weeks.

I want to be loved for one night,
then I can return to pollute these pages
with something beyond conjecture,
something worth holding on to.

The notebook is full, tea turned cold.
State of satisfaction without completion,
no itch to scratch,
no craving to amuse on;
the binge has abated for now.

Fragmented selves have presented as me,
adjusting hair in the faces of strangers,
a drink in hand,
elephants in the room;
none of them relate to me.

Naturally gummed papers strew the desk,
audio jacks and water stained notes.
This is entropy,
this pile of laundry;
the European map, made in China.

Going crazy is an ongoing process, friend.
It takes a lifetime to master
the Bojangles walk,
the flat-capped freedom;
a filthy soldier's limp.

I am finding my place amongst the misfits.
The world behind a blast-screen,
no invested belief,
no disease left to treat,
staying in for the evening,

staying in for the week.

Everyone has *** darling,
you cannot claim that as your own,
nor your past of broken heels
and your father's broken home.
I scored blood over my wrist
and toiled, toiled, toiled
in the sun.

I stood in line for my freedom
to find that there was none.

We are all maladjusted darling,
all singing to an empty sky,
all pastured by the government
and living amongst The Lie.
You cannot claim your illness
as the dissolution of G-d,

you cannot find a kindness
if you do not spare the rod.

Everyone loves a ******* darling,
in that you are not alone,
your father with his whiskey breath,
all cancer and flesh and bone.
I scored a high in an empty field
and howled, howled, howled
at the moon.

I stood up for the years that I had crawled,
for all our happiness that came too soon.

I can hardly remember your face,
left here in a chair,
room aglow with the muted television,
drunk as hell.
A man becomes a pigsty without a woman.
***** stains on the sports sock,
a battleaxe hangover,
bills piled by the toaster
and **** over the kitchen sink.

The bailiffs came.
I cried like a child through the burglary,
drank the Ganges in stout when it was over.

I have been drinking ever since
the Christmas lights turned on,
the town bathed in absinthe, teenage smokers,
Lithuanian women;
no chance of collision with you.
Eternal ashtray, brick upon brick,
cylindrical beams - an empire of ash
and odour. I can't smell you anymore.
How senses die, yet you remain,

stubborn as a **** on a concrete street,
stubborn in your deceit,
my old crutch, my faded ***** in heat.

I am a mess of old exchanges
whilst ****-stars **** on screen.
Fantasy is dead
as my first dog, defunct,
birthing colonies beneath the ground,
frozen over in winter.
I feel nothing. No thing.
Urges clamour for attention to keep me alive,
vague hunger, the need to bleed.

The paramedics came.
I cried like a child through the gift-wrapping,
drank from a plastic cup as they covered your face.

I can hardly form a sentence
in this fast world
of slow days and long aches in silence:
this is hell.
A man becomes a pigsty without a woman.
I see you in my ridiculous moments,
the insanity that stands in your place,
fractured light in the doorway-
my obsessive state, your forgotten face.