For G.C*

I'm on the dole, in therapy, taking meds
and posting statuses. I drink far too much
caffeine and read too little. The cops are bad
and the drug dealers, good. I wear shades
to hide fatigue and spoil pavements with
cigarette ends and receipts. I stay awake
all night meditating, looking for that
deep-sleep pill and peace of mind.

I'm a modern man and an old soul,
stretched out on a beach towel in suburbia.
I punctuate my day with digital smiles
and late night calls to my pillow-talk
sweetheart. All milestones are published,
doctored and time-stamped to ensure
that every moment is lived in memory.
The sky is concrete and the ceiling, made

of glass. I watch tree surgeons clean
the economy's veins, retired carpenters
tending to their miniature Eden, as
the rapists neck their third can by the
fire escape. There are hosepipe bans
and water-gun fights, crowded hospitals
and empty funds. The government are
insane and only the lunatic fringe can

make sense of things. I'm sleeping naked
and checking my prostate in the shower.
There are bowel movements in the
cubicles and Zionism rolls on by through
every other wide-screen joint in town.
I'm chasing jobs and avoiding eye-contact,
throwing coins into the wishing well and
hoping for change. I'm a modern man
and a miserable Old ****.

I remember crying over Chopin.
I was twenty years old
and coming down from alcoholism.
There were words in the
hammers and strings,
but I couldn't understand
a word that they were saying.

Around that time I started meditation.
A room to renovate, I took
a step-ladder to the astral realm
and spilled poetry from my dreams.
I was twenty years old
and in the process of quitting.
It's a slow-burner, even now.

There were doctrines for self-actualisation.
I was moved to understand them
in a smattering of conspiracy theories,
Buddhist mantras, and lazy hikes.
I wore sunglasses and shorts
in Gran Canaria, and strived
to get you out of your dress.

I remember swimming in the cenote
and conjuring breeze from
the warmth of your breath.
I would soak into wine and
stolen cigarettes, as you toyed with
your bikini in the mirror. I remember
the freckles along your inner thigh.

Around that time I worked a living
scanning bar-codes and forcing
hangovers down until lunch.
There was a tiredness gained
that cannot be shaken off,
and a lust for justice
amputated at the tip.

There were road-side sandwiches
and flicks of hair in the wind.
You pinned me to the bed
and showed me what love meant.
Three years on and I'm an old man.
There are friendships contained
in memories, as I think back to when
I was twenty years old.

Since you left I have been nourishing
my ego with long walks and vitamins.
Since you left I have written poetry.
A lot of poetry. There were nights spent
in the haze of **** beneath
plastic canopies and stars.

Since you left I have listened to the trains
pass from my bedroom window, lighting
incense and learning how to sleep
again. Since you left I have been
visiting old friends. They cheer from the
sidelines. They fill out my time.

Since you left I have been looking for jobs
and ways to write an honest letter:
an apology to reverse our goodbyes.
I have been counting my change
to take you out to dinner.
I have been losing my appetite ever
since you left.

Jim clutches his phone in his pocket,
in place of the hand he had grown used
to holding. From where laughter came
was now just silence. Awaiting a call
that was unlikely to come. It had taken

an attack to sever the nation he had
come to call as home. And now dug
in the rubble and salt marsh, he would
sell freedom for her. Words mean nothing
when they are heard by no one.

Jim has disappeared out of town again,
rambling through woods to occupy
his time. He searches the gutter for
cigarette ends and lighter fluid.
He spreads her out in a five-minute

dream of soft touch and hard kisses,
of come-down and sunrise under the
hem of her red dress. It is Jim's turn
to wait around. It is Jim's fault
he even has to be there at all.

The screen is a madhouse
of body-building, ego-boosting,
and bad gig recordings.

I see her bronzing in the beach,
applying lotion and laughing
with a new friend.

I'm still stuck in the snow,
watching her skirt in the breeze.
I chain coffee in the morning

to counter sobriety,
to show that I know her more
than just by the light of the moon.

In sunglasses, we'll meet somewhere
neutral; an escape route to run
if the patient becomes lunatic again.

She'll administer the pill
from her pockets to ensure I'll flat-line
through her absences,

and then resurrect when she's lost her
appetite. Far away from this
selfish depression, I dream

of us painting a wall. Nothing dies
when it is made into memory;
nothing lives without your early morning call.

Leonard swam amongst the basalt rock.
A music box of echo and tide,
***** pipes of molten Earth
petrified in place. He stood within

the natural cathedral and cleansed himself
of suitcases, old postcards, and
sweethearts, whilst the White Stranger
looked out for his sweet Iona.

Amy bathed her feet in the Sea of Stars.
She left her clothes on Conrad's
carpet and held plankton in her palms.
Freckles of light formed in a hand-held

pool. They bent and assembled into order.
She was the forgotten daughter
of fine wine and bold name tags,
until she left them for the salt and the sand.

Ryan sat in the sun with his shades on,
stabbing ice whilst making a call
to the office. He stretched out on his
day-drunk fortune, collecting souvenirs

and belly fat, double chins and photographs;
his wallet purging in the tourist trap
of old Van Dieman's land. He thought
that he'd escaped her prison, a long time ago.

It was all a reality Doris had come to accept (and Bernard too, to an extent). They had moved as if they were one entity for the majority of their life. Every thought would come in pairs; each footstep was echoed by the other, and every wine bottle was shared. They'd been wed for 50 years now, and with each anniversary, they found themselves becoming all the more soluble; mixed together like some kind of brilliant concoction: a solution to all of life’s problems.

They didn't notice me until I went crazy.
Until the lights went out and they heard me
moving around the house, my head to the wall
to force out blood, or sleep. They feed me tea
by the pint. Two sugars and milk to keep me awake.
I need to play the patient. It makes me their son again.

Food arrives on a tray with 20mg of distraction.
I can smoke outdoors in the cemetery walk
while father sleeps with the larvae and embryonic
Earth. My brother has turned eighteen
and I have become the canary to his coal mine.
He can live in the spaces that I have died.

There is always movement on the stairs.
Contestants cheer miserably beneath me
like a slave-ship bet of the first to their
death. The ocean rolls. The world keeps turning.
She is wearing sunglasses and painting toenails
into colours I had made her forget.

Mother, take me to the straitjacket cellar.
I will lie still and let the moths drink from
my eyelashes. There are books and women
meant for better eyes. There are trees for a
different childhood. There is nothing left
but to learn a silence. To become a whisper

hidden in the dirt.

The snowman slicks his hair
and sits on the piano bench.
He never comes to press the keys
for fear of the warmth
in a major chord.

The snowman lets his whiskey stand
in ice upon his windowsill.
He never comes to press his lips
for fear these poisons
will reduce him to elements.

The snowman browses works of art,
photographs of beautiful women.
He never comes to try his luck
for fear that rejection
will leave him cold,
and preserve his distance.

Please let me get to meet you
in the absence of a crowd.
To talk and talk and to reminisce
on memories we never had.

The rain is streaming down.
The traffic is slowing up.
Please, let's not allow geography
to push us from our ***.

I am way off in the distance,
stranded in Nottinghamshire.
There must be a time for fulfilment
at the summit of journey's end.

Will I satisfy your dreaming
of a young man lost in daydreams?
Will I be able to fill out my sentences
to explain how I got here at all?

Please let me get to meet you
in this strange event of life.
I have spent too many hours
waiting for a new friend.

There is a beer can bobbing on the horizon.
It poisons the sea; La Cerveza Valdez,
an opposable thumb to flip the swtich.

I think being human is an artwork.
Pierce me, flay my arms in tribal shapes,
kiss the rag of religion, break your soles

for the Hajj. Let's overpopulate the party,
trading red for blue in an endless procession
of masks. Let's straitjacket our sanity,

and document our depressions in late-night
emails, and early morning black coffee.
I lost my mind when I turned sober,

remembering what it means to forget.
There is a hospital bed in the future.
But there are pills I can take for that.

I have found a place to stay tonight
beyond the quartet of violence, cancer, debt,
and ***** field. Beyond translucent light,
crushed snail shell, and entertainment.

I'll die a thousand deaths in dares tonight,
popping dreams like candy in my mouth.
See the light before your hear the crackle;
a vinyl sky of firework sound.

The Zopiclone will send me off to sleep.
Come tidal wave, come vague inspiration,
come the bringer of tomorrow's Cash Cow Queen,
the next ghost-written, Cigar Smoking King.

I have no time to narrate upon existence.
I am only here to learn how it is to die.
There is a taste of dementia in tepid tea leaves,
load me with sugar, only far away from here.

The poet will run off with the pen-pal.
The egg will hatch inside the slaughterhouse.
And I have forgotten how it is
to ****.

There's a direct link
between your time spent writing
and your love for cats.

I'm still stuck in day-drunk unemployment.
A millennial with eyes to a screen,
adopting a science
in a bedroom whisper for Gaza.

Now a writer of pretty words and clumsy verse,
there's no place for happiness
in forcing poetry. There are ribbons and bows
around the fenced-off trees,

there are notebooks of unfinished thought.
I'm searching the skies for a scrap of movement,
for some coded message
to **** the engine of war.

There's a wedding in the morning,
and there is somebody who still believes in love.
Rainbow confetti will kick in the sky,
a dandelion is born in the skull of old Palestine.

I'm still stuck in this new-age desperation,
a constant plea for peaceful completion.
I'm changing address
for a clean way of living,

in your sweet floral dress,
let this be the beginning.

“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.

I had a lover in Calgary
who used to paint the mountains.
She was all words
and no ***, and so I was bound
to hurt her eventually.

I had a lover in Monteverde.
We would take the sky walk to the clouds
and lighten heads with wine.
I could never stand out from the beauty
that surrounded us.

I had a lover in Chernobyl
who used to collect children's shoes.
She was all memory
and no life, living in the fallout
of love and love's decay.

I had a lover in Alice Springs.
We would **** and drink in her shanty house
and argue through till morn.
I could never stand the sight of sorrow
and aboriginal rust.

I had a lover in every country.
They kept me from the sports news with gifts
of poets and good music.
For all the kindness they had offered,
I never had a speck to give in return.

I watched you slip off into sleep,
leaves descending from the castle keep.
You let down your hair,
laid down on the bed,
reciting from memory
all the lines you've been fed.

I held your hair as you threw up water,
claiming to be the forgotten daughter.
You held my hand
and you kissed my cheek,
said you thought you were cursed
by a landscape so bleak.

You rested for a couple days more,
then paced the walls for an open door.
We took to the park
and smoked by the river,
I swallowed the longing
that words failed to deliver.

By the time you recovered, you walked away,
to a seaside lover of salt and spray.
I am stranded here,
buried in snow,
searching the skies
for the wings I let go.

Old friend, we once excited in the crowd
before we were thrown into a romance
of jealous thought, and twisted circumstance.
I struggled for sunlight, head full of cloud;
you lost your voice over music too loud.
We left the revolution up to chance,
lazy in love, with a partner to dance
clear through the morning, with hangover proud.
Now we must strive for a cleaner living;
meditative skies and time for healing.
In separation, we'll untie the knot,
we'll learn to take after all this giving.
Now I must climb to reclaim that feeling
of giddy heights and the youth we forgot.

I have been waking to a mouth of feathers,
grinding teeth in my sleep
and dreaming of Luxembourg.

Giants surround me and call me 'friend'.
I can't see the stars
for their mobile phones,

for their fat wallets and career plans.
I have no coastlines to wander;
only old paths I can cross once again.

I have learned to speak in a thousand tongues
and yet still have little to offer.
Let me buy you a drink,

let me adjust awkwardly in your gaze.
I have seen too many wars
pass over my head,

and now I am looking for love once again.

It was you who drew the moth to the flame.
In a small-town Sunday, you walk the parade.
They see your dress ripple
in the gasp of the wind,
they forget old desires
and then become better men.

Are you laying beside him, his jaw foreign and thick?
Is his bland conversation a momentary bliss?

It was you that wore the dressing gown.
In a false-flag freedom, the high-street crowd.
They heard you crying
as I boarded the train.
All misery is gossip
and can be spread once again.

Are you thinking of me when you start to undress?
The way I counted your freckles,
the way we faltered to ***.

I watch you tend to your eyebrows
in your childhood mirror;
your parent's showroom.
You're not dressed yet.
I fix your necklace, breathe in deep
to smell your perfume.

You once told that settling down
is a kind of fatal error;
papering the walls to your tomb.
I'm staring at clouds,
your eyes are wet.
It's the coming of sleep,
shaped like a mushroom.

When will the paramedics come?
I lost my finger in a midnight rave,
****** to the bone and drunk as hell.

I think the doctor is trying to **** me.
She dispenses pills like a Pez-Head,
to send me to sleep,
to miss out on poetry,
but at least I'll catch the bus to work.

Cap and gown dreams keep visiting me.
I don't know what it means when she
lifts her blouse to reveal old scars,
when she delivers my life
in a steel-framed certificate.

When will the politicians come?
I lost my faith in freedom, when I was
clothed to the bone in distraction.

Take me to the fields
where memories form
in rolling banks of bonfire,
torchlight, and dead-end riverbeds.
Pass smoke in a kiss
across the group,
blowing wind up your skirt
to satisfy a dream.
If I could afford this life,
I'd live it; where everything
is so endlessly free.

I am bitter in pills,
as they clench my jaw shut.
I'll feign a good listener,
if you'll brush your hand
against mine. Our high-wire
existence is based on lies;
the lie is out and now
we're all too tired of *******.
Just hold back on the cider,
if it  makes you feel sick,
or forget how to live.

What happened to
London? This new wave of thinking?
It turned to drinking
and a healing bruise;
waiting for trains to break
my mind-silence. I can't feign belief
in some new lover's meeting,
or a cure for dementia.
I'm sure I'll forget you
in a lifetime of drink.
I will hold you immortal,

as I set you in ink.

for Leo*

I have no words to say today,
I used them all last night.
The city streets
were dark and bleak,
but I kept you in my sight.

We traded cash for hot *******,
we were shooting for the moon.
This force-fed high
of no reply,
always falls apart too soon.

In flame of hair she poured my drinks
and smiled across the bar.
I don't need this drug,
this pollutant fog,
to find a shining star.

I need to walk that nature path
beyond my father's grave.
To find a self
in better health,
in a place I can be brave.

I have no words to say today,
in the sober morning light.
I'll fall to silence,
I'll walk away,
before I talk again,
come night.

Do you hear the crashing sound
of a society at war? Can you find the
answer, for what has come before?

There's no petrol in the tank
as they clear your ******'s name,
the man who came to teach you
that love is a guessing game.

I hear they're selling rainwater
as a reason to stay inside,
they say you'll drown in the struggle
of trying to turn the tide.

Can you understand me now you've
seen it for yourself? If sanity is mimicry,
then I'll remain in my ill-health.

If you had seen the poems I'd written,
left closed in a drawer,
or else in an envelope unsent,
you would lay down your tools
and cynicism, for in me;
there can be no risk.

If you had heard my words of silence,
as I troubled the streets,
forming ways to display my longing,
you would lay down your drink,
for I would hold you
into sleep.

She taught me to find truth
in myth, and to steer away from
progress. She claimed change
to be an assumption
of God's redemption,
and to be in ignorance
of human history.

In ancient lace, she covered
all mirrors, to clear her vision from
vanity. There were songs she'd written,
but could never sing,
for fear of showing real emotion.
She would line her eyes
by sense of touch.

She loved me once but then
took it back, never returning from
absence. She claimed that change
was beyond her power,
and that reason was a retort
only used by the absurd,
and the hopeless romantics.

Summer arrives
in animation of limb,
to ramble the forest,
to reflect upon sin.
I keep smoking cigarettes
in the drunk-talk of friends,
I will kiss her on the cheek,
I will slur to her
my amends.
Summer arrives
in the advent of love,
I will settle my debts
with the great skies above.

This place is filling up with people,
as the workers settle into their chairs,
I have been sitting here for hours,
smoking with the 'barely-there's'.

We all shuffle to the bar-maid,
we mumble concedings for a drink.
We come to escape the front-lawn shepherds,
we come to avoid the kitchen sink.

You must wear your badge of honour,
the pills you take when you lie down,
till then you'll write another poem,
before heading off into town.

This is not what I imagined,
after the bruising years of school.
I can't drive off into Atlantis,
if I'll drown in a bathing pool.

Oh, when did this high turn to torment,
and when did truth fall to mystery?
When will my words turn to cliché,
and when will you remain, my history?

I have dealt with your silence before.
I have managed in absence,
in a fake disbelief,
that love should ever
fall upon my door.

This is no novel
or wine-glass introduction.
This is more a friction of times past;
tectonic memories,
building to destruction.

There is no need to hold you up
after midnight, to hand you
my dreams, in the lack of
pillow-talk.

When I lay down my mind,
you vanish from sight,
though return once again
upon my morning walk.

Belgian cider after a British nature walk.
This is my unemployment,
this is my fall
from grace.

In the mid-June breath of consciousness,
I can signal the daylight,
faded to white,
through the window lace.

If you take a stroll in the heat of summer,
you shall lose your ghosts,
you shall find
your place.

I've chased sanity down
with whiskey and ice.
It has been months
since I have fallen asleep sober,
and even longer
since a smile lasted longer
than an ******
or new haircut.

I've come back to rooms
of coasters and candles.
They're mowing lawns
and discussing old events
to renew their youth.
I cannot see past
their prescriptions and remedies
for a tired mind.

I've abandoned meditation
for pills and the limelight.
Old friends lend jokes
and out-dated platitudes,
disclosing pity in mobile apps
and reptilian notions of survival.
Cap and gown,
they congratulate my heart rate.

I've retired from hopes
of fame and recognition,
and now all I want
is to find some time to sleep.
There is no privacy
in this fish-bowl existence,
and there is no piety left
in all that I have strewn.

I take a walk into the parkour graveyard,
looking for Polish dealers and cellphone halos.
I heard Thoth resides in sobriety,
but words fail me
whenever you are near.

I let my tongue run in endless stutters,
disguising 'I love you' as some off-hand request.
I could take you to dinner,
I could show you a longing
without the need for ***.

This late-night food has lost its flavour.
This ******* never picked up.
All that is left is to dial these numbers,
and wait by the window
for any car but yours.

Let's take a walk to the railway bridge.
We'll smoke a joint by the open forest.
You'll push your breath into mine,
make me high,
and forget why I ever
felt so low.

I fell in love with music
when I fell in love with women.
Cassettes will weep upon demand;
homing melodies for the neighbour
who lives across the green.

There's no sense to *** or violence,
and yet I'll teethe it all the same.
I'll give out tepid love, flashes of blood,
and a weekend of cemetery wander,
if it means I'll get a modicum of sleep.

Zopiclone, Citalopram, and long walks
will do a lot to elevate a mind.
You see a painted blue
and an ocean view; yet you've lost
that old dignitary smile.

I am told to separate my wisdom,
to quote history as if time were a fact.
There's no love in the decimated forest,
the Earth now calloused and fickle,
to shake off the parasite of man.

I fell in love with cigarettes
when I divorced with yesterday's papers.
I have no wars left to fight,
and no money more to make,
now all that's left to ask is:
where do I belong?

Hang the folk-singer in a straight-jacket.
Let him out to entertain the pained,
and to allow him his vanity
of seeing one thousand t-shirted candles
echo back to him, his own face.

Let him board the train to nowhere-town.
Give him time to walk a recovery,
to indulge in a sorrow
that was too often left ignored.
He'll come back with a black eye,
cradle and all.

Kiss your divorce on the mouth, as you
filter his coffee. You're coming out of
your shell, and out of the house,
you're meeting for coffee again,
in the sun-glass shade
of the afternoon.

Hang your clothes out to dry by the river.
Let yourself have a hayfever bout
in the grass. Allow your new freedoms
from the tyrant, that had long kept you
anchored in the past.

I hear the town sing
beneath their fatal groans.
They have loans, embankments of debt,
and light fittings to figure out.
I hear the child-bride sing
amongst the echoing pool.
She sings out for oceans, and static moons
to deliver her from
the television roar.

I remember you left
in a panic attack.
You lacked what you felt two winters ago,
when bells chimed at your bedside.
I remember the mist
over Cawston fields.
The yields of wheat, in my bicycle freedom;
you left when I kept slipping
out of the door.

She was the type who would comfort her attacker.
All memories of love were postcards for her wall,
as she slipped undetected through life, collecting
bus tickets, old receipts and post-it notes,
all with an atypical tolerance for red wine.

She spent her days lying in waste, lying in wait
for the moment that life would catch up with
her beautiful mind. She gave love to him
in magnetised letters and pillow talk,
but she was forever replied to in silence.

She would reinvent herself in hangover light,
before ordering take-out, and spending
the week inside. She cursed her translucent skin
in the sunlight, and yet she glowed in the summer,
as the breeze unsettled the hem of her skirt.

Unobservable universe,
with all knowledge, illusion;
will you meet me in fevers,
and lucid delusions?

Will you frame my thoughts
in your concepts of God?
Would you allow me my slumber,
would you spare me the rod?

There is no mercy, nor divine retribution,
no cosmic ray, and static collision.
All that we own will turn into rust,
into the cracks of the Earth,
and beneath the crust.

Give me meditation,
and the fruits of the trees,
a town to return to,
to stretch out in ease.

I'll let this beard grow,
you'll take-out again,
we will sigh in our beds,
and play remember when.

There are no favours in a lifetime short,
there's no ambition, in attributes bought.
All that we left is now memory;
a fortunate fossil,
a bleak melody.

They smoke a lot of cones by the east-side lobby,
watch the sun come up in a habit-***-hobby.
Sweatshirts line the edge of the high-rise feature,
they pass their smoke through kisses, creature-to-creature.

The weeds hang over their heads in a brick-work reminder,
search-parties comb the woods, but they couldn't find her.
In the murmur of the city, with the street-kids drinking,
cooking up their schemes for a new-wave thinking.

The papers plaster words of in-group fear,
view the class-war that is coming near.
They don't vote for the parties that bring come-downs and blood;
they'd write a sing-song for freedom, if only they could.

They exchange love like high-fives, in teenage abandon,
now in their mid-twenties, still dreaming of Camden.
In the centrifuge of their small-town dissonance,
they toast to their cancer; to their short-lived innocence.

The waitress sends signals in neon code,
through Christmas illuminations stretching across
the car-park, and straight into my ***** orange.

She laughs through awkward platitudes,
and all the beards that comment on her skirt.
She's working to make a living,
somewhere down the line.

I watch as she scribbles poetry on old receipts,
eyes glossing over the ketchup stains,
and into the passing of the moment.

I hope that she is writing of escape;
of better times and better sleep.
She will smash the glass ceiling,
and save us from the greenhouse effect.

Baritone singers lure her into art,
into the promise of soft-hearted men
with a resilient chest.

The waitress waits for a signal
to restart her life. There will be flares
on the horizon, there will be new lovers
leaning on their cars in the sun.

She will finally get to sit.
She will thank the waiter for her drink.

I stood on the cliffs of Cabo Girao,
I watched the village slip away,
into to the mouth of mother nature;
into the sea of salt and spray.

And in my baseball cap, I leant out,
and threw my t-shirt to the sea,
I was done with missing sunlight;
I was done with autumn leaves.

I headed out to warmer climates,
and I was cradled in the sun.
I experienced new beginnings,
in the roots of Babylon.

They whispered through ayahusaca,
as I force-fed myself the tea;
as I malfunctioned into sanity,
as new voices came to be.

We laughed on through the Amazon,
and in the emptied streets of Rome.
Earth fell upon the weight of change;
now all of the land was home.

Old pick-up trucks are left to rust,
as all memories are altered.
A cigarette will tempt our death,
in a breath so rushed and faltered.

The voices left me in the high-rise,
in the car-park that we once looked out;
we saw the limit that is the horizon,
we saw a future full of doubt.

I have travelled through the aftermath,
and found no one left at all.
At least there's peace in my delusion,
away from the ancient city sprawl.

Yet, still with all these questions,
of what was caused, under which name;
you still send them to expire,
as I linger on your gaze.

I've not seen you in a while now,
you could be dead or worse: happy.
All I want is to find Eden,
and have you descend down from the trees.

There is no more room for satellites
spinning sitcoms from the sky.
A lecture wrought in nervous talk,
of terrorist plot and government god;
we saw the flock abandon the steeple,
before settling for luxury,
and reverting back to sheeple.

We spend nights home from work
locking ourselves in.
These twisted thoughts and store-baked goods,
they platter my mind with salted ambition;
they terminate the desire at the source,
the river now runs dry,
it has come to run its course.

There are thirty-three reasons why I came here,
and innumerable thoughts in between.
I have fallen ill of the sunlight's tilt,
of breezy summers and breathless winters;
you were the ease of conversation,
you clothed my children,
you fed my nation.

There is no more room for pointing blame,
for counting figures of possession and points.
We have got to live, grow bitter or forgive,
work for our bread, dodging rains of lead;
avoiding heart-ache at every terminal breath,
you are the only exception,
you are all I have left.

It is getting to four in the morning,
and so I will end this transmission.

I have conceeded all my ambition,
all inhibition,
to the paradise plain
of gothic symbols
and gossip counters;
trading secrets for status,
whilst painting the nails
of their foe.

The time is getting stupid now,
punch-drunk on half-sobriety;
unsure what is sense
and what is misery.

I have chosen revision over animation,
going over the same information,
in the uncertain elaboration
of passed-on wisdom,
of facts learned by force,
and not by a cognitive transition.

It is getting too late to talk like this.
These words fall apart,
to old dreams; I'll relive.

I wish you a kindness,
and I'll wake you in the morning.
I will play to you a pop song,
and whisper traffic warnings.

You take your sleep
and you shelter within,
this is your marbled existence,
this is freedom from sin.

I am listening to old jazz classics
whilst drawing up our next dystopia.
This malformed thinking,
this habitual drinking,
is a life ill-spent,
talking to mirrors
when in lieu of a friend.

There's peppermint tea freshly poured
and sat steaming amidst ***** glasses,
old bracelets, and hand creams to soothe
all cracks that form. Nina knows how I feel.

There's dance songs on the radio.
They're playing for the drunk entourage,
and for the shower-capped bedlam
of those with nowhere to go.

I am waiting for the ash to settle like snow,
to tell us all that death is just a season.
A season for returning,
like forest fires burning,
from aftermath comes afterlife;
it is light in the shadows,
it is the safety of night.

There's unsent letters in my mind,
exchanging function for memories and wine.
***** luck, old habits, and Nancy. She descends
the stairs, and shoots me down again.

There's folk songs for the runaways,
for the hill-climbing peace-seeker, who
takes photographs of landscapes,
so that he can remember in spite of tears.

I am striving to find that beauty,
to hold it close, and thaw out in the sun.
My brain is mending,
now that letters are sending,
now that I can reclaim motion
and park-bench conversations;

taking back the 'I miss you's',
in a race we finally won.

Let's set our minds to a consequential meeting,
a first-hand account of a new lovers' greeting.
In a time span new, fast, and fleeting,
it is to you I gape, with my heart still bleating.

I miss the kiss of 'hi, who are you?'
of a question mark over the ocean view.
My arrow will fall so straight and so true,
once you release me from the binds
that I have long since outgrew.

Will you take me from the taste of beer?
From sensations false, and to paradise near.
I want to greet the daylight without a fear,
to kiss your footprints, to keep you here.

Please reach for the hand inside this glove,
this car park wreckage, this artefact of love.
Will you be the branch beckoning my dove?
Will you separate the seas
from the skies above?

I'm waiting for you beneath the smoke,
mixing whiskey and vanilla coke.
I'm half-drunk and half-missing
in my masterstroke,
of vanishing entirely
within evening's cloak.

Let's set our minds to white wine in the sun,
to tracing the playgrounds where we used to run.
You'll signal to me when you're feeling done,
then I'll wilt in my twilight,
and let breath come undone.

I am encouraged by the middle-aged woman
who still believes that I am hard at work,
as I digest my latest beer.

The blonde Russian gives hope to me.
She gives me a consequential look of interest,
and I'm suddenly reminded of my youth.

There is no sexlessness in flesh.
It comes with the freckles,
scaling melodies across naked thighs.

I am kissing the Russian on the mouth,
as I hold onto her cheek,
as I pass by her on the bus.

Where is this welcomed doorway kiss?
Where is this elderly love?
I want to share with you, my garden,
I want to eat with you, our feast.

This atmosphere is thin,
and all passions hollow out
in this echo chamber of half-truths.

I have played out these lines,
these humble melodies,
and yet still end up in a writer's demise.

I am half-drunk and half-******,
with fake whiskey sours and downloaded bliss;
fragments of a slower pace of life.

This old soul, he troubles to breathe,
he wades on through discarded thoughts,
and lives within captivity.

I am living life above the chimney tops.
I am a beckoning haze
for the clouds above,

I am killing love in all maturation,
I am blitzing the market,
I am starving a nation.

How can I envy new lovers,
when I so wish to be alone?
Why does this passing sadness
flirt over what I have just left?

They sit within their vanity,
they know their love and what it means.
Yet still, they kiss upon human kindness,
and of all the distilled hope it brings.

Oh, mint leaves on a garnished drink,
a cocktail chained to the kitchen sink.
The wife has come to lose her name,
to a love played out like a guessing game.

She cleans his feet, his footprints too,
before taking to the avenue,
She is off to buy him a richer style,
to empty his pockets, to make him smile.

The wife sweats beneath the ceiling fan,
against the glass and the upward soles of man.
In the dark she dresses, to meet his needs,
she'll plant his crops, and then destroy his weeds.

She'll caress his temples in the night,
tend to her boxer after his big fight.
He'll thank her with a sharp right hook,
he'll lay down the law, he'll throw down the book.

The wife, she bends down to his will,
to his livelihood paying the heating bill.
She'll pay for all the debts that he acquired,
for an autonomy of will, now left expired.

Yet, as she stares at her mortal frame,
in her lonesome bed, she comes to dream again.
Oh, for all of the passion that has come to be tame,
she has finally stood; she remembers her name.

He buys his fashion from the Red Cross,
from the blind, the deaf, and the distracted.
In afternoons, he trades sobriety for a smile,
as he sears his pork-chops,
as he sweats beneath the extractor fan.

There are too many poems in life.
They average out the anomalies,
and so all brilliance is masked in utter failure,
and all mistakes become wonders
in their misdirected sorrow.

He drinks in the middle of the day,
surrounded by broken families and students.
He's planning the next beer or cigarette,
miles away from a career path,
and from holding down any sort of job.

There are a million songs in the sky.
Tortures are fickle and all ***** is demise.
And so, we immediately spark into dance,
as we drink and carve our names upon our tombs,
keeping our ear out for the establishment blues.

He buys friends with his preferential smile.
It causes quietude in all and any aggression.
In all fits of mood and dissolution of fact,
he reminds himself that change is tomorrow,
if only he learns to fall asleep unaided.

This beer was brewed in Prague,
far from these crooked miles of eternal November,
these long winters that often
stretch out into the fall.

I hold this drink because I can't hold you.
Because, all that I want is that vanity rainbow,
that fossil of love born in music,
and in our doubled desires.

Play a drunken chord for me
as you set your long fingers to the keys,
as you look to the cityscape's future,
and begin to sing for the past.

In faded suit, verse and rhyme,
I still cling to you. A poem of taxidermy,
small forget-me-nots and old love's tokens
to confirm that you were here at all.

I set flame to the Parisian lighter.
There is a hope that crowded breath
will bring you near, or else further away,
in the knowledge you shall never come back.