The distant park
Was a graveyard of dead stars.
Each streetlight a system of worlds,
So many lives between each mote of light,
Indistinguishable in their unique love,
Bespoke hate, and the drama of the modern age.

Drunk laughter behind transparent
Double doors. Another hotel balcony,
Another cloud behind the canopy
Of marijuana eyes
To unsettle me from the crowd.

She points out, when you look closely
You can see the disorder
Amongst all constellations
Of life and love and litter;
Of discarded Coke cans
And temporary highs.

She says this is not a scene
To imbue the ****** of a present mind,
More to baulk at the incompletion
Of one thousand to-do lists;
A million reasons why
You should just stay inside.

She says you can see the human swell
Of ignorance, our city lights
Blotting out the stars
In a black ocean of broken politic
And irretrievable fault lines-
Divisions between us all.
Lives twisted with professional smiles
And eyes lit with stunning indifference.

Still, I have felt charity and warmth
On the doorstep of lunatics and fascists.
I have read the love of life
In faces of those who gave up.
I have recounted countless artists
Who saw beauty
In moments that precisely lacked it.

I have spent too many nights
In anaesthesia,
Fleeing each instance of feeling
And terror; all the tremors
That tell me I am still alive.

Continued to stare at the lights
Long after her voice
And the laughter inside had gone.

Heard waves in the traffic.
A world so large, so expansive,
It can never truly sleep.
Every broken heart,
Every war-torn land,
Every promotion,
Every one-night stand.

I wonder what would happen
If we all stood still.
If we all took one moment
To observe the motion
That unfolds beneath
Our static windowsill.

If we all took one moment
To recover our loss.
The wars that we won,
The feelings, forgot.
The hell we retain;
Our paradise, lost.

My *** drive would cause earthquakes,
but I can never find the time
to leave this place,
this bed-side lamp,
and away from poor attempts at rhyme.

Depression is a tired old topic.
But *** is forever at hand
to pin you down,
to win you round,
slinking off to the toilet in my dressing gown.

I know you feel a belonging
to the archives of music,
you drink in bed,
and sink on in,
to the restless call of another troubled head.

I will find restoration
held between your slender legs.
It is all we've got,
in this paradise lost,
in this sweaty reclaim,
to a feeling we'd forgot.

Going down is not an art,
but a way of keeping young.
How can you claim to love
what you won't dare to kiss?
How will you ever hear her siren song?

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.

Be kind to yourself.
You have come so far.
Each emotion you feel tattooed
to your skin
the seasons wash away like chalk.

Be kind to yourself.
You are braver than you thought.
No longer scared of what lies
beneath your bed
but what awaits when you wake up.

Be kind to yourself.
You are worthy of love.
Only you give permission
for forked tongues
to leave passing words as lasting scars.

Only you can adopt old failures
and stack them as obstacles
upon each new path.
You cannot dictate what will be
only – who you are.

Be kind to yourself.
You are doing enough.
You cannot always be switched on.
Sometimes you have to lay down
and breathe –

it is not greed.
If you are always exhausted
you cannot help anybody.

Be kind to yourself.
You did not grow
from a single cell
born from a dying star
in order to feel so small.

You did not close the door
on friends when you expected
more from them.
Why beat yourself up
for who you were before?

Be kind to yourself.
A faltering dancer who gets up
again and again
draws the loudest applause
at the curtain call.

A person who spent half their life
at war with themselves
knows the value of peace,
the feat of getting out the house;
the measure of good mental health.

Be kind to yourself.
You have come so far.
They say ten thousand hours
is the time it takes
to master an art.

You spent so much longer than that
learning the patterns of your heart.
You can pull at those common threads
that keep you together
even when you are falling apart.

Be kind to yourself.
You are stronger than you thought.
Like Leonard says,
“there’s a crack of light in everything. “
You do not have to be perfect.

You do not have to live in the dark.
Be kind to yourself.
Make sure you get to the end.
Do not worry
how you stumbled at the start.

“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 use technology to take me to a time when it only half-existed. In a blue-shell room of mega-pixel photographs and rolling news feeds, I can put on my headphones and disappear into an instrumental Sunday.

There are stamp collectors making their lazy way over beaten roads and disused railways. 'Surrender' only means to fall asleep and to leave your book as a hut on your bedside table. Where war may still go on and on,

but at least you don't have to hear about it. Show me the place where pine-cones fall and women stare across the river. Where coffee is for taste, and not self-medication. I want to walk bare-foot and feel thorns

toughen my heels, infect my blood with Earth or God or Any Other Name. We will **** in the bushes, singing those fragments of Leonard Cohen lyrics that we can still remember from times spent smoking in my room.

I can almost feel that pointless happiness. That location in a canopy to retreat when the bills are due, when the walls needs re-painting. When the neighbour strangles puppies and all you do is complain about the time.

I use new music set to old sounds: freed slaves living in the cross-hairs of tradition. White lovers breaking their hearts over guitar strings and harmonies, always a semi-tone apart. I find your hair on my pillow.
There is no technology in the world to distract me from that.

Take one a day and mind the gap,
the rich and the poor, the beer on tap,
stand in line, date and sign,
the Red Bull jitters, the box of wine,
give way to the left, give way to the right,
the artificial winter, the bringer of night.

Somewhere, amongst the debris
of cigarettes after ***,
chemicals to induce sleep,
I forgot what it means to love.

I forgot what it means to breathe,
to sit still, and just be.

Somewhere, beneath these hooded seams
of solitude and well-versed grief,
beats a heart less cynical,
less tamed by vague distraction.

My nervous ticks and bad habits,
line of best fit for a near-hit
of satisfaction:

This is not enough, I know.
This is not nearly enough
to cool the bray of life
that still rattles meaning in my bones.

I forgot what it means to love,
what separates a house from a home.

Somewhere beyond this thirst
for brand-new words
is a gratitude for all that has been.
Every cliché holds a truth.

Every sentiment, a cocoon,
that I should lie so still inside

until I am wholesome,
until I am new.

Sleep, sleep,
still your breath
and just sleep.
Sleep through
the drum-circle,
the neighbour's garden,
sleep through
the fever,
the sentence,
and the eventual pardon.

Sleep, sleep,
blot your eyes
and just sleep.
Sleep through
her hands touching,
the solemn submit;
sleep through
the wastelands,
the war-zones,
and sleep with the deficit.

Sleep, sleep,
in the castle keep, sleep.
Sleep for the potions,
the poisons,
the crimes you commit.
Too steep is the gangway
to an easier life,
too far is the leap
and too impossible, the wife.

Sleep, sleep,
still your mind
and just sleep.
Keep to
the sidelines,
with intellect deep;
fall to sleep
in the limelight
of your  day,

for you have
earned your rest,
you have found your way.

I waste myself for you, oh page.
I battle sleep and demons and
Face what I would otherwise
Curtail, for the simple act of
Filling you up.

I trap everything that I am
Within you, page. A web for my
Foggy thoughts, dew caught like
Tears, crystallising the opaque
Within my life.

You are the recipient in my mind,
Oh page. Brain chatter forced into
Structure, a soldier. Almost a child.
You **** me like an alpha, my borrowed
Pleas at your feet.

And so I tread you like infant snow.
Each print a scar, each word a brittle
**** stem. Your silence a truth beyond
My own and whatever I say
Will pollute it.

So I walk round in circles. Tiptoes
Like sparrows, piecrust shapes in
The snow. I walk in circles to not
Carve a path. To hide my meaning.

Don’t follow me home.

The old man paints seashells
for all of the women he has loved.
He takes his husky for walks
along the beach, returning with
a bag of **** and a collection
of spirals and fans, still pregnant
with the whispers of the ocean.

By the window, he licks his brush
and steadies his nervous hands.
He will share a steak with the dog,
and wonder when the best company
became inanimate or at most; unspeaking.
He had long turned his back on Dylan
and Cohen, in favour of empty sound

and the rain hitting the tarp
in the garden. He recalls Diane
and the green of life in her poetry.
Louise, the blue of her moods and the sea.
Each woman had coloured his life
in hopeful hues, oh, and what a mess
he was in their absence.
(even the dog wouldn't sleep beside him)

The old man drew his last breath
when the silence became deafening.
When he realised he could not reclaim
memories through art, or through
the patient analysis of nature.
There was no shape or colour
that had not been created before.

The tightrope expires
And the skyscraper hollows out.
This hate is vicious and repeated,
Repeated; repeated on the news reel,
And in a Hollywood romance.

We’re skipping generations
Through faded vinyl sound
Of dust mite and crack;
I’m folding digits over chords,
Extinguishing lovers
By turning them to songs.

Oh, reality convenes, convenes
On the mind, and on the consciousness
Of fact. Don’t steal my job,
Don’t **** my land,
And never fall asleep
Under the sun.

There is poetry to mathematics,
Scaling the harmonics of the sound,
Some universal language;
Some bottled message to our brothers
Who are looking back at us
From the distance of the stars.

And, terror is called from every side,
Until we’re terrified to eat or breathe,
In the tremor of a terror
That can never come to be.

The tightrope fell down with the buildings,
But its idea, it still lives on.
We could be on the precipice of better times,
Or under the shadow of a nuclear bomb.

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.

Rugby town, of landlocked streets,
of wasted field and barefaced retreat;
I miss you now, in absence of a friend,
I miss you now, in the verse that I lend.

Suburb grove, of sleepy mist,
oh, battered housewife, oh blastocyst;
you will remain in place forevermore,
and forevermore, you'll become a bore.

Holding cell, of sporting fame,
you stole my dreams but gave me my name;
I think of you: a multi-storey view,
of happy faces, of which there is few.

Still, my town, in debt's nightgown,
the shop-fronts vacate, we're feeling down;
these streets are poisoned with names of the past,
each memoir to teach: nothing's built to last

Rugby town, of weary folk,
the private school is a private joke;
I miss you now, as I sleep through the day,
I miss the old walks, and all that you'd say.

Old market town, the aftermath,
of British summer, suicide bath;
of open mics and closing the shutters,
of waking graveyards, sleeping in gutters.

Hopeless climbs, of dreary times,
of childhood state and nursery rhymes;
each time that I come home, I know you less,
becoming a stranger in my redress.

Clock tower, chiming, chiming loud,
singing for history long and proud;
of Rupert Brooke and the question: “what if?”
What if I was born to some lover's tiff?

To some large and friendless town,
to some body of land, which I drown;
to some active place of pain unknown,
to some place that I'll not gauge that I've grown,

oh Rugby dear, stay with me,
let  me live on the periphery;
and although this town seems terribly dull,
it could be worse – I could live in Hull.

Rugby, Warwickshire
16/10/2015

Unholy streets of G-d, liquid tobacco,
gentle froth and steam
from the coffee estuary, split beneath the clock tower
on the idle hour; more pigeons than people,
more buildigs than choices
on this small-town, charity shop parade.

The women are still beautiful, still unattainable,
still on the brink of a breakdown
in the most confident dress.
Street-pastors carry the drunks home,
the street-cleaners appear by the afterparty,
clear out the old bottles
before the commuter picks up cigarettes
from the newsagents that never rests.

Tattoo parlours, barber shops,
Christmas on the radio come Hallowe'en-
this is the town that crazy built:
war-time poetry, jet propulsion,
chief inventor of sport,
of mild alcohol addiciton.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
hundreds of places to hide away;
a foreign face in a sea of family and friends.
Landlocked, gridlocked,
centrally located but left out on a limb;
this town clings to the tracks,
it's avenues of escape
the only margin to keep the residents
out of mind and in their place.

But this is where I grew up,
always more car-park than parkland,
my first steps on Campbell Street,
on Armstrong Close,
first time I broke the law on Bridget Street,
on Selborne Road.
I'd push my bike all around this town,
no stopping off for a smoke,
for to get my fix-
I'd push on and on past graveyards and open bars
without a second gance.

Now, it's all shooters and soul-singers
and happenstance;
chicken wings on a late-night binge,
a box of wine, a night of sin,
wake up in shame,
life's a guessing game
and guess what, you'll never win.

Chewing gum, patches,
vapour that scratches the back of my throat,
nicotine in my blood,
you know, I'm trying my best to get clean.
Blister packs of vitamins, bowls of fruit,
buying coconut water over the counter-
green tea by the rising moon,
incense sticks and vegetables in the garden,
yet by the time night rolls on by
the locus of my eyes, they darken;
I'll be back on the beer,
I'll be smoking a carton.

This is the town that crazy built,
even the flowers by the roadside wilt,
cement factory, hum-drum poverty,
post-code belonging to Coventry,
kept out of the war
by a matter of minutes,
kept from the future
by corporate interest.

Hospital lights, supermarket glow,
I can't remember the last time
I wasn't loaded with chemicals
every time I get home,
every time I sign out
and put my head on the pillow,
I see familiar streets, familiar signs,
the job centre, the floodlights,
the 12% lager, the twist of lime.
I struggle with rhyme,
I struggle most days to get out of the house,
but at night, I know, that sea of doubt
is a river of light, to ruin my liver,
to spike my fever, to calm me down.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
and this world it don't spin,
it just throws me around.

We are a global society
When we want oranges in the fruit bowl,
When we want out of our rut
Just long enough
To brown in a patch of Spanish sun.
We are a global society
When the Japanese car breaks down
And we are in need of a cheap fix
To keep food on the table,
Some Latvian mechanic
Who helps us find our way home.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When the zeroes run low
And there are spaces,
Foreign faces,
To which we can point
And blame.

We are a global society
With our sweat-shop chic,
American coffee chains
Selling Colombian ground beans,
Frappuccinos in plastic cups-
Made in China
And served by a Romanian barista
In Italian heels.
We are a global society
When the demand is high
And the payment is low.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When hands reach out for help
And our pockets are too shallow,
Our time, too brief
To commit to a unity
We feel is dragging us down.

We are a global society
When the football is on,
When the lager is Belgian
And the supermodel, Greek.
When we cradle that bag of Cheetos
After smoking too much ****.
We are a global society
When oppression is overt,
Caricatured in bulletin posters,
Threatening to land
Upon our own front door.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When poverty seems contagious,
When we have to clean up
Someone else’s mess,
Still we scar the Middle East
Only half-interested in an exit.

We are a global society
When we get sick,
When we borrow another doctor
For our ailing NHS.
When cities of white people burn,
We are a global society,
When Africa is divided,
We are nowhere to be seen.
Prime mover of the commonwealth
Yet we fall beneath the breadline
And living easy is so rare.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
Under the false flag
Of a golden age
We were conned to believe in.
Our nation, our island nation,
Lost amongst a sea of misinformation.

I have seen this town grow
through the tides of my time,
to the low and call of the market men,
to all of my drinks laced with lime.

The cracks form in concrete,
as they do to my aging face,
but never are the streets unrecognisable.
No, here, I can always find a place.

And the clock tower calls,
just to signify the passing day,
oh, all of life’s sorrow falls
to the saying: “come what may.”

I know you all, I’ve seen you crawl
through these jobs; waiting tables,
pouring wine, and shooting pool
in the stagnant afternoons;
claiming your past as part of mine.

Rupert Brooke is now but a name,
some archaic poet of yesterday.
His name now naught but of drinking fame,
as all the customers line up to pay.

Oh, I miss my childhood, old friends now past,
only stark reminders that nothing is built to last.
I need you now, my lifelong friend;

to my soul, give warmth,
to my heart, please mend.

On A Diet

The country is on a diet,
drinking coke with no sugar,
eating burgers with no bun,
running on the treadmill;
it's powdered protein for lunch.
It's straight tequila in the evening,
a light head and guilty fries at night.

The country is on a diet,
doing yoga over yoghurt pots,
training their minds with sudoku and solitaire,
rubbing salt and condition into their hair.
It's 6 a.m. gym sessions,
it's squats on the living room floor,
the country is on a diet, my friends,
and so we have no time for truth, or war.

The country is on a diet,
avocado in the breadcrumb,
aspirin in the salt-shaker,
food numb on the tongue
and those slim-shakes always failed to deliver.
Thigh gaps and mind-the-gaps,
all these signposts for a cleaner living,
no dust on the shelf,
no bags 'neath your eyes to hide
the lack of sleep
and your ailing mental health.

The country is on a diet,
drinking tea with no milk,
eating carrot sticks with best-value dip,
running on the treadmill,
we never get too far.
It's straight tequila in the evening,
it's "anything goes" in the dark.

I do not agree that there is a ‘forever England’.
How could I, when I can’t even recognise my face?
For all of the innocence that died in a decade,
For the concrete and car parks
Built over my childhood's place.

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.

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.

The cats sleep on the rooftops,
an ambient beat from the shower radio
comes tone-deaf through the open window,
replacing the hum of lawn mowers
that had been harmonising
all Sunday afternoon.

We buried one in the garden,
an overlooked shrine within the deep grass,
child-like magic markers  with a simple turn of phrase;
yet all I can think about
as I look over her grave
are how the beetles are nesting in her brain.

I lost the knack for sympathy,
ever since they medicated my drink
and told me I was their patient.

I lost the will for empathy,
ever since I tried to hang myself
and still they told me to be patient.

Goodnight I, lost the fight I,
Cheated death for a while my friend
Now I’m off for a better fit
Off to a place of happiness
And no pain
Tonight

I lost all my movements
I’m in and out of consciousness now
I can’t breathe but I can still dream
I still hear you through that morphine wall
But I can’t get through
Tonight

My heart skips a beat
Like a stone over a pond
If seeing is believing
I guess I don’t see at all…

Goodnight I know it’s late
Let’s toast the good years
We spent in waste
All the bars, all the conversations
All the details, they blur into one
Goodnight friend
Goodbye friend
You’re a ******* and you’re a drunk

Goodnight friend
My blackout friend
You always kick me when I’m down
And I’m sorry I lost the fight
Just from my window there is no light
There’s no prize, there’s no woman
So there’s nothing left in my sight

Goodnight friend, goodbye friend
There’s no feeling and no pain
Tonight

Goodnight

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how each chime rolls
Or taps the surface of the air,
Each an exultation of depression,
Creation.

Eyes sting with salt, wetted with
What has been – the foolish enterprise
Of my words. These notes, they
Scale the patterns of my life.
Pure emotion.

Inexpressible.

Hammers on heartstrings,
They fill the emptied rooms with
Sound.

Lo, how each key sings.
Their voice naught in solitude,
Yet a celebration of life’s discourse in
Union.

Ears ring like a music box. Chopin’s
Soul in the spaces beyond time,
Touching mine. Our sorrows pastured
Green, laying life under the ground,
Tough fingerprints.

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how they still my jittered soul.

Lo, how I accept the drizzle,
The arrival of autumn
At my window.

The veil lifted
from the mechanical slaughter
of the coastal engineers.

Waves crash in that soft,
whispering hiss. The sound that
is usually betrayed, contorted,
through terabytes of purchased bliss,
of a meditation wrought in sickness.

Freed of employment ties,
I stand at Earth's compromise.
Wavering boundaries broken,
conquered, and regained once more.

Cyclical, cynical, tempered battle.
War-torn property rolls in the throes
of the Moon, endless, gentle
discrepancies between land and sea.

I dip my hand in the brine. Long
written of, rarely encountered
in my daydream, salt unreal on the tongue,
only when spoken.

This roar, the old marginal sea,
it obliterates the pneumatic sounds of the
yellow-coated henchmen of progression.

Slaves, breaking backs to build roads
for the already-fallen pyramids,
already stolen marble coat and golden
spinning top,

we've dug it all out.

And the lighthouse winks. It winks
through the fast shadow of January's afternoon.
No land at the horizon, instead a sheet
of hostile, infertile water, and clouds
to stifle my lungs.

Oh, lighthouse; my childhood's end,
now but a lack of time taken to notice
you. You spindle-spin the light, powerful beacon.

You roll back the decades,
to times of ships and books;
of journeys born and placed
over profit's end.

This journey, this journey now so brief,
once dug by many, once an undertaking,
now one quiet train ride away.

Like a prophet, I strive. I strive
to notice Earth's balm,
the Mother and protector,
of all terrestrial innocence.

Bind me not in gravity, nor in debt.
Instead, let me scale the North Sea's
surface. To join the glamour of the
fairy-lit, tough Norwegian liners,
grey like Scottish shores.

Boundless power, opulent force
in a decaying town. City street lights
stretch up to bring the folk under the
dentistry light.

The groynes will hold this beach
like a girdle, as a holster of sand,
a harness for erosion, whilst the
traffic sounds signal lack of footfall;
mounted failure.

But, for evermore, the waves sing to us.
They sing the truth: that they will remain
long since our passing, long since the stench
of fumes; long since we've given up
on the fall.

With this and lightened body, brought
to betterment through cannabis and
Astral Selves, I turn to my life
and remember it well, as a fraction
of the entire self.

Kiss blown to darkened waters,
the paternal, cooing waves and whispers
of ancient whale, I turn back to the sand dunes
and hardy grassland.

A hotel stands at a distance,
privileged guests with fluorescent luggage,
and half-filled parking spaces,
whilst the Romans still stand in ruin.

That lighthouse weeps its goodbyes,
the sand drags me back in my prints,
knowing me, identifying me – careful police.
They sing, “Oh former tenant, Northern heat,
gentle visitor, help us cleanse your feet!”

Clumsily, I stagger back to my lifetime's
worth of worries. Back to the conglomerate
of blackened, distorted figures, sculptured
rain-soaked children, standing with feet
indiscernible from the globe beneath,

locked out of motion.

To them, I understand their isolation,
their helpless gravity in a heavy world.
To them, I return to artificial light,
where will suffers, where lungs heave,

but for all this I am glad,
of the sweet ocean-side reprieve.

On my way home from work
I passed by a *****
In a tent-sized, plain orange t-shirt.
It was forever-stained
With fossilised fluids;
A chest cavity of spilt milk,
And subsequent tears.

A double-take took me
To the green and brown keratin
That dragged relentlessly over concrete.
His sloth paws were protesting
Every step of grey existence,
In the colourful expanse of new morning;
They were clawing the ground
And submitting to gravity.

He looked right on through me,
Through everyone and everything
As if part of a hologram
That was no happier, but at least
Apart. I re-count his limbs to ensure
Whether he is even human anymore.
I surmise: only partially.

He milks his palms whenever possible
To heal the cracks of wind exposure
And old substance abuse.
This was no doorstep lounger;
He was a stray cat with no freedom,
And only washed his hair when it rained.

Then, as I later adjust my mask
In the foggy bathroom mirror,
Mind preoccupied with dissertations,
Affectations and payment schedules,
I realise that it is I who has lost my humanity.

These streets are postcards.
Moments of my youth,
My loves.

Each park bench enveloped within,
Licked and pressed to
My forehead.

Return me to those times.
I want my streets back. My memories
Present and my friends
Still readied for me.
Pour moi.

Pour me another drink
Whilst I forget the ones I had.
Red wine has long since replaced
My blood,

My skin; gone stale.
The streets press in on
My chest.

I can’t breath for the dizzy memoirs,
Yowling at the moon in
My brain.

The simple sway of a tyre swing,
You and I,
The chains.

The simple fog of your ice machine,
You and I,
The cider.

The simplicity of you and me,
You and me,
The years.

These streets are ghost ships now.
Bounty once abound, now gutted.
Do not tease me with your platitudes
Oh town,

And just let me be on my way.

The cello sings Ave Maria.
Distilled calm; blister packs
In a wet July.

There is peace in every grain,
So fine. Wore away the stone,
Three drownings in the sea.
Annihilation

To build a monument
We settle upon:
Our paradise recovery.

There is warmth after the rain.
Ukulele played on the
Gran Cervantes balcony.
Off-white scars;
Pyramids with no eyes.

Every stoner sleeps.
Every kind heart cries.

The Arc of Life sings a lullaby,
Still I cannot get calm.
In a wet July

A comfort to staying inside.
We tried, wore away our lungs,
Three renewals in the sea.
A leap of faith,

An old keepsake
We contrived upon:
Our lunatic discovery.

There is movement in death.
Pollen falls to the ground;
Exhale of recovery.
Dead-end joy,
Statuettes with no eyes.

Every criminal weeps,
Every kind heart lies.

The cello sings Ave Maria.
The strings that heal
In a wet July.

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.

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.

I painted you.
With trembling, amateur precision,
I suffered each line on your face.

Each fleck of sun,
Your candid smile,
Your immediate beauty in the foreground
Of an exceptional ocean.

Stumbling blindly through the days,
Fumbling for the switch
In a punch-drunk, love-sick afternoon.

Apart from you,
Stripped, exposed,
Laid prone on the gurney
With my skull in a vice
And a fist to my stomach.

I can barely stand because of you.

I painted you this afternoon
So I could toil in your gaze.
Pray I am an interesting splatter,
A noticeable blight;
A happy accident on your page.

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.

**** 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.

A synthetic thunderstorm envelops me
and I forget where my life is.
I forget about you and your fluent tongue
of disinterest, puppetry, and misinformation.
I forget the speakers and soundscapes;
wires and ties and strings attached,
the way I struggle to sleep alone,
but cannot share my life with anyone.

I forget the next payday, the next lay;
the need to borrow words and feelings
just to make sense of my own.
Distraction and hunger for nicotine
become near-echoes of a past life-
an umbilical bond to old decades
of habit and mistrust for the sober mind.
I forget the ash and ends I have left behind.

The ocean is close but occupies no space,
only the airwaves with a rhythmic breath
to still my own, reducing my identity
to fractals of self-interest and oneness.
I forget who I am amongst the writing desk,
The Book Of Longing, the cooling tea;
the stagnant water. I forget flesh desire,
violent ***, and apologetic *******.

I forget, for once, the need to live,
amongst all of this living.

There are bare-breasted women
lounging in the unmade bed
of my mind.
They teach me chords on the piano,
and how to stay grateful
in the face of time;
how it lingers between seconds,
but years go by unannounced.

We don't make love. We ****,
taking back each wasted Sunday
spent talking to G-d,
or waiting for political truth.
They run their fingers over my back,
send me to a sleep
of dried sweat and loving violence.
They send me sunflower seeds and ****

in the post,
so I can bloom by the open window
and feel warmth through winter.
There are powerful women
laying down the law by the clock tower.
They stand up for Syria
and challenge the authority
I had conjured in my mind.

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.

Ground zero again. Ghost ties to old moods
now that you have found happiness,
or at least the line of best fit.
Lips interlocked incessantly on the astral beach,
over the September permafrost
where I held up the chains of my cell
just long enough to kiss you.

Chambers of blue blood, of blue feathers
interspersed in the lining of our pockets:
I felt I could fly when I finally met you.
Heard the callousness, the human history of suffering,
when the chains overwhelmed,
when I fell back to the ground.

You were my fortune in the wishing well,
but now our tongues are rearranged,
all passions now platitudes,
another name or witness to wish me well.
Ground zero again. The foundations exposed
on what might have been love.

Monoliths of steel and scorched earth.
Broken vessels sail by in the night, influence of wine;
words are tempered but the intent remains.
You remain. Extinguished shadow in the skyline,
phantom limb of loving arms. I cannot find the stars.
I cannot reach out to anyone in the space you left behind.

I cannot recall the moment
that sanity became a working goal.

Drugs are expensive,
sobriety; even more so.
Somewhere between all of this
I will have to learn to live.

The homeless are pushed out of town,
asleep beneath the railway bridge
that sends rain through rivets
like bullets.

I keep punching the clock
as it throttles Eros with slow hands.

“Sometimes just a smile is enough”
reads a cardboard placard.
But I have not cracked a smile
since I started popping these pills.

My hands are trembling more than usual,
so I have altered my coffee to a camomile tea.
I administer everything as if it were medicine;
a chemist punctuating his day with
guilty cigarettes and vague homoeopathy.
It's all *******, I know-
but whatever gets you through the day...

In the season of advent, my fingers are bitten
down to the quick; throat seared with
half-functioning lighters and fragile matches;
I can scarcely operate either in this state.
The fairy-lights turn the high-street to a runway.
But all I see are charity shops
interceded with bookies and coffee houses.

This home-town exists to keep up my interest
in finding some purpose. A path to eventual escape
from all of these old bonds and ties,
pinning me down with memories of ***,
and all of the street-names I have learned by rote.
*I'm treading water here-
living in the comfort of a sink-hole.

In Morrissey fuel
and cigarette vice,
a map pinned up
with dreams of travel,
in eyes darkened
and swollen wrists,
in paralysed belonging
to established hypnotists
of hunger, of servitude
and self-discipline,
of not nurturing the childhood
nestled within,
and of friends now fable,
and of friends ill-spent,
now is the time
for the young man's repent.

There’s an offering of change
Vitamin pills and get rich schemes
Selling a better life
A shot of paradise

In a series of halogen bulbs
All the tunnels lead to Mexico
The hidden hand on demand
Working off in the shadows
Maybe they’re hiding in plain sight
Just a crazy thought that crossed my mind

Now I’m holding out for truth
Amongst the sedatives
Now everything I see
Is played out on a broken touch screen
And now the ship is sunk
Let’s get down to the bar
I need to see the sun come up
before I start to come down

Johnny was a head-case man
All the things they did to him
And when the rich men left
And when he finally slept

He’d sleep for an hour or two
In a punch-drunk afternoon
All of the chemicals
Working off in the shadows
It’s no wonder he took his life
Just a crazy thought that crossed my mind

Now I’m holding out for truth
Amongst the sedatives
Now everything I see
Is played out on a broken touch screen
And now the ship is sunk
Let’s get down to the bar
I need to see the sun
Come up before I start to come down

She comes here,
consumes nothing,
offers all
but what I desire.
Folds my laundry,
teaches me Thai,
goes down on me.
Massages my shoulders
to tempt sleep
in restless sheets.

But I cannot write
a lullaby
with her sleeping soundly,
like a lie,
by my side.

Do not lance your hair

Just to satisfy those men in suits,

Or your woman, sat there with that expectant gaze

Reserved for only you.



Let your image be cultivated

Through the culture of the downstroke.

The lazy thick steel on the neck of the guitar

That shudders at your touch

And responds with the readiness of one thousand ******

Cooing their broken sounded and false approvals.



I see your fingers fumble across the chipped mahogany

And I recall on the benefit of all men

The first and forgotten lovers,

Buried beneath years of clumsy ***

And vicious disregard.



And from the shadows in the archives of your grey matter

You remember every wince of self-doubt,

Etched across the faces of your women

That you never cared to notice in the dizzy ecstasy

Of your youthful wantonness

And the hardness of your ****.



So age will bite at your features,

And you will squint in the wind,

Cowering at the cold that clings to your bones.

At some age you will cut your hair

And iron your shirt.

Nurse your whiskey

And find yourself in receipt of all those women

Still tangled in the hotel sheets

In the back lodgings of your mind

And everything they did to shape you.



And you pick up that old acoustic

And play the tune of one thousands odes.

There are two sides to all. Two sides
To the world, and where it may sit
On the wheel. Black or red?

A split of inheritance. Right sided
Dreams, left sided mornings. Mournings
For those fragments of imagination

Left gagged and bounded. Tamed by
Penny-pinching and waist-trimming
And all other concepts that work like

A chisel. Chip away at me, they happen
Like thorns and barbs until I don’t look
In mirrors. And I dare not breathe past sighs.

A split of inheritance. The joy of invention,
A brain for science. New discoveries smash
Like champagne bottles to bless understanding.

It splits. It splits in two. The descendants build
On the used brownfields. Grey matter on grey matter
As if building over condemned land.

The roses of love and star-travel are but one side.
A veneer, more accurately. For in their gift
We would pick apart their heads, our heads,

Forgetting the years of thicket and thorn that
Had grown underneath. In forgetting, they talk
Of surprise at our true nature, though the thorns came

Long before the flowers, and were ever-present throughout.

Each measure of wonder; of love and poem and comedy
Are cruelly tempered. They are tamed by lust.
Lust for power, for vengeance. In-group. Out-group.

Heads or tails? I lie instead on my side.
A fallow state, a false parade. Technicolor masts
To sail lazily on my false knowledge. I speak of compassion

And philosophy. I hope they validate me
In the same way certificates do, for those men in suits.
Their success apparent and substantial, its frame

Weighs heavy on me. Barbs and dead weight,
My breath perishes uselessly I feel. A dandelion head
Caught in a chain link fence or a jungle of concrete,
Full of promise, pregnant with fertility
In a sea of barren saltwater and cigarette ash.
There’s nothing left but to write. There are

Two sides, two sides to all. Two sides to my words,
The hope of a finished poem. The harrowing read-through
By the morning. A mourning for myself

And my inactivity. The breadth of life in other’s words,
Tales of movements, experience; novelties in my
Small-town mind. I dream of Peru.

Two sides to myself. Two sides as there is to all.
One side is a virtuoso. Tuxedo-clad and hair slicked back,
Detaching from its greased trap only through

My movements with the keys. A movement free
Of thought. A meditation of music, a collective
Unconscious of chords. It is a side.

The same side that tells of tales past. Man lived
Before money. If man dies, money is contracted to go too.
It is bound. It is rite. It is truth.

The other side, though. The other side
Begs and borrows. It casts anger at my dreams
And how they lighten my wallet so. It hacks

Away with my lungs. Cigarette tar laced in bronchioles,
The result of a dream unrealised. I fidget in this other side.
It makes me shift in my seat, forever impounding,

Forever confounding. Forever uncomfortable.

There are two sides, two sides to all.
One is the scope of man, the ideal self.
The other is the result. A bulb-lit scoreboard

Above our heads. Money signs and bloodlines
Are a measure of man. Our measure. Two teams;
One competing for gold, the other asking

Of what competition is at all. And so one side
Sees us as animals, our rules foolish and lame
Aside those of Nature (with a capital ‘N’)

And the other tells us it is all there is. At least
All that there is worth knowing. For what good
Is it, to dream of the stars? Or Peru, even?

If you do not have the successes to get there?

Two sides, there is forever two sides.
One is a love for myself and for all.
The other is brain-chatter. It tells me little

But it says a lot.

A thin white dust of snow littered the concrete path like an overspill of Styrofoam *****. Summer had her hands buried deep into the lining of her coat pockets and her chin pressed tightly within her pashmina scarf. It was the first bite of wind she’d felt in a while. She had been holed up with her friends for several days and the concept of loneliness was already foreign to her, much in the same way as privacy. She could feel the cheap red wine rust in her veins as her body told her “too much” and in truth she was ready for the crackle of vinyl and the promise of fresh sheets and a shower. The week had been fun, she guessed, she’d certainly felt closer to her friends than ever before, even though they all went back for as far as it was worth remembering.  ‘She guessed’. She’d been guessing for a while now, living in absences with everything held at an emotionless distance – whether or not this was deliberate she could not decide.
It wasn’t a particularly long walk back to her house, enough to take the bus - but she guessed she wanted the walk. The cold air made her eyes glassy and occasionally she had to blink furiously to catch the water forming along her lids. The din of distant inner city traffic consumed the airwaves around her but the path that lay ahead of her was surrounded by parkland, and within eyeshot there was a lazy brook where children would often be seen playing, though they’d be at school at this time of day. She guessed. She wasn’t quite sure of the time, but she knew it was the 15th of February. She couldn’t always be sure of what year it was though, her head was often stuck back in the 1960’s, before she was even born.
Summer could feel the claustrophobia of youthfulness shedding from her every angle and with every insipid step she took, the world took on a more familiar feeling and she took her first real breath of air for days. From out of nowhere she felt overwhelmed at the breathless ease of the faint snowfall and the slate grey of the sky. The clench in her stomach – Summer often found herself weeping for no real reason, and she could never quite work out whether she would be weeping for beauty, or for sorrow…she guessed that there was some compromise between the two. All she knew is that she was very sorry when she reached her front door that her walk was over and that she must again disappear into the walls.
The heating had been off for almost an entire week now and Summer could hear the house groan into action as the radiators cracked back into life, and she felt much the same. The kettle jittered on the spot as the water steamed and bubbled welcomingly and soon the kitchen was greeted with the smell of tea. Summer retreated to her room upstairs. A wide room with white walls meant that it was often brighter than the world outside and it often appeared to unadjusted eyes to have a ghostly glow about it. Summer thumbed through her proud collection of second-hand LP records until she settled on listening through Pink Moon for what was now an uncountable time. “Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way”. She let out an exhausted but contented smile and fell onto her bed. The sheets were cold from privation of use but the coolness on her cheek was welcome and she closed her eyes and imagined she was still outside on an effortless walk, with the sounds of Nick Drake overpowering that of the exhausts of one thousand cars.
After several moments of another world, she reluctantly sat back up and began to take off her clothes to get a little bit more comfortable. It felt good to get out of her clothes, she’d only meant to stay for one night so she had not been able to change her clothes for days and she’d appreciated the idea of clean underwear in a way she never considered worth noticing before. She unclasped her bra and felt it fall clumsily to the floor and just sat there for a moment, bare-breasted in the pearl white of the chilly room. She couldn’t help but feel like an illustration, of pastels or watercolours. Her mind was still a convoluted collage of the past few day’s events – the haze of alcohol and **** still occupied a small corner of her being, despite the cleansing walk and the wonderful clunk of a familiar guitar bouncing across her walls. Her ******* were hard from the cold so she threw on an extra large male t-shirt that fell to just below her upper thigh.
She slid off her skirt and underwear, which fell limp at her pale thin ankles. Looking at her thighs, she could still make out the small thumb-sized bruises scattered across them from the distant and removed *** she’d had at some point last week. At least she guessed, it could have happened back in the 60’s for all she knew. It felt as if the past week was not real, a familiar feeling. She was almost certain that man who had shared her bed did not really exist and her bruises contested her own existence. At least that’s how it felt.
She turned over the vinyl and remembering her tea, slid between the covers and warmed her hands against the steaming ceramic. The tea was perhaps the most wonderful and delicious thing she had ever tasted and she felt it nourish her metaphysically. In a way beyond words, she felt herself heal with the rush of warm past her lips and the sweetness on her tongue. The room was slowly warming as she skimmed her legs back and forth against the mattress in complete comfort. Once the last of her tea had been drunk, she let the empty mug rest on the bedside counter and almost immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

The coffee cups are *****
But it’s the cleanest way
To drink whiskey here.

The barman lost half his right fingers
To a wood chipper in his early 20’s
And spent the rest of his adult life
Flipping the world off.

He got it down to a fine art
By the time I showed up.
He didn’t smile when I ordered my drink.
He didn’t smile at all.

The jukebox hasn’t changed
For two stagnant decades
And most everyone but the regulars
Are too scared to use it.

It’s the same rotation
Of Elvis,
Muddy Waters,
BB King,
John Coltrane,
And early Bruce Springsteen.

Not a woman in sight
But every song is about them
And we are all here
Because of them.

Certain patches of carpet
Have not seen a crack of light
Since the Berlin Wall fell.

Nothing changes here but the customers-
And that change is incremental at best.
The same filthy etchings over
The same filthy cubicle doors.

The same Cherokee Indian
Smoking a Cuban Cigar
In the heartland of America.

I can’t find myself here
But there is no feeling of loss.
There is no profundity in anything here.
Just squalor

And enjoying one’s squalor.
I think that is what it means
To be truly happy.

Departure lounge. Crown of tears
probably dried upon my father’s shoulder.
One year before I touch down again.
Everyone will expect some change.

Tried to swallow consciousness on the Bangkok streets.
Too much heat. There is no familiar face –
I cannot even read the road-signs.
There is no culture shock:
I had lived with that my entire life.

Made friends with the strays
for we had a common place.
Caught in no man’s land:
a need for hunger,
some awful drive to be free.

Left Bangkok for the coast.
New faces to hear old stories.
Born new, kissed each night on the mouth,
shared a hotel room for the month;
relinquished every memory

in a flood of beer,
old tears, the reservoir
to cleanse ourselves of doubt.
Dictated each depression

to a room full of strangers
until I could frame every disgrace,
put them to bed
until I slept full and new.

Fell in love with a singer,
red hair and a voice
that climbed a ladder to heaven.
Bid farewell in a country of mourning,

wore black until I found colour again.
Descended each rung
until I found that rock bottom
was still much higher
than where I had come from.

Wrote poetry and songs
nine hours from the foundations
I had built upon.
Black-eyed and clueless,
wrong side of the classroom,

I tried to teach a foreign tongue
in a place where I knew nothing
and no one. Far from every addiction
that once anchored me in place,

I shaved my face, pressed my shirt,
made amends for every cigarette end
that once painted the frame
of all I had amounted,
all I had done.

Fell in love with a town,
a pink sunset, stretch of rice-farms
and apple trees that patterned the view
of all I could see.

Still broken, still maladjusted,
still craving those twisted words.
Take my motorbike off into the drumlins
each time that I fear the worst.

Still broken, still singing
a song I cannot sing,
yet each muffled string,
each half-worn verse
is a half-formed reason
to rehearse
the melody I gather
each fateful, live-long day,

I cry out for meaning
before it fades away.

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.

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.

it’s windy i think,
at least the windows are rattling.

the men in hard hats,
yellow motes off in the distance
and their jackets the colour
of poison,

they scale the façade
of the contralateral building.

they’re speaking, yelling,
probably catcalling, singing
their ugly songs on cherry pickers
like some crowned nest
of wagtails.

it’s early i think,
though the lights are always on.

they’re fluorescent, staining,
unflattering colouration, rinse
your skin to poverty,
to jaundice.

i’m here because of pills
i’m here because school is out,
i’m here because i’m tired
and i’m here because of you.

flowers sit at the side,
already dry upon purchase.

gifted awkwardly;
do we give flowers to a man?
a boy in sheets, foolish drunkard,
balloons with helium
to lift my spirits.

its lonely i think,
though it’s filled with people.

wristcutter, lupus, chemo
all thrown into one.
we’re what’s left post-production,
left to sit in an outlet store;

buy me for half-price
or else half an hour of company.

i’m the young one,
nurses scan me with motherly eyes,
the radiator warmth,
their rounded bosoms,
‘you remind me of someone’.

at twelve to three, she washes me,
asks me to lift my *****
so she can get at the two-day grime
of indolence.

it’s sad here i think,
at least the television is boring.

daytime ghosts and broken families
make my bedsheets gain weight;
even the balloon sags
in heavy misery,
nothing is mine.

sleep comes in fits
and starts in blankness.

it ends with my questioning
of where the dream began
and where hope had perished.

you haven’t come,
i knew that you wouldn't.

it’s hard to blame you,
what with my post-use pinings
long after you’d given up
and the way i act familiar
after treating you like a stranger.

i long to leave here,
so much the windows are rattling.

i’m here because i am
i’m here because of my job,
i’m here because i’m tired
i’m tired because of you.