Held my breath, took the plunge,
took the flight to the other side of the world.
Disassembled everything.
Started over again.
Still, sadness is the shadow over my shoulder
and Marlboro my one true friend.

The fan fills noise in the corner,
in the space where voices had been.
Still covered in lacerations
from all those who reached out for me.
Keeping busy in the day,
buy and sell in the backwater streets;

if solitude breeds clarity,
then loneliness breeds insanity
and both arrive so rushed and so brief.
No need to lock the door
for no one will ever come.
If I should die, it would take a while
until someone sounds the drum.

I flew so many miles
and still, my sadness has won.

G-d knows I have tried
but he did nothing to help me.

I met my father at the end of the world
in a soundless meditation;
the still waters surrounded us
on some obsolete island,
but he could offer me nothing
apart from the same watery smile
I find in the mirror each time I drink.

Love came to me once
but I never felt worthy of it.

Since then, human touch was reduced
to formulaic platitudes;
a handshake from unerring acquaintances
and embraces from old friends
that always end too soon.
It is hard to be kind to yourself
when your bed is resolutely vacant.

Words may come to comfort others
but I am tired of hearing my voice.

Self-worth was lost to cigarette butts
and a loose grip on my sanity;
tasteless food sits in my mouth
and I can no longer appreciate
the fruits of privilege and shelter.
I am shielded from the rain
but the winter still finds me.

G-d knows I am doing my best.
It never quite seems enough.

Are you suffering from Bleeding Heart Syndrome?
The regrettable empathy for swollen crowds
of decimated veins and charity bags
being laid upon every front door.

The red tops scorn compassion and reason.
If you are searching for derivatives and elements
amongst insoluble problems, then you have no right
to a meaningful opinion.

Do you battle with your conscience as the addict
bundles his syringes into the public bin?
You have been told more than enough times
to flog and to point the finger.

And so why do you cry? Blood is precious
and yet you pour it out for another lost cause,
whilst there are countless functioning adults
who have worked hard to earn your approval.

Do not waste your time with understanding
when there are taxes to be paid,
whilst bombs retain our strategic place;
whilst we are running low on space.

Since I was a child I believed.

Believed in the near tangible,

The provable

The almost-rational.

I could never swallow the bitter pill of faith,

Religion,

God,

The dust and ash of rinsed out fables.



I still search the skies with a lack of avail.

I’d settle for a twitch of movement

But I dream of those purple beams,

So violent and foreign.

The opening of the doors

Should budge our closed minds.

My callused fingers will be worn to the knuckle

Before I produce what outside people would call a ‘song’.

I live in a world of one.

The idea that another pair of eyes truly exists frightens me

Let alone another pair of ears.



Another pair of ears that hears the pathetic wobble of my voice

As I mutter through another verse

And attempt another mimicry at all those artists

That transcend myself in every aspect.

What can I expect?

Not once in my life have I surpassed an outside person.

Sometimes I catch myself in a car window;

A shop mirror,

And mistake myself for one of them,

Before I see the ripples of odious self-doubt

That pierce the pores of my skin,

Reminding me of my place

And so I retreat back into my cage without a lock.



I am the ghost the world forgot,

The more-than-welcome guest left in the corner by the dog.

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.

Rest within my sight,
remove all your conscious doubt
and simply be loved.

I should have forgotten your face over time,
Red flush on your lips after a bottle of wine,
I should have pushed you out of the door,
But still I loved you,
Still, I came back for more.

I should have left you in the hurricane
After you drowned me in the flood,
I nursed your nails after they tore a wound,
Like any good lover would.

I should have kept talking about the starlight
And not the darkness in between,
I should have met you after the pills,
After I finally got clean.

I should have forgotten your claim over time,
Ruined songs now a white-noise lullaby.
I should have seen it coming,
I have seen it all before,

But still I found I loved you,
Still, I came back for more.

Somewhere

Across the the tides of nothingness

is Earth's twin.



Men with brilliance sit in suits,

and drink wine as they do here on Earth

but do not get drunk on their power.

The window rattles
and I wonder how many more butterflies
must stir their wings, before these streets are
torn apart. I wonder where

the homeless are tonight,
where the shopkeeper has retired to
in his now vacant marital bed. There's
sorrow on every doorstep,

there's fatigue of work, of a lazy mind.
It's nothing new, but borrowed and blue;
you must work, work, work to feel empowered,
you must pay, pay, pay for your freedom.

My patience rattles
and I stir wings to leave for Costa Rica,
for anywhere at all than this bleak British land,
torn from me so long ago;
and now is left asunder.

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

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

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

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

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

Louis took a cold shower
after sleeping in all afternoon,
thinking about those sweaty
summer bedsheets from last year.
Her skin was always soft
and he used to run his thumb
downward along her hip-bone,
setting vibrations along fault-lines
and stifling any sound with a kiss.

He turned on the radio
and brushed his teeth, removing
the taste of sleeping pills and
last night's cigar.
A mono-brow was forming beautifully
and he had finally grown a beard.
Now it's beer for dinner,
wine for dessert, and John Coltrane
rasping loneliness in stereo.

Louis admired his backside
with the retractable mirror,
reminding himself that old lovers
could never forget that ***.
He reminded himself of his poetry,
his dog; his back-catalogue trivia
of white-boy lyrics was sure
to make him a desired object,
far away from her loving arms.

He turned on the ceiling fan
and dried out to the jingles and adverts
that interceded the music
he'd never cared to listen to before.
The sad guitar and Indonesian flute
spun webs of memories in hypnotic
circles, keeping pace with the motor above.

The picture ran clear in the half-lit room.
Louis burned all his notebooks,
for all the good it would do.

I used to fear
A break in creation
But once the dust settled
On my notebooks
My guitar
My tired pleas
For rememberance
I could separate
The madness
From the sublime
I learned to temper art
With the science
Of healthy living

I am glad I fell in love

For once I have seen the moment in front of me.
I have given myself an unfaltering aim;
sober-eyed and away from Amnesia Haze.
The words came before the ability to speak,
and so I have been living as an empty barrel,
sleep-starved in the basement
and devoid of sunlight.

There is a wave of panic in the streets,
from ebola virus, to fulfilled prophecy.
Since my life slowed to a catatonic state,
the still waters came in a pill-drawn routine
of restless walks, and falling asleep in the day.
Once I had mapped out the cracks in the ceiling,
I stood up to look outside the window.

A voice appeared, to appease the silent word.
It is a fallacy to think
that a quiet voice should not be heard.

I wrote her lyrics on the back
of a postcard. Half of them were
mine, the other half stolen from
an undisclosed source by the sea.
I meant to finish the piece with
hope or a splintered olive branch,
but instead I changed hands
and wrote illegibly:
I expect to hear from you
next time you are bored
or alone.

It has been four years now
and I haven't heard that song on
the radio. It has been four years
and the letterbox remains closed
like the reluctant mouth of a
four-year-old in a dentist's chair.
I haven't seen the doctor for a long time
and often I know that I am dying.
I close my eyes and slow my breath:
there are stellar clouds and old
Arcturus is falling from the sky.

The farmer's truck is offloading pigeons,
descending the cages as they fight
for the freedom of an updraught.
I watch it behind a television screen
and I see acceptable nature through
my parent's back window. I have learned
to experience everything behind
a screen door, to keep out mosquitoes
and compassion for far-off deaths:
Twenty-four dead in dust cloud,
as freedom spreads to the East.

I wrote her a letter the day before
my wedding and told her the whole
affair was simply to get a mortgage
and to have a reason to shave.
I knew she would likely have moved
address, or else threw out my envelopes
along with pizza leaflets and
charity bags. I wrote clearly with
my better hand:
*I have found a place to rest my wings,
but they still cramp at the thought
of a cloud.

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

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

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had you been born,
my Tibetan bowl and whale song
would have been deafened by
dawn-struck alarm clocks
and ***** down my album sleeve.

Had you been born,
I would be toiling dishonest fields
for an honest go at living.
I would be sober for an evening
and wake with habitual ease.

Had you been born,
none of these words would be written
and poetry could only reside
in the spelling of your name
and your clumsy, childish gait.

Had you been born,
you would have stolen all love,
to the point I would hate myself
and only find fractions of it
in the women I would meet.

Had you been born,
I would have learned how to speak
in assertive tones
to regiment your mind,
to distil you from violence.

Had you been born,
I would now be an adult
with no margin for error,
no time for a future,
but with the promise of a home.

I think about you.
In a public suit, tight smile, destitute,
running out of steam in your mid-twenties.
We suffer for you, we do.
We do.

You died twice, you, once as
ruined core, ants scheming, plundered sugar.
The second, a rainbow funeral.
You were early to the party for once,
but as usual, you refused to speak.

Clouds turn pink in January, the second frost
over her cardboard grave, a birth of worms.
I will see more winters than you. You who
found *** in a private joke, the Great Electron
in all of your Buddhist theories
and those endless streams of smoke.

I mourn a kitten. The slowing stream of green tea,
the poison in the air; the malignant children
of consumerism. I do not **** for anaesthesia,
will not be killed for a chance at peace.

You, who comes to mind at each muted note,
each muffled string of potential sound.

You remind me of Stevie Nicks in her prime,
pinning medals to yourself for surviving love
and turning all sadness into effortless ***.

The lead guitar plays through your headphones
as you walk through another dreary street,
another dreary day where he will barely look at you.

Rain falls and autumn arrives as if it has always
been there, as if the seasons have finally caught up
with the mood that has been clinging to you

all year. You wonder from your place on the bus,
where your life is leading, if indeed, you want it
to lead anywhere at all. Every indication is given

by some well-wishing hand, each one hoping to
tend to you, pigeon-hole you into a life that they
had always hoped to live in, beyond hypocrisy

and lack of education. I know you gave up on
newspapers long ago. I am glad. You are worth
the peace of a morning. Someone like you

should never be dragged into war.

I need to clothe this manic obsession
for acceptance and digital affection.
The mornings turn to midnight
before I have started my day,
and the wind is blowing reminders of Newcastle;
the lack of warmth becoming prominent
in the absence of loving flesh.

There must be a better life somewhere,
beyond uncertainty and marketed freedoms.
Beyond where only question marks
punctuate endless months
of Novembers and displacement;
the chasm between who I am in the doorway,
and who I really mean to be.

I hear you are carving a living
out of the ways you almost died in the past.
You are signing forms for others,
you are making tea for trembling hands,
all the while wondering how it came to be you
sat on the right side of the table,
and away from the wrong side of the bar.

You told me an operator will find me,
a receptive ear to put me through
to someone who will know how to help.
In the meantime, you said, I should love music,
for when the shop-fronts have closed
and friends grow fat and indifferent,
Tom will sing Hold On until I can find sleep,

or at least a viable dream.

What would you write about me?

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.

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.

Oh, this is the love I meant,
or at least a happy accident,
there's clouds up in the canopy,
on a veranda set in eternity.

And there's seashells on the shore,
upon the land-dweller's front door,
I sing my song and place it to your ear,
but I'm drowned out from the ocean roar.

I've been a shed hollowed out;
left to stew in damp and doubt,
you hold my stomach, your face is kind,
and all of the knots begin to unwind.

We are train-stop lovers
beside the vending machines,
a ukulele sonnet,
for the clued up has-beens.

Now we're set to light
under the wash of stars,
until we feel great belonging
to all of the so-fars.

So without saving face or attempting subtlety,
or basking under conceited poetry,
under Costa Rican skies, in a writer's retreat,
in this astral plain where new lovers meet;

that for all the glory I may come to see,
there's none more beautiful
or rare than thee.

If all the leaves are gone
Then where’s the story?
If all the money is gone
Then what are you hiding?
If you have been here before
Where do I go from here?

If all disaster falls
At the last leg of home,
If all the thieves are caught
Then why all the cameras?
If even ******* fall in love
Why can’t I?

Saturday and it’s 5a.m.
Saturday and the room starts to spin
Smoke a cigarette and look down
At this grey, grey town.

And they will beat the drum
For any cause
If everything is ******
Then where do we start?
If all the money is gone
How do you manage
To sell out to all your friends and thieves?

If all the leaves are gone
Then what’s the damage
When every country is armed
To their teeth and think-

When the power is gone
What will we feed upon?
Have we reached the end
Or can we start over again?

Be still, wailing child.
Your eyes patted down,
Spirit tender and mild.
Pressed to a surgical gown.

Iris bleached with light,
Be still in my sight.
****** mouth on my breast,
Unquellable appetite.

Be still, untouched page,
Do not strain to cry.
Cast to light on this stage,
Born and now stirring to die.

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.

The sirens are wailing again.
They're coming to take another
half-baked lunatic, megaphone in hand,
into the metropolitan dungeon.

Filth lines the walls.
People move as ghosts through
heavy daylight, jumping at each
shadow's stirring, each laden breath.

We watch as they crack into his skull.
A spectacle no more, yet it reminds
us of the immortal mountain that
buckles over our heads.

Synthetic lullabies sing the rich to sleep.
New hammers and strings over
old, old songs, as the one-stringed busker
plays his ode to death.

The cannibals live outside old suburbia.
They saw society fall, and fell
instantly into their animalistic selves.
Only the gang-lords stray into their terraces,

for only they have something to offer.
The rest is just flesh and blood-justice
against the rich augmenting their memory,
against the poor for toiling the fields,

against their God for not existing,
against themselves for never straying to object.

When did I start drinking to **** the day
instead of to start up the night?
When did her smile
start to mean more to me than my own?
When did I start to listen to music
by hearing the spaces between the sound?
When did her smile revive my senses
and manage to lift me from the ground?

Let me destroy this glass of wine.
Take it to heart
like a recurring insult
from the men that once ruled our lives.
The soap operas are almost done,
and I doubt you will have any need
for me tonight.
There is no darling to address,
but if I whisper enough times
perhaps the wind
could pick up my voice
and carry it to more accepting ears.
Let me find a way to last the night.
A touch of youth
amongst all of this decay,
the way lovers pile up
like sad songs and ***** laundry
in the back alley of my mind.
Let me finish this glass of wine.
After that, I will try something new.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The room is full of blueprints.
City layouts; an imagined society
idolised in street-art,
in music halls,
and Greek tragedy.

Unfinished songs are stuck to the walls.
Archived chords to a forgotten verse,
all sentiment lost through the unsung months.

I am living with my mother again.
No longer a patient
but the unfortunate son,
the vein in her conscience,
the guilt in her lungs.

She leaves clothes folded by the locked door
as I stumble through an addict's routine,
Hope returns in the combustion of resin,

in the sweet demise of anxious lies,
in the cloak of a chemical dream.

What venture is next?
I have misused the neck
Of my guitar too often
To deserve its forgiveness
And another chance.

They tell me I have the
Face for radio, but not the voice.
Well, I say,
Let me stay silent between the songs
Or else you can throw me to the street.

I will play the best of the best,
You can hear it in the strings,
The arrangement of a higher power,
The conductor of everything.

And look I can speak in verse,
I can even write in rhyme,
But I know that’s nothing to the publicist,
Who wont even give me her time.

So what’s left but revert to some stories?
Some stories of a life once had.
I guess I lost them before they started,
A life not lived but always sad.

There will be another day to be remarkable,
another day to be compassionate.
I will save the pandas after
I have slept this off.
There will be another day for self-actualisation.
Today I shall be drunk
and quite intolerable.

I guess it is time to heave myself
Out of this rut.
The clamour of essays,
And careers
The gag of beer in my throat
Will fall aside as I
Finally
Finally
Lay down my words on the page again.

The self-doubt gave me a reprieve
Of creativity
Of which I’m still suffering.

This is all too literal
Too automatic
But I must do something
To overlap the hum of silence
Of being lost in a northern town flat,
With nothing but the stench of routine
And the festering couple next door
To remind me to at least kick out
At the sheets I lay tangled in.

I can feel the atrophy in my soul again,
I can’t tell if this is the bite of winter,
Or the rot of age.

Broke out of town and left everyone
To spend a year and a half
Outside myself and in the sun
But now I hide in the wake
Of closed walls
And only think of home when it rains
(It rains all the time but it does not last long)

The armor of discovery lost its weight
Like love lost its chains
So there was nothing to keep my kite-string heart
From buffeting in the ionospheric storm.
Now there is no light
It is all shadows, uncomfortable heat
And night as black and harrowing
As a scorpion in fear

Now I am always careful where I tread
I have learned to make a room full of fast friends
And enablers without any words being said

Quit the drug so I could finally
Fill those endless spaces
Took it up again once
I had squandered all meaning
And sunsets were no longer enough
Could only watch the lotus pools bleed
On the wrong side of dawn
Red-eyed and watching pilgrims
Reach absolution on the screen

Used to envelop myself in poetry and art
But now all words spoil
By page or by mouth
And no scream is enough to reach
This distance I feel
All emotion recorded long after
The feeling has gone
Everything I knew
Only realized after the fact

A familiar transition
Broken embankments
Where old scars bleed ancient terror
Into everyday humdrum moments
Crawl from the pit
Cowered in a squat
Bones jutting out amongst
The first smoke of the morning
The impending disaster woven
Into the tapestry of routine

Always had a strong will and bloodied wrists
I’ve washed my hands a thousand times
But they never emerge clean
Thought an omnipresent sun
Would remove the painful seasons
That decimate my progress every winter
But the sun only gives energy
If you are rooted to this world

Now everyone is pregnant
Or promoted
Confident or at least competent
Sharing easy conversation
Whilst I sit and struggle to breathe
Part of me got on the plane
In the hope someone
Would tell me not to leave
Now time has moved so fast
I’m 6000 miles from home
Yet it is I who cannot move on

It is I who trades sleep for chemicals
Fleeting feelings of calm
Passed through anything I can
Sniff, snort and swallow
Another half-cut legion
Chained to the mast
My endless depression
My humdrum delusion
My panic attack

I wish people could see the world as I see it right now.
Bleak British fog and thundering rain grazes
The bus windows, as we enter the seventh hour.

Ryan Adams is singing Sylvia Plath, as rapeseed fields
Threaten to bring colour to the north. The pills are
Working, and I’d cry for joy or for poverty if I could.

This isn’t the spring I was promised, but that’s okay.
I have learned that a promise is but a sincere lie,
And expectation can only offer far-off feelings and

No time. I’ve stopped throttling the goose to demand
My supper. I have stopped walking through the rain
And complaining about the weather.

It is time to start living.

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

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

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

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

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

I hear laughter
filtered as if through a can,
it finds its way through the crack
at the foot of my door.

It sounds false, somehow.
Sharp and jarring, with each bark
an insult, as if their lightness
is mocking me.

Unintelligible sound;
the release of emotion
undefined through language.
I can’t write it, it just is.

A call to arms;
their laughter a catharsis,
a defiance in the knowledge
of their eventual death.

I can’t match it.
The incapable voice in the choir,
my heart soars, aches at their boundless sound,
but only my ears may sing.

New To Town

There's clinking glass and wine on tap,
I'm new to town and I'm drinking alone.
This bar is full of beautiful women-
over half of them attached to some man
and the rest; laughably unattainable.

I've been playing with the jukebox in the corner,
picking at the cold fries surrrounding
a carcass of chicken; all the food in here
is the exact same shade of beige;
only ketchup and a smooth black stout bringing
real colour to the proceedings.

I've been spending half my time outside
in the half-lit beer garden,
standing beneath the thong-shaped tarpaulin
that hangs as an excuse for a shelter.

My eyes are a little red, but that's nothing new-
nothing a few sleepless work nights
won't do to you;
I smoke wearily in the rain
but I know I will sleep well, and full, tonight.
You see, the air feels clear here,
the people are good here;
I can wak to the coastline
to remind myself it isn't all concrete
and violence in the street;
I know that I am drunk tonight
but I feel that here, eventually,
I won't have to take to a chemical retreat
to find peace, to find sleep, to espace war on the screen;
to remind myself that I don't have to stand small
beneath the bigger names and bigger signs;
to remind myself that I cannot save the world
if I am so ******* in knots
that I can never unwind.

The tables are numbered, long, and communal here.
Men smile with all of their teeth
and clothes always hang better over confident frames;
I feel drunk on their confidence, an ocean spray
that salts my skin and thickens my hair-
a solution made in the depths of fluid and air.

Despite being on my fourth stout,
my leg is still jigging uncontrollably
beaneath the table
and so I roll another cigarette;
fix my eyes shortly to the screen
to watch the sports news roll by.

As I smoke once more
and listen to the rain hit the tarp
and a train roll in the distance,
I remember how far I've come,
how far I threw the dice
and gambled on this, a  better life.
A life by the sea in full bars
of beauitful people;
on the outside and looking in
on a scene full of pretension,
but shelves of whiskey and gin.

Earlier in the night, I walked down from my new place
and talked to the strangers in their workplace positions;
I stopped and asked for directions
as if I was someone who stopped people
and asked them for directions...

Now it's night,
I'm caught in the headlights;
in the traffic light shooters;
rainbow cocktails, more sweetener than *****;
but it all feels new,
too new
and I'm left with a tongue too big for my mouth,
I'm left with a head-full of doubt
and a gut-full of stout.

Still, the air is clear here,
the people are good here
and I can walk to the coastline
to remind myself that it isn't all about
going out for fresh air
and smoking cigarettes;
that it isn't about finding a state of happiness,
like Atlas; holding up the sky
in the fear it will fall upon us.
I can remind myself
that there is no race to be run,
there is no prize to be won;
I stopped being competitive
once I realised how pointless it was
to separate yourself from others.

There's clinking glass and wine on tap.
I'm new to town and, at least for tonight,
I'm drinking alone.
But there's a difference between
solitude and isolation
and in the company of these brand new streets,
I think I finally feel at home.

I cannot write a sonnet
or funny limerick that will leave you
laughing into your third whiskey
of the night. I cannot spread your legs
with words and I guess geography and
lack of voice have always blighted
my route to a real home.
I cannot write greetings cards
to a second aunt sunbathing in
Great Yarmouth and coming back
with frostbite and head-lice.
I cannot write a song
and sing it to you in a way that will
leave you kissing your pillow
and wishing I was there to steady
your brand new appetite for living.
I cannot write a psalm for G-d
or an ode to nature without sounding
like a lost cause or reluctant romantic.
I cannot write the score to
the sounds of thunder that siren
with friction in the sky
nor can I give form to happenstance
memories of worms in the soil
and rainbow braids in your hair. I cannot
do much this year save from writing
an obituary and hoping you will understand
what it means to drown in open air.

Not long ago,
I hurried my heart
to the rhythm of the day.

Each emotion amplified,
each action weary,
I went about business
much as bees tend to honeycomb,
or a great mountain
to the shifting plains
beneath.

In the passing of tomorrow,
lengthened shadows over ground
and years listed in names
rather than digits,
I do well just to venture my brain
so far as homoeostasis,

Scythe in hand,
I would play the cornfields,
cultivate them to size, to clear the path.

Instead,
each year that passes is another just gone.
Each journey home, a false promise
of reunion and return
of function to these bones.
Each year that comes is another false prophet,
each journey home, now a question
of home's definition
and of any possibility of return.

I don't want to spin out a rhyme
each time I feel happy,
I want to laugh and drink beer
in a cooling shed,
with the bleak disruptions
of cue ***** and pockets.
I don't want to
search for the future,
I don't want to
pester in squalor,
I want misbehaviour
and my head in a bucket.
To rise again,
with the faint smell of liquor,
inhaling the youth
that never came to deliver,
bring me back to the hope of a soul's holiday,
to the hope this struggle will allude
to days without discord,
that play to my tune.

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

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

I am humble in my love
and patient in desire,
prepared to submit old selves
to an archived sacrifice
upon your new-age pyre.

Memories turn to fertile ash
and Eden forces a bloom,
with brand new eyes and cheap red wine,
I could crack the shell
to my sun-starved tomb.

These hands have been empty
and turned up to the sky
in some anxious bid for lonesome calm;
a fettered attempt for higher states,
and a fading, sober lullaby.

O come fill them up
with something I can hold,
no dream of love but love itself;
beyond the snare of death
and all of the stories we have been told.

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.

Don't drink in bed
and spill your wine
for the poet.

He will only leave you
for a better rhyme,
a more wholesome
desk to set his thoughts upon,
a chance to live beyond
four-walled extinction.

Don't let him satisfy
his need for a vice,
a wretched want
for wantonness;
to lay her down
in a bed of poverty.

The poet will capture
your fraught moments,
spinning a line
in smart formation,
and then reminding
you of pain ever since.

Don't sleep with the poet.
He will only wake you
in fear of cold and death.

I’m trying my best now.
I am leaving the house on occasions
and letting the sun sink into my skin.
I’m told that it is good for me,
and for once I’m willing to listen.

I’m wiping flakes of pastry
and powdered sugar from my lips.
Almonds collect on the plate beside me,
as I stop and think of you over coffee;
assessing how far we’ve come.

The folks in here are old.
They move slower than the usual
rush that is found in the streets
below; never thinking, never stopping,
but always looking for more.

I wonder what they think of me.
I should be out having ***, trying on
loud shirts and sporting caps in the mirror,
whilst binge-drinking the fountain of youth,
and chasing it down with holy wine.

Instead I sit with them, frozen
in place with a notebook I don’t deserve,
sipping falsely on a macchiato,
whilst hoping I don’t get found out;
whilst hoping to become the furniture.

This death is approaching me.
I see it in the demise of poetry,
and in the grey hair of the book shop loyalists.
I see it in their ringed eyes,
as they look upon me like some species of bird

they’d long thought to have gone extinct.