She stands still over the tectonic fracture
between the love divined through a song lyric
and the disappointment felt in the immediacy
of familiar faces; love as some sterile function.
Tightened gauze over a worried stranger's head,
she tends to the Troubled as a rock garden:
arranging immovable boulders to a sea of pebbles,
opal textures and softened hearts come as a result
of her well-practised, beckoning smile.

She causes grown men to sing at their guitars,
turgid chorus and muttered longings for completion.
An imagined sight: her hair falling in waves
and eddying the islands of arousal across her
heaving, welcoming lungs. In truth, it had been
years since she had given herself to anyone,
more letting out her property for those that she
is obliged to love, and feel love in return.

She collects flowers and fruits in her mind's orchard,
in those spaces between phone calls and the eyes
that follow her strides during tired lunch breaks.
A mindful stupor has overcome her way of living
to the point that life is a procession of duties,
or truths only confided after the fourth glass of wine.
She stands still in the wake of her condition.
The way troubles gravitate into galaxies of doubt,
the way she hides beneath a polluted sky,
stood at the point I blindly stumble towards.

I felt the pull of poetry
in your elaborate handwriting.
Those delicately numbered pages
of concern and understanding;
well-tamed and thoroughly Christian.
You tended to your garden,
before spreading aid to the forest,
Joseph is doing well,
and there is happiness at last.

There are footprints limping in golden sand
meandering to the swash of the tide,
they stumble beside a body of life,
too weak for the forces that live inside.

Breaking news stung like bullets in his eyes,
delivering sorrow and his demise.
He lived like a ghost amongst picture frames,
reading the papers and scanning for lies.

He held music close to his beating chest,
for that soaring chorus, his heart's address,
and in days spent holding no one at all,
he'd talk to his posters tacked to the wall.

Women came and went like ships in the night,
too brief for the pillow, too smart to fight,
he kept all memoirs in his breast pocket,
clasped to his wrists, or hung as a locket.

There are foots disappearing in sand,
they succumb to the pull of Mother Land,
they exist in grains, now lost to the sea;
to the blue ocean of infinity.

We'll meet at the coastline, aeons apart;
we'll kiss this new freedom, this thawing heart.

I am not the man for you.
I know that I am not.
You are looking for that bright potential,
that sword-in-the-stone appraisal;
the Chosen One on steroids,
the hero on the screen.

I am not the man for you.
I know that I am not.
You are looking for an easy weekend,
smart dinners at the comedy show;
ribbons and bows of devotion-
those grand gestures
I could never bestow.

I am not the man for you.
I am not for anyone.
You see,
there’s a fatal, fatal flaw in me,
that I will only love
once the love has gone.

I never knew my father, but I see him pass in every window reflection. Collar turned to the wind, he bumbles towards the book store with a coffee shop upstairs. I'm entombed in literature and fellow hermits. We become non-existence for all moments but this; as we hunch over scalding cappuccinos, eyes darting to each other semi-covertly, for once hopeful of human contact.

I never knew my father. He died of lung cancer before memories bloomed, in the space between the womb and indoctrination. All traces of him are left in trinkets, soap-preserved hair fibres in a shaving mug, and ripples of gravitational waves. He tells me that I have a place, without ever saying a word. And, he never tells me off for smoking.

I never knew my father. He was a military man and belonged to the Salvation Army. I don't think we'd see eye-to-eye now, but perhaps he would have saved me from my artist's starvation; with my bleeding heart pouring pointlessly into each and every gutter. I would have walked with more of a stride than a fluster, and call out names to the streets, without ever caring for consequence.

I never knew my father, but I met him once. I met him in the caverns of mind, as I swung around with a flashlight; hoping to find meaning in meditation. He held my shoulders as I fell to sobs, as I told him I missed him, as I told him I was lost. To that he just smiled and said:

“You're already there.”

I have constantly rearranged myself,
eaten away at my own stomach
and then come to wonder
why it is I cannot eat.

I have always found a reason
to smoke instead of drawing a breath;
as if breathing cannot save me,
as if breathing has not been the only thing
that has always been there, since birth;
in spite of myself in grey days-
in spite of genocide
and weeks spent inside,
emptied bottles of wine
and tracks that disappear
before the end of the line.

I have constantly been reappearing
in social circles,
long enough to hold a thought
across the beer garden table,
long enough to make promises
that I could never hope to keep.
I have been haunted
in places filled with light,
I have plundered all my longings
at the mercy of the night.

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

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

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

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

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

Inspired by Lisa Hannigan*

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

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

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

Love is detachment
from fairytale promises
and peace in living.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words, words, words.
They have begun to dominate my life.

They are married to my thoughts
In such a way that one is to work,
Or more luckily, his wife.

Sometimes I can not bear them,
Whether spoken or especially read.

For when I try to replicate them,
They fall so desperately dead.

Words, words, words.
They have begun to form a mutiny.

They promise to deliver
Me a voice to portray the divine,

Instead they thieve my privacy,
Until I am not sure what is mine.

So from now on words are my weapon,
Whilst I am trapped in another time.
I will impale heads upon similes,
And I will cut you with a rhyme.

Old ladies pick at the crumbs from their almond croissant
with lengthened nails and arthritic wrists. Middle-aged
men polish their lenses to make sense of their lattes,
for once glad to be away from the bar. We have been trading
alcohol for caffeine; one vice for another as we claim to
be stepping out of old, bad habits.

They say you should never start smoking. You become an
addict for life – even if you ditch the smokes. For each fear
that can be identified and calmed, comes another in its
place, or even in its absence. Oh, the human mind;
dependent upon dependency!

Couples graze by the bookshelves to conquer a lifetime
of literature together, with texts full of *** to correct their
ageing bodies. Everyone is beige as they circle the tables
of fake flower stems in a plastic vase. I see comfortable love
everywhere I go, so why then do I feel so restless?

Dear friend,

I couldn't find the answer today, for why the world is turning. A half-dozen lovers in a timeless frame, are now but bridges burning. The coffee makes me feel like hell in the morning, whenever morning is an option. You see, I've fallen for a misery, I have become the local burden. They invite me out to harmonise their doubt, over trends we have seen before; the brief salute from a military brute; the human cost of war.

It's been a misery for days and days – weeks and weeks if I tell the truth, but I have been baying at the nail, and sharpening the tooth. I think money is a postcard lover who promises salvation, but in truth can only under-achieve against cigarettes and meditation. The Bowl has been singing to me, but I cannot understand a word,  at times I think I hear the answer, or else the passing of an airborne ****.

Forgive me for crudeness, or for my vague choice of tone, I am kissing my pillow in my sleep, but waking up all alone. From that I have decided that I've got to ask for more, so I am slipping up my sentences, to become a well-spoken bore. I hope you find the answer each time you sip on tea, some heat upon your lips and tongue, some red blossoms on the tree.

I am going now I promise you, I'm serving out my time, I am going to hang out with my father, I'm going to chase it down with wine. For all the good I had desired to do, I am committed to this crime, don't drink in bed, do drugs instead, and do not forget to write.

with love.
Jack.

And so here we are again,
You scrap of nothing.

Half of my hair, half my eyes
And all that I ****. You take me

To the side and calm me down
With my own thoughts.

I say “that’s what he would
Have wanted”, the he is you

Of course, whatever you are.
I think that you’re a Bible,

The one on my bookshelf.
There is still a folded page from

When I was seventeen. Seven pages
In, more than the years my mother

Has lasted in matrimony and more
Than enough to disbelieve what

You believed. I am far too sobre
And too far gone tonight and so

It is typical for you to come to mind.
“You *******” I think to you, or

Somebody else. It doesn’t matter.
What a perfect excuse you gave me

For the chip I bear
And the cross on my shoulder.

Or whatever.

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

Feet pedal the laminate flooring
as the screen door slides apart to
reveal her patient professional smile

Do not lend me your hand,
instead, lend me your money,
shared income, insurance,
and ownership of land.
Pin me not to the bed,
but instead, to your catalogue
of meek suggestions
for which shirt I should wear.

Do not lend me your ear,
instead, give me your money
so that I can cheapen love
and reduce it to some teenage tear.
Keep me not in your heart,
instead a part, of no sum,
of zero character,
yet adoration for my hair.

Do not lend me your friendship,
instead, hand over your cash.
I will pour your drinks - and smile,
should you not forget to tip.
Think of me not as a man,
or a tan of skin, of freckle
and violence,

but of tomorrows and histories combined,
blurred memories of childhoods past,
torrents of joy that pass so fast,
all dues paid in my sparrow heart,
weak upon my childhood's start,
when with love, came unending pain,
a heart overcome in the heavy rain.
For, with a heart so tiny,
and bounded in flesh,
chained to the body
and thus, to distress,
I found my heart to be feeble,
and harried in grief,
for there is far too much longing,
in a lifetime so brief.

When I make it big,
I will take my friends with me.
We will drink beer like tap water
and walk the parade into town,
a gallery of sun-glass women
in floral dresses
and old men smoking shisha
outside the beach-front bars.

When I make it big,
I will stop writing letters pleading
to be fixed. I will smile at the waitress
as she brings over my coffee
and talk to new faces
about the cost of living,
the price of success,
and the limited budget of death.'

When I make it big,
I will wear my depression
like a badge of honour.
Sitting on the park bench
where I nearly lost my life,
I will press my soles into the grass
and with exhausted tears I will know
that I have never felt more alive.

When I make it big,
perhaps this town will not seem so small.
I will erase guilt from memories,
left with a clearer image
of old faces and buildings,
recalling all of the elements
that have created me.
When I make it big

I will find a brave knowledge.
I will know that if I fall to pieces,
I can put myself back together again.

I cut my hair
and brought a new suit
and tie

to replace the noose
that was around my neck.

A sunflower
turned its back on me
but at least

it grew into September
to take me past the fallen leaves.

Women pass by
over the concrete streets
and weeds always

find their way through cracks
in an emerald defiance.

I will give myself
two weeks more of
rolling cigarettes

and smoking them in the field
whilst dogs **** in the grass.

After that the rain
will force me indoors
with the incense

and artefacts that accumulate
in the astral bowl of life.

They'll drop the dosage
and shine those bright lights
over my bed

to keep me happy in winter
and away from cemetery walks.

I am cracking a code
to find a place in the sequence
of self-control

and learning to love you
far from our crooked states.

Love swallowed you up

Old tyrant in shapeless clothes
Lining the pillows with used tisses
Blew smoke rings for the illusion
Of an open door

Arrhythmic moods
That collide in the hallway
Love were the moments
Locked inside the bathroom
Alone

Whisper to me upon Valentine's Day,
cool the water of scalding tide.
For, I've been lacking in absence of you,
I've been lacking all twenty years through,
please, lend me your ghost to confide.

Since us, I've been living in weather
turgid and hostile to flesh,
please, send me your songs of the sunlight,
darling, send me your heat through the night,
hand in mine 'till our fingers mesh.

Surviving on the promise of our children,
brown eyes - your living legacy,
their movements of mood mimics yours,
as British rain upon tropical shores;
how little in them, I see me.

Oh, whisper to me on Valentine's Day,
more than memory taken in wind,
for, without you my breath remains stubborn,
whilst all else I know is falling apart,
my appetite waning and thinned,

all because of this long-broken heart.

These country songs aren't enough
Neither are these hopeless drags of the cigarette
All these dreams of impassioned meaningless ***
Ribboned with the beauty of desire
With none of the fragility

These TV shows aren't enough
To distract from the ******* sinkhole
Of divisionary politics
And the hit and miss attempt
At barely living

These neon lights aren't enough
To guide me anywhere
But they are all I see in the dark
All these shadows to explore
In the absence of light feeling

These promises aren't enough
To keep me anchored in the world
I don't want to be anything
I don't want to get paid
I don't want to save up

Or settle down
These offerings aren't enough
To keep me keeping on
They are the sign-posts, the sirens
That speak only of scarcity

Who only settle their hunger
When I am lost.

As rainfall breaks its banks
Of concrete, potholes, and dust
Men in yellow jackets
Descend on the makeshift
Flooded car park
Its tea-coloured, temporary pool

With a bare left hand
And a green sack each
They pull bullfrogs from their throat song
In the shadow of my high-rise
I cannot make out the struggles

That, without doubt, ensue inside the sack
Limb entangled with limb,
Body upon body
Blind save for the odd cadence
And crack of light

Deaf in the caterwaul of disorientated
Angry males forcing a lifetime
Of movement into their last few moments
By sunrise half will be dead
Whilst the others dry out in the sun
Get shifted onto half-melted ice
And eaten once the sun
Goes down again

All will be still in the end

Gravity has a sister.
Men chant her name in the firelight show;
one million flames set alight the owl,
deciding the fate of millions.

Old complexes nest eggs
in our morality; more potent than the id,
and akin to the ***** degradation
of all sweetness and limbic reaction.

Fork your tongue to revenge,
and you will feel her tug at your navel.
She'll tense your fist, fight for your place,
she'll grow and learn to swallow you whole.

And then you'll be lying on your front,
to set a front for all inferiors.
She will be close at hand in the hindbrain,
she will be the shadows to your thoughts.

if you are expecting a poem
after a night like that
then you will be disappointed.
there are not enough words.
there is not enough time.

I'm as stubborn as a **** on a concrete street,
I'm as stubborn as the rainfall over London.
And as you walk away, you'll turn to me and say:
“I'm starting to feel that depression.”

I tried to go without drinking for the day,
but soon I was in another queue.
Beer in my hands, cigarettes on the shelf;
oh, I don't know where I am going,
no, I don't know where I am going.

I rehearse all the things that I want to say to you,
in the perfect production within my mind.
It takes a dozen takes, just to get that feeling right;
but now I know just what I am saying,
oh, now I know just what I am saying.

But the words, they will die,
if I feel all right,
so I'm holding onto this depression,
I'm holding onto this depression.

I'm as stubborn as a **** on a concrete street,
I'm as stubborn as the snowfall on the mountain.
I dream of a cottage, down in the south of France;
you and me can get drunk off each other,
yeah you and me will get drunk off each other.

But soon, I will pack
and leave you behind;
I'm taking just what I need
to survive,

I'm taking just what I need
to survive.

Now, I scribble all these words on a page,
and I hope to God someone picks them up,
then turns them into a doctrine for their life;
I just want to be someone's saviour,
oh, I just want to be someone's saviour.

But the words they fall away,
when I feel okay;
so I'm holding onto this depression,
oh, I'm holding onto this depression,
all I've got is my depression,

oh, I'm living for my depression.

This is my song of honesty,
a confession tied to a melody.
Some white-man complaint
of feeling old and blue,
but this is something
that I must live through.

My brother is playing cards
on the beach,
one-hundred million miles
away from me.
And my father, I never saw his face,
so you can see why I feel so far out of place.

I know life isn't really so bad,
I got all I need so I have
no right to be sad.
And yet I can't fill a room
when I walk on through the door,
and I'm not from this planet anymore.

So this is my love letter
to all the broken hearts;
howling at the moon
and living in the dark,
feeling like a *****
or ****** right out your mind,
looking through all you have lost
to see what you can find.

I suppose you are tired of it now.
Waiting for the rain to fall on the window
in that exact manner to bring about a tip-tap
sound of calm, against the backdrop
of suited racists and poets;
all claiming freedom
in their ten-minute slot.

The corn-fed chicken sleeps on the roadside.
It is covered in a kind of paste that seems real
in the moonlight, but even the strays
have learned not to touch.
Where are you now, imminent revolution?
Did you disappear in drink?
Perhaps you didn't exist at all.

Still, the pipes kick in through early morning,
heating the sheets you have just fallen within.
You allow flutes to bring you to slumber,
but awake to a pop song interference
of adverts and traffic news.
There is a lottery win and a winter cruise:
just enter your number,
and then apply within.

You cannot remember the last time you felt alive
thumbing through old anecdotes with friends,
all the stories have been told to completion,
or else have turned to myth nonetheless.
The pavement is real
but the passing faces are not.
The Clock Tower is heard
by all the people the town forgot.

I suppose you will still be drinking red wine
for each rough afternoon, family tradition,
or freak acquaintance to somebody
you thought that you knew.
I suppose my poems lost their meaning
once I spewed them out in parts.
I gave up a new direction,
to sit in the dirt of a dying art.

Upon this my heart's contusion,
edge of a blunted knife,
when I work my lungs for air,
I do so without life.

And I will faint at the future,
with all its awful stare,
for the lack of my autonomy,
knowing you'll not be there.

I will miss you in the morning,
but more so at night,
when I enter dreams without you,
I enter without sight.

Stood in a military uniform,
a costume I so despise,
you stare frankly
at the tobacco leaves
that I scrape the table to save.

The Villain is hanging from the tree
in the grounds that house your grave.
A benign smile
has ghosted me
and still I have learned nothing
about being brave.

The Villain spits on the cityscape,
a behaviour I so despise,
but he does it
to savour the drop,
to fall asleep to yoga breath
and harmonic lullabies.

You stand poised for combat,
a costume for the ages,
still you come to me
through poetry
as I keep filling up these pages.

The moon is full and high
Casting shadows on the wall
In the house where no one sings anymore

At night, you can hear the wind
In the empty room and halls
In the house where no one sings anymore

Even the faces in the ceiling
They’ve grown blind and mute and bored
And the voices on the TV screen
They make no sense at all
In the house where no one sings anymore

Until the light floods in
And rids the shadows from the walls
Nothing’s changing in this house
Not anymore…
In this house where no one sings anymore

You only want me
When I am walking
Out the door

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

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

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

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

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

She used to bite her lip
Arch her back
As she sank down on top of me
When she reached my ***** bone
My **** felt like it could break in half

Still, she’d lean further back
And in the throes of ecstasy
My **** became property of hers
At the mercy of her spine
And how she chose to undulate it

We would lay there
All hot and stupid
In our cigarette smoke
We’d both derive pleasure
From my pain

She taught me how to kiss
She taught me how to really kiss a woman
Kiss and ****
Alternating between closed and opened mouths
The neck, collarbones, the insides of ears
“Oh baby…” she’d whisper when we were done
“Kiss me all over…”
And I did.

I’d start on her toes
She had a mole on her fourth toe
Right at the knuckle
And the cutest ankles you’ve ever seen
I’d never noticed feet in any capacity before
If the nails were painted and she was clean
I’d take my time down there

Next I’d work the calves
Always massaging a little further up
To where my lips and tongue were
Working in tandem
I could taste our *** on her skin
As I kissed between her small, pointed *******
Her pale skin – she’d faintly utter a sound

Her diaphragm lifting
Her swimmer’s body
And hairless ****
She’d whisper “baby…”
As my hands work her hips
And my lips move to her neck
By the time we’re making out
I’m inside her again

All the guts and gore of routine love
I could feel my *** run out of her
Like a broken yolk
Nothing beautiful about it aside from the feeling
******* her so soon was like
Screaming after a smoker’s cough
**** all swollen and hungover

Still, she looked beautiful in the half-light
Of the early afternoon
Curtains closed
Till the street lights come on
These moments where 2 hours sail with ease
Without drinking, smoking, or killing something
Inside of us

Though the *** was full of heart
It was all methodical, strategic
Making love to the one we hate the most
Nothing hurt more than my numb life
But I’d forget it in these instances
Of endless restoration between her legs
We’d sit in bed and smoke and drink
Too spent now to ****, the evenings
Were for ourselves
Though we were never apart

Somewhere along the way
*** was all we had left
Fight
****
Drink

Soon enough we’d stare across the bed
Nemeses waiting for the other to crack
“God, I hate you,” I said once
As I pulled back her hair
And kissed her behind the ear
She shuddered
“You repulse me” she said

“don’t stop.”

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

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

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

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

Desire only comes in the next train ticket,
the next fevered plan to get out of here.
They are selling roses in the canopies;
a thousand lovers for you to meet there.

This violence is born in desperation,
a vicious sting to quell the fear of death.
And yet you still wake to the radio news;
repeating in cycles, the pains of life.

Where did you disappear to in your longing,
your perilous climb down the fire escape?
Did you find that sense of humble belonging,
or else fall into a four-walled prison?

I miss you now, in absence of a letter,
your voice not heard to satisfy my days.
Stay with me as I take to pills and water,
straining to sleep without your words at night.

A life of endless possibility,
More books to read
Than ever my eyes could
Consume.

Each pause of breath
An absence of life,
Each forgotten kiss
A sorrow.

And what do I owe to the meagre crowds,
Who so demand my time?
My life once spent
Is worth no more
Than a petty, failed crime.

This world contains indomitable scope,
More ground to walk
Than ever my feet could
Assume.

Each silent word
Is a wasted thought,
Each forgone embrace
But a lie.

Still, I walk in ever-decreasing loops,
Some solipsistic spiral.
My youth soon spent,
‘Till all that’s left
Is my poisoned past, now viral.

I would trade the thrill of one million explosions
to see you find your smile for more than a minute.
Even for the revolution, or some convoluted invention
of peace, I would sacrifice it for your chance of oxygen;
to breathe amongst autumn leaves
and orchestras, bringing sound to your afternoon walks.

There must be coastlines or hill-sides to walk on,
beyond the traffic roar of peak-time tourists.
All in time, or out-of-time, I would forsake the freedom
of some distant land of people,
if it ensured me a date when I would hear your voice
as you recited your short-hand in a meeting of the minds.

I know that vinyl scratches over time, but at least
the melody stays unhampered; only nuanced in lectures
on how not to set the dial, how not to play Scrabble
in darkness. I suppose you are gone from me now,
with tasteless luncheons
and a lack of real punctuation to your long days inside.

Miranda felt for the light-switch after stumbling through
the hall. You heard her snorting in the bathroom
and crying over the phone to a dealer who promised love.
We were all hooked from the start, over the thought
of cardboard boxes and dogs,
yet were left howling at reality and superstitious woe.

Did you see her pass the ice-giant? Stuck to a cold heart
for life; until a meteor passes in her direction,
or until the Sun burns out.
Did you see her circling Neptune in REM sleep,
or else faltering in her tobacco pouch for papers;
a way to set flame to those  consequential reminders
of a lover long left to a misery of doubt.

My thoughts stretch like
Centuries. They pull apart
And snap and make my body
Little more than a vessel

Of something or other. I feel
Flesh as if it was the bottom
Of a mossy pool. Or something
Else I know not of.

They stretch like mothers.
Bending, breaking in pieces
For the hand of what will be,
Forgetting what is and

What was.

I strain like a tendon. A fragment
Of an atom. A multitude trying to
Understand itself, over and over.
It’s over.

There is no genius here,
only mental illness conveyed
in an eloquent turn of phrase.
A Christmas Nativity in August
begins, with a topical birth
of a commonplace bride,
told that purity is
some form of ribbon
that is to be cast aside
upon the briefest love for a man.

We feel a tiredness beyond memory.
Memory of when it set in,
or how long it can be slept off
before sleep becomes the problem itself.

The choir sings in broken melody.
Fat faces that glow in spotlight,
dreaming for a future in film,
in a town built for passing things by.

There is no coastline here,
no way to look beyond road strips
and broken-down shop-fronts.
All we can do is keep on waking each day,
stirring the tea leaves
and keep looking for the next high.
A way to see out over
all of this separation,
that repeats in echoes and falls
from the early evening news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just want everyone out of this cage,
to feel the ruin of this capricious age,
I want to see the pain as it runs down your face,
as you realise that Earth is our only place.

And we're hearing the artificial joy,
of laminate love and fearful choirboy,
I long to meet the kiss of the sunlight's early rays,
I'm talking with others but my eyes are locked to your gaze.

I'm sipping beer just to get through the day,
I know I'm gone but we've all got to find a way,
so I'll stumble to a falter, each time the world grows colder,
each time I'm left to hike on through the sleet.

But I can be in Paris by dawn
scattering textbooks on the lawn,
calling, calling:
"you must remember how to feel,
before you come to
reinvent the wheel!"

And, this is my heart's disaster,
abandoned building and fading plaster,
the little room inside my head,
I come to scream and scare out the dead,

as shadows lengthen across the room,
disturbing my Atlantean womb,
I think of the drugs, and how I'm starting to fail,
throw the money to the wishing well,
but coming back with an empty pail.

I found something akin to a medicine man
in the way he would offer up his philosophy.
Tabby cats lounging on garage roofs
are the ******* icons of Mother Nature.
When he would huff on nitrous oxide,
he'd come to, and say to God:
“Well, now you're just showing off.”

We spent long nights in his high-rise flat,
discussing the nature of our morbid thoughts.
I once told him that I trusted by default,
and to that he said I may as well believe
in the British summer.
He was self-assured and self-involved,
using me as a passive Dictaphone,
as a kind of straw-man audience.

I still think of him sometimes
when my **** is wet and I'm sitting in grass.
It reminds me of that cannabis glow,
and the way we stayed up to watch the cathedral
light up like an old cartoon.

Looking out past the window,
looking out to the past,
there are smokers in the meadow,
there are citadels in the grass.
You see,

I am blind under the small-talk lighting,
I am blind to managing debts,
half a person delivered in writing,
half a person pressed to your chest.
You see,

I have fallen in love with the poet,
I have fallen out with the sun,
for turning words into sweat,
for staying inside too long.
You see,

looking back at swollen passions,
looking back at future dread,
I have given up on asking questions,
I have grown used to an empty bed.

Come inside I got some wine
And a couple stories to tell
And after midnight we’ll get to talking
We’ll drink right off the top shelf

And you’ll undress and say to me
“I’ve been alone too long
All my friends that don’t call
anymore”

My entropy, my third divorce
From vanity and reason
And Caroline, she took a rope
Then held it to her jaw-line

She said a few words no one heard
And in a FLASH she’s gone
Let’s pass the words around the room
That don’t help any more

I’m closing down
I’m throwing out
All that holds me behind

You’re outta tricks
Your bad advice
Your stubborn lack of sunlight

I started sipping on nettle tea
after I figured I should warm myself
now I cannot afford the heating bill
I could not quit the cigarettes
nor the obsessive clipping of the skin
around my fingernails
it is the kind of night to call you
it is the kind of night
not to be alone
I am getting good at it now though
They have started a new reality show
on the nature of consciousness
but mostly they just **** and fight
it is fantastic to watch
I think we are being prepared
to begin surveillance on each other
in this broken down state
I hope you will catch me stealing
I hope you will look out for me
it is all that I do

I am more
than the flame extinguished
at the forefinger and thumb,
of established thought.

I am more
than the alien footfall
as I pass through the daytime streets,
of functioning life.

Oh, how I hope I am more
than these textbooks and fissures
of time between you and I,
between then and now.

I am more
than these spidery hand-prints
that fog and dim my glass,
glass of wine and budget meal.

I am more
than this home, this flesh, this lack
of gut, this bone; more,
than I could ever care to know.

Oh, how I hope I am more
than cyclical thought,
the process of remembering
what I've chosen to forget.

And, I am more, so much more
than this insistence of 'tomorrow'
for, I am more within the present,
than ever could I be elsewhere.

Women dominate my mind in schizophrenic images
of taut skin, legs opened like a butterfly pinned inside
a display case, and their impatient, rhythmic breath.

I think this is youth. I think this is the longing of
a human, the urges that come once the universe
loses its blackness, and all that is left is light.

I have learned to love the ******. The soft low
of an eventual freedom, exultant in a head-spin of
low blood sugar, and the careful throttle of her neck.

Women dominate my days as a conspiracy theorist
chases truth. It comes in fits of suspended disbelief,
believing that my body holds something wonderful
in the centre.

Take me from this British land
Of phony politics and prescribed freedom.
Take me from these expensive tastes
For cheap wine and cigarettes;
Artificial food for a waning appetite.

I do not want to grow old here,
And lament potholes and cappuccino froth.
Take me to that warmer climate,
A slower pace; where love is a friend,
And death is not a failure of ambition.

Take me from these long winters
With flash-floods of tears, once politeness
Has ended and boredom kicks in. Let me read,
Finally read, and witness the sound:
I’ll know when the forest has fallen,
For I’ll be living within the leaves.

Take me from the towering masses
Of concrete, billboards and sirens.
The high-streets stir and distract attention,
Calling; Labour, Tory, God, and Money!
It’s a eureka moment – a flash in the pan.

Take me from this British land
Of hard-earned cash for harder times.
Let me find my place upon mother’s crust,
Where oceans divide the new from my old.

To where profanity fails to scale this feeling;
This art of living, this place for healing.

You claim yourself to be
A lack of symmetry,
From what you are
And what you dream
And what you’ll never be.

The teeth marks on your bed
And worries in your head,
Knotted stomach
And praying heart,
We share a common thread.

For, we’re all ****** lives
And only love survives.
We know not more,
No knowledge stored
Past communal archives.

So, don’t claim yourself to be
A life lived absently,
For you’re still young,
If you’re alive,
There’s time to swim the sea.