I still care.
Sitting behind the net curtain,
I burn incense to cover the smell
of cigarettes and watch the street
fill up each morning. I may have grown
old and fat and short of sight, but you know
I remained as half a person with a childhood mind.

The bodies come.
Mass graves as far as the eye
can see, and yet still I think of you
and how you patterned your hairstyle
to the changing of your moods. I wonder
how you are looking today, how you are feeling.
Though I am finding grey in my whiskers, I still care.

I paint now.
Nothing special, just irises
from the neighbours garden.
I grew tired of writing  once I found
that there was nothing to show for it.
I am too lazy to tend to a garden that
creeps up around me, I have given up on

trying to out-run the world.
I still care. Somewhere beyond
cynicism and charcoal, I still care.

Don't leave, stay with me.
Stay with me, oh blossom tree.
Stay with me and remind me
that not everything is lost,
as you peer over the garden wall,
to greet the concrete
with your tears.

Don't go, don't leave
and just stay with me.

Stay with me, my bodhi tree.
You wear your hearts upon your eaves,
leaving love over pavements;
leading love to a truth
more honest,
than ever I could hope to be.

Don't fly, nest here
for one more night,
and stay with me.

Stay with me, weeping willow tree.
Stay with me and show me
the beauty through anguish.
Tell me, tell me that even
in these joyless days
of all potential, but minimum wage,
that there will always be art.

Don't go, stay with me.

Stay with me, old birch tree.
Stay with me and remind me
of the stories from last summer.
Walk with me to the wishing well,
past the skinny dog and naked Adena.

We can laugh through an endless afternoon.
We can quit our jobs and marry the summer.
But for each gasp of breath, of happiness,
soon follows with me falling under.

In youth, I bathed in television glow,
literature but some passing fragment
of old humanity; irrelevant
cries from sad-eyed, androgynous poets.

Yet, birthed from a collective klaxon of
marketable, modern joy, I found my
voice unremarkable when out of text.
Lacking magnificence; I turn to words.

The winter used to feel long.

Ecstasy was a pill
on the tip of my tongue;
a common thread I missed.

I used to walk the streets
as if I did not deserve my shadow.
The imminent falling bomb
the only reason to exist.

Sobriety was a sleight of hand

hiding in plain sight.
Paradise were the moments
where I did not have to fight.

I used to sing for love
I would never get back again.

I used to talk to God
in the absence of a friend.

The winter used to feel long.

The summers were too brief.
Turned to every medicine
for transient relief.

I broke my back for a living.

Now I drink in the sun-glass shade.
No anaesthetic; no clouded mind.
I walk the river

a thousand miles
from all I left behind.

My country is in chaos.
Seats of power are exchanged,
Unelected come-down
And steep fog of uncertainty.
The poor are painting their signs,
Others lock their doors.
Tear gas spills in streets
Far from suburbia,
On the shoulder of Europe.

I struggle to sleep.
Not for tragedy
But missed calls
And lack of shelter.
For you and your
Darkened corner,
Bleak winters-
The last time
I saw you in the sun.

Petroleum fills
The lung of the sea.
Swarms gather in luscious greed,
Footfalls over concrete:
The peace sign
White poppies
And paper cranes,
Stubborn **** in the rock,
The busker with fingerless gloves;
The nightclub spilling over
Into violence.

I strain my eyes,
Not in tears
But in chemicals
And lack of vitality.
For you and your
Elusive path through life,
Over-complicated strides.
Simple, temporary medicine

That is the comfort
And not the cure.

The stars blot out,
One by one.
Each neon skylight
Fractures the night
In pink clouds.
Flowers die over the railings
Where they could not
Save his life.

I contain my breath,
Not in calm
But poisoned blood
And lack of air.
I can barely breathe
Without you here.

My country is in chaos.
Earth spins in a slow disease.
Still all I can think of is you-
Whether you are thinking of me.

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

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

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

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

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

Her hair on her *******;
soft freckles are constellations
hanging in the sky

The first winter I ever loved
coincided with my introduction
to Summer.

Three years younger,
she had defeated China
and in her wake lay one thousand men,
mouths hung open;
straining for her ear-shot.

Every taxi driver
spent more time looking in his rear-view mirror,
every ticket collector tarried
in the purchase; a hope to extend the moment
that he could be there, with her.

Used to watch her across the office,
her pencil skirt, precise eyeliner;
the way she would smell her tea
as it brewed in the flask.

Used to stray outside her classroom,
listened to her speak Chinese
to a room of students that would listen intently
as unfamiliar tones spread
across her easy smile.

She sang her tentative songs
over vague karaoke nights,
we sang together in English;
our neighbours sang in Thai.

I took her to the mountains
on the back of my motorbike,
she talked softly in my ear;
her legs pressed close to mine.

The first winter I ever loved
coincided with my introduction
to Summer.

The most beautiful woman
I had ever seen.

I lay still beneath her friendship,
bit my tongue in misplaced passion.
I stood and stared as she walked on by,
into the arms
of anyone’s

but mine.

I was not blessed with rhythm,
Was not born to set things free,
Still working with the wine and the ****,
No longer dancing cheek to cheek.

She was the puzzle piece that did not fit,
The sound of the rain, the snow, and the sleet,
The white-noise lullaby that permeated summer
And invaded all my dreams.

Now I’ve given up on love and war,
I have nothing left to fight,
No reason to stay sober,
It keeps me warm at night.

It gets me loose in the crowd,
It keeps me spinning in my place,
Think I spoke to a beautiful woman last night,
Only, I can’t remember her face.

I know you feel it too, my friend,
On your phone in a crowded room,
Checking your exits everywhere you go.
Yet you stay for the company,
You stay for that minuscule chance
Of a late-night spoon.

You stay out for the hope
That you will not miss out,
You drink to forget,
To white-wash self-doubt.

You hear the beautiful music
And although you’re set free,
There’s an ache in your heart, saying,
No beauty could come from me.

I was not blessed with composure,
All the subtlety I lack,
But no man is perfect-
We’ve all got a hideous *******.

I’m a slave to my *****,
I’m a slave to my cravings,
Cigarettes, *****, and late-night food,
until I've spent all my savings.

I’m a slave to the working day,
To the white-noise thoughts
That rattle my brain,
To the chemical feast
And the paltry remains,
The scratch-card defeat,
The guessing games,
I’ve grown up now
And I’ve grown up strange,

I am not blessed with charisma,
I am not blessed with a tongue
That can say what it means,
It just runs and runs and runs...

I’ve been walking in circles and complaining
That I will never find my place,
So many fruits to pick out from the tree
That I stop and stare,
Watch them all go to waste.

I was not blessed with rhythm,
Was not born to set things free,
But you’ll come to like me
If you sit a while
And spend some time with me.

Someday,
when the weeds are
growing all around me,
I will bury you in dirt
and then choose the words
that will act
as a cold-reading pacifier
for the crowds
who thought they knew you.

Maybe
you thought I would
be the first to go;
a near-certain bet
for the first to our death,
only for me to find youth
in my old age,
hitting form at the after-party,
just as everyone else
is looking for sleep.

Sweetheart,
I learned to stretch out
the hours of retirement
in a posture that can be sustained;
beyond mood shifts
and weather patterns,
to a place in which
I welcome the rain.
The allotment is flourishing,
my unsheathed Vishuddha.

Still,
**** my hippie fantasies
if I cannot hear your voice.

The astral bowl was full of green smoke,
the tin roof, the fairy-light canopy;
two friends suffered in greed.
The backwater shed,
a monument of beer cans
blow listless on the lawn.

One says,
"I have not given up on my dreams
I have grown tired of sleeping through them."

The other, an insomniac, glistens:
"Merrily, Merrily, merrily, merrily..."

The television was on mute.
A flag assembles from the garments
retrieved at the end of the war.
A red-eyed stare
as they lament
the dried rivers in the carpet.

One says,
"There are eyes on me all the time
so I drink myself blind after work."

The other, a pessimist, decrees:
"you drink to steel yourself for the cliff-face-
no idea where you are going."

The sky was granite
as they ****** outside.
One turns to the other and says:
"I try to live an honest life
but it always feels like a lie."

The other, still *******, replies:
"we keep our secrets close to our person.
Now please - tuck yours back inside."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He washed his hands in the Caño Cristales.
Five colours of healing bruises put to pasture
Within his purpled veins. There was blood again;
He was now a resident of Earth.

****** hair had grown wildly into a half-beard.
He scratched at it in the Columbian sun,
Sweating in the lack of British rain
And thinking of all the miles he had
Put between the two.

He’d spent all his life combing the mirror.
Combing the mirror and expecting change;
An escape from vanity publishers and
Celebrity snapshots. Combing the mirror,
And so always ending up in the same place.

Searching his memories of Peruvian plains,
There were diagrams set by the former residents.
He took out his folded notebook and started on
The Brand New Testament; before throwing
Its ashes into the liquid rainbow.

There is blood on the brain,
Your hair on my floor,
Your glass still on my table
To evidence the night before.

You were a kindness,
My fantasy, my misery;
Blowing smoke out of the open door.
Brief surrender under the shelter of
Our shared and selfish storm.

You brushed your teeth in the mirror,
Heard you sing as you tied your shoes.
It was all you as you stared at your phone,
As I disappeared from your easy view.

You were vague and authentic,
Quick to the bone; the truth.
A desert scene of transparency-
I held you high and soft
Beneath the neutral moon.

There is warmth after rain
From where your light came through.
Sat here again, a drink in hand,
Toasting the shadow of you.

They took down the eaves
after all shelter was destroyed.
Left a pay packet
and the desolation of ailments
that sang long after
the contract was done.

Fed the blade across my bicep,
irretrievable fault lines
from everyone I had called a friend.
Every message in a bottle
was a disturbance to still water,
the peace I gathered alone
but could not sustain
with two hands, one mind.

Stole the salt from my hunger,
the youth from my face:

I would not let them take the music.

Filled every cup to feign optimism,
clouded eyes that had seen too much.
Every plateau I took to,
they steeped the gradient,
each flower, they reminded me,
came from death.

They took down the saints of kindness.
Cut each nerve ending
as I slept on broken glass.
Left a pay packet
and a phantom of good will
once I finally loosened the strings,
sailed away at a snail's pace,

my boat savaged by the tempest,
my sails torn and weary,
my flag falls low, at half mast.

I heard whispers of a secret sound,
from Alexandria, hidden under the ground,
it was the steady beat, beat, beat;
more like a heartbeat, than a busy city street.

Now, they told me once and they told me twice,
that all occasions are played out thrice.
Three times of pleasure and of heartache too;
of a blood-thirsty conquest, the people's coup.

It was a global awakening, felt in the birth
of a bleak disregard for the marketing church,
a trinity of profit, of heat, light and gas;
of teenage lovers, beneath the underpass.

We stole through the farmland,
I pressed to your chest;
we sang to the autumn,
the coming of death.

We learned in science, of covert destitution,
prostituted knowledge to save the institution,
of rockets now missiles and force-fed thought;
where opinions are rote, and all politics bought.

The whispers returned in Sumerian sound,
tattooed on my skin, tattooed in the ground,
they came back to me, in my deep, deep sleep;
gold hair descending from the great castle keep.

I climbed from my body, led up to the sky,
as oceans gather from the tears that I cry,
in solemn disdain, for the conquest of man;
their synthetic wasteland, their three-year-plan.

We collided in memory,
as time was stripped away,
forever we were kissing;
forever we would stay.

I heard catcalls from a stone-circle mound,
clear as citrus to the basset hound,
whilst Jesus was caught dealing on the street;
exchanging numbers with the ****** he'd meet.

Now, they told me once and they told me twice,
that all occasions are played out thrice,
three lovers now nothing but a status update;
that we're nothing but slaves, licking the plate.

An introvert awakening, the three states of water,
hoping one day, to nurture a daughter.
To teach her of love without any condition;
to tend to her strength, to be her nutrition.

The blind beggar plays
to the tune of the river,
a Parisian lullaby;
une ode à la Seine
to deliver.

Oh, quickened street,
oh, passing joy;
my concrete slab,
my Helen of Troy.

Please stay with me now,
my dear wine-soaked friend,
do not linger on beginnings;
nor focus upon
the end.

We’ll sing over coffee
just to welcome November,
a Parisian ensemble;
une chanson pour la saison,
dying ember.

Oh, rainy skies,
oh, painted prize;
my lucid dream,
set before my eyes.

Please stay with me now,
my idealised sight,
do not lend to compromise;
in these foreign streets
of no plight.

And the blind beggar still plays
that tune of the river,
a Parisian lullaby;
une ode à la Seine,
et chaleur pour l’hiver.

Cross-legged and bare foot,
Spice on the tongue,
Iced beer through a straw;
Makeshift ****
On the white-wash balcony
Over dusted streets.

Revolving procession of strangers,
Exhausted stories born new;
Doctored through years of rehearsal.

I am every man.
White skin mistaken for affluence,
Exchanged for free gifts
And easy ***.
I never need to remember
Their names. They are always gone

By the afterglow morning,
Nights of mad love with no consequence;
Climbing heaven with feet on the ground.

Bruise of her mouth,
Stifled ******;
Surface wound on my shoulder
The only evidence
She was here.
Impermeable, remorse stale

As last night’s cigarette.
My open door births a crack of light,
Too slight for anyone to pass through.

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

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

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

They cut the cake and gave a smile
that would last longer than the marriage.
He held her hand whilst she closed her eyes
and thought of tumours and the Orient Express.

The DJ crooned his cat-calls to the
bridesmaids. The grandmothers wept and
bid farewell to their function now lived out.
Children played in the revolving rainbow lights

and chased their shirt-tails in circles,
grazing their knees over the varnished floor.
The bride and groom danced in their sweat
as two-hundred eyes opened their jewellery box

of devotion, causing them to revolve
forever, together, in the same old direction.
For a moment they caught eyes and told each
other without a word, that this was a mistake.

My friend,
My old friend.
Think of me as a romantic,

Though please do not consider this
A weakness or a foolhardy and
Archaic enterprise.

It is but the pursuit of each flavour
Of emotion.
To taste

Both the sticky sweetness
Of infatuation,
And the hollowed defeat

Of an impossible love.
How the pains of a misguided plea
Can cleanse you

From all of the lies and
Cynicisms you have adorned yourself with.
The life of a romantic is nothing

But freedom.
It is the freedom to be, and to relish
In each dynamism of the heart

And to feel no shame in it’s decimation
Of your activities. A romantic
Is free to sulk

And to indulge oneself
In the theatre of their heart,
To forsake all that

Does not transcend them,
And all that does not lead them
On their pilgrimage

For that consummate love.
And, my friend,
My old friend,

It is the belief in love that creates me.
It animates my limbs
Into action each morning

And motivates my heart
To keep up its business
As shadows lengthen across the ground,

In the simplistic hope that one day,
Love will appear in a wicker basket
At my doorstep.

For now, I shall remain
Studious. Though that word should
Have no real place

In a romantic’s life.
I shall read of the love that escapes
Every author,

That causes them to spill words onto a page,
Hoping that they too
Surpass all of reality

And hold true the feeling of the numinous
That causes men to weep
At their guitars

And women into their pillow.

Pain is getting old, nuisance slug
of toothpaste on a morning suit,
crest of daylight over dry eyes
at the first itch of addiction, processions
of commonplace panic begin
before the kettle comes to boil.

Pain ****** me like an alpha,
chained me to the kitchen sink. The brink
of insanity - messianic car-crashes, dead poets,
and cult leaders occupied our lives. Pain
lived inside, petroleum on fish-scale,
bone upon bone, a lie amongst lies.

Pain came to doctor the fairytale,
black-faced censorship, attention to detail
when forcing guilt under hysterical skies,
a cumulus jury, the persecution of 'I'.
Pain came to go over old grievances,
the people I knew, the friends that I missed.

Am I the one you think about
when the skies open
and you expect a storm to take you?
Am I the one you think about
when sheets turn angry
in the sleepless heat of the night?

This partial solidity,
this gulf of an ocean;
words recited by heavy eyes,
the palm reader's devotion.

Am I the one you think about
when elephants drown in the salt-marsh fields
and tears sting your eyes?
Am I the one you think about
when you apply your eyeliner
and mourn your reflection?

This endless question,
this echo of no movement;
lipstick on your glass will bloom,
my sickly, time-lapse delusion.

Am I the one you think about
when the tanks move in
and you go to war with yourself?
Am I the one you think about
when the skies open
to miles of dust and distance?

I have been drinking green tea by the evening light,
I have been wearing all my travelled hats again.

I have been striving for something beyond my reach,
in the hope that by stretching, I'll end up taller.

I have been eating croissants and drinking coffee,
exchanging currency and staring out windows.

I have been comforted by the sound of the rain,
as it taps on the drain by my bedroom curtains.

I have grown easy in this dormitory life,
sleeping through the day and then working through the night.

I have grown lazy, laid out in the olive grove,
in the eternal garden of the writer's mind.

I have grown weary through my scowling at the moon,
no more a wolf than a painter's aesthetic muse.

I have grown ugly through vague vanity's mirror,
I have grown privileged through my vacant stupor.

I'm still waiting for the love that has now perished,
a love that's now forgotten, that once was cherished.

Let me write my books of poetry,
Sing into a microphone with no connection.
Let me wash my hair in the rain
As a means to get myself dry,
To find a connection;

To cleanse my skin with ancient water
That tiptoed the forest before Man.
Let me punch the code of my identity
Into the melody and not the spreadsheet.
Allow me to **** all the people

I was before I felt alive.
Old means for yesterdays,
Ends that caused me
To start over again.

Let me send letters to New England,
Let me drink coffee on the pedestal
Of a day spent sober-
Buckle of the grass in the wind,
Mind lost to cloud canopies
And transparent heartbeats.

Let me kiss a foreign tongue
To learn that all lies taste the same.
Let me take off my clothes
When I am alone, simply to remember
That I can.

Moon: a companion,
Windowsill vigils at dawn,
Medication for the side effect
Caused by the cure.

Let me wash up in the Jovian seas
When my feet are rooted to the Earth.
Let my mind pester the working day
With dreams for tomorrow,
With catastrophes blacklisted in the sky.

Let me write my books of poetry,
Songs of sadness with no tune.
All the feelings I forgot,
All the passion I outgrew.

I cannot stop drinking tonight
I cannot stop smoking
I've had my fill
but the hunger resides
There is always something more
that I should be doing
There is always an impossible deadline
a misfortune in the breeze
I cannot stop thinking tonight
I cannot stop thinking

I stopped waiting by the phone
I stopped pressing my glass to the wall
straining for vicarious sound
I stopped waiting for distraction
to prevent me getting bored

I am alone
I am alone
but feel loneliness
only when I feel I ought to
The rest of the time
it is music
or the silence in between

I stopped pacing the floor
as if movement meant
I was doing something

I stopped looking for love
as if desire were the same
as feeling something for someone

As if holding out for change
was as good as holding a person
as if sleeping alone
caused dreams without reason
as if snatches of warmth
gave purpose to the seasons

I stopped collecting forget-me-nots
I stopped bleeding out my liberal heart
every time there was suffering
or hate in the spaces where
love should have been

I stopped waiting for someone
to doctor the still
where sorrow pervaded
the canned laughter of living

I stopped looking for someone
it was only then
I could start forgiving

You *** so fast;

using Snapchat
to *******.

Milk-stone tiling, with some
figure-hugging brown
and Castleton's ceiling pervading;
cement works, cement works,
on my mind.

The shroud of Christ's teachings
is left in damp upon the soap-fused wall.

Fan beating in aggressive pleasure,
it staves off stagnancy,
instead cleaning all humidity
with purity of essence.

Cleansed, cleansed,
the soaps are tinted in poisonous colours,
lethal toad and paradise mountain,
you scale all levels of disappointment,
to leave in want of better investment.

As in all politics, each day I intend
to settle my doubts in your cleansing augment,
of all that is pure, and all without grime,
from the stubborn North wind,
that freezes bells before chime.

It doesn't always have to be a sunset
Sometimes the sun just needs to come down

It doesn't always have to be chemical desire
Sometimes it's just two deaf, blind bodies

Colliding in the dark with no conclusion
It doesn't have to be logical

Sometimes you've gotta aim at the sun
With a steady finger on the trigger of the water gun

And pull

It's not always about success
In fact, it's never about success

They lit a million candles
Over the crash site of Icarus

And every good man has a corner of his heart
Devoted to the Sylvia's of this world

It doesn't always have to be a holiday
Sometimes screaming is enough

It doesn't always have to be an island retreat
Sometimes it's just an empty train carriage

To sit and read with trembling hands
Over an easy magazine

It doesn't always have to be difficult
Sometimes love feels like dying in your sleep

At others, it's your window reflection
In a strange new town

It doesn't always have to be a sunset
Sometimes colour is rinsed by cloud

It doesn't have to be poignant, or fair -
Sometimes the sun just needs to

Come down

Home is a funny word.

Home is the napkin
That you use to wipe the salt from your hands.
It is found on dime-a-dozen
Christmas cards and TV meals.

It is paraded by the letting agents;
Founded by stay-at-home adults,
Who will do anything,
Anything.
To break the monotonous tug of home.

Home is where you mind your manners
And comb your hair.
You plaster your flesh and bone
With a bracing tolerance
To hold fast against the moronic company,
All with no nicotine in the bloodstream.

Home is the shrapnel of memory
That has been so scattered in your mind,
And home is the filing system
That finally puts order to it all.

It is a mug of tea
Poured in your favourite mug
But not to your favourite taste.

Home can be the well-adjusted face
To the most maladjusted of bodies.
The gritted teeth,
The clamour of attention,
The lack of comprehension,
‘You don’t understand’
No you, you need to understand.

This might not be home anymore.
Until I am gone.

In sleep I leave thee, mortal tomb,
to respire and snort amidst the gloom
of ****** haze and time's distort,
graveyards to the wars we've fought.

Impossible colour in the light,
the child-god redeemer of my appetite,
for that deep-set rock ocean blue,
to remind me of all that is true.

To faces, to faces, to faces
it bends, of childhood teachers,
and teenage friends,
in one pulse forgiveness,
in another amends,
all outcomes played out,
before the end.

Falling further into a breathless stream
of thriving light and ecstasy dream,
I see the clasp of our lips set in between,
all that was, and ever has been.

In sleep I kiss thee, wholesome womb,
pressing light bodies in a violet room,
abundant in pleasure,
and absent of sin,
in the promise that the Sun
will rise again.

We cling to each other,
and we cling to the bed,
to all gravity's demands
and all the lines we've been fed.

With pleasure I leave thee, patient friend,
to my Garden of Life on which I do tend,
to find my wisdom, to find the truth,
to settle within your arms of youth.

Please settle this longing that is in your place,
this constant fear, of an empty space.

Love is not the scrawl of notes

left on the bedside, whilst

the alarm clock suffers to clouts

and rings, awakening her.



Neither is love the aperture

between silhouettes

as they embrace so readily

against the walls. Some clinch

of absence, the antiptosis

of the you and I.



Love is not the spaces between

the ‘I miss you’s’ and the

‘here we are once more’s.’



Neither is love the separation

between our wants and needs,

to the disparities in the world.

It is not the defiance of obligation,

nor some holy rest-house

to the ills of the modern world.



Love is not some shared novel,

a story born out over a communal

conjecture of where humanity shall

rest upon the end of everything.



Neither is love the offering of a rose,

or any other bouquet of severed

life, strangled for the nourishment

of her; the justification of your

placement in her life. These are just

condescending gestures,



weak offerings to the Lord

of all you claim to be divine.



Love is not a life to be feasted upon,

nor is it the self-satisfied glance

in the mirror, as you finally decide

on your definition of ‘I’.



Neither is love this malformation

of words, this attempt of veritas,

this hollowed pursuit of whiskey-fuelled

longing, longing, longing for

some great hand to deliver life

upon my doorstep, upon our’s.



Love is simply the eternal rite

of Gaia; the motes of existence

that tumble with great devotion

and all-cause to their eventual demise,



their inevitable return

to the spiral that created them.



Love is the spaces between my breath,

between your’s.

Those pockets of meditation,

and the realisation of union

between all that was,

and ever will be.



Love is the acknowledgement

of power between us. Our previous

lives, blades of grass wilting together

under the footfalls of the now-trees,

the now-governors of our lives.



Love is in the ‘I know you’s’

and the ‘what would I do

without you’s’ that we have so struggled

to forsake in the day-to-day

tumble of our lives.



And to this, I say, that love is

these spaces that you may

no longer occupy. The barren stretches

of grey matter that no being either

mortal or otherwise,

could ever reclaim.



Love is the birth of bespoke experience,

and the knowledge

that nothing can erase us

from the archives of

everything that should ever matter.



Love is us.

The white-noise sends him off to sleep,
a sedative pill to ensure a peaceful stay.
The nurses look on through the peep-hole
at night, and thud knuckles on the door
come morning. They are watching for signs
that he is still talking to the stars.
He claims multidimensional beings
can manifest as light,
and correct old constellations
into broadcasts for today.
As the students peer into his cell,
they scowl with concentration
and write furiously on clipboards.
'A high-functioning romantic'
he wrote in self-diagnosis,
and the pills helped with that
in the only way that they could.
He has learned to **** under observation,
a Gorilla in the leaves.
They fog the glass in fascination
at the sleeper in the cell.
Once they caught him *******.
He thought that he should put up a show.
That natural function too hard to swallow
or compress into a hand-book.
In the evening he watches
the sports-news revolve,
wishing his soda water
was something a little more severe.
By night the inner-city light pollution
near-destroys any hope of a message
The pill is slipped before
he has begun to lay his head.
He may be losing his sweet imagination,
but he happily chose sleep instead.

In adolescent vain, I studied myself
in a pilgrimage of identity.
I sought the avenues to find belonging,
I scoured song lyrics for personal truth.

In maturation, I have distanced myself.
I wish to perish my breath, my beliefs,
to clear my skies, my mind, so dutifully.
Hold true, my dear wholesome meditation,

so I shall live this life as an estuary,
opened-armed to all rhythms of the tide,
to be cradled by the land in life's dispute,
but still hear the whale-song of consciousness;

to realise this unifying truth.

Bury me inside your appetite
for rough *** and bad poetry.
I want to lose my Self
to memories of your ******* father
and catholic guilt;
your fears for the Holderness coast,
and how large bodies of water
enter all your dreams.
Ever since I learned your name,
I wanted to drown within it.

I see everyone as bright-white in beauty
whereas in the shadows you shall find me.

Uncorking the wine to keep myself busy,
replacing blood-sugar, feeling dizzy.

I paint the cave with fruit juices and poppies,
intersecting patterns, carbon copies.

There is comfort to be found in lonely breath,
to contemplate life, the absence of death.

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

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

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

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

I met a wilting ***** by the roadside,
she was barefoot and drowned by the riptide,
she said,
that had swallowed her up
over the course of her time.

I sat down beside her in the rubble,
hubble, bubble and a load of trouble,
she said,
that business must come first,
so she doesn't waste my time.

I told her I was just another waste,
another scrap of food without the taste,
I said
that I would stay with her
and live without clocks and time.

She waved off kindness with her ruined hands,
she knew not love but customer demands,
she said,
no man has kissed me since
my father ran out of time.

We talked for hours more in summer heat,
she was hungry but she refused to eat,
she said,
to find beauty I must
keep thin and defy all time.

At night she stumbled back onto her feet,
for some loose-skinned man she'd promised to meet
she said,
“tonight I have found love,
as if gifted from all the stars above,
but the city bells have begun to chime
and I'm afraid love cannot stop the time.”

The most unfair thing I was ever taught
In my sorry little life,
Is that death is the only thing you can rely upon.

I was most upset to find that I was not transcendent
To all those fools
That succumed to the hands of death before me.

Why, I could kick and scream,
I could crawl and plead
But I still must make my merry little way

Back into the Earth I was born from.

And so life - what of it?
I know that I shall grow up and become an adult
And therefore more childish with each day.

And so why should I don those suits
That stifle my throat
And choke my idea of ‘I’?

Noon is the most sublime time
To emerge from dreams
and to be greeted by the sun

And not blaring alarms,
or bleeting chidren.
Thus, I yearn to write.

Not out of skill
And certainly not out of profit,
But to take back all of those moments

with my back upon the soil.
For when I am feeble and when I am spent,
I know by now that I shall regret

Not the moments with empty pockets
But the world that I lost
In a restless rush,
In a useless toil.

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

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

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

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

she's still tired of my song.

Drunk again, on my own again,
without a friend in sight.
I learned to read just to pass the time,
St. Teresa she tells me:
"Be gentle to all and stem with yourself,"
and you will find the light.
But some of us see only in dark,
and we come alive at night.

Been trying to breathe, been trying to see
what William James told me:
"You can alter your life, if you alter your mind,"
my kaleidoscopic eyes-
and act as if you can make a difference
and "be not afraid of life."
But I've been running scared, darling all of the time,
life chews me up and it spits me out.

I'm tired of words, to see me through,
oh, I need someone tonight,
someone tonight.

Like Carl Rogers says, you gotta hang tough,
"I'm not perfect but I'm enough."
"What is personal, it is universal,"
if you just open up.
But if I should die, it would take a while
until someone beats the drum.
I flew so many miles and still,
and still, my sadness has won.

There are bags under your eyes
from where sleep haunts you,
or the lack of it, at least.

The gorgeous and the gruesome
always have trouble getting rest,
only the monotonous
and the sedated
escape to dreams with ease.

Where did your sobriety go?
Was it lost when you realised
even your parents were clueless,

or did you suspect that all along?
I would count you amongst
the gorgeous,
but with a gruesome turn of mind.
Whatever you do, do not drift away

if it means leaving your Self behind.

Alexandria, former lover,
though I knew you well.
Halls lined with books,
we memorised the details-
it was the meaning we forgot.
The river ran dry so long ago,
burned your books to the ground
and became the resting place
for men bearing gifts.
Learned the trade:
love in the modern age.
You took your fill,
left before you were dismissed.

Alexandria, you learned to open your legs,
blot out your heart,
endless doodles on a wet afternoon;
ear to the phone
in an empty room.
Need someone there to fill your time,
the day so long – crop so dry.
Wine in the evening,
your life-long amnesty.
We took to drink together
but you drank for yourself.
All those years of lost prudence,
all knowledge turned to ash.

Alexandria, your former glory,
the peace that will depart.
Entropy over your bed-side desk-
your habits always coloured your interests.
What happened to your monuments,
Your brick-by-brick
malaise
into being? Lost it to superstition,
found a religion and stuck to it-
the alibi of the thief.
You always fell beneath the sheets
at the first sign of winter,
every time you heard love
on someone’s tongue.

Alexandria, wordless chorus,
poetry in your movements.
Used to watch smoke
crawl into the fibres of your cardigan,
all studious and high in the garden.
Weeds came through the concrete.
The sun always seemed to be coming down.
Foxes looted the back-streets.
Took the same walk each day
in an attempt to bring down the walls.
All that is left of you is not mine.
You only ever belonged to yourself.
Alexandria, you sat in silence

whilst inducing men to sing.

With Georgia on my mind,
and coastlines tailored
upon the brim of my sun hat,
I take to the road in canvas shoes,
a crescendo of black man blues
and the song of kissing beer bottles
in my camping bag.

I know I have a soul.
I have a soul and
the promise everything is fine.
No more to the tune of modern frets,
instead the strings on which he sets
our raison d'être, our healing scope,
and parallel joys.

‘Neath London’s rain soaked skies,
shadowed reflections
combine footsteps over pavement,
and to the pigeon’s deep throated call,
under frequency of footfall,
I hear the passing of this empire,
so hurriedly built.

So with hitchhiker’s thumb,
I rise up like steam.
A lightness of living and the
true rejection of security;
my sins become my purity,
and time becomes naught but the measure
of what I have done.

I have become a mirror. Reflecting the smiles
of others. No thought is my own. Only a mesh
of arms that helped me up or held me down.
Essays traded for certificates. All science or
established old philosophies. I pilfer inner peace
from the Buddhists. I map my memories by
the names of streets. I eat my food from the
production lines. Maybe I should invent my
own language. Maybe then I will say things
differently. I will only draw in the dirt. Avoid
the arrogance of permanence. I would only
lose out to the weeds and meteorites in any case.
It has been two decades of a borrowed self.
Whatever was mine has been stolen long ago.

I have the portable blues;
chained to the screen
or else out on my knees,
looking for that whiskey shot,
or the next new-age way
of getting high.
I tie my shoes,
walk away from the evening news;
an outsider looking in
on the rhythm and blues,
the irregular heartbeat
of looted city streets,
and the army knocking
on every front door.

They're selling Coca Cola
for half the price of running water.
Close the borders,
regulate the ******
and lock up your daughters,
to save the ****** from temptation,
and politicians from scandal.
There are vandals
sending misinformation
to a nation of eaters and sleepers,
fair-weather preachers claiming cures
for cancer, toothache, and weight
gained through the menopause.

Let's whitewash the wall,
whitewash the streets;
dreams of white faces,
white people,
and white snow at Christmas.
You can send laminate cards
of ghost-written love
to every person that you meet.

I take my writing to the coffee shop.
Surrounded by books,
it is the only place left untouched
by the angry mob.
They are looking for that
advertised freedom,
running away in those
brand new sneakers,
popping pills and stealing tablets
to replace their food,
to light up the room,
and heat their child,
still sleeping in the womb.

And then the newspapers come
to doctor a sight,
to write-off rubber bullets
as a pinball machine,
a Whoopee Cushion intervention
against the unwashed masses.
They're growing lazy on benefits,
cutting school,
shooting pool
in broken bars:
the virulent, violent
lower classes.

The church choir pretends to sing,
heads bowed in prayer
for an incoming message,
a silent ring
from their half-stalked lover
who is drinking white wine
in paradise
and rolling the dice
of couch-surfing travel,
leaving a trail of half-written blogs,
and photographs of
every single meal.

I hear you can rent a folk-singer,
string him up
like a marionette,
watch him hang himself
with his guitar strings;
his five-day stubble
and Four Winds rings
ready for auction
at the next B-list convention.
There are black men
on Fox News, smiling, fat,
and drunk on the price
of their suits.

They are blaming colour,
religious fervour, and foreign lands,
for the turning sands
in the timer, as more brothers
slip through society,
crushed by the weight
of ***** and drugs,
and those that follow behind them.
They refuse to bite
the white hand that feeds,
that threatens
to exclude them
from the excursions of oil
and Monsanto seeds.

The summer ended
with Parkinson's and wine,
an ill-timed suicide
of a laughing face
and crinkled eyes.
No tide can be turned,
only bridges burned,
and yet still brothers converge
to sing a verse
of improbable change,
and poetry in silence;
an antelope bounding
across the shooting range,
hopping a fence,
and dodging a bullet,
in the hope of a friend,
a better tomorrow;
a safe place to mend
beyond all of this sorrow.

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

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

Shadow of two-year guilt,
Rather be erratic than static.
The world rolls its tongue
And everyone is talking
But me.

You said
Something good will come out of this.
You said
That I wanted to be unhappy.
I could reach so far
For impossible dreams
But it would not be enough.

Sleep feigns rest.
Bedsheets weather to discomfort;
Hypnotic inducement
As the sun comes up.
Alarm clock, *****. Cigarette for breakfast.
Food sits in the mouth.
Chewing on plasticine,
Sudden fear of choking.

I do not remember when I got so bad.

Lacklustre tyre swings,
A noose in the half-lit cemetery.
No amount of air
To tame the breath.
Folded, years of divorce,

Of cold toast, early mornings;
My insufferable self.
You said
That I wanted to be unhappy.
You said
That love would never be enough.

I lost my true love
once she found my true self,
I keep thinking life is improving,
before I'm under the rubble again.

And I'll miss you,
I already do.

I realised that I loved you
and it felt like hands around my throat.
When you had already left the room,
all freedom of my heart did too.

You see, I had nothing left but you.
But you and my assorted maxims.
Now, I've been leaked to the press,
all of my scales have been shown
to the blue-light;
now, all that is left, is nothing at all.