You have been living as a ghost for too long.
Too long under the flood-lit hoardings,
advertising a necessity
you have never thought of before.
Too long spent pushing someone away
rather than letting go.
I thought of you in bed last night,
your pale complexion
and the way you smoke cigarettes;
an ache of habit
disguised as a fashion statement,
spinning into a pirouette
after tripping over the step.
You chose a career of kindness,
siphoning knowledge to a new generation
at the expense of your punk-rock credentials
and afternoon naps.
I thought of you again today.
How you are leaving the house
and all your old selves;
how I lag so far behind,
that I can barely see you now.

The Third Eye is born
when you start to see the world
as others see it.

Do not say to me
that in life, is offered freedom.

Do not lie to me
and tell me everything is okay.

I am finished with the sacrament of stories,
I am done with lying through my words,
this world is falling apart in maladaptive chaos,
through the will of man, of companies and debt.

Do not sing to me
our prostituted freedoms.

Do not give to me
the ******* you've been fed.

I am past the need for fair and approved judgement,
I am beyond words for the injustice displayed,
from the cruelty of man to all species,
to the decimation of a low-income estate.

Do not offend me with
the policies for tomorrow.

Do not pin your bias
to the colour of your tie.

I am tired of fighting through this longing,
I am exhausted in the mere light of day,
because each day in your power is bereft of all hope,
each day in your power, we're enslaved.

We came as a strand of life from the source.

The estuary signalled creation, and finally; the residents spoke back.

There she was on the veranda; a Costa Rican sunset.

He sank pills with beer, and then he promptly disappeared.

And when they burned down the library, all humanity died.

The pixels flared upon the screen: now she is dead.

I surfed meteorites and time, just to see you again.

She planted the seed, then laid down in the soil.

She’s married now I think; I care not to check.

A woman took over God’s role: The results improved dramatically.
E. J., Coles-Jordan. (2014). An Equal Society: A Necessity for Cultural Revolution. Journal of Made-Up Thoughts and Wisdom, 1, 1-9999.

We are locked in this state of paralysed rage
for the powers that have come to be,
with their newspeak lies
and corporate ties,
they'll poison the sky and the sea.

Wherever you will go,
my mind will follow,
there's no shame in feeling weak,
when everything's looking so bleak.

Cop on the beat, we look to believe
that everything is in control.
No divisions of wealth,
your own mental health;
nothing is ever your fault.

Still, they come to say all this hard work will pay,
though your bedsheets are made out of lead,
so forget your disease,
get dirt on your knees,
and take this for your troubled little head.

Wherever you will go,
my mind will follow,
I have been writing these letters to say,
I hope everything's coming your way.

And it's all comin' down, like a surgical gown
replaced with a new lease of living.
Palestinian fields,
reinvented wheels,
and the churches won't lock their doors.

You see, the baby boomers, the white-men-in-suits,
they're a dying breed don't you know?
So keep saluting the sun,
the race isn't run;
I gave up worrying long ago.

Wherever you will go,
my mind will follow,
but if you're looking for a real kind of love,
stop looking to the skies above.

Wherever you will go,
you've got my heart in tow.
Now I'm sober,
all I can see
is the simplicity of you and me.

If only the whole world could be
as simple as you and me.

Pink pill turns black
on its tin-foil hammock,
putrid cremation
beneath a butane lighter.
A choir of bullfrogs
sing the advent of a wet summer,
whilst trembling hands gather
to capture the fumes
through the paper vessel
of a makeshift straw.

She gathers spring flowers.
Places them in a jewellery box
alongside the ring he has never worn.
Wide-eyed, she speaks in Thai
on their sweet scent,
amongst the burnt incense
and his vacant, impatient stare.
Tarried for the next hit of nicotine,
for the self-immolation
when he is left to sleep alone.

Lungs tarred with amphetamine,
she will return to her infant son
as if nothing has happened
whilst he wakes
to a morning bed of ash.
Mosquitoes fog the windowsill
as they languish
in off-hand, stubborn ***.
She falters to a ******-
he keeps his cards to his chest.

Dawn croaks its miserable head
as he suffers a silence of symphonies
with no words.
No common tongue;
heart brays over
a pillowcase of pebbles
and a mouth of sand.
She paints her nails,
smiles with professional assurance.
She lives in a comfort

he cannot understand.

Is this a new life,
Or has it been lived before?
I heard the salesman calling,
Knocking on my door,
As I defeated the notion
Of the cavalry roar;
Our history’s disclosure,
And memories of war.

These pills gave rise
To a new wave of thinking.
I have hands made to write,
And not just for drinking.
I have brand new ideas
With thoughts I’ve been linking;
New continents will form
For the land that is sinking.

No meaning is left
As I write in the dawn,
As I fall asleep
Just as the folks mow their lawn.
I have not surrendered,
To a life left still-born,
No I shall I get myself lost
In these high fields of corn.

For now I’m imprisoned
In this ****-filled detention,
As poetry clings
To my heart’s retention.
All is not gone,
In my life’s hypertension,
As I hold close to this Earth,
As I sing for ascension.

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

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

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

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

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

and now I am looking for love once again.

I didn’t lose the fight, I threw it
I had planned it from the start
Spent my time living ugly
So I could make dying an art

Troubles came two by two
And no help ever arrived
Friends were always slow to come
But the codeine never lied

I nursed my pain and boredom
Beneath the weeping willow tree
Those troubles came in twos at first
But the drugs just made it three

Now I’ve grown old in a matter of weeks
And the coffee is staining my teeth
Can barely move through the working day
Through all this medicine and slow disease

I didn’t lose my mind, I outgrew it
I had planned it from the start
Spent my days severing the strings
Of my crooked, hovel heart

The shot girl laced up her corset,
pressing brand new *******
into their vice for the night.

A Malthusian belt for shot glasses
and a holster for change
that conceals pepper spray.

She holds herself by the mirror,
reflecting a room of text books,
post-its, and old stuffed animals.

She kisses her palm to own her body,
before it is decomposed by eyes
and laid claim to by countless hands.

Her boss took issue with her skirt;
that it shows “too little leg”,
reversing all she'd been taught before.

She had a birthmark on her thigh,
and thought if nothing else,
she wanted possession of that.

For one more night, she says,
she'll flirt for a living,
for one more night, she says,
she'll numb herself.

I re-discovered an old habit today.
Hot water was drilling down my spine
as my extremities tarried in winter's cold.
Steam rose in translucent plumes about me
as I stood and stared at the drain;
angry torrents of colourless molecules
clamouring for the better seats
on their endless, thoughtless commute
through blind tunnels and inescapable voids.
I turned the shower pink.
I was not sure why but I enjoyed the art:
the statement of life amongst
well-ordered shampoo bottles
and the pristine white of the room;
a chance to claim substance again
after slipping into old routines
and falling off the face of the Earth.
The old habit came in an airport reunion;
a thrill of recounting long-healed scars
and that familiar embrace with an old friend
you thought you would never meet again.
I remember your smell, I know your taste.
I stopped shaving a long time ago.

They say the house ached
with an energy
his chord *****
haunting the A/C hum
colours crawl out
of failed cartoons
in schizotypal terror
dismembered icy blues
that take in everything
through bloodied stems
the retired boxer
******* the umbilical
with his head carved open
to dementia and night terrors

They say the desk-lamp shook
from pill-induced tremors
the anxiety of perfection
never borne out in creation
eternal battles between
pleasure and Satan
between the chorus line
and bouts of sanity
two self-portraits
twin the whitewashed wall
one frail and brilliant
with gaunt fears of hell
the other fat and docile
in the face of death.

The answer is in the quantum world.
Each probability exists in some reality,
As a multitude of collisions bind us
To who we think we are.

We cannot see the coded matrix,
This code to solidity in the face
Of empty space. We are not
creation’s children, but creation itself.

The club fills with fumes;
Energy drinks and elixirs
To banish thought
And the subversion of your ****.

You keep it in check.
Fear only comes from women
When you care for the means
As well as the ends.

And so,
Objectified and vilified,
You chase your ******.
You pursue them in numbers,
You hunt in packs.

You wolf whistle and grab,
You expect them to pay back.

For each drink you bought
To soften their tongues
And then another,
Another,
Another to soften their will.

Oh, and you pass. You’ll pass
Stories around.
You’ll compete for the
Anecdotes over hangovers,
Your conquests of the night.

Each woman a tally,
A tick on a board,
Each kiss an insurance
That you’re self-assured.

But each morning you wake,
And there’s that something
That’s missing.

It’s no wonder when you
Look in the mirror,
You see just flesh,
An empty holding cell,
Of a manly veneer.

How many more beautiful hearts will I spoil
All high and unavailable, their eyes occluded
With sorrow as they watch me slip towards a sorry death

How many times can I keep walking into a
Burning building, a sea of tongues I cannot keep pace with
Before I stop returning, always short of breath

How many years have I wasted wringing
My hands in quiet discomfort and worrying
When all this worrying will stop

How many more patient friends will slip from view
As I blind myself with false changes, as I lie in waste
Through my solitude, wondering why no one is here

To rinse the poverty from my ruined eyes

I have not been well recently.
I have been waking from dreams of falling bombs,
lighting up the sky like a mourning sun.
Each time this happens,
I predict the comfort of a dark black void,
and in waiting for this moment to arrive,
oh brother, have you ever felt more alive?

They say the North-East is in ruins
without my careful footsteps over the ground,
without my drunken tears and absent sounds.
Everywhere I land
has become nothing more than a sea-foam scar,
a painless reminder of all I once had,
now lungs of tar, the birth of a deadbeat dad.

I have not been well recently.
I have been waiting for more persistent ***,
with opened legs and sunscreen on her chest.
The scars may return
in the false new light of a British summer,
I will endeavour to do better this year.

I will smile through the stoning,
and I will celebrate my fear.

Gave up on being a saviour,
A martyr in the thicket of danger,
I won’t fight for my place
In the Free Speech Corner.

Gave up on being a bleeding heart
Run dry.

I won’t burst into flame
To prove a point:
Burn myself out
Until the chip on my shoulder
Sings like a flute.

Gave up on being a shelter,
Passion rains upon your window,
The traffic hum of weather
Just sends you off to sleep.

I won’t kick for the current,
Float to the surface,
Wait for the ambulance.

Gave up on being a lighthouse
Stood brave.

I won’t hold a torch
For love off in the distance.
I won’t carry death on my tongue
Until the moment comes.

Rock bottom is fantastic for perspective.

Late night drive-thru, red lights, stop signs.
Lately I’ve been blue all in the absence of you
And I won’t lie
The Philistines are out in force tonight
And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

I can’t control it, the weight of the morning,
I read the warning but I never saw it coming
In my field of view, or in my mind’s eye,
Well, I’ve been blue in the absence of you

And I
Like a beating drum,
Like a washed-out popstar,
Like an artifact
After the fact-

I’ll cling onto what I got stored up in karma,
You see, I’ve been a good man
But I’ve done some bad things in my time.
And I won’t lie
Everything must go here tonight.
And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

They say laughter is the greatest medicine.
They say a lot of things but it never makes much sense.
They’re climbing up the walls
To get their monthly pay;
They say laughter is the greatest medicine.

Late night, junk food, I’m ****** without you.
I’m a badly drawn cartoon with red eyes
And an ego on fire.

And I won’t lie
The lunatics are out in force tonight

And I won’t lie
There’s too much wrong here
To try and make it right.

And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

https://soundcloud.com/ed-coles-667440414/bottle

Winter left behind
a labyrinth of addictions,
chains of solitude
that took you the whole summer
to break,

Long sleeves on a sunny day,
pockmarked with exhausted pain,
delivered in fractures
only you can see on your face.

The mirror: a split-screen
of everything you see
versus
everything that you feel.

You have been staring
at your plate until everything
has grown cold.
You have drowned yourself in changes:

it is no wonder you do not feel whole.

Winter left behind
a fraction of yourself.
You scale the branches
in the bloom

only to wake up ******,
alone,
another winter's afternoon.

The old stars petrify in place.
Stone-set heartache over sequences
of bar and melody;
they remind us of pain immortalised
in the human race, and that in itself
is enough to fill your curtains
with happiness.

I miss the blind Parisian Busker.
The old tunes over the river
as I feigned language;
as I swelled in my heart at the
sight of the branches under
faint March sky. Tears roll down,
and I am a soft fool once again.

I remember being seventeen.
I remember looking up at
the night sky;
attributing its hue and old knowledge
to that of an infinite God.
Now that cruelty is self-evident,
nature has no need for Him.

Now I scan the world
and land my eyes delicately on beauty
as a butterfly in grassland;
unworthy pilgrim of temper and waste,
I feel nature has no place for me
either. Without art and old sentiment,
there would be no place for me at all.

There are a thousand lovers
for us in the world. They fidget
in bus-stops;
excuse themselves in queues
and stay in for a fortnight
for every moment spent alone
in a group of old friends.

They cry in their bedsheets.
Lamenting love and lack of poetry
in everyday life;
they hold old songs to their chests
to keep them warm in the winter,
and they re-animate the limbs
of heroes sleeping in the mud.

You *******.
How dare you lie awake
And feel short-changed.

There are children in Africa-
No listen,
There are children in Africa
Did you know,
Eating dirt and drinking ****.

And yet you lie there,
You *******,
And lament the broken socket in the wall;
All those sorry women you didn’t lay.

What now?
A tantrum again, you *******?
Your friends wont hit the town tonight,
And your woman wont let that depression bite,
So now your book will never get written
You ******* you ******* you *******.

Your mother loved you
But it was the wrong kind of love.
And your father,
Your father left after you were born:
A peaceful death but a tasteless funeral.
He left before you could recall
A slamming of the door.
He left no trace for you to search
The corners of the Earth for his return.

There is a privation within you but you cannot create something out of nothing.
No, you needed a slam of a door,
And the ache of tension in your gut.
You needed the punch on your heartstrings,
To create the music and the art
That would finally validate your lack of colour.

Oh, you poor *******.
Too unstable to hold down a job
And get a house in the burbs.
Too contented to set fire to the lot.

But I know you I do,
And you will pick up that guitar in a week or so
When I have set myself all tranquil-like
In the corner.
And you will try again,
Fruitlessly, may I add…
To concoct another potion of chords
To save another anonymous soul
That never needed saving.

And you hold out your hand
For just another ******* like yourself.

But I see you’re running late,
You must get to work.
You have small talk to be getting on with,
Yes, that dryness in your throat,
That heavy tongue
And those sentences you play out
In your head on your way into the office,
You know they will fall apart
Into useless, uninteresting stutters.
And the sweat under your armpits
Will cling to your ironed shirt
In your day-to-day panic attack
Of routine.

Yes, I’ll let you get on now,
And I will be waiting for you again
The next time you walk past a car window,
Or wash your hands in front of a mirror.
See you soon,
You *******.

My woman told me that drinking beer increases creativity. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not; but in this case, I'll put my faith in modernity. I'm drinking a can of Holsten Pils (there are other lagers available), and it's safe to say that I've aged a few years, since my uncle was laid out on the table. He drank beer. I remember that clearly. He was the only real person in my family, and for that I held him dearly. We built a bunk-bed for my brothers one summer, and he whistled throughout the day. For that day he was almost a father; for that moment, absence went away.

His death was inevitable, and we knew of its coming for years. It is because of this that I have accepted fate, and an eternity of tears. His muddied grave is a disgrace to his flesh, to the life that he lived, and to the friends he addressed. Now but a rotting Christian symbol, to remember an atheist; now but an unvisited grave, for those he loved dearest. So, I shall drink to my uncle, my makeshift father. For each Christmas he spent, drunk on cheap lager.

You do not love him.
For ****'s sake: you do not love him.
You are scared of being alone-
we all are. You are scared of being alone
despite your claims of freedom and independence;
all those hours you spend alone
in the comfort of the screen,
or else in the haunts of all the tracks
he has trod or stumbled over before
in the meadow of your memories.
You do not love him.
You love the happiness that has passed between you,
like teenage *****; like childhood sugar;
you outgrow everything
that was not built for your needs.
You know that I am.
You know that I am.

My dreams are leaden
With the weight of my past.
They pin me passionless
To my bed,
Some heavy handed vice
Clamped to my wrist.
Oh, crucifix,

You keep me martyred in my sheets,
The slate grey sky at my window
And northern wind that rattles the walls.
It’s enough to keep me in.

Your name passes by,
With features ill-defined.
A solution of Thyme,
Left to waste.
With heat of flame I’m
Left to dissolve.
Oh, perennial,

I suffered long, oh city streets,
Bite of cold from my belt buckle.
I dress swiftly to brave city sprawls.
It’s enough to keep me in,

It’s enough to keep me in,
When winter is at the door.

Your love is terminal and has weighed so heavy on my heart

Ever since that bottle of cider we shared was emptied

And let to lie there on the carpet and slip underneath the bed.



Revision: my love.

The weight still tugs at my chest,

And though I do not think of you that often

That long summer of nothingness will always find me

and warm my bones

and remind me of what was lost

in the tangled thistle as we came of age.

And I must concede;

That some things last a long time.



I remember when you refused my kiss

And seeing the restrain you had to pull

To stop yourself from falling into me once again.

The relief on your face as you broke the cycle,

It was plain to see that this was the moment

You would walk into that cowboy sunset,

You would grow up, fall apart

Tie your laces

And leave me on your roadside

Beside the dogs your father sent away

And all those forgotten, broken toys.



I’m fading away by degrees these days,

And I’m falling short of a ghost in the snow

And I feel that even if I could watch you sleep

Just one more time

I would just be the rain upon your window.

Most days
My energy is spent
Entirely
On putting one thought
In front of the other
So I don't stumble
Over my words
As much as I do
Choke on them

Let me rest.
Please, just let my mind rest
Away from these words that twist and crumple,
And fall listlessly onto the page.

I need a reprieve
From these thoughts that spiral
And catch on a loop
Which will then echo infinitely in my brain.

The wind falters
As bad blood settles back into the air
In the promise of another spring
Of disenchantment.

I’m not sure what this poem means,
And through the tides of time
These words will be no more
Than a speck of a speck.

But for now your eyes are upon me
As I hide behind the spaces between the words,
More than human,
Less than air.

And I love you
For simply being there.

I wish I could hold in me
the same indifference
to near-everything,
that you show with
such intrigue.

Objective steward,
you **** my mind with
one-thousand malformed thoughts.
Thoughts of my hypocrisy
and the spineless way
I have given up on
revolution.

We smoke by the canal,
getting high;
lamenting our lack of a decent broken home,
British hip-hop in the static of the upper classes.
They're doing more with their time,
old analogue transmissions, sleep-filled afternoons;
a paperback revolution, a snail's pace progression,
those ancient roads of forgotten travel,
the routes we had given up too soon.

I am too impatient now,
seeking The High
over inner peace, those new-found techniques
in favour of old habits; instantaneous retreat.
It's okay, this interludal existence, high-wire dependency
for a feeling ill-placed in sober routine.
We give up on chasing women
to chase heights we know we can never reach.

We smoke some more,
an artist's tomb;
the coffee table piano, old acoustics
with malformed necks, waning ligament of string.
Let's fill the emptied social scene,
appear red-eyed in the daylight,
pawing for a comfortable release.
We talk about hitting those unsung chords,
then we roll another, another,
until we cannot sing anymore.

Two escapists converge
to hustle the prison;
get high on the prospect
of getting high in the future.
We smoke by the canal,
feeling low, unstrung.
The out-of-tune white man blues,
pleading for acceptance
from the crowds we love to criticise.

They're counting scarecrows in moonlight
across the arid fields.
Men smoke cigarettes found in jackets
they've not worn in twenty-two years.

They're talking about Old Wisdom Street
and of getting into clubs.
Women are researching old lovers
they've not spoken to in years.

They're praying for the friends now gone
across time's limited field.
Children dress up as the Israelites
they've modelled in early years.

They're raising glasses to toast the present
and the fable of the past.
I have begun to listen to the lessons
they've not taught me for several years.

I lie in waste again.

I pace the carpeted floors,
with the padded feet of a big cat
so hurriedly cautious to mute
my steps.

The high is dull and repeated,
repeated.
Every day spun out on these
wine stained bedsheets.
My mind

is emptied
like a small town orchestral hall,
dusted and stale.

The lights on the screen
bend and converge into spirals of colour,
and the sounds from the speakers
coo subtly through the air,
soft, soft.

And the moon,
the moon hangs fat in the sky.
A hollowed spectre gleaming
Pearl-like
in the cushioned blue shadow of the night.

My lids fall heavy and dry;,
each blink an effort to keep consciousness
but the resin lines my blood
and holds true
in my bronchioles for just a little
longer.
Please,
a little longer.

A light fix of no consequence
and the return of an appetite long
lost
in the hermitage of depression.

The high is dull and repeated,
repeated
to still the pacing of my mind.

To capture the world within a frame,
and to quieten the thud of my heart.

There is no air left
In these sheets
If we don't get out soon
We will drown
In our stupid happiness

The hotel bedsprings sag to our weight,
we can hear the builders singing
down the fire escape.
They're singing for their winnings
and to drown out future losses,
and I think of how I came to be here,
over time, and the paths that it crosses.

And Tom is singing Hold On over the speakers,
whilst we're smoking a joint and
hiding from seekers.
I kiss you ******* the mouth,
and remove the need for words;
for polluting this moment
with a clumsy rhyme or verse.

You see me for the first time in sunlight,
the sunlight of a cloud canopy;
I whisper to you the secret of poetry:
in the simplicity of you and me.

You return my words with a silence,
but with a symphony of soft eye-gaze;
and forevermore I sleep in your witness,
forevermore, in your light, I will laze.

She sits naked on the floor
Picking songs and sipping
On her warm beer

I smoke by the window
At a new lover's distance
Watching her intermittently

The city is still
It's 3a.m.
Our bodies
Are spent on each other
The bedsheets still wet
With our sweat

After the fire
We separated
Into component pieces

She combed her hair
In the mirror
As I poured cold water

Over myself
And ******
With the bathroom door
Left open
My ****
Still a little hard

I could hear her sing
As I toweled myself
Watched the last of the water

Fall into the drain
And for the first time
I could remember

I did not have to try
There was no rush
There was nowhere

I needed to be

Today I find myself less of a writer
And more of a weatherman.

I’d like to talk to you about the settled snow
In my stepfather’s suburban garden,
That he worked so hard
And cracked his dried skin
To call it his own.

I’d like to tell you of the still air
Crisp with an early-January cold
And the sun that is daring to peek overhead
In the distance on a roof.

The only snowfall now is from the dendritic bark
Of the apple tree in the centre of the garden,
Melting just enough to slide from the branches
And the squirrels shovel snow
From their houses

Been staring at the screen too long,
Seeing faces in the whitewashed wall.
Been staring at the billboard
Promising a Brand New Freedom
And yet never felt so small.

Been fighting for inner peace,
The war inside my mind.
I find it helps to breathe,
To find that positive energy...
But I tend to just stick to wine.

Been giving up on giving up,
Then, giving up on that...
I’ve been a poet
And a life-long friend,
And I’ve been a selfish ****.

I’ve ****** on a stranger’s garden fence
When I was drunk and high,
I’ve disappeared for weeks on end
And never given a reason why.

I’ve been collecting memories
And turning them to lies,
I’ve become a shoulder
That you can lean on,
But one that you cannot cry.

Went crazy in the hotel sheets,
Took a pill to help me sleep,
The afterglow burned me out,
The after-party was letting out,
Been throwing up for days on end,
The winter blues, the long weekend.

Been falling into old routines,
Been lost inside my absent dreams.
Meditate on the toilet seat
To gain a modicum of sanity
In the caterwaul of the working day,
In the onset of reality.

Been picking fault in every line,
In every footstep, in every rhyme,
In the clumsy way I tie my shoes,
In the way I do not keep up with the news.

Been staring at the screen too long,
Hearing voices in the silence.
Been claiming love and poetry
But I think in *** and violence.

Been fighting for inner peace,
The war inside my mind.
I just find my way
To fill the day
And let the clock unwind.

After the rain,
there be flood of joy,
there be pianist fingers
shaping the keys, tending
sounds to solace.
There be stray dogs
falling in love
over railway tracks,
there be dinners of taste
and wine unending,
after the rain.

After the rain,
there be confident stride,
there be sun rays milked
over cloud as I see daylight.
After the rain,
there be confetti in the sky,
there be cleaner blood,
crisp wind and salt in the air.
There be long walks
through the old park,
cardboard lots of treasure
and a peaceful guitar,
after the rain.

After the rain,
there be faded scars,
there be off-white reminders
of the passing of winter,
the tide of Spring, as tears
come over in the promise of day.
Beauty thawed out
and turned to ice-water,
dulling the drink of Aquarius;
he pours it out to the needy valleys
and all the humans
with their acquired tastes.
After the rain,
we drink together,
we drink as one
and we drink in one,
the diluted drink of the Gods,
after the rain.

After the rain,
I write with force,
I write with foresight
and a wit to say sorry.
After the rain,
there be no more anger,
there be no blame
for severed friends
and teenage excess of love
and turmoil.
After the rain,
there be no more waste,
there be no plastic existence
under the guise of these walls,
there be no flag-waving,
there be no election,
there be no shepherding
of sentient light,
no tendon to chew
and no blood to pour,
after the rain.

After the rain,
life will finally happen.
After the rain,
there be no more cloud.

I have a tendency to distrust
anyone who has their **** together.
How the peaceful sleep at night
through wars on the television
and skeletons in their dreams.
I have a tendency to avoid
those who are whole;
those who possess a truth,
a faith that transmutes
all intention into each moment of chaos
that no human heart could understand-
those that stand on the hill
and work up their throats,
without saying anything much at all.
I have a tendency to fall in love
with the passing stranger,
clutching their phone
and all alone in the concrete streets.
Those who freeze in fear,
those who can barely eat;
those who still find the strength
to tap their feet
to music, and its restoring beat.

The notebook is full, tea turned cold.
State of satisfaction without completion,
no itch to scratch,
no craving to amuse on;
the binge has abated for now.

Fragmented selves have presented as me,
adjusting hair in the faces of strangers,
a drink in hand,
elephants in the room;
none of them relate to me.

Naturally gummed papers strew the desk,
audio jacks and water stained notes.
This is entropy,
this pile of laundry;
the European map, made in China.

Going crazy is an ongoing process, friend.
It takes a lifetime to master
the Bojangles walk,
the flat-capped freedom;
a filthy soldier's limp.

I am finding my place amongst the misfits.
The world behind a blast-screen,
no invested belief,
no disease left to treat,
staying in for the evening,

staying in for the week.

You tell me to get a grip
but I have got nothing
to hold on to.

My old teacher, she taught me of sunlight.

She taught me
of the energy waves,
crashing through the window.

She browsed
over distorted polygraphs
bleached in daylight;

oh, crashing black mark.

She wandered
through the courtyards at break,
eyes off and into the distance,

and always she,
the bleak reminder,
of memories turned to black.

She read in down-turned whisper,

lips twitching
the words, all for herself;
making sense of life

through ornamental verse.
A rapture of cerulean eyes,
she took my teenage heart

to town, just to pay the fare.

She taught me
of impossible love,
of all beyond the walls.

She taught me
of the paradise-life,
where memory unfurls.

She taught me
of matriarchal health,
in the strength of her stare,

explaining in her youth
eternal, that is etched
into my mind;

that not all that is loved, is fair,
and not all that is valued, is mined.

The fireworks make me nervous this year.
I dream of aliens by the back door,
their lenses centred on my idiocy,
and the ghost of my father
is haunting my every mistake.
I wear hats indoors to feel like someone else,
a costume for my solitude,
to play the poet,
and hide my head from the night.

Why is it that I only find strength
when there is nothing to fight against?

Why is it that love must
come after pay day?

Why is it that I only take to writing,
once I have realised I have no time for it?

Why is it I only value living,
once I feel dead inside?

Why is it that people only look at me,
when I've given up
and walked away?

Why is it that the words come to me,
only after silence has fallen?

Why is it that I find myself dreaming,
yet can never get any sleep?

Why is it, my darling,
that when you touch me,
you feel nothing at all?

I know how you would shy away from the term 'best friend'. Such a lofty position to hold in one's life – one that, you think, could never be afforded to you and your self-effacing ways.

Never one to gush or to quantify feelings into measurable and incriminating words of affection, or indeed, to impart friendliness through any means other than private jokes and last-minute hugs; I know full well that this enterprise of writing for you is rather trite and pointless. I would be better off wringing my hands and waiting anxiously by your front door.

But I am through with transient sensations of red wine and naked, fictitious, unobtainable women. I am through with curing a world that does not want to be cured. I have drank more than enough coffee, so to write bitterly would only **** all sensations.

In rations of cigarettes and endless walks, you helped to facilitate a recovery that at times I felt was beyond me – and probably was, without you. You and I, experts at self-hate and isolation, found a kindness in the exchange of insults, dead arms, and dreams of an escape from these streets of all-too-familiar names and faces – our unwanted dependence on our mothers and indifferent friends.

There have been times when I have left you behind. It scalds me to think of those years you spent in containment, inside the four walls of your mother's house with only her acid tongue for company. No job, no voice, and only tedious entertainment – those torn nights where you went out of your mind with boredom and hopelessness. All whilst I was too busy and too far-off to take the time to notice.

I discarded you in favour of a love that was always going to lose its charm, lose its patience with my lazy sadness and horrendous monobrow. It was a wretched way to treat a friend, I know, and no silly poem or attempt at prose could come close to bridging the deficit.

There is no ugliness in fragility, but it is gruesome to be lonely. In the cheap affair of swing-side smoke and your father's stolen whiskey, you taught me there is no need for success, if failure is found in good company.

And yet I wish you completion and contentment with a desperate gratitude above that of all others. You have lived too long a life set in compromise with your captors; persistent aches of insufficiency in some form or another, and self-punishment for everything that is out of your control.

In sleepless nights and deathly, early mornings, in which you cannot differentiate between the two, or where dreams begin and end; you are piecing together a life of your own. A brave, painstaking betterment of yourself, after bathing so long in a helpless void. Not once was I there to help you through, to be the voice at the end of the line that I so claim to be.

Despite this, you gave me those late-night vigils, talking between screens, in words that resembled care and concern, regardless of their off-hand and conversational tone.

I know that I have made you cry during the times I have wanted to die. I know I have shut myself from you at times when you needed an open door. So from now on, everything is left on the latch for you. No weather, time, or entity, will prevent me from repaying my debts.

I have found a friend to crawl home to. All of the rest is filler. All of the rest, I can live without.

I think it's finally happened.
I'm functioning again.
Thawing out on a deckchair
in my concreted garden,
the sky is thinning and
promising March.

It's finally happened.
I don't have to pretend.
I had forgotten the taste of air,
now I walk through the book shops,
peeling through new volumes
and nesting for my own.

I think I'm getting there.
All barriers descending.
Misery is not ending
but changing, forming
to constellations of doubt
in the vast expanse of space.

I'm finally getting there.
I'm functioning again.
The papers are stacking
and news is coming in;
we have thrown down our arms,
crossing continents in the sun.

It is not true that everyone
wants to reach for the stars.

Some of us just want to get high.

Black is the colour
You see it in
The core of my eyes
All the excuses I steal
All the malformed lies

In all the sheep I lead
To the slaughter
In a thinly-veiled
Wolf's disguise
Black is the colour

Now you see it
In the headlines
All the friends
You could not keep
All the colours

That pass you by

When the night comes
so will you.

Glass eyes fit over waxed, jaundice skin.
“I love you,” he whispers to his darling,
Careful not to break her celery fingers;
“just remember that,” he says,
As he kisses her forehead goodnight.
“And if you don’t see me in the morning,
It’s only because I’m finding my way home.”

Her eyes bake briefly in the ceiling light
Before he flicks the switch, and takes
To the carpeted stairs. The house is filled
With photo-frames and still-life happiness.
It causes memories to filter out the reality
Of some former life,
Some weekend spent in the Masif Central.

They say the eyes are windows to the soul,
But Helena’s closed behind Roman blinds long ago.
Black dwarfs are pupils,
Set in the salmonella grey of irises,
That once were stained
In streaks of bottle green and ginger ale.

In death, this was not Helena.
It was a vinegar haze and deflowered carcass,
Preserved within her husband's arms.
As always he tended to her living,
As always he would fall to
violent acts of grateful lust.

The police stormed in
as he was putting on her makeup,
as he dressed in drag
and started howling at the moon.