Poetry is dead.
I am only writing to you as a
Ghost myself.

Do not fear though,
For in death restrictions are forgiven
And we can roam senselessly
Through the annals of time.

Let us read of the modesty
Of the notebook. Oh, how I’ll
Remind you of the typewriter,
Lest we forget its aggression.

The pound of the letters,
Each stamped with vengeance
Onto the page.

The digital age.

This is all still just an elaborate
And effortful attempt
To paint our hands onto the
Wall of a cave.

So, poetry is dead
And I believe you are too.
Else you wouldn’t be reading this,
You would have something more unhealthy to do.

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.

The sun is soft this year.

It sits so still above the carpet of the clouds,
Bashful and modest
For its own resplendence.

How I understand Icarus,
And his moth-like lust for
Its motherly warmth.

How I wish to slip beneath its surface
And to find myself bathed in
Life and light.

How I would forgo the steel of the sea
And the cold blue of the sky
To return to the star that birthed me

And all of my love for words.

Oh, precious friend
of life and light,
who too, seeks the answers
in the night,
in those humble pockets
of solitude,
in which all of us
will brood,
who too, struggles
with the pace of day,
with their troubled soul
left to decay;
fear not on death,
nor life's dismay,
when you come to me
on Christmas Day.

Dear friend of mine,
in lifetime's past,
before the court assigned
our caste,
from troubled years,
where we learned to love,
when we moved to question
the stars above,
when we learned the value
of today,
to beware even
the ides of May;
but fear not on doubt,
nor love's delay,
when you come to me
on Christmas Day.

And, my fellow soul
and Earthly delight,
who too, thrives upon
friendship's sight,
the warmth of wine,
and future schemes,
of how to attain
your lucid dreams,
who too, lives upon
where souls do play,
lest childhood minds
fall astray;
but fear not on loss,
nor what you portray,
when you come to me
on Christmas Day.

everything feels fun and new.
i mean, i'm in no way a functioning adult
but some sort of weight has been lifted.
i feel good. i am singing - of sorts - again.
i am writing better words
and smiling more.
there are still spaces to be filled
and a few more caverns to explore
but there is no endless void or black hole.
only oil-lit passageways underground
where i will go when i'm low
in the knowledge that i will find my way out.

Where will I go when I am dead?
Will I get the chance to rest my head,
to finally find a comfort to sleep,
to make up for the lovers
I have failed to keep?

Will I meet my father at the end?
Where fragments gather and come to mend-
all of these pieces that I have been,
all broken strings, false surnames,
and sights left unseen.

Will I come to say what was never said,
or else forsake these words for your open bed?
In death, will there come a feeling I have missed,
through this fear of living,
this drunken, tearful mist?

I light up a joint on the cemetery walk,
skimming the tombstones with swollen eyes.
Whether pen or print, engraving or chalk,
will some higher truth sustain me
beyond a life of erosion and lies;

will any of these misguided words
make it through to more tolerable times?

Leonard swam amongst the basalt rock.
A music box of echo and tide,
***** pipes of molten Earth
petrified in place. He stood within

the natural cathedral and cleansed himself
of suitcases, old postcards, and
sweethearts, whilst the White Stranger
looked out for his sweet Iona.

Amy bathed her feet in the Sea of Stars.
She left her clothes on Conrad's
carpet and held plankton in her palms.
Freckles of light formed in a hand-held

pool. They bent and assembled into order.
She was the forgotten daughter
of fine wine and bold name tags,
until she left them for the salt and the sand.

Ryan sat in the sun with his shades on,
stabbing ice whilst making a call
to the office. He stretched out on his
day-drunk fortune, collecting souvenirs

and belly fat, double chins and photographs;
his wallet purging in the tourist trap
of old Van Dieman's land. He thought
that he'd escaped her prison, a long time ago.

I don’t play chess with love.
There is no strategy, no foresight,
No due process; only a knot in the gut
Which prevents all action
That does not result in your touch.

I don’t chase after love.
I lie in wait, in unfamiliar places,
Abandoned mines and filthy drunk tanks-
Watch morning break through the cloud
With stupid hope there are no more false dawns.

I don’t bear false witness to love.
I tie a ribbon to the loaded gun
And hand it over to the woman
Holding a scalpel with a smile
And earnest for my confession.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
My heavy limbs, lack of light.
Waking up to Ground Zero
And sleeping with a lie of chemicals .
I don’t want to forget how to love.

I don’t think the choice is mine.

School children walk by in their dirtied rugby kits
as a reminder that it only takes five years for
inertia to calcify and turn into a state of mind.

I smoke by the front door, ear to the hallway
in case a phone call comes from the government,
lending me money so that I can break up the days.

There is no need to change. No reason to pull out
of these clothes and take to window shopping
in the market town of charity shops and fast food.

My bed is full of crescent moons in nightcaps
and faceless stars, sewn together in Indonesia,
some small hands that gave me a comfort which

faded through wash cycles and pill-drawn sleep.
I have given myself to application forms and binary,
Yes/No answers to my heritage and right to work.

All I can do is lie exhausted in the night sky,
draw the curtains from daylight, and hope that
poetry is enough to punctuate the afternoon.

I thought depression was a creative drama;
a way to filter reality into a thousand petalled lotus
flower that blooms through broken skin and sends

algae past the ionosphere and into the breathless
lung of space. There is caffeine for food and boiled
sweets to give the sensation of mint and sugar.

I thought depression was a poet's ultimate muse.
I thought depression brought the most peaceful sleep.
I thought happiness came in basaltic columns,

echo chambers that sang with water flutes and
siren songs. I thought that I would find the current,
lengthen my back, and then float to dry land.

all the songs i lost on lovers

no longer mine

*****-inducing

barbiturate of old guilt

and even older happiness

all the songs i lose on lovers

all the lovers i lost to verse

The daylight comes through curtains,
Giving the afternoon an echo-glow
That comes only from a lifetime indoors.

It is going to be another night
Of pleasing thank you’s,
And scouring lipstick off plastic.

My teeth are yellowing in a caffeine binge,
As hands tremble over loose change;
Too much change to be sure of anything.

I am tired of this departure lounge of life.
My bags are packed, I’m ready to leave,
Yet still I sit, whilst others take to the sky.

I watched you slip off into sleep,
leaves descending from the castle keep.
You let down your hair,
laid down on the bed,
reciting from memory
all the lines you've been fed.

I held your hair as you threw up water,
claiming to be the forgotten daughter.
You held my hand
and you kissed my cheek,
said you thought you were cursed
by a landscape so bleak.

You rested for a couple days more,
then paced the walls for an open door.
We took to the park
and smoked by the river,
I swallowed the longing
that words failed to deliver.

By the time you recovered, you walked away,
to a seaside lover of salt and spray.
I am stranded here,
buried in snow,
searching the skies
for the wings I let go.

I was raised in a market town
with nothing to sell
but the notion of escape
to higher planes
and better times.

Landlocked,
the bars only serve
to bring you down
or to distract you with sports news
and the price of beer.

The drunk crowds assemble
in uniform fashion,
at a routine time
with cyclical conversation
and a lack of expression.

With no time for a future,
we focus on the past,
memories of fuller wallets,
of that potential lover,
now a passing glance.

Still we drink and we meet
to satisfy our days,
to turn our sorrow
into laughter,
and to keep loneliness at bay.

I have tried to replace it
with peppermint tea,
I have tried to repress it
with Phenibut and ****.
Painting wood the colour of metal,
I moved to erase the splinters
by feigning progression,
whilst all the while
that thorn in my side
became a mental health obsession.

I have tried to better it
with morning walks and coffee,
I have tried to harness it
with Chaturanga and poetry.
Siphoning words through a trusted vessel,
I came to meditate belonging
through crystals and nicotine,
whilst all the while
that space in my bed
could no longer be filled with wine.

I have tried to fulfil it
with an endless stream of ****,
I have tried to out-live it,
but always fall asleep by dawn.
Kissing through the sweat of a fever,
I bite my pillow-case and
think of your inner thighs,
whilst all the while
that warmth of touch
is lost to the cold, empty skies.

The weight of the world smothers me,
leaving troubles in my head,
yet you soften me with tranquility;
your own weight upon my bed.

And what a waste of poetry,
to forget what you bestow.
So I’ll write to you dear, so breathlessly,
to tell you of what I owe.

Without you I live absently,
just a shape within this world.
For, you’re the blossom of the cherry tree,
the colour of life unfurled.

So think not on the atrophy
of my day-to-day romance,
and more so upon the fluidity
of which you and I do dance.

We dance to divine simile,
and I write of what was left.
You may say that I write with such beauty;
but without you I’m bereft.

Bereft of any symmetry,
devoid of your wholesome kiss,
for, it’s with kindness that you nourish me,
and leave me in fateful bliss.

I've been drinking all the time,
I've been poisoning my wine,
take a pill to send me off to sleep.

And I've been spinning you a line,
whilst bawling out my eyes,
the grain is fast becoming
a desert-island heap.

There's a mantra in the ground,
lay your ear to the quick-sand crowd,

to hear all commonalities
expressed in forms of symmetry,

expressed in half-formal letters,
in aboriginal dance,
in the fated glance of
a bus-stop stranger;
a romance of happenstance.

Through a discourse with my loss,
I feel that finally I have won:
I just want to feel happiness for once.

Another shattering of illusions,
as I sit here in cocktail mist
and cannabis descent,
staring with guilt at the nicotine gum;
all the time applying lotion
to care only for exteriors.

Gold *** in apple juice,
I unsettle the ice in partial decency.
Half-baked notebooks scatter
amongst the stray tobacco leaves,
neglected books, tablets and glue;
it's little wonder my life has
fallen
apart.

Old jazz queen,
she's rolling trills and cigarettes
and reminding me of my spine,
the way it twists to the bass-line,
sending chakras to bedlam
and returning to me
my recently lost youth.

Keep it off the record,
as I tumble on through another night
of poison and medicine equivalence,
a summum bonum of forget-me-do's
and elimination of both
the future and past.

I clear the leaves from my autumnal porch.
After the dead slate of winter,
I will emerge, sober.

The sirens sound across the street.
It sounds like tinnitus in my ear.
Down in reality where lovers meet,
In the open air so fresh and clear.

So, I find myself in the glow
Of the dulled screen and its bleached-white page.
Oh, I hope to god my desires show,
In the eyes of a more studious age.

Longing. Longing, the word defined,
By my non-action; an artists’ life.
So I must sit and read, my words refined.
The husband of art, lustre; my wife.

This wine tastes like young vinegar,
The tobacco like dirt. They will these
Rushed little sentences together
Like mixed fibres in your polyester shirt.

Another poem for the ghosts.
And another for those in between
The place where desolation meets the coasts,
And the places it’s already been.

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 for 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,
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,
your over-complicated strides.
Simple, temporary medicine

that is the comfort
and never 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.

I am tired of trying to find
Words that rhyme,
Words to quantify
This meaning bereft in my chest.

Where are you now?
You promised to be here forever.
You said that nothing could steer you
From the love found within our bed.

Darling, I know that I’m a fool,
That you did well just to keep with my moods,
But now that I need you more than ever,
I have lost you to some art teacher.

He’s killed Rufus, and stripped me of art.
He has taken from me my constant,
An oxygen tank in this tear-gas foreign field;
Now my lungs are drowning in dread.

And all I can ask in this strange composure
Is where I went wrong in flesh surrender;
Did I not keep you warm through North-Eastern winds?
Did I fail to capture what you felt was the end?

It became a famous joke
the way trouble followed you home

How you sang into tiny microphones
on ruined afternoons

How you put leaflets through doors
to fund the calm of evening

It became a famous joke
last to arrive and the first to leave

How you are still in love
with every woman you have known

How you smell of beer and cigarettes
on your clothes and on your breath

It became a famous joke
the way trouble followed you home

How you lost the will to speak
How you stopped answering the phone

We parked at the side of the road,
You put my hand up your skirt,
Said “I’ve had a lifetime of hurt,
Make me feel that I am not alone.”

Could hardly kiss you for the lack of breath,
Could hardly look at you in the fear
Of how it feels to forget.

You had a man at home.
I was more alone than you could ever be.
Felt no sympathy for your cause of misery
Amongst luxury;

Could hardly say no in this lack of flesh,
This tom-cat longing
Once all the daylight has left.

We parked at the side of the road,
Old-stringed guitar: all rhythm and no tone.
Limbs splay across the gear-stick;
Passionless and cold,

Weak delirium of instinct
Was enough to get me through.
Could hardly speak to you

Once the engine started again.
You pulled your skirt down,
Turned the radio on,
And wondered *who cheated who?

The stale stench of cannabis,
Settles deep into the fibres
Of my heavy coat
And already I miss the haze of dull beauty,
A mind that whispers instead of screaming
And that wonderful appetite that can never be extinguished.

And I sit at my desk
With dawn fast approaching.
She burns my tired eyes with demands of sleep,
But I will resist
And I will write
For no reason and with little aim,
Filing time before I can collapse into my sheets,
Or else hear the crackle of cigarette paper,
As resin laces my lungs.

Oh, I miss your paws more than ever now,
My wordless little friend.

A ***** film fixes itself onto a loop behind my eyelids.
The particulars fall apart all around me
And Plato’s cave becomes more of a cell.

How hard it is to swallow
The pill of panic that sticks and forms
Into that lump
In your throat.
The one that resides from the first steps into school
And onward the rest of your life.

And I write,
I write to stay sane
To calm my breath
To organise those thoughts
And to reduce that shriek of depression
Into a bray of indifference.

Hey Porter,
What price for the forgotten vinyl in the corner,
And the dog-eared books
Donated by the whiskered old woman?
Hey Porter,
What price for that fish,
To save me the thud of scales on wood
And to see of its return to water?

And I write,
I write to stay calm
Revision: to become calm.
To attempt calm.

And I play,
I strum to the sound of my heartbeat
Until the buzz of strings slows enough
For me to lay down
And crash into my pillow.

How exhausting it is,
To care about every gnat’s demise in the
Twilight of an Indian summer
And every flicker of doubt
You see in the strangers you pass by.

It won't be long.
It won't be long
until you find yourself
running to the platform
with your suitcase
faltering over the cracks
in the concrete.
As the train pulls out
you see blinding fears
diminish and then
disappear entirely.
You see false love
for what it is
and then thank whoever
for your opportunity
to experience it.
It won't be long
until those psalms of travel
become a reality.
Until you are removed
from your pigeon-hole
and post-code
which have been tagged
to you since birth.
You can replace
them with a new name
or in the different way
you apply your eye-liner
and look across
the new rooms
you frequent.
It won't be long
until you find yourself.
I promise,
it won't be long.

Do you take the path of least resistance to get through the day?
Do all those leaflets make zero sense to you, too?
So you take a beeline route to avoid
anyone that is trying to sell you something;
the missionaries by the charity shop,
old lovers in the beer garden-
do you take worn paths only to lament
the lack of changing scenery?

Do you get ****** up just to calm down?
Do the seasons creep up on you, too?
In one moment, are you walking through the autumn leaves,
only to find yourself buried in snow?
Buried in the hue of the darkest blue,
where only melodies can reach you beneath the soil,
a tone-deaf beat that gives cause
for you to wait out the winter,
until something starts to give,
until something comes to change,
until the old warehouse of memories
is finally rearranged.

Do you miss the moments that matter
only after they do not matter anymore?
Do you always hope for friends
only after you have locked every single door?

Oh, blessed eyes of infancy,
unknowable love of misery,
I will lend to you my fatherly face,
for your sleepy breath
and all sin erased.

Be still in sight, make a man of me,
let me tend to you, my mimicry.
I will lend to you mistakes of my past,
to devour a lesson
that is built to last.

Oh, brand new eyes of innocence,
Impatient love of my descent,
I will hold you with strength I’ve never possessed,
I will tend to your soul,
I will beat in your chest.

My head is in the toilet again,
as I cling to the tiling
to satisfy my place. All the time
growing smaller,
growing tired of this face.

It reflects in the ****-water like moonlight,
like a stranger huffing solvents
in the street. All the while I think
of your location;
in both life and the placing of your feet.

I have tumbled through darkness for years now,
so far that I have entered
forever-night. Oh, I miss your
voice on the telephone,
and more so in the absence of light.

I'm having trouble with my head again,
as I wilt like the orchids
on your table. I fear that soon
I will slip away,
that soon,
I will be but a passing fable.

We're all looking for that bigger high,
we're all looking for a match,
a retreat into a field of wine,
with a roof made out of thatch.

The gulls cry out across the quay,
a prayer naught but an angry mob;
they are searching for eternity,
they are doing it all for G-d.

The solider cries into his ballast sleep
in the analogue plains of war,
no poppy to **** the pain so steep,
no desire to ****, no more.

We're all looking for that higher love,
we're all looking for that 'it',
a life beyond land-mine and slaughter,
beyond false outrage and solemn submit.

A standardized suit.
A universal fit for
all those
who do not feel the nourishment of food.

A career path
cut
through the hem of childhood
and choked by a cheap thin
patterned tie.

The mothering
of a paranoid system;
“it’s not my fault,
just jump through the hoops.

I get paid to read you this book.
Lend me half your ear
and I will half teach you:

Think.
Don’t think.”

Spot the simile.
Dot the t and circle the i.
And I.

I am all in a room painted
with flyers.

They work like road signs,
luminescent with lasered ink
and ladled with pictures
of success.

You can.
You can’t.
You shall.

They hang
like smiling convicts on the wall.
A warning shot to remember
every time you catch yourself
staring into the sky.

Teacher, you are right - it is just like me,
in wrath, I know only to curse the sea,

for all that is looking but never found,
for all the persons I shall never be.

So I turn back to my foolhardy pen
in the hope that I should breathe once again

the air we had shared in memories drowned,
now left to spoil amongst capricious men.

Our budding memoir is wrought in white gold,
yet at your ghost’s feet, I buckle and fold.

It is within these sheets that I am bound,
Oh, How it severs hearts to be so bold!

I shall live as a fragment of a hive,
lost autonomy; no longer alive.

But one day I’ll mine the old lion’s mound,
upon the tremor of my childhood’s sound,
I’ll yell from the cornfields; wait to be found,
‘neath the canopies where the leaves have browned.

And teacher, you’re right - it is just like me,
to dismiss my blessings, I’m blind, you see,
to all that’s thawed in this frozen beauty
and the way that we kiss so absently.

There was a time I walked with you
Beneath the railway bridge inside my mind.
Where rain fell hard and we stayed dry,
Collecting memories and passing time.

There was a time I would talk to you,
The vestige of care for my swollen heart.
How it overflowed with love for you,
How it still does, though we're apart.

And I still dream of you, you know,
I dream most every single night,
And when I wake, this broken man,
You are the only smile, the only light.

But you chose to stay and I understand
His love was safe and warm as a glove.
I blew hot and cold, a Bipolar storm,
You cannot rely on me, my love.

So you'll grow old and fat and kind,
Beneath the eaves of his easy years.
I'll grow wise and tough and cold,
Bent and crooked, effaced by fears.

But if you ever feel the breeze of doubt
Inside your confident stride,
Just know that I still walk with you,
Beneath the railway bridge inside my mind.

I tried to keep my focus on the out-breath,
to the things I can offer
rather than what I keep inside.
I have tried yoga poses
at the crack of dawn
with nothing but my underwear on;
I tried to drink eight pints
of water a day
to ensure that my veins do not rust away,
to fill myself with the basic essence of life-
but I could not handle the broken sleep
each time I woke, desperate for a ****
in the depths of the night.
I tried to blu-tac unfinished songs
to my wall, emulating product-placement
but with nothing left to sell.
I know I cannot keep smoking ****
to emulate a stalwart companion.
These broken streets
look more second-hand to me,
and I have tried to find
that sober sleep,
that wide-eyed wonder
outside of these stale, chemical dreams-
but all I get are cold sweats
and cold shoulders;
people growing all around me
like stalks in a cornfield,
blocking all but a circle of light
that hangs over my head;
the bottom of a well,
the bottom of the world.

I am doing my best to keep on top
of all the things
that threaten to bring me down.

Please, sit with me.
Talk to me of travels far
and scandals now settled.
Load me up on gin,
as you give me
my first piano lesson.

You press elementary chords
with the expertise that appears
to flood, flood in all your motions;
in all commotions of doubt
and in the brilliant glow of hair,
that has so stolen my heart.

Please, bear with me.
Crest of a tolerant smile
as my clumsy fingers fail,
loaded with gin and fear
of all inadequacies,
of all loss of melody.

These deficient hands apologise,
as they ***** in your blessed wake.
Unholy pilgrim (whiskey on the sly),
I temper doubt in suspended life
as you squeeze lime into my shot,
oh, my saint and shaman of poisons.

Please, do remember me.
Recall ease of laughter
and all of the moment's poetry.
We're loaded up on gin,
as I drink for safety,
as I drink for old scars
and as I drink you out,
before the start,
before a career of future hurt

in the fear of love found through Chopin:
an eternal, unsatisfied infatuation.

All this,
as you give me
my first piano lesson.

I spend far too much time,
writing about wine.
I spend far too much time,
needing it.

And I spend far too much time,
making words that rhyme.
And not enough time,
living it.

For the banks of the Tyne,
I sing for what's mine,
And all of the brine
it searches.

For the bells that do chime,
and green nails of lime,
You are all that I dare
dream about.

Though I spend too much time,
cleansing the grime,
And far too much time
cursing it.

And there's not enough time,
to live like a mime,
to only chronicle secrets
in silence.

Hand-painted ceramic turtles
camouflage in flower beds.
I discern their faces
at a distance.

Blind-sided kaleidoscope-
work fatigue
versus
the first breath of morning
in the heart of April.
I am awake,
half-alert,
inertia bleating in my bones
where is the steady drum of mercy
where is the heart inside my home?

White blossoms fall
like Disney snow
cans of Stella at my feet.
Cardboard boxes  
damp and listless blow
across the lawn
and the silent street.

Amitriptyline
softens the edges.
A chemical reaction
that can never be
the Solution.

Spring is bleeding into colour
before my eyes.
I want to break the skin,
taste something sweet-

too scared that my timing
is not right.

We were lovers once, for all of time eternal.
That's no fabrication, says old Sugarman;
but that's a concretal fact.

We spoke as friends, atop the canopy of rainforest.
Costa Rican insight, we speak in tongues of delight,
pushing, pulling, pushing upon desire - all the while
smiling serenely into your ***** cocktail,
aware of the pressing concerns
into your later freedoms.

We love. We love and love instantly.
Skin baptised in humidity and rains rising in abundance
across the steep
valley of further treetop,
fading to cloud
beneath us.

Beneath us is the world: unbounded and plenty.
I settle eyes onto yours, stomach knotting, yet ensured,
as smiles weep to emancipated longing,
and this sheer belonging now felt
for this; our Eden, cast upon Astral shores.

In prophetic view of paradise, I pour water from a jug.
Clear as mind, I see through solar nourishment,
the expanse of all life, the life that crescendos
each time you sip on your straw.

Memory cleansed of all magnitude, now but fragmented
thoughts of nothings and second-hand sentiments,
I remember only the passage of our time up here,
the balcony of heaven and of Earth combined.

We kiss in the rays of Astral sunlight,
brighter than the longest of our day!
We sip red wine leant across the railings,
your dress clings emphatically
to the motions of your body.
It becomes as if brutality never existed.
I concede to life
and its offerings for all.

I kiss you greedy in the fast-fading sunlight,
as the sky is re-birthed in the conception of tomorrow.
I kiss you ******* the mouth
as we survey the old kingdom of man,
and these dying moments
before our next subliminal fall.

Please stay with me now in suspension,
this devoted region of nature, of plumage
and the removal of all sin.

I am done with whiskey slurs
and cigarette burns,
of chasing zeros
and memories unconfirmed.

I am done with complaining
about all of tomorrow,
about all of the pound
pound
pound of the heart
that resides in this chest,
this useless vehicle of flesh,
of matter born to die
and innocence always corrupted.
Please stay with me now,
as I go down
down
down...
please stay with me now,
my new sight.

I am sitting on the riverbank,
watching rocks cleave the
running water and thinking
of all the times I allowed the
moment to slip within my hands.

It's not a healthy process,
to lament the past or forecast
the future, and so I am learning
how to divide my time between
the two; to find the moment
that lingers in the centre.

There is progress to be made,
if you sacrifice some time for today.
I have music playing as I stare
up at the ceiling, I have friends
waiting to heal me at the bar.

I am catching trains to London
and back, trading secrets for living
with those who have seen me grow.
I am trying for a new wave of thinking,
a way to revive that former youthful glow.

I put you to the back of my mind,
not because I don't care,
but as the grieving mother-of-two
places her own mother's
garments into the attic:
none of you
has left me,
I promise.
It's just that I do not fit.

It would be too painful
to throw you away.

So now you stand
as a measure to dust and distance;
as a measure for every woman
who calls me by my name.
We walked together
on lonely mid-night crawls,
the pillow-talk in my empty sheets;
you were the stalwart companion
in all of miy dreams.

The miracle in the chicken shop,
the sanctum on the screen.

I put you to the back of mind
so that I could focus on
what is in front of me.
None of you
has left me,
I promise.
My hands blister
from holding onto you,

but it would be too painful
to throw you away.

I shall never know,
if you faked those blackouts.

The ones that made you crumple
on the stairs. Or else out in the cold
of Andy's rusted shed. Once I caught

you naked, you know,
during one of your blackouts.

I shall never know,
if you faked those blackouts.

I wouldn't have blamed you,
a shed-full of
wasted tanks and canisters;
lighter fluid, degreaser, air freshener,
foot spray – they spoilt the flooring,
and they spoilt our thoughts.

Never once deterring
from the self-manifest dream of escape,
of truth and eventual decay;
we took to bare arms
to satisfy
our escape from oxygen.

And, in open view,
you laid out naked with her.
You more studied her,
than ****** her,
you more observed ***,
than became it.

I wanted her
as much as I wanted to be you.

So, I traced my dreams to your nothings,
upon your heralded wisdom,
but never could I untangle
from some impossible condition.

No, I never could untangle
the means from the ends,
and never could I darken
at will,

my old blackout friend.

I am a man of simple pleasures
and complex desires

Started over again
Re-learned my sums
Until I could stand
Over the faucet
And count my blessings
Again

Children play with no shoes on
As locals drink coffee
At the daytime bar
They let me sit at their table
Eat their food

Fall passive and glum
Amongst their easy conversation

I learned to be clean again
It started with the dishes
My clothes
Then at a snail's pace
***** and cigarettes followed

Soon sleep was no enemy
I greeted it like a friend
With the aid of her weight
Across the mattress
Her breath

That filled the silence
Of the room
Started over again
Rolled away the stone
To let the light back in

I heard they found him hiding
behind claims of inner peace
and the sweaty palms of a
bare-breasted Parisian lover.
They found red stains on the
mattress. She could have been
a ******; young thoughts and sin,
though I know Leonard had
quite the taste for cheap red wine.
It would often resemble blood-lust.

They dragged him away through
the photographer's parade,
one million flashes mimicking
nature to capture the colour
leaving his handsome face.
In a faded suit and tie,
in a faded verse and rhyme,
he addressed the crowd to call
for freedom, to call for anything
more than a monthly wage.

I heard they found him lurking
in the digital archives of their crimes,
biding his time to become a hero,
to blow the whistle once he had
finally learned how to carry a tune.
He found innocent blood-shed
in the dust-cloud streets and money
distributed amongst greedy hands
like poker chips, passing weaponry
between countries like a blunt.

They dragged him away to
great public disgrace,
funding the next big blockbuster,
turning genius to mania,
and his lover into a victim.
In the lack of space or time,
in the lack of pouring wine,
Leonard learned to whistle
from by the window until
the inner peace returned,

until he understood the birds,
until the city came to burn.

Our relationship belongs to the press.
The word has been out for a week now,
along with a ***-tape
and my drunken messages
from a sleepless hotel room.

They captured your good side. From behind.
You know that I always loved you in blue,
collarbones on the mantelpiece
and toenails painted with
the colour to match your moods.

I heard you crashed your car in a bunker
as you were documenting loss in Gaza.
The rockets flew overhead
as you were carried, pearl through dirt
into a white-skinned hospital bed.

I denounced my royalty by text message.
I blu-tacked a passport picture on the Queen's
vanity mirror, and took a ****
in the Yeoman's shoe.
We slipped out at night to blind cameras.

Our relationship belongs to the state.
The bills have been due for a week now,
along with better luck
and a wine glass full
of whatever will suit your taste.

I need to break out of the wide-open cell I have locked myself in.
I can spot the thieves, the robbers, the vagrants,
all shifting through the sticky tin and plastic
of my life's wasted moments.

Every alternative reality mocks and condescends me,
highlighting every stutter and stumble
as I fall through life on this (temporal and fleeting) trapeze.

And clinging onto the hopes of a softer landing,
I know I will always fall into the safety of the net
so that I do not land deep in that shallow water
and drown in a six-inch pool.

I have been thinking of rope again.
The simplicity and mastership it would take
to efficiently break my neck so that the crack of bone would precede
the crack of thread.

I have been thinking of sleep again.
The simplicity and infallibility it contains.
Incorporating every aspect of being
and painting it in the only colours I can see.
And I see.
And I understand.

For the passage of tomorrow,
I cut myself a key.
Hoping that by walking on,
I will come to see

all the beauty frozen in place
and all postmodern lust,
the temples left to ruin in sun,
now covered in ancient dust.

For the promise of a taxi,
I walk on through the rain.
Hoping that I’ll sober up
In time to catch the train,

that will take me off to Europe,
that will take me to my room,
that will undress me by the window
and kiss me like a groom.

I plan to marry Bratislava,
kiss Amsterdam on the cheek,
run away with Budapest,
away from times so bleak.

For the programme of education,
I grew myself a tree.
Under the eaves I dreamt of you
and all you were meant to be.

I hope you’re living at frightful speed,
I hope you’ve learned to shout.
It’s been far too long since I’ve heard your voice
oh, it’s been far too long without

your words grunted in the morning,
your words in any form at all,
I see your ghost in every corner,
And I see you in the hall.

I wish I could describe to you the catching of the sun

On the afternoon leaves.

To tell you their story and appearance

In a way you have not been told

Every other day of your life.



I wish I could instil in you the same thrill

That flutters my heart

When the chemistry of words spill across the page

And fall into a perfect endless spiral



I wish I could sing to you

Past the broken sounds that fill my throat

And the stifling of that timid ghost

That haunts me every day.



I want to fill the rafters

With the tapestries of my non-experience

And the feel the groan of the orchestra behind me

As I tell the tales of my selfish angst.



The same angst that still tells me I am exceptional

Every time I sit down to write.

And those afternoon leaves still sway by my window,

Kissed by the sun.

For Blythe*

My friend, where did you go in such a hurry?
I was stood at the bar, reciting my order
as a preparatory mantra for an interaction
that was always difficult for the both of us.

Everyone is dropping like mayflies here.
A silent dive out of the hologram
and towards more indelible climbs.

I know you lived with an abusive secret;
poorly kept, yet rarely addressed in
your tectonic silences. Irretrievable fractures
that birthed the fault lines in your face.

Fate was donated into your hands.
Another kind soul torturing itself
for merely being human.

My friend, please tell me where to go.
Tell me, how soon will I follow?
Tears have collected in oceans for you.
As you knew that they would.

But even that could not stop you
once love had lost its flavour.

I'm coming to meet you, travelling swiftly,
drunk on this: my escape from the city.

Escape from want and relief from this bleeding,
from gravity's hold, my soul receding.

I come with the message of all life restored,
upon the cycle of Tibetan chord,

I come with the song you thought I'd never sing,
of kingdom's passing, celestial ring.

Too long a cynic and too short a season,
I have learnt this living;
I have found a reason.

A reason for waking so dutifully,
to tread the Earth in sweetened loyalty,

a reason for thinking in patterns too deep,
for talking aloud to you in my sleep.

I'll tell you of the hum I hear in still breath,
the vanity of of seeking life through death.

I come with a great message of bound duty,
I come with childhood memory in tact,

I offer up my unitary wisdom,
to consciousness and the potency of fact.

For all the worries in your head,
all the tears that you have shed,
will we all know what it meant,
when we reach our life's ending?

And the rain stains the path,
to the stagnant Roman Bath,
to the fall of consciousness,
we call the Garden of Eden.

The forgotten circumstance,
of humanity's romance,
with a lifetime in the sun,
that'll last through the centuries.

And the truth in Emerald stone,
no matter how much wind has blown,
will whistle through the night,
to serve a reminder,

of the scope that we have spurned,
forgetting everything we've learned,
settling for the dregs,
in this pitiful freedom,

where we vote for men in suits,
and some purple-hearted brutes,
who sing in colloquial joy
for the empire's end-game.

Is this all that we have left,
from all the blood in sorry theft?
For all the tears that have soaked
into the fibres of tomorrow?

Because upon my gentle heart,
and in the poetry of art,
I still kindle for that loss
I have felt in my division.