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

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

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

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

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

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

This love is fading,
this love is through,
I'll quit this complaining
if I can quit you too.

I'll stop smoking cigarettes,
I won't curse your steps,
as you walk 'cross the landscape,
as you pay off your debts.

I'll stop hiding in toilets
for a  moment of peace,
for a moment of outlet,
for a sight of the East.

My world is fading,
as you walk out the door,
this beauty is collapsing,
as I lapse into you.

This love is fading,
this love is done;
you've quit your pretending,
you've already run.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Well, I'll sail away
on this effortless sea,
from fortune and fame
and celebrity.

Off to a world,
where all is in place,
where God is a friend
and all doubt is erased,

off to a world,
where scars turn to skin,
where all passion is pure
and hostility, sin.

Off to a world,
where the coastlines will be,
where discovery lasts
for all eternity,

that's where I'll sail away,
to the motionless sea,
to the bringer of 'I'
and all infinity.

Saturday night in with the blues.
A Memphis Session
on a loop, the last dancers
in the smoking bay,
casting out their dues
for another day at work,
for another sorry pay.

The chancers are out tonight,
groping *****
on the tube, the last train call
to another city,
of broader sight and brighter light,
with a silk-lined wallet
and discarded winter shawl.

I can stay inside with the blues.
Let it wash on me
like pre-worn jeans, copper leaves
in an October street,
death forming in aesthetic hues,
to colour the abandoned quarry,
to soften the falling
of my feet.

Come meet me at the bar
and I'll slip you a drink,

upon the condition that you will
slip me a pill

to make it through another dream,
another push and get-rich scheme.

Stand with me in the pouring rain
and I will hold your hand,

upon the condition that you give
me life to live,

to make it through another day,
where loneliness will come my way.

Would you press me to the kitchen wall,
help me feel just anything at all.

Scars

Oh! Undulating mood.
Harrowed thoughts and a sparse
Nest of recollections for
Fair fortunes on which I brood.

Skin, torn and contorted.
Fingertips a sign of
A future bleak and a past
Doctored and left distorted.

Oh! Talentless wretch! I
Suffer for my art and
My art, it suffers for me.
I, some malproportioned sketch.

Skin, lined with old fault lines.
A freeze-thaw depression,
The past of sewing scissors,
My ****** Nazca Lines.

Oh! My littered landscapes!
Thin plastics kicked up in
The wind. ***** my longings,
The map to plot my escapes.

I'd like to speak to you
about the Taming of the Shrew,
and how you've suffered in silence
for too long.

I'd like to hear you say
that you were happier that day,
when you were gifted with answers
that you knew all along.

I like to hear you call,
or say anything at all,
I just need to know you've found
where you belong.

I'd like to talk with you,
sat on the wall by the avenue,
where we kissed under the street-light
in summers rushed and long.

I'd like to be your friend,
drunk under morning light's slight bend,
as we talk under the dawn-break's
hopeful song.

I'd like to eat with you
at a breakfast diner for two,
we'll lust away the hangover
in a memory lifelong.

I'd like to speak to you
about the sadness of the few,
about how you're disappearing
about how I need you
to be strong.

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.

At seventeen I stepped out of the cloud
and into a clearer knowledge; an atypical
viewpoint skewed by my heritage and
stubborn willingness to always be right.

Some kind of British tolerance has kept me
from howling 'injustice!' in the streets,
whilst some idiotic notion of love or truth
presides, to keep me invested in this life.

With knowledge comes the weight of knowing
and it wore my shoulder down to a chip,
causing me to walk in hurried strides
in order to keep balance, to make my way.

With clarity comes a more potent love;
all features and laughter amplified
to make you forget the sound of silence,
until you cannot deal with its return.

Some kind of solace has been found
in reducing life's events to a plot device,
whilst some irreducible desire causes me
to wake, to persist with a purpose.

At twenty-three I found that better sight
only illuminates the complexity of existence,
the fractal nature of the developing foetus;
echoes of evolution: a better self each day.

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

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.

The market is so ingrained in us
that even revolution needs
a memorable slogan
and a celebrity face
to mask the crowd.

You cannot own my river
but I will let you name the sea,
with its fortressed depth
and alien life,
all out of sight and out of mind;
the poisoned sustenance of brine.

Leave the blame at my feet
and forget me over time,
you can take the roads
leading north,
if you allow me to take the south,
with no chance of a future collide.

We can cut a deal over the reservoir
if I can retain the quarry,
it was never yours
from the start,
but you can play the victim's harp,
whilst I tattoo over my scars.

I will sing for the Star of Bethlehem,
you can fall into the arms of David,
you can make it out and
pay your dues,
shine lights onto your winter blues,
whilst I anaesthetise each painful bruise.

You can paint over the wallpaper
whilst I am replacing all my strings,
we can change the meaning
to our favourite songs,
I will sever the ties to unalterable tunes;
all of those words that lead back to you.

Old friend, we once excited in the crowd
before we were thrown into a romance
of jealous thought, and twisted circumstance.
I struggled for sunlight, head full of cloud;
you lost your voice over music too loud.
We left the revolution up to chance,
lazy in love, with a partner to dance
clear through the morning, with hangover proud.
Now we must strive for a cleaner living;
meditative skies and time for healing.
In separation, we'll untie the knot,
we'll learn to take after all this giving.
Now I must climb to reclaim that feeling
of giddy heights and the youth we forgot.

Tomorrow you will witness no surrender,
you'll see me turning all those ***** tricks again.
I'll coast on through,
kiss the morning dew
and welcome back the energy I once had.

I have waited far too long in transit,
I think I've waited my whole entire life.
But tomorrow I'll be strong,
tomorrow I'll play along
to the red-tape parade of our age.

Tomorrow I will walk the streets with purpose,
you'll see me as I'm passing along the way.
I'll bless this ground
and the welcome sound
of the world still spinning in its place.

Do you remember those blues?
That early twenties something:
revolt against the people that
you are growing up to become.
Do you remember the music
we played to keep us company
in those nights without purpose,
in those days spent drunk and
saluting the sun upon its demise?
Do you remember the letters
of sadness we sent back and forth,
relaying uncertainty in our little
sink-hole of neurosis and boredom?
I wonder when that stopped.
I wonder if I miss it sometimes.
Do you?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

My *** drive would cause earthquakes,
but I can never find the time
to leave this place,
this bed-side lamp,
and away from poor attempts at rhyme.

Depression is a tired old topic.
But *** is forever at hand
to pin you down,
to win you round,
slinking off to the toilet in my dressing gown.

I know you feel a belonging
to the archives of music,
you drink in bed,
and sink on in,
to the restless call of another troubled head.

I will find restoration
held between your slender legs.
It is all we've got,
in this paradise lost,
in this sweaty reclaim,
to a feeling we'd forgot.

Going down is not an art,
but a way of keeping young.
How can you claim to love
what you won't dare to kiss?
How will you ever hear her siren song?

**** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
take me from this wonder,
this blindness in the night.

Anger me in morning
with the refusal of ugly ***,
sleep still on our tongues,
whiskey on my breath.

Treat me to your body
when I am true and I am good,
dance me through your questions
until you are finally understood.

I can hear your longing
though I cannot hear your voice,
you know that I choose you,
though, I never really had a choice.

Tease me with your movie scenes,
your folded, anxious legs,
a calf born into the slaughterhouse,
the conveyor-belt, the hatchling, the egg.

I was doomed to your misfit puzzle,
I was sentenced to decay,
skin seared by your magnificence,
by your gratuitous delay.

Delay from a fulfilment,
a delay from inner peace,
the incremental recovery
whilst dreaming of the sea.

Now I'm drowning in the wishing well,
in the steady clamour of home;
the pill-box in the aquifer,
the faded reference to Rome.

I can memorise your breathing
hair fawning over your chest,
there are countless decent lovers,
but you know that I loved you the best.

So **** me like an alpha,
**** me out of sight,
I am tired of words and meaning,
those blind entries
into the night.

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.

I plan on using your shaving mug.

a plan not worth telling
unless you knew of
the many howling adolescent evenings
I spent
jabbing my fingers in the snout
to touch your leftover hair.

It was stuck,
preserved with ancient soap,
cleansed of life, of pigment.
I wanted to touch the filament
that once burnt you
into being.

Yourself entombed
in pottered clay, soft beige
monument. The hands that once
shaped it, like yours;
they tend to me, bring me shape
in a formless world.

The same shoots grow here;
on my crown and over the temples.
I worship your concept,
myself a replication - thin haired
and inadequate. Less loved, more turbulent,
with naught left but life.

It's less than what you have;
idealised memory, a shrine of compliments,
a spotless life of saviour and sin.
How I love you, oh privation,
How I miss you,
dear Father.

now is the time though,
to clear my reflection.
now is the time
to wash you out.

She was the type who would comfort her attacker.
All memories of love were postcards for her wall,
as she slipped undetected through life, collecting
bus tickets, old receipts and post-it notes,
all with an atypical tolerance for red wine.

She spent her days lying in waste, lying in wait
for the moment that life would catch up with
her beautiful mind. She gave love to him
in magnetised letters and pillow talk,
but she was forever replied to in silence.

She would reinvent herself in hangover light,
before ordering take-out, and spending
the week inside. She cursed her translucent skin
in the sunlight, and yet she glowed in the summer,
as the breeze unsettled the hem of her skirt.

The summer had passed without consequence.
Through blissful parks and cemetery walks,
I measured time by the slits in the fence
and hunchbacks forming on sunflower stalks.
I found a thought of you amongst the pills,
in the pelvic bone of a wishing well,
I searched through the postcards, the old film-stills,
the notes for a story I could not tell.
I know that autumn will be my demise.
Dry toast and jet-lag upon each morning,
painting anecdotes into my disguise,
and act as if a new day is dawning.
Whilst all of the time I shall think of you
in Saturn's arms, or held in Neptune's blue.

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

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

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

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

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

Show me how you cry.
Show me how you drink red wine
and pass the time.
Show me how you freak out,
how you clasp your palms
through moments of doubt,
careful to let nothing slip out;
let nothing recede the paint on your face-
I know that your careful eyeliner
is the borderline to help you find your place.
Show me how you sleep.
Show me how you
fall into routine;
show me how you have learned to stumble through life
and look as if you have not missed a stride.
Show me the freckle
on your inner thigh,
show me how you drink red wine,
show me how sometimes, you want to die.
Show me how you cry.

The greatest writers in the world

Use the language of simplicity.

I strive to be a beautiful writer

And to pepper the page

With every colour on my pallet.



However like a photograph in grey scale

The most beautiful writings

Come in the most simplistic of forms.



Only once you get through the spew and bravado

Do you begin to find the reasons people turn to words;

For solace.

For companionship.

For honesty.

For memories

And for the confessions of another maladjusted soul.



I still hide sheepishly behind my words

And twist them into a maze

In which I can hide my true intentions

And the reasons why I ***** these blank pages

Every time I find myself alone.

Lest we fashion ourselves
in artificial joy,
we must sing to this world;
the poet’s envoy.

In these days so heavy,
In these days without cure,
we forget the homeless
asleep on the moor.

They’re asleep in our wake,
they’re asleep to the hiss
of advertised pleasure,
manufactured bliss

And forget not the old,
with those faces of fault lines,
so haplessly devoid,
like the old coal mines.

They live in their shadow,
they live within their past,
this world on which they’ve learnt
that nothing’s built to last.

No notebooks in the drawer,
Nor diaries of old,
The story’s in the sale,
Not from what is told.

So, before we get lost
In day-to-day routines,
Let us piece together
What life really means:

The faded word of print,
A sugared ring of wine,
Favourable melody,
Endless stretch of brine.

The winter’s passing rain,
And August’s fatal heat,
The swaying of the tyre swing
Where lovers care to meet.

And we will return to
Our places in the skies,
Where life is lived in centuries
Devoid of all goodbyes.

We’ll weep not in longing,
We’ll weep not in our haste,
For losses felt yesterday,
For all that’s laid to waste.

Upon the explosion
Of all these dying stars,
We’ll rejoice in the so-near’s
So much as the so-far’s.

We will live out our dreams
upon that foreign shore,
and sing out to our lives,
‘till we breathe no more

The slam poet sings his songs of false hope,
feigning poetry and swinging his hips in time
with his ego. He is patient with his beer, nestling
it into his confidence like sugar in the blood.

I remember him telling me that poetry belonged
to a voice, that silent passions only go so far in
getting you laid. He held a joint between his
fingers, and then drew his name in the air.

It lasted just a moment; a flash in the pan.
He said that this was the essence of poetry,
of music and art: 'You cannot possibly hope
to live forever through printed word alone.'

We sat in the beer garden listening to cover bands
and arranging our set-lists for an upcoming gig.
He crossed out most of my suggestions
in favour of ****-breaks and introductions.

I remember telling him after my fourth whiskey
that I wring my hands in between writing verses,
swallowing pills and jittering my leg in time
with slow jazz tunes and next door's bass-line.

To that he said: 'forget the oldies, forget Christ;
nothing that dies will come back again. Poetry is dead.
We are in love with Frankenstein's monster,
and we'll only kiss each other in electric bursts.'

The slam poet went back to his backlit stage.
I sat at the back and started on my fifth.
There was a blonde girl in a blue dress, mouth open.
Her eyelashes curled. I was persuaded to sing.

I have found a place to stay tonight
beyond the quartet of violence, cancer, debt,
and ***** field. Beyond translucent light,
crushed snail shell, and entertainment.

I'll die a thousand deaths in dares tonight,
popping dreams like candy in my mouth.
See the light before your hear the crackle;
a vinyl sky of firework sound.

The Zopiclone will send me off to sleep.
Come tidal wave, come vague inspiration,
come the bringer of tomorrow's Cash Cow Queen,
the next ghost-written, Cigar Smoking King.

I have no time to narrate upon existence.
I am only here to learn how it is to die.
There is a taste of dementia in tepid tea leaves,
load me with sugar, only far away from here.

The poet will run off with the pen-pal.
The egg will hatch inside the slaughterhouse.
And I have forgotten how it is
to ****.

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.

Sleep, sleep,
still your breath
and just sleep.
Sleep through
the drum-circle,
the neighbour's garden,
sleep through
the fever,
the sentence,
and the eventual pardon.

Sleep, sleep,
blot your eyes
and just sleep.
Sleep through
her hands touching,
the solemn submit;
sleep through
the wastelands,
the war-zones,
and sleep with the deficit.

Sleep, sleep,
in the castle keep, sleep.
Sleep for the potions,
the poisons,
the crimes you commit.
Too steep is the gangway
to an easier life,
too far is the leap
and too impossible, the wife.

Sleep, sleep,
still your mind
and just sleep.
Keep to
the sidelines,
with intellect deep;
fall to sleep
in the limelight
of your  day,

for you have
earned your rest,
you have found your way.

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

I fell in love with music
when I fell in love with women.
Cassettes will weep upon demand;
homing melodies for the neighbour
who lives across the green.

There's no sense to *** or violence,
and yet I'll teethe it all the same.
I'll give out tepid love, flashes of blood,
and a weekend of cemetery wander,
if it means I'll get a modicum of sleep.

Zopiclone, Citalopram, and long walks
will do a lot to elevate a mind.
You see a painted blue
and an ocean view; yet you've lost
that old dignitary smile.

I am told to separate my wisdom,
to quote history as if time were a fact.
There's no love in the decimated forest,
the Earth now calloused and fickle,
to shake off the parasite of man.

I fell in love with cigarettes
when I divorced with yesterday's papers.
I have no wars left to fight,
and no money more to make,
now all that's left to ask is:
where do I belong?

You push me under
the river water,
the rumble strip,
the war-torn manger.

Appear on the small screen,
you slow me down
in this inch-drawn recovery.
We are still human.
Still human.

You pin me down
to distant dreams,
to the patient quick,
the train-stop silence.

Appear in the doorway,
the hangman's wedding;
homeless ribbons and bows
for the missing persons of the world.

You gave us our depression.
We wore it as a badge of honour.

You keep me far
to relinquish confusion,
a hall of mirrors-
empty basket in the bulrushes.

Appear as a melody
spinning loops through my wrists,
a one-way confession-
loose confetti, falling ash;
ash after ember,
warmth after rain.

It’s four in the morning
half-******, alone
slouching towards brilliance
on the back of a half pack
of cigarettes and a lifetime
spent staring out the faces
in the ceiling.

Been this way since evening
unshaven, undressed
striving to be beautiful
amongst flashbulb memories
of my fingers between her legs
and her phantom song
that cut through the smoke

and tore the heart of every man
left standing
in the room.

The coffee cups are *****
But it’s the cleanest way
To drink whiskey here.

The barman lost half his right fingers
To a wood chipper in his early 20’s
And spent the rest of his adult life
Flipping the world off.

He got it down to a fine art
By the time I showed up.
He didn’t smile when I ordered my drink.
He didn’t smile at all.

The jukebox hasn’t changed
For two stagnant decades
And most everyone but the regulars
Are too scared to use it.

It’s the same rotation
Of Elvis,
Muddy Waters,
BB King,
John Coltrane,
And early Bruce Springsteen.

Not a woman in sight
But every song is about them
And we are all here
Because of them.

Certain patches of carpet
Have not seen a crack of light
Since the Berlin Wall fell.

Nothing changes here but the customers-
And that change is incremental at best.
The same filthy etchings over
The same filthy cubicle doors.

The same Cherokee Indian
Smoking a Cuban Cigar
In the heartland of America.

I can’t find myself here
But there is no feeling of loss.
There is no profundity in anything here.
Just squalor

And enjoying one’s squalor.
I think that is what it means
To be truly happy.

I want you to be my lover,

the crumple of your lips.

I want to be your saviour,

pressing up into your hips.

But for now you are the space

on the wrong side of the bed.

For now you are galaxies away

from where I lay down my head.

My darling,
Go back to sleep.
Leave the hurry and the rush of the world to me
And just sleep.

Let the waves of slumber
Fall into you in a warm rush
Of blankets and breath.

My girl, my woman,
Lie back down and stop worrying,
Calm those lungs and slow your heart,
I will give you all the time in the world
If you will just slow down.

My bags aren’t packed
And there is no seat on a train
With my name on it.

Your career will come
And you will make a splash.
If not we will live on a diet of bread and noodles
And scramble the rent together each month,
Feeding scraps to the dog.

And don’t you fear.
Don’t you ever fear
About the stumble in your step,
Or the snort in your laugh.
The freckles on your back
Or the troubles in your head.

Your imperfections are what makes you beautiful to me,
My dear,
In this world of change – please don’t.

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.

These streets are postcards.
Moments of my youth,
My loves.

Each park bench enveloped within,
Licked and pressed to
My forehead.

Return me to those times.
I want my streets back. My memories
Present and my friends
Still readied for me.
Pour moi.

Pour me another drink
Whilst I forget the ones I had.
Red wine has long since replaced
My blood,

My skin; gone stale.
The streets press in on
My chest.

I can’t breath for the dizzy memoirs,
Yowling at the moon in
My brain.

The simple sway of a tyre swing,
You and I,
The chains.

The simple fog of your ice machine,
You and I,
The cider.

The simplicity of you and me,
You and me,
The years.

These streets are ghost ships now.
Bounty once abound, now gutted.
Do not tease me with your platitudes
Oh town,

And just let me be on my way.

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

The snow piles up and is then washed away
like the change in an alcoholic's wallet,
appearing too briefly to instate a memory,
whilst the world remains unchanged, come morn.

Last year I smiled with tears in my eyes
as the snow fell and I waited for the bus.
I could feel the onset of a great transition;
but I had to lose my mind, before I found myself.

It has been a long year of beer bottled ash
and months spent catching up on lost sleep.
The pills came to take a weight from me,
until I gained the strength to carry the rest.

Songs have appeared with omniscient timing
to carry my breath through the bulrushes
of the river that never seemed to reach a source.
I am still looking for the ocean blue, the view

that will take me from these seasonal lows,
to a place where I can thaw out and live.

I look into my life.
It’s distorted,
Curved at the peripheries
‘Till I’m required to squint,
Just to make out the features
Beneath the glass.

In the snow lies dead thought.
Water stagnant,
Green-blue and faded paintwork.
How I ache for that great hand
To lift, shake and cascade me
With memories.

Rain on me my life’s memoirs.
Drown me in snow.
I sit and I wait for when
These monotone streets will
Fan and flame, burst to colour,
Burst to flavour.

My romanticised past,
I marvel at.
Recall each day as a dream,
And each night an excursion
Of wanderlust, innocence
And fair fortune.

For now, I’ll remain here.
These arching walls,
My old translucent prison.
Life in stasis, I’m stubborn
As I avoid career-paths
In my dome,

And wonder when this world
Will begin to feel like home.

Turn these restless limbs to stone
so I can get a modicum of rest.
Clothe my bones, walk me home;
steady the clamour of my chest.

Blot the stars with a marker pen,
place a ceiling over my dreams.
No news at ten, play remember when,
when the future falls at the seams.

Place all useless guilt in the dirt
so I can finally lapse to sleep.
No three year hurt, I will iron my shirt
and line my pockets deep.

Hide the misery amongst the flowers,
the ash amongst the living.
These early hours, these mythic powers;
find the solace of forgiving.

Pull me from the Ground Zero rubble
so I can learn to stand again.
Be my double, first sign of trouble;
my anchor and not my chain.

Shield the summer from the rain,
let me walk with a peace.
Free from pain, my voice will strain
for the melody of release.

Heave all words of lazy defeat,
throw them to the pyre.
Been white as a sheet, a snowman in heat;
flame of grief turned to fire.

Mask the eye too full of fear,
leave the door opened for the light.
So used to tears, so many years
at the mercy of the night.

Take me from this dead-end breeze
out into the open air.
I am on my knees, these hopeful pleas,
that you will take me there.

I have discovered the sober sunrise.
No longer the bringer of pill-drawn sleep
or the sick brightness of morning
as I walk home via cigarette butts
and misleading signs.

Who am I, to walk amongst the living,
after all the times I have died?

I saw myself at the end of the world;
strategic scar on my upper left wrist,
the extension cord and the lower branch
of the Tree of Life.

The taste of cheap red has become a phantasm;
salted mirage of clean streams and reservoirs
in the backdrop of dry land.

Now only cigarettes or accidental love can **** me.
I have discovered the sober sunrise
but have no idea what to do with it.