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.

The carpet is thick here.
Fuggy and like pastelled peaches.
In the fibres is us; flesh flakes dead and brittle,
Our nail, hair and bone,
Liquor in hand to toast our time’s acquittal.
It is a night in the present, our past’s indulgence
Upon all that we held too dear.

The chime of bottled beer.
I surrender to your faces.
A sea of young fortune; it favours acute flesh,
Our ***, bare and tone,
Her nails painted black, bruised legs folded in mesh.
For once, I cling not to my ungodly obsession
And think not of time’s grisly sneer.

You live within my tears.
Each moment aside from this room.
In grey matter is us; memories flayed and malformed,
Our kiss, touch and moan
Bought several times since, efficiently performed.
Don’t lie to me, the meaning of your transitioned lives,
Nor that my face does not still endear.

The air is too thick here,
Now that I have left this shelter.
I shall meet you in waves; upon battered beaches,
Our age, wage and loan
To lace our tongues in most defeated speeches.
In this life it is us; now so rehearsed in our kindness,
But still shrapnel and fallout
In all that we fear.

No more withering in the flames,
no more tales of running away,
this coast is too bleak to see the breadth
of aurora paint and consciousness,
and yet all I can think of in this grey mass,
is how all of despair, must come to pass.

I watch as the white clouds settle in,
pushing storm out of the sky,
passing it on to another sorry state,
as small paradise emerges in my wake,
and so I cling to the vapour of desperation,
pleading for adaptation.

I watch as clouds crash into cities,
pushing life out of the streets.
I dream of war and tambourine men,
and of what latent content could mean.
Yet with each nightmare of my waking mind,
I return to sleep in nature's umbilical bind.

No more singing of yesterdays,
no more faces stained in the clouds,
this glass is full and overflowing
as good intention spreads to all;
I turn to the world with arms stretched out wide,
to speak of my terrors, in which you, I confide.

Another fated Saturday,
where shadows often lurk,
please let me settle in my place,
please, don't make me go to work.

Another night of ungrateful drinks,
and hooligans gone berserk,
please save me from this dull disgrace
and don't make me go to work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You remind me of the old abandoned quarry that was turned into a reservoir. We were lethargic lovers, I dreamt of picnics over the board-walk, the swans begging and always somewhere between a deified species; and clumsy birds that scare the **** out of us. A film-still moment at best, I lay still as you inspected your vanity, and then kissed me to pin me to the bed.

You remind me of the guilty taste of beer, as I find myself all alone again. There was once a time that we flourished in the cemetery, but now that's long-passed, and we're cynical fools again. You remind of cats out at midnight, of early-hour lorries delivering food in the dawn. More so you remind me of bus-stops, of always waiting for the signal, but never getting on.

You remind me of a circumstantial meeting. One born out of interest for the other. In some ways formal, in most ways desire, my jaw is still hanging from the moment that you left. I miss that feeling of your speech pattern, as it lingered in well-spoken tones, I miss the heat of the sunlight; and now I feel like a shattering of bones. Forgive the rhyme, it escaped me, as I cover up disappointment. I'm not quite sure what I'm disappointed about, but it's there all the same inside.

You remind me of poetry in vivo, the way that you just pour from my mind. A silly fit of nothing-at-alls, but simultaneously offering up my life. I think that your face fits like a portrait, the archetype I have long placed in my mind of what I believed love would look like. Then you walked through the door. My eyes are too swollen from tears to really take everything in, but I see you all the same. It's as if I've been seeing this my whole life.

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.

None of this is preconceived.
Lesson One came in the knowing
That no animal, angel, or adult
Has any knowing at all.

Life never attains ideals.
There’s a sand-grained image of you:
“How did you manage sunburn in Great Yarmouth?”
The pain now forgotten as anecdote.

Please let me get to meet you
in the absence of a crowd.
To talk and talk and to reminisce
on memories we never had.

The rain is streaming down.
The traffic is slowing up.
Please, let's not allow geography
to push us from our ***.

I am way off in the distance,
stranded in Nottinghamshire.
There must be a time for fulfilment
at the summit of journey's end.

Will I satisfy your dreaming
of a young man lost in daydreams?
Will I be able to fill out my sentences
to explain how I got here at all?

Please let me get to meet you
in this strange event of life.
I have spent too many hours
waiting for a new friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He collects copies of The Watchtower
to get a feel of true America,
to spike a lonesome fever, a voice of
desperation now in the hands of fate.

And in the black tapestries of starlight,
upon smoke and abandoned birthright,
he will stumble into a walking pace,
whenever the moment has come too soon.

He writes about writing more than he writes,
delusions of tyre-swings and fallen kites,
dreams of solitaire and those black-out fields
where you started the fire, then danced within.

And in the grey misery of hindsight,
in lack of sleep and forsaken sunlight,
he will stumble upon an inner peace
for the moments that are still yet to come.

He thinks of naked women all the time,
opened boxes of wine, slave to the mind
of divided poetry, words that rhyme,
a missing person, hidden in plain sight.

Don't drink in bed
and spill your wine
for the poet.

He will only leave you
for a better rhyme,
a more wholesome
desk to set his thoughts upon,
a chance to live beyond
four-walled extinction.

Don't let him satisfy
his need for a vice,
a wretched want
for wantonness;
to lay her down
in a bed of poverty.

The poet will capture
your fraught moments,
spinning a line
in smart formation,
and then reminding
you of pain ever since.

Don't sleep with the poet.
He will only wake you
in fear of cold and death.

Let's dance to this tune,
let's lie like adults.

Let's manage our profits,
let's fix the results.

We'll fall to the ground,
we'll fall for each other.

We'll fall for the fire,
we'll fall for the smother.

Don't think of the morning,
don't think of the slaughter.

Don't drink for numb feeling,
don't drink all the water.

You'll pin me to bedsheets,
you'll pin me to death.

You'll pin me behind glass,
you'll pin down my breath.

I'll kiss you in cupboards,
I'll kiss you in pleasure.

I'll kiss you, my lime tree,
I'll kiss you, my treasure.

They'll witness our marriage,
they'll witness our fall.

They'll witness new life,
upon infancy's call.

The old vacuous building
parasols the weak sun;
nothing enters here.

Nothing but rainwater
sleeping in puddles.
Cigarette ends, wet cardboard,
with only whitewashed walls
showing light,
showing grime.

Grey in the cracks, the mortar,
tainting, turning to off-white,
the pollution of the city
staining the bridal gown.

How far is the bridge,
from my mug of tea?

How far are people talking
above The Grateful Dead?

The old vacuous building
barricades the strong wind;
and I can’t leave here.

I haven’t seen sunlight
in over a month.
Nicotine gum, apathetic tug
in my matter
showing then,
showing now.

Scribbled in notes, I sought her.
Failing, I turn to lost sight,
the pollution of the city
turning the pages down.

How long will it take,
upon bended knee?

How hard is it to balance,
these troubles in my head?

The old vacuous building
parasols the weak sun;
I’m scared I’ll never leave.

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

Another cup of coffee,
another last cigarette,
waiting to get over that something
I had never managed to hunt
and pin down in a display case.

Chase the thoughts with endless distraction,
habitual reactions to commonplace panic;
the skin on your milk,
the lines in your face-
the colonies in your bedsheets.

A futile blur of words,
ancient shapes and poems,
I scour neurotropic fields of sunflowers:
some organic high,
a steady-state escapism.

Houdini would be proud.
This brave escape from detection,
'till only odour and circumstance
can pick me from the crowd,
this red-eyed happiness,
this stalwart blue.

Chase love down with a box of wine,
old methodologies to find something new;
the drunk-dial confession,
the marks on your arm-
the lies in your back pocket.

Another cup of coffee,
another chemical cloak;
another hourglass intervention.
Meaning slips through hands like sand
when you decorate your life

with obsessive mirrors
and uncontrollable smoke.

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.

I don't know why you came here.
I don't know why you brought
two gallons of wine
and a series of dresses to try on
in front of my postage stamp mirror.
I haven't slept a full night in two years.
It gets a little easier after the first.
You learn small tricks to bore yourself
into unconsciousness
but now you have given me a reason
to stay awake during the day.
How could I ever go back to dreams
now that you are stood in my doorway?

It’s crawling up the drain pipe,
It’s crawling in your bed,
It’s coming back to remind you
Of everything you said.

It’s standing by the broken lamp
That used to light your way,
It’s filling in the empty spaces
When you’ve nothing left to say.

It’s fogging up the window,
So close you cannot breathe,
It’s watching you undress,
It’s watching you retreat-

Into your habits,
Into your sheets,
It’s waking you up
When you’re trying to sleep.

Into your whiskey,
Into your tea,
It’s spiking your food,
It’s all you can see.

It’s the rat inside the wedding cake,
It’s the rain on a perfect day,
It’s the wind that rattles everything,
Every cymbal in your brain.

It’s coming from the blind side,
It’s arriving without warning,
It’s brave and dark in the moonlight,
It’s small and fearful in the morning.

It’s Muhammed in the headlines,
It’s Jesus on the cross,
It’s the bias in the history books,
It’s the meaning that got lost.

It’s playing on your heartstrings,
A song you cannot sing,
A broken piece you cannot fix,
The calm the pills don’t bring.

Into your pockets,
Into your blood,
It’s getting to you
Much more than it should.

Into your mirror,
Into the screen,
All that you feel, all that you see
Are ever-decreasing spirals
And absent routine;

It’s pacing the halls,
It muffles your scream,
It’s holding your tongue,
It’s the mould in the crumb,
It’s the secret you keep from everyone.

It’s the reason why you stay inside,
Why walking the street,
Why leaving the house
Is like turning the tide.

It’s the jet-lag gloom
It’s the familiar ache
That weighs you down
Every time you wake.

It’s crawling up the phantom limb,
It’s the corpses in the sea,
It’s the debris that covers everything,
This constant anxiety.

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

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

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

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

It is getting to four in the morning,
and so I will end this transmission.

I have conceeded all my ambition,
all inhibition,
to the paradise plain
of gothic symbols
and gossip counters;
trading secrets for status,
whilst painting the nails
of their foe.

The time is getting stupid now,
punch-drunk on half-sobriety;
unsure what is sense
and what is misery.

I have chosen revision over animation,
going over the same information,
in the uncertain elaboration
of passed-on wisdom,
of facts learned by force,
and not by a cognitive transition.

It is getting too late to talk like this.
These words fall apart,
to old dreams; I'll relive.

I wish you a kindness,
and I'll wake you in the morning.
I will play to you a pop song,
and whisper traffic warnings.

You take your sleep
and you shelter within,
this is your marbled existence,
this is freedom from sin.

You remind me of Stevie Nicks in her prime,
pinning medals to yourself for surviving love
and turning all sadness into effortless ***.

The lead guitar plays through your headphones
as you walk through another dreary street,
another dreary day where he will barely look at you.

Rain falls and autumn arrives as if it has always
been there, as if the seasons have finally caught up
with the mood that has been clinging to you

all year. You wonder from your place on the bus,
where your life is leading, if indeed, you want it
to lead anywhere at all. Every indication is given

by some well-wishing hand, each one hoping to
tend to you, pigeon-hole you into a life that they
had always hoped to live in, beyond hypocrisy

and lack of education. I know you gave up on
newspapers long ago. I am glad. You are worth
the peace of a morning. Someone like you

should never be dragged into war.

Do you hear the crashing sound
of a society at war? Can you find the
answer, for what has come before?

There's no petrol in the tank
as they clear your ******'s name,
the man who came to teach you
that love is a guessing game.

I hear they're selling rainwater
as a reason to stay inside,
they say you'll drown in the struggle
of trying to turn the tide.

Can you understand me now you've
seen it for yourself? If sanity is mimicry,
then I'll remain in my ill-health.

She draws black wings to her eyes
in a green-wash reflection, light
cascading through the shutters
of the ceiling fan, whilst red lips
rehearse a smile for her lover.

He will hold her like a wallet as
they pay their way through town.
It has been months since she felt
human touch, mammalian warmth,
or whispers exchanged across the pillow.

His eyes are on the screen as she
undresses and then falls beneath
his weight on the mattress. An empty
thud, a hollow sound, as his night is
given purpose, and then falls to sleep again.

She lies awake and wonders where
her night went. There was laughter
across the table, drinks stirred with straws,
and UFOs painting pictures in the sky.
The sea roared in the distance like

a passing train, and so there must be
an escape to a far-off land for her
to start again. Start again beyond
waistlines, over coastlines, and all ties
to employment. To start again

with a half-naked lover, who will
watch as the wind kicks up her hair;
as her skin freckles once more
in the sun.

Distant as the far-off maritime state,
undeniable as the endless mismatch
of rock turmoil in the centre of the Earth,
and as vital as the pound of flesh, pulp
and lung, tired bronchiole, wasted lyric,
and cancer's ever-present weight
upon your mind.

Familiar as your lover's intonation,
as she asks of the breadth of your love,
attractive as the modest celebrity,
with legs splayed in bronzed celebration
of this, her life's affirmation.

Bound as the pages of your old journal,
full of misdirected sorrow and old, old love.
Curtailed as the dance floors abandoned
at request of the lights, sugared, spilt drinks
to rot the wooden boarding, now devoted
to misery-cleaners and the bringers
of tomorrow.

Firewalled as the world is to debt.
Cardboard shop-fronts, straw-men hippies
and bent products, cash out at Christmas,
then a haemorrhage in the New Year of
old floods and foreclosures. Covered up
as is the rusted kettle to stifle flame.

Lost as flavour is to ketchup, as winter
is to hope of heat, to desire of spring
and the end of forever-night. Thin as
my wrists, as hands hold the banister,
gaining small balance in life's rare incline,
long stripped of exercise, of enterprise.

Unutterable as the soul-sounds
I feel when I pick up the guitar,
as unattainable in this life,
as is beauty once my knotted fingers
press consciously upon the strings.

A truth legacy found in blood and
distortion, found in intuitive drives,
warped by consumption. Dismissed
theory of Atlantean ties,
of old Babylon
and Reptilian lullabies.

Luring, luring, luring to distraction,
into the night and the plight,
into the absence of Arcturian light!

Keep close to me, please,
oh, feeble recollection,
please take me to truth,
in this, my meditation.

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

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

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

Back into the Earth I was born from.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is no *** in a writer.
It explains it all:

why I can never fill a doorway,
or have eyes on me.
It is why these features hollow out
in sunless days spent inside.

It is why I shall never satisfy
another woman – too scared
to commit to flesh what I would
with paper. An artist is full of ***;

watch as he paints her eyes in colour,
as he moulds clay to the shape of her hands,
as he whispers longingly what he’ll do to her;
whilst I am but the broken arms
that feign passion in the night.

I know now that whilst I can tattoo
my love inside your heart;
I can never match his strokes,
his arms, his languor in confidence.

Go – find your artist.

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.

He educated her on John Coltrane,
on Heron-Scott, and Black Power movements.
Old jazz romantics and second-hand
hipster records; two white kids
indulging in slavery guilt
and the throb of aching trumpets.

They kissed to the taste of cheap red,
her lipstick fogging on his mouth, clouding his
mind with south-western coastlines
and the promise of an easy tomorrow.
Incense burned and curtains twitched
as they agitated the silence
of New Suburbia.

She told him stories about the moon,
how a million collisions made sense out of entropy,
and how a million letters could be sent,
but still words can never be enough.
They dined on a park bench overlooking
the arcade; shadows of yesterday's Britain,
a simple summer for older generations.

Their own summer had passed
in a shrug of shoulders, families staying in to watch
the latest action film.
They reclaimed the autumn
as a time for new living, as a time-lapse
to remember, as a half-formed memory,
given to **** and old melodies.

The sheep pastured on a steep distant hill,
rolling green and cigarette papers turning like
leaves of a book in the coastal wind.
She drew a breath, dissipated cloud;
he held his own, held her close,
and like a blind man, he read meaning
through the undulations in her spine.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

She comes here,
consumes nothing,
offers all
but what I desire.
Folds my laundry,
teaches me Thai,
goes down on me.
Massages my shoulders
to tempt sleep
in restless sheets.

But I cannot write
a lullaby
with her sleeping soundly,
like a lie,
by my side.

I have taken to writing on receipt paper,
Sitting in the bar alone, sipping pints
And listening to all of the nonsense talk
From the revelling crowd.

Each one of us troubles with the fault lines
That appear on our faces, over the passing
Of the years. I don’t know what I’m writing
For anymore. There no career path in place

To make the whole dam thing work.
I know I should shelve my poems for a rainy day,
To refine them and sell them off as if they are art.
But, I see no value in the bulging of my wallet,

Save for the purchasing of cheap seats and wine.
So, why would I ever foreclose the spaces that I
Live in, when all I want is to be
*A voice at the end of the line?

I feel his eyes on me
Whenever I cross the room.
It is mostly when there are others
Present and we must share ourselves,
Expended over people

And places. The spaces
Before we fall into our wine stained
Non-marital bed. The grape blood reminds me
Of my own. On my own, fledgling ******* and acne,
Elaborately false *******

Where I would never have my fill.

A child-man I forgot.
Or remember only as a token,
Cardboard textured orange peel
In a breast pocket never worn. I forget
Most everyone

Now that he is
In my life. He obliterates
All else like light pollution.
Not of fluorescent neon or slogans
But an exploding star

That dims all else
In my peripheries. I am
Diminished also in his love,
Both wholesomely and then in a sense
Where I lose my ‘I’.

It is in his shadow
Where I live. Small comet
Hidden in the black of velvet,
Licked by the spit of his flames
That scald me

And bathe me
In equal measure.

I am more than this
I know. Or guess. His tailor hands
Though, are efficient and caring. They
Do not create me, but he threads himself
Into my sides

And drops a stitch
Only to adulate the rhythm
When he enters me. When he enters me
I become burgeoned and full and blood fills
The rusted roadways

That shine blue
Through my pasty prism.
He finishes. A gloom fills me. Not
A gloom, more of a nothing and he is
An obliterated star once more

And I his aftermath.
He has killed me with a kindness,
A ghost only when witnessed, kissed.
I have long since forgotten whether I have
Been taken prisoner

Or gave myself up.

There is a war on the screen
Full of filth that goes unseen.
Yet all I can do is sip peppermint tea
And regurgitate conceited poetry.

Of days too long where I long to hold
Purpose in me, a spirit bold.
To go forth and spread a message of love
And pray to the science of the stars above.

But it’s a caterwaul of profiteering
And adverts for the hard of hearing.
It’s to my heart, this world’s poison is seeding,
My once hopeful head is now receding.

So it is with compromise that I do age,
A prostituted soul on minimum wage.
I’ll escape out into my fictitious streets,
Where fairytale lovers still care to meet.

Where words are read and held to *******,
To imprint the words upon the tremor of chests.
Where misfortune is fickle and lasts not long,
To where the dandelions may sing their song.

Lived the life of an artist
long before I became one.
Pressed to guitar strings
until my fingers were numb
to all exposed skin
that was not my own.

Listened to one thousand sad songs
over and over
until the pointless chords
clamoured over one another,
psalms of living
fall on deaf ears.

Trawled archives of *******.
Lauded aristocrats of cheap whiskey nights
and black coffee mornings.
Garnished my days with addictions carried
by better men
in love with real women.

Grew thin, moved about the apartment
in the graveyard hours
tacking songs to the walls.
In the absence of chains and ***
I fixed myself with neon lights
and cigarettes.

Spilt paint over undeserving paper
beneath the halogen bulb
to colour radio silences
of past friendships,
mountains I should let recede
like a ship in the night.

Stood alone in crowds
to witness the onset of a moment,
openings and closings of mouths and doors;
each one to allow another person in.
I go home alone
and sleep with my thoughts.

Do not lance your hair

Just to satisfy those men in suits,

Or your woman, sat there with that expectant gaze

Reserved for only you.



Let your image be cultivated

Through the culture of the downstroke.

The lazy thick steel on the neck of the guitar

That shudders at your touch

And responds with the readiness of one thousand ******

Cooing their broken sounded and false approvals.



I see your fingers fumble across the chipped mahogany

And I recall on the benefit of all men

The first and forgotten lovers,

Buried beneath years of clumsy ***

And vicious disregard.



And from the shadows in the archives of your grey matter

You remember every wince of self-doubt,

Etched across the faces of your women

That you never cared to notice in the dizzy ecstasy

Of your youthful wantonness

And the hardness of your ****.



So age will bite at your features,

And you will squint in the wind,

Cowering at the cold that clings to your bones.

At some age you will cut your hair

And iron your shirt.

Nurse your whiskey

And find yourself in receipt of all those women

Still tangled in the hotel sheets

In the back lodgings of your mind

And everything they did to shape you.



And you pick up that old acoustic

And play the tune of one thousands odes.

You are beautiful.
That awkward gait of yours,
the way you check your pockets
every score of steps
to ensure nothing will slip out from you
that could never be returned.

The shifting weather
can never keep up with your moods.
It is beautiful how you rain in the sunshine,
how you can stretch out in the snow
and sleep like it is late August.
You understand the difference
between weather and climate:
that day-to-day failures
cannot make up the bigger picture.

You are doing well.
Climbing to places no one can reach,
you look down from the walls you built
to keep people out;
aloft from the crowd,
you find love in the faces
of all the people
you will never come to meet.

When did loneliness in a crowded room become a goal?
Eavesdropping on inspiration; indolence.
Like my art, pockets of brilliance are found
in the wreckage of a market town
with nothing left to sell. All those discordant
ideals of escape and of nothingness.
Still waiting for that ***** of light
which must always break through.

Isolation becomes a component of personality;
a need for space in overpopulated surroundings.
Like my art, pockets of living
congregate in moments torn from the clock face,
in lines of laughter and grief; the five o'clock champagne.
All that revel in maladjustment,
all who laugh at death,
those who had given up on The Lie.

When did my life reduce to words and symbols;
stealing poetry from the street-preacher's leaflets?
Like my art, pockets of reason
form amongst the senselessness of meaning;
how love sits different on every tongue,
how wine hits sweetly only in the need to run.
I have grown tired of running away,
this stalwart need for acceptance.
A want for a panic room,
a need to fall to pieces, undisturbed.

The three of us sat on the disused, plastic patio chairs. Their white facade had faded into a malformed sort of grey, with grazes of mud and collected rainwater erosion further condemning them. We were blind drunk after three-and-a-half beers that were tempered with lemonade. The dreary five a.m. dawn threatens daylight, bringing an end to the party. In a few years’ time we’d be here again; coming down off drugs and talking about missed chances.

Tom and Amy are in my parent’s room, as we whisper conspiracy theories about his impotence, in the light of our lonely morning vigil. I barely remember what else was said, after we spoke of *** and love, and of our life beyond home. “There has to be something more, somewhere…” we would all insist. Yet, one by one, we have turned to shrugs, and those left to insist, do not.

What I do recall is the coffee (I never drank the stuff then) and dry crackers. As the sun came to rise and patterned the skies, we had seen one day slide into the next; we aged brilliantly in a moment. I stared out at the Rugby field just beyond the overgrown allotments; you could only make it out by the floodlights that towered over the trees. I knew then, of where I had always been, yet knew not where I needed to go.

I still don’t.

Be kind to yourself.
You have come so far.
Each emotion you feel tattooed
to your skin
the seasons wash away like chalk.

Be kind to yourself.
You are braver than you thought.
No longer scared of what lies
beneath your bed
but what awaits when you wake up.

Be kind to yourself.
You are worthy of love.
Only you give permission
for forked tongues
to leave passing words as lasting scars.

Only you can adopt old failures
and stack them as obstacles
upon each new path.
You cannot dictate what will be
only – who you are.

Be kind to yourself.
You are doing enough.
You cannot always be switched on.
Sometimes you have to lay down
and breathe –

it is not greed.
If you are always exhausted
you cannot help anybody.

Be kind to yourself.
You did not grow
from a single cell
born from a dying star
in order to feel so small.

You did not close the door
on friends when you expected
more from them.
Why beat yourself up
for who you were before?

Be kind to yourself.
A faltering dancer who gets up
again and again
draws the loudest applause
at the curtain call.

A person who spent half their life
at war with themselves
knows the value of peace,
the feat of getting out the house;
the measure of good mental health.

Be kind to yourself.
You have come so far.
They say ten thousand hours
is the time it takes
to master an art.

You spent so much longer than that
learning the patterns of your heart.
You can pull at those common threads
that keep you together
even when you are falling apart.

Be kind to yourself.
You are stronger than you thought.
Like Leonard says,
“there’s a crack of light in everything. “
You do not have to be perfect.

You do not have to live in the dark.
Be kind to yourself.
Make sure you get to the end.
Do not worry
how you stumbled at the start.

I have suffered in a silence,
I have whispered through the pain,
too many friends have fallen down
to see it happen again.

And I have seen it all before,
weak from the escaping city roar,
all of these products replaced by noon
in a state of constant war.

The days have lost their flavour,
they sit like ashes in my mouth;
they leave me with little to savour
beyond brooding over doubt.

And Doris comes to mind,
in all the answers that I find,
to why I kept on with every struggle;
to how my heart grew old and kind.

Now all that's left is memories
and my future of decline,
the rush of life is now but thunder
and they've gutted my father's mine.

And I have heard it all before,
the lull of the anchorman's dull snore;
there's bombs falling in the desert
and there's riots in the grocery store.

I have written all my letters,
I have settled all my debts,
to all the friends who have lent me a kindness;
and all the poetry that is left.

I want to see you stripped
down to bare elements;
a deaf-blind entry
into knowing you,
because I am tired of words,
words, words,
and a lack of warmth
beneath my hands.

I want to see your hair
spread like a river delta
over the pillow;
content and raw
with exhaustion and red wine.
Drunk and torn
from the monotony
of long nights in an empty bed.

You taught me of the poetry in science,
the chorus within a sea of new stars;
the Pleiades: a nursery of infants,
and the fossil of old oceans, is Mars.

You talked to me just like a human,
through the decades of languor that passed;
you taught me that a stupid question
is better than one never asked.

In your ship I was cast to the Cosmos,
into the faintest ripple of space-time;
to peel back the illusion of politics,
and to see it as but organised crime.

You filled my mind with clear knowledge,
that'll stay through my short lifespan;
more than facts, you gave me a shining example,
of the burgeoning qualities of man.

A synthetic thunderstorm envelops me
and I forget where my life is.
I forget about you and your fluent tongue
of disinterest, puppetry, and misinformation.
I forget the speakers and soundscapes;
wires and ties and strings attached,
the way I struggle to sleep alone,
but cannot share my life with anyone.

I forget the next payday, the next lay;
the need to borrow words and feelings
just to make sense of my own.
Distraction and hunger for nicotine
become near-echoes of a past life-
an umbilical bond to old decades
of habit and mistrust for the sober mind.
I forget the ash and ends I have left behind.

The ocean is close but occupies no space,
only the airwaves with a rhythmic breath
to still my own, reducing my identity
to fractals of self-interest and oneness.
I forget who I am amongst the writing desk,
The Book Of Longing, the cooling tea;
the stagnant water. I forget flesh desire,
violent ***, and apologetic *******.

I forget, for once, the need to live,
amongst all of this living.