Felt gospels, locally hand-stitched, hang from the necks
Of the white stone columns. Seven in total.
Wandering eyes have read them all a hundred times.
Each one belongs to a name and number.
The mass assemble on the ground floor.
The circle tiers are near-empty,
They keep their coats on.
I wonder if they are closer to G-d.
The bald island only visible to them,
The vicar’s pure white hair.
Pews are formidable with adults, Sunday best,
A silence dark with giggles, the stained glass
Shone a rainbow of torture, ******,
And I did not know what we were all there for.

Christ hung beneath a turquoise sun, kaleidoscopic agony
Etched on his straight white face. You could play a tune
On his ribs. The vicar stood bored at the platform;
glory in monotone.

Finally, we rose to song.

The adults stood tall, autogenic. I became lost in corn stalks,
Wind of reverence, spirit, mass delusion.
Everyone seems to sway. Some close their eyes. A few
Hold a hand to the sky. A grown man is dancing in the main aisle.
He is making a mockery of himself
And the adults do not stop him. Do not scald him
Or tell him to keep quiet.
The grown man seems to notice no one.
I wonder if he is the closest to G-d.

Water near-boils in black pipes, the wind outside
Seems to find its way to my chest. I choke myself.
Leave our scarves on the burning metal.
No instrumentation! Menace. I mime the words.
Cut my eye teeth climbing garage roofs,
Stole a turnip from Mr. Sutton’s patch -
The air is too holy here. Hypnotic. I cannot breathe.
A football shirt. A pair of jeans. The singing stops.
Prayer begins. The vicar drones, we answer back.
Repeat after me, repeat after me. He is talking
About next week, the order of service,
His out-of-hours devotion, our spiritual homework.
Dismissed, the mass push angrily to the doors.
Quick to their cars,
We always stayed behind. Slow, slow.

My parents led me to the pulpit. The vicar was smiling,
My name was on his list. I wondered if I was getting
The eighth felt gospel..
“You are to be confirmed.”
“Okay.”
I did not know what confirmed meant.
I did not know what submergence was.
The vicar took my hands. I puzzled at his dog collar,
His snap-necklace. My parents stood in the periphery,
The cheap seats; a happy occupation,
A successful operation.

I was to be new again.

“...and let the Holy Spirit pass through Edward,
And help to guide him through inevitable trials.”

My arms were shaking like a tuning peg.
I was a filament, quivering, giving myself away,
Flashbulb memories of disgrace. He must know.
“That’s the spirit of the Lord inside of you,
That’s why you are shaking.
It is working brilliantly.”
The vicar put his palm to my forehead.
Pores magnified, barbs descended from his nostrils,
His overgrown eyebrows. His holiness. His age.
He did not smile with his eyes.

I was handed back to my parents.
They looked pleased with themselves. Did I pass the test?
I looked up.
The ceiling was impassable.
There had been no breakthrough.

Drove past the hospital. Asleep in the passenger seat.
Surgery on my soul. Clean, clean.
There was static on the radio.
The shaking had stopped.

My sweetheart once told me
about the passing of the moon,
how it takes an age to burn so bright,
then gone away too soon.

My father once told me
about the whisper of the wind,
how ghosts are soldiers left to die,
in brutal war's rescind.

My shaman once told me
about collective memory loss,
how it takes an age to build a kingdom,
which swiftly turns to moss.

My teacher once told me
about coincidental beauty,
how love is found in patient bliss
and custodial duty.

My pen-pal once told me
about how all of life is work,
how you must toil, toil, toil the fields,
only to end up hurt.

My mother once told me
about the truth found on the coast,
how in landlocked state, she buried thought
and missed my father the most.

My blackout friend once told me
how he re-invented sin,
how truth is but an echo of thought
and great delusion's twin.

The news anchor once told me
about the falling of the towers,
how brothers fell under the mythic spell
of dehumanising powers.

My electrician once told me
about the sounds of abandonment,
how a million memories within the halls,
are now but histories spent.

My garden gnome once told me
about God within the weather,
how we traded in moonlit ponds
for car seats made of leather.

My psychologist once told me
about living with depression,
how it takes an age to face the day
and a second for night's oppression.

My failed love agreed with this
as she turned to walk away,
and for all the words I'd written down,
I had nothing left to say.

I have stopped singing for success
but instead for the ancient river's 'ohm'.
I have memorised the timeless lyric,
but can't hear the key in which it belongs.

I have stopped trying on clothes
and shifting like an old man in the mirror.
For whenever I get close to myself,
my breath fogs; and nothing is clearer.

I cut my hair
and brought a new suit
and tie

to replace the noose
that was around my neck.

A sunflower
turned its back on me
but at least

it grew into September
to take me past the fallen leaves.

Women pass by
over the concrete streets
and weeds always

find their way through cracks
in an emerald defiance.

I will give myself
two weeks more of
rolling cigarettes

and smoking them in the field
whilst dogs **** in the grass.

After that the rain
will force me indoors
with the incense

and artefacts that accumulate
in the astral bowl of life.

They'll drop the dosage
and shine those bright lights
over my bed

to keep me happy in winter
and away from cemetery walks.

I am cracking a code
to find a place in the sequence
of self-control

and learning to love you
far from our crooked states.

It was all a reality Doris had come to accept (and Bernard too, to an extent). They had moved as if they were one entity for the majority of their life. Every thought would come in pairs; each footstep was echoed by the other, and every wine bottle was shared. They'd been wed for 50 years now, and with each anniversary, they found themselves becoming all the more soluble; mixed together like some kind of brilliant concoction: a solution to all of life’s problems.

I never asked you to undress
You wrote yourself into my life
your punished, caffeine heart
became a cuckold
amongst the yarn I spun
You spoke to me
but my words were meant for everyone
You spoke to me
but my words were meant for anyone
but you

Oh, Danielle
your voice carries south
and whistles
through the ages.

Oh, Decibel
your sound hollows out
and compounds
through the stages.

Oh, Wishing Well
full of stagnant doubt
and rusted,
wasted wages.

Oh, Danielle
your voice naught without
keeping me
in cages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about anything at all. It’s a new methodology I’m trying out. It involves pacifying wants with better hydration and sipping green tea like a whiskey sour. I couldn’t tell you if it works, it’s Day One. It’s always Day One. The only thing I ever truly understood is this: that everybody is guessing their way through life. Homeless preachers, mothball billionaires and the child bride on stilts; all as baffled as the next. What is the use in regarding winter, when it will pass like some face in a crowd?

So I’ve stopped thinking of you, too. I have stopped thinking of you and instead, I listen to hours of positive affirmations play through headphones. I’m told I radiate joy and positive energy, but the voices don’t register the ground up cannabis in my nails. There’s no census of friends, only the binaural beat of false creation but still, I am told repeatedly of my brilliance. It’s enough to go to anybody’s head. That, coupled with old fortune cookie prophecy, leads me to believe in a signpost reality.

I have stopped lending misery to others. Look at my face now and you’ll see absence. It’s an old trick of Buddhism and the new one of fashion. I’ll not smile painfully your way, nor will you catch a scowl in the small reflection of the window. Impassive through and through, I assure you there is a beat somewhere in this chest. It’s still going. I know that because the drinks are still flowing for everybody else but me. I serve you and your friends. You thank me, tip me, pour me over your ice and then forget me by the next song.

I have stopped caring greatly about friendship. Coffee shop dreams and foreign coastlines are imagined only in solitude. Faithful book and the illusion of depth. All inept artists do the same. When nothing else is blooming to art, just turn yourself into it. So, I have stopped thinking about winter. I have stopped thinking about you, and them, and the times I took off my shirt. It’s Day One, but already I am liking what I see. I will wear this indifference like the patterned scarves I’m soon to leave at home.

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

When did it get so hard
Just to talk, not to run
Well I’ve been here before
I know all the signs
The dead ends

Just know that I’m still here
Patiently waiting for a sign
Just to hear we still share
The same Earth, the same stars

Ever since we’ve been apart
There’s no light on
But I’m always up

There’s no one here
To pick me up
To calm me down

And the Earth
It don’t spin
No it just throws me
All around


I’ve grown jaded, I know
Nothing’s changed
It never will

So I’ll play the middleman
For a few weeks more
Then I’m gone-
If not before

The screen is a madhouse
of body-building, ego-boosting,
and bad gig recordings.

I see her bronzing in the beach,
applying lotion and laughing
with a new friend.

I'm still stuck in the snow,
watching her skirt in the breeze.
I chain coffee in the morning

to counter sobriety,
to show that I know her more
than just by the light of the moon.

In sunglasses, we'll meet somewhere
neutral; an escape route to run
if the patient becomes lunatic again.

She'll administer the pill
from her pockets to ensure I'll flat-line
through her absences,

and then resurrect when she's lost her
appetite. Far away from this
selfish depression, I dream

of us painting a wall. Nothing dies
when it is made into memory;
nothing lives without your early morning call.

I do not agree that there is a ‘forever England’.
How could I, when I can’t even recognise my face?
For all of the innocence that died in a decade,
For the concrete and car parks
Built over my childhood's place.

I guess I'm lonely.
I guess I'm a little arrogant.
I guess my collar turns up to the wind
whilst blocking out the adverts
in my periphery.
I guess I blinkered myself
to keep things moving forward,
detaching from people
to find an honest word,
beyond fear of detection,
beyond hurting others
whilst I shatter into pieces;
making the stage the only place
where I can find a voice
choosing solitude,
as if I had a choice-
you know I never learned
how to drive a car,
I have walked so many miles
but I have never got very far.
I guess I'm lazy.
I guess I'm a little broken.
I guess I'm just a skeleton
of all the words I've left unspoken.

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’m living on a diet of Citalopram, **** and Snickers bars.
Soft jazz bubbles and falls through the alien hum of the speaker,
As the numerals collide with that three a.m. alienation.

Eye on the clock, everyday feels like an urgent countdown
Of time, time, time; the little I have got, and the amount that I waste.
Still, I grind, grind, grind on the leaves to tempt morning and sobriety,
Whilst my inbox piles up awfully on the side.

It’s misery here. Academia is not for me; it’s not for anyone
Anymore. For all the Starbucks and cheap *****,
These qualifications will never outweigh the costs.

It has been months since I fell asleep without assistance.
I cannot remember what a dream feels like;
Only that there’s you,
And you are laughing in the park.

Our own desires sit false on the page. Stewed in our longings since memories born, there is a tedium to our cravings, and scorn for all the outstretched arms you have torn.

All passions come in a bespoke flavour, it's tailored to the pattern of your sight, my dreams are just saliva in my mouth, but yours can offer never-ending light.

So, I give to thee sacrifice of page, in the hope to bring back taste to your food, in hope you'll see my friendship coming through, in hope one day I'll soften down your mood.

They didn't notice me until I went crazy.
Until the lights went out and they heard me
moving around the house, my head to the wall
to force out blood, or sleep. They feed me tea
by the pint. Two sugars and milk to keep me awake.
I need to play the patient. It makes me their son again.

Food arrives on a tray with 20mg of distraction.
I can smoke outdoors in the cemetery walk
while father sleeps with the larvae and embryonic
Earth. My brother has turned eighteen
and I have become the canary to his coal mine.
He can live in the spaces that I have died.

There is always movement on the stairs.
Contestants cheer miserably beneath me
like a slave-ship bet of the first to their
death. The ocean rolls. The world keeps turning.
She is wearing sunglasses and painting toenails
into colours I had made her forget.

Mother, take me to the straitjacket cellar.
I will lie still and let the moths drink from
my eyelashes. There are books and women
meant for better eyes. There are trees for a
different childhood. There is nothing left
but to learn a silence. To become a whisper

hidden in the dirt.

She used to bite her lip
Arch her back
As she sank down on top of me
When she reached my ***** bone
My **** felt like it could break in half

Still, she’d lean further back
And in the throes of ecstasy
My **** became property of hers
At the mercy of her spine
And how she chose to undulate it

We would lay there
All hot and stupid
In our cigarette smoke
We’d both derive pleasure
From my pain

She taught me how to kiss
She taught me how to really kiss a woman
Kiss and ****
Alternating between closed and opened mouths
The neck, collarbones, the insides of ears
“Oh baby…” she’d whisper when we were done
“Kiss me all over…”
And I did.

I’d start on her toes
She had a mole on her fourth toe
Right at the knuckle
And the cutest ankles you’ve ever seen
I’d never noticed feet in any capacity before
If the nails were painted and she was clean
I’d take my time down there

Next I’d work the calves
Always massaging a little further up
To where my lips and tongue were
Working in tandem
I could taste our *** on her skin
As I kissed between her small, pointed *******
Her pale skin – she’d faintly utter a sound

Her diaphragm lifting
Her swimmer’s body
And hairless ****
She’d whisper “baby…”
As my hands work her hips
And my lips move to her neck
By the time we’re making out
I’m inside her again

All the guts and gore of routine love
I could feel my *** run out of her
Like a broken yolk
Nothing beautiful about it aside from the feeling
******* her so soon was like
Screaming after a smoker’s cough
**** all swollen and hungover

Still, she looked beautiful in the half-light
Of the early afternoon
Curtains closed
Till the street lights come on
These moments where 2 hours sail with ease
Without drinking, smoking, or killing something
Inside of us

Though the *** was full of heart
It was all methodical, strategic
Making love to the one we hate the most
Nothing hurt more than my numb life
But I’d forget it in these instances
Of endless restoration between her legs
We’d sit in bed and smoke and drink
Too spent now to ****, the evenings
Were for ourselves
Though we were never apart

Somewhere along the way
*** was all we had left
Fight
****
Drink

Soon enough we’d stare across the bed
Nemeses waiting for the other to crack
“God, I hate you,” I said once
As I pulled back her hair
And kissed her behind the ear
She shuddered
“You repulse me” she said

“don’t stop.”

When will the paramedics come?
I lost my finger in a midnight rave,
****** to the bone and drunk as hell.

I think the doctor is trying to **** me.
She dispenses pills like a Pez-Head,
to send me to sleep,
to miss out on poetry,
but at least I'll catch the bus to work.

Cap and gown dreams keep visiting me.
I don't know what it means when she
lifts her blouse to reveal old scars,
when she delivers my life
in a steel-framed certificate.

When will the politicians come?
I lost my faith in freedom, when I was
clothed to the bone in distraction.

I spoke to a doctor in the City of David.
He told me to be kinder to myself,
he told me to roll in mud to save my skin,
to sleep deep through the night
and wake to infant skies.

I spoke to him over a flagon of wine.
He told me that the game of words is bunk,
that mathematics is the new empire of tongue.
He said: “Ed – reinvent yourself
in the language of galaxies,

why write of escape and sonnets to the skies,
in words chained down upon the Earth?”
He said: “the universe is no country song;
it'll take more than whiskey
to understand it all.”

I spoke to him over too many cigarettes.
He told me not to worry so much.
He told me that the weight of my sighing
caused greater threat to  life,
than these poisons ever could.

I spoke to the doctor outside Fingal's Cave.
He wept for the kindness of current sight,
he wept for all the miseries of time.
He told me: “never stifle
what is meant for expression.”

He spoke to me about indefinite time.
I heard him mention God in brief passing,
but in hindsight, it may have been a sneeze.
He said: “Ed – find Jacob
and ask him for a ladder.”

Upon the sorrow of the newspapers,
I turned to my faithful doctor once more.
I asked him: “why do I stutter through life?
Pray, stay here and tell me please,
why I take your advice,

for a happier life.” He shifts in his suit,
he shrugs in my gaze, he ruffles his hair
and walks from the frame. I am left with a note
and a pill to ****,
he wrote me:

“We have distant memories of older wisdom,
we are the bringers of divine intervention.
Do not focus upon temporal wealth,
nor come to me for your mental health.
Forget set memories of old advice,
all dogmas are but melting ice.
The books cry out from upon their shelf:
'to stay alive, be kind to yourself.'”

I'm still stuck in day-drunk unemployment.
A millennial with eyes to a screen,
adopting a science
in a bedroom whisper for Gaza.

Now a writer of pretty words and clumsy verse,
there's no place for happiness
in forcing poetry. There are ribbons and bows
around the fenced-off trees,

there are notebooks of unfinished thought.
I'm searching the skies for a scrap of movement,
for some coded message
to **** the engine of war.

There's a wedding in the morning,
and there is somebody who still believes in love.
Rainbow confetti will kick in the sky,
a dandelion is born in the skull of old Palestine.

I'm still stuck in this new-age desperation,
a constant plea for peaceful completion.
I'm changing address
for a clean way of living,

in your sweet floral dress,
let this be the beginning.

Take the pavement into town,
over bridges, galleries and pain exhibits.
Sip beer on your own;
a bottle into the half glass,
before sinking into that spectator's chair.

Slip a tenner to the homeless man.
You don't know why,
but his face felt like wisdom.
You take off your jacket in the sun,
beneath the underpass as notebooks
pound together in your black messenger bag.

Take a fantasy to heart,
collect images of her and her soft music.
Allow the melodies their art.
Their art of fogging reality,
of allowing one to appear as they are not.

Keep you thoughts on the banister,
safe from the fall of pleading into old dreams.
Wilt before the kaleidoscope
of all adopted memories,
the time you bathed Christ beside Olympus Mons.

Ride the ghost train to the present,
past the infidels and terrorists of truth.
Never fear that fear of consequence,
of tomorrows lived in yesterdays,
of appreciating life,
yet forgetting to live.

Old ladies pick at the crumbs from their almond croissant
with lengthened nails and arthritic wrists. Middle-aged
men polish their lenses to make sense of their lattes,
for once glad to be away from the bar. We have been trading
alcohol for caffeine; one vice for another as we claim to
be stepping out of old, bad habits.

They say you should never start smoking. You become an
addict for life – even if you ditch the smokes. For each fear
that can be identified and calmed, comes another in its
place, or even in its absence. Oh, the human mind;
dependent upon dependency!

Couples graze by the bookshelves to conquer a lifetime
of literature together, with texts full of *** to correct their
ageing bodies. Everyone is beige as they circle the tables
of fake flower stems in a plastic vase. I see comfortable love
everywhere I go, so why then do I feel so restless?

I followed you out of the picture,
our subtle breakdowns, anti-matter,
too drunk to function, too vibrant to sleep.

The tables were numbered when we sat to eat,
uniform plates, revolving staff, doors open
to the public, red wine on tap.

I met you in the bathroom, venetian white,
***** on your sleeve, tears in your eyes,
love on your tongue – an emptied stomach.

I know I can poison you with words,
stop your taste for wine with a kiss.

I followed you to the open grounds,
pollen thick in my lungs, the wind ate sound,
removing all history: you and me, you and me.

The fountain turned copper with generosity,
faded queen, bottle-cap fraud; crowds took us
to alleyways, to your opened front door.

I met you in the kitchen, synthetic white,
heart on your sleeve, *** in your eyes,
tongue upon tongue – truth amongst lies.

I know I can save you from endless distraction,
this need for a fiction; this want for an action.

They link arms and walk in solidarity
for those that have died for our freedom.
They sell arms to the lunatics,
to the future, blind assassins,
and the terrorists they will come to condemn.

They cross words with each other
in a room of hot air and bucked teeth,
then pull together if they feel
any shift of power
like a rug beneath their feet;

experienced tongues
are well versed in deceit-
call it reptilian,
call it good diction,
call it a swig of fiction
to chase down
the spirit of Fact;
we live in a pack of lives,
ruled by a pack of wolves
in a sheep's disguise;
we herd ourselves
with sensory distraction;
in fear of dissolution,
in want of a real kind of reaction-
But the charity shops are piling off
and we're all too broke to give,
so we live in guilt as the flowers wilt
on the roadside; another number
for the headlines,
another ****** on the land.

How long must we be ruled
by those who cannot understand
what it takes to be a woman,
what it takes to be a man.

I remember the old reservoir.

The one we used to take to
walking around in the hedonic
aeon that was our youth.

I’m still young.

I’m young but the years have
aged the path that took us back to there,
grown over in thistle, thicket and thorn.

It’s cracked, with infant pools
of rainwater filling the potholes;
man-made, still habitats.

A mimicry of their mother,
water-filled basin of breadth
and no brine.

Only on those blue-moon occasions,
with cynical tongues and carved faces
do we still cross those few paths
that remain.

I’ve learnt now to accept my loss.

Dear Draycote, pool of life,
circular route and void of time,
I can dream of your return

into my days, but awake
to the sight of my long-gone friends
and all they once were.

I cannot hope to cross your path
in the way that we once did.
For we used to walk in circles,
and now that circle is complete.

So we shall live our separate lives,
pin badges, names, onto our *******,
thin ribbons to bind our fates.

But what, my life, do I call my friends
that now only frequent my mind?
Oh how do I catch up with them,
after falling so far behind?

I left my midnight shifts
and stepped into their spaceship.
The grass was thrown into purple light,
a royal carpet between my toes and
all with no scorch marks left behind.
I had wanted something
flesh-and-blood to believe in.
They would stroke my back
until I fell asleep, purring rolls of sound
through vibrations in my spine,
into the epicentre of The Electron
and its throbbing, binaural flute.
I left the planet on a whim
with common strangers
who understood the distance of stars,
but more importantly:
how to get there.

There are no numbers on these tables
to quantify our place. We sit and smoke
in the beer garden glow, forgetting the
circular thoughts of home. This small-town

will turn you to drink. It will soil your liver
and cloud your breath. She's serving cocktails
to strangers, her hair bleached by the summer
light. I'm still rooting in her shadows,

as proof I ever had her at all. My Big Brother's
wallet is only slightly fatter than his head,
and yet he talks of heartache as if it is
a sort of passing trend. This is an alien life

without footsteps overhead. A chance
for bacon and *** in the morning;
a chance for music and coffee, come
lunch. I have learned that love

can be simple. It is the absence at night
that turns lungs to black. 'I miss you'
sounds out as a mantra. I travel in dreams
to our coastline,

to where you may finally allow me
to love you back.

We were together
Staring out at the black sea;
A void in some backwater alley
Of central Bangkok.

You were laughing at its beauty
And like the stars I stared blankly,
Looking for everything I could not see.

Alternating undercurrent
Of raw sewage and street-food spice,
Alive in the shadow
Of a searing neon skyline,
The moon made of bone;
We blacken our lungs
Six thousand miles from home.

Set in greed for *** and company,
The familiar lilt of Latin tongues.
In a dream I still need to breathe,
Still need to feel the heat of love
Or at least the touch of anyone.

I lean, habit-ridden
Over the railings of misspelled lovers
That carved their names half-drunk
With hotel keys
Into the dandelion paint,
That with gradual loss,
Succumbs to the traffic
And falls in the breeze.

You wept at the sentiment.
I baulked in their loss.
I drew you in closer
To keep hold of this dream,
Before the night fades,
Before time has forgot,

Before life pulls us apart,
Before love loosens its knot.

I cannot write a sonnet
or funny limerick that will leave you
laughing into your third whiskey
of the night. I cannot spread your legs
with words and I guess geography and
lack of voice have always blighted
my route to a real home.
I cannot write greetings cards
to a second aunt sunbathing in
Great Yarmouth and coming back
with frostbite and head-lice.
I cannot write a song
and sing it to you in a way that will
leave you kissing your pillow
and wishing I was there to steady
your brand new appetite for living.
I cannot write a psalm for G-d
or an ode to nature without sounding
like a lost cause or reluctant romantic.
I cannot write the score to
the sounds of thunder that siren
with friction in the sky
nor can I give form to happenstance
memories of worms in the soil
and rainbow braids in your hair. I cannot
do much this year save from writing
an obituary and hoping you will understand
what it means to drown in open air.

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

You have not grown gills.
You have just grown used
to the feeling of drowning.

I am drunk again
and wondering what happened
to my stable moods.

This beer was brewed in Prague,
far from these crooked miles of eternal November,
these long winters that often
stretch out into the fall.

I hold this drink because I can't hold you.
Because, all that I want is that vanity rainbow,
that fossil of love born in music,
and in our doubled desires.

Play a drunken chord for me
as you set your long fingers to the keys,
as you look to the cityscape's future,
and begin to sing for the past.

In faded suit, verse and rhyme,
I still cling to you. A poem of taxidermy,
small forget-me-nots and old love's tokens
to confirm that you were here at all.

I set flame to the Parisian lighter.
There is a hope that crowded breath
will bring you near, or else further away,
in the knowledge you shall never come back.

I don't want to work for you,
fake a smile in this costume,
I don't want another day
of a boring job and ****** pay.

And I don't believe in G-d,
no TV expert or demagogue,
promising a different way,
it's the same formulaic play.

So I twist in sheets and walk around
to escape all of these household sounds,
the news is spouting war again,
I close my eyes and count to ten...

...And I wait for some change to come.
Your patient ***, your siren song.
Are you maladjusted too?
And do I have a chance with you?

Because I slip a pill to fall asleep-
nothing else will work for me,
I've tried everything there is
to cure me from this restlessness.

They **** the many to save the few,
they decimate all that we knew
about what it means to be free;
doctoring our history.

And I don't want to be the one
to bring you down or mess you up,
I just want some peace to come,
no broken streets, no fallen bombs...

...Is this all there is?
Pockets of momentary bliss?
I just close my eyes and think of you;
my drunken words,
your ocean blue.

I'll close my eyes, my mind, my tomb;
if I could have a chance with you.

The waitress sends signals in neon code,
through Christmas illuminations stretching across
the car-park, and straight into my ***** orange.

She laughs through awkward platitudes,
and all the beards that comment on her skirt.
She's working to make a living,
somewhere down the line.

I watch as she scribbles poetry on old receipts,
eyes glossing over the ketchup stains,
and into the passing of the moment.

I hope that she is writing of escape;
of better times and better sleep.
She will smash the glass ceiling,
and save us from the greenhouse effect.

Baritone singers lure her into art,
into the promise of soft-hearted men
with a resilient chest.

The waitress waits for a signal
to restart her life. There will be flares
on the horizon, there will be new lovers
leaning on their cars in the sun.

She will finally get to sit.
She will thank the waiter for her drink.

I remember the walks we took,
Smoking cigarettes and cursing the modern day.

I remember the Canary sands,
And how we fell into each other,
Our bodies still warm from the Sun.

I remember how your body tensed,
Each time you were caught in vulnerability.

I remember those ancient postcards you’d send:
“I miss you, I miss you, I miss you”
As the hours strained in your luxury.

I remember seeing your beauty from afar,
But curtailing my interest through circumstance.

I remember how you’d say to me
That all love was bunk,
Until you finally tasted what kindness could be.

I remember our intimacies;
Grown children planning world *******
Under the torch-lit covers.

I remember every story you ever told me,
And how all of your words have birthed mine.

I remember how the train took us away.
You stretched out on your empty bedsheets,
Whilst I tarried in the past.

They turn the music on in the bar
just as I am deciding to head home:
when did I become
the first one out of the door,
yet still the last one to leave his room?
I tacked a map of the world
onto my bedroom wall
to echo a song lyric;
tried to plot worlds of my own
based on the chaos of the present.
But I cannot muster the effort
when scaling the oceans,
when I know there are stars
in their death throes,
putting on a show no Jumbotron on Earth
could ever come to replicate.

They turn on the music
to fill out the films of silence
that separate crowds of people;
all clans and colours,
brands and rags-
this disconnected town
is landlocked in yesterdays.
A market town with nothing
left but charity shops
and punctured breath;
I cling to poetry
to stop me thinking about death,
about who would miss who,
and who would appear
in the breathing spaces
between dancing and drowning;

the fear of the fallen leaves browning;
browning in the dirt
as we all must do,
whilst I ***** my wage
to buy some green
to decorate my windowsill ashtray,
the embryonic apples
hanging from the tree.
I replaced my torn clothes
and bought some new shades
that blot out the sun
I once so aggressively craved,
through my years spent
sleeping with the moon;
a temporary insomnia,
as I slowly,
so slowly,
found my retreat into a poet's tomb.

I am packing up my belongings,
I am falling in love with everything:
all the things that pass my way too soon.

What a bliss-
to wake up beside an old friend
and feel familiar hands
hold you in familiar sheets,
a habitual ache
you have known since childhood,
and can never quite feel yourself
without.

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.

Somewhere

Across the the tides of nothingness

is Earth's twin.



Men with brilliance sit in suits,

and drink wine as they do here on Earth

but do not get drunk on their power.

He's all nervous twitches at the keyboard,
googling his fatal diagnoses, and listening
to old jazz turned digital. Nothing is real
any more. There's powdered sauce and
elastic pasta: just add water. There's the
street-light glare and recycled laughter.
He didn't know how he got to this point,
but he knew would have to take the diaper off
at some point soon.

I

We lost the art of brand new sight,
of sleep unaided in dreams of flight,
when tendons grew
our hopes diminished,
we set to flame
all the books we had finished.

We faced childhood's end upon the start
of routine pain and a world-weary heart.
When sadness grew
without a good reason,
we viewed happiness
as just a passing season.

We felt parents weep upon our shoulder,
experienced loss but never grew older.
The passing of time
has kept you away,
but upon my first kiss,
I shall ask you to stay.

II

Our father was a lion buried under the mound
in the jungle grass of our garden. When trains
passed by at night, we roared our father's calls
back to him. We always felt we would meet him.

In boundless energy, we would climb the tree,
scale the back-alley car-park, parading maladies
as a badge of honour. We were going to be
astronauts, playing football on the moon.

There was no time for debts or tomorrows,
only the taste of sugar and plastic mints.
A long soak in the bath was a punishment,
with nothing but dirt to wash away.

III

I think of you in comfort
as I open unfamiliar doors,
as I fall in love with a photograph,
as I find myself sleeping on floors.

I think of you in solace
when waking up is hard,
when love has been reduced
to the print of a greeting card.

I think of you too often
as I dodge another bill,
as I waste a field to play within
and settle for the windowsill.

It was you who drew the moth to the flame.
In a small-town Sunday, you walk the parade.
They see your dress ripple
in the gasp of the wind,
they forget old desires
and then become better men.

Are you laying beside him, his jaw foreign and thick?
Is his bland conversation a momentary bliss?

It was you that wore the dressing gown.
In a false-flag freedom, the high-street crowd.
They heard you crying
as I boarded the train.
All misery is gossip
and can be spread once again.

Are you thinking of me when you start to undress?
The way I counted your freckles,
the way we faltered to ***.

Eating lunch alone.
All tables are numbered
and each meal standardised.
I used to have someone
to distract me from the subtitled news
and the taste of microwaved mashed potato.
I fear I am growing old and mute.
The dole comes in but all funds are withdrew
before the chance to purchase a smile
or a new pair of shoes.
I have been walking in circles and perimeters
for too long now
but to sit and sit alone
is more painful than blisters and a bruised sole.
I miss the company
of clinking glass and snorts of laughter
between tasteless bites.

I chose coffee over beer today.
At least that is something.

But sobriety only expands the view
and makes these empty spaces
even harder to fill.

When did I start drinking to **** the day
instead of to start up the night?
When did her smile
start to mean more to me than my own?
When did I start to listen to music
by hearing the spaces between the sound?
When did her smile revive my senses
and manage to lift me from the ground?

We’ve got a lot in common,
we share the same disease.
We’re thankful for our belongings,
though we fall down to our knees.

And the Israelites are coming,
they bring their funeral song,
a one thousand petalled lotus
is burned in the Gaza storm.

Oh, I don’t want to hurt you,
but you know that love is pain.
You find yourself in its absence,
just to lose it all again.

And still, I’ll come back for more,
like some ***-starved, pointless slave.
Fixate on you in the darkness,
and forget you in the day.

And I do not need this devotion,
I know not what it is for,
I waded through the ocean,
just to fall down at your door.

I gave myself to religion,
I gave myself to war,
I fought for all of the peace,
that I’d lost on your bedroom floor.

And I do not need this devotion,
'cause I know not what it is for,
I waded through the ocean,
just to fall down at your door.

And the soil swallowed me whole,
whilst I’ve been searching in the skies,
A motion of light in the treetops,
a love before the lies.

I do not need this emotion,
I do not need your pearls,
I’m looking for a brand new woman,
now I’m tired of spoiled little girls.

We’ve got a lot in common,
how we tend to impossible dreams.
The way we stand up for freedom,
the way we fall down to our knees.

The way we fall down to our knees.

Upon this my heart's contusion,
edge of a blunted knife,
when I work my lungs for air,
I do so without life.

And I will faint at the future,
with all its awful stare,
for the lack of my autonomy,
knowing you'll not be there.

I will miss you in the morning,
but more so at night,
when I enter dreams without you,
I enter without sight.

What saddens me most,
in this world so abound,
is that my voice is so silent,
birdsong with no sound.

No sound to call out with
to still your cold shiver,
and so I ache with the love
that my words fail to deliver.