Winter let you down again.
Hidden in layers, still your thin skin
Breathes in every particle, every wave.

In the heat of every symbol of love
You grow cold and depraved.
Beleaguer every drum,
Every instrument of calm
Until you are left with your breath
And what happens when it is gone.

Smoke a cigarette
When your mind will not rest,
Unwind in the secondhand sheets,
The daily reminder
Of your ineffable lack of sleep.
The pills that you take;
The ache of routine.

The panic button,
The false alarm,
A new lease of life
That swiftly lost its charm.

The talisman of a heaven-sent sign;
Extinguish the stars
For the city light lullaby.
Hear the ocean in waves of traffic,
Hear the truth in interludes
Interceded with static.

Hold fast to the tracks
You have trod before,
The pyrrhic loss,
Each opened door

That seemed to close
Each time you reached out,
Each time you fumbled for change
In your pockets of doubt.

Winter let you down again,
A dalliance with autumn,
Your terminal friend.

In the heat of love,
You grew cold for shelter.
Away from your moods
That shift with the weather.
Away from the rain that follows the storm,
Another surrender;
Another false dawn.

I know that it feels like forever,

Since we walked down the streets of our homes.

And I miss that young breathless summer,

And the belonging I felt in my bones.



The boys tried to **** with your body,

To make themselves feel more like men.

But I made you feel like somebody,

Before I ****** with your mind once again.



So I know what I’ll get I’ll deserve it,

The wrench in my stomach and lungs.

To ensure that I’ll never forget it,

The moment you walked and I clung.



And I will taste other women,

And feel their weight on my bed.

But its you in the spaces I dream in,

Every time I lay down my head.



Oh, its you I go back to in winter,

To those familiar pages I’ve read,

While the trees wither and splinter,

Our love falls so still and dead.

Come, paint me by the fruit bowl,
power me with cheap coal,
keep me running for as long
as I could care to stand.

Come, walk along the mountain,
we'll meet beside the fountain,
I'll give you back that hour
you gave to me back then.

Come, talk to me over coffee,
in the softness of the city,
in the sweetest desperation
of a tune.

Come, listen to my sadness,
and preferential madness,
come listen to me play
my autocratic flute.

Come, indulge all my sorrow,
all the poetry I borrow,
from the poets with the sense
to avoid the 'I love you's'.

Come, meet me in the canopy,
high atop the balcony,
be the one to make
all my lucid dreams come true.

Come, hide under the bedsheets,
we'll play criminals and junkies,
we'll play until the birds
begin to sing over our ***.

Come, relax in my eyesight,
born upon the morning light,
come, kiss me in my new self,
on lands where only love,
is ever considered wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

And I love you
For simply being there.

Sometimes I fear
I will run out of things to write about.
Often I fear,
I already have.

My eyes are glazed over and my mouth is hanging open.

I sit here and feverishly type, gathering momentum

To swing the creative cavalry inside my mind forth

And to **** all that throws itself in front of my periphery,

So desperately catcalling my attention.



I live in a creative vacuum,

From the hum of the fan

And the slamming of the doors,

To the static from the TV set

And the voices. Those voices.



I feel there is a poem in me

Or a song,

That will claim the hearts of others

And tug on the hems of their peripheries

Just as these homely distractions do to me.



Until then I must write and write harrowingly.

I must disregard the rules set down by centuries of genius

And throw back the paradigms put forth

By every raised eyebrow and polite accolade.



I am only twenty-one and I have not yet felt the ache of age

But I can feel the atrophy bite in my bones,

Making me cower at this transient life

And again I find myself at a desk by the window

Feverish, so feverish.

For seven-eighths of each day

I long for those instantaneous moments of

Unbridled joy.

I bid so long to Marianne

As I hear the full bubble of wine

And welcome Suzanne

And the fullness of her moistened lips.



Oh, if the eyes are portals to the soul,

Then the throat must positively be the vessel

To all that soothes the thunder

and causes our souls to shudder

In the watery pits of our gut.



These toxic tonics that we hold

Betwixt our baneful id,

And our most pathetic of egos.



This lamb that tames the lion,

Purple hearted with paranoia

and a lack of trust to rival even the most barbarous

Of governments.



**** me or don’t.

Perhaps the only mark of solace in this life

Is to be stabbed in the front

And to avoid the hustling of the scheming lovers

Behind the roman blinds of your devotion.



Set fire to Marianne.

You can lay with Suzanne

But don’t share a smoke with her.

Because she will take.

And take.

Take.

T.

I keep playing the high string
on my second-hand guitar.
It sounds off against the rest,
a year older, more sour,
and cynical at best.

It knows the breadth of my sounds,
the cradle of my voice
over words meant for someone else.
Centred over my shaking fingers
and constant questioning of self.

I keep strumming the same old chords
and hoping for a new sound.
Twisting cheap rhymes and wine,
another glass-full, another smoke,
all from the unemployment line.

This writing was an attempt
to make laziness an art.
So that singing through Wednesday
is better than a desk-job,
better than my next far-off lay.

Yet here I am once again friend,
finding a friend in this:
my inter-planetary longing
for some unrealistic bliss.

Is he patient with your moods?
Does he understand the difference
between weather and climate;
a weekend of sunshine
does not mean that it is summer.
Does he know how it feels
to be stuck in January for years?
Does he open the curtains
and expect your skin to tan?
Does he kiss between your legs
to pay off his passionless debts,
and does he bring you flowers
for all the times he forgets?
The tulips are vibrant in the vase.
Does anything else you know
contain that much colour and life?

A mood is lifting,
As we tilt our chins up to face the rain.
This bitter detox has been hard to swallow,
A new range of old stone tablets,
Decreeing buy and sell, buy and sell,
And that everything can be owned.

We have defined ourselves
By the patterns of the weather.
Capricious friend, my book companion;
Steer with me now, across the bend
And into insanity. We can embroider
Limbs over our Sunday mattress,
And salute the new week
In ****** and teenage songs.

I’ll take you through the bridleway.
These approved paths of nature,
Contrived and confined by beaten mud
And memories of the 585 bus departing.
I will hold your hand
But not hold you to anything,
Freeing up the paths you made
Before ours intersected.

Yes, and take me to that barren farmland
Where you learned to drive.
The mud-splatter and swearing
Contained within it the only happy memory
Your father ever gave you.
This mood is lifting as we indulge each other,
As we laze into love;
As we warm by the flame.

My fingers cannot scale a melody
or take a rule across lands, to the sea
and back again. My fingers have never
pressed these strings into sounds worthwhile,
nor have they ever held a person's hand
and not felt utterly incapable of human touch.
These fingers know only strength in binding;
in fidget and rhyme, as I try to structure confusion
into something marketable. If nothing else though,
these fingers can roll a mean joint, and hold a
beer bottle so precisely to these lips.

I have started walking again.
Questing for the Atlantis
that has claimed the truth
of ten thousand men.

It's a simple process really,
of one foot and then the other,
whilst talking to the ghosts
that whisper clearly.

Each faceless name and nameless street
is a straw-man companion
of endless attention,
but never shall we meet.

Old tales go by in monochrome,
I'm a writer turning tricks,
walking paths of others and
claiming it as home.

I have started walking once more.
I watch the branch twist in wind
and beacon shelter
from reciprocal war.

They put nails in my palms
for loving you.
You described bookcases
as a ladder to the moon,
and they did not care for that.
You labelled the radio
as the death of the album,
and upon each of your words
another sparrow flew
from the windowsill in my mind,
off to join you for warmer times,
your flesh on mine,
your glass, my wine.

They told me that you eat men.
High heels and corsets
as you make their acquaintance,
a black hood and axe
as you take a moonlit walk
past the old cemetery.
I would be lying
if I said I was not scared of you.
I would also be lying
if I told you I came with devotion,
or any other plan that did not
involve taming you with ***.
They put nails in my palms
for loving you.

They put nails in my palms
for never wanting you to go.

I walked past her again.
Annihilation glance-
one thousand exposed memories
of teenage years
and exaggerated fears;
how stupid they appear
now we've learned misery well-
how to keep silent in its tenure.

How to fall at its knees
in gratitude of its brief release.
Hopeless captor,
impatient platitude;
we catch eyes on purpose,
to relinquish the delusion-
I still want her,
and she is still unsure of me.

I have not changed my costume
since those dress-rehearsal years,
still pacing streets in black coats,
still conversing with my fears.
The core of walnut in the bannister,
the stair-lift in its cage;
I walked past her again
with ****** hair and awkward gait;
an ******* full of tricks
and a folk-song made of hate.

How she falls to her knees
in cigarettes and ashes,
hopeless captor
of old bad habits;
we catch eyes on purpose
to speak beyond tongue-
I'm still singing on the hill-side,

she's still tired of my song.

Teach me how to touch you
upon your heart's consent,
throw me back to the gutter
that I'd given up for lent.

Audition all this longing
to measure out its strength,
its lack of sense for fear and time
but that of shadow's length.

Show me how to miss you
without weather turning bleak,
show to me your eternal youth,
bound in memories I seek.

Demonstrate all living joy
as you wake again today,
birthed into the curtained sound
of Atlanteans at play.

Teach me how to hold you
in my sober sight,
allow me to accumulate
all of nature's might,

as I coast on through the avenue,
as I tumble through this plain,
please teach me how to love you
without expecting any pain.

Don’t let the *******
Get their foot through the door
Say yes once, at the wrong time
And you’ve said yes ten thousand times
Soon they’ll be taking the hours
From your life

It will happen slowly
Creeping up on you
Like glacial tides
Like choosing a Pope
Like *** cancer
Until one day you are consumed
And struggling only pulls the mud
Further up your throat

They get you with all the necessities
Food, water, beer, clothes, and cigarettes
It takes POWER to say no
Not a lot of people have power
At least, they say no to the wrong things
They’ll say no to a mid-week ******
And yes to the slow death of 8-5

You see the injustice in their eyes
You see they are looking for an escape
You know, though, that they wont
The ******* move in

They claim they already own the place
That they never moved in at all
They’ll start rearranging
The furniture of your life
Orientating everything in their image

Don’t let them in
Don’t even open the door
They’ll take everything-
But it’s yours to keep

To keep so long as you
Love their cruelty
And allow them the last thread
Of consciousness
That leaves your body before sleep

It’s yours so long as you
Turn up on time
And stay late
Punch the clock
And throttle all human smell

It’s all yours
If you give yourself to them
They will use up your patience
And then start on your confidence

Until they have you
Decorating your iron bars
With raised, clenched fists
Declaring loyalty to those
Who would drop you without hesitation

Soon, they’ll **** that spark
That Blue Moon spark
The one you feel when the sky
Mimics colours of happy memories
The one you feel when
You wake with movement in your bones
The one you feel when
A balloon swells in your chest
Or when ecstasy fills your spine
How the wind at the back of a motorbike
Blows the cobwebs from your mind

They’ll take it all away

They’ll take it all
Compensate you with a paltry sum
For all of your hours
For all torn relationships
You have no time for

They’ll turn the vice
A little tighter each day
Until you turn crazy-
If you’re lucky

If not
You’ll be there
Spent on purified sugar
And a lack of motion
To your days
You’ll be there
A hollowed shell
Of violent potential
Lost

Lost in timesheets and long weekends
You’ll take pictures
Of days spent in the sun
So that in your luxury
Your geriatric, loose-skinned luxury
You can look back
On your small life and say
“Hey, I did everything expected of me”

And that will work
For no one

Don’t let the *******
Get their foot through the door
You have no POWER to resist
You won’t be you anymore

I wish to write a poem,
but my heart is just too tired today.

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A tight-jowled youth
of the twenty-first century,
tan-white skin of olive grove
and modest treasury;

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A heterozygotic individual
walking over the glass floor,
I watch women on computer screens
and I walk them to the door.

I sign off to the world at night,
laptop glow polluting the stars,
I fall asleep to a lullaby hum,
the mating calls of intersecting cars.

Eyes roll at the demands
of twenty-first century life,
I curse the death of all poetry
in the elimination of strife.

Oh, I have no reason to moan,
please forgive me this.

Information genies commentate the world.
Screens deliver me lands fractured
in drought, oh, disconnected reality
and always living in doubt.

I weep at the sights of sadness
and I purge all longing onto paper,
I watch as the sky returns my tears,
polluted air and puncturing skyscraper.

In modern joy, I curse all comfort.
Through art I pretend to praise,
I pretend to feel real emotion
beyond my usual haze.

But still, I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

Old Leonard sings his ******* poetry
in clumsy awe and wonder,
he sings to me as I count collected tips
and he always pulls me under.

My greatest ailments require cocoa butter
and my greatest rival is myself,
my rival is my best friend too
but he doesn't take care of his health.

But the curtains will close in the night-time
and they'll open again come morn,
and in my comfortable surrender,
I plead only for innocence reborn.

With that I know, there's no reason to moan,
you'll have to forgive me this.

So for love undiluted and pure,
I will call out my miserable answer,
I will walk these streets,
grow old in the face
and fall in love with a dancer.

I will dream of forgiveness
and of yesterday's returns,
I will dream of stirring the flame
that rather gifts heat, than burns.

And in the process of waking dream
and suicidal kiss,
I ask only that you understand
and that you forgive me this.

“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.

Did you ever fit the cut?
Did you ever sing in key?
Did you ever light the match
To the pages your prayers have been?

Did you ever get in line
In your struggle to be free,
Did you ever cheat in love
To find some honesty?

Did you make it out the crowd
Just to find you are missing out?
Did you ever have too much drink,
End up ******* in the kitchen sink?

Did you ever cheat death
Just to feel alive-
Just to see what it felt like
On the other side?

Did you take drugs
For that same reason?
Does your mind shift
With the patterns of the seasons?

Do you look to the future
And forecast a storm?
Do you ever plan an early night,
Then fall asleep at dawn?

Have you ever fallen in love
And acted as if you have not?
Have you ever drank your demons
Under the table; under the rug?

Do you feel confused too?
You know, I haven't got a clue
what I am doing, where I am going
- is that the same for you?

She drew each suit
Of a deck of cards
On my arm with a
Black ballpoint pen
We nursed our shared glass
And took ice once
All the customers had taken
Their motorbikes into the night
We made love beneath
The fairy-lights and
Cleansed ourselves
In simple, beautiful poverty

I knew that the ink
The glass
The ice
The fairy-lights
And the ***
Would all burn out
Or wash away

I knew that the poverty
Would lift
Eventually
And expose
Our rushed
And reasonless
Foundations

The cats sleep on the rooftops,
an ambient beat from the shower radio
comes tone-deaf through the open window,
replacing the hum of lawn mowers
that had been harmonising
all Sunday afternoon.

We buried one in the garden,
an overlooked shrine within the deep grass,
child-like magic markers  with a simple turn of phrase;
yet all I can think about
as I look over her grave
are how the beetles are nesting in her brain.

I lost the knack for sympathy,
ever since they medicated my drink
and told me I was their patient.

I lost the will for empathy,
ever since I tried to hang myself
and still they told me to be patient.

I met a wilting ***** by the roadside,
she was barefoot and drowned by the riptide,
she said,
that had swallowed her up
over the course of her time.

I sat down beside her in the rubble,
hubble, bubble and a load of trouble,
she said,
that business must come first,
so she doesn't waste my time.

I told her I was just another waste,
another scrap of food without the taste,
I said
that I would stay with her
and live without clocks and time.

She waved off kindness with her ruined hands,
she knew not love but customer demands,
she said,
no man has kissed me since
my father ran out of time.

We talked for hours more in summer heat,
she was hungry but she refused to eat,
she said,
to find beauty I must
keep thin and defy all time.

At night she stumbled back onto her feet,
for some loose-skinned man she'd promised to meet
she said,
“tonight I have found love,
as if gifted from all the stars above,
but the city bells have begun to chime
and I'm afraid love cannot stop the time.”

The weekend revellers
hand over a half-hour of toil,
of eros, of prayers in cash,
of dizzy heights, life lived
and to be lived again
as I hand over their bottled beer,
their ice and *****,
their poster boy of good times
and the erasure of all day
spent watching the wheels.
Spent watching the clock
wind its endless route
to freedom.

Legs cramp,
eyes blur to focus,
and cash moves dirtied hands,
one to the other, to the other
and back again.
Back again to the dancefloor,
to the gape of sweaty arms
flailing in catharsis,
in sweet memories
of playground kisses and
lunchtime riots.
We play sweet imitation
of black-man-blues
and toast the new day
as it comes 'round the corner,
steamrollers through
into Sundays spent
with cigarette ends and
heads in buckets.

This, my origin of misery,
their open-doored appearance
to substantial existence,
to footprints of two-time
than carbon.
To commutes of whiskey sour
and wine dry,
car left in park at home,
whilst the taxis
pick up the slack.

Poisoned in the promise
of forever-youth,
the cougars cover
the same old ground,
the same old ground
every week.
I spot them in the corners,
by the doors,
in the cloakroom
and in the fire of backway passages;
the closest hope to
human touch
they'd ever dare to dream.

And the shot girls.
The shot girls kick water
in a sea of salted men,
football hooligan,
semi-political lyncher
and the neck-tattooed reality hero
who crawled in from
some bar or other,
to condemn losses with shouts
of *****, of *****, of please.
“Please, just once,
afford me a want in life”,
comes the mating call
of lads and businessmen alike,
as young female flesh passes by
their lives,
like some unfulfilled match,
kicking up sparks
but refusing to flame.

Each day I wonder
why dread exists. Why I
cling to the bedsheets,
why stories are poured
and glasses written,
why I settle for anti-living
and artificial light,
why woman is singular
and drinks are solo;
whilst all life passes by
in the excruciating hours
spent stood behind
the beer taps,
behind the barrier
that separates me
from them.

Don't give yourself to points of misery
every time the die doesn't fall your way,
for tomorrow could be the day you wake
to all of the outcomes in the right place.

I have seen it for myself, my dear friend,
the way days drag on but you have no time
to find a conclusion, to find a reason
as to why you even woke up at all.

But the day will come when fear has no hold,
only loose ties to old loves and old selves.
You can learn to count your blessings amongst
all of the wreckage of your misfortune.

You will find yourself amongst lost pieces.
You will finally see all that you've done.
You are noticed my friend, and always loved.
The day will come when you see it for yourself.

You have appeared again.
I know I'm nearly home
because that's when you
come to take the air from me.
You come into dialogue
and leak memories over tea,
sweetening the taste that
I've long since grown out of.

I am quite different now.
At least I like to think I am.
I let my beard grow a while
whilst tiredness films my face.
I take the bus places now,
no more bicycles over the estates,
reliving anecdotes like old videos
and drawing your name in leaves.

I don't want to listen anymore.
I don't want to remember.
I don't want to go over ground zero
with a ***** and expect the past.
You have appeared again
and I can't handle it.
You have appeared again
and I am a shell.

You once called me callous.
You once said love is bunk
and lives in the spaces
between happiness and death.
Now you're signalling regret
like an echoing mantra,
thundering my loneliness
in the wake of you
and the way you are growing up.

With Georgia on my mind,
and coastlines tailored
upon the brim of my sun hat,
I take to the road in canvas shoes,
a crescendo of black man blues
and the song of kissing beer bottles
in my camping bag.

I know I have a soul.
I have a soul and
the promise everything is fine.
No more to the tune of modern frets,
instead the strings on which he sets
our raison d'être, our healing scope,
and parallel joys.

‘Neath London’s rain soaked skies,
shadowed reflections
combine footsteps over pavement,
and to the pigeon’s deep throated call,
under frequency of footfall,
I hear the passing of this empire,
so hurriedly built.

So with hitchhiker’s thumb,
I rise up like steam.
A lightness of living and the
true rejection of security;
my sins become my purity,
and time becomes naught but the measure
of what I have done.

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

Cracked heel,
Tiger Balm,
Dust of yesterday’s streets;
Sequins from all tomorrow’s parties
In the lining of unwashed clothes.

Cats sleep in the dirt
Beside ashtrays of white monoliths
Stood brave in a bed of stale ash.

Foreign tongue, the lullaby,
Familiar habits, the birth-ground
To finally be new again.

Spheres of ghost-light
Prevent secrets from slipping out
Into the night.
A hundred beautiful women
And still, I sit and stare.

The air is thick here.
Stone-bench vigils
Through evenings that do not end.

Only strays and electrical hums
Threaten to disrupt the peace.
Tears fall. My hands shake.

There is no reason to be sad.

She left me a gift bag
of coconut oil, expensive shampoo,
instant noodles, and bug spray.

Focus slips as she
presses her face to the bus window,
staring out at a town
she will never see again.

She believed the town was a prison
until I taught her
how to ride a motorbike.

Dodging ***-holes and stray dogs,
I clung for my life,
primed for purgatory-
whilst she screamed love ballads

at the top of her lungs,
believing that if she drove fast enough
she could make up for the time she had lost.

As ghosts appear
along the country roads of Kalasin,
the drumlins will be
a mere sequence of pixels

and Chinese whisper memories.
I smoke, lean on bad habits
across the fence of solitude I built

so meticulously by hand.
Another night spent drunk
under the stars – alone.
Desire spikes a fever in hindsight,

thoughts stray to her upper thighs,
blue eyes, and untouched lips.
I wonder whether reaching out

for somebody in the dark
would have been enough
to abate our bespoke
and desperate loneliness.

She left me as another moment
I let slip through my fingers.
A life-time spent

wringing my hands.

My lover left me for a handsome man.
She said that she was done with lazy love,
and instead; she wanted to work
for his arms in the evening.

My mother left me at the grocery store.
She said that she had nothing left to give me
past the shelves of fruits bathed
under artificial light.

My friend left me for the city nights.
He put a needle in his arm to see
if he was still human; to see
if sensation was still available at all.

My teacher left me with multiple choices.
He said that he had grown half-blind,
because beauty faded in his wife's demise.
Now, there was nothing worth seeing.

My father left me with photo frames.
Forced pictures of frozen life,
with bones eaten by cancer
and a future left unconfirmed.

My job left me in poverty.
It tethered me to caustic chemicals;
stripping my flesh, interrupting sleep,
withering youth before its time.

My former lover left me with memories
polluting each home-town street.
She passes across the road in traffic fumes;
emerging red-coated in my mind.

My cat left me for a sweet release.
She lay down her head and bid farewell
to a world of little experience
but that of my paternal love.

My life left me for a more worthy cause.
All potential spread to another, as I elected
avoidance; pushing out all friends
and leaving just memories.

Oh, mint leaves on a garnished drink,
a cocktail chained to the kitchen sink.
The wife has come to lose her name,
to a love played out like a guessing game.

She cleans his feet, his footprints too,
before taking to the avenue,
She is off to buy him a richer style,
to empty his pockets, to make him smile.

The wife sweats beneath the ceiling fan,
against the glass and the upward soles of man.
In the dark she dresses, to meet his needs,
she'll plant his crops, and then destroy his weeds.

She'll caress his temples in the night,
tend to her boxer after his big fight.
He'll thank her with a sharp right hook,
he'll lay down the law, he'll throw down the book.

The wife, she bends down to his will,
to his livelihood paying the heating bill.
She'll pay for all the debts that he acquired,
for an autonomy of will, now left expired.

Yet, as she stares at her mortal frame,
in her lonesome bed, she comes to dream again.
Oh, for all of the passion that has come to be tame,
she has finally stood; she remembers her name.

Goodnight I, lost the fight I,
Cheated death for a while my friend
Now I’m off for a better fit
Off to a place of happiness
And no pain
Tonight

I lost all my movements
I’m in and out of consciousness now
I can’t breathe but I can still dream
I still hear you through that morphine wall
But I can’t get through
Tonight

My heart skips a beat
Like a stone over a pond
If seeing is believing
I guess I don’t see at all…

Goodnight I know it’s late
Let’s toast the good years
We spent in waste
All the bars, all the conversations
All the details, they blur into one
Goodnight friend
Goodbye friend
You’re a ******* and you’re a drunk

Goodnight friend
My blackout friend
You always kick me when I’m down
And I’m sorry I lost the fight
Just from my window there is no light
There’s no prize, there’s no woman
So there’s nothing left in my sight

Goodnight friend, goodbye friend
There’s no feeling and no pain
Tonight

Goodnight

Let me go to war.

Let me go to war against all the odds,

Against all the ends

And everything that treads in between the grooves

And the cracks in the pavement.



Let me go to war for all that was lost in the fire

Or in the stewing **** of the flooded toilet.

Let me go to war against the loaded dice

And the big fella in his baseball cap

Shifting his fat on the stool,

Awaiting that certain hand that will feed his boy

And get head from his double-dealing wife.



Let me go to war against the ivory towers of hypocrisy

That is the church.

The breathless opulence of a rain soaked cathedral

And the poverty of righteousness

Found in every leap from scripture

And every hungry soul.

In every forgotten feminist.

And still the Pope stands in his robes twined with gold,

Claiming to feed the world.



Oh please, let me slit the throats

Of every person who scoffs at the teenager cutting his wrists,

Or at the old couple fading to grey in a world of multi-coloured ****.

Let me begin the culling

Of those who undermine The Beatles

And all other music

By turning it into another cash cow

And for those that stand with their cameras,

So desperate to chronicle this experience,

That they forget to experience.



And finally, let me go to war.

Let me go to war with myself

For being too quick to judge

And assuming I am the arbiter of fairness

And where the ashtray should sit on the table.

Let me go to war with the demons that fester in my brain

And scratch on the walls of my mind when I try to sleep

And rattle their cages every time I step into a new world.

Let me go to war so that on my deathbed,

My last thought isn’t this:



That for all the money I had made,

For all the times I had got laid,

And even the times I had got high

That I didn’t let those opportunities go by

Where I could just sit in the dark of an October dawn

And watch the rise of the morning sun.

We are a global society
When we want oranges in the fruit bowl,
When we want out of our rut
Just long enough
To brown in a patch of Spanish sun.
We are a global society
When the Japanese car breaks down
And we are in need of a cheap fix
To keep food on the table,
Some Latvian mechanic
Who helps us find our way home.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When the zeroes run low
And there are spaces,
Foreign faces,
To which we can point
And blame.

We are a global society
With our sweat-shop chic,
American coffee chains
Selling Colombian ground beans,
Frappuccinos in plastic cups-
Made in China
And served by a Romanian barista
In Italian heels.
We are a global society
When the demand is high
And the payment is low.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When hands reach out for help
And our pockets are too shallow,
Our time, too brief
To commit to a unity
We feel is dragging us down.

We are a global society
When the football is on,
When the lager is Belgian
And the supermodel, Greek.
When we cradle that bag of Cheetos
After smoking too much ****.
We are a global society
When oppression is overt,
Caricatured in bulletin posters,
Threatening to land
Upon our own front door.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
When poverty seems contagious,
When we have to clean up
Someone else’s mess,
Still we scar the Middle East
Only half-interested in an exit.

We are a global society
When we get sick,
When we borrow another doctor
For our ailing NHS.
When cities of white people burn,
We are a global society,
When Africa is divided,
We are nowhere to be seen.
Prime mover of the commonwealth
Yet we fall beneath the breadline
And living easy is so rare.

We are our own nation,
An island nation,
Under the false flag
Of a golden age
We were conned to believe in.
Our nation, our island nation,
Lost amongst a sea of misinformation.

Ground zero again. Ghost ties to old moods
now that you have found happiness,
or at least the line of best fit.
Lips interlocked incessantly on the astral beach,
over the September permafrost
where I held up the chains of my cell
just long enough to kiss you.

Chambers of blue blood, of blue feathers
interspersed in the lining of our pockets:
I felt I could fly when I finally met you.
Heard the callousness, the human history of suffering,
when the chains overwhelmed,
when I fell back to the ground.

You were my fortune in the wishing well,
but now our tongues are rearranged,
all passions now platitudes,
another name or witness to wish me well.
Ground zero again. The foundations exposed
on what might have been love.

Monoliths of steel and scorched earth.
Broken vessels sail by in the night, influence of wine;
words are tempered but the intent remains.
You remain. Extinguished shadow in the skyline,
phantom limb of loving arms. I cannot find the stars.
I cannot reach out to anyone in the space you left behind.

The old man tempts smoke down
The throat of green beer bottles
From the night before.
Cigarette a tool of precision,
Smoke falls like a lozenge
Until the bottom is occluded; endless.

When viewing art he takes to the moor,
Emergent properties of flocking birds,
Overhead patterns he can understand
Without knowing what it means.
Creation is ongoing, cumulative.
Bone upon bone, centuries of death
To build a monument for living.

The old man paints fissures on the foundations
That cultivate famous skylines,
Smoked windows interrupt sunlight;
No one is looking out for him.
The flocking birds circle the air;
Static black on the page - angry, restless.

When making art he suspends disbelief,
Essence of life locked in time,
No beauty in the fault-lines of a face
If no one has seen it smile.
Empires are falling, unknowing submission-
Tower of Babel, Interstate Highway;
All roads lead to terminal erosion.

The old man bites the skin
Around his weathered fingernails,
Fear is his mantra.
Cigarette a tool for soothing,
Smoke falls like a lozenge,
His hunger is permanent; endless.

It's been a while,
so off-the-cuff
with my sweet remarks
for the coffee rings
on the mantelpiece-
how it symbolises
entropy;
the debris of living entities,
the **** at the bottom of everything.

In reality I'm too lazy to clean,
too obsessed
with my lack of legacy
to notice the dust
that collects from old memories;
skin particles from parties long-gone,
all those fast friends
in the mirror,
sharing a tenner
across the kitchen floor.

The Drug took hold of me
from where love had left off,
throttling me
with its day-to-day panic
through my most tired routines,
the pillow-talk white-noise,
the anti-substance regime.

And now I'm tired of you,
you who I get high for,
you who brings me
to steady lows,
a subtle submission
only I can witness,
and only I can bleed out.
The Drug took hold of me
because you didn't;

because everyone let go
once I found a job,
once the money came in,
once my clothes weren't torn anymore.
They thought I was reborn.
A sober sunrise,
a cigarette at dawn,
slipping into the shower,
slipping into that
professional smile;
the bright whites
of the working day-
I have learned
to write and to cry
in the tears
of a crocodile.

A man becomes a calamity
without a woman,
or at least a love
that loves in return.
I have grown soft
in my bleak recovery,
waiting in the trash
of my poetic failures,
no longer looking
for those angry words,
no longer hoping to see
the city come to burn.

I have come a long way.
Those endless nights spent clouding the mind
to a comfortable blindness
where I did not have to witness
the war at my own front door.

I have come a long way.
Locked in fear I could not communicate
with my foreign tongue;
learned that good company
was the mere salute of open arms.

Learned to swallow breath
as I once did pills, *****, and cigarettes
to find that patient calm.
Chemicals promise anaesthesia;
only pain is left when supplies are gone.

I have come a long way
from the departure lounge,
staring at heaving grey skies
and contriving a paradise
no one could hope to find.

Walked suicidal through
tourist-lit streets of central Bangkok.
Half-drunk I wondered why
I continued to breathe;
why my heart refused to stop.

I have come a long way
from believing happiness
is a steady state you can attain
through time-lapse images of victories
and failures you forgot.

Fell in love with an older woman
who would sleep beside me
when she could not see her son.
Through nights of *** and amphetamine
she would sway through each melody

even when the meaning was lost.
Taught me how to speak Thai in the moonlight,
left food on the handles of my motorbike
when I was too hungover
to face the day.

I have come a long way.
Travelled 6000 miles to learn
that home  means anything
from a constant pleasure
to some happy accident.

That love is not pillow-talk;
it’s the rain on the windshield
that gives shelter from the storm.
That truth is not what you hope to find.
but the words that you meant;

fractions of yourself
you could never leave behind.
I have come a long way.
I have made love in enough hotel rooms
to tell you the ashes of yesterday

can be both the aftermath of a flame
you cannot replace
and the fertile ground
to change your name
and start over again.

I have come a long way.
I am still my worst enemy.
Every day is still a fight;
each moment filled with darkness
when I cannot see the light.

I have come a long way.
Stood brave in the entryway
of every opened door.
Made a toast for all the people I could be;
all of the people I have been before.

Had you been born,
my Tibetan bowl and whale song
would have been deafened by
dawn-struck alarm clocks
and ***** down my album sleeve.

Had you been born,
I would be toiling dishonest fields
for an honest go at living.
I would be sober for an evening
and wake with habitual ease.

Had you been born,
none of these words would be written
and poetry could only reside
in the spelling of your name
and your clumsy, childish gait.

Had you been born,
you would have stolen all love,
to the point I would hate myself
and only find fractions of it
in the women I would meet.

Had you been born,
I would have learned how to speak
in assertive tones
to regiment your mind,
to distil you from violence.

Had you been born,
I would now be an adult
with no margin for error,
no time for a future,
but with the promise of a home.

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

I forget myself
in the quest for happiness
and a perfect love.

There is no poet alive
who can relate to us the distance
of each falling, passing star.

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

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how each chime rolls
Or taps the surface of the air,
Each an exultation of depression,
Creation.

Eyes sting with salt, wetted with
What has been – the foolish enterprise
Of my words. These notes, they
Scale the patterns of my life.
Pure emotion.

Inexpressible.

Hammers on heartstrings,
They fill the emptied rooms with
Sound.

Lo, how each key sings.
Their voice naught in solitude,
Yet a celebration of life’s discourse in
Union.

Ears ring like a music box. Chopin’s
Soul in the spaces beyond time,
Touching mine. Our sorrows pastured
Green, laying life under the ground,
Tough fingerprints.

Hammers on heartstrings,
And I wish to tell you of their
Sound.

Lo, how they still my jittered soul.

Lo, how I accept the drizzle,
The arrival of autumn
At my window.

A library of poetry
cannot articulate
what is found in
two minutes of Chopin.

I painted you.
With trembling, amateur precision,
I suffered each line on your face.

Each fleck of sun,
Your candid smile,
Your immediate beauty in the foreground
Of an exceptional ocean.

Stumbling blindly through the days,
Fumbling for the switch
In a punch-drunk, love-sick afternoon.

Apart from you,
Stripped, exposed,
Laid prone on the gurney
With my skull in a vice
And a fist to my stomach.

I can barely stand because of you.

I painted you this afternoon
So I could toil in your gaze.
Pray I am an interesting splatter,
A noticeable blight;
A happy accident on your page.

The street lights kick in,
a pinkish hue,
some artificial moonlight,
in the fast darkening blue.

Only cars rush by,
cars and brave people,
back from work, their home a church,
their satellite dish, a steeple.

And here I find myself,
entombed in caffeine,
paint pages with words,
yet know not what they mean.

I sit in my sorrow,
and I sit in my haste,
to not disuse my emotion,
to not let this feeling go to waste.

And all that comes to my mind,
is to conjure a rhyme,
to garnish my words,
like liquor laced with lime.

Oh, innumerable streets,
with your innumerable lives,
each person a pattern
of what fate contrives.

There's just not enough time,
to scale these peaks,
truth far too elusive
to ever care to seek.

So I shall just stare into darkness,
in this coffee shop glow,
and chronicle this world
that sits at the window.

World of code;

riddle,
and a brand new
language.
I hold you close my
dear, as you stumble on through the dark night,
this knowledge
is hastening to bring my demise.
You sit within my pentameter,
so where did
I lose my peaceful mind?
I'm still struggling with poetry, in finding art
amongst the burdens of the street. You're applying sunscreen
to your back and shoulders, and then
you're basking in the heat of my astral beach.
I'm stranded here
alone now,
sending my postcards
to nowhere at all, I have grown tired
of this mere existence,
of fading in the city sprawl.
Now Mathematics
is the language of the universe,
and will speak for
centuries to come,
gravity making sense
out of chaos, and will talk forever over
the atomic bomb.
I'm learning
my sums again darling, I'm going back
to a clean state of mind, hoping to discover
an answer, to why I'm

constantly falling
behind. When I find the equation I will
call you, and profess them unto the stars,
a love never lost
in
translation, a love where you'll always be the source.