Visiting once more brought the smells all back,
Stout, mixed with cigar smoke, maybe.
I guess it still lingers; Damp had crept  into the only wall left
Burrowing its way in, nesting in the crevices.
It must have been 6, maybe 7 years to the day
When I got a beer from Seamus at the bar
And watched Jack, Billy and Sean down Guinness
With all the finesse of  blind dogs.
What dogs they were though, the furious three;
Piercingly loud they screeched
At every dart that narrowly escaped the clutches of the bulls eye
And nestled itself in the matted padding of the run-down walls.
Even on its last legs, Carlton Vale still kicked with its escaping life;
Now it is clear that desire to fight
Went away the moment the bulldozer touched that first wall, and
All that is left is Billy’s lucky dart
Defending its resting place in the centre of my memories.

I:
I stopped for breath;
It was earthy, the soil
Was putrid to the touch:
Death oozed out of the cracks
Of the river, bubbling unnaturally.
Life was naught where I roamed.
Squeezing the last drops out of the bottle,
My cracked lips groaned, the silence strangled my memory
Only the weak were erased that day.
Four years ago I think
She ruled herself with a spring in her step
Before the sludge, the acid sludge
Wiped her dreams away
And ushered in the sun of winter
To never see summer again.

II:
Speckled with dust I carried onward;
The terrain flashed with familiarity
As I stepped into the darkness of her home
If you can even call it that anymore;
Her smile is a deep crimson, the blood of the many
Line her barren wasteland. Sometimes I face the winds
Instead of hiding; but they bring those hollow, pale spirits
Ever closer. They only stop
To torment; their whispers perfectly pierce
And destroy the hope I once had.

III:
They tell me sweet nothings and extend their hands of absence;
I cower in the darkness to stop their screams.
The scimitar of radiant light cuts through the night
As I prepare to face the wasteland again.

Swallows, sloes and willows; gone are the days where
They lined the earth and made it smell whole again.
Now we lay motionless in dreams long lost
Lonesome as I was, the ghosts haunt where I once were.

IIII:
The path in front of me winds endlessly;
Shattered and incomplete, it beckons me
To wherever it decides to take me.
For I am naught in the wasteland;
I will wait for her to come back
But the sands of time are not on my side.

Mammy Jospehine,
Death lingers on your breath;
From every third sentence
The untimely demise of a friend
Is plucked from your alexandria
And laid to rest in the London air.

The engagement party became your wake;
Gratitude came first, some qualifications second
Since our celebrations reminded you of your reverend
Who possessed your heart in full
Until his tendons supporting you
Severed clean when he rode a bit too quick
Molding his Harley into the spine of bricks
Previously the boundaries of your new home.

Leaving the party in Cousin Jason's car
The joy on your face seeped into my arm
Revealing your age old scars.
Praising the jollof rice and the confetti
You stopped and realised you were indeed not ready
To forget old Aunty Eunice
Who welcomed her release from an unsteady mind.

Even though I saw how much joy hurt
I couldn't help but feel peaceful
Because I know that your true strength
Is your ability to know that persistence is evil.

Yet your persistence
Despite the toll its taken
Enshrines your Friends
In the Prism of your qualified lens.

All that is mine I carry with me.

My frosted spectacles
With the tiniest crack on the surface
Just enough to make them special.

My leather wallet
Beaten by years of rain and use.
Inside, a polaroid of the one I consider divine.

My keys
For what I do not exactly remember.
They stay nestled in the back of my pocket, rusting slowly.

My lyric book,
Complete with unfinished ideas that ****** at the
Back of my head, pleading to be finished one day.

My Memories,
Which have a repugnant smell of loss
That I embrace with open arms.

My ‘Dreams’,
A potent synthesis of reoccurring nightmares
Fundamentally unrequited in its presence.

My Addictions,
Virulent Vampires leeching droplets
off who I adore so dearly.

My Love,
You too are being ripped away
So quickly.

I think for now
I shall stare at my lyric book wistfully
Through my spectacles, hoping for redemption.

Perhaps one day I will again be able
To show you the Polaroid I hold so dearly
And finally get to use these keys.

All that is mine, I carry with me;
Hopefully I could one day
carry her too.

Angelically gold Mary stood stoically
Cradling all that I’ve known to be true.
His father is dead; blank was his expression
Blank were the people bowing to him.

For all meaning had been lost to the wind.
Once, this place teemed with the beams of children;
Now that our fate is confirmed, we merely stare
Without sight.

Standing tall its rungs seemed so far apart then
The ladder peered down at my achievements with glee,
Realizing that I was nowhere near the standard of the men
That so easily surpassed this obstacle before me.
I tentatively touched the ladder, pleading for a strong foundation;
The steel rungs screamed back at me. Nonetheless I flailed forwards,
Gripping the battered beam without hesitation.
It told me of my critical mistake as it flung me westward,
And the jagged cliff loomed on as I was propelled ever closer
To the end of my hubris, that so set me on this path years ago.

The Headstone, worn out and fissuring at the edges, stands alone;
Etched deep into the charred rock was a name; one which is now gone.
I glance at the bloodstone, and wonder if they did atone;
Or did they stand stalwart in the mist, and fail to move on?

Did they suffer in silence as the fire cleansed the earth,
Of their meaningless existence? In the end, however, hard they tried,
They indeed did not matter; with no chance of a rebirth
The scorched corpse hovers above ground, yelling

“You are just a grain in the sands of time!
Just like me, desire and fulfillment will pass you by
As the colour which you were born with, leaves your eyes
So your prime shapes itself easily
Into the Fallen remnants of mine.”

The lights smiled as the road stretched for millennia
I refuse to entertain them, to persist forever.
However it tells me different, that I must go
To where I am needed most, I follow
The crumbling walls, betraying its host                                   
It has been long since I journeyed this way.
Footprints, of some kind, lined the path;
Whatever it was that made the mark
Might it have searched for meaning deeply?
But in the end it began to fade, and I heard
The tall nettles, scratching the mighty concrete;
Blue-crested Swallows too joined in on the harmony
So Discordant and so Soothing, for a fleeting moment, but
There was no respite given as the moon watched me stumble;
Her eyes pits of nihil, devoid of hope, yet mesmerizing.
There is no telling when I can return to my happiness;
Why Must I be so lonely, in this plane of mild?
The isolation appears stronger, I am afraid
That I may grow insane with the wild.

Delicately poised in the center of my palm
A fly, its slimy eyes poking out of its head
As it scuttled across happily,
Seemingly scouting the fleshy terrain.
I could crush it in my hand.
But this time… I won’t,
Not straight away anyways.
For even though I hold complete control,
Everything
Deserves a chance to escape
The deathly vice grip of humanity.

Indeed, it must have been a year back
When I first laid eyes on her.
She was ruminating out on the willow tree
Deep in thought, her maroon eyes followed my footsteps.

When she moved, so did the leaves;
Tentatively rhythmic they swayed powerfully
As her flaxen hair danced playfully around
To the sound of the howling wind eclipsing my awe.

Briefly her heavenly gaze caught mine and conjured
Dreams of our future, intertwined with fragrant optimism
Rooting itself deeply in my head, taking a fluid, ever changing shape.
Maybe now, I thought, I could become what I so wanted to be.

The lianas shot upwards towards her as I stepped ever closer;
Their startling roots wrapped themselves around the willow’s boughs
For a split second, but it was just long enough to ******
Her away from me.

It seems to be that now only I
Can ruminate in despair on that same willow tree
Looking out on the idyllic plains, dreading the unavoidable day
When what i know to be real ceases to be.