Hey young man, nervously idling away the fresh blood the creator sent you,
Cowering, afraid of bounteous opportunity while blood turns stale and the keen head turns to mush,
Stop lying to yourself and to your love, desist in piling worries upon her tender frame!

Whilst the blood congeals in the veins
The eyes can grow dull and sickness can mollify the restless spirit.
Open the cells to mineral impregnation,
Calcifying the legs, then the waist, then the chest…

No need for anything dramatic.
No need to open up the veins in hot bath,
And bitterly expire beside the 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner
As unsuspecting house-mate knocks patiently on the bathroom door:
“(KNOCK, KNOCK KNOCK) are you going to be long in there?  I need a poo.”
Why ruin a good door-frame by forcing said house mate into shouldering door from hinge
Only to stumble across sprawled carcass bobbing softly in reddened lukewarm water
Wearing swimming trunks for modesty’s sake.

Why face the posthumous embarrassment
Of having your rambling, hastily scrawled farewell note;
Marred with emo clichés and syntactical errors,
Poured over and scrutinised by judgemental mourners.

Nah.
Just lock that bathroom door deep within your soul
And let the childlike ambitions and desires that defined you
Sink beneath the lapping waters.
Soldier on, mourning the demise of the inner self, for now
Where the excision took place is tender and red
But it will heal.
And you will be free from the burden of self-reflective expectation,
You can dine with the servants; **** up to the inept boss,
Discard the heavy crown of ambition
And walk with a light and merry step into the silence of the grave.

And whilst this resignation is all very well
for a piece of self-pitying prose
Maybe you owe it to that guileless infant
(who art the father of the man writing this)
To do better by him than drown him,
Letting him Go Gentle into That Good Night
Simply because
In the face of unwavering actuality
He has become an inconvenience.

How do I impress you?

By insisting that my love is absolute and unconditional?
By finding new and ever more elaborate ways to demonstrate my hopeless devotion?

By opening up my heart to you fully for your indifferent inspection?

Should I peel off
The mask of casual bravado to for you to see unfettered the festering mass of insecurity, obsession and shameful secret from which I am wrought?

By declaring unreservedly my utter devotion; and that I am utterly unable to imagine a life without you? To make it clear that your desertion would render my tender frame wholly murdered?

By rudely expelling from your head
whatever now is left
Of that work of fiction which you have created;
And confessed to love on that moonlit night three years ago?

Not likely.

It’s Friday and the world is saturated with possibility. As I tread the familiar funeral-march to work and wage, as inevitable as death, gladness lightens my steps and sunshine paints the decaying leaves like confetti.

It’s Friday. The mise en scene fizzes with delight. The week’s weary cynicism is banished forever and cheery simplicity reigns. The laughing crowd of actors cloaked in Sunday-best suites outside the temple feel it too, and in this light all religions are true.

A glorious Friday. The graveyard dances with life. Mammal and bird pay scant regard to the festering bones. This is no time for the dead. With the hubris of youth I scamper between, leapfrog over the stones; smirking at the ugly archaic names, which in this light seem more absurd than usual.

I know that its not right to force it because its not natural or pure, the soil is poor, there’s a flaw, no flow, no place for it to go, led down a Cul-de-sac, off the beaten track to a sterile wilderness where there’s only the mundane, eating *******, talking, working, walking, friends faces, names, places and facts.
    Dry dusty facts, set in their mould, old facts, cold facts, aging hard, ready to crack and dissolve, slipping and draining away to the darker recesses that you've forgotten how to reach, or try only to find the minds too numb and bruised, too weary, abused and overused. Like the endless capillaries have gradually retreated from being mistreated, you know that they won’t re-grow and its accepted and its just another fact setting slowly in the mould until

SNAP!

You remember the name, the aim of the game, the shadows and stains the voices you retain in the dark recesses of the brain and its re-shelved in a safer place nearer the surface, grinding other facts into dust, now a few inches high, thick enough to stand on top of it, loose so that snaps of conversation and chilling grains that catch in your throat and make you choke and cold all over and weak at the knees are carried on the erratic breeze that whistles between the plural mes,
    Sometimes linear, progressing down a straight path, so direct that from A, Z can be seen and processed leaving the remaining 24 letters unnecessary circumlocution, sometimes ignored or stored to be thought again when bored, recycled, implying a mind of finite possibilities…yes, It is futile to exist, reminisce, kiss or think or resist the bland uniformity of experience: to stand out, shout, or doubt, think or drink or stagger, swagger or to conjure grand statements that somehow draw ultimate and above all illusionary conclusions about everything that are eyes aren’t designed to find; cos our bodies, too small for our minds are only built for the daily grind.

Round bricks that don’t fit our square shaped holes, objects too weighty for our inky fingers to lift and label and store away with the other facts, to rot until eventually freed, returning to a primary state of non-existence. Add Rhyme :lime, time, Thyme, mime, I’m, Grime, Chime, Chyme, then Simon Says add some clever mechanical clockwork metrical structures whilst speaking insightfully about abstract concepts in a witty and above all IMPRESSIVE manner. On your marks…

Inner monologue gets louder, pulse begins to quicken
A growing sense of desperation vies for recognition.
The tone gets more insistent and a thousand voices ask
which clump of molecules is in charge behind the mask?

Inches from the mirror I study my disguise,
hoping I can see the me that lies behind the eyes.
I'll process the objective, trying not to see.
The fractal patterns that divide into infinity.

Trapped inside a universe behind my eyelids closed
I glimpse the logarithmic hell from which I am composed,
If you take away your senses, all that you'll feel is alive
Like stripping paint from canvas to find from which part art is derived.

If maths is what I'm made of, then I don't want to know
for once I fear the truth is hear it's never gonna wanna go.
We're all made of nature, and if nature's all the same
how can a soul be grown up in a dish but still it isn't tame?

Today is the day. As in customary, we shall start with the weather: The morning is clear and cool, the sunshine weak but well-meaning, the wind sweet but sharp and the trees green and chatty.

This day has been a long time coming. This day has. For too long it has skulking amongst the future pages of some misplaced internal diary. It's long shadow has been edged with fear, dreaded like an exam. Said fear melts away like yesterday's clouds, replaced by sunny optimism, for this date is now set in stone, frozen hard over night it now stares me down with oblique neutrality.

I'm not going anywhere, it whispers softly. You're fears are misplaced. Your fear of me is a your fear of death. Useful up to a point - but essentially irrational. Whatever will be will be and it will today.

The morning gather pace and after momentary brief salutations and briefer negotiations the train is boarded. The destination: no one knows. We know the names but they seem oddly sterile now, the sound cold hard lumps in our mouths, currency worn smooth: Edale, the pennines, the peaks, Absorbic. Citric. Folic, Formic Carbonic. Sulphuric. Deoxyribonucleic, Lysergic. Acid.

The absurd signposts of anonymous hamlets lazily swing by with increasing rapidity, blurring into one like the blades of a helicopter.

Post-industrial scabs and sores instantly give way to merry bucolic splendor as itchy, thick balaclava of the city in torn away. Laugh about nothing as we are hurled headlong into some postcard image of an England long lost between 'then' and 'now' where trees sing, walls are dry-stone and happy cows and sheep await noble, happy deaths; all wrapped in honey-coloured sunshine.

Rolling mounds of soft green matter undulate gently to a halt, and we emerge intrepid coloniser of a galaxy far far away. Locals eye us warily, the hot sun looks down angrily now. The baking mud coughs dust in our eyes and yellow spears of dead grass stab our tender shins. The warm fuzzy nostalgia that we are draped in gives way to...something else. Illogical patterns snake across verdant valleys, breathing and twitching. Harsh blue sky melts into hazy horizon, like oil on water. Panic sets in.

Pleading looks are exchanged and whilst reassurance is sought, none is found. Each gaunt face is scoured for hints of strength. Leaderless we wade through a sea of shimmering heat, collecting beads of sweat, losing hope of succour. We seek solace in plastic pound-shop distractions, only to find we are rendered too numbskulled to operate children's toys. Terror turns to horror. The yawning maw of madness, death is now so close we are caressed by it's putrid breath...

Release! Baking savannah morphs to cool,  mottled-green grotto and everything has already changed. All is bathed in verdant peace and ears can feel the cool lapping of a friendly stream.

You walk a lonely path old man but now and then you show us
you're alive
And maybe when you've had a few you'll shed a sorry tear or two.
That's fine.

But if you really must insist on dredging up this ****
Each and every time.
As each new fact's learned don't mistake horror for concern.
Cos it's a lie.

I'm happy. My eyes are dry.
I can't feel pity looking in your killer's eyes.
So chin up son, don't you cry.
The things you did were unforgivable and I'll never sympathise.

Lying just beneath the skin there hides a multitude of sins
That wait
For a ear that doesn't sneer or recoil sickened
Cos they can't relate.

Seize any opportunity; for you've so many agonies
to share,
To unload your woes but that cross you built
is yours alone to bear.

Each sacred tet-a-tet where you might vocalise regrets
makes you renewed,
But don't forget that as they peer at you it's one-way glass
their peering through.

You look through misty eyes - your little heart is opened wide,
but their's are shut.
They can't return your gaze of hopelessness and shame,
They've heard enough.

If I thought there was an afterlife
I'd be concerned for what's coming your way
And whilst I don't believe in evil
You and him came pretty close I'd say

You can repent until your spent or
Flagellate your sorry self to death.
But if your just trying ro tell the world your sorry
Well, you can save your breath.

Leave flowers on his grave and promise that you'll never
misbehave again
Curse the wicked heart god gave you -
If you had the chance you do it all the same.

Mount another charm offensive
Show them all the side they think you lack
But know that no amount of
Humility will ever bring him back.