This is me
I am male
I am tall
I wear glasses
I have a short beard and hair that's receding slightly
I have a slight face
I am quite broad
I have poor posture
I have a rural accent
I like to laugh
I like to speak
I love to listen
I hate that word
I like your opinion
You gave me a nice drink, thank you
This is nice, isn't it?
I've travelled a bit
Where have you been to?
Ah yeah? I'm at uni too
Cool, nice to meet you.
I have poor posture
I have a slight face
I have a short beard and hair that's receding slightly
I like to smile at strangers leaving
I am tall
And that's it.

I question what I know
and know I do not much
but maybe know not nobody
how know they suchy such

What stuttered whimsy
denies the morrow
and leaves its perfume in its wake?
What cloven promise
corrects wonder
that crude and muddy shows mistakes?

Lonely pillows petrify
Mine becomes a plastic sheath
To television inspiration
I hid my dreams beneath

And whole my sleep will stutter
My feet won't walk the floor
I'll take any chance at dawn's return
Murmuring 'once more'

A sense of purple, royal inadequacy
Siezes me as I gloss truthly spirits
And invent what they tell me to feel,
Pretty woman, pretty thing
Primitive lonely, primitive thing
Don't look into my skull, for
I'm thinking what they pay me for

But lovely is the feeling
That saviours walk on educated steps
Frowns draw well wrought lines of ponder
Ditches of leprosy dug by the brain,

Pariah, well maybe, well just to myself
What it is I'd forgotten what wishes I work with
I'm leaving a nutshell and entering an essay
Donning a thinking cap woven in led

So there, I wrote something, and it came out coherent
Though I've no idea what it said,
My ramblings lost purpose and for that their quest,
But they buy me a future, and for that
I'm happy
Or perhaps I'm easily *lead

To be alone
A flower without a stem
A cloud without the rain
An eye without the lid
Light in through all to see

To be myself
An ox without a yolk
A wish without a future
A word without a lip to speak it
Flying away from deaf ears

To be lightning
Bright and dangerous in the dark
Ears to hear beyond sound
Mind unfettered by company
Hope uniquely free, uniquely so

Mask left on my dressing table
Chest left in my drawers
No ear at the door,
Oh to be alone

To be alone is to shed a skin
To sigh as I touch the earth again
And cease this mad
Levitation.

To be alone is to rest                                                                        Finally
To grow out of each day from the tight skin I wove for myself
To view it all from deep compassion
From a sudden intake of self control.

To be alone is to gamble
For each day is a die rolled
Or a bell tolled
And how my ears ring
Depends on how I was under it all all all day

To be alone is to hold my head in my hands
To pull my mind back freely
To think I will never feel that again
Until the next day.

I wouldn't call this an anniversary,
But what I have of the old you
Resurged today, and I barely knew its creases,
Barely knew where to buckle when it looked at me
So I suppose that's a waystone, a twist in my gut worth mentioning...
I remember you -

I remember when you came downstairs, naked
And looked at me with bloodshot eyes
Shuffling your swollen feet,
Dripping

I remember when you begged her to come home, touching a clammy hand to my face
Not knowing I wasn't her, but
I was so close to leaving

I recall, when I said I wouldn't care if you died
And thought of what your legacy would be, distant
Shufflings of bald wax and steam
Breathed through a desperate engine
Firing wrong, chugging wrong, wrong
I remember you.
..

Just

But guess what, I know you now,
I know what a glint in your eye means
I know, not remember you tell me you love me
Every day
And I answer back, hesitant
Because I fear
Memory doesn't sleep so well under soil
As feelings, so carefully buried
And locked away
Only sprout stems and
Bloom, without my knowing
Without my permission,
But saving what life left me    anyway

I know you now.

There's a tolling depth to me,
A rebounding chasm
Space a hopeful quantity
Tuned instruments ignore

Where broken column qualities
Lie naked in the unkempt stubble
Undisturbed, those civilised peaks
Mountains for heavens bored smooth by soft hands

Champing teeth abound the wind,
Old sounds of dun legs taking flight
And leaving the knotted trees
That died in the clotted soil

Be warned, beasts have left this barren
Sharp corners have been smoothed for
Once this land was deep and green
And gushed with florid indecencies

Now its depth tolls
With the charter of the wind
Scattering what few collected rocks remain
As bricks for walls built far beyond.

I met her in my sleep last night,
And it was awkward, like in life.
Her arm was parcelled by a curse
And I hated him at once
Though I hid it well.

I was a king on a throne,
Brooding over battle
And my armour fitted poorly,
A matter which she noticed
And pointed out.

She asked me whom I was fighting,
Smiling as she did.
And I looked down, amazed
That she could be so bold.
She readied herself.

I drew my own weapon,
Distance in my fist
And fought her smile,
While her 'friend' looked on.
She laughed and it rattled me.

There I lay,
Distance brought down and shattered
And there she was,
Above me,
Her smile the only weapon she needed...

Don't trust trains
They take you places, shuffling
Across steel paths cut for them
And take you for the pleasure of places
With  no thought of the coming back,
Not of home

Don't trust trains
They sprinkle your sense of home
Across a wilderness of bright faces
With a sense of shallow humour, dark as
You'll never meet them again, like all
Upon rare returns all has changed, trains have swept all on, flash
Don't trust trains

Don't step to the pedastal, platform
Lest you've been warned a thousand times and
Disregarded every word
For the churning of wheels, you
Have laughed with a wheeze at the choke of belonging
And wished for more, I
Wish not to see you on the train

For just one time, if you are ready
To love and lose me
I'm here, bitterly tossed
At your sweet lap to take some hours of each other
Sprinkled on our lips like momentary dew
Until we evaporate and leave only the salt of loss
Adding what we can to life, no
Unless you really are ready for that
Never trust trains

'Do you want to go to a club?' he asked her.
She nodded and might even have smiled
He couldn't tell from
The gloom of her smartphone.

The club had a band and they played all the night
While she was playing Zombie Fight
The crowd got too crazy, and soon went to rush
While she was playing Candy Crush.

Her boyfriend got bored and went for a look
While she was checking her Facebook
He met a girl and he did the deed
While she was checking her Twitter feed.

She went to find him, looked up at the band
Wanted a member to hold by the hand
But they were all taken by girls who could try
While this girl just looked down and checked Spotify.

On the way home she saw a lady
On a Youtube vid' called 'What you've all  paid me.'
The people who watch her all make her life good
Be like her? The girl wished that she could.

Now I'm free
From wicked thorns
And lives on sticks
Dangling
Like hanging men

And the silence bathes me
The night-eyes keep me clean
And I smile
Under the first warm moon
For many a blue sun

Now lets dream about
The stars
One of the most perfect dreams
On still nights like these
I could be happy

I could be old
And sigh in my sap skin
Like trees with dream roots
And deeper, drinking highs

I could be young
Or ne'er born again
And cry out
For the sake of hearing myself
Feel something newer than me.

I could be free
And tweak like the bird
Air about my brow and
Flowers about my face
Yes, sir, I could be free

Yes, madam, without you
I can be me.

Like painted frogs upon a tree
I feel the poison leak from me
I do not gamble as a rule
But with that hope may disagree

I chained the gauntness, kept the beast
Until it felt at home, at least
When it snarls I shiver less
When it bites I let it feast

Show me more of ******* sap
Sticky, but this honey trap
Is quickly eaten up by me
To venom I’m a porous wrap

It comes, it goes
The gale force blows
But poison’s fickle
The tree frog knows.

I can almost expect
What you're worth to me
The search for something I care about
Leads me to consider some like you

To be honest, you're a bit of a plaything,
Some little dolly I can twist
To make me happy, one
Bird in the light's chorus

So the vanity in me congratulates you, you're in, that which I'm sure about
In my garden of the could've-beens
Where all is shelved and warm and no longer offensive

You can be great there, one of the best
And walk through the grass, the fountains of instinct
And meet the others who came before
As though you cared

There, you can taste the sweetness
Of pollen I scatter, brush past currents on the wind I send to ruffle your hair
*** it should be displayed,
Hear the laughter of girls in the painted summer
And appreciate me

Like a tap, cold and misshapen
You can twist me and watch words come out
Mixed in with the tears, fluoride confessions,
Equally dangerous in quantity
As bitter I'm pushed
To tell you I never wished to speak
To tell you I'm alone
That I long lost what you were
In cramped days

I feel sick
Not learning, not learning
And dashing my mind against you
Tearing myself up
And pouring out like
Feral confessions

Turn me off, stop me speaking
For only your eyes
Have the strength to twist me up inside
And pour me out
Like a tap

Like those who've lived neath the umbrella
And ne'er learnt to hate the rain
So those who've been safe together
Are keen to build with pain

If they had met the eyes
Of a man holding a machine gun
That would have been the demise
Of the destruction they seek for the sake of fun.

Don't wave your flags and say to me
The state is old and pointless
I've lived with comfort happily
Why do you want to destroy this?

Anarchy is the seed of the fools
Who're born and bred beneath
The umbrella of states and their 'tools'
Their rage their comforts bequeath.

She told me she's an artist
And it was sad to see
Her mouth make 'Umm's as she thought
Her brush strokes torturing me.

I didn't love her, no indeed
But she was good and so I feared
That one day she would have to find
That pain would oft 'umm' as it neared

One day she made my portrait
It was not good but I suppose
That for one who 'ummed' and erred
It was beauty in dead clothes.

One day she called me seeking feeling
And comfort with soft words
She failed to sell a painting still
But I just ummed and erred.

We did not speak for many months
But she came back one day
At my doorstep children stood
About her by her way

She asked me for forgiveness
And I begged it in return
For few may sell their paintings
But good people never spurn.

A trojan course
Before me
Light
Hasten
I'm here

Listen
Please
Understand
What I try to say

I'm not wax
I'm flesh,
Rotten
But perfume's my conversation.

Don't tell me you've forgotten
Bad words
Reek from my lips
I'm me

And I'm confused

An urgent kind of motion
Lends me life on grin
And thumb-prints make words
Techno-bio-written

I read you when I'm spoken
I speak you when I'm heard
And you and I speak lives together
That we both were, little brother

Thank you  from a drunk heart to a thirsty living
You're all I love
Hold hands with me
That horizon's for the seizing

I think what we do
Is something like drudgery
It's difficult to define
What takes us to our manners

But I think there is a rhythm,
Even when I know there isn't
And I think thinking makes the thing
Makes our rhythm

I think the world has its beat
And at times I get lost in it
It jumps in at times to change the stage
But even its verse breaks for my chorus

Leaving behind a depression isn't like
Raising the dead
I find it's a lot like
Waking up
To a conductor waving you in

I feel it still
That cold, beckoning wind
In the shutters of the leaves and
The spiral ice of puddles

The yellowing leaves
Ochre metal pots to Autumn
Shallowly answer me
Reluctant forms of wishes.

My hopes defy corners
Spring upped from mountain earth
Bristles of naked grass
Iron grey like the wreaths of the North

What I longed to feel attached to
The winds buried
And broke into a million pieces
To call my name in the morning glitter

We're all nervous
We're all scared
We don't move our limbs
Like ribcage tabletops, hearts like coasters
We cry
Varnish tears
And prop
Fists
On our brazen wood.

We're all anxious
We all need breath
To twist our tongues to words
And our lips to a grimace
Fooling no one,
But the ones who don't care.

And we all shine
Like carbon diamonds
Under the pack of a thousand years of dirt
We're not normal
But,
We,
We so are.

We are so alone,
Together.

What orange bosoms

Can you press to yourself

Prised out a candied tube?

What lice make thoughts creep

And hands run down stockings?



What time spent brainless,

Hoping for a life outside riches

Growing into a chair?

What losing streak

Paints your face, sorry?



What can we talk about

That isn't hopeful,

That asks true questions?

What can I say

of big arses on fat girls

and big biceps on vain men?

Wear your heart like a golden brooch
Shine it so all see
Your goodness is as you would be
Your courage is itself beyond reproach.

Darwin knows, some try to say
That the weak should fear the strong
Well this has gone on for so long
Can you honestly say you like this way?

I propose you think on those
Who live in darker minds
Their hatred builds up and then blinds
Them from the hard path each has chose.

I met a man who said to me
Love is like a destiny
I met a man who frowned at me
And he was neither glad nor free.

Love yourselves to love another
Love your sister, love your brother,
Love the man who scowls at you
For in that heaven may be true.

Walking 'long a sparkling street
As adverts wave aghast to meet
The poet's eye, the poet's stare
To meet the challenge everywhere.

Men of brash, metal cage mouths
Women of pinched faces of hows
Life lives itself here, with
Or without your give.

But I am flint iron steel spark
I am death life grow fast mark
Don't talk to me, fearsome
I'm a little more than you.

I'm taking earth from your pockets
I'm taking words from your wallets
I'm living smiling drifting lazily
While you rush

For here, I am,
The wind, it knows
that on my peak
The heaven glows.

And totems ease
To be my trees
The shoots prop up
My lowen luck

I don't have to stand
To be taller than Strand
I don't have to tell you when
I'll climb atop Big Ben.

Grimace, ****
I'm made of ash
And your fire can't
Burn me.

Alive or dead,
I win.

Breakdown in the tower,
I'm going to miss you
As I wait for the next step up
The lightning crackles on about.

Or waves roar beneath
Past listens crash alive
I'm healed, but
In our past I was broken.

You'll be everything without me, but
Of course
Not our everything,
That's a drop in our uninventable ocean now...

Our sea between us.

Well, know heartily that I laughed,
That I loved you,
Friends and lips,
Walks and trips

Forever chuckling on into my world.

I'm fond of thinking of
Little towns I never knew more of
Than a name, a blooming of meaning
For someone else

Wandsworth, for example
Where is that?
What root colour does its name bring up
Through ink and rising yeast of
Mucky history, what
Legends roam there, who tells the stories in
Such a place?

My questions lie in courtesy
For I expect no wonders from a place such as Wandsworth
Nor would I expect my own beginnings
To tingle much whiskers
But I know

Every corner and straight of my hometown
Every cranny and nook of where I'm from
Every thought of deflated or ardent home grown hope which springs
From every river I know my place
And someone knows Wandsworth

Some lover is leaving there now
Some legend is lacking a purpose there
Some houses are filled with public displays
Of memories made, of remembrances paid

Who calls that place home?
I know they're out there,
Thinking of something
And looking up hoping
Perhaps writing of me
As I ponder what life read to them

And had me read back
Curious love for knowing of others
And the sleep which follows
To forgetting such things
Forever

The howl of shells still split my mind
Haunting fear a freezing bind
The paper hope sent down on lease
Enough to change war into peace.

Peace thought myself a braver soldier
But was not foolish, that I told her
Like pig’s meat when I hit the pan
I shrank and squealed, such is a man.

Crying out in **** manner
“You’ll take my breath, but not my valour!”
But they came not for bravery,
They came to waste and waste is me

I fell a million times they say
Each time I sobbed the self-same way
My friends have died, but death’s a mystic
One death is tragedy, more a statistic.

Match the sleep up to the fire,
Words alight in bareface glow.
Take your knees and hold them tight,
Tonight's the night that Dragons fight.

By the river lives are woven;
Fabric soft and hugs the skin.
As the shadows dance about,
Throw their arms and scream and shout.

Froth at the shore - take care!
Who'll hold you back from the tale?
Don't lose any grief.
Each story's a thief.

'I don't know if you've ever heard
Of the Great Charge.'
Said one to me.
I smiled
And thought of those
Shouted onwards by He on the Hill.

I had heard of it,
I had heard they bled
When they were shot while they were led.
Who'd have thought?
I frowned.
And thought of those
Shouted onwards by He on the Hill.

'Funny.' he said
'His Hill was so much higher
Than all the cannon fire, but
They say he still cried out
With each muzzle's shout.'
I nodded.
And thought of those
Let down by He on the Hill.

'Yes.' I said
'In fact they all cried
Together when they died
And realised what they're worth, that
His Hill was only earth
And they were only bones.'
I walked away
And thought of those
Made to realise they were nothing
By me on the hill.

We're not human
Riding on what waves
The length of our spines will flex to
Shiff ff fting focus as if from congealed lenses, blushing crimson worries

I forgot what I was meant to be told
I lost the talismans given me
Pupils leave glass classrooms
And can't be hoped for any more
Than in the grim mission they're handed, but we're not human

For we aren't sorry, not grieving the passing off of pleases
And the absence of grace
No churches, ties or classrooms push us forth no more
We're no longer human
For we forgot how to spell that word
With every ounce of our body

Should you find yourself alone
And in need of someone, for
The first time in your woven life
Call on me, my darling
Call on me.

Should you find yourself silent
And in need of someone
To tremble lips and speak
As if they could not think before you
Call on me, my dear
Call on me

Should you find yourself regretting
The long lost tomes of love letters
And the grin of someone more understandable
Him, him, your him,
Call on someone less, my love
Call on me.

Should you find yourself misunderstood,
Mistaken on your sun-netting mountain top
And you need someone who understands down here
Call on me, my only
Call on me

For I am here,
Feet rooted to the ground you walked upon
Hands hanging in the shape of your shoulders
From which you kissed me goodbye,
I am here, for you,
For anything left of you

If you should find yourself taken
By any other than me,
But wonder, what, what would I have been to you
Call on me, my endless happy mistake
Call on me

I'll never stop listening
I keep my ear out to the wind
And feel your flowered words
Brushing against my expectant glance

On a sunny, cloudy day.

If we all perished, fire, ice and disease
Rubble the epics that tell of our deeds
Millions of years then would pass like a breeze
Until life sheds fruit and replanted its seeds

If new people did grow and become us
They would live with what would not be the same
The fragments of gods, built with purpose
Give them the hope where for us it is lame

How could life not have some reason
When the works of the Lord all circle our earth
The scorched marks on the earth show the season
When the gods took their fury and lighted our mirth

We’ll burn up our planet and then they will see
We few were the gods and vengeful were we

Wellies
Unfull cups of funny puddlewater
Around the feet and toes of happy children
*****
           Stamp
Splish
          Splash
What
         Fun
A memory of that darling child
Hand around her mother's
Fascinated and absorbed
By those little lakes and worlds
Her little pink coat
And wellies
Keeping her warm as a snug bug.
Stamp-Splash-Fun

I'm an ounce of honesty waiting in the night
Council houses, broken bricks
Muddy boots and tight ribbons
So tight, so far out here,

I'm a kind of filth that reads
And looks you dead in the eye
Beatings, belts, rooms with no air
My, my my creation, perfect
Muddy rooms in broken council houses

I'm a rocking chair
Seizing up
Tying you in blue ribbon
Seeing if you know what's coming,
Broken
Beaten
Council houses

Let's leave the shores of uncertainty,
Oops, my boat has holes
And is made of human skin
Water gargled through
Shock-wide mouths

But don't let's fret
Or fret let's don't
For we see what we look at
Through eyes that look through me
Let's inflict ourselves upon reality

I'm so biased, me
I don't know you,
Or do I? Don't tell me for,
What can you know,
Believer?

Let the waves tickle your feet
And laugh at the sensation of their beckoning
Turn it down with a snort of mirth
And breathe easily for once, or twice, or thrice...

We just can't know.

When cowards flirt
Sparks don't fly
Arrows don't fly
Birds don't fly
They don't even sing

When cowards flirt
There's no amazement
There's no tomorrow, or when
Drums don't beat

When cowards flirt
Hope takes a pounding
The heart packs up and
Moves to the throat

When cowards flirt
It sounds like sorry
It sounds like the wind blowing through you
They run

When cowards flirt
It sounds like a boring question
Aimed at making conversation
End quicker

When cowards flirt
The touch on your arm
Is wiping away the drink they spilled
And the tension says later

When cowards flirt
The kiss on your cheek
Stays in the head
Stays on their trembling lips

When cowards flirt
Ash is less subtle an indication
Of flame
Of feeling

When cowards flirt
It sounds like see you never
It sounds like running away
It sounds like thinking what I should have done
And never did

When grease turns, kettles scale over
Rusted innards show, red in the ground
T, TB, AA, PSA
What can I do?

When you catch the musk of defeat
Bleeding out your crusted dearest
How soon before the years since stutter?
I forgot them already

I can't be what I want to be, without your hateful consent
Tides of cradled love and rotten ****
Wash over me and I
Take it to heart

When it all loses spirit because no whim is trusted
From a signing bearded beast
When you realise it's not going to stop
Until we all fall down the molehills
Fastened and swinging
The only firm hand I ever knew

When it comes back, sweeps your Victorian progress away
Leering, you're not recovering anymore
You get to call yourself it now
You're the addict's child
Slip in that and curdle.

White figure on me
Heavy like clouded panes
Smudged by me
But self-cleaning

White ghost sinking into
My muddy chest
The night takes the sun
The cloud is now black

But still it is so wet
Soaking my skin in a deep
In a deep you
Cloudy white is my favourite white

My pallet is now white
Dipping my brush
It’s wet
And now it’s white too

I grew up in a house with white walls
The light shined through the brighter
Every happy morning
In my bed beside my brother.

When my Dad first drank
Dry rot found a nest
We moved into a house with cream coloured walls,
Without my father.

I saw the cream walls turn blue
When I broke a pen on my brother
And the ink became his blood of this fight
We moved into a house with purple walls

I saw the purple walls turn grey
When we all got our own rooms
And we all chose the same colour
As we sat alone.

I moved into a house with black walls
When my life dragged me away from them
The light shone through the darker
Every unhappy morning.

My house was small
It was damp and it was dark
I heard a knock at the black door
And light came in with you.

We moved into a house with white walls
Every morning a birth of new sunlight
Every happy morning,
Waking up beside you and smiling

I don't ever drink
I keep a watch for dry rot
And our walls stay white
Forever.