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Shevek Appleyard Jun 2020
Stumbling through streets
A playground of drunks and delusions
That cages your freedom
And cuts your digression
Squeezed into the swarming system
Possession to repetition rhythm (screaming loud)
Too immersed to disperse the crowd
Boxed in I smoke
Where the great sounds are drowned
I spy him and choke
Retreating with a suitor
In a serpents nest
I lie on his chest
Depressed
Beneath mislaid sheets

The creature the day makes of me awakes
Cheerfully cherished by the hammock of a hangover
Scouting for my lonely mattress
And the jinxed luxury
From the sizzle of a frying pan
Avoiding my critics pulsing stress
My ego clawing at me for retail therapy
My cynic judging my supposed needs
My mirror painting me false
I cradle my anxiety till it relies on me
I lock up my secrets till the liquor hits my lips again

A silver lining inky with doubt
A missing wallet indulged by immoral hands
Kept immortal with desperation
The last few rascals rasping
from adventures that soaked up the night
In search of a lost soul
I lick the sadness from her eyes
Till i'm drunk on someone else’s pain
I'm bored of explaining mine
I'm bored of this place and time
Im tied here with debts to myself
Tired of everybody else
And I'm too weak to break down walls
Or seek true freedom
Fall fake to placebos of liberation
To have found the end of the week
But I'm on my feet
Repeating the words I shouldn’t speak
I grasp at my past out of reach
Destructive
I weep
And tumble back into the streets
the hangover poem
Shevek Appleyard Jun 2020
a wood pigeon coos the start of morning
then an accompaniment of tweets begin
I stretch between bodies loneliness dawning
fast but I struggle a smile when the birds sing

feelings that lodge in your chest for decades
trying to cry the heaviness out but I gasp
whilst we warmly cascade into our graves
my vacant heart is stuck in the past

I contemplate what it is to feel afraid
I climb around the kindness of my home
admire all the things that make me brave
then chalice my fears to build a throne

a tired little soul with a greying dress
her hair, her house and her mind a mess
A sonnet
Shevek Appleyard Jun 2020
indecisive, precised
on nothing that matters
to block out the natter chatter
that keeps ideas shattered

one step forward
and five steps back
ignoring is rewarding with a slap

growing weary and dreary
feeling short of time
I struggle to remember
that my mind is mine

longing to be involved
not feel mistaken
alone in contemplation
vicious circle situations

unsettled on repeat
my eyes can't see
I have the ability
to run from this free

doubts and outs
what has come from my mouth?
again and again
competing with friends
fantasies of enemies
far-fetched theories
smoked and smeary

my spontaneity stretched
my confidence confiscated
always on edge  
opportunities wasted

fretful precision
anxious decisions
imitates and animates
knife sharp and fast
convincing and sneering
you are an outcast
Shevek Appleyard Jun 2020
The evening attacks as the figures howl
Unhinged with ferocious divination
On the prowl for faded possessions
That drip with empathy
Dismantled by their frantic obsessions
Jaded faces painted with longing
Of ownership and belonging
Just to be a child again
Pulling marigolds out of the ground
Drowned in sunshine and sleepy with hiccups
Handsome dreams lined with soft petals
Dewy with downtrodden tiredness
Tricked into maturity
But still tickled by memories that take up time
Fickle fragments of the day
That shatter into your realm
Conspiring against the truth
You sniff rails of excitement
Gazing, you suckle on the sky
She chuckles with her eyes
And hurls you back into the forest
A green and twisted hunter’s path
Shadows giggle and glue together
Flames of hope
Your homage to the dark

— The End —