I don't remember how I got here,
when the notebooks accumulated
and anxious thoughts became ideas.

It is a nice feeling. To turn old friends
into characters of their better selves,
and to turn loneliness into a stranger's

companion. Those bus journeys into
the city, to pour drinks in a Hawaiian
shirt seem like a distant memory of a

fragmented self, now slowly turning whole.
The ashtray is still full, and worries
still form and pester my mind,

but they don't trouble my dreams,
and now I fall asleep to the sounds of
summer rain, and I feel the inner thigh

of a pen-pal who is sleeping by the sea.
I found my first grey hair when I grew a beard,
and found a second when I finally turned sober.

There are picture frames of smiling corpses,
showing more life than ever I caught in their
daily living. There have been a million words

traded across the pillow, and I have found
intimacy in the form of written word.
I have time to ramble to the forest, to meditate

beneath the slowing autumn leaves.
A bicycle is all I need to reach a silence,
as the hangman's noose begins to lose its grip.

There is humour to be found in my failings.
There are lovers found over every continent.
No more whisky slurs to keep me out of wedlock,

no more running away from where I want to stay.
I am playing guitar, perched on my single bed,
watching the branches sway in the suburban streets.

I no longer miss a childhood long since turned
to romance. I no longer crave the absence of my
head. My features are turning handsome in the

sunlight. I have traded dance-floors for the
promise of my bed. There's no money left to
get myself ****** up. So I will simply sit inside

and write my poetry instead.

It was you who drew the moth to the flame.
In a small-town Sunday, you walk the parade.
They see your dress ripple
in the gasp of the wind,
they forget old desires
and then become better men.

Are you laying beside him, his jaw foreign and thick?
Is his bland conversation a momentary bliss?

It was you that wore the dressing gown.
In a false-flag freedom, the high-street crowd.
They heard you crying
as I boarded the train.
All misery is gossip
and can be spread once again.

Are you thinking of me when you start to undress?
The way I counted your freckles,
the way we faltered to ***.

I take a walk into the parkour graveyard,
looking for Polish dealers and cellphone halos.
I heard Thoth resides in sobriety,
but words fail me
whenever you are near.

I let my tongue run in endless stutters,
disguising 'I love you' as some off-hand request.
I could take you to dinner,
I could show you a longing
without the need for ***.

This late-night food has lost its flavour.
This ******* never picked up.
All that is left is to dial these numbers,
and wait by the window
for any car but yours.

Let's take a walk to the railway bridge.
We'll smoke a joint by the open forest.
You'll push your breath into mine,
make me high,
and forget why I ever
felt so low.

RESPECTFUL
                       HELPFUL
                                        REVERENT
        ­                                                     KIND*

Steeped in licentiousness
engulfed in shadows

At last the secret is out,
as it always must come in the end,
the delicious story is ripe to tell
to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square
the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear,
there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir,
behind the ghost on the links,
behind the lady who dances
and the man who madly drinks,
under the look of fatigue
the attack of migraine and the sigh
there is always another story,
there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing,
high up in the convent wall,
the scent of the elder bushes,
the sporting prints in the hall,
the croquet matches in summer,
the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
there is always a wicked secret,
a private reason for this.

Million dollar haircut and a two bit soul. There's a hole in my heart where you've fallen in and swim deep in my darkness. Myopic, yet distant, your eyes betray your armor to the world and presents with a bow, a more harrowing figure to be told.

Our voices ring out in hallowed tones unveiled by the ordinary horrors beset by beasts in human masquerade. Unshielded, you choose to drop this pretense, the unjust foray into the dark night of the soul, and sound out "I am the god of this forsaken place. That contains the human psyche, I am the bull of this labyrinth. I have tamed the wild pleasures of Eros and I have befriended the mortal end, Thanatos. I have unraveled this velvet thread until time itself was my servant."

Yet, I am still pulled to the human fold. "Why is there a NEED to be wanted!" Shouted everybody in the room. The question reverberated down the gilded halls and between the cracking voices of the council.

Yet...

There was never a breath of a conceivable answer.
All in all, futility and fatalism is what we all are sentenced to.

You are my bookshelf.
From tree trunk to my room;
with nightstand and couches for neighbors.

In some catalogue you might
be ordered and tidy, with turquoise
bindings and untouched papers.

But you age with me,
we wither and decay.

If I wanted you to stay flawless
I would need to do the same.

The tomes that burden you
are portals to your heart.
Without them, what would you be?

When I wipe the dust off, I wheeze -
Yet I wouldn't open your books
If I didn't care enough to see.

For with every new novel,
every remarkable misadventure,

Your shelves creak and strain,
but my passion for you grows tender.