Hurt people hurt people.
So says the doctor.
Hurt people, Hurt people.
So says the patient.

I have given legs just before he steps, but I have forgotten to give him ground on which to stand. He plummets into the abyss.

I will try again.

Hunger is a gun to your head.
Can you feel it pressed up against
your temple or is your tummy full?
Do you hear it cocked and ready
Or does your lunch sit happily on
your warm breakfast and cup of tea?  
I think it's high time someone like you
                                    bites the bullet.

You in your fine-tailored, Italian suit.
You in your penthouse apartment,
who leave homes empty here and abroad.
Yes, you.
I know you know someone who knows
someone who grew up in a tenement flat.  
I know you know someone who knows
someone who works with disabled people.
I know you haven't heard any complaints.
But I know you and we have here this gun.
And I know just what we'll do with it

Kim Kardashian is my neighbour.
I see her every day, smiling seductively;
her curves grinning too.
She recommended some gluten-free meals,
skincare products, mobile apps, and friends.
She introduced me to her family,
and they are a lovely bunch.

I don’t know my other neighbours.
I know they are noisy, smelly,
up all hours of the night like bats.
But they haven’t been as helpful as Kim.
They’ve never entertained me for hours.
I’ve not seen their break downs, break ups,
make ups, and family meltdowns.
I’ve not seen them ****** and ******* ****
in a hotel without a worry that I was watching.

And Kim is never going to move out.
At least not until those curves stop grinning,
and she stops breaking down in front of me.
Not until she lets slip the mask that the machine wears.

Get a job. Get a girl. Get a house. Get a coffin.  
Get a jump on the morning and eat an omelette of worms.
Get a newspaper with your morning loaf and
read that thing cover to cover.
Get real, get prepared, get in line.
Get your orders from the horse's mouth
and follow them to you're told otherwise.
Get a grip of yourself, young man!

Don’t get yourself in trouble, infected or in jail.
Don’t get up after midday or go to sleep after midnight.
Don’t get used to coming in first
or you’ll be a wimpy sore lose.
Don’t get cocky kid; don’t get smart.
Don’t get ahead of yourself and think
you're the man to lead all the others.
Don’t get too big for your boots, young man.

Flex military muscles from across the water,
And ***** the shining rods of destruction.
We’ll sit amazed with our mouths open.  
You’ll have the world on its knees
With the mere threat of eruption.
We’ll sit amazed with our mouths open;
Half scared, half angry, half-halfheartedly opposing.
I feel like you'd like us to beg.

Daring, dragon skinned painter of poets,
does your work weigh heavy on your old heart?
Does Glasgow reflect in you, the ugliness,
beauty, passion, and apathy you see in her?
Has hell swallowed us, deep down the gullet?
Did it spit us back out for being too foul?
Is this city too pitiful? Too proud?
The city of the future need sutures;
the people are tearing each other at the limbs.
Hate’s been brewing like a storm over the hills,
and’s about to come whip us into a frenzy.
Whatever time you have left, is there time left for us?
Can you hold up your unflattering mirror once more?

I'd like a sof- boiled Brexit so I can dip in my soldiers.
My Granny wants a hard-boiled to challenge her dentures.
I've not heard many calls for scrambled,
though that may be how they end up.
Or we could fry them until they leap for the fire.

The crowd moves without murmurs.
You don’t know when it started.
But you remember the day
you packed your bags and joined them.

The crowd moves without murmurs.
No one knows where to anymore,
they remember or misremember
old tales of the light that had opened up in the sky.

The crowd moves without murmurs
like cattle being led to their slaughter;
a beautiful and glorious death awaits.
Old tales of the light set to swallow us one by one.

Someone starts speaking:
‘ I’m sick of waiting in line for this.’
‘ It’s a sham’
‘ It’s a heaven you blasphemous fools’
‘ It’s a sham. Wake up. You’re living in darkness.’

The crowd moves on, as conversations break off.
Some break off into different directions.
Most continue to wait in line, moving slowly.
You don’t know which way to go.

Morning comes like a friend up the drive
to clean the mess the night had left.
Bright eyed, full of life, ready to help.
Sometimes he makes me feel like ****.
Can't he give it a rest for one day?

I was a fireman and an action-man
when I was on my father’s knee.
I was a footballer and a fighter
when I walked through the school gates.
For a time I was a film star, a photographer,
an artist, a famous poet wooing woman.
Then I was a politician, a prisoner, a puppeteer,
a mad-man, a psychiatrist, a nurse.
Now I’m wondering who I am
and what that man should be.

I told you I was ill.
You told me I was mad.

I told you I was sick.
You told me 'take a few'.

I told you they don't work.
You told me 'stay the course'.

I told you they don't work.
You said we'll up the dose.

She’s my fuzzy love,
my medicated mornings
that roll over, turn in, turn out,
and spin my stomach
til’ he falls out with my head.
She is not sorry.
No diazepam apology
ever graced my ears.
No beta-block bargaining,
No fluoxetine forgiveness.
She’s cold and hard
but soft when I need support-
I fall right through
her flimsy grasp.
She’ll tell me she misses me
as she comes up with my *****.
She says she wants a break
when I swallow her.

One time I crushed her and sniffed her.

One time I drowned her in whisky.

One time I sprinkled her like seasoning.

She ****** me every time.

Nothing is a balloon before and after popping.
Nonsense.
Yes.
Quite so.
Nothing is a ball before and after its kicking.
Genius.
Yes.
Quite so.

Lip-syncing hymns in the front row of a funeral.

Appearances are key.

Pinch nose for tears as the sighs swell and fill the room.

Appearances are key.

Lift your glass to the lost and try and mask your jealousy.

Appearances are key.

Say something that sounds from the heart but's really from a card.

Appearances are key

A diazepam apology never escaped my lips.
Eyes spun,
                    lips sealed,  
and not one word graced your ears.

Each pill stuck in my throat with the longing to say.
Too soon,
                  Too easy
forgotten, and the day turned in and I soon followed.

Each moment is a moaning teenager in my head.
Too much,
                   Too little
chances to take or people to meet or places to start again.

And today is no different.
But I do hope to see you soon.

Inside me is a stranger, a queer and frightened freak.
A frayed rope smile and on a face crafted from straw.
Rocking-horse knees that stand his scarecrow posture.
Her staccato limbed demeanour's too awkward for company.

I used to let him out in the safe homes of friends,
where judgements eyes never burned on the back of her head.
One night, a boy with bullying hands threw him to the floor
and pounded her fist after fist in a burning fury.  

Now he won't come out.
She doesn't know who she is.  
And they're sick of being told who they should be.

She had a tears before bedtime twinkle in her eye,
and a don't come too close shimmy in her shake.
He had a predatory grin salivating through the teeth
and hands that knew no jurisdiction.

He put a forget me tomorrow at the bottom of a drink
and handed her it to her like it was wrapped in a bow.
She sipped through her straw with a delicate smile,
all the while wishing she could go home.

She was bagged into a taxi at the stroke of two
by the boy with the bullying hands.
She was passed out on his couch when the morning came
while he slept in the scene of his crime.

She wore a cauliflower dress on her ballerina bones
and a stare that would avert a devil’s gaze.
Her legs were swinging to a three-four time daydream of tomorrow
as she looked out over the park where she grew up.
The black ink pond water shivered as the moonlight
danced upon her and made her feel awkward in her movement.  
Then she took off her clothes and went swimming in the dark,
and went under never to come up.

She did this once a week.

And a bevy of swans cried, laughing in the night
with a much-a-do about nothing in their voice.  
Eight white dresses swimming without care,
over where she did the Houdini, moon-soaked routine.

Waiting can be a madman clawing his own skin.
It can be drying paint, dying libido, or crying dogs
at the window watching a car roll off.
Sometimes waiting is just a phone that never buzzes.

I’m still waiting.

Hunks of meat swinging and forced screaming,
I remember, would always do the trick.
Now it sends a hollow feeling rushing to nowhere.
Now I feel like I’m watching a reality show.

SOME SCENES ARE CREATED FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.

This programme contains product placement.

The pair of air Nikes she keeps on while bent over.
The Maurice Lacroix watch he wears while spanking her.
It is a nice watch; they are nice trainers.
She is beautiful; he is handsome.

But, I’m still waiting.

The predictable ****** comes and goes.
The conclusion’s always the same.
It never used to bother me, the farce of it all.
It used to do the trick.

But, I’m still waiting.

Watch this thought walk up the wall.
Watch the creepy crawly creature creeping higher.
His waste trails after him, sullying the paint.
Before long the whole room reeks.
Watch him watch you now as he sits on the ceiling.
Is this really how you want to spend your day:
watching your thoughts walk circles around the room?
You used to entertain yourself with lofty notions.
You used to write to some of the thoughts down.
Now look at you looking at some sickly creature,
and trying to find something to say.

Watch this thought form a cocoon.  
Watch the sleepy drawling creature sleeping soundly.
He is gestating, growing, becoming while you just sit there.
Before long he’ll be something more than you.
Watch him and listen to the sounds of change.
Is this really how you want to spend your day:
in envy of a creature who’s life barely lasts the whole thing?
You used to entertain yourself with clever colleagues.
You used to fool around with funny friends.
Now look at you looking at some sickly creature,
and trying to find something to say.

Watch this thought hatch from its slumber.
Watch the bouncing, buzzing beasty birthed.
His wings spread out and he flies down from the ceiling.
Before long he makes out of the open window.
You ask yourself: is this really how I just spent my day:
imagining a life instead of living my own?
I used to write poems, and I thought they were profound.
I used to tell myself that they might mean something to you.
Now, look at you looking at me looking at nothing in particular,
and try to find something to say.

An Empty carton is sitting in my fridge.
It’s been lurking there on the shelves edge.
It’s the only thing that is in my fridge.  

There’s a fiver in my wallet, coppers in the couch,
maybe some euros from last year I could exchange.
I could always pawn another guitar, I guess.  

But something always stops me at the door.

So, I’ve been taking my coffee black.

My home has started to whine like a lost pup.
The doors cry open, windows yawn, and the taps sing
as widows drowning their sorrows.

It’s a pathetic harmony of melancholy.
It’s a laughable life if I say so myself;
and I do say so myself and to myself,

and I guess for myself, too.


But, at least, for now, there’s still black coffee.

Bugs in the mug by my bed again.
Two of them, one following the other
round and round the other day’s dried coffee.
**** it; it’s an ashtray now.
Poor we ******* begin to panic
switching directions as the ash falls.
Why does it feel so heavenly?
I’m a god and this is my plague.
I used to drown them and pour them down the sink.
I’d watch them swirl helpless in the spiral.
I can’t tell you why,
but it always made facing the day that bit easier.
No matter what weather you’d hurl at me
from wherever that kingdom of yours is,
I could find solace in the fact I’m man and not bug.  
But today I feel different.
Today I see their suffering, it’s not
washed away, swept under the carpet, out of sight and mind.
Today they are burning in front of my eyes.
I think, today, I’ll stay inside.

Eyes fixed on a flickering screen.
Yesterday’s dinner caking itself to the plate.
Sheets itching to get off the mattress
all while you lay there in your filth.
The air of stale sweat and fast food
no longer itches your nose or nauseates.
Instead, it’s aroma seduces you
into staying here another hour.
Open the window for some air?
No, that would ruin the illusion.
Stay here until there’s nothing else to do;
until the shops are shut and your friends are asleep
and the whole world is sleeping with them.
Stay here until the air runs out
with eyes fixed on a flickering screen.

Oh, the wave of insincere condolence
that drowns the tragedy of a heroes true legacy.
Why don’t you play a record and stop your whining?
Why don’t you read rather than reach for the tissues
to wipe your forced, phoney tears?
You’re not fooling me. You haven’t even fooled yourselves.
Did parading your opinion like a ****** with his **** out
really gratify your ego as much as you hoped,
or did it just show you to be more full of **** than
a politician stuffed full of laxative with a sewn shut *******?
But what do I know?
I’m the kind of guy that writes about you.

I thought I was sick
and that could be the only conclusion.
I was so certain.
You told me it was just an illusion;
a murmuring mind muddled by confusion.  
I thought I was sick;
I was so certain.

You, my remedy,
my unwavering and unjaded ear.
You were everything:
A world to which I could just disappear,
and a ditch to which you would not let me steer.
You, my remedy,
you were my everything.

They thought I was sick
and that could be the only conclusion.
They were so certain.
You told me it was just an illusion;
a murmuring mind muddled by confusion.  
They thought I was sick;
They were so certain.

Scribble, Scribble, Scribble. The scratch-work of a madman.
Dribble, dribble, dribble from a half cooked brain.
Half up, Half down, half here, half elsewhere,
Half heartedly chasing a thought.
If there’s a point here,
I’ve lost it
again.

No.
That was it.
Of course, it was her.
The one who flirts with my tired mind
as she sends him unravelling and
screaming like a maniac off of his meds.
The little ***** that tricks with games I always lose.  

Lavender, rosemary. What’s this I’m on about again?
It’s vanished. Disappeared. No hope to regain.  
I tell myself stories  until I just
lose the plot. What? ****. Not again.
I’m so, so sorry.
I just can’t
even.

Benzo, blur my mornings and bury my feelings.
Beat down my misery and banish my ecstasy.
Steal my sweetness and turn my stillness sour.
Spit out a new me, and the old me, devour.
You stick in my throat like a longing to say
something I had too soon, too easily forgotten.
Trapped and helpless at the tip of my tongue
is each little thought and each one turns rotten.
Now all my worries wash grey and bore me asleep,
as time stops his march and slows to a creep
that claws through my head, and the worries unsaid
are left to fester in a foul and filthy old heap.  
Though they may reek like flesh on a dying fire,
I could take them or leave them just where they are.
I have no heat, no bold and burning desire
to do anything but nothing, and, so, to nothing I retire.  
Leave me be beeping alarm that screams like a maniac
so desperate to jump to his next brewing thought.
Leave me be roaring traffic, so equally manic,
leave me here in my head to lose this loose plot.

You stick in my throat like something I long to say
and send a sickness sinking through me.

Then I gulp, gargle and rinse you down
my gullet like I used to do with my carrots.  

With nothing you fill me so full I could burst.
But nothing ever happens; nothing at all.

Colours drain from everything around me
as If they’ve gotten bored of trying.

Night turns in, morning falls back asleep,
and each moment moans like a teenager.  

But I still remember her perfume,
though it’s fading like a car over the hill.

I still remember the backcourts
when boredom used to bang and bounce a ball.

I still remember the scraped knees,
the first drink, the first joint, the first stolen kiss.

I still remember it all.

The memories jump start me into action.
And then I look at the clock.

And you remind me that it’s too late,
and that we will try again tomorrow.

Riddled ramblings on and on.
Oh, how I know it can get so tiresome.
But these young tongues like to waggle
when the clock strikes quarter past
who gives a **** anymore.
When blurry moments ring for hours,
and glasses empty and fill themselves,
and piped up people **** confidence
until they remember their ***** training
and sit back down like dogs
who have disappointed their owner.  
Then, five seconds, minutes or hours later:
Bump. Bump. Line. Line.
And once again they've got a spine.

The clock clapped his hands
and told the time to go **** itself,
while the walls stood wobbling,
scared of the confrontation.
The telly turned herself off,
for fear of adding to the noise
while the lights flickered
as they thought of something to say.
But still, time marched on.
The clock made two fists
and waved them with fervour
as the walls tried to hide
behind their hangings and features.
They telly, still silent,
cowered quietly in the corner,
and the light bulbs no longer
had any bright ideas to voice.
Time marched on, uncaring.

Come meet me when today blurs with tomorrow
in the house with no way to tell the time.
Come with a present that no one will want,
and a kiss that feels more like an insult.
We’ll laugh like we’re happy,
We’ll cry like we are sad.  
We’ll sing the words of songs we’ve never heard.
We’ll tell the stories of people we’ve never met.
Just please don’t be late.

We are a whisper in an auction hall
where the greedy bid in a vile clamour.
We are unwanted; unheard in our call.
And yet it's our necks under the cold hammer.
In cowardice, we wait for it strike
like goats being lead to their slaughter.
And as the price inflates in an awful spike,
we are drowned deeper under their laughter.

' Sold! To the gentleman in black'

The gentlemen with the creeping crooked grin.
The gentlemen with the suit worth a home.
The gentlemen uncaring of hardship; unaware of sin.

We hadn’t spoken.
A silence, birthed from misery,
choked us until
we were Voiceless
and  spent our time
drifting apart as twigs
on a bullying sea.
Thoughts like echoes
bouncing between church walls
rattled around my mind:

“ If I called, would it be the same?”

“ If I ran to her, would she open her arms?”

It isn’t the same.
How could it be?
We’ve both changed so much.

This child will move a mountain.
Its peak scraping skies that sit
too comfortable in yesterdays.
She will carry it the world over.
No ocean, no border, no man, no,
nothing will stop her travels.
This child will come to her rest
when the skies split like a vein
and tomorrow bleeds into her today.
And It's a day that we may never see.
No terror, no hatred, no blood, no,
nothing but love to flood from the skies.

If the bogey man should come tonight,
When your tucked in safe and tight,
and his cold hands creep so slight,
how would you like to be a baby girl tonight?

Or an unconscious, intoxicated woman?
He slips right in well she isn't moving.

She wakes and she wishes it away,
But still the spinning eyes of his face
turn her sick as mind starts to to race.
How would you like to feel like you have no name?

You're the Unconscious, intoxicated woman,
nameless and shamed, and no longer feel human.

And I think he's taken my wallet too.

There’s a bench in the park across from my house. It sits atop a spiralling path on a hill, and it oversees everything. I would sit there every night watching the bevy of swans take flight at one end of the pound just to come swooping down at the other. Their take off’s just like planes: momentum is gathered until that vital second when they lift, and I would almost feel the sensation in my stomach as they did so. Such beautiful creatures. It baffles me how someone has a claim to them: “ They are mine. All mine”, she says without saying.

One night, with nothing but the moon lit reflecting off the ripples of the pond, I sat there watching the swans. A group of young men dressed in a deathly black appeared, moving swiftly to the pond. I watched them split up and try and round the swans up like they were sheep. They struggled at first, but eventually they grabbed one and bagged it.

I guess that’s the problem with ownership.

We live to watch and are watched as we live.
You would think we would clean up or  hide.
But we lay bare and filthy for our watchers.
Caught up in this old spotlight arousal,
with her **** and his ****, and their new hair-do
or tattoo, or sham marriage, or over-dose.
And you know, we want a taste,
So as long as someone could be out there watching,
we live the horizontal life and watch as we waste.

“ Here’s my everything”, we say without a word.
  Our apathy and acquiescence sing to their tune.
  Sing our digits, our dreams, or sick secrets.
  Sing our pasts, our futures, all for them to see.
'Keep an eye on one another’s', Oz once said.
Though I never paid it any mind at the time.
For he was known to drift to some dystopian scenes.
But Oz knew, and perhaps he knew too early:
We live in public, and the private lives in the screens.

When you find yourself lost,
take them home, tuck them in,
and watch them drift off to sleep.
If they struggles then sing,
or read, or just comfort
them with words of love.
Often we run away
from our true selves because
we do nothing but throw hate,
beat them down, and bury them
under ****** torment
that twists into grotesque
and dark acts of malice.
I’ve beaten myself so
badly before that I
found him laying with tubes
rigged to machines that just
barely kept him alive, and
I tell you, it's taken
years for him to forgive
me, or even look me
in the eye. He would just
avoid my gaze from the
otherside of the mirror.
Sometimes he would even
turn and run away in
to some fading idea,
some place where he could be
alone.
Alone without me.

You won’t find me in an innocent laugh
or in some greying beard’s wise words.
You won’t find me on recoveries roads
or in the gay songs of morning’s birds.
No, you won’t find me in the bluest sea
or on the hills that pucker to kiss the skies.
I’ll never be in true love’s fiery throws ,
or in some sweet and un-jaded eyes.

I’ll be here, in the heap of ****.
On the drunk drivers tongue, in the junkies spit.
In beauty broken by unseen hands,
in the plane that crashes as it lands.
In the crippling fear of the abused,
and in the power that the abuser used.  
I’ll be here, in the heap of ****.
I’ll be here, for I am all of it.  

I am weak, and I am so resolutely.
I am power corrupted absolutely.

To no-where I go in the nothing I feel,
Spinning like an old coin or a wayward wheel.
I tumble as I twist, throwing myself on
through the falling mist of the new red dawn.
Battered as I bounce, I trip on with zeal;
Spiralling, Spiralling, Spiralling on,
till I’m spiralled from anything I thought to be real.  
Till concrete crumbles and the green grass is gone.

Here, I stand, in those bizarre acres of mine.
Where geometry fails in the plans I design.
Where math melts like memories of my boyhood,
and the laws of motion ******* to be understood.
Come falling upwards, plummeting to the sunshine.  
We’ll swing and we’ll sway on the old wise wood
of trees that hang from the skies like a shrine
to nature in reverse, and truths in falsehood.

It builds itself faulty.
It teeters as it grows.
It knows its own weakness.
It knows its own strength.
Unfortunately, they conflict.
So, of course, it comes crumbling down.

Vacant people with vacant peepers
stare with them fixed on flickering screens.
Monday morning's wide-eyed sleepers
sit missing the window's passing scenes.
Mere millimetres apart from each other,
they drift in worlds a million miles away.
Bodies so close, close enough to smother,
as the train rumbles along, they sway.

You’re free to talk until someone listens.
You’re free to walk but only in circles.

The jigsaw piece is puzzled;
He can’t find the others.
But they are                here,
       there,
and
                          everywhere

        In between.

He knows’s they’ll make a picture
of beauty bolder than the sea,
a story older than scripture,  
If that moment could only be,

where
           every
                     piece
                               alone
Comes together and makes a home.

Morning twisted in her sullied dress,  
no longer as one with the night.
She wrestled with sleep and opened to stress,
as the sun climbing above her shined bright.  
                HE STOOD LAUGHING
                               she
                Lay helplessly beneath.

With no help from those who went passing
on by, she passed into the night with nothing to bequeath.

"Kick a kumquat in the belly.
Tell a wee rose that she's smelly,
and ye dinnae like burds lit at'.  
Cook a cucumber in *****,
cook a cucumber in *****,
cook a cucumber in *****. "

" Excuse me, pal.. Urr you awright?"

Soon the spiders will be home.
I feel the tingling on my spine.
Already we have Stockholm syndrome.
Though we couldn’t pick them from a line.
We’re caught, and we love it.
All our thoughts are theirs:
our breakfast, our break-ups, our cares,
Our warm blood, our mucous, our hairs.
We’re caught, and we love it.  

I hear the spiders coming now.
I feel a quaking in my chest.  
To them I will make a pure vow:
I’ll never look away; I’ll never rest.
I’ll stay; I’ll stay tangled.
I’ll be their willing prey.
When they feast one me, I will lay.
I won’t try to wriggle away.
I’ll stay; I’ll stay tangled.