They said Keith couldn't *** without a finger up his ***,
they said Ruth was a **** for not sleeping with her man.
They said George was a woman because he couldn't grow a beard,
they said Molly was autistic, because she was a little bit weird.

They said Mr. Winchester was a ******* because he wore an overcoat,
they said Ms. Wheeler as a witch, and once sacrificed a goat.
They said Mr. Winter was so fat, he was more or less bulletproof,
they said Ms. Walker was not attractive, but if it came to it:
she'd have to do.

They said Lucinda was thin because she chose not to eat,
sitting by the bathroom doors in the lunchtime canteen.
They said Leonard was a ****** with his long, blonde hair,
they said Luke was a downy because of his vacant stare.

They said Mr. Fresco was a drinker who beat his wife at home,
they said Ms. Finkel was a *******, seen standing out in the cold.
They said an awful lot of things that decayed away over time,
but it takes a strength to train the mind

to not trod the tracks of a lifetime past,
to keep yourself to who you are,
not those ancient words,
nor those faded scars.

I can hardly remember your face,
left here in a chair,
room aglow with the muted television,
drunk as hell.
A man becomes a pigsty without a woman.
***** stains on the sports sock,
a battleaxe hangover,
bills piled by the toaster
and **** over the kitchen sink.

The bailiffs came.
I cried like a child through the burglary,
drank the Ganges in stout when it was over.

I have been drinking ever since
the Christmas lights turned on,
the town bathed in absinthe, teenage smokers,
Lithuanian women;
no chance of collision with you.
Eternal ashtray, brick upon brick,
cylindrical beams - an empire of ash
and odour. I can't smell you anymore.
How senses die, yet you remain,

stubborn as a **** on a concrete street,
stubborn in your deceit,
my old crutch, my faded ***** in heat.

I am a mess of old exchanges
whilst ****-stars **** on screen.
Fantasy is dead
as my first dog, defunct,
birthing colonies beneath the ground,
frozen over in winter.
I feel nothing. No thing.
Urges clamour for attention to keep me alive,
vague hunger, the need to bleed.

The paramedics came.
I cried like a child through the gift-wrapping,
drank from a plastic cup as they covered your face.

I can hardly form a sentence
in this fast world
of slow days and long aches in silence:
this is hell.
A man becomes a pigsty without a woman.
I see you in my ridiculous moments,
the insanity that stands in your place,
fractured light in the doorway-
my obsessive state, your forgotten face.

Everyone has *** darling,
you cannot claim that as your own,
nor your past of broken heels
and your father's broken home.
I scored blood over my wrist
and toiled, toiled, toiled
in the sun.

I stood in line for my freedom
to find that there was none.

We are all maladjusted darling,
all singing to an empty sky,
all pastured by the government
and living amongst The Lie.
You cannot claim your illness
as the dissolution of G-d,

you cannot find a kindness
if you do not spare the rod.

Everyone loves a ******* darling,
in that you are not alone,
your father with his whiskey breath,
all cancer and flesh and bone.
I scored a high in an empty field
and howled, howled, howled
at the moon.

I stood up for the years that I had crawled,
for all our happiness that came too soon.

The notebook is full, tea turned cold.
State of satisfaction without completion,
no itch to scratch,
no craving to amuse on;
the binge has abated for now.

Fragmented selves have presented as me,
adjusting hair in the faces of strangers,
a drink in hand,
elephants in the room;
none of them relate to me.

Naturally gummed papers strew the desk,
audio jacks and water stained notes.
This is entropy,
this pile of laundry;
the European map, made in China.

Going crazy is an ongoing process, friend.
It takes a lifetime to master
the Bojangles walk,
the flat-capped freedom;
a filthy soldier's limp.

I am finding my place amongst the misfits.
The world behind a blast-screen,
no invested belief,
no disease left to treat,
staying in for the evening,

staying in for the week.

My *** drive would cause earthquakes,
but I can never find the time
to leave this place,
this bed-side lamp,
and away from poor attempts at rhyme.

Depression is a tired old topic.
But *** is forever at hand
to pin you down,
to win you round,
slinking off to the toilet in my dressing gown.

I know you feel a belonging
to the archives of music,
you drink in bed,
and sink on in,
to the restless call of another troubled head.

I will find restoration
held between your slender legs.
It is all we've got,
in this paradise lost,
in this sweaty reclaim,
to a feeling we'd forgot.

Going down is not an art,
but a way of keeping young.
How can you claim to love
what you won't dare to kiss?
How will you ever hear her siren song?

They didn't notice me until I went crazy.
Until the lights went out and they heard me
moving around the house, my head to the wall
to force out blood, or sleep. They feed me tea
by the pint. Two sugars and milk to keep me awake.
I need to play the patient. It makes me their son again.

Food arrives on a tray with 20mg of distraction.
I can smoke outdoors in the cemetery walk
while father sleeps with the larvae and embryonic
Earth. My brother has turned eighteen
and I have become the canary to his coal mine.
He can live in the spaces that I have died.

There is always movement on the stairs.
Contestants cheer miserably beneath me
like a slave-ship bet of the first to their
death. The ocean rolls. The world keeps turning.
She is wearing sunglasses and painting toenails
into colours I had made her forget.

Mother, take me to the straitjacket cellar.
I will lie still and let the moths drink from
my eyelashes. There are books and women
meant for better eyes. There are trees for a
different childhood. There is nothing left
but to learn a silence. To become a whisper

hidden in the dirt.

Belgian cider after a British nature walk.
This is my unemployment,
this is my fall
from grace.

In the mid-June breath of consciousness,
I can signal the daylight,
faded to white,
through the window lace.

If you take a stroll in the heat of summer,
you shall lose your ghosts,
you shall find
your place.