His love was like the wind,
Strong and courageous,
But with the power to destroy.

My heart a willing victim,
To fall in love with the gusts of love,
How one day he'd be a drizzle,
The next; a tornado,

Ripping through my defence,
Powering through my walls,
Past my endless promises,
To never fall at all.

And me, being weak,
Like a wave that never makes the shore,
Let him take away the innocence,
His heart was yearning for.

And as that wind slowly tore me apart,
I remained that injudicious wave,
Too weak to repair my barriers,
Too broken to be saved.

Every colour turns to grey
Every price he'll have to pay
For every little mistake
He's ever made
And though none could equal
To the pain of his latest
The loss of his love
All down to him
He drove her away
With every mistake
With every late night flit
And his latest one night stand
But it doesn't matter
Because that was a mistake
And it's guaranteed
He'll make another one tomorrow
That may equal to the loss
Of his latest love affair
As he goes back to his wife
Lost in the ineptitude
Of his mistakes
She takes another beating
For his loss.

Last night, I heard a song, a song in my sleep.
Last night, I heard a song, a song in my sleep.
All my dreams, they were fickle, but my thoughts they ran deep.
And last night, I heard a song, a song in my sleep.

The song, it was beautiful.
It played, and it teased,
With the strings that plucked at my soul.
The song, it was beautiful.
With a tune that ran wild.
The song, it was beautiful.
It had a soul like a child's.



It had lyrics,
That whispered in my ears.
Lyrics, that spoke of another world,
A world, full of happiness, and light.
And it was with great happiness, and great light, that I realized,
I lived in that world.



And all the things, that were supposed to be important, they suddenly stopped mattering,
And the thoughts that poisoned my head, became feckless, mindless chattering.
The strong hand of clarity, it guided me right,
And so I slept, I slept long into that good night.

The eleven clocks ring back home
Hold my hand
My world

Hands locked,
Forever and ever
Until one day.
Lips on lips,
Kissing.
You're in my world.

Sunshine in eyes,
Water on feet.
Tears on face
Screams from mouths.
Cause you don't understand
And I don't understand.
My world, my world.
Help me keep my world
From crumbling.

Hands that swing
Side by side
And they touch.
Do you still want
To be
In my world?
It's not perfect, and it's cracked,
But my world will be your world,
My world will be our world.
I'd like that,
And I hope
You'd like that too.

I used to be able to write poems.

I could make them rhyme,
make them happy,
make them sad.
I could make them flow,
make them float,
make them feel.

I could put into words
everything I felt,
everything I knew.
I could pour my heart out
onto the paper,
onto the screen.

But then something changed.

I lost the spark that I had,
that inspiration,
that drive.
I lost the thing that kept me going,
that encouraged me,
that pushed me on.

I lost the one who made me laugh
when I was tired,
when I wanted to quit.
I lost the one who told me to write
when I was out of ideas
when I was frustrated.

I lost the one who made writing worthwhile.

I lost you.

I used to be able to write poems;
Now, I just feel them.

I live in the bottom of a tea-cup,
the basin of an English town
that is no more remarkable than any other English town.
It has little flair,
too much submissiveness,
many characters but no character.
It is a stencilled town convinced that it is something more
than margins.

Front gardens are filled with bits and pieces
of broken things
that are perpetually leaving.
Cardboard boxes,
disconnected fridges,
unfinished patios,
wellingtons that have paused to collect the clouds.
The crocuses have frostbite
and the lawns are fraying at the edges
like muddy carpet.
As you follow the road the houses get bigger
and their front doors get shabbier.
Paint peels like sunburnt skin
and the road stains yellow.

The old and the new mix obscenely;
two girls, tied at the elbow,
crack their feet on the sound
of their sisters’ high heels slapping paving stones.
Most people have got extensions
that have left their house in two pieces,
the bricks never seeming to meet.
Gingham table cloths hang out to dry,
a red double-decker teeters on a corner,
biked teenagers slip through the net of the Friday sky.

It’s a green-ish evening
and the clouds are strung like DNA blots
around the blurring sun.
The light’s not strong enough to dry your bones but,
when you look at it,
it seems to have exceeded any outline.
A slab of sky is golden.

The allotment is rows upon rows upon rows of bamboo canes,
browned like apple cores.
Chicken wire and faded Wendy houses
slouch upon their soil trenches.
It is a patchwork of mediocrity;
the beige and the brown and the grey
overtake the green.
Tin cans stud the place
like piercings on the body of an ex-punk;
only dead things grow
and the colours have been switched to mute.

There’s a market on Saturdays
where strawberries will cost you the moon
and where egg boxes are recycled
until they drip in the rain.
My grandparents remember my town in its embyonic stages,
my parents remember when it still was framed with local business,
I remember it when Shakeaway was a fruit and vegetable store
that sold palenta on Wednesdays.
My town is locked in a cycle of self-improvement
that it never seems to benefit from.
It is infitely greyed
and nothing more or less than ordinary.
Boys with blackheads pretend that they understand parkour
and the haberdashery closes down.
Each month, the window displays alter to no avail
and the dust sinks a little closer
to the pages we’re constantly trying to turn.

I live in the bottom of a tea-cup
and I never stop trying to read insubstantial fortunes
from the dregs I’ve left behind.