Get a bellyful of bubbles
And watch them form one by one
As they come to the surface
All your troubles are just gone
They just pop. Pop.
I will pop some for you
There goes another
Look, it’s so easy to do
We could do this all day
Just you and me
All that time spent worrying
It was a waste, don’t you see?
They were really nothing
It was nothing to hold back?
It was just little bits of nothing,
Air. One by one, in a stack
I see the bubbles floating up
I see it in your eyes
They become so blue when you let go
Of the bubbles of hurt and lies
These tiny little bubbles
They’re the things that held you back
When you just wanted to have fun
They didn’t cut you any slack
And so they’re really nothing
Blow them away and say ‘don’t come back’
The worst thing you can do is bottle them up
Because then the bottle goes crack.

Women. Making out.
I don’t think I’ll come back
It’s just like a circle
We’re on a one-way track
Looking for something
Looking for some meaning
So tell them sorry
Sorry for leaving
Do whatever you want
You can burn all my mail
I just don’t feel I belong
And it’s all in the detail
I don’t want to do this
I don’t want to conform
I don’t want to be everyone else
I don’t want to be the norm
And I know it will be hard
For just a l’il while, to go there all alone
But I know it’s the road less travelled
Once I’m there I won’t want to come home

If the time comes when someone
Asks me, “Dan,
What one thing would you hope for,
For this world I mean?”
I guess, after much deliberation,
I’d have to say ‘hope’
I’d wish for ‘hope’,
It’s all you can do.
The hope that this
Fear that consumes us
All in concrete
And frigid isolation
Dissipates
Along with the falseness
And the corruption,
And that we are free
To seize ourselves
Seize the day
Seize everything we want to be
Maybe I would not go
As far as Blake to say
We could retrieve the lost Golden Age.
I am by all definitions a pragmatist
Therefore I am hoping.
Hoping
  And waiting

It doesn’t matter who you get with
Or how many parties you go to
At the end of the day you retreat
To that hole inside of you.
Where she once sat
Strumming your heartstrings
And now late at night you sit
Weeping, oh how it strings
You can’t choose your family
Just as you can’t choose where to leave your heart
Neither can you choose for it to be accepted
But you can choose to go back to the start.
It doesn’t make you weak to think:
If only I’d help on a little longer.
It’s not abnormal to think:
If only I could have been stronger.
Then the next day you’ll go out
Walking across the common to town
And you’ll see her walking by
Headphones on and her eyes down.
I’ve been there my friend
With all this madness where are we bound?
When we can’t just love each other
And unite two lonely hearts, waiting to be found.

To Sam Bradley, who was taken away from us too soon.

I could tell this day was coming
My body knew this day was near
I could tell when my life fell apart
There was a return of all I fear.
I guess everything I was
Everything I am sure I want to be
Every bridge I burnt
Was because I needed you near to me.
And look, three years on
Every day is still a case of survival
It’s a struggle I know
This feeling no-one can rival.
So I sit down and write,
I think about girls, counting the cost
Yes work’s a bit hard
But I look at what you’ve lost.
And that makes me cry
It sends shivers down my bones
They took you away from us
Somehow I’ve got to make it on my own.

“Virginia Woolf was wrong, you don’t need money, hell you don’t even need a room , to be a writer. All you need is a lonely garret and a toilet. Got that, and a writer’s got it all.”

I think it’s a misconception
That a writer’s garret is blue.
Not at all, it’s a place of bonding
Where it takes me and you.
The only choice we have to make
When you come over at two
Is to think when you’re reading my poetry
Have we got any learning left to do?
We get on so well
There’s nothing left to say
Apart from to have a laugh
And strum the day away.
I treasure these moments
It’s more than a poem or a song
It’s more like a healing
And I feel it growing strong
You show me what you’ve written
I’ve tried to hold you before
But only now do I see that
A relationship is so much more
Than a warm body to hold
And our experiences are so sublime
When I’m sat with you
And you’re glowing all the time
You’re smiling, ah yes
This is a partnership we both can offer to
A writer’s garret is a place where we can grow
Not a place where we go to be blue.

It was the day I rode on with my life
The day I went into my daydreams
The day I fell through the floor
And life wasn’t everything it seemed.
I was lost in a forest,
Trying and not succeeding to follow the signs
In the I end I was beaten, wasted
Wasted from wasting my time.
I got lost in the jet stream
I got lost in a hole in the night
I saw a fire beyond.
I saw the golden beams of your light.
It was then I knew
It wasn’t you I was running from
I could see the petty anger
That held us, ending up living alone.
Then I saw a city
A city dressed in cold concrete
It  was the city of angels
But the angel was dead in the street.
For once I saw it your way
For once I was all wrong.
I could see you there
I had just been pushing you home
People will only take so much
People will only wait so long,
Oh -----, my love, oh -----, my love
I can see I was driving you wrong
Insane even, I laughed
Because life can just sting
When we forsake our own love
Without you, -----, my life doesn’t mean a thing.

A good day is beginning
I can feel it in my bones
It doesn’t matter what you’re winning
It doesn’t matter what you own.
It’s more than just a feeling
It’s more than just a zone
It’s something like a healing
And I feel it coming strong.
We have got our history
We’ve had that ‘I need my time alone’
And even if we lost our mystery
At least we know we’ve grown
It really wasn’t so complicated
Not after all
We’ve been through all that
We don’t have so far to fall.
There’s only one girl
Who I can telephone when I’m blue
And I know you’ll be there
I can finally give myself to you.

Let me tell you something
About life as seen on TV
It may appear ideal
But that ain’t the way it should be
The goodie has no end of ammo
The baddie is never in with a shout
But in our world today
It’s always the good guy who loses out
He loses out to the *******
The puff with the SUV.
The girls drop a nice one instantly
For a flutter of profanity.
The ***** always get laid
While the dude’s  left out to dry
And for all that goodness he’s got
He’s alone a lot and why?
It’s a question I asked myself
For years and years to come
To the conclusion that all winners
Are deadbeats, jerks and ****.

The emails have not been kind of
Late –
It’s not sadistic publishers
Or die-hard groupies
(well, mostly not)
No it’s people getting in touch
Wanting a taste of the good stuff
Their mouthful of meat
What they believe is theirs,
A weight I should carry.
Sometimes it’s about poetry,
I only wish more of it was –
But mainly it’s people
With nowhere to turn
And no thought for my situation.
I try and assuage their grief
But it’s no good
I cannot do it.
One day I can take no more,
I am staring at the ceiling
And I hear the telling ping.
I hit delete
It could be Jesus gone viral
But I doubt it,
Even He knows
I’m past saving.
Then I know it’s a diehard,
My phone begins to make
Continual pinging noises;
An ****** of woe.
The buggar then begins to
Ring.
I could fling him across
Main Street
But I only bought him
Two days ago.
He’s not worth it,
And goes away,
Before I can blow.
But sure enough,
There is no peace for the wicked:
Beep, beep
Ring, ring
Ping, ping
I picked it up, primed
“What do you want?!” I bellow.
“Oh... I’m sorry Mr. Hinton, just
To let you know this is Nurse
Georgia, reminding you about your
Appointment this Friday?”
I told her I’d be
There for her.

“Adam Kieslowski,  I want to punch your face in, with all due respect.”

“Dan! Don’t do it! Don’t go there!”
“I’m gonna, do it Megan.”
“Don’t! You’ll **** him!”
I was at the point of snapping
No man scared me
The blood was pumping
Through my fists.
Mike Tyson could have
Walked through the door,
******* Gargantua
I would have got froggy for
Megan.
Silly cow could never even love me
Back, but alas, tis the work
Of lust and ******* desire.
I am by no means a good fighter
But a ***** one,
A tactician,
Teeth an’ claws are no bounds for me
******* Oedipus him if you have to
I had a bellyful of beer-*****
And I was ticking over
Idling
Thinking, teasing
Working the jaw.
The door opened and I pounced
Throwing him to the floor
I could feel Megan pawing at
My back
But it was futile
When a man is pumped, even
The God’s can’t stop him.
I threw him back against
The floor
Gritting my teeth
His lip swelled like a melon
And tears filled his
Watery eyes
“Oh my...”
“What the **** did you say, buddy?”
“Dan please...”
“What the ******* messing Megan around for?”
He mumbled, blood oozed from
Every orifice and his mouth
“Answer me!”
With that, he did something
No man expects,
He burst into tears!
Floods of tears, not just a trickle
A ****** fountain.
We nearly had to call in Moses
To do his party trick with the
Red Sea.
I let him up, as Megan’s eyes
Burned my head.
With that he ran out of door
And drove off.
Puff.
Safe to say, I now had to get
Out the room
Without Megan killing me
Multiple ways.
I didn’t return for several days
Like one doesn’t return to
And aeroplane crash site.
I saw her one day, and she
Said nothing
She came up and
Kissed me on the cheek
And walked on.
I guess Adam never
Bothered her again.
I returned home
And continued to write
And drink beer.
I didn’t think
That situation was
Too bad for my
Soul.

‘You *******!
You *******!
You *******!’
It’s all I hear
Being shouted down
The corridor
Thank God I’m
Walking the other
Way.
I do miss those nights
At flat 33.
It’s another generation
Another guy being
Thrown out
On his gluteus
Maximus
Told to scram!
Get the **** out!
Because Delilah’s on it?
And he’s out.
Some of the best and worst moments
Have been endured on my bottom.

I remember sitting in
Numerous wards
And clinics
With all the madmen
Around me –
Wondering if they are dying
Or whether that
Scratch has turned
Septic.
I think people enjoy
Thinking there’s something
Seriously wrong with them,
It gives them
Something to do
With their dull lives.
But it works both ways,
Doc can feel a hero
And he can tick a box.
God incarnate,
Allah, Buddah, Jesus.
I am called in
I’m sure my diastolic is up
After nabbing a handful
Of pear drops.
“Right, Mr. Hinton, please sit down –
Are we feeling okay today?”
“What can I say, I’m in a
Practice when I could be writing?”
“Ever the pragmatist... Now let’s
Have a look – your blood pressure’s up.”
“You just stuck a rod on my arm
And contorted my arm, I’m sad
It’s not through the roof.”
“Now, you take it easy on
The beer and the women.”
“You know I won’t, see you in
Six months time, John?”
I shake the Doc’s hand and
I slink away.
Immortal for another day
*******.

He may love himself
But every man has
A weakness,
He loves his face too much
And a broken body
Is not a good one
For modelling
Cashmere scarves
And playing
Waterpolo.
This will be
Your downfall Adam
One day,
A guy’s gonna
Land you one
Right on the chin.
It’ll be like
A Magnum Colt going off
It’ll send you reeling
And even death will wince
Before taking you.

Some days I just
Lay there,
2am – staring at the
Ceiling
Home alone when
I walk through my
Front door,
Thinking:
Take me. Take me now.
I can’t be this strong anymore.
I’ve been the travelling man
I’ve wandered through this hell,
Parched of love
Full of loneliness
Broken hearted
Defeated
Beaten to a pulp.
I’ve soldiered on this far
But now
The vultures can have me.
Then I sleep
And somehow I wake to the
Onslaught again.

To John – who always told me, ‘I’m fine, it’s the rest of them’

You know that
You’re kissing life’s ***
When a girl chooses
A weedy
Airheaded
Pompous
Obnoxious
Nothing
Over you.
You, with a big heart.
A warm touch
A sense of humour
A sense of love
And not just carnal desire.
That, no man can do without
She will not love you
Nuh-huh, no way.
And you’re thinking,
Jesus:
It’s either something he’s got that I haven’t
Or indeed  that
They’re lacking something I’m not.

I told her, I did
Megan, I said
I’m not taking the load
Not anymore.
You come to me when you
Want help with words
But you won’t give me
Your tongue
Or even, as a deposit,
Your word:
Yes.
So I’m saying no,
******* you *******;
And she is gone.
I do feel bad – a bit.
But what can you do?
Bottle it up,
The bottle begins to crack.
Do what you can
Because you can’t come back
That was the straw that
Broke the donkey’s back.

If I hear the words
‘I didn’t lead you on,’
One more time
I’m.going.to.scream.
How long before
You realise
Love doesn’t work
Like that?
You’re off chasing
A dreamer
And to me, you’re
Just a dream.
It’s either one of two things:
Either it’s love between us
Or we’ll go bust
It should be heavenly appealing
These show be the best
Years of our lives
Love should have us
Swinging from the ceiling

Haters
They are everywhere
They are like a contagion
Infecting everything in their path:
And that is the worst of it.
It’s not the death of morality
But the slow dying
The crumbling of it.
This is what the human condition has become:
Good people
Eroded
Worn down
By **** boring people
Boring people populating the Earth.
It’s a two faced monster
Vain
Drunk
Horrible to look at
Feasting on good looking girls
And boys
But there will come a time
When even Death will wince
At the old hags
Before taking them.

A Sophie Hesme

She won’t do this forever
Famous last words
It has to be up there with Napoleon
And Nelson
‘Drink, drink, fan, fan, rub, rub’
Hardy never got
Kissed
Which is a similar feeling
I get, sat across from Josy
In poetry class.
I chew the end of my pencil
As I get bombarded with shrapnel
I’m hit! I’m hit!
But she won’t do this forever
Hopefully I don’t bleed to death
Before I get reconciled.

It’s such a shame
When all people have to live off is loneliness
So often they are overlooked
By people in search of the grander
The prettier
The more popular.
Everyone wants to tell their story
Or speak to someone
But we’re not all getting equal
Show and tell time.

The telephone has not been kind of late
It’s not from new found fans
Who have suddenly started praying for me,
Or from publishers
Wondering when my next book is going
To be finished
No –
It’s much closer to home,
Friends of mine crying their eyes out
Because some long-legged stunner has left them
“Dan, I don’t know what to do, she
Was a little girl from Sweden,
A real supermodel,
I bought her a diamond ring
And now she’s gone!”
A  crackle down the end of the phone
“Come on mate, pull yourself together,
Why did you buy her a diamond ring?”
“Because I thought she loved me!”
“How much was it?”
“£5,000...”
“And how long have you known her?”
“3 weeks... I thought she was the one.”
I hang up after my apologies and realise I can do no more
I’m no snob, I try and assuage their grief but what can I do?
I can only talk to them, and the girls –
They must figure the rest out.
I decide to go and talk to one of my best and longest friends
She is one of those ladies I have always felt my friend
And a good one, but nothing more.
I talk to this elite selection of women, because
They surely must know what it takes to get women.
I turn up on the farm, she smiles, just finished butchering a pig.
“More fool him is all I can say. Tell me the only way
He knows whether a girl will play him honest, is if
He looks beyond the beauty and is she there
When he needs her the most, through thick and thin –
That’s the testament of a women worth having.”
God bless, Hannah – she had a way of putting it so eloquently
And I don’t believe I could do the speech justice.
That night I ring him up
“What did your friend say?”
“Nothing man, just leave it.”
“What?”
“That’s how you learn: the girls that are good
For you are there all the time. Whatever happens –
Soon as you mention money or start throwing money
At the long legged, the *****, the blonde. You’re dead
In the water. They know they’re beautiful.”
“Thanks mate, you’re a pal.”
I hang up and the phone ring again. It’s Hannah.
“So what did you tell him?”
“Just what you told me, but in language he gets. Man speak.”
“You’re one in a million. You know that? I love you.”
I hang up the phone and smile to myself:
Everyone’s gone away contented.
I’m rather pleased with myself,
They both got to hear what they wanted to hear
With the minimal amount of damage.
It’s a hard act to balance
It’s a hard lead to follow
But I’m mastering it.

I remember moving in to my old flat
Down in San Jose
It wasn’t much to look at
But it was all I could afford
I was studying a 6 day degree
Hoping it would get me somewhere
It was only dollar twenty five
In the rag
Because we all sometimes have to pray
For small mercies
I had just paid out for another hidden cost
Turns out there are a lot of them
When you haven’t got much money:
$13.02 to get my room key
Or the landlady hits me over the head with a baseball bat –
That’s how a democracy works, we elect a leader
And then they milk us for all we are worth.
A dictatorship works the same way –
Only they don’t bother with voting.
This hunny came up to me,
Lips that could devour a man
A body so voluptuous
It could make a man go insane.
“Excuse me, there’s no toilet roll in the cubicle.”
****, what small hells we make for each other
Even the cruellest of men should be able to wipe their ***.
At times of seeing such beauty
We become all gushing
And promise things that are simply beyond us,
In a hope of being rewarded with a mouthful of beauty
Or even better –
A bed.
So I went downstairs and had a near fatal run-in
With the Jamaican landlady
“You won’t be having no pieces of *** in your flat
I-s can be a-telling you that now!”
I returned with the toilet roll
She puckered her lips
Winked and said she would see to me tomorrow
So the next day I went round and said I had
A bit of ailing at the back of my throat
She turned her nose up and said:
“There’s nothing that could be done for me.”
And with that shut the door.
It is such a shame when such beauty gets prissy
But that is the human condition
The more generous you are
The less generous you can afford to be:
Just ask Timon of Athens.

To Alex

Sometimes I think when I sit at 3am
Staring at the screen
Listening to ‘Lonely Island’
I take stock of where I’m going:
We all must.
Not just looking where  we have come
But where we are going.
It’s like love:
You can’t go bull-headed into these things
It must take its course
And sometimes the intermittent waiting
Leads to sleepless nights.
I sit and think,
I want to be your soldier in hiding, girl.
Not for bragging rights
But the fact is,
I can’t bear to lose another.
Such a shame –
When the night rolls on
So do the texts
And the romance goes unfulfilled.

The first time,
I remember (through a drunken haze)
It was beating down with rain outside,
The gods were weeping,
She looked beautiful that night
And we were both wasted,
I sat up and lit a cigarette.
It was done.
She continued to lay astraddle on the bed
“How was that, baby?”
I said puffing on the smoke, grinning.
She took a few minutes to answer and said,
“It only hurts when I laugh.”

I sit on my own in a restaurant
And at the table next to me
A guy’s grabbing a hunny’s ****
And giving it all the googly eyes;
He smiles.
It’s a first date.
He’s done her already
And she is a stunner
Eastern European
A body built like an athlete
A body you’d **** yourself for
Just for a sip of that amber nectar
The body of a woman that puts fire in the *****
And gives way to sleepless nights.
He was grinning
And I was lost in my Vichyssoise
But as the evening wears on
The passion disintegrates
Into mindless rote
They were onto eating sandwiches
And I was onto the lobster
I know that you shouldn’t bring a sandwich
To a buffet.
The guy with the Bulgarian hunny learnt that too:
As soon as the guy looks up and begins to give his order to the waitress
The Bulgarian hunny interrupts him
“I would to order...”
“Bradley, don’t you look at another woman –
He’ll be having the salad and the tuna steak.
You know you’re not having a **** steak
I don’t want you dying of a heart attack before you’re forty.
And I’m certainly not going to be left to feed 6 kids!”
There was an awkward silence
Every time Bradley tried to get a word in the
Hot Bulgarian fluttered her big brown eyes
And shrugged  her shoulder.
“Boy, save the charm for the ******* your arm.”
God, if I were him
I would sleep with one eye open.
And I know if they had a bunny
It would be on the stove by now.
The conversation gently continued,
Poor Bradley couldn’t look at another woman
Throughout the evening
It was decided:
3 boys and 3 girls
And not one would be thought to be called
Bradley Jr.
They had to graduate
They had to work five years
And have full dental plans
All this was going on before
The salads.
I have to laugh
Hahahahahaha
When one is faced with a beauty like that
That’s a maniac
I have to think:
You can’t taste the milk
And then not put a down payment on the cow.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Uni
Such as we all live lives like the ones off Hollyoaks
And that in order to survive
You need to be three things:
Beautiful
A party-animal
And an iron liver.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Those things are all nice:
Much like a free side with your sub
Or a red-letter day.
They’re nice –
But they’re not necessarily vital.
It’s not vital you fall in love with the first person you meet
It’s not vital you get with someone within Freshers
Like it’s a race and you’re Lyford Christie.
It’s not vital that you down half a bottle of Jager
To prove to your flatmates you’re a god
It’s not necessary.
Some of my best friends
Are quiet
But they are good
And I wouldn’t want them any other way
When we come together we have nothing but fun.
Without alcohol
Without drugs
Without 2am walkins
I know...
What’s this world coming to?

When you come away from home you can be one of many things:
A ****
A partyanimal
A geek
A talker
A listener
A doer
A drinker
A social recluse
An alcohol abuser
A hustler
A bustler
A fanatic
A panicker
A best friend waiting to be discovered
A great lover in the cupboard
The list goes on
But we are all one thing:
A fresher
A newbie
A greenhorn
Streetfighters
Run up quarterbacks
Soldiers of Fortune.
And I realise it can be hard
With everything going on
Trying everything new
Trying to make friends
We can sometimes get caught up
And lose our field of vision.
If I could give one piece of advice
It would be:
Be who you are.
Standup for what you believe in –
People always come round to respecting that
If you don’t do shots
Drink beer
If you don’t like ****
Pass on it in a dignified manner.
I once knew a guy who lost his field of vision:
He ended up firing a rifle out of a second-storey window
Trying to hit the centre of the O’s on roadsigns.
It might have been the exuberant amount of alcohol
He had consumed that night.
I just don’t know.

Written with Josy in mind.

There comes a time in life
When we cross the River of No Return
We have to go and move on ahead
We have to leave the bridges that we burned.
There are bridges over troubled waters
I guess that’s what good friends are for
But sometimes the bridge just crumbles
And the foundations hit the floor
Into the River of No Return it goes
You get whipped, you pay the piper
But in the end you get to call the tune
And then, my friend, you’ll be so much wiser.
Maybe you’ve got your finger on the trigger
It’s a hard, hard lesson you’re going to learn
You’re gonna have to take a beating
And you’re on the River Of No Return.
It runs on and on through the Jungle
You don’t look back; you don’t know what you’ll find
You’ve been there and you’re past it
Through the wastelands of your mind.
It’s the law of the Jungle my friend
The Nature of the Beast
Lying in wait for all of us
Save yourself, to say the least.
It’s a hard, hard decision
To stand and watch your bridges burn
But it’s a hard, hard lesson
That we all have to learn.
It’s not easy; I know it’s not easy...
Everything you had, everything you believed
To see it go up in smoke, fade away
And finally accept you were deceived.
Once in your life you will see
There’s no where left to run
When you cross the River of No Return
And your heart comes undone.

There will come a time in life
When you feel swept out with the tide
You really want to get you some
But actually no-one’s on your side.
You stand there, at the end
And I sit here, wanting to die
Only inside as you curse my French
But baby, all I did was try?
How long can a man survive this?
How long can he believe in love?
How long can he hold onto a chord, a prayer?
How long can he believe in a God above?
It makes me mad to think, God when will I be loved?
I come home alone every day and night
I  just sit there crying, wondering
When will somebody see the light?
When will we realise that today
When we shell and run for cover
It shouldn’t be a God that we fear
But indeed how we treat each other.
We are so cruel in the things we say
It pains me Josy, baby, cos it’s true
Why do you want to hurt me so badly
When all I wanted was to love you?

In the deepest night
I was feeling half past dead
I just needed somewhere
To rest and lay my head.
I said ‘mister, could you tell me
Somewhere I could lay my head?’
He put his arm round my shoulder
And this is what he said:
“Take a load of famine
Take a load of greed
I’ll see you right my son,
If you just put your load on me.”
I walked with him down the street
He says “this Jester’s my brother,”
And so we continued to walk
Fool on one side, devil on the other.
I asked him what he was doing out
When it was a good quarter to twelve
And he just smiled and said, “Son,
Sometimes you have to think of someone other than yourself,
Now let’s go and get you some food –
Take a load of spam, take a load of beef
Take a load of chewing tobacca
And then put your weight on me.”
When we went to a little saloon
And I asked him why he did what he did
He just sipped  his drink
Then said, ‘hey listen kid’
There’s a lot of people in this world
Who are only out for themselves today
They’re so consumed with their problems
They just can’t seem to see the way.
There’s so much greed around
There’s so much fear –
Sometimes I sit and think
Well, where do we go from here?”
Then he looked at me
Then he leaned a little to
And said, ‘I’m a man of the world’
And I know what we got to do.
We got to help one man at a time
Unlike religion we can’t save them altogether
One soul at a time my friend, come
And see what I mean down on the heather”
So we went down past the brush
Past people walking around
They had their own trajectory and problems
They commuted without a sound.
‘I see what you mean’ I said
‘Everyone’s too full of their own concern’
And the little man just smiled at me
‘That’s something you’re going to have to learn’
But just because it’s happening, doesn’t mean it can’t change
So take a load of greed,
Take all the things that hurt you
And put your load on me.”
He said “tell me all your troubles,
That’s how we defeat the greed
I’ll be there to listen ‘til they’re gone.
Feel free to put your load on me.”

If it’s recognition you want
By all means, go ahead and try
But don’t get so bogged down
That your time passes you by
If it’s a point you’re trying to prove
Give it your all until the last
But while you’re so set in your ways
Remember to let go of the past
There’s no use in holding on
To things false things all around
And there’s no point in looking
For something that can’t be found.
If it’s power you want, honey
I hope you’re going to see
That all these uncertainties
Aren’t  in a boy like me
I know that you could look forever
In search of insubstantiality
But just chain down my heart
And throw away the key.
I hope then you will find
I hope then you will see
You don’t have to fight me all the way
You only have to talk to me.
So don’t curl your lip
So don’t look the other way
Avarice is only temporary
But my love is here to stay.

I like the days, when I just sit
Staring vacantly at the ceiling
With a book of Bukowski upon my head
Serious Osmosis going on.
I go back, to days
Days when we would just steal a traffic cone
For the Hell of it –
When being young was just doing
What you could
Because you could.
I remember eating Nachos and apple crumble
At 2am.
Then watching a friend of mine
Eating icecream one night with a ladle
The next night screaming in the shower
Out of apparent ‘excitement’.
I remember when we would sit,
You and I,
Drinking and if the atmosphere wasn’t more
Frosty than the arctic wind
Then Dave the drunk  added his two penceworth.
When I had to fight off Dave and his  Bovverboy.
That was rather humerous
Particularly by the fact that you nearly crapped yourself
It was a good laugh
I wish there could have been more times like that
Ah well...
Unlike most great works of art, this has no theme
That holds it all together.
I guess, like most undiscovered artists
I just thought I’d write **** down
And see where it went.
Clearly, not very far.

I wonder what this world is coming to
When we have to overcomplicate everything
All I hear on the TV of late
Is ‘bare craic’ as my northern Irish friend would say –
“I can’t understand this  credit crunch,” she said
Poignantly, (neither could I) “I think I’ll take
A dander down to the shops.” And so she did
We were out of milk
And living off salami
I picked up the paper
And I realise nothing is without a price
Or a fate
They are the two certainties
So is death
And the price is not so hard to see either.
The American bigwigs sit round a table
Complaining what is to be done about the financial crisis?
Each eating a $16 dollar muffin with their $8.48 coffee
Wondering where oh where can money be saved?
And they’ll get back in their private limos
Drive past their second addresses
Back down to Bel-air
Lock themselves in their villas
Count their bonuses
And sleep happy
After doing jack ****.
While Greece is going down the crapper.
I can see the solution
Can you?
Or is it just me?
Or can you see it to?

Well I tried so hard
And I still  don’t know
How to turn the page,
And let you go.
I’ve read this book
And I know how it ends,
It brings me back to you
Again.
It’s like a movie
Where I play the part
Of the guys who’s imprisoned
By his lonely heart.
And for the first time he’s where
He wants to be
It’s just that way
With you and me.
I used to think
I’d never need someone
Like the superhero
Who comes undone.
As the part unfolds
And it falls into line,
You’re my someone,
Who I want with me all the time
Like the caped crusader
Needs his boy wonder
I need you
To steal my thunder.
I was so confused
Two weeks ago
Whether I really  loved you
But now I know,
Happily ever after
Like a fairytale...
That’s just how it is
With me.
A story that’s true
And real,
That’s exactly the way
That  I feel.

My life story.










You say that love
Love baby it takes time
I won’t give up
Not until I make you mine.
I’ve just found out
That when you take me home
You push we away
With your heart of stone.
Which one of you are you today?
Do you want to hurt me
Or are you coming out
Out to play?
There are so many ways
So many ways to fall
Guess I’m an easy touch
And you don’t care at all.

She came up to me,
Flailing her arms on the stairwell:
“It’s the song isn’t it?
What you were trying to tell me:
‘I hope your happy now, I
Could never make you so.’ It’s
The line out of a song isn’t it?”
I stand there mute, one
Foot up the stairwell.
No-one can argue with an Irish
Women when she’s got something
In her wee bonnet.
“It’s a line out of You Made Me Thief
Of Your Heart isn’t it? I heard it on the
Radio today, a song by Sinead O’Connor,”
I was going to interject but something held my tongue
“It’s from a film about a Northern Irish man who feels
The world has done him a great injustice isn’t it?
Don’t bother answerin’ you’ve seen it, 5 TIMES!”
“What is this a dig at me? Cos I’m Northern Irish?”
“No it’s not...” I whisper hoarsely
“So what does it mean? Have I done somethin’ to upset you?”
“Not that you’d know of...”
With that I turn on my heels and walk away
It’s always a nice send off, when they never really get it.
A flustered northern Irish girl left exasperated
Staring at a piece of paper that reads
YOU MADE ME THIEF OF YOUR HEART
With hearts to dot the I.
Sometimes they just don’t get it.

There’s this guy
I once knew –
He was called ---
And every night he would frequent the local
He was ****** as a ****
But me and my mates felt we had to talk to him
Out of sympathy.
I could reckon that --- was quite intelligent
But he just drank too much
And people gave his a hard time
Apart from keeping us amused
I thought how he must
Each night
Reach his angle of repose
The moment when he began to slip away
From reality into drunkenness
As if we all haven’t?
And when I look back
I think of those fun-filled nights
With his new interpretation of ‘The Lord of The Rings’
And his philosophy of ‘the end of the world’
They were poignant evenings
And somewhere in between the alcohol
Was method in his madness.
Cheers, here’s to you,  ---

I am always curious to see
How we each react in our own way
To the things that hurt us most.
Our breathing lessons.
The shizz that just gets us by.
One foot at a time –
Concentrating on only each and every breath:
Through love
Through life
Through marriage
Through divorce
Through elation
Through heartbreak.
Some of us turn to *****
Some to drugs
Some to women
Some to solitude.
But these people bar the last
Forget the importance of being quiet
And believe the void can be filled
With substance
It can’t.
Much like the governments
And politics
Of this world – it’s an insatiable
Inimitable black hole
That when it shows its teeth
We have to all grin and bear it.
What do I know?
What do I care?
It’s all very much like poetry for us poets –
Just another way to survive.

Through the blue smoke
I see your eyes burning a blaze
And I feel my heart jump
As I negotiate the roadhouse maze
This isn’t just any piece of ***
Any idiot can chase that
But what I’m chasing now
Is a hurricane across the flat.
You’ve had your share of pain
I can only see those brown eyes burning
I can’t take my eyes off the three dots
By your eye that has got my soul turning
Your finger curls at your blonde brown hair
The ringlets fall thick on your shoulders
And every time you pucker your lips
I always feel my nerves smoulder.
I see you tapping away to the evening beat
The long hot Tequila nights before us
The world is playing at our feet.
I see you draw up on a cigarette
The smoke encircles my heart
Now sitting in the barroom five years on
I wish we had taken it back to the start.
I wish we had started again
On that Tequila night
Can I just ask you somethin’, mon amie-
Can you see the light?

I remember once a day at school
I will never forget
She was called Storm
It was not so much what she said
That was memorable
But how she drove some
Guys insane.
It’s amazing what a piece of ***
Will do to a guy’s reasoning.
There was this one Belgian
Called Timothy
He never really said much:
Girls ignored him
And so did the bully’s
Because he wasn’t worth anything
The only thing I remember is
That he used to share his potato chips with me.
I didn’t want to be his friend:
I just liked his chips.
You realise when you have nothing
You’re out for all you can get.
One day when our English Teacher Storm
Came in
Showing all the leg
I think she knew how much to reveal
And to leave us guessing
Just wanting a little bit more...
But not ruining the dream for us.
It’s true we wanted to rip that spray-on dress off
She pouted her rose lips
And tossed her bountiful brown eyes
Her grey-blue rimmed eyes were framed by magnificent lashes.
A photo in the making.
Every boy was willing to pay for her to have her nails painted
And her eyebrows plucked
Well, it would start every English Lesson
Storm (Mrs. Goodwin) would cross one leg over the other
And there would come this noise,
From the back of the classroom,
Quietly at first
Then...
Thump
Thump
Thump
It would continue all through the lesson
And Timothy could continue
With mute persistence.

I shuffle through the detritus within my flat
My atomic stockpile
Once every so often I empty out the draws
The decaying *******
And forgotten poems
I put them up on a board
Prepare them for an emergency operation
I give them fillings
Attend to the cavities
Brush them down
Give them another lick of paint
And bit by bit they stagger into shape
Doctored.
Breathing.
     ...Just
If I didn’t do this
I would have to burn your cities
Hound your women
And unleash my attack on every corner on the globe
You should be thankful
I only clean out my room
Once every  ten years.

There’s one thing you must learn
About women,  it is just this
They  always call you –
Whether it be to make-up
Or break-up
They let you know where you stand.
It was some time after I fell out with Josy
And I dared to ask her flatmate
The droll question:
“Josy holding up ok?”
She clearly wasn’t because
She hadn’t called me.
The short answer I got
Was a cold
“Yeah, she’s fine”
Women too are full of contradictions:
“Fine” means she’s not fine
She’s probably been crying,
The short answer is teasing
They want you to ask more
To suffer, suffer, suffer.
The fact the flatmate was reserved
Means that Josy has told her a lot.
The fact  I thought this was gonna be painless
Is testament to the fact it’s not.