They played in the Garden of Eden,
After hours, when the street lights when out,
And the pavement cooled down,
They drank from green hoses,
Fine aged wine in a different world,
He gave her a boost,
Soft hands on bark,
So close to touching the moon,
The earth beneath her,
No fragile wings opened,
They chopped down the tree the next day,
No Garden of Eden,
And no little girl to play,
He spends his days making paper airplanes,
Thinking of the sky that took his bestfriend.

Empty are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land
And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads.
They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land
Where Ione
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a person just gone.

The prophets are corrupt.
Tablets that are easy to swallow
but impossible to tolerate
in the swarming ache,
accelerating climate;
the act of being human at all.

Human at all
in the face of the clock,
the tick, tick, tock of progression,
incremental change;

the feeling that you are heaving a boulder,
only to wake, to shave,
and to do it all again.

The drinks are cheap here,
and old habits live easy.
I am doing better than most
in the humdrum collision
of everyday living.

I am doing better than most,
but still I climb into the canopy
only to wake up ******, alone,
and at the bottom of the world.

Such a conundrum,
severe desperation for sleep,
but I'm a word zealot.
As the moon increases altitude,
the pen flows,
freely.
Two a.m. when,
I'm ****** and sufficiently lubricated,
near delusional,
from three days lack of sleep.
I ***** ink and emotion on a page,
it solidifies,
I'm ******* King Midas!
That's when the magic happens... Sometimes.
I wake up on the floor in a,
putrid puddle.
No evidence of effort,
save an ink stained rug and,
cigarette butts.
Most times it's just ****.

Eloise in a Christmas tree,
swinging a straight razor
at the children below.
  Never held enough
as a baby.
  Never in love
just a maybe.

Eloise's father
in the living room,
drinking the news.
  Those *******
******* and *****,
  he screams.
Never held enough
  as a baby.
His mother smelled of
  a late night and
pineapple blend *****.

Eloise popping Prozac
like Tic-Tacs.
  Fantasizing about
shooting the school body.
You sonuvabitch,
her father screamed.
He penetrated--
She screamed
  and writhed.
Wrists held.
Body pressed.

Beans and toast
  for dinner.
Mom left dad because dad
  isn't big enough
or makes enough money.
Enough. Enough. Enough.

Eloise was supposed to be
a miscarriage.
Her dad lost some toes
when he missed a log.
  Chop, the axe said.

The world is a swinging place.
Whispering in the dark.
A hushed frenzy.
  Mix and **** out,
her gun let out a shout.
Eloise, queen of the
  student mass grave.

Eloise's father turns on
the news.
He drinks liquor instead.
Eloise on the t-v.
Oh, woe is me.
He went to the shed
  and blew his head
clean off.

The world is a swinging place.
The world in a frenzy.

It is 16:18. It is April.
Winter has thawed and all feels new
now that I can sit outside without discomfort,
without pale, immovable hands
and a wind to unsettle my thoughts.

My first beer of the day,
no idea of when the last will be.
An ashtray of previous cigarettes;
two of them are my own.
Always the follower of better men,
of charlatans and well-travelled fools.

I refuse to be a consumer,
yet I live to consume;
the pavement beneath anxious strides,
the warmth between her ethereal legs,
the drug still in my system,
the cold sweats in a half-empty bed.

My first crisis of the day,
exchanging money for a quiet place to sit.
To find my poison, toast my newfound health;
a wealth used to line my stomach,
or else to devour a box of cheap wine.
My last day off work,
last chance to sour in a sulk,
to gawp at the shapes in the ceiling,
to stay up through the Sandman's song.

When will I learn to turn with the world?
To not cling on in desperation
through each changing, unfolding scene.

We smoke by the canal,
getting high;
lamenting our lack of a decent broken home,
British hip-hop in the static of the upper classes.
They're doing more with their time,
old analogue transmissions, sleep-filled afternoons;
a paperback revolution, a snail's pace progression,
those ancient roads of forgotten travel,
the routes we had given up too soon.

I am too impatient now,
seeking The High
over inner peace, those new-found techniques
in favour of old habits; instantaneous retreat.
It's okay, this interludal existence, high-wire dependency
for a feeling ill-placed in sober routine.
We give up on chasing women
to chase heights we know we can never reach.

We smoke some more,
an artist's tomb;
the coffee table piano, old acoustics
with malformed necks, waning ligament of string.
Let's fill the emptied social scene,
appear red-eyed in the daylight,
pawing for a comfortable release.
We talk about hitting those unsung chords,
then we roll another, another,
until we cannot sing anymore.

Two escapists converge
to hustle the prison;
get high on the prospect
of getting high in the future.
We smoke by the canal,
feeling low, unstrung.
The out-of-tune white man blues,
pleading for acceptance
from the crowds we love to criticise.