Rock bottom is fantastic for perspective.

He chains black coffee and cigarettes,
knocking ash into last night's beer bottles
whilst Tom Waits is yowling from the stereo.
The Sunday morning is bright-white
like the bleached kitchen counters
that spread in uniform fashion
across the neighbourhood.
The window blinds him with the brilliance
of daylight, after staring too long at the screen.
Another chance to make a go at living,
but with the opportunity
of squandering it all the same.

Conscious that he was standing in his boxer shorts
and more so for the inevitable morning *******,
he checked for humanoid shapes in the allotments;
no Peeping Toms or curtain-twitchers,
only carcasses of Sunflowers
charred by November
and forming a Tunguskan fence.
In his incomplete state of a half-grown beard
and lack of full-time employment,
he found it quite impossible to think
that he was the present day culmination
of all humanity's endeavours.

Save for a relentless talent of self-destruction
and a penchant for giving oral ***,
he had long given up on a remarkable life,
instead savouring the aesthetic of smoke
curling by an open window,
or else watching the squirrels renovate their homes
to the patterns of the seasons.
A strain of survivors lead to his existence
but it didn't steel him in the slightest;
the most energetic thing he had done all week
was to kick a dog-chewed tennis ball
across the park in disgust at his life.

He kept a chart of happiness tacked to the wall
but he was always too depressed to fill it in.
Instead, there were books to be stared at
from their shelves, women to be thought of
but never spoken to;
a windowsill to lean against
and feel at one with the Earth.
Despite the cruelty of self-imposed detainment,
he had come to find a solace in stillness;
to slow his days to a glacial pace
with tense, quivering yoga poses,
and a disdain for daytime television.

During this hiatus for living he had finally
stopped biting the skin around his nails
to the point his fingers would bleed.
He was a man with a myriad of bad habits
and an maltreated disease,
but now the world was crashing around him
whilst he stood in the sidelines
as a disinterested spectator.
He has no stake in the outcome
of endless war and lottery tickets;
only the next collection of honest words,
and to where they might lead him.

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?

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

if I should sleep with a lady called death
get another man with firmer lips
to take your new mouth in his teeth
(hips pumping pleasure into hips).

Seeing how the limp huddling string
of your smile over his body squirms
kissingly, I will bring you  every spring
handfuls of little normal worms.

Dress deftly your flesh in stupid stuffs,
phrase the immense weapon of your hair.
Understanding why his eye laughs,
I will bring you every year

something which is worth the whole,
an inch of nothing for your soul.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved?  were we not weaned till then,
But ****** on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea discovers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown:
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemishperes,
Without sharp North, without declining West?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.