Remember standing outside
the Mountain of Clouds
waiting on the bus to arrive,
and thinking:

“How the **** did we get here?”

There’s always a point
where the tree trunk ends
and the branches go on,
no matter how high it reaches.

I'm not sure if I’ve ever told you
this one before,
but a while back
Sentimental Stevie took my hand
in the snug
and confessed his lunacy to me.

The ash built up fast
then dropped to the red sand stone
beneath my suede boots
where I had to admit my age,
finally.

The smoke tastes
like burnt Strawberry
and lingers in the crevasses
of my meridian mouth
before I succumb to the image
in his head.

Anyway,
now we’re one week on
and I’m no further on
with finding out
if I belong,
or if that even matters
when you pull out the map
and lay it across the glovebox,

so I guess
I brought that place up,
that musky Titanium white room
filled with love and doom,
and all things good
because

I'm not dead yet.

When I come home
I like to make myself
a midnight bowl
then lie beneath
the dripping ceiling
where
I am at peace.

My parents think
it’s a strange thing
for someone
to spend their life
in seclusion

behind these walls

but here -
I’m not being questioned,
nor judged.

Spread out on a cloud
and
blowing bigger ones
than the night before,
it is just
a time when people
aren’t knocking at my door,

elation comes and goes.

Once a connection is lost,
they are severed from you
forever;
you can’t light the end of a burnt out match stick,
you can’t burn the bonfire
after it’s been hosed down
the second time.

None of that matters
when you’re half way down the Rabbit hole
watching the patterns
flashing through your mind,
and you just heard
someone promising
in a such genuine tone,
“I’ll always be down this way.”

But
you see the thing is,
I know
better than that now
and
so will you,
in time.

No matter where Nature drags
your rotting bones
it's stored in a safe black box
hidden under the stars,
or in some special place
at the back of your wardrobe
where (you think) no one
can ever go.

The lesson is to
look
before you fall.

To play the blues
before they play you.

Jack rolls black joints
and tells us to
sip them like tea
under the kazeebo tonight.
The sky is covered
in diet Pepsi;
clumsy moon must have spilt it
over the canvass
of the day,
but it’s okay because he says
he’ll buy a new one
when the shops open next,
we know
he always tries his best.

Taylor says it feels
as though
we’ve been transported
to a resort in
the South of Spain.

I take my jacket off.

Chris asks us if he smells
of anything sinister.
I look up from the step
and whisper,
“If they don’t know by now,
then they’re morons
with office jobs,”
we share a laugh and
in that moment,
somehow we forget
that this, and everything else
will come to an end.

I heard you say
across a cloud of smoke
that you hated
February,
is that why you left
on the 18th?
on the 18th hole
just as the course
was coming to a close

I watched you turn around,
walk away
at half past two on that
Thursday,
and as you did
I could see myself smiling
on the phone to my best friend
I could hear myself saying,
"Don't be silly,
I've got nothing to worry about."

With my feet firmly planted
on the freshly sprayed grass
that costs twice my month's wage
to preserve,
I reached out for a club
to batter over your head
but instead discovered my caddy
had gone astray,
and all I could do
was watch you walk away
in that poncey way
you always walked away,

I know you think your something else
but now
I have a handicap
that would put yours to shame any day.

Don't believe me?
Rematch February 18th 2017.

Arsenic sea under my steps
The echoing loud
Too hard to forget.
Peculiar things happened while
Labouring through
This darkened street
Where the monsters sleep.
Hitchock we're done
With your whistling numbers
I need something less daunting tonight
Why don't you
Give me some light.
I'm only passing through,
Just give me some advice.

What way do I go for the rest of my life?