Collect and disperse, what's the worst a man can do. Think of you? Babe, how do you do.

Quantify and subjugate the cold food on my plate, so I can keep cryptic crypts coming, while my thoughts just keep running.

What can I do when my best friend has died. I only knew him for a minute, then there he goes, waving "bye-bye". Real men don't cry, do I believe that? I might. But I struggle to keep those thoughts away at night and by day light.

How do I feel about her? What's the thought and what's the gimmick? Happy to settle for friend but my heart pangs when she says she's with him. I dare not tell her for fear that she'll leave. But then they all do, don't they. What's the reprieve.

Nick

hot coffee and stale cigarettes
while i reflect upon circumstances
and i suspect that the regret
will dissipate, while hope appirates
and my self confidence condensates

so i compensate for a lack of self meaning
by pushing the boundaries of what you seem
to see in them; dreaming of my next moves
like a display at the art gallery
you need to stand behind the line
while i sing "come on over Valerie"

so it's self lobotomy
as i open my mind up to the aether
and either i push forward to let go of her
or i stab the inner me that says i need her

so i make friends with the ladybirds
wasps and the ant hills and burn my lip on my cup as
i make a move to get my fills
and make peace with the fact that everything must one day

go up in smoke.

nick

i don't need anyone or anything
i'm a self-sustaining music machine
infinite energy, wax and wane
some times i feel vain
while i contemplate pain and imagine security
in the arms of another, spurious and distant
i hold my stance and raise my arms

a pitiable defense against the rigours of a lonely life
but they're all i've got and so i take a stab
because the only constant in strife is that nothing short of ****** will stop me
and even though i may feel blue, it's only cos i wanted company
i feel at odds with the inner me
and ashamed that i have to explain myself
and apologize for the tremor i felt

my hands shake with the weight of a thousand cuts, hidden
beneath a thick veneer of smiles and "how are you?"s
she was the only one to reach through and hold the trembling nucleus
to say "it's okay, I know that you can do this"
but i worry her and i can only think about how much i worry them
i some times worry myself, now i think again

but this is the way i am built and i will make it all the same
life is a series of moments and kindly strangers met on a late-night train

i want to be like you. it's easier to like myself now.
but it breaks my heart that i can't explain it properly, anyhow.

nick

At a stroke I feel the heat
Winding pulse of electricity
Beneath me I feel grounded, thunderstruck
My love abounded
So wherefore am I bound?

To tread lonely is no cause for fanfare sound
And yet to know warmth is to know bitter lacking
For in the lean times when friends seem far away
All I can feel is that maybe I was not good enough

At a stroke I banish these thoughts
But I am ill prepared to walk
The twisting thread, the tightrope-drop
And alack, I curse that I should be forgot

I hate that I should have to fight
The inner me with all my might
Who at a whim should change his coat
That in the shade I suffer'd stroke.

Nick

She curls my toes.

The way she looks at me, you know.
No time is sweeter than this. When the future is dark; the past shrouded in mist.

My mind is a caterwaul, my belly a bunker. When she gazes at me, my heart is thunder.

Come hither and sweep your troubles away. The day is over. Come.

Stay.

Nick

I'm afraid to jump the gun
And express the welling tide of feeling
Because how can I?

You would drown.

Or run away from the flood of my arms
And curse yourself for approaching the shore.

So I mark off the edge, and warn against those who would swim.

But I want you. And I'm sick of this island.

Though it is safe and though I can do no harm here, I can't be satisfied with the messages you send; delivery by bottle.

Drunk on the words they contain, I need more from the source.

So I'll jump the gun, and suffer a shot to the foot of course.

Nick

Require desire and delegate the choir to my sire, redesign and perspire; the liar deigns to fire the dire hire. I sleep soundly and softly while the people shoot aloofly so sooth sayers deny a responsible player and quietly quiet the last word.

Under the black light
You lay bare.

A band of luminescent pearls
Declare your smile
And the rainbow whorl
A cascade of electricity

Humility and humbled
We throw ourselves to the void
My back carved like the grooves,
Aged wood of the telephone trunk

A playground of negative space
And in my haste I remember to savor the taste
Of the chemical calm
Of the drone inside the walls
As we embrace

Until dawn.

Nick

I cut out all the reminders and remainders
You said yes but I know
That it can only be no
So go

I'm all that's left the morning after.

Nick

i'm looking for the switch
that i know must be there

it's like groping for the light in an unfamiliar room
all i can feel is the rough and rusty edge of an old filing cabinet
of a mouldy moving box,
and so i move deeper into the room
and trip over all the things i threw in there

but i still have to look at them

why didn't i have the foresight to clear a path? and why can't i find the switch?

i don't want to feel so powerfully. i need to find the switch and turn it off. Rip the nubbin out of the wall and eat it like a pill. Class A prescription for the pain. This is why i avoid making connections. i have a weak immune system and i catch feelings like the plague so that all i see are stars and bars.

i feel awash in an ocean of inadequacy and you ask me how i can't see what you see and it's because i can't find that ******* switch. when i think about it i fall about in stitches, while she wishes i wouldn't worry her but how can i even begin to relate when all i've ever felt is alone.

Brief flashes of warmth, and I can already feel the heat fading. i can read you too well and i can see too many steps ahead. so that i charge bravely into that new world knowing full well that in the end i will be alone again and you will have moved above me. all i can see are stars and bars.

i wish i could find the switch.

nick

Adrift in my ocean
Foam lifted and light
The sky sets on the horizon
And your leaving brings the night

I spy the lighthouse oft the distance
And wrack my body to relieve the pittance
That space brought such a torpor and a tremor
I need your assistance

But tho I cry out in pain
As though struck, no answer except
The uncaring roar of the inner me calls
And the brine lacquors my lips and lids
So that all I can account for
Is the cold emptiness of the place that I had been abandoned in

Not one to give up, I summon my courage
Heart full, I swim away from the light
That can't shine on me, and the shore that won't harbor me
And push deeper to the midnight blue
So I can cast away the memory of you.

It is bitter cold and lonesome, but in time
I note the water eases its assault and the light begins to shine
Truly, not the lighthouse, false shore and rocky bay
But the dawn's morning light off the continent ahead

So I redouble my efforts and drag my weary and wasted body up the celadon sands
And open my heart and with my hands
Throw to the bitter depths the pain I had carried
Like a locker all the way across the ocean of many

And though for a moment I feel the pang of that empty space
I know you couldn't stay

The wrong time and the wrong place.

Nick

this is not a beginning or an end
it's simply somewhere in the middle -
as it always was, and as it always will be
(i think.)

this is not the callous future you made out
the end-times we projected, lying cold in the winter of our misery
rather it is just another page
(maybe, it could be.)

so i shook away the rime
and practiced folding my hands
and looking up and around instead of down
to hear the music, not the sound
where roller-coaster emotions roil in a boiling sea of toil
and foil coils to the heart-breaking heights
(of somewhere else.)

nick