really really warm. she glances at me
Forget how ******* amazing
I forgot how much
bring an audience
yeah but lie on her bed

psychiatry is the wall...
you cannot belittle me. for i had a lovely day

a girl in the picture
wow i can't see With ice cold hands
the prettiest dresses are worn out
alone in a moment

The angels are picking people up and leaving the horizon
out there in the distance
I see them

I suppose it’s supposed to be quite beautiful.
Perhaps poignant.

They could be dropping them in the sea
Or onto rocks
But we’ll assume it’s to heaven they go.

I really hope they do get there
I hope I get there

Because it’s been tiring
And lonely
It has been a long time since someone’s eyes have met mine
And even longer since winter began
There is happiness awakening in Berlin, Prague, New York,
Only it is a very static form
It takes short breaths before it is put down
And when it is its eyes swivel around in its hollow head
We all stroke it as it passes on

It is tiring. Too tiring.
There are no beds anymore
Not a feather

I scrunch up the membrane of my eyes and tell myself
Forget all the little loves
The summers that were so eternal
That autumn and winter became calm and just
Forget it all
All the people on buses and trains and pavements and in shops
Forget it
Forget it
Forget it

And now, here is my angel.

Out on the runway, screaming at grey engines
how did he not open his stomach up in front of the T.V.?
how did Tommy go on living,
the boy never showed, they were to fight at 3, after school
who will I fight now? Who will I hurt?
Who has survived the drowning
Black Atlantic,
bone nails clawing to shore,
writhing in the black tentacles
of scuba gear.
Who stalks the land anew;
unafraid.

Shaking with all the coffee
wood tables, stairs, chairs-
this cafe is made with the slain,
with old spirits. It's too warm.

Out there walk by the day-mares; toothless and alone,
confused and wandering.
Family in prison, army, lost.

Others waltz with bulging
plastic bags,
adorned with beloved brand names,
kissed with reciepts,
blessed for ignorance
"beautiful."

A tiny girl across teh street with a smudge on her face smiles.
I pull a thin curve, wave a little.
Unto a land that no longer cares.
No longer breathes.

I wake up in the morning
And slip on a pair of boots
But I realise apart from this
I am naked
So I dress and undress and dress again
But now I’m wearing no boots
So I think and I dress again
But no I have no voice
So I undress and pace and dress
But now I am the opposite ***;
Now a dog; a cat; a door

(this is all very complicated and confusing
Let me assure you that.)

So I try again
But these are childs clothes
Now there are no clothes

So I return to bed where I am ****.

Christ, people
you're all an
utter ****** embarrassment.
you showed great promise,
in those early days,
crackign skulls with stone clubs,
howling at morning suns,
filthy and *******.

but you've only gone and lost the bleeding basics, haven't you?
you don't **** on your territory- what territory?
some big old boy called 'government' has been ******* all over you,
and you applaud like a foolish clown.

you clip your nails with metal, out of necessity,
because they're not being ground on rock
in the fling and throes of the hunt.

you've become terrified of dirt, and the possibilities of the body,
you can't even stomache your meat raw. pathetic.
meek and obsolete, wandering lost and lonely.
you've no pack instinct, and pander on and on and ******* ON

about 'love.' what a villaniously clean word,
not even a scratch of dirt, no delving in warm pink orifices,
filthy and *******

you may be top dog, but you've lost the dog, and are falling from the top.

The village is reaching the end of eternity.
The story has been told, written, read.

Out in the borderlands,
David still
fights Goliath.

The crowd have been around them for thousands of years,
chanting names,
fists in the air,
***** angry faces.

As the chanting of his name increases,
David grows in size,
unfolding like a redwood,
gleaming tanned bark.

The crowd becomes uneasy;
a giant among them? whose children will he eat?
which maidens will he devour?

and so they begin chanting Goliath's name;
David's strenght ebbs, they're feeding Goliath with their tongues now,
as he hulks and looms more and more over the shrinking David

alas, the crowd learn their mistake,
bite their tongues,
twisting them
until they are saying "David" once more.

This fight has been going on for thousands of years.
The crowd continue blindly shouting, 'David' and 'Goliath' being the only words they have uttered for aeons

unrealising they hold the power to release themselves
from this eternal fight.

the tree rises in the dark
fine needles, like fingers
forming in the love of the womb
like hay hooved back into the stable in the spring
spring. summer. No one can imagine the warmth;
a different warmth. sun warmth. animal warmth.

Curled up in winter, we nestle into a different warmth.
we huddle together like a litter of mammals for heat
in the nights of the storm
we feel Gods watching us
with fiery anger
and flowing loves
we see the streetlights like pathetic fires
sprawled out across the valleys
where the mist sets in the day and the sky consumes at dusk

the house is haunted
but we shake the old bones' hands,
we sing and dance and shout,
red in the face,
red in the blood, the heart,
we give the ghosts flesh so they may sit with us,
so we may love and cherish and laugh

so we may sleep safely wrapped around one anothers limbs
the great sprawl of humanity
awake again for the touch
of winter warmth.

Lying there
lights off; her body
dark and abstract
no words no touch
cold cold cold

Lying there
I feel his eyes;
His fidgets and twitches
warmth unwanted
embrace me night embrace me

Goodnight everyone.
Goodnight.

Listen up barflies, tricksters and drunks,
People’s lives wasted with heads down the dunk;
What if there really is a land for you and me,
Where the bar is eternal, refills are free.

You may have heard the jokes
Escaping creased lips,
Cheeks scattered with scars
Lives rallied around bars.

But I implore you;
What if the beer runs in a river
And contains something sweet to help along your liver

Bags of peanuts grow on trees
No alley-way dogs crawling with fleas,
No aging ******, the price a humiliating tease.

We of the wasted, the broken; the done
Heaven doesn’t really sound like much fun.
Tennis greens and elegant scenes
Don’t meet our  tastes
For ***** ashtrays
Engine oil and grease;
Gangs of bikers and hordes of police.

When I find that sign creaking in the wind
I’ll indulge in one final binge;
With an ex-wife in Hawaii
A boy out in Leicester (or New Mexico)
A veteran-frazzled brother
And a daughter who doesn’t want to know;
A bank sends love letters requesting my stuff.

The bible urges me clean
I look up to heaven
Doesn’t sound like my scene.

So hear me you wasted, you hardened,
Capillaries burst staining noses red;
Let’s comply to the census
And drink ‘til we’re dead,

Because the eternal bar, the river of beer,
Is all in your drunken head.

Is it still love or am I just used to it?
The everyday grotesque is just fine.
Content may mean good...
But the crying, why is it,
that I find it so easy
to walk away

Clinging to the eternal truth
That manaña never comes
But put all faith in the dawn of tomorrow
All the eggs in the sunlit basket

Because here, now,
In the dust of the crushed buildings
The pettiness, the bite of bullets from rooftops
The megaphones screeching their siren songs across
The dredge of forbidden earth,
Here and now
We embrace,

In the dawn of mañana a mother feeds a son
Toasts are made
The Spanish smile and
Gesture to the sky;
They are undefeatable
In the face of defeat;
In the face of mañana.

Oh mother and father
The fields and the bibles
The barns and the woods
A bird cries for more
Green forever

Oh my love; my queen
The carvings and the maples
The sweet lips and gentle
Hands clasping my arm;
Moonlight quiet and sunlit smiles
For a while.

Oh brothers and sisters
Look at the fire
Look at the ash
Look at the skies
Feel my skin
Feel

A dry scale on my back

Crawl in the forests
Roll in the mud
Feast on the fallen
Birth to the given
Eyes on the sky and the sky so blue
I am alive
I am alive

I
Am Alive.

So we descend onto the bed
like dust onto the still and sombre poppy
like fragments of pollen lapped up by the lizards tongue
white flash smiles and small night-animal noises.

Wasted seed. ****! Gone, into the folds and crevices of dark
thick smell of rubber like the hot factory floor
I'm tired now, Beatrice. I'm worn, weary,
world-weary, wasted.
I shall sleep now
and unfurl like an impossible caterpillar, unfinished
from its cocoon.

It is simple, and yet sublime;
Incapturable.

You need not go in,
Take away the man, destabilising the economy
That you so love
Letting them die

You need not assassinate and collaborate,
Scheme and puncture
Spheres of influence that stretch and bubble
In Latin America and Southern Asia,

You need not sign secrets away
Safe and deep
In silos and bunkers
Where Armageddon sleeps.

You need not supply, buy and axchange
Implements of violence and rage,
Picking sides in civil war, tribal conlflict
And bigger,
In lands you do not understand
Lands where the mountains resonate with holiness,
Lands of spiritual awakening awaiting for the young;
Concepts you can’t grasp, that don’t sit well

You need leave them be.
Enough has been done,
Not always with bad intention
But rarely for the greater good
Enough has been said and bought and replaced
Captured, shot at, disgraced,
Caricatured into funny cartoons
Taken over, the masters’ role assumed.

For all the radars and sonar
It seems impossible to listen;
Simple, yet sublime.
Incapturable.
Irreplaceable.

It’s true, death has jaws.
Ten nations wide,
Snarling like
Tomes torn in utter tedium
Like stars rising and falling through the millennia.

But life has arms.
Strong and weather-tanned,
A village builders, heaving bricks and stone into heaven.
Soft as thou mothers breast,
Caressed by your fathers hands,
Suckled in infancy.

Be embraced by these arms, and in the culmination of solemnity,
Set your lips to the beauteous jaws.

Out there with the shingled road
shimmering in the white sun
squinting into the periphery,
burnt ragged and raw retinas

dilation

out there in the slathering of sky
sleeps your soul

Hi how r u
I want u 2 no that
I want u 2 feel

I want 2 lay down 4 u
A thousand beautiful dreams
Of angel suns
Revolving in the heady twilight
Like orbs in a palm

For all the LOLs and ROFLs
This is no jk,
These are dusk zones in eternities

Green and black screen
Does me no justice
Breaks my fingers
And numbs my toes

I’ll brb in morning
To kiss you goodnight
In a tomorrow that
Will wrench yourself from yourself

Because YOLO is wrong.
You will live forever (YWLF.)

This is the place where people come to forget that they will die one day.

They let their conscience build up on the linoleum floor in puddles,
deep and dark
And follow the crowd to the next store
And the next
And the next.

This place will bleed you.
It will tear your pockets out of your clothing
And your children’s hands from yours.

A new shirt.
A new TV.
Well done.
You’ve done well.

But when you leave the white walls
The music tinny and dim
Escalators and litter
You still won’t feel free.

What would you like for dinner, Honey?
Pork? Beef? Human?

Ah, I’m never sure about human.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a free range or organic human ever,
Which has always surprised me, seeing as they choose the environment they live in.
Haha, they have the most ridiculous hierarchy of alpha males and leaders,

The psychopathic lead the docile.
I find it hard to eat this animal,
Always in the back of my head are the rumours
That they have a conscience
Somewhere underneath their thin skulls.

And all the controversies,
About it not being quite human meat,
Or being diseased,
Or the weirdoes, with their
“where did humans come from anyway?”

They barely have any meat in them anyway,
Useless animal really.
Sometimes it’s just fat, sometimes just bone.
I don’t like the chances.
Too much risk.

I think I’ll have some foie gras, or maybe some veal.

The opening and slamming of doors was a final symphony I was definitely happy with
Leave
And come.

“Marvin!”
Oh God Marvin please come here to hear my last words
Before I walk out in front of a bus.

Quiet, old man. You’re not talking sense.
You’re not going to walk out in front of a bus
Because there are no buses anymore.
You’re not going to die
Because I am death
And so are you.
Don’t be sad, old chap. It just happens.

“Maria!”
Save me from these nightmares
Tell me I’m dreaming
Tell me I’m dreaming

I’m weak
I’m weak
Oh Maria…

Hush, hush there dear.
I am near.
I am your moon and your sun,
You won’t go until your done,
So calm and sleep,
Relax hands and feet;
Look at my smile,
It smiles for you
Look at my eyes
You are but few

Who have seen them.

We shouldn't be remembering war
we should be remembering the aftermath
the smoking shells of homes,
the lasting hunger,
no Johnny or Jimmy or Dave or Sandra or Sarah or Marie
at the dinner table tonight
flowers gathering on graves.

Learn a God ****** lesson, don't retake the class

I come home smelling of someone elses sweat
Crawl into bed next to wife
Knives of guilt
Bleeding the bed.

Maybe I have done heroic things in past lives,
Defended outer galaxies from daemonic risings,
Villages under my protection,
Medicines made and distributed.

But for now I am forty
And I smell of someone else’s sweat
And I am next to my wife
In my bed
In my house

And it doesn’t feel all that heroic.

You down there in the depths
In the dark and lifeless ends,
Stop fantasizing over those non-existents,
Over those perpetual angles and starlit kisses.
Crawl out of the abyss, fingers ******, and
Embrace a human.
Leave those non-existents far behind your wake.

I can’t.
They’re all I have.

Meek and powerless
Human kind stops breeding,
Stops loving.

A ***** dull and grey
bored into cheap floorboards
the plastic around the bath
shattered
limescaled shower
trying to excrete
discreetly
hungover hot ears and cheeks
heart loping away
among laboured breaths
God Jesus ****...
Robbed happiness
cheers in the pub;
Here's looking at you, kid.

Some leaves
never give in to autumn
but blush red with anger
for too long.

the sun has never risen,
and yet it has been light
since dawn.

as it sets, it begins to rain.
grey and blue.
lavender grows in the garden.

throughout dark,
records play in the corner,
and lights are focused
on artwork around the room.

people are dank, dark and *****
from working hours
grease and sweat.

they will sleep through this night, and the next,
naked, touched by the sun. entwined
and resting,

until the sun awakens.

My boy...
You were going to grow up strong
in the dust of the village;
you'd nurture the weak wherever they'd lie forlorn;
you'd make life, in your love's belly,
in the soil,
in the lined smiles and creasing eyes
of young through old.
You'd ***** the land, modest, humble;
seeing the light of life for what it is,
taking & giving.
Sometimes you have to take- but you always give.
Life is unfair, but you would've broken your back
heaving the scales into balance...
Except you never will, my boy,
my blood, my name,
pale and silent,
uncoiling from your mother.
I held you in my arms, feeling in them the exhaustion, the gift of fathers, mothers, uncles, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters...
In your death I realised your not-life,
my boy. My love. My son.

I think I left a domesday device
in big yellow storage-
no the grimoire, Doktor Dee
had that, think he lost it while absolutely ******
on K cider. Losing all his teeth.
The pages are scrunched up, trodden, sodden
on some minor wasteland path, probably in Coldean.
You know, those treacherous corners of *******,
resolutely and hopelessly parked upon by a dog ****.
Papa Lebron's been making it rain down
most of Lewes Road,
but it never floods.
Leads to the sea, you see.
Old warlords sit on monobloc chairs
outside the garages they rent out
with their war chests & loans,
gesturing slowly across the way to each other.

My shoes, my jeans, my jacket,
all falling apart.
What I need is to raise a
good old army o' the dead
and take those rusty garagesm
store them for ransom in Big yellow Storage and
wait-wait-wait
for the bounty to roll right in.

salt stings wounds
salt stings eyes, entering, leaving...
healing, healing. The sea will take you away.
I tire of hearing abot these migrants
well they tire of the rick-shaw of an untested boat
of their homes becoming rubble & dust clouds,
of seeing blood in the dirt.
As long as there is war,
as long as there is famine
as long as there exists somewhere
called 'refuge'
then there will be refugees.
Oh child, rocked to sleep by the tide...
you should never have to answer for adult violence,
innocent & sleepy, sinless.
You have been written in blood in the old books
you have been decided for.
Your dice have been rolled by strange hands;
born amid angry eyes,
and so shall die,
washed ashore upon sand,
carried quietly away
to your final crib
to your refuge.

There have been numerous,
endless,
beginnings,

yet only one
finale,

one send off to them all.

hats off boys,
that's a big one

there go the stars
oh boy oh boy.

paired off into an infinite sunset
swan lake dozing at noon

sweat and bugs
comfortable
neat alcohol,
sweet.

fingers are touching lips
saliva like desert dust,
like streams trickling dry.

wink out.
turn it on.

fill out the space;
forever and ever and
(don't let go.)

the beginning was optional,
the ending uncontrollable.

each beginning was
written and read,

but none of us could
stay up late enough

to see how it all ends

Tell us more, Old one-eye,
Spiller of darkness
Bringer of hope,
Builder of men.

What could I tell you,
Young and agile,
Dark dreams and light smiles

About the pits
So deep
We lost their names

Or the towers
That rose so high
We forgot about them

Or the fire
Intensely hot;
We forgot how to feel the cold,

How to embrace the night
And the morning.

There are tales of stars of battles
And heroes of blood.

There are no tales of makers of stone,
Iron and wood.
You are all those things, youths.
You are the knot in the rope,
The hand that tied it,

And the mind that knew how.

** hum. Days work I suppose.
They come and go.
Riches they want.
Power they says.
Fame they wants.
Corrupting things these pale sweaty men yearn for poison.
Ah well, they pass bread over to my thin fingers, they can have it all.

But why doesn't anyone every wish for
the lasting sight of rolling hills cut under a deep and dark sunset?
Or to feel soft hands
worked and worn hands
child's hands
loving hands
****** and resting in their finite palms?
Why don't they wish for the pen to touch the paper,
so that when they read it back
they can't help but burst sealed lips whispering

'beautiful'

for themselves but so that themselves can beam at everyone else...?
Gone are the days when simple people wished for truer things;
these are the days of calculated idiocy, of boring invincibility...

It may be spring, but tucked away in my tent on the side of the road,
undying, starving, bored,
I shiver a little as vehicles eternally roar by
following the road into a dull and predictable oblivion.