No one can know your pain
Not nearly as well as yourself
But the rope won't take it away
It just gives it to someone else

I don't travel for a living, I travel to feel alive.
And I've learned that nothing will better illuminate the path ahead of you than a burned bridge behind you.

The sun has long disappeared behind the stage
I'm inspired and sweaty and feeling my age

The amplifiers still ringing in my ears

The smell of the Tagus draws in and I take my tired frame up winding streets
The cafés are open. Piano music. Shoes on cobbles providing the beat

Sat silently listening to the late urban shuffle, people appear from narrow openings between tired, tiled buildings
Are the up late, are they up early?

It's been a long day. A day of fleeting smiles.
I think of you, and there's one more.

This one lasts.

The truth is organic
Time will change it without you knowing

Lies are a machine
That just keeps going and going

Flattery's not included

I wonder what goes through her head
She's like a book I've never read
The cover both enchanting and confusing me

I comment how her hair looks cute
And peel another piece of fruit
Turns out orange will rhyme with something

With pith under my finger nails
You interrupt, rebuff, regale
You said you know that I'm waiting for you

It seems the radio concurs
The DJ spins 'Venus in Furs'
As you amuse yourself to cure me

While that's less quote, more paraphrase
And now it's weeks instead of days
But you still get to stay equivocal

I'm feeling far too old to care
'Bout books and covers, pith and hair
So I'll just take it out on poetry

You are my sunshine and I was singin in the rain until you stole my thunder and left me under the weather.

I'm going on holiday

I'm staying in a quiet cul de sac

It's going to be sunny

All my friends will be there

All my family will be there

It's not going to be much of a holiday with everyone I know there, is it?

I'm going on holiday

In a cul de sac

I want the sun on my face, I want the wind in my hair.
I want to be free to be seen, in air sunny and clean so the world cries out: where have you been all my life?

I want the rain on my skin, I want the sand in my toes.
I want to be out and about, hear my kids laugh and shout ‘til the world cries out: where have you been all your life?

Empty streets, bustling bars, quiet rooftops, beeping cars. Big hearts, rosy faces, warming smiles in public places. Silent library, noisy playgroup, vendors scream out the latest news scoop.

“girl locked in cellar for 24 years” Dad wears the cuffs. Mum cries the tears. Concentrate on my thoughts so my feeling’s diminished. Back in the real world, I realise he’s finished.

I want the sun on my face, I want the wind in my hair.

She feels his waves lap up her. Her boat rocks side to side
He knows he's wasting his time. He can't force the pride to slide

The months they feel like years. Her timing has always been off
The flame he carries inside him burns the gas she won't turn off.

She kids herself into thinking that she's better off where she is
He rarely gets closer than arms length. Cos she likes him where he is.

She knows that she could be happier. But comfort wins for now
But he tells her the same, there's a name for this game but he can't recall it right now.

He goes out with his heart locked up and the key she keeps in her purse
Guess she didn't know she had it but he hid it somewhere in this verse

Fearful of the consequences of his affections

If he's not at work, he's thinking of the things he might have said
To some how keep her from slinking into another mans bed.

So he waits upon her shore. He stands here every day
His throat is getting sore from trying to scream the clouds away

But he doesn't see the rain, creep up behind his back
Each poison drop could **** his crop and leave his scorched earth black.

She throws around her colours once more and grey gives way to blue.

There's a pain in your head that won't seem to subside
So lay in your bed cos it's raining outside
But why lay there all day when there's things to be done?
Get up, go out and play, shift your ****, have some fun.
It's only a bit of rain and it ain't really that cold
Stop making excuses, you're not 80 years old.
But any time day or night, you'll find bed can be fun
When you roll to your right and lock eyes with 'the one'

He shoots... He misses
He shoots... He misses
He shoots... He tagged me.
*******.

I've been expecting you
I've also been avoiding you
But what could I do when I knew that your aim was true?

That's just Cupid

I must confess, more or less, that I'm back in this mess with this little black cloud in a dress.

Walking all over me, running rings around me. Stamping everywhere that you breathe
Bob says "it's good to talk", the old man says "don't be a grass".
I don't know which one to believe.

That's just stupid.

So we decide to talk but it doesn't last long
Soon enough we're shouting. At least the passion isn't gone.

As I fantasize and fight to rationalize
You exercise your right to exorcise.
Honeymoon is over, we got work in the morning.

But honey is still honey, and a bee is still a bee.
So why's she acting like a wasp?! There's stings all over me.

So I mentioned before that I'm back in this mess, but it's my mess and I'll tidy it up alone.
Well of course you will it's your ****** fault. That's it, I'm turning off my phone.

"LEAVE ME ALONE" She hissed. It was clear she was ******, her heart closed like a fist.

Even with feelings dismissed you're too hard to resist. So to you I insist that our love should exist.

I recall when we first kissed and my eyes start to mist.

I know I'd strain my wrist if I wrote a list of all the things about you I've missed.

HOPE! You lousy vagrant, you've lead me on once more
You've tricked me into getting up from my home here, on the floor

They say when you've hit rock bottom the only way is to ascend
But I was proving moving side to side was a viable uptrend

'Til hope descended like an angel, said "take my hand sweet child"
Her promises of palatial glory leave me potent and beguiled

But hark! What's this? A serpents hiss? He's tangled round my feet
I dared to hope now I'm back on the ***** to rejection and defeat

I was cosy at the bottom. In my undercroft I've lain
But by the streaks on my cheeks and the fire in my lungs
I hope I'll never hope again.

I missed you today and the smell of emulsion.
******* like it's a full on compulsion.
Safety pin, pen knife, beard long and grey.
Swearing at the hammers. "I'm just a lodger here" you'd say.
When the weather's damp your big toe gives you trouble.
When the weather's dry, you're on stage singing bubbles.
Overalls, dust sheets, sudoku and crosswords.
If the traffic is bad, you'll hear a few cross words.
That's just today, but as sure as I exist
Every day I wake up is a day you are missed.

Why wait until the end of the tunnel?

You can make your own light, wherever you stand.

Even in darkness she glows. She thunders on into the night.
She flows through me as I do her. She's a insatiable addiction and I know I need her more than she needs me.

And I know I can never leave her.

In the blink of an eye she chews up lives. Swallows hope and spits out pride.
And even as I breathe heavy she keeps pace with me.

She is pretty, my city. And she's mine.

I'm comfortable down here,
I rest easy down here, for here is the bottom.

Nestled tightly against my bottom is the bottom.
There is no way down so things cannot get worse.

Up there is hope. Hope CAN be poison.
Why would you want to taste poison?

Down here is comfort. Comfort IS home.
Why wouldn't you want to be at home?

Warm, safe, reachable

"This one ain't about you"
He says trying to rescue his pride

"This one ain't about who?"
She says, smiling on the inside

"It's just me creating art! My tools to distract, to endear, to have fun."

"It's OK to think you are smart my love, but it's a fool who thinks all others are dumb"

"..."

Buck the herd, ***** the wage
Let's be stirred into rage
Seems absurd in this age
To keep a bird in a cage

31 sleeps until Christmas.
He's got six weeks a sullen doctor says
Is this the scale for our lives I wonder? The years the weeks and the days.

You remember where you were when the call came in
Blissfully unaware and then it changed everything

How could you know what they were going to say?
"You've got the job" or "it's the hospital, it's going to be today"

These things they divide the eras of our lives. They aren't measured in ticks and tocks
It's always "after little Ben came along" or "since the towers dropped"

Drill down further and you'll hit the epochs of our very existence.
"When I worked for Tesco", "when I retired", "when I went up to infants".

Funny how folk say school days are the best of your lives
Now school was ok, I can see why they'd say
But chances are it's based on lies.

See, you look back at things favourably. Overlooking the negative parts.
The dreary hours in detention or the time you split your trousers in class.

The embarrassment that lasted weeks is now an anecdote for reunions
And if you went, I'm sure, school days weren't nearly half as fun as your uni ones.

So the ticks keep tocking and the clocks ain't stopping and the hours will always make days
We can work then sleep like good little sheep then the days will only make greys.

Or in my case, nothing.

Time gains it's substance from when you look back at it.
24 hours can be a day or, all those hours can flit

Chances are you work and each work day echoes the next.
Emails and phone calls. A pit stop for lunch. Having relationships over text.

Look back over the last 5 years and rejoice that memory that sticks
I got a fiver that says it ain't the 9 hours straight that you spent alone on Netflix.

See, you might not keep a diary but your brain does and you might not know.
Have you ever looked back in the evening and felt that morning was days ago?

The time was full of wonderful things to keep the brain alert and engaged
Nothing slipped by unnoticed and the diary was full on that page.

Take a look at the 27 club.
Hendrix, Winehouse, Cobain
Chances are there's more pages in your diary but most of those are plain

All of us organic. Decaying as time slides by.
The most we can ask is a fair amount of time so come death, we won't ask why.

Our pages full of joy and tales
Of how it feels when the wind fills our sails
It's said that time flies, but I find often it stops and sits
The world may not remember us but we can always remember it.

How it's amazed with its sights
Its days and its nights
Oh, the ways it delights
I digress...

I guess I should go. Check my watch and I know it's only 18000 sleeps until death.

I used to be afraid of the unknown
Until I was taught to see

It's me that is unknown
And these people are afraid of me

As usual, she shined as we sat down.

“I don’t know if things will work out”

She dulled.

“it’s just not fair on you”

It was almost dark now.

“I don’t want you to get hurt”

I think back to the start of the conversation. I wonder if she knows, she’ll never be that pretty again.