For six years,
since I was eighteen,
I have been carrying a white rat
inside my left breast pocket
in a long grey coat.
I have paid attention to no one,
just that rat.

When I ******
two **** victims
who thought they loved me
in two nights,
the rat was there.

The rat was there
when I told them
to ignore the guilt
and remember that
no one needs to know.

The rat was there,
stronger than ever
when I got drunk
and ****** her
in the back of her partner's car
right on the seat where her child
usually sits
whilst someone loved me
from an empty bed.

The rat was there
when I got drunk
and threw him over a table,
and when I threatened to **** myself
if she did this
or she did that.

My rat is currently looking
at a place in the record books
as the longest living rat to date,
and he has survived
in a coat pocket
nibbling at bits of me
when I give him the chance.

No one knows he is there,
they just think it's me.

I tried to show someone once,
but he wasn't there
and we fell in love
for three years,
but the rat
came back
and now I sit
staring at these walls
or pacing frantically,
whilst the rat continues
nibbling away
at the last few remaining
morcels
of
my
heart.

Outside the hotel room window
the children are screaming
whilst the shell of my father
waits in a box
to be burnt.

Why am I here?
I am nothing like these people,
they have nothing to offer me
apart from more news
of their mistakes.

Teary eyed stories
of entrapment
that make me wonder
how.

How can I be like this
with all that sludge
in me too?

sitting on the toilet
the morning after.
Hollow
Beaten
Staring at the walls
as if THEY were them.

That was the last moment
of me.
Now, it is back to work
to keep the cogs rotating,
whilst my own
**** themselves
within a violent ****
shortly before
the wind sits quietly
in the corner
watching the sun
grow old
and wave goodbye
to starving cattle.

She stares at me,
but I choose the walls:
The cold, featureless walls
that expect nothing
and can take nothing.

Maybe just a little skin
from my knuckles.
Nothing that I need
or that I can't retrieve.

...

I am learning a craft
that everything is part of:
Indecency, lust and bruises
Allies, enemies and alcohol
Music, literature and madness.

It is all essential
to the process.

As is everything else.

It is 9:50 am
I’m no longer tired,
but tired out.

I think about my mother
pinned down by her husband.
Unable to live.
Forced to live his life instead:
One without air,
or beauty
or love.

I think about my sister
who in seven weeks
will have a child.
She has had no childhood.
Now she drinks
and inhales twenty-a-day,
Desperately trying to find something
without the aid of the means
she was always denied.

I consider my father
who is old now
and constantly attacked by depleting health
We know so little of each other
And there is little time left,
but he was once stone to me.
Discovering the life in him
makes death seem more apparent.

Then I consider her
-truthfully she is always there.
The one who saw and felt
the real me, who she can no longer trust.
The one I want to curl up with,
to laugh with, to breathe with
to cry with and to dance with.
But she is somewhere else
with someone else,
rediscovering all of the above.
  
It’s now 10:02am
and I stare blankly
and wantingly
into better days
from this cage;
Hoping, but never expecting
to be let out soon.

I wanted to write a poem
for everyone and everything
to say 'I am not
entirely sorry.'

The arguments,
the broken glass,
the women
and their now solemn
ex-boyfriends,
husbands
and fathers.

It has all helped:
Given me the word.
Put me in a place
where I don't have to rhyme
or make over-worded sentimental
metaphorical statements
older than time.

I am fresh.
I present myself -naked,
hiding nothing.
The gut is not ****** in.
No make up.
I present myself
without fear
or falseness.
Just as you should:
the men and women
that became wound up in me,
in one way or another.

It is where you have faltered,
and where you falter
I progress.

You have to seperate
your soul from work
completely
-if you have one.

because as I look
down over the rail
and see the mind numbing
dross that I am partially
responsible for

I instantly look at myself:
drinking my wages away
in nine days
with all my great ideas
that could help us all,
but they're not allowed out
because I might offend
someone who is wrong.

Well, If I brought my soul
in here,
I might just jump

and that would not
be one
of my
great
ideas.