It is very strange
when you realise
that, once and for all
they are gone.

They are no final words,
no goodbyes,
just a blank space:
no chance of filling it.

And the poets continue
attempting to put the word
down, but they miss
the point.

Every sentence
has been blown
straight out of my head.
Everything has evaporated
in just a few words;

That one phone call
'he is gone'

and he is.

And so,
to my father
who is no longer anything,
just a few things i can remember:
Rest
in
peace.

Leave your intoxication.
Accept the few outbursts,
the many bouts of sadness.

Study how to prolong joy.
Keep it with you.
There are better things to forget.

Don't depend on the pen
for too long.
That is addictive self-reliance.

The guilty pleasures are fine,
so are the times when you consider
the deep, red bathing regime.

The way out can be appealing,
like the untainted skin of a late teen,
but they are better things.

They cling,
they dive.
Sometimes they rise to the top.
They ****,
they blow.
Sometimes they get lucky.

At the end of the day
our fight isn't worth it.
We press on
against nothing.
We try and make sense of it,
but that is as much of a waste of time
as wasting time.

You can keep telling yourself
that you're something else;
progressing further.
I used to do that.
I was wrong.
You will die just like me,
and I will die just like you.

'How can I sit here,'
you must wonder
'and repeat all of the things
that have placed me in this cage.'

If I cannot change that
then how am I ever
going to live by a word
I only ever said
between my teeth.

I did not trust it,
so it failed me.
Now I do,
it is failing me.
The world carries on.

Chopin plays on;
I no longer enjoy him there,
because now I need him.
Unlike Chopin
I am no longer needed.

It is incomprehensible:
in and amongst the longing
to reverse those mistakes
which drone like wasps in each ear;
both stings reaching deep in to my gut,

There is still you.

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.

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?

They deal in hatred
-often well disguised.
Religion impregnated
the extremists.
Then the fingers
really started pointing.

No one is left
without being chastised.
Immigration knocked up
national pride.

Everyone is waiting;
glaring at each other.
We are all dogs
being cattle prodded
with hatred
until our leashes snap.

What a circus it will be,
even more so than now.
More so than ever.

I am both sad
and excited:
If it takes so much
-a moment of finality,
of bloodshed
and horror-
to make them realise
that they really ****** this up
with their superstition,
flags
and greed

then I will grin
through the whole
disgustingly fitting
affair.

My shoes rest on concrete
as I lean on concrete
and stare at it.

Everything is concrete;
especially our mistakes
and our final outcome.

We are not music,
or art,
or the future
or hope,

we are what has been
before us:
one step closer
to
the
end

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.

I have to wipe
the **** from
the toilet seat
before I sit down
to write this, and
outside the drunks
are drunker than I

remember.
They slur their nothingness
so that once again
I sense comfort
in an accidental,
quick death
away from it all.

There is no chance
of joining in again;
at the best of times
it is a test
of toleration.
This game is hate

filled envy
for the ignorant.
Their confidence,
quirkiness, complaints
and compliance
are the holes
in my weary armour...

For, the few occassions
when I am truly alone
I am god himself
staring down at the landscape
as if it were bare,
with a face consuming grin
as I write away

their worth
and, with it,
mine.

Getting to know meShare
Today at 1:23pm | Edit Note | Delete
I wasted years
discussing future employment;
taking the name of that college
and turning it in to a pretty university.
I got half way there...
Did three years of time
under the teachings
of socialites
and successful suits.

That was when
I realised that
the women, the music,
intoxication and the word
meant more to me,
and very little to them.
It seemed to me...
Be successfully dry
or struggle through
with fire.

So now,
I work my *** off
for a meagre wage,
I spend what I can
in the bars,
whilst those I used to know
take out their mortgage loans
and start planting the seeds
without considering
exactly what is left
-or not left-
for them to grow in.

Well, waking up
at noon
with a head on my chest,
a hangover that drags
me to the bathroom
then puts me back
where I started...
Knowing that nothing
takes preference over
personal enjoyment,
decency and honesty,
and knowing that all those struggles
reaffirmed this:

It's a bubble,
one that I know
is now
far too thick
to be burst.

It's Gospel
Category: Writing and Poetry
The blacks are singing gospel music
through an open window;
they have their god.
I just said goodbye
to the most beautiful girl I have ever seen;
I don't have mine.

I need the cold bottled beer
to slide down my throat,
but the landlord has overslept.
Some people really have it made
and they generally make it a pain in the ***
for everyone else.

Fifteen minutes to go.
I've held out for an hour.
I swear to the god
who is being projected from that open window
if that door isn't open at one 'o' clock
I am going to **** someone.

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.

I never really put in enough thought,
or spent any time
finding the perfect word
or the ideal pace.
Enough people have said
that I am a great writer,
only occasionally missing the point.

Right now, as my head rests heavy
without rest,
I don't feel like that great writer,
who amazed the bars
and spoke of sincerity
combined with profanity.
I don't feel as if the pen
belongs in my left hand
or the stacks of notebooks
are worth anything more
than an hour of heat
outside in the cold.

I think hard and heavy
about my surroundings;
how the people waste away
never earning enough money
to live,
but earning just enough
so as not to quit.
Everyone has a hand
around another's throat.

I have written
with myself in mind
and with myself
as the topic
of my writing.
This is no different
to slamming a fist
in the face of the innocent
due to impulse,
or taking a country to war
for personal wealth.

With only the 'Denial of Death'
sitting open at the end of the preface
and a sunken brow
I think about packing it in:
Until I live more
I have nothing left to write.

'I may be gone for a short while,'
and once again I turn the tables
to myself.
Writing as if I capture importance,
when in reality,
I merely offer the few readers
myself, captured
by myself.

Life seems to be phases
upon phases upon
phases.
From music to prose,
to alcohol, to poetry,
to now,

where the cold air outside
weaves its way
around us
and we grow sullen;
full of questions
that can't be answered
until we forget them.

This is no time to attack
the poets or the obese
child sat among her obese family
with a bucket of chicken each
and two hours of prime time television.
A brief realisation it may be,
but right now it seems
that I have done no more than them:
I am not fighting against poisons,
I merely pen my opinion
as if it is worthy of your consideration.

And so, until I have gained something new
or lost something I didn't think I could be
without,
I must rest my pen
next to a pile of books
that I plan to read
in order to gain something
whilst I lose something
I didn't think I could be
without.

For a while,
perhaps until I become
just like my father is now
I have lost it.

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.

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.

Why the journey
to this extreme?
Where all achieved
illusions of self
are pounded down
in to the gravel
where the footsteps
are **** heavy.

Two young scoundrels
stopped and stared
as I walked
past them:
Intimidation tactics.
Who are these people
and what are they
prepared to do,
and for what?

All I know,
is that I am becoming
less and less;
this fear
that drives my creativity
is strangling me.

This is a plea
to an impossible god
as tears run down my face.

I am afraid.

Please, for the sakes of yourselves,
SHUT THE HELL UP.
If you are going to talk
then talk.
No one who is anyone
wants to hear
how you love the football
or despise the government
and immigration.
It is dull, two dimensional speak.
It says a lot about you
-you say a lot about yourself:
dull and two dimensional things.

But, I suppose I like listening.
I now know that I have nothing
to worry about.
I got out, in a sense.
Sometimes it gets lonely
looking in at everything
you can't be part of,
but most of the time
it is the reason I haven't bled to death
or run in front of one of these cars
built by idiots
and driven by them.
I tried it once,
but I didn't know what I was doing.
As a result, I won
or maybe the car won,
I'm still not sure.

Anyhow, let me get a beer.
I'll be back soon

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 don't know how long it has been,
but it seems long enough
for it to have been a while.

You should see them outside
as if they all came
from the same septic *****.

The females become pregnant
before they cease being girls
and litter this town
with more philistines for me to breathe in.

Meanwhile, the men are sordid
excuses for fathers
who glare, hoping
that they can pull
the alpha male trick
once again.

And they will,
because the scare tactics
are deployed
and we are afraid of everything
whilst nothing much
ever really happens
except our passive demise.

The beer tastes the same,
the jukebox continues singing
the same idiot's song.

Everything is the same
putrid plod along disaster,
but there is much more of it.

Those who NEED to change remain
the most stubborn of all
as they push us further
in to this age of idiocy.

Waking up half drunk,
forcing the food down
and then sitting on the toilet
to feel everything that was there before
burst out of me,
whilst writing it down.

The sounds that I try and hide
because the woman I make love to
is laying awake next door.

The knowing,
that all I have to do
is wipe,
brush my teeth
and head for the bars
to start again.

'Throw it away,' he said,
'throw it away
throw it away
throw it away.'
Hume didn't believe
that any man had
thrown away a life
while it was worth
keeping

and nor do I.

I can foresee now,
that from here-on-in
I am due to hear
nothing more from them
other the absurdities
caused by that old
*******'s will.

No one knows where it is,
apart from the two
who don't want anyone
to know where it is.
No one knows a thing
about it's contents
apart from...
I could go on.

What baffles me
is the ease
at which
they cast stones
and snake around
each other knowing
that this place
only exists
because of that dead object
and what those not
quite so dead objects
didn't or did do
for him
and to him.

Now there is a corpse
and that is evidently not enough.
They want more:
A monopoly over that corpse,
the complete removal of blood
from veins that now sit,
charred, in a tasteless urn.

It is a senseless battle
between unintelligent mourners,
where, once upon a time
there stood my father.