They tease only because they like what is true.

That is why you call them friends.
So when, in avocado skies,
With the fragrance of fuchsias, 

And perhaps even focaccia, 

And other salty, honest facts of life,
Droning like blue hummingbirds
And Manuka bees,
You seep through my weak and ailing
Ego, out onto the blotting paper of my conscious mind, 

I shall consider what it is they cherish, 

And come, perhaps, to feel the same.

And do not berate me when I do, 

I tease you only because I like what's true!

But here's a precursory thought or two,
Already noted on bibulous blue...

While I write a bottle’s worth
Of evasive attempts at articulation,
The following transpires:

That I have more in common with Van Gogh
Than most care to know, or notice.

That some called him Vincent.

That all I’ve ever written does not sum me up now,
And that the whereabouts of Brighton really doesn’t matter.

That you are the closest I will ever come
To understanding the stars,
And candidness is more attractive
And captivating
Than anyone cares to admit.

That lousy house parties
Are sometimes better than expected.
And you are braver than me,
And I thank you for it.

That speech is, more often than not,
Inadequate, and
Words seldom do justice
(However hard I battle with them.)
And that self-confessing,
Asymmetrical smiles
Are secretly my favorite kind.

That some songs have a hold on me,
That I could never explain much,
And photographs are not my favorite medium.

That poems are often incredibly hard to write,
And it’s all your fault.
(That you’re forgiven.)

And that even the spectrum
Of browns, golden and dusty,
Azul, virescent and viridescent,
Warm and hazy, igneous-red,
Flushed in sunset,
Curled in blazing amber;
The hue of gloriously tawny,
Shaggy apertures
Of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
Are no match
For the honeyed morning's
Beams of light
Dancing on your head.

'But how can words express the feel of sunlight in the morning...'

I pace a space of limited freedom.
A space where, when love’s concerned,
We’re rarely in our right mind.
And times eternal lines wash out
Onto white pages in elegant contours of black -
Outlining all it is I cannot say,
Like ink on a body bathed in caramel.

Tonight the roof is open. And enigmatic
Shapes fill the void above our heads;
Incandescent shapes swirling and burning
At night before the eyes of stars,
The stern staring bright shafts of winking white,
And yellow and crystal.

Oh, Pompeian Girl – the old me was young!
Oh, reckless indecision,
Ever evading good sense,
Like shapes in the black;
Light evasive figures of light-lost spaces –
Pinning at hope in the dark.

Oh discontented winter of your youth,
You have been weighed.
You have been found wanting.
You’re going down
And I’m coming with you.

Electricity hurts,
And the Hippie-code is broken.
Placid indifference envelops my heart.
The city reeks of Urban Folk, miscalculation and conceit.

I eat my hand, fingers first,
Contemplating the Epic Cycle,
Like Plato in the shadows of the Beule Gate.
And write drivel
With the neurotic mind of a sonneteer –
Past cure am I now reason is past care.

Still no star-fangled shape of blurry
Minds eye reveals itself.
Still the work is not yet done.
Tilting for months-on-end
Upon the abyss of some nauseating
Overheated, drug-induced-calm-before-the-storm.
I lose my touch,
And touch loose ends
Of quasi-philosophical moments
Of enlightenment, or revelation,
Or some other nonsensical,
Unimportant *******,
Like the etymology of
God and good.

Good God, and giddy aunts,
And aunties that would put the sophists
And the pop world, and the upper class,
And parliamentary embarrassment, and
The football score, and grammar, and
Self-induced debt, and man-flu, and
‘off days’, and awkward dates, and
Broken phones, and insufferable library fellows, and
Hangovers, and the middle class, and first world problems,
And second world problems, and no signal,
And problems with the ex, and
The wrong coloured flowers,
And the fickle whims of fussy eaters, -
The repulsion of grown men at the sight of blood,
Or a reasonably ***** kitchen surface;
A broken string, a bad day, a long week,
A bad long week, a weekend cut short,
A short changing, the wrong sized internet-delivery,
The trivial pursuit of ancient notions of justice,
And early mornings, and morning sickness,
And the evasive nature of
Soul-mates and talent and happiness,
And ******* myxomatosis,
And dissertation proposals
And dissertations, and deadlines and pay-cheques,
And checkups;
Anything that is not fighting for your life
Or for those you love…

…Aunties that put all this to shame.

She is strong.
She eats Odysseus for breakfast,
With his affable, sneering, divine assistance.

Lighten her load if you can.

My helpless heart and I are here all week.
And my velvet tongue will inflame
And be an irritant.
My unconscious will tell me that you scoff,
Though you don’t,
I know you don’t.
Yet doubt and delusion will prevail,
And I find myself
Pacing a space of limited freedom,
Crowded by celestial forms, looming deadlines
And unfinished sentences that...

Pulling long strands of your lemon grass hair from my clothes,
I consider, as I watch them fall to the ground one by one,
Should I let you go as easily?

Coffee stains, you see my Darling, are not so easy to remove.
And amber stones infect my heart with rapidity.

I stole an esoteric kiss from red, enraptured, trembling lips,
While eyes deep and wide enough to drown in shot me through the chest,
And fingertips
Traced my limbs
Through candle-lit smoke rings.

And achingly beautiful birthmarks, scars and loveable idiosyncrasies
Swirl around my mind, awash with whisky,
And Puccini,
And suicidal Butterflies.
A dangerous, heady, Olive-green elixir.
An ethereal melee perpetuating unrest,
And thoughts of when I'll be seeing you next...
And other nervous questions,
Like where can you get a good night sleep round here?

You grip my throat sporadically, erratically – not often.
And trickle in through passages and pores I can’t defend.
Treacle through fingers.
But you avoid me too, and I hate it just as much.

I wait for your hand to loosen,
I breathe cool air,
Then I feel your absence.

Your gloopy venom is addictive.
I tasted you once, and now my tongue yearns,
And eats itself –
It flickers and twists and spits its serpentine-self out. In vain.
A vague, dull shadowy lustre remains,
Undulating under baited breath,
For another foul injection.

In reality I fear you. I despise you. I hate you.
If you’d only never return,
I could spit you out forever,
And tongue sweeter, healthier, more benign stuff.
No more swilling,
No more idiosyncratic sways upon social norms,
High Society and empty smiles that stifle natural intentions.

You are a disease, and far from untreated.
You are the last drag, the last hit,
The very last dose that no one actually wants.

I rebuke myself wholeheartedly
At even entertaining the idea of having you in my company. Yet there you are –

In every message, in every ransacked draw,
In every turned out rucksack, every old coat pocket,
Every ***** shirt, every unstitched button,
In every visitor’s news, every car back-seat,
Every dusty notebook, every empty fruit-bowl,
Every old, long-unseen smile, every dowsed fire,
Every man woman and child I sit across the table from.

There you are. Somehow. In some form.
Turning my sweat cold like cheap wine,
In what is otherwise an already disturbingly depressing
Struggle to maintain some kind of equilibrium or serenity,
Let alone with your smug mug cropping up scornfully uninvited.

You ****** me before I recognise you.
Helping yourself to the food on my plate with a wink,
While I do nothing as if handcuffed, and chained at the soul.
Then I move to eat.
Hand to fork.
Fork to mouth.
And it tastes of you.
It reeks of you.
And if I were anything but human,
I’d spit you out onto the kitchen floor,
Stamp on the bile you’ve stolen from me,
Burn you with kerosene,
And wage a third world war on the very concept of you ever existing.

But I am a human.
And moments later you have me
‘******* and thinking of death’
As coy and Marvellian as you like.

I indulge in full-knowing paralysis,
Lapping up your unvanquished honeyed venom,
With a voraciousness that redefines Lovesick –
Giving it a whole new meaning
Going beyond the epitome of disgust.

Enslaved, you have me smash myself against the ceiling.
And eat myself over again from within.
Consuming me like the fire I found you in.

You have me rage and conspire against those I don’t know.
But I will conspire against you one-day.
You have me hate others, but I will forever hate you.
You have me search my soul and grate it upon street corners
And the pavement of city-centres,
While you gleefully, whimsically **** my past
Or polish vain, rose-tinted hopes that without you
I’d know were futile and unjust –
Until I ruin them myself, knowing all the while
That you are the author of my unnecessary devastations.

But I will smash your green demonic skull into obsolescence
In some back-alley where none will find your
Bubbling frothing corpse.
You will be utterly repudiated even by the rats.
And the flies will drop you,
Iota
By
Iota,
Onto the tracks at Dalston to be rendered into absolute oblivion.
And I will go, a man unshackled, about my business –
Whether it be of importance or not,
It will be with a conscience cleansed.

But for now, vile sham of an emotion that you are,
I do your inglorious bidding.
Zombified and putrid, my actions smell of you.
They reek of you.

You intoxicate what should be left alone
And endured with silence and rapidity.
Yet you elongate these private, personal trails torturously,
In some sensational Cold War.

It goes without saying,
The world would be well rid of you.
Yet godlike, you endure the ages
Just as we endure you.

Perhaps Keats was too afraid to admit it –
You are the original
La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Pluto’s daughter in persistent disguise.
To be seen presently
‘******* and thinking of death’.

You may look for me on Oxford Street
At dawn or dusk or night.
Or downtown where the down-and-outs meet
To drink and sleep and fight.
You may catch my shadow lurking on the curb
In the rainy middle-class suburbs.
(You’ll be chewing on the cud and on the curd,)
And they’ll all think you quite absurd,
And pass you by without a word
Without a care.
You won’t find me.
No, I’m not there.

You might get a glimpse at sundown
Of me and The Sundance Kid,
Riding onto Cape Town,
Or sliding through Madrid,
Or stealing through the byways of Turin –
Winking at the bottom of your glass of bitter gin,
Breathing through your window, on your skin,
Guessing what I think, just like a twin
But I swear,
You won’t find me,
No, I’m not there.

Chase my name to the horizon
Or the shores of Timbuktu;
Just be sure to keep your eyes on
Those two feet in-front of you.
I’ll be biting at your heels,
The stinging citrus scent of the fruit you peel,
The whirling hub of your bicycle wheel,
The hassock you fall upon when you come to kneel
In prayer.
But you won’t find me,
No, I’m not there.

Do not think that I will answer
When you ask or shout or call.
The figure of the folk dancer
Will not be me at all.
I’ll be the one that you’re not looking at,
Sitting in the place where you just sat,
Wiping from my face what you have spat,
Sleeping in every dark empty pocket of every new coat that
You wear.
Oh, you won’t find me,
I’m not there.

In every crowd and every gathering
You will turn around to see
That where I am not standing
Is not where you want to be.
Somewhere between you waking and your sleep
I swim the deepest secrets that you keep,
Silently catching the tears you weep,
In the kitchen cooking the food you eat
Minding what you sow you reap!
I am one step ahead of a sentient sweet
And fair.
But you will not find me.
I am not there.

It’s like biting into a lemon,
Or choosing the wrong pill
Offered to you by a bald man in dark glasses
In some wonderland fantasy exalting a looking glass,
When you choose to chase down memories…
Like a white rabbit bolting down a black hole.


I reconstruct you necessarily…
It hurts – I shouldn’t do it,
But inevitably.
And I compare you to everything;
To everything in it’s right place,
Clinging on to what was,
Or what should have been.


Whoever you are
You were the root of a root,
The sky of a sky of a tree called What If
At the bottom of my glass,
In the first place that didn’t know my name.


You controlled me for a second
With your eyes.
With your hands.
But now you handle me remotely
From somewhere I don’t know
And will never be.


You would say things like
“Don’t you think
That just for one evening
The stars should be
Multi-coloured.” And you
Smile sheepishly
Wishfully,
Then stare at the bottom of your own glass
And then say “Anyway
There’s a thin line between love and hate
It’s so easy to have feelings of hate
For someone you love -
You end up caring too much,
And then they do the slightest thing wrong to hurt you
And you hate them for it.
That’s how I see it anyway.”
Or something like that.

As for me, I intend to sit and read.
Then I will smoke and dance.
Because the way I see it,
I live in a city with no memory,
The way money is between good friends…
And my days shall be lazy without end.
Cos the way I see it,
Love makes you solitary,
And all at sea.

Contemplate universal facts that can’t be helped, like –
Straights smoke quicker than rollies.
And yes you can say “this happens to everyone”
No doubt it regularly does –
Probably because you can go anywhere
Dress as someone else.
You’ve don’t that, I can tell.

I guess what I really want to know is who are you?

Here I am.
Reeling at the very idea of remembrance.
In my own historic battle,
Perpetually considering you.
Y.O.U
You owe ME.
As I crash land,
Heavily injured,
Into a room you might call “Square One”,
Questioning just how it is exactly
I’m here again.

What are you thinking? She said.
Have you ever tried standing outside
Late at night and have everything
Sound so silent that you can
Hear your ears ringing?
No. She said.
What are you thinking?
Nothing. She said.

And then you realise,
Staring into wide effervescent eyes,
That your intense willingness to be
Open and honest with this
Daisy-chain enwreathed
Creature of sensation,
Does not compliment
Her nervous wish to maintain
an extraordinarily exquisite air of mystery.

A mystery in itself, no less...
...and rather unhelpful, if you ask me.

Flesh on flesh. Eyes watch eyes
Following fingers round curvatures. Caressing skin.
Skin on skin. Flesh in flesh.
A gin-sung-dream –
Silent utterances from the dark-side of a candlestick.

An unsung overture to Nature’s greatest gift
And Nature’s perfect curse.

Lips pursed open, speechless. Breathless.
Wide-white eyes scream STOP. blink. GO ON.
Glances flash between the flickers of candlelight ,
Meeting unknown looks in the black. Bodies
Embrace, writing words that have their own
Music. Heard only by its two composers.

Everywhere the other wishes to be –
Vivacity. Revelling in promiscuity.
Obscurity. Strangers share a warmth
As old as the ages.
A wafer-thin knife-edge of meaning.
Gin-song dreaming. An opaque tonic
For loneliness.
Hands in hands, heart fleeting.
The perfect curse of Man
In the stroking of skin.

Later, a vague sound of water, a towel
A drawer closing – a door latch clicks.

The world floods back.
Through the curtains,
Through the drainpipes
Your fleeting heart sheepishly returns,
Aching like a hangover.
Too much gin.
The momentary tonic wears off.

Heart in hand,
Hand to head.
Candlelit premonitions return.
Heated flesh. Arching backs.
Fingers through hair…

Salty fingers through oily hair and
Blood-red-wine lipstick smudges and
A singeing waxy smell makes you reel
To the window for air.
And there you are again,
In the middle of a city that knows you
More than your Alcoholic Lover,
A Melancholic Mother to all your needs,
Except the one you tried to soothe
A few hours back.
The one you pine for.
The one you lack.

Oh, this Humdrum City
Rushing you, with your heart in your hand, off your feet.
And your heart in the street
And the gin in your glass
Whenever you meet
Whoever it is that might
Make you complete…

A vague sound of water, a towel,
A candle extinguished, a door hinge creeks.

Wafer-thin. Flesh on flesh.

A belt buckle rings, a zip
A drawer closing, a door latch clicks.

The door latch clicks.
The door latch clicks.

Am I not your root, your source?
Do I not bite into your being?
Did I not draw you from the depths of Hell,
Out into the vast light of atmospheric health
To be born of more solid stuff, oh Auburn Queen of Fall?

Before you plunged us both back
We were made of the same solid stuff, the same self.
We were one once, you and I.

I traded in God for the first you,
Shortly after time began.
I felt your eyes upon me, oh Amphetamine Queen of all I've seen,
And all the places I have been since time immemorial.
Yet now, now alas, for this grey shadow,
Once a man, would sign any Faustian pact again,
And act protagonist to any ****** Marlowian tragedy!

Tortured with optical touches
And words unsaid.
The composer of commotion strange
Inside a prelapsarian breast
Has left me fraught throughout the ages.
And still, I'd fall nine more satanic days through Chaos pure,
If it meant landing any closer to you.

Let us go back to Paradise, you and I.
What is lost can surely be regained.
Here's to new beginnings...

The next time you go running in circles daydreaming, take me with you.
Round and round and round and round
Until the sky clears, clouds disperse on the ocean,
Dancing.
On unswept autumn leaves.
On a hillside with the heavens open - soaking you to the skin.
A field of long grass in morning mist, of corn at sunset.
Flowers in your hair, linen round your shoulders, round your waist,
Freckles swimming in flushed cheeks, auburn hair
Whipping round your face. Smiling, laughing,
Round and round you race, chasing down your dreams,
Leaving normality behind. Up you soar
To dizzying heights,
Forgetting sleep on summer nights.

My feet sweat, my shoulders burn
But I am indifferent.
Nature plays around me.

Close your eyes. The last thing you see
is a white butterfly dance past the tree-line
into oblivion blue.

Bush leaves crackle above you in branches
and below you, let loose through brittle grass.

A light wind conducts a symphony in which
Each shrub plays a part.
Each dry branch, kindling ready to explode,
Itching to snap its dangerously perfect note.

Thorns whistle sharply - reeds hiss and hum.
Every breeze is a clown, taking up instruments
And jostling melodies to play all at once.
The grass rushes to its queue, dry as a bone.
Leaves follow behind in vague harmonies.

I wait on the edge of an eventful storm.
The sky is blue.
A storm of events - something big,
Behind the horizon, behind the mirage.
A rhino.
A microlite .
Electric fences, purring.

A wan nation celebrates, then groans behind the hills.
Natures orchestra sings to no one in particular

You write. The table moves rhythmically.
Sip hot chocolate. Pages scattered.
A candle burns, shadows flicker across
Your face. Concentrate.
Inky blue fingers, bic lighters. Lucky Strikes.

You are studious. Hands in sleeves.
Rosy lips, hidden behind your shawl.
Velvet jacket. Passionate.

Your hand writing is bold, round
Friendly but forceful - excited or in a hurry?
You tear pages apart. Swear, and write on.

The only blank page is your face.
You write with your eyes.
Expression impossible to detect.
What do you think?
I want to know you. How will this end?

I will learn how to read you.
Know you. Second guess you.

Where will you be? I hope.
Fingers crossed.
To be scared, terrified of repetition.

Rehabilitation.

Finally I am tired. You have worn me out.
Mind Body and Soul.
Wonderful exhaustion.
But your presence keeps me awake.
Short sighs - of love ( I hope )
Just audible over your pen scratching doggedly.

Sleeves on paper edges. Leaves rustling. Sandpaper.
Kiss me again Ridiculous Girl. You pause,
Stroke my hair - an eternity of navy blues,
Greys and strawberry cheeks.
Paint in my hair. Sugar at the bottom of my cup.
I miss you, though you sit in front of me.

Back to a world of drudgery dearth and broken dreams,
Where a fatalistic sense of eternal loss
Washes in through the door of the classrooms I sit in.
Back to the futile sham that mocks humanity
And the selfishness that engulfs all around,
Touching us all in different ways.
An angry black and bitter wave waiting to drown us all.

Three hours of nothingness,
Lost to the past,
Contemplating what is required
For this machine I live inside.

I have thought of you for five hundred and thirty one kilometers.
You have sat next to me, and passed me by the side of the track
In rich linen clothes, carrying water in yellow plastic bottles.
You have waved to me, smiled at me with bright flashing pearls,
And peered through wind tickled maize to meet my absorbing eyes.

Under shaded boughs, you have played the locals at their own game.
A game more ancient than trees,
As ancient as you.

I've seen the back of you, huddled in apathetic crowds
Standing round broken down jeeps.

Your essence flowed down the Nile towards me.
Your fragrance has breathed across townships,
Rattled past glass coke bottles on sun-kissed tables an hour before dusk,
Below ashen grills and above glowing hot coals,
Through my open window, as i race past an infinite world of senses.

You scream down dust-tracks and over sparse hills,
Chasing my soul, haunting my memory.

In my contentment, you pull me back,
Rushing through The Conditional, and all the Verbs -
Rushing- racing, loving- tasting, testing one another.

I have though about you for three thousand two hundred and eighty kilometers, but reality is daunting.
I ignore it. - we roll, instead, through long grass -
Between white sheets - through each other's hair,
In Equatorial Heat.

I lie on a faded green windowsill
And sweep eyes across lakes the size of oceans.

The floorboards have done their crying.
All the sticky flap-jack has been spent.
The sweetness, and energy of youth has run out
in the biscuit-tin we call our lives.

The times before this will always be missed.
But now is a time to freshen your face
with a cool, calm cloth.
Wipe off, those, your last of tears, and restock.

Now stand, the size of a cut on the tip of your finger,
in that vast empty tin.
Gaze up at the stars, and admire them
as they reflect around your box's silvery sides.

Or, at the witching hour, hear the flicker of a cigarette
burn in the silence of a leafy drive.
Keep that sound and let it echo, only for you,
in that spacious box.

And the next day, having worked hard,
You will look upon the world with another sense of beauty
- not just seeing the trees and fields in the afternoon sun.
That afternoon, your cup of coffee will taste the same as that very first time.
Its smell fused into your lungs, luring you to try.

Put that in your box too, and close the lid. Tight.

Sting you through the chest. Jar running thoughts.
Reach in like lightning, plunging a green hand
Into your heart, and squeezing tight -
Life-stopping, heart-wrenching,
Bulging between finger - a nightmare,
Stifling panic in a back room - in a black room.
Your mouth trapped behind an irrevocable, greasy paw.
Suffocating.

The paw grows nails, the nails gleam, lipstick red.
she moves across the room, you feel her presence. . .
She leaves, the darkness deepens.

Pulses race through tubes,
Out into the world in multi-colors.
Her green grip tightens around your soul -
Fireworks gouge your eyes from inside.
Ready to burst, helpless, breathless.

Familiar hands clutch a glowing breast.
You fall back to earth
back to where you were.
It all happens so fast.
In a flash, like lightning.

Light fades. The sunset;
From electric purple, to a thin fleeting slash
Of amber just above the tree line.
I hold my cigarette up to the horizon –
No difference

An umbrella-tree shields me from the drizzle.
I try to distinguish the rain on leaves
From the rustling branches of gushing trees.
I peer out from under leafy-dreadlocks,
Across an abandoned meadow; it is calm,
But the sound of water tapping foliage is restless –
Its sound calling back to the storms of life.

It was merely a pause.

I am dying
From within. I don’t wish to,
But I think of this skin
That holds me

Back and I feel ill. I stare,
Glazed over, at all the happiness I have tried to
Capture in moments of grace,
And self contentment.

But this does not do me justice.
This hand does not do me justice.
It all falls short of feeling.

Now I write blankly, efficiently, capturing
What I feel because it is easy.

Do I long for you, or do I wish happiness
Would knock me dead?
Knock me down,
The earth upon my head.

I wait, I long, silently.
Suffering all, wishing nothing.
Nothing will come of nothing.
Or shall I become a sod
So as not to feel and rot,
But just rot, unaware.

I am dying, like a flower,
Whose time is limited.
But unlike a flower,
I see what’s coming.
Unlike the single, once crisp tulip
That hangs aside from the others still-fresh,
Falling from the boring vase
I see my fall
And contemplate it often.
And read poetry which seems both
To help and to hinder.
Like you, an enigma.

The feeling seeps through my nib
Through my heart, through my ribs
Gushing out onto a page, limited,
Tired but taking shape.

Hope leaves me, to be implanted
In a line
A seed,
Sewn. Waiting, longing, wishing quietly
To grow.

But not knowing that its time is limited.