I was born on a belt
In the factory of man,
Rolled into a home,
Labeled and stamped.

My life was made honest
By ink on a page,
And my future controlled
By a system of wage.

My whole life thus far,
Two decades of lame,
Incompetent bureaucratic,
Institutional reign

Has seen us shuffled down
The educational lane,
Made unified products;
For unified gain.

I can't describe -
How the yearning hides.

How it waits
Until the dead of night,
To wear upon the mind.

The Grey

On slow-light morns
I meet the grey,
An absent sky,
It’s light, afraid.
It heralds the bleak
The tired, mundane,
Most loathsome, most
Despairing of days.

And yet this day, though bleak,
Though vision frayed
And blue sky strangled
By the 'gulfing grey,
After a shower and an eye-shut shave
The bleakest day,
Is realised.

I am awake.

“It’s hard to stop being lazy.
I think it’s because it takes serious effort
To admit to yourself, that you’re lazy.”

I suppose now,
The time has come -

In spite of all,
At last;

To tread towards
The nearest sign,

To sojourn from
The past.

Even a scrooge,
In his castle keep,
A lone fire burning
While he drifts out to sleep,

Once wondered
In fright,
Amid the sundering night,
If he was worthy
Of either judgement or bribe.

Clouds,
Quietly framed, aflame.

The Earth,
Speckled damp, with rain.

The night strays
Into a dream,

A retreat:
A wall,
On which I lean
When under throws
Of volleyed wants and drowned woe,

To stolen escapes,
Beneath the wet.
To smoke,
To dwell.
To taste regret.

Birthed from earth-water
Gathered with little hands,
We laboured in the ice-dark dawn
To mould our image of a man,

Modeling our fathers’ clothes.

Yesternight, I drank much ***.
Suffice to say, it was much fun.
But today I pay the awful price,
Of a dented wallet, and swollen eyes.

I wonder how much
A barrel of blood,

Costs in dollars...

To short-sighted eyes;

Tetris -

               to
Springs      mind.

A seagull grooms.
The harbour sleeps.

The sky a-stir,
Responsibility creeps.

Don’t watch the people,
Watch the patterns,
The habits, the gestures,
The shared reactions.

Friends,
Think not of terror in the night
Of wayward wandering careless fright.
Think not of hatred in the morn,
Of owness lost and past left scorn.
Think not of guilts
Dead to the wind,
Think not of ills
You've beaten still.
Think not of the spectres of your mind,
Of days destroyed, of thought decline.
Think not of angels
Escort the dead.
Think not of challenges, haunt ahead.
Think not of blanket
Bleaching sorrow.
Think not of heartache soared tomorrow.
Think not of panic in the dark,
Of where your friends and foes reside,
Of what they say or what they mind,
Or whether they think you cruel or kind.
Think instead,
Of all you are.
Of where you've come from,
Crawled this far.
Think of your talents,
Of your shine,
Think of the world in terms of rhyme.
Think not of fear, of mindless dread, of panic ransacked
Quaking head.
Think all too clear of love itself.
Of simple life in raging health.
Never question what you are,
But freely count the fading scars.
Question malice, idle, stubborn, judging hearts,
Question tired cynics,
Mouthing barbs to better grow into themselves,
Question injustice, and condemn to swell
All those who'd dare
To make you shrink into a lesser, hardened shell.
Never wind your steps back over tread,
Already stepped.
Hold firm and fast
White knuckle raging burning grasp
Your fingers to the rail
And grimace menace
To all that failed


To break you.

A jackdaw’s calls
Ring out the rusted shells of Tractors.
The grey fog, engulfing, perished to
Cloud.

As shadows, linger
In the twilight.

In the middle of the minutes
Between nine and ten,
An unknown walked in,
Grasping a pen.
He scribbled a face on the whiteboard wall,

It was a face from the internet:

So we’re brothers after all.

Come join the network with me -
Watch your friends in the freak tent, see,
See their pictures when drunk,
Their reactions when dumped,

Just sign here to... 'tacitly' agree.

I sat out in the burst half-light,
Atop the cliffs of Zennor.

At times -

I’d lift the navy sky
And bark a cry;

Heart severed.

A sign.
Typical of a time, now snatching at its last,
An ebbing breath.
Branded bright with offset colours
Telling of better days,
Sweetshop-styled, screaming all is fine
With the unshaken dignity
Of older ways.

I stare
at the stack.
Stood tall,
And bold;
Of sweat,
And grit,
And sheer
Resolve.

The spiritual hour:
The clock,
Static, stagnant,
Glowers.

So it’s about half ten
And my then friend, Ben
Is walking with me to the shops.
We chat **** about lit
As we’re acquainted through college.
So together we’re relatively
Secure in the knowledge
That at least we can agree
On poetry.

As I flip my wrist
To look at my watch
I turn back to notice
That Ben has stopped.
He’s gazing amazed at
An open front door
That’s bustling with boozers
And music that soars.

“Let’s crash it!” Ben demands
Like the house party fascist that he is,
But I have to admit
That my state was somewhat ufit
To be called ‘responsibly sober.’
So with a heavy eyed grin
I say “OK, let’s go in”
And together we both wander over.

As we move through the ranks
Of the bodies that flank us,
Past the guy with a guitar,
That we could hear from afar,
And the girl who sits just there by the wall,
Twirls her hair whilst absently staring
Into a beer,

We stumble upon the kitchen.

Here the music is nearer
And after an hour passes,
Along with some clear glasses
Of spirits and wine,
We think we’re fine
But then, it suddenly hits me.

We’re crashers, I remember
And as if our agenda was destined to fail,
We would now have to bail,
As just when we make a mission
Out of appearing exempt from suspicion
As if by intuition, some bloke asks casually:

“So how do you guys know Dave then?”

Ben decides to aid by looking artfully away
Whilst scratching his *****,
So it seems to me
That the responsibility falls…
“Dave!” I say, looking absently away,
“We go way back make man,
Holidays in Cornwall and that,
Y’know, caravans?”

The bloke goes away,
Presumably in search
Of the mysterious Dave,
And so I turn to Ben and say “Go mate!
We’ve been made!”
We bolt for the door past the prep lads,
The muso and a chap on the floor,
Ben’s grabbing bottles and **** as he goes,
When I hear a voice ask aloud
“Hey Dave do you know those two?”

Hiding our faces we pick up the pace,
Pushing our way to a tidy escape.
We burst out the door and onto the street,
Finding it hard to stay firm on our feet.
Despite getting myself caught on the garden gate,
It has to be said,

Best party to date.

A cigarette drips,
Between fingers and lip.
As the dark of December,

Hangs.

The signs creep,
Although it sounds cliche -
The little things:
The morning shave,
Feel but a blink...

A sigh revives
Any thoughts misplaced,
In memories lost,
To stress, and age.

Can you read me that license plate?
On what?
Pull over.

For a time,
Nova bright,
I burned.

Now, glanced back
'Cross a shoulder sloped,
Smiled over self
At what was learned.

Broken skin burned by bracken, toil.
An earth printed palm.
A shovel, older than memories,
The slight horizon calm.

Years of making others’ beds,
Time spent digging.
The wind and rain he must endure,
Whilst waiting for the living.

Through mist I wander slowly;
A mist of six odd years.
Of misdeed, dreams, wearing seams,
Of trial, thought and tears.
In this forest bleak, lonely -
Blank, damp and bare,
I stretch a hand to high above
And call out: "Is no one there?"  
A ghost of brick, dust and rot:
Amidst wind, the structure groans.
The space contracts to shaded grins
And at once
I'm all alone.

To revisit a bench,
In the park of nonsense -
Where as children
We felt colour as drugs:

A pool of rain, reflects
Fleeting wings.
As the moss-oak bench,

Ages.

(Meter and Rhyme structure taken from 'Invictus' - by William Ernest Henley.)

Under the shade of dying trees,
Rooted in grit, wet sand and coal,
I crouch then curl in apathy
And begin to dig a hole.

Knowing the dark whims of random chance,
I have once struggled to put down
A wavering and anxious glance
That ends firmly on the ground.

In youth this world felt all too near,
Too close to comprehend, let’s say,
And as I weaved about my fears,
I learned to stop, take pause - and say:

It is in my mind I make the shade,
It is then I that digs the hole.
Thus when the time of fear pervades,
It is I that must take control.

Her eyes, redolent of a river’s tremor,
Startled me from sleep.

When young and stirring from his bed,
Before hopes and days so bright,
He weary lifts a cheek of youth,
And takes to teenage flight.

And when returned in the half of morn,
To shades of amber light,
He scans a home so blankly left:

His prison cell by night.

Lenses, looking out:

At the silent body,
Jostling.

I sat there in the rain,
On the cracking pavement.
I watched them walk with apathy,
But a step before enslavement.

My joys are but
The hung-wax tears,
Of a candle
Once burnt down.

I have but only
Finite lights,
And each cruel word
Breaks bulbs.

When I am old,
Give me white walls
And false family, dressed in green.
Bring me pills to slow my growth,
And suffocate my dreams.

In murky pleasure, fingers rest.
Cradling a cigarette – hand rolled,
Wrinkled raw.
Smouldering.
Pressed between lip, and the grimace of youth
As gentle licks of grey
Obscure his vision’s corner,
Flickering.

As new born temporary pleasure,
Living short its life
To the car horn muse.
Soon finds itself in a sunken pit
Face down,
Ground in between battlements.

On nicotine fueled days
Where dull, heavy musk hangs malignant.
He sits.

And - raising a cup of crude
To toast the capital ******* passing
Peering over near pressed vessel,
Straining through a blur of steam.

To recollect
Fluorescent childhood dreams:
A stuffed bear,
Clutched firm in hand
At the love-torn seams.

I’m a bit of a collector, me.
(I like discographies, personally)

Why I collect?
(It’s funny you ask.)

I never gave thought to obsession,
(Too busy obsessing.)

These are in order of release.
Those are alphabetical.
(Don’t touch them.)

I haven’t gotten round to those.
(Subsequently, I can’t look at them.)

There seems to be an attitude, regarding rhyme,
That suggests free verse
A better way to waste your time.
Problem is, with meter lost
And structure sent away at cost
What's left is but a soup of sound
That works for some
But for others, hounds.
To me the art lies in the rules, to know the code and sift the pools
And once or twice to bend a straight...
Throw out a line that doesn't scan.
If you make it the point of the whole piece, however,
You can easily **** the whole endeavour.
But that's just me and, taste is taste,
Yet, don't rub free verse in my face
And claim it the right over the wrong.
A dying style or old timed song
Can have a strong effect, I find
Amid the rolling buzz of contemporary lines.

As it falls, clad in shadow,
Their hurried heels abhor
The spectre,
A spring petrichor.

Perhaps,

It is not what you know,
Nor simply, what you can prove.

But what you can prove that you know.

For years he strived,
Worked hard, and blind,
To the reach the place
That promised a mind.

And once arrived
He fell, struck, to find,
That there are no answers,

Only lies.

A man of age,
Decades rinsed his muddied fingers.
Raises a wet-dog brow in the face of rain,
His life half lived, half lingered.

A tower stood before me,
Of at least a thousand feet.
It took my right to light away,
And sold me back its heat.
I stood submerged in the shade and cold
Of broken bricks, stones of old,
And in a fleeting moment learned
The world is not a gift,
But yearned.

An envisioned time.
In which thought itself -
Perceived a crime.

A time where rights remain for few,
Where the masses praise
Those our fathers slew.

At sixteen, he set about the task
In which he sat himself and asked,
When time is up, when stood alone,
How best scratch his years on stone?

For fear of nearing tragedy he worked
To find the words that freely said the best of worst

And so penned the lines
That in his mind,
Justified his selfish crimes:

“I sought to be a man of leisure,
But then leisure met the better of me.’

The *** hums a feral anthem
As the light at my window dies.
A candle stagnates on the sill,
The autumn wind cries.