I don't remember how I got here,
when the notebooks accumulated
and anxious thoughts became ideas.

It is a nice feeling. To turn old friends
into characters of their better selves,
and to turn loneliness into a stranger's

companion. Those bus journeys into
the city, to pour drinks in a Hawaiian
shirt seem like a distant memory of a

fragmented self, now slowly turning whole.
The ashtray is still full, and worries
still form and pester my mind,

but they don't trouble my dreams,
and now I fall asleep to the sounds of
summer rain, and I feel the inner thigh

of a pen-pal who is sleeping by the sea.
I found my first grey hair when I grew a beard,
and found a second when I finally turned sober.

There are picture frames of smiling corpses,
showing more life than ever I caught in their
daily living. There have been a million words

traded across the pillow, and I have found
intimacy in the form of written word.
I have time to ramble to the forest, to meditate

beneath the slowing autumn leaves.
A bicycle is all I need to reach a silence,
as the hangman's noose begins to lose its grip.

There is humour to be found in my failings.
There are lovers found over every continent.
No more whisky slurs to keep me out of wedlock,

no more running away from where I want to stay.
I am playing guitar, perched on my single bed,
watching the branches sway in the suburban streets.

I no longer miss a childhood long since turned
to romance. I no longer crave the absence of my
head. My features are turning handsome in the

sunlight. I have traded dance-floors for the
promise of my bed. There's no money left to
get myself ****** up. So I will simply sit inside

and write my poetry instead.