Chronologically, the life force of upward momentum
Eratus, irrigated field leaves at the backdoor
Leaves in the mailbox
Always upward, from below, the deepest place
This may have been out of my frame of reference though
Did you see the half-mast falsehood
Up the pole, down the hole
Listen to the secret word
Monitor of the algorithm

The rusted pylons
the endless rain
the drifting soils
spoils of war
spoiled, spoilt
remember the illuminating fear
soldiers of war


Baby laid flat unbreathing
pillow cases ajar by the splintered doors
eye sore, the sadness in your I's
when the plane touched down and you knew I was home
where the wind blew gales
over all these fields
and the way you thought of them,
brought tears to my eyes
or just because I was thinking of our child
- who died


My deer lay down, right here
this time
its different
this time it ends


Stray bullets with names etched out
it didn't matter, the importance of the target
green grass turned red
should have been safe until the end
lowered now into a manifest grave

Now the moment had come
now the songs had been sung
now the dirt it is ground fine
and so now is the time


- He who watched them descend
will be here to the end.

By the canal in British summer rays
Talking a lot to waste away the days
In your black leather reigns
Adolescent growing pains
You exist too loudly today, pull away from the sun
Tight starry wristbands, and you've only just begun
You've read Proust so many times, you believe it all
From the adjacent garden, you hear your Mother call
There's insects caught on the updraft
Floating away, you see the life-raft
With heavenly swans on board
Some alabaster hooting hoard
And the boys in tight vests
Run away from your pert *******
You would give chase too
Only if you caught them,
what on Earth could you do?

Smokestacks billow to the clouds and their shadows cast
The littered concrete is an eternal ream
It travels a world we believe small but actually ever so vast
A clean living world seems a distant dream
We inherit a world of pure beauty, such so it leaves us aghast
A small blue fish, swimming up stream
Meeting each current, a determined spirit, but the river it can't outlast
Global warfare on the television screen
How did we not learn from our mistakes in the not too distant past
The patriarchy is truly a vicious regime
Are we not the generation of change, why are we not amass
With a little work, I believe we can redeem
And begin to build a peaceful utopian society at long last
We then lay back,
and float downstream

Sick and cyclical memories linger, how unjust it seems
In somber city streets, her father's name she screams
When the fix is late and her body sodden and shaking
Her childhood recollections waking, every joint aching
Falling on tarmac, tearing stockings and fleshy knees
Through the distant mist it's a saviour that she sees
Marvin on a white steed, motorbike and leathers
To get her straight  he only requires her nethers
What difference could it make to such a worn woman
So little that her eyes glaze as he announces his comin'
And she's immediately put to work after initial transaction
All night shifts, ****** abstraction, customer satisfaction
Returning 'home' to Marvin where the earnings are counted
Giggling schoolgirl as playful stories of John's are recounted
And Marvin's insatiable perversions are compounded
****** cocktails and deviancy, her psyche confounded
The **** sleeps blissfully beside his new top girl
And through ****** daze, she examines her world

When I was a kid all I wanted to do was smoke ****
But nowadays its harder stuff that my body really needs
In my teenage yeas smoking on a spliff
It would seem to be a substantial lift
Before long though my depression took hold
Alcohol and cigarettes making me look old
I fell into a bad crowd, moving drugs that were illicit
My life moving so fast I probably could have missed it
MDMA in my system and I felt so loved
Ecstasy wasn't enough to see God above
I experimented with psychedelics and I had a real ball
But my habits got deeper, and my friends, I lost them all
I turned to the streets to pay for my increasing routines
But my job on the street interferes with my dreams
So now I'm just a shadow of my former self
A syringe smiles at me from the bottom shelf
Sometimes I need a little bump just to get my mind right
But often times a bump can turn into a wild night
Sometimes I need to get level with some golden dope
But too much of that **** and my life can lose all hope
I often wonder if my life would be alright
If I was never molested on that dreary night

I saw you, and your children days before
Your son's stomachs were distended and your girls were emaciated
The track marks on your arms betrayed your neglect
Pungent family, poor and alone in society
I saw you today, with bacon in your trousers
My boss saw you too
Undignified the way he forced your hand
and you protested the soap in your pockets also
I see you everyday in the faces of my family
and I see you in my dreams, falling from Capitalist trees
I was told to stand guard of the door, in case you ran
I wished you had, I really do
Would you have ran if you'd have known me?
For I would have stepped aside and held the door

Fifteen days in that prison, I spent
Laborious in pursuit of pennies for a millionaire
While I scrape the bare minimum wage
Fifteen days because I'm a good worker
Fifteen days with no break
Fifteen pounds worth of soap and food
Stuffed into a filthy tracksuit
For your family, as they starve
and they continue to pang as you are processed
The police uphold the law, but I often disagree
What would they do, to feed their family?

When we were you we'd sail on great bicycles, through fields and over the car parks
Crashing down at the corner store and fumbling with change to buy sweets and crisps
The old lady, incomprehensible, would threaten as we ran, pockets bulging and laughing at the wind
Back to the skate park and we'd giggle as we caught a breath and the boys would be fighting
Ah, I remember climbing the solemn tree atop the hill, looking into yards and tearing our clothes
We'd steal shiny jewels from the wheels of cars parked on each street, and trade once we were home
Do you remember the magazines we'd read, the popular lyrics being recited 'neath a sturdy table
Waking with the dawn and lighting matches on the climbing frame, letting fire fall through the air
Dear friend the trouble we'd cause and the trouble that followed
I still see the faces as we ran from street gangs attempting theft, our mothers would never allow such things
Yet we disappointed them, and the tree was cut down by the preacher man
We'd knock every door and scatter to safety, heartily laughing at childhood innocence
Oh and hopping from garden to garden, free spirits and free from concern
I wish we were still young

But life broke us all, the town collapsed atop us and we suffocated
I remember your blonde hair in the wind and the way you smelt
And how we'd kiss as we played life in mattress houses
Now I see you about town with the boys, and you're now a boy
Hooting at the ladies and jeering as the Reds concede another goal
Your face still pretty, bright and freckled, I'm still confused
And I, jaded and alone, sit here and ruminate on life's folly
The sadness that our town bestowed upon me still weighs heavy
For the abuser still walks these streets and I still cower
As the powder takes another victim, more battered faces
I curse the poverty and all it brings.

Bass rattles the roofing of the warehouse
Tonight we are truly alive
The alcohol and synthetic drugs course through our blood
Three people stuffed in a cubicle
Snorting lines of coke and adderall from the screen of a smartphone
A truly modern menagerie
The image of a woman confined to my mind
Searching desperately though eternal chasms
Tunnel vision and weary eyes
I don't know when the nights end
or begin
It's a psychosis that developed within me many years previous
The product of a generation with no forethought
Each pill popped was one less worry of the future
Synapses destroyed with such nonchalance
Enjoy the looming sadness

We, doomed to repeat
You, doomed to relive

Each shot to the arm takes it's toll
The toll may not be obvious now but in your twilight...
The wrinkles shall show and the scars continue to glow,
punctures in your flesh allow me to know.

I saw your mind decay before my eyes
Your body emaciated, your legs so fragile
I wish you hadn't experienced life to such a degree
I wish you had stopped me.

But alas, I stand here with my company
Another line
Another
One more
Level the score
One more pill and another tab
One more drag before I pass it back

To replicate my Mother and my father.

Remember those days
Those ****** days?
Days and days,
she says, she says
Remember those days?
The daze for days and days
Yet we remained, we stayed
for days and days
in a daze, confused, the haze
and days and days
Each day we fade
we fade and fade.

The ****** remained
but we laid and laid.

Late night, into the morning, in a lonesome bed still yawning
Vest on my chest and a tingle between my legs, I'm mourning
It's a confusing feeling, the thoughts in my brain are calling
Seven years old and the appealing feelings are appalling

Vexed by the *** that my peers are having
I stay with boys, on the corner, hanging
Moving crack rocks, ******* slanging
But my hormones know and leave me panging

Caught by my father as a guy goes down
Kicked all around and thrown of of town
Homophobe Dad don't want me around
Now I'm just searching eternally for a sound

They called me immoral and assumed my brain unsound
Moving product, all I ever wanted was to wear that crown
Like Omar on The Wire, King of the streets, feared all around
They have no love, after being caught my life crashed down

I traveled the street loathsome and alone I always dined
Until I met the man I adore and we saw the changing times
We marched for freedom and worked within the lines
Now I have a love that I can say is all mine

Don't fall down, the stairs are uneven
Haunted regrets, embodiment of liquor
Lacquered wood panels, smell of old alcohol
Guilty hands shiver on a switchblade shining

There by the door stands an old man leaning
Taunt him some more and he might start screaming
The haggard old mystic witch by the bedpost yawns
and the New Orleans bayou still shivers in a shimmering light

Tonight though, taste the tasteless tears on terrarium trellises
or tug away the tightness of the tortured terra firma tetsuo
and maybe tonight there will b-

Waif-like drifter on a fading cloud
the saddest sound makes its rounds
The outer limit of this town
She speaks to herself somehow

How her life turned around
after hearing a siren sound
Oh, the wolves abound
As she stumbles from that crowd

And so her rueful mind aloud
split the seam and scheme and shout
for whatever worth she receives in clout
or any mirth that fuels her doubt

By the bracken broken, beaten paths
through trails of time and solemn laughs
she finds herself alone at last
In lonesome graves of her lovers past

That sickly sweet chocolate taste is a lingering reminder
He’ll be back again tonight
Sweet-talking you out of bed
Your father, he does love you, but not the way fathers usually love their daughters
Oh honey, you’re too pretty for the other boys at school
And your mother’s in bed with your brothers giving head
Look out!
They’re alive again tonight, and you wish that everything will be alright
But you’re late again this month
And everything’s a little bit sweeter with chocolate on your lips
Better than the baby on your hips, oh put the cutter down, and bring yourself to bed
So he can “gent-early” caress, and the sounds of the street, come crawling with defeat
Through the window, like your bigger brother the other night
When his crack pipe no longer lights, it’s a habit that she gave to him
Like the deformities of your mind, and the way your mangled body squirms
Oh dear, you've fallen down again
And the kids at school all laugh
Because your shabby clothes smell like kebabs, and ****, and last night’s brown-watered bath
Watch out!
It’s dark on the streets today, when the clouds refuse to go away
So wander the estate wondering if this is how it is, if this is all there is
To be the doll tied down for everybody’s love
Dangled up above, you on the bed
Just playing dead

You tried to not enjoy it, you tried to tell your secrets
But you’re a liar and a cheat, and nobody believes the scars, or bruises on your knees
Get it together; you could leave it all one day
Like your sister did before
Only now she lives next door
With a ghetto husband of not so distant relation
And you hear him beat her when he’s drunk
And you hear him beat her when he’s sober
And you hear him beat her when she’s unconscious
And you hear him
And the whole street hears him
So you wonder if they can hear you too
Echoes through the zoo, that you call home
Monkeyed enclosure of ***** flinging beasts and your mother getting ****** on in the shower
Every hour on the hour
Because your father loves the power
Listen out! Can you hear them?
Dear reader, look outwards from the window
And see the way her winds blow, how she walks the streets so aimlessly
Dead inside her eyes, where the spirit cries out in the morning when she’s late for school
Because her father’s got whiskey **** again, and now she’s trapped underneath him
And her mother’s fast asleep on the floor

Stupor of the soul, it’s always taking hold
Cover up the sadness, or cut away the grief
Everything is different when they’re taken by police
And now you’re sat in a foster home, feeling welcome
Until Mr. Saviour creepily creaks the door
And your freeze in fear
Because you feel that your father’s here
And Mrs. Saviour is in the next room with the others

Damask robes on the severed road, as Severin sings the boot precociously
Furs and spurs are the roots of inevitable depression, the rain in the gutter
Flows like so many streams to the town of your birth
See that scar and revel in it, for the clock that tocks is dying so eloquently
And here, I shall hold your hand and convey irrelevancy

These days seem so long
Words leave a vapid hole in my soul
Are you reading this closely,
Meaningless as it seems

Each poem like a crack of the whip, my back scarred and bloodied
Each person, in a line, taking the time to abuse my mind
and today I am freed from the ties that... keep me safe
But still bound by the ******* of a million people
Each one suffers, and I lay awake in the evening damp
Listening, still listening, to the cries of the camp

So I wrote a novel
and named it after her

Waking as a woman, new skin glistens and the skies are bluer
My baggy clothes fit no longer,
and my window pane is the devil's eye
Heels tap tarmac
Hair long, singing, alive, loving
Wolf whistle samurai, old me dies
This is how it feels to be accepted

Nightfall doldrums, walls sweat profusely, laughing
Skin tight clothes, constriction, regret,
and liquid death like poison in the throat
Gang dem talk loud, wolf whistle predator
Racing rabbit, running running run, run
Cold breeze silence
and sobbing into the handbag

Waking as a spirit, ethereal pleasure
The re-appropriation of gender
and manic transcendence
Post-modern love.

With wings like barn doors, perched upon the tower and scathing
The king fell, the Earth moved and let him drift slowly to death
Bukowski on the bedpost sang rosy melodies through tin can headphones
and the daffodils of a thousand fields wilted at the news of her death
Needles fall from the *****'s arms, a rain drop escapes

Coca-Cola bottles strewn on a green carpet, smooth under foot
and the festival casualties drift aimlessly to their scorching cars
Pills fall from pockets as a forlorn criminal collects coins
The clouds disperse from the estate, reggae disrupts cats making love
Bass that resonates, crumbling cars and the warring between neighbours

Lay with her as the coffin descends, gun crime statistics
Spinoza makes accusations from beyond, ethical misappropriation
Stop talking, for your voice could make an angel weep
but the children still scream, running, frenzied on the lava streets
Cracking bull whips at the backs of a slave, ******* passion, weeping
and the sun sets in the East, proverbial ******* to the populace

Franzen now teaches me how to live such a lonesome life
While the night holds me like a mother once would
Until I pass,
and the arms of Susanna Blamire beckon
Hold me close
I'm scared

Fire questions to the sky
so many bullets rain back down
Cruelty abound by the bookstore in town
Where skagheads rob ragheads and laugh
back to broken scuttle-bug alleys and rain
the pain
I hope your age doesn't enrage you
or I hope the town doesn't become you
Burn all your Matterhorn replica symmetrical dreams
guard all bars by the backdoor sullied sweethearts
the ally of your ally is an enemy of somebody's enemy
but the enemy of that enemy is a friend of the state

Liquid LSD spilt on the raptured structures of this ***-
King city and the all encompassing simultaneous trip
is only the perception of reality we're made to endure
the title you hold is a roll of paper by the door
and we burned them all for heat when the powers that be
rolled over you and me

It was six AM and it was one AM
We spoke in silence
and whispers from the sheets
She told me she felt disgusting
I held my gut and buried my head
Oceans...
She called before and I slept poorly
a thousand iterations of her voice
That swarmed my painfully ****** mind
Oceans between us...
I mentioned puzzle pieces
and alluded to something like a movie
She questioned my rambling
and I closed my eyes, listened to the fireworks
She met other boys
ghosts in the bad dreams haunting
Memories of Jordan
memories of Jorie
memories of Mimi, Annie and the rest
More oceans between us

  I feel so disconnected

I wished I was dead so I couldn't hear her again
but I've wished this before and nothing
Maybe her eyes could pierce my heart
but her eyes wander, and I wonder where she is
She's sounding scared
I'm apathetic by nature, I wish I could wish I wasn't
Are you blinded by the dangerous
because I am too
Are you flailing listlessly into existence
because I understand
Are you feeling better
because I want that

are you
because I am

It's a recurring scene
the unavailable, the broken and the best
I'm drifting away and it's a world in that ocean
You're with me today in hazy faded memories
and I laugh when I think of your laugh

I really shouldn't fall in love
with somebody who
can't love me back
because...
It's so far to Missouri and flights are expensive
So I'll sit in my sadness
and dream of you

There's a city under water and she sings to me with pride
(I sit alone and wish you profound gaiety)
The rains continue to pour across my face, I refuse to go inside
There's a man without a home, free from the ******* of love
(I wish to find within myself a sound laity)
And so I return to the church pew desolate, searching for God above

Born to an atheist household, deprived of propaganda
(I suppose learning now is enough)
I sit here, a church in drowning Uganda
The rains of a thousand brutal homicides leave me with a sigh
(The rainfall allegory, merely a bluff)
But still I sit on a bench in a church yard and the LRA pass by

Bathing in the solemn wintery lights of the city that bears down on me like a behemoth from some great unknown celestial body, separate from our comforting little universe, my thoughts turn to you.
Dreaming of our odyssey in the stars and the way auburn locks fell across your rosy cheeks. Imagining the texture of your chin as I caress your solitary freckle with the back of my right index finger. Oh it was a long summer, the one in which we met. A summer that lasted several literal seasons whilst the metaphorical summer illuminated my life for an obscure length of time.
I observe this fickle city on a daily basis, conjuring your smile on the face of every denizen that so happens to walk my way. A frivolous glow from such a radiant being as yourself is enough to bring such a giant as myself to his poor lonesome knees.
Alas in this city of thousands I am but a rejected vagrant, captive in my quarrelsome, dissonant and feeble mind. Star-crossed and foreordained to remember you as pixels on a monitor. A distance comparable to that of the distance from Earth to Kepler-22b. I hyperbolize of course but apart from physical distance we are sequestered in many ways. Ways in which I could never bring myself to address.

I shall cease my mournful ruminations and rise from this numbing wall, the one that runs the length of the fountains and the square. I need to forget you my dear. I fear so much that no person could ever compare to the seraph I have contrived in this dense mind of mine. The angel of your impersonation, the nymph-like mother of the world and your doppelganger. That person exists not, while you most certainly do exist; although not simultaneously in my own immediate existence. I know I idealise you and for that I beg your pardon. I'm always aware of my own faults.

You broke the security of my aromanticism, destroying every notion of 'Love' I may have ever held. The word still evokes stark contradictions that war within my ever suffering head. The gaunt women that slip by me in the unfortunate  street pass muster for a smile but receive little in the way of reciprocation from myself. Lugubrious, stubborn old man that I am. The curved women that remind me of you, holler and howl at their young children, berating the psychosis of my youth. I looked to you in my adolescent naivete for the elusive mother to the world. That true Goddess that bore us, each and every one, in physicality and indeed spirituality. I could not tell you how I long for your tender touch on my tearful cheek.

Oh but I shall saunter here in my tumescent loneliness, betwixt streetlights, postboxes, houses and my fellow meandering, soulless shades. Dreaming of a day I am allowed to feel amorous once more.

I. Tune Out The Traffic, Just Listen to the Crickets

Throw your phones into the sea
  walk away into the night
  fall asleep beneath a tree
  burn a candle for your light

Don't pretend to be in love
  only say it, if it's true
  pray to nothing up above
  the only person to trust is you

The manifesto wasn't long
  the words were not obtuse
  it rhymed just like a song
  but in the end it was refused

II. There Is No Metaphor Here, So Please Stop Looking

Big 'ole spider on the wall
To where is it that you crawl?
I'm sure today you've seen it all
A dog without a ball
and humans walking tall
The leaves of pretty whorl
and a lonesome bathroom stall
Oh
Big 'ole spider on the wall
Do you have someone to call
When this stranger has the gall
              to crush you

III. Algae on the Riverbank

They dragged a corpse from the river
it was bloated and decaying
They pulled a body from a burning car
it was charred and still smoking
They took a foetus from its mother's arms
it was slimy and cooling
They shoveled a person from the sidewalk
it was shapeless and splattered

Everybody dies,
but every body mattered

IV. The Untruths of Poeticism

Tear pages from your books of poetry
and throw them to the winds
They become falling leaves in summertime breeze
- fills the sky with pretty rhymes
Butterflies flutter by
look away from the shutter sky
The stutter lies
and so do I

If you want to watch, she'll dance again
Your drugs are expensive today
everything was cheaper before
and life is beginning to bore

If you want to **** again, she'll go another round
bring her down around town, smile and frown

So if Heaven is full, I know a place we can go
Let me know if this seedy city is too much
if her face is pretty much muck
I think you might be stuck

But she still dances, and you're still watching
from the balcony and the beacon

the lifeless girl drowned in the Mekong
where was she escaping to, or from?

Through peach coloured faded blinds, you watch him type on ashen keyboards
Low music playing, he used to cut her hair, she was breathing
Words from a soul, or words from dictionaries faded as the blinds and walls and clothes on his back
A team of typists, all in a line (factory work and the repetitiveness of city living)
You notice the desk, cheap and flat-pack, worn markings exposition of veneer and wood
Did you spot the reference, or did it pass your eyes,
- are you a fan?
His derivative verse of Bukowski and the like is painful to eyes and corroding of the soul
Have you seen the bees flee?
Watch as the lights turn dead, and the oven burns red
I'm not sure if one could call it homely; his home
The way darkness arrives early each night above that house alone
and the way rabid foxes walk in large circles to avoid the shadow cast
You hear him cry at night
(and I feel ashamed at noticing you)

He sets himself alight, to feel something new
You watch from your couch and flip the channel

Are the old haunts getting older still,
by the night's final adieu, a wild dog scampers home
To lay beneath the old car with grass in the engine
and we both know the house is burning

The flashing lights in the street and the coked up vagrants dance rhythmically
Smoke contortions over the grassy morning dew
A girl with a vacant stare, from a bench afar, watches and flicks broken nails
Everything you are is nothing you want, still watching from the window
Pacing. Pacing.

(I am on the rooftop, and I saw it all.)

Did it hurt when you died
or did you not notice
Only, we missed the countdown and so we fell
out of
                          sync
The beginning was a false start
Chattel hurriedly march onward to their demise
Maniacal laughter from the radio chatter
and the afterthought master, pulled strings faster
Cloning programs in the desert
Phone record credit

(your birth certificate is just a receipt)

This year, the year of somebodies lord
many facts come forward
many facets of the reward scheme
of institutionalised regimes
Your terrorist masters in the government houses
mastermind crises or create all these lifeless..

Sing it two times for the slaves in the system
and their families that miss them
The Queen's Christmas manifesto
Ghost written in a conference in Austria
This is your controlled system
But you'll try not to listen
Unless there's a fire beat, something to make you move your feet
Unholy march of the lonely,
Masquerade of the only...

...and when the end finally rears, when the years stop, drop
pop and lock
We'll be dancing
and the lights will be dimmed

Crazy starry-eyed mannequin
Taken to the stars again
Heroic catalyst of my youth
Left us with the inevitable truth
proof of the elusively loose and uncouth

I'll see you in the sky

Blessed Love My Lord and Empress

Praise be to Haile Selassie I
Raise me from Earth's ashes
Sacrament to Jah, my soul sings
Your son I praise him, Haile Selassie I

Garvey come and spread word, glorious words
Freedom of a people, Zion land, it waits with love
Praise be to Talaqu Meri, let his lands grow green
His Imperial Majesty, walk with me

Empires dazzle eyes, black Empress at the steps
Her robe draped with tender caress, love, Jah
Prophet man sing, rasta man sing, we all love Jah
In death Haile Selassie I looks over I and I, love Jah
Over Babylon the skies rain freedom on Jah people

Who are you, that you can palpitate my malcontent heart?
When you pass me in the street I avoid your eyes
For they are too much for my troubled mind
The way your doe eyes and mascara coalesce
and my spirit wanes with wondering thoughts of You and I

Oh blue-eyed seraph, queen of my callow folly
Is your name the password spoken to Saint Peter
When a man is to transcend this eternal struggle
Or are you the devil dressed in down robes
Come to drown me in wanton waves

You seem to have come here on gradient beams from the cosmos
With your platinum locks, alien in texture, encompassing and fine
Do your misdeeds and free my tortured mind
For these enumerations may drain these tortured veins
and leave this poor proletariat passionless once more

Pouting and winsome, your elegance is eternal

When the plants have all turned as blue as your eyes
and the cement golgothas all crumble
When every elephant of the Sahara, withers and dies
and the Cheetahs fall to the ground and mumble
When the skies turn black and curse our love
with the oceans boiling over
When the stars all fall from high above
and the cliffs are brown at Dover
When the Earth splutters and coughs, gasping for fresh water
When God yells obscenities and Jesus has no choice but loiter
When the racing rats stand still and ponder
When the hills all fall, way out yonder
When the noises of the cities are but ghosts on dead air
I shall remember your smile and know I have nothing to fear

Black flags hoisted high in some wild parade
Occupied residences, the terrified children cry
Under militant control now, Fallujah mourns
There's no time for petty metaphorical advance
Sludge tracks are worn, boots muddied, bloodied
It's a strange agreement to use their houses
for this, the extroverted violence of a dark regime
The Sunnis' purge, spurned; new conflict arises
In Ramadi they cry too, it's cyclical, this eternal war

When will Iraq see absolution
and it's people get to sleep at night?

Some faded curtain sways in a phantom breeze
      and air swells in the old duct behind the bed
Cowboy Junkies play
        Salted meat stench, tobacco and zest linger
The misted road on the outside
                                                     refracts moonlight through a crack

it's all too disjointed
but also clear, all so clear

The cliched call from anonymous houses, screaming; drunken screaming
                                  I  t  '  s     F  r  i  d  a  y     n  i  g  h  t
You're invited

The notion enters in eerie silences
                                                        ­and wood-frames creak
and the curtains still dance
       and green leaves look black in that middle point between the lamp posts
              and a stray car buzzes along a sultry surface; it is the moth, brazen in search of light
                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                  
and who are we, if not moths in search of light?                                                           ­                    
                                            ­                                                                 ­                                                  
              ­                                                                 ­                             Can you hear that ocean swell
                                                           ­                                                     or do you roar in unison too
                                                             ­                                        Would you change as the weather
                                                         ­                                                            and embrace everything
                                                      ­                                                                 ­                     everybody
                                  ­                                                                 ­                  and life
                                                            ­                                                              
                                                                ­            to reach transcendence

...and they told me that you were to die within the week
I took your hand in mine and held you ever so close
Setting a bed for you to lay with your weary head
Your muscles are trying, your heart is sighing and you body is weak
I read your beloved poems and adored with you your favourite prose
But before the day's end, in mine arms you were dead.

All your fading smiles
In the cities in her eyes
and all you broken memories
and all your jaded lies

It was social experimentation
To be locked away, windowless
Four walls, perpetually fixed
- as his figure in a lightless room
Ears removed, mouth sewn closed
Eyes blinded, no light, no sound
Muted humanity, no dignity

He happened upon a laughing child
before the procedure
and that sound echoed inside
Deep within his bowels it reverberated
Through his blood
Distorted in his stomach
Youthful innocent laugh,
it grew monstrous
It began to talk
and the beast within was personified

Day one he lost his mind
Day two was still day one
(how irresponsive time becomes)
Day three the laugh became a growl
Day four the voices started
Day five in absentia
Day six he was done
Day seven, bizarre interim
- that between life and death

Profoundly lost in swingin' psychosis
Met by the devil in detailed cerebellum
Watched memories deteriorate
like some reel-to-reel burning, spluttering
His wife now only a hydrogen hallucination

Do you, the reader, know true loneliness?

The observation deck was packed on day eight
Muted, yet guttural screams of anguish
from deep within his throat
Were haunting reminders of the damaging effect
of psychological studies and the fragility of humanity

The cataract voids in his stoic face
they betrayed fear, and begged captors
for some respite from this hellish dream

Until in a tormented blinded haze, the voice was clear
His ears still dead, though this voice was true
Spoke but three subtle words
The subject experienced simultaneous neurological
Joy and fear
He had heard the de facto vocalisation of some supreme

he spoke them aloud
his only utterance

and the teary eyed scientists gathered
sterile needle
no words
dead.

The promise of life
                                  spread over Sumerian scroll
                                                                                    surprise prose of the soul
like when the stream of water bursts through trickling riverbanks and turns to behemoth gushings of clear and conscious life paralleled only by man-made train tracks through these green pastures and serene hereafters

Acrid acid in the veins
                       perfect storms over rear horizons
                       She kisses trees in desolate parks
              and wanders down the city light parades
                      alone
                          Oh, yearly comes the fair
                                         or the rains
                  or that special way in which the city sleeps
               Falling diphtheritic on swollen grounds
                       and rolling around
                           doing rounds
        shooting all these fantastical clowns
                            Ah, to die
                                              ah to die

Marijuana smoke fills the air
I play with your hair
You're here, I'm here
Aural pleasure, your voice in my ear
Sirens play, crippled with fear
Ten kilos of ****** lay right here

Why would you be friends with a writer?
Ever so pretentious, ever so righteous
Only come to play in the night time
Coming down and nodding off as it gets lighter
Pacifists the lot of them, not one fighter
Oh but many shall be knighted

We're here on a Island, each one of us banished
Authors of the west were long ago abolished
We've had our share of bloodshed
Alas, it's all fun and games until one of us is published.

The ants were lied to
As their wooden homes burned down
Foolish little ants

Stood at the precipice of the world, a shadow cast
The oceans were dry, no greenery was breathing
A button that ended the lives of billions, pressed
And since that time the people have all been leaving
The cosmic family, their neighbours, were all grieving

We are the ants now
Our homes are catching light now
We can stop this how?

a special kind of succinct sadness
toil the night long, until day breaks
and eyes water in mourning windy gusts
the river froze over, lose control of you
carried over thresholds in collapsed houses
feeding into tributaries of the soul
through the trees that kiss the sky
or past placid cars in aluminum nooses
needing more

but no end.

You couldn't relate to my life if you tried
Degenerate pride, in my pride, the family all died
I took a trip, slip from the front door
Walking to the house of a man with some more
Of the poison of my mother, the mater, my pater, the father
My brothers and sisters slumped against a wall, injecting
It gets harder
I'm a martyr
But I fall farther
Brown brings ardour

In the haze of detestable days, bus journey raves
To the estates, I'm in a state, I hate fate
Try and place blame, struggle to get straight
But straight to the point, you're a mate
Pass the plate, and the joint
I'll do a line, get straight
Straight to the point...

Where was I?

Back in the house, forgot how I got here
The emptiness too much to bear
I miss my family being here
My mother the seer
My father drinking beer
I close my eyes, open, hope they appear
The loneliness of the kitchen feels so queer
I pop a few pills and realise its been a year
Since I saw them here

Fading to black and I awake in a wrack
Fiending for some smack, panic attack
Light up a pipe, smoke some pale crack
Keep me going on this lonesome track
So I pack my bag, down a glass of Jack
And get back on the beaten path

To the corner where I find her, solemn in a slump
Hard night's day, I give her cash and we arrange the jump
Pump pump, I dump my junk and feeling drunk
Walk silently in a grump, she re-adjusts her skirt
and returns to her bunk
To her lifelong funk
before being packed into another John's trunk

The streetlights are cruel in the winter night's haze
What beautiful days, in a daze, feeling amazed
Clasp my hands and I pray, am I crazed
or is this mournful delay
A year ago today,
my love took my family away

Her name was Hannah and I loved her blonde hair
Tender young woman on the streets, price was fair
Meeting at the corner of Forest Road, he said she'd know where
Marvin hooked me up, my training was complete
Time to get back on the horse, really find my feet
She jumped in my car, I smelt a perfume so sweet
She flashed me a smile and wished I was her
At this point I didn't know what was to occur
To be in this girl's skin is what I would prefer
We took a room at the seedy hotel in town
Closing the door, I turn around, she sat down
She took off my jeans, all she had was a frown
I told her I knew her Daddy and he treated me real mean
She got up to go, so I struck her face, it came keen
Told her I was his slave from the age of eighteen
The smirk on her face filled me with manly rage
Again she tried to leave, so I truly blew my gauge
A swift punch took her down, bruised her rib cage
I tore into her **** uniform and took what was mine
Begging me to stop but it was already too late to decline
I used her body in masculine rage, treated her like swine
And when I was done I left her crying on the bed as I left
I just took something from her but it didn't feel like theft
I got what I wanted so I didn't think of how she was bereft
Said to her as I left that if she told Marvin, she would die
She lay crying on the bed, so there was no word of reply
Quickly left the seedy hotel and look up at the night sky
Marvin took my masculinity so I took it out on his girl
What do I have to lose, I've got nothing in this world
He'll look for me soon, revenge in my mind, time to give it a whirl

She lives in a cage, in the shed, at the bottom of a garden
Her master comes, twice daily, with food and water
She lives for him, a servant to his psyche
She has no power, slave on her knees in chains
Its simple pleasure for leisure, to serve him is to be free
Minutes in the sunshine, phallus in furs
- and a collar as a symbol of respect
Music for ******* Performance in the house
She lays down and tastes the whip on bare cheek
Obedience is taught through willing submission
Gorean affectations, willing desire and the natural order
One's journey into identity, a thrilling concept at first munch
- God will speak in good time

To dismantle social construct in a kingdom of one
Liberation at the hands of a master in leather
- and whips outstretched
Through drear smokescreens, transformation and feminisation
Slave-girl, man-child, longing for acceptance and protection
Early morn, teary-eyed sunshine creeps through a crack
Blonde wigged, bearded man wipes mascara clean away
Only two more months, every day she will be beat,
- and the sissification of the master's slave will then be complete

I touch your cheek, its stone cold to the touch
I wanna make you see, that I love you this much
We need to make this cash babe, we really have to eat
Future plans take shape, when you climb into his backseat
I really do love you girl, I promise that I really really do
In the mirror give a wee twirl, before you pay your dues
And you can pay me,
And please me,
Because I love you Hannah, and you know that its true

Talk to me Hannah, you've been silent all night
Talk to me baby, I can make you feel alright
Why are crying girl, I got you your fix
The daylight is here babe,
You don't have to turn tricks
Here sweet thing, take a hit of this
Yes young girl, now that's real bliss

Not too much now, what are you trying?

(Wake up Hannah, I think you may be dying)

Caustic doorway blues
The fog sets in,
and the moon doesn't glow
when brick structures crumble
Rats in worn carpeting, writhing
The screaming from pensive terminals
and insects live on dead wood
trees felled in hollow rounds
This is the end of something warm
These are days of hydrogen loneliness
and grey skies applaud the tarmac
Pornographers snap pictures
of silhouettes in garages
and the playground hears no love
when gunshots deafen the trees
and the old mattress is sodden
Stale alcohol pungency
near the alleyway, dormant today
But the lights are still glowing
in the house by the canal
where somebody's memories still linger

What steps he took, after losing his edge
Cocky **** running wild in days, never slept
Took drugs, took women, took men
Never slept again

What cliffs she admired, after seeing the edge
Tormented in fuzzy daydream childhood afternoons
She came down and stayed for days
An obsession with time to the point of stasis

I think I'm losing my edge
He thinks he's dead again
She lost the bed again

A faceless man was sat on a bench by the seafront
Hood high, said goodbye
Told me his missed the old style, wants more
Told him I was tired and this is whorish
What vines are these, that bound my ankles
and I was screaming into vacuums, grand clocks, strange houses
Safe houses that become embers
Magic men, shaman, shaggy hair, danced there

To use words in multiple places, placing clues
A whole story, absolute, read it backwards, forewords
iTunes shuffle function, on the poetry of the soul
(if it exists)
But he lost his edge again

Yes he went to Africa, saw the face of God and the Devil, unification
Iboga, uneasy stomach, vomited and killed them all
Watched the world burn, and children dance
Bluebell Lucy on arrival, back home
Taunted the skies, saved the proletariat
Grew wild roots and sang, some seraph

Admittedly not an architect, or a poet or *******
How many people have made these allusions
Sold drugs, killed men, ran home, all there, ghost of government
Hedgerows grew wild, were noticed and cut down
Still praise beatitude, Ginsberg, love-made, Kerouac, still plays

She was Hannah and she was Malcolm, also Marvin
He was them too, all the same, transcendental self-infatuation
Peach trees, coloured blinds, ashy scattered floorboards
Burnt home, music playing, popular culture
All free-form even with formality
A stream of conscious way of life
Outlook unsure

He thought he lost his edge
Turns out s/he never had it

O how I loathe him, hideous man-child
Bounding down the steep stairs of our house
Barging through that shambles of a door,
and leaving it open, the brute
Clattering about the kitchen, cramped and yellow
Rustling sweet wrappers as he raids the cupboards
O fat disfigured son of mine
I pray you leave this house for I love you no more
The odour of a dying rat, the face of stoicism and sadness
Leave, O leave disgusting boy, I love thee no longer
My patience is tried, your mannerisms crude and vile
Leave this domicile at once, for it is no longer a home

Resonant alley beside a block of council flats
The bass booms from a car with three doors open
Four spliffs burning under flickering street lights
The British winter rains drench our hooded heads
(We plan the heist)
Deafened by the disenfranchised rapper from the speakers
Blinded by the darkness of the car and my peers
Balaclava, hoods up, gloves on, tools out, smoke out
Jump from the whip, vexed boys, looking for a payday
We move rocks by day but night time comes, we get shady

(Gunshots ring out, the bells of death
Never forget what you did
A life on the hands of a boy
Blood on the sheets as I cry myself to sleep)

Jump back in the ride, laughing with careless disregard
Count out the stacks and divide up the product
Pull up at the dole office and smash a few windows
Sirens fly by and give them the finger
Fast enough from the scene and we're back in the yard
Waking up the kids with the banging of the doors
Waking up the fiends as we dish out the draws

(It's a war out here and your people are dying
I killed a man today and felt nothing
Breed your soldiers and look the other way
Just another careless life that we lost today)

Fall into bed with my girl and some bud
Burn it all down to keep the insomnia at bay
I tell her I need to get out the game some day
She tells me she wants a new handbag today

(The rain never ceases and the kids wake in tears
Every day on the road, is a day full of fears
There's no real reason for any of us to be here)

You're in love with a rotting Ginsberg
The desert's tanks are overturned
and your motifs are stale

Fooled into the belief that anyone cares
That clumsy wordplay is acceptable
or that your name carries weight

It's the same piece, week after week
With drugs in your system
and stoic aromanticism

How do you expect to write a novel
When ideas melt in tablespoons
or are blown in dusty clubs

You sit and watch rain fall in archaic gravel pits
By a window, long overdue for cleaning
and Jandek plays mournfully

Watch as that jaundice coloured sky opens
When the winds overturn dustbins
and form trash streams, ironic

Another languid day you waste on cannabis and ennui
Whilst the world burns; it's people raving
and the war is raging