Tonight I went to a house warming party,
Just to be nice,
When I really should have been at home,
With my hungover head on ice.

I didn't like most of the people there,
They bored me in fact,
Especially the cliche hippies with long dreaded hair,
Clothes, barely intact.

As the night went on,
The washed up ****** ****,
Came through the gate.
One by one by one.

I don't have time for people,
They drain me.
Trying to be nice by buying minors alcohol,
But no one repays me.

The welcome wasn't the warmest,
I was patronised because of my mode of transport,
By yet another ****** ****,
And his tattered up Jansport.

Eighteen years to realise,
That the public and I don't get a long.
Eighteen years later and I can guarantee,
That i'll be singing my own funeral song.

Broken Needles and rusted gates,
Treading over thorns and crushing glass in an apathetic state.
At best toss the thrown rock will crash,
Not without aggravating a storm of Asbestos.

Iron-lacking in socially acceptable art etiquette.
Climbing neglected buildings.
One hand gripping a rusted ladder,
The other, spray paint wielding.

Battling for space between the wall and the vine.
First time I don't feel misplaced, struggling for lines.
My minds at ease, I have everything I need.
A place to sit and think,

A place where the space is occupied by two high school kids.
Lighting candles that have merged
With the unstable rotting wood of the table.
Scratching their heart's words through bleeding pen nibs.

Loose leaf pages scatter the ground,
Not worthy of residency in my note book.
Reunited with the fallen leaves.
Reconciliation with my mind hook or by crook.

I took a different route home
And sat in the shade
Of a tree that over looked a park

Of rusted spring ponies
Paint chipped and weathered
All together, but so lonely

I tore out the intimate stanzas that my friends had written in my note book
I used it to clean their mess
Jealousy at it's bleakest
Excuses at their best

Angst and nerves filled my head
Most of the time i'm too scared to read what they had written
Most of the time i'm too scared to read what they had said

My notebook is hardly mine any more
Merely scrap pages for my friends thoughts
Their voices are loud and powerful on paper
But I hardly spare the time to listen


**Imagery created by all means
But never correctly interpreted

Writer's blocked, nose,
Mind's half stigmatic.
They say one day you'll resemble a rose,
I could never get past growing thorns.

My pen trails over memorable tales,
Of frail dead friends.
Days and days of nothing,
Starting to blend.

Slaving over thoughts,
Not thinking of words,
To reconcile,
Dead and dying nerves.

My mind is a swimming pool of fiction.
Drowning just happens to be my latest addiction.

The affiliation with gangs keeps the *** shops in business after hours
The prostitutes sell their souls and bodies to make ends meet
But what does 'making an honest living' even mean?
When the police can't even keep the streets we call home, clean?
When the government can't keep crime at bay,
And show these forgotten souls a different pathway?
But can still look forward to a pay rise every second day.

Déjà vu of a man walking his dog home after the transaction is complete.
The drugs are in his hand and his dog is on a leash.
The man doesn't have dark skin so police let him walk in peace.

The moon is high,
Casting a shadow,
Over the kids in the streets.
Higher and brighter than the moon could ever be,
They stay out late,
So they can afford to sleep.

The world was theirs if they had a can and clean walls,
To express the lost art called freedom of speech,
But if they didn't,
Then who's world was it?
Probably yours.

The stumbling ******,
Caught fumbling his car keys,
Is put behind bars,
Before he reaches his car.

After further investigation,
He was searching for his insulin.
Oh well,
Six months imprisonment.

If he does't retaliate he'll get off on probation,
But if he has a fit from not getting his medication,
We'll say he attacked us.
Beat him to death,
And get awarded community protection,
Medals.

When the rain cleans the leaves, from the classroom awning
I walk to the hospital carpark, yawning.
Treading over makeshift graves for dead leaves,
I think to myself 'They've left home, they've left the trees.'
Sarcastically wondering why I can *** a smoke from cancer patients in mouring.
Constantly reading the same signs,
'No Parking'
'No Smoking'
'No Loitering
But I know I've been here far too long,
When the shattered, sick and weak tell me to move along.

A little whisky can go a long way
By yourself on a lonely sunday
While all your friends are seeing one another
Doing the same thing that i'm doing, but together

A little whiskey can go the wrong way
When you've had too much
Your mouth begins to burn
Then nothing, it's numb

Along with the rest of your body
Your minds at work,
But it's ready to resign
Is this by coincidence or by design?

It's going to be a long night
If I can't refrain
From fighting with myself
But what does it matter?
I have nothing to lose, nothing to gain

I'm trapped in my mind
With a bottle jammed down my throat
Finding it hard to breath
And wondering why?

We ditched class,
To go the park down the road,
We followed toe to toe,
Shadow to shadow.

To forget our troubles,
To forget our woas,
To forget education,
To forget our sorrows.

You probably think this is about a girl,
Though,
No.
I'm referring to my closest companion,
My alter-ego.

Sirens calling in the morning ,
As I sit at the campus across from my school,
Smoking.

Are these sirens coming to take me to a better hell?

The school bell rings not long after,
Soon to be trapped in a prison of forced laughter.
Engulfed in the musky scent of cigarette smoke.
To teachers, I must be a joke.

Self inflicted sickness is slowly killing me.
Not any quicker than the chance a teacher has,
To ******* mock me.

New gold Casio watch,
Loosely hangs from my wrist.
It hits the bottle harder than I do,
Against my best wish.

Swish of whisky down my throat.
I've never been one to boast,
About newly bought possesions.
But this watch,
This gold Casio watch is the exception.

My life,
These times,
The epitome,
Of a downwards trajectory.

My existence is but a career,
I wish to resign,
So consider,
Every crooked letter of this poem
As one step closer to my resignation letter.

Recognise this note,
As my termination,
Of a short life,
Of poorly attempted dedication.

Working this life,
For minimum wage,
With out a break,
Except a broken sense of direction,
Displayed.

Life is merely a career
And I wish to swerve,
I wish to veer,
I wish for my torn family,
To not shed a tear.

The reflection that peers back at me,
In my jo-black coffee,
Is taunting and eerie.

With every sip my face ripples and grows old.
The steam that was my youth is no more,
I have grown cold.
Like the remittence of the coffee that once was,
All that is left is grindings and sugar,
Undissolved.

To be drunk, regardless.
Coarse, as it runs down and grazes my throat.
The person who was staring back at me is gone,
And with every coffee that follows,
an unknown reflection, it will host.

Like the empty cup,
I have been rendered useless, by my own nihilistic judgement.

Early graves, paved by the lost and misguided
To whom do I owe the pleasure to, for being short sighted?
Your presence does not shake me like it used to,
Not since you've left my skin like a ******, faded tattoo.
Can I get by if my thoughts remain one-sided?
Or will I get by if I become more open-minded?

Crooked fingers grasp,
A nearing empty bottle in my left hand.
Your hand,
Loosely gripped in my right.
The cigarette that hangs from my cracked lips,
We'll follow into the night.

Seventeen years too old,
Left looking for cheap thrills.
Waiting for an early death to unfold,
Brought on by unprescripted,
Prescription pills.

It's cliche and *******,
But all I can write about is unsatisfactory coffee,
And harsh, stale, half-lit cigarettes.
My thoughts and hands are not insync,
Like when my own hands stopped me from drowing in the kitchen sink.

My heart beat rocks me back and forth
Like a old timer on a porch
with his dog and gun
Telling minorities to move along

A cloud of smoke exits my lungs
and my mouth opens,
Smoke no longer crowds my gums

If you stop breathing
You can hear the seconds tick past
You can hear the swishing of whiskey
In the old mans flask

And with every second of forever constant time
You can taste the age in every sip of wine

Do people people say
'Time heals all wounds'
To make them forget about
Their first world blues?

Or are they preaching it,
as a muse?
To grasp the concept of the news
No matter how false or true

Believe me, If i knew,
I wouldn't be lost
I wouldn't be left to assume

When I died
Face down in the night
The ambulance
Parked outside

My friends
Much older
Carried me
Over their shoulders

Pumped full
Of something
On the couch
I felt nothing

They thought
I died
That night

In a sea
Of red
Barely breathing
Strapped to a hospital bed

They called
My Father
And
I never told
My mother

They told
My sister
She could have
Lost her brother

Morphine
Took over
And I
Went under

I should have died
Alone that night

Scream my name from a moving car,
The most cowardice of greetings.
You slow down to shout
And drive off when near.
Exhaust down my throat
And me in your rear view mirror.

If I lived in a town where no one knew me,
I wouldn't have to question,
Why people persist to shout
Just to gain my attention.

At second glance,
I just missed my chance,
To talk to you,
A girl, I rarely encounter.

I grit my teeth,
And bite my cheeks,
As your car hugs a bend.

That's it, you're gone
Goodbye, so long,
My nervousness is at an end.

Just another girl forging the beat.
Led zeppelin on her tee shirt,  doc martins on her feet.

She walks with a stride
Then blames it on pride,  when really it's the tight leather that surrounds her feet.

Play her any two songs and she'll just nod along.
She'll be wearing a new band in a week.
Letting trends set,  before she takes a hold. Last week she liked her coffee hot, this week she likes it cold.
She went from liking guys with long hair to men who are bald.
And so on and so forth, now she's getting old.

Her youth waisted hiding behind a face painted with short lived fads.
'I'm a lesbian,  this is how I was born, this is who I am, dad.'

I want to die at an early age,
But i'm afraid,
My name wouldn't entertain readers of the obituary page.

I want to chew gum when I crave,
But I'm afraid,
Four years of braces would go to waste.

I want to quit smoking,
Not because I'm afraid of cancer,
I just don't want to be a slave.

I want to write my thoughts in a poetic way,
But I'm afraid,
Every stanza will go astray.

No fame or fun
When words are sung
Hardly Spring until it's sprung

These polite words are scared of heights
They fall back from my tongue
Down my throat
Into my blackened lungs

Only to remain unknown by you
But known too well by me

Until a shallow breath of air
Pushes them back up
And turns them into a gamble of rambles
Abrupt and corrupt.

My coffees burnt,
By now I should have learnt.
But something about a rooftop garden cafe that serves pie,
Intrigues both of my blood shot eyes.

The light on the table,
Isn't doing me any favours,
It casts a shadow over my note book.
Over crinkled pages.

But still I return,
To see your face.
And still I burn,
To savour new tastes.

Summon to mind when we were teens,
The nights we spend climbing to deserted roof tops,
The nights we spent exploring quaint coffee shops.
Just two teens, in our torn black jeans.

We would exchange thoughts of the future
And tales of self-inflicted torture.
One year age difference never meant anything to me.
That night, I told you i did not want to live past twenty-three.

Now you're twenty-two,
The thought of one year age difference
Makes a second and final appearance.

I wake up in the morning,
Put on my favorite shirt,
I walk to my bus stop,
I go to work.

My bus doesn't stop,
My chest starts to hurt,
I have another cigarette,
I'm late for work.

My boss fires me,
I call him a ****,
I douse my throat in liquor,
I start to smirk.

Night life fades to dead days
I looked at you and you didn't look the other way

You sat next to me by the bronze horse statue
In the heart of the city

On the seventeenth floor car park
Underneath the over head cranes

The sound of hollow trains
Screeched past then faded away
Like they had a better place to be

The company of a drink would have made the time fly
But alas, I was with out my flask
On this cool summer night

So high above the passersby
Telling each other poorly constructed truths
With a hint of carefully thought out lies

You creased your jeans
I rolled my sleeves
You dotted the I's
I crossed the T's

More than acquaintances
Less than friends
Popular amongst each other
Far from setting trends

Dear those who I held so dear,
I've been left behind like morals of a Christian gone queer.
Clearly caught between two things unclear,
I'm starting to realise my apologies are becoming less sincere.

A color can't define my mood.
But if it could, the color would be darker than blue.

My limbs have been fashioned from spare parts.
The key's been lost to my bronze locked heart.
These lungs of metal, these lungs of led
These locks of hair filled with dread

Plagued with faulty parts,
From heart to head,
Never showed how to love
Maybe i'll feel it when i'm dreaming in bed

The girl at the book store
With dark shoulder length hair
Fervent in the way she moved
And all I could do was stare

She approached me, dancing
'Can I help you look?'
'Sorry? Oh, I'm just glancing'
'Let me know if you need help finding a book'

She hung around,
No more than an aisle away
When I looked up,
Her body was in the way

'Do you stock Factotum?,
Then i'll be on my way'

Years of being **** on
Taken away in a day
The small things in life
All fell into place

A package came in the mail
I got a new tattoo
I booked a trip to Brisbane
I get to see you

The corner store didn't have
The cigarettes I wanted
I tried a brand they had
Kind of glad I got it

I made a new song
On my second hand guitar
It's not very good
But it's my favorite so far

I got the bus for a students fair
The café I went to was closed
They let me anyway
Why? I don't know

Now I'm sitting by a steady river
On the outskirsts of the city center
Just my perfect day and I
The wind blew past and didn't shiver
There's not a cloud in the sky