I am surviving only
Through midnight dishwashing
Submerging my amygdala in soapy water
Trying to scrub it clean
Listening to los campesinos! so I don’t have to hear the water rush
Or taste the bubbles on my tongue-
My life only makes sense with a soundtrack.
But in all my favourite albums
There’s a skip on the record
I must have dropped a stitch somewhere in the fabric of my self-determination
In the dam that would have stopped this flood of bitter glitter tears
Maybe there’s something missing in the lining of my soul
Because I’m happy.
I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
And yet there’s still the catch in my throat
The lingering sense of not seeming like myself
I’m shadowboxing my demons that are smaller than the mountains I’ve conquered
And yet
How do you **** a thing unseen?
A thing that creeps on the edges of my vision
In every blind spot
I don’t know what I’m fighting so I don’t know how to fix it.

I am surviving only
Through midnight dishwashing
And one way phone-call wishes to a god of self delusion
And doubt
Self-sabotaging from the inside out
Relying on chip shop philosophy to get from one minute to the next
And yet I don’t remember what you told me.

It occurs to me
That maybe my demons are dead
And perhaps I am fighting
Myself.
The parts that don’t live up to the lies I tell to sell my soul to every passing stranger.

You see, I know
That there’s nothing to cry about;
Or that there’s everything to cry about
But it’s not the stuff I’d write poems about
War and famine and plague oh disease
This festering something that’s inside of me.

Cut out a pound of rotting flesh to pay my debt to art
Cut out every dead piece of me, cut out my failing heart.

There are ruins of hearts hiding
in the secluded places
that refuse to vanish into
this decaying world.
Stagnancy is not an accurate word
to describe
the beauty of these corners,
where the caresses of sunlight
and wind are trapped forever.
There are places
that hold the touch of the ones
the world has lost.
Though I am yet
to fully realize
the depth and sorrow of
this word.
But here it doesn’t matter.
Here the summer and the winter are same.
Here the cry trapped in my veins
can sings along with voices from far way time.
Here my silence
can be music.
Here I can sit and hope
for our love to last forevers.
And know that there are certain love
that can never cease to exist,
but only forgotten.

In the mustard yellow smoke that floats
along the streets there drifts
a burned and greasy smell through shot-out
windows from frying pans ignored
while on the phone to a neighbor.
I long to turn the burner off,
but it smells like home to them.

By ****** puddles warm with sewer gas
I pass with too much grace—and weave a
dainty two-step down gaping alleyways
beneath clothes
strung out like a lifeline,
sifting murky sunlight
through threadbare cotton.
Old and ugly patterns dangle
from a nylon cord--
cut it and they fall
against the wall and are ***** again.
I shove my hands in my pockets and walk on.

In this town, the tower blocks stand above the clouds,
the street lights illuminate the granite pathways,
as you walk, you will kick a package of cigarettes
depicting a very sick woman -
they sell them in the corner shops.

In this town, I have seen the worst mind’s of my generation,
flourish in the un-fertile fields like
flowers that grow on a soil
of cigarette ends and syringes
chewing gum, coffee cups, oranges.
Condoms, crisp packets, needles,
Rare paintings that hang on the walls of the mind,
torn down by the authorities,
painted over with white.
Lost in a sea of machinery.
And bright light’s.

In this town, in the gutter of the pavements,
vile creatures will reach out there shaking hands.
Varicose veins, blackened nails, drooling mouths,
and beady wanting eyes begging you for pennies.
Dismissed by city boys suicidal from the stress.
Some look a mess, some feel a mess.
It’s all the same, the endless city strain.
In this town, when your eyes look up,
you see the birds flying in pain,
from these ******* factories filling
the air with smoke killing
the natural ecstasy of the sky,
and they fall from the sky and die.

And they wonder why kids
reach for the knives and the guns.
Wonder why they cut their arms.
Smoke and smoke and smoke to feel calm.
Wonder why they hang from structures.
Wonder why they paint obscenities on the walls of schools.
Wonder why they drawl
at the site of death
when it follows them everywhere
from podium’s in the wealthy churches.
To the cemetery gates,
To the news broadcasts.

Wonder why they disappear for weekends
Somewhere lost in a city of escapism
Wonder why they howl fowl verse
Strums on guitars,
hit at the drums.
Wonder why they linger in dark alleys. And dead ends.
With money, clutched by shaking fingers, seeking amends.

In this town, you wake to the marching boots;
The sound of the army that walk the city streets
In a uniform of suits, and guns in the shape of suitcases
All with similar faces, similar hats,
You will wake to the scream of the birds & the cats,
The scream of babies
The scream of love
They scream of could be, should be, would be and maybe’s
The hope.



Suffocated by the marching armies
By the dictators
that are the tower’s, the factories, the school’s
  that stand above the clouds,
   in these towns.

I used to be a razor blade
So bright and sharp from care
I cut and cut and cut and cut,
Steel gleaming oh so fair

I used to be a razor blade
But now my whit is rust
My passions dulled, my metal cooled
And I am afraid

Hands fidget under the cover of darkness.
They reach and burn, so willing
to tear each other apart
their fingertips brand their surface
into the earth
to revel in the blood pooling beneath them.
I can feel the touch of Paranoia
on the back of my neck,
can hear her whispering a melody
of broken bones and twisted branches
pulling at my skin. The bitter bile
seeps from her mouth when she kisses me,
promising that the sweet relief of loss
will never come back to retrieve
what it so eagerly forgot.
There's a fire burning, eating her eyes,
dissolving the tip of her rotting tongue as she sings
and lingering, dancing, on her skin.
Her hands could be music or taste
dwelling softly on your lips
but they are the thunder of broken
chords, the discord of dying
wolves howling the same song, decade
after decade, to moonless skies. Hatred blooms
in dripping clusters beneath her feet,
biting my heels and twisting
until they find my spine and pull, pull it
into the depths of the earth, replacing it
with acidic vines which poison
the flesh of my body and leave me,
blind, waiting for the paralysis of death.

I've seen to it to be left about,
a coursing, hushing let down.
To prove to you I leave rot out,
I see what's best about my withering brown.

A coursing, hushing let down-
take this as seriously as I say I do.
I see what's best about my withering brown.
My equinox benefits only you.

Take this as seriously as I say I do.
I'll come back and fall to fruit,
(my equinox only benefits you)
when warm tides cause seeds to root.

I'll come back and fall to fruit,
so see it to be left about.
A warm tide caused seeds to root,
I prove it and leave the rot out.