according to King Nothing,
father’s day phone calls
are restricted…
i live in a world where
foot-rest make better supports,
and broken beer bottles fight
the most perverts away.
i’ve been homeless
three times, and "abortion"
was crudely drawn
on my forehead.
my love for
Frankenstein’s monster
knows no bounds.

the whole apartment
was gutted of its copper
two years after that.
the ‘first woman on Mars’
dream he had was sold for scrap;
threw out half of my books,
called me the reject.
a childhood tomb, raided…
the Queen was pleased.
she doesn’t believe in aliens,
and most stars are dead
according to light-years anyway.

Take your ******* fedora off you are not a Jones.
Kid, leave the captain's hat on, gods know you're going it need now,
those waves are knee dip and those rip-tides drag:
lay flat across the hull in dreams of concrete and something a little more stable
until someone takes over,
guides you back home to the lit terraces,
glowing apartment advent calendar,
lighthouses of cushions
and the sofa just how you left it.

Within simple pleasures sleep intricate tasks,
curled up dogs at the foot of fires:
someone please tell them their Dalmatian died whilst they were on holiday,
he was
below
the radiator in the spare playground.
Am I a weak man? it asked the black marble glare of the corner skirting board joint.
Am I meant to feel like that gasp after a slow kiss? that come back for more
               Godfather Part Two again,
               Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,
               rumble string of motorcycle parade through tarmac and your core
               sat crossed legged on any first school floor.
AM morning calls to vets,
stumble for words and
over the abbreviations,
the IAADP have got your back in case Gandalf ever witnesses your blinding,
forever led forth by a lead and little more faith in something worth confessing over.

Love is a tango
it's too hot to handle,
someone sang in a spontaneous smoking area
spawned from a spare terracotta *** and someone asking for help once,
so nervous their knees quaked,
slow down reigns not effective once their BPM was past 200 whatever
Jeremy Clarkson was screaming that week,
but their eyes,
they were knocking down walls with toffee hammers,
scattering chunks under werthy wooden horses,
rubbing sweet stud wall shards into coarse prison gravel with waiting soles,
whistling so not to give the game away.
Escape now back to a Lowell of an old park bench,
dig through **** and pipelines of earth for
canons of authors stacked high in front of you,
you awfully well bled individual,
the wounds from those words about to heal
all the slips you fell into
dragged yourself out of,
clawed back your fedora through more doorways than you can
remember: it always gets you into trouble.
Kid, one thing at once.

For a long time now, i’ve felt like i’ve been waiting.
To be let in on the secret,
To get it
To know what it seems everyone else already does. 
I’ve been walking towards the gap in the bridge with confidence that I will know how to get over it by the time I arrive
because I have seen everyone else on the other side.
but the closer I get
the more I feel as though i’m going to fall right through.

Sometimes I close my eyes while I walk. 
when I close them I can feel the entire daunting bridge disappear 
but as soon as I open them, it’s waiting in front of me 
and I will never know if it’s really gone when they are closed. 

But opening them to see where i’m headed makes me wonder
is someone responsible for telling me how to cross?
does everyone cross the same way, or am I being tested?
what happens when I fall through, 
for I surely can’t make it over.
why is it, that I feel such a strong need to get to the other side.
what do I expect to find at the end?

Mostly when I am afraid of crossing,
I consider that all the others who have already crossed, do not seem different from me.
if it was truly so difficult, they couldn’t have thought it so easy, right?
But every now and then, the ones who fell through, crawl from the shadows and creep close enough to whisper to me.
My body aches to run.
To turn around and go back where I came from
To never think about the bridge again
To convince myself that this is simply a vivid nightmare.

But it isn’t.
and if I know anything at all,
it is that one day, I will have to cross,
and that I can spend an eternity at the edge waiting for someone to tell me the answer.
to tell me how I can get over the gap in the bridge 
and to tell me what’s waiting on the other side.
to tell me what happens if I slip and fall 
or if I decide not to cross at all.
but if I do decide to wait,
eventually I will understand that no one is coming.
no one ever will.
and maybe it’s because no one else knows the secret either,
maybe even the ones on the other side are waiting for someone else.
and maybe, all along, there wasn’t anything to tell at all.

Spinning on a top of color;
The balloons are inflated in the desk,
and the rainbow streamers gave me a paper-cut.
I thought the red make-up was blood.

Running and jumping up and down
on a box of inflatable candy,
that turned my lips purple and blue.
My dad thought it was lipstick,

so he gave me an old ***** magazine.

When the animals morphed into balloons,
I petted them with grass stuck to my hand.
And POP! – goes the poodle,
in the parking lot next to the splattered juice cups.

My friend cried and wiped his eyes with icing
as a clown grinned, showing his orange teeth
that was the same color of the cheese-curls in the bowl,

that the three year-old just poured into the kiddy pool.

I got lost in the ball-pit.
I remember every color, then nothing;
Gray had became the fun
to a depressed clown wishing he’d got the hang

of life’s circus.

Daddy, I have grown up and
Daddy, I have become a woman and
Daddy, I do not need you anymore
I have learned to live without your love
to starve myself from your embraces
because I got tired of expecting something
that wouldn't ever come
Exhaustion is a beast
it eats up all your reserves
and greedily asks for more, but
Daddy, my soul has no more to give
I have nothing left to feed it
mo more energy to devote to waiting anymore
I am broke
and you never came
And I wish I could have packed up
and moved on, but
Daddy, I never heard you say it,
I am proud of you
Five single syllable words
Oh, I heard them plenty
when I had gotten an a
or when I won a medal
Or when I did
something so spectacular
that I was lucky to wear your last name
but, Daddy, what about all the other days
you were only proud of me
when I made you look good
so what about my car crash
what about my fractured fingers
what about the times I broke my heart
So they weren't my crowning glory
and they definitely weren't my favorite memories
but they're still mine, and they still define me
And I don't know, can you be ok with that?
Can you look at me, busted head and all
and say, I am proud of you?
Daddy, I have grown up and
Daddy, I have become a woman and
Daddy, I do not need you anymore but
Daddy, that doesn't mean I want you to leave

Once there was a boy
Who became a cog when he entered the big machine
When he started to slow down and creak
They medicated him to keep him going
When he graduated with a Bachelor's he became a gear
And when he began to crack from the pressure
He considering protesting, but didn't because that's what it meant to be an adult
So when he finally snapped, people were surprised they hadn't seen the signs
And he spent three months in a white room
When he was released he sat on a stoop silently
No one knew whether he ever left it or slept or ate
Because no one noticed him
Except film students who would use him in time elapsing shots
So when he stepped in front of a bus one day
Only Jesus was there to stop him
And then he died anyway.

i don’t want to feel
like poetry
is a chore, like i’m
choosing to pour my thoughts
out of my head
instead of doing it
because i can’t
stop it from spilling.

can a person really
write a poem about
indifference? can i write
about how i’m sad
at my apathy?

i guess i’d give the gift away
for a life
of active living.

i think moving on
of any sort
means adding
potential moments, lost,
to the list of things you grieve
just every once
in a quiet while.