I told her about my pin badges -
It was that kind of intimacy.
She went away
and we talked every day,
But brought me back a fridge magnet.

Several years ago I became depressed
And fled from my independence
Into the seductive arms of my home
In the hope that it would cure me of my
Chronic feelings of discomfort, angst, and misery.
In my head, it was a sanctuary,
A place I could go to free my mind
And find warmth and comfort.
Nothing has changed in my head
And I had forgotten how much of a nomad
I actually was and that home is just a myth
We tell ourselves to make ourselves feel
Warm and fuzzy and not so desperately alone
And now I'm wondering why all I found here
Was perpetual headaches and continued heartache
With the added benefit of cake.

I've been a nomad oft to roam
For what seems like an endless time,
But meeting you, of all girls, here,
And strolling down Dun Laoghaire pier
Against the full moon's ghostly shine
Whilst French kissing and holding hands;
Debating life's endless demands -
You made me feel like I was home.

Pardon my French but -
That **** Parisian accent,
The mischievous smile,
The devilish sense of humour
And, my heart, she's fire
******* hell

Penning rhymes post-coitally
Always felt like it was supposed to be
But now there's something rather empty
About composing post-*******.

A lesbian nightmare is nothing
At all like a lesbian dream -
She had captured my heart
with her smile and eyes
But played for another team.

I'm, almost always, a hopeless romantic, and never a misogynist, but some girls are just *** personified - doused in an inevitable emptiness

You're so beautiful my head gets dizzy talking to you. And those words escaping my mouth just stumble. Over your. Eternal eyes. Where was I?

For months she made my heart beat faster, but the indifference I know she feels must be accepted, even at the cost of complete obliteration.

She drinks fine wine and oozes class - with eyes and a smile that melt my heart. Here's me, just oozing, with cider and tears for company...

On occasion, when one sees a man's front garden destroyed to make space for a new car, a nuclear holocaust seems quite an apt end for us all

When I am out enjoying life's remit,
And wander into some department store,
I find that I am often cruelly hit
With nauseous scents of which I must endure.

Aromas of the various perfumes
That famous folk oft peddle to the masses
Affect my asthma clogging up the rooms
Until I'm far away and then it passes.

But when a lovely lady passes by -
Perfume mixed with a human factor,
And the scent wafts, floating, past my eye
I have to carry on and play the actor.

For that sweet odour smacks me in the face -
Envelopes my nose and then my heart,
For first it seems to stop and then to race
As brain is tricked by nature's work of art.

My senses dwell on that sweet love's decree
That smell that leaves me in pure ecstasy.

It is the most wonderful gift to create worlds with your mind and hands - to create these surreal places where you can hide from your tears.

It started with a touch -
Nothing and everything special,
A gentle hand on the arm
As a sort of comforting reassurance
In a friendly-stranger-sort-of-way.
A way of saying everything is fine -
I'm talking to you because I want to
Not because I feel obliged to.
It was that simple gesture
That made me fall in love with you.
And there, senoras y senores,
Is your answer.
I fall in love too easily.
Poets fall in love too easily,
And each for different reasons -
All with a psychological deficiency,
Or maybe psychological necessity.
Mine, it becomes clear to me now,
Is the desperate desire to be held
In any meaningful way
For as long as possible.
And that acknowledgement
Brings forth logic and reason:
I know very few things about her
And always will.
She is a passing poet's love...
Just red hair and a sense of humour
Caught in a fortnight's daydream.

In a world that is a sea of seductive men and women amidst a sea of seductive beds amidst a seductive darkness we are all just stubbed toes.

I want to scream but the government doesn't care. They ignore the screams of the people. I write it down but it already feels like it's f...

She's the finest, perfectly sweet gelato that Italy has to offer, but even once you have tasted her you're still susceptible to brain freeze

Smoking is terrible for you - we all know that,
But there's nothing quite as **** as a cigarette
With its wafts of smoke curving sensuously up
Like a winding staircase to heaven.

Maybe it's that, that Bacall and Bogie dance
Of noir fog above a lit cigarette,
Or it could be the intimate way
The word "young" is carved out on your slab,

Or the intimate way that the smell lingers
On the clothes of loved ones long after
You're dead and buried.
Nothing makes a guy harder than rigour mortis.

The world is growing that little bit older, and everyone around you is blooming like flowers in spring and you are just stood there, rusting

I'm madly in love with words, but they can be as meaningful or as meaningless as you want them to be - like rain or blood. Maybe that's why.

We drink to 'guise our fraught depression -
A mask staging a good impression.

A drink and darkness cocktail vice,
And one that comes at quite a price:

I'm one who likes a beer or two
To take the edge off feeling blue.

She likes to douse her thoughts with cider
To fill the emptiness inside her.

When feeling down we'll have a stout
To help us force the demons out.

He takes his ale so he can feel
That different kind of numb appeal.

The girlfriends go for lots of wine
To help them say their feeling fine,

Or they sometimes call for ***** shots -
Or tequila shots, and often, lots.

The lads drink whiskey on the rocks
To knock the cotton off their socks.

While your poison always comes with lime
To prolong the certainty of time.

She takes gin with a dash of tonic
To try avoid being laconic.

You like to take your Coke with *** -
For glum is oft best paired with numb.

We start to settle down for an all-nighter
And dream that the noose grows a naggin tighter.

The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of Snap -
Because we're all too stupid to play chess.

"You know nuthin', Jon Snow!"
Now get your blood and **** out for H.B.O.
I don't care if you're a Stark,
I'm only watching for Emilia Clarke

I feel like Howard Beale screaming: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" There is a lengthy poem brewing inside me.

For over two years, every day, I've dreamt of dying. Historically, I've always hated change but I'd certainly consider killing for some now.

The most tragic thing about film is that it isn't real - just reels of regret at what the world could have been. Life with colour and heart.

"Don't let your imagination play tricks on you."
"I'm a writer, it's what I do."
"Surely sometimes it's handy?"
"It's normally just agony.."

When she doesn't have a voice, and she shies from the written word, you can only imagine the cruel ways she's tearing your heart in her head

Like a lot of "artists" I fall in love with someone about once a day. The ones it happens regularly with are the ones that are worth poetry.

Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
Does it hurt hiding your wings?
Girl, you must be an angel
Because you're a figment of my imagination

Fallin' in love is easy. The hard part is copin' with it when it ain't reciprocated. 'Cuz you're lookin' for a light that simply ain't there

She was too beautiful a flame to not be drawn in.
I flutter, ever closer, wanting nothing but to feel her warmth without singeing my wings.

I finally send the message and now I wait.
Every second is agony and I could drown in the silence,
Just like I drown in your eyes every time

Some people have a phobia of clowns, but I just have a fear that one specific clown with a beautiful smile doesn't feel how I feel about her

Apparently the world is my burrito
Or so the philosopher said.
While I'm eating my daily bread
I relive decisions I'd like to veto,
And weep for the girl who'll never dance to my tune,
And pray that life, and my luck, will change some time soon.

I lack courage to tell you how I feel (that, I know, when you're in my arms) but as I am awfully sick now I bet you make a mean chicken soup

You fear she won't feel the same way and then you dispel all doubt as the self-realisation, you simply aren't good enough for her, manifests

I need to change the way I live, for I am desperately unhappy. But change is something I fear more than anything. What if it doesn't fix me?

Regularly I'm a master of oration,
But when it comes to
Deep feelings of affection
can't I just bury my head
and hand her a poem instead?

Maybe it's because I've been lonely for a while or maybe it's a weird side-effect of depression, or maybe I'm delirious from this course but

Poets are the creatures who can't love themselves
So they try and love everyone else instead.
The tragedy is that it always ends badly...

The dry-stale phlegm of cider on those morning-afternoons,
The pounding of your head aside the clangs of coffee spoons,
The dreary, heavy weariness that's clogging up your eyes,
The alcoholic drinks them all until the day he dies.

They used to burn, stretch, or cut you, but now, they just get a girl with a beautiful smile and soul to not use Facebook very often. Agony.

Do I fall in love so easily because I enjoy writing poetry, or does a poet within my soul soar to the surface with the ease in which I fall?

Take a bow you white knights
As you blast the Academy's critics
With silent "N"'s and thinly veiled white hoods
Check your ******* privilege

Yah. Aw jeez. Blood and snow, I tell ya, scary stuff.
That Fargo's mighty rough,
And I'm guessing that's your accomplice in the wood chipper

We put our teachers on a pedestal,
Until we age, and mature, and stifle.

They wear cardigans and reading glasses,
While teaching spelling and grammar classes,

And have an impeccably insufferable wit -
A world of puns amidst the world's dark grit.

So who would think that life's next station
Would involve discussing punctuation?

And passing that, believe it far -
Sharing drinks in a grotty bar?!

But here I am amidst my friends
(Despite not knowing them at ends)

Discussing the art of lesbianism,
Islam, clowns, and feminism,

How men are pigs and life is ****,
And how innuendoes always fit,

How therapy would be depressing
(Despite depression being the issue pressing.)

Oh, how girls can dance whilst sitting down
With words, and lips, and laughs and frowns,

With obscene gestures with their hands,
And tongues and drinks, and stories grand,

By uplifting life to a higher beat -
A rhythm that can trap your feet
And click your fingers.

English language teachers don't
Dance how I imagined them to...
And yet, I'm sad when the music's through
And my memory of them
And that simple, yet brutally important night
Lingers...

I firmly believe everyone does
Something for a need,
A desire of completion,
Of fulfilment.
I write, hoping the words
Will envelope the hole.

So I spill, I bleed, I fuss,
Pouring out feelings of greed,
Of hurt and frustration,
Of love, contentment -
Plug the emptiness with words
To fix my damaged soul.

When floating on your back, all is well.
It is only when you are drowning that you start to
notice how many of your friends also can't swim.

It's when you're teetering on the edge of insomnia,
When every pound of your being is exhausted
To the point where you're seeing colours,
Without recognising objects, people,
Kind souls, kindred spirits,
That you soar to the most wonderful place
Of creativity and life-fulfilling happiness,
Or at least if not happiness, then
Contentment or satisfaction.

But, like insomnia, that teetering
Is the fundamental factor -
Because that same day,
In that same continuation of euphoria,
You can be waiting for a train,
And whilst you teeter at the edge
Of the cold station platform walkway,
You can plummet to the depths of depression,
Return to those comforting, suffocating clutches,
And that cry for help is stifled
By the thundering railway carriages,
And all that is left is a ****** stain -
Stained in your mind,
The knowledge that you'll never escape those clutches,
That grasp for the underneaths of railway carriages
Or the cordless bungee of tall buildings,
The comfort of the warm ground below,
And, naturally, a poem,
Flittering away in the gust of the train
Storming through the station
Like your ever-dwindling happiness...