Eyes split like a cat hair,
The oncoming cessation of light ,
A suffocating debt,
Not in gold, bodies quartered or the matted hair of children,
No longer may we prostrate ourselves,
Nature is brandishing its power,
A vengeful god with its teeth bared,
A vicious landlord deaf to the bleating of its thankless tenants,
Centipedes, snakes and flora do not cower,
The burden of knowing is ours,

Abandoned children with eyes cut out, lungs stained and bodies burned,
Our illusory thirst and desires have cut our throats,
Our backs broken,
A demise that was our own doing,
We consumed and did not create,
Accumulated but did not come together.

I speak to you through older people,
suffocating me,
Reassuring to know that
This will never amount to
Bruised and quickly passing,
Is the worst of it
Autumn now and repeating.

His mother called him Jeroen, his friends called him buckwild, but he’d forgotten why. He rode a 3-wheel bicycle backwards in the vicinity of the train station, his glasses steamed up at times. He didn’t often know why he did things, they just seemed to happen; ****** upon him by an invisible hand or colliding with him as a result of his own forward momentum. He liked to binge eat chocolate until his stomach felt like it was going to take off like a NASA space rocket. He liked to watch NASA space rockets take off on youtube, while fidgeting with chocolate wrappers. His bedroom smelled of tomato sauce and lynx body spray; he liked it that way.
Sometimes bad things happened to Jeroen which him which made him sad, sometimes good things happened to Jeroen which made him happy and then sad again. A suitable metaphor for his emotional state could be a see-saw or a shuggy boat. Although really his emotions were much more complex and fraught than that. Jeroen was Jeroen and buckwild after all.
One day, after he’d been to the supermarket to get a baguette, a horrible meat-based spread for the baguette and a can of a horrible fizzy drink; Jeroen was cycling backwards quickly. Jeroen forgot to press his break and went flying into a pizza food truck. Jeroen was unharmed.

Your heaped whispers are soundtracking my hobbling days. Not all of your words landed so softly.

A reddened messianic figure babbling inwardly,

A drunken guardian shining a petulant light

Doomed gymnasts performing blasé sequences in wainscoted rooms of unverifiable vintage

Half gassed pigeons circumnavigating the vestibules of burning trains,

A white noise amphitheater in the kingdom of heaven, an audience of oxygen impoverished capitulates heir thoracic ducts screaming,

Delirious children stalking sickened cats, Their feline ***** dripping from their mouths

My skull gassed and pliant Government of the absolved

They eloped behind the door. Her baggage colliding with his baggage. There was an eerie atmosphere, but they tried to concentrate on their bodies. By doing so, the eerie atmosphere seemed less imposing. Their eyes were red-rimmed. They were heaped full of caffeine and gluten-heavy sandwiches, it was surprising that they felt amorous really. Although there was nobody else present, it felt like there was a presence in the room. This could have been the hum from the insect killing machine located next to the copier. When their bodies met each other it gave off the sound off a shotgun going off, kind of, gentler than that really. Neither of them climaxed, separating without Ill will. They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing regret via the direct messaging app on a well known famous social media app. Much to the amusement of the CIA operative spying on their company.

overt discriminations
polaroid dickensian remonstrations
elevated poo pooing of forecasted demonstrations
coalescing in a whitley bay bus stop
be sick on my shoes
angel of the overcast sky

I will fornicate with bureaucrats and syncophants
call me beligerent in an acid rain downpour
belicose victim of the jackbooted thuggery
tattooed forearms,
a conduit for satanic grunting
I hear volcanos erupting, sick sick

Debonair and not caring
uppercutting the earth until it enters a feotal position
razorblade wit and ******* upon a darras hall balcony
I would like to inhibit a physical space paramount and facile
I smell tomato ketchup and whipped flesh
unequal pleasures and sequinned ******
boot me into a grave state of mind

If you could imagine hums and whirs and beeps. Her eyes bulging, not being able to discern what she was really all about. Silks, precious fabrics,  high-end cosmetics. Neutral, objective, unfathomable. She seemed to fill the space like a gas with a pleasant odour.  'So you have a degree but want to work as a checkout assistant, how come?'. Uneasy, light attacking and her eyes looking at my face. I look down, shuffle in my chair and gulp. 'Well, it is a company with an excellent reputation and in all honesty I have bills to pay''. She smiles, but without conviction. ''Have you tried to find jobs more relevant to your degree?''.  I pick up the scissors and cut a sizable lump of flesh out of my forearm. I pick up the plastic chair and throw it as hard as I can against the interview room window. She flees the room, afraid, nervous and easy to read.

You should have seen it,
Quite the spectacle,
So it was,
Insides spilling out on national TV,
Schoolkids watched in fluo vests
Their eyes like spot lights.
The stink was abhorrent,
And seemed to chase the people around and came back in their dreams,
But that was the least of their worries,
It was cut into slices and transported to Gent,
Some say pieces of it were sold on the black market,
You don't get many whales in these parts.

There was nothing that made him want to leave the house. The world seemed hostile and uninviting; waiting to trap and mock him. A life of action seemed to evade him, no matter how much he willed it into existence. There was nothing but his own mental landscape and how it quickly it turned on him. Unfavourable memories returning like they were on loop. He slept as much as possible; awakening only to eat or to chat with people he barely really knew on the internet. When he wasn't in his bed he could smell his bed inviting but sour. He distrusted those close to him, waiting for them to prove his paranoia to be true. He spent days pondering things of zero consequence and comparing himself to inconsequential  people.

If he bothered to wash at all; he sat in the bath looking at his kneecaps, trying to produce a thought that would change his circumstances. Transcendence and an existence outside of his own body and mind didn't seem possible. He was suffocated by the vividity of his own imagination coupled with his inability to overcome his own anxieties. When they came, social invitations were quickly turned down; the act of interaction and fostering relationships seemed superhuman. The task of leaving the house seemed herculean. He neglected his talents and watered his insecurities like plants until they were deeply weeded in his psyche. He ate infrequently; destroying a once taut and capable physique.

It started off innocuously enough. An argument over the correct length and shape that parsnips should be cut. Differences in vision over simple practical matters can quickly expose much deeper fissures. She felt compelled and her brain quickly went into overdrive; feeling consumed by a clarity of vision that she had rarely had since childhood. She opened an incognito window on her web browser and started looking at flights to Irkutsk, Florence and newcastle upon Tyne. All places she had a fleeting connection to. She updated her CV, and checked her eyes with a pocket mirror, noting that her eyelids had a slight purple tinge. She went downstairs to get a glass of water and saw that she was alone.

Sometimes I feel like a dust-mite,
time will badly use me independent of my courage,
all of the moths I have ever seen are shadows contained,
A fine memorial for the nothing man,
layers upon layers if those layers could speak
caught tongues, blabbered words,
there is no way to be certain of anything but the weeping,
a collective of the unseen
I would like to cover everything in pre-emptive gauze,
prevention is the best cure for ruin,
shrouding my words in illusion.

Have you considered,
It may never happen,
But then again it might.

He spent numerous days in his pyjamas. If he recalled correctly and sometimes he didn't, he hadn't left the house; at least physically for 3 days. His skin seemed to weigh on him like a polyester suit. He had a constant itch and feeling of being enclosed, obsessing over people had never really known or liked. They seemed to live so effortlessly. Their social media posts and photographs projecting a warmth and a coherence that he felt unable to match in his own life. He wanted to leave no trace, live a blameless existence. He had many plans but no intention to execute any of them. She lived a noisy life in the attic above him. His day was filled with her footsteps and musical choices. He viewed her positively although their contact was functional in a practical sense; upbeat energy in otherwise gray days. It was a surprise when she invited him for a cup of tea. "It is weird that we live under the same roof but are otherwise strangers". There was no time to be surprised as the car skidded out of control and hit them, he tried briefly to grasp her hand, one last reflex. Although he lived an extensive life in his thoughts: he didn't have time to think a final thought.

Laughter is not always the answer, he thought, as he rearranged his papers in-front of him as though possessed by a spirit devoted to the production of electric shock like anxiety. The word ''So....'' dripped off his lips as the first gunshot cracked into his temple, seemingly propelled by the screams of the audience.

A carpet of hands,
heart beats marking time indelibly,
A sneering man with a jutted out lip,
A suit too-tight at his breast
proclaimed everything kind of Corbusian,
then sped away in a three wheeled robin reliant
his elbow leaning a quarter of an inch out of the window
nobody really cared
he was not entirely audible in his proclamations,
and people had largely lost interest in 20th century architects,
the sky was an ocean of jade antique Chinese vases,
or at seemed to be,
people had stopped being very sure of anything,
but they did eat kelp noodles,
and encouraged each other to become exorbitantly physically fit,
analyzing each other enviously,
like roman senators plotting each others demise.

Sickened sky favouring,
eyes trembling and fixated on unending facades
Mammalian dancers bled out
bound limbs and high pitched spirits,
heated up and cauterwaling,
the fundaments detached,
re-imagined by minds unhinged,

Moments ash-the sun is giving up-cowardly like flailing arms--it is a monster dropped----slotted together bodies, corseted and franked----undulating beams of fury---an old man groans in a polo shirt, wait it is the seer----he passes by -full of quintessential humanity---he was the heir to the steam engine---alloted time emitting smoke----hands massaging ducts----frankly nothing will stop---the onward march of nonsense---blue eyed and confused---angels caked in syrup

My granda snored as loud as a shotgun going off
in a silent film,
called us tossers,
cooked us food,
picked us up from school,
was a source of joy,
set us right,
but never gave us thick ears,
in his finals weeks,
he took the time,
to tell me all he knew.

foaming winter/hollowed out/shackled trees/brooding mother/licks tears/blood strapped/earth limb/dissuaded path/glow tentacle/downed civility/shed bonds/cascading days/lion's sight/mayhem night/echoed end.

The sun is a dreadful satsuma,
A man who looks like an Algernon,
with tomato sauce stains on his offwhite vest paces nervously,
Lives discarded,
As books turn to ash, word lost into the unrelenting forward waddle,
Memory palaces unmoored and imploding,
The sky pregnant with skin and consumer goods,
As sheet metal drops and curls like polyester scarves,
The hideous snake like hisses of sirens,
Eyes darkening like a newborns.

I lay very still in the bath,
here, there and in incidental celestial light,
trying to inspire a revolution without opening my mouth
if you just wait long enough
the loose ends that are appearing like locusts
will tie themselves up,
Silk and completeness,

Passing in valleys and sunrises,
Setting and withering away,
There is no monotony housed in
The skin of naked daydreaming,
Some things are never quite finished,
Dancing in the full view of the congregation,
Asking to run it back,
Asking the same questions,
Going somewhere else but returning.

****** are calcifying words,
the metronomic marching,
of the new world,
in utero,
Static will bring to bear,
the new frequencies
metallic angels
choking out their celestial messages,
ears deaf to the
shifting of the blood current,
gabbling gods computing
as the future is weaning.

A piece of cake with a waxy fatty layer,
our eternal laughter,
my bald head then frizzy haired,
endless possibility,
tea as weak as can be fathomed.
following a man with a narrow gait and greasy hair down the road,
beautiful unintentional times.

Bus number 1,

Was here now it is gone

Eyeliner-ed lads and young berserkers,

value centre decadence,

warwick terrace is decaying

I am cidered up and paranoid

my hands twitch omniously,

I will never ‘’be’

Dehsi bar and grill meals

Bathtub ruminations

rosy cheeks and wounded ego

watching ritualised ****** disguised as music

too much too think

confined to my mind

i persecute myself unrelentingly

I resent everything,

leaving the house to grocery shop,

I let my youthful physique dissolve

I no longer recognise myself

My hair grown

Bleak propositions

I begin to assemble empty defences

Your marble skin
stone bearing,
unbound from time hidden,
is the milk of derision,
your lion's teeth,
strewn in your caviar black mouth,
unravel the threaded sun.

My fingers do not know this new body,
passed through a transformation,
as quickly as the noon obscures itself,
our words seem to more deeply take root,
there is something humming and brewing,
beautiful as warm déjà vu,
let it be born of fury and love,
the king of our bridges,
the wriggling feature star of our thoughts,
let him grow in majesty and fervour,
rule over our hearts like a peaceful tyrant.

It sticks to me like heat and syrup,
Having no answers and understanding,
Whoever you are I love it,
We will be the same and different
Matched and divergent.

The roaring passage of shadows
concrete intrusions and sunrise deterred,
here where the stars are obliterated
and the sky is no longer spoken of,
People shriek and whisper,
night comes like a monolith
Sickness is yellow and blue,
metal is like loneliness,
everywhere and cold,
trees grow wherever the eyes goes,
roaming the dead,
a stiffness to the spirit,
that cannot be resolved,

I have lain here for seven eternities,
Waiting to begin a journey
False starting numerously
Aching joints and mouth as dry as sellotape,
Ignorant of all calls to justice
Clarions unsettling my sleep,
Everything an interlude,
With mottled hands I pray to a statue of a blues singer on my mantelpiece,
Yet again I awake to the sun setting,
Basketball shoes almost comically big on my finger-toed feet.