Don’t get old
The old boy said

As he struggled past me
With his walking stick

Don’t get old
He repeated

As though by telling me
I would be able to avoid it

There’s a 25 year old
Fighter pilot inside me, he said

Then he was on his way
Hunched over
Shuffling along
With his walking stick

In my dream

They stole

My soul

When I awoke

I was broken

And alone

John died last night, my wife reported

Sadness:

Mostly for him

Some for me

As I’m reminded

My days are numbered

He was a good old guy:

Led a full life

Survived war

And marriage

I wondered what he thought at the end

Knowing his time had come

What an inglorious finale?

Or

Just

Relief to finally be departing

This absurd life?    

I’d invited him to visit my studio

The last time we spoke

He said he would like that …...

A single kiss
Engraved
To memory

The weight
Of guilt
Immense and unfading

Forever ashamed
For one act
Of betrayal

I am in the valley of despair

My ship is sinking

The Gods mock me

My dreams are dying

Even my imaginary friends hate me

Drowning in the Sea of Freedom.

A citizen of nowhere to go

And nothing to do.

Hanging out with Bukowski

And drinking tea.

I should spend more days like this.

When I heard you were dead
I was sorry
Sorry for your wasted life

I’d see you in your regular haunts
An inconvenient problem
For the world to ignore

Asking, ‘Can you spare some change?’
Change for drink and drugs
Or change the world?

Perhaps if I knew your story
I would understand
Perhaps not

I kissed her:
Forbidden fruit.

Sweet
But the memory is sour.

Now
I am alone.

Ashamed
For betraying you.

The pain
My punishment.

I wish I had spent more

Time with them.

That’s what people say

When they are gone.

But whilst they are still here,

For one reason or another

It’s too difficult.

One day

I will probably say

I wish I had spent more

Time with them.

In my dream

They stole

My Sole.

When I awoke

I had blisters.

30 December:

Diagnosis cancer

February Surgery

The longest day …..

Home

Recovery and Love

Chemo….

It's a slog….

But you are legend

Life re-set

My beautiful wife

My favourite person

A second chance

**

I asked her if she hated me.

It was a safer question

Than asking if she still loved me

Hey Buk    

I just wanted to say...

Thank you

You make me laugh

You make me think

About this thing called life

And the small part I play

You inspire me to write

Even though by comparison

I am a fraud

I promise to dedicate my first book

To you

Or Robert Baun

Or my wife.

I need to go away, I said

I've done my time

Doing what's right

But now I need some time for me:

To refresh my soul.

One year from what I have left

Is all I ask

And that's not much to ask.

She thinks I'm joking

But I'm serious

And already dreaming

About how I will spend

My long days of freedom

We pretend to be normal

She is sobbing

I am helpless

I reach out

She pushes me away

I walk out the door

For once I don't care

Life is filled with joys and sorrows

But some joys are expensive

They come at the highest price

What if that was the last good one?

Out of ideas

And inspiration for the rest of days.

Unable to write anything of worth

One piece of crap after another

Abandoned by the Muse

A victim of writer’s block.

I better write another

Here and now

Just to prove

I still have it.

The wine flowed from the bottle  

as the words flowed from my pen.

It was my best ever.  

A match for the greats:  

Kipling, Thomas and Henley.

And one that my favourite, Bukowski

Would be happy to say

You matched me today.

I celebrated my masterpiece

With another glass of wine

Before going to bed, joyous

With the feeling I had created

My Magnum Opus.

In the morning I rose,

Clear headed and happy with

The memory of my creation.

I read it again.

It sounded different.  

This was not the splendid verse I recalled.

It was the ramblings of a drunken mind

Bukowski would say

Try again Man

This is a pile of crap.

Suddenly, I had a hangover.

For days he had searched for the words, but they would not come

He shouted, ‘Stop mocking me gods, you have had your fun!’

Another sleepless night and the day was here

As the class grew nearer so did the fear

And then he realised the route he had to go

Steal or borrow, no one will ever know

That evening he beamed as he read the stolen creation

And when he finished, he smiled and waited for their adulation

But all he heard was….

‘Oy you ****, I wrote that!!’ as he was swiftly thumped in the face

I have already written my magnum opus

Attempts to better it, seem to be hopeless

As I struggle to create an anthology

Perhaps it comes down to Psychology

After the shipwreck,

We drift through calm seas:

Together.

Another storm...

The sky rages

The sea erupts

We’re torn apart,

Struggling against the waves

To get back to safety
  
And each other.

The storms come more frequently of late.

Each time

We drift further apart.

I fear  

The next storm

We may drown

She wrote me a poem

I forgive her.

It's beautiful, I say:

A

Lifeboat

After the shipwreck

Maybe it’s a story

Everything

The creative of beautiful things

Some were not sure:

Eh?

Wot that mean?

Ich wiess nicht Vater

Finally,

I had to agree:

Tiefe frage für einen montagmorgen

( deep question for a Monday morning)

Do you want to hear my best ever? I asked
Ok, she said uninterested
I might as well have asked
If she wanted to hear last night's football results
Or the shipping forecast
I recited Four Seasons Winter
It was a good reading:
I nailed it
The drama
The  timing
The punchline
She said......
Is that the best you can do?
It was like a punch to the gut

Shotgun, shells
A bottle of whisky

A final burger
The best of Bukowski

Some pills
A line

Vivaldi for the last time

Sorry for
The mess

Me: Imagine if it's your worst day ever,
Over and over for all eternity

J: That's not how it works!

Me: Who said so? Are you writing the rules?

She was silent
Probably considering the worst day she had ever had

I thought it was

You and me

Against the world

But life changed us

And

The world changed

And

Now it’s just

Me

Against the world

This one hits me harder than the rest:

The horror of the grave

An eternity of nothing.

The futility of it all

Makes me feel like screaming

And running away

From everyone and everything.

There will be no more sleep tonight

Burnt my toast

Stubbed my toe

Why do the Gods

Mock me so?

In the future we won’t eat food
There will be a pill

We won’t drink wine
Another pill

We won’t go out
We will be able to visit anywhere on Earth

And beyond
Via a headset

No one will write books or poems
The robots will do that for us

And the only thing people will talk about
Is the good old days

Before we ****** it all up

She wears a permanent frown  

On her deep lined face

An unwanted trophy of a hard life.

New day, same story:

Morning paper

Handful of scratch cards

Scratching away as she walks

Expressionless  

Probably no longer expecting to win

But willing to pay the small price

To hang on to the dream.

I wonder if she remembers

What the dream even is?

I tried to do right

With all I had left

A fine day
Not as warm as yesterday
When the sun burnt my face

I sit in the park
With a coffee
And people watch

The Japanese tourists
Photograph the blossom
The irony makes me smile

A Japanese boy stares at me
I put my sunglasses on

Perhaps I remind him
Of someone
He once knew

'How did she die?'

They always asked that.

It annoyed me.

Once, I might have asked it too.

Now I realise

The question should be:

'How did she live her life?'

And the answer...

She lived it without fear

If you could hear what I thought

And I could hear what you thought

And women could hear what men thought

And men could hear what women thought...

Relationships wouldn't last very long

Death had visited 

Again

I was worried

He was becoming too familiar.

Perhaps if I moved away,

Kept my head down,

He would forget about me.

For a while

At least

She said she had read my poem.

She said it made her laugh.

I thought the poem was incredibly sad.

One of us was emotionally broken.