In all of the pages that you wrote
There was never once talk of the past
In every single story that was sold
You locked away all stories to be told

All of these letterboxes used to leave me love
All of the hopeful words you could dream of
But now your past is dead
The future wades in your head
To your new self
I say goodbye

Well, should I change? Must I remain?
Should I love you all the same?
March on steady to the beat of that drum
If it’s gonna go- I’m going this way, on this line

All of the people had the notion to speak
All of the words, now so weak
Surrounded now, blank white walls
Paint a life, your world calls
To some motivation
I say hello.

I’ll walk until I think I’ll stop
Rest awhile ‘till you catch up
Put my boots next to the fire
While the body and my mind do conspire

All of the birds would sing their song
Don’t mind at all if I sing along
In a quiet world sound erupts
The chant of choir soon conducts
To this plague of mice-like men
I shed a tear.

Beat, beat on that black-laced drum
The march that gets every man from
A kingdom to a kingdom in the sky
Living in a world of life just waiting to die.

All of the eyes were looking stern
All of my letters have been burnt
Carry coal from that mine
Who knows, he, she, or mine?
And tip my hat to whom it may concern.

Try and picture something different, to what's behind the window
When the sun rose, rosy-fingered that morning
summer solstice sing-a-long, kids playing, garden gatherings
Even when the clouds gather, same scenes, new ambiance
That nostalgic smell of rain on the concrete, and you think of family
the old summer days, in Nana's back garden (and the one holiday you vaguely remember but only that smell, and the sound of wood pigeons)
So you lay on the freshly made bed in some kind of silence
And you try to sleep but it's tiring
then you start to cry and the only explanation is that you accidentally thought about your father at work and somehow that made you sad
But, and so, you wipe away the tears and sit back at the vacant desk
Gazing at the faded screen
and you log into OkCupid and scroll through an impossible list of beautiful people with interesting lives and you close the window and you close the windows
Standing there gazing through the wan window (wile old Wilde) and a bright yellow helicopter flies by to some emergency rescue and you turn away and think about your thoughts until you think you thought too much but realise you thought too little about the thoughts that matter
And you stop for a second and turn on some music but ten thousand songs is overwhelming and you turn back to the window
and the rain is easing

Your brother slams his bedroom door and tries to sleep but the light from the Xbox is enticing and so he turns on the laptop
YouTube is endlessly entertaining to a child, he messages friends between videos of people playing video games
and so his friends come online and the Xbox gets a workout if the children don't
Hours pass and the sun hides behind a sandstone structure
Snoring from the next room, where you have succumb to the loneliness of the window
You brother never sleeps, there's no time
Besides, the room is too hot and summer nights are cruel
So the window stays closed, keep the bugs away
Heavy curtains crouch on the bed and hide the seasons, hide the passing nights, hide reality

It's midnight on the street below the window and an infant is crawling on cigarette butts thinking no thoughts
There's an agent on the corner that works for the Eye, and he's watching the windows
So cars pass intermittently and kick steam from the day's rainfall into the face of homeless kids that play football all night, like so many sun drenched favelas at the rocking equator
Drunken men stumble home and **** light posts and letterboxes, collapsing on themselves before the wrong front door

But, and so, anyway the birds rise early in the summer
and the streets are dried in promising dawn light
The drunken men re-adjust their ties and head to work
and the children all fall quiet, hidden from informants
when they should be at school but instead hang around corner shops
and tell pensioners to buy them ***** and Amber Leaf
The sleeping depressed wake and make cheese on toast
fall down the stairs and sleep in a sticky heap by the letterbox
and these lives continue on ever more
but that's just what the window saw

There was no hunger, no want, no desire
it was said that life is passion, you aren’t alive unless your insides burn with fire

Words were exchanged in full and without thoughts, second
Even when bonds were broken, within mere minutes would they mend

There comes a time when you realise that tomorrow isn’t much of mystery
don’t think things repeat? How about a lesson in history

Wise words have always passed on through the ages
wiser words yet, have perished with their sages

It is said that beauty is skin deep but ugly goes to the bone
funny, how none but them are drawn to the throne

Time was abundant and myths were told of change, spare
of our short, pathetic existence it seems we weren’t fully aware

Here we are atop a richly laden tree
one look towards the earth and you see skeletons, anything but free

The doors that used to be once open wide
now are walls with letterboxes, through which only bills and cheques now slide

Choice was an idea that truly held weight
not just a nuisance while picking a restaurant for a date

Nothing’s farther than the truth from itself
stories we shall write, into the depths of our own lies shall we delve.

“Our characteristics smear through us,
Like colours in a stick of rock.”
He says to the audience of ties and blazers.
“If I cut you open, what shades
Would I find in your cross-sections?”
“If you cut me open,
There’d be a fair amount of red,
I should think.”
I say behind my sharpened teeth.
“And my parents wouldn’t be very pleased.”
Oh how witty I am
With my quick fire of sarcasm,
And petulant spasms of acrimony.
Eight miles away,
Our house is full of September;
Raincoats and Crane flies,
And I water my Guinea Pig’s tumour
With tears I owe elsewhere.
A teacher at my school
Committed suicide, people say,
While we skipped waves
And created poetry from the leaf-light.
They can’t tell us the details,
Of course not – sensitivity is key –
But that tells us all we thirst for.
School clockworks forwards
With a hole in the Geography office
And I forget about remembrance.
He drove a BMW and laughed
Small laughs that coughed with nervousness.
I sit in History, pen-chewing,
Thinking of all these more important deaths.
The school bells don’t hold silences
The year sevens don’t stand
Or bow their heads in room 180
We try making futures for ourselves
And apply ourselves to those things
That still have chances tied to them
Like clover leaves and birthday candles.
We turn on lights in the evenings
And I wake myself from darkness to darkness.
My life consists of the cooling,
Cotton-throated early mornings
And the bike that my brother bought new
Six years ago.
And the drag of my newspaper bag
That claws backwards from my peddling.
The world is blue and grey with rime,
I rip my fingers on letterboxes.
My shoes fall apart from the heels
My ballet shoes fall apart from the toes
My life enjoys unravelling itself
From wherever I’ve chosen to stitch it
And I fray and crimp at the corners.
I prefer to go barefoot
Across the rinsed, diluted garden
That smells of rotting apples.
Ballet tights rolled up my legs
So that my bruised toes get kissed
With grass slobber and the faded zeal of autumn.
Slugs crisscross pavements like surgical tape
Then get stuck and frazzled there
While the sun toasts them.
“Maybe I’d find hopes, dreams,” he says.
“Maybe you’d find organs.”
You’d find me weeping over pirouettes
And geometric lines and extensions.
You’d find a twice-broken arm
And an array of internal fractures.
There’d be shards lodged between each rib.
My parachute lungs, pumping filth,
Would continue to tear and furl
Until they wouldn’t resemble
The things we scalped in biology.
I re-write lists of ‘Things To Do’
In the hope that they’ll seem shorter
But I add all my flaws to them
For amendments and for procrastination.
For some reason people still expect things
From this emptying girl
Who actually thinks
That the one who cut into her
Would be in danger of finding
Nothing but a brittled, bitter hollow.
I highlight my essays
And highlight the cracks
I’m carving in my personality.
I paste impressions of myself
All over my exterior shell
Alongside character traits.
Who knows what lies beneath
The papier-mâché of well-played parts?
My fingers play music on the computer keyboard
More than they practice the piano.
But the songs they make are far from sweet
And rarely beautiful.
My parents think I’m working
On Hume, Bentham and Kant
But really, I write jaded poetry
Which forms its own philosophies.
“Your experiences would be evident,
Spread through your character.”
My brother ate away at his life
Until he starved.
They set him down in a mental unit
For the ‘Screwy’, ‘Freakish’ and ‘Insane.’
So I buried my childhood
In the side ward mazes
Of hand sanitizer and tubes and tombs.
“I’d find what makes you unique –
Your religion, perhaps.”
I laugh away the suggestion
That is actually the truth of how
My Sunday mornings fall under ‘Church’
And the afternoons are ‘Top Forty’ –
I don’t even like chart music.
How can I be ashamed of the faith
I try fervently not to doubt?
The sun drips from the evening sky
Like a squeezed lemon
And Monday cycles round again
I live in a little world of spirals;
Eternally coming back to the same place
Just worn a little further down.
I waste my life on the vanity
Of mirrors and self-deprecation.
Sometimes I think I must be arrogant
To make the pretty little assumption
That I don’t have to wear make-up.
It’s funny that I lay my skin bare –
Always –
But can’t manage to strip myself down
To the crudest, rawest truth.
I can only write for people I don’t know;
I let my parents believe blindly
That I’m a creative prodigy
Instead of human
By refusing them the blessing
Of honest words from ink and paper.
But the truth is;
I am not the faded mystery
That I pose as in my writing,
I’m just someone who sits in school assembly
And tries to make self-portraits from words,
And tries to forge intelligence,
And tries to never grow old,
And tries to be something,
And tries nothing,
And tries –
“But what I’d really want to see
Is compassion,” He says.
I turn my face down to my knee bones
And permit myself to agree.
Compassion, I tell myself
And, just for a minute,
I feel a little less
Superficial.

His fingers move like lies over the rough spark wheel
of his lighter, the sweet release of nicotine
in his hands - trusting as a lover.
Sepia tones drift over his head,
addiction pulling him place to place.
Hopscotch.
Dancing under trees in the sunlight,
dappled shadows warp across the smoke
engulfing him. Laughter,
the promise of friendship.
Hand-holding by chipped letterboxes.
Inhaling and exhaling
an ideal world.

Is it discriminatory to hate
the fungus that can spread in the bodies of ants.
Creeping
through the nerves
infecting
until it scrapes through the cerebral nerve
driving them mad
climbing the heights of rainforest giants
which they can’t get back down from.
When it takes their mind,
Are they now the same?

Is it discrimination,
If I **** the select black pages of a book that tumble along the desert winds, their words cursing those
under the God.
For those in letterboxes, I have a message: do you want to be defined by your value as a possession?

Is it discrimination,
To wish us rid of those who will condemn our humour and joy,
for it is a sign of humanity.
On online forums that do not have to except a human flood and a culture crushed to single metal pieces,
Will not except a yellow glutton carnivore
as president,
Will not except the red and blue beams from the sun being darkened by a night-black swarm of red and yellow striped wasps,
the vibrant joy of star fruit now as constructing as imperial gold.

Speak,
Rid your bike,
Shine your light
For Tiananmen is abroad.
Location decided not by a treaty,
But by those who cling to a rising sun,
Not shineless stars.

Satchel strap, knotted, both ends -
bag slip, not good.
Wrecking my shoulder blades,
too heavy, 'nough said.
Weights made-up, by drivers, usually.
Chasing the clock too.
Daily, endlessly.  

Man on bike, best combo, feels right:
By car is faster of course,
walks timed using them -
quads like an Olympian
and you've no chance, of matching 'em.

Heavily-sprung, hinged - left, right or top!?
Vertical ones, ridiculous, seriously?
Letterboxes, they bite,
literally, metaphorically.

The rain IS a pain, horrendous.
Letters become scrambled mess.
Smeared addresses.
Renders postcodes illegible,
M14 2WZ.

Snow is worse, laughs at wheeled transport,
making every step treacherous.
Don't trust the slush and the frozen mush;
Others sent home, but my mail must get through, apparently.

Part-timer equals second-rate citizen.
Lifers get the best walks, which aren't equalised,
no matter what they say.
Bosses, incompetent morons,
promoted through ranks like in WW1, clueless.
****-up, brewery, nuff said,
they tolerate too much tom-foolery.

No dignity at work, none, zero.
Sexist, racist, homophobic heroes.
Mindless chants about *** and ****, penises and ****.
**** this ****, juvenile morons.

Overtime's a crime, claim it before it's earned,
then argue the toss over 2.5 hours for the next three weeks.
Costing them a fortune, like this ****** welfare state is;
money for nothing and your hits for free.

But I'm fitter and slimmer, more toned and tanned.
Take in my pants at leg, waist and the seat, one size down.
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" is mostly appropriate.  

Blind, ****-offs, flats, notice-lefts,
Recordeds, specials or regis, if you're old school
Gone away, RTS, addresee not known,
"He died, he died, he died!" Funny, but sad.

Households, door-to-doors, hated by one and all; deliverer and receiver.
"The customer wants them” -
that's why they bin them as we turn our backs to deliver more unsolicited DM.
Sell outs. sold out. The customer, quite simply, don't count.
Royal Mail, epic fail.
I die with each one I deliver.
Do my best to avoid them,
sign up customers left & right to refuse 'em.
Unite, posties, unite.
Untie people, yourself from these mindless bundles,
dropping through your doors.
Say no, no more, please.  
No.

orbital lives dizzying speeds
star light in the dark
a single candle flame

one song for tomorrow
three for today
yesterdays silence echoes around

blue sky for happiness
a blinding light
hope in goodness

letters hardly ever arrive
letterboxes becoming redundant
a written goodbye.