By the Spanish Arch
a few kind crusty folks
talk in the March sunlight.

Soft incantations of sweet trad
spill from a concertina, tin whistle
and fiddle, sloshing out an ambiance.

An old fella' makes a poor man's black velvet,
The ladies drink Estrella Galicia and San Miguel.
Another lad jokes: my grief counselor died last week

but he was so **** good I didn't care.

A motley crew, good-natured and friendly,
Drawn to session like moths to a flame;
Always I wonder whether I belong.

"I think in his heart Frodo is still in love with the Shire:
The woods, the fields…little rivers. I'm old Gandalf.
I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it"

Orwellian insight provoking apocalyptic visions of prophetic rodents,
Mammalian entropy divining inconsequential apathy,
Veracity overshadowed by facility,
Empathy vanquished by semblances of narcissistic affliction.
Alacrity a surrogate for hollow accomplishment.
Disturbances are null and frivolous in midweek ennui.

I have basked in another beauty,
a sharp jasmine needle
that has pricked the corner
of the so-called snazzy ones.
A bright torch
in a dark blue drowned room,
crumbs on a blood napkin
and the one-tone words
drop out our ears
like heptagonal coins out of pockets
or tears,
tears onto pages
in a teenager’s diary.

And then we advance
into October air
where leaves tick and tack
as typewriter keys do
across soggy ground.
Ride, walk
and now a story begins.

I don't consider various eye colors "beautiful" nor "enchanting".
In all honesty; I've never really understood the incorrigible obsession with iris pigmentation that is genetically inherited and beyond the control of the possessor of the same pair of eyes you deem "beautiful".

But in contradiction to the callous statement I've opened with;
I've found a pair of eyes that I can unhesitantly call beautiful.

It should be noted that I only fell in love with the eyes after I'd seen them roll back with pleasure
(a memory that still makes me shiver)

And from that night on; I started to notice every single beautiful thing the eyes did.

The way they lit up with frenzied excitement,
The way they burned with raging desire,
The way they filled up with salty achromatic tears.

I've loved the eyes for as long as I can remember.

But I don't consider myself lucky just because those same eyes look at me lustfully midweek; but because in a seemingly redundant life, those eyes became something to look forward to seeing; or feeling pierce through your skin on a warm Saturday night

maybe someday i'm going to wake up
and someday maybe i'll feel okay
and maybe it won't be tomorrow
but maybe that hope of someday
will be the hope that keeps me here

Did I ask for help?
Easy for those out there looking in.
Shame fills my emptiness.
Pride is long lost among the
Apathy. I reek of
Insensible poetry, palms are
Rooted to the shame of it.
;

Brain fluid's leaking
bones are creaking
I need tweaking
it's
Wednesday again.

It'll soon be 2020
wonder if I'll have
perfect vision then
when
It's 2020
plenty of time to wait
and see
I suppose.

At the stroke of a pen
chaotic
******
words from a neurotic
still Wednesday
can't write it off
won't write it away

'Have a good day'
but
you know they don't mean it
unreal
like bit coins.

another stroke of my pen
but
when the missus finds out
I'll be in trouble.

Still Wednesday and I've already
blinked hundreds of times
looks like the magic's on a
coffee break

Looks like I
will have to change it
manually.

But it's Wednesday
which is not to say it's
any less a day
than any other day.

If there was another way
to say it's Wednesday without
it sounding that's it's not okay
I'd say it.

Wednesday
nearer a pay day than not
and that's got
a certain charm to it,
so I see no harm in it
being Wednesday.

Teddy with his glass eyes
looking at me with great surprise,
I say,
this is no epiphany
look and see
this is just a
Wednesday and
so it goes.

In the midweek of twelves months I torched blunts and choked on wet smoke and chamomile tea.
Fretting the niggling giblets of a queasy disrememberance of a sober stroll through your tossed hair salad.
I managed to mangle  the marvelous gross lust of our impending
delirium. i farmed bok choy to annoy our local siege. our muskets were polished with misdeeds.
our demons barked, all coy and ravenous in the sweet diffuse of our useless aplomb.
ginger rockets in our thespian numb. you Dis-Oriental surrogate Mom.
You.... flame folding cranes, like a Japanese cancer
with opposable thumbs.
Unstoppable in the dead wink
of an awkward eye
upon your heaving *******.

You burn regardless.

it was uncomfortably
hot out today

i put my cardboard box
down on the pavement
and squinted into
the midspring sun

grateful for the
knowledge
of the truth
the ukulele truth
and nothing but
the truth

like i could
scream every
johnny cash song
i've never learned
at every pathetic smoker
disobeying the signs

and i understood
oh but did i
understand
why they're always
pushing friday
on midweek radio shows

it's thursday
at 3pm
and guess what?
now we're free

(to roll in the grass
and soak up the sunshine
or maybe just
take a nap)

tell your winter
clothes where they
can stuff it
and your hick
christmas lights
to get lost

there's a pitcher
of unsweetened
ice tea with just a
dash of lemon juice
waiting for me when
i get home

and a cracked
front step to
nod off on once
it gets cooler

and even these
june bugs
out in may can't
bring me down.

It takes three days to pick up a habit.*

How sound this is, I'm not sure,
because some habits seem as inconsequential
as a statement regarding time and vice.
It makes one wonder how long it takes
to believe a statement to be true.
Possibly as long as
a *** of coffee to be brewed.

Surely the amount of time will
vary by the weight of the statement.
But even a measurement is prone to
be thrown off by unforeseen additions.
Eight cups of water, and four scoops of grinds,
you're bound to have a little too much or
a little less than expected.
It becomes harder to tell
when dealing with a slow drip.
Brewing coffee may be completely divisible
when dealing with a recipe, but
hardly unequivocal when
the time comes to measure up.
This follows suit with patrons
and their proclivity.

Only in fiction is the coffee shop patron enigmatic.
Only in fiction can the patron enjoy a cigarette indoors.

Men and women wake and
head to their cubicles,
coffee in hand,
five days a week.
By the third day
a habit has formed,
and maybe that is why
acceptance is had midweek
and why the first day of the
nine-to-five seems so everlasting,
if not inscrutable.

my husband, my lover
the man i hold dear...
you know the one
the sports zombie
who dress's so fine.

sauntered out to the back
deck and asked
"beer or wine"
as he is the chef of,
this evenings decline.

now, here is the conundrum
that often,plagues my mind.
wine, tonight, is not really, my palates delight
but beer, tho tasty and thirst quenching,
expands my quarters hind
and leads to wrenching and
writhing in midweek training or at least coniving
of how to be released from
exercise captivity

which way to go,
a cheeky pinot griggio
or a robust boutique beer.
which way, crisp chardonay
or mango ,belgium wheat,
micro-brewed  pilsner.

oh, for the days
of the cask or the
slab of vic bitter.
when the biggest
problem was how
to drink fast enough,
to gather a blast.

the man mountain,
has become impatient.

....now i need to
make a decision.

so,with a women's precision,
i state with a smile,
wide and then wider.
"i'll have one of those
apple-pear ciders"

I know what it's like,
standing with your back
against the storefront window,
to reach into your pocket for a dollar,
but pulling out only six pennies
and a ticket stub.
Or to return to work on a Sunday
and dread seeing the faces of
the lonely, toothless men in
oversized shirts that haunt your dreams.
I know what it's like
to drive home midweek,
midnight, head full of worries,
and to find your bed void  of warmth,
bad music the whole way there on
the radio.
If you care to listen
I can tell you what it's like
to have your fast food meal cut short
with father on the telephone,
"Grandfather's passed away today,"
or to realize that that poem you've
been writing is full of recycled verse,
words already written - and you knew it all along.

You have a Wednesday stuck to your oversized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.

Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...

I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.

I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.

Would you like to have some chai ?

Coach class and the second I pass go I don't want to.

In ******* or steerage
chained to the railings.

Dismal on the Central
like
clockwise down the
plughole.

My soul has been stolen and
shipped off
and being ******* is no
way to go on.

It's only Tuesday
a long way from
the weekend,
but far enough from
the beginning to know
going back
is too far.

Some mornings are as dark as can be
no light shines on me and I
see nothing but shapes which
I suppose are what makes me
aware.

In 91091,
this
number of a carriage
flicks off and then on
or maybe imagining is
all that is left of me.

Already draining away
and
still only Tueaday.

A herbal remedy
germaine to my malady
may help me.

God help me
the hype's got to me
'stay healthy,
live longer'
for what?

I'm taking a shot
loading the Glock
and
stopping the clock,

before the clock stops me.

To hang with my crew, any day of the week, would leave 21yr old me, in the bathroom on his knees.
Wether we chill in the lot with a Rapper blowing trees, or moonlight the bar with lap dances and whiskey.

5am, 'In The Air', single mom feeling naughty
Next thing I knew, was at the afterparty.
Hooked up till dawn, but cant tell nobody.
Haven't shaved in a week, cant remember last sleep.
Ask me where I was and you'll never hear a peep.

Head home for an hour, change of clothes and a shower
Then back to work, cause the wicked get no rest
My tire explodes, Im on the side of the road,
and Im dressed to be sat at a desk.
Catch my breath screaming '****!', **** near hit by a truck,
as now rain pours down in my face.

Tore my shirt and late for work, *******! do I hate this place.
Now the hours feel like years, till I again have some beers and get back to where I feel like me.

6am in the bar, and just lit my cigar, and the bottle it seems is empty.
Lather, rinse and repeat, cause its only midweek
And this is how I know to mend.
What is my life? **** if I know, but a ShitShow you'd pay to attend.

You have a Wednesday stuck to your over-sized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.

Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...

I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.

I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.

Would you like to have some chai ?

not sure when it happened
maybe last week
Tuesday or Wednesday
sometime midweek

With godnames on sealed lips
I traverse midweek morning,
Leading the baby day
Through silent commands.

Shaping; raising it; preparing
For the excellent hours it'll
Become.
All I am is a result of

The choices I've made since
My first one.
Now here come more.
Every breath, every heartbeat,

Every sliver of your life;
An adventure, when you
Realize your powers.
Poet.

On my midnight, midweek walk
I went searching for Disaster.
Being all ****** up
With no place to go
I think I found him.
He opened a door for me once
And I barely noticed
As I swept right through.
Now, so many midnight strolls since,
I go out searching for Disaster,
And when I opened the door for him,
He barely notices
As he sweeps right through me.

scrambling
                       desperate to
                    get the words on
                          paper.
Hands as a leaf
I cannot fathom how
Intimately
    She and I are linked.

From the start we were kismet,
connecting on a level that
  would astound all those
    passing.

Two patrols of the night
couldn't even shatter the glass menagerie
We built to house our
    broken identities.

I stumble through chaos to
find the foggy mirror
to peer
and view her lipstick
   stained on my chin.

And desperately wait for
midday,
midweek,
   When I can see her beautiful lashes again.

Intimately I want to
Know her, more than
the FIVE FAST FACTS
that stretched into
the perfect first date.

She is the one who fills this page back to front
and

Makes my entire body crumble and crave her like
my next cigarette

I cannot stop shaking
    She will steady me,
My
Abby.

So
here we are
fingers in the cookie jar
and it's only Wednesday
.
.
for the hard of hearing,
I said,
Wednesday
not
Wedding Day.

Coffee with cream is a treat,
She'll beat me up when she
realises I put her cream in my cup.

always
making maelstroms out of moleskins
or something like that.

It's the skill set that we get and how we use it, but I bet that some will waste the opportunity and only see the things they want to see,
like blind men in a runaround, over and over the same old ground,
it gets a bit monotonous.
I hear a thunderous applause, someone's added one more clause to the high five big society,
'all in it together'?
wait and see.

There's a new wave rolling out, I don't doubt it's for the best but I bet again it may not last, them lazy ******* cast their votes, drowning in their fancy coats.
Cromwell come and save me please, these men are mice but I eat cheese,
not fair to me when such hypocrisy can rule the roost.

It's Wednesday and in the trap of midweek moving, feeling flat, inflated though by what goes on,
The time will come, I wish it would
but until then I'll join the other men
in a game of bowls.

Philosophically speaking, thinking the bathtub's leaking
is wreaking havoc with my Wednesday.

Any other day I'd be thinking those
plug hole thoughts like we're sinking,
drinking the ocean dry to keep from drowning
down in the deep and
that'd be okay with me.

On the way home from work
a man on the train sneezed into his handkerchief
and a woman next to him, maybe mid-thirties,
mangled her face into a state of disgust.

Two friends were talking football
as I turned onto our street,
one in a City top, the other with a ball
scuffed with the marks of many a lashing
into the north-west of a park net.

Our daughter was doing homework,
exam season, a cocktail of notes
scattershot on the duvet, and when I asked
do you fancy a cuppa
she said yes, so I clambered the stairs
and she asked me how work was.

The game was on, midweek match.
Two goals but by the second half my head, drooping
down and again down, laden with sleep,
so I left the last whisper of wine in the glass,
undressed, brushed the last remnants
of a steak and kidney pie from my teeth,
put myself to bed, my wife a hand away.

apart from the rent that's 12 weeks overdue,
the 7 missed voice memos,
the special midweek lunches you have
that you pass perspiring paper boxes of
respectably uneaten quesadillas that
christen your laundered floors,
that i refuse out of fasting as an excuse
so as to not add up to—
what i owe you:

the music, the rawness of Vancouver Sleep Clinic
and The Psychedelic Furs at two in the morning
when i can't sleep, so you wouldn't either.

the good dreams, when you told me if only
nightmares had brakes, i wouldn't suffer another.

and you were my other,

what i owe you:

all the wrong reasons to the right ones
i never meant to say,
out of fright of out of fright of out of fright
of love,

a sober kiss good night,
half asleep a giggle and
awake on a morning that only smells like
waffles, some borrowed French cologne and you.

Between the platform and the train
and here I stand again

nothing's fair or do I have
a jaundiced view?

you read
I write
along the roads that
lead to midnight and
we've all gone there

down the unlit avenues
where you've shivered
in your fright
along the roads that
lead to midnight

this is a hide and seek
Monday to Friday
a
midweek game and
here I stand again
teetering on the brink
of should I or not
decide to think
drink or sling my 'ook
and slink away.

Between the platform and the train is a universe of pain filled with galaxies as yet unformed
and I am torn between a devil and deep space,

to close my eyes and in
darkness look upon my face
and if I have a jaundiced view
who is at fault?
what do I do?

On the five fifty six
to Waterloo
you might consider
as I too have done
what
is it all about?