One Thousand Apologies

I was sitting in my parents' living

room & surrounded by the debris

of empty glasses, unread books & stained

pages of composition when he came

to me: a ghostly spectre of derived 

experience, with limpet eyes & foul,

flowing hair. He told me about love - thin

whisper - & vagrancy, & I said that

he had helped in fucking us all over.

The streets are paved with gold

Out, out brief candle. Life is but a walk

in shadow – a fire glint in vapour clay.

- - -

A cigarette sparks, whispers in the faint

outline of heavenly night, clear-air-dew

hung and hanging over black, blasted street.

In the silence, it stumbles: a grieved flare.

- - -

Out, out bright-star-shine. Life is but a walk

in shadow – a damp, dank melancholy.

- - -

Over the hateful, hated hill, a gaunt

shaft rises, growing pale underneath thin,

waning moonlight – a greying fog. It sings

of rank, lazy leers and, then, fades away.

- - -

Out, out burning Hell. Life is but a walk

I can barely breathe and I feel sick.

Tomorrow I might risk crying - I don't know. A part of me is afraid of what will happen if I do. It is afraid because it knows crying won't help.

I know crying won't do anything. It never does, not ever. Depression is more complex than that.

The world needs to let me win, once, on anything before I can feel better. I know that won't happen either.

I am not a good writer. I cannot overthrow Capitalism. No-one can love me, fully.

I am sick of writing things like this. They make me feel old, jaded. But, on, on we go.

I write to help people. We are all miserable, lonely, wretched creatures. We all need to know that someone feels the same way. That's my goal, just letting you know. Most people regard my writing as insane, strange, scary.

I fight against Capitalism because it is inhuman. It hurts people. It tortures people. It kills people. It is, irrevocably, evil. I am considered insane, a raging lefty, a terrorist.

Never, in my life, have I tried to do anything but love, protect and help people. I have never abused a partner or friend emotionally or physically. I am alone, constantly.

Today is Valentines day. I have coughed

up half of my lungs with no intention

of stopping. I feel sick and, yeah, angry.

My throat hurts and I can't get out of bed.

Today is Valentines day. I have watched

five episodes of The Simpsons and don't

yet know how many more I will consume.

The ceiling looks a little too dirty.

Today is Valentines day. I have read

a chapter and a half of the single

most miserable book that I can find.

I am now bored of it. I don't read it.

Today is Valentines day. I wrote this

sonnet with nothing in mind but the snot

in my nose, the ache in my chest, the book

by my side and the lit television.

Today is Valentines day. Her present

I dunno know where I want to be or what I want to be doing

but I know that I want to be somewhere, doing something.

- - -

I wanna run

I wanna run

I wanna run

- - -

I think that On the Road did something to me.

Dean raped my mind and now I just want to go

and see and be and live with the life of it.

- - -

Somewhere, doing something, there lives

a person who is my exact copy: carbon-dated

and ripe for some form of evolutionary chain.

- - -

I don't know or care who. They exist

and we will never meet because, hopefully,

we can just run and run and run.

- - -

Mobility is the closest thing to freedom.

- - -

If I can outrun the equator in three days

then I might stop for a while to write about it.

- - -

But that's all.

- - -

I do not want to live anywhere

or have a job doing anything.

I want to be somewhere, doing something

that will enable me to leave.

- - -

I wanna run

I wanna run

I wanna run

- - -

Bruce Springsteen got out of the slums

by playing the guitar. He spent and still spends

his life doing everything wrong now.

- - -

I want to see every slum.

- - -

Still, there's a lesson in that: there are two ways

to leave a place: successful or broke.

- - -

I don't want to be successful, at all.

That would be immoral. And, fuck it,

I'm broke anyway. Life is best lived small.

- - -

I wanna run

I wanna run

This is where the world dissolves:

empty cans,

burnt desk,

- - -

cigarette ends

and black sheets, waiting,

The cigarette breathes smoke into my lungs

as if it were kissing me and sharing its own

air: misty and flavoured like stale coffee.

- - -

I juxtapose cigarettes and love too much.

I think that I should probably stop, don't you?

- - -

I walk down the street with music dribbling

into my ears: a love song for the heartbroken

and weary. A love song for me alone.

- - -

I take everything far too personally, I think.

I know that pathetic fallacy doesn't really exist.

- - -

An idea flickers into my brain as the ash

of my cigarette wilts down onto the pavement.

I take out my notebook and write four lines:

- - -

I am on a golden beach,

she is there: fire-red

amongst the liquid gold

and ashen-grey of the earth.

- - -

I need to stop writing things like this.

They torture me: words as sharp as knives, thoughts

as ugly as chains, eyes as black as death.

My life is a lonely Tragedy, one

player upon the stage. The act, the act…

the act is eternal: on and on ‘til

the last syllable of this fetid world.

- - -

Her eyes were limp at times,

I could never pin-point

that before. I’ve dissected

her now though: strung her out

over an operating

table and cut through

her flesh with sterilised

knives and saws, vices and jaws.

And the blood has spilt

everywhere. Not one

It lies on the page:

our paper protagonist.

'Life is a war. For now, I retreat.' - Stan Akilah, Money in Sketches.

- - -

Rain beat down on iron, electricity

and movement: wheels crushing tracks in haste,

shifting the bridge from side to side under

the force of their momentum. Mannequin

- - -

heads detonate and explode, greedy eye

- - -

grooves pinned to the floor, the windows, a screen.

Behind, the city lingers: a looming

foreplay to the incoming, a grey-black

canopy of concrete fingers to all

- - -

the broken outgoing. The exiled dolls.

- - -

(The scene is set,

the projector whirs.

O, puppets dance,

the audience stirs.)

- - -

An orchestra of cowboys, drowned in song,

carries the time and the rain and the dolls

away. City melts into a picture

and dribbles ink into a gallery

- - -

of stones set in the heaviest grey. Merde.

- - -

(The scene is done,

the projector slows.

O, we cut away,

the audience goes.)

- - -

One plus one plus two plus. Mannequin's stand

and move thin french-stick legs in unison

but out of time. The metal screeches: eeeee-

sparks that none can see. The train pulls into

- - -

a wave of sea air, glistening with sun

- - -

and billowing through the weeds growing under

the track. The writer is tired, he's had

enough fire; he tilts his head and sighs.

The cowboy orchestra starts another

- - -

song inside of the plastic in his ears.

- - -

(The scene is cut,

the projector dark.

O, the screen dies,

the audience snark.)

- - -

Three bars of misery, the train stops. I

stand and limp to the platform, breathe fresh air

for the first time in memory. Beaten, broke

and bleeding, I move out and down the street.

- - -

Joe wants a haiku.

Here it is then, a haiku

To Joe, Tom, and Daniel.

Tea lights for feet,

dance around the room

to the sound of a lone guitar,

piano, or synth

Green leaves of ribbon

Hung in unison

A light was on in the attic

Dust

And I did not know where I was

The earth is rising;

blossom falls from sky, falls

An Ode to Mustaches

 Men! head my call:

that time has come

to declare war

upon razors, shaving foam, warm water,

and those small specks of torn toilet paper.

- - -

No more shall we shave! No, are we not men?

Do we not have

mustaches, hair

on our necks, and

small patches of clear skin in strange places?

Head my call: be a man! do not, ever,