Between Pain and Paper

Hi, I’m Andy.

I write poetry, prose, and the kinds of half-formed thoughts that usually show up late at night. My work circles themes like pain, healing, memory, and the strange ways we hold ourselves together when things fall apart.

I’m currently putting together a collection called Thoughts for the Broken. If you’ve ever felt worn down, out of place, or quietly fighting your way through the day, you’ll probably find something familiar in it.

You’ll also see the occasional story about guardians, forgotten knowledge, and the cosmic weight of things we’re not meant to carry.

Please feel free to reblog, it means a lot!

It’s all tumbling away

as memories turn to dust

in my aching hands.

I was away from myself for too long

and I don’t know the way back anymore.

Nicotine and caffeine

to wake my hazy head.

Sit for a while

get ready for the day,

as time marches on.

Ridiculous repeats of shows

that don’t deserve

their laugh track.

Third person mode activated

as life becomes a stage show.

I watch myself stumble and trip

my way through it all,

all the people

so many empty faces.

They talk amongst themselves

as I drink my beer alone,

spending the last of my money

on another drink.

Then home

with headphones,

music loud to drown

the noise in my head.

We’re past half three now

and sleep seems

very far away

so I’ll procrastinate some more,

until my heavy head

hits the pillow.

Tomorrow will be much the same

I’m sure,

Had a brilliant night out so here is a rare photo of me smiling!

Sitting here I see the echoes of the past surrounding me, the impact in the wall from an angry teenage fist. That seems a world ago and I suppose it was; it was twenty years now and it seems to have gone in a flash at the same time. Things have changed and I weigh up the pros and cons. We have all this freedom under such tight control, the illusion of choice fuels free will. Live how you want, but not like that, like them. Choose a house and fill it with electronics, all these people so uniquely the same, carbon copies posted around the world.

Keep the wheels turning and don’t rock the boat, you’ll do fine around here. They offer crumbs of what could be, a trail leading further into the capitalist dream, on to the heart of it all. Forge on full steam ahead but it’s always just out of reach, the tunnel narrows and dreams become nightmares. Rows and rows of buildings line the way, all the same, the roads a convenient grid. The workers come and go as the city flows and hums with traffic and the constant advertising, the voices of its people lost to the din.

We’re in the future now, this golden age.

Buy into it, but don’t pay now. Wait. Stretch it out and pay forever, monthly instalments for time immemorial. Locked in now you can’t slow down, just think how much you’ve already sacrificed, a little more, another step. Lost to the glow of screens, the faces don’t even look up as I pass. Clothes all start to look the same, all colour and individuality drained to grey.

And so the day begins again.

It doesn’t feel different, just slightly off.

Like a loose thread, pulled ever so gently until everything unravels.

All day is spent trying to rest, to settle to something but nothing feels right.

Somehow I’ve slipped into an alternate universe where everything is almost the same but not quite.

Has it always been this way?

I obediently took my meds, every day, for twelve years.

And now I can feel the chemicals draining from me, everything comes back in vivid technicolour, but the sound is wrong.

It’s been copied and compressed too many times and is just a roaring cacophony now, a caricature of a voice.

It took four weeks of dropping doses but the end is in sight.

The words were in my head,

or at least an idea of them,

but I took too long

to write them down.

And so they left me,

floated away on the breeze

as I tossed and turned

longing for sleep.

They were the words

that would make everything

ok again

and bring you

back to me.

They come back now and again,

mostly as I’m circling sleep

and my mind is a sieve.

Each cycle they’re watered down

and diluted from that first time,

and pretty soon

they will lose all meaning.

I’ll watch them bleed away

until they’re nothing.

They might have been the words once.

How such tempting vices

draw me in,

if they weren’t illegal

I’d say it was criminal.

Just one more toke,

one more bump,

one more chance to

never return.

Get so thoroughly

out there

that my brain

can’t find its way home.

Let me wallow in that

beautiful nothingness

of shifting shapes

and colours.

I’ll float through life gently

bumping and

turning but never

making an impact.

A rosy glow from the glasses I wear.

And I’ll pretend it’s all ok,

even if it’s just

I have a wooden coaster

in the shape of a puzzle piece

with her name on it.

It came back to me

in boxes of my belongings

once we were over.

And I can’t help but wonder,

do you still have the other?

They were a pair,

my name on its partner.

And they fit together

like two puzzle pieces do.

Will they one day

be reunited?

But then the creeping doubt

sets in,

maybe you threw

my name away.

Maybe this is the only one left now,

and it will never be linked

to me

i used to wander through clubs with a double drink in hand and goosebumps from the music and alcohol and everything else flowing through my brain

i had this kind of content look on my face

like i belonged there

and it was a magical place to be with the lights and the lasers

the fast intensity of the music scratched an itch deep within that addled mind

if i could just make this moment last forever

just floating in space with the colours and lights and sound

but i need to smoke

so it’s outside for conversations with strangers that seem all consuming at the time but are gone by morning

the nicotine calms the jangling in my system that comes from the first traces of a comedown

so i dose again and my buffer between me and the real world is reinforced for some more hours

and i know it can’t be the way

Hell on earth

as rich men rise

and the rabble beneath

them are left

to rot.

More stores

selling stuff surplus

to requirement

for a happy life.

Walk the roads

and see

the damage being done

by the status quo.

See the inequities

as the divide

between us

and them

stretches

like a great chasm

with no way to cross.

And all the while

we are flooded

with more media

than the planet

could consume.

It shapes

the way things are,

and daily makes

me wish

So,

will it always be this way?

Living this half-life,

removed from the day to day,

a background character now?

Maybe,

and maybe

it’s for the best.

Just drifting along with the current,

not rocking the boat.

Let people come and go,

hold no attachments,

sow no evil.

The phone stops ringing

and I don’t leave the house.

Days and days

become weeks

and months.

At least the sun

Something creeps along beside me—

a shadow, rolling and tumbling,

leaping from dark to dark.

It follows me most of the day,

except in the brightest sunshine.

And when I settle into bed,

when my eyes adjust,

it settles too.

In the air above me it hangs,

like a miniature storm cloud—

my personal weather front.

The forecast shows no sign

of the sun breaking through.

So I live with the knowledge

that something dark is there,

just out of sight.

In the corners of my vision

it waits for night.

Then dark thoughts fall like rain

from the cloud above me.

They seep into me,

start to take hold,

spiralling down in a rush

as memories run like a river.

I am surrounded—crushed

by my past mistakes:

a slip in conversation,

the times I interrupted,

spoke over others.

Then the heavier things arrive—

lost love,

lives I could have had.

These are the worst.

Conversations and arguments

fall like artillery shells,

and the day is destroyed,

laid to waste and ruin

by things I cannot change.

But I still have to cook dinner,

pick up prescriptions.

Such normality—routine—

in sharp, stark contrast

to the war within.

It is a hellish internal conflict,

each side following

a scorched-earth policy.

Nothing new will grow here.

Landmines wait

to burst forth,

to drag it all back up again.

It will take years to clear,

and many more

for healthy soil.

A foundation cannot be built

on layers of failed attempts—

in love, in life.

No place to lay my hat,

nor my head.

No roof to stop the rain,

no locked door

to keep them all away.

So I walk the earth

with my rain cloud

Straight through

the eye of the storm

at three hundred miles an hour.

Like threading a needle blindfolded,

just chaos and noise.

Careering on with so much

momentum it feels like

I’ll never slow down.

What the hell,

pour some fuel on the fire,

stoke those

goddamn engines

and watch this thing fly.

Loose panels

and nuts

and bolts

shed themselves as we rocket along.

Soon all that’s left is the cockpit,

a couple of engines

and a terrible

roaring

screaming

as the nose

starts to dip.

Terrain,

pull up.