#ndru

Years of frenzied writing, writing two, three, four poems some nights

accounts for, and amounts to,

nothing.

Poetry is for idiots and children screaming on the internet, ceaselessly squeaking for attention from the absent

moonborn ghostking in the sky.

Intellectuals unable to cook a meal or fix the damp in the corner force ontological arguments and emotional stigmata into the minutest of moments

what for?

We are, and this is, literally nothing

worth thinking twice or writing about.

Hang up your pen, mine’s snapped and leaking shit-fluid over everything previous

By distance or familiarity, waves once roaring overhead are now muted by the black. The clear-dark blue volume weighing down on us immortals is unfathomable, we are crushed, yet alive. We are five: three men, two women, and we are doomed to live forever.

Attuned to nature’s undulations we hear nothing except wale-song on the occasion, there was a lot of staring and touching at first but now, passed the stages of hope and panic we are motionless, part of the scenery, somnambulists watching nothing as even the sun is drowned by depth.

Everything previous is unimportant - except that one meeting with the sorceress - our once great families, struggles, achievements, even the name of our city flees from memory.

Sometimes I think I remember what it was like before the flood, baked fish, cut grass, cinnamon buns - but logic chases away those thoughts; few of us were over a thousand-years-old back then, traders, conquerors, rich land owners all - but still ninety-nine percent of our lives has been spent in this pit underwater longing for death.

All we know is what we’ve seen: life is light giving way to dark.

cry if you must. I’ll cup my hands and catch every drop together we can work it out, run our fingers through the mess and sift out the salt, as easily as plucking hair from a plate or saying no to the universe when it knocks at your door and asks you out to play.

the church at the top of the hill is 15 minutes away from my house, something drew me out tonight, an energy in the air or pseudo euphoria - whatever I heard a screech and stopped for a bit thought that maybe, maybe I’m too close to crashing to be out this late.

Carried on walking to Sudley field, sat on top of the hill overlooking South Liverpool, during daytime you can see a sliver of Mersey and the Welsh mountains fading in and out behind it.

Ambushed by the sameish place where I last sat with Buster. He was nan’s dog, we raised him from a pup and since he passed of old age they’ve had two more; weird how memory stirs to life when faced with the familiar...

I look up; a thousand million houses congregate, flicker their orange eyes at one another aggressively; this could be anywhere, I could be anybody there might be someone else sitting somewhere else drunk and dumb dumb and drunken on the majesty of angry clouds.

A group of lads make a bee-line for me and I decide to leave, when I pass the gate they shout something but I’ve been in this situation before  so I keep my head down and keep walking, at least downhill and with the traffic is easier, even when buffeted by a wind fronting calm and demure but don’t believe it, I’ve watched guys like this tear the arms off of trees.

I’ve been playing Age of Wonders 3

sinking whole daynights into it when I should be working, writing.

Downstairs the house stinks of dog piss dried in to the bathroom floor, I refuse to clean it again, instead upstairs in my room I hide guarded by incense, a window wedge, a fan.

Back to work. To open the document and type something I’ve already typed before. To realise I’ve been writing the same poem since it happened.

To hit delete. To close the file and grab a book and read something and post it online as if to appear productive, just incase the landlord bugged the bedrooms and watches me, tea-and-biscuits in hand, judgingly.

Maybe he’s like God, he wants to help us, to say hello and work things out, but can’t, or he’d have to explain his senseless not to mention invasive, spying on us it is a bit perverted, actually. Maybe god’s just too embarrassed of himself to help,

but it’s getting harder to force food passed something invisible blocking the place between where the fork is and where i want it to be -

like a barrier, or a wall of vomit, it might just be my weak stomach, weak lungs, weak like a poet smoking doesn’t help, nor does the dope everything that makes me is infantile

The best writers are Russian. Another attempt, or almost-attempt weak heart, weak stomach

from above, the majesty of cloudbanks batter down on us with howling windrain so I up my hood and lower my gaze: a haggard birds’ nest floats on the lake’s surface a flotilla, a sanctuary tangled with the half-dipped branches of a tree.

I watch for a second as it’s thrown from right to left then back again, while a single black coot gazes back at me from inside the nest, pleading.

‘Just hold on, will you? Hold on, we’ll ride it out, it’s just a storm, they never last it’ll be over soon and we’ll be out the other side.’

I turn my back and keep walking, another lie to soothe a conscience,

The others were scratching their names on the trunks of trees in the park while we signed ours on leaves and sprigs, you bordered the scrawls with a heart and one of us put an arrow through the centre of each mural but I’m not sure which of us was the archer.

We’re lost knowledge, waiting to be lost like the lives that built the Sphinx and the forgotten before them who lived, breathed, loved, fucked and were fucked, then buried with their whole world, under mountains of deserts and oceans of time.

After everything that’s been etched has been etched, I don’t think it could ever make much difference

to us

whether we’re noted by the world or not.