15 Feb 2024

And all of me is left behind

 

With every drop of happiness

Every small moment of contentment

Comes this laughable realisation

That these moments

Fleeting and irrelevant

from years ago

Dictate my current state

 

Without effort or malice

I am me back then

Myself a million years ago

 

And now

 

And still

 

And so are you

 

I wish I could erase all

These false memories





Superposition


It’s both things all the time

Because I am this and that

I am a feather in someone else’s cap

I was never a writer just

Someone falling through various thoughts

 

Some of which caught on

The frayed edges of my being

On my way down

Because it is always spinning

IT

Is always spiralling out

 

The non-definitive centre of yourself

Never stopping

Only the speed varies

And that

Despite popular belief

We can in fact control

 

It’s just that most of the time

It’s more fun not to… 

 

 

 

 

 

End of the world

 

They never have the good olive oil

I’m trying to be healthy and I can’t get the virgin olive oil

I mean

 

I walk to the beaten down tough as shit guy in the company blue shirt stacking whatever the fuck onto dusty shelves

‘hey man, you guys don’t keep the good oil anymore?’ 

 

He jumps up with the energy of someone ready to die or kill

‘Yes Yes! We have!’

And scurries out through the nearby metal swing doors - reappearing 2 minutes later with the bottle of extra Virgin

 

‘We can’t keep it out, people keep stealing it…’

He looks at me, equal parts confusion and embarrassment, 

and hands it over

 

‘Wow, really. End of the fucking world’, I say

He doesn’t even smile. 

 

 

 

21 Sept 2023

Bigger picture


 
A thousand small needles
Over a thousand small days
Each point piercing nothing more
Than the skin’s surface
But still
 
And you feel to disappear
Just disintegrate
But something will not allow it
 
Each point an awakening of sorts
Like a room of grown men
Each in varying degrees of failure
Manifesting in the despair of
A new shirt
Risky haircut
Crazy socks
 
Like a lost old lady
Hardly there but for her cane and
Coloured hair
Asking for help with a 
    crack in her voice
 
This pain is a dark morning
And
Sunlight in your eyes while
At the job
Sirens and car horns
An absence of psychedelic logic
 
A thousand years past
And a thousand more to come
And still
The same voices
Droning and breathless
They skim the surface and dissipate
In the grey mornings mist
But still
 
You feel to disappear
Just disintegrate
But something will not allow it
 
And you wish to forget
To avoid anger
But something will not allow it
 
A thousand years of repetitions
Of the same rules
The same poems
The same hatred
 
The pain is a dark morning
And sunlight in your eyes



 

14 Sept 2023

Dress down Thursday

As bad as it gets 
A flash of light can still
Arrive
And remind me that
At least I avoided having to 

Every day

Go to a job 
That makes me wear a tie 
With my top shirt button 
Done up


15 Jun 2023

Discord

 

Walk uphill

Into wind and rain

Eyes open chin up

Walk in front

Naked if you have to

Take the full force of it all

 

Run upstairs 

Do not walk

So when eventually

Inevitably

You have to run


You will not be left behind

And fed to the wolves

Your body a stepping stone

As the masses walk through their malaise

 

Keep Moving they say

But most days

Doesn’t life just grab you

By the ankles…

Nails digging into skin

A merciless lesson in humility

 

And there is no reason

Nothing you did wrong

To deserve such treatment

It just is

 

Don’t look to me for help

Or retribution

Don’t look to me for counsel

There is no shoulder to cry on

No arms to hold you

 

A sandstorm churns up my insides

I cannot see

Beyond its edges

 

And so I drag you

Sober and drunk and high and

Low

I drag you

Along

With me

 

And demand allegiance

And demand patience

Days and weeks and years go by

And still you remain 

 

My arrow through the wind and rain

An anchor on the open ocean

While I demand the impossible.

 

 

 

6 Jun 2023

One summer day

  

The drug addicts dance off against the alcoholics

As tribal music crosses green fields and

Teenagers smoke their weed while back home

Their parents drink chilled rose and fuck on the kitchen table

Probably

 

Everyone is so young

And vital

And we recall those times when you had no call to

Lie to yourself

And laughter arrived as spontaneity

And today was today

Was today

 

A call came

A trip to the hospital

An emergency

The gods sometimes say fuck you and your wistful memory

And your only choice is to

Say yeah

 

Well

Ok…

 

 

 

 

Just another Tuesday

  

I hurl the piping hot stovetop

Across the balcony at the pigeon

As it tries and fails badly to

Hide underneath the deck chair

 

The thing clangs against the metal chair legs

As the rodent pops straight up

Whacking its stupid little skull against

The base of the seat

 

The hot coffee splashing across wooden slats

Bits of feather and dirt fill the air

And are caught in the 7am sun rays

As the bird slams against the glass over and over

Trying to get away

And I watch on gleefully

 

die you mother

Just take off first

So I don’t have to sully my hands

Picking up your dirty corpse

 

A second bird perched and static

Looks on from across the way

Unflustered by the commotion

I wonder which of us

Looks more insane to him

 

Finally the thing makes its escape

Unharmed

And I am left there

Alone without caffeine

As they disappear together into the morning sky

 

Time to go to work

I guess.

 

 

 

 

Positive Positive


So there you go

Ships passing in darkness

Over and over

Pulled down into each other’s orbit

Gravity increases exponentially

Until one of you destroys the other

 

These are nature’s rules

Not mine

 

Specialisation is for insects


 

the city hides monsters in plain sight

underneath oak trees and behind bus stops

gathered in corners of blown-together trash piles

behind the sound of distant gunshots

and crows stealing jewels

 

this place will eat you alive

so don’t let the smiles fool you

the hippies play guitar from

inside a mushroom haze

and good for them

but they’ll be first to go

 

look behind you

feel the wind change from the slice of the blade

just missing your neck

a glint of steel in blinding sunlight

the red of a wild dog’s eye

looking into you ready to charge

 

this place will tear you apart

given half the chance

for no other reason than

it was just your goddamn turn.

 

 

 

20 Feb 2023

Podcast links

Seeing as the writing is stalling, I have linked all my previous music podcasts for ease, below.

 

These go back to 2013 and are more about the songs than anything I have to say about them. Please do have a listen/share with anyone you feel might dig them.

 

Podcast 1

Podcast 2

Podcast 3

Podcast 4

Podcast 5

Podcast 6

Podcast 7

Podcast 8

Podcast 9

Podcast 10

Podcast 11

Podcast 12

 

 

 

 


26 Dec 2022

No papers on myself

 

A rock to the head

The flash of white

 

A percentage of epiphany

Something you know

always knew

 

A corner bitten off

The dawning of the first

Real

Morning of your life

 

So what are you

On the train

Walking to the job

All smiles and fakery

No hate or love

Just

Just…

 

You know

You always did

To live inbetween

Happy and nervous but still

Home

Neither here nor there

But now

 

Locked into this role

A post holding up

The weakest links

The man above

The ones below

Really who gives enough

Of a fuck

 

So here we are but

For how long

How long before we can bring it all

Crashing down

 

We are well versed in that

Bring it to me and I can kill it

Not a night’s sleep lost

 

So what are you

Now

Today

Tomorrow

When you’re awaken at 60

 

And how do you make it so

All those around you

Those for whom you truly care

Will even remember

What you were

After you’re finally

Gone?

Love is no drug


Drugs are truthful

Making you spit teeth and cry freedom

Drugs open flowers and crush hearts

Under the weight of dying stars

 

Drugs are feared by man

And woman

Yet are under our control

As we are disabused

 

A drug is the bark on a tree

The hair on a street dog’s back

It is ocean water and lightning strike

 

Love

Is no drug.

 

 

 


9 Jun 2022

Bright out there/dark in here

 

You a fighter?

He barely heard her voice over the music coming from across the bar

A small and ancient box spewing out tinny pop radio

God am I in the wrong place

He thought for the 3rd time that afternoon

 

No, why

He finally asked the woman

She had been sat there when he walked in and

Likely still would be after he left

If he actually got out of there alive

 

You have that look. I’ve seen it a lot. I know

She slid her hands over her cigarettes and lighter

Dragging them along with the heavy bottom glass of bourbon

And shifted from her seat onto the stool right next to his

 

What do you know? I ain’t a fighter. Not big enough.

Had maybe three my entire life.

Outside the sun had begun its descent, on the hottest day of that summer

A black McGraw Electric fan was just about making it around

The blades ticking along in unison as her red lips moved

A shitty breeze was better than none at all

As she continued to dig in

 

So what, you a runner? Nah you’re no runner.

Your eyes are tired. Black. That’s because you fight. All the time.

That why you’re in here – all day, alone?

 

He took a last sip and stood up to get out, the clicks inside his back

Betraying both his age and his purpose.

 

Your jacket, she gestured. It had fallen under the bar stool and

Was lying in what he could only hope was old, dried booze.

 

That’s piss.

She said, laughing

Yeah

 

Yeah

I know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 Apr 2022

Dreams of the Atlantic

 

 

How many uninformed

Uneducated and desperate

How many willing but

Unable are

Waiting on the red letter

 

How many starving or

Almost starving await

The hard KNOCK on the door

 

How many on the outskirts

Outsider yet artist

Introvert yet intelligent

Swatting flies with a year old

Copy of the New Yorker

Or

Glancing as an aside

Towards the black & white brains

Within the pages of the Atlantic

 

Wishing

Hoping

Dreading to be included

Be part of the club

Lauded, envied

Pretending to understand

Every single page of comment

And culture

The world above so

Unlike below

 

We curl up in bed and type this shit

Watching coffins drop

Seeing pixelated blood over pixelated body

Not hearing gun shots only

Because we had the windows closed that night

 

No art here

Sorry

No academic retreat or book festival

To exclaim aloud our perspective on

Every single

underlying injustice

    sorry

 

Rather

Just one more

Outsider

Introvert

Swatting flies

Glancing

Towards black & white brains

Wishing

Hoping

Dreading to be included

Be part of the club

Lauded

Envied and

Pretending to understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16 Mar 2022

Stalled

 

I have not written in months

Because the world has become a joke

When the world fails

Poetry fails

All great art fails

Becoming only a knee jerk reaction

To some ironic sorrow

 

As the sky now remains an undecided yellow

Not winter nor yet spring

Just keeping you guessing

A ubiquitous distraction

 

And so it is best to fall back and

Pause within a moment

To recall and retain an old anger

Or sadness or what

Little humour there is left inside you

And to bottle them

Cork them tightly and wait

 

Fall back to old routine

War films

Coffee

Wasting days and nights with nothing

Wasting your life as you lie over and over

That there is so much life to spare

 

Refrain from meaningful human engagement

Yes and no and thank you

Now and then and

Only enough to ensure you are

Not looked upon to be a fool or insane

 

Eventually the masses will settle

Real life becoming sunflower soon after

Poking its bright yellow head from cracks in cement

Then you may start up once again

To reflect and inform and express real life

On the page or on the canvas or in dusty black

Vinyl grooves

 

But you must wait

Relax

Drink bad liquor

Watch bad tv

Sing

Take long baths

But do not write or paint

Or even think about any of them

Out there  

Until the rest of the world is ready

to catch up.