poemz autumn 09

here's some unfinished poems i've been writing this week/some from summer, you can probably tell i've been reading far too much allen ginsberg:

"FIRST LOVE SONGS"

They are embarrassing
photos, clunky words,
shuddering escalators
are those first poems,
graceless reminders of
wet summers. Pricktease,
an elephant in high
heels are my 2007
ablutions
of strange
strange love for poor
naive you.

OK Jingo,
who's dotted each
semicolon since, they
are cheap prayers
without a God, smoke
signals from the great I
Am, aged fifteen and
collapsing,
they are

what the cinema promised
me what the teen angst
books promised me what
Sylvia said would happen
, do you see?
you see,
I was prophesised
by Drew Barrymore the
thirsty wear-and-tear
of YOU, Jingo of
gesticulation and
wolves, Jingo of
bus rides
and Southampton, oh
wild wild Jingo the
artfag liontamer of
all my easy aches,

yes now that I too know
that I dreamed you up
almost entirely,

you have a friend in me,
I guess.



"UNNECESSARY POEM"

Try not to believe in repent
or glorify repent; you cannot
mourn for songs you never sang
for boys you never held (or
most likely for the boys who
never held you, afterwards)

and I am a train wreck tonight,
desperate to shed this Catholic guilt
that's come from
nowhere,
that maybe I was bad bad bad
all along - or give me science
give me coffee
give me mathematics -
not regrets or melodrama,
BUT rises like a shriek cos
maybe I owe you one ugly belated
and unwanted apology
one big fat IOU from Duckels Loans Inc.

I could give you
hours of forgiveness.
For I have tasted other boys since you
and now I gargle it
and spit in the shiny white sink
the plain truth

that you were only truly cruel
when it was absolutely necessary,

and so I apologise,



"JULY"

It would be nice if you missed me,
sent a sweet text occasionally (nothing
grand, just an enquiry as to how I
am, considering the last time we spoke
I smashed a plate and threatened to
kill myself) but as it is I happen
to be content imagining different
ways for you to die. Sometimes I am
your saviour, bandaging you up as you
gaze at me adoringly, as never happened
in the reality of Us;
but most
of the time it is I who holds
the knife above your head,
or starts the fire, or smothers you
with your favourite pillow.
Although
this does not soften the blunt
truth that you fell out of love with me
into someone else's bed, told me I
was neurotic (although I probably am)
and spent a week overcompensating via
drinking too much and blatant sycophantism
whenever we spoke. But my point is,
darling, that today we passed each
other in the street and no grim
conversation leaving me shaking
followed. Instead, you gave me the
sort of vague smile I remember you
giving your mother and old
work colleagues, and walked ahead.
I would like to say this gave me a
sense of closure and halted my
homocidal daydreams, but truthfully,
all it's done is spurred me to discover
more painful ways to kill you.



"LOVE SONG 28TH SEPTEMBER 2009"

LOVE SONG SEPTEMBER 28TH 2009

From the pit of my stomach I shriek mad love
for car parks and chainstores,
for late nights and heartaches,
for brawls and for vodka,
for smashed windows, crashed cars,
dirty sheets, rooftops at dawn,
and a pack of cigarettes.

For those who alight the 24 hour supermarket
drunk and taking photographs;
for those who tried cutting and drowning
and then dying, but didn't;
for those who run thru the woods wild-eyed;
for those who dance and dance and dance;
for those who sing out of tune across parks
on hot August days the sun melting ice creams;
for those who drink gin and tonics and wear black;
for those who smash bottles against walls when angry;
for those who kill spiders,
for those who don't kill spiders;
for those who I fell against,
and those who pushed me.

This is for the faceless boy who drove me home
the night I threw up two dozen times across Kempshott,
and this is for the anonymous girl who
told me all her secrets that I can't remember.

This is for those who karaoke,
this is for those who dance,
this is for those who rise late,
this is for those who laugh,
this is for those who hate their hair.
This is for those who cut their own hair,
and regret it.
This is for those who break bottles
and hurt and get hurt, those who roll in the mud
on that rainy night at the bowling green,
those who bleed or have bled but
above all
this is a love song
for the night it snowed
and I was still awake but
no one else was and it made me
almost believe in God, yes,
this is for the walks home alone
and the vomit, the constant meat market,
and the underage girls who always fell in love,
and spilled free verse of bad men into my ears, often,
and the decks of cards swollen in the rain
on street corners somewhere,
the sleeping homeless we disturbed,
and Jenny who always cries,
and Lux who kept giant snails,
and David who I loved constantly thru
school and one day I saw him
playing football in the pouring rain his
white school shirt soaking wet his
nipples probably hard underneath his bare skin
probably soft and damp and cold,
and the rain came down on my shoulders too
and his blue blue eyes looked at me
standing in the rain looking at him,

yes this is for that moment too.

For the dogs and the do-gooders,
for CJ who cracked his knuckles all the time,
for the afternoons of stealing pointless objects
from overpriced high street shops,
for the kebab vans and the blackberries,
for the ocean and the train rides,
for Jingo and the angles of his face
and the creases beneath his nose when he grins,
for Groucho and Atwood and the mess we all made,
this is a love song for my eighteenth year
and all the ones previous;
this is a love song for the messes I would make
again, again, again.