Floors of water, baseless.
I chose to snorkel and I snorkelled.
Pescetarian and regretting it,
the ocean surface becomes a ceiling
that I hang on top of, a beetle,
staring into the green room.

zz

 
If I were a great astronaut
sailing celestial seas
Or a tall and sinewed Tarzan,
or even Hercules,
You could simply waltz back in,
Doing as you please -
And I, at your mercy again,
Would fall down to my knees.
 

 

Long days of drought
until I had your absence bottled

and now I shiver
in my crooning majesty

inescapably alive to its scent.

Aware in the darker times
of your brutal hands

and my infant mouth
slurping, gagged, erased -

your absence remains,
beast-like, humming, there.

 

viut vut

I prize the late night crackle
of your voice on the telephone
without truly wanting you
but needing your speech at midnight.

I imagine you. My logic impeached
by the rattles of my heart
which flutters young, restless,
I have swam your shallow waters.

*

Somebody is upset. Reckless,
as a wrecking ball I hover
against the vanity cabinet
ready to spit my sympathies.

Yet I draw back, timid.
I am aware of my arrogance
in comparing my miserable trials
to her magnificent break-up.

££

 

There's no romance in his
logic. I've little time for
dialogue with bubbling hormones.
I barely have the patience
for empty rooms, for red cars
hungry in the night.

Science blinds him, he is
not an architect. I am
the anonymous champion in his
atheist arms.

In the absence of any faith
he has found me sucking
on my cigarettes, and thought,
"Yes, this'll do."

Resistant to any compass,
I explode under his geography.
My architecture is based
in his palms: empty rooms,
thieves, vandals, arson,
the struggle of a kiss.

Science blinds him, he is
not a sculptor. I remain
anonymous, championed in his
discoveries, his words.

My brain is immobile, scowls:
eight years old, I was a bucket.
Postcards flicker in the breeze,
he shuts the window.

"Poetry is desire, is a secret
tied up with adverbs," he says,
lighting my seventh cigarette.
"A eulogy, a smell, a glimpse."
Smoking and silent, I wait,
and bend to taste his thigh.

I have blinded him, he is
not a scientist. Held here
between my legs, unmoving,
his body is already a skeleton.

I exit the scene,
unable to talk in tongues,
unable to tie my shoelaces.
He remains, laced up in his logic.

 

black coffee dressing gown spew

Yours for the Night:

  except not,
although I enjoy
your possessive gaze,
those fingers mapping
my body, little soldiers,
and watching you commit
what you think is me
  to memory, irrevocable,

  (you learn, slowly,
    my noise, the engorged
        vowels spilling
    from my mouth,
        and consider it your
    January achievement)

  and receiving
the cruel comfort of
strange bruises, a shared
breath reclining
between us like smoke -
    young man, I'll miss
    that obnoxious set of teeth.

__

cheated children are throwing
themselves into the sea

howling.
and the wolves snarl up

with raised fists
to corner and threaten,

enclosing.
"there will be no miracles here."

 

december

I saw a lack of comprehension
    turn the nonchalant vicious
and watched with folded arms
    as we wrote elegies,
    and took photographs,
for empty universities, hospitals
sponsored by Coca Cola, a million
children handcuffed, spoilt -

I felt a different noise
    send an ugly biased reality
through the December streets
    red-nosed and bloody
    oblivious to etiquette,
for empty universities, hospitals
sponsored by Coca Cola, a million
children handcuffed, spoilt -

    Dreamt always of 2009.

8979832789r

 

If he has turned from being
 
A young man with a heart,
 
To a plastic bag and a belt
 
Snapped tight around a red neck,
 
Maybe all the late nights
 
And smiling men
 
Don't matter that much, after all.
 
And I wonder: did the plastic bag
 
Contract and expand with his
 
Last failing breaths -
 
Did his body provoke his reasons
 
And throb and shudder, as if screaming -
 
Did he understand what he was doing
 
Did he recognise the disease -
 
    Yet no answers ever come.

 

yeah it's raining

 

Since the decadence of heartache,

All assumptions move aside.

Conscious of my old mistakes,

I've somehow maintained pride.
 

A ship lurching out the harbour,

I push towards open seas,

Abandoning cheap ardours -

Determined to be free.

 

supermarket of dreams~~

 

Our stomachs are bigger than our eyes
  in these small towns of concrete,
  and there will be no victims here -

Our tongues are bigger than our stomachs,
  and then the ascent is halted
  by the Bus of Convenience.

Our stupidity is infectious.
  Key sympton: a hundred dark nights
  in this Mall of Absurdity.

Yes. Our knees are stronger than our hearts,
  so we chase, as pixels, onwards,
  to the Supermarket of Dreams -

 

And Vulnerability

 

And vulnerability is never an excuse
For an absolute lack of self-respect,
So whilst you remain a petty victim
Of your own crude nonsense: I go on.

 

poem written 9 a.m. on train this morning blah etc

 


      We drank neat whiskey and wore your parents' clothes,
it was late, and you looked exceptionally handsome -

      And although I knew that lovers were either fools,
or cowards, or both, I let you kiss me anyway -

      August sank over us, riverbanks splintered;
then I caught you snatching a wink from a stranger -

      But with the gates of my heart wide open,
my brain closed shut; and I was blind -

      September came; it smirked,

      shattering the whole dumb charade.


      We haven't spoken since March,

      And today I saw you, at Waterloo Station,
holding hands with the winking stranger -

      He was sipping coffee, you were laughing,
he must have quite a sense of humour -

      I wanted to walk over, to say hello,
yet somehow, I couldn't quite unstick my feet -

      In a daze, I'd missed my train,
there frozen amongst the scream of London -


      So I stood beneath the clock, watching.

      My sad heart, it hummed -


     

One more. Gotta go be social.

With a full heart and a half-empty glass,
I shall walk down the long lawn,
Across its shadows and patches of light,
And when I reach the house at its end,
I will remember the walk,
And how soft and damp the grass felt
Beneath my bare feet,
And how I knew I would find you
Waiting for me at the gate.
(Even if you are, for now, imagined.)

Yeah, fake romance, again

   



    After the willed amnesia

        Of several glasses of wine

    I sink into the armchair

        And watch you

            Flow through each room,

                The embodiment

                    Of "beautiful,"

            A teenage Midas,

        And I'd rather not rhapsodise

            But with you stood there,

                Nonchalant, untouchable

                -- Darling,

                It's hard not to.



   

weird crap about an astronaut post-apocalypse

All that remains is you
    caught between June and July,
    sweat upon your brow at Durdle Dor
    that time we decided
    to be friends again. We made
      ironic sand castles,
      and swam in an ironic sea
      I was happy that day

    - nothing much else lingers
      in this blue empty.

Yet in spite of all hazards
    accidents explosions yet
    despite this huge gloom the
    six billion now dead (including
    you) our Earth atrophied,

        there you are again,
        holding my hand,
        gliding through the cosmos, and

        I am stuck in the red mouth
        of grief where no alibi,
        change of heart, promise could
        sweep away what happened,
        for it has happened - it is done,

        and I mourn for the first lines
        of all the books I won't finish now.

In this blue room who is all colour
    and in its oblivion,

        you glitter: porcelain wolf;
          your very DNA magical brave, potent.

So here Spacecraft R9T I am,
    peering out the second porthole,
    in my angel suit alone, survivor,
    I watch

        as you (graduation, '07) waltz
        tumble and flirt through time
        and space transcend all barriers
        as you always had done,
        all centuries stitched into you
        all moments ever are dust
        beneath your fingernails -

        yes you Jerome, whom I haven't seen
        in as long as the stars do shine,
        witness me post-Earth
        to supervise my End of Days,
        you step forwards across space
        and the blue room allows it.
        A golden smirk, I smile, because

        God left: and there was you.

04:48, less frantic, late.

God in a bucket, ignored,
And a boy in a jar -
There are wide blue skies,
And you, dancing.

Ever more, I don't
Want to lose this day.
I don't want
To lose faith, to forget -

the 2007, the 2009,
the endless empathy
of your crossed legs
at my kitchen table.

Oceans and solar systems:
I am in orbit
Around your tender humanity,
Your misplaced kindness,

Your arms, pale pineapple,
Which you reached out with
And I, anonymous, trembled,
Wedged upon a broken sofa:

and it's not sexual.
My hunger stumbles,
confused - what I want
is only to hold you.

Yes. It becomes hard
To focus on the mathematics
Of further youth,
The geometry of angst.

Because all I ache for
Throbs within the tender
Timbre of your voice,
You - God, in demin,

icon, stepping through
the night, towards me,
a friend for whom
I cherish a private wish:

Yes, I wish you joy, for
All aches to be justified,
All bruises to be healed,
Each night to pass softly.

At your side, I could
Perhaps accomplish glory,
Find a diamond where I thought
Only the monsters lay,

though you, wretched prince,
could never understand
how blackened I became,
beneath streelights, neon,

where my legs moved unknown,
dancing through new cities,
chasing a future which your
beauty would not fit into.

03:18 22/07/2010, frantic

and nineteen years old suddenly,
but i won't ever let it show,
until i turn twenty, brave:
enough love to fill a canyon,
but i can't divulge details -
enough love. enough anguish.
too much to fall apart,
too young to fall in love -
instead, obsession, the
wide gates opening always,
since ten years old and
perpetually collapsing,
gasping, and, well soldier,
if the heavens ever do receive me
i will turn to the Lord and
i will say,
"darling, what's the use?"
i will turn to the Lord and
i will say,
"who walks on water,
if i build you a motorboat?"
i will turn to the Lord and
i will say,
"never cry, because
the world sings for us -
the freaks, faggots, vandals,
this is ours - this patch of time -
this song in the depths of a night -
these are our hours,
these are our ghosts,
this is the omen
and here are my hands,
shrieking to you, O Lord,
to give us acceptance -"

and gasping, restless,
we toss and turn,
bizarre creatures,
fragile, courageous,
and hungry for a future.

so i read a lot of ginsberg yesterday

As our grinning nights
do crumble down to
pixels so shall the cities
the literature the factories
all fall down.
This blue room where I
first read Ginsberg
will eat itself too,
the whole earth must plummet,
for History
is an amnesiac, the papers
thrown to the wind -

Then in a thousand years

that first kiss of ours,
October '07, Indian summer,
will perish and cease
to have ever existed.
But in 2591 the sci-fi aliens
might fuel their cars
on cathedrals London sirens
Moby Dick hospitals, on
love petrol, our dead October
every dead romance

now dust, all dust, at rest.

Here is what happens that nobody speaks about:

1.) Boy slips down concrete set of stairs, knees buckle, jeans rip, blood spills, drunk and gasping. They have ran off shouting and laughing. Could call the police but won't, doesn't, he isn't hurt enough, they didn't do enough visible damage. Phone dead, face red. Injuries are already turning into grazes and bruises - mementos; the pain mutes into a throb. "Faggot!" they shouted. Their fists came, he broke in two. Pulls himself to his feet. Up, onwards, home. Wakes up with his face stuck to the pillow: dried blood.

2.) Miscarriage in the shower. She didn't know she was pregnant.

3.) Puts a pillow over her face when he fucks her. 20 years of marriage and his eyes are still vicious but he never looks at her. Lurches and grunts, one last thrust - he pulls out, penis quickly flaccid, embarrassed-looking, slopping against each thigh wet from her insides as he goes into the bathroom. Alone, she breathes rapidly, turns over. Between her legs, what he put in her slips out, sticky, sad, expected.

4.) Long sleeves in the height of summer: stabs whatever she can lay her hands on into her arm. A glass of wine for courage and then the razor digging inwards. It is as graceful as a ballet - the frenzy is over - she sighs, leans her head back. But the hysteria resumes (that unexplainable feeling inside her heart!) and she needs it again - fast, quick, a flush of red. Afterwards: washes her arms, applies a makeshift bandage. Sleeps easy most nights. Wakes up smiling and does not look at her arms.