Poem

Basking
Reading novels of feminity, family and theatre
With the TV upstairs a bawdy reminder of location, language, life
My mind conjures images of truly happy times
In East London Pubs
With people I love
And our true selves together
Drinks, jukeboxes and hugs
Poets, accountants, lawyers and others
All really just boys and girls released from pretence
Because bullshit walks and we sit and joke
And really really laugh like so rarely
Whichever doomed relation dominated my words
The spirit was really of platonic bonds
And I swell with pride when I think of you and the journies we are taking
And wish for decades more of this
I'm afraid that one day too soon
I'll be sat in another bar
Far from your relatives and achievements
The only one remaining, stubborn body sustaining
The weight of lonely tears uncried
I've been blessed, insulated, from much tragedy
Which means there could be so much to come
So the next time the circle closes, however many of us sit within
For me it will be the sweetest taste of freedom
To laugh just one more time with you

Friends (Today)

I could never fulfill the expectations we set together and

it's so hard when I don't know what I want from you

Sometimes to be comfortable in my own company is the biggest

present I could ask for

But when I claim my space I find myself apologising

Over and over and over again

6.04 And I'm responsible for where I'm going

The wheels I've set in motion have no one direction
a mild form of torture
Until I act

I push you and praise you and miss you when I'm gone
(When my lover is but a murky echo) but when we're close I never have enough precious time

My rants and raves and soliloquies of facile wisdom become worse in memory, beasts of my ego tearing the flesh of our clasped hands and I'm lonely thinking how much I've learnt from you

All of you

So this is my apology and this is my prayer that in our hearts we meet without the monkeys on my back tagging along

Without me dragging the void through the doorway and consuming your laughter on your living room floor

I want to win your pride with love and care not bold promises

Thank you for being you, what more could I ask?

Question

Am I a writer or just a critic in disguise?

Poem (Today0

Death Dreams
Night Cramps
Early Rise
Late Arrival
Exotic Fiend
Another Chance
Aching eyes
Adapt for survival
Sore peeling hollow sunken
CARCASS
His or Mine?
Cinematic edits stab into necks
Pistols are drawn, explode, holes smoke
In the same day life moves on
And raw rough cuts are replayed for laughs
Dull pulse still beating
Now Frames echo around, around, around
Cranium
Heartbeat seems to falter
Signals of distress and calls for aid
Ignored build Blades of eternal guilt
Into the tumor that will never remit
A document of projected emotions
Untenable.

Poem (today)

Gilding lilies
Should not be a career goal

One can break the surface
And explore the depths

Without(first) grenading the pool

Just get naked
And assume the liquid
Second Skin
Seamless, Complete
Transparent

No subterfuge, no deception
No pattern repetition
Simple pattern recognition

Transcendence

Liberating destruction
Rejection of inauthentic,
Unsustainable Reflections

And beneath the surface
Life moves slower
And somehow there's
Room to breathe

Poem (2nd November 2008)

To engrave in one's flesh
To make one's values manifest
Is to vanquish fear
This shell is not sacred
It's a tool, a device, a
Reminder of what it is,
Will be
Has been, was never
The point, the object
Merely a sufficient locus
For all these disparities to collide

Poem (2nd November 2008)

Damp hanging clothes
Insects
Gutter running outside
Sleep seducing but not succeeding
This drives me to drive through Fatigue and lethargy
To the frontier and back
Curiosity, ambition, wanderlust
Being and Time
My Experience
My Responsibility
We may only ever conjugate in the imperfect tense
So enjoy it or die
We're not rehearsing and when I regress
The clothes will be dry
The gutters empty
The insects older or past
My mind a place of possibilities, riffs and narratives
Could I lose that all to gain Freedom?