Mare Street

Coming back from Mare Street,
Returning home through blazing sun,
Through the pedestrian flurry of Hackney,
Great bodies abundantly veiled and motionful,
Ambling, gliding, dancing, pacing
The pavement slabs
With an ancient rhythm like rain.

Suspended

Suspended in a jar of viscous fluid, like egg white, like my life. Paused for a moment or simply just beginning, it can be so hard to tell. Unlike the conveniently structured narrative of a book, a life has an infinity of evolving threads, the majority of which are invisible, undetectable like a piece of lint perhaps, invisible to the naked eye, unless discernible for an instant caught in a ray of sunlight.

Living, life happens around us when the door is open; reaches into us, where we can either decide to push it away or look after it. Ideals rarely exist. Rather, they make manifest impossible obstacles to the profoundly challenging morphologies of the unexpected far greater than a picture. We live in constant uncertainty.

Sundays

Sundays.
Baths poured and left to go cold,
endless cups of Coffee and tea,
thoughts of visits to the pub, free Vodaphone weekend calls.
The whole screaming lot of us
(for the most part) indoors.

During the afternoon the rain fell
And I had a flashback, those damned things I said last week,
Slipped in through the gap in alcoholic haze.

A photograph of a little boy bouncing on a trampoline
And a voice inside uncontrollably rings out apology to mother.

Is it true, the only truth left is hatred
and love is all just lies?

Sundays.
Baths poored and left to grow cold.
One week more on raging.

About time

It's about time that I added some note to this blog that I'd once so lovingly dedicated to the cause of poetry, sliced into meaning uttered out of need, images of beasts that sting and so on to keep them back and invisible amongst the dark parameters that surround the safety of fire.

Well I've not written a word for some time. Anyone whose ever been here and read, and I know that those of you responsible for such an act of graciousness are less than the word 'minority', would have gathered that my token words, brandished against the agonies such as they are when one falls in love in a field of stones, are what they are. I am now however currently poor of muse and living life without that screaming fertile soil, bouncing along a fresh road, lined with the buds of early summers bright drifting blossoms and have an old friend back instead (or so it seemed; note in hindsight).

I might as well, I considered, here in the depths of East London and soaking in a bath write something to keep the wheels a little busy. It's not poetry is it, this? (As for the rest?) I need to write somewhere and this small plinth of oratory is it. No point in being too precious. And so it is.

Untitled

I understand
That it must have been hard to ask me to leave,
If that’s what it was,
And easier to tolerate my persuasive company.
There I was pretending hopeless.
Lunch, drinks and then onto dinner, holding on,
And desperate not to let go.
I asked permission to put my arms around you outside,
Against the wind and the rain,
Struggling
With the lost property gift of a pub Umbrella,
That embrace,
like drops spared from a desert well.
I trod upon hot coals gladly,
Steaming in the summer rain.
Some first impressions of how it feels
To loose the majesty and arrogance
Of youths easy come and go.
Finally, the weight of afternoon alcohol
Pulled away your patience,
And my anger flooded into the space it left behind.
I called you a Tart,
Furious at my stupidity,
Furious at you;
White noise where there should only have been silence,
Perhaps no worse than what you’d thrown at me,
But a sudden, Leaden, thoughtlessly public full stop to a vain,
Desperate Soliloquy,
Pride’less, hopeless, stumbling and short –
A bubble burst of bile,
And unforgivable.
All that remained of my glimmer to you,
In that instant in my feeble hopes,
In that desperate blindness,
Weakness and howl,
Became gorged and ugly,
Immobile, and rich pickings
For the barking beasts that tear me apart.
A remorseful sorrow,
Venting me deep into the river,
And you high above it as the eternal night,
Your phantom bird circling above.

Lascaux Domesticus

I cannot sleep.
I listen to my own music.
Scrutinizing, listening for where
Another mark should be,
Holed up here in this deceptive space,
I call home,
Where I can wrap
Up against the wolves.
Sometimes I think of these past few years,
My self-imposed exile,
Like a kind of jail term.
“Yeah, I’ve been inside for seven years.”
Or perhaps even more ludicrous -
The idea that I might be some outreach ascetic,
About whom nobody knows.
What was it Bukowski said?
‘…There have always been
And always will be, little men in back rooms,
Ask Malcolm X, Kennedy and Christ.’
Well, I’m coming around slowly
To some kind of acceptance of this crazy life.
I’m in favour of the trees you know,
And the invisible.
But in my mind I’m torn by extremes
And unsettled
Anywhere.
I’ve begun to joke a little
That I’m a tramp, but I’m serious,
Defending myself with self deprecation
And getting the knife in first.
I cannot go on living like this,
This life I have,
Painting on the upholstery
Where I’ve slipped down behind the sofa.

And so… If I could really write.

If I could really write,
I whine,
Then I might have lived my life differently,
And that’s an uncomfortable damned equation,
Somewhere – I live in shame,
And suffer, as we do, trying hard
To avoid the pain,
Though mostly, my dumb solutions
Only drive it in deeper, like a Tick
At the end of a cigarette.

It’s all been too easy,
Means nothing,
Band-Aids
And sickness
And that,
Were it not that I am some beast,
I would be dead,
Like the runt of some litter.
But when they all go home
To pay their bills behind
Moats and castles,
I crawl back into my cardboard
Shelter and library shelves
Of bookmarked,
Well intentioned,
Half-carved invalid,
To masturbate and hide.