dissolution

restless legs spite tired eyes.

3am and wide awake with thoughts

like crashing cars.

absence and regret collide inside

this acid stomach,

where all the words i swallowed

dissolve and turn to bile.

now forced past this bitter smile

every lie and love and decomposing line

is flushed away.

too early and too late to be awake.

too cold to be outside.

too old to be alive.

too young to be the bearer of bad tidings.

3.17am - i toss and turn and shake and hope

the nightmares are no worse when i'm asleep.

misread

you misread my words
and now there's nothing left to say.
try to speak my mind
but find that i'm too tongue tied.
thought we'd left the past behind
but it seems the future is the same -
it just has a different name.
yet i still see your eyes smile
as I close mine.
we never said
will never say
goodbye.

train home

pulled away into the night again
to head back into the past.
and this could be the last trip you ever make
if you would take the chance. you know i know you won't.
the city flickers like a candle in the windows,
orange winter streetlamp glow
until the bridges bend you into places you don't know.
a voice in your ears put thoughts in your head.
it feels like you haven't slept for years
and that christmas was last week, not next.
nobody to talk to but you don't want to listen anyway.
close your eyes and dream of new year's day.

november sunday, 3pm

cold, tired bones from open windows
give us headaches like the winter.
red wine stained and blood drained
on a sunday afternoon,
we pop paracetamol and aspirin
or whatever comes to hand
(all non-brand because it’s cheaper
and we can’t afford the names)
and count down the next four hours
as our teeth begin to ache.

the floor is stella-littered,
stale warmth in slightly dented cans.
and tonight could be our last night,
so we remember to each other
faces we’d forgotten and girls we thought we loved
to songs we fell asleep to so many years ago.
outside, alive, the sky dims like a slowly dying light
as we close our eyes to thoughts of staplers and spreadsheets
and the crazed and hazy line between what went wrong and right.

last exit from brooklyn

get through the night by dreaming

of fucking you over

(and over again).

5am sky and a cigarette ride

across the brooklyn bridge -

big city lights goodbye

soaked up sucked in

and now slowed down

through decaffeinated eyes

as green signs point towards dead presidents

and unspoken, reluctant farewells.

america is gone

perhaps it's your perfume that reminds me of new york
but london smells like america tonight -
candy flossed and codeine scented.
below, the pizzeria's late night orders
float through the window and the rain,
wine stained and garlicy,
as another summer sets.
there is no autumn, just the fall
and a sad face full of smiles.
through the wall, next door's television
blares muffled lives into our limbs entwined
and beneath the sheets the coffee on your breath is death -
raw morning nerves and cigarettes,
the sticky sickly salt sweet sweat
of missing love and hard times debt,
a life of work and fading dreams
like dirty shirts that always go unironed.
and though i swear i thought i smelled you twice today
i know i'm wrong. that's just a song -
america is gone and the new york streets are far too far away.

mutatis mutandis

your death is just as sad in any language,
however beautiful it sounds.
and the more things change
the more i wish they'd stayed the same.

there are still no flowers left
to buy to say goodbye
because the more things change
the more they stay the same.

at night tom waits sings you to sleep
in the cold cold ground
and the more things change
the more i wish that they would change

because the more things change
the more they stay the same
and your death is just the same in any language,
however beautiful it sounds.

ripped and stitched

filling crosswords in a hospital bed
my childhood returns -
memories of the mary celeste,
whose ghostly bows i walked upon so many years ago,
no longer lost or faded in the fog.

and as my life leaks out of a plastic tube
i am vampiric and thirsty -
my neck ripped and stitched, cut and shut,
an undead red blood wound
that soon should wreak vengeance
on a world too fucked to care.

but night-time pills close eyes and book,
sending ghost ships and vampires to sleep.
lights and life fade behind the curtain
and i am adult and anaesthetised again,
my childhood dreams now nothing more
than clotted hair and red chalk on a pillow.

accident prone

there was a time when i used myspace a lot. so did other people. that doesn't happen much anymore. so instead of posting poems and writings there, i decided i'm going to start a blog for the first time in my life and post them there (here) instead. accident prone is the title of a jawbreaker song. it's much more sad than i am, but it's still beautiful, so i stole it. the lyrics are below. which means that the best poem on here will be one by someone else, but fuck it.

What's the furthest place from here? It hasn't been my day for a couple years. What's a couple more? And if I go, don't forget the one good thing I almost did. I learned your name without words. I used my eyes, not my hands.

What's the closest you can come to an almost total wreck and still walk away, all limbs intact? And when I go, you'll be there crying out, begging me. I won't hear. I'll just go fast into this night on broken legs.

A near miss or a close call? I keep a room at the hospital. I scratch my accidents into the wall.
I couldn't wait to breathe your breath. I cut in line, I bled to death. I got to you, there was nothing left.

What's the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love and still smile to your new found friends?
In the same confusing breath, you pull away and draw me in. I wanted you. You wanted more. I built this life and now it's mine.