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.