These are some of the poems, if you can call them that, scraps and general spurts of words that have accumulated on my computer from Autumn 2004 to Spring 2008.
c. Winter 2004
Follow Her Down
She’s here you know. There. Lying next to me.
She has her back turned to me.
It’s been a long time since we last spoke.
Last time I saw her is even further back in my memory.
But I remember it.
She hugged me. When she left.
She surprised me. But I held her tight.
And now she’s lying next to me on the grass.
The stars are out. We should be cold. She can’t feel it.
It’s time to turn her over. I want to see her face.
But when she rolls back.
All I see are her eyes.
She’ll take my hand and pull me upwards.
Her arm rests on mine and I hold her close.
The silent music is enough for us to hear.
We’ll dance in the dark.
But she has to move on. I have to stay behind.
She wants me to follow her.
I wish I could. But that would be selfish.
So I drop her hand and kiss her forehead.
Perfect.
And she leaves me.
Her life has ended.
But that doesn’t mean yours has to.
When you are ready.
Follow her.
In Memory
1990-2004
c. 2007
THE SLAM, ACHE, GRIND OF BODIES IS WHAT I LIVE FOR
When you wake up and decide that everything's changed
And when the song doesn’t finish where it's meant to
After time's gone on for too long and
We've spent forever after beyond.
When you're not sure anymore, but
You have no questions to be answered.
The last time you do something you've always done
And the times you never look back on it.
Every word you've ever spoken that
CANT be taken back, when
You feel alive but you've stopped feeling, you've
Found the perfect somebody, who
Turns out to be a perfect tragedy.
The hands you cant turn back and
Words that cant mend.
Only laid down to try and explain, but
There's nobody to read them.
The one where I wake up and feel alive,
When the music goes on forever,
There's always someone to hold your hand and
Always the crush to be felt.
When everything was changed at the start,
And books don’t have an ending.
c. 2005
The Stars Will Tell Us If We’re Right
We could be infinite
Laid out under the stars
The dark has always concealed
The flaws that overshadow
How we really feel
Stripped down
You can’t lie to the sky
It sees everything
And everyone
The world can’t wait
But the sky holds every moment
As if it is a last
In the moments that everything changes
c. 2006
The new violence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We can do each others drugs and get spun till we can spin no more. Last out a high in trips and flashing colours, paint our scene by numbers. It’s okay to lie and watch the clouds turn into sky and stars and the black reach down and touch our dreams. We’re as down as we seem.
The end gets closer every day, they keep reminding us. Caught on the hooks played on a loop in the shopping centre, filled with bodies of robots, look down on them, watch from above their level of numbness. Are they content with emptiness? Losing to win in the race to the sales of souls. The signs are busy but they move on up to the end of everything their lives depend on.
c. 2006
They should have left us in the dark
Where we couldn’t compare
Or see what we didn’t have
Maybe we’d still listen
If everything wasn’t so blindingly obvious
And organised
We’d still have the raw passion
For what we believed in
Before everything turned commercial
And life became a cliché
Love would still be blind
c. 2005, after hearing about a call to Childline made by a girl who had overdosed but refused to say where she was, asking only to be sung to as she fell asleep.
The Other Side of Morning
Please don’t call for help
I don’t want an ambulance
I’ve taken more than they can stop
I’m sorry but I don’t want help
Just please listen to me as I cry
Sing me to sleep as I die
c. 2005
Stinging Subsides to Scarring
Marked once for giving in
And having all three meals
And once again for trying to
Tell someone how I feel
This is my private punishment
For all the things I do
It’s either hurt myself
Or I take it out on you
c. 2006
M A N I C
she's a sick bitch
self involved uncontrolled
never know what will come
out of her face next
the track bipolar extreme of
fierce selfish interest
in what's
more inside her head than out
he's the manic craze
that flicks and switches
clicks between over active
over thoughtful and
counter productive
nerdy nice because
he tries to please and win
the affection she seemingly
hates to receive
each end of the spectrum
gains momentum
I'll meet you where the
X marks STOP
c. 2007
GET ON YOUR MYSPACE FACE
Today I played a game on the Internet
It said you might find hope
If you’re luck’s good enough
But I highly doubt it
Today I clicked a link on the Internet
That told me my score
Was as bad as it gets
I haven't figured that one out yet
Today I took a quiz on the Internet
I think I might have missed
The point
My solution wasn’t listed
Tonight my Internet got disconnected
And to speak plainly I had nothing else to do so I went to bed early
c. 2008
Legless
Getting shit faced, off your head, out of it, drunk, high, smashed, junked up, spun, fucked up, wasted absolutely legless. That sounds like a good night out, like a laugh, bit of fun, something to pass the time, for parties, for college, a first time buzz, a lifestyle. In your mates house, on the street corner, in the park, in bed, in a squat, behind the bike sheds, on the roof of Somerfields, in the back of a car, on the top of a car, in a warehouse, under a bridge, in the hospital toilets. This isn’t just getting it out of your system; this is keeping the system sedated.
18th May 08
Cut the crap
count backwards
step sideways
jump
through the system's hoops
hope for the best
the unchallanged
goes unnoticed
getting away with
murder
stench of blood under
noses, dried blood
under fingernails
bang bang,
who's dead?
As long as you could
have done nothing
about it
on your head, be it.
27/04/2008
Splitting headache;
the split open
with a knife
puncture any organ
inside, type.
His skull, bleeds black
down his sorry spine
no soul in sight.
Unforgiving throbbing,
thought out snaps
of synapses;
slide the blade in and
JERK
our sin is complete.
His head is conquered
with only late reactions,
contortions and spasmistic
contractions
to show for his master's
migraine of spite.
14/06/2008
Delirious with ignorance in a whitewashed box of aspirations. Surrounded by the ones who made it without making it obvious, looking up to walls of faces who know how to hold their pose and places which make what I've seen of this world inadequate and inarticulate. One moment says a thousand words. And so it runs
in reels and stutters, cigarette burns, clicks, claps, the grind of life and what it brings; what will be brought. Snap nicotine stained fingers: tickets to every back row, grinding in the underground, banging hips with screamers, screen workers, believers in threadbare lust riots. Drink up, pink lips, drink up. Up all night, dancing in bat caves, up with the stars, feeling infinite, up and screwing harder than DIY in '77. Going on into our last hours. To our drawn out ends we get down, dirty in sweat, hot with working down to the ground. Leave the lights off,
that is our last request.
Where is this going?
