A Collection of Spurts from 2004-2008

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?