Party Animals

1

Last night was party night. This morning feels great. Maybe it's because we're all young and inspired. That's how it rolls. After a long evening of Ring of Fire, smashing cans of beer on our heads and having several visits from the residential co-ordinator, Iggy, the party moved to Flat 260, that's where the party animals and I reside. Kris started playing his guitar and suddenly, there were all these party people crowded into his tiny room, sat on the floor, crammed against the walls. He lost it, playing so strong and singing in his great accent. That was the first infinite moment, right there. It could have been the end of everything, a room of complete strangers, because really that's what we are and were. Maybe not knowing made us closer, physically and through the love coming out from Kris. I have no doubt that's what it was, even if he was pissed. It all means something and everything. Of course, it came to an abrupt end when we were hauled out to chain smoke, though that made us all closer again. Nicotine and alcohol brings out really great shit from people.

Morning after the night before, life goes on in misty mornings, black coffees and Kris singing along to Bob Dylan or something in his room.

Today, being here, hearing him across the hall and the others making breakfast or whatever. Makes me feel alive.

2

Back to Flat 260. Stumble through dirty fountains and urban underpasses. Party animals, we come out at night.

In the dark, meaning over anything. Under the influence spill out your heart and in the morning we'll pretend nothing was ever said. Heads on laps, legs, resting, pacing, that's our hearts beating. Faster, harder, stronger. Lying out listening to love, the guitar and blood rushing around our

Slow down your breathing. Maybe we could make it last

our strange love

strangers

it feels like home for now.

Black marks, lie ins, every head going round the bend with thoughts of the night before. Takeaway, picnic in the corridor, sat outside the boundaries and shared, most importantly, shared.

Drink up and out. Shots out of shot, shooting up on red bull and vodka, wavering by the bar, perched on stools around a table roost – out to the dance floor.

Watch us shake it, beats. Jeans, fishnets, heels, horns. Saints or Sinners. White light, red heat. Feel the beat. Dance like there's no tomorrow, no one else out there but this jagged circle, no home just time and space and people. We are playing the world's game, well.

3

What am I to you?

More significant than who I am or what I feel like, everything real means nothing if you are held in no one's high regard. My heart runs on love of others. I am independent output, dependent input, without you I am nothing. Your words can make me no one or the only one. Assumptions and high hope fuel the distinction between living and being alive. Hurt me. At least then I know I am worth your spite. Lying awake, asleep. The highest intimacy requires time, there's no rush, lie back, hold tight and just be. Be with me. Everything amounts to how your heart beats. My indifferent love – tonight I crave proximity. Break me apart, use any part as you wish. Tell me and touch me. To have your attention drives me faster. Who am I, to you? Decide my fate weighed out in attributes and appreciation. What the fuck am I to you? That leaves me nowhere, conquest. Alone, invincible. Give me affection and I am vulnerable. Show me what I am to you, or I might never believe it.

Stork

Almost two weeks since Uni started and it's going swell. Or buzzin' as certain people might say. That comes with a smile and, fond memories of last/this week's antics. I'm planning on doing a post on my new blog showing photos of what we've been up to. Not been a moment of boredom, I can tell you. 

Anyway, all I seem to think about when I'm not out at Flat 110 harassing (hanging out with) our mates down there, is Chels and her ever increasing baby bump and what is going to happen in the future. Wherever I go and whatever happens, it's good to know that there'll be some sort of family happy to see my face again. There's so much to be getting on with. 

Cakes are on the agenda for tonight, meaning lots of big chocolaty ones. This morning we made brunch for the two flats and had the most huge cooked breakfast you've ever seen. Kris is playing his guitar across the hall and someone's making some tea in the kitchen, I just heard the microwave ping. Everything feels content, or something like it. Three years of this, I can cope with. In fact, a part of me already worries about how quick it will go and whether I'll ever see these people again. Bloody hope so. 

Get busy living!

#1

Slides in and out of focus.

The pattern on the carpet spells out our fate. Inside my mouth feels sore and chewed up, because that's what it is. It's a habit I got into when I met you. The first time we met, and I didn't know what to say next, so that's what I did. Chewed up, biting the sides of my mouth. Like a kind of punishment.

Our stolen glances are out of sync. "It's bothering me."

Now you have a reason to look, so you do. Hi.

“What this could mean.”

Propped up by elbows. Or hands, depending on how you look at it. Are you looking, no, at my leg. From the knee to half way down the calf is a long split of the flesh, held together by red, black and yellow blood, scab and pus.

“Can you not look at that?”

You keep your eyes where they are, then, slowly, look away out of the open balcony doors.

“You worry too much.” Something's drawn you up, out to stare over the tops of the trees and across to the row of balconies on the other side of the avenue. “Great view up here.”

“Yeah, yeah it is. A fucking great view, that will be the same fucking great view for as long as we're up here.”

“Fifth floor?”

“Count.”

“Too high to jump then?”

I know you're not looking at me because if you were, well. The back of your head is smoking. Out comes a half empty packet of cigarettes, out comes one particularly fat one, even though they're all meant to be the same, flick, lit, in and out it goes. Nicotine stained air.

“You could abseil it. No one would miss you.”

“I'd be alright then, at least I'd be dead or dying on the ground. Better than being well and truly alive up here with you being such a dick about everything.”

There's a bit too much thigh showing. A quick hoist of the bath robe and it's sorted. Enough to keep you guessing anyway. If you ever turn round, which I expect you will when you decide you want a toke or six. True to form, you mutter something about nothing I expect and saunter over to steal my fag, suck on it like there's been a drought and shove in back in my waiting fingers, a mere stub.

You can't see, I'm glowering. Yes, at you. Mangy old bastard.

My feet get cold. Time to move. There's nowhere really to go, except to the bathroom and then you'd only come banging on the door after two minutes asking (hopefully?) whether I'd topped myself. I feel a tantrum coming. Actually, this flat is too small to throw a decent one, and if you're going to behave like a child, you might as well do it properly.

“Got a plan then, Maestro?” Our arms touch, sharing the rail. The cute guy we sometimes see shopping in Lidle is watering his balcony, shirtless. “Oh I see. Right.”

The plants get fed, he disappears. I'm the next best thing.

“Not really. Seeing as your last attempt went so well.” Idly, you finger the end of the black spikes separating us from the neighbours. And the rest of the world. “Don't worry, I give you permission to eat me if I die first.” You think for a moment. “There's no way I'd touch you. Not enough to fill a plate.”

“Fuck off.” I wouldn't mind eating you now, actually. But I don't suppose that option is on the menu.

The Sacre Coeur looks great this time of evening. I think you are equally lost in the horizon, meaning we're in for a long night of thinking aloud and staring at ceilings. You put your hands behind your head and stretch. Has anyone ever told you that you have good armpits? Because you do. Now I really want to hug you. Timing my move, I grab you round the middle as your arms drop back down.

“Cheeky.”

“You love it.”

Maybe that's true. We fit pretty well, for an odd couple. Couple, ha. That might provoke assumptions. Time will make you desperate, and we've got plenty of that.

Goodbye from George and I

GOODBYE

This is farewell, for a month or so anyway. Where I'm off to there's no such thing as 'communication', in the wilderness it's send a sheep or nout I'm afraid. Upon my grand return, once this laptop's hooked up to the University accommodation wifi, a new blog will be born in addition to these two. The new blog will have substantial-ish daily posts on everything from Existentialism to Agyness Deyn and eventually stand as an example of my writing skills at a, hopefully, more academic level than the informal posts on this blog. 

Tomorrow morning at approximately 5am, my car, George, and I will be heading 350 miles 'up', head banging to Pendulum et al. all six/seven hours of the way and pit stopping at all my favourite service stations. There's one with a waterfall, groovy or what? ANYWAY. Goodbye for now, we'll bump into each other in cyberspace sooner or later.

Last night's insomnia

12/08/08, early

Open, closed

tick

Side, back

tick

Open, closed

Their both black

tick

in

tick

out

Time winds on

Mind winds up

Taught and ready to snap

tick

Over, under

tick

Front, back

tick

Over, under

Losing track

tick

in

tick

out

The clock

and thoughts

beat

in 

out

breathe

out 

in

breathe 

out

The walls are closing in

Tonight:

watched 'In Bruges' on DVD, oh the glorious moment of unwrapping a film and sliding it out like a new born baby, fresh to the world and ignorant of everything but itself. Was just as good as the first time round, although my laptop widescreen hardly bears recognition to the whopper in Vue.

filled the car with boxes, stood around looking pleased with myself, emptied the car of boxes

There's a white gap in my wall where I took down my sexy Ikea bookcase. I live in the converted garage, a weird shaped white box filled to the brim with everything I own. It's not much, because I am not a great believer in material possessions and I'm a serial cleaner. Clutter = bin, good stuff left over is what makes my little box home. Not for much longer; my things and I are moving to a new, darker box. First a garage, now the bothy. But that's how I like things, simple. Boxed up and boxed in. 

Time is dragging now it's set.

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?