Steak

 

Bloody

All caps

No apologies

Cut to death

Chewing fat

Grinding sweet marrow

Animal at the trough

Nails scraping

Knuckles down

Whisky bottle empty

Tears rolling

Teeth broken

 

But still half the world whines

Spinning round like a fairground ride fallen out of all favour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The politics of the world begin to seep in

  

A string of war movies

Cowboy movies

Anything except the real world

 

The vultures have circled for so long

They too have given up and

Flown home

 

The grey sky full of nothing now

But cloud and smoke and

Dreadful promise

 

And new habits form

Those of survival and denial

Which you mould and re-form into regret

 

But still a new and shining version

Of a time honoured disappointment

Until the unavoidable occurs

 

And there you are

Reading the morning headlines

The words seeping in

Old water from a broken pipe

 

Time has been decided by the devil himself

A game played on a broken watch

Nothing certain but purgatory

And so

 

I will go out under cover of darkness

And set fires across the city

Burn the palace

Torch the god’s houses into grey ash

 

Something to feel in control

Something to create life

Anything to jump start the failing world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black and blue

 

Cumulus mountains drift by my window

Pushing the first cold breeze of the year

In the small open crack

 

It is fresh and tangible

And forces change

And so is to be embraced

 

Everything within has become like paper

Words fading away with the fall of each evening

Every morning a reset to zero

 

And what do we do to maintain

But try and steal away some order

Where none can live

 

Because our madness is a liar

And good at it too

As we revel in our own deceit

 

Nothing has changed because

It never does

All these rules are merely presented as new

 

But you know

As do I

That they can talk and talk and yet

 

While they dictate that all must be

Either black or blue with no third choice

Their words are written in sand and made to be kicked

Away.

 

 

 

Jab, jab, jab, jab, jab

My anger is boring

And old like me

To stand apart from the scurrying creatures and

Comment upon their insanity is not the writer’s job

It is not my job at all

And I am losing interest in doing so

 

But of late the world has decreased in size and

Ergo my world almost has become a fishbowl

I am unsure even as I write this

On which side of the glass I am

 

And so there is nothing else

External with which to distract myself

Innerspace has once again failed me

Empty as a pint glass stuck to end of a bar

Ignored there

As heavy doors are bolted for the night

 

And my disdain is tiresome

And tired like me

All I have is a stockpile of love

And ghosts and demons to keep me company and

Keep me from going just that little bit too far

In the wrong direction

 

To stand apart is to stand in shadow

In quiet and self-reflection

What a horror show

So I turn to madwomen begging for drug money

To dogs chasing children in the park

Men cursing from large cars

Ready to kill over an amber light

 

And my anger is boring

And old like me

But the sky is still there

And the air and the sea and places other than

This

Guitars

Dragonflies

Good mezcal

And at last to sleep

Just to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real scenes of Japanese whaling, etc

The TV was silent but I would always keep it on

In the background while I worked

A habit steeped in nothing resembling logic

And there were images of fins being sliced

And massive harpoons rocketing past ice flows into dark red blubber

Stock footage dropped in the middle of the fictional war movie

I was alone and so listening to the wrong music as

Always

The words weren’t coming 

I held my breath and go get a drink

Pretend there was something else I could do

I know there’s rubble to clear away

Bent metal and rebar and concrete, cement, broken glass, brick, sandbags,

All of it

And under there in shadow on newborn grass is a voice or

Instruction of what I’m supposed to do and how I can do it

And so I sit with aching back and spinning head and ignore the

Madness I create in all those around me while year in year out

I fail to engage with what that exactly is

Or how I pull them down into my hole

Spin them round and spit them back out

Always working twice as hard to

Be half as good at everything I ever did

And that’s alright because I know what would occur

If I ever stopped trying and gave any of it up

The weight of the days was suddenly also everyone else’s weight

So less important to both you and me

A shared load of anxiety and countdown to the end of the world

Or at least the end of the humans

Jesus what a delicate animal we are

Wishing for better

Wishing for more

Just one

More

And I decided to no longer wish for anything

When a million people all do the same thing at the same time

Yours surely gets lost in the fog of wanton criminals

Their families and ex-wives and dogs and neighbours and bosses

None of who ever did anything to earn their wishes

Fuck them

They aren’t pulling my words out from under

Whatever concrete slab they are trapped beneath

They aren’t putting wine on my table or an acceptance letter in my mailbox

Dear sir,

We have decided after years of semi-deluded efforts and slightly above-average poems, to publish this one small piece of your work in our magazine no one will ever see, in order that you stop emailing us over and over again.

Kind regards…

Etc

I turn my attention back and see I’m now in the company of cowboys

And brown-faced injuns.

Dry plains and snow-capped peaks far behind them

Everywhere I see feels like a potential escape and

I still feel I’ll never get anywhere but right here.

All the little things sing songs of madness

All I wanted was to see a lighting bolt. The flashes were coming and going and

the thunder, particularly impressive considering the mid-grey of the sky, shook the balcony after each time the sky was lit.

I stood looking down on all the little people scurrying back to their homes after being caught out. Always unprepared. And when they weren’t – rather than bask in it - they still retreated from the reality of it all.

I leaned my stomach on the railing and strained my eyes out and over the taller buildings to the right of my own. The clouds were darkest there and I hoped to get at least one quick shot of electricity bang its way down to earth.

Another flash from within the cloud cover, but no bolt. Damn… The rain was sideways now. I pulled my head back in, soaking wet and warm and alive.

The Chinese family in the garden below had pulled their two screaming kids from the garden moments earlier. The dog across the way that you could hear 24/7 was silent, nowhere to be seen.

It was too much to ask that’s where the next strike would hit. Still, I crossed my fingers for one last yelp and the smell of burnt hair. The rain became ocean rain and suddenly I realised its constant sound was covering everything else.

The scraping of cutlery on plates. The shake of downstair’s washing machine. All the voices – even those I love and will always want to hear. Buses, sirens, the children and the dogs and music of the stupid. All gone, though I knew, only momentarily.  All the little things fell away and for a moment I was sane.

I knew that one by one, these things would return, and mockingly slowly at that

That is not your normal – they’d say

This, is your normal

With my heartbeat and my fingers typing, the only sounds left with which to defend against them.

Told you so

The world does not look to writers

for answers to the big problems

If it did we’d all be living in chaos

We are self-serving and ego driven at the best of times

But some would never admit that

They masquerade and live normal lives and

Write terribly in the process

They work normal jobs

Drive normal cars

And have normal conversations about

The larger problems of the world

With normal people

Most

Of whom, are the cause of said problems

And they are published in some journal

A piece now/then

In some bi-annual magazine

But they have no answers

And nor do I

Not a single one for you on straightening

The twisted wire of the world

Because I don’t truly care about that

Or them

Or you

I remain capable only of caring about my survival and

The survival of those few closest to me

The all-knowing writer is a myth of academic proportions

Drowning in research and statistics

Desperate to prove their worth

To fund more publications

Pored over by a committee and yet

Becoming ash no later than the rest of us

Proliferating mediocrity

They endanger the very souls of those of us who gasp for air

In order to scratch down words that both defend from death

And carry death along with them

As finally we all run out of breath and black ink.

Fast forward

There is only rewind and pause

No play

No fast-forward

No consumption of page after page

Character built meals of meat and stock

None

There is the first page

When it was all to come

And the last

To be ripped out and shredded

Eaten to ensure no one ever discovers

The screaming hilarity of your tale

Now is a mist

A smoke

Now is a million miles an hour

And choking on the fumes of it

Now is an instant memory

In a head already overfull

Now is fury become silence

Because the world cannot allow

Fury

And tomorrow is expected

Predictable and easy

Then the thousand more tomorrows_≠

Bring weight upon their sullen mornings

So you tense up and focus

Leaping with all your might, to the end

Unchanged from the start

Unevolved and making all the same

Mistakes

Hiding your journey from them all.