Two more poems

Running out on me

Time is running out
To say how I feel
Time is running out
Like the world is running out of seal.
There are not many left you see
They keep drying or being killed
Or something
Like all these endless tasks

I, or someone else, invents
Kills off the seal of time
'Till none are left
In the ocean of my love.

Time is running out
To say "Oh love me if you will!"
Time is running out
Like an armeggeddon film.
The counter's ticking down quickly
It beeps as my heart pounds and pounds and pounds
And no hero's coming to save my day
Now Willis, no Cruise, no Gibson,
'Cos they're all actors
(And twats besides)
And now those numbers,
Red, like my heart
And the knickers I stole from your line,
Has reached zero
On the apocolypse of my soul.

Time is running out
To say my words of bliss.
Time is running out
For me to go and take a piss.
I bladder like my heart is bursting
With stuff I really can't hold in
But I can't find and outlet anywhere
For urine or for love.
Now the pain I feel is real
And really quite uncomfortable
So my muscles, like my being,
Are so long overstretched
That, like my romantic yearnings,
They have just given up.
So now piss stains
The trousers of my being.

Time is running out
To say anything at all
Time is running out
For you to be the cinderella at my ball.
Which is fact no-one turned up to
And I had to waltz all on my own
Which was slightly weird
And when you appeared
You left
As none of your friends were there,
And running after you I did not see
The glass stiletto on the floor
And sharp shards splinter into
The sole of … my foot.

Time is running out
To say what I wanted to say
Time has now run out
Oh well, I would only have fucked it up anyway.

Maybe I should have actually done something
Instead of writing a poem about it?

Crystaline

In school once they showed us
This prism of crystal
Demonstrating the light
Flowing from each sharp edge.
I looked and thought though you
Were not paying attention
That crystal was you true,
Sharp edges light flies through.
And while I would never
(Lacking talent)
Try to paint or sculpt your profile,
As I charted that light,
With my blunt HB pencil
It was like capturing the sight
Of your dark features bright.

Still my sketch was not good
I could never draw you well
And on paper your lines
Are smoky indistinct
Fading out before me
Though it is my instinct
To capture light in print.

So your crystaline form
Continues it's escape
From me and from my eyes.
Bright delicate crystals
Cut with light just reminds
Of flight of lines like hind
From hound that just wants to be kind
And how I could never draw you well.

: 31 Aug 2005 18:37 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

THAT guy

It has recently occurred to me that almost all women of my acquaitence (and certainly all the ones I've pulled) have had a previous boyfriend who's messed them around, given them trust issues, and ultimately who they're not yet over.

This causes ridiculous short farces of relationships, lack of sex as the want to take it slow and then the short bit kicks in, and ultimately emotional hardship for me. I'm sure it's the same for many of you guys out there.

While before I prescribed to the "all men are bastards" view, so previous boyfriends would almost certainly have fucked most girls over, I am now revising my opinion:

There is one guy out there going round and messing up all the women!

You know the one, the guy girls cry over "oh he treated me so badly, oh I can't trust men any more, but he was so sweet sometimes and I'm not over him, I'm so sorry." The guy who sleeps with them and is either so bad or so good that they can't then sleep with other people.

Well I say, ENOUGH! We must track this man down and string him up!

Who's with me?

: 16 Aug 2005 15:56 |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Summer poems

My life in poetry

I'm ashamed
And you should shame me too
Because this actually happened
And somewhere in this foetid sea
Of narcissism and post-modernity
Imagination does languidly lurk,
Unseen, unused and out of work,
Trying to drag down this boy who has been hurt,
Prevent him from sounding like a total berk.
And failing.

Dumped by MSN
How post-modern of you
Darling
Dumped by MSN
How unimaginitive of you
Starling
Whose song I once thought was so sweet,
But now my sweet is bitter.
Like a sheep who's lost his Bo-Peep I bleat
Whilst like ev'ry other girl you titter

On and on in cyberspace,
Where no-one hears me moan
And you don't have to look me in the face
As I let out a love-lorn grown.
You've shorn away that look of grace
In bold black ten point your words are stone

For though you say you don't want to be like
Ev'ry other girl, uncruelly unkind,
That's how your words seem (not sound)
Stripped away's your voice, what you type's not quite,
How I expect to hear you and I find
Myself imagining a girl around
These letters in which nothingness abounds
A girl who's not you, but as the 'net is blind
She poses with your screen name and starts fights.
A girl not you, but ev'ry one I've found,
Who's very sweet in her own mind,
And for my own good my own life she blights.

Looking back at that MSN convo
(I can as I saved it)
It seemed to me that all these girls
Whose ex's messed them up
That rather than an army of such churls
Who go round treating women like crap
There's just one bastard ruining future wives,
Tracks down every girl that I might meet,
Insinuates his way into their lives,
Maybe massages her feet.
And interspersing massages and more
He does his best to fuck her up
When I, a decent bloke, takes the floor,
It's too late she thinks of him and can't stop.

Sure you think I'm paranoid,
But I really think this guy exists,
Making the world an unpleasant void,
And ruining my relationships.

So even though she hurt me this time
I'm trying not to blame her
I knew that she would ne'er be mine
As he'd already claimed her.

So that was my technological break-up,
Please forgive it really happened,
It's indicative of the way things don't work today:
With a post-modern twist
And lots of irony
And me moaning about the things girls do to me.
And not minding
As I can turn it into poetry.

All fucked up

So I'm all fucked up
But aren't we all?
I think that we were meant to be that way.
With our broken smiles
And tender guiles
Our neuroses tied up in a pretty bow.

For everything in life does do it's part
To make you who you are.
From our thoughts sold
To new loves grown old,
Until our stars fall around
Our ears like snow.

And all our lives are spent like this,
Notching notch after notch in our minds,
Until there's no more room
And we're scored right through
Marks storying our fucking up over time.

So now you've notched me,
But you're untouched.
No knife is sharp enough to scare through,
But unseen to me,
Beneath what I see
Those tender guiles have
cracked you.

Balloons

When I was a child my thoughts,
My actions were all those of a child.
I played as a child.
When I thought I was an adult
I still played.

My life was a pretty blue balloon
That I bounced up and up
From the inside
Never touching the ground, ´t´was my blue moon
Red, yellow, pink and green beside.
And I thought that it would never stop.

King´s Cross, Aldgate, Edgware Road,
These stealthy pins prick my balloon,
But there was no loud pop, no childish screams,
Glass and metal shards tore my world at it´s seams,
Searing bright and reflecting me
The child the world still knew me to be.

Blue rubber bursts, and it´s an adult´s cries
Yet another´s mirth
I hear from my balloon that falls from tattered skies
And deshevelled, torn, it flaps to earth.
I step out , I see, and I walk
And have my rebirth,
In the adult´s world,
An ugly place where shadows stalk,
Destruction´s ripped banner lurks unfurled.

I´m no more a child,
But I´ll still play,
Batting up coloured moons,
Keep mean pin pricks away.
So that children can remain just so,
Their lives sweet and warm and mild
Up in the air, and they will never know
How their balloons light up my adult´s life
And bring an end to dark.

I like you like

I need you like the prisoner needs the bars
In his dark dank underground cell
No light, no hope, his private hell,
But your bright teeth intruding are.
A cage I love to lie in, that's your guile
I'm in you though I wish I weren't
I'm held but not the way I want
Still sitting in the space behind your smile.
Your bars hold your prisoner's gaze in your eyes,
The dark, pretty, but empty space,
I look and there's no other place
I'm stuck and happy and it's no surprise
Without bars
I'm no prisoner.

I care for you as I care for world peace
That vain poor hope all wars might cease.
I think that it's a good idea
Loving and living, no more fear
Caring for friends, enemies too
But I know there's sod all I can do.
So I try to be polite
Hoping always I just might
Change something, maybe, by being kind,
Yet always lies at the back of my mind
A thought my good intentions tries to hide
As long as I'm without it
We can hope it.

I love you like I love the lie
Wrong, forbidden, the giddy thrill
Once more I'm the child with the guilty grin
Who has his parents' disgruntled face espied
That creased up portrait, with the look that kills
All fun, reminding to lie's a sin,
And the portrait looks at me in distaste
And guilt comes
Like a bus or bullet too late
Reminding you of that rule of thumb:
That when thrill dies
There are no more lies
And without them, I'm me.

I dream of you as a coma patient dreams
Alone and sleeping and yet not quite
And maybe he will never wake
But in pseudo sleep will ever dream
And oh! such dreams
Elysium, Valhalla, Heaven, Hades and Hell
Such bright places, burning faces
The black of fire and enshrouding light
At night
He sometimes dreams of things he knew
But what did wrong, does right
The darkness long, is light
So I almost would regret to wake
But dream these dreams always
Of release.
But without them
I'd have it.

I hate you like God hates the devil,
All-knowing He saw, felt the worming hate that grew
Wriggling 'neath the halo in the bright angel's brain
Leaving it's long glistening trail of slow hate
It slithered on sowing hate in fertile heads
Hate for him that brought that heated pride
Rebel prince cast down halo for a crown
And is too cast down, He felt wings stripped
Flesh and feathers plucked by that wild rush
One by one, as he fell on and on
Landing at last in burning hate
Born of that splash of hell's fire
Bubbling up into Eden
He hears the subtle whispers
Feels the snake's temptation
Feels them tempted and tastes
First sweet bite of fruit.
None would have fallen
Without his hate
Yet all-loving
He loves his
Snake child still
But knows
How good
hate
is.
Without hate
He's not love.

: 16 Aug 2005 15:39 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Jazz

Beginning of a longer work that I wrote over easter, I'd like some feedback to see if you think it's got legs.

It’s a dingy room by all accounts. Plaster cracked all over. At least three colours blotched on the walls, peeling or never finished. Rows of chairs that look like they were left over from the bingo. A bar in one corner, serving warm ale and cold water, even in here there’s a regular drooping folds of beer fat over his barstool. And at the back of the stage, the one stylish thing in the place, the black back wall, daubed with messy almost-rectangles of almost-white paint. Deliberate chaos, sort of what tonight’s about.

The music’s magic. Rhythm and melody and discord and accident all blended together with crushed ice into one fiery cocktail. Inspiring and intoxicating, it bowls you over backwards and then whispers in your ear. But before you know it you’re on your feet and the music’s inside you, changing all you know.

A three-piece, even the band doesn’t match. One tall, one medium, one almost medium; One thin, two fat; one grey and balding, one grey and red-faced (so if I squint he’s pink), one brown and young. A replacement for the third of a broken set, dead for two years, heart attack, I don’t remember his name. It bothers me because I should know; after all I performed the service. The kid’s better, though he could use some dark glasses for his image. The dead man’s brother’s playing saxophone, on a break now, waiting for his time to come, or for his breath to come back to him. If he doesn’t cut back he’ll wind up with his brother, playing the blues in heaven. That’s the ex speaking, forever sitting on my right shoulder.

The double bass purrs at me, low and strong, I can almost feel the vibrations, disturbingly steady, deceptively regular. The backbone of the music, snaking around you, tying you in, always holding you, even when the piano’s path catches your eye. It’s there around you, solid. The piano leads you down a dozen false turnings, snaring you in a musical maze, making you run in circles, but never going the way you think. You fall through hedges, holes in the floor and sky, it loses you in every direction, waits for you to catch up. And all along, in and out of sight the saxophone sings its dance in the sky. It’s beautiful, it’s stunning, it can make you stand in awe as it writhes, golden in the air, shouting at the earth, whooping at the heavens, then swooping down to stand still behind you and whisper burning longings. But it disappears into the maze when you turn around, and you run after it, missing the fiery brilliance.

Not only is the kid better, saxophone player’s better since the funeral. He played the service and it was the best I’ve seen him. It’s as if he won’t accept the 40-year-old kid is better than his brother so he plays for both for them. I once told my ex that dead guy was better off playing in heaven. She hated it. Maybe now saxophone player just has something to play the blues about, a real soul handing around to put the spirit in the jazz. My ex hated that too. We argued, but that wasn’t really what I meant. There’s no idea more gloriously self-indulgent than playing the blues to your own death. Nothing so tragic as playing jazz to everyone else’s life.

The saxophone player switches to the clarinet and he makes a long high-pitched whine sound like an angel crying because he lost his choir. The sound hangs in your ears, just long enough to interrupt itself with cascading notes all falling on top of each other, ending abruptly by flowing into another perfectly different whine.

The room fits the music like the music fits anything. Bingo-chairs, cracked blotchy walls and single stylish wall. None of it matches and that’s just perfect for jazz. That sound that doesn’t fit in anywhere, that defies rhythm and form, subverts you to the path of freedom. Yeah, knaff walls, knaff furniture, cheap bar and a stylish backdrop: that’s what jazz is. Or maybe the music just made it seem that way.

The only thing bothering me is the ‘No Smoking’ sign. People are supposed to smoke during jazz, it’s rebellious, dangerous, and self-harming; you’re not quitting like society tells you to. And the smoke creeps lazily up in a sinewy silhouette, curling its way to a cloud in the ceiling, only it smells foul, gives you cancer, and really it just conforms to the idea that smoking is cool peddled by a different part of society. It’s just that’s normally the part of society that likes jazz.

: 24 May 2005 01:30 |  Tags: Writings Of The Socially Maladjusted |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Well let's give this a go …

Ok, my first actual blog entry on my blog and it's the first time in a long time that I've actually had time to myself.

Actually that's not strictly true as I'm on a break from doing an overdue essay, but I need to take a moment, so here I am blogging away with buffy playing in the background. And it's comforting, to finally take a little breather, to not have to worry about rehearsals for two seperate plays, or about not having time to revise, or do work for the Othello submissions pack.

Oh and the plays, why did I ever think I could do both Junk and Noir Way Out? I felt like death for the entire week leading up to the performances, my friends were worried I was going insane. But it's over now and I can recover from a very fun, but very draining experience. The cast parties were awesome too. I love drunken debauchery.

Also recently revived my love of comics after the recent and brilliant free comic book day at "They Walk Among Us" the local geek-boy store. There are some great ones, (thinking ahead and considering doing my dissertation on Daredevil) but I have not been able to find a comic shop in coventry or leam.

So yeah, that's my first blog/neurotic whine, hope it made you feel better about yourself.

: 23 May 2005 23:41 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Which Greek God am I? Thanks for asking!

Morpheus


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

: 29 Apr 2005 18:30 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Another one

Aww, give us a cuddle. You're an Emotional Drunk!

"But I thought he liked me. It was all going so well. I can't take it, you know? Not again. Why me, you know? My life is so fucking shit. I'm just a worthless piece of nothing shit. Everything I do is shit, or it turns to shit, or I turn it to shit."

– pause –

"You've got beautiful eyes …"

What Kind of Drunk Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

: 15 Apr 2005 17:19 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Had to post this

Are You Damned?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Sex With Nuns

Whether as a punishment or as a reward, the fates have decreed that you will spend eternity having sex with nuns. Better be careful though, they are 'Brides of Christ', and if he catches you at it he'll pull out your pubic hair.

I love Rum and Monkey.

: 15 Apr 2005 17:07 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Spiders

I'm stuck in her web
I'm the fly to her spider
She's caught me and I'm crawling
Towards her eight lovely eyes.

If I can see them I'm happy
And I can see that she's hungry
She'll eat me right up
And I'll be lost inside.
Too polite to struggle.

To the fly that's what love is:
Giving yourself entirely,
Letting her have you.

'Welcome to my parlour'

To her I'm just another fly
Accidentally ensnared
And not really wanted in the web I'll die
Teeth crunching exoskeleton
Shatter it, my insides splatter out
Disgusted by the feelings that I hide
She doesn't hear my final cry.

'Said the fly to the spider'

For behind her stood a little boy,
4 years old if he's a day,
Clutching in his sticky palm
A stick,
A toy,
With which he tore her web away
And squashed the spider in two now stickier fingers.
Fly, still dying, screams at her insides,
Foul, dark, spurting, revealed on kid's nails,
And on sticky palms our innards mix together.

But on another day, another spider,
And another fly,
A kinder boy just chases them away,
And they escape,
The fly showing hunter how to hide,
And live,
Spider teaching prey to hunt.
Together.

'As flies to wanton boys'

To the spider that's what love is.
The fly who gets away
With her.

I'm not that fly,
I never get away,
But some day:

“Welcome to my parlour”
Said the spider to the fly.
“Have you met my friend
the four-year-old?”
Replied the unsubtle, unsly fly,
The suicidal glint of love in his eye.

: 07 Apr 2005 15:30 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Love Tastes Vaguely of Almonds

Before you die,
Not quite sure why,
You realise there was just a taste.

In books with endings
You figure out before they end
It always had it's place.

I don't like those books
And I don't like the taste
They leave upon my brain;
A hint of missing talent,
Of paper waste,
Of the cliche that kills
Imagination.

Because of all the ways that we could die,
It just comes back to this one,
A hint of almond on the tongue
The warning just too late.

Those books make me feel like that
Like I've digested arsenic
Or cyanide (or whatever the hell it is)
Into my brain
With no warning ‘till death takes my thoughts.

Love’s like that
It takes your thoughts away
Until none are your own
And you wander and wonder
In a lovelorn stupor,
A romantic coma,
A lovetorn illusion,
Original thought buried in recycled ideas.

Like the footprint in the flowerbed
Easily seen as the flowers are stripped,
And on her bed.

There’s blood on the sheets,
As you forgot to remove the thorns,
You thoughtless lovelorn fucker.

When you get the taste of love
Imagination dies
Replaced by one thousand little gestures,
Someone prepared earlier.
Originality in love is a lie
As even the romantically unromantic is cliché.
Man’s search for original gift of love
Mean’s there is none.

There are only so many times
That the butler can do it
Before he gets too tired.

There are only so many times
The poison can taste vaguely of almond,
Before you spit it out.

: 04 Apr 2005 00:02 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem