Asylum for Conflicted Thoughts

Know the feel of a winter...
Mourning comes to a cold damp...
Sell all you can and renounce your...
Thrown from your world like a broken...
Idle is the man who only...
Praise to those who talk with...
Steal that which will never be...
Mist covers your tracks in the dark of the...
Knight yourself in the eyes of your...
Farther away from your time at the...
Alter your path and never again say...
Know the feel of a winter...
Mourning comes to a cold damp cell.

The Demands Of Ghandi

They look solemn as they quote the words of Ghandi,
and the old place their heads into old hands,
you must hate the sin and you must love the sinner,
and evict those foreign devils from their lands.
A thousand broken mothers share a thousand broken thoughts,
as those well meaning pockets are lined,
to know the words but not to focus on the meaning,
an eye for an eye makes all the world blind.

Upstairs Baby

For two hours now

The BABY upstairs has been crying

i look at my watch

And i can feel that i am biting my lip

SHE is clearly there too

Desperately trying to get the BABY to settle

Silently trying everything so that HE doesn’t wake up

Praying HE has drunk enough to sleep through it.

i glance at my mobile

If it happens again i will call the police

i know i say this a lot but i will

This time i will call

Then i hear it, the creak of HIS bed,

The feet searching out slippers

The sound of HIM heading down the hall

And then i hear HIM speak

my ceiling/HIS floor muffles HIS words

HE sounds different, SHE replies cautiously

After a moment HE speaks again, but not to HER

HE is singing, softly singing

BABY seems to hesitate, then cry,

Then hesitate, then slowly, easily, calmly

Settles

HE stops singing, there is a minute of silence

Then i hear HER speak

Then the sound of THEM heading down the hall

THEIR feet kicking off slippers

Then i hear it, the creak of THEIR bed.

One Night

Sleep slowly releases it’s grip

His eyes crack open

And he sees her

For a second

For one glorious second

He doesn’t remember her

Then it all comes back

The alcohol

The dancing

The alcohol

The grinding

The alcohol

The long wet kisses between drags on a cigarette

The fumbling with clothes

The fast, unsatisfying, fuck

The awkward moment where names are repeated

The call two months later

The arguments, the tears, the hatred, the making of an honest woman, the calls from parents, the job, the house, the mortgage, the credit card

The screaming

The birth

Thirty long years of depressing, monotonous, good health

He looks out the window at another gray day

Just another day.

Shuffle

Somebody told me music is the victim

And video killed the radio star

So throw away your television

And I will try to fix you

Come as you are Sinnerman

Sit down

Place your hands on the common people

And share one vision the Masterplan

At my most beautiful

The hounds of love walk this way

With every breath you take blue orchid

And the flowers in the rain go crazy

Don’t marry her fat bottomed girl

Stay here with me a fluorescent adolescent

The heavyweight champion this is our velocity

So smile like you mean it

What They Say

Some people try and make their points from the shadows

Or not at all, to increase the value of the words not being said

Well, that’s what they say

Or don’t say

We always try and do what is right

Because we are human

But of course by being right we are not often doing so

We can go with the flow or plough our own furrow

Standing shoulder to shoulder with those with loud voices

Rise up and be one of the number

Shout with the crowd

Make yourself heard

After all, there is very little to be gained from one voice

Just one against the masses

One voice of misguided morality

One voice spoken to the world rather than from behind a pint glass to those who will agree

One voice that can, in the end, say I didn’t call for Barabbas.

Already Dead

I remember that she clearly looked both ways,

There are those that will say she stepped out with a purpose but maybe she just didn’t see it,

Misjudged the speed of it,

Either way,

It hit her.

There were many people there,

Unresponsive bystanders,

Waiting for someone else to deal with it.

It really messes with your head when something like this happens and all you can think is,

‘I’m going to be late for work now’.

It was only a few seconds before someone reacted but it may as well have been a month.

She was already dead.

Before this I had dealt with four deaths in my life,

My dog, my cat, my hamster and my nan.

All in their sleep and all when I was too young to understand.

I remember crying for hours over my dog.

This was new death to me.

This was eyes still open,

Blood seeping,

Open wounds,

Can’t look away,

Death.

The eyes still open,

That will stay with me,

That last moment of realisation,

That fleeting second of panic immortalised like stone on her

Pretty dead face.

The woman who had been driving sat,

Her forehead on the steering wheel,

Huge agonising cries as we all stood

Looking blank.

We didn’t have a doctor so a vet checked for vital signs

But there was no point

She was already dead.

Someone tried to close her eyes but they wouldn’t stay shut

They flicked open like one of those dolls in the bottom of every child’s toybox.

In the end we covered her face with a scarf and cast uncomfortable looks at each other.

A few people drifted away,

I stayed,

I don’t know why.

We explained what had happened and the Ambulance took her away,

No screaming sirens,

No running red lights,

No emergency injections

Or oxygen masks

She was already dead.

And I miss her.

Welcome To Our Town

Welcome to our sirens that scream through the nights to assure you that although crime is happening at an alarming rate, there is always someone trying to get there.

Welcome to our streets scattered with litter and potholes, our tyres will be on double yellow lines and yours will be avoiding the broken bottles.

Welcome to our hospital with our emergency department, the place to be on a Saturday night, from a stomach pump that can’t be beaten to stitches for the story you will never remember.

Welcome to our parks, the perfect toilet for your dog during the day and during the night you will love the experience of drinking cheap cider, and don’t forget your hood.

Welcome to our statistics, top of the table at underage pregnancy, HIV and AIDS, unemployment and we are all pulling together to get hold of that elusive knife crime title.

Welcome to our town, Welcome to our pit, we won’t even change charge you, you’re welcome to it.

Craigrannoch

Silence has never been so quiet

The nights have never been so dark

As they are at Craigrannoch

To lie down in a bed

And listen

To no cars on the roads

To no alarms jolting you awake

To no drunken arguments and fighting on the streets outside your window

And certainly

To no bangs that make you lie awake, eyes wide open, wondering if you should check or ignore it

After all it was just your imagination

Probably

To lie down in a bed

And listen

To no more than a gentle breeze

Rustle the autumn leaves

The call of an owl reminding you that life goes on

Somewhere

To stand at a window

And look

Out at the blackness

No street lamps casting a miserable orange glow

No blue lights as the emergencies are attended

No head lights flashing off the walls through the windows

And certainly

No little lights on your radio, television, alarm clock, and computer that blink at you

Constantly

To stand at a window

And look

Out at the moon

And the stars looking bigger and brighter

Than you could ever had imagined

Silence has never been so quiet

The nights have never been so dark

As they are at Craigrannoch 

Happy Hour

When I was seventeen they stopped asking me,

For ID,

My friends and I would gather at a table,

In the corner of ‘The Fisherman’s Fable’,

And drink bitter through a moustache

It had taken two weeks to grow,

And we felt like men because we were bitter drinkers.

When I was twenty the guys from the factory,

Would often join me,

At my regular place and my regular table,

In the corner of ‘The Fisherman’s Fable’,

And drink bitter while we complained

About work and the weather,

And we were men and we were bitter drinkers.

Then I was fifty and I still went there most nights,

Putting the world to rights,

Having wonderful discussions from my seat at my table,

With the owner of ‘The Fisherman’s Fable’,

And I drank bitter while we says it’s nearly time to retire

Because we are getting on in years,

Men like us who are bitter drinkers.

And now I am old and it is under new management,

From a southern gent,

Who serves cocktails and olives and removed my table,

From the corner of ‘The Fisherman’s Fable’,

So I drink bitter while the place fills up with seventeen year olds,

And nobody talks to me,

Because I am an old, bitter drinker.

Butterfly

There are certain things that never disappoint,

There are certain lessons that,

Once learned,

Leave a lasting impression.

Power gained from knowledge.

Comfort gained from a red, woollen blanket.

Present a butterfly with a flower,

Effort, minimal.

Price, acceptable.

Appreciation is your reward.

These characters are never enough

For every feeling

Every thought

I could never sum it up

‘I love you’ is not the same followed by colon, dash, close bracket.

Or maybe I could vocalize the Vocalise

Tell you the purest things with the purest words

With the help of a Cello

Maybe it would be better to present a butterfly with a flower.

Big old wooden trunk, trellis of Roses, one of Ivy

(kept well maintained, it shouldn’t damage the brickwork)

Wooden flooring, rugs, fireplace, sunflowers and a blueberry bush,

Wine and whisky, Samson and Delilah.

The pitter-patter of tiny

Paws

So, I may not do it often enough,

But when I present a butterfly with a flower,

It means

You know what it means.

Por Ti Volare. Literally.

There are certain things that never disappoint.