Saturday 3 December 2011

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.

Sunday 20 November 2011

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.

Saturday 24 September 2011

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.

Thursday 1 September 2011

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.

Tuesday 30 August 2011

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

Sunday 28 August 2011

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.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

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.

Friday 19 August 2011

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 

Saturday 30 April 2011

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.

Monday 4 April 2011

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.