Party Pooper

‘But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe’

-Hamlet, Act 1, Scene II

Excuse my disinterest

But I struggle to see

What swell of occasion

Could overtop me;

What drift of disinterest

Could rally my speech

From this sullen aloofness,

My trappings of grief.

Forgive my disinterest

But who gives a toss

If it’s so-and-so’s birthday

Or our dinner is ‘posh’?

Four years with your girlfriend

Is all well and good,

But I don’t give a damn

Unless I’m understood.

So I’ll swim in my silence

Brush small talk aside,

And frown and feel hollow

Like somebody died.

If you won’t catch my moods

Then I’m out of your reach.

Though you offer a lifeboat

I'll stick to the sea.

The Parable of the Talents

'England is mine, and it owes me a living,'

-The Smiths

Joe totted up his net worth on

A dog-eared restaurant napkin.

His date was twenty minutes late

And he was hardly happy.

Joe totted up what he could give

To a vast indifferent world.

To woo uncaring multitudes

He totted up his worth.

And writing on the napkin’s right

In a cramped and nervous scrawl:

His virtues, talents, modest skills.

On the left his faults and flaws.

He started with the positive;

The things that he could do;

Like mediocre portraiture.

He used to play the flute.

But he quit karate needlessly

In a fit of childish rage.

The novel he was born to write

Never stretched beyond a page.

His French: no more than a bald Bonjour.

His verse was pretty bad.

He felt like the man who must multiply gold

But instead hid his charge in the sand.

His heart kept time in a sickly thump.

The sweat sprang from his skin

And left damp marks on the feeble start

Of his feeble offering.

He crunched the list in his clammy hand.

‘This isn’t all of me!’

‘But,’ said the absent place of his absent date,

‘This is all that I can see.’

Palm Sunday

Sunday.

The trees swallowed me up

And cogitated me softly,

With the leaves falling down in a vertical march,

Like the weeping of trees, a procession of palms.

They were not gold

But pale and brown,

Though far away

They shone like stones.

So as you were sinless you cast them at me

To bloody my body with loss of belief.

Now nothing remains of the lies that I weaved,

But I don't want to see.

So I shed my skin with muffled cracks

A constant, gentle breaking

And shift this flaking, wasting corpse

In one painful act of waking.

Now turn your eyes away from me

For I don't want to see.

And take your tongue and bury it

My covered ears still bleed.

And take this light away from me

For I don't want to see.

For I don't want to see.

Consall

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the road that could almost be wind too.

And birds.

One a blunted pinprick,

The next a creaking door,

And then a whining nasal choke

Pleads that they chirp no more.

The stream chuckles quickly and softly

Censored by a sharp avian tut.

Across the stream, the light is green

Amidst the trees, at awkward angles

Aloofly offering leaves for gifts.

But not the vine: high-diving,

Hitting the absent water with even gestures of green.

Climb higher. A tree is felled:

Its fallen branches parallel.

Too straight somehow.

Another bows its mossy arm

To wish the ramblers well.

The ivied storybook oak

Looks perfect in the damp.

Its smooth and well-considered curves

Stand proud in a kingdom of dishevelled ferns.

When you’re alone the wind takes on a character,

Mingled with the rain that could almost be wind too.

Wetley Common

Canned chorus of barks

Rattle to a crescendo.

Behind the trees

The kennel echoes.

The howls subside.

A cockerel crows.

Static of tyres

On slipping stones.

The air exhales

A distant gushing breeze.

A hammer cries

In dull metallic shrieks.

The road beyond

Sighs a swelling, nasal groan.

Half formed words

Of children dance below.

In the relative calm

A cow clears its throat

Turns to the horizon

And boldly lows.

Stranger on a Train

You drink the world

Like old men sip their beers,

Heads bowed in

Surreptitious swigs.

Those deep-set eyes

That widen through the years

Sit proud in

Caves of vigilance,

Shadowed with purpled

Folds of sallow skin;

Bags for life

Filled to the brim.

So did your cool, unsparing glance

See callousness and arrogance?

Armistice

‘Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all’ 

Alfred Lord Tennyson

5am and I can feel

Your weight around my neck;

And every step was torture,

Thoughts a bullet to the head;

Hurt signposted for miles around,

I loathed the dusty track;

And tears squirmed out of every pore,

I dreamt of turning back;

We were drowning in our feelings

And we’d lost where we began;

You said, ‘We’ll go our separate ways’.

It felt like a release;

But when it came to letting go

I only felt defeat;

A precious flower, yet to bloom,

Was wilting in the heat;

The weed of resignation

Would surely prove too much.

If you’d consent to strangle me

I’d shiver at your touch.

Your fingers laced around my neck

Could only make me blush.

Better far to love our hurt

Than hurt for want of you.

And we will hurt each other

Yet we need each other too.

I’m gentlest when I’m with you

But our minds are black and blue.

I will not risk a rupture

Though an end may find us soon.

So I will end this armistice

Though we bare our hearts to wreck.

5am and I can feel

Your weight around my neck.

Coffee

‘Maybe you should just drink a lot less coffee

And never ever watch the Ten O’Clock News’ –Regina Spektor

Leaning like italics;

Heading God knows where.

A fizzling core demanding more

And crumpling with its care.

A sizzling shiver in my hands

And thighs like fireworks.

These limbs are spitting sparklers

So you best be wearing gloves.

Now I'm composed of dominoes;

Disaster’s in my lines.

My structural integrity

Could snap at any time.

And with one push I’d feel the rush

Of swift impending doom.

Just one more breath and little death,

Emerging something new.

Another sip and I am filled

With all that I could be;

Like love without the nasty bits.

All possibilities

Drift down like sparks in autumn parks

When the rocket’s had its day.

It kills me with its climax

As the caffeine melts away.

Boyhood

It started with substandard films

And Hollywood explosions.

Manhattan burned, we faced our doom

From comets, drones or Martians.

Guy Fawkes demands an audience

When he gives himself to flames.

And violence is a boy’s best friend

In bloody playground games.

When British Bulldogs led the chase

That scrapes the skin from knees.

When infant fists stroked supple skin

It felt like a release.

When we learnt about the birds and bees

The teacher looked so serious.

It terrified my childhood friend

Who asked if boys have periods.

When my crush whined grass was in her bra

I scrunched up summer leaves.

When she started dating my best friend

Milk teeth made chapped lips bleed.

Perhaps the joy when tissues burn

Wasn't worth the wasted dust.

And perhaps the half price shoot-‘em-ups

Were never right for us.

Still, flowers once were shattered seeds

And fractured eggs makes birds.

And silence must be broken with

Artillery of words.

What harm was there is throwing stones

At Spot, the neighbour’s cat?

And insects feel no pain when scorched

With a magnifying glass.

So you will feel no hurt when I

Visit your lips too roughly.

And when I step across that line

You’ll damn well cross it with me.

And I Was Eyes Alone—

And I was eyes alone—

A curious departure.

‘Til thoughts reflect inflections

Of the voyeuristic laughter.

To disappear completely—

This aimless body’s aim.

The selfless self alone could help

To fill the world again.

Now drifting out the window

As the daylight starts to fade.

Do you spy it through the glass beyond

Your thin translucent shade?

To look and feel will fail

To know your memory-ridden face.

Now I see without direction

With a cool diffracted gaze.

Everything and nothing fill

The shrinking streets below;

And sleepers trapped within themselves

Still drag their worlds in tow.

Above, the formless fingers stretch

To grope towards the stars

Blind in their bliss to inward depths

Expelled in cosmic fires.

The light below is failing fast,

And with no light of its own

This voiceless voice is rising still.

Invisible. Alone.

Whitby

Seven years later: I'm back here again.

Is this the same town that I cherished before?

Is this the same sand? Is this the same shore

Where I danced to the pulse of the waves?

The silver framed photos are all that I have

To bind me to this quiet beach

But the pictured sand has left the land

The grains of me lost to the sea—

Before the hoping doting groping

Chocking with hurt

Feel like filth

Feel like dirt

Dad calling me ‘sod’ and carpet burns

And yellow paper fantasies—

Clifftop graveyard,

Ruined abbey,

New-sand seashore,

Nothing stays.

Pirate golf course,

Cliff-lift eyesore,

Salt-smell, seagulls,

They remain—

The grey sea claims me

Lately, they say

Insides echo,

Hollow, let go,

Touch me, tell me

I could matter;

Break me, fell me,

Idle patter;

Feed me, lead me

Back, back—

It rained so we stayed inside the car

And swallowed chicken sandwiches

The windows steaming

Dreaming

I would

Never leave there

Breath in

Leaving—

My Whitby where did you go?

The waves beat on while I was home.

Repeated breakers

Shape us

Make us

Longshore drift

Shall dislocate us.

I tried to dance with two left feet,

But quickly stumbled out of time.

The waves beat on, the tide encroached,

My loved ones said it would be fine.

So Whitby: home of vampires

And Goths and jet-based jewellery.

All I recall is that I loved

Those gentle memories truly.

So love me, Whitby, though I may

Have known the taste of failure.

I’ll find my head, then I’ll return

If you can’t be my saviour.

The sea is always calmest in

The space between the waves.

I’ll never leave that steamed-up car

The wind won’t bite my face.

The abbey perfect once again,

The seagull in mid-flight,

And there I’ll be;

The static sea

Will not know day nor night

My Whitby and Whitby's me

Together for all time.

Find me beneath the whale bone arch

A child again: alive.

Little Victories

Come February Eden- show your face!

Come rebel summer- burn winter away!

The day is yours- shine on and make us proud!

Blow back the fog of the declining day.

Due West the bright balloon is flying low;

The avian chorus chirrups its dissent

That they should share their sky with dilettantes

Raised up, made godlike by Promethean vents.

Come five o’clock no resonance remains;

Persephone returns to her dread tomb,

With her I’ll languish in the misty gloom

And with one little lapse lose all my gains.

These little victories are all in vain

Since winter is still winter all the same.

Perhaps We Are

Perhaps we are

The ripples on

A stagnant pond

Underneath the algea;

Like veins within

Your oblique skin.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

The gaping fish

That gasping slip

And slide back in the water;

Try to taste air

Which is not theirs.

Perhaps we are.

Perhaps we are

Just amateurs

With metaphors

All a size too small;

Can’t comprehend

Our complex ends.

Perhaps we can't.

Snow

It fell so close that I was choking:

Claustrophobic,

Sodden through.

The flurry flustered. Non-committal

Orbitals

Surrounded you.

The grace on your face reminded me

Of the time we saw circumspect owls.

They all looked suspicious,

But you were oblivious,

Your eyes spoke uncensored delight.

Your alchemic joy: bright, infectious

Giddy, reckless,

Radiant.

And I was like the whitening marble

Heroic poses

Roman noses.

Though I was drunk vicariously

That impish laugh knew no reply.

That smile brings back the scarcity

Of crunching tread and dandruff sky.

Lloyd's Ballad

Lloyd syphoned off adrenaline

(Stale caffeine concoction)

And poured it into tea stained mugs

As urine coloured bourbon.

A face filled with anarchic glee:

George deftly chugging vod.

Tequila solemnly prepared

The body and the blood.

By this time Emily was pissed;

Videos were taken.

The wall propped her up grudgingly

Until it too lost patience.

A merry band (sans Emily)

Descended on the town.

They hugged and skipped and talked too loud

Feet pummelling the ground.

Inside the club the air was dense.;

The bar queue was ungodly.

The crowd was like a rolling tide

Endless waves of bodies.

Lloyd let the bass roar through his shoes.

He swayed with his eyes closed.

George leant and bellowed in his ear

Whilst treading on his toes.

Lloyd lost the others by the gents.

He peered into the throng.

And stared at strangers in the crowd

Who looked like they belonged.

The couples touched more than Lloyd did.

The lads were closer friends.

He cursed his dull and dreary life

And swore to make amends.

Outside the cold air bit his nose:

The cartilage carnivore!

He’d left his friends and sobered up.

He’d realised he’s a bore.

He dreaded the long anecdotes

They’d dwell on the next day

‘Cus none of them would feature him.

He trudged his lonely way.