First Draft
The best I can do,
Is often the first,
Attempts to improve,
Will likely be worse,
The punch thrown in a dream,
Where noodly arms waver,
Or carbonara sans cream,
Incomplete; lacking flavour.
Too many ideas swirling around,
Or is it a chasm; too few?
It matters little as no sense abounds,
It immidiately all goes askew.
Fauxstalgia
In my dark cell,
Where the phantom life is lived,
Eighties beats and eighties hooks,
Set the tone.
How can this make me pine,
for imagined yesterday?
I ask myself, yet, of course,
Nobody answers
All that fills the aching silence,
Where the false memories are made,
Are eighties drums and eighties keys,
Is this real?
Spat out, no choice; plunged into the fray,
Fatal flow, no voice; for all we need to say,
Compassion forced on some; incompatible with life,
A rancid curse in a universe, filled with needless strife.
Thirsty, shaded flowers wither, slowly dying,
Despite lack of powers; its supposed they're just not trying,
Labelled as the flawed; the meek, weak and fragile,
By those with hearts unthawed, mental gymnasts oh so agile.
Those they think are troubled, just can't block reality,
Unable to change the channel on the cosmic LCD,
Most will end up early dead, and beat the mob in hell,
Embarrassed by the lives we led, even if we lived them well.
I live for one purpose now, strange a reason it may be,
And that is to find out how, they we can o longer see.
Rainbow
Once was black and white; void and light,
Wrong and right: did we know?
Colour changed, black and white exchanged,
Black now white, white now black, no going back.
Colourblind came, melting together,
Right and wrong tethered,
Right now wrong, wrong now right,
Became each other overnight.
The tricolour: Mother White, Father Black,
Begat the son Grey,
Enveloped in uncertain comfort,
For eternity.
Yet, beyond the prism, a colour schism,
Exquisite Eve, white teeth into Ruby red apple,
Her toes curled in the green grass of paradise,
Sharpened to prick guilty feet, drowning black and white in ruby red.
Blazing orange-yellow Prometheus,
Warming hearts of innocent husks,
Scythed in Pangea fields,
Soon to sear and bubble in black and white foam,
Alchemy giving grey.
Gilded absolute of the far east,
Gold becoming sepia tone, lost in fogs of time.
The everlasting soul, blue as sky above and sea below,
Out of grasp,
Brown as mud underneath terracotta feet. Prickly, guilty feet.
Severed by pagan savage.
Black, white, grey; washed away in the pallets of ancient artists,
Kaleidoscopic imagination splashed lovingly and violently across a turbulent canvas; eons wide.
Ode to Tea
There is just one thing which I be stannin'
And that's milky brown tea, rich with tannin,
Boomers, millenials, Gen X and Gen Z too,
Can all appreciate a basic, boiled brew.
Fuck your bubbles, fuck your ice, fuck exotic loose leaf,
Just give me a Yorkshire teabag or i'm causing you grief,
Yes, it's staining my teeth and it's staining my mug,
But it's worth it all for this hot liquid hug.
Frst thing at breakfast, end with one during supper,
Any time of day you'll see me cradling a cuppa,
But leave it for two minutes, or maybe even three,
Cos I'll cut you up if you serve me pissweak tea.
Confidence
I put my best foot forward,
And fell sharply off the cliff,
I'm so extremely cool,
That my joints are frozen stiff.
I always get back on the horse,
Which my hefty weight collapses,
I have a bulging, genius brain,
Missing a few too many synapses.
I dance like no one is watching,
To the beat of my own drum,
But uncoordinated shuffling,
Has left limbs sore and numb,
I carpe each and every diem,
As though it were my last,
Which explains my temporal anxiety,
As the clock is ticking fast!
The Masterpiece
Too awake to sleep,
Too tired to move,
A masterpiece of ambivalence,
Belongs in the Louvre.
Buried, in a closet, under bric a brac and stationery
And weight and loathing and hate and masonry.
The militant caretaker diligently taking care
To bury himself in work and leave it decaying in there.
Too sharp to shut it out,
Too backwards to go far,
Without too much a doubt,
An apathetic objet d’art.
Framed, and tightly packed, lickety-split on a rickety boat,
Pounded against waves of a confounded, primordial sea,
Interrupts the endless, tedious water where it floats,
On an ocean of baseless, hypocritical morality.
Too despairing for plans,
Too reasoned to be hopeless,
As a work that is bland,
It is life’s magnum opus.
Washed up on shore; hope no more to be truly seen - obscene!
No artist impression can capture the canvas of depression,
Lost in paradise, under nature’s empty blue and unruly green,
Known to all the land the digits on one hand a work of pure obsession.
The Smoker (Pt. 1)
He’s really starting to get to me now. Four times he has appeared to me, and four times I’ve been left struck. He just stands there, with his fag in his mouth, grinning.
It happened first three weeks ago; I remember the moon was at its fullest and illuminated my room through the prism of my bare, curtainless window. For reasons I do not know, and wish I could explain, I found the exact shade of grey-silver light irresistible, and found myself almost floating out of bed, towards the window.
Looking out at the vast grey of the sky, I found myself surprised at the full moon's dullness, as wispy grey clouds wafted over it. Looking back now, I believe with my full heart that the magical light was not created by the moon, but the figure that I saw dimly lit by it.
Behind the two storey flats is a stone wall five feet high, encompassing the greenery below. Opposite the wall, a number of fences that guard the gardens of houses in a small housing estate. Between these two boundaries is a lane; a long lane of dark blue tarmac that stretches from my flat and winds towards and along the river for about a mile.
Stood - almost rooted - in this lane, no more than forty yards from my tired eyes, was a man, perhaps maybe a figure, squat and dark. He was surrounded in shadow but lit lightly by lunar light, giving him a greyish, foggy quality. Faint colours mixed around him and changed with every glance; sometimes reflecting the deep dark blue of the tarmac beneath his feet, sometimes incorporating (or emanating?) the moody indigo hue of a neighbour’s vibrant garden forget-me-nots, trembling - from fear of him? - in the breeze; sometimes the earthy brown and life-giving green of the nearby grassy soil or alder leaves mixed with him, giving him a mossy sheen or slime in autumn mist.
I stood there, utterly transfixed with fear and anxiety, for a time that could not be judged by humanity’s precious attempts to gauge time: a brief eternity or an infinite moment. The wisps of cloud thinned, and the increased illumination of the moon revealed a cracked, craggy, round face, weighed down by an algae green fisherman's bucket hat. He stood thirty yards away, but I could make out a thick, oily, brown-red liquid leaking from the interior of the hat down the side of his face, revolting me. He wore a long, black mackintosh that reached down to his thick black boots, boots that seemed to almost sink into the pavement.
Somehow, perhaps by his design, I had moved from the safety of my room and out onto the balcony. I noticed immediately that there were no sounds, however slight, of the wind, or of the birds that regularly chirped even in these small hours. I felt that I was not awake, but in a vivid dream. I never know I’m dreaming, so I knew this was real, but less so. The smells were off; the colours were off; the feeling of the balcony banister in hand was off. It was as if I had entered a different place but stayed where I was, or he had brought me here.
Then I realised, why? Why did this man, or thing, arrive here, stand there, and stare at me, with blurry eyes. As if answering my self-question, the figure’s face contorted in a bright, yellow-toothed grin, rummaged in a pocket and brought out a dark red cigarillo case. He flicked it open in his hand and inside were a dozen fags, led solemnly in their satin lined coffin, ready for cremation. He took one, caressed it into his mouth, returned the case, rummaged in the same pocket, and revealed a dark red zippo lighter that dropped out of his baggy sleeve which landed delicately in his calloused hand. As though it was a part of him, the mackintosh man flicked open the zippo – embossed in white with the logo of a swan – and lit the object clamped between his chewed lips.
Suddenly, he gave an enormous drag of the cigarette, reducing to a beige stub in seconds; his cheeks inflated simultaneously. With a flutter of the lips, as though playing a magical woodwind, the pale cigarette smoke seeped out of the mouth. The gas like smoke looked lost for a moment, floating in front of the figure’s face in a gentle swirling motion, before slowly floating towards me. The cancerous vapor made me cough involuntarily, which seemed to offend the figure and the smoke. Suddenly, I noticed that parts of the swirling grey were flitting off from the main form, and as they did so they were themselves forming peculiar shapes.
Words. They were forming words...
I hypnotically viewed this painstaking process for an age, before the smokey sentence completed itself. To my horror, the words spelled out these words:
He is coming.
Equine
Made for speed,
Bred to bleed,
Tug the mane,
Break and train,
Gasp for breath,
Charge at death,
Bow and spear,
Run through fear,
Metal feet,
Human seat,
Blood is spilt,
Empires built,
No reward,
Just a horde,
War is done,
Now for fun,
Vilest curs,
Whips and spurs,
Placing bets,
Live assets,
Break a leg,
Cannot beg,
Behind shed,
Cold and dead
Hello Everyone, I’ve Written a Poem
Hello everyone, I've written a poem,
I've titled it "Hello Everyone, I've Written a Poem",
It's quite like me, to struggle for titles,
But this one, I didn't struggle with,
I said to myself "What would a pointless poem be called?",
I replied "Probably something like 'Hello Everyone, I've Written a Poem'",
HA!
So I went with that, I went with the title "Hello Everyone, I've Written a Poem",
While you read it, you may find yourself angry,
But let it happen,
Anyway, here is the poem I've written,
Titled "Hello Everyone, I've Written a Poem":
You know that panda that eats, shoots and leaves?
Well, what about the community that grieves?
Thank you for reading my poem, called "Hello Everyone, I've Written a Poem".
Merry Christmas everyone.