Iced Coffee

I’m grateful to the world
for spinning while
I was away.
Grateful to the road for still
being here with
its lines and holes.
It’s nice to see that
that street light has remained
steadfast in its incapacity and
that the sign it
doesn’t illuminate
is still bent and dented.

If I could thank the sun
I might think about it;
it shines on them
and that
and me
and my petty little bullshit
problems.
Iced coffee still exists and
so does the fact
that it’s not decaf,
like I asked.
It’s nice to know that
while I was away
in my hole
surrounded by my own
evils
the air above it all
still flowed and saved
just enough for
me to come back to.

A Scam

I suppose there are reasons.
Excuses, maybe to
buy more time to
fix all that’s gone wrong.
To be fair
what’s wrong now were all merely
hopes and
pipe dreams from
a while ago.
That distance that seems so short is
probably,
most likely,
miles from where you started.

It’s not about finding reasons for the future
because
you could just
get hit by a bus
tomorrow
and it would all
be for nothing.

I think it’s more about finding reasons for now
even if they’re tiny,
even if the only reason is to stick around
to spite the feeling of
leaving.
Gather your nerve as small and quiet
as it may be.
Retreat if you must
and conceal if you need.
It’s not healthy, no
but it’s healthier
than jumping off
a bridge.

Sometimes it’s better to take it
from the left
to the right
left, right, left and so on
without considering the place
where we stop.
Put your head down
and refuse to look up
if you must, ignore
each shoe that passes by
if you need to.
It’s a bit rude, yes but it’s kinder
than jumping off
a bridge.

Maybe it’s about value
and not for the
sake of finding a value but for
what you value most now,
maybe?
Existence is a scam and
they all profit from
the con, clutch your
pennies if you need to.
It’s expensive, but
expensive is expansive and
given that economy,
I suppose it’s cheaper
than jumping off
a bridge.

THC

Whether behind me or
aside me to
bind to me or
arise to my
eyes to remind me of the past
with me,
or the path with me that neither of we,
of us
took,
I notice your
lack of head on approach.
How you sneak now to my
periphery when my
head on is hazy or
a little dilated you
suddenly appear because
maybe now is the best time for you
to tell me,
when my guard is down and my
dosage is up, now that I’m
docile enough for you to gain the audacity
to show your face again.
In my window,
the window that I cleaned and re-framed
and resealed and
re-locked and
gave new curtains and I drew them for a moment
to look out again and there
you are.
On your 12 foot ladder
face pressed.

Well to you at my back
or you
up above
or you
at my left but never
at my right
fuck you.
And you.
And you.
Here I am at
peace in one
piece for one night
and feeling the feelings
that you, or you
never gave me but you
certainly did I
condemn you to a life and
afterwards of the same curse
you left with me. Feeling
each of someone else’s wrongs
in your own throat.

Contingencies

She started screaming today.
She’s normally so
quiet and she
sits at the back but today she
made a run for it.
She burst the windows open and
grabbing at the ledge she
let me have it into my
bones with
a guttural
roar I felt in my own
throat as she
ran her nails in between my
ribs
and filled up my lungs
with the air she’d
been saving up all this time.

I didn’t know how fed up she was.
Being a possible
contingency dressed
as an ideal and kept
in the back pocket
in case what I say isn’t good enough.
But she really
wants out now.
She’s tired of
crying for two,
eating for none
of anyone’s goals and
praying for sun
that’s bad for our skin but
she doesn’t care.
We’ll get wrinkles
either way.

The bargaining is over now.
She’s better than me
and it’s fine.
Her gentle suggestions
have become golden rule,
she’s made for the world
that’s ahead
and I’m tired.
For sanity is saved
by raising an eye,
by looking around and
pulling up from
a sodden ground
and even one handed
to heave your whole weight
is better than
crawling any further.

Cost of Living

I feel my weight as I walk
lately
I’ve noticed my neck
waits for my feet
lately
my channels don’t surf
in my wate
but
lately I see that
I saw this coming.

My numbers don’t match with
my pages
right now and
I’ve heard it’s a mass
aloneness
right now
no one is special but
especially
not now
I should have known
not to complain.

I’m constantly looking
behind me back there
and
I’m drowning in
days to come up there
and I’ve committed to
seeing them through
this time but
living is fucking
expensive.

Double Cleansing

It seems that I end each day as I start it.
In preparation.
In front of this mirror I
paint my face to prepare for whatever
war I trip into that day and
late at night I wash it all off
to allow it to
breathe.
As if I’ve not taken a gasp all day
I wipe and
wash and
scrub to atone for suffocating myself for the sake
of going outside.
For vanity, maybe? Maybe but what is vanity
really.
And what’s so bad about it?
If vanity lifts my chin and
chest and makes me
grin and
blessed
then I shamelessly paint with
each and every brush
so that I may
stand at my post for those hours.
Unapproached.
Unbothered.
Untested.
I suppose we like knowing that we could, if we needed to
but we don’t, so we won’t.
That mirror holds a face hung
on a soul which eludes.
I beg for them to like me, to praise me and
love me, not in love’s own definition of love but in the
love you always wanted but knew
never existed.
Fake film love that emulsifies
soul intertwining and
sonnets in the rain with
groaning and writhing in
obsessive sweet pain.
The love where you love it just
so
and so it goes
to sit there, untouched and unaltered because
simply you love it as
it sits.
It need do nothing else than
breathe.
Which I may only do
after washing
my face.

Bus Change

There’s comfort in knowing
that I know your words.
And I do hear you from
time to time but
now, now your voice is often
coming through my own
vibration.
I suppose that’s what happens
when it’s been a little
while.
I’ll go the
rest of my hopefully
longish or long
enough life
reciting your
gems and boasting your
wisdoms and
I’ll sound just like the others that
ramble on about someone
no one else
knows.
I can’t amble with those others
who lie to save my youth
when you talked the truth at
me. Whether I wanted it or
not.
The chats about the days and the ways
that the days
don’t mean much
when you’re old.
Your walls were
worlds where
shame fell like
biscuit crumbs.
I miss the bus change
and Tesco shops.

Home Less

Not home,
it’s not home.
My home doesn’t exist but
even what
little part does
is not the
part I am in.
This is not it,
the arena is not
mine nor is this
armour.
Currently
as it is,
I’m less a home
and owed one
I think but
not sure from whom.
This scene
is seen
from a
dream that
I refuse to stop
having.
I’ve never felt
more at
home
then looking
through that
screen.

My own doors are
keyless
and keys are
less that I
would beg for.
They are
enshrined in
ivy and
stone
and surrounded by
riddle and I
don’t know
the answer.
Less
a home and
more a house.
Dismissed at
first viewing,
not enough charm,
too much work.
Damp.
I suppose I
should rebuild
and
make
my own.

I wish
I belonged
where I’ve been
left.

Hello

I want more friends.
But I don’t want people.
People are tricky
and trickless am I
or at least
my bag isn’t as big as theirs.

I feel I should have
more friends
to say hello to.
To say hello back.
But I can only
care about so many
hellos and
I fear I’ll reach my limit.

I don’t want their
small talks and
their large lives
with their leashed up
husbands and
their caged up
wives.
I want frank
talks
frank nights
with frankly
weak, pathetic
fights over
who paid
last.

I want to
smack talk men
and call them prats
and dirty looks
like we sound like cats
of witches cackling
over a can or
few
but I’ll never
get that
if I don’t
say hello.

If I say hello,
then so will they and
I’m no good with after
(unless I’m paid)
I’ll overshare and
undersell and
come off like
some
stuck up
foreign
bitch.
Like always.
I think it’s best
if I use this
time to
be with myself
in case I
can’t later on.