Grifting

The house is cold

We have for years
Been used to a vacuum of sorts
Double-glazed top floor
Heat from below
Great in winter terrible in summer
And now reversed
 
I refuse to buy slippers
I am not yet an old man
Though my back and eyes and bones
Disagree
In our first December here
The cheap bedroom carpet feels like luxury
To me
 
Venturing downstairs - I’m reminded of the barns
Where we’d stay in Suffolk, in springtime
The early morning mist creeping in at 7am
As I make my toast with local plum jam
 
But here
Now
I sip lukewarm coffee (another side effect of the cold air)
Pack my bag for the work journey
Eye drops / lip balm / knives and swords and armour
And find the thickest socks from my drawer
They say it will snow
I know they are liars
 
First day out for the first day back in
The beginning of the pattern again
The day and week and month/seasonal split
That I create to manage the grift
 
Bowie once said he felt he’d one day face
Terrific problems if he ever had to stop being an artist and
Enter the real world
And every single day of my life

From the periphery I can see the same thing 

On a distant horizon

The day I am caught out
Stopped and questioned
Taken to task
 
It is not generally accepted to admit
That you are not only faking it but
Perfectly happy doing so
But here we are
 
And here I go into a bright blue day
Listening to the Northstar Grassman & the Ravens

Light snow begins to fall
January has only now begun and here I am
Wrong already.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The last one

 

I see you fade away

One by one

Incrementally over time

 

Both out of the blue

And as predictable as rain on a

June Sunday morning

 

I keep looking for order

Patterns

Some underlying logic to hold onto it

While you all let it slip from contented fingers

Or lying hands

Or blind eyes

 

I don’t know

Maybe there’s a truth there

Perhaps you can now sleep through the night

And wake in the morning full of love

And wonder

 

So why do I not believe that

 

Jealousy

Confusion

But I’m the smart one

            (so you say)

 

The failure remains

Of circling around to the start

Looking for tomorrow’s answers

Rather than process the day

I am actually

In

 

The failure of easy escape

Of the release

And reset

And repeat

The familiar becomes like iron

Weighted and dull

An unseen crowd laughing in the darkness

 

Waiting to die cannot be the goal

Or perhaps too much truth is just uncomfortable

For most people

 

So I remain the last of the fools

Holding onto fire and grinning through the pain

Through the fact I know

The imbalance is the one thing keeping my legs under me

 

Keeping the wheels spinning

The brain firing

The foolish heart breaking

 

Every

Single

Day

 

It is a disappointment

A mockery

A bad joke

To be the last one standing

I thought they were all smarter than that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something is better than nothing

 

Past the half century

Holding home-made coffee and sandwiches for lunch

There was supposed to be more to life than this
And I suppose there is

Hiding in the cracks and dark corners
But my flashlight is out of batteries

My senses acknowledge the change in air pressure
Again

Again

Again

The coming season

Earlier and earlier each year
We shall reach a perpetual autumn in no time

The sun hanging there harmless
With no memory of the good it once did

And I am of late, no support
Vicious and uncertain
A stray dog trembling in the rain

I am no human being
Not today
Nor yesterday

And the smallest elements of ourselves
Lay in wait for one eye to close even momentarily
Before clawing their way to the surface

When the knife edge is old news
And the third eye remains closed
You burn your hand and

Slam your bones down onto cement
No regrets
Maybe
Maybe not

I am not predictable
Trustworthy
Or blessed with foresight

Maybe it’s time to stop all this
False honesty

Hold my breath
Learn how to ride a horse
Or become an assassin
Or play guitar

Something that actually
Matters.

 

 

Fighting

 

Soaking in hot salt water

Trying to rub some

Feeling

Back into my thighs

 

Thumbs digging in

Sliding into lines of old muscle

White steam absorbs the remaining smoke that

Moments before

Hung in front of my face

 

Burn scented wood

Fill room

Remember how to breathe

    Never works

 

This pretence

The mirror out of sight

Useless

I do not need it to know that the face

Looking back is the real me

 

Staring down pitying this figure

Slippery soaking in a tub too shallow

To even drown

 

    I picture myself as a fiction

    like a less fat Orson Welles

    Cigar in mouth

    Brandy to the side

    Only a few years left to go and resigned to

    That

 

Then the steam’s turn to clear

Just enough so the reflection appears

It seems nothing like the fat guy

Nor anything like myself

Traitor

 

All I thought to be real 

Now rinsing off my skin

And draining away

 

Close window

Inhale steam

Remember how to stay alive

    Never works.

 

 

 

Seven minutes of sun

This thing inside

Will not let me just go

At my own pace

Allow me to wait

And consider the days

Or nights

Like a lost pair of socks 

Unexplainable in their absence 

Weighing on me like the ocean 

On a deep sea diver

And as used to this as I am

It will never make sense 

This thing within me

For so long

Continues to push me outside

Too early

In advance of any need

My timings  

My boxes

My rules 

My law

As I find myself early

Again

Always 

Stood waiting for the train

With 7 minutes to kill

And even that

As small a moment as it is

What a waste of time in itself

I stand in the sun to at least

Try and make it somehow

Worthwhile

Draft

 

My subconscious has taken a beating

It lies bleeding on a rainy side street 

 

But it is not the first time

And so I know we’ll catch up again 

Sooner rather than later

 

In the meantime I am left alone 

With these median memories 

Nothing old 

Nothing new

A haunting 

A distraction

Guilt upon guilt 

Bad choices made with such 

Vigour and self belief 

 

My honesty now much greater 

Than when these images were made 

 

These cliche tonal photographs of

Unlined unloved faces 

Creating magic and running toward raging flame

Displayed on every street I pass

 

Choose…

 

Cake for dinner

I am old now

I have outrun my guilt and so

Drink my tea and wait for my subconscious to 

Catch 

Up

 

 

And all of me is left behind

 

With every drop of happiness

Every small moment of contentment

Comes this laughable realisation

That these moments

Fleeting and irrelevant

from years ago

Dictate my current state

 

Without effort or malice

I am me back then

Myself a million years ago

 

And now

 

And still

 

And so are you

 

I wish I could erase all

These false memories

Superposition

It’s both things all the time

Because I am this and that

I am a feather in someone else’s cap

I was never a writer just

Someone falling through various thoughts

 

Some of which caught on

The frayed edges of my being

On my way down

Because it is always spinning

IT

Is always spiralling out

 

The non-definitive centre of yourself

Never stopping

Only the speed varies

And that

Despite popular belief

We can in fact control

 

It’s just that most of the time

It’s more fun not to… 

 

 

 

 

 

End of the world

 

They never have the good olive oil

I’m trying to be healthy and I can’t get the virgin olive oil

I mean

 

I walk to the beaten down tough as shit guy in the company blue shirt stacking whatever the fuck onto dusty shelves

‘hey man, you guys don’t keep the good oil anymore?’ 

 

He jumps up with the energy of someone ready to die or kill

‘Yes Yes! We have!’

And scurries out through the nearby metal swing doors - reappearing 2 minutes later with the bottle of extra Virgin

 

‘We can’t keep it out, people keep stealing it…’

He looks at me, equal parts confusion and embarrassment, 

and hands it over

 

‘Wow, really. End of the fucking world’, I say

He doesn’t even smile. 

 

 

 

Bigger picture

 
A thousand small needles
Over a thousand small days
Each point piercing nothing more
Than the skin’s surface
But still
 
And you feel to disappear
Just disintegrate
But something will not allow it
 
Each point an awakening of sorts
Like a room of grown men
Each in varying degrees of failure
Manifesting in the despair of
A new shirt
Risky haircut
Crazy socks
 
Like a lost old lady
Hardly there but for her cane and
Coloured hair
Asking for help with a 

    crack in her voice
 
This pain is a dark morning
And
Sunlight in your eyes while
At the job
Sirens and car horns
An absence of psychedelic logic
 
A thousand years past
And a thousand more to come
And still
The same voices
Droning and breathless
They skim the surface and dissipate
In the grey mornings mist
But still
 
You feel to disappear
Just disintegrate
But something will not allow it
 
And you wish to forget
To avoid anger
But something will not allow it
 
A thousand years of repetitions
Of the same rules
The same poems
The same hatred
 
The pain is a dark morning
And sunlight in your eyes

 

Dress down Thursday

As bad as it gets 
A flash of light can still
Arrive
And remind me that
At least I avoided having to 

Every day

Go to a job 
That makes me wear a tie 
With my top shirt button 
Done up

Discord

 

Walk uphill

Into wind and rain

Eyes open chin up

Walk in front

Naked if you have to

Take the full force of it all

 

Run upstairs 

Do not walk

So when eventually

Inevitably

You have to run

You will not be left behind

And fed to the wolves

Your body a stepping stone

As the masses walk through their malaise

 

Keep Moving they say

But most days

Doesn’t life just grab you

By the ankles…

Nails digging into skin

A merciless lesson in humility

 

And there is no reason

Nothing you did wrong

To deserve such treatment

It just is

 

Don’t look to me for help

Or retribution

Don’t look to me for counsel

There is no shoulder to cry on

No arms to hold you

 

A sandstorm churns up my insides

I cannot see

Beyond its edges

 

And so I drag you

Sober and drunk and high and

Low

I drag you

Along

With me

 

And demand allegiance

And demand patience

Days and weeks and years go by

And still you remain 

 

My arrow through the wind and rain

An anchor on the open ocean

While I demand the impossible.

 

 

 

One summer day

  

The drug addicts dance off against the alcoholics

As tribal music crosses green fields and

Teenagers smoke their weed while back home

Their parents drink chilled rose and fuck on the kitchen table

Probably

 

Everyone is so young

And vital

And we recall those times when you had no call to

Lie to yourself

And laughter arrived as spontaneity

And today was today

Was today

 

A call came

A trip to the hospital

An emergency

The gods sometimes say fuck you and your wistful memory

And your only choice is to

Say yeah

 

Well

Ok…