47 Minutes Late

Shiiiiiiiiit, I am WELL late tonight. Sozzer, it's all down to my hectic social calendar. Await no longer. Here is a poem about lost love and lost friendship and live political views.

NaPoWriMo Day 3!

In the Aftermath of Whixley Burbage

Today I saw a dog posing for a photograph; Whixley Burbage, an old friend of mine. We used to snort coke together and cruise around in his Maserati, looking for bitches. How our times have changed.

I remember the days we did everything in a circle. Have you any idea how difficult it is to loop water? Whixley was testing me, that bastard. Some days he wore only a cummerbund, just to prove his point.

Once, he said to me, “If a pony belongs to a gypsy and the gypsy is always laughing, does the pony really exist?” Then he bit into a sweet potato and said, “I can has?” That’s when I knew things had gone too far.

“Whixley,” I said. “Dude, why you gotta act so loco all the time? Boi gotta eat, man, I know that, but this a poison too far.” Whixley laughed and said, “Bitches be crazy.” We never saw one another again.

Until this morning that is; this newly-wed-excitement of a morning. He was so different. He was dressed as a racist trying to blend in with the rest of society. Did you know that racists wear jeans now?

Whixley was always very left wing. “When I say ‘OVERTHROW’, you say ‘A DEEPLY CORRUPT SYSTEM OF OFFENSIVE FINANCIAL OPPRESSION!’” is what would chant in clubs when the beat was right.

Oh Whixley; you’re a twatbag. You broke my heart and called it progress. I would have cradled you. I would have taken you in my arms and listened to your sadness like it was a song. Like it was something that mattered.

Walking away from the scene I feel like an unseen extra in a movie, who is only there to make the leads feel like they’re really living it all. I touch my hair and somebody calls a cut. I can’t even get that right anymore.

Of All The Named

Hey hey hey!

So, I've spent the day coming up with alternate life plans and buying large envelopes. That's right, ENVY ME. But for reals, this poetry lark is taking its toll on my inner tubes and whatnot. 

Just as a joke, answer me, who would read a novel I'd written? Not that I really HAVE written it, but it's coming along, and I'm pretty sure that if I sent some positive public opinion polls garnered from my very own blog to the agents I'm going to approach, they would DEFINITELY want to add me to their books. So do me a favour, tell people I'm a writer and that I'm coming to write the shit out of them, yeah? Thx bbz.

Day 35, love to you.

The Book Of

In the beginning,

we went to a pearl

and asked for forgiveness.

The pearl said,

“Let he who is without a stone

cast the first line.”

And with that, fishing was born

and all the people were saved.

We cut out small stars from our skin

and cooked them into a stew

so that we might taste

the darkness of universe.

Our mothers and fathers didn’t trust us

with the sharp knives,

but when we served the meal,

they sat back and thought it was good.

They say there are cabbages out there

that are bigger than houses;

so big in fact they hollow them out

and have people live in them,

like giant molluscs.

There, they make lists

of everything that could improve

at the hands of anyone but themselves.

We’re all born in black and white,

coming out of the dark room,

pleased with our exposure.

In the end, everything is a sea

and we have drowned and drowned again

searching for a precious stone.

Wandering through the suburb of my mind

the streets ring with nothing.

Love After Love

Hey y'all

So first off, I'm sorry I haven't really given my preamble the effort it deserves over the last couple of days. I was attacked by a plague of gnats shaped like the letter X, so I couldn't see clearly to type, but I've been trying really hard to fight them off, so hopefully things can start getting back to normal at some point. I'm not convinced they will, but we can only try, right?

Secondary apologies must apply to recent poems also. I can't concentrate to write anything very jolly right now (it's the gnats, they've chewed me raw). Tonight's poem was supposed to be longer, but nothing sounded right, so maybe it's the right length, just as it is.

Anyway, day 23 go go go!

On Darkness

The night comes in like a stranger,

fumbling over our arrangements,

our routines. There’s a whisper

of something breaking.

There’s a rustle in the shadows.

I look across at you.

Your face has become a Ferris wheel

turning slowly away from me. 

At the Carnival

Dear all...

I'm afraid I've had to cheat a bit today because I'm so bloody busy...this is not an entirely new poem. Well, it's actually not new at all. At least not to me. It SHOULD be new to all of you though, and that's what's important, to me at any rate...it also means I can go out and get my love on with Alex, who writes a super sassy blog over at Inferior Design.

Please try to enjoy this, despite my betrayal - I've chosen this poem especially to highlight it. I appreciate your pity. 

Old Friend

My friend and I were friends for a long time. We grew up together in a shanty town just outside London. Not many people knew of its existence and the air of collusion that wove its way through the streets seemed to bind the residents irrevocably.

I’m flicking through the old photographs of us. Me, dressed as a bald man with a limp; she laid on a towel in the rain pretending it’s summer. It causes me a certain pain to remember what happened; pain just below the jugular, as though there’s a small man in there, opening tin cans and throwing the lids around with little regard for his surroundings.

For a long time my friend had acted strangely, pursing her lips when she saw me coming and speaking only in pound coins when I said hello. She started dating an old sea captain from the 1600s. When I tried to tell her it was an impossible relationship, she said, “When the witch watches the walkers in the woods, the woods won’t wake for the walkers.” When I told her I didn’t understand, she laughed and called me a philistine.

The day was June 16^th 1972. I knocked on my friend’s door and asked if she’d like to come out for some Estonian street food. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve fallen into a deep depression. The ocean of my despair will drown you.”

“I’m a good swimmer,” I said.

“Not good enough,” she muttered. Behind her, I could see a dinner party going on with an empty place, just big enough for her to fill. I took our friendship from around my neck and put it in a small cardboard box shaped like a mausoleum. “Bring this back to me when you feel like you want to talk.”

Sixteen years later I saw the box in a charity shop. I opened it and found it empty but for a few blades of grass, which acted as a perfect metaphor for the knives now lodged so firmly in my back. I called my friend on her old number.

“Hello?” she shouted over the Carnival of Betrayal going on in the background.

“It’s me,” I said.

“It was never you,” she replied before putting the phone down like a cancer-ridden Labrador.

I head out into the garden with a box marked old stuff from the past you’ve tried to forget and put it into the hole I dug with my hands last night. Six parts petrol, one part match and the smoke is waving its farewell into the evening.