Act

It’s all an elaborate act,
The pitch,
The body language,
The tone of voice,
The smile,
It’s all just a way of getting people
Interested enough to talk to you…

It is acting on a permanent scale,
There is no respite,
No time for rest,
The smile remains forever intact,
Always coaxing the unsure
Out of the safety of their shells
And into a place of impulse…

Only the eyes can’t act,
Any hint of worry or doubt
That creeps into your mind
Will seep its way through those clear windows,
Exposing itself to those you are talking to,
Infecting them with the same doubts and fears,
Ruining any chance of building bonds and trust…

This is an act far more advanced…
Then any seen on a stage or screen…
The world becomes your eternal stage…
The poker face becomes your eternal mask…

(you can thank my door-to-door selling experience for this terrible poem - however, while it's not the best poem ever written, it gets across what it was like faking a part of your personality and mood whilst trying to sell things to people on their doorstep, and it's an experience I'm glad I got).

How?

My head isn’t in its right place,
My heart isn’t in one piece,
Weeks after and I still feel
The same about the one I can’t have,
I know she’s moving swiftly on,
Well, I don’t really know,
But in my mind she’s already courting another,
Much to my soul’s disarray…

Why would she stand still?
Time waits for no one,
Life stops for no one,
Why would she do the same?
I’m the opposite,
I would gladly stop everything
For the sake of something more important,
This is why I’m constantly falling behind…

I need to move forward,
I don’t want to,
I need to forget the past,
I can’t, even if I wanted to,
I need to repair what’s left of my heart,
I don’t know how,
I need to give myself a proper chance,
Thinking of this reminds me of the little chance we had…

Anything and everything reminds me of her…
How can I forget what I can’t escape?

Deja Vu

Trying to read her mind
Is like trying to find a needle
In a haystack,
I wish so much to find it
But I fear the severity of its prick,
I fear it will lead to heartbreak…

The feeling in my stomach has changed,
Where butterflies once flew
A sick feeling now rests,
It knows what is about to happen,
Now my heart and mind
Need to brace themselves for the harsh reality…

I’ve been here before,
I can see the signs,
The situation is completely different
Yet startling similar,
We should have had longer than we did,
Where have I said that before?

I feel an impending sense of deja vu…

Time is fickle,
It stops and goes back for no one,
I wish I could turn the clock back
And make more of the brief time we had,
I just wish I could hold you one more time
And for that time to last an eternity…

We’ve been through the rain and the sun,
The elements couldn’t stop us,
Other complications are what stand in our way now,
They are slowly but surely squeezing
The happiness and trust from our relationship,
If it could even be called a relationship…

All of this has happened before,
The compression of things irrelevant
Has forced a premature end to another bond before,
Suffocating is the way to describe it,
Slowly but surely all air is blocked from our lungs,
Forcing us to cut our losses and part ways…

I feel an impending sense of deja vu…

Constant Reminders

Out on the dance floor,
Up at the bar,
Out on the packed streets,
Everywhere I turn I see couples
Doing the things we never got the chance to do,
I’m constantly reminded of what I can’t have,
I see passionate kissing everywhere,
I see hands clasped together everywhere,
I see people losing each other in the other’s eyes everywhere,
I see all the ups,
I see all the downs,
And all the while I think to myself,
We never got the chance to be truly up or down,
We started in a blaze,
It was extinguished as suddenly as it started
By circumstances unavoidable,
Now there’s just this emptiness,
A void where you should be,
I need to stop staring into that empty space,
But I can’t bring myself to,
Nor can I bring myself to try and fill it with something else,
As the loss I’ve experienced is still too fresh in the memory…

Cease

How ironic it is
That in order to stand the sight
Of spilling blood
You must ignore the feelings
Of that which pumps the blood in the first place…

How awful it is
That in order to stand the sight
Of a friend falling forever
You must numb yourself completely
And pretend you never knew them at all…

How tragic it is
That the older generation’s pain
Dies with every veteran that succumbs to age,
Leaving us again with the youthful innocence and ignorance
That led to millions dying blindly before…

How inevitable it is
That the world is destined
To live out this repetitive cycle
Of peace, fighting, coldness
Until we eventually obliterate the places we call home…

How terrible it is
That when everything comes to a close
We will have to destroy
Those we hold dear to us
Just to keep our own lives….

History is a wheel that forever keeps spinning,
Life is the engine that keeps the wheel turning,
People are what allow life to make history,
People are the biggest threat to history’s existence,
Someday the threat will become reality…

Irony, awfulness, tragedy, inevitability and terribleness will cease to exist…
History will cease to exist…

Biting the Bullet

Now I have to bite the bullet,
It flies at me,
Faster than the speed of light,
Yet slow enough to see its intention,
Its aiming to destroy who I am,
I bite down,
Trying to prevent it from doing what I fear most,
Yet still it prevails,
The sheer speed and power of the bullet
Rips right through my mask,
Piercing my flesh,
My mask falls to the ground and shatters,
My true being is exposed,
Blood runs down the cracks and crevices of my real face,
Everyone I have ever known stands and stares,
Horrified at the monster they see before them,
Now they all know why she chose
To exit stage left while she had the chance…

The bullet was forever aimed at me…
Yet avoiding it was never an option…

Alone at Last

Alone at last,
Soaked to the skin,
Huddled in the corner of our shelter
Waiting for something special to begin,
Rain falls unceasingly,
Its lashing we do not realise,
As we spend all of our time
Gazing into one another’s eyes,
Every smile flips our stomachs,
Every gaze causes the shakes,
Every kiss we share is an out-of-body experience
That helps us forget past mistakes,
Circumstance attempts to be a wall,
Solid, unmoveable, unchangeable,
Yet still we smash holes in it
Even though it seems to be indestructibly stable,
Circumstance is forgotten
Every time I see your joy bringing face,
Hiding the joy brought to me
Is a task quite difficult in this place,
But when we forget circumstance,
We act as if we were meant to be,
Joking and holding,
Proclaiming our feelings for all to see,
What we have may not last long,
But if and when we come to an end,
We will look back and say it was brief but beautiful,
We'll still see each other as friends…

In the end, time will tell us…
What will be, will be…
Whether we’re together a month or a year…
Our lives will always intertwine and be free…

Be free...
Be free...
Be free...
Be free...

(to this day, I still don't think I did the moment that inspired this poem/song justice).

And it's Done

And it’s done…

The inevitable has finally happened,
Yet it’s still a bitter one to swallow,
Something that should’ve blossomed and flourished
Ended in seconds because of circumstance,
In the end it suffocated us,
Cut off our feelings for one another,
The wall built up and eventually separated us,
As we knew it ultimately would…

Yet that didn’t stop us from trying…

Our daily rendezvous’ will now cease,
Our sneaking around is over,
Getting lost in each others eyes is no more,
Kissing will never happen again,
We will never get to do the things
That normal couples get to do everyday,
I will always cast envious eyes
Over any two people I pass that are holding hands…

Karma always hurts you twice as hard…

I just wish I’d made more of the time we had,
I just wish we had more time to make something of,
At least we tried to fight the circumstances,
Regret will never hang over us for not trying,
It will just hang over us
As we think of what may have been,
Maybe the future will present a second chance,
I know though that life doesn’t offer many second chances…

It didn’t give us a fair first chance…

This is All I Have

Hit by a sudden slap of common sense,
Realising the pointlessness of living life under a cloud,
I could continue in the same vein
As I have been during recent times,
Waking up everyday,
Venting pent up aggression and loneliness
On people that don’t deserve it,
But what would be achieved by that?
What would I, or anyone else, gain from that?

This is life,
This is all I have,
My one chance to take everything bad that happens
And just turn it around and laugh at it,
My actions determine whether I smile or not,
And this is the only time that such a thing holds true,
Living in shadows and wishing for the end
Are things so useless that to hope for either or both
Is to be dead while still breathing…

And where is the point in that?
There isn’t one…
I realise that now…
But how long will that lesson remain learned?

The City Centra

The city centre,
Alcohol is like water,
Drugs are like medicine,
Mixed together they become
A recipe for destruction,
People stumble out of bars and clubs,
Vomiting everywhere,
Starting fights,
Bleeding while making blood spill,
It’s almost humorous when you have no connection…

But when you do have a connection…
You realise the stupidity of our country…

A friend to a lot of people
Was bottled for defending these friends,
He did not raise a finger in anger,
He did not even raise his voice,
But people go into the city centre
With the sole intention of making someone bleed,
Of making someone fall unconscious,
Once he and his friends were targeted
They didn’t have a chance,
In the end, he fell on his own…

But it has rocked those who are close to him…
Yet the penny won’t drop with the rest of the population…

Because all people want to do at the weekend
Is get ossified, get high or get low,
All they want is a release,
Yet far too many release themselves in the wrong way
And release someone else from their life in the process
Either temporarily or permanently,
These people take it upon themselves to spill others blood,
Being under the influence only has so much of an effect,
Mentally, they are ready to kill before touching a drop,
That means someone is already a dead person walking…

Being under the influence just gives them the physical courage to follow through…
This is a contradiction as following through is an act of cowardice…

This cowardice is rife throughout ‘our fair city’…
How does this make our city fair?

His bravery goes unnoticed by all except his nearest and dearest…
To those in the city centre, it’s just another fight…

To his nearest and dearest however…
Its potential ramifications mean so much more…

Stories

All these people we are around everyday,
They all have their own story,
Their own script to follow,
Until one day
It ends with a final full stop,
And they are no more…

We come across so many stories in our own lifetime,
Yet we miss out on so many more,
So much gets written down and recorded,
Yet so much more goes missing in time,
So many inspirational people
Are forgotten about completely…

Because they were not considered important enough to remember…
Who has the right to decide such a thing?

Stolen

We used to be like fingers crossed,
Inseparable,
Now, though, institutional machines
Have prised us apart,
Like a burglar prising his prize open with a crowbar…

Our friendship has been stolen…

We used to speak for hours at a time,
We used to help one another
Through our respective problems,
Now, though, we don’t even know
If either of us has problems that we need help getting through…

Our friendship has been stolen…

No one can be blamed for this outcome,
People always drift as they grow older,
But we always thought we’d be there for each other,
I just wish I could’ve kept that promise,
I haven’t been able to…

And now, our friendship has been stolen…

In years to come
This may strengthen us,
Right now, it just seems to have ended us,
We could walk by each other in the street,
And exchange nothing more than a simple greeting…

All because our friendship has been stolen…

Right or Wrong

I was just kept onside,
Before being thrown aside,
As soon as she rose through my list of friends,
She decided to bring our courting to an end,
As soon as she burrowed through my heart of glass,
She left again via a hidden overpass,
One that led her to my newly reformed soul,
That took an age to once again make whole,
Upon seeing it, she exposed its weakness
And exploited it with seemingly sincere sweetness,
The blackness oozes from it again,
My mind begins to crawl back into its den…

A tear of fire runs down my cheek,
She looked at me, unable to speak,
She realised how angry I was,
She should never have broken our unwritten clause,
In her, I place all my trust,
She betrayed it and turned it to dust,
Moving onwards and upwards is the name of the game,
But these set backs mean I’ll never be the same,
Being used is a horrible feeling,
It’s like speaking without your lips moving,
Taking away my control is blatant betrayal,
Now, our friendship is one that has long set sail…

My reading of you was completely wrong…
This realisation echoes in my chest like a gong…
The anger subsides, replaced by desperation…
Right or wrong, I remain forever in isolation…

Pursuit

Now that he's free of his weathered ball and chain,
He'll return to the pursuit of his shining brief flame,
Now that he's avoided inevitable destruction,
He'll continue his cross-boundary bridge construction,
His realisation was important for himself,
Yet, in turn, it could put me back on the shelf,
If he returns to his brief flame,
Where would that leave me in this love game?

In recent times, I've been overcome with desire
To feel the heat of his brief flame's fire,
I thought his commitments elsewhere
Would allow me to turn a dream into a dare,
Now that he's free from the one he loves to hate
It re-opens the cross-boundary bridge's gate,
Which allows him and his brief flame to revive
Something that looked like it would never survive...

Suddenly I've been dragged into an odd triangle,
One in which all our feelings become tangled,
Someone will walk out of it broken hearted,
And I think I'm the most likely to be the departed,
As they've shared something I haven't been able to share with her,
And it doesn't look like I'll be sharing it any time in the near future,
Which is why I should leave this triangle of heartbreak while in one piece,
Before the inevitable happens and my heart ceases to beat...

His pursuit of his brief flame will end with a kiss...
My pursuit of his brief flame was never going to end like his...

Poker Faces

All people judge wrongly,
All people think the surface
Is the be all and end all,
It’s always the people you least expect
Who decide to walk away in the end…

‘She was tough as nails; she wouldn’t commit suicide for no one’,
Whether they’re tough as nails,
Or soft as silk,
They all have the capacity to take themselves away,
As do you and I…

Thoughts like this can fill one’s mind
At any time during the day or night,
Succumbing is another thing altogether,
But what’s on the surface isn’t the truth,
We all have poker faces…

We all use them everyday…
Some use them to runaway…

No One Notices

*waves*
Goodbye everyone…
*no one notices*
It’s nice being the invisible man,
No pays you any attention,
You can get away with anything…

*waves*
Goodbye everyone…
*no one notices*
Well, it’s not great all the time,
There are times when it’s nice to be noticed,
Otherwise you feel alone…

*waves*
Goodbye everyone…
*no one notices*
Ok, maybe it’s not nice at all,
Having people care about you
Is something everyone should be able to experience…

*waves*
Goodbye everyone…
*no one notices*
*disappears, never to be seen again*
*years later, one person says*
“Hey, where did that lad go?”

*falls on deaf ears*
*no one cares*
*they walk by his carcass everyday*
*his eyes remain open*
*there’s a letter clasped in his hand*
*one day, someone finally notices him*

*they take the letter and read it*
*there’s only a solitary sentence*
Maybe now someone will care…
*the letter finder shuts the letter holder's eyes*
'I would've cared...'
*no one noticed what just happened*

*no notices what society as a whole fails to notice*
*what society thinks is important is what gets noticed*
*that's why our society is falling apart*

Life and Dreams Intertwined

A running dream,
Chasing things I want in real life,
Acceptance amongst my peers,
Emulation of their achievements,
Reaching for things that are right in front of me,
But are always a step too far for my limitations…

Things like the ability to play and sing,
To be able to give my words something
That will force home their meaning,
A trait like bravery,
To be able to stand up and take a chance with her,
In both real life and in my dreams, I wish to achieve these things…

And in both universes I fall short,
Always getting close but not close enough,
Reaching a certain stage where it all seems possible,
Before collapsing at the climax,
It’s the story of my life,
But dreams are meant to be different…

Unless they are not dreams…
And they just mirror what’s to come…

I run and run in my dreams,
Hand outstretched for my longings,
Grasping at something that’s flailing behind,
Thinking that this is it,
I have what I’ve always wanted,
But realising then I’m clutching at thin air again…

It’s a recurring dream with her,
She continuously runs away from me,
Yet when I stop for breath, she goads me,
'Come on, chase me, don’t you want me?'
And I run again, thinking I’ll catch her,
Even though the flash I see in her eyes tells me I never will…

The landscape of my life exists in my dreams,
The so near yet so far story is replicated in both worlds,
My constant stumbling and falling in my dreams
Means I can’t live up to my peers in either universe,
My outstretched hand never reaching her shoulder
Means I can’t make her mine in my dreams, as well as in reality…

These must not be dreams…
They must just mirror what’s to come…

Lying Down

Lying on my bed,
Wondering where the next blow is coming from,
Uncertainty of the future,
And uncertainty inside,
Combine and destroy my conscience
And my mind…

Sleep is not the place it once was,
It used to be a haven,
A place of safety,
Now it’s filled with the chaos of my life,
There is no order,
Insanity is rife…

Now I sleep with my eyes open,
Constantly turning things over in my head,
Right side up or upside down,
Either way, nothing makes sense,
The mere thought of everything gone wrong
Makes my muscles tense…

Rectifying my problems
Seems like something so simple,
Like walking around the corner,
But the world has risen up
And blocked all paths forward,
All ways are shut…

Now I’m faced with two choices…
Either I dig deep and find some resolve…
Or I go to the place with no noises…

Jamie

Jamie…
You’ve been hit harder
Than ever before,
You’ve fallen into unconsciousness…

Jamie…
We’ve been hit harder
Than ever before,
By your absence you are conspicuous…

Jamie…
Every moment you seem
To be slipping away,
Don’t disappear into the blackness…

Jamie…
The part of us is where
You once rested is vacant,
Come back and fill the emptiness…

Jamie…
You’re not meant to leave so soon
Or before any us do,
Please, wake up from the darkness…

I realise now the terrifying thing about age…
You notice more when life tries to turn a page…

Candle

If love was an eternal candle,
It would light our lives forever,
If the candle melted with time,
The liquid wax would harden
And immortalise love for eternity,
If the flame was to be suddenly extinguished,
It would symbolise the frozen hallway of a lonely heart,
If the candle was never lit,
It would convey an affair never kindled,
Love as a candle is warm and everlasting,
Love as a candle is cold and cruel,
Most people's candles are lit and last ‘til the end,
Others never get the match needed to start a flame,
Those peoples’ souls turn to ice,
Their lives are never completely fulfilled,
Their candlesticks fall away into evermore…

(I wrote this behind a small table just inside the entrance of a random Super Valu - I can’t remember where exactly - while attempting to sell Victoria Jackson make-up, and despite the distraction women and make-up can bring, I wrote Candle which, fittingly, stands out from the rest of the poems on Bebo page thirteen in terms of its imagery).