Dither

Convoluting confusion teetering towards a crushing confession,
Danger dithers while we discuss the diversions,
Sought solitude fails spectacularly to sink or swim,
Instead initiating a sound suspension inclusive of intermediate instances,
And all along we wait alone for another aspiration or aversion,
But being loved leads the blind back to before,
Repeating ripe mistakes made right because they are wrong.

And so it was...

And maybe she thinks me a creep now.

**************************

And it was me, I did it,
No one made me,
No one helped me,
I did it alone because I wanted to create something beautiful,
And I didn’t want to share it with anybody.

**************************

And it starts,
Every single person looks the same;
And the pieces fall apart at the seams,
Bodies try and fail to come together;
And the cylinder mirror jumps left to right to left,
The reflection I see is as distorted as the reality;
And bevy after beautiful bevy swan past,
Amplified arrogance barges in pursuit;

And I never stood a chance, did I?

And the days of politely asking a lady to ballroom dance die and die again,
Its replacement a shadow dance filled with false smiles and dawns;
And now I close my eyes one more time,
Lost;
And I stand alone amidst a million strangers,
Abandoned;
And I don’t want to wake up just to piece everything back together again,
And I just don’t want to wake up;

You could stand there forever, holding the same person.
You could stand there forever, holding the same person.
You could stand there forever, holding the same person.
You could stand there forever, holding the same person.

**************************

The world has no need for another glory hunting ‘intellectual’ who claims to have our species’ best interests at heart and who claims, in print, to have the solutions to all our problems.

Red

I bought a big red balloon today
And tied it around my right wrist,
It was my friend to talk to all day,
Red was there when others were not;
I took Red to the seaside for a walk,
We had a heart-to-air as the tide
Came in and the people pushed out
Toward the nearby ice-cream van;
We got some funny looks from
Those beach folk, who just did not understand us
And the way our friendship worked,
That single white string the only bond we needed;
She turned out to be a guiding light my friend Red,
Offering sound advice as she floated innocently by,
The only problem was I found myself watching her glisten
In the sunlight rather than listening to her words;
You see, an epiphany struck me late in the day
Like a car on the motorway - in those hours we spent together,
Walking the coast, I had come to really like Red,
And all I wanted to do then was kiss her inflated body;
So I leant into Red, really thinking she
Felt the same, but she had untied herself
From my wrist, and floated straight up,
High into the sky above, where she burst into shreds.

(I didn't actually attempt to snog a balloon, just in case you thought it was going that way - to be honest, though, I don't actually remember where the idea for this poem came from).

A Broken Promise (To Myself)

Sitting across from me is every feeling in my chest,
So close, on a crowded couch surrounded by people,
And as she laughs in the only five minute gap she has,
My mind drifts to the messages we exchanged not so long ago;
My eyes read the confession while they were shut tight,
Ignoring the sheer impossibility of the current circumstance,
And as I allowed myself to dream of something special once more,
I forgot about the promise I made to myself;
Since resuming hostilities with the institution and its heartless sarcasm,
Our paths have crossed only fleetingly with your time not your own,
And as I ask you to come out with me again and again,
I find myself crashing to the ground harder every time;
You are buried in work for a paper buried in pretension,
Living your life through it and through the friends you have made through it,
And as I realise the inconvenience my advances must cause,
It becomes clear that my presence in your life is an unnecessary distraction;
And back in the present I see you walk away one more time,
And I see that infectious smile on your face at the thought of the day ahead,
And my feelings for you continue to grow despite the futility of it all,
And I begin to let go of something I should never have snatched at in the first place.

When is Too Many?

So, there I am, right,
It’s four o’clock in the day,
I’m staring at this computer screen in a friend’s house,
A middle-aged man’s wife has just left him,
And he can’t remember the cause,
If it triggered him or if he pulled the trigger, making her leave.
Everything since the day she walked away is a blur,
One giant blur, every second culminating at a bottle’s end.
Vodka is water, and he drinks like a fish,
Resulting in his being fired from doing what he loves.
Pretty sad, yeah, but he gets a hefty pay-off,
So he ups and leaves, to hit Vegas, to “drink himself to death”,
Not before burning all of the things he doesn’t want to bring,
Including a picture of him and his wife together.
He can’t tell whether or not he was drunk in that photo,
And he doesn’t really care as the flames lick through the centre of the picture,
Splitting them, then disintegrating them,
Exactly like he wanted, exactly how it was.
So he goes to Vegas, four weeks worth of money,
His aim to be broke and dead by the four weeks’ end,
And there is no Hollywood recovery for this man,
He dies in a crappy motel room in the arms of a hooker he hardly knows,
But who he claims to love.
And then my friend walks in, secretly upset, his tenth bottle in hand.

Got to Be

Swings her hips,
And looks to me,
Then she says,
It’s just you and me now,
Then I see,
That we are free,
And I know,
It’s got to be we now.

It’s got to be this time.
It’s got to be this time.

In her eyes,
Sudden surprise,
As she sees,
There are no lies now,
Only love,
She doesn’t want,
And she knows,
It’s never or now.

It’s got to be this time.
It’s got to be this time.

(I allowed myself a return to Joy Division mode one day - I wrote this while listening to Ceremony so these words can fit in with the music of that song).

Wave of Changes

I wake, two sets of eyes,
One in the present, living,
Another in hindsight, observing,
One set living through it all,
Another watching it happen again,
One set ignorant to time,
Another pining for it back.

A green container home to a team,
Harboured by children, then by teens,
Moved, replaced by a running track,
An artificial river and a grey building,
All more efficient in their use,
Yet none replicating that feeling of home,
Or the memories of past matches.

And one set of eyes live through the changes unawares.
And another set watches them all through streaming tears.

A class of seventeen, separated by circumstance,
In need of knitting, it never sowed,
Groups of four and groups of one,
A unison only found in its division,
Both sets of eyes sadly agreeing,
Three from seventeen is a bare figure,
Where did the other fourteen go?

A girl younger than I, flaming on top,
Is pregnant, when she herself is no woman,
A child inside a child, not nature’s way,
Another girl, a year older than I,
Has two already, with more to come,
The sets of eyes have yet to live life,
The girls will never get a chance.

And both sets of eyes turn as sirens come to punish the same crime.
And both sets of eyes can only watch another wave of change pass them by.