(2013)

This was written at the grimmest period of my existence a few years ago; post-death of many kinds, I was sleeping on a mattress in my dads bungalows front room, it was christmas, i was alone and due to his dementia he wasn't aware of the season. I was incredibly depressed.

Good times.
Still a favourite though.

I write a lot about love, death, fire & home.
forever the cliche would say next that "theyre all ive ever known"
but as an infection spreads to the heart, my dearly departed ma & me discuss Ginsberg over coffee in a kitchen where the sun warms your face, spilling the room next to the brick walls with a sense of aching normality
like ive been filled to the brim with content, free from all earthly sin (excluding those inherited)
but she aint dancing in those mortal coiled shoes, long since tapping her feet to the great bass drum
the one that scratches at your face to take the skin for what it convinces you is sacrament.
but is actually kidnap. a stopped mid sentence silent vanishing.
and ill be standing before the reaper squealing, asking the only question that matters still
"but..does she still love me? like she used to?"

"has she kept that dimple acquainted with my fingers? has she hidden boxes of photos in a treasure chest?
am i allowed to assign hope to a ship long lost to a swamp?"

but she
always she, the forevermore Sma. forevermore, forevermore the biggest darkness in the hall, the gust of wind thats blowing down walls. the chill that creaks spine.
ive missed you. ill miss you. i am missing you. it is missed.
like there was never meant to be none of this but im piling books of knowledge like ignorance was going out of style.
histories lessons are stamped, or more scarred into skin that yellows with age.

ive learnt to know better, or so id hoped, so id penciled down on some red lines at the back of an old schoolroom class in a maths lesson i wasn't paying attention to. loud booming over the numbers at myself
but i scribbled and sat, scratching marks to paper that would last a life time in the heart.
then i buried it. and whispered to the ground that it better not tell a soul in the wind it blows lest i cut out a tongue with a pastry knife.
not that nature needs nurturing into silence, it doesnt do to tell the mountain about moving. it doesnt dwell on dancing.
but slow burns the skeletons, ravages the exo-ignorance.

'I'll never be alone, ill always have death'
i once wrote on a stone that i then cast out to sea.
i turned away from the shore, walked home & sat in front of a fire like before. light illuminating, old miser buddha position. i fell into the flames again (yet to feel alive). i cut off my arm to dissect the nerves to try and find the ones that were rattling the bone machine, spluttering cough medicine all over the carpet. i collapsed and went further, motorhomed it towards the sunset on a mattress the carers kept under my Dads bed for festive occasions,
but baubels dont reflect itv, christmas trees dont green to dying domesticity.

i've given enough to let go.
i've given enough to escape
what more can you take?

'There is a lifetime in the mornings sun' i woke up to know this stanza from a poem id built.
little light casting through the blinds, i pushed my eyes & tried to find the horizon point to disappear on.
little leprechaun, how does a rainbow grow? where can i melt into the colours, blues & hues?
he handed me a shovel, and recounted Sinking Ships:
"6ft between the days we spent and the way we wish things couldve been"
i sat hunched alone, a meditation my back had learnt and mused upon the best direction to dig in, the comfiest size to sleep in.

I'm shedding skin, but wanting sleep
I'm kneeling for prayer to bring a guillotine
I'm washed under history & seldom find peace.