Philosophie.

Pulling long strands of your lemon grass hair from my clothes,

I consider, as I watch them fall to the ground one by one,

Should I let you go as easily?

Coffee stains, you see my Darling, are not so easy to remove.

And amber stones infect my heart with rapidity.

I stole an esoteric kiss from red, enraptured, trembling lips,

While eyes deep and wide enough to drown in shot me through the chest,

And fingertips

Traced my limbs

Through candle-lit smoke rings.

And achingly beautiful birthmarks, scars and loveable idiosyncrasies

Swirl around my mind, awash with whisky,

And Puccini,

And suicidal Butterflies.

A dangerous, heady, Olive-green elixir.

An ethereal melee perpetuating unrest,

And thoughts of when I'll be seeing you next...

And other nervous questions,

Like where can you get a good night sleep round here?  

‘Reverse Cowgirl & Thinking of Death’

You grip my throat sporadically, erratically – not often.

And trickle in through passages and pores I can’t defend.

Treacle through fingers.

But you avoid me too, and I hate it just as much.

I wait for your hand to loosen,

I breathe cool air,

Then I feel your absence.

Your gloopy venom is addictive.

I tasted you once, and now my tongue yearns,

And eats itself –

It flickers and twists and spits its serpentine-self out. In vain.

A vague, dull shadowy lustre remains,

Undulating under baited breath,

For another foul injection.

In reality I fear you. I despise you. I hate you.

If you’d only never return,

I could spit you out forever,

And tongue sweeter, healthier, more benign stuff.

No more swilling,

No more idiosyncratic sways upon social norms,

High Society and empty smiles that stifle natural intentions.

You are a disease, and far from untreated.

You are the last drag, the last hit,

The very last dose that no one actually wants.

I rebuke myself wholeheartedly 
At even entertaining the idea of having you in my company. Yet there you are –

In every message, in every ransacked draw,

In every turned out rucksack, every old coat pocket,

Every dirty shirt, every unstitched button,

In every visitor’s news, every car back-seat,

Every dusty notebook, every empty fruit-bowl,

Every old, long-unseen smile, every dowsed fire,

Every man woman and child I sit across the table from.

There you are. Somehow. In some form.

Turning my sweat cold like cheap wine,

In what is otherwise an already disturbingly depressing

Struggle to maintain some kind of equilibrium or serenity,

Let alone with your smug mug cropping up scornfully uninvited.

You seduce me before I recognise you.

Helping yourself to the food on my plate with a wink,

While I do nothing as if handcuffed, and chained at the soul.

Then I move to eat.

Hand to fork.

Fork to mouth. 

And it tastes of you.

It reeks of you.

And if I were anything but human,

I’d spit you out onto the kitchen floor,

Stamp on the bile you’ve stolen from me,

Burn you with kerosene,

And wage a third world war on the very concept of you ever existing.

But I am a human.

And moments later you have me

‘reverse cowgirl and thinking of death’

As coy and Marvellian as you like.

I indulge in full-knowing paralysis,

Lapping up your unvanquished honeyed venom,

With a voraciousness that redefines Lovesick –

Giving it a whole new meaning

Going beyond the epitome of disgust.

Enslaved, you have me smash myself against the ceiling.

And eat myself over again from within.

Consuming me like the fire I found you in.

You have me rage and conspire against those I don’t know.

But I will conspire against you one-day.

You have me hate others, but I will forever hate you.

You have me search my soul and grate it upon street corners

And the pavement of city-centres,

While you gleefully, whimsically prod my past

Or polish vain, rose-tinted hopes that without you

I’d know were futile and unjust –

Until I ruin them myself, knowing all the while

That you are the author of my unnecessary devastations.

But I will smash your green demonic skull into obsolescence

In some back-alley where none will find your

Bubbling frothing corpse.

You will be utterly repudiated even by the rats.

And the flies will drop you,

Iota

By

Iota,

Onto the tracks at Dalston to be rendered into absolute oblivion.

And I will go, a man unshackled, about my business –

Whether it be of importance or not,

It will be with a conscience cleansed.

But for now, vile sham of an emotion that you are,

I do your inglorious bidding.

Zombified and putrid, my actions smell of you.

They reek of you.

You intoxicate what should be left alone

And endured with silence and rapidity.

Yet you elongate these private, personal trails torturously,

In some sensational Cold War.

It goes without saying,

The world would be well rid of you.

Yet godlike, you endure the ages

Just as we endure you.

Perhaps Keats was too afraid to admit it –

You are the original

La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Pluto’s daughter in persistent disguise.

To be seen presently

‘reverse cowgirl and thinking of death’.

I'm Not There.

You may look for me on Oxford Street

At dawn or dusk or night.

Or downtown where the down-and-outs meet

To drink and sleep and fight.

You may catch my shadow lurking on the curb

In the rainy middle-class suburbs.

(You’ll be chewing on the cud and on the curd,)

And they’ll all think you quite absurd,

And pass you by without a word

Without a care.

You won’t find me.

No, I’m not there.

You might get a glimpse at sundown

Of me and The Sundance Kid,

Riding onto Cape Town,

Or sliding through Madrid,

Or stealing through the byways of Turin –

Winking at the bottom of your glass of bitter gin,

Breathing through your window, on your skin,

Guessing what I think, just like a twin

But I swear,

You won’t find me,

No, I’m not there.

Chase my name to the horizon

Or the shores of Timbuktu;

Just be sure to keep your eyes on

Those two feet in-front of you.

I’ll be biting at your heels,

The stinging citrus scent of the fruit you peel,

The whirling hub of your bicycle wheel,

The hassock you fall upon when you come to kneel

In prayer.

But you won’t find me,

No, I’m not there.

Do not think that I will answer

When you ask or shout or call.

The figure of the folk dancer

Will not be me at all.

I’ll be the one that you’re not looking at,

Sitting in the place where you just sat,

Wiping from my face what you have spat,

Sleeping in every dark empty pocket of every new coat that

You wear.

Oh, you won’t find me,

I’m not there.

In every crowd and every gathering

You will turn around to see

That where I am not standing

Is not where you want to be.

Somewhere between you waking and your sleep

I swim the deepest secrets that you keep,

Silently catching the tears you weep,

In the kitchen cooking the food you eat

Minding what you sow you reap!

I am one step ahead of a sentient sweet

And fair.

But you will not find me.

I am not there.

Square One

It’s like biting into a lemon,

Or choosing the wrong pill

Offered to you by a bald man in dark glasses

In some wonderland fantasy exalting a looking glass,

When you choose to chase down memories…

Like a white rabbit bolting down a black hole.

I reconstruct you necessarily…

It hurts – I shouldn’t do it,

But inevitably.

And I compare you to everything;

To everything in it’s right place,

Clinging on to what was,

Or what should have been.

Whoever you are

You were the root of a root,

The sky of a sky of a tree called What If

At the bottom of my glass,

In the first place that didn’t know my name.

You controlled me for a second

With your eyes.

With your hands.

But now you handle me remotely

From somewhere I don’t know

And will never be.

You would say things like

“Don’t you think

That just for one evening

The stars should be

Multi-coloured.” And you

Smile sheepishly

Wishfully,

Then stare at the bottom of your own glass

And then say “Anyway

There’s a thin line between love and hate

It’s so easy to have feelings of hate

For someone you love -

You end up caring too much,

And then they do the slightest thing wrong to hurt you

And you hate them for it.

That’s how I see it anyway.”

Or something like that.

As for me, I intend to sit and read.

Then I will smoke and dance.

Because the way I see it,

I live in a city with no memory,

The way money is between good friends…

And my days shall be lazy without end.

Cos the way I see it,

Love makes you solitary,

And all at sea

Contemplate universal facts that can’t be helped, like –

 Straights smoke quicker than rollies.

And yes you can say “this happens to everyone”

No doubt it regularly does –

Probably because you can go anywhere

Dress as someone else.

You’ve don’t that, I can tell.

I guess what I really want to know is who are you?

Here I am.

Reeling at the very idea of remembrance.

In my own historic battle,

Perpetually considering you.

Y.O.U

You owe ME.

As I crash land,

Heavily injured,

Into a room you might call “Square One”,

Questioning just how it is exactly

I’m here again. 

What Are You Thinking?

What are you thinking? She said.
Have you ever tried standing outside
Late at night and have everything

Sound so silent that you can
Hear your ears ringing?
No. She said.
What are you thinking?
Nothing. She said.

And then you realise,

Staring into wide effervescent eyes,

That your intense willingness to be
Open and honest with this
Daisy-chain enwreathed
Creature of sensation,

Does not compliment

Her nervous wish to maintain
an extraordinarily exquisite air of mystery.

A mystery in itself, no less...
...and rather unhelpful, if you ask me.

Flesh On Flesh.

Flesh on flesh. Eyes watch eyes

Following fingers round curvatures. Caressing skin.

Skin on skin. Flesh in flesh.

A gin-sung-dream –

Silent utterances from the dark-side of a candlestick.

An unsung overture to Nature’s greatest gift

And Nature’s perfect curse.

Lips pursed open, speechless. Breathless.

Wide-white eyes scream STOP. blink. GO ON.

Glances flash between the flickers of candlelight ,

Meeting unknown looks in the black. Bodies

Embrace, writing words that have their own

Music. Heard only by its two composers.

Everywhere the other wishes to be –

Vivacity. Revelling in promiscuity.

Obscurity. Strangers share a warmth

As old as the ages.

A wafer-thin knife-edge of meaning.

Gin-song dreaming. An opaque tonic

For loneliness.

Hands in hands, heart fleeting.

The perfect curse of Man

In the stroking of skin.

Later, a vague sound of water, a towel

A drawer closing – a door latch clicks.

The world floods back.

Through the curtains,

Through the drainpipes

Your fleeting heart sheepishly returns,

Aching like a hangover.

Too much gin.

The momentary tonic wears off.

Heart in hand,

Hand to head.

Candlelit premonitions return.

Heated flesh. Arching backs.

Fingers through hair…

Salty fingers through oily hair and

Blood-red-wine lipstick smudges and

A singeing waxy smell makes you reel

To the window for air.

And there you are again,

In the middle of a city that knows you

More than your Alcoholic Lover,

A Melancholic Mother to all your needs,

Except the one you tried to soothe

A few hours back.

The one you pine for.

The one you lack.

Oh, this Humdrum City

Rushing you, with your heart in your hand, off your feet.

And your heart in the street

And the gin in your glass

Whenever you meet

Whoever it is that might

Make you complete…

A vague sound of water, a towel,

A candle extinguished, a door hinge creeks.

Wafer-thin. Flesh on flesh.

A belt buckle rings, a zip

A drawer closing, a door latch clicks.

The door latch clicks.

The door latch clicks.

New Beginnings.

Am I not your root, your source?
Do I not bite into your being?
Did I not draw you from the depths of Hell,
Out into the vast light of atmospheric health
To be born of more solid stuff, oh Auburn Queen of Fall?

Before you plunged us both back
We were made of the same solid stuff, the same self.
We were one once, you and I.

I traded in God for the first you,
Shortly after time began.
I felt your eyes upon me, oh Amphetamine Queen of all I've seen,
And all the places I have been since time immemorial.
Yet now, now alas, for this grey shadow,
Once a man, would sign any Faustian pact again,
And act protagonist to any damned Marlowian tragedy!

Tortured with optical touches
And words unsaid.
The composer of commotion strange
Inside a prelapsarian breast
Has left me fraught throughout the ages.
And still, I'd fall nine more satanic days through Chaos pure,
If it meant landing any closer to you.

Let us go back to Paradise, you and I.
What is lost can surely be regained.
Here's to new beginnings...