Ocean 2009.

Like wandering the streets at 7pm,
Looking for breakfast in this bustled city.
People in business suits walking along side folk with their heads shaved on bikes.
Who else could create such thoughts within me?
Sitting beside it, or glancing over steep walls into the water.
Records you can see through the lake and streams of grass for us to lie,
Summer wasps in the air,
And lack of obligation for our adolescent stares.
Slowly giving ourselves the summer out,
And slowly we begin to show ourselves the lives we want.
Somehow tearing us apart at our joined hands like pulling paper from its rings.
The letters I wrote you and your right hand in mine.
I see your careless mouth but your thoughtful eyes turn over the scenery,
Just as though you never did see it.
Within your head you think you'd spend day after day with me,
But within the miles between us we could spend a dozen other lives.
And don't you fear missing that?
Cold to think I may leave you, yet missing,
and miss,
Are two very different words.
Explanations you just didn't want to hear over a cup of coffee in the cafe on a rainy autumn afternoon.
Trains that don't take me all the way to where you live,
And buses that run me off the beach sides.
Standing on the pebbles, undetectable in the darkness of the summer night,
Each one as damp as the ocean that threw itself upon them.
And my shoes wearing thin and through them, bare legs and a horror dress,
And my darling in his suit.
Watching what he can see of me darting about the ocean side, down by the burnt out pier.
Safe in the knowledge my feet are still on the ground as the pebbles are forced into one another.

Oh of all the other lives we could be leading,
The different clothes we could be wearing and the people we might know,
The jobs we may slave at and the social we may partake;
But tonight, that night, in the past we, you and I, stood together on a breezy well-known beach.
And we knelt in the stones,
Each of those a part of the mountain that held us up.
And the ocean collapsing black upon itself, the stars overtaken by floating fires.
Shadowed faces almost as haunting as the skeleton that emerged from the sea.
No horizon or cut in our skyline,
Just constant darkness at our feet.
The black that continued rolling threateningly toward us, then pulling out softly as if a tease eternal.

Perhaps sleep should come? I wondered almost as much as Trevor's wife did the keys.
Rolling images and music that no longer is made nor sold.
Footsteps between us on the pathways of a seaside town,
And our bodies beside walls of religious B&Bs.
Not wanting to part the us that was between every one else.

Tonight I see summer breezes I once detested that remind me of moments I once missed.
Meaningless teenage romances and conspiracies,
And faces I no longer care to see nor fears I no longer emulate so powerfully.
You came into a life that messed itself up and attempted straightening out a few kinks,
Before falling for them.

I came across this piece dated 11th August 2009. It is not a love story.

Salt and Sand.

As of late, I have caged that washed-out summer feeling, and once again it is encasing my emotions. Death has reared it's claw to another familiar face and voice and distracted with the masses elsewhere. It's being disgusting at the moment, I am not sure why, not that any are, but I feel it too common a place.
A friend, not so wise - it must be said, once said to me after the death of a very close loved one to us both;
''How old are you now? 19? -Here, he shook his head, fiddling with his thinly rolled cigarette- It's all down here from here, one after the other now''.
Of course, he was referring to deaths. It was a terrifying thing to hear, no doubt. But I remained calm, and responded only with a tilt of my still mind, a glance at him that he did not return, and the idle fiddling of the gift from her who had passed in my hands.
I have not been in that living room for quite some time, but then, it was exactly as she had left and decorated it.

Much of this, many of these thoughts, have provoked nostalgic, dry, white thoughts of the East end streets. The common, natural, and ever flowing longing for returning 'home' has returned. I see the crowded buses without faces, the tube journeys and the summer heat between Dagenham east and Barking. The cool tease of the tiled floor of Chadwell heath station, the dusty dry streets just outside of his home. The suspicious eye of the shopkeeper as I buy a countless amount of Jamaican Hardo Bread, listening to the likes of Amy Winehouse on my i-pod. The cracked, white cool of his kitchen floor, the strange and unidentifiably comforting scent of his then home. His final home.

The sky here at present is muggy, it is grey and lightless, thankfully, but the heat still rests at the door.
It is a home, that is for sure, but I find it rather difficult to connect these two places. It is not the first time that I have felt like seperate people, that I have been torn right in half for want of one place and need of another.
My life is pleasant, magical and astounding now, oh the thought that ran through me just weeks ago;
'It's my turn now, to live my life'.
My heart screamed out and turned in my chest, I have more than one home, how fortunate I am. But the people, those within those homes now, what do they scream?

And yes, I am having my summer block. Writing is difficult to structure, thoughts will not meet my lips with ease and my skin is tightening beneath the glare, but still I am here and to try. This rolling upset, this longing, these photographs, yes, they will always breathe down the back of my neck strangely alluring and soothing...
But what I have before me, oh what I have.. There are not words for the astoundment. I have not a way, yet, to describe how fortunate I feel. How scared that my lips tremble a smile. It is true, some people have it handed to them upon a plate, and squander it mercilessly. But at the moment, I feel like the only one. I grip this beautiful thing in my hands like the sand on my so-missed seaside, discovering silver shells and shimmering pebbles as the grains fall.
Water collapses at my feet.

Yes, I do miss you all, but I am aware that your lives are a little too advanced to be missing me too.
Moving photographs so I can see the waves, a stone heart beats softly into the sand.
I'll never know another day like the one that my uncle and I sat, getting rather off it on Rose from plastic cups, upon the seaside. Oh the pebbles and the sand, we waited for something that never did come about, throwing rocks at a coconut on the water's edge. It was our sunny evening.
The train back, the scent of sand and salt, tearing faces from the news papers and putting them upon others.
My hair was claret and blue, yours, of course, was slap-head. And we did.
'Your wondering now, what to do, now you know, this is the end'.
Taking notice of my music, reminding me of yours. You truly wanted to know me.
Oh how distracted we all were.
And then, there were the nights. How voices still run through the memory, the smell of whiskey and wine. The sight of Jack bottles in the bin outside, the constant damp of the garden. Amy wording the back ground, dices rolled and how I always managed to 'get the glam questions'.

It has grown cooler, the nights will begin to leak in earlier now. I ask the winter, the winter I have confessed my Love to, to treat me well this year. To be kind.

'A true sehnsucht...'

I long for beauty like this,
Oh, you, in a dull morning light.
It is the curve, the cure to irritation,
My skin crawling and the winter breeze tingling;
Tease, it does, at the bottom of my bed.
I've seen so little like this before,
And I have heard every word in a different order,
Each letter the wrong way round, each day glanced through frosted glass,
You are the clearing,
You are the centre of the field on a white day of fog.
I honestly don't mind where I end up,
The dregs of want from the past are ebbing away,
Lingering in unconscious but laughing at me no more.
And why should I sleep?
They are here, and within,
And mostly, you are only here. For you, the thing you are, leaves me in the unconscious,
You frighten and astound!
And so charming you are,
When you are grinning in malicious spirit.
How beautiful the face without expression when I wrench open my eyes,
When breath fails me for seconds,
And you sigh in your sleep.

I find there is no back,
No other side to a wall.
In arms, in embrace, I need not air, I need not object,
And yet we cannot delay reality's presence.
That pathetic entrance of Summers weak sun.
It bleeds into my room such as the night did end,
It drapes across the teased image of you,
And it stirs the lid of your eye,
The trembling skin of disturbance.

Quickly, do the words scrawl the walls,
Severed, you crawl from my sheets.
Motionless, how on earth do I part for my day?
How do-able it all is!
How ill that makes me!
Easily I may take each day, I may slip into each situation,
Without you.
So much sweeter, with an air of atmospheric treasury could it be,
With you,
The sky the gold it goes, when the rain has fallen, and the Summer night sun weakly bleeds in,
Again against the thick of smoke clouds.
A fire has fallen,
Here I gain,
And here you have given your hand.

Scurrying.

My dear heart has merely longed and lonelied',
The night, my heart has been drawn to,
The moon it's porch lamp.
And had I not seen the black ocean of the late hour,
I would not know what it is to love.

Contented, somehow, am I, to be even disgraced and abysmal in silence,
To be endlessly boundless,
To find that I have rested in the only arms I know how to,
I hang my sheets upon the banister, only to see scarlet spread,
Oh to bleed into the water!

Upon that bench we sat, and how my eyes stayed upon you,
All over you,
How night gave the cool breath night gives,
The slow breath night gives.
I guessed I would never crawl to your side and writhe into sleep.

Pieces of flowers swill in the fountain,
It is a quiet park we have yet to walk in, but we will,
And night, it shall be.
Sea air, we shall breathe. I just want the horizon,
I just want the dawn to sway us to sleep, to dance us upon the promenade.

I may spend my time putting the pieces of him together,
I could perhaps be found in the window, painting,
That bleeding colour, that grey quiet of an English morning.
My brush nuzzling the veins of he,
Those eyes alway asking.

I see the beauty you know,
Of him, in my shadow.
Oh pale morning light,
Give his skin more life!
And yet, bitter evening glare,
Puts such romance in his sweet stare.

''Something I cannot, can see me''.

An aged story.


Will I spend my life doing this?
Taking on the old information as if new?

I heard the trees anger last night,
As alll that filled the 4am streets was my own whisper,
Ordinarily.
The rest that filled the silence was suddenly all collapture.
To look above me,
My footsteps ended,
Paused, and slotted into the cobbles.

The damp road an empty stage to the rustling and the breaking above me,
I could almost trace the sound with my eyes,
It moved around as if some thing on all fours ran-a-mock on the tree tops,
Beneath the shielded moon.
I was a build up,
A tension.
And I waited for something to drop,
As I spied a star through the mess of leaves.

Some of autumn, some clinging onto what was left of the weather,
I waited.
Surely a branch would have stopped breaking?
But the sound of ripping bark and clattering leaves progressed,
An orchestra building up,
"Something I cannot, can see me".
Was tonight, my ordinary night, The night?
For all the shredding, the grinding rips,
Nothing fell on the floor.

But I waited, I even stepped into the dark from the lamp's light,
Directly beneath the sound, willing it to test me.
But perhaps I wanted it too much that night,
Or maybe I wasn't truly fearless,
They saw me unfit?
Still I pictured this creature on the tree tops, lining Queen's square,
All that was beneath, such ordinaire,
And are all above such hair tinted creatures?
Drooled and thirst?
I ached my neck back,
Realising the horizon was lightening, for it was apparent.
And all in such short time,
the climax came too little.

Little but what the creature had left,
That was swaying wood out of eye's sight,
And the fluttering leaves that rumbled humbly in disturbance,
As if attacked and reacted,
As a body would to a needle.

All but tonight.

Nothing saved me from my plight,
I was just another colour under midnight's light.

Wake me from this, I wondered,
Pondering on an ending,
Or not seeing beach light again.
As I left the cobbles closer,
I ran thoughts through a bitterly set mind.

Surely, if I cannot sleep as alive,
I shan't sleep when I am dead either?

Commited to a wander that is mood lead,
Waiting to be accepted into eternity?
See, I think they're watching.
I'm waited.
I'm watched.
But I'll go out in daylight today,
It hidden by grey cloud and musk.
And the goers by,
Suits, ties, and nine to five thirty,
Scurry as rats do to the sewers,
To the train stations, to the bus depos.
As I rest weary, moon streaked eyes,
And pace out around them.
A slower, more tuned walk than they, gushes by,
With worries of such,
That I once would have dreamt, yet dreaded having,
As a ten year old wishing amnesia upon my self.

And wishing for all the woes of an ordinaire.
Yet the moment I spend my ordinary walk home,
Claiming and comparing,
To be as ordinary as;
Those who eat ordinarily for a living,
Those who ignore the ache in their side,
Those who pine for those they cannot have,
Those who find those of a similar life,
A tree snaps before me.
And they wonder if I'm truly ready.
As do I.

The Steam Rail.

I have been asked for fears,
I have been confided in.
I have slept uncomfortably,
My bed has been the floor.

Of all those pale fears,
I have seen within my rooms,
I, today, feel scared of you.
I twiddle my finger beneath it's ring,
And I listen to the Japanese speak on the telly.

I have seen days far more beautiful than this,
I have had evenings of sweeter engagement,
And yet there is something so quietly sweet,
Surrounding our presence where ever we may dwell.

I have been many things, and I have been told many stories,
in the quiet of a cafe upon such rainy days.
I have been sick of my writing, I have drawn so terribly,
But beneath your eyes, still, I see admiration.
I see honest opinion.

I have led myself upon this track,
As if putting the gag in my own mouth,
How I have tied my own hands so tightly,
How the approaching steam once held romance!

And yet still I feel it, still i wail indignantly,
I feel like you could save me,
And yet you really needn't have to.
You are tied beside me.

If rain.

Delightful it is!; To sit beside a window cracked,
And letting in air as cool as is held in the crypt!
Rain does thud at my glass today,
And grey has coloured the dull blue that was.
Autumn feels closer than the month would suggest,
And a book of age lies at my chest.

To sit is absolute, and to listen to nothing but!
I have the calm and the serene today,
Of a lady who, once, knew precisely what she wanted,
Of a cat who hauled in the birds beside the mice!

I question my dreams today, I ask them why they haunt me so?
I may have taken a restful gaze toward a window dotted,
But the lingering images behind these eyes are of creatures, unsettling.
Yes, just last night I gave in to sleep,
And slept for as long as I might ever,
Until. And then dream did come. Did taunt!
It lay out fears my mind had only just come across,
And oh how well it did!

If my mind would write, quite the story you would read.
It put poison in my drink! It led him by another! It threatened at solitude of an outing,
It may as well have put fire in my sky!
I am distrustful of my mind in sleep!
Here, here I lay in a comfort I have made,
And it laughs, it gives a foul hissing laugh, as I fall empty into unconsciousness.

The sweet rain pounds harder now, it sweetens the horizon,
And my mind is withdrawing the memory,
I pry so that I may word the fears and paint the creature;
Yet it pulls back as slowly and effortlessly as the tide receeding.
My mind but sand, my fingers protruding with difficulty, clutching as if suffocating.
Only to dream again.

~

Murk has my mind been,
And just of late has it swum back with the tide.
I am aware, if at all, that such as the shadow through a window,
Of rain upon a familiar portrait, in a dark and deep, elaborate room,
Forgotten and anachronistic,
Love does begin to patter at perfection.

I shall never go out again. I only wish to surround myself in literature, art, poetry, fine china and exquisite music.

The Young Rambler.

The creatures that lie in the beds here,
Are the ones that once donned my bedroom walls.
I need not fear the monsters here,
For I did reside before them,
My deepest fear equipped masculinity,
It was caped in woes older than me.
When my years begin to gather,
I have written and I have witnessed the matter.

Make this true, within this natter,
I have got these things inside of me.
Rest child's eyes, and lie in the cool of stone.
The damp and the dry,
The aching, the fingers that pry,
My window was never a safeguard,
My humming nervous system did flail.


Damned away from the sun,
The same old monsters run.
As a child, I knew they would come,
During enjoyment, they waited with heaving chest and narrowed claw.

Rotted teeth and gaps in gum,
The glorious creatures shadowed.
The earth from my garden wrapped around each thumb,
Each claw, each tear in ancient, leather skin.

Is it the quiet of night that doth draw the worry,
Aware, was I, that my skeleton led within me.
Had mere younger years seen but enough?
They lurched in their places, even inhaling they bring a dull hiss.

And could my childhood ears have perked,
I pictured them at the window,
Even knowing they lived within the walls.
Still do they crawl at my hair, do they whisper at innocence.

'Oh what on earth is even holding you together?!'
And hear I, only, the response;
'Oh what is it that puts the colour in your skin?'.

-
- Notes to this piece;
Even as I speak the light dims and flickers, as if riding on my pulse. When will these demons leave me? The bell rang only once as I spoke 'The monsters were always faceless in the barn of my childhood home'.

It must be grey.

I should think you mighty,
To come and to challenge me,
So don't,
And simply be beside me.
Have you ever a question for me?

I am aware of tear stained cheeks,
We have both witnessed,
Such colour,
In dusks simple transaction.
Like winter lasting longer.

I have made you up a room,
The walls all rather pale,
To rest,
You must lay your head somewhere near mine.
The birds here sing all night.

Waking is a scent in itself,
And realisation is the sweestest follow,
Remember me,
The crow will caw before the dawn.
And I have been awake most of the night.

Should I fall prey to sleep,
Below the hollow tree in the garden,
Gentle quiet,
And day time's birds.
I expect your challenge withdrawn upon waking.