Ode to Southend-On-Sea

Oh you always seem to find me,
Don’t you, the moon?
Oh if there is any one I am in love with,
I do think it is you.

Oh the thought does drift about my brain,
As did the sea air the last time I felt it about my hair.
How I miss those leisurely days beside the pier, or sat upon the sunny rocks.
For it has been almost a year since I have seen any real sunshine,
And whilst I prefer the grey days…
And much prefer the night…
There is nothing like the warmth of evening sun on your back,
As you read Murakami on the rocks with your feet burrowed in the sand,
The sound of children laughing around you,
And parents wishing to go home.
Knowing that Rossi’s ice cream parlour continues to modernize up beside the hill behind me,
But as ever serves the same delicious menus,
How I hear no cars but am ever aware of their rolling by,
As if they are sorry to be a break between the parlour and I,
And a cut in this beautiful scenery.
Such does the sea lie before me,
Does the industrial views of Sheerness.
I see the towering chimneys from here, and all the miles they lie away are nothing when it is all but water.
How the sea dips into any part of the shore it can,
It laps back and forth, each time growing closer to my toes,
Until it cannot go any further,
Until it slowly laps back as if rewinding itself.
All to show are the creatures and stones it leaves behind.

It is so very similar to the way a mind whirls about it’s memories.
How things roll in and out of your mind,
Further and further away,
And closer and closer.
When your current thoughts recede, lie all the ones that merely drifted beneath the surface of your consciousness. Misplaced or still alive in your mind,
Though perhaps not in life.
I adore my nights,
But please do not take away from me, my evenings at the seaside.



Oh, just this one more song,
May we stay?
As I hear Vera sing and you smile in the dim of the bar.
I know the sea is just outside,
And the stars sit happily in it’s ripples,
This fine, sweet, sea side night.
Oh I hear no more gulls but they shall return by morning,
And here it is all the clinking of glasses, the moving of trays,
The sweeping up of the end of a night,
And here plays that final song.
That one I asked for, to myself, just this one!
And here, still you stand, in that fine, fine suit you wear so well.
This is my favourite dress, oh won’t you dance with me,
Just for this last song?



A sweet melody, that brought you to me,
Vera sings.
And so you take your hand to my waist,
The other scooping my hand up into the air,
Stationary they hold,
As we dance, sway in this seaside bar.
Take me back to Brighton I cry,
Oh but this time,
Let it be love by the railings.
We’ll do the sweetest waltz across the shoreline, me and you.
The lights scoop the end of the pavement, and illuminate the pebbles of the beach.
And here we are, just us.
Oh where is everyone else,
Oh let’s just pretend they are all dead.
Just for tonight.
It’s just me and you, dancing beside tonight’s black sea,
And it’s just what love should be.
Oh why can I not see your face?
My sweetest figure in such fine attire!
What love will be but I cannot see!
I just feel all the adoration and returned love I swell with,
Released only in a smile to your ear,
As you ask me how we might get home.
And I tell you once again,
Just this one song more.

I might be something, dreaming.

Suppose I write a new, for the old?
My dreams have been so tell-tale lately!
And so unco-operative as I attempt pen them down!
Blasted, unrelated, unrealistic sub-reality of one's own mind!
But so realistic! It is the problem, they are so!
For I feel in them,
Feel as you might breathing in the rain on a routine stroll to work,
Feel as you might on that first dive into the cool of an outdoor pool!
The people in them, I have seen, mostly, I have!
I have grown with them, I mightn't have all of them any more,
But they have been here, in this supposed waking world.
And growl, have I, at waking on occasion,
To find they are still not here.

It is proof of my time-walking?
It is certainly proof of my dreaming!
And it is all of the dreaming, it is all of the mumbling in my sleep,
And the constant logging of dreams!

Suddenly, I awake and am onto something,
Suddenly writing is as writing can be,
And I've a beginning to that story I never finished,
And mightn't finish if I should have trouble sleeping again.
On all these notes and the above and below, I return to my dwelling, I return to the screen and pen my endless papers! It might just happen, I confirm, it might!
I may have stumbled onto what a life I am supposed have,
Or at least the same road.
Well, same city at most,
But the same nonetheless! On the map it all is!
I can be something,
Can't I?
As awkward as I am in daily situations,
As dull as my voice sounds,
As vague as I ever am,
As unshapely as I may be:
I might be something.

I might be.

Our Day Will Come.

The nights are sweet, in other rooms and between our beds,

Not a sight familiar, not a permanent chair,

I've washed my hair in several showers,

We've attempted dining at all sorts of tables.

But of course each object melts in comparison,

To my strong image of you.

I made myself sleep this morning, I dreamt and was aware, I woke and refused to give in. Back into the dream, it took me to other worlds, it swept me up and attempted to drift me out to sea, it took sun from any sky and put hate in the voices of others. Oh it threatened me with faces and long gone places, but I slept. And this time, I woke when I wished to have woke.

Yes, as I swung my legs round the bed, I collapsed to the floor on a numb leg, but all the pain of yesterday and the rest of today has been beautifully worth it. Not long, I keep on, not long here again. Only I find it hard to picture my kitchen, my wallpaper, these days. And I've never really been one for 'seeing to believe' in the physical world.

Too awkward to kick back, to uncomfortable to fall asleep on the sofa, I wait with tense bones by the window - not for winter to pass - but for my season to guide me to my next destination. Perhaps make a home, oh can I even?

Am I scarred and unable to settle, is it just the new I seek now, now that I never pitched camp?

Keep the future painted with accents of a past I never had, it would do me well to actually drive on with it all. Is it that I have waited too long, that in the porch of next year, I long to just step in and not wait a second more? Am I angry and impatient, oh patience of 10 years! Patience! What am I now, that I've never known impatience?

Nothing manages to freeze over in the city, I see no glittering webs and dusted hedges?

The leaves do not crunch here, the sludge slipped in with the rubbish just slips -

I have waited so long.

Do not let it just be words! They can be the fuel, they can tie us together, oh they can slip into physicality but if I ever stopped talking just for a day, would I crumble in your eyes?

And yes, how I stop myself, and yes how I hesitate! I disgrace my own wants and knock on my own front door!

I've much to pull through to,

And much that I want to,

It's you in every mirror, in every photograph, in every suit! It's you,

And it will be tomorrow, I can be tomorrow!

So let it be today, dear body, let it!

I've needed all of this,

I've need, fed and swam into!

I remember being told - both in the morn'.

I remember treading carefully through the snow,

Rocks turned over, twigs peered through,

Leaves lining the trail of foot and paw.

I will be joyous again.

Our day will come.

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.

To be read quietly.

And I shall live now,
As I always intended upon living,
For I have taken fresh air,
Into lungs that had just fluttered out the old,
And threatened upon me something dire and unthought,
And as I sit now, chest once again peacefully heaving,
The crow caws at my back door.
And some where far, the sparrows hum.

Now it is I, who am able to read and speak,
To dance and walk,
To be and be with,
To be pleased and to please.
For life is able, and only as I make it.
For it I, who was standing in my way before,
And no other.

Give in now, to the passions that have stepped beside me,
And lead them. Lead them to the brushes, to the strokes,
Oh, of which I seek beauty in.
Find me, by sand and by pavement,
By cobble and by book,
To the scent of home,
And the trickle of tea.

I am to be me.
And finally, me.

~

Note to this - I just came over very queer, a couple of hours reading and suddenly air seemed to flutter into my heart, a tremble down my throat, my quivering lungs. I ran to take air from the breeze in the garden. Unlike any anxiety, for now I breathe clearly and my head pain is gone. So near to the next seven years, have I been reborn?
To be read quietly.

The Homeless Man and Chocolate Mike.

The actual air was frozen, I mean it, it was like smoothly gliding through deep sea water, walking to my bus stop after work. Even with the white fur of my scarf sticking to my lips as it enveloped three quarters of my face, my breath still broke through the material in a thick white mist before me.
Nearing two AM bore it's usual nonsense of a typical Saturday night, lairy-ness and lack of clothing. Work had been unkind this evening, as had most of those I had worked with, and I was more than anxious to be arriving home to a warm bed and two snuggling cats.
I sidestepped those too drunk to realise their staggering, and shivered inwardly at the women still donning Primark mini's when actual snow was visible on the cars around us (Snow that had been defaced with rude markings by said drunkards). One women passing by me split hands with her boyfriend on the road, singing about a Microphone with a derranged look on her face, she reached out to grab the 4ft black stemmed, white material rose I was clutching.
I slanted out of her grip and that moment was forever lost to her.
The gift to my loosely termed wife, for her most recent birthday, safe still, and the bus stop nearing sight.
And amidst all the trend setters, cold women and drunken speech, a small heap stood out to me.
A man, legs curled to his chest, an old withered looking winters hat cupping his head in a rejecting way, sat quietly in the doorway of a bank. Later to be described as ironic.
He didn't openly ask for change, like any other homeless man may (in a thick scottish accent, perhaps), but he sat, with kind eyes and a sad mouth. His attire, all in the dark of 2am, seemed rather colourless. Dark blues, dark greys, not necasarily black but they all blurred into just that. And yet his eyes, downward they were, but they seemed so blue. Even in the light I was given to view him.
I imagined he was an attractive man, should he be allowed a suit, a good scrub and a clean shave. I feared his eyes were frozen, so cold was this night. I passed him by slowly, his eyes went up on me for a moment, a moment in which I broke my own gaze, but smiled with a mouth revealed to the cold for his sake, and then I stopped.
I gripped at my belongings, and I gazed toward my bus stop. I looked back, but he was out of sight in that curved doorway, only his small silver tray with around three little coins within sat feebly in my view. I had already passed, I did not have to go back, my warm bus already sat at it's stop, waiting to ferry me home with a small charge of having to sit amongst said drunken 2am people and the smell of subway sandwiches.

His eyes glanced upward to me as I stood before him, I noticed only now that he had a rucksack beside him, propping up against him safely. His poessessions?
"Could you spare any change?" He barely spoke the words, but his voice was dully calm, sweetly calm. If he had a hot drink in him, he would be a well spoken man, a man to which a conversation with would be wonderful, whether he had much to say or not.
"I don't have any change" I lied, "But, I'd like you to have this"
My voice didn't sound like my own, just as it never usually does when I lie, but I felt him having my rose was much more important, and whilst I lie here writing with the urge of buying the man a suit, and a coffee or a cookie from subway, handing him the 4ft, black stemmed, white material rose warms me.
His eyes did not light up, but the kindness from them could barely thank me, and I'm not even sure he did, but his smile (to which I cannot remember if teeth were missing, or if my memory is biased) gives me more than I needed, and I barely said another word before leaving.
I never look back, I only saw him tuck the large stemmed rose into the side of his rucksack, and hope to the festive seasons spirit, that he does not sell the rose for alcohol, or trade it in for a drugs.


The bus held a usual scent of subway and takeaway pizza, although it being slightly earlier than the buses I would usually board, the crowd was less and the people at their appropriate limit for alcohol, unlike the 3am bus, of which would be filled, not doubt, with alcohol poisoning.
A man was told by my usual driver that it was much more his worth than getting a taxi all the way back, and he approached us sat toward the rear of the bus with a 'Hello' to where we were all headed, marking the name of destination, ironically, as 'sunny'. He sat before me, the seats slightly lower than my own, sideways, so he was comfortably in talking range with me. He attempted conversation with most, and I smiled at him, though secretly annoyed i may not be able to peacefully listen to my music on the way home as i normally would.

But he turned out to be a chocolate man. A chocolate man with a home in tenerefe, who used to drive mini cabs in London. He had a breaking Irish accent, and the ability to speak to almost any one and still have a genuine word to say.
He was happily sad that converstaion with modern dayers was broken if not dull, and every one seemed miserable. We shared our feeling, it seemed, and it was unusual for us both to actually find some one to speak to on the bus.

Chocolate Mike used to reguarly ferry the singer of the Pogues from his sisters home to the airport, way back when, and spoke of his wife not believing his knowing of a radio DJ, until said DJ bought them a bottle of champagne in a resturant. On ice of course. Only the best for the blue eyed Chocolate Man.
Chocolate Man gave in his slightly drunken, but perfectly tipsy worry, that all young people complain of being tired, when he himself travels out of the country at least six times a year, and can get by just fine on four hours sleep, when his wife (who doesnt' always accompany him abroad) needs at least 8 it would seem.
''My my...'' he said, ''If only I were five years younger!''
Chocolate Mike actually asked me about me, and yet spoke much of himself.
The journey was not long, but Chocolate Mike gave real conversation a delicious touch to what was almost a bad end to a night at work.
''You are so young!'' he exclaimed, although, for once, he did not mean it in a bad way. He was not judging me, nor making any assumptions. For once, to an older person, it was genuinely okay for me to be young.


~ These were delicious ramblings, all of true events and happenings that took place just tonight. SheBlinks tells no lies and means no harm should any thing mentioned relate to your own life or personal gains, and you should think yourself proud if you met The Homeless Man and Chocolate Mike.

Running a-mock and turning each table,
I recalled a turn of events beside a snooker one.
It was dull green, though not as dull as the (in memory) windowless light that coated it.
I circled the table, though not for a shot,
and claimed the tables to have been turned on their head.
And i realised now. (I'm aware)
That i cannot stay on track of losing track.
Structure seems to achingly scrape at my fingertips, beneath keys or around pens.
Though the mind controlling them fears anything so much as
Being able to write in stanzas.
Or even. In sentences. Alot of the time.
Though i like some thing wonderfully outrageous.

I put my own skin against a test that needed nothing more than a pen, and a potractor.
My face feeling the temprature-less feel you can only get from an exam paper.
The hall run a-mock this time only with the sounds of pens scratching paper.
Ink injecting a tree, sap and honey i used to lick as a child.
Running out into the misty summer sunshine, into the clear shade beneath the tree on the left of the path before my house.
Seeing the ooze, remembering that trees may bleed too,
sliding my finger down it, some times frozen, and tasting whatever this fantastic new substance was.
No substance for that entirely could have ended up sexual.
A tree and myself.

I've honestly cleaned this up, from what is going on in my head.

They'll use it against me one day,

I'll be leant awkwardly against a white wall, on a silver chair, with black tips stopping the legs scraping the grey, dotted floors. The table before me may once have been seen as 'dull egg shell' coloured. Which is misleading, i always thought. The typical egg colour is that of skin, mostly. Lighter skin. Freckled skin.
Egg shell in the aisle, is actually a dull blue. Doused still in freckles, usually. Perhaps there was a minor mention of a duck. Still, dull blue freckled skin could still relate to the previous egg. Flesh gone off.
Any way, the man (or woman with her hair tightly pulled back into a bun, scraped across her head so that i figure without the black parts, the chair may indeed scratch the floor so that it looks like her scalp) will tell me 'Wipe the slate clean, start over'
Any I'll nod. Face against the cold wall, I'll nod.
Though inside i know, i listen, i picture a chopping board in a stupidly hygienic kitchen. I picture a wonderfully clean sponge covered in bubbles and fairy liquid, slopping away the scum and filth that covers the board. And i see it glint, shine in some unseen, unnatural light.
But i know. There are digs. Dips and slices in the chopping board, from old knives and cutlery. Accidental dents. All harbouring traces of scum. Disgusting bits of germs that couldn't have been caught and removed when 'wiping the slate clean'. They fester, lightly, and unseen.
So his/her words ride across this slate happily, like a small space ship over the surface of the futuristic landscape.
Work here is done and she's alright, release her, get her a job and get her in some flat.

My own eyes open now to the sap falling from lips of pyschatrists. My eyes blank and flat, believing and open to suggestion. I run my finger, mentally, across their oozing lips and take a commemorative lick of my finger.

Brainstorm

I watched my wrists today,
though i saw nothing 'pulsate' per say,
i traced the purple lines tinged red.
I wondered if they'd shy deeper beneath my skin if I touched them.
I gazed over each break into another series.
They looked and look like two trees, standing quietly still in the dusk.
My skin acting as an olive coloured sky, near a field or small wood.
I almost saw the old fence running along side them.

But could, and only for today, my skin be the ocean.
Such an odd coloured ocean, as my veins ride just below waters surface
Like dolphins beside the boat that is my hand.
Wondering how most references turn to the sea,
I trace as these trees trail deeper, the roots finding water.
Visible partially to the surface, my veins then delve suddenly into the depths of my body,
And i can no longer see them as they fade.
Moisturizer tainting my hands, identifying each crack and line
with harsh white contrast.
I couldn't count and my hand twitched nervously,
as i do, when i am being watched so closely.
My body is just like me.
Writing like a five year old but my body is just like me.
Reacts as i do.
Gets nervous and quivers.

I'd get on the coach tomorrow.
Had i not a day to earn the money i don't have coming along.
I didn't speak to any one other than her for around 36 hours, so come the second 1am my words withered around my lips, never falling.
Unfortunately not being so wound up in my head
Is aiding me to leave the myths behind.
I got up from the chair, and led upon the floor.
The ceiling lit from the left hand side of the pale room as usual,
seagulls circling the night outside.
One star, in a clearing. Cloudless, was the sky.
I thought i saw a dash or two. And completely forgot about the rain in the day.

Crept in through the bus window,
as if treading through cold waves.
The sun wiping over the prominent memory of the seaside,
giving it a hazed reflection in a car window.
The ocean shon grey-green,
and delved into every orifice of the lucky pebbles.



I keep thinking what might happen if I saw your face at my door,
Smiling nervously in the sunshine.
Knowing that night might only bring comfortably dark conversation,
over by the park and where the stars hid behind light pollution.


How long may i spend writing one thing to them?
Irony held out ten fold.
All the train stations were far too recogniseable,
and i believe they began to get used to my bones on the platform.

Thinking freely into music filled ears,
stepping in a rythm those around me could clearly see.
Diamond dogs and a zebra print suitcase.
Influenced beyond the seaside, down by the boats.



My life then played out like lights at night,
and each day time step was taken like one in the dark,
suggestively glancing for that tree stump in the alley,
letting you lead, of course not by choice.


I was reminded of Whitam, yet another station.

The dull silence only corrupted by the constant flicking of plastic,

of the digital clock counting seconds on the platform.

My mind ached again in irony and footsteps came to a slow halt beside me.

For once i couldn't remember where i was going, as I declined a man a lighter,

And avoided small talk.

I can't stand seeing her lie there.