Tuesday, September 12, 2017

COUGHING UP SOMETHING WRONG

I hear old boots walking up the stairs
Dragging scrapping dying all the way
As if that is all they can muster
After another day out at the waste of space
But something is wrong, wrong here
In the house that no one can find
On the never never in invisible Bristol Road
As my chest coughs and blusters and
My old body aches as is already legendary
And some of the stuff that I’ve been coughing up
Just seems alien and really shouldn’t be inside
My throat, my chest, anywhere in fact
As I sleep and grow ill off the damp
That’s creeping up my walls, onward to the top
And leaving me wondering how can people remain here?

Sure it would be quite alright
If my view wasn’t that of a rich mews house
And the back of that as well so they can have their privacy
Whilst I could really do with a few more square feet
As the damp means I sound like I smoke 40 a day
And my head feels messy but that might just be
All the weed I’m currently smoking
Hold on now it’s time for another
In the hope that maybe tonight I’ll just pass out
And not fidget enough to keep me awake
Leaving me feeling more uncomfortable than ever before
Or at least in a room with a roof
When on nights like these I’d just love to lay there and wallow

ESCAPING MY CELL

The prison walls were breeched tonight, a
Saturday night breakout, beer-bust had to be
Completed in order to sit here and write
Alone again but sick of what’s out there
Sick of the illness that is slowly killing this town
Gentrification, drug addiction it’s all the same
Bloody deal as where the money goes the bad
Tend to follow, oiling the wheels of commerce
In the insurance industry as who knows
A shady dealer may well move in next door
To you, especially if you’re on the front
And buy right next to a slum clearance
Dwelling that is chock full of mad ones
Some good, some great, some desperate
To just escape this town that brings it out
Shines a light and lets you know
You’re mad, it’s Saturday night and you’re
Sat here, alone and mad but sick of out there
When I could be out there getting drunk despite
The fact I got work tomorrow and barely enough
To afford more than two, a half and shot and
I’d be done tonight back to sit here, screaming
Mad thoughts about how I should be out there
But all I want to do is stay here and hope that
I’ll never see the inside of any of those places
Ever again

I can smell my escape, it’s growing more imminent with
Every passing day and right now I can just about
Wait it out, under six months and a ton to do but
Hopefully not once will I have to pass through that
Door to blow my tiny wad and increasingly mad cells
Just in order to sit and talk or hear another human
Voice that isn’t coming from my radio box
As today the only person I spoke to was the guy at
The shop and that was to just clarify a price
Four big cans of strong Polish lager was what I
Wanted, needed and he let me have them at a discounted
Rate and that is all the highlight I need for this dreaded
Saturday deep into the heart of middle-aged insanity

IT’S HARD BEING A SAINT IN THE CITY OF SIN

Trying to be good is hard
In this city of sin, in this home of the crazies
The only thing to do is get out or
Go wild, out of your mind
Until the day comes when it all gets too much
And you just got to bolt
For the refuge of the old
Because, honestly, it wasn’t always like this
I haven’t always been a madman
Waiting for the next time to get blasted
And right now, the longer I wait
The madder I get, the worse my head feels
As it deals with living in this god-forsaken dump of a town
Where no friends mean no one to talk
No one to confide in, no one to cry too
It all just feels like my time is coming to an end

After a long while I met a woman who I fell for
And we were like two peas in a pod
Despite having nothing in common outside of poetry
Drinking anything and smoking the weed
But now she’s cleaning up and I again have no one at all
As I lose another one to the futile attempt
Of being good right here in this city of sin
And I really hope it works out well for her
That she sees the light and gets what she wants
A sober life forever more
But me, I just want a friend with something in common
And in this town, well, am I all alone?
It certainly feels like it at this time
When I can’t even get a colleague at work to say hello to me
What can I do but get over it and move on

So the new list of things to do currently runs like this
Get a new job,
A new friend who ain’t interested in self-destructive ways
A new flat where my neighbour isn’t drug dealing scum
Who it sounds like regularly smashes up his room
Angry about something but then again maybe nothing
Just trying to exert his masculinity with a view to getting me out
So he can move a mate in
That’s a pretty long list and right now it seems hard
Nearly impossible for me to achieve any, not even one
As the rents soar and the drinks are priced too high
And all the jobs pay never enough to afford anything better
Than the life I have here in the damn last resort.

LOST A POEM TODAY

I got home after work today, tired but free after a hard days’ shift
And ate some dinner and switched on my radio
The plan for tonight was going to be some football on my radio
Another Madrid derby as a centre-piece of a major European night
And a bit of the other, a poem or new story to be started on
But then as I unlocked the laptop it all went pear-shaped
My stupid lovely old laptop didn’t recognise who I was and shit
I couldn’t remember my mate’s old password
He’s passed on now so no way to make contact but that still
Still didn’t stop me from trying every which way I could
To get it to work, to open my words up and write again
And then finally I managed to get inside and wow, no shit
I managed to get it fixed. 

I sit here now and the match has just kicked off
So plan A is back in action and the only stuff I didn’t have backed-up
Was a poem I wrote last night, a proper stink fest
Of words and confusion caused by someone
Most generally me, sitting down with no idea of what words I wanted to write
So i think this one works a little bit better
And hopefully I’ll remember to back this one up!

ON YOUTH & WRITING IN A DREAMLIKE STATE

I dream of my youth and all I can see my young self doing is sitting alone, writing
Just like I am now
But it’s not at my home; it’s at friends from yesteryear
Numbers 11, 15 and 19 all on the same street but a few years apart
Number 19 came first and the lower the number the older I get
And the smaller the houses become until well I’m back
Sat here in the last resort penning this little ditty

Then I’m older still and sat in a familiar place
A time of clubbing and mad nights with mad drugs and near-dead Goths
But I sit in the corner, imagining Kerouac typing like mad
On his never-ending scroll of eternal delight
As I do nothing but yell at my drug dealer, give me more because
I just got to write.

TWO OLD PUNKS DISCUSSING THEIR DEMONS

I was sitting on the beach yesterday with a friend from yesteryear and he’d been through some similar shit to me of late
Another old punk struggling with their demons and both of us admitting to mistakes in our past when the great old combo of drink and drugs
Made us feel real, different to how we were when we were young and growing up
When all the madness made us the life and soul of every party and life was just one big long party because then we didn’t need much food and it was all dirt cheap
The days were spent listening to snot-filled speed-fuelled music and the nights were spent pushing hard at those god damn doors of perception as we determined that all drugs were good and they could never harm us
Now after being spat out the other end we sat and talked and he asked me about things that happened in our squalid house-share and all I could say was
I don’t remember much of it as for me I pushed it a lot harder than anyone else at that house and I’d already seen and done so much stuff, some I was desperate to forget
The women, the occasional terrible music we used to listen to, I’m thinking the horridly bland pop-punk and the drug-fuelled gabba that ruled just because of all that damn amphetamine sulphate
And the things I can vaguely recollect are just mostly things I want to forget hence all these years of drinking and doping but now they’ve ended well shit what comes now??