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??