Posts

Showing posts with the label Matthew
Show all
Posted by

Last Minute

I'm likely 85% ready in the
last five minutes,
then the cortisol high,
shocks me still,
I love my thoughts
slowing down in this,
time,
which is
just the panic
and then the utilitarian calm
of what's done is done,
complete and on time,
is a filter,
a boring trick,
I have no need for
a steady heart rate.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Are You Mad at Me?

Just taking it and apologising isn't enough,
I say sorry in my sleep,
it's water off my back,
it is said and I shuffle on.

I could actually parse why someone's mad,
and say it's not really me,
or take it on the chin,
understand it,
and remember.

Anger is like anything else,
so who's irritated, really?
And will I stop,
of course but 
clear away your eggshells first,
tiptoeing is a
miserable infinite spiral,
a flawless trap.
1 comment
Posted by

Good Morning, Marjorie

Paperboy, all my life,
though my bike's beneath the porch,
rusted out, spokes like
West Pier, Brighton,
splayed, the stanchions,
going, but a frozen
scattering in terror.

Getting up, feeling bad about
the wife, 
her dodging runaway
mowers, 
bush clippings
flying everywhere,
the shelled splinters of trench lumber,
children's gripes vanish
in the utterly banal hum,
of leaf blowers:
who was the poorly demon who
frog marched everyone down to
B&Q or wherever?
Deh not dee pot.

The only papers come in
trollies, 
a coupon clipping pettiness
devours Wednesday,
do I feel bad,
fuck it,
you accept price gouging
then you accept your
deal frenzy also.

Thanks for the new shower curtain,
it's why I awoke crying,
I love this place so much,
it pisses me off,
it's the world to me.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Communication Styles

The house style is truncated,
or rather I overelaborate,
I'm not trying to charm snakes,
seem like one myself,
but if I've wadded my talk,
to deceive the x-ray,
it's just that I'm always
trapped in pleasing or
it feels that this is
only a truer path
than the one where I'm
callous or should I
just read my father's
health updates as the
purest statement of fact,
nothing but the whole truth,
and none of this circle talk,
of which I am fond.
1 comment
Posted by

Teeth Grind Beneath the Sun

The desire to win,
no-one ever expects to think,
what happens after,
it must be the worst addiction,
you must become less, right?
It's like being snapped,
the soul dies,
you erase and are.

The worst anger,
when I threw my racket in the bin,
and yes I'm just like my father,
though I don't know if
my parents ever played together,
and I just got worse and worse,
like the weather that day.

Needing a stake in victory,
it's so grim,
standing there in the drizzle,
slowly dampening,
not knowing how to 
unpeg ambition from anger,
not know that sports are
fundamentally unimportant,
but bless the athletes who
can share in the burden
of speaking through us,
that is to say,
just put us on the map,
please.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Group Chat

One parent misrepresents,
is excommunicated,
the other rushes into space,
has to fill you in,
and send you on your way
I've absorbed it as
light work,
taken for granted,
a fine polished sword,
sinking into the
soft flesh of life's work.
It's brutal, but it
does the job.
I don't know what
kind of parent I want
to be yet,
people say I'm kind,
though I'm heavy with
doubt,
forcing me into a v
here as I sit.
What would my child read first,
my posture,
my silence,
or my tolerance?


Post a Comment
Posted by

The Drink

I'm not a writer man, I hope,
but yeah I see things when
I'm drunk.
To a point I'm fine with
most things I say,
I don't think I'd be
overly concerned
to overhear myself,
it's ok, I think,
the slurry in which
my eyes sink,
brain tipping back,
I'm closer to myself.
It's not coming home,
exactly, more like
catching my reflection
in a dark window,
yes, I must hope to
look like this
all the time,
I think.


Post a Comment
Posted by

Back Through The Flow Chart

In the basement,
I'll catch a glimpse,
of a shoebox
or a bin,
stacked too high, always,
making more space
for gifts I can't refuse,
which don't tell me anything
about my life.
Honestly,
I don't know why I keep them,
out of sight and mind,
but digging in, reminders, yes,
I chose to keep this and that,
though I don't remember why,
is this how bugs break into the code,
make the present collapse periodically,
I wrote this all in to begin with,
to keep me on my toes,
to wonder why
my thoughts won't add up,
why processes won't come to bear,
to have to go back,
perform routine maintenance.


1 comment
Posted by

Hyperbolic Both Ways

Opinion sheathed in the scabbard of opinion -
I don't feel gas lit by cultural commentary
but I feel cornered by why I don't like your opinion
it doesn't hurt to couch opinion in kindness,
towards micro level cultural artefacts,
no, nothing, not always on the grand scale.

Opinion won't shift anything but my wherewithal
to make something,
be smart, be observant, be vigilant,
know when it's fine to promote the kernel,
even if it's barely nascent,
be advised
that it won't become the taser, 
something abused daily
if it weren't a b-side, forgotten about,
and a what if, if you can pull it back from the ether
even.

You are heard,
were.
Post a Comment
Posted by

It Could Have Been Me

Self-regard,
yeah, in the octagon,
with self-loathing,
settle it
with the world all around
roaring for a winner,
it doesn't know who.
Self-regard, with no
other regard,
and the nerve tree jangles,
branches bow,
they can't be cut back,
a boss stretched out
in 16 bits,
ending.
I was full of hate, then,
but it was so unfocused,
pointless without reasons,
groundless without solutions.
I was so lucky, then,
just to hate with purity,
that negated precision,
reasonless, unresolved,
with no need,
and now what has it become?
A pebble that I clutch,
that draws purple to the
rings of my eyes.
Just look how the others turned out,
my god, it could have been me.
Post a Comment
Posted by

B12

Also how I experience myself,
in getting over the hump,
coffee isn't social,
it scares me witless,
the heart doesn't beat as one,
this isn't my pulse,
I don't feel its blip
in mine or other bodies
when all thoughts,
are no thoughts at once.

The snow, the other day,
and we blue dotted,
on unbooted map,
an arcology and nothing but
the will to conserve ourselves
let alone the perfect white expanse.
Screw the sight lines,
erase the horizon.

It was my pillow soaked in tears -
I had such deep dreams
of space as a child,
of wanting nothing more,
and such weeping frustration
in excising space of insignificance.

Post a Comment
Posted by

Keeping The Faith

Come back, trace a finger
through the dust,
the mantle was clean,
but a week ago.
Kitchen standards,
have slipped again,
the chicken wasn't stripped,
for the gristle puzzle
and the juices flow.
You and I,
and thirty years,
we set the double standard,
you guys, this, and that
you don't understand
we never did it like that.
Double life fading
from both ends inward,
slow tv vanishing trick
before your very eyes,
never truly homesick,
just unsure why we left.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Pukka Pies

Gravy, junk of the soil,
pastry, of this world,
then if you try and keep it
it won't
just dust on the bones
of the catacomb.

I forced myself
to find complexity in the
blandess,
the northern bog-tainted,
peat of it all.

A tin of pineapples
meant the world,
a lava lamp play of
condensed milk,
peach liquor diffusion.

Celebrate the food,
celebrate the people,
a nation awakened,
against its worse judgement.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Sight Beyond Sight

Beginning joke,
origin story
for how I began 
my middle age.
I laughed,
thought of myself then,
I only I could see
and see me now.

I don't need these 
cuban heels,
I don't need 
a disc compression.
A hot stone pain,
the vice of my waist,
nerve lava,
false stomach ache.

I've lost
friends to lasik;
I don't need these
lenses,
my face reformatted,
the periphery laid bare,
a new layer of meaning
to the wince and the glare.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Myth Making

For your tropes,
having not lived quite with them,
I've aimlessly wandered around
fishing out the crumbs
back to your first wave,
so how you came to be,
I think I know now.

I am this way, 
I have this set of features,
so yeah, being interpolated,
or worse,
it's always a piss poor,
shrug back into
oh yeah, yeah I remember this,
the sigh fried into
the  morning mist 
of swamp sounds.

These aren't quite my tropes,
so I tend not to exploit them,
unless someone else
thinks they're my tropes,
then glazed over,
in a trance,
performing not my actions,
not of my time,
I draw first generation,
second natured,
with unimaginable ideas,
packed around a city section,
coughing out fibreglass,
this insulation from within,
though it isn't mine.
1 comment
Posted by

Put the Devil into Hell

Crab, it's all sticky inside,
my hand slipped on the chop stick,
there was screaming by the stairs,
blood covered frost,
front window smashed.

I scooped the shards before the dog,
and no way to know 
what the surgeons saw.

What is the gap between
seeming nice,
and knowing what one wants?
It seems a whole life can live in there,
all of our jostling,
reputation, 
and quiet repudiation.

It was dumb to stir the pot then,
ignoring the seething force,
of men doing to men,
what one man does to himself.
Could not have anticipated
there would only be one choice, then
to want your tendon to be one
and to be a useful witness to anger.
1 comment
Posted by

Leaving

Working a hole through a jumper,
a finger popped through,
then a cork and bonne nouvelle,
it weren't no chance,
planned it for ages.

Years later,
Gare Du Nord - Ashford - St. Pancras,
looked not as sieges in succession,
just a nice thing, for once,
salient dots on the continuum,
since the French aren't coming,
I was reminded in class once,
it's fine.

And above the water, even,
coming off drugs
I'd take the ferry teens,
leering at my sallow skin,
cheekbones, haunted Toblerone bumps,
six weeks sucking the life out me ---
mixed feelings in this tunnel right now,
something worn out,
tyre scuffs,
damp loo roll strewn bilingual carrier, 
and the layers through which we travel,
so this mode is everything
that seems far in the future,
and so pulled into the voyagers' past.


Post a Comment
Posted by

Zun or Zon

My voice through the ages,
you'd catch a junior wurzel 
taking the piss out of tv
on a chewed up C60.

And on the cassette reduced,
translated tracts of grandfather's life,
a breaking, reedy 
half-arsed RP.

Then a pin dropped,
in the Atlantic,
and the gap,
through which the dirt I packed on the
cricket ball of Acton,
I said Amazon 
instead of Amazun,
made the sleight of the cipher,
redundant.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Mad For It

I love yer, only wanna do right by yer,
right by yer, loving yer,

 Just waiting for a racist chant,
flesh out their justification,
go on, I dare 

 yer
pipe down,
it was just a stranger in a crowd,
it don't mean anything,
just let im bleed the radiator,
don't get involved,

it ain't nuffink,
I love yer.
Post a Comment
Posted by

Good Little Matey

This subject returning as coda,
but if it seems as motif,
spit splattered ear,
full of nostalgia of and for it,
paper trailed through strips
of Wetherspoons receipts,
then I was here - when?
And we spoke of this then too?

And honestly, it's alright mate,
I know how it looks,
I have gone and faded,
but somehow you've kept me right here,
the sad spit reminds me,
and frost soon becomes dew,
settles down again some night,
it forms the closeness,
that crept through the creep of winter.

Yes, we're family now,
dare we leave ourselves,
a dampened chill for our bones.

Post a Comment