Tag Archives: writing

You don’t notice the dawn if you sleep

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The orange or red rising thru blue night
And how it chases dreams away from
Tired eyes you can’t see how it wakes
In you when you don’t want to raise your
Head from a pillow or low shoulders
These birds with their necessary beauty
Like a carefully chosen alarm ringtone
But better and how the night lights of
Your room dim in the coming day the
Wifi box once so bright or broken party
Fake candles or candles or lava lamps
How a morning saliva gathers in your
Mouth like the sun is meat like the day
Is flesh and how eyes ache to behold
Such wonders after a whole world of
Day and night gone by yes under the
Right circumstances dawn feels like
You’ve lived too long and refuse to stop.

Just sitting and writing at the table because

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My desk has too many books on it and other
Shit and suddenly there’s a knock at the door
I pretend I’m not in I want to write I want
There’s banging at the door and it gets loud
In my head and so I’m getting up to go to the
Door and there’s a tap on the window I think
Oh no it’s the pigeons fucking again I look
Over while on the way to the door and see
Nothing go over further to investigate there’s
A banging on the floor I’m not playing any
Music today maybe there’s a leak in the toilet
Again I check the bathroom and there’s this
Door noise again perhaps the banging on the
Floor was really at the door I open it oh you
Forgot your keys again fine okay do I want
A beer sure I want a beer I pop the beer in the
Kitchen we’re drinking and chatting behind
Me the laptop screen goes into power save
The beers on the table the caps underneath
My toes massaging the serrated edges my hand
Thru the carpet we’re watching a film now
I look over at my laptop I drag myself up
Stare at the screen a moment walk back to the
Kitchen for more beer drinking lying down
Drinking lying down drinking lying down
Apparently people struggle to do that without
Feeling like drowning not me though

I put on my headphones like ear muffs and wait

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For the quiet buzz leg moving shifting chair creaking
Like a metronome that fails every thirteenth beat
Gin trickling down my gullet feels like its behind the
Heart and my throat is rocks limestone warm knees
Under the robe warm knee under knee aching finger
Spiderweb headaches snot dribbling at the back of
The throat itchy cut unabrow cheekbone sniffling
Scalp crawling ear pulse and tickle and burning eyes
Waiting for the line that I lost watching a film and
Drinking gin and tonic gin and tonic.

U have to read to write good

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So sometimes I like to read
And go into their dreams
I feel the grass like the wind
In Dylan Thomas and everything
Smells of semen he’s always
Talking about salt and ears
Of corn and things I hear his
Deep voice imagine Welsh
Baritone or just booming or
Hungry and dripping with words

And then I go on hobartpulp.com
To see tens of unique but similar
Tales of realisation, family, love
The new poetry and I look over old
Couture Noir feature lists and
Maybe I write something in LA or
Miami and then it’s vagabondcitylit
If they’ve decided to do an issue
Lately and I’m looking for poems
About transgressional romances

On my table are two Hunter Thompson
Collections I read over and over
And three collections by local
Poets Andrew Graves and Penny
Pepper and Society of the Spectacle
And a horn and a clay jug and my
Almost broken headphones taped
Together with hairbands and a pot
Of coffee and as I get to the peak
Of the coffee high my mouth vents
Petrol and I roll my head back.

Don’t Equate Me

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The same Grammarly ad five times 25 minutes
The same grammarly ad ten times an hour
25 miles of grammarly source code can’t
tell me that inconsistent capitals, no full stops
random line breaks, can’t tell me
How to improve lazy and bleeding noise –
Is a cover up: 6 times twenty five, 150 empty
grammarly ads for air heads who are acting in ads
School never let them write
Like this
And 25 maths questions about fruit doesn’t
Tell you how an apple tastes in 10mph wind
On the seashore, salt-sodden trousers and dying
Devices in the pebbles and health among the
Broken glass paraphernalia of cutting and honest
Forced out phrases with hyphens in the wrong places.

Anohter [sic]

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There’s not much better on a Sunday
Five layers of salt smell wafting
Midday activities pleasurably concluded
And a 2ltr cider resting on the table there

Pristine before the implosion, pristine
And then the week comes with the best
Dirt, and the days roll on – cheap fabrics
Cut under an industrial skylight, on and on

No other time will the salt smell so good
No other way to paint the layers in peace
No other space to breathe the dust

Smooth Cider Like Syrup, in Tankard

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Because it brings me dreams of green
Those fillings between hop fields and farm lads
Toiling with their flagons over shoulder and a mean
Wage, hairy youth which sup on apples
The trees in the wind with that summer pollen
Breathing through worms and fruits of the morning
Spurned through til sunset falls atop the crest
The day done the night come

Because it brings me the righteous haze of dripping
Poison, the suckling brown bottle beauty sweating
Cold, the farm hands amid the crops caressing hands,
And beads of milky sweat on the brow, they stream
Salt shaken and mineral and pure to the lips
They press on the tongue their sheep’s eyes

Because it brings me sugar with its continual sipping
And slurping chasing the dream, taking away
Meagre earnings for meatier pleasures,
and the hanging fruit.

Computer work

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Computers do strange things to your art
You can’t rip a file
I mean you can rip it off a cd apparently
But you can’t tear it in half – you have to give it somebody
Once something’s written down you can’t hide from the reality
You either accept it or delete all knowledge of its existence
In one moment
You don’t even get the joy of trashing and burning
Does that help? Is that a good thing for, let’s say, a writer?
Maybe. But I find lots of old material I don’t want to change.
It’s interesting, sure, but I probably won’t use it again.
The ideas are in me, they always were, so why worry about
Them being lost anymore than they might already be?
This way is conducive to selling, or, better, to communication
I guess
Selling is communication’s psychotic half brother,
Probably from a different father
Causing pain with healing and vice
Versa
Well, we know all this don’t we?

About Romantic Odds

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(a drunk normally writes too simply for anyone)

It doesn’t matter but you didn’t come
I barely asked you to but you didn’t
You didn’t answer and you didn’t
I sat for two hours with two beers
You would disapprove
I didn’t talk but I got some good reading
Charles Bukowski going mad and Orwell down and out
Every minute you didn’t come I spent more of my soul
Every minute you suddenly arriving got more important
Now I know how Bukowski felt about horses
Big dicks and bad odds
I drowned in my two beers and departed.