begin2009 Poetry (10)

Working here in my nine millionth job
I come closer to understanding it all

Walking through town today,
I see men I used to know
They belong here
I don’t

I have no mortgage, no kids
They have

Maybe I have balls, maybe I don’t
This time next year I’ll know

As Christmas approaches I say
next year’s gonna be my year
like all the others that weren’t

I leave behind the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known

With little more than survival money
and the wreck of a tragic split,
I bring regret and a kind of freedom
to new people

Domestica is a soul sucking poison

You’re cut out for it or you’re not

If you’re not, get out

Someone more suited to the job
will fill your shoes
in a heartbeat

Masterpieces
went walkies
between his head
and the page

I go out Monday nights
when bars are empty.
I long for a connection
but nothing happens

People are at home,
holding a babies,
watching telly,
or writing stuff like this

We sat at the Christmas dinner table
eating the four course meal she’d just made

this time last year
she lay in hospital
waiting to die

I asked her to sum up in a sentence or a word
what she’d learnt in the past year

“Live” she said
and continued eating

I got up at 5.30 every morning
and skipped down that road
knowing I was avoiding the noise and madness of
three kids,
ten arguments,
and the insanity of the human race

I saw myself living in a cave,
inside a crater
on the moon

I looked at the books and CD’s
squat in the cave wall,
opposite a picture of nothing

I marvelled at the sundial I’d made

I listened to the blood in my hands,
and the hair in my ears

Outside,
a soft warm stream lapped against rounded stones

I had a coffee machine that worked,
and a guitar that winked at me from the corner

I had a friend who came around once in a while,

I drank Brazilian tea in the evenings
and thought about nothing

I lay on a flat slab
and let the sun sink into my eyelids

I thought about Summer as a child

I didn’t think about you

a pulled tooth
a shit year
an hour to go

I waited..

it was open mic night

For some reason
‘No Point’ thought I looked
a little less lost than him

He stuck his chest out
adjusted his balls
and fiddled with his guitar

I asked him was he nervous

“no point” he said

They booed him off when he eventually got up

He found me again
and talked about his divorce,
the medication
and the kids he rarely saw

He said he was out of a job

After a while
he asked for guitar lessons
but said he couldn’t pay the going rate

I said I wouldn’t charge the going rate

A stuffy head, a weak body, a year to the day since the split
I needed some peace
Fred was in the other room with his spoilt son
I’d just settled down
I opened the first page of Viz
BANG
the door exploded open.

Fred’s wife was ON FIRE showing me the dress she’d just bought
She spread it in the air.

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred and forty euros?’

‘No’

Her Filipino seamstress friend appeared.
Me and seamstress talked about the job she was going to do on the dress.
Fred’s wife burst into the room again
’Twenty five euro’.
I’m convinced women invented weddings,
but anyway,

Fred’s wife and seamstress disappeared upstairs
and with them, the wedding planning noise

Seamstress’s husband lectured Fred in the other room
on how to repair the running machine I’d broken.

’A fella like you, who likes his football, could be doing twenty minutes a night on it’
Fred said ’Yeah’ when he was allowed.

I struggled with the brown bread and prayed for it all to end.
I knew the only way I could avoid prison
was to live on my own

forever.

Hi everyone,

I've been a CS member for 7 months now. In that time. I've completed my first album.

I'd be very interested and honoured to hear what you think.

You can hear it at

Please don't hesitate to email me.

Thank you sincerely

Glenn

He felt her beyond his heart
he knew her beyond his mind
She’d been there before she hadn’t

With words he tried to explain
what he didn’t understand
There was no need,
she understood

He was her and she was him,
illusions
experiencing each other and themselves
through each other

He went to her with a thousand questions
he didn’t have to ask
the answers just came

He knew she knew
She knew he knew

He’d peel an orange in his pocket