How I Feel

All the grotesque voyeurism I usually conjure disappears today because it is vulgar and crass, and I could not begin to apply it to such beautiful people, in their time of loss. Even myself, such a figure of fun usually; now I feel like I can't be anything but statuesque in my dignity - because I have to be. Because if the cracks appear in one of us when the light goes out then the whole world will crumble apart beneath our feet, and the horrid depths below are not a place I wish to send anyone I care for.

No doubt many people reading this have experienced loss, and will understand. I feel selfish and vainglorious for trying to elaborate how I feel, but I want to, so I will.

I have not slept for a very long time; no one has. There are so many faces flashing around the house and every eye is red and pouring tears, pulsing sadness through gargantuan veins, limitless devouring love all hanging loosely from lanterns; guiding balloons safely home.

Panting lonely sighs, staring at the wall, reading books and not taking in words, holding hands and tearing apart the tissues. Everything feels so fleeting, so tinged with sadness and overflowing with meaning. Artifacts of little value now destroy me, and I bury my head in my hands and weep. The smallest things, the most minuscule, become cosmic in their sudden lack of purpose, their owner covered in cotton and breathing so slowly, eyes closed never to open again, and my hands trembling and unable to look. The smallest things hurt so much; and I will never again hear that voice, that beautiful joyous laugh. I cannot help but think I can pick up the phone and have her answer in that beautiful calming way, and I know that any fears I have will dissipate. No problem is too big for a grandmother. Not even dying. It is just one of those things, handled with the greatest ease, and the swiftest of arms flung around my shoulder.

The greatest struggle is there in the eyes of those left behind, who don't want her to to go. I didn't want her to go. I never wanted her to go. No one deserves this. The intimacy of death is overwhelming, and the strength of love, the sheer will to provide comfort unending.

I know today a large large part of me died along with my grandmother. A part of my past is now just that; the past, forever locked in my head with only dreams to stir up the correct agitations to make it seem real.

I cannot believe she is gone.

Jaywalking

Is it ever okay to dance so beautifully with so crass a sound scratching from the stereo, so dark a light illuminating the cracks of your face?

I would feel so content to drift every last second away floating downstream and crashing under the weight of the cascade at the end. Falling water and I. Effortlessly entwined, mouth full of earth and leaves clinging to my ears, my bizarre elfin shape destroyed on rocks of pure amnesty. Shuffling onwards, mortal coil ragged and torn, slipping off me, or cut off with scissors. Yoko laughing. I try so hard to dignify my actions, but fail so remorselessly in hurting myself so much that the blood trickles down my chin, with the spittle, the alcohol touching puddles on the floor where he stood and makes for sombre chains of sweat on the brow.

I cannot find hope within that rotting old frame, through contact with toilets or bathrobes; but dancing effortlessly on satin sheets stained with apathy and sweat; lurching forward from desperate clinging partisanship; the labels stick so vehemently, and never even think to leave the door open, for a way out.

Urging myself to spill out all over and not cry poor tears from even the lewdest of orifices onto the faces and licking up the tears as I hear the family in the background wonder what their daddy is up to and if that boy is happy in his complicity.

I remember when I drew pictures in crayon of my mother and my grandmother, and how I was such a lovely lovely lad. I was such a precious vessel. I could have filled it with all the seven wonders, but instead I chose to fill the empty cup with shit; overflowing, a whole river bursting the banks and wrestling with the alcohol in the bloodstream, the numerous probable infections. I was so sick of myself and I learned the hard way that liking yourself is such a petty crime.

Death

I want to move to the country, deep in the mountains and live in a cottage there, and not worry about people anymore. I want to find the one I will give myself to completely, and lie in their arms and softly sleep and dream of sheep.

Under the mountain, capped with snow, I would walk with such gigantic steps; listening intently to the wind as its song wanders down from the valley.

I wish it was nineteen seventy-two again. I want to wear my hair long and not be so fat, I want to wear scarfs and walk my dogs and press flowers. I yearn to be alone. Kissing the sunset goodnight, I would read, and listen to music, and not have a telephone. I want to write my poems and not worry about anyone reading them.

I wish Samuel Beckett were still alive. I want to hold his hand and have him tell me it will all be alright. I would only ever listen to that sentence if he told it to me. Which he does. I masturbate and wait for Godot, Molloy, Malone, and the rest. One day I will go to Paris and lie down on his grave, and stroke the stone with my grotesque fingers and press my lips against the cold. I cannot thank him enough.

I want to save everyone from the eternal chilly black; I want everyone here with me, on some beautiful enchanted isle. I miss that beautiful girl, whom I loved. I really did give her everything, and now I just do not know where to put my penis, or my heart. All the holes seem the same these days, but I still open my chest and invite them inside. I want everyone with me, and I want to protect them all from the pain. All pain. I want it to be gone. Why can't we all stay here in eternal embrace? You cannot hug the bones. You can't cuddle a corpse. I don't want my mummy to have to go into that horrid earth and lie alone forever. She doesn't deserve that. No one deserves that - not after all we've been through. The birth was hard enough, and then the society - that brute. I don't want my bunny to go into that awful hole and not climb out. I want to stop it all, and not ever have to say that cruel, horrible farewell. I will have to write some words someday, that cannot bring back my departed friends, but will bring smiles and tears in equal measure.

Things have changed so much in this house. It feels much darker, more slow, and altogether more ethereal. I can just drift through the walls and trip over memories, cascading down the stairs and crashing over the carpet, onto my shoes. I can't help but feel the water around my ankles. I'm drowning in the past, gasping for air and grabbing for a raft.

Beginnings

"It was about four in the morning in the height of summer, and the birds were singing beautifully. I had been staring into the mirror for at least twenty minutes. The sunlight bled into the room behind me and the bathroom light cast its judgement. I think my staring might be the result of severe narcissism. I see myself and I think I’d probably fuck me. Probably. It’s only when you look closer that you see the ugly humanity of it all. You see things in yourself and you realise you’ve criticised other people for less, but somehow it’s okay because it’s you. My face was gruesome. So purple and tan and tired. I looked at that beard which had appeared from nowhere. I guess I just stopped shaving somewhere down the line. I looked at all the individual hairs, peeling away from the flesh, trying to escape; they weren’t even the same colour. That’s me all over, no consistency. Lower than that my neck, and all those bruises from the love I made several hours ago. I can’t stand to make love prettily, and I never have. Sex is ugly, and unclean, and not remotely pretty. I suppose that’s why I like it so much. My eyes looked so bored– a dark brown, but not all that intense. They always seemed so much richer when I was younger, and in my mind’s eye they are a deep chocolate. The reality is harsh, and different – they’re more like sandalwood. Even my eyes were pale. The hair, the roof of the soul, was what made me what I am. It was never perfect, and it was never what I wanted. That quiff, borrowed from a thousand movies and pop singers, flopped limply about in front of my forehead. I saw myself so clearly that morning – I saw the face of a man who didn’t know where he was, and didn’t care. I stared for so long that my face lost all meaning. It became a pale collection of forms, and grotesque features, geographical, but still organic. "

Americana

Driving through town provides the golden thrills of youth, for free, and without fear of growing too old, slowly, losing our hair, and dying irresponsibly, just for fun.

The honey coloured sky, branches silhouetted against burning summer, and rustling as we drive past, in our convertible, layers of air pouring through our mouths, and up in our eyes, holding the face steady, and kissing, pushing the hair back all through the past. You're curled on the back seat, the bottle of Jack rolling around amidst the maps and the water bottles, your famous blue raincoat, discarded, and tied to the aerial, flapping in the breeze down the long road away from here.

That old cassette mix we made has run out and the skips are beautiful, just like that soft lulling sigh coming from the engine as we head west and don't ever want to stop until we reach those soft majestic hills, in that golden valley where I spent my childhood. I'm going to take you up mountains and remove your jeans, pulling softly as you let your long hair roll across my cheeks and feel the gentle training of your sex register deeply with my most base feelings of compassion, and ridiculous denials.

When Born To Run came bursting from the stereo and licked the air with sexual guitar chords, you woke up and clasped your arms around my neck, my Ray Bans creaking slightly as your press your face against mine, and you smell of Ralph Lauren, and I smell of the city, and your soft petals drift under my shirt, the air expanding with your fingers and making me feel whole.

It won't take long before we run out of gas, and need to pick up some more cigarettes.

Windows 2

I can not look out into the black night sky and not be intrigued by the windows. I grossly misrepresent one here.

A note on the text

When I started this blog in February 2009 - I set out a manifesto of what this blog would be about.

This whole phenomenon has brought about an insidious revolution whereby know-nothing individuals can protrude a half-baked philosophy on pretty much anything they can get their sweaty hands upon into the arena of the popular conscience. I have been bombarded by erroneous, inflated, and downright boring text in my attempts to enjoy the fruits of this invention; and while it is true that there are fruits - sweet and wholesome, filled with literary juices - they are few and far between and it makes the struggle all the more frustrating.

In this, I have failed miserably. I have become what I entered this world to combat. As of late, what I have crafted here is an amateurish banquet of inanity, trivial poetry, and vulgar self-deprecation.

So I propose a new manifesto, a renewed promise. Over the next few days I am going to collect my thoughts and create a course for this to take. I wish to continue writing - but not with such disgusting lack of direction. I want to create something exciting, interesting, not just a slow collection of phrases.

There are at least three people who read this blog - which is more than enough for me to consider the possibilities of becoming famous - and with that in mind, I will need to distil what is it I think I can do with this thing, into a more alchemically potent experiment.

Monkeys

Have you ever been laid with someone, or sat with someone, and you forget you exist for a few minutes? You could be fucking, or they could be licking your neck, or touching your genitals; or you could be sat at the back of the bus like the end of The Graduate, and for a brief moment you realise that you are entirely alone. Hopelessly alone. The silence is absolutely inexorable.

Sometimes in the dark, while he grunts and pants and is beautifully in his moment, I hold him close but look over his shoulder, my eyes looking deep into the ceiling and finding nothing there, nothing in the air above me and above him, I just close my eyes and pretend I am alone, wishing with all my might that I was alone. I can't bear it. I cannot ask him to stop, because I love him, in some way, in all probability.

Sometimes he will say something, and it will be so empty of meaning that my eyes lock on his, and I smile my empty smile, and I sink within myself. I wander down the steps of my mind into the basement, in my belly, in the very darkest part, and my soul sits there in the comfy chair and plays Simon & Garfunkel records over and over. His words, like silent raindrops, fall all around my ears and I am looking out of the window into the garden next door - the children are playing - and I think about where I went wrong. Was it that I chose this one? No - they all do it.

I have no earthly hiding place from it all, so I step inside myself. I drift off and become increasingly taciturn, licking fingers when offered, and spouting out the slogans. He must think I'm shy - for I have nothing to say to him. I make jokes and they fall flat. I pretend I am someone else, and he doesn't notice. So there it goes. Drifting off into space, while I want so desperately to be engaged, to hold so dear, and to not hate deeply everyone I have cared for ever.

How can I be so cold? Do I hold people to impossibly high standards? I think I hold people to human standards. I don't even know what standards I hold them to. I realise I don't know what I want - I doubt there are very many people who do. All I know is what I don't want.

It's not really that hard to figure out what you don't want.

Sometimes I think I was just born completely out of time. I can't relate to so many people, and so I come across as a snob, or an elitist, or a misanthropist, or a pervert. Maybe I am all of those things. But how can I embrace a culture that encourages mediocrity, and demonises intelligence and free thought? Any stray thought articulated to Mr. Man - and I am lost and out of swing, desperately scratching for some sort of understanding. He doesn't understand, and so I have to explain, and when he doesn't understand the joke, I have to pretend I didn't say anything.

Human beings are strange. I can't explain what I feel like when I drift off into space while he ploughs on regardless. But I feel very close to coming to the ultimate conclusion that we are nothing more than two monkeys in a bed, in a house that we did not build, struggling desperately to find a meaning in that.

Windows

How about those days when you don't open your mouth? You can't even drag up a smile to offer the shopkeeper and you feel a gripping unease when you walk down the street - a horrible fear in your belly that someone might notice you are there. Those days are the worst. They're not so frequent lately, but they are there - every now and then.

It's longing really. It's a deep seated desire to belong somewhere, to feel needed, or useful. I most definitely am neither needed or useful. I take up space, and pay for the privilege.

It's a hard pill to swallow - I came to realise that I am probably not the victim in my failed relationships. Not that there has to be a hero. But I am probably more culpable that the others. Let's examine that for a moment. Sat on the windowsill looking out onto the warm glows of houses filled with happy families. I wonder if they are happy, and if they are, I wonder how they got that way.

Regret - that old demon - stalks the room. It's hard to believe the shit that went on here. The romance. It wasn't romance. It was close, but no cigar.

I don't think she'd have any breath left, the way she went on.

I probably deserve the nagging. There's no way I don't annoy people. Maybe it's my teeth. They're a little less than white. I don't keep myself in as good a condition as I should. Yes, that's it. Physical unattractiveness, that is why they leave. Mental unattractiveness? I am overly contrary they say. Because I do not agree with most people, that makes me contrary. I hate Twilight, and Coldplay. That makes me contrary.

Some things are just shit.

Get over it.

You need to move on, Rob.

Get over it.

I have moved onwards, always onwards - but not entirely upward. Probably downward - hurtling towards some great chasm.

It's dark down there, and there are no people.

Enough.

On finding a man

What is love?

What a boring question.

But seriously.

I think I have experienced love. Possibly once. Maybe twice. Can you retroactively love someone? I don't know. Here goes.

___________

It's incredible really - the lengths we go to.

We have this need placed in us to select ONE person from the throng to be our mate, and procreate, but with just one.

We hate the sample, but that does not stop us.

Is it more difficult if you are a man who likes men, to find a suitable partner to aid you on the trip? I'd say so. There is maths involved. If you take, for example, the population of London - twelve million (12,000,000) - take it down to one tenth (average percentage of population that is homosexual) and then halve that (cutting out the females) - we are already down to six hundred thousand (600,000). That's not a lot of people really. And it gets worse! How many of those people will you like? If we assume at least 75% of those will be unsuitable to your tastes (a conservative estimate) we're down to one hundred and fifty thousand (150,000). Now how many people will like you? Assuming that 75% won't like you - you're now down to thirty seven thousand, five hundred. (37,500). That may seem like a large number of people - but if you are a stay at home hermit like me your chances of meeting them are slim. That 37,500 is 0.003% of the population of London. And I was taking the larger figure which includes the outer reaches of London, with conservative estimates of the percentage of the population a person can stand.

__________

I like boys and everything, but sometimes I am tempted by a firm yet subtle vagina.

____________

The chances of finding one person with whom you can SPEND YOUR LIFE are both slim and frightening. Why would you want to? Why I can have as many as two boyfriends at a time! You might say I 'Pulled a Swinton' - only neither of them know about each other. Libra rising - that's me. Always judging.

The people who live in my building play host to a veritable rogues gallery of men - some of them with unsatisfactory penises.

Who could possibly stick to one man, when they are so phenomenally useless on their own. One must top-up! Fill in the multifarious holes with caulk formed from the scruples of other men. There's not a good one among the lot of them. So we create! Art; it's important even when shagging.

There are no words left to say.
No voices.
No words left to echo through orange words. No reason left. No sabres of light. No metaphor. All quiet low sounds drifting through windows and back out, leaving no trace, making no impression. Hard mattress, lined with cold metal, breaking the spine, disturbing the peace. No loss. No sacrifice. No leaps out of windows. No broken limbs, no snap, no bleeding onto the concrete, no staring blankly out onto stars.

There is nothing that matters now. No billboards. No adverts. No celebrities. No television. No music.

______________________

It's all sand to me. All that sun. It's beating down and bursting capillaries, the red glow of summer on Earth, amid the rooms, and buildings and towers. Faces stare down angrily. Distorted. Phonetic.

Rarrar ta beeh lie rar, low skoerm figler getus

Reservedly, I peel it back, and make a go at it. It's not right this morning. Too early. I want nothing more than the earth to open and take me somewhere.

There must be a place where no one talks nonsense.

"Rarrar ta beeh lie rar, low skoerm figler getus."

____________

I lie awake at night,

he's just there sat by the window

Staring at seagulls that can't

seem to find their way home.

Saucers of milk on the floor

spilled by clumsy footsteps.

Lighting cigars and face lighting up,

roll up the pillow.

I can't decide if I want to be here or alone.

Talk to the ceiling again.

Ridicule sculptures and alabaster moustaches,

hang off the walls and the story continues

with relish.

He wants what I want but not with me

not together....

Lying on my back hearing shadows

that call from the basement

That's the old person I used to rely on -

She wants what I've got I'm used to it

Really, don't worry.

It's not the details that scare me these days

It's the lies.

Wandering back through the lanes in my mind

watching ghosts of my friends

passing by.

Still clinging bedsheets to hide behind comfort my sadness.

Leaping and screaming I hear as he dies on the pavement.

Partially moved by the sirens I wait by the window.

Staring at seagulls that can't

seem to find their way home.

Out of the fire....

That bitch killed me. Through and through. She took my heart and squeezed it tight in her fist - I swear to God that's what caused the angina. That bitch ripped me up and fed me to the wolves. And I died. I really died. Some rotten ghost on the floor of this place - that's the last of me. Or rather that was the last of him. He's there, that one who loved him.

A few months on, some different ghosts haunt the same hollow room. I never wanted to live in the room, flatsharing with the ghosts of two people I used to know. I am a different person now. I'm like the fucking Doctor or something. My lover now is this bottle. That bitch drove me to drink. I never did. I do now. See the effects? Manifold, multifarious.

I am somewhat of a Phoenix, lurching burning out of the flames into the cold shower and pouring on the iodine in some callous act of self-preservation. Burned and scarred, but ultimately fresh. It's rejuvenating. I was such a snivelling, obsequious drivel of a man when I loved her. What a waste. What a poor excuse for humanity I put forward. So gentle, so fucked. Always with the fuckery - I raped my own dignity day and night and poured salt into the open wounds of my own relationship. Cliché.

I am all anew, certainly. I came protected to the fight now. I cannot go into battle bareback these days. I'm like fucking RoboCop. Remember him? Me neither.
I have created out of clay some perfect alias, some character that I can act - because it is easier, and hurts less. This beard? These glasses? These headphones? That aftershave? Those expressions? Armour. Nothing more, nothing less. It is a multi-faceted protection against any form of intrusion into the upper echelons of my heart. There you go, girl. Are you happy? I'm just as suited up as you are now. No fucker's going to know how I feel now. I'm ready for a fight. Back off! Fuck off! You're gonna get fucked - fucker. Fucker. Bitch.

This moustache can repel the bullets of any romantic advance - it is my beautiful shield - and with it comes the deepest increase in hostility since the drinking began. I drink now. It is the only way. It'll kill me in time. I don't care. All I want is to not let my fortress be stormed by an uncaring enemy anymore. I have SO many guards - you don't even know it. The vodka shoots down planes, and the know-nothing stare makes sure no intelligent person comes anywhere near me. I want to love stupid people forever more. Does the Daily Mail have a personals section? I could pretend to be a racist. I love race. Do racists fuck good? I bet all that pent-up rage and sexual frustration would burst out in one marvellous display of lust and semen.

My fingers smell of semen, and saliva. It's been a long night - but the moustache remains perfectly intact. I may love him. I may have fallen in love. But he's not getting in now. Why would I want him to? I have these words! I have words and drink! The lime and the quinine are a perfect substitute for true love.

So I am another man now. I should change my name. I still bear the same name as that awful chunderfuck who lost the war of love. Ralph Stanley. Yes. Call me Ralph. Pronounced 'Raif' of course. Because I'm a hardcore wanker now. I sip wine from the bottle and scar poetry on my arm with the vegetable knife. The blood drips onto the table but I don't care. "Keep the VATs coming!"

I want you all to know that I am happy now. I am in love with protection now. It keeps away the villains. The old one is dead - he doesn't want you to know, but I'm a much better person than he is.

A Diary of the End of the Day

Trees look so stately, silhouetted against the silvery blue sky, waifish clouds laying themselves down on the horizon - not entirely without purpose, but mostly restful. Thin golden sabres penetrate through the empty spaces of the skyline and lunge into my eyes, reflected dimly in the window pane. That face looks so much more rugged there - bathed in vague shadows - complimentary flourishes of light - vaseline on the lens. I am stately, and sexual. The Hitler hairdo and untamed beard could stop Cleopatra in her tracks. I'd fuck me. Oh yes - that man in that window - he is a real person.

The light feels precarious, as if it could shatter at the slightest touch. A broom extended from the window might knock the sheet off the curtain rail, and bring down the set, and reveal the perpetual ever glowing dark behind it - deep and rich, full of blues. A sky of deepest blue Indian ink, pricked with gorgeous bright stars, pounding softly on the trees and making them glow dark against the lovingly painted backdrop. The city below breathes softly and hums, exhilarating breaths, long sighs and quiet people all lying and walking and suffering below the massive sky above, pressing down with such momentous quiet, full of planes, blinking softly into the distance.

The light is fading now, faster and deeper, leaving only traces of itself bouncing around the glass, dancing on the fences, resting in the ponds. It is so beautifully dying, caressing the air as it eases the suffering. Endless houses, with their bright yellow eyes, and bright yellow mouths, watch in astonishment, only awake when the day is falling into unconsciousness. All is full of birds, slumbering gently, awaiting the dawn. I see stars, the scouts of Nyx, and that winged goddess herself, in her chariot, grasping the corner of that sky and pulling it slowly down as she flies across the heavens, and the day falls effortlessly under her arms.

That cool orange is so subtle at my back, and sparsely pricking my eyes from out there - earthly, and manly, and ethereal. All history is united under that same sky. The whole of human experience has seen the same skies - just think - you have woken to the same skies as Alexander, you have sat in awe of the same sunrises as Hammurabi - beautiful and delicate, and immortal, unchanging. It is deep on that horizon that we all exist - alone in the solar system, and the audience to a most spectacular exhibition.

Future/Sea

Where is this going? This lot.

Are the days going to end, abruptly, without fanfare?

I can see only so far into the future, and then ocean. A deep sea of memories, desires, expectations and fears. Always fears. Eternal, and deep.

I can look behind me and see the road, in all its barren spectacle, noticing the people and the choices, I can see the road, and I can see where I stand, or sit. In this room, here I sit pondering the future. I can see the future a few weeks from now, where the road turns slowly, but surely to sand. The sand is unstable, unloving, unrewarding, uninhabitable, and it droops slowly to the great black ocean of uncertainty, plunging my head wet below the surface, eyes closed, to drown surely and forever in loss.

Effortlessly I wander the road, not taking notice, taking the wrong forks, wearing the wrong shoes. Without a care in the world - even though that ocean looms on the horizon - to strike me.

Where would I be without this resentment?

Is it resentment?

Is it not fear? Nausea? Tiredness. Am I so tired of the world and all the people in it that I can't bring myself to feel for people - bring myself to put effort into making people like me? Will people like me. Does it matter if they do? Am I a real person after all? Am I not a creation of some other or other and eternally in that shadow?

_______________

I think the world will end in the dead of night and I will be there, floating in the ocean while the bombs fall, feeling the flash, the warm glow blinding me, mouth agape, the sea churning in ironic ecstasy - rumbling deep within the gut, a long harboured wish to see it all gone. Rotten and empty streets filled with fire. I will float and hear the water burble around my ears, and drip into my eyelids, I will hear the planes drop their bombs, all over the cities, and flash, and over, and crash and the rocky mountain ranges of the country become just as civilised as the cities in an instant. The wilderness remains unchanged in its savagery - and the wild men roam freely in forests.Poor child. Your papa can't do anything but crawl under tables the same as everyone, he is just as frightened. He lived through it the first time. Worse times to come. Hope for a quick fire, hope for a quick death. It is amazing how in real life tragedy is silent. There is no orchestra out here floating alongside. (Feel the tapping of the keys, like the lapping of waves) there is no orchestra playing as the heroes crash under the weight of buildings, there is only me now, silent in this sea (hearing the keys lapping against my chest). The bombs make heavy thuds, but no other sound other than that of the water gently leaping and tossing my long hair (for I grew it).

Once everything is silent and the planes are in the water and the fires are gently burning I swim ashore, so softly naked rubbing against the sand, and I crawl so slyly over the sands and the ash collects in my hands and drowns my face so that I can hardly see, and and all is silent. Silent always, like god intended, no noise.

It's now one am, and cold. The stars aren't out but the clouds are - and just out as beautiful. How are you? It's a meaningless question - but you won't answer me fully, or honestly, so I'm resigned to repeat it endlessly. That's a sign of madness, right? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result? That's what it's like with you. The same result every time. Dirty circles that get cloudier with each revolution. I want to be done, or I want it to be real again, or I want it to be like it was, back in the fall, back when I knew where I was.

It's so cold these days, but the air is fresh at least......

These Vicious Mountains

I held her hand, and she ran her nail around my knuckle in circles. I told her I loved her. She sat a while and pretended the air coming out of my mouth carried no words.

I leaned back, lying on the crisp sheets. Littered with crumbs, the ceiling looked paler now in the orange light, soaking through the eyeballs, burning through the cigarette smoke that climbed the molecules toward the ceiling. The base camp at her fingers wore red nail varnish, cracked and smiling - betraying her thoughts - that face was stone, unscalable though. Impenetrable. She had a way of not looking at you, and not taking a drag, and not saying a word. But I knew. I was lost in those sheets I knew so well, my fly open, innards spilled, the metal scratched slightly, but the back of her head pounded hard, and it pained me to look at it. I chose instead to stare into the light bulb, bursting with energy through the thin cotton shade, cutting the eyes deeply. I closed my eyes, and remembered the moment of release, into her cold hands, the hand that now clutched a damp tissue, all evil forgotten in there. She let slip and fell back at last, staring straight up - I saw it briefly as I turned to see where her eyes had fallen, no on me, on the ceiling, I pulled mine back to the ceiling also.

We were not in love, and we had never fucked. This was as far as it got, not even the lips were mine, except to touch my lips with, to whisper into to let her know that her hands were working, were doing the correct gesticulations. Sometimes I had to take control, to better go at the button, for my angle of entry is more familiar. But once opened, and laying back, there the many faces of the ages flash before my eyes and I imagine them all lined up, baring all, bending over. I cheat in my head. I fellate, I caress, I penetrate. All in my head and some primal urge gulps inside of me, some wretched noise and all pours sickly sounding, sickly smelling forth, burning the air with its wickedness. The red nail varnish makes me want to cry, as it melts around the silly masterpiece that has taken place for the millionth time. Ever since I was thirteen I have been playing the same old tune, to different audiences. I never stop, but it is so wearying.

She rolls, and moves my hand from my chest - pure and innocent - and she says something, and places it on that softly warming pile of denim that mounts between her legs, and I wince, and I look at her, and she looks at me.

We talked for a while about her father, and how much more he meant to her than I could. I bet he's got a massive cock, I thought. I wasn't really listening to her, but she was rubbing my hands anyway, all spilling oil on me, and that's really all I could think of.

As I mounted her, all naked and gangly between our legs, as those filthy sheets grasped our bodies, as our warm air evaporated, the smoke still burning my eyes from all the way over there, in that solid glass ashtray. I felt her lips on mine, and again, like always, she asked if I was hard. I didn't care. I didn't answer. She just pretended it was what I wanted to hear, and I pretended I liked it. The sheets were damp, through effort on my part, to keep things relaxed, I was rather more vigorous than I ever had been in the past, with the others. She looked at me - into my eyes. I sat there for a long time - or what seemed like a long time - all I could hear was the creaking and the siding and the air seemed so still between our lips and our eyes were locked. I was climbing that unscalable face, she might let me in, at the top, once I know, once I feel it. She didn't love me. Not really. It wasn't just that she couldn't say it. I held her hand tightly, running my thumb over the cracked nail varnish sent me into a thrill, plunging my head down behind her shoulder and vanishing from sight, in the pitch black - thrusting into that sock, just like the old days before I found the sun tan lotion - there again the myriad images from my youth, the ones that always did the trick. Don't want to disappoint, don't want to keep her waiting. Before long it was darker than ever, and she had had some sort of episode, I felt the quivers, perhaps it was over. I suppose it wouldn't matter if I stopped now. Would it really pollute the experience? I don't think she has ever been under the hammer before, up for auction. She certainly deserves it. I don't think I deserve it. I drove the point home. That is the gold standard. Fuck until you feel like you earned it. That's the rule. I couldn't fucking stand girls. That was my problem. Too much wretched babble.

After long time lying next to her naked, no love lost in the encounter, I heard the door open and slam downstairs, the light from underneath the door lit the gloom, and my thoughts turned to the man, her father, who hated my fucking guts. I might do better than him, but I doubt it. He was about forty five, and average looking. He had a thin beard that always reminded me of the tissue men I gawked at through flickering screens when I was fourteen, going on fifteen. She placed my hand on her crotch and gave me some vile instruction. I complied, without turning my head from that sabre of light, which brought my thoughts of Richard, yes, that was his name. I wouldn't call him that as he fucked me though. I don't think I could bear that load, that would be too grotesque. I scaled the wall once again, she seemed not to mind, I wanted to finish, and now I had my fodder. There he was, clear in my mind, fucking me, fucking her. All so vivid. She seemed to like it but I don't know. There was no emotional bond, so it was not any real kind of betrayal. Just a play anyway. All actors seeping in and out of all the wrong places. Determined to finish first, centre stage, with some prominence. That was me, pounding out the speeches. Monologues bursting from the orifice onto the expectant audience. For once that old bastard had done me some good. Saved some face. I wanted to get out. Feed the street lights with my carbon dioxide, feel the cold air filling me with the dread of night.

That's the post fucking experience for you. Always the awful sense of being trapped within yourself, and wanting nothing more than to crash through the window and fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and eventually stop - earthbound was where I wanted to be now. To place my roots in some other place - anywhere but there. As I clung on to her she whispered in my ear. She told me she thought we were good together, but she thought that if we were to keep this up I needed to stop being a fucking idiot and stop telling her I loved her. I told her I didn't love her, and I never ever would. And we clung together, in the sheets, under the harsh darkness creating half formed figures in our peripheral vision. I licked her lips, those crass and husky mountains, and she felt me, and it was warm and awfully cold all together muddled in one fermented moment.

I drank my coffee, which had been made hastily, and with little care. It was instant. That fuck. I'd never blow him now. Not after he gave me instant. But he sat there, in the yellow kitchen, opposite me, that cock-tickler mustache shining in the bright fluorescent light. I told him I intended to pay it back in full, and he agreed that was probably wise. We had good conversations, me and Richard. But that's not really enough. I hate waiting for people - talking to their parents. It's all so vulgar, but that is what we must do these days, for love.

I am my own worst enemy

I get the Unmade Bed now - Tracey Emin's most well known work. I understand it. It makes sense.
There is something about the environment in which you sleep that says so much about you - so much so that when you invite an outsider in you become worried about what your living space says about you. There is nothing about my being that conveys the way I feel inside. My words are meaningless, my dress sense is non existent. My shallow husk of a face is all that separates the world from my demons - but it shows nothing. I think my face probably portrays a damp squib of a human being. Vacuous, fatuous, and wholly out of step with everything. So that just leaves my room. My fetid den of corruption and low self-esteem. It's rotten, but I get by. The moment though, when you realise that someone you quite like wants to 'come back to yours' - the fear sets in. The hearts sticks in the throat as you can't remember what vulgarities you left lying around - what gruesome artifacts are strewn on the Omaha Beach that is your floor. You cannot even see the floor. 'Oh no' you think 'he might see the awful remnants of last season's summer collection scattered across my tabletop'.

But really - it doesn't matter. The damage has been done. You are who you are. No more you. I am what I am, and that's that. I apologise profusely for everything wrong with my flat - even having cleaned it only an hour or so ago.

Every word I say feels laboured, every glance of the eye is scrutinised as I wonder whether or not I am successfully holding his attention. I imagine I am not, at every second. I hear the words tumbling out - banal, cliché words. I create silences, I cannot fill them. It is only when I try to put my supposed 'interesting-ness' to use that I realise it is a spook, a phantom. It does not exist. A cunning ruse my mind played on me to give me some small feeling of self-worth. Like a child told all his life he is intelligent, sharp, and will go far, who fails to pass his exams; the comedown is brutal, and sharp. I realise I have nothing to say. All my opinions are too stark in contrast to his personality that it would be like shooting him in the face, and I wouldn't, I couldn't.

I cannot even tell if he likes me. One presumes he must - he is in my bed, accepting my monstrous body, willing to intrude, with some coercion. Are older men that sexually repressed? I feel like a horny teenager - aren't the beginnings of relationships supposed to be filled with insatiable sexual hunger, lust for the ages that dies down late and in the autumn. Perhaps he has not accepted my monstrous body at allg. Perhaps it is a ruse of his own. A gentle hoax, allowing my lips to wander while he awaits the train - pre-booked. Pre-booked trains are a nightmare for the neurotic. Does he want to stay longer, but cannot, for the train is booked - or does he desperately want to leave, but cannot, for the train is booked. I cannot tell whether anyone likes me anymore. I have lost all eye for subtlety. I don't get his jokes. I laugh anyway. I don't make jokes, and he doesn't laugh.

I worry I might be doomed to not like anyone ever again. I think because I assume he does not like me - that means I cannot possibly like him. Even though I think he's sexy, and smells nice. And cooks me breakfast. I am so fucked up.

cafecouture

To be honest, I never really was very good at being productive. Not through laziness, though. Well, maybe a little laziness. But mostly I was never very good at being productive because it's much easier to act like a writer, artist, or congressman than to actually put in the work that awards that title. I have called myself a writer and an artist at various points in my life, but I am twenty two now and have not completed a single fully realised piece of work. Just the journals, just the sketches, the outlines, the ideas. It's a wonderful life - to profess to be something and get a lot of the acclaim without having done anything. It is not a life I am aware of however - it is not something I am familiar with. I am only fooling one person with my beautiful charade. Sadly, it isn't me, I've haven't yet been completely taken in by my shirt and jacket, sunglasses and haircut, pubescent facial hair - so if it is you who I have enraptured, somehow, accidentally, you should call me. Perhaps we could have sex, and later you could introduce me to your boyfriend.

It is easy to put on some fancy coat and wear leather gloves in the autumn, practice your moody cover sleeve photo in the mirror and pretend that it will all come true without your doing, but it doesn't get anywhere, unless you plug away at that novel that's been shuffling around inside your head all these years. You know the one, where the small town girl moves to the big city and finds herself. They'll make it into a movie you say. Dakota Fanning will be the perfect age by the time they come to cast it. But that's ok, don't worry about it. I will continue to haunt the cafés with my ungainly presence, spiriting the baristas with my unsolicited advice and aimless chatter.

"Oh yes, I am an artist, you see. You can tell from the look in my eyes as I silently pour disdain on your tacky furniture and artwork."

"Would you like cream on that?"
"Oh no, I couldn't possibly."
"Is that everything?"
"Why don't you work that one out for yourself, hmm?"

What ghastly vision is this? The cruel blade of self-knowledge. It's a bitch, I will give you that.

So I am sat - in some coffee sales place, clacking away at this thing - writing something. Lord knows what. This I suppose.
Oh my.

Slash.

There is that awful blade again.

If you ever want to fall in love, utterly and unavoidably in love, coffee shops are the place to do it. Why, I can fall in love up to four times in any given coffee shop session. They are filled with beautiful people, staring wistfully into the distance. It helps if, like today, Miles Davis is playing, and the hairs on the neck stand to attention, and the other parts stand to attention, and the ears prick up, and the moment is beautiful. It's a miraculous institution. A peculiar institution for the modern age perhaps. There was one boy who would have had been sucking on a cigarette if it were not for the prohibition of such things. I wanted to take him outside and hold it to his lips, in some sort of Felliniesque still frame, where the smoke would wrap around his lips, down around my wrist and up into my face, crashing against my sunglasses. The lighthouse abides.

It is wonderful how sad people can look here. I shall have to draw some of them some time. So beautiful, and so sad. They have faces that stare endlessly, in slow motion, a lightly lifting breeze carrying the steam away into some other conversation - also slowed down and faded, like some awful photo. Like the photos on the walls, of smiling women, and old men playing cards. They stare out, stock still, onto the world outside moving in all its unbearable acceleration.

So I suppose I belong here. Because no one here is being them self. Or perhaps I have it all wrong. Perhaps everyone here is hopelessly them self. Sitting at that big glass window, clutching their latté, staring out forlornly, yet not so forlornly that they lose their enigmatic charms - the couples with hands pressed on each other's knees. The beautiful boys, longing to call up the gods of nicotine and rape their veins, their beautiful blue blue veins. The women, reading Nabokov and listening to Joni Mitchell. Maybe it's not as false as it looks. Maybe it's all deeply, unflinchingly real.

I can't say much for the rest of them - but if ever I need to stare, clinging to the caffeine, riding on the false words, if ever I need to stare outside and wonder why they're moving so fast, I can count on café culture to embrace my fabricated desires.

Art

It is amazing how beautiful the sky looks

when it bleeds out slowly over the skyline

I feel just like the sky

draped over jagged concrete

trying not to draw attention to myself.

The Good Girl and the Scoundrel

I only know what I know, which isn't all that much.

How can I lie there, while he does his business, and think how much I miss you, how much I dearly wish it was your arm around me. It's not fair. It's not fair.

I only know what I know.

I shed a tear in a loving embrace, that was not loving. It was cold, much like his words, much like his intentions. It was no more exciting than cleaning out the oven, and I felt such contempt.

How can I lie there, under the spell of the haunting lilting music, while he does the business, and I am so angry inside, and I wish you were here. I wish you were here. I wish I could remember what love is. I wish I could remember what passion is.

I only know what I know.

I have forgotten what it is like to look at your smiling face, and feel the whole of me smile from the depths of my soul. Your hair was golden, and so was the world. Now the world is golden, but all there is inside is blank pages, one after the other, turning and turning, searching for an illustration, some colour, some meaning.

How can I lie there, listening to him struggle, while I stare into space, knowing what I know, that there will never be another you.

And he wraps his arms around me, and he doesn't know the lines. He speaks in hushed voice and I want to die. I simply want to die, because he doesn't know the lines,
and I know what I know,
that the foolish man survives, while the childish lover cries, and the laughing in your eyes belies the hurt you feel inside, and the knot within unties as the Earth sleeping implies that you might never come to rise to all the challenges you despise, will you ever realise that it's just as loving dies that you'll know what you know and you'll never ever see her face again as it smiles in the morning on the pillow last nights make up still spattered on the egyptian cotton and she looks to you to make it all better and you do because youre you and you love her and she loves you and she knows that everything inside her will feel correct when you wrap your loving arms around her neck and you want to be with her forever and you think you will be with her forever and what of it why not why cant you be together forever is something stopping you i dont think so i know what i know i know i love you i know you love me and hes still there behind me doing his business going at the old ceremony what a fucker i hate him i hate his eyes i hate his noxious grinning why isnt he done yet he can walk himself out the fucker why is he still here i hope he doesnt want me to do anything i know what i know and i know i want the girl i want the girl i felt good with the girl she made me happy maybe i was happy and she made me realise it i made her happy i think i made her happy she never once made me do something i didnt want to she was never cruel i think i still love her and that makes me want to cry.

I said I know what I know. And that isn't very much.

The Adventures of Modern Life

I have lived for some years in the constant agony of the boredom of modern life. Alienation and social anxiety aside, life now is horrible, and cruel, and dirty. We drink our Cherry Coke, and we watch our televisions, we masturbate, we dance to our music. No, scrap that, I could never be unkind to music. Modern life can be exciting, but within in a very limited scope. There is no adventure to modern life.

I have been a fan of the idea of fantasy fiction ever since childhood, but only the idea of it. For the most part reading fantasy fiction leaves me feeling cold. The actual experience is enjoyable enough, swords and sorcery and dragons etc. However the escapist charm dissipates into the aether the moment one has finished, and instead of being enraptured by the feeling of being elsewhere, one is confronted once again by the harsh realities of modern existence, and the cruel tedium that drives people to read escapist literature, or watch fantasy movies, is brought into a more stark and focused perspective, leaving us feeling worse than when we started. You still have that report to write, your girlfriend still isn't talking to you, the toilet still needs fixing. Being so caught up in a story or setting that has never existed and will never exist, then to realise that you will never experience something so exciting, really truly exciting, is a comedown worse than anything I can imagine.

The story of Peter Pan is about the death of the spirit of adventure, the childish freedom to imagine anything, and the 'grown ups' having lost this spirit, don't know how to have fun.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure" Pan states. Beautiful words that to me, sum up the desperation that we suffer as a result of our society having 'grown up'. We have become the Pirates of Pan's Neverland. In Steven Spielberg's re-imagining 'Hook' - the character of Hook is fleshed out, and becomes a much deeper and more profound allegory for the end of adventurous spirit. "Death is the only adventure I have left" he says.

This, I fear, is a statement that has come to represent everything that is troubling about globalisation. There is no unknown any more. Truly the last of the adventures of discovery ended in 1893, with the official closure of the American frontier. The only adventures of the twentieth century have been immortalised in countless films and books and television shows, they have become fictionalised and legendary. These adventures were the two world wars that took place in the first half of the century. War and death are the only adventures we have left.

The Goonies tells a familiar tale, that the drudgery of modern existence will destroy the spirit of adventure in the children, so they decide to make their own adventure, one last time before they have to grow up. Even if it is fantastical and not at all realistic, it is joyous to embrace the idea that adventure, real adventure, can take place in today's world.

Why was the recent film adaptation of The Lord of The Rings so popular? It was not the cast, or the special effect, or the direction - it was because we have always cried out for adventure stories that we can plunge into, and escape into. Fantasy and adventure work best by throwing the reader (and in many cases the protagonist) into the unknown, usually with some sort of guide (Gandalf, for instance) who is aware of the lore of the world and can explain things and create the correct emotional effects in both the reader and the protagonist; the reader doesn't know to fear something unless the guide tells them to be wary, for instance. However authors also rely on the emotional precedents built into us from childhood to create emotional responses relating to the unknown - caves and forest are to be feared for example. This idea of the unknown is both scary and exciting, and it typifies the adventure story. However, I have never been all that fond of fantasy that exists in and of itself, in a completely different universe. Someone once said that there is an inverse proportion between the quality of your fantasy fiction and how many words you make up while writing it; I couldn't agree more. To me, the most powerful fantasy fiction is that which anchors you to a setting you already understand, and allows you to more actively engage in the story. I am thinking mostly in modern terms of zombie films, and post-apocalyptic stories. Post-apocalyptic stories place the reader in a familiar environment, and make it unfamiliar. This creates a feeling of the unknown which is juxtaposed with the reader's expectations of the setting which they take from their experiences in real life. For example, place the protagonist in a post-nuclear-war London, and walking the streets of the West End becomes uncanny, rather than familiar; so the reader becomes scared and curious, where they would normally be confident. This type of adventure story is more powerful, by the nature or the world knowledge, and the same applies to historical fiction. By giving the reader a sense of world knowledge from the start, the readers sense of unease and adventure will be much greater than the fantasy novel where we are told the story of the world and why we should be afraid of Party A and empathise with Party B. Moreover, more often than not, completely fictitious fantasy can be read as an allegory, which can draw us out of the story if it becomes obvious. Even if it is not inherent in the text, an allegory imposed on the text by a group can be just as damaging in this regard. Tolkien always denied that The Lord of The Rings was in any way allegorical, but it is well known that the anti-nuclear lobby took it as an anti-nuclear allegory, and it is hard not to think about that when reading it. Allegories are a little easier to swallow in fantasy fiction based in our world, if just because we know that real world events effect our world, obviously.

To me, the best adventure fantasy has always been rooted firmly in our world. Stories like Treasure Island contain fictional elements, but they are set firmly in a world we already understand, even if it does not exist any more. We know the city of Bristol for example, and we understand the importance of seafaring in the 18th century. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, is a folkloric tale of adventure, set in the wilds of Cumbria, and it is littered to references to places that those listening to the story at the time would have recognised, and most importantly, that the writer of the story would have recognised, and drawn on. But again, both of these stories draw upon that key characteristic of fantasy fiction, the unknown. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is filled with strange and mystical creatures, such as the woodwose, or the Wild Man who roams the forests of Britain, and Treasure Island has the island itself, mysterious, and uncharted.

Increasingly we look towards history to create adventures from, back when real life was an adventure, truly, for real people. The Age of Discovery, the frontiers of America, the conquistadors in South America. Real life adventure, that we cannot experience in real life because there is no more unknown, so we look to fiction. Recently there was a spate of popular Chinese films set in medieval China. These films were popular in the west, because the period is unfamiliar to us, and this unfamiliarity is of course, exciting.

So fantasy leaves me wanting, but the reality is much worse. The real truth here is that for me, the wonders of escapism are ruined by the stark realities of life, and that globalisation, and instant communication, and the enslavement of the population has ruined the possibility of adventure for most of the population who crave it. We need more adventure fantasy stories based in the knowledge we possess of the world, stories we can relate to, that are exciting.

Please do not let the spirit of adventure die.

What I am for

I can't go on forever, acting like it doesn't hurt. It's never all that great when someone decides you are literally not worth thinking about any more, but this one stings a little more than most.

I really have thought I was going to call it a day at several moments in the past few months. Lying in bed surrounded by the dark, cut-off from the world, your mind resets to the default, without stimulation, it is your thoughts then that are the most honest, the most vital, the most brutal.

It turns out my 'default' state of mind is resignation, reticence, and lethargy. 'None of it matters' I think. I listen to music to feel vindicated, not to receive an uplifting message. I long for Leonard Cohen to wrap me in his arms and tell me he felt that way too, he's been there. He in the Chelsea Hotel, and I in my room, in my rags, in my hovel.

I gave too much to someone, and now I have nothing left. My arms are empty of blood, and my mouth is full of words that bubble up from some polluted depth, the words plume to the surface and spray out into the air, but they don't mean anything. I wasted all the meaning on you.

It feels like I'm living underwater, sometimes. Swimming down the streets, gasping for air, diving into buses, and searching for pearls under rocks, prying cigarettes away from lobsters. I can't face the world, so I pretend it doesn't exist, the people are gorgeous, and they are so unaware. If you've ever tried telling someone you have the flu and had them laugh at you and act like you are making a big deal about it, try telling someone you like that you suffer from a very deep depression. Letting that cat out of the bag, on a date, because you feel you are an honest man, is quite a hard thing to do, and you hope to god they've been there to just so they can understand.

I am not a morose person, but happiness takes a lot of work for me, waking up in the morning is a grotesque dance.

The point of all this is that I used to have something that made this infinitely more bearable, it used to not hurt to crawl into bed at the end of the day. It is an unpleasant realisation that you have single-handedly alienated and pushed away the person who means most to you in the world. I always accused you of being selfish, but it was clearly, always the other way around. I was brutal, and manipulative, and I suppose my inability to relate to almost anyone these days is a direct result of my failures in our relationship.

Oh well. At least I have television......

Teeming with humanity.

The sound of cars on wet road, the dirty rain landing on my hands, on my fingernails, warming my hair as it soaks its way in; a crass collection of scents mingle in the air above my lip, combining with that old smell, the one that lingers on the nostril hairs. I smelled it quite deeply, pressed against those furs, the last time was over a week ago; but the moment it returns, all time is forgotten, and once again embrace, and coalesce, and ravish. That scent is all that remains physically, an hour after the fact, the liquids now passed through the system, long forgotten by the senses.

Sat on that same wall I sit on every week, waiting for that same bus. It's awful really, the people who live around these parts. They all have those faces full of stories. Some of them must have lived through the war, although I think their souls are still lost, wandering around in Willeseden underground, looking for their lost father, scattered against the wall by the Luftwaffe. They all have those faces, all lost. They get on at one stop, and get off at another, but they don't really know why. I can see it in their eyes. They have no hope of redemption. No one in this world has that going for them anyway. Not since the old days.

I digress.

Sat on the wall, staring at my ugly shoes. You'd think if I was going to put so much effort in in the bedroom I would at least try to dress nicely. Fuck the shoes though, I thought. They're going to be taken off just like the rest of the fluff when the time comes. Little attention paid to the outer layers, it is only the skin that counts. Only the flesh that has to match the other flesh. But what of the flesh that doesn't match the other flesh? What of that? Is it criminal? Do we worry? I worry. But soon enough it doesn't matter and he has his eyes closed and I am in a very powerful position anyway so I suppose he won't really much care for my clothes, or what I look like under them.

He is a pretty man, and pretty men are dangerous. They are just as unfulfilling as the ugly ones. This is troubling, and worrisome. I lie awake for hours worrying about it. If a man I am greatly attracted to produces the same mediocre results in the head and the heart as the quick fuck I bucked as a way to kill time on an idle sunday then what hope is there for humanity? Or at least my humanity. Here is a beautiful man and licking the same soft neck and same supple waistline presents a pleasant but not altogether exceptional experience, and the conversation is nice enough, but it feels forced and that's not exceptional either. We are playing at liking each other. It is all pretend and fictions and make believe. Even the orgasm can't be trusted any more. I mean certainly the old moloko did flow, and freely, and the ejaculations from his mouth certainly would lead one to suspect that fun was had; it all feels a bit dollhouse. And that is truly troubling.

Walking out the door is always the worst. The awful feeling that you have done something criminal, coupled with a mild sense of self-fulfilment. It pains me to say it, but on a number of occasions, a mad hysteria sometimes comes at me, brought on by that smell above the lip, the wild eyes flare beneath the sunglasses, and I think momentarily about throwing myself into the road and not worrying any more about whether or not the government shall fail to support the weight I so lazily push down upon society, and not think of the guilt as I am enraptured under the sheets of some Lounge Lizard. More often than not, however, I do not commit suicide, and remain stalwartly married to my bus stop, awaiting the number 226 to take me away from my cruel and inattentive husband. The bus gives me a better stiffy that's for sure.

I get carted away eventually, back to the room where so much grotesqueness has been bandied about, the whole air of the place stinks of the foul sweat of the elderly, ploughing their fields, and planting their seeds. Oh, to think I was party to it. It nearly makes me want to wretch.

Of course I always think of giving in, becoming a nun, castration, the one way ticket down into the earth. But the lure is too much, my mind is weak, and the body is strong. I waltz down the street, erection in hand, asking anyone to take me in hand and learn my ways, some new fresh blood.

I wear sunglasses because I do not want people to see the despair in my eyes. They might want to help, and I couldn't allow that. They might see the old airs and graces, buried beneath years of built up grot. A filthy layer of grease and slime covers my entire being. It is the filthy rot of experience, gnawing away at me from the outside in, gargantuan, and terrifying, it yearns to seep into my heart, blast around the veins and corrupt my entire being. But it will not. It cannot. I can still smell that novel above my lip - teeming with humanity.

The Lies We Tell

These things have a way of creeping up on you. The slow lingering doubt, swirling slowly around my gnawed fingertips cast aspersions around the room. I had had my fair share of crestfallen faces staring up from between my legs, but this one was uglier than the one before. The one from last night. He was better. This one made me want to give it all up and become a priest. There's a noble profession.

I drifted off into my thoughts as his lips slowly closed and I felt the damp exhilaration once again, in my head. My eyes, misty and unfocused moved around the room and came to rest on the window, there the rain had been pounding away for hours now, and the drops of water formed their groups and made and severed alliances. One droplet looked set apart from the rest; alone amongst the throng. I recognised its pain, there pinned against the window, all alone and no one listening. Strapped as I was, arms outstretched on the bed, I felt I knew the pain of Christ. The pleasure of my groin, augmented by the unbearable agony in my arms, the smile on my face reached from the very depths of my anus to the tip of my skull, about to cry out. I felt that droplet of water, Christ, and I were the real holy trinity. My cock in the chicken's mouth, Christ forever in his death throes, erect and weeping, and the drops of water dripping from his forehead and mine. It was bliss. Horrible, disgusting bliss.

I came around and came, and he came, and he smiled, and he drank my Dr. Pepper which I had placed on the side for him, and he gargled with it, and he pulled up his trousers and he left, and I shut the door, and I sat in my chair, and I finished the garlic bread which I had been eating when he showed up, and I sank lower into the chair and I crawled into the bathroom and started running a bath.

There I spied the mirror, and I turned it around. I wasn't prepared to see that beard again just yet, that would have to wait.

As I lay on the bathroom floor, gushing water echoing through the air and bouncing back louder still, I stared deep into the ceiling and saw only hatred in the stark white. I turned off the light, and sat in the bath, in the black, listening to the calming water flowing through my head, then over my hands, over my groin and down my legs, pooling around my feet and ankles. Hot life giving liquid. I had given mine up already today, and I surround myself in nature's - because it makes me feel more like a man.

The door of love

There are times - in the dead of night, when all is quiet, and the empty streets caress your thigh ever so gently - when you realise that you are hopelessly alone inside your own skull. No one may enter, and you are barely able to leave. Speaking through the letterbox, and peeking out occasionally to get a glimpse of the postman's package, but certainly nothing else.

That door though, is forever locked. No one will ever be able to get closer to you than rubbing their lips over the sanded wood of the door, desperately grasping for the knob, urging some form of release, wanting something inside you to pulse out into their hands, or into their mouth. It is distressing, and awful. So much do we want to understand the inside of the people we love, that we poke and pry and insert. Exchanging fluid from inside to inside, through the grotesque old ceremony. We take in any excretion we can - because it comes from the body, it comes from inside. De profundis - from the very depths.

That is how much we love - when we try to, when we want to - that pressing tight against that doorway, no matter how lovely, and warm it may be - it is just the bricks and mortar - the lovely cottage, that we yearn to step inside of. We yearn to breathe in the sandalwood, run our fingers over the mantelpiece and laugh at the old portraits of the long dead lovers.

So heartbreakingly painful it is to be strapped inside the chair of your own mind, utterly and ineffably alone, inside the great fortress of the mind, with the gates barred, and the unscalable walls reaching to the zenith.

This is what love faces. There are deserts even lovers cannot traverse, it is woeful.

Afraid of Everyone

It's hard enough to want more from your life without being laughed at by the man in the corner-shop for buying just a chocolate orange and milk.

I'm so nervous these days, I can hardly look anyone in the eye.

I'm afraid of everyone. Everyone has an agenda, everyone hates your stupid ugly face.

There are those who will tell you they like you, that they want to caress you, they might even tell you they love you. I just cannot let it be. I cannot accept that any human being would want to act positively towards me. There is always an ulterior motive.

Past experience has proven that love is a difficult beast to tame, and usually you and your partner are fighting different battles on the same field, without either side knowing. Friendship too has a dagger behind its back sometimes - not always. But there are those who will use you and slash your face if you dare to come to them with a problem. Melodrama is one thing - but it may well be genuine; and what do you do as the blood streams down your face as you hug your best friend and their arms slowly drop, and you're left there once again, pouring bodily fluids into the bedsheets, just like old times. Who do you go to when you have no one who cares, or no one who can help, at the very least. Do you wrap the rope around your neck and pretend that that's it? Over and out? No, you're too dramatic for that. What's the point if you can't hear the applause? Or the jeers?

So love is a beast best swallowed whole, man after man, night after night, drinking milk from the bottle, not even bothering with the coco pops you bought because you can't stand the muesli any more. One day at a time. Thursdays are the worst. Wednesday has reasonable television - you can sit and switch everything off, not take in any food and regurgitate your sorrows to the void once again - and no one listens. Just like before. The world won't listen to you.

Everyone is afraid of everyone else. No one is afraid of the bomb anymore. Now there's something everyone can be afraid of - total nuclear annihilation. There's something we can all be worried about. Did we love better before the wall fell? Did people fuck better knowing that sword of Damocles was forever hanging, ready to crash to the earth and make barren the world?

We should be afraid of the bomb, not each other.

So everyone hates my stupid ugly face, and they don't even want my semen, they just want rid of theirs; where I put it I'm sure they don't care. Out of sight, out of mind.

I am out of sight and out of mind - and no one minds. I'm slowly drifting apart, just like that great continent all those years ago. My arms are separate, and I don't care what they do. My legs continue walking, and my mouth spews words and takes in genitals. Revolting pastime. There I am, an archipelago that no one visits, and no one cares to recognise, with that mighty set of volcanoes - spewing it's bile and ash and ruining no one's travel plans, silently down there near Australia. People who loved when they could walk all the way from the north to the south on my mighty mass cannot any longer, and so they hate me. Hate me because I am broken, and so they cannot stand the sight of me any longer, down there near Australia, spewing the bile and ash, and the world doesn't listen.

Hole

I couldn't begin to explain why that hole looked so tempting. Standing on the edge, feet inching ever closer towards the vast open hole in the earth, the wind licking my face like a snake, calling me forward. There it was though, in my living room floor, that mighty chasm had opened while I was masturbating in front of Come Dine With Me. The one guy was alright. He had a nice enough face. But it always angered me that I had to think of him to climax. No other did the job. That always annoyed me. Oh well. So there I was sat in my pyjamas and a great big hole opened up in the floor between the sofa and the television, black as the night sky and just as inviting. At first I thought I was imagining things, but really it was inescapable, there was a hole in my floor the size of the rug. The rug had vanished, no trace, and the coffee table. So as you can imagine I jumped to the only logical conclusion - that the universe was offering me a way out. A free ticket to oblivion with little hassle. That was fairly nice of it, I thought.
But there we go. I stood up, and crept to the edge, staring down into the quiet nothingness below, and dropped myself feet first into the empty spiralling darkness, and those bastards on the telly slowly dropped out of my head forever.

Celebrations

Hobbling across wet cobblestones, I look sideways and fly headlong into the mirror that curtly sums up my face, and calls me that name, the one you used to used.

Earthen faces dry up around my ears as they pass, spouting their gospel, wearing their ribbons. It's all so obvious and callous. Rain has been kind to me; all my convictions washed away years ago, in the nineties - or the eighties. Nothing left to stand on anymore, just this battered leg, bursting with muscular pain, just like the angina again. There goes the chest, again. They might as well pin a ribbon on - it'd hurt all the same, and mean just about as much.

I wonder what will burble from my lips when I am old, what anachronistic diatribe will send my tongue flopping about, slapping the sides of my mouth and grinding along the teeth, barely spitting with razor blade sincerity, words forming and jutting forth and drying up in the air, next to the ears, flitting away with the vapours.
Not something worth a damn, I hope. No one will listen. I used to yell louder than bombs, and no one would come running. Now they come running and await my every word. They stand outside the doorstep and I reject them with a smile, and a lie. I say so many things, and they cling to it, and repeat it, and they say such things that you could never repeat.

They were not there when the words were worth being heard - so what made the switch? Where was the trick? Was it the lies? The quiet? They will soon realise it is all a trap, all a veneer, and they'll notice my broken leg and lie down for me while I step over them quietly and drift away into the background.

Ego

Have you ever stared into the mirror for so long that the face in front of you begins to lose all meaning? A blank pair of eyes and that same tired nose, the one you wish you could rub out and redraw, those same dirty old lips that have committed atrocities, all the same old faces, resentment, bitterness, tiredness, all pouring out at once onto a blank canvas burning before your eyes.

It is not without fear that I take a step away from the mirror and enter another room, where more memories flood inwards, into my eyes and over that rickety shell I call my bones. It is with a sense of dread that I turn away, worried that if I do not continue to stare, do not continue to keep an eye on it, that face may wane, and vanish, disappearing into the void, turning the light out as it leaves, and I alone, no, not alone. Not even myself for company any longer, just the murky white sheets and the pillows, and the dark.

That face scares me shitless. It bares the scars of every crime I have ever committed, every lie ever told, and every squandered opportunity, and cunt stuffed with more ego than love. There in that mirror is everything I hate about myself, magnified, and intensified, and left hanging there while I gawk and rearrange my hair hoping to wash it all away, hoping to throw all the beady eyed fuckers in the bin with the stray hairs on my comb.

It is not enough to regret, not enough to wish for more, not enough to just sit and sip tea while the crowds linger outside, talking about all sorts of exciting things. I do not want to regret - I want to erase, scrub away at the flesh until all the vile grot inside pours out onto the linoleum and bleeds out into the carpet, with the coffee stains from that evening that I hated, the evening where I wanted to panic and throw my legs over the window ledge and pull hard on the curtain for balance, before spilling the coffee and having to clean it up.

Coffee does not come out of the rug all that easily. It works its way deep into the fibres, into the sinews, into the flesh of the rug, and there it remains, showing still, twenty years later when your next bang comes round and you remark Oh, it's a pity about the carpet.

All those coffee stains on my face are there and when the next bang comes round I remark Oh, that's just a fat wannabe. Don't mind him.

You had your dry cleaning and I think you're dreamy

It's difficult to imagine what life would be like without what we do in the bedroom in the lights off.

Perhaps celibacy is where it's at. Perhaps loneliness becomes fun after a while. It might even become intimate- legs wrapped around a pillow, thumping your fists on the pillow, tears streaming onto the sheets.

We promise ourselves so much - and we can't ever live up to it, we can't ever be that perfect version of ourselves that always makes the correct decision and never trips and falls and lands somewhere unrecognisable, holding our head and bleeding profusely, wondering where all the time went. The saddest part is that we hold our relationships to this too. We read the lines and when things aren't going according to the script, and we panic, and we fly right into the sheets again, hoping a quick spastic fuck might be the answer, telephone ringing off the hook, mothers crying. It's breathtaking what we do to ourselves in the name of Hollywood.

So there's this boy, yeah? Well he's pretty hot, and interesting. I think he likes me. (Mistake number one) I really think it could go somewhere. (Mistake number two) I wonder if he won't mind that I don't have a job or that I have a small apartment or that I don't watch the news or read newspapers but pretend I do anyway.

So at that point you have their number and so on and you text him wondering what he's up to and he responds in a suitably jovial manner and then as the conversation winds on you get less and less excited and realise that either you have nothing in common or he's not as interesting as you thought or worst of all and what we are loathe to admit is that he really isn't all that bothered about seeing me again (or for the first time). Because we want it so bad, and our last relationship didn't pan out the way we wanted to we try extra hard to convince ourselves that this is worth pursuing and isn't just a hairy waste of time stalking around on Facebook.

And so you see the cute boy at the laundrette and notice his cute clothes and impeccable hair and you want to go up and talk to him but then you remember your waste size and all the old feelings of inadequacy come flooding back, crashing down on the Egyptian soldiers of your self esteem.

Why is it so hard to fall for someone? Or more pertinently, why is it too easy to convince us that we're falling for someone and get burned because in actuality it's not even worth a second glance.

Am I so alone that sex with strangers no longer feels like masturbation?

Constancy is a waste of time

I can't sleep anymore. It does no good. Once I slept for eight hours, no more no less. Once.

I do not know whether constancy in villain is as admirable as constancy in heroism - by mere fact of constancy being seen as virtuous.

No virtue is held in such high esteem as constancy in the political world. It is seen to prove confidence, the ability to make a decision. Constancy. But here is a world where constancy is one of the worst possible traits to have.

I give in.

Words are a waste of times.

All towns have their fool,and I am this town's fool. Stripped bare and tired, tied to the cross and left there slow to hang. I am now completely and utterly naked, empty of style, loss of virtues, none of which ever existed in the first place. The first place. The first place I came to when I moved to this most exasperating of cities - this cold sweat in the night of civilisation - when I moved here I wandered along the riverbanks and swaying gently, taking my place among the concrete and the stone and the angel dust scattered calmly along the pavements, there I thought I was a new man. A new and creative spurt in the cracks - not weed, but blooming flower, creeping up between the dirt and the mud.

All this is vulgar now, and tepid. The sun ejaculates; lukewarm splashes of light spray my face and my shoulders - time heals no wounds. Wounds fester, infection spreads, caused by tired bones shuffling along the streets - reading confessionals on the spreadsheets and murdering passers by with intense grinning. There is no stone left unturned in my desire to devour the wicked and the cunts. All locked inside, stock still, riding high on ego and cucumber sandwiches. There, I said it. Fucking cucumber sandwiches. All my life, cucumber sandwiches. I hate them.

I am a fucking lunatic, lost and found - raping the flowers with a glance. It doesn't help to realise what a loony bugger I am - hitting the faces of the passers by, my fists bloody and crimson, locked in perpetual combat with my own vulgarity, my face now, pummeled by my own fists; oh how I want to! How I would writhe under the beating I would give myself! I woulds squirm and speak nightmares, terrible to stop - and terrible to continue, it is all so utterly unbearable what I have become. A burden on myself, a calm cloud in the coffee of my own stark naked youth.

If you love someone (and I don't think you do) then why don't you simply let yourself fall headlong into the dark, and cry about it now, before it has even begun? Why not say now: "It was never going to work out, I saw it in his eyes - he's a vulgarian. I can see it in the words that cascade out of his mouth, out of his pen and onto the page, he hammers the keys with such ferocity that his fingers will soon curl round and vanish into his mouth, and he shall vomit the words onto the page, and they will spatter and we shall know, once and for all, that he was a nasty piece of work." Why not stop yourself from ever fucking your life away with me, in my hole, in my place of revelry. It's me in that dark. Can't you see it? Can't you hear the clowns rolling out of the car, village idiot, teeming with ruddy life and strung up on the gibbet, awaiting the roar?

It was all there, darling. The rope was waiting in the wings, waiting for the curtain. It was all a stage, darling. They brought you here with their singing, and now you live alone; on the floor. And god forbid you should eat something. Shovel something into your mouth, darling. Cram the words back in. Live on the words.

Short stories are a waste of time

Here is some flash fiction for you. Enjoy.

__________________________

Oh I shall die on the mountain. Solitary; strong willed. The mountain has willed it since I can remember. It is bold in my memory. It is where I shall die, on that misty field, below that black forest. That is where I will breathe my last breath, gasping silently, trying to catch one last molecule of oxygen, keep it inside and pass it around the organs, keep them stirring. Keep the heart pumping. The town is dying so slowly, choking on its own placidity. It is inactive, but restless. It itches to be free from something. No, not itches, squirms. It writhes under the weight of its own stillness. It is dying now, or is already dead. The people sleep so soundly under that distant sky. Under that damned mountain. The silent voyeur, watching the sleeping villagers, watching and crawling around beneath itself. It is a vulgar sight, that mound of earth.

It had a name, long forgotten. There are probably those that remember it, but that doesn't matter. There are other mountains in these parts, all lower, less imposing. They have their own towns; their own villages. They have their own creeps to watch, and lust after. They all have their names, the mountains and the towns, all long forgotten. Only the sleeping people dream the valley awake, with the names on their tongues, keeping the dream alive when they rise in the morning full of steam, full of vigilance, full of screams about their lives. The mountains are silent and reserved. Never speaking, never commenting, only silently watching and causing no pain. No feeling whatever. Only one of the mountains of the valley torments me, though. It is alone in that respect. I belong to the one town, the village. Whatever it is, it is my home, and I live there. I belong to the town they call Green. It was named Green after the hills and pockets of forest that bear that colour in the spring time. I am tormented by only one mountain, just as I inhabit only one town, the town of Green. Green is the smallest town of this wretched valley, but it boasts the highest mountain. In fact I would go so far as to call the other mountains (say that of Blue, or Heather, or Grey) mere shadows of my mountain, that is to say the mountain of Green. I would not call them mountains at all, but rather hills, misshapen calamities of the earth that have formed around the sudden arrival of the human race. They are afterthoughts, certainly. All my life I have lived in the terrifying shadow of one mountain. The sublime mountain of Green. Every morning I would fix my gaze on it - staring out of my window. Twenty or so years until I moved on from that place, to another valley, equally low. But that was not the last of it. These things have a way of haunting you, following you in your steps. It has never appeared in my dreams though. I rarely dream. Not like the rest of Green, or its brothers. When I do dream it is of the lesser things. Bodily functions, intakes, excretions, ejaculations and so on. Detestable stuff. The mountain haunts me in other ways, it crawls with me in the back of my head.

There is a house at the foot of the mountain, beyond the town, on the outskirts. No one lives there anymore, no one has lived there for years now. It has long lain empty, amid the trees. That is where I will spend my last night, for it is certain that I shall end at night, when no one is watching. If I were to bid this world farewell in the early afternoon or even the evening, well, that just does not seem possible. It is not as I have imagined it, or foreseen it. No, I know I will die one night, or early one morning in that filthy old house, up there on the slopes of that misty deep. No one will buy it. I am sure it must belong to someone, although they do not use it for anything, so I am sure that I will be fine to pry open those wooden doors, when the time is right.

I spent my childhood staring from my window out into the night, eyes resting on the mountain and the house - white and pure. It was not at all dilapidated then. When I was a boy I would watch Mr Williams outside that house, chopping wood. I would watch him with an old pair of binoculars my grandfather had given me. He used to watch the birds in the garden, my grandfather that is. There were many birds in our part of the country. Life all around. Spring was green back then, summer golden. Skin gleaming with oil and flesh on show, a slight zephyr bringing the scent of mountain heather rippling down the hillsides and into the nostrils. Sometimes Mr Williams would work without a shirt, causing pulses of pubescent excitement to run from my eyeballs to my groin. A passing phase, no doubt. In all my years, Mr Williams' bare chest, swinging the axe, was probably the closest I have come to finding real human love. Certainly I have loved, it is beyond doubt. But more than that man, or any man, or any woman; more than that I love that mountain. Mr Williams is now quite dead. I had visited his grave; I had attended the funeral. Perhaps not in that order. He left no widow, no children. I often think my early fantasies are all that is left of Mr Williams. The mountain remains.

Fridays are a waste of time

Friday evening. It is hard. Callous.

I have had the opportunity to fly spiralling out the window - plummeting towards the grass at less than satisfactory velocity - and there to end. Wonderfully, beautifully. It is a missed opportunity, certainly, for adventure. Most horrid adventure.

It is surpising how often when wandering beside a busy road we are tempted, prompted by the realisation of the opportunity, to throw ourselves in front of the oncoming traffic and end the brutal hideousness of the thought of spending another evening alone in front of the ghastly television. What a beautiful instant it must be - to think that the ribs might crush, the heart stop, and the consciousness cease all at once. All over in practically an instant, and no more X Factor ever again.