Now then! Crowded, gathered, the thinking serious
Raise glasses, mindless, indulged, drinking the serious

Thames drags good ship existential, the glaciers
rotten with contempt, success sinking the serious

Child stars wallow in tweets and Metro headlines
Smoke, bury us in delays, stinking the serious

Loan spending vomits on Sainsburys basics range
Why am I in restaurants, cooking the serious

Flaunting holes, visceral cascading hypnosis
Sleeping ruthlessly, hours linking the serious

Nearing mid-twenties and forced among company
Ogle what didn’t matter then, sucking the serious

Last favourite conversation destined to be
old man from Bristol, are you fucking serious?

My head ducked down to be forced to ravage lost sense
wander into bed, on top, bucking serious

Envisage future summers, grasp aimlessly through
It’s okay alone, fist raised, trucking serious

Denied vegetarian don’t believe in greed
He wanders as a sheep that’s clucking serious

Fresh-faced panel every year push to the grave-tube
A blonde, brunette, redhead round judging serious

Dumbfounded toga party slips me the night-bus
I lose sandals in the mud trudging serious

Desires tire, here comes fired pariah
Gilbert hires a liar called King Serious

•  6 April 2013

Star as night the clod horses strangle the sand,
wrenching their muscled necks with heed
They drench the ground in fierce fresh captivity,
Western Ferraris

Havoc pulled over broad shoulders in the form
of a sawn-off across his back, we are the scenic rapture
bobbing, weaving, neighing and clapping
Not enough humans are nearly destroyed

Kid! You had so much to live for!
Six-shooter juts at the screen, the climax bores me
In a land without constitution
I bear arms

•  21 February 2013

My brother had beaten me at arm-wrestling
A sore loser got his glasses broken
slamming him to the ground

Cotton thread, superglue, 12.5 grams
Amber Leaf next to his USB fag
and he was puffing on an Embassy No 1

Rain knocked the shit out of his Honda
He squeezed the case-on-wheels in
and we sped off for Peterborough

Moaned and moaned of a Summer fling
“She was never the one, was she mate”
We had to go back because I forgot my phone

He was getting a bit fucked off now
as he hurtled this green lump through back roads
My dad has never bought a car that he wanted

Reeking of a dog and cigarettes, we’re warm
A £20 in my back-pocket
along with 50 grams of baccy

The youth team never wins
but my traitor brother is blessed with goals
and I am always invited to presentation evenings

Dragging my case back out, I am completely pathetic
He chuckles out “Why are ya?”
Jim has a stronger arm, a talented foot and dry eyes
and he laughs and says “That’s cos you’re a poet, boy”

•  21 February 2013  •  2 notes

Phlegm and tobacco crumb cyst lies dormant in my coat
waiting for an eventful collection of seconds before I spill
Coke all down my arm\

Dodgy fucker on the bus keeps drilling into my skull
with caffeinated or worse eyes, maybe he has his hood up
for a reason

It’s midnight in his head

I need things I don’t know what I need
Today is Monday and Monday is always the sweet amalgram of Stuff-Doing Day and Thing-Needing Day
Today I will need a cheap plastic case to house an expensive plastic case
and a piece of meat from Fuck-Knows-Where
will settle between two sugary buns that’s been stewing in metal canisters
for forty-five minutes

Already know, mate already know
A victim of an era and impulsiveness enough to repulse anyone
I’m such a fan of Earth
Now I can play with my plastic case which houses a plastic case
watching the machine orgasm as it washes my handkerchief

•  21 February 2013

Such now is the daze that tremors my being,
such now is the daze that tremors my being,
that a head flops over unkindly in truth.
That, a head, flops over unkindly in truth.
The daze flops my head and my being tremors,
such being the truth is now, unkindly, in.

I wind up myself just imagining form.
I wind up myself just imagining form.
Wikipedia coups the character flow!
Wikipedia coups the character flow.
The character flows Wikipedia form,
just imagine my coups! Myself, I wind up.

Pages and pages of nice structure and rules.
Pages and pages of nice structure and rules.
Billy on my side, yeah, he knows how to laugh.
Billy on my side, yeah, he knows how to laugh.
Laughing and knowing – Billy rules structure, how
on my side, nice! Pages and yeah, pages… nice

Here you go, poems! Experimentation!
Here you go, poems! Experimentation
The internet’s helped man, I’m not gonna lie
The internet’s helped man, I’m not gonna lie
Gonna lie; internet poem helped man, NOT.
Experimentation, you gonna go here

Billy Experimentation coups structure,
truth, laughs on rules and unkindly characters.
Head pages “How To Man Poems Myself, Yeah?”
Being you, know Wikipedia form lies
not daze such. Wind sides up. Go imagining
Internet flops. Nice pages gonna flow here

•  23 December 2012

Trust me, this will make you sick

you had everything going for you -
the toes to tread tarmac,
the eyes to stroke a million rhapsodies

Escaping the inevitable, I can
confirm that you are now without
the heart to be trollopsed,
the times that puncture your head constantly

Fear had gathered enough momentum
in your tiny ant day, minuscule flecks of doom,
force-fed a hot rope of sanguine numbness.
You paralyse as the dementor eats the tiles

A churn is reviewed in a metal gut
and the spat emblems of desolation
rage from the catapult, maligned
this direction, that direction, our direction

Lumbers are felled, it’s a dirty job
creatures expand and flail in their cranial home
the love-child of anti-human concoction
and lack of guidance - meditation squeezed out

Twelve steps: an apprehension, an interrogation
a direction, a sanitisation, compensation
rehabilitation, execution, a resurrection
and then: vegetation and vegetation and vegetation and vegetation

What’s up doc? The domes are not alight
and they have lost the will to live
over not willing them to live;
they should live yet their wills are written

A healthy purge of hope to suit our needs
plastered on black sheens. Negated
duties, blameless beings. Surge of traffic -
inquests what exactly is going to happen here?

We require a frugal attitude towards
our allowances, our expenditures, extractions.
The snide rollercoaster of nothing
dominates every office either side of the Ocean

Who are you to call me a nihilist?
I HAVE THINGS: These had nothing
born and brought up for nothing
were killed for and now are nothing

•  17 December 2012

(An old one from two years ago I found)

Well, this is nice
marvelling at the weighty DVDs I’ve brought,
ever closer to the cliché that I’m much deeper (NOT LIKE THAT) than you thought

Well, this is nice
awakening at 5am to draw together two slices (Freshly picked of penicillin)
punctuated by a dead animal

Well, this is nice
pattering of teeth sliding down supermarket aisles alluding (detailed, transient)
to the grandiose selection

Well, this is nice
halting of my breath and beat as you console me toward your (SCIENCE? WHAT SCIENCE?) many, many fatigues

Well, this is nice
deciding of choice of topic of subject of (PLEASE DECIDE)
genre of time of event

Well, this is nice
ignoring of my comeuppance, my wanting and my focus, (Do you like girls?)
all on you by chance

Well, this is nice
lying of corrugated kindness our parallel bodies (barely touching)
combine to help manifest

Well, this was nice
exchanging of good-nights and farewells and me (hugging carefully),
condemned to a separate bed

•  10 December 2012

One-off piece I submitted as part of my coursework in first year of university

One dry, hardened slum through the P4 route and we are drained. Glancing at the marble staircase at the entrance of the Academy, she grasps my arm firmly and drags. I choke on a breath when astounded by the visuals; these are “stroboscopic lights”. The two-man band is getting ready to play and she confesses to me that she’s feeling “very ill”.

            Jealousy courses through me as men, endless men, are bumping into my left leg, my right arm, each carrying a girl in their hand; each girl a porcelain doll in ripped jeans and a baggy t-shirt. This is their “rock” wear. Tonight is their “rock” night. She’s adamant on drinking regardless of how she’s feeling and she leaves me, disillusioned and so awake, to order a drink. The barman smiles; she’s obviously cracked out a knee-slapper, probably dazzled him with shocks of blue eyes. Another guy bumps shoulder-first into my waist. I thought I was short.

            The house lights flare up only to dismally shut down again and these are signals. The crew are alive; it’s time for the band. The drummer paints the pulse of the evening - she shakes her flawless pale face in anguished ecstasy, and I am still rubbing malevolent, pointed shoulders with the Brixton elite. “Hey, I’ve paid stalls too, pal”, some goofy American with a handlebar moustache sourly decrees when I lead my pathetically miniscule revolt against the tyrannies of ardent shovers. Expensive lager drips from cheap plastic onto my shoes and a curse can’t stop itself from hurtling out of my mouth.

I delight in thinking of a reason to join the party (the creases in my cheeks will tell), but I’m cordoned off by these damned inhibitions. She’s very ill. I brought her here and I shall try to perform at my protective best, without being possessive or romantic or any description of over-emotional, to look after her. Her blonde streak smacks me in the face on her return, causing a temporary pained blindness. “£4”, she replies and I take a sip. With a bit of luck, perhaps I will too fall ill and this night can draw to a close and a sigh of relief.

Dorothy leans into my ear and militarily reports on the situation. “I hope they play it”, a jutting grin invades my gaze, “Seriously, I need to fucking hear it.” Song after song in their set tumbles into the crowd, a beach-ball filled with beery cigarette breath floats solemnly from flailing hands to unsuspecting heads. Each number flung from their repertoire triggered a slight lapse in her half-smile, then quarter-smile and then two-sixths, upon discovery of it not being the one she needs to hear. Should I feel responsible? Give me two minutes; I’ll find the tour manager and throttle him until an arrangement is made.

Vocals of gravel screech through a velvet wave of bass as I reach for the quart bottle of scotch I hid in my belt earlier. My vocals become gravel as the drip of alcohol percolates through my throat and creates a sumptuous heartburn, evolving into a delicate nausea. I turn to her and the nausea is turned up a notch: I have literally only turned around, just the once in the past half an hour, to take a sip and she is already being sent sweet nothings through darkness, permeated with follow-spots, by a complete tool in a Harrington jacket. Her ears aren’t just burning – they’re napalmed. I’m livid yet abstinent of expression.  This night is an eruption of trend-setting pus and this expedition, true to my innermost fallacies, was worthless. If my eyes were tuning forks, there could be some form of getting visual headway of what he’s saying to her. “Stroboscopic lights” I have to blame for this. Instead they’re pitchforks, and they are stabbing him in his forehead. Inwardly exploiting the negativity surrounding my every notion momentarily, I drum up a neatly timed flashback:

An airbed lies in a corner of an expansive kitchen and the windows on the far side are gammed up with washing machine condensation. We’re sharing a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s with my Uncle Cliff. He winks at me when she tells him she’s a vegetarian and she’s going outside for a smoke, and the next minute Cliff’s gone upstairs to sleep and we’re fucking on the airbed. For four hours. Am I going too slowly? Is she bored? She said that she’s slept with more people – is she faking?

Next we’re walking down the road, hand in hand, and I wave her off when she gets on the bus with her suitcase. I caught her smile in the bright April noon; thank fuck she’s satisfied. I refrain from eating meat for an entire and happily mid-length week, short through feeling yet long through yearning.

Another sip, another ache in my thyroid and Harrington Boy takes full awareness of the pitchforks (he nearly shears an eyebrow off with their sharpness). The tuning forks pick up a distant and volatile stammer; my chest swells in full recognition of his climactic fear. He brings the nothings to an ultimatum and they are left bare, sour and still very much nothing. She toddles up to me after, gives me a queasily sugary grin before proclaiming

“Alright?”

I’ve got too much to say and I stick to my abstinence. The gig ends and the song she wanted to hear live through pain of illness hasn’t so much as sent a note lobe-ward. We head back to the stop and await the hawkish, clumsy vehicle we arrived on. Ten minutes before it comes I spin; bowing my head and I brush my lips along the side of her face. She coolly and coyly dips her head in, releases a billow of menthol from her red mouth and proudly informs me that she gave the lad her number. I wait for the bus without as much as another word, and this time I don’t wave her off.

•  4 December 2012

I delight in awkward bromances

on a lifeless screen

which would not exist for

independent labels

Hallowing myself I forage every

inexplicable capability

to leave myself alone

I’d like to end up in the gutter
but looking down at my shoes

Extricate every being that tries

to get close!

I am determined to disappoint

those around me

if anyone was around me

Satiate myself with the means

to be violent!

I’ve never felt more obliged

to look for a bystander

To feel the release of a clench
locked in arrogance

The bitterness rinses over,
such hunger, such thirst

 Ridiculed, despised,
 my own moral objection,

I am my own social compensation

No one goes out of

my way for them

Breathing landmarks just

tessellate conviction

in their savagery

Unspeakable pities

distress in

the sublimest fashion

No one hurts me
no one is there

Distanced by invisible, a mirrored

plaque adorned by the impervious,

scrutinising, travelling bootlick

circus; a dirge Circle Line

Jealousy pulses through each of us
Maybe I wasn’t born to be a hipster

What an idiot I was

to assume musicians

would give me anything

more than music

•  1 December 2012

Today I was hit by a car; A perilous glimpse as my shadow’s leg
collides with a pale plastic hub and tyre shroud revolution
as I fumbled down Trafalgar Road.

Cold; The world turned to a numb throb through the left side of an ankle,
scraping and hollering myself from the curb, phone-in-hand,
dumping this proselytising excuse of a limb.

Blithe rod of excruciation on a path, a paramedic bundle to Lewisham,
fifteen minutes later chewing on the cud of white Paracetamol
told to my face how I’m ever so lucky.

And that’ll teach me to be late for my lectures; Today down Trafalgar Road
the world turned as blue as my foot, and as a twenty-mile-an-hour pile
of aluminium came hurtling, so did my fucking mouth.

•  16 November 2012