Memoirs of a Life Unlived

She can't seem to see beyond the beyond - sleeping badly before the Big Bang, killing time outside the Universe. None of it compares to your four o'clock, now she has problems. I've heard she growls like a dog, howls when hungry. Feel pity, think cleverly, say nothing. Maybe she'll get there. Maybe we're all lined up at the edge, dropping clichés like greasy plates. Maybe we play with words, clearing out the cupboard and putting it all back in, over and over, forever.  

Now comes the slow fog – Not looking when you could have Becomes not looking now you can’t – Now comes the eternal now: A balancing act of letting things be, Addressing nothing, accretion of complication, The only consideration remaining how This state of grand denial took over entirely. All hail the smooth ageing – Looking in the looking glass, Just not becoming anymore – All hail the mortal coil: An unbalanced state of letting things go, Recalling nothing, accretion of pathology, The only clear morality cowers, despoiled By the acts of dereliction and dumbshow.

Nothing fits and all hangs down and billows out, slips off and down and all the faces previously closed now snarl and gloat and glare and things held tight within the skull grow, restless, homeless, craving light and news comes thick and fast and hard and all the things that once held firm with superstition, or with luck and charm now wriggle, dangle; all the ferries making stops at islands stay in port and hope runs low, misunderstandings breed and all the daily quiet and maps begin to pull and yell, and twist at arms and disappointment paints the day and things that were relied on start to play tricks which till today might have meant fun. But now, right now, mean only harm. And I, who can’t decide, must choose how to go on, and on and on.

We're trying to identify who's responsible and it's sure to be anyone but me. We're trying to find a solution to your problem and you're lucky I'll do it for free. We're trying to clear a path through the thicket and I'm armed to the eye teeth with machete to hack through this undergrowth, Sword of Justice and last but not least a heightened sense of what it is you've done to upset all that was right. I'm going to help you to see that no one will bring comfort to you in the night. All this I do more as a calling and of course out of love and concern; as you open your eyes to the morning give a thought to the many I've spurned.    

Woken up or still awake, the grass frosted, Thinking out loud he says: ‘Maybe it’s cos I don’t read enough’ And ideas of cannons being primed In fiercely frozen fields take off And crash soon after pen hits paper, Fuselage looking soft in the early rays, Kerosene spilling out and the flames Making a mockery of hard cloddy ground. Let’s try again, this time fix On the loyalties of that age, print them out Almost factually the first stanza; research it, Be deaf to the clarion of social networking. Do the work. That plane idea was interesting, Flesh it out.                    But no. Apparently not. Music or something or mazy thinking Grant that horrible few seconds of uncertainty When it shouldn’t be enough but might be. It’s always enough. ‘I need more sleep And to read more.’             ...

The sky breathes ripped dark cloth, presses the gravity column down clumsily onto my head; and I swear I heard a snigger in the moment before we felt the first fat drops.

When writing a poem - pen dangling like a ciggie from a fat lip - just sit with it, she said. Sit with it before, during and after the doctor's visit. Everything fragile must be cradled: a heavy sigh blows through the filigree of smoke, smears lace into paste, pushes out into disorder like...like... waves on lugworm casts, the s poon in milk-splashed tea (she wrote some down, and I saw her work tak e slow shape through luck and design). As she wrapped the olive cashmere scarf around her neck a second time I looked up from my notebook , shook her hand with half a smile and thanked her for the gift of being kind.

With such a weight of pencils, drab and bolstered - scribbled histories from then to now - now squatting on your fragile shoulders I'll talk of intricately rented worlds and how such brilliant and fresh-laid concepts shattered plate glass thinking way back when. We'll scuttle - frantic like the sugared insect - and overegg ideas from now to then.

Happy Birthday to all those ridiculous boys trailing their futures. They're smiling at everything and I saw you smile back like you couldn't help it. Their world's like yours with the colour turned up and you like that. Buy them presents, bake them cakes, lose them for a moment  and they're gone forever.

Frost roosts on my gable fearing nothing. The plump pigeon ruffling its feathers considers me, as a Heathrow-bound plane floats golden over its head; knows it far better than I, is not fooled by it: knows it wakes earlier, thinks faster, sets the rules. Two panes of glass, piped gas and a pen separate me from the pigeon's living.