A Matter Of Intimacy

The Bourgeois Side Of Poetry

It seems every time I pick up a pen and attempt to alleviate the pressure of writing that pounds at my brain, the ideas that wish to burst from my mind and flow from conscious thought to hard copy seem to dry up unexpectedly, leaving me dumbstruck and scrawling odd words and phrases that could never translate into opulent poetry. For many weeks I have vainly tried to piece together any scrap or piece of reflection into something that could bring a single tear to the eyes of many, with stringed accompaniment and force of will, instead of the spew and garbage that leaves me dry of mouth and ashamed to gaze eye to eye with.

 This has become a daily struggle of mine. I have an audience to please, sadly figurative and only a representation of my own need to improve, instead of an actual audience which so far has yet to manifest itself as I move from bar to seedy bar with shaking knees and quivering hands and entertain a crowd of usually disinterested drunks who prefer to stare without presence into the bottom of a pint of Stella. Even now as I write this, I sit wondering who the fuck I could be writing this to. Am I writing this for you, dear reader (should you exist), or am I writing this for me? Is it simply to justify the talent which I quietly boast to myself that I have?

 Or maybe just to fill time. I have a lot of that these days, what with the genetic code lottery deciding the perfect time to kick my ass and pound me as I lay flat out just at the time when I least wanted it to. The struggles I faced on a daily basis seem now a distant memory. The days of being doubled up and gasping for the sweetest dirty air of Liverpool, clutching at parts of my then skeletal frame to try and reduce the agony that deemed itself fit to break my peaceful existence with jolts and weight loss. 

 Looking back at the day I realised I was ill, I feel rather amused. Sick way to be, but to tell the truth I now boast from the highest pantheon the fact that I am free from the scurrilous niggles of hurt that made it difficult to raise my head, let alone write the things I want, love who I want, be who I know I am.

 Though who I am is still a mystery, truth be told. I still cannot identify who I am, or even what type of man I will become. I would like to think I am upstanding and regal in my own superfluous way. However, it has come to my attention through wrongful acts and drunken hazes that maybe I ache for something more, something more lustful and altogether more backhanded. To some that may be something less, not something more. This slip in language of course comes from the inherent thought in my mind that the good ones are worth fuck all. The concept of being the world’s biggest ass seems to be a pastime which attracts and moistens the opposite gender, despite their cries and scorns that they are looking for a nice guy. Serve me on a plate with a cherry on top and the sneers and turns away are all too obvious to me.

 I do think through the destruction of media I am analyzing myself too much. This I have known for quite some time. I now trawl fashion blogs for tips on how to improve my current sense of style, as if being on trend were ever really important. I try desperately to find a niche for myself, as if writing music and just being me where not enough. Frank Turner, a musician who I strive to emulate, once pointed out that he only started playing guitar to get laid. Well fuck me, I always knew that’s how it was but I lied and scrunched my eyes and fists to avoid it. I freely admit now that in earlier days I had tried to write simple ditties to assist in my wooing of fair maidens, as if compensating for whatever lack of experience or lack of depth I had through the medium of three chords and metaphors which didn’t exactly flow smoothly, but yet fell 500 feet down Niagra Falls and jagged rock towards you. “Secretly I want to fuck you, yeah but let’s hide it behind these poncey words and see if you catch on”.

 As if they didn’t know. It is well known that a woman knows within 5 seconds of laying a deeply coloured eye on you whether she would fuck, marry or at least toss you off behind a dirty bar after closing time. Too much? Probably, but we’re all adults here, let’s be crude as fuck and see who really will complain when it comes down to it. Anyway this is prose, poetry’s proletariat brother, not refined enough to contain rhyme or even reason most of the time. So we can play in the gutter as long as it sells, right?

 But anyway, the bourgeois side of poetry is still something I aim at mastering, no matter how much I scribble and hurl onto this page right now. I fiddle and toy with my guitar strings, feel the caress of winded steel strung tight under my toughened yet flaking fingertips, and try to match their soulful harmonies with that from my rough vocal chords. It is a difficult match at times, with my furious tongue sometimes overpowering the somewhat dulcet tones from my Epiphone. It may just be that what I write is shit, but who knows? I’d much prefer to be graceful with my description than merely piss on the bonfire.

I really have no idea what I am doing with this. I have my headphones in at midnight, surrounded by my half finished endeavours of today and yesterday. My iTunes is seemingly now dominating my train of thought and it’s both distracting and comforting. I want to reach the bottom of the page and beyond but once again I seem to be suffering from the same issues as before. Even in the gutter press of prose I still can’t seem to link my stream of consciousness to something palatable and creative.

 For some reason my eye has been drawn to my phone. Tangent, tangent, tangent. Whatever, baby, it’ll all make sense. Sit back and put your temper away. I have a photo in the recesses of my phone that at times I find myself gazing upon. I came across it at a bus stop. It was a simple sticker that read, “There’s certainly no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life”. I’m sure as hell not a religious man, and though my liberal use of the Lord’s name in vain and my many references to hell may betray what my true beliefs are, I stand firm by that. And yet, this has become a motto for me, a slogan for my at times perilously ludicrous life. It is my justification for stupid acts, my raison d’être for being a right fucking dick when I feel like it. An excuse, nothing more.

It bloody works for me. Fits me well, burn it on my skin and let me live by it. I’ll die by it too. Not really, it’s not that important to me, Christ. See, there I go with that Christ stuff. Must cut that out. Although I use this heartfelt sticker as a way to justify hedonism, I have recently been drawn to mark my skin with something perhaps more dignified. Yes, I do believe that in its purest form a tattoo can be dignified, even if the pool has been misused and polluted by arseholes who feel the need to cover themselves with ink. Salud y Amor I wish it to say. Salud y Amor. Salud y Amor, stamped firm on my chest and over my heart. Health and love. Spiritual, sweetheart. Is this a chance for me to be reborn? Not getting religious dear, I mean more like a phoenix. Sorry, too much Harry Potter recently.

 I could see this as a fresh start. I’ve wrote this New Year so maybe I’m becoming one of those bullshitters who think a changing day can change a person. Ah well, I guess I can live with that. I want to be better, maybe for others, maybe for me. Who knows, and frankly who gives a fuck. Change for change sake, can’t say it’s a great idea but it’s what I need. Is it for you, or is it for me? Who will survive in this shift, not for me to say.  I’d like to hope I do though, that would be nice.

 You’re the one. Probably. Yeah, I’d like to think so. I have spent days imagining it, but my reach is always too short, and we always slip away and it gets left to rot and gather dust. Oh it’s all empty words when it all comes down to it. A remnant of past intimacy that will no doubt remain there until one of us finally goes, “What the fuck?!”

We still discuss it though, or at least we finally spoke about it properly recently, but that’s for another time. For the moment, I’ll sit back with what I have written, no doubt over-analyzing my ranting and ravings and edit accordingly. Don’t want to scare you off, darling. Or mate. Delete where applicable.

If only deleting were applicable.

You’re my devil, you’re my angel 
You’re my heaven, you’re my hell, 
You’re my now, you’re my forever, 
You’re my freedom, you’re my jail, 
You’re my lies, you’re my truth, 
You’re my war, you’re my truce 
You’re my questions, you’re my proof 

See Post tags #poetry #creative writing #seven years behind

6am

 Jane hugged Dave. Dave reciprocated. Tight. Flutter, flutter.

 He always enjoyed these moments. He selfishly lapped them up with great satisfaction, despite his secretly twisted stomach and jumbled ideals which did nothing but muddy his thoughts and feelings towards her. He had no idea what his hazy head was drunkenly trying to communicate to him. Was it a case of love, despite the fact that this situation mirrored all the other bloody times this had occurred between them? Jesus, let’s not go down that road again. Too much time and brain power wasted on that one. Too many sleepless nights, ah you know how it goes. Cliché, cliché cliché.

But yes, this hug. A hug means many things to many people. Depending on the link between the two involved, it can have many different connotations. Between family, it can mean love, support, comfort. Between friends it is this and more. It can be used for something as simple as a greeting, agreement to a particularly pithy statement about someone’s mother, (accompanied by an equally pointless statement in reply) and more. It is indeed a powerful thing. Between lovers, the hug is one of the strongest bonds in a relationship. The warmth, the closeness, is drenched in intimacy. As is the warm breath of your other half on your shoulder or buried deep in your chest. In true love, it is beautiful. In love unrequited, it is intoxicating and destructive. You crave it more, desire nothing more than to be lost in the embrace as you feel time slow down and bend, leaving you both in your shared bubble of amour.

 Yet if the love is not reciprocated, or worse, latent and dormant due to timing and other excuses, it can be ruinous to the mind and psyche. Once you have both stepped out of the bubble, released your grip on the other and continued in the regular time frame we mere mortals share, satisfied and smiling, one will leave. The moment you shared is then lost to them in the deep, turquoise sea of all the other millions of moments that we call existence. Yet to the spurned, the moment envelops their being. They absorb it, pick it apart and piece it together. Yet admire its beauty yet twinge at the yearning for another. They spend their time trapped in it, surrounding themselves in it, bathing in that singular nanosecond when nothing else mattered to them. They play it backward and forward, analyse it critically for any sign of something less than innocent in the others motives. It is a drug, dear children. With the one some people act, you’d think the government would have made a PSA or something. Weed? Heroin? Crack? Nothing man, score some hugs.

 What exactly makes a hug special then? Bugger if I know. That’s not a cynics view, I may add, (though I admit I stubbornly refuse to kick the habit, even though its kicked my heart in the ass so many times I’m surprised it hasn’t packed its ventricles and fucked off), but merely what I know on the topic. Is it the way the other person grips you, I wonder. The sheer heat and rhythmic beating of two hearts entwined? Or is it the animalistic side of us? Is this foreplay?

 Perhaps it’s the fact that the other person’s hold on you provides a bond that mere eye contact just can’t do for you. It’s as if for even the tiniest moment you are the most important person to this person. You are what they require, desire and more. But only for a second. I speculate on the feelings of many a girl through how they hug. You can always feel whether there is something, or rather some indifference depending on your choice. Of course, with my strike out and success rate, clearly I am not the one to be providing advice on what this all means. This is simply stating fact. Escaping thoughts and words that I never understand first time round.

 Let’s get off the general for now though and go back to Dave. This was killing him. Sad, really. They’d gone in circles so many times he was losing count. Honestly, poor guy. Pity him, honestly. He stared at her exposed neck as she obscured her face in his torso. Her skin was soft, perfectly tanned and aching for him to reach out to it. He wanted to caress it, stroke it lightly with the outside of his finger, not for her but for him. Whereas he knew the neck was an area sensitive to touch, it was the electricity he wanted to feel down his body. Surging by the simplest brush of skin on skin, he breathed in the heady scent of her perfume. It swirled around his nostrils and hit his brain like a freight train. As if he didn’t need any other stimulus from her. She already polluted his thoughts, lounging casually in the corner of his mind, occasionally piping up with a smile and a wink, leaving whatever previous thought forgotten and bludgeoned, with her in its place. His arms were linked by his fingers around her slim waist. He felt protective of her. He felt like no-one had any right to have her but him. He noted her curves and her fire red hair and sighed inwardly. Is this what he was reduced to? Enveloping himself around this girl, dedicating his aura and his being for little or nothing in return?

 His hearing went out of focus, lost in whatever fleeting fantasy currently flowed through his head. He was sure she said something, but right now he didn’t want to move, or speak or anything. He wanted to think back on this one with a quiet peace and satisfaction that would be destroyed and crumpled under the weight of the rest of the situation. Of course, he knew she had something to give. They’d been standing there for a good 30 seconds if the bubble wasn’t screwing his inner clock. No person would keep in a hug that long if they didn’t feel something, right? He could feel her heartbeat quicken and her grip tighten as he rested his lips on her shoulder. He had no idea anymore.

 After what seemed like a millennium, she popped the bubble and said goodnight. Their friends had gone to bed while they dawdled in the kitchen. Seemed only fair to put the bookmark on the page at the end of this chapter, don’t want to wake anyone I guess.

He decided to amble a moment more, in the silence of the living room/kitchenette. He watched her walk to her room, her curves amplifying the headiness of her perfume on his clothes. He didn’t know where to look after she closed her door without a single glance back. He first looked to his feet, then the TV, then out the window to the skyline of the city that raised him. It was rather pretty from here, he thought as he downed the last of his Becks and put the bottle with a clink down on the counter.

 He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his eyes. It was 6am, maybe sleep seemed the better option right now.

See Post tags #creative writing #inspiration #seven years behind

I Am A Man Of Many Colours

 I am a man of many colours.

 I am a complex palette of your softest hues of light reflected.

 Though colour is merely the reaction of my eye to light, I feel as though what makes me up is more than this. I am more than light and warmth. I am so much more. From the purest white of bone through the pink and red of muscle and blood, which pumps and travels through my every fibre. The pinkish tinge of skin that holds together the physical being that is me. It carries me as I live my mortal life. It glues together my complex parts. Without it I am nothing, and when they fail and lose shade and power, I shall disappear and crumble, and my layers will lose tangibility and fade.

 What makes me is more than simple sinew, this much is true. Though on paper you may sketch my outline of feeble frame and disjointed parts, this is not all I am. Though you may see the clothes I wear in order to keep abreast of style, colours matched with silly precision due to hours of forethought and testing, it is merely the gilt frame for what lays inside. Although I am recently defined by the rot that aims to break down my coats of being from the inside, what is mortal and truly me is not this. To a passing eye this may be true, but plumage is all this is. I am not simply a square easel, a canvas on which the world may put forth its intentions.

 I am my own man, I react how my will dictates, with subtle brushstrokes of blue and green or occasional slashes from my bristles a deep and bloody red, dependant on what the world chooses to press onto this impressionable soul. My aura shines with whatever colour equates my current mood. It is my identity circumvented in something invisible. But I know it is always there. Through frauds and psychics they try to define what colour I shall be, whilst defeating all purpose for it at all. It is free to be whatever colour it chooses; it cannot be changed by others who choose to cover it with watercolours and prophecies.

No.

I am a man of many colours.

I am a complex palette of your softest hues of light reflected.

I am a man of many colours, and not one shall define me.

See Post tags #seven years behind