I don’t play chess with love.
There is no strategy, no foresight,
No due process; only a knot in the gut
Which prevents all action
That does not result in your touch.

I don’t chase after love.
I lie in wait, in unfamiliar places,
Abandoned mines and filthy drunk tanks-
Watch morning break through the cloud
With stupid hope there are no more false dawns.

I don’t bear false witness to love.
I tie a ribbon to the loaded gun
And hand it over to the woman
Holding a scalpel with a smile
And earnest for my confession.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
My heavy limbs, lack of light.
Waking up to Ground Zero
And sleeping with a lie of chemicals .
I don’t want to forget how to love.

I don’t think the choice is mine.

I’m tired of these lonesome nights
spent **** in fist and staring at the ceiling.
Exist in thought and again through
ever-changing screens;
it’s been years since I lived through action.

Desiccated white heels in the dust of Savannakhet.
Finding love in the half-dark Bangkok hotel room.
The bar-maid in Malaga, hash from Morocco,
all those nights spent lusting for blood amongst the wine.

Now getting high means finding an anchor
to hold me down when gravity does not feel enough.
When all forces of G-d and Nature combined
Cannot rattle hard enough to force me to speak
in any half-filled room.

Sometimes I’m certain the noise in my chest
can be heard aloud
and everyone knows I am nothing.
I wonder why in all my dreams
Beauty follows in my footsteps.

I wonder why in all my dreams
I’m running away from something.

All I could think of was to shut you up
Smudge your perfect red lipstick
And forget
For once
About our private hell
And the weight of time
Hanging in the gut of us all

Fireworks scolded in your brilliance
Each one a spec k of observation
Amongst a sea of eyes with no limit
Fragments of no time

Infinity was the glance across the table
After our fourth drink

By the sixth we were bringing in the new year
In a fitful, sleepless night
Of stimulant drinks
And cheap spirits

I have been living as a ghost
For several years now
The ashtray is overflowing
In the wake of one thousand tongues
Spilling their way needlessly into mine

Whatever is left
After a lifetime of travel with no destination
Failed treatments and one thousand breathless
Attempts at barely living
Is yours

Whatever is left
Once you are done tending to the offshoots
And slicing each tendon from the bone
Is mine to keep

Never dreamed I would fear
The best thing for me
Forsake longing
In the daily pursuit
Of escapism
And ugly living

Lack of meaning
Beneath the tongue
To almost anything
And anyone

What do you expect from me

When you stand there
Bold in the beauty of life
Full of struggle without a scar
Fingers delicate in prayer

I am ravaged by the storm
All movement without lustre
All shelter torn
All sails at half mast

Years spent searching
For dry land
After years spent learning
Nothing is built to last

If you lend me dreams of your future
I will confess to each demon of my past

It’s four in the morning
half-******, alone
slouching towards brilliance
on the back of a half pack
of cigarettes and a lifetime
spent staring out the faces
in the ceiling.

Been this way since evening
unshaven, undressed
striving to be beautiful
amongst flashbulb memories
of my fingers between her legs
and her phantom song
that cut through the smoke

and tore the heart of every man
left standing
in the room.

I thought of you this evening
heart tethered to the ceiling
fingers teasing the hem of your dress
our stolen names
our clumsy address

Thought of you on Parliament Square
holding a clipboard
and shouting in the rain
tied a ribbon to your hair
with a silver paper crane

Thought of you with innocence
thought of you with ***
all the miserable spaces in between
the collisions we forget

I thought of you this evening
by the milky blindness moon
argued on the cause of death
agreed it came too son

Thought of you this afternoon
thought of leaving too
this artless life
I lie beside
in the wake of you

Thought of you and all the thieves
that chanced upon my way
I never counted you among them
I still love you to this day

I thought of you this evening
eyes tethered to the ceiling
numb and dense with pills and regret
you taught me the art of forgiving
even when I could not forget

It became a famous joke
the way trouble followed you home

How you sang into tiny microphones
on ruined afternoons

How you put leaflets through doors
to fund the calm of evening

It became a famous joke
last to arrive and the first to leave

How you are still in love
with every woman you have known

How you smell of beer and cigarettes
on your clothes and on your breath

It became a famous joke
the way trouble followed you home

How you lost the will to speak
How you stopped answering the phone