How can I envy new lovers,
when I so wish to be alone?
Why does this passing sadness
flirt over what I have just left?

They sit within their vanity,
they know their love and what it means.
Yet still, they kiss upon human kindness,
and of all the distilled hope it brings.

Please let me get to meet you
in the absence of a crowd.
To talk and talk and to reminisce
on memories we never had.

The rain is streaming down.
The traffic is slowing up.
Please, let's not allow geography
to push us from our ***.

I am way off in the distance,
stranded in Nottinghamshire.
There must be a time for fulfilment
at the summit of journey's end.

Will I satisfy your dreaming
of a young man lost in daydreams?
Will I be able to fill out my sentences
to explain how I got here at all?

Please let me get to meet you
in this strange event of life.
I have spent too many hours
waiting for a new friend.

My lover left me for a handsome man.
She said that she was done with lazy love,
and instead; she wanted to work
for his arms in the evening.

My mother left me at the grocery store.
She said that she had nothing left to give me
past the shelves of fruits bathed
under artificial light.

My friend left me for the city nights.
He put a needle in his arm to see
if he was still human; to see
if sensation was still available at all.

My teacher left me with multiple choices.
He said that he had grown half-blind,
because beauty faded in his wife's demise.
Now, there was nothing worth seeing.

My father left me with photo frames.
Forced pictures of frozen life,
with bones eaten by cancer
and a future left unconfirmed.

My job left me in poverty.
It tethered me to caustic chemicals;
stripping my flesh, interrupting sleep,
withering youth before its time.

My former lover left me with memories
polluting each home-town street.
She passes across the road in traffic fumes;
emerging red-coated in my mind.

My cat left me for a sweet release.
She lay down her head and bid farewell
to a world of little experience
but that of my paternal love.

My life left me for a more worthy cause.
All potential spread to another, as I elected
avoidance; pushing out all friends
and leaving just memories.

I am drunk again
and wondering what happened
to my stable moods.

I have become the cartoon of misery. Meditation only goes so far before western medicine is needed, before old Johnnie Walker comes to visit me at my desk. He does nothing but sit and keep me company, faithful friend, whilst I go about polluting the internet. I have let myself go. I think Johnnie helped with that, for better or worse. I bid him goodnight at my bedside, faithful friend, knowing that I'll not want him there in the morning.

I have become something wasted. Old pill packets pile on the side, ailments beyond cure or at least, beyond care. Hats scatter the room, never to be worn but optional costumes for future selves. Change collects in big proportions in a coffee mug, left to waste in rust as another day passes in daily interviews with the mirror and no plans. It's crazy, I know, spurning vital energy in not exerting any of it all.

I have become the morning after. Eyes buzzed with new light, temples now ruins of Dionysus, I search for the window of perception. Roman blinds flirt truth in waves of indeterminable information and so I call up old Johnnie to help me understand things again. He flavours ice with half-truths and old, old cravings. I dial in old numbers, old, old, old, until I feel new again, once I realise they can't talk to me anymore. I have become the teenage dream realised as I take to independent waste and whiskey slur, long-shot attempts at fame and periods of silence with the family.

I have become the cartoon of misery with no audience. I can live with that.

Oh father, where did you go?
You're sending postcards
from the West Coast,
whilst I'm stranded in the snow.

Oh father, I hear your voice.
You're telling me to
keep breathing in,
telling me I have a choice.

Oh father, who are you?
All the evidence
of your footsteps
have faded into the blue.

Oh father, you walk with me.
You keep your ears
close to my thoughts,
in this distant city.

Oh father, where did you go?
You're being fanned
by the warmth,
whilst these northern winds will blow.

I have suffered through this awkward silence,
and barely lived through all of these weekends
of pouring drinks to quench this thirsty city;
they laugh with me, but none of them are friends.

They pollute their dreams with future blueprints,
a formula to manage all their bills;
some childhood land turned into a car park,
and all of their memories that soon will.

I'm planning to execute a kidnap,
I know it's gonna be the perfect crime,
as I sing to the hearts of the lonely:
that you're not alone, oh now, you are mine.

Oh, I'm tired of working for a pay-cheque,
I think I shall start howling at the moon;
now all I've got is my superstition,
and all my friends that grew up far too soon.

And, if you come to see me in the morning,
I can't promise that I'll be there at all.
I'm packing bags, heading to Costa Rica;
I'm standing up for the years I have crawled.

I wish to write a poem,
but my heart is just too tired today.

You walk over tile,
you tumble through life,
you falter to smile
through all family pictures.

Because, home is now lost
and your mind is a mess,
no plan of the future
and no stable address.

Still, open your arms
to all that you see,
until you discover
the sweet unity

of hearing the rains
fall onto the sheet,
and boarding the trains
to take you away.

Away from this state
of eternal disrepair,
to make a clean slate
and to find you're still there.

They’re crowding around the DJ stand,
Arms up in ecstasy, heads are down in pills,
Decoding rhythms of synthetic sound
Over spilled beer from dented cans,
And the scent of baking soda and ****
Clouding lungs, and blacking minds.

Lights hang low, sweating heat through
Exploding bulbs. The youth press together
In a slave ship of fashion and ***. Nothing
Makes sense to the acid kids staring in
Mirrors, old razor blades
And plastic bags scattering the flood
Of **** and stench, and trailing shoe laces.

Eyes closed, the lead rain of death
Is suspended, as aurora fields stain green
Light and visions of Christ and Buddha
Across whatever is left of me.
Elbows are pressing invariably into my sides,
As drunks and dealers move like cattle,
Farming their wages for one more drink.

How did it come to this? What happened
To the domestic love of paved-over gardens
And standing on sheds? What happened
To the easy sleep, as we turned to dreams
As we do now to habit?
How long is there left to regain the self,
That we spend a lifetime catching up with again?

I have suffered in a silence,
I have whispered through the pain,
too many friends have fallen down
to see it happen again.

And I have seen it all before,
weak from the escaping city roar,
all of these products replaced by noon
in a state of constant war.

The days have lost their flavour,
they sit like ashes in my mouth;
they leave me with little to savour
beyond brooding over doubt.

And Doris comes to mind,
in all the answers that I find,
to why I kept on with every struggle;
to how my heart grew old and kind.

Now all that's left is memories
and my future of decline,
the rush of life is now but thunder
and they've gutted my father's mine.

And I have heard it all before,
the lull of the anchorman's dull snore;
there's bombs falling in the desert
and there's riots in the grocery store.

I have written all my letters,
I have settled all my debts,
to all the friends who have lent me a kindness;
and all the poetry that is left.

Never could I fall in love
and not fall for another,
I would kiss a ******* the mouth,
but end up with her mother.

Never could I reach a smile
without finding a splinter,
I would stretch out into the sun,
but still curse the coming winter.

Never could I have a drink
and leave it all at that,
I'd drink until the new day breaks,
until everything fell flat.

Never could I hear a song
without thinking of the weather,
I'd hear the rain in deep sleep dream,
until falling like a feather.

Never could I write to you
and report without complaining,
I would cry for the price of air
and all the illness I was feigning.

Never could I enter the room
and fill up all the doorway,
I would fall at the feet of life
and always hide myself away.

Oh, I am dead to this false, worthless venture
of word and page, of half-baked pain and lie.
Oh, I am so tired of rhyme and not living,
bending thoughts in chaos-mind to structure.

Oh, I am done with this cyclical closure
of will, for the sake of all quiet art.
Oh, my heart is done with the strain of growing,
of growing old in all life's exposure.

I’ll remember you best
As the key to my chest,
As the crumbling fiction
Of art.

And I’ve given up on the test,
In need of a rest,
As my eyes line in poverty
Of sleep.

It’s hard just to be;
To feign that I’m happy,
With all I desire
Out of reach.

I’ll remember the bee
And nature’s symmetry,
As my two halves of a person
Collide.

I have been looking for truth in silence,
I have stayed up all night long,
I am waiting for new information
of which I knew all along.

I have been trading in all of my secrets,
I have been fishing for a life,
I have been falling in love with strangers,
whilst searching for wife.

I have been thinking of quitting smoking,
oh, you've heard that one before,
but stagnation sets in with old habit
and temptation closes the door.

I have been studying great romantics,
I have been drinking in the bath,
I have been coding all troubles to words,
and reciting Sylvia Plath.

I've heard that truth will be found in silence
and solace within a song,
so I've been framing my life in artwork,
I've been faltering to belong.

Why do I think of you,
when I am walking in the day-time,
and why do I remember childhood,
each time the rain is light?

Passing through York,
I am aware that there is war.
slaughter and counter-slaughter,
lives piling up on the side
whilst Africa starves;
and yet, all I can think about
is you.

Newspapers cheat attention
with passing headlines of half-truths
and murderers turned to heroes.
My bank account empties,
all friendships have perished;
and still, all that I suffer for
is you.

Bury me in cigarettes
and drown me in my drink.
Please, forget that I was ever here
to tread this land,
to lie on my back over
the ceramic bathroom tiles.

Oh darling,
I’ve lost my balance without you.

He asked me for my name
and so I told him that I had
lost it long ago, once men
stopped calling me by it.

I told him that my father
only knew neck-ties and
employment binds;
that love and men only exist

together in the breathing spaces
between wars. I told him
that the Americans own
the canyons, and the Chinese

may learn to mine the moon,
but this heart is too full of wine
to ever find room for a man.
He looked confused by my lack

of desire, and claimed that life
must have long left my rusted
veins behind. I told him that
I sleep with the radio, and I

spend nights with the poets'
******-babble and misplaced
hope. I told him of meditation
and coffee shops and Sunday mornings

stretched out with biographies,
and the rain grazing my bleached
skylight. I told him that some
pleasure can out-live an ******,

and that physical love is just
finding your favourite place to sit.
Yes, I told him all of this,
as he laid me out on the bed.

There are no numbers on these tables
to quantify our place. We sit and smoke
in the beer garden glow, forgetting the
circular thoughts of home. This small-town

will turn you to drink. It will soil your liver
and cloud your breath. She's serving cocktails
to strangers, her hair bleached by the summer
light. I'm still rooting in her shadows,

as proof I ever had her at all. My Big Brother's
wallet is only slightly fatter than his head,
and yet he talks of heartache as if it is
a sort of passing trend. This is an alien life

without footsteps overhead. A chance
for bacon and *** in the morning;
a chance for music and coffee, come
lunch. I have learned that love

can be simple. It is the absence at night
that turns lungs to black. 'I miss you'
sounds out as a mantra. I travel in dreams
to our coastline,

to where you may finally allow me
to love you back.

I woke up today
with the future upon me.
It pressed hard to my chest
in paralysis;
a hypnagogic sigh.

Other people pass by
as if the sun only shines for them.
They pester the street
with ease and no care;
I'm always questioning the sky.

The pain has returned,
and all the tears have dried.
There's nothing left in me
to pour your drinks, to smile;
to carry on with this lie.

Come together, he sings,
I think I'm in love, is his own reply.
All I have is the rhetorical romance
of art, never reaching completion;
the bonds I could never untie.

Cocoa butter is my solace,
returning the youth to my skin.
The rest of me is a scrapheap of flesh;
of knotted bones
and only stirring to die.

I'll fall asleep tonight
with no future upon me.
Old friends press memories
to my chest.

I hold them close, wish them well,
and for all that I can barely breathe,
I have no tears left to cry.

This is a time when good words will falter,
my subtle decline and rank disclosure
of all the things that I once claimed to love,
I'm chained from the sky; I'm chained to the Earth.

I'm killing the cancer, I'm kissing you,
I'm within my own mind, I'm missing you,

you're wilting in sunlight, you're leaving me,
you're hitting your targets, forgetting me.

I am a man of a tiresome load,
a grave concealed under the morning snow,
of gracious poetry, of failed adult,
of weeping willow tree, of heart grown cold.

This is a time to prepare the slaughter,
lay down our arms, put old selves asunder!
This is the time for all words into thought,
of Earth's spinning dance, a whisper of God.

I'm tired of longing, I finally see,
I need this belonging, I'm finally free.

You're posting your letters, you're doing fine,
you don't need me here, for the sun to shine.

We heard your name across the moor,
some Scottish ghost and fragrant mist
that tangles our lungs,
that promises honesty;
that breaks a stare to fix our drinks.

I lost my focus when it came to dreaming,
when it came to whale serenity
and peace of mind.

I lost my hope in trying to conjure,
praying creation still exists
in these tried and tired limbs.

We saw your face fixed inside the locket,
witnessing the storm, weeping for the aftermath,
scowling in the sun,
scowling through the rain;
yet smiling at the shop-front to cover screams.

I kept you close when it came to winter,
when it came to memories
to disclose warmth.

I kept fall close in the advent of spring,
to remind me of loss;
in the blind love of summer.

The Earth is the only thing
you can count on to never
let you go.

After that,
it's all up to chance.

Laughter is the greatest medicine of all, and if that fails, there's always anaesthetic.

What is the use of rites and group-think,
This long-term stay in the communal mind;
When all we know can be cast asunder
Like individuated snow?

And where is the profit in humiliation,
When all autonomy must go?
For I don’t care about tax and freedom,
If it’s your oxygen I share.

Oh, how does it feel to breathe the coastline
Whilst I slave away in Flares?
Can you still see that ark of memories:
The footprints leading out of the sea?

Who are you to define what love is?
All I can see is symmetry:
The fish I caught returned to the river,
To the fluidity I have sought.

And why do I keep old train tickets,
From the journeys I have bought?
For all the miles that have worn at my shoes,
I am still forcing smiles,
Still unable to choose.

Jim clutches his phone in his pocket,
in place of the hand he had grown used
to holding. From where laughter came
was now just silence. Awaiting a call
that was unlikely to come. It had taken

an attack to sever the nation he had
come to call as home. And now dug
in the rubble and salt marsh, he would
sell freedom for her. Words mean nothing
when they are heard by no one.

Jim has disappeared out of town again,
rambling through woods to occupy
his time. He searches the gutter for
cigarette ends and lighter fluid.
He spreads her out in a five-minute

dream of soft touch and hard kisses,
of come-down and sunrise under the
hem of her red dress. It is Jim's turn
to wait around. It is Jim's fault
he even has to be there at all.

http://www.mixcloud.com/ed_coles/

I have decided to read aloud,
to project my thoughts out to the crowd.
I'm probably ****,
and I'll most likely stutter,
but it is better than leaving
my words in the gutter.

Let's dance to this tune,
let's lie like adults.

Let's manage our profits,
let's fix the results.

We'll fall to the ground,
we'll fall for each other.

We'll fall for the fire,
we'll fall for the smother.

Don't think of the morning,
don't think of the slaughter.

Don't drink for numb feeling,
don't drink all the water.

You'll pin me to bedsheets,
you'll pin me to death.

You'll pin me behind glass,
you'll pin down my breath.

I'll kiss you in cupboards,
I'll kiss you in pleasure.

I'll kiss you, my lime tree,
I'll kiss you, my treasure.

They'll witness our marriage,
they'll witness our fall.

They'll witness new life,
upon infancy's call.

I tell myself that I am beautifully bruised.

He tried to find it between her legs,
he tried to find it on the news,
he tried to find it in yoga poses,
but he found it with the blues.

There is no *** in a writer.
It explains it all:

why I can never fill a doorway,
or have eyes on me.
It is why these features hollow out
in sunless days spent inside.

It is why I shall never satisfy
another woman – too scared
to commit to flesh what I would
with paper. An artist is full of ***;

watch as he paints her eyes in colour,
as he moulds clay to the shape of her hands,
as he whispers longingly what he’ll do to her;
whilst I am but the broken arms
that feign passion in the night.

I know now that whilst I can tattoo
my love inside your heart;
I can never match his strokes,
his arms, his languor in confidence.

Go – find your artist.

In this, the death of a knowable God,
we have turned to seeming absence,
to vacant pleasures; staring up at screens,
inviting opinions as prescriptions,

and living within the squalor
of the new great depression.

We've slipped into poses, robes
of Moses, walking to the reservoir,
the old abandoned quarry of our minds,
we meet him in the clearing;

the clearing of breath and hearing,
of inner thought and all questions answered.

In this lack of discovery: invention of distraction,
we have descended to fractions, morsels
of attention; all worship of the celebrity,
for lack of concrete alternative.

Don't take me back to the past that I crave,
nor lock me in the misery of today;
for, my eyes belong to the future,
to when everything is okay.

I have stopped dreaming
I stopped a while ago
and during that time
put it down to wine
and the misery of money
After thinking it over
I remember a picture
from a could-be memory

I have found the reason
I have found the root
to all despair of age
and vanishing friends
It came in the moment
I stopped chasing my shadow
It came in the acceptance
that it would never walk away

Talk to me, oh summer's day,
please, lift me from my silence,
this painted room
is an eventual tomb,
if you don't lead the way.

Take me up in purpled light,
please, fortify my garden,
this barren land
and all this shifting sand,
it barricades my sight.

So, with all the time that I have left,
there beats totality in my chest,
as I cling to all that is sublime,
I've paid my dues and served my time.

And time, time always comes to my mind,
how shadows lengthen and clocks will wind,
but I'll tarry for you, oh summer's day,
as you take me from my heart's affray.

Talk to me, oh childhood's end,
please, gift me with your wisdom,
this tarot card
predicts a future hard,
in the absence of a friend.

Love me now, as I fall and bow
at the mercy of discovery,
I'll take with me
only memories,
in this paradise recovery.

Our own desires sit false on the page. Stewed in our longings since memories born, there is a tedium to our cravings, and scorn for all the outstretched arms you have torn.

All passions come in a bespoke flavour, it's tailored to the pattern of your sight, my dreams are just saliva in my mouth, but yours can offer never-ending light.

So, I give to thee sacrifice of page, in the hope to bring back taste to your food, in hope you'll see my friendship coming through, in hope one day I'll soften down your mood.

You have appeared again.
I know I'm nearly home
because that's when you
come to take the air from me.
You come into dialogue
and leak memories over tea,
sweetening the taste that
I've long since grown out of.

I am quite different now.
At least I like to think I am.
I let my beard grow a while
whilst tiredness films my face.
I take the bus places now,
no more bicycles over the estates,
reliving anecdotes like old videos
and drawing your name in leaves.

I don't want to listen anymore.
I don't want to remember.
I don't want to go over ground zero
with a ***** and expect the past.
You have appeared again
and I can't handle it.
You have appeared again
and I am a shell.

You once called me callous.
You once said love is bunk
and lives in the spaces
between happiness and death.
Now you're signalling regret
like an echoing mantra,
thundering my loneliness
in the wake of you
and the way you are growing up.

You have saved me from despair
and all-knowing conviction
to half-truths, penny-saving,
and the unreality of all tastes confined
to that of general acceptance.

You have redeemed me from loss,
loss, loss and total loss of limb and time.
In this inactive protest,
you tilt up my chin, hold my hair
and deliver me that sweet syrup of words.

Internet dreams and
lullaby, the mountain peak
of an infant cry.

Maybe I was not meant
for life uninterrupted,
and long years spent
in solution.

Maybe I was not born
to feel lasting friendship,
old faces now torn
from my devotion.

Maybe I am not here
to be a whole person,
instead but a tear
of half emotion.

Maybe I am just air
falling from the bridge,
never seen and barely there
in all of life's commotion.

This love is fading,
this love is through,
I'll quit this complaining
if I can quit you too.

I'll stop smoking cigarettes,
I won't curse your steps,
as you walk 'cross the landscape,
as you pay off your debts.

I'll stop hiding in toilets
for a  moment of peace,
for a moment of outlet,
for a sight of the East.

My world is fading,
as you walk out the door,
this beauty is collapsing,
as I lapse into you.

This love is fading,
this love is done;
you've quit your pretending,
you've already run.

I am sorry.
I am sorry I never learned
to greet the daylight,
or smile through songs
of pain.

I am sorry for relenting
in my wisdom, for boarding
the train to nowhere at all,
and crying at the window
the entire time.

There’s nothing left
to kick against as I’m treading
the water of my own tears.
I barely breathe without you,
and now I must find a way
to do it all of the time.

There is no poetry here, only:
I love you
I love you
I love you;
as the rails thunder distance
between us at last.

I’m filing as a missing person,
For all these months I’ve spent inside.
Despite the pills that I’ve been given,
You can never turn the tide.

All I wanted was some freedom,
A chance to stretch out in the sun,
But I’m having conversations with the streetlights;
Talking to friends where there are none.

This bus is full of lonely people,
Who’ll cry only in the dark;
For all the dreams they’d left in high school,
And the teenage lovers in the park.

We only send out grateful letters
Once old friends have moved address,
And I can’t fight this sleep much longer,
Whilst I am straining to confess.

This life isn’t what I wanted,
Nor can it be what I wish for,
But I will settle for the sound
Of you knocking at my door.

Depression: the state of clinging
onto everything until you can't work out
what to let go of.

All paths link,
from chaos to mend.
All humanity's start,
is humanity's end.

I'd like to speak to you
about the Taming of the Shrew,
and how you've suffered in silence
for too long.

I'd like to hear you say
that you were happier that day,
when you were gifted with answers
that you knew all along.

I like to hear you call,
or say anything at all,
I just need to know you've found
where you belong.

I'd like to talk with you,
sat on the wall by the avenue,
where we kissed under the street-light
in summers rushed and long.

I'd like to be your friend,
drunk under morning light's slight bend,
as we talk under the dawn-break's
hopeful song.

I'd like to eat with you
at a breakfast diner for two,
we'll lust away the hangover
in a memory lifelong.

I'd like to speak to you
about the sadness of the few,
about how you're disappearing
about how I need you
to be strong.

No more withering in the flames,
no more tales of running away,
this coast is too bleak to see the breadth
of aurora paint and consciousness,
and yet all I can think of in this grey mass,
is how all of despair, must come to pass.

I watch as the white clouds settle in,
pushing storm out of the sky,
passing it on to another sorry state,
as small paradise emerges in my wake,
and so I cling to the vapour of desperation,
pleading for adaptation.

I watch as clouds crash into cities,
pushing life out of the streets.
I dream of war and tambourine men,
and of what latent content could mean.
Yet with each nightmare of my waking mind,
I return to sleep in nature's umbilical bind.

No more singing of yesterdays,
no more faces stained in the clouds,
this glass is full and overflowing
as good intention spreads to all;
I turn to the world with arms stretched out wide,
to speak of my terrors, in which you, I confide.

I want to hold her on the bed and
show her that not all men are mean.

Come meet me at the bar
and I'll slip you a drink,

upon the condition that you will
slip me a pill

to make it through another dream,
another push and get-rich scheme.

Stand with me in the pouring rain
and I will hold your hand,

upon the condition that you give
me life to live,

to make it through another day,
where loneliness will come my way.

Would you press me to the kitchen wall,
help me feel just anything at all.

Do they sing to the stars of freedom,
just to celebrate their place?

Do they learn the universal laws,
just to decorate their wisdom?

Do they scar themselves with angry words,
just to bring about completion?

Do they shake under their wealth of love,
too much stored to ever dispose?

Do they donate their sorrow outward,
too much to keep to themselves?

Do they dream of death in waking day,
too much doubt within their brains?

Do they take solace in the half-light,
just to see anything at all?

Do they keep all friends close in mind,
just to feel anyone at all?

Do they keep returning to nowhere,
just to find anywhere at all?