It’s such a shame
When all people have to live off is loneliness
So often they are overlooked
By people in search of the grander
The prettier
The more popular.
Everyone wants to tell their story
Or speak to someone
But we’re not all getting equal
Show and tell time.

The telephone has not been kind of late
It’s not from new found fans
Who have suddenly started praying for me,
Or from publishers
Wondering when my next book is going
To be finished
No –
It’s much closer to home,
Friends of mine crying their eyes out
Because some long-legged stunner has left them
“Dan, I don’t know what to do, she
Was a little girl from Sweden,
A real supermodel,
I bought her a diamond ring
And now she’s gone!”
A  crackle down the end of the phone
“Come on mate, pull yourself together,
Why did you buy her a diamond ring?”
“Because I thought she loved me!”
“How much was it?”
“£5,000...”
“And how long have you known her?”
“3 weeks... I thought she was the one.”
I hang up after my apologies and realise I can do no more
I’m no snob, I try and assuage their grief but what can I do?
I can only talk to them, and the girls –
They must figure the rest out.
I decide to go and talk to one of my best and longest friends
She is one of those ladies I have always felt my friend
And a good one, but nothing more.
I talk to this elite selection of women, because
They surely must know what it takes to get women.
I turn up on the farm, she smiles, just finished butchering a pig.
“More fool him is all I can say. Tell me the only way
He knows whether a girl will play him honest, is if
He looks beyond the beauty and is she there
When he needs her the most, through thick and thin –
That’s the testament of a women worth having.”
God bless, Hannah – she had a way of putting it so eloquently
And I don’t believe I could do the speech justice.
That night I ring him up
“What did your friend say?”
“Nothing man, just leave it.”
“What?”
“That’s how you learn: the girls that are good
For you are there all the time. Whatever happens –
Soon as you mention money or start throwing money
At the long legged, the *****, the blonde. You’re dead
In the water. They know they’re beautiful.”
“Thanks mate, you’re a pal.”
I hang up and the phone ring again. It’s Hannah.
“So what did you tell him?”
“Just what you told me, but in language he gets. Man speak.”
“You’re one in a million. You know that? I love you.”
I hang up the phone and smile to myself:
Everyone’s gone away contented.
I’m rather pleased with myself,
They both got to hear what they wanted to hear
With the minimal amount of damage.
It’s a hard act to balance
It’s a hard lead to follow
But I’m mastering it.

I remember moving in to my old flat
Down in San Jose
It wasn’t much to look at
But it was all I could afford
I was studying a 6 day degree
Hoping it would get me somewhere
It was only dollar twenty five
In the rag
Because we all sometimes have to pray
For small mercies
I had just paid out for another hidden cost
Turns out there are a lot of them
When you haven’t got much money:
$13.02 to get my room key
Or the landlady hits me over the head with a baseball bat –
That’s how a democracy works, we elect a leader
And then they milk us for all we are worth.
A dictatorship works the same way –
Only they don’t bother with voting.
This hunny came up to me,
Lips that could devour a man
A body so voluptuous
It could make a man go insane.
“Excuse me, there’s no toilet roll in the cubicle.”
****, what small hells we make for each other
Even the cruellest of men should be able to wipe their ***.
At times of seeing such beauty
We become all gushing
And promise things that are simply beyond us,
In a hope of being rewarded with a mouthful of beauty
Or even better –
A bed.
So I went downstairs and had a near fatal run-in
With the Jamaican landlady
“You won’t be having no pieces of *** in your flat
I-s can be a-telling you that now!”
I returned with the toilet roll
She puckered her lips
Winked and said she would see to me tomorrow
So the next day I went round and said I had
A bit of ailing at the back of my throat
She turned her nose up and said:
“There’s nothing that could be done for me.”
And with that shut the door.
It is such a shame when such beauty gets prissy
But that is the human condition
The more generous you are
The less generous you can afford to be:
Just ask Timon of Athens.

To Alex

Sometimes I think when I sit at 3am
Staring at the screen
Listening to ‘Lonely Island’
I take stock of where I’m going:
We all must.
Not just looking where  we have come
But where we are going.
It’s like love:
You can’t go bull-headed into these things
It must take its course
And sometimes the intermittent waiting
Leads to sleepless nights.
I sit and think,
I want to be your soldier in hiding, girl.
Not for bragging rights
But the fact is,
I can’t bear to lose another.
Such a shame –
When the night rolls on
So do the texts
And the romance goes unfulfilled.

The first time,
I remember (through a drunken haze)
It was beating down with rain outside,
The gods were weeping,
She looked beautiful that night
And we were both wasted,
I sat up and lit a cigarette.
It was done.
She continued to lay astraddle on the bed
“How was that, baby?”
I said puffing on the smoke, grinning.
She took a few minutes to answer and said,
“It only hurts when I laugh.”

I sit on my own in a restaurant
And at the table next to me
A guy’s grabbing a hunny’s ****
And giving it all the googly eyes;
He smiles.
It’s a first date.
He’s done her already
And she is a stunner
Eastern European
A body built like an athlete
A body you’d **** yourself for
Just for a sip of that amber nectar
The body of a woman that puts fire in the *****
And gives way to sleepless nights.
He was grinning
And I was lost in my Vichyssoise
But as the evening wears on
The passion disintegrates
Into mindless rote
They were onto eating sandwiches
And I was onto the lobster
I know that you shouldn’t bring a sandwich
To a buffet.
The guy with the Bulgarian hunny learnt that too:
As soon as the guy looks up and begins to give his order to the waitress
The Bulgarian hunny interrupts him
“I would to order...”
“Bradley, don’t you look at another woman –
He’ll be having the salad and the tuna steak.
You know you’re not having a **** steak
I don’t want you dying of a heart attack before you’re forty.
And I’m certainly not going to be left to feed 6 kids!”
There was an awkward silence
Every time Bradley tried to get a word in the
Hot Bulgarian fluttered her big brown eyes
And shrugged  her shoulder.
“Boy, save the charm for the ******* your arm.”
God, if I were him
I would sleep with one eye open.
And I know if they had a bunny
It would be on the stove by now.
The conversation gently continued,
Poor Bradley couldn’t look at another woman
Throughout the evening
It was decided:
3 boys and 3 girls
And not one would be thought to be called
Bradley Jr.
They had to graduate
They had to work five years
And have full dental plans
All this was going on before
The salads.
I have to laugh
Hahahahahaha
When one is faced with a beauty like that
That’s a maniac
I have to think:
You can’t taste the milk
And then not put a down payment on the cow.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Uni
Such as we all live lives like the ones off Hollyoaks
And that in order to survive
You need to be three things:
Beautiful
A party-animal
And an iron liver.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Those things are all nice:
Much like a free side with your sub
Or a red-letter day.
They’re nice –
But they’re not necessarily vital.
It’s not vital you fall in love with the first person you meet
It’s not vital you get with someone within Freshers
Like it’s a race and you’re Lyford Christie.
It’s not vital that you down half a bottle of Jager
To prove to your flatmates you’re a god
It’s not necessary.
Some of my best friends
Are quiet
But they are good
And I wouldn’t want them any other way
When we come together we have nothing but fun.
Without alcohol
Without drugs
Without 2am walkins
I know...
What’s this world coming to?