Me

I have failed at everything.
Everything I try to do.

I have failed in school.
I was never well behaved.

I have failed at work.
I was never a very good slave.

I have failed at family.
Where are they now?

I have failed at life.
I’m barely making it somehow.

I’m not a famous person.
I’m not a wealthy man.
I’m not a holy guru;
Nor wanted by any friend.

I’m just goo...

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Regret

Regret
A thousand times regret.

Choices made,
that cannot be unmade.

Stupid things,
done again and again.

Foundations
laid for a useless life.

Coming to an end for some time.

At least death will be done right.

Kind of hard to screw that up.

(Photo taken by poet. It's the Pennsylvania hills behind Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob House.)

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Utterly Forgotten

They set out to make a man like you make a car in a factory

It was a production process starting at step one till the end

When you’re left with the finished product and the job is done

Step by step following instructions and designs and plans

Not missing a single bit or doing it in the wrong order

To look at the completed man you would be amazed

That he was m...

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When you left, you took a piece of my heart

When you left, my whole world came tumbling down

I became so lost

I was left in the dark

You took with you my light 

When you left, I learned to fight

I learned to navigate this world without you by my side

I learned to be strong to no longer rely on your love

You thought I was weak,

For feeling too much

Now, you're the one ...

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For the successes that we have
Are as the land,
And all our hopes and plans
As trees and flowers,
But our failings are the droplets
Of the sea and rain
And all our fears and worries - 
Winds and storms.

And I am so adrift, so far, so floundering
Though there's most a lifetime learning how to swim,
Till I have thought me too far gone
Or that the raging sky and sea might never ease agai...

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The person that I want to be
dies every day.
I never know exactly when, or how.
Sometimes it is sudden,
Sometimes lingering,
I often struggle, I often cling,
Sometimes, fatalistically, I just give in
But the person I want to be dies every day
Sometimes many times.
 

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Thinks she's a failure
As a Wife and a Mother
A failure of all

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Seeing the shadow in vision
Getting feared of what the great poison
Hiding out back to the scratch
Tired of being what they're interpreted 
To be looked up in the sun
To be puked in deep water run
To be lost in relief distance
I was fight, 
But no lights were made
So where is is heading through wind? 
Passing it off to be betrayed and seen
That soak tree's been relied on
As this volt i...

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Mustn’t Grumble

Thinks he’s the bee’s knees

One big bumble

He’s doing his best

Mustn’t grumble

All around

Dreams start to crumble

Chin up chaps

Mustn’t grumble

Gets his words

All in a jumble

An Eton boy

So mustn’t grumble

Discontent

Begins to rumble

He’s such a card

Mustn’t grumble

Staggering on

He’s bound to stumble

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Ten years old,

gigging frogs,

avoiding horny toads. 

Then a teen,

in search of the wizard,

playing pinball, drinking, smoking. 

On to adulthood,

pushing back when anyone 

crossed the line. 

Now, 

doing time

with this karma of mine.

Traveling brick roads

that lead to

nowhere particular. 

But, as long as there is 

music and poe...

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"Find yourself"

You can misplace your mind

But

You can't forfeit your mind

When you've built a fort for your mind

Mine is bulletproof,

Double-glazed,

Soundproof,

In here

I can stay outside of myself

I can step outside of the world

Oops

Yesterday,

I watched us having a conversation

From my window panes

Through the heavy glaze

It made me feel some type...

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After I lost you,
If I stop
You to adore
Or begin you to abhor,
I never loved
You before.

Even if I am aware
You are no longer mine
I will take that fine.
Exchanging with you
A greeting
By itself is a
Nice thing.

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My insides writhe like pit of snakes
As my mind runs away.
It flees from my mistakes,
Made with good intent,
As fast as my ambition got me there.
Why does my ego tote me around like a child?
Why does it feel like I'm always being punished
By my mundane thoughts?
What am I doing?

Rotting.

I eat the snake.
I abandon my ambition.
I punish myself from now on.

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Sorry for the length, but I wrote this after something that happened to one of my students a few days ago. It's the first thing I've written in a long time that is probably a song.

With acknowledgements to John Lennon

I see your tears falling

It really breaks my heart

I know right now you believe

Your world just fell apart

You can’t see through the darkness

The next move ...

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A poem about getting old... and staying young.

May I Never      

I may never rule the world with theories so fine

May never run past Bolt, smile and duck across the line.

I may never meet Mandela, Obama or the Queen,

I may never solve all wars, or stop leaders being mean.

I may never reach a hundred, run for thirty miles,

I may never help the hungry, turn their cries to happy...

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How many times can one person be reinvented

I have run from myself so many times

I have fled from who I am

in order to be someone better

But always I fall short

Always I fail

Always I become someone changed but still the same

Always I leave behind the good

And carry with me the bad

I flee from the things I hate

Like a bat out of hell

I try to outrun the parts of my...

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 It is an anti-climactical relapse into the repression and suppression of life. 

You'll be on a cloud of positivity held in the captivity of optimism. 

And then as if your minds been hit by a tun of bricks that indicate the euphemism of the candidness of reality.

 As you get older you realise that the higher you climb the further it is to fall, 

so you get indecisive between the f...

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On The Slag Heap

Quenching the eternal flame,

the furnaces won’t burn again,

the northern dragons will lay still -

the Government has had its fill.

At its heart a molten core

that will implode and beat no more.

The mill will close, the light will die

and in the dark the ghosts will cry.

The workers will go home to bed

not knowing if their family’s fed

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(This poem is the second part to my previous poem 'My Beautiful Lie' http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=36793)

The lie I created I hid far behind,
Blind - vacuous and vapid, my rapid descent
Into madness was sealed, with gladness
The concealed face of my own lot was lost
And the cost of this deception was total,
Brutal at the very point of inception...

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Plebeian culture wanders out and proud –

The cult of drugs; discordant music jams;

Moronic rap and savage hip-hop ‘slams’:

Unchecked emotion snarled in hate aloud.

Now I, for one, take quite another view

and give plebeian culture not a glance;

mere childish chaff born of unhappy chance,

a savage skit to which scant praise is due.

But why is it esteemed, and...

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Been there

Done it

Eaten it

Drunk it

Almost drowned in it

Nearly died

Praised it

Cursed it

Dodged it

Traversed it

Just you name it

I’ll have tried

Smoked it

Snorted it

Been traumatised by it

Reduced to tears by it

Laughed and cried

Run it

Walked it

Chased it

Caught it

Wished I hadn’t bothered s...

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