something it's not

Wait watchers, we're willing weary women
to touch toes, kiss pillows, wake up dreaming.
It's only young hopefulness keeps us going
when dope doesn't dose us, our efforts slowing.

Catch ourselves following full figured feminines;
shallow pockets, stagnant lives stop us from getting in.
All chasing rewards that have long been lost,
things left behind are the obvious cost.

MSc, PhD, dent in my wallet,
job that's soul sucking so what can I call it?
Investment in a future stuck pushing paper.
Resents and regrets that won't disappear later.

A pad in my hand that tracks thoughts unknown,
a ticket in my pocket valid just one zone,
a card in my wallet, 'nuff for one good meal,
brain in my head struggling to see what's real.

I can't be the way to your glossy dreams,
give them up now or leave me here alone.
Inside my heart there is no charity
and the cave's entrance is obscured by stone.

"I can see you but I can never reach you."


You think that sadness is lodged somewhere in the middle, around the gut perhaps. You are a woman whose eyes bleed experience. You took the pink pills and they led you here. And where do I lead you? Ask yourself where the writers are going, they circle like vultures from their elevated positions. I am the questions, not the answers. They come from inside. 

The phantom is your father's ghost, his death was premature (he shows the way to justice). Follow the path, it only leads one way. Are there choices to be made? Are you man enough to make them? It is laid out before us like a blood red carpet, decisions (decisions). Turn back, I dare you to look into your father's eyes and show him who you really are...

I grow tired of waiting for it to start. It seems the prelude is finally nearing its beginning. There are sounds like the strings, there are cymbals waiting to be burst.


[If I liked it a lot I hope it doesn't hurt to say so. You are a humanist and understand it all but I'm still asking questions of anatomy. I like you more than I let on]

It's a broken window. It wasn't meant to happen but it did. She was beautiful then, cliched glances and text messages. There were eyes that seemed to stare forever until we slept. It's not the same without her, never will be again. 

I see your smile, it's tearing me apart...


We had a few too many that night. In the bed I knew she saw the others, I think Seb heard it all (the headphones weren't in). We carried on anyway, I think she liked it. Slug was pretending to be asleep. When it became a bit too loud I asked her if she wanted to go somewhere more private. I'll never know why she declined, reputations I guess. I walked Kelly to her door. Summer was always my favourite time for romance. 

-

In the dark the view from the eighth floor was mesmerising, trains idled into and out of view floating away from the city's priorities. There were no promises.

-

In the cold room we were touching as if nothing had happened. The first night was different, then we had morals and hope. Rachel told me she liked my trainers. My hand crept up her thigh.

-

In the bunk bed, the bars which stopped me rolling out kept Laura from opening her legs. It was [             ], there we were in the silence.

-

I happened twice, Penny wanted pizza the second time. It was a conquest and a measure, it was loving, vengeful, dangerous and wrong. It was unavoidable.



There were reasons it wasn't going to work. In the end the sum of all its ills was too great a pressure to take. When we spoke recently she sounded well.

Intelligence is linked directly to self-awareness. Once anything (in light of luddite films like The Terminator and iRobot) becomes self-aware there is a realisation that there are only really two things in the world, itself and everything else. Based on this knowledge, sentient, self-aware beings are capable of forming one key instinct, survival instinct. The understanding that existence in this reality is central to experience is one which we all (religious folk included) take on as the basis to the way we approach nature. Man's struggle against nature is a survival instinct. 

The strongest threat to man (individual man, not mankind) is the world which over time seeks to deprive us of our looks, fertility and eventually our mental faculties. Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse sees a man learn to eventually accept that mortality is the only certainty in this life. Far from taking this as a death sentence, he understands that coming to terms with death is the only way we can begin to enjoy our limited time on this Earth. Our lives are so short, we must learn to take advantage of that which will never be a given. Essentially this is a religious argument, take on sin and experience the world, or remain innocent in the hope (faith) that life will be a precedent to something greater.

Thom Yorke compares being in love to being an animal in a hot car. He has captured the angst and frustration created by one of life's most beautiful emotions in an image which seems completely incompatible with the old fashioned romantic image of love. It's a picture we (a modern audience) can easily appreciate for its subtle depiction of positives and negatives. The heat, the passion, the fervour, the desperation, the fear, the vulnerability, the trust. 

There is something else, there is a security. Locked inside our cages, nothing can hurt us except the person with the key. Love is the final barrier to the outside world, we can convince ourselves that nothing else matters, place our future in the hands of another and hope they will never let it fall. Sometimes we get it wrong.

Human nature and nurture means we will never give up looking. She asked me if I thought there would be a point where it was all too much, she wondered what would happen if a person couldn't take any more. I don't know. I've never felt that way before so I couldn't answer convincingly. (Do you feel that way?)



I grasp the shadows
Too much light on your darkness
You are unfinished.

It all started a little confused. There were a million questions with answers that were just as elusive as the adulthood I sought to obtain. Like any generation Y kid I headed for the resources I knew had almost limitless potential. A hundred years ago anyone would search the Bible for answers but two millennia of wars has taught us, if nothing else, that there’s very little but delusion and confusion in organised religion. So where do I find the answers to all the questions posed by the most inquisitive and brilliant minds?

The internet has created a generation like no other. We are self publishing, instantly connected with billions and credited with nothing (at least nothing physical). It is our key to the universe, I do not explore the world with senses, I contemplate the cosmos through a computer screen. And after all what’s the matter with that? Time has given humanity more creative ways to share our information with each other and now I carry in my mobile phone all the workings of humankind's greatest minds. Meritocracy has finally perished, in amongst the piles of worthless wonderings and the endless mediocrity of musings by a misguided and overly ambitious population, the greatest of works can be overlooked. Scouring Google resulted in little but sponsored resolutions and a capitalist desire which will never be satisfied by the directionless meanderings of a person whose understanding of himself is ill formed.

We call out to the millions and are heard by none… And why should I be listened to when all individuals are drowned out by the incessant whirring of the billion dollar industries which rule our judgement? I want a coke, I want a pair of jeans, I need a car. So here’s the turning point. From inside this box (a box in a box, all lined up in tidy columns and functioning perfectly) came the answer to all life’s ponderings. Search results, the collection of all the answers from our new Google God.

I refined my search, algebraic equations coupled with grammatical correctness would culminate in the perfect answer. (“What am I supposed to do next?” + answers). Amazing, a search which took me the best part of 22 years with no results, returned hundreds in only 0.32s. I scour the page, dismissing those irrelevants with the speed and skill of a honed seeker. Computer game walkthroughs, apparently it is important to navigate our way through virtual lives as well modern society. A well known and well paid futurist predicts that within 50 years our virtual lives will be integrated into our real lives, he dislikes the term virtual reality, acknowledging that it is an oxymoron. Finally stumbling upon something that resembles a question similar to my own I began to wonder what answers might accompany this query.