J. Walker's Poetry Blog

Train Ride (05.06.09)

2009-06-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

This is not the first time,
And I am not the first,
To take this journey;
Cross these counties
In an unnatural, unflinching line.
Embarking upon the inane train -
Never travelling; no sojourn,
For this air-conditioned inertia
Never leads to weeks
Spent lounging Inertiatic
On the shores of the Adriatic,
Or some other common folly.
No gateway to holiday.
It’s remarkable.
It variegates; it changes,
Each time I glean along it…

I’ve seen it a tundra –
Barren. Empty. Sparse
Cold
Wrought in midwinter’s vice.
All the small bodies
Of water
Sheened in their Perspex barriers,
Separating swan from fish with
Ice.
All along the concourse
Is the acrid powder;
Gritty hibernic death.
Even the pylons seem to sag overhead,
Like the old folk in the carriage.
And the loamy hills roll grey
Like the storms of Thor.
Unpicturesque is Albion’s shore.

I’m sure I’ve seen it yellow.
As the sun infects each
Nook of shade.
Making everything seem brighter.
Yellow trees;
Yellow tinted blue sky
Yellow swathes of the sun’s rape crop.
All the garden nourished;
Germinating towns, (some larger than others).
Every place I scantly see,
Whilst shuttling down the track.
I am perennially walled in with greenery
Which occasionally gives way,
To armies of woad-stained sheep.

The experience is peculiar.
My vision is drawn to this garden,
Along the way
Of this rapid panorama
That I’ve seen before,
In green. In grey.
But, I sense,
I Taste. Touch. Smell nothing,
I do not hear the things I see.
I am deaf to nature
From within this sanitised shape.
Perverse dichotomy;
I am wholly at odds with my eyesight,
Like the thicket-framed railings I continue to pass -
All juxtaposed;
The rogue sense giving me something surreal
Before it pulls in at the last stop
And the scene becomes inane
And all which was yellow and grey
Is gone.

Sparks (21.05.09)

2009-06-07T12:01:00.002-07:00

At a quarter past two
I'm thinking of you
Because the light in my room flits; it flickers.
I'm sure you'd rather I wouldn't
If you so much as thought,
An intermittent thought,
About me. I doubt
You care that I care -
Apathy poorly transmits through the air.
But a walk in the park isn't easy.
I know no romance, it isn't my style;
It makes my bravado feel queasy.

Furthermore;
I am fully aware that fear is a flaw,
Which I showed in the face of a blond labrador,
That saccharine harbinger of doom.
And so, we both laughed
And kissed in the grass.
But this isn't that place,
It's my darkening room.
And lying in bed, The light flickers
Dead.
Coincidentally, the sparks gone again.

Future Keys (10.05.09)

2009-06-07T12:01:00.001-07:00

This could well be
The last of the heathen war-songs.
A final crescendo
Most abstracting of cries,
Devoid of mythoglyphics,
To be heard from the outside
Of the mouth
Of this ingrate;

Ever the dirty rotten stopout
Who amalgamade words,
All verminous and lyricidal
Uttered the utter gutter base hybrid
Who played perverted infections, learnt.
Taught without past –
- No class;
Inbetween and none besides.

How dare he.
How dare he.
How dare I be so arrogant.
No faith I renounced
(For faith I don’t have)
No brain disintegrated
To mere sludgy matter,
(Not yet at least),
But must I continue to disappoint
All the anthropomorphic clouds
Of yestermen?
Since they’re perpetually swirling
On perpetual reputation.

All I know,
Is that I wish to know,
“Will it ever be good enough?”
Otherwise I’m packing it up,
Quitting before I fall further
Into overfilled history.

I’ll take the keys for the future
If they’re on offer.

Apollo (09.03.09)

2009-06-07T12:00:00.002-07:00

There's not much Light in here.
Yes, the sun's out,
But our house conspires against it,
Leaving us in a permaglow
Of low-wattage. The sounds of free sky channels
The little proper light at midday.
The bills are astronomical,
But at least most rats like our hovel.

i'll park my arse on the knack'red old chair
After walking back down the path on the hill;
he's already splayed across the sofa,
Still ill,
Laughing at Ed Byrne.
(The T.V's shit. He turned it off, favouring stand-up sets on youtube)
"Innit-Do. Getme-Do." - We're on to lenny Henry.

We failed to notice it got dark outside,
'Cos he's been monged for much the day
And in the warm and orange, synthetic glow,
Watching Live at the Apollo,
I'm not really bothered.
"Andy Murray-Do."
End clip.

"Shall we play Mortal Kombat?"

Memoriam (25.02.09)

2009-06-07T12:00:00.001-07:00

She makes this feeling alright.
Dulcet melancholy
Tones, near-naked; stripped of flattery.
Dub-deep dark, ephemeral,
And tasting like the petrichor
After the sheeted film of summer sun-baked
Rain has passed.
She's a song,
Singularly lighting each synapse;
One by one; endorphining
My inner sanctum.

I doubt she knows.
I doubt she'll ever know
Because I doubt she'll ever see this.
Even so,
All the spartan rain particles
Will keep fragmenting,
Like burnt icicles,
Since she's etched her song
In memoriam.
But what is love without loss?

Turn of the Night (17.02.09)

2009-06-07T11:59:00.002-07:00

By the time we met
The other night,
I'd already seen off a few
Too many.
More than I should have - more than definitely.
I'd come to the stage
Of trivial lies,
After swearing I wouldn't play -
No more Nepentheatrics;
Games - ten minutes before.

I was a state of disrepute -
Insidious. Lascivious.
(I think you might have been too)
As you flitted between the bar
And the chair;
Moonish; lit-up;
Laissez-faire.
Meandering with your hair,
All sweet and vodka pretty.

Another drink too many
Accelerates my memory,
Of the other lies I told.
We shared a kiss:
That had gone amiss
By the walk through the nighttime cold.

My Notebook (12.02.09)

2009-06-07T11:59:00.001-07:00

In my book
Things happen.
In such a way
That works.
On my logic,

A pen and a page;
Scribbles are higgled
Scratched;
Remade
So that dismantling
Clouds reflect
Reverie.

I'm glad I've found
My book again.

Knowledge (09.02.09)

2009-06-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

You can never know enough", they said
"You can never overlearn".
So we, the Wisemen
Sapped up the thought,
In the hope we'd know it all.

You can never know enough...

I'm lost.
I'm submerged.
Ripplet in a spit pool,
Somewhere.
On a small earth.
We took the world,
As ours; conquest.
We sussed the spacio-temporal -

- And now its all just there;
Theorised. Rationalised
At a fingertip touch,
Spinning on its own omniscience.

You can never know enough...

I'm searching. I'm searching.
But the abstracting lack is
Disconcerting.
He said there would be time,
He told me there was time,
For me to find my own niche,
My distraction from destruction.
The time is gone -
My time is gone.
I threw it all away.
It knew too much,
Which instead of full,
Ironically left it vacuous.

You can never know...

Laptop (15.12.08)

2009-06-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

My computer's broken,
But somehow I'm still here.
I can still emote -
I am surprised,
'Cos I thought It'd leave me hollow;
A ghost,
Chasing my digital shell.
I'd be not myself,
Everything gone;
Save for teeth, for eyes.

My itunes has ceased.
All the old stuff I wrote,
On an indefinite hiatus,
because I won't send
My external self
To Toshiba.
It can hibernate for longer,
Poised;
To reintigrate itself
With my physical world.
I can't wait,
To listen to Dangerous Liaisons
And re-know what I once wrote.
This is my Alexandria,
Lying dormant,
In a plastic coma.

I cannot wait,
Though i have to wait,
Because student loans don't pay
To cover contingency,
After I doused Toshiba in rum,
Just one too many times

Hearts in Darkness (11.12.08)

2009-06-07T11:55:00.002-07:00

I say it's ours.
I say it's ours,
Although it is not mine.
We lead the way,
We lead the way;
Occidental designs.

No glittering gold,
Just littering gold,
Within the deathly mine.
A diamond deal.
A diamond deal.
Cash for blood is fine.

A kingdom fell.
A kingdom fell.
A kingdom falsely claimed.
A nation falls.
A nation falls,
Its people concentrically
Maimed.

The war is ours.
The war is ours.
Though we don't partake.
We set it off.
We set it off.
And now they rape the raped.

They use our force.
They use our force;
Neglect all mother tongue.
We cast a shadow,
Cast a shadow,
Made this hell-hole in the sun.

And we stand by.
And we stand by.
Cruelly compound all misery.
The Congo - raped,
Again. Again.
Midst poverty. Tragedy. History.

Hiding (22.11.08)

2009-06-07T11:55:00.001-07:00

- "There was not enough god to go round."
- - E.M. Forster, 'A Passage to India'

Hidden,
Between dirty, greying, carcass walls
And acrid mould's perpetual drip,
In a house rendered; rent with contagion
And a bowing, wormy ceiling,
Is a clutch;
A pack of huddled people.
Lying in the shadows.

Hidden.
Wrought in contortion; foetal curl,
As dust-clouds scrawl through scraps of window,
Breathes a father - all alone,
Holding a carcass wife and children.
Who faced the swarms
Of shots. Of shells.
Dead. In the shadows.

I know this man,
person X,
Who tears in front of me.
His face dusty; pigmentless grey.
His heart harrowed; filled with war.
His face is on my screen,
His abject face screening
His hollow, caustic screams.
Which brought me to the thought;
Epithets and exocets don't mix
In a war-torn jungle/tundra/desert scene.
But by the time I'd had the thought

The screen had changed
And my interest began to wane.
I'd shunned the news for falsehood -
I'd chosen apathy.
An epithetic killer, none the same.

Between pastel papered, dim-lit walls
And the drip of the kitchen tap
In a three-bed rented house,
With a newly plastered ceiling,
I am lying to myself.
Hiding.

Smoke (29.09.08)

2009-06-07T11:54:00.002-07:00

Last week I quit the smoking
Because my lungs were on the brink.
For years I've been afflicted,
With a knowing I'm addicted,
To each and every single toke,
Each circumstance that they'd permit.

On the lash
I'm out, I smoke
In sheep-pen zones, filled with
Two-bit whores.
Monotony could make you choke -
Or at least splutter half a lung.
Every night's so-so; alright,
Laced with cloudy lovelines -
All contrite.
And all mixed up;
Billowing in a boozy fervour,
For we were all far too close together.

So I'm sat here now
In unwashed jeans,
My back pocket full of papers.
Extracting. Crumpling.
Throwing rizlas one by one
I always knew she loved me not.

Siren's Night (11.08.08)

2009-06-07T11:54:00.001-07:00

Summer was a grey affair;
Salty perfume fogged the air,
Shown up in lamps’ night lights.
Flotillas of vixens, sirens, valkyries
Forced reverbing cacophony
From walls at darkling hours.
Each night I’ve heard the screaming
Echoed in the tidal rolls
Of water at the witching hour.

Summer was a grey affair;
Seam’d with ladies debonair
Sirens’ perfumes fogged their hair.
Lucid liquors, cigarettes,
Linger ‘midst crush-black curls.
Lying. My spoils. Antiquated words.

Summer was a grey affair;
Subtle stratagems; Perfume’s spoils.
Perpendicular to the square.

Forgotten Fiction (17.03.08)

2009-06-07T11:53:00.001-07:00

Do I, I wonder,
Whilst I mangle thoughts in silence,
Poison intervening,
Slur further sinking,
Have my wicked way with words?
So that other people listen
So that I might be heard.

Could I emote?
Stir, rouse in triumph
So deftly, adeptly,
That I could lead the masses
From stalactactical catachasms
Towards the lightshine.
Could I extrude all the leeches
From every mind,
So that all might cast down their Dan Brown
And daywalk again.

Or are all the minds matted,
Every knotted core gnarled.
All beyond wormed,
To the very brain-cave turned.
So that if I roused myself to lift up
And speak,
Would I be cast out; spurned.
Would I be forced to lie in mass graves, in silence,
With the rest of the dead poets.

Friday (12.02.08)

2009-06-07T11:51:00.002-07:00

Punch drunk and verging on the blind
All in motion all writhe to
Basslines under sodium skies.
Feel the tunes.
Stratospheric evasion
Takes you more than miles away
Armageddon ecstasy
Nothing matters more right now
Than lose your mind – I’ll show you how
Double drop and breaking down
The whole room is in tune with sound.
I am gone and I am air
There’s never time to blink or stare
As DJ throws the next track down
I’ll stay here forever bound.
As earthly notions leave my back,
I’m Prometheus rent unto the rave.
Water break atop the stairs
Ear drums blistered throw the shouts
This is what Friday’s all about.

A Change of rooms…
And now I can touch the liquid beats
Scattered through the hazy room,
Rhythm is the order of this set
It plays coquettish,
The whole room one.
United under a banner
A plethora of ravers
Nod and bounce and exude rumbas
Til’ six O’clock the speakers thunder
And we all leave,
Tired.
Satiated.

December's Window (10.12.07)

2009-06-07T11:51:00.001-07:00

This Place has sucked
All vigour and life
From Me.
In this small room
I am trapped;
All alone, save for Facebook,
with nothing to write.

My window is lashed
With torrent;
A swathing storm outside
Belting down a wetpour
Against the pane.
Not itunes nor headphones
Could ever drown
The raging violent raindin,
So hard it smashes
Against the glass.

From my window
The contorted image
Of the once proud Oak
Permeates through globules
Of water that streaks 'cross the glass.
The frail man,
Flailing whilst flogged
By the fury venting wind.

The same callous wind that tortures
That gnarled old Oak Tree man,
Blows its cold heart through the cracks
And gaps in the win'seal
At me. So that I am
Downtrodden with tempest
Whilst stuck in my room;
A torrent of Myspace
DVDs and Pot Noodles.
I am trapped,
With nothing to write

Parenthetic Requiem (30.10.07)

2009-06-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

And that which is gone,
Is gone.
No longer are we concerned
With that which came before -
No precedence.
The end to social maladie,
As everybody died.
All to existence blind.
The Requiem - parenthesised.

And thus; we were made dust
So that this vast orb returns
To a state of reverie,
Without precedent.
So all words will fall
On hollow ears of dust.
Gone.

Tongue Tied (30.10.07)

2009-06-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

Why is it that I never say
Those things I really mean
To you. Am I inept? Since I can't combine
Thought and word and mouth
And you?
Thus I force myself to delay;
Oh fie procrastination, fie!
For it is with words I feel;
Yet I cannot convey
All that which I mean to.
To you.