Just When You Thought You Got It Made

Well I’m here once more. I made it across the first relay point and a stuck up girl in a pleated grey skirt and nylon knickers has just passed me some kind of stick she calls a baton. I’ll take it, run with it anyway, though I’m not convinced of what this race is for, or why I am in it ( I always hid in the cloak room in P.E.). And my phone beeps on my desk like a needy child. Bless and blast, I’ll break this skull a hundred times before the night is through.

So here’s where I’m at: what yesterday permeated the horizon, filling it with colour so intense it threatened only joy, with time and hesitation, today begins to take on spectral proportions. So I have realised I must take uppermost care to spill my guts with regular abandon in this ere forum of hope, else it’s the chop for me…you see, its that morning after syndrome, it’s the worst kind of hangover. One day you’re wittling away with your pen, and you’ve somehow managed to touch the fucking fabric of all that ever mattered, all that ever could be created in one precious, glorious stretching finger towards humanity, within a chain of words which follow each other all the way home, you’ve solved the puzzle, ridden the riddle, broken the sound barrier and landed back inside vision like a meteor on the moon. It is a living miracle. Next thing, the tea is brewing, the shoes have come off and you look at what came from this bright stain of inspiration and, well, the terrible question rises like indigestion in your chest: is it, well, mmm, is it, really all that good? Does the earth really move for you and anyone else? Failure lands like a tripped up postman on your doorstep, letters all blowing to the local winds.

     So I have written this in defiance against all the time i've wasted worrying about such nonsense that plays havoc with my vulnerability, to give myself a firm talking to, as I'm a sucker for perfectionism and it never did me no good.

oh-but-oh-
there they go
out the door
here we are again
back to counting the pennies
and the driving test with the L-plates on,
and waiting in the queue
for ugly school dinners,
back to tea on your lap
and missing the end of Eastenders.
back to masturbation and misery.
back to Manchester,
back to the hidden.
back to clichéd clare,
zombied frenzy killer queen…

she little girl lost in the woods
with a crazed piano?
NO? she horror score writer
with her eye on the trigger?
NO? she a black force
in a terrible night
of ardour and small vapour?
NO? she a gig and a triumph
and a fully stocked larder?
NO? is she a crumpled sheet
without even any stains to honour?
NO. is she crimson?
is she Welsh and proud for once?
is she a titan or a muse?
forever baking bread at the witching hour,
she never even got this far
and she’s
none of those tiredly things,
she is splendid
fired up on crystal rings
and barbequed angel wings.
hey!
i just saw a play!
it goes: she think she one,
but that just ‘cos she think she is-
she become just that
when she is TWO,
she is not twat.
she is Two and she CAN
live like that,
stretched out beauty on a harpsichord,
and I’ve seen her floating in
a star spun nightly glass ceiling,
i have seen her moving on the
sheeted dance floor screaming
like wretched of desire
and tumble blazing afoot in it all…
so why all small?
why small girl who want to be tall?
why tall girl embarrassed to not be
more small?
why big feet too little,
little feet too large?
why ever-present witchcraft
hovering over gold-spun head?
trust yourself girl.
you’ve spluttered up way too much blood
for one
two three lifetime.

it’s never perfect enough?
and it never will be.
not got no ending?
it never will have.
and
that, my girl
is what you big enough to live on
if you thought on it enough…

you are big enough
(but you think yourself
a small tepid whitish thing)

and that never blew you out of
the Carolina water.
that never made you a star.
He said:
EGO DID IT
Ego made it SOAR.

and I don’t want him go alone in Abyssinia.
i miss the nights
and the absinthe
and that gun-shot
through a
hotel wall..