Rough Mouth

Let’s cut it loose,
Slow it down
Ditch it, smack it, stop it
In it’s
Fucking tracks

Is that the only muscle that works,
Connected to your mouth but not
Your brain
Running on vapors but still running on

We’re all tired of being your back up plan
So three cheers for plan C
As we sidle away and take our wet blades
To the whetstone
Waiting

For you to turn around
It doesn’t have to be like this
We’re far from perfect
All of us

But we’re trying so hard
Bless us, anoint us
Let the sarcasm wash over us
Baptised and beloved by the patronising prophets

Sometimes simply living is hard enough
With the stresses and pressures we’ve created
Our qualifications hang round our necks like
Metaphorical seabirds

Still alive, screeching and flapping
Violently against our chests
Their shit running onto our shoes
Staining the cheap leather

Yet still the laughter rings out,
Caws out, clucks out
Get the fuck out of here and leave us
All alone, every last one of us

We’re cold, we’re poor but we’re happy
Or would be if we could just focus and
Count our blessings
Without that tongue clicking, clacking
Against the roof of your rough mouth

Chanting, chiding about how we should all
Feel a little less than fulfilled
An overqualified, inexperienced and indebted generation
Saddled with expectation and
Sidelined through no fault of our own

So raise your glass to repression
Block it out, blunt the daggers
Flip the coin and grin as the regent’s silhouette
Lands, facing up

I Am Shazzamo

Lyrics to I Am Shazzamo by The Fall Of Science

There’s nothing left to say
Except the obvious, the empty
The erudite one lies and squirms

We’re searching, we’re hoping
For something to save us
There’s still nothing left

As the truth has been revealed
And the tables have been turned
This distance brings me falling to my knees again

When elegy becomes memory
Shazzamo, they’ll never know

We’re becoming sentient
Soulless machines; breathing, bleeding
Knee deep in apathy

As the truth has been revealed
And the tables have been turned
This distance brings me falling to my knees again

If it makes you smile, I would say these words to you
And if it makes you smile, I would end this life tonight

Hey emptiness, this is our salute
To every breath, to every tear
You made it real;
The beauty of loving you

You don’t have to suffer,
You don’t have to see this to the end

Ethereal

Lyrics to Ethereal by The Fall Of Science

So hold tight baby
And you’ve never been so quiet
Yours was the loudest voice at her funeral
You’ve never been this quiet

I’ve tried so many times
And failed to make you see
But I’ll be here, emptying my lungs
Until I cease to breathe

You can’t be true to me
And you’re looking at me trying
To show me sorrow
And I can’t breathe
And I cannot breathe

When every word you uttered
Stands to be a fragile lie
Then the people left behind
Will finally bare their teeth

For this life we lead through
Disbelief I will crown you the pointless fool

I guess something had to shake you to the core
Something had to squeeze a tear
From those turquoise eyes

No you can’t be true to me
And you’re looking at me trying
To show me sorrow
And I can’t breathe
And I cannot breathe

December Update

Good evening everyone.
Just a quick update to apologise for the lack of posts lately. At this time of year it can be difficult to find the time to just sit and write. I guess i’m quite content in life at the moment too and satisfaction is the death of desire.

Swannui and Cygnus (for sale in bookshops in Beccles) featured 23 poems, a compendium spanning several years. There were poems which I had written aged 16, sat in class in sixth form, procrastinating in an English lesson. There were poems i had written just weeks or even days before (Meander was written as i was formatting the PDF). A 9 year selection of poetry can show an evolution but also can seem muddied and inconsistent.

I’ve now written 21 poems towards my second book. My second collection will feature 25 poems, all written since the release of Swannui and Cygnus earlier this year. It will be considerably longer, deeper and perhaps less conventional than my earlier work; often Swannui and Cygnus poems bore the mark of the eager university student seeking his tutor’s approval. I shall try to release the second book early next year, for myself if for noone else. I need to write parts 2 and 3 of The Merfoxiad and a couple more.

I’m sure i’ll write a long background post about The Merfoxiad soon enough but for now check out parts 1 and 4 under the New Poems tab of this site.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading. I mean that, really thank you for reading any of my work. It is great that you took the time. Far too many apathetic people.

How are you guys all doing?

Inspiration

Inspiration is not a river, nor a stream
There is no constant trickle of ideas
It is neither an ebb nor a flow
Inspiration is a small spark

From a single match, a single discarded cigar
Taking hold of a forest, searing the sequoia
And then
Gone

A spark, a small spark
Yet the mind needs nourishment
Much like anything else
It wilts, it flops, flaccid into itself
An implosion

Caused by mass media news and junk television
Feed it Dickens, Tolkien, Keats, Yeats
Chekhov, Ovid, Blake, yes even Blake
I’ll never love your little lamb, Sir, but you stirred me up
And feeling like shit is at least feeling something
I tip my hat towards Gothenburg

Not true writers; musicians, the professors clamour
As they strive to root out some great mystery in every
Single, metric, foot, as though, Shakespeare buried
Some great secret in Coriolanus
And you could be the one to break his code
Now, come on Sir, perhaps he just wanted to use a full
Fucking
Stop
Right there.

Oh and then Marlowe, what a man can achieve in some short
Thirty years
Is enough to confound as much as admire
If a few glasses break over my thick skull some day soon
I hope some whining fool is writing odes to me
In four hundred years time

Though I’d settle for four hundred days
Now, Poe, America’s finest, many might argue
Yet you chilled my bones, as you buried her alive
In a crypt by the tarn

And moving back, Dante, hell you’ve got some nerve
Some verve, and a ponderous verse
Call upon Virgil and imply his approval
When he is but dust and his Rome a memory

If i chose a guide through this, by my side
I know of one man I would take
Though he wanders through the dark now himself
He’ll never walk alone as he stands guard atop the walls
The abbey, in red, will always live with me
So, Sir Jacques, I bid you your rest

And so what if elves became otters and dwarves were just mice
Great Gilgamesh proved that a cliche, a story told twice
Can ignite millions
Move them to love or incite to hate

So whether you live long with whiskey in hand
Then tube in your throat, defiant to the end
Or let it wash atop you and be overwhelmed
With stones in your pockets, barefeet in the riverbed

Inspiration drives us, us artists, us fools
Tonight I lay Dostoyevsky aside
I feel far too much like Raskolnikov
Yet half as smart