Rough

I have killed

As a fifteen year old youth I worked in the local slaughter house, earning pocket money for the summer holidays, picking up enough cash for Friday nights at the YMCA. A discotheque where I splashed on Brut aux de cologne before it became a mass consumer commodity. I splashed on scent to cover up the stench of blood and sweat, and fear; the fear of the cornered sheep who knew, from the ambient noise and the putrid smell, that it's time would very soon be up.

My time also done. The highly flighty young girls entirely unimpressed with my disk jockey selections of Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa et al. They breezed off to more soulful & romantic liaisons; who knows even to find a little bit of rough.

Not that the rough boys ever worked the slaughterhouse; no, mostly the rough boys were cowards and bullies, synthetic tough guys with no real fibre or backbone, or steel in their makeup.

They were the sort of boys who worked best in gangs, or who took their strength from their weapons of choice. The sort of young men who might have tried it on with me, until they heard that already I was a killer

I had killed before

All of that was a long time ago. I only mention it now, as we collectively undress.

More as a point of disclosure, to let you know of what I was once capable. It took a while to learn to stand up to bullies. Perhaps less time to move on to the more expensive aromatics. I hope that gives you some certainty, perhaps increases your expectations, of my future intentions.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on Kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Reclamation Yard

I could believe, if I wanted to, that with all those gulls in the silver, white and grey sky, then the sea could easily be over the horizon.

You might choose to share this thought-stream, from the evidence of your own personal vista. Pray tell of your unique, over the top dreams, themes, dramas, and convictions.

There are times when I could be embarrassed, there are occasions when I need to find a place to hide.

Not out here though, not beneath the bare trees that rest beside the canal, along the snow covered path, that might easily never end. 

You might choose to walk with me for a while, have fun seeing your own breath, inhale the smoke from the silage-stacked fires, and gaze down the endless corridor of limes.

There are those times when you may be embarrassed, those intemperate occasions, when you may need to find a place to hide.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on Kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Highway

First the door

Then the carriage

From the almanac

Coupled in marriage

Rope filled thoughts 

Thoughts that ravage

Scavengers rustle

Down the unlit passage

An interior tussle

Dark with damage

All Freudian slips to

Psycho micromanage

Trips born in haste

Vain with baggage

Powdered tufts

Acrid as cabbage

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on Kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Pittance of Troubles

Insecurity and insincerity stand side by side at the gatepost. The CD player's drawer will not open.

Another nail, in the mid life, late life, risible crisis coffin. It doesn't amount to much does it; the result of a technical fault combined with low blood sugar levels.

Does anyone really believe, or are these just words. Just how long should the endurance be measured to satisfy the title of believer, and thus to be endowed with the moniker of an altogether satisfactory chap. 

Not at all to my satisfaction, no news yet from the car insurance, a dull wet mist to look out on.

The beat from Jim Moray might beat me back to life, as equally well might reading Romantic Moderns.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on Kindle by clicking the highlighted links

And So I Write

There is sadness, is that not one of the reasons I go there. Four down beats to every five beat bar, or five to every seven on an upbeat kind of day.

Beats and bars and sweet sorrowful music to coincide with the tides ebb and flow; compelled by what's lost and what's not to be. To tell the truth how can we be swell yet at the same time dwell on the past presented by itself.

There is hurt and pain, it is more than one half of what drives me. The coiled spring that energises the clock when otherwise all time seems spent.

There are imaginary postulations, which if revealed would for sure embarrass me. I also need to find places, to hide those moments of half-belief in ridiculous implausible situations and coincidences.

These are daydreams of indiscrete circumstances. Premeditations created with wilful invitations. Invitations which are often, in my mind, super-sensorially accepted.

All this holds at bay the clear and final closure; yes there is upset, the infinite concentration and distillation of years of personal doubt.

Yet to give this up, to give up this past, to offer it to flame is no more or no less than a partial personal cremation. It is too big an ask of this one person.

Fires rise, flames die away, embers glow until the rains come, but our embers, hey continue to glow way beyond the rainfalls.

There is the mouth’s sour taste of waste; what a place to take the case to tribunal. There to face the rights and wrongs, to sing the songs of good and bad, across pontius pilate's plate of contemplative pebbles.

One stays quiet, even with the most direct attack. Clearly more had broken down than could be in  one mind entertained. That stream of bile on the journey north, what had been done to deserve this, surely tiredness can only accept one part share of blame.

I too am tired, tired of all the unease that surrounds me. It is as though I am at the kernel of tiredness, the core of the earths negative energy.

And so I write, with coloured pens. I listen to artists in colourful conversation. I choose purple as my new seasons colour. I re-engage with paisley patterned cotton shirts, resplendent in their tones of blues and berries.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on Kindle by clicking the highlighted links