The Journal of a Disappointed Man

I slip and slide through my life, trying to get a grip on the rail. I'm grasping in the dark for a switch that'll turn on some almighty bright white light and thus, illuminate the way, the path, make everything clear as day. And every breath I take seems to be quickly rolled up behind me and filed away in memory. Only a particular scent or dose of weather can pinprick the past and even then, the drawer opens flirtatiously for just a moment. 

I have lost touch with everyone I went to school with, everyone in the village where I spent most of my formulative years, everyone I went to college with, everyone I ever worked with. They too, are filed away, often angrily slamming the drawer behind them, over something I said or something I didn't say. 

My lovers cannot be traced. I know. I've tried. I've taken trains to their cities and stood on street corners in the miraculous off-chance that they might wander by. But each time, I have returned home, defeated and had to force myself to sleep so that my heart didn't kill me. 

I began my autobiography at 23 years old, with the intention that I wouldn't live 'til 25. But I'd done nothing, loved no-one, said nothing of any great importance by that time. The journal of a disappointed man. 

I took a position at the Natural History Museum but left after only 3 months due to allergies. Whilst deluding myself that I could reinforce the scientist's power of detached analysis with a poetic intensity, I would cough up my guts on the glass that held the giant stuffed man-o-war. I had a gift of incisive and candid comment, but I failed to ignite it when faced with the apple-cheeked Irish girl who served the tea in the basement canteen. Drunk most nights, in the Black Swan on Canal St, I would attempt to put my own complicated nature under the microscope of a beer glass. I walked home alone, opening the air with bolshy, slurred dictums against religion, ethics, love and life itself. 

Lonely, penniless, paralysed by the guilt of never having told my father I loved him, I wander hospital corridors, posing as a visitor. I have wept, enjoyed, struggled and overcome but I remain disappointed.

Piano Magic

You never loved this city

 Make haste, the light is fading 

The traders turn the sign 

The clouds are lost to darkness 

The bars they spring to life 

You never loved this city 

But angel, it loves you 

Your smile, a roman candle 

Your eyes a Prussian blue 

 Beware, the crack of lightning 

Three miles but drawing near 

The first rain blacks the pavement 

The birds, they disappear 

And in the doorway, lovers 

They share a cigarette 

Below, the rush of gutter 

Above, a silhouette 

You never loved this city 

But angel, it loves you 

Your smile, a roman candle 

Your eyes are Prussian blue 

I never loved this city 

But you can keep me here 

Your love, a stained glass window 

Your heart, a chandelier 

Piano Magic

The Blue Hour

 

The clouds, they go their way

With indifference to us

A melancholy light

The ghost of Summer past

The moon relieves the sun

Across the evening sky

And here we come undone

And here we say goodbye

 

Take the last kiss from my lips

Take the last look at my face

And then surrender all we have

Or I will never walk away

 

The whispers in the bough

Are but rumours on the wind

This love was never ours

And yet we took it in

The headstones mark the lost

Erased by time and tide

Ashes cast to sea

Blow back as memories..

Piano Magic