A collection of poetry alongside photographs I took. I wanted to do a follow up to Vanishing Point for quite some time and, finally, this is it. To anyone who gives it a read, thank you. Please be aware that many themes are visited in this booklet including some which may be considered uncomfortable.
download for free at palaceofnero.com
Note: This is an HTML text-only version of a pdf booklet.
The booklet contains a lot of imagery and is the recommended way to read these poems.
click here for the Red Light & Rain .PDF
another dollar, the worst thing you can ever be is someone else, red light and rain, when you leave, the bells at the harbour, glass girl, what im thinking about, obligation, ode to the nhs, you make me, if god made me right, don't touch the grass, nettles on knees, the tilt, a word that's me, i get small, people like to say, poem from a dying world, i love you, inhuman, malignant thoughts, angel you, NEVERBE, pasta haiku, ive.loved, glimpses of life, a confession, stuck, 2am and 200mg THC, one long night, shapes in the fog, when you were sick, l'amour vache, the climb, states of being, laser light, faulty parts
five o'clock- you're let out of your pen,
and the voice in your head starts to sing:
black out, black out, black out.
your pocket glows- it's your mother's voice,
but you've never known it to be kind.
ignorance finds its rhythm when truth hurts to hear.
spend your life with the seconds second guessed,
or spend it trying to avoid the inevitable,
you'll reach the same conclusion either way:
nobody gets out of life alive.
when the day is done and your farewells finished,
you'll crawl back home in a gentle daze
and stagger slowly up the stairs
towards an empty bed that you may or may not reach
before you pass out into sleep's blissful vacuum:
but only if you're lucky.
because when the sun is down and the streetlights dim,
thoughts will creep and worm their way
into painful places against your will
forcing you to maybe, possibly, conceivably start to realise
that the worst thing you can ever be is someone else:
leaving behind another day untrue to you.
when you leave,
i listen out for your train
as it echoes like a heartbeat
getting further away.
wind and waves make quiet music with the buoy bells at the harbour
in a moment that she alone will ever know and alone will ever lose.
she listens with the solemnity of a priest taking the confession of a dying man
with a list of sins that demands more time to explain than he has left.
before her, fickle lamplight scatters over the discordant waves
in an unwinnable struggle to mark down its place in the world.
the pubs are empty and the punters safely tucked into their beds,
leaving these cobbled streets to the festivities of rats, starving and mad.
times like these are dedicated to that which can no longer exist anywhere else.
before the sun rises, she is gone.
glass girl
whose soul shatters so easily.
try and see her,
don't look through her.
she's good for very little
so treat her very gently
if you have the patience.
she certainly can't save you
and might not even be worth it
but that doesn't mean
she loves you any less.
sipping cold coffee as the rain pounds against my window,
and i'm thinking about you.
strolling through the suburbs at night with nowhere to go,
and i'm thinking about you.
being jostled by the movements of the two forty five train,
and i'm thinking, i really fucking love you.
you have no obligation to make anyone else happy
but if you're really just doing what's best for yourself,
it will be the smiles on other people's faces that let you know.
as a kid
i used to think i was a robot
and that if you cut open my arm
like, really deeply
you'd find wires
sometime later-
i got some solid proof that i was wrong
but i felt less human than ever
persistence is key- i know it's true-
so i limp out of bed and into clothes
to spend another day at the hospital
and another twenty on taxi fares,
and another anxious wait in the lobby,
with another disappointed trip home
where i hide my tears from the driver
after a five minute meeting with a medical menace
who seems convinced i can keep living this way
but who never bothers to look into my eyes-
cut short as she takes a phone call
and gestures swiftly towards the door.
even now, i am in pain.
'we will contact you in the next three weeks,'
which is code for six months of uncertainty,
and thoughts of death come flooding back.
you pay for my tits and
my curves and
all of my hope and
you make me
what i should be and
as you want me and
i am yours and
happy to be your doll
if god made me right
well, if god made me right
i'd be barefoot in the kitchen
of someone i didn't love-
knocked up for the fourth time,
and knocked out in the evening.
don't touch the grass
that lies mangled on your lawn,
run your hands instead through the wild grasses
that are bejeweled with dandelions and daisies
that nest in patches between trees and bushes
that are tickled by the wind's gentle breeze
that travels from afar across land, sea, and sky
that stretches away into icy feathers of cloud
that smile down the light of the setting sun
that streams through and blesses the earth
that provides for creatures both big and small
who sing their songs of love around you
and remind you of humanity's place in nature.
nettles on knees, hands for holding,
love hit you like a closed fist kiss
and sets your whole body off-balance.
something is stabbing you in the heart!
but if it fills a desperate void of longing
with a deep and beautiful aching
that makes you want to write poetry
about how he puts his arms around you
at 3am, to give you a shoulder to cry into
without a second of judgement or resignation-
let it swallow you up, and let it hurt.
when we finish talking, i always want to die-
you make me so happy that i feel like shit.
you're the problem and the fix, the sickness and the cure;
a brilliant light that eats me whole,
and spits me out with an aching soul.
and there are a million words that i could say to you-
to mend a moment of this pain in my heart.
i could tell you the ways you twist me up inside, the ways i fucking need you;
but before the night is up and done,
i won't have squeaked out a single one.
if you gave me a sentence to describe myself,
i'd take a word and then let you keep the rest.
that word would be a short one-
in the simplest font style i can find-
in the tiniest point size available-
small.
when you praise me
or berate me
i shrink down for you
i get small
when you walk past me
or look me in the eyes
i shrink down for you
i get small
and if a stranger sees me
i get small
and if i have to speak
i get small
and if i have a desire
or a feeling
or a need
i shrink it down
and i get small
people like to say im doing better
and when im getting things done, i tend to agree
but people like to say a lot of things.
people have said i landed on my feet
and when i look down at my toes, i tend to agree
but people dont know how carefully im balanced.
people claim ive gone up in the world
and when i look out the window, its hard to deny
but people talk about all kinds of shit
and i havent been asked what i think.
remember who these men want dead
to know why we turn their wishes around.
some things can never be innocently said
if they aim to put people in the ground.
when laws make lives impossible to live
each new rule becomes a violent deed.
the suffering of others is only easy to forgive
when you're not next in line to bleed.
don't shake your head at the thought of dissent
or mistake your comfort for peace on earth.
if others struggle while you stay content
it will soon become clear what you are worth.
ily. i need you- i do.
but you wedged a bullet in those three words and shot me dead.
ily. i need you- and you know this, you do.
but that doesn't mean that you know the rest of it.
ily. i need you. i love you- it's true.
i just wish you'd said it back sooner.
certain sights and slight sounds, little words and lucid moments,
they're all the reminder i need that i will never be fully human.
there's a correct way to be come to this world,
an exact way to exist, and a right way to rest in peace,
a human order to toil under even if the world beyond has none,
and definitions to live by no matter how thin the idea of truth-
no, i'm not human at all.
a tragedy might happen once but will always last forever,
worming its wicked way through your every endeavor.
you'll learn very quickly that there's no hiding or running,
when the ways it will hurt you are always too cunning.
so no matter how sudden or silly your trauma's birth,
the day you escape will be the day you're in the earth.
find distractions- if you can, and lessen the pain- maybe,
but we both know you'll be back to crying like a baby.
angel of my heart, you
and i saythis gently, you
and i say this with love, you
you break me apart
it is all very simple:
NEVERBEAPROBLEM
NEVERBEABOTHER
NEVERBEACHORE
NEVERBETOOLOUD
NEVERBETOOBIG
NEVERBETOOHAPPY
NEVERBETOOSAPPY
NEVERBEANYTHING
burning the pasta
breaking down in tears again
on the kitchen floor
ive.loved everyone ived loved but
andim typing with frozen fingertips but
whetyer ive made the righgt choices
illnever know but
assumingi have(i mean i haeve to)
that's pretty dqmn sad
Metal on metal outside while I was by the window by the fan its a good one considering the heatwave and the sound was irritating annoying even if rhythmic made me wonder what he was doing seemed to be trying to smash through a bike lock it was about 2am and it was strange it would be his bike but to steal something so loudly would be brazen though that’s a whole strategy I suppose could be a kind of master thief as even everyone just walked him by like the people stumbling home from the bars drunk and screaming slurs at one another I can never truly tell whether or not its friendly but its in any case strange to hear from ones own home and makes me wonder if im missing out on anything though I know thats strange too its just all I wanted to be was everybodys honey and all I managed was to be convenient and maybe less so everyday because the world kind of passes you by when youre shy and moreso when your leg is so fucked you can barely walk but last night I dreamt I could stand on my own two feet as easily as anything no pain at all and I could even go for a run if I want and I think this makes me miserable I need one of those hugs people only ever give you when you can cry but if I cant then Ill be waiting forever theres a car blaring the most unbearable music now so at least someone is happy but Im not sure they realise people are trying to sleep around here not that I am and there really are glimpses of life everywhere I look I just dont want all of them to be someone elses.
i've never been rejected much in my life
but it's only because i've never tried much worth doing.
if you drown out all aspirations beyond becoming a wife,
your world shrinks until it's just who you're screwing.
scrapped:
[it's really not that i'm shallow- more so that i'm frightened
to walk too proudly through a world made for strangers.
a single wrong move will kill you once the noose is tightened
and even the most careful lives are packed with dangers.]
i needed to be somewhere else,
and the doors sealed themselves shut.
i needed the freedom to move,
and the walls closed in towards me.
i needed to be someone else,
and i could feel my body grow larger.
i needed to think other thoughts,
and the ceiling moved down an inch.
i needed to scream and cry,
but i could barely breathe anymore.
high as fuck and cleaning someone else's vomit off the floor
the doctor says i already have a knee in the grave
and i never wanted to be a grown man's mother
when i never got to be a little girl.
when i passed through the first village, there were so many lights that i gave no thought to the number. the night was dark and the path ahead was long and winding. as i had no idea where this journey would end for me, i was determined not to risk wasting any time by stopping to look around. lantern by my side, i kept putting one foot in front of the other at a steady pace.
in the next village there were fewer lights, but still i paid them no mind. a few people here or there doesn't make much of a difference. the village still felt pretty much the same as the last one. i raised my lantern high and continued down the road, knowing i could not stray from it.
as the villages grew darker and darker, quieter and quieter, i only focused more on nurturing my own light. the darkness was giving me chills but i felt like there was a lot of distance left to cover. i could not even think about stopping.
eventually there were very few signs of life at all, and none that reached out to me, just a handful of faint glimmers in the dark. i started to wonder who they were and how they lived.
now i reach a village that is all but pitch black. my loneliness takes on a new shape that creeps over me that whispers: drop your lantern!
but my feet move on their own
when its dark out,
im talking three or four am in winter,
and im out walking in the cold
and i look over the water
where theres this low fog obscuring everything
so you cant tell where the horizon is
like its some kind of closely guarded secret
and youve got to fill in the gaps
yourself
then i start to imagine
all kinds of things
that could be hiding out in there
like creatures with appendages defying any description,
giants with metal arms to sock each other with,
men on boats shovelling the islands into place,
and im wondering
if i can see anything that might match
what some dark age peasant could see
on this same vista,
and if a thousand years from now
there's anyone else checking it out too.
when someone is sick
and they wake you up with their screaming
it's hard to make it about yourself
but hey, i will:
i was so afraid of losing you
i was so afraid of being alone
and i couldn't say a thing
when you were dying
and i felt your cancer burning my palm
it wouldn't have been right to say anything
but now, i can:
my days were full of grief
my head was full of needles
and i loved you all the same
when it was all over
and life began to return to normal-
well, fuck:
i'm not sure it did.
with pistol boots and a bullet necklace
gunning down the street i love where
i saw a man die/ i saw so much life
you can take your pick with this one.
hearts racing for good and for bad
in a hundred different accents,
beautiful balconies of wrought iron
artistry hanging above my head as
blood pools under someone else's,
and the sun is shining so so warmly
that it feels like a loving embrace.
every sudden sound puts me on edge
but then every smile sets things right,
and i can truly do nothing to fight
this strange affection.
('red light and rain' and 'the climb' were derived from the same draft)
i've scrounged for better, seen how high i can climb,
let my flesh become tainted with all the world's grime.
a mountain of hurdles, both fearsome and vast,
and i've tried my best- done all that was asked.
yet when i look down, it's just a place from before
and i've failed to get away from the things i abhor.
there's broken asphalt underneath my feet,
lonely moonlight scattered across the street,
and i, all of me, am just part of the scenery:
a captive cog in the universe's machinery.
the girl on her way home from school where she will discover her father lying half-dead in a pool of his own urine
the boy cutting ribbons of rubies into his arm just to feel some kind of control in a world forever indifferent to him
the woman making herself look pretty for an unfaithful lover who will never live up to what he pretends to be
the kid crying because they went another day at school without making a single connection with a hope of sticking
the man using a streetlamp to keep himself upright as a drug induced haze threatens his body with total collapse
a crowd of people listening helplessly to screams that echo out of a burning building as they feel the heat lick their faces
they all breathe in, they all breathe out,
and how wonderful it is to still be anything.
(i'm a) sexless whore in scattered laser light
dancing harder than the intrusive thoughts
a six foot tall woman removes her bra
and a stranger's sweat hits my skin
step to the right and step to the left and
step outside myself again
i built myself using faulty parts
and then counted down to malfunction
five, four, three, two-
i never thought i would last long enough
to regret my self-destruction.
© Palace of Nero (palaceofnero.com)