*** I haven't written prose for years but I found a scrap of paper in my desk drawer with the opening two sentences on and I felt really inspired ***

...And all that happened was that it imminently dawned upon me that you can't find solace in a single person, nor can you seek completion in something as incomplete as yourself. The metallic bite of this statement lingered in my mouth as I lay, defeated.

That had been the whole point of this adventure; discovery of self, self-sufficiency etc etc etc until I begin to sound like an upper-class art student who is "just so damn oppressed by this capitalist haven". But, with only twenty dollars left in my battered jeans, I realised that I'd spent a stupid amount of money pretending I was Jack Kerouac, forgetting in my excitement that my life was not a novel.

I laughed to recall the lonely motel nights, surfing the web for cool things to do in whatever city I'd happened to end up in, then sighing and watching a straight-to-DVD movie, trying to find poetic meaning in the static of the cable channel. Trying to avoid my own company as the walls stared back, blank with apathy and the sunlight reluctantly crept in, worrying that it had disturbed the perfect "woe-is-me" cliché that I had created.

For alas, no police stations did I sit tempestuously in, cold coffee and panda eyes. No buses did I flirt my way onto for free. I learned a lot about independence... I'm grateful to myself for that, but I also learned that as much as you may want to, you cannot crawl back inside yourself to escape from the ghosts that hide in the canvas metropolis of your soul. I discovered that I wasn't trying to find myself at all, I was trying to lose myself amongst neon glares and catcalls and kamikaze bars... I almost succeeded.

However. When I least expected it, feeling the epitome of smug liberation, the essence of who I am would creep back to me across sticky nightclub floors. The least gentle reminder of the jigsaw puzzle pieces I had strewn from bar to flat to cab to park. The "burnt-coffee" smell of realisation that I was actually just as dependent, flawed and insecure as everybody else who pretended they were ok being alone. But that's fine.

You were the ache in my bones

That carried me disorientated
Until 4am
Blinking bewlideredly
At the flickering matchstick face

Tell me how

Tongues can be barbed

Worse than any fence you ever scaled

And emptiness can cut

I missed that pain

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/12894817/?claim=mc7hk3whmxb">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

I was drunk when I wrote this

And you can't connect the dots
She's milk white and blood black
All ragged edges and smooth planes

I think you just lost your wing mirrors, old chap.
Your focal point is off-centre
Your blind spot: the thin red line of deceit

Give my love to your family
I'm sure they're nice people

When your plans with friends turn to shit - UNFINISHED

We pass through dusk, nonchalant shoulders tilted
Too soon, the colour drains from the street
Extremist pamphlets reign upon your shutters
The house longs for new friends.

The night makes the floorboards creak.
Anticipating, we turn to dust
Whilst the ghost face of the wind
Meets our rattling window panes

We become ash-grey
Skin bouncing off moonlight
Radiating hollowed eyes and hair,
Transformed into a mass of sleeplessness curls.

And so we sit, 2am
Devoured by expectation
Drinking tea
Listening to the flicker
Of black and white film

2 minute writing exercise - 3:23 AM.

"

I shot lasers through my veins
To crush the war under my skin
That began when you left

That scrap of purple moonlit paper
Was all that remained
Of all we were

Some people dream of outer-space
But the only space I want
Is within the circle of your arm
Where an army of goosebumps rise
Regimental under your touch.

"

Innocence//Experience

"

If I were able to count using
Every cell on my burning skin
I still could not count
The number of times
That I have thrown myself
In a purposeless heap
Onto your unwashed bedsheets

Nor could I count
The number of times that
I have gagged on the porcelain crotch
Of the toilet bowl
The shower blasting
To conceal my moans

There are multitudes of
“3:35am and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life”
They creep behind my shuttered lids
Whilst I shiver in the unheated box
Of my cold water flat
They refuse to rise and be counted

Really, who could blame them.

"

Ode to My Shrinking Friend

“

You’ve been living too fast recently my dear and I hate being the one who helps you out of some stranger’s funky smelling bed sheets, who forces you to look in the mirror, forces you to look past the fading eye make up and bed head and to look at your sunken cheeks, the lack of vitality - or even feeling - in your eyes.

And I know it’s hard because we all want to squeeze ourselves into a life different from our own and convince someone enigmatic and mysterious that we are equally enigmatic and mysterious.

And I know you hate who you are when you’re strewn amongst last night’s abandoned hopes with your dress hitched up around your hips and some guy telling you to shut up because your crying turns him off.

And I know it’s hard to be yourself when you loathe who you are but I love you. And I want you to let me in and allow me to neutralise this acid that corrodes your biting heart and I need you to let me soothe those singe marks left upon the delicate fibres of your soul, the artwork of people who aren’t even worth a second glance.

So for one night, throw away your inhibitions and come roll down hilltops with me and we’ll swing in the playground and dance furiously to High School Musical like we used to at school discos, dizzy and giggling because 9 o'clock felt like the end of the earth. Hell, I miss seeing that smile.

”

Tree

“Tree, I stand.

Abandoned by square shaped eyes
Burning with apathy
The flickering ‘grams
And the deep curl of bass
Thundering down oil slicked flagstones.

Tree.
No feet caress your proud carriage
That carried, life
Into the lungs of those
With the fairy dust eyes
And the sleep shuffled hair
Sitting by the glare
Of flickering picture
Neurone destroyer”