Late Night Train of Thought

Feverish dappled sunlight

streaks through the tunnel of my mind,

focused solely on its goal, and what it might find

buried deep within the recess of a faded, ancient process,

that old familial brain lapse

as i feel the clicking synapse

that forms the thoughts within my head.

Or so say the theories I have read.

So I sit, I wait, I wonder, watching

the world slide by, stare into the eternal

yonder, and realise I'm living a lie.

'Tis not the life I'd wished for, many moons ago;

No wife, no kids, no bills to pay,

nor nothing else to show

for these short few years my fuse has burned;

old age and regret are all I've earned.

When all is said and done, through battles lost and won,

there's little left to do, but pay off what is due.

With muscle soft and sinew flailing,

I feel my body aching, ailing,

and that which keeps my mind from failing

is the vision of a happy face, smiling

from some better place.

Some higher value there must be

in writing down all that we see,

and so we wander, seeking all,

until we learn of Kublai's fall,

and then Man's folly comes to roost,

wiping out our spark, our boost.

Creative edges, tho long blunted

by inaction,

strike one final, taut

reaction

to send synapses snapping,

and the 'modern poets' rapping.

Wading through this stagnant brine,

we search forlornly for lifelines,

until we are tossed a single rope

that we can cling to, and call

hope.

Search and Destroy

This is a monologue I wrote for a good friend of mine, who used it in an audition. At some point I want to expand it into a full-length piece, but for the moment this snippet shall suffice to satisfy those with shorter attention spans.


The narrator has been found hiding in the rubble of a collapsed building, and is being asked why she was there, if  she's infected, whether anyone else was with her, and how she got in: 

How?(cough) How did I get here?

Listen, I’d focus less on the how, and more on the why, if I were you. I’ve been hiding from the local mob. Twenty-four days I’ve been on the run, ever since the spill. Those of us considered unclean have been hounded, and ‘eliminated’, like the disease we carry. (cough) Breaking in is easy if you’re desperate enough. (hacking cough)

Why did twelve respectable people feel the need to flee? Ever since the event it’s been pollution this, infection that. Enough is enough. There’s a civil war going on outside, and all you lot do is sit there twiddling your thumbs waiting for a disaster so you can come with your stupid clipboards and ask your stupid questions.

The twelve of us, the lucky twelve who got away, knew we needed somewhere to hide, so we snuck in one night. They knew. They always know. Destroying the (cough) building was just an attempt to flush us out.

Anyway, how do I know you’re not one of them yourself? You may wear that uniform, but uniforms mean nothing now. Law, order, peace. Just words fluttering in the breeze.

Waiting (2009)

It is not easy, passing time, alone.

Clinging to lost hope's all I can do,

Waiting here, in vain, and all for you.

I know you'll not come back here when I call,

Nor yet be here to catch me when I fall.

And yet I wait, I stay here, just in case,

On the off-chance, I might still see your face

Prologue (c.2009)

I used to write fun stories, long and short,

But now I sit and wonder if I ought

To make more of the wond'rous gift of life,

And put an end to tragedy and strife.

Therefore I wield my pen- now is my time,

Though I know not what to say in so few lines.

My time is short, I have not long to last

Before my rhyme must be secured, made fast.

And so here goes, I'll dive in, pen in hand,

Dipping pink toes in an inky-blue sand.

Hello all, I reckoned it's about time for an update, so here goes:

It's been a pretty hectic and eventful few months, hence the maintainance of writerly silence on my side of things. My new job is taking a lot out of me creatively at the moment, but I'm endeavouring to get back on the metaphorical writing horse over the next few week(end)s.

In the meantime, I've dug up and re-work some of my older, as yet unpublished poems to upload for your aesthetic pleasure. I feel the messages and meaning of them are still pretty pertinent, even a couple of years down the line.

Enjoy.

T.U.M

Three Word Haiku

Labouriously
Pseudointellectual
Vocabulary

Unmentionable

Pain.

Shame.

Fear.

Tears.

I feel empty.

A horrible, vacuous, emptiness as I ask the inevitable question:

Why me?

Why did he have to do this to me? I love him, loved him.

Or thought I did, and knew he loved me.

Or thought he must.

But love isn’t lust.

That’s all he saw. Girl,

Twenty-four,

just another score

on his bedroom door.

An object of desire

to be fucked by the fire,

passion burning hot,

Whether she wants it or not.

I can no longer sleep, now I

sit here and weep,

Trying desperately to shape

that dreadful word:

Rape.

Blank Page

The blank empty page staring up at my face is fairly intimidating. How to behave? Do I scrawl, scrabble, stumble my way through the words, refusing to flow, off the end of my fingers? Fingertips dipped in inky blue, and all for you who cannot see the other me, behind the mask, this alias I create to hide my true identity, my real fate. A futile attempt to escape the dawning realities of reality, a life less lived, more existed in. And why? Why struggle, why fight, why bother to write? In a world of injustices, who needs more impotent commentary, more writers, less right? Surely the only way to proceed, to make amends and fix all that has gone before would be to take up arms ‘gainst the sea of troubles, and by opposition bring them to their end. Sending out the message of universal suffrage, equality for all, would prove more useful than all this previous drawl and drivel, driven by hidden, secret and ultimately selfish personal desires, those burning fires raging inside my soul, scorching through the empty hole that once stood for something real and true, something that connected me to you. Are these the rambling thoughts of a wandering mind, or the sort of questions you would find plastered upon the walls of the in-patients halls of the kind of asylum I used to reside in? Do you think I’m sane, or would you have them retain me? Every day I fight the demons sat in the back of my mind, wondering why I do nothing to battle the wrongs that I find. I struggle ever onwards through the pain, as my mind floats on high o’er vales and hills, fighting the vicious effects of these pills. THEY USED TO KEEP ME SANE.

And now I feel bereft, abandoned, alone and stranded, combating the psychosis biting thru my deeping ills. I am not long for this world, and head is filled with hurled and burled ideas of right and wrong, weak and strong, and with a passion to rise against the tyranny of oppression that is not taught in lessons. This is a rant, a rap, some poem, some prose, the likes of which acts as a metaphor, the meaning of which is to help us all strive for a better, freer, truer place, and prevent the boot from stamping on the human face.

The Showman, part one.

...‘Thank you, Hugh, for those few kind words. And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am about to perform something that has only been attempted once, and never successfully achieved in human history’. The tension mounts to an almost unbearable crescendo as the crowd falls silent. The air is thick with anticipation. My time to shine. ‘Just be sure you don’t miss, the last thing we want after all our hard work is a repeat of Moscow ’83.’ ‘Thank you Janet, I am well aware that the press would have a field day were we to repeat that catastrophe, and, as such, I have no intention of allowing it to happen’ I hissed scornfully into the mic at the pessimistic and frankly off-putting voice echoing through my head. I knew the drill, knew I had only one shot at deliverance. I had spent too long in the wilderness to jeopardise it all now. Eighteen years I had waited for my chance at redemption. Eighteen years of working cabaret circuits and comedy clubs, playing second fiddle on the bill to such luminaries as Jolting Joe and the Jamborees and Dave Knight’s Kickass Komedy. Do you know how that feels? Do you? To be truly, absolutely and completely out of the game, stranded in the stagnant backwaters of your profession, gasping for air, hoping it’ll all blow over. Do you?

 I was better than this. I was huge, or at least I had been. I had been: ‘Everybody’s favourite live act’ (The Sunday Times); ‘The supreme tour-de-force’ (The Arts Review);‘The greatest showman to grace this earth since Houdini himself’ (The Guardian). But I had done things poor Harry wouldn’t have even dreamed of, scaled heights no-one had ever achieved before or would again. I had played in the world’s biggest venues, sold out Wembley Stadium in ten minutes, had higher viewing figures than all of Ali, Tyson and Holyfield’s fights combined. I was the most recognised and universally adored face on the planet (I hesistate to use the word ‘celebrity’, since its recent total defamation has inverted its intended meaning). Then came the gig that was to corrupt my career and the rest of my life. I was witty, charming, erudite. Now I’m a total wreck, my confidence and ability sapped in that one, mind-numbing, bloodcurdling, spine-chilling second in Russia’s behemoth city.

Moscow, 19th May, 1983. 10.48pm. A moment I return to time and time again, one I can never escape. Each night it haunts me in my sleep. Each day I am reminded of it as I trudge about my daily existence, drinking to forget, and praying for salvation from my living hell, knowing that to end it all would be to vilify myself and abolish my legacy.

What follows is a lesson in life, and a guide on how to lose your family, your friends, your sanity, your wealth, your freedom, your faith in humanity, and everything else you hold dear. And all of this in the space of a single second.

What happened, you ask?

Well, in Moscow, on the 19th May 1983, at 10.48pm, live on stage, in front of a worldwide audience numbering in the billions,

I killed a man.

Overdue Bill [BTL]

Bill woke up, blinking hard in the fierce Arizona sunlight. It had all been a dream. ‘But’, he muttered internally, scraping the sleepy deposit from his eyes, ‘I felt it’. And he had. He had even seen the gun, held its cool metal in his clammy palm mere hours before. He’d also seen the small puff of smoke, and smelt the sickeningly sweet stench of fresh, newly ignited powder. He’d heard the earth-shattering ‘BOOM’ as the bullet ruptured the air with phenomenal velocity. And he had felt it. Felt the revolting thud as cold steel thwacked into warm flesh, piercing it with unprecedented ease. Felt it as it scraped its way through the maze that was his insides, grazing a lower rib or two on its way from entry to exit wound. Felt the life draining from his soul as blood gushed in rivers from his body, limp and lifeless long before it hit the floor.

And yet, here he was, 6.13 am the morning after the night before, and he was alive. Or, as alive as he would ever be, given his drug-distorted past and disreputable future. Either he had experienced the greatest recovery in medical history, or it had all been a dream. There was no other possible explanation, he thought as he clambered into his black Cadillac Seville and set off towards the blazing sunrise.

And then it hit him.

Between The Lines

I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past few weeks, and my lack of activity on here is probably a direct reflection of that. As a result of a couple of sleepless nights of furious inspiration and feverish writing, often caffeine-fuelled, I have come up with a series of short stories, essays, and reflections I'd like to group together as a coherent unit. Every now and then over the next few weeks/months I'll be uploading and updating these bits. Any piece with the prefix or suffix [BTL] can be considered part of this 'project'. I will confess that i do not entirely know where this will lead me, but I'm looking forward to leaping and discovering exactly where it is I land.

As always, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy my work, and please feel free to comment and advise!!

Cheers,
TUM

(The word 'coherent' may be woefully inaccurate, as I'll have to wait for the pieces to develop before I can comment on how effectively they fit together!!)

Love: the ancient enemy (*unfinished)

Love is a cliché, love is untangeable, love is a warm fuzzy feeling.

Love is all-consuming, a pesky sensation that eats away at your insides.

Love is life. Love is death. Sometimes literally.

Love comes in all shapes and sizes;

Passionate, caring, unrequited,

brief, long-lasting, re-united.

 Love is a battle with your senses, a fight drawn out against your instincts,

 the baser of which leave you begging for more-

more lovers, more love, and more and more.

We are all beasts rutting in enseamed beds,

our rank sweat running from our toes to our heads,

 not pausing for a second’s thought about the importance of the battles fought.

Love is not something that can be taught, its cause is fraught

 with perils the likes of which ought

discourage us from further thought-

of LOVE;

The ancient enemy, which wanders, lonely as a cloud,

 (and reminds us not to be too proud).

A curse for which the remedy is said to be most Heavenly.

As pure and gentle as a dove? No, not this evil we call LOVE.

The Refuge of the Page

Stutter.

Stammer.

Feel the heavy hammer

of vocal chords striking a tune unfamiliar,

a sound so peculiar

you wonder if you made it or heard it;

perceived? created? Or perceived creation?

Logos, centros, Derrida was right;

They say to speak, but I claim to write, is the nobler form, the upper way

to show our torn and tattered natures to a shorn and shattered world 

bereft of those who care,

left with those who share inane, insane, irrational ramblings,

strewn across the cyberspace we like to call home,

to which we must roam and vent our rage in theatrically absurd ways,

like loyal players upon a stage,

seeking the refuge of the page.

madness & me

The incessant whisper nagging at my door, the door to my soul. The sole purpose of the band striking up a tune for the final stand, crying god for Harry as they face volley & thunder. The thunderous applause of an audience so naïve & nuanced they cannot see the inevitable, onrushing collapse of society. Societal norms pushing outsiders to the edge, marginalising & labelling the mad. Madness, affected & performed by the deformed outsiders, the few who recognise a hawk from a handsaw. Scribbling, scrabbling, bubbling, babbling, the incessant whisper nags at my door. Dormant in most& for most of life, once awakened it wreaks a revenge most sour. Manic with desire  you’re pulled apart by the fire that burns a gaping hole through the lobotomised knoll to the sorry soul down below. These are the things I can no longer stand, the incessant nag, the futile war band, & the madness that defines, defiles, delineates eliminates & tugs at my very existence, daring me to write, as the only means of fight left in me, a final hope, a way perhaps to right the sins & woes of my life. & so here goes, I’ll dive in, pen in hand, dipping pink toes in an inky blue sand, & when the flames within are once more fanned by the rage built up inside, we’ll merely glimpse another chance of life , of an identity, the proposed, & therefore possible existence of a me beyond the ampers&.

New Moves

Good afternoon fine folk, and welcome once again into the inner musings of my mind.

So far, every post in this blog has been a piece of poetry. However, as a special treat for the new(ish) year, and because it happens to be the form my inspiration has taken lately, the next few submissions are likely to be more lucid and prose-esque, whilst (hopefully!) retaining their inherent poeticism. This is partly because I believe these rough-hewed forms best allow a thorough exploration of the issues dealt with, and partly to provide an insight into the thought processes involved in my poetry, as they are, in essence, pre-poems, the raw materials of a finished work, yet to be polished and refined. These outpourings are both emotional and intellectual dumps, similar in style to 'stream of consciousness' writing. They are, as I said, more 'thoughts' than finished articles ready to stand up to the full glare of the critical eye. And yet that is what I hereby choose to subject them to!

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them!!

The soul is the source we must retain

Adjust, adapt, re-interpret.

Mass produce and distribute.

In the midst of all this,

There lies inherent risk,

Of losing the creative spark,

Which makes all of this writing lark

Worth the suff’ring of indignant pain.

The soul is the source we must retain.

We cannot but recall our poesy’s root,

Lest we forget, or bid the soldiers shoot.

Vitae

Shifting, sifting, lofting, lifting,

Applications. Aspirations.

Dreams, hopes, prayers, for a future

Devoid of this despair.

The time has come, the game is up,

It’s time to get a life. No more

Mere games for this young pup,

Just struggles, grief, and strife.

Falling, failing, aiming, ailing;

The market is too bare.

The young lad’s sorrow

Haunts tomorrow, and no-one

Even cares.

Chin up, they say, the

World is tough, and only

Tough men prosper. We’re

All in the gutter, looking up, like

Poor, deluded Oscar.

Alas, cries he, this cannot be,

The world’s a grisly place.

Filled with the rank skulduggery,

 Writ large upon your face.

With that he strode toward his addressee,

And wordlessly disposed of his CV.

Curriculum vitae, aptly named, for that is what it takes.

The soul sucked out onto the page, to be read

 by a man with a Stonehenge face*, the product of    

a bygone age, in which men were men, and

women slaves, a tyranny, so warped

and twisted, that it ended in a blaze of  rage.

The Mirth of War

Once the foggy mirth of war

Has lifted from the bedroom floor, he

Finds himself at lone at last, ties a noose,

Makes it fast.

And climbes upon his hardwood desk.

As though stepping up to the batting plate,

He makes a decision about his fate,

Makes it fast.

Gasping, gaping, flailing, fighting

One sad mistake and now he’s frighting. The

Noose, so tight has cut his supply, lending

Poignancy to his desperate cry

For a help that never came

 in spite of all the Novocaine.

And there he dangles, limp and lifeless,

Left alone, child-and-wife-less.

A soldier in a far-off land,

Accidental hero of a fight,

Sufferer of an indignant plight

 that none could ever understand

CRASH. BANG. WALLOP (Taunton's Terrible Tale)

CRASH. BANG. WALLOP, the coaches used to say.

Crash, bang, wallop went the fireworks display

Which haunted and taunted the newly-tainted Taunton.

But they were not to know

The dangers of their show.

Crash, bang, wallop, a victim slowly dies,

Crash bang wallop, the natives close their eyes

Hearing only the casualties’ cries

Ringing out across a clear night’s sky.

Crash bang wallop, a nation mourns en masse,

Crash, bang, wallop, a truly awful crash.

You need not be in Taunton town

To taste this terrible waste, as,

Putting on a mournful frown,

Reporters cover the case.

The cops, they saw, are looking

Into the causes of the smash,

But blaming the RFC? To me,

That seems a little brash.

For they were not to know

The dangers of their show.

Crash bang wallop, the sounds fill me with dread,

Crash bang wallop, 51 injured, and 7 dead.

Those who saw and still survive

The atrocious scene on the M5

Will never forget the crash near Devon

Watching their loved ones ascending to Heaven.

If, as some are sure to claim,

It’s all a part of God’s great game,

And that He, in fact, set these people free,

Then ask, why them, not you, or me?

For tragedy is a thing, you see,

That cannot be explained

by turning to some deity,

No matter how well famed

his vengeful wrath may be.

Crash Bang Wallop, a lorry hits a car

Crash, Bang, Wallop, under a glittering star.

There follows a phase with cars all ablaze.

Taunton is forever tainted

By this terrible tale.

Years of Innocence

Years of innocence, years of glee,

Years that ran away from me

And left behind mere memories

Of the lives we used to live.

Years of Triumph, years of Woe,

Man cannot stop the temporal flow

Which whooshes and weaves its way down

Toward spaces not yet met,

Spaces to which we may never get.

Years of sorrow, years of joy,

Years ago whilst still a boy

I met a weary, world-worn man, who told me of a wondrous plan

To defeat the ravages of Time;

Escaping into a poem’s lines.

This lesson I hope to have heeded well

As I feel Time’s tsunami heave and swell.

My time is short, and his much shorter, but

I fell in love with this man’s daughter.

And once we’d wed, and drank his wine,

He passed away, dear friend of mine.

Years of happiness, years of grief,

Our time on Earth is very brief.

Years of innocence, years of glee,

Years that ran away from me

And left behind mere memories

Of the lives we used to live