Searching for Purpose in Bottles and Bars

Lately I've been thinking of the vastness of travel and the way, between seas, you can get lost somewhere in any land where life grows. I want to feel my feet beneath miles of promises new and see the sights and the sounds and the pure curvature of earth. So who's to say we can't just kick off the dust and take these souls to the road and move on? Who's going to be there for us in the distant horizons of months and years? I want to hold your hand and dissolve into mists, evaporate into the heat soaked tarmac of winding roads. I want to worry over stars and shelter and I know everyone has their worries but I've been told we'll all get there, to some place, some day. Like the boy on the corner playing sax for cash, and the woman who waits on our cokes and our fags. The terrors who steal all those cars in the night, that blaze through the cities in flickering twilight. The children that cry into the desolate night, and the men who drink lonely in the dingy and dusty bars, paralytic and slumping into November frost. They're all just trying to find their way, like us, and everyone else. They're all just trying to find their meaning. I've got to find my meaning, babe.

Clarity, Commerce, Courage

Open:
I was sat on the edge of a pier watching waves lap up promise on equatorial shores and with each sunset came people in mosaic with beating hearts of value. Well that's the way I saw it then, under golden orbs spent from nine hour heat. Birds circled for freedom and colours mashed beyond ships masts and the world was pure and I was pure and I sucked in air from the atmosphere that wouldn't exhale. Boxers touched gloves at the end of the year and with commerce this place was ahead. Lenses took in the event with a hunger unseen since that evenings meal. I watched from my perch the laughing and eyes, and the singing and chatter of children. I watched all the beaming and shaking of hands and my thoughts fell on opposites back home. So why does the shiver that rumbles my chest seem to appear when I look out to vastness? How can anxiety present itself in the flicker of eyelids when you can just blink and miss all the answers? Pavement chalky blue, sky golden red, people blushed with private, unprivileged freedom. I was sat on the edge of a pier watching waves lap up promise on equatorial shores. This is the place that we'll find all our meaning. I'm sure of that.

:Close

The Aggravator of False Wounds

This city is a river tonight so lets let it swill us away, through alleys and over bridges to ghostly borders of it's limits where we can shine and fucking burn under the stars. Hopefully this will be the last journey we ever make because the truth is Kate I can't handle your smile. You were selfish and brawn and you thumped into my heart with your fists, everyone said it would end like this. Maybe I wrote you as a perfection of character, one so flawless and kind you were a work of fiction, but when I think of you laughing with those envious eyes I feel chilled to my core with regret and I know your reality was lay in that truth. But it's over now, and although time was no healer I think it's safe to say it's been kind to me. Years have rolled by without reason, life has moved on without cause. The hourglass moulded for us was dropped long ago and the last grain of sand has blown on. This is all justification for me because it's my obsessive colouring of the human condition that has allowed this whole and fluid envisioning to carry on. I want to bury you know and locate sensibilty. I want to find my own feet and walk on. I want to name you and shame you and leave you behind. I want to flock with the birds and just fly. I want to pass on this city and move to new climes. I want to shake myself six years ago and open my eyes. Most of all I just want you, but saying goodbye will have to do. Time is the greatest aggravator of false wounds, that's all I really know.

Regret and the Question of Time Machines

I've got to cut these pathetic ties to maybe's and what if's and midnight city streets. All the water just flowed through the gutters that night and left the town where we were and into suburbs somewhere. Maybe I should have done that too, with these questions, with these words, with this ache. Just spat it all out into Northern Quarter grids and watched it disappear forever into the underground of my life. Because you weren't no saviour of my dreams like I thought, fuck, I don't even think you were human. I have to grant you just one little thing and that's the way you got me drunk from your eyes kind of saved me. The memories I'm left with of those green soul windows get me thinking of dragging on fags under star light. They get me thinking of brown pinstripe trousers, cut tight to the figure of early morning movies. They get me thinking of your naturist smile, bearing all but at the same time bearing nothing. They get me thinking of hard leather seats, leaning back and hiding my hands under the table. They get me thinking of America and the vastness of travel we planned over hills between seas. They get me thinking of petite, curving shoulders, of sinking clavicles and jet black nails. They get me thinking of flirting and laughing and you holding my hand and silence falling. They get me thinking your eyes filling up, saying why not me, why can't you be alone? But then I just wish that I'd done what I said, and spewed all this up in the gutters that night. Because that question, that teary eyed wish that you raised, it has no answer I can give to serve clarity to us both. One night I will go back to that street, to that bar, to that basement and stand under that light. I'll call you and say that I wish you were here, and I'm a writer, I'm a fraud, I'm a failure. I'll beg you to come, and if you do I'll hold you close, you can ask me again why not me, and I'll say, baby, it should be but for cowardice.

You Were a Liberal, and I Was a Coward

Notation:

I had a vision of you in the dank winter town, you were green in perfection and breathing out mist. A little rain spat down and we rushed into a bar, ordered drinks and we smoked there because you just could back then. You put your Marlboro's on the table and sat back in your chair and you smiled and we laughed about futures and leaving. That was the moment, where I could have changed it. I needed to reach out right then, make a phone call and stop it. I needed to stand up like a man and say why give a fuck? Why treat ourselves like already written books? Why stand here so vacant but so obviously in love, maybe not even love, just unrequited lust. Why not just say: 'Look, we're both human and mistaken, we're both churning for touch and self reparation. We're both burning to be close in this town, in this chair. We're both shuddering for each other, we breathe the same air'. But I let you evaporate, with those desperate eyes, that just wanted me to stand up and spell out clarity from choice. I let you stand up and walk out as I gulped, cowardice overtook me and I should've pulled you back and said don't. God what I wouldn't give for your eyes and your smile and your hair and your hands and your breath. Once upon time, a guy lost a girl, and in the winter mist she walked and he took his last breath. Once upon a time, a guy lost a girl, and his life was always measured by that fact.