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[foryouallforyou]

The Pub Landlord drinks after closing with his oldest regular, an hour before the end of the world.

“John...

You know 

I’ve never tried 

that bottle at the back?

I always kept it for something special

I guess I thought I would end up with someone

Some local girl, or maybe 

bring someone home

From my time overseas - 

And we would open it together...

Ah but you know how it is

This pub washed away everything in the end

And it's not too bad

After all-

Here we are…”

“Sure this is it!”

John sits looking deep into his drink 

and wonders at the long miles 

between the first 

and this time,

 here now.

Up at the long wooden sea board

dividing him and the landlord

How he landed here

when the owner was still a young man - 

fit and in his rude prime -  

a lighthouse leading the whole village home

The two of them are well on their way to the grave,

Maybe more so tonight than ever.

He looks up at last and sees the bottle Jim points at and squinting 

reads the bastard’s trick aloud...

Pernod.

“Are you fecking mad Jim! 

I thought you were going to get down a Bushmills 

Or at least something

Quality…

Get away from me with your stinking

PERNOD - 

No wonder ye never fucking married!

Jim is really laughing now,

The bellows in his chest working hard,

the tears in the blue eyes squeezed out sideways 

by those high cheekbones that keep 

his handsome together -

This man has the pub roaring

in chorus with him by the end of these tricks -

But not tonight-

Just him and John left to drink up.

He’s coming to the finish - that last wheeze 

Like the gasp of the stove top kettle

calling coffee in the mornings

When they worked on the ships together that time

Indian Summers and the Rhine - 

But then he slaps the counter 

and pulls out the real bottle -

Mumm’s Champagne 

and slides it across the polished wood

To his friend 

And his laughter 

stops.

As does the heart of John, 

as he read the date on the bottle, 1951

The old clock ticks and he glances at Jim 

The years roll back like their old ration tins

“Where the fuck did you find that?”

And 

then,

“How long did you keep it 

with you, 

Jim?”

[foryouallforyou]

EDEN SUCKS!

I’m beginning to 

get worried 

that

I am not 

your green 

eyes’

apple,

But the 

Snake 

In the 

Tree 

Above 

you

It’s just that -

I always seem

to get off

On getting you 

to eat things 

you shouldn’t,

And 

I do like to

make you Itch,

And make 

your pink 

tongue 

swell

Up Thick,

And I do 

like it

when,

your eyes 

roll back

In your curly head...

And I do love to 

Hang upside down

Over your bed,

Like your own

personal

Devil,

Whispering in 

your ears 

like 

grass.

Oh I know you

are worried

What God will say

When He gets back

And I know

you are looking 

For a better woman, 

From a rib 

crack,

But I just know 

I will miss you 

when I get banished 

for this issue:

It’s just that it’s

Becoming true -  

I am

More Left 

than 

Right

for 

you.

[foryouallforyou]

Don’t talk to me if you don’t want to eat the thing you love!

We used to 

call it 

Kitten Teeth 

When 

all you 

could do 

was eat -

the folded, 

fur-lined, 

little ears

Of the 

still-blind 

babies

cupped 

so neat,

in our young hands-

Oh we only nipped!

(So tiny-light)

a little squeak 

and we made it right!

And only 

very sometimes much,

the love 

entirely engulfed us,

and we pushed their soft heads 

deep into our mouths,

(for a damp-moment-mind)

just to save them from the world outside

It’s just that thing when -

Your face drives the opposite 

way to your feelings;

You grit your teeth 

And bite your lover 

When all you want

Is to smother

Them with your love

And get a mouthful of 

bone-dust 

To spit - Just to show them

That you really

Mean it.

The following triggers

have been cited

As examples 

to get excited:

-A small gap between the teeth

-The folded back lip in the genuine smile 

-Tiny earfold of child

-A robin’s thread thin toe 

-Freckles on a strong man’s nose

-The eyelashes of my eldest

-A tiny model of a pie dish 

-Her whole face if I can help it

So don’t even talk to me

If you don’t want to eat

The thing you say you love -

My 

Sweet.

[foryouallforyou]

Grey Jumper with Wet Patches

Oh that

dying breed;

Beautiful,

British Brains

On a

Husky blond.

Hemingway Woman

(in the kitchen) 

With a bowl twice the fucking size of her!

Always looks like some kind of 

tipsy rapunzel;

Ah that fucking hair man -

Like a disney princess downing a bottle of prosecco with a fag in her hand.

I am suspicious

Of women 

that pretty

Who can spit a litany -

She's a surgeon of swear words;

Her curses are so cutting,

It's a pleasure to watch her at work.

I love those perfect words she spills out like the

curls of paper she twists when she crafts-

Always doing something for someone else.

Man, that bitch smells just like summer,

And it’s always sunny 

When I see her.

She reminds me of butter yellow,

Which is my favourite colour

Ever.

Seeing her in the morning

Is my favourite;

There's always a touch of mascara rubbed

And two wet patches on her jumper

And she must only have gotten 3 hours sleep,

Yet she has never looked hungover,

So fucking interesting to listen to,

And she makes me laugh

Deep up from the belly- 

God that woman

knows 

how to live.

[foryouallforyou]

Do you taste like a chainsaw?

You asked

As you ate the last of

My grapefruit.

I had no idea 

How to answer you. 

I think 

I’m tasteless -

Or if anything, 

I am salty with sweat,

Or just the traces of all the things 

I've touched throughout the day.

When I was 15,

I smelt of biscuits, dogs and the sun,

My mother always said I smelt of hay-

But taste is 

a tricky one...

I’ve only ever licked my arms

After swimming in the sea -

But I think I might have 

the answer actually-

Maybe you should

Just lick 

my wounds,

And then 

tell 

me?

[foryouallforyou]

I’ve heard you fucking!

I’ve heard you fucking

In those old corridors 

at our old college

You hated so much -

And I know your body almost

As well as I know you,

Your stomach is so strong 

It could kill a man -

But I remember your eyes best

When you were sitting with your father

In the ASNAC common room,

Like a girl child in a woman’s body,

All knitted together,

Green and yellow grey, 

That old piercing scar, 

And that mandala on your wall -

And the way you rub your lips with your finger

When you are talking about something

Stressful.

And the way your feet are neatly

Arranged

So sexy-prim and proper,

My little mouse!

My mackerel for tea,

And I loved you first

When you understood the funny things

In the fresco without me having to explain,

And you drove me mad when you 

Used to scream in my stuffed-up ears 

WD 40!

And spin me around outside the Pizza Hut, 

Oh you ran so wild in Cambridge

And I'm so sorry I ever tried to stop you 

From being yourself

(That was my shyness)

Do you remember their faces when I told them about the burial of my dead dog

At that dinner I dragged you to?

We often had to leave early in those days

You were always the friend who I felt I could be bold with

And complain!

When really I loved 

waiting for you in Boots

As you poured over the options 

from your points card, 

I hid behind different makeup aisles 

to make you laugh 

by popping up suddenly with a silly face.

And I Love to have tea with you

And I Love your notebooks too

And I love your crazy family 

because they

Made 

you.

[foryouallforyou]

You, who kissed me like you meant it, like a train crashing into a bridge.

[foryouallforyou]

The Pearl

For 6 years, I was mad. 

Unknown to myself mad. A mad that altered my eyesight and affected my memory. Like a lobster in a pot, the mad had warmed up around me while I had a bath. I was boiling red by the end. Thermidor Mad my wife would have said.

But I was not mad at first. 

At first, when the wave came, I was filled with love. I was abundant. I overflowed. All that surplus love was returned to me and there wasn't rooms to contain it inside the small change purse of my body. I would have needed 100 storage facilities to hold it and I could not afford the rent. It poured out of my eyes, my nose and the old piercing in the top of my ear. The ground I spilled my love upon flowered around me. Weeds which didn't need the encouragement bloomed where I stood. I emitted the love I used to keep in her in strong pulses like our dead dog's special collar which we forgot to take off when we buried her and depleted the local worm population for a few weeks afterward. 

The love stank of flowers and bread and bits of childhood and lasagne and play doh and sugar and fires and wool. Good and Bad tasted it on the wind. Light flew in my face windows and dark came crawling towards my ears. I couldn't stuff the love back inside myself. Much as I tried, my chest rejected all attempts to receive it with the same vehemence as a cat being wormed. Inside was more than a void. It was active. Deep as Vantablack but darker. 

You see, I was scared of seeing my love lying out there on the grass with nowhere to go. But that fear made me angry with my love for causing it. When it arrived up from my throat, I bit down and tossed it away. I gritted my teeth against it. Over time all the grit in my teeth grew hard and gathered and all the words I swallowed made a cold pearl grow silent in my throat. Perfect and smooth like a long licked gobstopper. It sat smug and smothering and stopped the feelings rising up and escaping and words which needed to be said from being spoken. It blocked impassively and it was perfect to behold.But I couldn't see it.

Looking about me some months after, at all the love hanging out windows like old washing, dragging in the dirt behind me like a tail and stinking up the place in general, forced me to do some cleaning. I wanted somewhere to put all my surplus love. I didn't want to look at it out there in the open, stinking away because looking at it would mean where it used to be was gone. I did not like knowing this. I believe not liking knowing things is where my memory started to cloud over. Because if you do not want to know something as basic as 2-1=1 remaining, you will stop knowing other things like how your car works, the capital of certain countries and where the hashtag is on a mac. These things will leave you as well. 

Sly, desperate cuckoo, you will come to notice that a certain type of person is a great place to hide your rotting love. The nest for your egg will need to be unaware and selfish and wanting. The more needy the better. They will have many empty rooms. You will not care about the long term consequences - speed is of the essence. You will move it in quietly and neatly, boxes stored in the attics of their house. You will pretend you are fixing the roof. You will say nothing of the contents of those boxes. When you come down from the attic you are restored. You are a hero again. The rest of the house is full of light and noise and clatter. You cannot hear them waiting in the huge dark. 

The pearl sat pretty in my throat. It blocked the fear but it also blocked other things which should have been said. I became proficient at shaving and crying from one single eye for a allotted time and moving on with my day. I could easily email clients at the bank whilst sitting in my underwear in the dark if I needed to. Laughs became barks. I lived a thin life. The pearl sat cold and smooth. Fresh healing words died from the lack of oxygen. The only thing that could fit through was thin simple emotions. Like anger. 

I started small.

I started by being mad at noises. I took sirens personally. And beeps. A rush of emotion would appear, the pearl would block, and a thin trickle of anger would slide out instead of the wall of grief. The relief was pleasant. Like a snack. I went back for more. I got mad at more things. Human greed. Pollution. Layouts of cities. Traffic. The car seat. I aimed my anger at strangers shopping in big stores. I aimed it at stores. People I didn't know. The country I lived in. Waste. Hunger. Big Pharma. Trump. Huge big topics which could take my rage. A nice easy, relatable mad. Mad that other people could get on board with. Mad you could have in the pub with mates. Mad people liked. 

But my anger could not be contained so neatly for long. My vision narrowed. The lack of oxygen diminished how I saw the world. I couldn't see that my rage was almost identical in scale to my love. And all the while the rent on the place I had hidden my love began to increase. I didn't even notice. I was short sighted in my anger and missed the obvious. Whilst the landlord kept me busy with all kinds of tasks, they had started to sell up the empty rooms. Soon my boxes would have nowhere to go. My anger condensed behind the pearl and with it the intensity. I was mad at my loved ones, and mad at the dog and mad at kids crying and mad at death. I was mad at my friends who had a good time and mad at myself for not having a good time. I was mad at my car, my job, my skin, other men, other women, the wind and the man who wouldn't let me on the train. I was getting up early in the morning just to be mad longer in the day. I was so mad my skin peeled off. I became fat then slim. I pushed myself out to sea in a boat and sailed on a sea of rage until one day I saw it around me and realised. I was just mad because it was easier than being sad.

One day the house I had stored the boxes in was sold. The boxes were all back out on the lawn and the birds were standing on them and drinking in the smell of all the love. A few weasels had got in the sides of the cardboard and love was seeping out again. The attics where the love had lain were teaming with wildlife. Whilst the house itself was empty, the attics were strewn with flowers, foxes and a nest of rats. The house owner made a note to call a rat catcher. They didn't recognise love when they saw it.

Quickly I gathered them all up and shoved them on my back in a huge pack and ran. Where I went, the size and shape of me gave the animals in the fields a start. My shadow was frankly ridiculous. The jolt of moving dislodged some of the pearl. Some things came out. But my vision was still messy. When the wave retreated and the years rolled on, I finally stopped moving. I found an empty house. I put down the boxes and gave them space in the house. I gave them soil. I lay on the ground and retched for a month and finally brought up the pearl. I made it into a ring at a creative course for grieving husbands.

She would have liked that. 

[foryouallforyou]

Eats egg and leaves.

Get a Pan. Now. Get two eggs, pat of butter, salt - enough to herald a heart attack. Get two cloves of garlic sliced up and warmed in the butter in the pan; toss avocado into the pan if you need to. Depends on the level of comfort your mouth and throat requires at this point. Things must be soft but not slippy. A cold salad never warmed up a frozen heart. Get over yourself and your diet. I am vegan up until the point of panic. Sometimes butter is the only thing that will do. It won't kill you - yet.

Drink black weak coffee whilst you make this. Do not get stuck into strong coffee if you want to come back a bit from the edge. Strong coffee has bittered my tongue across the cafes London and as that is the city in which I have experienced the most panic attacks. So...go figure. Less is more. Until you leave London for a time, you do not realise how remarkably insane life is there. The noise of the underground alone could stun a whale. And yet - We are bored by it - almost. But wild animals weave in cages when they are stressed. They look bored too. Boredom is so often a mask.

Back to the pan. One foot will be aloft scratching the other shin. You will peer over the pan heron-like, pecking with your wooden spoon at the soft mess. Pat pat. You will not be able to tolerate any scratches of metal so avoid at all costs. The choice of mug will be important - this is something in life you should never settle for. I firmly believe that the things we see everyday are the things we should take time to ensure we love the most. Consider hanging favourite pictures where you can see them from your bed. Go to sleep and wake up looking at what you love. Change when you change. Pictures in a house are not for other people to look at as if in a gallery. The same with your toilet. Notice where you spend the most time. Do not ignore the small details of your life. My god, the things I have learned from informative posters hung in toilets. Be aware.

The egg should not be scrambled to dryness. A slight creamy nature should be preserved. At this point the companions will be roused with interest. The tiny electrical waves in your body will have already announced your intent to the animals in the house. They are not mind readers. They just kept listening when humans ceased. Do not fear. They are in total agreement with your plans. The cat smiles gently. The large disabled one has started singing gently. The grey wolf slinks out from under the table and swims out the open door. You pick up a plate, (choose wisely) the coffee and a large bottle of water (recycled of course) and a book. The book will become covered with food if it is lucky. As you balance this precious cargo, the bare feet will patter out to the sun, where you can hear the birds. The sun is warm. Things are coming into focus.

I have never really meditated in the usual fashion. Tuning into sounds is the closest I can get to the state the gurus suggest. I listen in to them like a spy, with the intensity of trying to hear someone who might be bitching about me. And then I separate the layers. I know nothing of who is saying what. The tuning is all you need. To be totally honest, after a few bites, the eggs are no longer really required. The work is done by making and sitting. The cat is strung out like an empty fur snakeskin on the table. The white dog is resting on my leg. The grey is waiting in the shade. A pheasant calls from the top of the hedge. The trees breathe.  

[foryouallforyou]

On Reflection

I was once a mirror for your vanity

always reflecting you in the best light

you never had to look elsewhere

for what you needed,

when you left, 

I smashed myself on the rocks below,

don’t you think the cracks give a better picture of you?

don't forget to cut yourself on the shards of how I used to see you,

all that is left now is yourself and the empty sky

the reflector is gone,

the magician disappears.

[foryouallforyou]

Compliments

Stop saying I’m a good woman, 

when you mean you are a bad man.

[foryouallforyou]

Chase your way through the days, pull the night sky behind you like a banner reading every damn thing you ever loved, stream it blind behind you, tear strips off the darkness and leave them in your wake, pour the dawn in the door and leave it open to the outside, the wild days, the whiskey, the fires; send them up like rockets and wake up the lazy sun; shoot the wind through with bolts of yellow laughter, fluttered out like old shirts on the lines you draw taut behind you as you run hard for the cliffs, raise the dust with feet fleet from over long sleep, shake down your pelt and scupper the bees; this is what it is to live, to rush headlong, pulling the world to its feet just to race it to rise. But drag out the honey slow with your hands and spin it with the sugar threads that follow the trails you never saw coming. (but sure did feel going, when they went from you.)

[foryouallforyou]

Your death was a Russian roulette, The trigger was pulled so many times, we didn't even realise when we had finally been shot

[foryouallforyou]

[foryouallforyou]

Warning.

My love is as big as a whale.

And I’m worried it would swallow you whole.

[foryouallforyou]

Male Pattern Badness

You are just a repeat transaction I have with myself, when I am blocking my creativity.

[foryouallforyou]

The Truth was just one part of it.