The house looks like a painting yet, we can’t agree on anything What I want is meaningless to you what you want remains awkwardly obtuse and unreadable
I play my game, aligning the pieces to get me whatever I desire O, the house looks like a painting but I never know what’s right too adept at getting what I think I need
Meeting an old girlfriend who talks of monasteries and monks as I count the freckles on her nose and wonder if she still swallows…
O, the house looks like a painting yet, we cannot agree on anything Is there an urge that we can harness and repair or just our feeble pushes toward opposing goals Two firm lurches toward different shores
It’s corrosive it’s wholly limiting it’s the only way we seem to know to operate
The house looks like painting and still we’re not aligned on anything at all…
O Lord, I ain’t what I aimed to be I think I missed the target some my seed got turned upside down tried to grow towards the light and grew down…
O Lord, are you listening to me? ‘cause I’ve never heard your voice in here no conductor’s baton, no steady hand as I stumbled through this night and grew dark…
O Lord, I’m miles from where I meant to be the Devil, he has no compass, no stars to follow says ‘hack away, till you reach the easy warmth’ but I hacked so many people, I keep slipping in their blood and fall down…
O Lord, I haven’t used my eyes for years don’t see anything when you only live to feel I get whatever stimulus I can take I’ll take whatever’s not bolted down and go blind…
O Lord, I’m chased by that same snake again always offering me that same apple all I ever wanted was to live in the light Yet something always eclipsed that need now it feels too late to change and I’ll always hang here in this bleak greed and pitch night…
Would you forgive me, Lord let me admit to all this blackness and move on could you forgive me, Lord if I promise you I’ll change and for the better
O Lord, all I ever wanted was just to live in the light but look at me now, deep in the dark do you see me here, lost in this dark…
Tom is dead. His party’s over. Stark and sarcastic he’s just a memory, now…
So numb, I watch me crack again in horrific black and white projection about to jump, in someone else’s bed so restlessly, I turn away can’t face up to my adultery the tempted, cheating, loveless; me
So dutifully, I cover my eyes again headphones on, I watch me walking blinded, soulless, vacuum filled so magnified, I still look small swallowing my pride, all passion dies the pointless, aching, hollow; me
Devoid of colour, of life or joy the putrid skin just falls away a mess that stains the carpet One last thing to write about a death so rough and meaningless the broken, elemental, rotting; me
(And at the sight of all of this the spectator me can only laugh and from my passive lips, a joke a joke…)
They burn on in the night dripping candles of my fat for what I couldn’t give in life comes from functionality in death So openly, I tear out my beating heart the sinning, lost and wasted; me
So obviously, I watch me try to stand pushing the lens in deep between my eyes the blue flushed out and burnt away So covertly, I’m zooming in I can’t get enough of seeing this the forsaken, faithless, empty; me
So naturally, it came to me at first time took my hands so tightly pushed me into the holes again stripped my words down to the bone so pathetically, I put up a meek fight the tortured, pained, artistic; me
A joke stark and sarcastic me A joke stark and sarcastic me
[2003]
Thanks for reading this very old poem.
Note: I’m going to post some older poems which I’ve never shared before over the next week or so. They’re all quite early in my writing and are flawed in all sorts of ways (aren’t we all) but I thought they might be of interest to people to see where I started. T.A. 18th June 2021.
The Lighthouse 