The greyhound bought me mile and mile ever closer
Home to you. I pictured you waiting by the cinema,
Just below the broken orange light that swings
Violenty
In even the most gentle of breezes.
I picture you there and hope you have forgiven me.
Nobody pays much attention to me, thank god.
If they did, they would see a regretful tear
Drifting slowly down my scared, haggard face.
I take my handkerchief out of my pocket.
My nose catches your scent and I cry some more.
In a tear, a lifetime’s sadness is shown.
In a tear, all manners of images are exposed.
In a tear, life can end.
In a tear, broken hearts mend.
In a smile, friends become lovers.
In a smile, true feelings uncover.
In a smile, people fall for strangers.
In a smile, we face the greatest dangers.
In a laugh, heroes stand tall.
In a laugh, comedians hear the audience call.
In a laugh, there is unity in a nation.
In a laugh, lies love’s greatest potion.
The lonely voice echoes down the multiplex of wires.
Each wire holds her cries for a second before
Passing them on to its neighbour without care.
For what do wires care about the fate of a single tear?
Without effort, I listen as the story falters from one
To the next, I know you need me there to chase away the liars.
“Please insert fifty cents to hear real desperation users.”
Comes a metallic voice full of the joys of spring.
I dare it to bid us, “Have a nice day!”
I saw a photograph of her years ago, stately, beckoning.
I knew she was so much older than me
And that many people, men as well as women had loved
Her beauty as much as I did now. She seemed to symbolise
Everything I ever wanted. I was in love, I was mesmerised.
She was so far away. So for many years I could by dream
Of being with her, my heart ached and my thoughts ranged
To the day when I would say, “It’s me my lady, I made it!
Missing You
She introduced me to the pleasure of friendship,
She made me realise the pain of love.
She saw how much I hurt, what her aching had made me become.
A quivering wreck, an emotional fool!
My heart no longer still, in time with the savages drum.
The taste, tantalising and slow
Regret that I never once told her what she meant to me.
All those years from childhood to near death
And she said, “That this moment was for me, my reward.”
For friendship will prevail, it’s all that’s left.
Originally published by The Liverpool Echo.co.uk (part of Jade Wright’s column.)
One thing that’s been lost in the digital age, is the ability to listen to the C.D. of your choice and look at the carefully written lyrics inside the sleeve notes that the artist has thought out, sweated over and hoped that in some form or another their words might be quoted and sung by random listeners up and down the country.
The words now have to be downloaded via various websites and digested for seemingly fractions of seconds before the person gets bored with it and moves onto looking at another Wikipedia site in the hope that they will find something else to take up their time.
As a man approaches his fortieth year on this fast spinning globe we call home, he is struck by the sound of his decaying mortality. The ticking time bomb, tick, tick, tick, within him lets him know that the spring of his youth has long since moved on and is nothing more than a distant memory, occasionally waving from a far off hazy shoreline.
6,000,001.
“You’re a nasty horrible man”. The nurse screamed at the crumpled up human being sat on the end on the damp single bed, “You have no idea what it’s like to look after so many desperate and demanding people. It’s old…bastards like you that make so many of us give up the profession, or worse go private”. The nurse spat the sentence at the man on the bed. Each word delivered with the fine precision of a well-sharpened surgical scalpel.