WHILE YOU SLEEP

It's too late
To be careful now
You aped me
As I ran to you
I couldn't hear you
When you looked at me
And now you stand behind me
When I speak to you
You were childish
All day long
And at night you grow
Before my eyes

You are older now
You dress yourself for bed
You drown me in your sheets
You choke my wicked mind
You ferment me alive
To preserve me from
The specious child
That wants to do us harm
I could never allow
The trust that you breathe
To be betrayed
While you sleep

I lean away from damp air
Into the folds you provide
Your breath spills onto your pillow
It drugs me
What I'm thinking now
How could I not mean it?
So I will say it aloud
While it's still true
I won't do it again
How could I?
The way that you sleep
How could I?

CHAIRS ARE MEN

The human body always caves in on itself
When I think about it, it's like 1979
How far away from that behaviour am I?
In air there is nothing, you're in it, across from me

Walls are men hiding
And doors are men coming
And chairs are men waiting
And men are things nothing

A deeply felt well rankled by indifference
Not turned from but left in suppliant waste
Fear of loss of momentum informs everything
And stages melt, one into another

Walls are men hiding
And doors are men coming
And chairs are men waiting
And men are things nothing

VISIONS, RUSHED

The soft tissue around the anus yields paper cuts
In time with sags and heaves in the next cubicle
Must this feed my dreams?
Faeces-boy at the wedding, the injurer of Frankfurt

To lie alone in the mornings
Nailed to the bottom of the pit of opportunity
Makes me sad and sore
To sit, bedecked, makes me hurry more

LIKE ARMS

My memory is alive beneath folds of disease
I have exclusive access to its power of release
But I cannot use it, no matter how I try
To break the surface of everyday life
I am looking down at a dirty street
I have no place to sit and I have no place to eat
Who is responsible for this particular loss?
I don't need hands to know what this chain of events will cost

I choose not to foam at the mouth
I separated out the rough from the raw
And found that there was nothing more
So I drank, then I sat in a chair
And tried to carve things in the air
Where I fell for despair

There are undergarments showing through
The glassy waters of a deep black pool
I will fish them out with a wooden stick
I will hold them up to the light; they're sick
Historical figures shudder into view
Anonymously, they sway in unison
They struggle unaware to meet in ages
Is that so bad? The dogs all stop to look

I choose not to foam at the mouth
I separated out the rough from the raw
And found that there was nothing more
So I drank, then I sat in a chair
And tried to carve things in the air, just over there
Where I fell for despair

THE TIDE

I conduct my seed
I climb on notion or deed
I prepare to tear apart
My life, a fragile reed
I attain the peak
I have no right to seek
you deserve much than this
I am not fit to speak

Imbibe the tide that swells inside

It was never like this before
Hating all I saw
The filthy lack of pleasure
Made my heart an ugly whore
But this is not the same
Nothing can be blamed
This is not still-life
It grows stronger with each day

Imbibe the tide that swells inside

I decide against
But when I turn to face
It builds and builds
And I cannot deny it has a place
It is too late to mend
To work I will descend
Break the dam and break the bridge
Upon which all depends

Imbibe the tide that swells inside

UNTOLD

Sprawled out to the front
Your naked body
I inject it
With unmade decisions
Eleven years on
What went on?

Birthplace, bonny, abroad
A lying troubadour
It's an emotional revolution
I'm closer to his origin
All of this
Is changing back

What went on?

MISTAKES

Walk away in front of me
Don't look at where you've been
You don't have the time
And there's no point in wasting mine

I don't want to see you now
I don't need to now
I don't want you to be here
I don't need you near

Lie down away from me
Lie down and stay there
No rain is coming through
No rain would need to

There's nothing wrong with you
There's nothing wrong with what I do
But things don't meet, they grate
And we ourselves are by mistake

FAINT PRAISE

I do not miss your urchin hair
It was never fit for me
But whether by touch or by imitation
I let it crawl over me

Things were better then because I made clear
That I was unable to be wrong
I breathed clean air, my arms swam through
Unintended, without intention

Not understanding what I believed you to be
I allowed you to eat into my privacy
And having once slipped into this behaviour
I was unable to see my error

So when the scorn poured down upon me
And soaked me through to the core
I turned to you, my incapable friends
You could not tolerate me clinging there

You pushed me into my present direction
I pursue it obediently; I find that it's true
To my better nature, which now dictates me
And leads me far from you

BREAK NO BREAD

Was there ever such a perfect time?
I am in waste and I hang for it
Don't let me drift from my task
I could veer and spill onto my side

This is my sickness

Sometimes I talk to my own excrement
Or size myself up in a mirror
I lie down on a surface intended for walking upon
And I gorge myself on molecules

This is my sickness

Don't come close to me; you don't need
To see the pieces that begrime me
In time I will transfer them onto you
But for now be patient; stay there

This is my sickness

I will line up and coat with dust
Every half-thought and every action
Until all content has been obscured
My finger died in the woods; its use went

This is my sickness

FOOD'S JOURNEY

Arrows are alive in some skies
No such luck here
We have fog and breath
Fat is falling out through pores
See-sawing down the weave
To slide across non-repellant planes
To fester out of sight
While bowels march
Amassed in shitty millions
Seasoned, but yet to lie aflake
They hover above bus seats
A magnetism compels them
They need to collide but won't
The grease poured in prevents them
They are bagged up for now
Saved for later

The parent of your cells
Wants to make you grateful
It will find a grudge of its own
To shove into your pipes
Lie down among pissed-upon newspapers
Crane them in, bury them down
Plastic and tin will scram at you
Count them in, too
Eat shit, eat shit
Tolerate it, encourage it
Need it, ignoring the want
Take up shit, stick it in holes
Push it round, feed it in and out
Plug it through, tease it
Make it prickle you
Hold it in, right up to your heart

FOR THE WEAK

No light rises from your waters
And you, hot mollusc that you are
You lay me down beneath them
As your mistaken identities jar

Your face is contorting as you tell me
Of the things that trouble you
You live your life in speech and gestures
And in the ill-timed rendezvous

Passive encouragement seems to be what you seek
Don't mistake me for a scratching post for the weak

How many things do I need
To pretend that I don't understand?
My assent is not my acquiescence
My tiredness is never planned

I can always cake my shoes with convenient mud
And smile with conceit as I drag them through leaves, as I should

A LESSON

Fed with mint and cheese
Loaded with books and downcast amongst them
Surrounded by wood or alarms
Accompanied by a red jumper
By stained teeth gritting out
Lined by dark salt supplied hourly
This is a lesson to keep in a windy back-place
A used process never fresh

Saddened by encroaching brickwork
By subsiding pavement
The information you have is wrong

SHOWN

It's not yet two days later
And I can't tell if I'm suffering
A weight has been lifted
But a new weight is coming
Which could become
Blood in brain
In turn becoming
Blood in body
I am clinging to something
As a train thunders by
The only question I had left
Has now been answered
But I must remember
That this can harm nothing else
That much has been proven
Beyond doubt

Can anything be said
Out loud about this?
And it would be so loud
It would be so loud
I can't do it here
But at moments I feel it
Has there been any change?
There is worth in too much
Do apologies enter into it?
How did doubts re-arise?
Or did they ever leave?
Perhaps I was pretending

It would be so loud

Am I ever
Awake to life?
I struggle to see
Through my eyelids
I need to find a way
To be ashamed in front of you
To become numb to yearning
To feel guilt more than shame
Trumpets blare
At the back of my mind
And all that there is
Is in muddy half-confusion
What will become of us?
This is too much to bear
And beyond this
Everything will dissolve

Dissolve

WASTE

Long will be the passing day
Strong will be the urge to stay
Resigned to slump beneath the need
Designed to incubate the seed
Bend beneath
The weight, the grief
And so control
Your goal
See in objects' static lines
The moving plan that they refine
Read into a body's needs
The intention to deceive
The lid you lift
Will set you adrift
Because your skin
Is thin

The senses by themselves feel strange
And through them you hope to arrange
Actions into present facts
Activities into real lacks
Look: they show
The empty flow
That runs through
The things you do
You could be wrong and in which case
You should resolve to now displace
Effluvium, the rind of dreams
To flush it out in uric streams
Smell the waste
Without distaste
It will reveal
What you really feel

Words by Lloyd James, © 2002