I'll let you in on a secret: 

this is an accident, a mistake that happened to turn out well, 

an unintentional success and this success will be sabotaged

but never beyond salvageable so it's always scattered with

remains, old loose screws, a scrap-heap mind

and this is unbrushed and unironic 

and this is not inspiration, this is fear looking for distraction

and this is not energy, this is endlessly having to run

and this is not going to impress anyone 

because soon they'll grow bored. 

I went backwards through my poems on Hello Poetry in terms of their popularity and picked one line from each to compile this:

It’s coming, like it always does,

your heart beats more than 100,000 times every day

hid in one of those hiding places 

between me and my appointment tomorrow at half past ten.

A hiccup is heard from the back of a classroom.

and now I don't trust them on my tongue. 

Morning comes like hell with a garbage truck,

all knees and fists and teeth

disappearing

and the post began arriving on time,

letter-writing weather, bathtub weather, 

until pills pass from pocket to palm 

The inside window was not broken.

It was a stampede of hooves money was lost on,

every penny you ever tossed into a fountain, every star-

We are burning up the blueprints drawn up of our stars.

The universe came in and hungry

but it's not worth stealing anymore-

then and today, where have you been?-

the wind will be sleeping

(the black bedtime echo)-

and ghosts are only ghosts.

And those streets, do they matter to the shoes treading them?

Suddenly I don't need mirrors to tell me

I don't think we could have been happy.

That brain of yours. You’re just a sea made of tears

and happen to have a smile on your face and suddenly

I want to say something

but I don't think I'm brave enough,

because I wasn't even there.

There is the aching overwhelm of blood returning.

I know how tiring it was, loving me,

already I am holding my breath-

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

spinning word strings

Ran in rings, what was it for? A spinning-top Jenny Jelly-tot

picking up a penny from the train carriage floor,

the rain flecks drying on the window like ageing seams

of childhood hopes, pages of storybook paper, pieces of pepper,

and marriage was one of the eight pipe dreams.

Days blinking by, stolen gold moments, each a little better, 

and stolen jewelled eye in the place of dreams once were

but none now sleep can't recur, just sketches of skittish things

like stars on screens, like clocks and where-have-you-beens

and keys without locks or too many knots to untangle strings.

Handshakes and spills the soil that pours from a pen 

into sad-bad-mad landfills, and the mouth with pills 

a little too dopey too late, dwarfed days and nights, just when

the dawn calls 24 hour sorry services, so you can compensate

with apologies, lodging into the cerebral arteries. 

It's all in and about the head. Up to date, running a breath too late.

Oops...

Lalalaa

The Naked Lunch(er) is watching you 

How to save a life

- weekdays/weekends- knowing the difference between a Friday evening/Saturday morning/Sunday afternoon
- wind in the hair once in a fairly blue moon
- a good guitar solo
- breakfast foods available to have for dinner
- proximity to people, both like-minded and different
- space for private rumination
- a wealth of books to look into when the mood strikes
- seeing the sky changing colour and design
- art- ideally both abstract modern art and fine classical art, juxtaposed
- the opportunity to stand up for the values and rights of the self and others
- language and the ubiquitous assimilation of words on the brain
- the postman delivering parcels
- collectables occasions when strangers offer unexpected helping hands or their smile for no particular reason
- the softness that comes with a comforting touch, not too often but consistent and not withheld
- at least one other person to believe your life is worhwhile
- hope

The Notebook- Trailer (Alternative Version- Psychological Thriller)

This is added now to my list of favourite poems. It's untitled, as yet, I think although the poet rarely uses titles and that's part of his style-without-style style, in my opinion.

The future shakes sleeplessly awake
And in the silent room statued actors stand waiting
Carving their noses from the stones

And when despair stampedes into whirlpool shadows hungry for fear
They stand unmoving
Transfixed
Eyes fixed
Seeing time in the swirls of plugholes

- William Nein

Ophelia enters, playing the lute
to share a song that she wrote
about being sick to death of being good
but keeps hitting the wrong note.

The Lady of Shallot is mute.
She has been since she failed to float
but she etched her song into the wood
that made up her grave and her boat.

They used to say, if you want something badly enough, if you believe in something hard enough, it will happen, you will have what you want, eventually. Now I think I've tiredly learnt that carrying something around with you in your pocket for a long enough time and someone will try to take it from you, because the probability of this happening increases,the longer you try and keep it your own. You'll probably never understand why, just that there are some nasty people out there who you can give a lot to but who you can't ever really do anything for because they'll never see you. Maybe you're meant to be invisible. Maybe, but not meant to be this quiet. I may be too quiet for my own voice, for my own body, but in the place of a commanding voice I've found I can pick up the very high-frequency supersonic screams that other people don't know that they're screaming. I can hear them piercingly.
A Monday night miracle, an understanding stranger smiles, a bus conductor doesn't need a ticket, waving a hand, it's okay, it's okay, and I sit and breathe it's okay. People do things I don't do. They clean up promptly after themselves and they regulate the way they spill, they make plans and follow through with them, they work alongside clocks and open mail and play music really loudly when they want to relax. They turn on televisions, open magazines, clean the tops of their stoves and put their lotion and slippers on at seven. I think I'm in a life I never really learnt to live in, and I'm lucky, lucky, lucky, and I'm happy, happy, happy, and I don't feel disappointed anymore when things don't turn out the way I think they will, when people don't turn out to be the people I thought they were. I don't think about things turning out, just watch it play out day by day, inwardly, and there is the curse of sentimentality. My belongings become indecipherable, one item from another, and my bones hang like strings waiting to be snapped loose, limbs like pipes instead of bones and skin, and heavy like the way old lace smells in old cupboards, the way people's goodbyes sound when you know they're never coming back. This is a bitterness and sweetness that goes on forever and ever. Trees waiting to be cut down. I start to think then about the tree that died on its own, the heart transplant, the broken mould, the forest that survives centuries and the myths surrounding the pyramids and one life trading itself for another. I wonder if trees can grieve.

Us

Hey, remember when we were laughter?
You were excited and I was improving.
You are still exciting and I am still proving myself
but now we are both tired.
Only you choose to take a rest stop
and I keep on trying to prove that I don't need
rest, which became comfort, which became touch,
and only proving myself wrong
because I need you and you are my comfort
and the rest is laughter
and the rest is improving.

we were so young

and we were so young then
and we were so young then
and we were so young, then
we weren't

and we had always been too busy
being too much trouble
being too much to handle

we didn't begin
when we should have begun
and we didn't know we were in wait
when we should have done
for futures we'd have to hold
the weight of in our hands

and we are so used to breaking things
and breaking ourselves
and making messes
and making ruins
and making excuses for our messes and ruins

so things have been broken
and things have been shattered,
on purpose
and not on purpose

because all people who grow up
have to hold onto things,
some people holding onto just something,
and all people who grow up
don't just try not to make messes and ruins,
for all people who grow up
also have to try to make something of
themselves

a long-exposure shot I took of traffic up to Heath Street 

the art of indifference

some photos I took in between Hampstead Heath and Angel and my bookshelves 

It doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't matter anymore.

The new year is meant, so they say, to provide the resolve to accomplish new things
or the resolve to resolve things. I tell myself that this coming year I am resolute
that it does not (have to) matter
anymore
what the matter is
and that it doesn't matter anymore.

Resolutions, then
to learn the art of cutting balloon strings
to learn to fall in love and leave
to learn how to arrange flowers after snipping away stems
to learn the word 'goodbye' in multiples tongues,
    specficially silent languages like that in sign or Morse Code
to learn indifference

But I know myself well enough/have honed my sight self-critical enough
to know when I'm resolutely determined to keep
to the promises I make to myself, in my writing or in my head
and my inability and discomfort when living with promises
that leave only themselves, emptied-out, and some lies
is something unresolvable. Are these resolutions, anyway,
what I want? And, more importantly (this resolve, I suppose, is morality)
is it a good thing? Will the forthcoming years be changed for the better
if I learn my way down the list, for surely, at the bottom of it
you're left listless
and it doesn't matter
and nothing is the matter but you know what matters
and yet you promised yourself it wouldn't matter to you.

Not resolutions, then. The past informs the future
and this past year I have learnt that
my life is a miracle
there are those so loyal that they will find their way back to you
that mistakes can be made and messes made and then
these mistakes and messes can be cleaned up
and there are those miraculous one in a million people
who will let you mess up, help you clean up
and also there are those equally abnormal ones
who are evil and it's ugly, and I have never thought
such intentional cruelty could come so naturally to some
and strangely, because they want to feel better.

So among the masses there are the miracles
and there are the monsters but
everyone matters.

Resolved resolutions list, then.
I will only cut the balloon strings when the lines are crossed, the bubble bursts, the twine cuts in
I will only be left, as I will never leave (when you leave, you realise what you left behind
and thankfully for me there was going back)
I will not buy or arrange flowers. I would honestly consider it a frivolous waste of time.
I will learn sign language further but language is forever
I will not be indifferent. I'm not all that different,
but to say I don't care and shrug off the matter at hand
say that it doesn't matter, now or anymore,
I would be lying. My resolution is not to try to be anything but this,
messes and mistakes and all.
If I am listless, I ought to exercise more.

One lie I tell myself: the matter of which I am made up is stardust.
One lie I tell others, nothing is the matter.

It matters too much and becoming indifferent, releasing hold on balloons,
trusting those flowers to make you smile because they are indifferent too,
Love is a great matter not to be taken lightly To be the person that matters
to the person that matters to you is the real resolution, isn't it/

Looking ahead at me, on day two of the 31 in January
I no longer see anyhing listeless. . The year looks suddenly a miracle, a spectacle
the way that some describe a sunrise or sunset as a spectacle,
and to be indifferent to that would be such a waste of time
and time is all we have but each other.
It matters so much to me. That doesn't matter. I prefer it that way.