Lorraine

LORRAINE

I know that you've known nothing like this pain
And nothing brings you pleasure any more.
The world would be a lesser place Lorraine.

It seems as though all hope went down the drain,
You've taken to just lying on the floor.
I know that you've known nothing like this pain.

I never thought you were one to complain,
But even though each movement feels a chore,
The world would be a lesser place Lorraine.

The way you feel is too hard to explain,
This earth just seemed a simpler place before.
I know that you've known nothing like this pain.

Happiness isn't something you can feign,
But even though you feel you've lost the war,
The world would be a lesser place Lorraine.

And though your valiant effort's been in vain,
I'm begging, put the gun back in the drawer;
I know that you've known nothing like this pain,
But this world would be a lesser place, Lorraine.

Wanted

So I took what I wrote last night, and used it to help me find my words. So.. ta da, my latest poem. Obviously I'm not planning on putting an ad of this nature in the next issue of the Herts and Essex Observer, I just wrote what came at the time.



WANTED

I'm looking for a killer,
A murderer of sorts,
Anyone who's interested
In the most dangerous of sports.

Your dream is to kill someone,
And I just want to die.
We'd be a match made in the afterlife,
Your twisted self and I.

Don't prey on someone innocent,
There's a willing soul right here.
And no, it's not a hoax advert,
I've never been quite so sincere.

I don't mind how you do it,
The choice is yours to make,
Just make sure my life will end
I don't care how long you take.

So pave my route to heaven,
And steer your way to hell.
The sinful secret dies with you
For I shall never tell.

So please, drop me an email,
My address - listed below,
The time has come to live your dream
And it's my time to go.

Watching Paint Dry

"The lows, the nothing. There's nothing left in you. You're beyond tears, you're even beyond thought."

I want my hypomania back. Just got to let it pass. But I'm so impatient.

Wordless

When I wrote in the letter in the blue envelope that I didn't think I could be a writer anymore, that was just because my finesse didn't compare to that of my favourite writers. But now, I think I've actually lost it. I spent all day trying to write. I can't even rhyme anymore. I have ideas, I've just lost my words. They're not my words, I don't know why I call them that. I've lost the words. And that scares me a lot because writing is how I survive. Suffering from chronic boredom. I need new experiences, I need to do things I've never done before. Like the cuckoo's nest. Not that that really provided me with any writing material. I don't know what's gone wrong. Everything's all mixed up, it's all too still. I feel cold, hard, flat. I'm not enjoying this. And I don't even know how to fix it. None of the music is what I want to hear. Everything feels very wrong. That's the only way I can explain it. Everything is wrong without words. Agitated.

Chemical Imbalance

I have a chemical imbalance in the brain. So do lots of people. Trouble is with my chemical imbalance they don't know which chemicals to feed me to put me right. When the chemicals they presume will work don't, they try to alter my diagnosis. Surely with all the money that goes into medical research they could develop a type of blood test that assesses which chemicals in the brain aren't present in the correct amounts, so patients could be given the right chemicals as medication to make them right again. I'm fed up of being a fuck up. I'm fed up of being unfixable. I'm on such a high dose of everything I take that I think it's affecting the way I think. And by that I mean I rarely think. Or I'm rarely aware that I'm thinking. I seem to have no access whatsoever to my thoughts, and I'm sure it never used to be this way. And the knowledge of this leads me to question what it is my brain is so busy doing that it's lost the capacity to think.I don't know how I'm ever supposed to succeed in the creative world without thoughts.



Is it unethical to make a life-changing decision based on the lyrics of a song?

The Hoarder

I have a photo of a man whose name I don’t know. I’m a hoarder, a magpie; I collect things I don’t need. It started with something I heard on the radio; a familiar voice explained how she was unable to walk past a discarded scratch-card on the ground, just in case it was a winning ticket that had been overlooked. And once I’d mimicked this, triggered the avalanche, I couldn’t stop. I also couldn’t bring myself to throw the scratch-cards away. I pinned them over each other on my noticeboard until the pin wasn’t long enough and I had to start a new pile.

Receipts came next. I didn’t need them, but I couldn’t bin them, just in case they would be of some use some day. Consequently I’ve kept every receipt for everything I’ve bought in the last five years. I have thousands, tens of thousands maybe; more than I could count, I know that. So it escalated, the snow kept falling, until I was keeping and collecting just about everything.

There’s always that temptation, but I’d never outright steal. But when the opportunity is there, I just can’t turn it down. It began on a bus; a woman bent down before me, picked up a shiny silver key and held it out in front of me. She asked me if it was mine, but it wasn’t. My mind said no, but my lips released the affirmative. I had no use for this little key, but I slid it into my pocket after thanking her and later blu-tacked it to my bedroom wall.

In this way I’ve gained a mobile phone, three wallets, four umbrellas and twenty eight train tickets, amongst other obscure objects. Piles of jewellery crowd my bedside table, and I've accumulated enough scarves to wear a different one every day for a month. But I have a photo of a man whose name I don’t know and it’s the most prized possession I’ve unearthed in all these years. I found him in a wallet, nestled between bank notes, removed him and sat him behind the transparent window in my purse.

It’s a lonely life as a magpie; everyone knows it's one for sorrow, two for joy. I’ve accumulated many beautiful things but my own beauty remains untouched. I’m well into my thirties, no longer young and promiscuous, and the dreaded question never gets easier to hear. “Have you found yourself a man yet?” Aunties and grannies and long-lost cousins twice removed never tire of asking that one. And I was tired of letting them down. So I lied. It was only an insignificant, tiny white lie to begin with. I said yes, and opened my purse to show him off. He attracted a lot of attention; they told me over and over that I’d caught a good one, reeled in something really tasty. But somehow even the fishing analogies didn’t deter me.

It rocketed out of control, just like the hoarding had done. I named him Ethan, and told my family that he was a soldier in Afghanistan, that we’d met whilst he was on leave but that he was back on the front line now and that was why they couldn’t meet him. Sometimes I’d find myself with a glass of wine in one hand, television remote in the other, scouring the news channels for his face, convincing even myself that he was real.

I became devoted to this imaginary character, writing unsent letters to him, addressed to the army barracks I’d told myself he was serving at. It scared me how attached I was. At times I’d try to remind myself of the reality; I even thought about offering the photograph to strangers on public transport, in the hopes he’d fall into the hands of another hoarder. But I could never bring myself to go through with it.

After an exhausting day at work one Friday evening, I breathed a sigh of relief as my train finally pulled into the platform. I fought my way into the busy carriage, squeezing through a mass of business people to a space by the window. Gripping onto the handrail as the train began to move, I caught sight of my pea-green handbag, lying unaccompanied on the bench I’d sat on for the last half hour. It was too late to get off; it was too late to do anything. I clapped a hand to my mouth as I watched my possessions fade further and further into the distance. My phone, my purse, my umbrella, my train ticket, gone, forever. And the photo of a man whose name I didn’t know.  

Untitled

And so I have to go away,

'A retreat' you've coined, in the nicest way.

'The funny farm', 'mental home' I say.

I wish it didn't have to be this way.

And so I have to go away,

And here, without me, you will stay.

You'll cross your fingers, kneel and pray,

That everything will be okay.

And so I have to go away,

But no magnitude of help will change the way,

You're in my head each single day.

You're mine, regardless, come what may.