Poete Maudit

At an engagement soiree,
The bride to be in a dress
Of silver holes joined at the loop and the groom
Ready for a snooker tournament-
Old distinguished and extinguished faces, familiar,
Large bodies, shrivelled sausages, shrink wrapped cheese,
Store bought cold quiche, dairy triangles....
Old couples ready for Noah’s ark,
And evil music.

Most of the young stood at the entrance
Glasses resting on a window ledge
Inhaling duty paid tobacco
I stood by
Holding the fort
Talking tunes of modern mentality
Speaking to a waitress in a Greek tavern;
She’s in a relationship with a friend of mine
And they’ve been together for time
They live above his work
And their relationship threatens my living:
Bed before midnight/ solo dining /sexless/
They all put me in a play /I’ve not acted in
For dog years-
They see me as a cowboy/ as a semialcoholist/
Full of nightlife and women dragging me to bathrooms
In clubs to fuck/
Blow jobs on the bus/
Public nudity (and a flagrant disregard for love)
Then there’s the bottles and the booze/
They see me as a man with a glass glued to his hand
In their eyes/I don’t sleep/
But I drink continually/
In their mind/I don’t eat apples/ or walnuts/
I don’t walk 5 km a day/
To them I’m in the bars/
Putting life in my mouth/
And in the toilet/ putting it up my nose/
And cigarettes burning in the ashtrays/
Black market Prescription pills/
Lining my pockets/
To them I’ll be the same...Infinite/
Like a film frame/
Like Dorian Gray’s attic portrait/

I’m that Gareth/
The troubled brooder/
Full of silence and sleep/
First love/
Also peanuts and dogs/
Hater of romcoms and shit food and music/
Amateur artist on headache holidays/
Almost on a precipice/
At the lips of drowning himself/
In a bathtub or shooting himself/
Full of badly sourced heroin/
He who started acting in secondary school/
And started guitar without knowing/
What the top and bottom e’s were/
He who formed a band with his best friends/
And then disbanded/
He who wrote short stories that appeared in rags and journals/
He who lived in a house without doors/
Or doorframes/
He who had his heart broken in Dublin/
London/ Paris/
He who for a few weekends on 2001/
Made holes in Belgian beer cans/ and sucked crack/
Through the tear/
He who tries two careers at once/
He who taught himself the culinary basics/
Moved on/ moved up /and borrowed talent/
Two hands chef/ two hands/
He who looks at women like they’ll want him/
And find that they don’t/
‘cause he’s serious and his face and posture/
Says I can look after myself/
‘cause he has no one to care for or take anywhere
‘cause he’s eating the world on toast/
And not chasing them/
‘cause he wanks and wonders the eaten earth/
And wonders what is wrong with women/
And their pretty heads and fit bodies/
Women with smiles and cerebral smarts/
With fitted trousers with appetite/
WOMEN he loses himself on the simple matters/
And they lose interest in him/
‘cause he loses it on that/
‘cause he’s waiting/
Prolonging his limbo/
No intercourse for the course of....
By now he could be shooting blanks/
Could have been doing it all along/
And all they could of had but didn’t/
Found it too much and pissed away the chances/
While pissed three sheets to the wind/
And wearing clean undershorts/
Pissed and picassoed/
Pissed and putting the blade into himself/
Giving too much/
Crawling back to his real home to hibernate/
Staying safe/
So safe he leaves his keys with someone/
And his bankcards in the supermarket/
He talks it up/
But goes nowhere/
Not walking to the end/
Of the pool and jumping/
Without nose plugs/
Without goggles/
Life’s deep end-
He paddles puts his feet in/
And almost takes them out/
And sees you/
You and your army/
You and your gang/
You and your brother/
You and your kids/ and family planning/
3.99 pregnancy tests/
Fertility clinics/
Gynaecologists/
And he stays there afraid/
Positioned by his own stance/
On how he operates this.