TOXIC NEIGHBOURS

I’m here back at the last resort fighting for the survival

Of this place which is the only place I can live in this ridiculous town

With gentrification creeping upwards from the soon to be

Holiday flat being developed on the floor below

And insanity crashing into my shared corridor

As next door, down that shared little space, I have a guy

Who’s on something I didn’t really know about until this week

Crystal methamphetamine is nothing but bad

Bad bad as even the fumes that leak under his door

Poison me and trust me I’ve done my fair share of bad stuff

Down the years but if this shit is making me feel like this

Without direct contact I dread to think what it’s doing to him

In his quest to reach outer space

It’s kinda funny that on the stairway side I got a woman

A strange one at that but not my kind who is convinced

We are all descended from that outer space; a Scientologist

That’s what she is but at least she ain’t trying to poison me

Probably guessing I’d tear apart any argument she raised

So, right now, I feel strangely normal here in the last resort

With both neighbours heading high and into outer space

Whilst I just sit here, smoking weed and trying not to die

Every time I walk out my front door.

THE END OF MY SOCIAL MEDIA TROLL, part 1

I've just experienced one of the problems of this 21st century existence

That moment when you've had enough of a so-called friend on social media and just want rid of them

They've messaged lots telling me how much they like me and yet they can’t help but hate me because they can't understand what it is I do in poetic form

My parents live in a big house and yet I moan about the state of my life, so fucking what

It's only that way because they worked hard to turn a mess into something great

And they wouldn't have that big house if they'd stayed here in shitty little England

If they sold up tomorrow they'd struggle to afford a studio flat in this shit tip of a town

So anyway there I was going through my list of so-called friends, eager to unfriend this wailing banshee of a woman

Only to then discover she'd already beaten me to it

Oh well fuck it, I just hope she gets to read this sometime and know that's it, no more forgiveness for you.

MY BEER THAT WASN’T

My beer is just that, MY beer

But the other night my need for weed

Dragged me outside where I wasn’t

Allowed to take MY beer so I left it

With someone I knew.  After the smoke

My taste buds messed I took a long hit

And immediately thought that this

Ain’t MY BEER.  I sit back and

Look around and reached the conclusion

That maybe this is MY beer.  I drink

It down and mad I go for at home

I realise it weren’t MY BEER; it was

Tainted with something that made

My mind flip out.  2 hours later

And I’m pacing my room, crying,

Dreading convinced this is my end.

LIFE & ART (FUCK BEING COOL)

Rock’n’roll died when it became something you could learn in school

Cos great old rock’n’roll was all about seizing the time, the place

And making it culture rather than just a commodity

When being rock’n’roll meant being a true outsider and not worrying about making money

As long as you had enough to get by and a love for the noise that’s all that really mattered

Now it’s all about labels and sponsorship deals

Gone are the days when rock’n’roll was a life, now it’s just a consumerist commodity

Lacking any real soul and just desperate to be cool

Rock’n’roll is fucked so I got in on this whole poetry trip

But with creative writing courses and those god damn workshops poetry is going the same way

Something that can be taught in school rather than lived and experienced

Essentially life should be the template for all great art and should never ever worry about being cool

HEARTBREAK FOR ME

I’ve been heartbroken so many times now

I just spend my Friday nights getting drunk with a gay guy

Getting drunk, listening to jazz and bitching about the state of our love life’s

How did it ever reach this stage? 

The jazz I can understand

But why is there all this damn heartache?

Am I hideously ugly or just plain shy?

All I know is every episode for the last few years

Has seen me dumped on to the steps of the heartbreak hotel

Whilst all she has is the life her beau can offer

No excitement and little to do besides be the obedient little house frau

That the boring career minded guy wants her to be

Whilst I just sit here, all alone

With thoughts that love shall never know me again

KEEP ON FLOWING

Now I sit here, alone again and for one of the last times

I get to look out my window at that view and I grow sad

As my time in the last resort is coming to an end

Despite it being a tough last year since David left and

He moved on in with all his trouble-making friends

And random angry visitors who sometimes camped out

In our shared corridor it has to be said that I will miss this place

As my life has been transformed since I moved in here

When I left the last place I could have no idea what this place

Held in store for me, all the words inspired and shared

With like-minded souls around the world

But now with time running out, less than forty-eight hours

Before I move myself around the corner I just hope that

Maybe, hopefully the ink won’t run dry and the words will keep on flowing...

Bradford Middleton