A SHITTY
MORNING ILLNESS
I wake dizzy and immediately feel sick
Before running off to the toilet and realise
Oh shit, I’ve caught something horrible
From somewhere I don’t know as vomit
Explodes from my mouth before realising
That there’s more to come from the other end
And that literally is just more shit
MOVING ON FROM THEM
Pushed into a new life on a road leading up from the past; the old people, the
old places, the old life that I’m moving on from now
Onwards towards a life where I think it’ll be different; away from the people
who hold me down, pushing the knife in my back as I walk away
But this time I made it and survived and now well here comes the really
interesting part, how will I adapt and where will it take me
Leading me away from a life of fake friends who only use me to make their own
little lives feel a little bit better
To them victory is me attending their party, to show how many friends they’ve
got, and then slagging me off behind my back
Telling anyone who’ll listen, oh him, well he’s mad, a guy from my past who got
in over his head and now can’t turn around his life from being fucked
Well that ain’t true anymore as I turn my back on the old and move on with the
new, the new life, the good life, the life where I hope to stay
A life in which I can dream of not being pushed in the back with a knife
telling me that I ain’t one of them anymore.
NOTICE TO GO
It dropped today and with it came a lot of wailing and a bit of anger
Section 21, notice to evict, the time to get out is February 6th
With nowhere to go and no money to spend I began looking
For a place to call my home, one that feels like it’ll be never-ending search
for those
Who can’t afford to be gentrified and sent out of town
With no transport how am I to get to work in this place
As work pays not enough, part-time minimum-wage and
Where bus-pass costs a fortune but if you’ve got a smart-phone
You can use that to get a cheaper fare, it’s all so back to front
But thinks its ahead of the game when all its going to do is kill
Kill the poor, kill the old, don’t know about the internet
Then how can you be living, go away die please just kill yourself
I plead and beg to various agents, landlords, council workers
And they all nod in agreement that it is a terrible thing that is happening
But alas market forces mean I’m very soon to be homeless.
So now I sit, staring from the window out to sea, joint in ashtray
Laptop working and wonder where and how long will it take me
To be priced out the next place I go to, maybe Hastings and the creeping
Gentrification that is due to kick in early 2020s...
SLEEP IN PEACE
Saturday afternoon and all I want is sleep
As my body succumbs to its inevitable exhaustion
Caused by the last few days of living
There have been things to do
And places to be/ people to see
As well as work and all the simple
Non-pleasures that brings
But now alone, all I want is to sleep
And here it comes easy as at last
I sleep in peace
And it feels
Feels so damn good and
Relaxes me
To the point where I just
Lay there
Snug in my bed, happy at last
To be alone again
As sleep has been lost over the last
Year during which
I lost some over a woman
Who couldn’t get enough
And a neighbour that had all the wrong
Connections as I
Subsequently discovered but now that
Has all gone
I can sleep whenever I want
Even ignore phone calls
As right here is everything I need
On most nights
With the typer and all my distractions
Ready to keep me
Entertained as I relax at last
Before getting
Another early night as the sleep
Is finally caught up on
SO MUCH FURTHER LEFT TO FALL
I’ve written five new poems in the two months until now
And it’s growing apparent that my brain has been muddled
Next door remains but now, right now, I don’t really care
Just over two hundred hours until I escape this dreadful den
His activities have made me question just about everything
From the state of my own mind, convinced with the nagging thought
“Shit, maybe I’m just really paranoid?” to the idea that soon
My flat will be broken into or it will all end in a firry disaster
As he did once say “I’ll burn the place to the ground!” and all I
Could worry about was the destruction of vinyl and books
Before the thought of my neighbours and the hope he was just joking
Things got serious when the noxious fumes became a daily habit
And he’d always seem to be up to exclaim on his lad-ish attributes
With stories of ‘dem hooes’ and mass shoplifting at some supermarket
The remnants of which remain in my kitchen, to be drunk soon
At some point in the next two hundred hours whilst I run around
Sorting the shit we all need to move but
Now with this being my fifteenth time it should be pretty easy
As it’s just around the corner, I’ll be walking and can’t wait to get out
To somewhere quieter, somewhere to unwind and let my mind
Spread out, stringing together words that don’t just recite a horror
I wouldn’t want any of you to go through.
TIME IS
RUNNING OUT
My body has been dragged to the edge
The sheer edge of collapse and it’s all down
Down in the basement of my soul to the years
The years, months, days and hours when
I’ve tried to enjoy myself, keeping my mind
Lucid and alive with those magical twins
The wonderful and opulent drink and drugs
All that booze that I’ve drunk since the age of 23
When I was, for the first time, told
‘One more young man and it could be your last’
Which one way or another led to me doing
Doing all those lines, those big fat lines that grew
Fatter the thinner I became until I’d almost
Waisted away and the comedown wouldn’t have been
Doable if it wasn’t for all the grass I got to smoke
But now, mostly, and for the last 16 years its
Always been about that, a ton of grass and as much
Booze as my poor tired bored and mind can handle
After all these years though occasionally my body
My poor old body rebels and leaves me
It leaves me feeling like a run-down old man
With not much time left.
Bradford Middleton
