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