Broken Things Read online

Broken Things

  And Other Repairs

  Alex Blythe

  Copyright 2014 Alex Blythe

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  This Is Me

  Flowery

  Dire Mother

  Homeless First Part

  Here He Comes

  Playing Sports

  About Dave

  Broken Bottle

  Homeless Second Part

  Litter Picker

  Back Matter

  DEDICATION

  FOR HELEN,

  WHO GIVES ME EVERYTHING,

  I GIVE THIS TO YOU

  THIS IS ME

  Bring out your dead,

  they invite me too,

  to bring out the hate I have

  for you.

  Trudge them all out,

  chuck them in the cart—

  yes, yes, even that blackened,

  twisted little heart.

  Blame me for the way

  that my life went, but I didn’t

  choose

  to have my parents spent

  by social impurity,

  psychological dysfunction;

  I didn’t place

  myself at this junction.

  There’s always a spark,

  then there’s always a fire,

  that ejaculates

  an inferno

  from its throbbing cock.

  Dante

  discarded

  his manuscript

  onto the parched

  path that I was set to walk.

  Must I be sorry

  down to the hardest truth,

  that I’ve had painful excitement

  to your wasted youth?

  I don’t have degrees

  unless it’s been

  the angle of the path.

  This brain still functions:

  Self-taught academe.

  It’s no concern that you

  stand above your station,

  in your Christian armour

  so quick

  for condemnation.

  To love your neighbour

  makes you physically ill—

  long ago I had my fill

  of you.

  I am who am,

  this is me,

  like it or lump it, it’s who I’ll be,

  long after your God proves

  you’re a lie.

  FLOWERY

  I don’t do flowery,

  I’d love to, but—

  it

  writes

  too

  slow.

  I have to scribble

  this drivel

  as fast as it flows

  or it’s lost

  to the crows.

  There’s a pipeline

  from my bowels

  to the hard drive,

  feeding the oil, untampered

  into words, un-pampered,

  from a coffee-coloured

  soul.

  Yes, I hate, I despise,

  I still cry and laugh,

  poke fun then crash

  back in the circle that keeps

  these hands scrawling

  whatever the shadows

  in my brain are bawling

  me to write.

  No, I don’t do flowery.

  The state of a flower, not my thing,

  unless a dog’s pissing on it

  acting like the king.

  Love, oh love to thee, swimming,

  in thy eye—bloodshot;

  overtired, saggy eyes,

  half blind. Woe to thee,

  oh Billy Shakespeare,

  forsooth

  my tooth

  fucking hurts this morning.

  No, I can’t, won’t, don’t do flowery.

  Too wired for speed,

  emotions are greed

  that must feed

  this insatiable desire to vomit

  my thoughts out

  into this human-plague-ridden

  testicle hurtling

  around an arsehole of hot,

  spitting gas.

  That’s life.

  No, I don’t do flowery; but you could.

  DIRE MOTHER

  You opened goods inward

  to receive the new stock.

  Nine months down

  the production line

  I’m stamped: discounted—goods

  outward.

  What a pleasure

  to roll around your insides,

  I’ll try to remember

  if you could abide

  the mere thought of me, or did the thought

  of a coat

  hanger and steriliser cross your mind?

  Earth Date 76,

  filling in the Mother Ship Logs,

  Social came,

  whipped me out of school

  because you slipped

  your cogs.

  Marvellous

  opportunity to suffer school

  inferiority

  on a Mother’s Day

  when my hand raises

  to say:

  “I don’t have a mother, Miss, her reason

  blew away.”

  “Well, write it

  to your Grandma, I’m sure it’s all

  the same,” Miss said,

  bowing her head,

  in a peculiar dust bowl

  of pity and shame.

  Oh,

  to my Grandma,

  right,

  that makes me feel good,

  all I can see is “Dear Mummy,”

  “Glad you’re my Mummy,”

  plastered on the wall:

  Five year old explodes

  in Mother’s Day rage—

  sheds blood.

  Thankfully,

  you shut down your factory. I believe you

  were taking payment without shipping.

  HOMELESS FIRST PART

  Isolation,

  that gets me the most.

  I got the seagulls, sure,

  got the breeze off the coast.

  Yeah, I’m surrounded

  by hundred different folks,

  they don’t wanna know

  I talk to myself,

  just here, in my head,

  not aloud, not crazy,

  not yet.

  I re-enact

  things way back, I’m trying

  to put them right.

  Thing is, no one hear to listen.

  Yeah, isolation,

  oh, and desperation, yeah, hunger.

  Wait till midnight,

  go to the wheelie bins side of

  M&S,

  always throw good shit out.

  Dined on prawn sandwiches, sausage rolls

  and a couple of out-of-date energy drinks.

  Have to watch it

  though, counts as theft even

  though

  they throw

  the damn stuff away.

  Walk miles, I do, ferretin’ for lost pennies.

  Found a quid yesterday, still got it, saving it,

  you know, for a rainy day.

  Cigarette butt huntin’,

  now that’s a bastard

  on a rainy day.

  HERE HE COMES

  Here he comes,

  shirt off

  swaggering

  like an epileptic

  praying mantis.

  Flexing

  his skinny arms

  to his girlfriend

  who giggles l
ike

  he’s just whipped

  out his maggot.

  He opens his gob,

  another albino

  thinking he knows

  how to act

  black

  Jamaican.

  “Innit, tho blud? Wiv ma woman an’ me crew, like.”

  Fucking bag of crud,

  seen your statuses

  you dyslexic spanner.

  Friday night

  staggering down the street,

  too many Monsters,

  and those M&Ms

  that you were gullible

  enough to believe were Class A.

  Skipping school

  because you were drug running

  Sherbet Dip to Primary

  school kids, because some short arsed,

  hairy fatty on a Ribena drip said

  you could have a career.

  There he goes,

  shirt off,

  skin burning,

  you can almost smell

  the baby

  wipes

  his mother cleaned his

  arse with.

  PLAYING SPORTS

  If you don’t like sports you must be gay,

  he-he, giggle-giggle, run away.

  I didn’t date boys

  or girls, makes me

  non-sexual.

  High school. Peers. If you ain’t one

  of them you must be queer. A pansy. A rose

  bush on a slant. Enjoying the showers

  ‘cause no one wears pants.

  Half these lads never had a date.

  They were too busy trying to masturbate

  under the desk

  while the Religious Education

  teacher tattled about circumcision, sodomy:

  Man should not lie with another man—

  He’d go home,

  bang his boyfriend.

  If you don’t like sports, if you ain’t playing

  the game, you’re lame.

  Limping fag swimming in

  your own mouth, dribbling.

  One flaw in those peer’s verbal

  piddling,

  one of “The Lads”

  got done

  for kiddie fiddling.

  ABOUT DAVE

  He was born with a hangman’s game,

  A light cloud in a blanket of grey,

  it’s all the same.

  His brother John kept him close,

  but you can’t stop the thunder

  when the lightning hits.

  He was born with noose ready drawn,

  just took a nudge;

  and those fingers soon budged

  April dawn.

  Hauled away for hording stolen goods,

  planted there by some rival hoods,

  John left to mourn.

  The hammer came down on two years,

  which released Dave’s fears,

  and he swung in his cell

  drenched in tears down hell.

  Hangman’s game complete.

  BROKEN BOTTLE

  Thrown by the shoulders

  of a foul tempered sea,

  a broken green bottle tried

  hard to flee.

  Discarded,

  Disregarded,

  by nature’s breast,

  shoreline to shoreline

  it found

  no rest.

  Abused by a system

  of oceanic law,

  shackled

  to the tide

  on the hydrosphere floor.

  Limpets of guilt,

  barnacles of shame,

  pox

  of the beaches,

  a ‘kick-the-bottle’ game.

  Lying spent,

  years worth of grime

  on the skin,

  a hand reached down,

  an eye looked within.

  Held up to the sunlight,

  it heard a voice say:

  “Your glass maybe be splintered,

  through harsh seas in the winters,

  you’re still what you are.

  A wreck

  snapped your neck,

  Rocks pounded your shell,

  But these eyes

  know you,

  and know you well.”

  HOMELESS SECOND PART

  Bench is damn cold,

  wind turned cannibal

  chewing at my skin like

  it happened to be on offer in

  a bargain bin: Out of Date

  50 percent off.

  Started snowing. Pretty.

  Watching the little angels

  flutter from the sky

  to die

  in an instant on some still-ticking

  engine.

  Hid up here, in a shelter

  lean-too, with shadows disagreeing

  on present company. See

  the hotel where I used to slave my arse

  off for a pitiful wage, flamboyant tips.

  These days,

  I’m flamboyantly

  detached from the grid,

  any grid. Extinct.

  In the cold.

  In snow.

  Most likely wake up

  encased

  in ice.

  Nice. Have to be better

  than this bench.

  LITTER PICKER

  He’d been doing our street

  for a good dirty, thirty years,

  that litter picker, picking up

  bitter flitting litter from the

  oily,

  shit stained gutters.

  Him and me Granddad

  chatted and batted

  the manly gossip,

  with a hot sip

  of coffee in the coastal winters.

  Me Gran and him,

  wagged the chin,

  whined at time, the changing time,

  when litter was scarcer

  than gritters in winter,

  when kids were raised,

  praised

  for following the sticker

  where to drop litter,

  so litter picking sticklers

  didn’t break their sodding backs.

  Like him.

  Back Matter

  I would just like to take this opportunity to thank you for downloading this free book of poems. Opinions are always welcome.

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