Where is insanity?
Is it in the places we don't look,
Hidden in the cracks
Which crease our tidy lives?

Where is sanity?
Surely it lurks in madness.
Broken and bleeding and
Hell bent on ordered destruction.

Insanity is ordered life.
The edges that press at reality.
The love of others and
Work to pay and not to play.

No one is looking at me.
The vanity of youth has died away.
I am not special or unique.
I will not light the world on fire.

I parted with my dreams.
I gave away my fire for love.
Tired and worn, the stress falls away.
I am only me now and I am always alive.

Guess, who's back. Back again.

So I got lazy, I got lost and I got found. Somewhere in the haze of finishing my MA I have managed to start hearing the words again. There they go, tick tick tick. Wanting life, wanting breath, wanting to consume me the way they always have.

I have been away to long and my story, Maldon't Hammer keeps banging against the wall that is my brain. Art, art, art. It's been my saviour and my whore for as long as I can remember. Well, I am sorry I have been away, but now I am back. Can't you see? Can't you hear? No, well then I must make you listen again.

Work In Progress (I think)

Malden stood for a while and listened carefully to the air that crackled around him. What had he been told? Listen to the trees. That is what they had said. Well he was listening and they were saying much to him at all. They just shushed at him and bowed their branches the other way. In fact, he was sure that they were trying to ignore him.

 

He sat down and thought about it for a while. His baby sister could do and his two hopeless brothers could too. He squinted at the large silver birch in frustration. He would have to admit it. There was something wrong with him. He was just plain odd. He didn't fit in and he never would. He couldn't talk to animals. He couldn't hear the trees and he certainly couldn't make fire out of thin air, no matter how many times he was told that air was what created fire. He would have to go and talk to Gabriel. There was nothing left for it.

 

Getting back to his feet he made his long and sad way across the field to the old barn that lived on the edge of the estate. He hated it, he loathed it, he resented it. It was falling to pieces and stayed together in a way that he felt he never would be able to do. It was a resilient shack that bucked against logic and nature. It stood strong in the face of adversity and filled up like a bucket in the face of a storm. Fortunately, it had so many holes that it quickly emptied when the rain had passed.

 

He hadn't wanted to get to this point. It meant he was desperate and at the end of his list of useful ideas. Besides, Gabriel scared him in the way that old people over sixty do and when he looked into your eyes, he looked into your soul. He was tall, brash, honest and ever so slightly blurry around the edges. He always looked like he was about to disappear but you knew that in reality he was actually trying to enter this world.

 

He stood by the barn and peered through one eye at Malden. His cigar dangled from his lip and he was forced to squint through the smoke. Old in a way that was beyond any earthly knowledge, Gabriel knew everything. But he was still scary. He dressed in black because it enforced the myths that surrounded him and relished the fact that he could tell people what he thought of them and spit, should he choose to. He was wizened, old and cantankerous. He was secretly, very very happy. He loved it all. He loved life so much that he simply couldn't figure out why people thought that he was so miserable.

 

Malden slowed under his gaze. It was the bird that he disliked so much. Not Gabriel, but the bloody bird. It was psychotic and there was no other word for it. It was selfish and unpredictable. Fierce and uncontrollable, it changed like the wind. One minute it was loving and approachable and the next minute it would be trying to take you to pieces with its beak. It should have been black really, both on the inside and the out, but it wasn't. It was cute and colourful and looked like the mountains on a warm and peaceful evening. The whole village was scared of it.

 

He wasn't going to be afraid this time. Not of Gabriel and not of the bird. He straightened to his full height, gritted this teeth girded his loin and other such things and walked on up to Gabriel, with one eye cocked on the sky of course.

 

"Thought you'd come sooner." The old man sighed, "The sun's high and I was about to nap. Can't stand this weather, it's too nice." Maybe, it occurred to him, this is why everyone thinks I am depressed.

 

"Aye, but some of us have to live with the sun. It's life in't it? I've come for advice. Would you help me? I don't know what else to do really."

 

"I thought," Gabriel purred, "as much. I guess things can't be rushed lad. I know what you want so save your words. Other people talking bore me. Sometimes lad, some people get the short end of the proverbial stick. Sometimes, no matter what someone does nothing good ever happens. Someone has to be at the bottom after all. And that is your fate I am afraid,

 

"Legend says that people like you used to go to a place over the hills. You'd think that people would come up with something more original but there you go. These people can't hear anything at all. They can't even hear each other anymore. Go there Malden," Gabriel was getting excited now. His eyes were on fire so Malden took a step back just to be sure, "go there a bring back. . ." Gabriel paused for effect, "the Hammer."

 

Malden stared at him for a moment.

 

Then a moment longer.

 

"Your really are mad," he said as he walked away.

Untitiled

Thunder crashed down from the sky as I turned to stare at him. He was so far away from me now and I didn't know how to get to him. The earth shook with every sonic boom and I wondered how it had come to this. Beyond me stood the angel of darkness, hollow and malevalent. I was frozen to the ground. Behind him, Daniel walked away. Slowly and calmly, as if nothing had ever been wrong, as if we had not come to this mutual end and isolation.

The house behind me shuddered. The house that we had owned and kept together. The house that had held our love. Cracked and damaged, it was driven to the very point of redemption that I had felt within my heart. Like me, it just stood and stared.

What could I do? I looked at the house. It looked at the angel and knew that I had to make a choice. Which way? Redemption or pergatory? I closed my eyes and walked.

Funny as hell!

I don't really know why I took this here test, but the results were funny as hell! For the record, I am a South East English person. So why so funny? Well, I love Bruce Springsteen and it would seem that I have me a Jersey accent! Brillant!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The South
The Midland
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Dear World - Explicit

Dear World

I've been sitting on this for a while, well, since I was about thirteen really. But the time has come and I just want to speak my mind. Here I go. Dear World, fuck you. Fuck you once and then a few more times over.

I have slogged my guts out since childhood to chase that thing we all call a better life and you have done nothing but dump on me. You should be ousted and sold out to the newspapers, government or whoever the fuck it is that deals with nasty cheats like you. When you gonna give it up huh?

You drag my families asses off to the country of my ancesters in search of a better life and what do we find? I will bloody tell you, so I hope you are listening. Racism and recession. Now what is that about? We were promised everthing and instead we got weeks of nothing to eat but bloody Kraft Dinner. Is it any wonder then that I am now wheat intolerant? I don't think so.

Get your education, that's what they said to me. It will finish all of your problems. Bollocks will it. I speant years trying to stay at college but the government didn't want me there and made my life difficult. Education, education, education. . . my arse.

I have spent my entire life trying to pay the bills and now what? I have an education and career, but no one is hiring. Funny that cause I was guaranteed a job. Liars. I can't afford a house because I pay rent which drains all of my savings. I can't afford a better car to replace my old one, which is expensive to run because it is old, because I am too busy paying over the odds for the one I have. The council think that I should be able to pay three hundred pounds a month to them. Ha ha fucking ha!

I can't buy a house or get a job in this area but I can't afford to move to where the jobs are. Yawn!

That is my sob story and really, we all have the same one. Just maybe in a different form. So world I just wanted to say fuck you. I am tired of watching the cheaters and users park in the illegal spaces and get away with it when I get the bloody ticket. I want you to know this: I am not done. Do what you will, I ain't going anywhere. I am the only person I know who is working five jobs and I will keep on doing it because you aren't going to win. And if the council put me in jail for none payment? Well, that's a vacation isn't? It will just mean that I finally get some time off.

This is my public announcement to you World. Bring it on cause this underdog is still fighting. In the words of Denis Leary, "thank you, thank you and fuck you."

Peace out.

All Brits - sick of being tracked?

As everyone in Britain knows, our beloved PM has been reading a little too much George Orwell. Anyway, the jist of it, for those who live elsewhere, it this:

Our government (with a small g) wants to make people in this country has a box put into their car so that we can pay as we go drive. Yep, that's right, we pay for the driving we do. We are to pay somewhere in the regions of £200 for a box that tracks our every movement and then charges us for doing it. If we go to fast by accident then they will simply add a fine to our next months bill. Very nice. Not only do we pay a car tax, a road tax and have the most expensive fuel tax other than Amsterdam, we are now going to have to pay for every millimetre that we drive.

Not good enough really is it?

Well there is a petition against this and I would like to ask anyone who reads this, you must be British or expat, to take out a couple of seconds of your life so that Britain can try to pretend that we are a free country to live in for that little bit longer.

Happy signing!

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/sign

There is only one Boss

If there is anyone that I love more than Bruce then I don't know who it might be. Saw Seeger Sessions in Manchester. Have seen him a million times. Keep it rockin' Boss. Love you forever.