Stories we could tell

January 

I breeze through the winter frozen air of Vinohrady

Breathing deeply

Head up

Eyes wide

Ambling along Korunní

The magic of this place once so evocative

Now stale and serene

I left a piece of my heart on every corner of this sparkling city

Also the contents of my stomach 

Less frequently

And I remember...

A million cigarettes 

Outside bars

Inside bars

Ten thousand joints

A thousand shots of slivovice 

At 4am crashing through normality

The oxygen starved air of my lungs joining the choir of voices in a cacophony

Shouting

Laughing

Shouting

January

I ease through the crowds of Wenceslas square and float to Náplavka for a final beer

I stop at the places I loved

The places we loved

The places she loved

Lost a limb

Gained a limb

Lost a limb

Gained a limb

As time runs short

I do things for the last time

Fully aware it's the last time

And I feel mostly numb

January

Through Vršovice streets I run

Mostly in a daze

Mostly numb

Lost a few years

Gained some pounds

But not a thing I'd change

Not one

More sad music

It’s 8.15 am and I am sitting on the balcony smoking a cigarette looking at the giant golden cross on the roof of a nearby church.

I woke up again today in tears, that’s three days in a row as the pain and hurt finally start to release from my body after months of isolation.

I think about the last ten years.

Ten years is a long time and a short time, like the blink of an eye.

So many places and faces, drunken evenings, hungover mornings, joy and laughter and despair.

I think about her living alone with our dog and everything she must have been going through and how I really could and should have done more.

A swallow dips and dives across the blue skies and for a moment I’m tempted to leap just to feel the same freedom but instead I smoke another cigarette and keep pressing repeat on the sad music.

My head spins and buzzes, full of regret and questions.

How did we get here, how did things get so fucked up?

Will she ever be able to forgive?

Will I ever be the same again?

I step back from the edge.

For now. 

I listen to the songs we loved together and reminisce on the best times - the magical times.

I try to stay occupied, just to keep from losing it entirely but the days feel like months, like years, the time since we walked away longer than the decade we spent together.

Charlotte, I only hope you can find what you are searching for, I hope that one day we can speak again and the anger and bitterness subside.

I hope I can survive long enough to see that day.

The tears keep falling all morning and there seems to be no end to this torture, my shoulders slumped, eyes red and puffy, somewhere in between living and not living.

Clouds cover the blue sky and I think "of course, I can’t even have sunshine".

It’s cold for May, tomorrow seems impossibly far away.

And my heart in pieces, holding onto thoughts of yesterday.

Same old post apocalyptic blues

It doesn’t seem real now and the memory is hazy, as if the encounter was a dream or some quirk of the imagination but I am sure that it was some ungodly hour, in a godless place, and I was drinking myself to an early grave when I first heard his coarse voice, coughing and spluttering through the foul air and stink of spoiled beer and piss.

"Kid... come over here. Sit down here." Then a chain of guttural chokes and spray of spittle as his body was wracked with the outcome of a lifetime of hard living and the late stage lung cancer that would eventually lay him to rest.

"Don’t be afraid!" With this he shot me a toothless grin and then leaned away on his bar stool almost to the point of falling backwards. He let out a long, high pitched cackle like a cartoon witch and then spat a large congealed splotch of blood directly onto the bar floor.

I raised my head from my stupor to take a glance at the barman, who was slumped with a needle in his arm and his only good eye rolled back into his head.

I guess he was pretty much dead anyway. So when I stuck a bullet between his eyes and took the cash register nobody really noticed.

A long way to fall with only a life jacket

I can see the shadows of clouds on the surface of the sea and the view from the window is top to bottom blue, scattered with wisps of white and the infinite haze that marks the horizon

From here the atmosphere is clearly paper thin, barely a whisper, a soft hug of gases that allow the hustle and bustle to continue below unchecked

It's all so fragile, impossibly delicate, perched on the edge of eternity, as far as we know alone and clinging to this solitary rock face, awash in the endless ocean

The wing tilts and the bottom drops out as we hit turbulence and I glance around at the rows of suits crammed into the early morning flight across the Channel

Everybody dressed in Sunday best, on the way to business on the continent, all committed to believing in this frail concept that keeps a roof over head and families fed

Maybe some are toiling towards the progression of the species, scraping hope from the unlikeliest of places, turning genius into usefulness, true pioneers in this age of knowledge

But I suspect that most like me are just here for the ride, holding on to any passing craft, working, watching, waiting

I try to create meaning in the smallest of things, two giant liners on the vast pond below appear tiny, apparently racing neck and neck but hardly moving from up here

Sunshine reflects from the pale blanket underneath and as we descend pulls me out of the daydream

Here it goes again, another day pretending, ties and handshakes on foreign shores but nothing new and nothing more

Food on the table and bills paid, I spend weekends exhausted, languishing on the sofa, completely uncertain what I was meant for

Some words on extremism

I believe that when I have suffered real loss it will be much more appropriate to commentate on events that so far
I have only been involved in through my obsessive consumption of media

and possibly my greatest material will unfold through some grand tragedy but it is fair to say that my life has mostly been blessed with safety and stability
and clearly I have no right to push any opinion I might hold on anybody

standing here against the wind on any given Friday when the night is getting late with nothing but a cigarette and headphones for company it is impossible to feel anything but despondent and lonely
especially when everything I read currently leaves either a wounded heart or a sour taste with me

anyway it seems we have no choice now, the world is indeed polarising whilst I barely struggle to make it through the week and drive on through my apathy

hatred, intolerance, violence and despair have become daily but this is because of the actions of the few, not many

I will not be subdued, I stand here strong for the west, I guess I am Charlie but mostly I am me

and whatever is thrown in our direction I will continue to be

And now for something completely different... A small selection of my paintings

Full size

Full size

Full size

Full size

the pursuit of happiness

so you know who your friends are
at 2.23am on a Monday morning
and it's too late for music and drinking whiskey out of a champagne glass
anything positive is only just enough at this time
so push on through the reasonable
the whole building is aching and creaking with the sound of bass
but it is far more important that some words get through the shell to you
so fuck all the responsibilities of tomorrow
and keep on getting older and older and older
nothing brings any more joy
just keep finding excuses to escape
a walk into the wilderness
a walkabout is due
but not yet
it will come but there is still much to do
if it is possible to internalise something that is intrinsically powerful and external
none of this would be essential
a subject I discussed very recently with a very important person in my life
anyway
I was there
destroyed gang life and that
yes I beat all that
we lived hard and never had to draw gun
I flew back down south
and yes the pace is slow compared
but I can breathe the beat whilst watching sunsets
and green hills
and rivers flowing
and yes I am sat
2.53 drinking whiskey from a champagne glass
heavy beat in headphones
not quite where I was 5 years ago
but progression from there
happiness is almost impossible to achieve
but you can try to obtain objectives
I got a few
but plenty still spin round my head
with stars in time with beats
and alternate criticisms still ringing from early defeats
I still hope to beat on through you
and destroy anything you ever said
rebuild then some
so I reckon this is almost done
destruction now for everyone
like I said whiskey in a champagne glass
and this says something about what I think about holding your chin up
so hold down
and hold your chin up
another whiskey and we will be strong
forever
and on and on

Things fall together

The year following the death of two great Africans
I have never seen storms like this
The wind tears and screams our cities apart
The bold steely creations of man have been swallowed by the sea
And water fills our homes
Disrespectfully
Washing away the clutter of a modern English family
You only have to turn on the tv
For angry pink faces publicly venting their frustration for living too close to the beach
A million miles from the intense African heat
Of the savannah or Sokoto streets
A little more hot and a little more beat
Without two loud guiding voices

Yet the dream is still alive and thrives
We still have Half of a yellow sun
And it makes our relative degree of suffering a million miles from real plight
I get wet, unfortunate
But I survive

another day, with grace

I guess that's it...
when the rib cracks
the lungs and heart aren't too far behind
and the view doesn't need to be the hardest or the night the darkest
to spin an entire world around
and tears fill the eyes
it's in breaking and breaking down
we find the wings to create beautiful things
and the greatest understand
that the worst rooms in town are the source
of all the best and most destructive pictures and words crafted by man
by pen and by hand
and it all builds
day on day
to one of those sparkling
magnetic evenings when
in waves the starlight fills
through eyes
arms
fingers
to paper
to new eyes
lungs
and hearts

the great unwashed

the people who go all the way crazy
who kick and scream and kill and maim
the terrible few who fall so far
from basic levels of decency
that they lose even the core of humanity
and exit society
are probably not so unlike you and me
but a little more scratched
a little more dogworn
and beaten

they eat and sleep and work and pray
like you or me
they probably even had dreams
once

but the knocks kept them down
the sheer weight of it all
a cross to bear
that somehow shifted a potentially great
and important member of this western democracy
into a sadistically wrong
and tragically destructive note in history

a smile or two
or a kind word to a stranger
every now and then
might make that little bit of difference
to the otherwise bleak and terrifying life
of a potentially great
and important member of this western democracy
so close to the edge
you will never know

or maybe it's far
too late for all that
now