Oils, 65×44 cms.
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I have always had trouble sleeping and would watch the dawn from the floor of my room. I have lived alone for almost all of the last decade.


“Loneliness is and always will be the central and inevitable condition of man.” T.S. Eliot.


But it doesn’t HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.


Sarcasm is its own reward. With a feel for illusions and allusions there’s only one bone picker on the farm. Give me a chance and I’ll tell you how to lose, how to become whatever it happens you mostly revile when you’re alone and trying quietude for an experiment.
Bones on the outside, like insects, sure.
There is no way out of this, this is stuck-dom, stuck-ville, stuck-o-later time, for Christ’s sake give me a plate full of ashes and a lime green chair and why don’t you ask me one more time, I’ll find the right way to say it.
Ask me again. I’ll say the same thing in a different way and on the couch this time in the night, singing softly and whispering into my hair. I’ll show you my teeth and you can twist the hairs on my arm so that you know that I know that you’re there.
Wishing for time to see, lips curled like paper on a fire, man that’s not the world shaking – that’s just you.
I love it when ads for colour fade.
Lifting up in quiet suspension and Christ did you see that guy’s fucking NECK?
Offer me a corner in the parlour with soft wrapping on the outside, lights and stretched skin, translucent like grass on a spring afternoon only skin, not grass. Offer me this and a few more and ask me again.
This time I’ll tell you a story with highlights in pink and we’ll both fall backwards laughing into summer with our arms full of flowers clutched a little too tightly. Soft cheek carved into light smell of cigarettes and warm wine, – tolerance and conviction clean into pure water, sure, in the morning?

Their love story, it’s famous, a princess at Christmas-time, iron that’s pitted and scarred and cool and heavy in your hand. Walking on the beach muttering vigorous, Somer and Aquitania separated by cloth-backed, dark books. Trying again and so hard this time laced and buckled and arcane, accentuated and caressed. Willed into existence with a strangled grasp.

Wish I wasn’t so fucking tired all the time and could give up properly, once my arms stopped hurting I remember that was a good day.
Dipped my cigarette into my coffee and took a sip and a drag, so hot made me feel alive for a moment that I’ll never get back and will probably happen again but I’ll forget to savour then too. I don’t really want all that much, just a sensation that I can forget is a sensation for the period in which it happens without having to remind myself. Lick my fingers it’s the only way. Such pretty eyes and idealised.
Punch the key a bit harder at the end of the sentence, there’s only breath and life and no promises from either, go guarantor for me that I’ll be alone, prove me right with skin that colour, hand that soft, a zealot with a placard walking in the rain. Drama and faith are such poor excuses.
She looks lonely but I must too huh? Twelve o’clock on a Friday night, two cups of good hot coffee and five or how many cigarettes this time, run my hand down the side of my face. Crack each finger individually. I’m in no condition for revelry, though I do remember what it was like.
Give up, give in. Whisper and kiss the side of my mouth. Couldn’t hold a conversation if I wiped my hands dry.
Someplace or something warm.
I think so.
It’s okay.
It is.