The Morning Paper

REMNANTS of winter at the window,
soft like your hatred as you surrender to
isolation and delve into a microcosm
of sleeping reminders, lost in a battle of time.

THE front page plays with your dreams;
the years are striding in like storms.
They are winning this jealous war
with boastful destruction in their voices.

YOU'RE bleeding days in desperation,
witnessing wounds and recording failures,
choosing fatigue as your perfume.

20

Twenty minutes of believing.

Twenty minutes of maybes.

Twenty minutes of praying,
most of which were in vain
and you knew it.
But you carried on through the pain
and you didn't stop,
did you?

Twenty seconds behind a locked door
as you fell right apart
on that cold bathroom floor.

Twenty seconds.

Nothing more.

This Time Yesterday

This time yesterday, we were alive,
dancing in the streets, painting
the pavements with our laughter
and the air with our songs,

like a marching band with
bright paper streamer drum beats
and iridescent firework chanting
around us, above us, everywhere.

One thing can taint everything,
like a cancer that spreads
and multiplies, turning every cell
into a shell.

When the flood came, it washed
the joy out of our voices, the
colour from our faces and we
became dead, grey, silent,

like masterless marionettes
hanging from abandoned strings,
graceless corpses, drained within
from without and being without.

This is what we will remember,
For even our memories
Are now diseased.

Wouldn't It Be Lo-ver-ly? (The Elite League version)

If you're a British hockey fan then you probably know what this is about. Written for a laugh when the Phoenix were on the verge of switching leagues.

All I want is a League whose stance
Means we all get an equal chance
Regardless of finance.
Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?

Honest owners who never cheat,
No 'Big Four' - wouldn't it be sweet?
Where we could all compete,
Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?

Oh, so lo-ver-ly dreaming that someday
We'd win the League.
But the way that things are now,
It's difficult to believe.

Let's see Hull raise the Playoff Cup
(And the Bison as runners-up),
The Phoenix out on top,
Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?