out for breakfast at the heartbreak hotel

welcome to my blog of poems and pretty things

[faithyposting]

the emperor Claudius:

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Port Talbot

From Submarine by Joe Dunthorne

Port Talbot by night is GCSE maths as it ought to be taught; an equation with glitz - pipes run through the air unsupported, kinked at wacky angles just for the fun of it; rows of giant, bracketed smokestacks, wrapped in ladders, scaffold, long division; there are billowing yellow flames, dense blue flames, and sometimes, on a good day, a flame of toxic green. X equals one of the thousands of orange carbon lights that cling to every structure: the points of a line graph awaiting connection. There are tall, thin towers, dirty at the top like chewed-on pencils. […]

My parents like to blame Port Talbot for a number of local problems: leukaemia, lymphoma, asthma, eczema, brain tumours, and the lack of investment in Swansea city centre. There is a stretch of houses between the motorway and the steelworks that Dad calls ‘Melanoma Way’.

I used to say: I do not believe in scenery. This is still true but I would send postcards home of Port Talbot by Night.

[faithyposting]

Piledriver waltz by Alex Turner

[Excerpt from song lyrics]

I etched the face of a stopwatch

On the back of a raindrop

And did a swap for the sand in an hourglass

I heard an unhappy ending

It sort of sounds like you leaving

I heard the piledriver waltz

It woke me up this morning

You look like you've been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel

And sat in the back booth by the

Pamphlets and the literature on how to lose

Your waitress was miserable and so was your food

If you're gonna try and walk on water

Make sure you wear your comfortable shoes

[ lyrics from the beautiful song by Alex Turner, written for the soundtrack of the film Submarine and later re-recorded and released as part of Arctic Monkeys’ Suck It And See. ]

[faithyposting]

A Private by Edward Thomas

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors

Many a frozen night, and merrily

Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:

‘At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush’, said he, 

‘I slept.’ None knew which bush. Above the town,

Beyond ‘The Drover’, a hundred spot the down

In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps 

More sound in France - that, too, he secret keeps. 

[faithyposting]

funeral

My veins loop around my neck,

Tightening. I am housed there,

But beside me, my grandfather

Head bowed like a beggar

Watches his red-leaf hands

And I know that is where he lives.

Blind to the green of the valley

the rain’s touch is cotton-soft yet

Heavy as the woman’s voice

Like stewed golden apples and bleeding plums.

Is this my first day in reality?

The bitter joy of afterwards can only be found in pain.

  The fluttering people, all perfectly alike,

Are a delicate, threading nerve

Through my cells, mind, and soul,

Exposed to sunlight at last

As if my leg is severed

and I am bleeding on the ground.

  Inevitably I am cold, barred in by grey.

I desperately want to take his quaking hand,

Still the loud shivering which tells

A story I only know the last chapter of.

But I am an angel weeping, locked in.

I look down. All I can give is quiet tears and breaths.

[faithyposting]

neither here nor there

I.

Same sea, separated,

I am doused as I lie.

drip drip, never dry

But stuck in-between

Wet cheeks and bare mattress,

stars side-eyeing me

The room ends and there’s nothing

Where the fourth wall should be

Just night, distant lights, and the same sullen sea.

 II.

Wooden floor, misplaced darkness and old rumpled sheets

Salmon cat-sick ceiling, steep cobbled streets -

Bring me the warmth and the walk

The scratchy circle, routine.

Down the rusted path, protected by leaves

And when the campfire burns out

In sunset sand lose cold feet;

Glowing, dark sea, the haze of a dream -

But the air here is naked, sharp in my lungs.

The ground is never quenched

(and the summer never comes).

[faithyposting]

Excerpt from Corfe Castle By Alun Lewis

Love grows impulsive here: the best forget;

The failures of the earth will try again.

She would go back to him if he but asked.

The tawny thrush is silent; when he sings 

His silence is fulfilled. Who wants to talk

As trippers do? Yet, love,

Before we go be simple as this grass. 

Lie rustling for this last time in my arms. 

Quicken the dying island with your breath.

[faithyposting]

today i saw cancer, cigarettes... etc

I write poetry and I’m too cowardly custard to publish it in the college magazine because my friends are on the staff and will know it’s mine. I’ve looked for places online to post and it all seems to just be old men posting on poetry sites. what i want is the return of the ryan ross livejournal poetry era. i cannot lie he is who i base my poetic style on the most... being a panic fan during my formative years has done this to me. 

so anyway i’m thinking of posting bits on here if nobody minds that

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hi... do you guys fancy creating a cult following for me or somethinf

I’ve always loved the idea of having my own blog page like this. I love beautiful things. I’m obsessed with tv shows and movies, I love literature and music. A place like tumblr, which does pretty words and pretty pictures, seems a great place to start with this. I’m basically trying to curate my own Museum of Me on this wall. I’ve never used tumblr before so this might take some getting used to, but I’m hoping someone out there will like to see the inside of my head.