Paradise.

And...
Go!

We run away, to the secrets, to the treasure no one knows exists. It's a place whose beauty is unparalleled. You wouldn't see it if you blinked.

We climb off the trams, hearing electricity sparkle and spit at the sky lines, and our little feet can't carry the excitement we bear.

Young, hopeless and lost in a world we'll never see again. You hold onto nothing but the air, and you're close. Very close.

There's a sun shining, there's a place undiscovered, unnoticed but not unloved.
Still, the day's cigarette burns slowly. You adore the summer, and you are in love with this secret place.

It's not hidden, it exists but people seem to like the beach instead. You hate it, the sand. through your little wriggling toes, it hurts when you walk home. But here. Here, it's safe. It's your friend. It's your place.

Leave me to climb the steel. I'm good. I'm too young to know, and too tall to play. But I still play.

The floor, stained with wood chips, hurts softly when I land, but I laugh it off and do the same routine a thousand times over.

I'm covered in dirt. Terrified. It's sunny weather shaded by trees surrounding this vestige of safety. 

We look a messy blur, but we always will act as kids. Give me a hand please. I need to get up, and there's a hand willing. Your hand is gripped and a smile stays on the face. 

You feel like nothing is wrong is the world, because you haven't discovered reality yet. You stay inside this paradise, laughing endless hours away and realise that there is nothing you need except the space to play and be.

I'm here, on top of it all. This cobalt blue steel cable jump is ancient. Thirty or fourty years separate you and this object, but you share the emotions and memories of thousands of others that have attempted and achieved what you have, but for now you do not know this. You are innocence.

Ready to jump, ready to let go of everything for that feeling. That notion, of freedom. That one thing you chase eternally, mortally. You have it as a 6 year old you. Now you know what it was like. Freedom.

My hands reach out to paradise,  but it never calls home.

It stays and waves goodbye with a dry breeze.

Asleep.

And in that one moment, I swore we were but infinite.

Sing to me.
To dream, I desire.
I define your words of tire, to bed.
Where it remains, a place of security.
Just asleep, and then leave me be.

Don't try to wake me, you know I'll be gone.
Never feel for me, I'd want you to know.
Deep in the cells of this small heart, I'll feel you.
So.

I don't want to wake up on my own anymore.
I don't want to wake up.
On my own.
Anymore.

Don't you dare feel for me, I want you know.
Deep in these cells of mine.
My heart, I have to go.

There is another world.
Is there.
There is a better world.
There is.

Oh there must be.
Well, there must be.
Oh.
There must be.
Well, there must be, well.

Review: The King of Limbs

10/10

Rarely you get an album that remains completely flawless. But with The King of Limbs, Radiohead achieve this with absolute ease. All that’s been said before about them is in the journals of music history, but with this one album, an 8 track wonder is what they’ve spawned. It’s not the album of the decade or anything, but it’s a definite shoe-in for album of the month, if not year, and it’s only February.

Thom Yorke and co.’s “less is more” approach works beautifully throughout the course, with arrangements of just certain notes allowing vast amounts of time for you to cherish and appreciate the album like a fine and ageing wine. Without a doubt, the choice made by the band to not market this to its hypest potential and allow something as brilliantly timed as this to nearly slip under the radar is simply remarkable.

Some would mark this as a compilation album conjured up from Yorke’s solo career and leftover bits of track from the In Rainbows days, but I’d beg to differ, as it deserves more recognition than that. Originally not such a fan of Radiohead, both the latter album mentioned and this one resonate and facilitate the abilities to reel in people who sit on fences and make you appreciate the delicacy and focus of British rock music.

Greenwood’s drumming is put to most effect with the lead single, a stunning title to a stand out song, ‘Lotus Flower’, one which eschews both moving poignancy and jazz like feelings, motions of both body and mind intertwining, entering into your mind like a virus by taking root and burrowing for quite some time until you want to thrust along without a care.

It’s something worth more than checking out, whether you’re driving home, whether you’re off to a gig, when you’re waking up, it’s a transcendental masterpiece du jour which I implore you to hear if you’re after something with weight, presence, and beauty.

Cup of tea, was it?

Sitting soaked on a terrible 1970s plastic seat inside what can only be described as the remnants of a once busy café, I stare emptily at the dirty glass windowpane, wondering where in the hell they are. Literally pounding away onto the glass, the rain decides to create a curtain of water which makes it even harder to spot the blurred figures going back and forth in a hurry. I notice my hands start to shake on the steaming cup of tea I ordered three minutes ago.

It’s ridiculously hot, or am I just bloody freezing? I don’t know, or care.  All I know is that I’m waiting here for a person to show up who’s already 25 minutes late, and this worries me, and makes me overthink, spouting dumb rhetoric like ‘What happened last night?’ , or ‘Am I at the right place like they said?’. Instead I try to distract myself.  Putting my hand into a pocket, I look for my iPod to try and pass the time, but then I realize I left it  at home. Shit.

I sigh, then try to inhale some of the sludge they serve in this dingy and dilapidated café, whilst still trying to pretend to look comfortable on these unfitting chairs. The radio blares away some static like pop drivel from an American artist picked top of the mundane week’s releases, and ignoring this as background noise, I focus on everything and nothing around me.

I notice how everything is beige. The Artex walls, the doors, the chairs a faded brown and even the laminate carpet they left behind from the 1950s still lingers. Even the food and drink looks and tastes it. I keep on checking my phone every half minute or so, lying to myself that I missed a text or a call, and then keep on putting it back in my coat pocket, whilst repeating this same routine for say another ten minutes.

There’s nothing here except some middle aged couple who also remind me of the same colour that suffocates this gaff; a sense of life faded and gone askew, somehow living an average life with some average experiences, an average house, an average job, an average car, average friends, average, or as I call it, living an existence of nothingness.  

They seem to be stuck into a deep conversation at the far righthand side of the greasy spoon, yet don’t even bat an eyelid towards each other. Both seem to have given up on even speaking in terms of eye contact, their words seem to drop onto the table and drag themselves towards the other, and vice versa.

The table is an ADD’s paradise; one all symmetrically aligned, cups all facing towards each other and everything lined up, even the plates where their disgusting Full English once was also shows this eerie symmetrical pattern. A couple objects of no importance also seem to be next to the woman, with a re-read Take A Look magazine spread sitting plump next to the condiments they used for their breakfast.

All they do is just sit their silently, just mumbling wordless speech towards each other, and I still feel entranced. Just looking at their blank gazes and cold faces, I listen to what they’ve got to say. When one of them moves their hand the other one coughs and then she jumps out the chair screaming, yelling at him those six simple yet shocking words.

‘I wish I never met you.'

The Ballad of Beasts and Seasons

Tragedy befell our little town,
Little Red's world turned upside down,
Her grandmother dearest gone,
Taken by the Beast,
A lonely year arrives,
One with no feasts.

Oh! the people mourned for their favourite elderly,
A week of sombre mourning and quiet misery,
Black laden sheets lay,
Spread on curtains, banisters and seats,
Candles lit outside all their little places,
The town of Evermore changed forever as you gaze on the faces.

Autumn passes and winter fell,
Suns fade as Luna cast her spell
Children once outside all day playing
Inside their rooms they were now staying,
How the Beast howled down,
As shadow came slowly upon this little town.

Winter leaves its coat and spring comes around,
Little buds popped up and flowers spring from the ground,
The children play again as life returns with zest,
Not for long and never near the shaded forest
But behold, on silent nights,
The Beast returns to scream and stir many a fright.

When spring says goodbye and summer hello,
As the long grass grew once more so,
The town amok with heat aplenty,
Pales on shoulders remained empty,
Our sun lingered long and the nights were shy,
Once more stirred the Beast with a feral cry.

But this cry was not like Beast,
One if heard again it would be with displease,
An eternal voice
Borne not from choice,
Grandmother's cackle no doubt,
Hers which remains a haunting shout.

Prince, unsatisfied

Prince, unsatisfied
He remains waiting
Wants and needs
A princess he seeks
He's lost
Looking for his one
He scours the lands


Method up his sleeve
Hours and days pass
Requests sent and some reply
They arrive to sleep
Sleep, under a tower of beds
No feeling is felt
Instead disappointment and regret


Lying there to be found
Inside sheets of ground
They still remain numb
The prince remains, unsatisfied
He waits for the one
Relentless yet
Still


Awake, she comes saying
"I couldn't sleep, something pressed on me"
Joy for our prince
Searching for she
Once a prince, now a king,
Young man,
Now a man satisfied.

Today...

It's my birthday, so this'll be a short blog.

Hope everyone has a kickass day, I know I will!

Nightswimming.

Sometimes, you get that feeling of hearing one thing, and you keep saying to yourself, 'I can't stop listening to it'. Without a doubt, R.E.M's magnum opus in my opinion. A song of purity, of escape, of a moment trapped in a mind, once upon a time.

Every time I hear this song in the background, or on the radio, or sometimes on my iPod, I get this feeling, of summer 2008, where everything seemed so easy, so relaxed, and so useless. All I did was smoke pot, drink booze with friends and go to house parties, beaches, and parks. I sat on swings, laughing away to the early mornings, walking back without any care at all about my future.

Knowing that there was always another day to change my life around, I squandered, acting stereotypically teenager like, and loving the parody I became, I remained that foolish. Jobs, family, and food weren't an issue, friends were. Love was.

I reminisce with care, and try to picture my being then. I wore a bee suit to a party full of sixth formers, me being a year below but seeing someone older, I never thought the house I stood in was anything I'd seen. Not a mansion, but an actual self decorated, self designed building, shaped in an abstract shape of the bow of a boat. That's one of the first few times I fell in a kind of love for a house.

I cared a bit for this girl, remembering the times we jumped on a bus after a gig, slowly drifting away to the sounds of the Smiths' 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', smiling softly at our faces. We shared meals, walks on beaches and parties, both of us the exact opposites, me, an outcast guy who happened to be a captain for the basketball team, herself an Oxbridge certain, with manners I still won't understand today.

When summer 2008 ended, so did contact, she left for uni, and I stayed behind. Kept on somehow trudging through A Levels and life, but I did it in a more mature way. I understood that loss is also gaining. Some people say that if you keep on lingering about the past, it can haunt you. It can cause you to act foolish in the future.

When I saw R.E.M. a year or two ago, I remembered the power a song has in connection to a moment. Some have profound meanings, and I wouldn't give up my memories for any amount of money. No matter what happens, when I listen to Nightswimming, I feel happy. Happy that I was there, in that moment, sharing that thought or feeling.

Walk.

And as I reached across that space, all I saw was the nothing that left them behind.

It is wonderful. My own self, nowhere but above me in a flash, I see I'm gone, a mess of sorts. I laugh, and it laughs too.

The vast distance only covered in less than seconds, by sheer force of mind. A relentlessness force beckoned, threw me, and then gazed upon my bloodied arms. Inject me with poison, why don't you?

Motion is non existent, and useless. I have no guidance now, and fear I left behind along with the 5 pound note on the bar. We seem to have frozen as we walk along in shapeless circles. But I still smile. Away from the joke that was tonight, and alongside warmth. It's inviting.

How harsh it seems, the streets are all paved of shit and empty kebab polystyrene boxes, we evade and slowly dance away. I feel dead, but so damn alive, it's a combination you know if you've experienced it.

Alcohol and minus degrees combine to alleviate any barbs in my skin. They feel alien, and again I can't stop a chuckle. Constant invasion of mind is imminent. Apparently I've disappeared, yet I am here. The winds pick up, and more and more I relinquish the decision to steal my warmth back. But I won't.

Lights on the dilapidated pier seem to dim across the night sky, but my attention doesn't appear to be there, I'll let my subconscious have it. Ego needing a feed, I do feel more than drunk, or even whenever, a high. I'm
not aware of such a crushing and holding creation named time. There is no time.

We turn and face the city. It still lives, somehow. And walking returns to the picture. I say good morning, instead of goodnight, then make my way back in an unorderly fashion. I arrive, open up and stand  inside the cage, an elevator they call it, dimly lit and filled with boorish faces, all seemed shocked at my condition. I stifle laughter and eject vomit instead.