Poetry: Selections from Adam Paxton

Debaser

 

I haven’t known intimacy in so long

I’m afraid they may have changed it. 

I’m a rough-shorn shape

Resembling my old reflections, those

Various collections of left behind selves,

In little else but name. What a waste.

This isn’t chosen loneliness

All charming and chaste,

Nor am I some skittish prisoner 

Of innocence and good faith. I’ve known

Lovers; perhaps less than I’d like,

When I rue the truanted parties

And their attendant potential partners.

I passed up on them all, preferring 

The words and the wine and the

Violent nightly quiet. I always wanted

To believe I wasn’t missing out,

But I couldn’t quite buy it.

 

You still come around every now and then,

Bringing all but the intimacy in.

Still with your swaying hips and music mouth,

Your lust for life and lack of doubt.

And you say I’m someone different,

I’m not who I used to be.

The Truth is my future never happened,

Or the past took its toll too soon,

Look how little it left of me,

Look how much it has to you.

 

Did I say Truth? I’m sorry,

I’m talking shit again; I turn the reasons

For what happened into what I need

Them to have been.

I need to find a way to hate you,

And if that means I have to lie

If in these waking dreams I debase you

I’m just playing games with the why.

 

Last words of a tomorrow borrower

 

I sleep-in beyond the bounds of reason

In solitude, I hardly see the change of seasons

Only ever followed shadows on the wall

How could you ever think that I’d follow you at all?

I need chemicals, chemicals, to restore the order

I’m a head full of hammers and blunt force trauma

Battering, battering the doors of perception

Your self-reflection works best as a registered weapon

 

Anything it takes to buy a few more fucking years

It’s never getting any better but it can’t get any worse

 

Leaving is easy when you’ve got somewhere good to go

If the bricks you built your life upon at least resemble a home

And not speaking is simple when you live your life alone

And situations never shaped themselves so you could say

‘I told you so’

 

You never really understood my nihilistic sense of humour

All tomorrow’s parties met the man with no tomorrow

While all my pretty prophecies meant nothing to ya

You knew as well as yesterday I’m a man with no future

 

I am the twinkle-toed silver-tongued made to measure tragic figure

Rough and ready head unsteady twitching-twitching trigger finger

The little-known skin and bone pawn of pleasure tragic figure

I can always hit the spot but somehow miss the bigger picture

 

There’s nothing, at the heart of it all

 

She said she loved the way

I’d alliteration in conversation

I played constant passive games with the words

Now she thinks that I’m pretentious

That my apathy is endless

It’s not effortless in fact its endless fucking work

And I can’t say she’s wrong, after all.

I’d love to say those lips were lying

But what I present as coming off au natural

Lies in an agony of trying

I’m insecure and undersexed

I’d leave my greatest fan unimpressed

I’m unemployed yet fucking stressed

In a battle with myself I’ll always come off second best

And I’m witty if you give me enough silence to prepare

Try to express my inner-self but found there’s no-one fucking there

In the depths of my depravity 

This dance with death I do,

Petrichor of calamity,

Of disaster, darling isn’t it

Ever so pretty?

 

Golden Boy

 

See me stumbling, bumping

Banging into everything I pass.

See me wobble when I

Fumble my way to the nearest place

To piss.

 

I only ever worry the lows

Won’t be worth the highs.

I’ve lost so much weight,

My stomach aches, 

My friends avert their eyes.

 

I fall asleep just as the light

Comes crawling from the sun.

And I wake up late and ask

Myself just what the fuck I’ve done.

Daily Admissions

 

I still trail off mid sentence

I fetishize failed transcendence

Commit the crime and fake repentance.

 

I boast such bad defences

Don’t flinch at my offensives

Don’t die on my directives

 

I live on instant ramen

Creeping up to storms

To see if I can sneak some calm in

People used to seem to find me to be ‘quite charming’

 

My life has not quite went right

I’m as unfulfilled as the next guy

I’ll wear a hemp-rope neck tie

 

I’m a self-inflicted hate crime

I am a walking landmine

A child up well past his bedtime

 

I languish in the long light

I’m gonna be awake all night

Nothing seems to have quite gone right.

Adam Paxton is a poet from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. He finds life generally challenging. Twitter and Instagram: @TheSuicideJones.