On Turning 27

I used to imagine I was the next great poet of the gutter,
that one day I'd lift the filth up from the gutter in my cupped hands,
and when I offered it to the world they'd see the beauty in it.

Then I sat down at a desk, and four years of admin later I'm nothing,
no poet, no writer,
I never learned how to play my instruments - I'm still playing like a five year old.

The electricity must've escaped my mind,
leaked from my head,
look inside my head and there's nothing but Cumberland sausage,
it's all tangled up in a big fatty pink knot.

In some places the skin has ruptured,
there's sausage meat leaking out,
soon there'll be nothing left but collapsed sausage skin.

I shouldn't have sniffed those poppers,
I shouldn't have done those sexual things -
nobody ever warned me;
that one sausage leads to another
sausage
until eventually you've had so much sausage,
it all starts turning into one homogeneous blob of meat.

When I was 17 years old I smoked crack cocaine,
I drank mushed up magic mushrooms -
though most the time it made me puke.

I was stoned by the noon,
drunk by tea,
and by supper I was bouncing off the walls on E.

I thought it was wild,
I thought it was my duty -
when you're stuck somewhere backwards you do what you can to escape.

Well, I did escape,
but many got trapped.

What a bore all those drugs are!
What a trap all those drugs set! -
they say come this way, this is your way out of this place,
they do it everyday and everyday you wake up in the same place,
the same place and the same age.

17 forever!
Some dream!
I had a lucky escape,
and I was thankful to age.

But now...

27.

I remember the first time I made love,
but I felt nothing because of the drugs.

I remember the last time I made love,
but I felt nothing because of...
I don't know,
what?

Somewhere in-between,
things made sense,
for awhile,
but ten years later...
I've come full circle,
in the place of drugs,
I have work,
the effects are just the same;
'can't I go to sleep now,
I don't feel a thing,
maybe in the morning,
I'll feel something,
anything...
17?'

Ah,
it all seemed so exciting,
even though I couldn't feel a thing!

What hope is there now,
the writer lost,
the poet found... to be a fraud.

A prick is just a prick,
a cunt is just a cunt,
that's all I've learnt,
from growing up.

A love is just a love.

A death is just a death.

The prick and the cunt and the love turned out to be far less than I imagined,
The death, far more than I could ever imagine.