Quick intro: This is a poem I wrote a long time ago. Like, 10 years ago. I was 19, a spring chicken, and on my very first bicycle tour (London – Paris – Luxembourg City – Aachen – Maastricht – Brussels – Calais – London), which I was not psychologically prepared for but which I do not regret one jot, as it planted me on the path I’m on today. When I was performing at/organising spoken word events in London as a student, this is the poem I read the most. It has a dear place in my heart. The reason I’m uploading it now is because I reached into the psychic archives last night and performed it at a lovely open mic night (with a poetic focus) in Bangkok, organised by Lyrical Lunacy, and multiple audience members requested I send them a copy!!!!! Which is a very nice thing. I had also brought along a small handful of zines of my reality TV poems and cycling poems and they all went to new homes. So anyway, here it is. And I’ll be writing in more detail about the event for The Friday Poem (link to website). Eyes peeled.

The end

Let’s think about the end, right,
because the end is in sight
and try as you might, you can’t turn back…
from the old school unlimited or sunset riveting 
patchwork of life as it rushes past your eyes,
so don’t forget the images, the undulating symmetry, 
the catastrophic syzygy that comes from being there till the end.

And maybe the end is not so bad,
not full of all that stuff that made you sad:
maybe it’s all the opportunities that you never had,
to be lived through by tapestry—
so what, it’s a two-dimensional artistry,
it’s full of life and movement and energy
and whether it be the life of me 
or the death of you it is infinite, like me and you.

Maybe the end is light bulbs,
or a thousand Roman candles and eureka in the dead night of the south pole.
Maybe the end is dim blue skies,
or shortened school-ties,
or black grass forever spiking and leaning into soft lines,
doctrines comprising the eternally wise
and packing it all down into three little lies.
Or ten big lies, set down in stony hypocrisy.
Maybe the end is mediocrity,
swings and roundabouts, and everything it ought to be.

Maybe the end is coiled like a spring
and biding its time until bade ‘come, sing’;
maybe seven deaths in all and nails bitten to the clear,
wicks lined for the squad-
cars boxed for slaughter or
punctured lambs bleating ‘hurrah’ for the eternal,
bleeding hurrah for the end
with beady eyes beating, too far from home;
maybe silhouetted husks, or stuck in a rut, 
bathed in the brine of a sun so fine
and holding onto tears of light
that once made you cry but now make you strong like the trees.
You can live in peace if you choose to seek and kind and mindful way to be.

Maybe turbulence,
maybe extravagance,
maybe champagne on silver and no need for the ambulance
because you’re almost there with bubbles galore
and there’s ecstasy all over the floor.
All your morbid memories are replaced with exotic delicacies—
you’re Superman or Peter Pan
and whatever people say you are, that’s what you’re not.
You’re bursting through these eyeball phases
and racing through countless powdery places
and what’s at the end but your own sins and graces?
What’s at the end but the smell of fifty million dead cigars,
a trip round New York and volcanic jazz?

Maybe the end is three weeks on the road
with nowhere to go but among strangers and strange lights.
(or on a bicycle in Bangkok, performing your poems despite stage fright)

Maybe the end is ego death, going back for a chat with Socrates,
a lapse in the continuity and serving a crystal Mephistopheles,
the repetition of stars and lights and not being able to get it right,
you look for God but he’s not in sight and suddenly you’re on your knees.

And maybe, absolutely, indefinitely, it’s not so bad –
not full of all that stuff that made you sad.
Maybe it’s all the opportunities that you never had.
So don’t forget the images,
the undulating symmetry,
the catastrophic syzygy that comes from being there till the end.

*

Subscribe for updates!