Bradford Middleton- Three Poems

PROBLEMS ON THE HOME FRONT

I can’t think, I can’t write, I’m so damn stressed I just want this to end

The end of my days in this shit-tip of a home where I came the other week to discover

Our maintenance man stood in the middle of my turned-over room

Without batting an eye he turns to me and the tirade begins

Your flat is infested he claims whilst pointing at two bugs climbing the wall

It has been a hot day, hotter than if we were in Hell

Surely this time of year and in these hot sticky claustrophobic environs they should be expected

You’ll have to throw all of it out; it’s spreading to other flats

So what do I sleep on?

The next week is a drunken blur of trying to forget

Whilst I cry off to anyone who’ll listen, their throwing me out and I ain’t anywhere to go

Too much stuff to move back to a studio and not enough money to splash out on anything bigger

Especially when the bastard landlords say ‘No DSS’

I work I plead but they seem not to care, as they state their desire to have a young professional

Rather than someone like me, mature, hard-working, hard-living writer

Who just so happens to work in a shop on a part-time contract which means I need help paying my rent

Are you going to be glad when our regular customers ask my ex-colleagues where I’ve gone?

They’ll probably not know because right now not even I have a clue but I know I will sometime soon

Another winter in this flat will surely kill me, especially if it is a bad one

And the idea of an agitating maintenance man looking to spruce up the house

All of this is driving me out and as we hurtle towards autumn I do worry

What am I going to do and how, just how I am going to get out of this mess!

FAILURE

I’m a failure

A failure in life

A failure in love

Just a damned failure

I live in a house that in the next few months will grow uninhabitable

I live in a town that is slowly falling into the sea

Where on certain days I’ll be woken by the roar of engines and some inane bable as a car show happens whilst the greens run the council

I live in a country where they tell us it’s all good for us, that everything is alright and don’t worry about a thing, forget about that naughty man Putin and as for the IS well you ain’t a journalist are you?

I live on a planet where a life is cheap but everything else is expensive

Are we all just damned failures?

I know for a fact that some people live nice lives in nice houses in this town

I’ve seen a few and so know it’s true

They seem so at ease perusing their vegetables in Infinity Foods

Quaffing coffee outside a starbucks in the middle of North Laine

Happy with their lives in which they star

It’s like a dream that is hard to believe

Organic, free-range, gluten-friendly expensive bits

That you’ll then take back home

To that wonderful place, your home

I’m a failure

I live in a shit-hole

I live where I deserve to live

I DON’T BELONG HERE

Another damn poetry recital and open-mic session

That yet again I’ll whore myself out to be a part of

I walk in and a friend comes over and explains to the blue-haired lady who I am

She sits on the door, menacing for cash, and she asks

What would you like us to say about you before your appearance?

All I want is a beer and the bar is already crammed

So I just say whatever and battle my way through

I get a beer, get a seat and am ready to be bored

I’m not disappointed as first up is a landscape poet

With so little detail I barely conjure a sketch

Her publications run like a who’s who of the UK scene

But it just bores me silly

I can feel bits of my brain falling away with the minutes she’s on-stage

Next up is someone who starts with promise

A tale of Kind of Blue drummer Billy Cobb

But alas from there it just meanders in monotone

And I’m bored again; next up is the open-mic

That should at least provide some form of entertainment

But suddenly anxiety hits and my hands grow sweaty

Paul wows them with his poems and then it’s me

I walk up to the stage with a beer in my hand

And suddenly I feel more nervous than I should

Perhaps with the knowledge that I don’t belong here

But I get through my set and rush back to my seat

I drink some beer until break-time comes when some people talk to me

They seem to have liked my poems and show sympathy for my poor digs

But right now I don’t want to talk poetry I just want a smoke

I need to get this evening right out of my hair

And my friend Will suggests we go but tonight there’s still more to come

There’s someone I want to hear read some stuff

He ain’t all that tonight so I just leave sad, bored and desperate to get drunk