Life, in five stages.

Did somebody tell you that you could control the moonlight -
all you had to do was try a little harder, did somebody say
you had potential, only displayed in the wrong light? It's
a compliment that lowers ambition; it's always cloudy
in your mind, the lovers and the silver foil with a core
of sweetness. There is no hope when you grow to old
to know the names of people and paperbacks. Your blood is
thinner than water but you can control the tides.

When love is a chore, and stress is the biggest charm;
you have nobody left to abuse; symbolic self harm, suicide
for suicide's sake. Drinking poison and petrol because you have
nothing left to do; with passion burnt and body spent, you always
find a heart to bruise. Left alone as time goes by, in a little
house by the ocean, but the sea breeze never blows your way.
If you've learnt anything from this, it's what turns you on,
it's how you find another person to light your cigarettes

Life kicks in the door; and the world is shown in a different
light from your own bed; as years go by on repeat.
And love, to whatever end, is just a means to pass the time.
In stability – you drink to keep your stomach from spinning,
but loneliness isn't just about drinking alone. Do you connect
a hosepipe from the engine to your mouth to cure insomnia?
Suicide has somehow lost the romantic appeal;
a means for a useless escape.

With life in dull acoustic now; lifting the blinds
on a dusty room. You scrape blood from rusted shelves,
running a hand along the decrepit spines of books;
unread, the words fade, soaking the carpet with ash.
Your ancient hands tend the vegetables in broken glass;
with cataract-filled eyes, you see more than you once did.
Suicide is blown away in the wind; weather-beaten chairs
haunt the cliff-sides, preserved in the salty air.

By your casket in the dawn-light, we reminisce and laugh -
you lived fast, but you hardly lived at all; you went too fast,
but that's standard speech for the occasion. Death holds
none of the glamour that it once did; with flesh and bone
becoming one with the ebony and rust. In silent vigil,
candles are blown out by the air from the ocean; a
gravestone untended for the sake of reminiscence.
The grass chokes the marble, and we begin again.