The best poems are birthed in the stink of beer shits. The most gut-wrenching of love stories, born not on celluloid, or social media, but on park benches in towns where nothing ever happens. What appeals most are tears cried over the kitchen sink. Broken hearts bleeding all over the pet food aisle in Tesco, and dreams that come and go down alleys in council estates the Tories piss upon with the same enthusiasm they fuck the mouths of dead pigs. It’s a beautiful world and a terrible one, all at once. On a bed in a bedsit, romance blossoms like a flower—the two souls involved offered a temporary reprieve. A reprieve from the confines of a society that will do its utmost to pretend it knows what it is to be human. But the most redeemable qualities of being human—empathy, regret and integrity—are kicked to the kerb and exchanged for gold quicker than a cat pukes up a furball. They’ll tell you they know the way, but the only way they know is bound in chains to a future that never arrives. That’s their future in a nutshell—no future. Their mantras little more than empty kisses during empty sex. Meaning replaced by function. Symbolism traded for the sterile joys of the damned.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US