living two minutes away

rhymes wind like ivy vines climb
the pillars of time and i'm tired
of trying to define the divine
so i'll read my own mind like a
broken road sign by the side of
highway dissecting a landscape
changing as a i watch from a cotch
in the front seat of corsa with three
close friends and quarter

i once called myself sam porter
with certainty and personally
considered it my mission to accumulate
wisdom read the words that have been
written and listen to those spoken
thoughts with burn out like a torch
lighting the way through the maze
of underground caves which i paced
back in the day, yeah... i once called
myself sam porter with certainty and
personally considered it my privilege
to be living in a time where minds collide
as sure as the rhymes i write reflect
those age old ivy vines which never die
perpetually continue to climb the pillars
of time and i'm sure that there's more

sure of new heights to reach
i thought i wanted to be taught
but university can seem bleak
in novembers of the soul like these
and i rolled into my home town
feeling a freedom which i had envisioned
walking away from simmond's
each evening breathing bittersweet
winter breezes and making drum rollies
with hands which were freezing
and i still couldn't help feeling
that something was missing

maybe it's that i still picture kissing
her goodnight before i sleep
and thats why it seems bleak
maybe the pieces of the puzzle
got bored of waiting in the box
i dunno... but i still love her
and she still has one of my socks
so i guess that i'll keep cotched in this
corsa where we've blazed the quarter
down to an eighth and turned our eyes
to the sky scape

clouds roll past like trains i've ridden
from diss to london a million times
and back, from paris to nice where the
beaches had me believing that i could
dream forever, from vienna to nuremberg
all i did was dream, frankly its been that
way since i was fourteen

i believed in what the ecstasy and MD
told me and even though now its cold
and i feel i got nobody to hold me down
i remember the way the world turned around
those times i got high in london town
lived experiences which i could never deny
under that crazy orange night sky in
london town

and now we're both living by the sea,
her and me, ain't really like a i figured
it would be... and it could be a blessing
in disguise and it could be that i haven't
really forgotten the look in her eyes or
her smile quite yet because time can be
slow to take effect

so for now i'm here in this corsa
unsure of whether i still am sam porter
or more or less than i was way back when
and by the time i finish this verse we'll
have smoked that eighth down to a bens
just me and those three close friends
and we'll sense that the evening is coming
to an end and head back to wherever home is
but before that we'll smoke one last spliff
and watch as the ivy vines continue to climb
and lift our spirits with them, drifting,
like spliff smoke out the window...

After a time I began to feel that maybe there ought to have been a bit more editting but I'd hate to be the one to say what you should cut back on. The manic play of internal rhymes, half rhymes, etcetera, is intoxicating.

I really enjoyed it Sampson. Often I find poems this size hard to read but I wound around spellbound every line like it was sign....!

Agree with the above. As mesmerizing an ennui I have ever read.

What a breath taking read, Sampson! I have really enjoyed this :)

Couple of things:

- I don't know what a "cotch" is. It is not listed on Cambridge Online either but, since you used it twice (once as a noun and once as an adjective?), I am assuming it is not a spelling mistake. What does it mean?

- What does "bens" mean in the line, "have smoked that eighth down to a bens"?

- Also, because you have used it in other lines, I don't think you are againt using punctuation so I think apostrophe is missing in these lines:

and that's why it seems bleak
...
all i did was dream, frankly it's been that

...
told me and even though now it's cold


- Is "a" in this line necessary?
"her and me, ain't really like a i figured
"

Cheers guys...

Scheherazade, a 'cotch' is a slang term that i picked up in East London; it means a cosy, chilled out place... Roughly at least. In this sense its a noun, but it can also be used as a verb; 'to cotch' would be to sit down and chill i guess.

A 'bens' is another slang term that assimilated itself into my vocabulary in East London. It means a ten bag of grass.

And as to the punctuation, the 'a' was a typo and the rest were just oversights on my part. I tend to write very quickly in a stream of consciousness sort of style...

Thank you very much for your explanations, Sampson. Looking forward to reading more of your poems :)