Beautiful

It wasn’t the overdose

It was the vomit

that killed him

Drowning in vomit

No way

for the beautiful

to go

And he was beautiful

in so many ways

So when I think of him

As I often do

I smile

And say a wee prayer

for Lesley

.

Alky

I know the stuff is poison, but I neck it anyway. It’s a psychic shield against the vicissitudes of strife. What a happy delusion to carry around in my head. A soft and fuzzy lie I like to bathe in. Get me to my bed where I can adopt my cloak of dreams. I don’t care what shape the world is in – I don’t want it banging on my door 24/7. There’s a place I lay my head where I get the peace that grants me immunity from the combine.

What’s in a man’s blood that he offers himself for a slave? Is it some pernicious form of anaemia which thins him out and bleeds him sallow? Is it the herbivore instinct of curtain twitching quislings who endure a life of vicarious pleasures and shared disappointments? I’ve had to turn my back on the gut churning spectacle. The whole scene and its protagonists sicken me to my bones. I’m happy on the outside of that shit – even if the isolation sometimes drags me down. The undertow is strong in these latitudes and men have been known to drown in sentimentality. I have a cup for such occasions and it brims with heavy liquor.

.

Everything

She gave me everything

She gave me all her hopes and dreams

She shared all her crazy schemes

With her little girl lost routine

Yes, she gave me everything

Looking back it seems

I’d soon exhausted all those dreams

She still danced on my string

But I’d had my fill of everything

.

Heavy Arithmetic

it’s a heavy arithmetic

that measures out the hours

and subtracts the days of our reckoning

time spent more in hope than knowledge

of a final destination at journey’s end

our rusted factory eyes lack lustre

they’re fixed on horizons far away

where our dreams now live in exile

and yesterday’s tomorrows accumulate decay

is it true what I heard you say?

you made a binding promise

that you would wait forever

for forever and a day

.

Revolution

They say that hunger makes thieves of us all and that poverty lurks in slender pay packets. Many of us now live hand to mouth and day to day. Under competent governance poverty would be something to be ashamed of. In a poorly governed country it is wealth we should be ashamed of.

This nation of beggars steals garbage from supermarkets and panhandles for pennies in the high street. We slave on zero hours contracts and abide on the never never. The illusion of luxury piped into our domiciles on subtle carrier waves is enough to buy our good will for men of treasonous intent. While we are punished for the nameless crimes of our fathers - they inherit our souls by means of scientific management.

The inequality between rich and poor is an old and fatal ailment in all nations. Poverty is at the root of revolution, and revolution is the root of change. Revolution is more than the battle for power, it is an act of love, a struggle for the future of our children. The moment is fast approaching – the time for change is now.

.

Catechism

I pulled the plug

the dividends were huge

I cut the chord

and learned how to breathe

I renounce violence

in its every dimension

I own my fear

if fear becomes me

When pricked I bleed

When so moved I cry

but celebrate life’s little gifts

In accordance with my temperament

and the precepts of universal love

.

Walls & Guns

 

There is more smoke than fire

in this dystopia

Less fact than fiction

in the corridors of power

These are the days of empty rhetoric

Of pointing fingers

and wagging tongues

This is not the age of reason

this is a time of walls and guns.

.

Adios Amigos

They’re busing migrants to the border.

These huddled masses

draw their last free breath

beneath the statue of bigotry.

We’re building walls

and digging trenches.

Planting the seeds of our destruction

on our very own doorsteps.

We are as a people suicidal.

They say it’s written in the book.

That the signs are everywhere

if you care enough to look.

.