The Great Worm

I’ve been cutting about
with the sharpest metaphoricals
and audaciously deployed similes
dripping from my tongue
as cool as porcelain
and clear as glass
I’m untethered by traditional gravity
some think I’ve caught religion
but that’s the death of imagination
and the refuge of villains and fools
I shall not be seeking absolution
the great worm does not absolve
it renders men to meat
and then picks their bones clean
regardless of their beliefs
I’m already consigned to the power
that wields the bloody fangs
that tear the life from flesh
but until that final butchery
I’ll live as a free man
standing on my own two feet
and not a fucking slave
on my bended knees
.

The Judas Goat

you make my bones ache
you was a barrel load
back in the bygone
but you’ve been running on vapours
for the last ten million miles
I’ve seen road kill
with more juice than you got
you’d better buck up sharpish
or I’ll pension you off
to the judas goat
he won’t read you
no bedtime stories
he renders meat
from stiffs like you

Islands

I was never sectioned. I went in voluntarily. Still, getting in was easier than getting out again. I had to play a game of incremental improvement - softly, softly catchee monkey. I spent a month in that shithole, pretending to get well. I never felt so isolated in my life. The wards of that crumbling old hospital were named after Scottish islands. That seemed appropriate, because the people in there were islands too.

Carpet Bombed

I was gang raped and lynched by mercenary hyenas, then left to decompose in my own slime. My rotting bones ached with the stench of old ghosts. My cup overflowed with the heartache that burns and I was drowning in another tsunami of shit. I was stretched beyond breaking - with no place to lay my head. This was my Golgotha, my funeral pyre. I stand now in its ashes - bewildered and deathly tired. I think my friend Ross said it best when he told me he’d been carpet bombed, but somehow had survived.

Moonbeams

did you hear the moonbeams sing?

it was a low, soft, shimmering song

the silver filaments of night

coated the earth in honeydew

and the moon sighed

as she revealed

the secret feast nocturnal

and you and I 

replete in our birthday suits

shivered in the cool air

cascading droplets

from our midnight swim

and the unspoken promises

of all the lovers

in all the world

never touched our lips

Incremental

the coroner

ruled it misadventure

an accidental overdose

of pills and booze

but I knew better

this was the final act

of his incremental suicide

he’d been reaching for oblivion

for most of his adult life

too much was never enough

to feed the tyrant

that reigned as sovereign

over some secret portion

of a heavy heart

but who could name that beast

or explain its design

for here was a lonely man

who was never alone

who was well loved

and loved well in return

Over Easy

Tea Bag and Leaky Dave

made lunatic enquiries

from the edge

of the frying pan

and you can get singed

at the edge

of the frying pan

but what do poor boys do

when their alternatives

have shrunk?

some said it was a compact

others said that

they were drunk

and everybody wondered

were they pushed

until they jumped?

Crumbs

these here

are just crumbs

I keep the cookies stashed

back at the gallows tree

I sneaked a peek

in your pyjama case

I see that you’re a stayer

but I’m about to leave

my bus is late

that’s not news

I forked out for a ticket

that may not be of use

I’ve grown used to delays

this entire route

is littered with no returns

stranded in transit stops

I’ve seen all I’ve seen

an eternity on the omni

takes a moment to discover

but a lifetime to express

Curio

those were the dog days

of starving klepto mongrels

home before the bell

who knows what lessons

were successfully evaded

in those truant hours

back in my laboratory

I had been dissecting

the entire enchilada

and I found it suspect

from its shabby suburbs

to its furtive interior

our buxom benefactor

was obtusely square

and everything she did

seemed strangely angular

but her association

with me was perhaps

most oblique of all

I was a mere curio

the prodigious man-child

a worldly innocent

in a cabinet of horrors

and I wondered

how many junk shops

she had trawled through

just to find me

Pistolero

it was an ordinary pistol

highly sexualised

it only cost him twenty

they had asked for twenty five

he stuffed it in his pocket

with pharmaceutical intent

now he had the power

readily to hand

he showed the fucker to me

its number had been filed

it had a dodgy provenance

but that was no surprise

I told him he should ditch it

but he ignored my advice

it only cost a score

but it made him feel alive