Ageing

Old man, his hands look dead. His neck is creased like a scrotum. His eyes are milky blue. He looks right into me for a second and something flickers and disappears. He’s moved on – moved within to some ancient memory that seems more real than I. Age draws the mind inward until we live on memories. The world at large loses its allure. The world gave up on the old man long before he deserted the world.

Will I grow old I wonder, real old I mean? Will I live long enough to grow raven’s claws and a purple veiny beak? I can just about imagine losing my marbles and retreating into my yesterdays. Becoming some drooling old fart sitting in my own shit. I’m terrified of that. Not having my faculties, not even knowing what kind of hell I’m living in.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and die before that ever happens. Maybe I’ll get luckier still and live to a ripe old age with my mind intact. Either way, I don’t relish the prospect of aging, but there is little I can do to negate the process – short of suicide and that is an even bleaker prospect.

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Funeral

Heavy industrial gloom
Settled like a mantle of black ash
On my old hometown
The crushing weight of sanity
Cast an oppressive pall
Over the grimy rooftops
I had to prise open his coffin lid
To ascertain the cause of death
They say he jumped
But he was pushed
No-one ever jumps
They are all pushed
We lifted him from his coffin
And left him in the open air
Where the crows could get at his flesh
Where the sun could bleach his bones
And the wind could caress his carcass 
While the rain poured down 
On my old hometown

Pistol Whipped

Writing without drugs is like squeezing spunk from stones. I promised myself I’d write for an hour every day, but I can’t find the head room for that. That unbearable straightness precludes the flash of inspiration. I cannot shoot no-one with an empty gun. You can try beating sense into the words, but you end up with a fistful of bloody words.

I underwent analysis to make myself more likeable. All I got was a navel load of introspection and an even greater craving for drugs to wipe away the memory of self. Who can I shoot with an empty gun? I can only beat myself around the head with it and hope that concussion brings me some measure of euphoria and I am pistol whipped into some kind of order.

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Mysteries

the three great mysteries       life, love and death     compass all      our little knowledge     borne like jewels      is of no advantage       in the face of the unknown     deep in the heart of the sun       the sound of tiny hammers     beating on golden anvils        ring out in a single wavering note      they are pounding out our dreams   too vague to make sense of    and as fleeting as our lives  

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A Little Blood

a little blood?
well, what did you expect?
every birth is an act of violence
life is bloody, beautiful and short
at night we lay us down to rest
in the morning we shed our dreams
and take our place on the treadmill
the dreadful work begins again
bloody ankles and deadly smiles
men fall as the leaves fall
each is whittled into nothing
by the relentless mechanism
of commercial necessity 
an unseen hand wields a final blade
we are enfolded in black wings
and ferried across dark waters
out into the nevermore
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Bad Luck

I’m reaching critical mass. I may implode, explode or expire. All that’s pent up within is spilling from my lips in a language I don’t understand – all the wrong words in the right order. I blurt, I spurt – my negativity appalls me. I wish I could stop, but I’m playing out the reel and can’t change the script. There are explanations for my plight; a lifetime of suppressing my emotions so that I occasionally blow a fuse and spill my guts. The curse of manic depression crosses the wires in my head causing emotional overload. I put it down to bad luck. It’s bad luck I have the curse.

I believe in bad luck. There is no justice in this world – only good and bad luck. The people experiencing good luck are far outweighed by the people experiencing bad luck. Bad luck is ubiquitous and it’ll find you out sooner or later. Destiny is a concept we are willing to accept if we are fortunate, but we call it injustice when we are not. We regard good luck as a right, and bad luck as a betrayal of that right.

Some say we make our own luck and to some extent that must be true. Poor decisions and bad luck are bed partners. However, the universe is a big place and it’s chaotic. It’s only natural that chaos touches us sometimes. There are unhappy situations that cannot be attributed to any logical theory of causation – we call them bad luck.

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Mortality

 

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes

 

They say cats actually purr as death takes them. That seems a healthy attitude to have. Me, I get apprehensive just thinking about my own mortality. I can’t imagine non existence any more than I can imagine some noncorporeal existence, or reincarnation. I can’t even imagine my final moments, but I’m sure I won’t be purring.

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Rain

prisoners of the rain
bearers of bad tidings
trudge into the east
two stops beyond Eden
where dark beasts are born
within the hearts of the loveless
and false witnesses deny the dawn
and are forced to live in the dark
they pack empty suitcases
and run in diminished circles
like blind men hitching rides
to any other place devoid of light
the lies they spread infect the ear
and flourish like cancer
in the minds of the uncaring
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Tapeworm

The worm in my gut tells me when, and who, to eat. I know he’s crazy, but he’s insistent. I draw the line at Methodists – too dry – too organised. Now they have that see see TV so you have to watch who you pick up and where. A guy can’t get away with a thing. Used to be that these dark winter nights covered a plethora of covert activity, but nowadays they have cameras that fit into your colon. 

The tapeworm writhes in disgust at the thought of that kind of exposure. He likes the dark seclusion of the bowel and its squishy warmth. My gut is home to numerous infestations and hunches. I feel things with my gut the way you might feel with your fingertips or your love pump. My worm keeps me well informed – though he suffers a right wing bias I have to filter out through my spleen. I can ignore his more extreme fear fuelled demands – until he lays on the brain pulse and cripples my membrane with the hurt. Then I have to go do something drastic which will inevitably humiliate and embarrass me. Such is the frailty of human nature – we are often in the squishy dark groping for comprehension in the shit and slime. We are often thinking with the gut instead of with the mind.

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Lazarus

Don’t dig me up.

I’ve resigned myself to the inevitable and I just don’t give a fuck. I have heavy blood. I’m sorry the fighting ended, but glad that the struggle is over. I’m going to lie here and die by degrees – unnoticed and unloved. My sheets carry the aroma of soured dreams and my head is full of snakes.

Why can’t I just breathe? Open up to the possibility of resurrection. Get myself a shovel and dig. Wave the ju ju stick – toss those bones and divine a new day with my name on it. I could leave this place and never look back. I could start again in a new town, with a new identity.

Why don’t you dance for me? Give me a pirouette, a pasodoble. Go on - give us a twirl. The worst things in life are free and misery abhors company, but you are never alone with your memories.

I’m a puppet to my memories. I peer dimly through second-hand daylight at my empire of dust and I don’t care – I’m going nowhere – I’m in too deep to resuscitate. 

1973

Meat and two veg
The order of the day
Egg and chips
Those trusty standbys
Powers cuts and strikes
Lock outs and riots
Calor gas evenings
Radio by candle light
The white heat of technology
The Tiber foaming red
Unfulfilled prophesies
Littered the dirty streets
Those were the days
Of sedentary bombs
In secret locations
Policemen & revolutionaries
Armies of occupation
The other Battle of Britain
Was waged in the dark
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Murderous

I’ll have his guts for garters
He’ll make me a murderer
I’ll swing for him if I have to
I don’t care for consequences
I’ll bash his tiny brain in
Stick his head on a spike
I’m at the end of my tether
About to cut loose
I’ll slash him, stab him
Throttle and drown him
He’ll be the victim
And I’ll be the fucking monster
I swear I’ll do him in
Just one more word
And I’ll do him in
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Crashing Out

Sometimes I get so low
I start to think about crashing out
All my life I’ve been crashing out
Crashing out of something or other
I get jammed up in situations
So I have to make a change
That’s when I have to crash out
Into a new scene, a new life
When I need help, I need it bad
But there is no help this side of hell
So, I just crash out – make a run for it
I pack my bags and get myself free
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River

I wanna be stoned
Like the meteor
That crashed into the earth
And killed all the dinosaurs
I wanna be stoned
Like a great muddy river
That flows down the delta
To feed the fishes in the ocean
The juice is good
The booze is so not good
I need a positive stone
Hurled in my direction
Heap me up with manna from heaven
One silver bolt
Would fix you with my meaning
There is no hiding place
From the miracle of creation
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Shotgun Messenger

You placed your bets
On a stranger's smile
But where did you go
When the lights went out?
You played the game
The best you could
But all you gained - you lost

You thought you could make it
All on your own
You thought you were a winner
But all that makes up our lives
All that’s wrong and right
Is but a fleeting memory
Ours to hold, but not too tight

Bindlestiffs

dummy up and listen good
while I pour moonshine in your ears
we got no homes to go to
and no-one waiting there
the world is big
but not big enough
for us to fit in
we’re the bad apples
who spoiled the whole barrel
fitted up on charges of vagrancy
for wearing out our shoes
we were kings of the highways
with no roof to tie us down
no man could boss us around
now we live with doors unhinged
and when the smoke has cleared
all we have is empty pockets
but once we’re back on the road
we’ll be livin’ high on the hog
low down on the greasy pole
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Bloody Imposter

They never sicken of taking my blood
They must have gallons by now
Enough to reconstruct the man
To make a blood monster
To take my place
To kiss my wife with his bloody lips
To sleep beside her in my bloody bed
Perhaps I am that bloody man
How would I ever know?
Maybe I’m the bloody doppelganger
What if the real me is locked away
In some asylum somewhere
And I’m his crazy counterpart
The bloody imposter in his life
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Poppy Tears

The ancient Vedas describe the poppy as ‘heart pleasing’. There is no more apt description.The thin white latex leaks in milky droplets from the poppy’s skin and hardens into a sticky brown resin, the harbinger of dreams. It tastes of bitter lettuce and burns with an acrid smoke that lays soporific charms on the minds of savage beasts. It gifts the touch of night and lays a little death on the hearts of those bleached divers who drink the poppy’s tears on their fatal arc into oblivion.

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Mirror, Mirror

There are certain kinds of dust monkey who'll eat your fucking face off and vampires who’ll suck up your will to live. When I look in the mirror I see your face which could be the cause of deep self loathing. After all I wear the devil’s face, but I don’t care no more. I learned to live with that and any number of bad trips you laid on me.

So I’m the Antichrist and the bad Buddha. I abide in the knowledge that no man can touch my piece of mind. So I’ll be laughing my socks off come your judgment day.

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Silenced

I don’t want to talk today
I won’t want to talk tomorrow
the viper that bit me
had a morbid tongue
the bitterest black poison
threatens to drag me down
to my darker layer
but I’ll keep my silence
learn how to bite my tongue
I’ll die by degrees
and keep to myself
the secrets of a lifetime
that was lived in error
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The Real You

I saw your face
contorted with rage
fierce green eyes
tinted with hate
it wasn’t so pretty
but I think I was seeing
the real you
it struck me as funny
I could not help laughing
you looked so small
and seemed so far away

Birthright

Bake my bones
Brittle and broken
Flay my nerves
Fragile and shattered
I am grist for the mill
Meat for the table
Ache me, break me
Roast me on a spit
Cover me in misery
I am watered down
And poured out
Pain is my middle name
Agony is my birthright
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Written

You gotta have style
Something you can pour
From a tall pitcher
Into a short glass
That thing that oozes
From you fingertips
And shapes the words
Into shade and nuance
Imagery and thought
Something that says
This is me
Nobody else can do it
Like this
I’m not talking varnish
Not just a thin layer
Style is deep
Your style is you
In the abstract
Stamped into the page
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The War On Sleep

by the seventh night      I have torn the veil     and crossed the line     into the land of death and annihilation     my eyes are red and sore         my head buzzes with empty space        and I stand thinly      at the centre of my void     I am insulated by static mush       thinking in a single stream of mercury       I’m constantly in the frame      consolidating the one true IS      

everything speaks to me     and I speak to everything     this is the high on high      close to the heavens      and closer to the edge of oblivion      all this is more than I can translate     into cohesive thought        I roll myself a number and eat the smoke      just a little fire to ease me through the night     

insomnia is my oasis     where my dark thoughts and I take refuge       sleep is the kiss of death      the obliteration of my senses       nevertheless     the time must come for crashing     and the horrors inky black

naked    inert and defenceless    sleep beckons me with iron fingers     and I am too weak to disobey      she takes me down     into dark oceans     filled with forgotten dreams     I fight like a drowning man    but she takes me hard and relentless      down into the deep 

 

Pig God

the secrets hidden in your head
the occult pleasures of your heart
the treasures you have plundered
then passed off as your own
mark you out as a singular failure
the simulation of a man

in the solitude of your prison cell
you pray to your pig god
that no-one sees your true face
or the bloody hands
that betray those guilty secrets
and your empty aspirations
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Smoke

I love the way beer burns an empty stomach and leaves a heavy buzz in an empty head. I love the feeling of minor vertigo produced by a lung full of green and the gentle rocking of my boat in the calmer waters dreamt of in my cooler quarter. Send me sultry jazz messengers to soothe my mind and smooth out the corrugations of my life.

I deplore obliteration, but dig augmentation. I like a little spin now and then – to hone my edge and free up some space in my tool box. There are a billion jurors on my case who’ll condemn my predilections as errant criminality, but I pay no attention to dogs with no teeth. I like to cultivate a little distance between myself and the unclean thing, ‘cause the unclean thing really twists my nuts.

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I Don’t Remember

I don’t remember
ecstasy
the summer loves
and winter tragedies
softly spoken promises
and bitter recrimination
.
I don’t remember
you
any of you
partners in crimes
too sweet to resist
.
I don’t remember
wounds
carved by bloody lies
and broken promises
or the hand
that wielded the knife
.
I don’t remember
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Something’s Coming

Sshh,

Something’s coming…

Something’s coming

From a long way off

Bury your head

Plough a new furrow

Cultivate a little distance

From the past

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Kissing God

“Smoking this stuff is like kissing God”. Hyperbole, he did a good line in embroidery. Of course, the stuff was lethal – laced with DMT – Happy times spread across my face like the warmth of the morning sun and unfolded in my lap in a royal flush. 

I swam where the dolphins swam and ran where the children ran. I found the place where all the dreamers came from. I was as light as the breeze, as helpless as a child. I wouldn’t leave a ripple if you dropped me in the ocean. “See the little crystals? That’s the magic right there, in them crystals.” So he thought; the magic was in us – in the forms reflected in those crystals  – one of which was divine.

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The Biggest Lie

You was the giant killer
Big chief of the Zulus
You was a hard man
King of the Hoodoos
Your word was law
Your name was God
But you’re the biggest lie
That has ever been told
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Mute

I dreamed that they banned music and silence softly ate at our minds and infiltrated our hearts until we were made of nothing but emptiness. Our voices contained no lyricism, or colour. Our thoughts contained no conflict, or wonder. Even our faces gave up and died – their blank countenances conveyed neither happiness nor pain, their egoless expressions were one and the same. A world without music was a world without tears, a world without laughter. A world without music was like a play without actors.

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Image ‘Mute’ by Maya Kulenovic

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Brompton’s

Squeeze me a Brompton’s and blow my joint while I eat this bird. I have a hard on for the kind of high only a hard shot of junk provides. My old man got tarred for drinking this bug juice, but I don’t care about tar – it’s the feathers I object to. I’ll blow my own brains out before I let anyone turn me into a chicken.

Those cold-blooded bastards down at the lizard house have it in for dissenters who sup God’s own from the crystal cup. They incarcerate anyone who jacks up or spreads a little green on his lungs. Their war on drugs is a futile exercise in enforced conformity. The pressures of the market lead to standardisation and the ubiquity of mediocrity.

Prohibition only causes the criminality that keeps the law enforcers in business. Everyone is a would-be snitch. Everybody is an enforcer trying to gun us down in a hail of psychic bullets. Pour me another baby; I’ve come over all terminal. I need to cradle my consciousness in velvet gloves.

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Leave Me Be

My spring is wound
Way too tight
I’m on the fight or flight
The roaches beneath my skin 
Are threatening to do me in
I’ve reached a certain velocity
It’s an animal ferocity
.
I can’t sit still
I think I’m ill
I pace the floor
Make for the door
But out or in
I’m stuck on a pin
I can’t get free
Just let me be
.
I’m rotating left then right
There is no peace in sight
I’m spinning like a top
I don’t think I can stop
I’m struggling for breath
I might catch my death
.
I can’t sit still
I think I’m ill
I pace the floor
Make for the door
But out or in
I’m stuck on a pin
I just can’t get free
So please let me be
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Fungaloid

Travel me
Unravel me
Baffle me
Turn me out

Fix me with a fungal crown

Pump it in
Pour it out
Rub it on
Inhale – exhale
Spark it up
Snuff it out
Skin it back
Tear it down

Anoint my head

With manna from heaven
Spike me upward
Drag me down
Ball my lightning
Take me under
Turn me on
Turn me around
Innovate
With my confusion
Make me whole
If not holy
Bake me outside
In the sun
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My Old Man

Meat and two veg
On a formica table
Jim Reeves and distant drums
Twenty Kensitas Club
An ashtray full of dog ends
India Pale Ale and glass of rum
Plastic teeth in a grimace
The smell of Brylcream
A splash of Old Spice
And a clout round the lug
Tailored suits immaculate
And cuban heeled boots
Off to see a man about a dog
He was hard as nails
My old man
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Paint Me Yellow

Sodium yellow
The colour of caffeine
Paints the street
And invades my room
My nights are long
Measured in solitude
The world is sleeping
But there’s no peace
For the wicked
And I am wicked
So turn me over
And paint me yellow
I have hours to wait
Before the dawn
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Noah

Noah built an ark

He was thinking of the future

I built myself a raft

I was thinking of myself

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Stranger

left to the mercy of the weather god
drenched in the rhythmic rain
a man – a foreigner perhaps
dark and curly – straight and bent
is lost in the open country
he carries the casts of his funeral face
and the relics of fallen saints
always a stranger – stranger than life
he quarries great stones of remembrance
once he was this – once he was that
now an alien in these parts
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The Electric Messiah

There have been many messiahs, but none ever touched the majesty or lunacy of The Electric Messiah. The Electric Messiah kicked in the doors of the temple and set fire to the money changers. He did that a lot; he was bi polar you see. On the positive side he was very generous, but on the negative side he was quick to anger. The people had not asked for an Electric Messiah, but you get the messiah you deserve.

In a world of conflict he was the supreme arbiter; smashing the unjust and delivering the pious with a beatific smile. His days in the wilderness had taught him that temptation was a blessing and to succumb was to conquer. His right hand held a flaming sword and his left the book of mercies. He could draw thunder bolts from the heavens and calm the seas with a whisper. His road to Damascus was filled with doubtful blind men – The Electric Messiah offered judgment, but not redemption.

I met him in rehab, which was compulsory for him after the great pharmacology scandal of 76 when he was convicted of turning communion wafers into methamphetamine and baptizing new converts with LSD. The papers compared him with Charles Manson, but Charley was never so gifted as The Electric Messiah. We got on like a ward on fire – he was good at starting fires. He told me of his early life as the son of an electrician from Glasgow and how his great potential as a conductor of electricity was first discovered.

At the age of six he was caught in a massive electrical storm and struck by lightning several times leaving great charred craters behind him. His mother said it was a miracle, his father said it was a question of conductivity. All through his formative years he was known as Lightning Rod, but it was only in his teens while experimenting with magical mushrooms did he realize his manifest destiny as The Electric Messiah.

Things were to go disastrously wrong for The Electric Messiah when his doctors doped him with omnopon, strapped him to a table and crucified him with electrical oscillations. The electroconvulsive therapy was meant to cure him of his addiction enabling delusions. Instead it triggered a massive explosion which destroyed the hospital and sent out an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed London’s communications apparatus causing a major catastrophe.

That was the end of The Electric Messiah, or so they said. However, many have reported seeing him whenever there is a great electrical storm and his words have lived on, though his body is apparently gone. His intolerance and his anger are evoked whenever the powerful seek to justify the use of force. His generosity and kindness are evoked whenever they seek to preach restraint. Yes, The Electric Messiah left his mark on the world – you can’t be a true messiah unless you do.

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