The Great Grimaldi

heavy weighs the crown

on your crooked brow

you’re master of inanities

and king of all the clowns

but that sugar breath of yours

smells of shit to me

for you have shovelled moths

into your gaping maw

and you’re wearing kind of thin

tell me of that vision narcotic

you pass off as your own

it has the familiar flavour

of someone else’s gum

you got no metal in your veins

or I’d simply cut you down

but I’d be just as happy

if you no longer came around

.

Mutton

there are skag villains neatly
bungalowed  on every suburban street
and there are fleshy instructors
festering in every tenement close
I've seen uncle bluebeard
and his tribe of mutant terriers
cashing subs at the post office
they normalised incompetence
so that he could claim disability
the poison radiates outward
from the point of corruption
I picked mine up at school
because I was paying attention
all justice is arbitrary
and rope is for lynchings
there is comfort within the flock
but we must obey the dog

Tremors

we felt tremors - but we ignored them

when cracks appeared we just filled them

with scrap metal and toxic waste

the world rattled as she screamed and tore

and we tried to ignore that too

but we all bunkered up for the bat flu

it seemed the world had turned on us

just as we had turned on each other

we fell in with dank villains and petty tyrants

and we pledged allegiances to avaricious gods

some of us tried to follow the way

so far as we were allowed

don’t get me started on the games people play

it’s hard to harmonise with nature

when you are a parasite and a killer

….

Bleached

my bones ache

I’m infected

with ghosts

the kind that grind

a man to dust

this confinement

withers me

desiccated notes

and ancient rituals

crowd my nights

with recollection

I shield my eyes

from the righteous

dread vibrations

of straw witnesses

and trial by radiation