it’s all graft sure enough our sweat buys us candy but there’s little gravy handy I was a toiler couldn’t get myself square but manna flows from heaven and I know I’m due my share
I tried to scrape an honest
living but didn’t have a prayer some
call it criminality but I don’t
really care coz only a fool goes
hungry when there’s gravy stashed
somewhere
poor boy shone feeble against a starless sky before he flickered out to give up the ghost and die was there a moment when he knew his time had come? did he awaken in some faulty paradise reserved to losers and bums? or did he simply blink out as he spiralled away on his final moth man trajectory? prayers were said for him which fell on deaf ears the lesser god of hobos and junkies was just too stoned to hear his last gasp went unattended there were no fond farewells no intimate gestures he drowned alone in a pool of vomit there’s no dignity in that his sleep was too swift and deep to allow for human comfort we held a day of weeping but his name has long since faded from our lips no one here remembers his face and no one really cares
I shied away from the pain I balled up my grief and swallowed it whole I never
let on but inside I was dying you left me here standing alone misadventure
they said but I knew better you killed yourself through reckless abandon one
way or the other you simply didn’t care
I can’t afford to think about this it’ll only drag me down but
where can I go that you haven’t been down to the shore and into the water out to the undertow where all the drowned sailors bleached by the sea huddle together for comfort and ease
I’m sickening again I’ve been infected I have ghosts in my blood you best roll me a stony make it a hard one I got the fear something chronic but I’ll keep on going I’m bound to get lucky I’m prepared to die trying this world can make you this world can break you but there’s no coin in self pity and there’s no solace in tears
I don’t believe in resurrections
or in tearful reconciliations the past is gone forever ghosts take shape in its shade my head is haunted with that fearful
geometry and the friends undone by
time and tide I’m a single link in the chain forever
broken my heart has formed a
compact between the living and the
dead
ghosts come to me through my own reflection ghosts come to me in the wake of my dreams ghosts come to me with
untimely reminders this life is
hard and
shorter than it seems so
take your best shot and maybe
another you might win some but you’ll likely lose more this life pays out with diminishing returns no-one
passes this way with bridges left unburned
I’ve got the deep chill from standing on the outside coz while all the world was fast asleep I was on a bender and burning out my innards with jugs of liquid fire the intrusion sparked the fear within and I blew a heavy fuse trying to contain it back in the night back where the fun begins I’m all fingers thumbs and knotted nerves but I’m skinning up and dumbing down I have avian reflex in beak and eye but this rooster’s teeth are worn from gnawing on old grievances
she always thought I wore my heart on my sleeve but she was wrong only the sleeve was real the heart was an affectation heart
or soul what’s the difference when they’re both absent? she said I’d carry that load through the ages and that I’d been enslaved by my own instruments I serve
but do not know
I learned to run from her sagacity I need no commentary on my decline I leave
my own words as reference a salutary
lesson in personal abuse my words are
as brittle as my bones and as hollow
as my intent I didn’t force the world on anyone I acted as an outsider a mere observer in my
capacity as counterfeit hero if my
efforts fell short of my bourgeois pretensions it
was more a matter of attention span and
my penchant for the seemingly exotic than any predilection for deceit
somewhere on my covenanted half-acre of hell there stands a mausoleum washed smooth with tears here the holders of my promissory notes are interned along with the wax effigies of former
lovers I lie but not through intention I
lie from carelessness and a casual disregard for facts I
have a proven record of self-deception and quiet ineptitude may the evidence show that I was never deliberately cruel but
was perhaps reckless in the pursuit of pleasure
the most damning indictment against me is
selfishness I confess my guilt but reserve judgment to myself
praise be to the tallyman who sells us back our shirts and keeps our children hungry for the sake of democracy the nation’s books are balanced on our broken backs we make believe while making do that we hang on in together and he provides the glue
I waited up all night by the telephone when you eventually called I said I wasn’t home I’m sorry for that now coz baby I need your prayers I need your readies too there’s been a blues revival I’ve been chemically castrated stitched into my blankets and left out in the rain maybe something I desired crossed that invisible line I offered my contrition they stoned me just the same and left me still yet still conflicted bruised and torn subject to the tender mercies of the compassionately numb save me from do gooders who would save me from myself I just need a tonic to improve my mental health
when I get low I get high I’m not gambling for salvation indifference is my prize when the sun sets on the good and clean the geeks and freaks and junkies join the medicine show our bankrupt ideals and crooked jungle rules weave loathsome pinprick tapestries that stain us to the soul and the wonders of the world dissolve on our dirty spoons to be regurgitated in an idiot geometry in the catch as catch can where our flight is stunted with leaden wings in another shabby paradise not the advertised cool blue nile or the taj mahal with the lover of our dreams but instead the squalid nightmare of endlessly repetitious junkydom and the eventual release of that fatal final dose
