graft

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         

sailor

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

outside

 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

 

tallyman

 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

tonic

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      

the taj mahal

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      

it's catch as catch can        where our spiralling flight is stunted       by our leaden wings         just another shabby paradise    -    not the splendor of the Taj Mahal     with the lover of our dreams    -   but instead the squalid nightmare        of endlessly repetitious junkydom          and the promise of release        in that fatal final dose