Jonah

the wind tugs at memory
in indistinct murmurs
from the wilder country
full of forbidden places
and ancient curses
I learned what it feels like
to become a beast
my face is fluid now
it can take many forms
angels and demons
dance across my surfaces
twinkling like children
in orphanage rags 

I took to the streets

to deliver the bad news

but the streets were so wide 

they swallowed me whole

Spotlight

When the spotlight hit us we were frozen in helpless fascination. We’d stayed longer than we meant to and just wanted to go home. From my point of view – and presumably hers – it was all over. Even the wildest of adventures becomes mundane with familiarity and it’s true what they say – familiarity breeds contempt. In the cold glare I could see that it was over; I felt no more remorse than I would for stepping on a roach and I viewed the whole thing with the same detachment. Whatever we had together had long outlived its usefulness.

Our thing was nourished by lies – from the start to the finish we never knew each other. Fear drew us together; the fear of loneliness, the fear of discovery. That’s the history of the world – boy meets girl, boy lies to girl and gravity does the rest.

They say nothing lasts forever, but some things last a lifetime; like fear, anguish and shame. Ever since the Garden of Eden we have been covering our shame with little white lies. When the black dog begs at my table and the cold wind hampers my doors I review my liturgy of falsehoods with a wry smile. Every lie begets another – each a building block in an empire of self deception.

Ash Wednesday

Someone must’ve spiked me with methedrine because I’m way too high. That shit gives me crank bugs and the heebies. Another nightshift scheduled – my body aches and my mouth is dry.

I saw him, we danced real close, he has black eyes and the blackest smile. The drinks were on him, black wine from Corsica. I’m halfway to Ash Wednesday and my penultimate oblivion. I hooked an angel with my kite and cut him loose with the Devil’s scissors. I wrapped him up in a parcel and mailed him to the Church – they said it was a miracle he ever arrived considering the state of the Italian postal system.

You must send the boy away. If he goes to his father the old man will think him evil and wild like his mother. His father has religion now and has become a terrible bore. He sits all day issuing sober soul orders; “Repent! Everyone is responsible for everything they do. The Lord God demands his supper!” His inquisition isn’t welcome around here; we’ll have to stone him one day.  We’ll mail him to Church as pate for the Holy Father. All organisations are built on lies, but he has all the best ones.

Exile the boy and nurture the man - with regular beatings. Spare the rod and spoil the child. It’s in our nature to nurture, so beat him relentlessly. Cut him with the devil’s scissors, make an end to his childish ways. Take him to Church and bury him - every church is a tombstone for the spirit of man.

My mind is my church; no altar, no preacher, no ceremony – just thought. The Church is theatre and religion is politics. The God venerated in the church is completely at odds with the natural universe. Iconoclast is the answer; smash the idols, burn the churches, free the mind.

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The Sickness Of The World

I have always been the victim of my own machinations   I always gave in to the blunt and vicious side of my nature   I feed that hump monkey with my bitter delusions and confectionery lies   I’m not a victim  I’m a volunteer  the sickness of this world is fear  fear of disclosure  fear of truth  fear of death    creeping fear is the prime motivator  the scent of excitement  the stench of dread apprehension  take a little whiff and he’ll make your wildest nightmares seem true

 my cloak of invincibility  my masquerade of masculinity   are driven by the shameful quirt of fear  the whole public edifice hangs on one tarnished nail   the threat of exposure   the disgrace of discovery  fear is the touch of death   my most secret paramour   fear has driven me to the contortions and exploits that map the surfaces of my life   but the hidden depths are his alone  he is emperor of the interior  my internal story is one of revolution   of my struggle against his tyranny I’ve learned throughout the years that inaction breeds doubt and fear    you gain in strength courage and confidence   when you confront your fear

A Criminal Mind

A thousand Kafkas, arithmetically sound, file the dreams scouted awkwardly in your sleep. It’s the low sleep; the sleep of dogs left dying. None shall trespass here in hollow space – none will hear your cries, or read your laughter. It is a wretched thing - scrutinized by panels and commentators in the prime time of your imagination – it is a wretched thing. 

You are a pile of limp bedclothes in an empty room. You are the blossoming of dead flowers in the dark. You are the silent echo of screaming corruption; poured out as congealed blood into the night. No-one can reach you now; you’re out of kilter. This place is the last elaborate station before damnation – there are no roads out of here, just a gradual sinking into nothing. 

This journey was in your stars; this place was always primed for your acceptance – you want to go home, but you are home. You were incarcerated for possessing a criminal mind. You saw crime in everything. You saw injustice everywhere. But you lacked the imagination to act like a criminal – you had to play the martyr. So take this crown of thorns and sow your dirty sheets. There are betrayals and crucifixions to re-enact before  you ever see another dawn.

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Flight

At a run we could leap between the garages quite easily. The wooden rooftops would give our footfalls an extra spring and help us to build up momentum until we reached the final garage in the row. Then we would launch ourselves into the air with a final thrust, our arms and legs still flailing as if we were running on air. We experienced a moment of exhilarating flight then, a moment of ecstatic buoyancy, before gravity took hold and we landed with a thud on the grassy ground. We would compete to see who could fly the furthest. My brother Tommy was the best flier by yards. He was part bird, my brother Tommy.

Joyride

Richard brought her around

they brought some booze

which soon ran out

while he was out buying more

I fucked her on the kitchen table

I still can’t remember her name

but she was a looker

or I was very drunk

Richard arrived back just in time

to see her straighten her dress

and me pulling up my jeans

he had that resigned disappointed look

that told me this was not his first time

he dropped the booze and left

not all bad news then – he left the booze

we drank some more

she tearfully told me she loved him

as I undid her blouse

we fucked with less passion than before

we took the time to get low down and dirty

when the booze was gone

she remembered

she had a full bottle of gin at home

I was beginning to get the impression

that booze was a big part of her life

she took a minute to locate the car keys

“Les go” she said

“No” I replied, “Les call a cab”

she would have none of that

she pronounced,

 in slurred speech,

that she’d drive home

with me or without me

that’s how I found myself driving shotgun

in a weaving death trap

I steered from the passenger seat

and she operated the pedals.

we were both blind drunk.

still, I wasn’t so drunk

that I wasn’t terrified

all the time I was thinking;

will I die like this, drunk in a pile up

with a nymphomaniac alcoholic

squeezing my crotch

as I steer through the blurred traffic

on my way to a bottle of gin?

Christ, I don’t even like gin.

Plague

Rats! – I saw rats. What kind of rats? - Big fat hairy bubonic rats, delicious rats with long juicy worm tails. That’s how I know this ship is sinking. Flea bitten scurvy rats are deserting in droves; it’s not too healthy around here anymore.

This place is a cess pool of vice and debauchery – not the fun fleshy kind, oh no, but an inane limp variant of isolated key punchers and video hoaxers vying to impress with the vacuousness of their thought. This is a plague of ineptitude, the triumph of mediocrity. Mankind is doomed to die of impotence; a whimpering lovelorn adolescent reaching across the net searching for human contact by remote console. They have not deserted the sinking ship, they have locked themselves in their cabins. They say the Roman Empire died of decadence – our civilisation will die of negligence.

There’s a pandemic stretching an ugly hand across the globe – one that reduces all it touches to the commonplace. An imagined empire of sameness; the current composite existence is dwindling into a mire of self restraint and tasteless simulacrum. We no longer touch. We no longer experience firsthand. We share. We share a pseudo reality where even our dissent is manufactured and orchestrated by unseen commercial interest. Our every thought is digested by the combine and regurgitated to inform new patterns of consumption. The machine has set us free. The machine has relieved us of the burden of thought and feeling. There is no choice to hate in this brave new world; only the option is to ‘like’ – not love – ‘like’. Even our emotions are being reduced to the mediocre. We can rage against it, but will do so next to advertising selected by the machine to reflect our current status.

Feast of Souls

the dogs will have their day

when the beast calls us home

we will devour the world

at the last great feast of souls

.

we shall call on a saviour

but no saviour will come

we shall eat our children

at the last great feast of souls

.

there will be no burial rites

no funerary procession

no-one there to mourn us

at the last great feast of souls

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Psycho Reflex

black blood     the rancid shit    comes from deep deep in the bowel    that’s a sign      a deadly sign     of cancerous infestation    some vicious invader eating at my guts     that’s slow death      death by maggots    incremental      relentless

I know from the pathology     I’m in the balance     I only have ounces     left to live     but don’t we all?      we fend off creeping rot      with lacerated hands      and shrieks of denial      not now      please not now     but if not now     when?

my gut is home      to numerous infestations       and inchoate hunches    I feel things with my gut       the way you might feel with your fingertips      or your love pump       my worms have tendrils everywhere    they think they call the shots     I can ignore      their more extreme     fear fuelled  demands       until they lay on the brain pulse      and cripple my membrane     with the hurt   

they force me into     drastic actions     which will inevitably     lead to humiliation       such is the frailty of human nature        we are often in the squishy dark       groping blindly     for comprehension      in the shit and slime      thinking with the gut    not with the mind

my skull is packed with stained sheets     and rare botanical exhibits of stolen graveside flowers       taught to help myself     but not too much      I flounder now on the shores of dementia      my public decomposition     and damaged precocity       have burgeoned to insane dimensions

I have become a spectacle      for leering jaws and wagging tongues     I’m making manic      with the sorry classicists     who bought me dinner     and stole my luggage      they share their condolences       as they rifle my drawers     I stand subordinate to my monomania       awkward in my anaemic droplets    frantically attempting regeneration       through my psycho reflex

Cabbage White

nothing corrupts a boy    like a father’s love    a few blows here ‘n’ there     some bruises     a little blood    and a thousand humiliations    cause you're a useless cunt    you're shit      you're a prick     an’ you’re  fuckin’ thick    words that once trampled my heart      like his big work boots     his filthy    ugly boots

 

I sought a place in the shade     closer to the cool earth     while fire poured from the sky       but it wasn’t as harsh as his words     there was a butterfly illuminated     in a corridor of light     it was nothing very special     an ordinary cabbage white     but it was beautiful to me     I’d have gladly flown away with him       but I was rooted to the ground       and couldn’t fly as yet

 

you know      that stony cold silence    the morning after a beating?     that fragile feeling    softly trembling    the queerness in the gut    when the ebbing throb reveals      the broken incestuous jaw     of the sacrificial lamb       in a garden untended       and filled with nettles

it’s a mouthful of blood       and a handful of hair       nothing to write home about      no need for tears       it’s not as if it matters      even then I knew too much        to take too much to heart

 

 

Popsicle

I once knew a guy, a square, who would unfold his elbows to disgorge great chunks of scripture from his ugly fissure of a mouth. He claimed to be an artist and a writer – a literally terrible Baudelaire under the influence of an evil river of semantic bullshit. I used to abhor the sound of his voice and his predictable Boy Scout denouement.

This bead twisting bastard considered himself to have been appointed God’s lawyer. His mission was to weed out and pull down the atheistic, agnostic blasphemer hounds of hell that kept bad company and cluttered up the corridors of hope. They only tripped up the unsuspecting with their weed, speed and jumping Jack Kerouac; preventing them from reaching a state of grace in God’s red white and blue heaven. It was his task to usher, forcibly if needs be, the vile unbelievers into the glowing light of HIS love. To this ends he would grind out sermons on every subject from evolution and the ‘monkey fallacy’ to homosexuality and AIDS as a judgment of the Lord.

He was a loathsome little bigot of a man who pulsed negative energy in every direction, but worse than that he was a complete drag who could banish a smile at three hundred yards. One day I spiked him with cyanic acid and stuck him in the freezer to cool off – I turned him into a Popsicle; bitter almond flavoured.

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