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
these false witnesses deny the dawn
and are forced to live in the dark
they pack empty suitcases
to 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. I could leave this place and never look back. I could start again in a new town, with a new identity.

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 into my empire of dust, and I don’t care – I’m going nowhere – I’m in too deep now to ever 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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