Number Seven

I set number seven ablaze. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner. I was stoned at the time – when the impulse took me. I put the chip pan on and went out. It’s the most common cause of household fire, the chip pan. I was standing across the road watching when the fire brigade arrived. It was only then that the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I was shaking. I was in shock. I stood there among my neighbours and watched the smoke fuming from the roof. I could see the flames through the windows. All my possessions were burning. Everything I owned was being turned to cinders.

I was a bit embarrassed when the fireman guessed correctly that I was off my face, “the most common cause of household fires” he said. Fire cleanses, fire destroys and fire renews. Friends gathered around to console me, “At least no-one was hurt – are you insured?” At that moment I just did not give a shit. I would rise from the ashes. I was looking forward to it.

A few days later I was allowed to enter the building to retrieve any belongings that I could. To my surprise my bedroom – though covered in a thick layer of soot – was basically intact. I found a shoe box crammed full of old letters and postcards, a lifetime’s worth of correspondence. They were miraculously undamaged by the fire. I scanned through them – old lovers, friends, relatives – bitter sweet memories. They burned very nicely. One by one they joined with the ash on the floor.

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Manic

when it’s on me
it’s a speedball
an acid rush
the distilled rays of the sun
burned into my retinas
fusing the membrane
and flooding my head
with a rainbow song
then I’m a supernova
I’m a lightning strike
an atomic bomb
I’m the Empire State
and the monster Kong
I’m a gushing torrent
a tidal wave
I’m a rattlesnake
with a diamond back
I’m the seventh son
I’m a maniac
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Black Dog

I’m sick to the soul of this shit. My days are long and drawn out in a thin visceral stream that twists around the landmarks of my life. There is a quake in my soul - a quickening of pulse and febrile brow. I am atremble, a candle in a draft. I’m sinking into the mire, I can no longer help it and I no longer care.

It is always a step before and a breath behind me. A miasma of waking dreams played out against my pillow in the constant churning of my incessant consciousness. It’s there in the tangle of my sheets that the turning and returning of my memories break as waves across my brain pan. Every embarrassment, every humiliation, is played out in slow motion for my morbid delectation.

I feel so strange. I’ve felt it before, like something, somewhere, is all wrong. It’s coming from someplace far away and it’s coming for me. I buried something somewhere and some-one is now digging it up. Zombies from the past are trailing me. There are conspiracies whispered just beyond my hearing.

I’ve been here so many times before but I’ll never get used to it – that’s the bitch - I’ll never get used to it. It's an insidious and complex torture, always new and yet familiar. That unhappy shadow is always nearby – and the promise of inclement weather is ever on the horizon.

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Dead Man’s Shoes

Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you a story. It’s set out on the edge – out on the hard road. It concerns a travelling man who slaved all his days for a handful of nothing; that’s where it all goes eventually - down the fucking tubes. Virtues turn to vices and vices turn to chains. It’s a rough road to travel for rich and for poor. Over time the luxury of indulgence becomes the slavery of convention; emperors and hobos both wear tin crowns.

I walked those uncertain miles in a dead man’s shoes. They pinched, they chafed, and they left little room for deviation from an idiot course. The path of least resistance led to the bottom of the bottle, more dead soldiers littering the sorry path to hell.

My cause was lost, the spirit had ebbed away, but I made my crooked way to where the grass was no greener and the people were no kinder. Always onward – never back – I kept on until they found a reason to hang me in those dead man’s shoes.

I’ve seen men hang, hang by degrees, with the life choked out of them over the course of decades. Lynched by the mob,  ostracized, and exiled to the barren regions. Naked men left out in the rain. Men without a friend, men without a home, men starved of love.

There are no second chances for those already dead. They say hope is the mother of all men, but I had no mother, no father, no companions. I’d nothing much to remember and nothing much to forget. I had nothing much to celebrate, but everything to regret.

Some say that Jesus awaits us at the end of this long road. That he’ll relieve us of our burdens and wipe away our tears. So put the pennies on my eyes to pay my fare, wrap me in a pauper’s shroud, but first take off these fucking shoes.

Gouge

All my life they spat on me
Because I dragged the low end
I got used to fighting for what’s mine
Blood of my blood and bone of my bone
I believe in an eye for an eye
I’d gouge away with bloody thumbs
Even if it rendered the whole world blind
Everyone is born with love in them
But you have to be taught how to hate
Each blow that landed was an education
They taught me and I learned it well
I want my pound of flesh on the bone
I’ll dig my grave right next to yours
I will pluck out my offended eyes
And serve the dictates of my primitive heart
.

The Secret World

I don’t have to live like this

I could give up the bug juice

I could get creative

Tear up my notebook

And start again

I could pluck out my eyes

Block up my ears

Tear out my tongue

And write in the air

There is no truth

And that being true

There are only lies

Stories that you tell

To make it seem alright

The object of thought

The indelible link

To predictable reason

The assassin of truth

Obscures the way

To self expression

There are no words

With which to write

The secret world

The inner life

For lies abound

Where silence prevails

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Bones

Man I'm fucked. Inertia has carved me a mountain to climb. I’ve got bad bones - dry and brittle. They ache in the rain and fracture into vicious shards that pierce my flesh with darts of pain. I’m sick of my body – old and flabby. I captured a few pounds along the way, or they captured me. I’ll beat this vessel into an older shape – such a handsome youth – before the spilling of blood.

(He says he will. He’ll later say he did, but he’ll hold his place – it comforts him to remain inert.)

Bongs and bombs left craters in my bronchial organs. I wouldn’t smoke one of them – that’s a needle for the lungs. The wheezing, gasping instruments of life – collapsible bags of phlegm – expelling life by the root and tubers of my chest.

No more graveyards for me – too close to home to bring comfort – full of old bones and memories – such places only bring me down into the cancerous layers of yesteryear – coughing spluttering bloody handkerchiefs. Coffin nails stain my fingers brown – the colour of creeping death – the sepia tone of ancient photographs – windows on the dead. Brown is the colour of the sod that covers my corpse - the colour of my rotting bones beneath the dirt. My tired old bones embrace the inevitable – I’ll be gone, but my bones will remain.

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* Graphic ‘Cyclops’ by Stanley Mouse

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Shadows

I own my shadow

thank you Dr Jung

it’s always been there

companion and jailor

adversary and friend

some nameless arseholes

have suggested that I’m morbid

in my preoccupations

but I don’t need the remedy

just the culture

I exercise my shadow

with brisk forays into verse

our stories are shadows

they follow us around

the proverbial bad penny

or a lousy streak of luck

you can’t shake them

with drink and drugs

but you might lose

the plot in trying

this life will kill you

it’ll make or break you

I was forged in adversity

that’s true of everyone

that I’ve ever known

each had burdens to bear

and every burden borne

had a story of its own

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The day I died

when I called out
you couldn’t hear
I turned to talk
but you weren’t there
you left the works
but took the gear
.
how I wept
how I cried
I sent for a priest
but none arrived
things were rough
the day I died
.

Far away

more haste – less speed
the minutes s t r e t c h out
racked in terrible instance
tortured in the passing
the throbbing mechanism
of desire
the beatings of fleshy drums
pulse off into nowhere
on and on
the cycle persists
the dim morning
cold grey light
seeping gently in
through empty windows
framing the silence
with spine chill –
and frozen sap
another day of coffin nails
and cellophane smiles
of sleeping lovers
far away in time
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Ageing

Old man, his hands look dead. His neck is creased like a scrotum. His eyes are milky blue. He looks right into me for a second and something flickers and disappears. He’s moved on – moved within to some ancient memory that seems more real than I. Age draws the mind inward until we live on memories. The world at large loses its allure. The world gave up on the old man long before he deserted the world.

Will I grow old I wonder, real old I mean? Will I live long enough to grow raven’s claws and a purple veiny beak? I can just about imagine losing my marbles and retreating into my yesterdays. Becoming some drooling old fart sitting in my own shit. I’m terrified of that. Not having my faculties, not even knowing what kind of hell I’m living in.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and die before that ever happens. Maybe I’ll get luckier still and live to a ripe old age with my mind intact. Either way, I don’t relish the prospect of aging, but there is little I can do to negate the process – short of suicide and that is an even bleaker prospect.

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Funeral

Heavy industrial gloom
Settled like a mantle of black ash
On my old hometown
The crushing weight of sanity
Cast an oppressive pall
Over the grimy rooftops
I had to prise open his coffin lid
To ascertain the cause of death
They say he jumped
But he was pushed
No-one ever jumps
They are all pushed
We lifted him from his coffin
And left him in the open air
Where the crows could get at his flesh
Where the sun could bleach his bones
And the wind could caress his carcass 
While the rain poured down 
On my old hometown