Scientific Management

deep in the art of confusion   the dissonance between the chord struck    and the note heard    rings awkward in the ear    thoughts come thick as bricks   truculent or tractable   empire blocks of concrete and jelly    some are solid gold and easily held    while others are trojan horses   disgorging disgraceful minions  into the defenceless mind    we inhabit thought in the land of contradiction  what’s in you is around you   what’s around you is only comprehended    through the scrutiny of mirrors

 when I was a young man   I declared my emancipation   with lightning bolts and free speech    and I believed that I was free   because I had no chains and made no claim on others    but the price of that freedom was solitude   I later realised that freedom was only the name of my cage     and that I  had constructed a prison of my thoughts  an intricate lattice of values and recompense    the instruments of scientific management

 

Mescalito

The first hit of the day gives me that edge – a soft fuzzy boundary that cushions me from the agents of chaos. I’m surrounded by idiocy and brute ignorance. I have my blues for breakfast and wonder who they will kill today. They are rounding up all the queers and taking them to the bus depot. They are rolling bums in the alley ways and sacrificing school kids in the classrooms. We are all marked out for adjustment – it’s your innocence that condemns you, not your guilt. After all, everyone shares in the guilt.

I don’t belong here – I never belonged anywhere, but this town ain’t big enough to deviate in – I can barely turn a phrase that isn’t weighed and rejected as madness, or vanity. While wounded congregations pray for consolation I watch the cactus god tear open the sky and angels come pouring out as snowflake confetti to melt like whispers on the ground. Heaven is empty; there will be no resurrection, no day of judgement. There is no final authority – just unending stupidity.

I have my blues for breakfast and cacti for my supper. I walk with Mescalito who tells me that the actions which define us are often difficult to understand, but there is nothing unnatural in this or any other world.

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Manacled

it was bad patter
well out of order
and a bitter repast
for blackened eyes
and broken teeth

I was a pollutant
and filthy to the core
a bi curious creature
and apostle of magical thinking
young enough to hunger still
old enough to know better

those razor edged memories
slash through the 3 am
in procession triumphal
for they have conquered sleep
one day I’ll go straight
but I’ll never sleep again

crack giants
in suicide squadrons
loom large where dreams
once haunted my bedclothes
the chains my forebears fashioned
are branded into my flesh
wrought iron keepsakes
of love meted out
between the blows
.

Painless

I never do house calls, but this radge was overdue and I was losing patience. He was all meek and mild till the talk turned to readies owing – then he turned bubblegum warrior. Scumbag tore me down, wrapped a rag around my face and blitzed me with a dirty one. Man I was sick. He then proceeded to dip my pockets; relieving me of my stash and less credible credentials. That was a boot to the nads – and me with no bullets in my gun.

Here was the neighbourhood leech rattling my cage and I felt the filth rising, but there was no point taking unkindly to him – he was doing all he could to alleviate the surplus in my pockets and bring comfort to my bleary head. The gear was no good, and the sentiments attached were bogus, but they nearly did for me. I was a cathedral full of blind mice tuned to panic stations – they sang the siren song of closet tweakers; quietly, tunelessly.

My knackers were withered, but my thinking was still deep enough to cover my space. So I fixed laughing boy with my good eye and asked, “Why do they call you Painless?” He just laughed and flourished his kit before commencing with the washing up; there was trouble brewing in his pipe, but I had my school craft down – this old dog knew a few tricks. It was well past noon before I peeled myself from his rock star wife to emerge victorious by the narrowest of margins – where I often do my best work.

.

Thief

I wasn’t fazed when she shied away from my touch. I expected that, top bird like her. She didn’t just jump into a situation like that – didn’t give her affections away to just anybody. Especially the likes of me. I was an imposter and I think we both knew that, but I guess I fulfilled some need in her. I made her smile and I wasn’t demanding her life. I just wanted a little of her time. 

Boys fall in love with girls like her and they never forget them. They carry their memory in some sacred place within. I could have loved her and perhaps I should have loved her. Summers fade and lilies fester, but nothing lingers like words left unspoken.

.

Monster

I’m sick of this tired old face. I want a new one – like my old one – like the one I wore when I was young. I see a hundred faces on any given day and every face conceals a story. What kind of story does my face conceal? At night I’m lost in a sea of faces that clamour for my attention – my dreams are full of faces; they crowd me to blame and shame me.

The girl at the back has a question – an unkind and supercilious question. Her query originates in the psychotic regions of a bleached mind and sounds an echo in memory – something about my missing soul.

“What kind of monster are you?”

I suspect it’s more of a rhetorical device than a question, so I ignore it. But later I get to thinking... What kind of monster am I? I’m a blind monster or I would have seen her coming. I’m a deaf monster, or I would have heard her lies. I’m a mute monster – because I said nothing. I’m a numb monster because I feel even less.

She was one gift horse I should have given the full dental. Those sceptic teeth made ribbons of ambition. I have little time for those awkward manoeuvres imposed by some milquetoast Mussolini. I have an agenda sublime to accommodate; others follow the mandate of their own hearts. I take solace in the fact that I may be a monster with no soul, but I’m closer to heaven than some.

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Nettles

It’s the 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 incestual 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
It’s not as if you care
.

Fish n Chips

Oh Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some cheap thrills. This one looks game for a laugh; she’s all fur coat and no knickers, not that I hold that against her. I know her slightly - just enough to know I ought to maintain a little distance. She’s comely all the same and the mere idea of her gives me a hard on; the way that casual acquaintance does when you’re on a sexual high and possess little moral fibre. I’ve known a few mongrels in my time, but this one takes the biscuit and she takes it greedy like.

I don’t mean to make it seem that I lack respect, but I recognise the limitations of this faux romance. Still the pretence of courtship is all part of the ritual – though I doubt that she even remembers my name. We’ll do the deed alfresco – doggy style – with no inhibition or manners. We’ll grab some fish and chips after and converse inanely for the first and last time.

.

Ashcan

least said, soonest mended
so I dummy up nice
and batten down tight
stick it in the shade
and avert my eyes
from the unclean thing
that foul device
it’s just old news
bitter rebukes remembered
with a bullseye to the heart
I turn once more
down a path well trodden
but put the stoppers on
I don’t remember
or choose not to
those things that drag me down
who rakes for coals
in an ashcan full of yesterdays?

Promethean

what kind of monster am I?
I’m the man fortune made me
only as good as circumstances allow
and only as bad as I have to be
this heat and light are stolen
they obscure a multitude of sins
it’s an old cliché tailored to fit
and worn with a swagger
because I’m stepping tall
when I roll out my thing
this candle burns exceedingly bright
is neither hidden under a bushel
or extinguished in the night
.

Porcelain

At the eleventh hour she knew she could not fly, her mother had clipped her wings to minimise risk and circumvent adventure. Her limitations I ascribed to a troubled childhood, she was fragile, more doll than woman. Her porcelain was milky white and smooth as a babies butt. She was encompassed by phobias, riddled with irrational fears. She lived inside her head; perfectly manacled to her dreams.

She was married of course – to a stranger as it turned out. They collided on the periphery of their daily lives, never knowing the other with any depth. She possessed a wicked temper and drummed her heels in great tantrums which bemused the man; he had a phlegmatic nature. They never bit deep; there was no blood in that relationship.

I was there for a short while – under their roof – close to the hearth. I betrayed them both, as was my style. I could dig her skin and her brittle smile. I wasted little time in plotting her seduction. I presumed she had hidden depths as yet unfathomed and that I would be the one to draw them to the surface. An error on my part; her goods were on display, at the surface, they went no further than that.

It was a woeful misadventure; a giant tactical miscalculation. Often what seems exciting in the dreaming is fraught with sorry entanglements in real life. When it was drawn out into the light our dirty little secret seemed as retched as cum stained sheets. There was a scene and shown the door I left like a scalded cat. Some people are so uptight about a little play. There were tears, of course, but mine were from laughter.

.

Icarus

How high is too high? How low is too low?

I’m stretched across impossible altitudes. I got the vertigo, that cold dizzying flush, but who cares when flying is suddenly so easy? I can see my life from here; it seems so small and lacking any real significance. What matters is now, this moment of flight, this instance of freedom. I’m reaching for forbidden constellations while my feet, caked in mud, are sinking into the earth. These unnatural avionics, they say, are the result of faulty wiring. Who needs drugs when you have aerial acuity and are filled with grandiose intentions?

Oh, this is cool – this is sweet. My trepidation gives way to exhilaration as my aerobatics become practised and concise. You never lose it, the power of flight, and having once flown you never forget the exaltation those wings of wax can bring. This apparatus has been well examined and its flaws are well documented, but I’ll milk this sensation for as long as I can. I’ll ride this fucker until I hit a cul de sac and slam once more into sodden ground. Crash landings are the price you pay for your time aloft; some reckon it’s worth the fee.

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