Hungry

that’s me there   face to face   with the back of the crowd   fetching awkward angles between my toes    it’s always seemed that symmetry eluded me and I was dissolving fractions in a decimal world   a feline soul in a canine cosmos    I told a big stripey lie that painted me a permanent crimson and soaked my banner with piss ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

that was thirty years or so ago    and there’s been plenty of action under the bridge since then    it sometimes feels really late    but that’ll be the times    I developed humour as a mechanism to lubricate those rapidly diminishing hours   burdens borne with a smile sometimes feel like blessings in disguise……….…………………………………..

those hooks and punch lines are mine to own    but they aren’t all jokes   half of them are true   I hawk them anyway because there is little else to say    people expect lies in these days of photo-shopped selfies and fictitious biographies    so I get away with the odd deprecating truth    as long as I sugar coat them     no one accepts the sour any more     their palettes are acclimatised to saccharine and the soft candy floss of mediocrity……………..…………………………………………..

I stood in a long queue to receive short shrift and a parcel of unwelcome platitudes    I’m not complaining mind you    I got to where I am by the circuitous route    but I got here just the same    I’m quite comfy in my hollow    and if things are now slower than they once were    it’s only because I was speeding in the first place    it was always post-haste and frantic stratagems with me    I was hungry the way only poor boys are hungry    I’m still hungry    but it's an old man's hunger

Soulless Episode III

She robbed me with apparently no sense of irony. She was enraged and barely coherent. I had been rumbled again. She went through my pockets looking for anything she might have missed. She found a couple of condoms in my jacket. She held them up and laughed.

“Just in case Johnny? Or do you always go prepared?”

She tossed them at me with a gesture that suggested both amusement and contempt. She loved a grand gesture did Jane and she had the dramatic flair tae pull them off. She was a bonny lassie, but she would insist oan talking.

“Yer easy tae get along wi Johnny. Yer a good laugh and yer no bad in the sack, but yer lacking something.”

Here we go, I thought, the commitment lecture – it had to come one day. It always does. Still, I couldn’t help gazing at her near naked body and thinking that a man could lose himself in a woman like that, so why can’t I?

“Yer a coward Johnny. Yer afraid of commitment and yer afraid of love because yer afraid of rejection. Ye take nae risks ‘cause yer a cowardly fucker.”

I was smiling now. I didn’t mean to and it could only wind her up, but the whole scene had a familiar pattern to it. I had recognised the symptoms and I knew it was coming, but like a fool I had to turn up for the final scene. I was almost glad I did though, she was magnificent in her rage. She was a very beautiful woman of strong character. If I were ever to fall in love it would be with a someone like her. I wish I could tell her these things, but tae what purpose? I just lay there on the bed smiling like a muppet.

“You’re pointless Johnny. You’re a record wi nae groove, a fuckin’ bike wi nae wheels. You have a’ the charm and grace in the world Johnny, but ye huv nae soul.”

I groaned in psychic pain. Not that old chestnut. There’s no such thing as a soul. Even Buddha had tae admit that, sort of. The soul is a concept – an abstract – a fuckin’ falsehood. Why do they always pull that soul shite on me? If she meant I had no conscience – that I could bear. It wiznae true, but I could bear it. This soul malarkey though just got oan ma tits. I had soul – even Buddha said I had soul – whatever that means.

“There’s nae need for this Janie, we’re friends after all.”

“I dinnae want tae be one o’ your ‘friends’ Johnny.
 I’m no some wee whore fi the scheme who’ll let you pick her up or let her doon as ye fuckin’ well please. I deserve mair than that!”

“What’s the money for Jane?”

“I’ve been yer whore and now I want paid!”

“Do I make ye feel like a whore?”

“Aye Johnny – ye do.”

There was so much anger and anguish in her face that it silenced me dead. She loved me. She really did love me, and in that moment, I knew I loved her. It was too late though. Too much had already been said and too much had already been done. How could she ever trust me again? How could I? She would be better off without me, who needs a man with no fuckin’ soul anyway?

.

To Dream As Gods Do

your suicide warden
garnished in chains
inspects your arsehole
where morning has fled
your pot hole eyes peering
through a lysergic purge
witness only the contents
of your dingy abode
which encapsulates the wearying
trinkets of monstrous dalliances
and licentious attacks
of falsified intentions
these are the things you’ll remember
during those lonely repasts
of quaaludes and hard liquor
green tea and ground glass
.
you learned to sleep in shallow latrines
on egyptian cotton and busted bed springs
gazing up at refracted reflections
in cracked ceiling mirrors
where decades of hope
disappeared in a murmur
to dissolve and fade like baby aspirin
.
your aged gigolos and mutant dandies
dopes on the ropes fighting losing battles
are smudged entries in last year’s diary
so your electric wire and phony smile
seemed like your last best defence
in a life grown cold
from hustling for change
and god knows you need a change
there’s one more hit left in the locker
so lay back and relax to dream as gods do
.

Any Burden

I’m in chemical confinement
l a s t ..o f f.. t h e.. b l o c k s
held in a generous solution
replete with aspic crown
maybe something I said
crossed that invisible line
I offered them contrition
but they just tied me down
I’ve got no padded cell
just a padded mind
this way’s more humane
and so it would seem
to the casual observer
but if he scratched the surface
the observer just might find
there’s more to skinning cats
than first meets the eye
I want more human rights
and far less human wrongs
I waited up all night
by the telephone
when finally you called
I said I wasn’t home
I didn’t feel no better
and I was still alone
but I’d bear any burden
and I very often do
I’d even commit a murder
if I could only get to you

*Image: portrait of the author as a young man


.

Dirty Feet

me and my dirty feet do well enough
our stony egress from domestic strife
was sanctioned by our physician
and relayed by express riders
across the kitchen table
in a flourish of insult and injury
but we made good with smiles
and the enduring trace elements
of lithium and freshly squeezed irony
this was a bitter lunch, a scant repast
that cost too much
.

Confessional

I’m coming clean
cause it’s good for my soul
I stole them words from a cracker box
I’m leaving town on a bus later on
a circuitous route through the badlands
throw any blood hounds off my trail
I never liked it here anyway, it’s a shithole
the folk round here never took to me
some people say that I’m vain
but I never claimed to be perfect
I like myself if that’s what they mean
when it comes to me I’m biased
some distrust me cause I have no soul
but when push comes to shove I’m honest
don’t you go thinking I’m running away
it’s just that I’m allergic to lynch mobs
and when they find out just what I did
they’ll come to an early consensus
that I am no longer meant for this world
but loving someone was never a crime
whatever the difference in status
just to be sure that you understand
it wasn’t the act, but the feelings
I left her in tears, but its better this way
a life on the lam is no life at all
when you’re young and receiving a baby
.

The Power Of Speech

where do you get your sharps?
I need to know they’re clean
I’m allergic to dirty things
so don’t touch my pistol
unless you wash your hands
I get more trouble that way
than opposable thumbs allow

your voice sounds kinda thin
hold it up to the light for me
because I know about these things
I know what you were on the inside
you were a lavatory superintendent
and a bona fide shit herder

there’s no shame in that my friend
many a named player shovelled shit
I’m the prescient son of a prescient son
And I’d have had the readies handy
if I had only foreseen their coming

so spill me that trick you do
when you’re bombed out
down under the bleachers
it’s cheap seats for me and you
until we can fashion key holes
and the necessary certificates
to get us from here to there
wherever here or there is

I know you think you know me
but that’s unlikely to be the case
somethings are unknowable
and others have matching luggage
with irregular identities carved in haste
presumably out of dubious necessity

those spectators who crowd us out
at the soup kitchen
I pay them to stare at me
it forces me to remain spectacle
in a world that rains disappointment

but I’m over all that for the time being
except for the embarrassment
and the sudden deep coil reflex
when someone mentions her name
I know you don’t mean nothing by it
so don’t give it a second thought
I only called to reassure you
that I still have the power of speech
.

Your Favourite Lover

Three’s crowd darlin’
Did no one tell you that?
Three caused more murders
Than greed ever done
And baby that’s a fact
There’s a man odour in here
Like the smell of dying dogs
You better burn those sheets
Cause they’ve been spoiled for me
There’s only room for one man here
So who’s it going to be?
.
When I first met you baby
Five or six years ago
You didn’t have a clue
But my how you have grown
Have you gone all femme fatale?
Is this a game you’ve been playing?
Well the fun and games end now
Don’t waste your time explaining
You better make your mind up
Or I’ll have to set you free
Who’s your favourite lover
Is it him or is it me?
.

Bagman

I always had to drag the low end. There was a crock of shit at the end of my rainbow. That’s the very first time I was gifted anything for nothing. There’s irony in that statement cause brothers and sisters – nothing, not even shit, ever comes for free. I was once an archdeacon for the diocese of no hopers, now I’m a bagman for the combine. I collect what’s due them from the people of the parish. They shell out a little corn to those who’re in need and I gather the proceeds. I just come from stoving Fat Eddie’s face in. I get a little vexed when people don’t pay. For one thing I’m supposed to – it’s the nature of my job and for another I’m on a slice of the trim. It’s in my own interests that the punters cough up; so if they don’t then things can get rough.

Fat Eddie’s wife asked who gave me the right. I told her I was free to do as I pleased. She told me my freedom was an obscenity while I helped keep my neighbours in chains. That was something to contemplate; however briefly, I’m no philosopher so I wouldn’t know. I just do my job and don’t think about it, because in my line of work thinking doesn’t pay. If it was up to me there’d be no collections and we’d all live in peace like the good Lord says. But it isn’t up to me, so I do what I have to. Whatever it takes to keep my head above water. Times are tough and they’re getting tougher. I just play the game. I don’t make the rules.

Some local loser followed me from Eddie’s. My tracks were still warm and revealed my bloody feet. This joker tried to tap me right there on the corner. I said I don’t do loans, I only collect them, but I gave him a sawbuck for temporary relief. My good deed done, I was soon on my way. I had places to go and people to meet. Business is booming on account of the recession. People are hard pressed, but they still have to eat.

They said I was a sociopath and a menace to society when they locked me up and lost the key. I just do my job to the best of my ability and hope that it’s enough to keep my people off the street. We all do what we think we have to. That’s the nature of the game we all play. We are all of us slaves to the system and no matter what they say none of us are free.

.

4:15 am

a good night’s rest, so they say
is the next best thing to sleep
but I can’t stay still long enough
to get me some relief
I close my eyes on the world
to reveal a world within
I can’t divert my mind
from the thoughts
that are keeping me awake
I try my best every night
you don’t know how hard I try
there’s just no ease in the dark
but that’s the nature of the beast
the quirt cuts deep, yes it does
and won’t grant me no release
it’s a long slow death, so it is
when all I need’s a little peace
.

Tread Softly

I just dummy up these days. No one cares to hear what I have to say. But I have seen what I have seen and I know what I know. I have witnessed our faint progress beneath remote uncaring stars and I know that we are bound to them by forces beyond our comprehension. The life of man, a single man, is of little significance in the great tide of events. Epochs have come and gone to leave no trace but fossilised remains in The Museum Of Natural History.

What shall I bequeath I wonder to those who come after me? Will some trace of my love linger still in the hearts of my progeny? I have no wisdom to impart them, no great insights to share. I doubt if I’ve had a single original thought in my entire life. If I could leave them anything it would be this advice; tread softly through this world, but don’t take the same route twice.

.

Sacrificial

it’s the stony silence
the morning after
a savage beating
the night before

it’s that fragile feeling
of quake and tremble
and those crimson stains
on the killing floor

the dawn reveals
the shameful secret
of blackened eyes
and fractured jaw

the sacrificial lamb
was led to slaughter
under dismal skies
by a man of straw

it’s a mouthful of ashes
and a handful of nothing
but the familiar lies
from his bloody maw

.