Parade

I’m no knocker

no tattle tale

but I was at the front

of her big parade

remember me?

I was the arsehole

with the big bass drum

counting steps

and keeping time

with regimental

precision

.

everything was cushty

everything was sweet

until the rain

put the mockers

on her big day

there were tantrums

there were tears

she put on quite

a performance

and in all honesty

she preferred it that way

.

The Last Dog

I’ve used up all my shadows and I’m bleached naked from the big light. It’s been typical and that’s to be expected. It’s beyond four in the anus mundi and time to see what treats await me in the bumper box of pain.

My days are short lived, but my nights are so very long and weary thin. These are measured in endurance; each instance squeezed from bloody stones. Twenty thousand nights proceed as hollow headlights on empty cars. That’s many inches travelled, but hardly enough to justify the effort.

This is the hour of broken lovers and solitary maniacs devoted to causes long lost in the not so long ago. My lot in the sodium yellow cathedral quiet is quantification – the grand introspection. The detailing of the acute and sorry tales that constitute the most mundane of disasters. I’m sickened by the stench of self-indulgence, but my hammer is on the table and I’m in the frame until the last dog dies.

.

Barley

this happy heart

will be the death

of poor me

I tilled the earth

then scattered

cancelling

my subscription

to the ever after

to carve myself

a solitary path

through golden

fields of barley

in the soft

summer rain

.

Rental Dogs

Do me a favour would you? Lift the lid and let it breathe. Let some of the heat out, we don’t want it boiling over do we? We just want a gentle simmer to bring out all the goodness. Cooking is an art form Johnny and it takes patience to prepare a masterpiece. This is what it’s all about boy – meat on the table. A man must provide for his own and no one else is gonna do that for him. A man must provide even if he has to steal. Not too much like – only what he needs; you leave some for the next guy. You nibble the hand that feeds ye Johnny. If you leave teeth marks you’ll soon find a pack of rental dogs oan yer tail.

Those rental dogs are meaner than the average mutt and just love the taste of blood. They smell your fear and so you must keep that shit well hid. Never look ‘em in the eye. It aggravates ‘em if you look ‘em in the eye. The eyes are the windows to the soul and those mongrels have no souls, see? Most rentals are bereft of souls. Whether they were stolen by pimps, or dealers – notorious soul thieves – or worn away from the inside by worry, hatred, or avarice; the rented have a legendary soul deficit.

Remember Poor Boy? He went insane and sold his soul to complete strangers. He got a sawbuck for one weighed ounce of solid soul. He bought a wrap with the proceeds and smoked it, but it never filled the hole left by his soul. No amount of gear ye smoke, or booze ye drink, will ever relieve ye of a missing soul. Take all those rental buddies and barflies who congregate in the temples of oblivion, or the crack heads and junkies they look down on. They got no souls.

Half the world have no souls and mostly that’s avoidable. It’s a question of intent; of how much ye want something and how much you are willing to pay for it. My advice, Johnny Boy, is to never want anything too much. Besides, you’ll see the price come down if the seller knows you can walk away. Some have no means of paying for whatever it is their hearts desire, so they go rental. You’re only rental so long before you realise that yer soul is part of the deal.

It’s a nightmare to live without a soul Johnny. The soul is that vital spark that kickstarts the emotional and intellectual energy that makes you unique. The soul is yer passion, yer intensity, yer mojo, and without it you’re an empty husk. Take it from ole Buddha, ye never want tae go rental. You never want tae lose yer soul; not for fortune, fame, for women, or drugs. Because nothing you can ever possess is more valuable than yer soul.

.

Golden Apples

channelling

exclusively

via satellitic intent

this monomaniac

is deeply fixated

on our nearest star

and that’s where

you’ll find him

from now on

lost in an orchard

dazzling bright

stealing golden apples

from the heart of the sun

.

Tragedian

Sally threatened suicide

she did from time to time

it was no cry for help

but a demand for servitude

I’d have given her anything

under any other terms

but she came as the victim

of numerous insoluble crimes

her eyes were always offended

they were tuned to disappointment

she said she’d turned a corner

on another dead-end street

.

I felt the momentum

of some terrible gravity

dragging at my entrails

hers was a brutal surgery

born of desperation

the decision was mine

my choices were limited

by narrowing circumstance

to a fight or flight scenario

so I reluctantly opted out

but I still have a pillow for her

if she ever feels the need

.

Jelly Beans

stop my mouth    anaesthetise me    I need panic pills      merciful medicine    my beautiful mutation  is murdering me    I’m withering into psychosis      so nourish me pharmaceutically     I know I’m bat shit crazy   the world makes me crazy   her beauty is fouled     from the misuse of mirrors     in the still of my room      I’m gradually transforming     into a psychiatric emergency

my heart beats too loud      I can’t hear me think       my life no longer sparks    I’ve been harvesting my sickness    I’m the effigy of moral weakness    I require psychotropic medication    it’s my rod      my staff      my crutch     my blood is charged with electric potential    the bipolar extremities beckon me     I need some proper insulation      faith is not enough         

in the shadow of existence   where the dark things flourish   surrounded by tender tyrants     and outflanked by awkward instance     I’m a hostage to necessity    and have demons to placate      I need a little something      added to my recipe     I require a magic bullet       to get me off my knees     so get me an extension    I’ll call for some assistance     to feed me psycho quackery      in the shape of jelly beans

 

Joe the Movie

Not so very long ago, and not too far away. There lived a man called Joe who’d worked hard all his life for very little gain. Joe was that dedicated chump that bosses all adore; he’d go that extra mile for very scant reward. He’d always be the first to arrive and very the last to leave. There was always one more final task to keep Joe working late.

The other men could count on Joe to always lend a hand. He’d even put their tools away when they could not be arsed. They said he loved to graft, that he worked like a machine. He’d clock up fourteen hours a day, for seven days a week. His family hardly ever saw him. He was a stranger in his own home and a mystery to the wife and kids he’d hardly ever known. They said that Joe would give you the shirt right off his back. There was certainly some truth in that. Joe was always giving out, but seldom getting back.

Then one day it seems that he’d finally had enough. Perhaps some grand epiphany had turned Joe’s head around. Or maybe the growing realisation that he was being taken for a clown. Whatever the reason; Joe turned up for work that day with a can of orange spray paint and daubed “Joe the Movie” on the factory wall. Then he squatted there beneath the sign taunting his fellow workers and giving them the full rhetorical.

“You cunts are nowt but fucking slaves. They have you by the balls. They control your every move. They control your fuckin’ thoughts. They tell you that you’re free, but the combine owns you all! You’ll graft away your days to earn an early grave, but everything you make – they’ll simply take away. They give you with one hand to take back with the other, the combine has commodified everything you need. They even orchestrate your dreams to make them seem attainable, but these are only opiates tae keep your noses tae the wheel. Your only purpose in this life is to satisfy the greed of their insatiable machine. So you can work from now till doomsday, but they’ll never set you free!”

Joe refused to get to work, or to talk to management – or answer to his slave name. As a free man he insisted on being addressed as “Seeker”. He declared he would be writing his own screenplays from then on. He wouldn’t be coerced into speaking other people’s words down the barrel of a gun. The bosses called security to show poor Joe the gate, but they were a little shy of him in case he ran amok. Eventually the cops were called and Joe was hauled away in chains. He was scrutinised by two quacks and sectioned under the Mental Health Act of 1983. That’s what they do to heretics in this day and age. They simply lock them away and castrate their minds with chemicals, they say it’s more humane than physical restraint.

They say a prophet is never recognised in his own hometown. The doctors labelled Joe as paranoid schizophrenic – he took to it the hard way round – and labelled them as his torturers and instruments of the combine. They pumped him full of Thorazine and other abominations, but he would not be silenced, he was evangelical in his cause. He would not be dissuaded through their psychoanalytical rhetoric, or through their chemical cosh. Joe planned to smash the system, no matter what the cost. He steadfastly resisted the combine and all its fiendish instruments until he eventually realised he was fighting a losing battle, simply because he had his tactics all wrong. So he adopted subtle subterfuge and employed a little guile. He learned to play the psychiatric game and responded well to treatment after just a short while. Joe was the soul of discretion and kept his cards well hidden. He never mentioned the dreaded combine, or espoused his true beliefs. So he passed his days quietly in relative grace and peace, while he awaited the revolution and his inevitable reprieve.

.

Tin God

I was always frenzied

with my Aztec instruments

and my rituals inevitably

ended in an act of betrayal

and the archaic justifications

of injustice and tragedy

the theme of my soap opera

and the playground melodramas

I classified as historic crimes

.

I cast a giant shadow

in the kingdom of the pygmies

my erstwhile sycophants

were eager recipients

of my every crumb

that collective approbation

really warmed the ego

but I could remember when

I expected so much more

.

*Image: Mesoamerican god  Xochipilli ‘Prince of Flowers’

.*

Fat Bastard

King of the big fat bastards – apologetically corpulent – a sedentary warrior on a motionless battlefield. I’m sick of this shabby body and its flaccid interior. Bashful and shamefaced I pace out my days on the inside. I know where everything is in here – no surprises. They think I’m crazy, but I’m just hungry. Buddha wants me for a dumpling and I can no longer hide my embarrassment behind a jocular disguise – I’m going the full agoraphobic – I might never go out again.

Disfigured, bloated and monumentally fractured. The faulty chemistry, the kink in the grey matter that winds me up to draw me down, has me flip flopping and gasping for air. My stars twinkle softly; they shine low. I eat the silence. The silence allows my delusions to flourish. I can almost buy into them.

The rest of this story for the most part simply withers on the page. I could drone on without meaning or direction, but I won’t. These are the hollow words of a foolish man; too vain to leave the past well enough alone. My days pass so slowly – must be the road I’m on – a road only traveled by the weary and the lost.

*Image ‘Window’ by Fran Yule

.

Immaculate

I just hopped off the bus

to fulfil my statutory obligations

I been zapped in the brain pan

by that solar radiation

if she had only seen me

back when I eclipsed the sun

she’d have a little more patience

with her beloved skid row bum

now she was feeling mystic like

and squatting on her haunches

she cast an evil eye on me

so I gave her beer and roses

I was coming off some slick machine

and was very nearly empty

this was in the morning after

on a day of rest and prayer

I played the messianic dope fiend

she made out she didn’t care

.

Monsters

there’s no sleep for me
there are monsters in my bed
the creeping sons of chaos
just will not let me rest
.
they’ve fashioned lethal weapons
from my sacred memories
to lacerate my consciousness
with morbid fantasies
.
I plead not for redemption
that’s far beyond my reach
I bargain for the mercy
of eventual release
.
deliver me from kindnesses
invested in by strangers
I have no use for enemies
when friends will steal my tongue
.
this union of erstwhile companions
this compact of seasoned liars
have anointed me with kerosene
and lit my funeral pyre
.