Odysseus rides again

I went down to the jungle    on a sacramental mission   those misbegotten angels     were selling counterfeit mushrooms   laced with dark confusion   and suicidal ideation    I swallowed me a bundle    and set off on a voyage   of odyssean dimensions

 the devil took my clothes   and stripped me of my name    I became the shotgun messenger    the prophet of a new gospel    that was totally insane    and mine were broken commandments    before they were ever carved in bone   hallucinogenic manna    that was less than halfway baked

I saw patterns emerging   that were hidden from science    they only blossomed in the darkness    of the gardens in my mind    on a vicious island    in a secret archipelago     on the ocean of despair

I was eaten by moths   who feasted on my organs    and left me wafer thin   solitary and moonstruck   in urgent need of repair    I was a one man holocaust    in a dystopian nightmare that I myself devised    there was an armageddon there    and no-one else survived

if I was taught a lesson    it was difficult to decipher   my bones have rejected meaning   and my mind denies the consequences  of feasting with my demons   I’ve been hung out to dry   in the sodding rain   a man who prayed for a fair wind  and reaped a hurricane

the sporting life

I’ve been tapped in the napper  by skull cracker monkey warlords    I’ve been dug up and called out  by knuckle dragging sporting types  who had me pegged  as an easy mark    but I’ve never been easy    and I never mugged a chump     though I made a few exceptions     when exceptions were the rule  and chumps were thick on the ground

I rolled in the hay with farm girls     and in the street with street girls    I bought their stories on approval     I got a few stories of my own    they’re hard to tell with dirt in my mouth     I was committed to no commitments and on my honour to be a good boy     which was never simple  in the no tomorrows of the unconscious   reflexive   existence  the jungle demands of its denizens

I crashed out of monkey town   before I went native    I bugged out of the urban for the country     where no-one knew my name    became a real nice guy     and raised a family   in the cosy cotton intimacy of belonging and total commitment    but every now and then I still feel it burning hot and bright    the monkey in my soul

sorrow falls like rain

 

you can’t betray your enemies   you can only betray your friends   and when you stick the knife in  that’s when the friendship ends   there’s no betrayal without trust    there’s no hatred without love   I didn’t think about betrayal   I thought only of my lust   but I try not to look behind me     where I see only ashes and dust

now my joy has gone   but my sadness lingers on   it’s a sadness I have earned   and regret that I have learned    my heart is twisted black    because I know there’s no way back    I murdered the love we shared  and destroyed the life we’d built   I’d rather I had died   than shoulder all this guilt

sorrow falls like rain   washing hope down the drain    no-one ever told me    that grief would feel this way    I drink not to forget   but to keep the pain at bay   no amount of booze    can make it go away   I drink until I’m numb   but the sadness stays the same   for time and time again   my anguish and my shame   will chase me through the shadows   but my sorrow will remain

allow for shrinkage

the engine was an old engine   it whined and coughed   but to me it was singing    it was the song the crows all sing  a song of life  and death   and chaos  I resonated in sympathy to each discordant note of the music that only I could hear  my gum had long since lost its flavour and my mouth was dry and reptilian 

 

roll the window down a bit and let me breathe 

 

there were many miles to go before morning splayed her thin grey fingers over the land   I rolled another joint   just a small one    all I asked for was a little dab of fire to light my way   the road was long   without even a whisper of which way was home   perhaps there was no way home   just the road and the memories

I went to see a man about a monkey and left her standing in the rain while I sipped warm tea with my doctor   I couldn’t care less  I was that kind of arsehole   the kind that bleeds for sympathy when he’s dark from psychosis and suicidal ideation    but blows smoke up your arse when he’s high    I could be quite charming when I was high

 

I heard you got married

 

yeah   I got married

 

what was she thinking

 

I have no idea

 

it would never last   it never did     I gave it two years before she worked it out    they all worked it out eventually   it was the secret that would not be concealed    this man had no soul    I did not sell it   or trade it for eternal youth riches  fame  or power   I didn’t gamble it away in some diabolical game of chance   I didn’t even throw it away in a fit of pique    no  I simply turned around one day and noticed it was gone  like a missing shadow   I had mislaid my soul and had no idea where   though I suspected I may have left it standing out in the rain somewhere

she said she liked the cut of my cliché   suburban dilettante with a splash of druggy mystique   but   she said   and here comes the wrecking ball    you have no soul   the girl with the raven eyes    said I had no soul   but of course I have a soul  that’s where the pain lies   she laid the boot in where it hurts   right in the ego   started a downward cycle    spiralling beyond my control

any fool can draw blood with the carefully chosen word  most use the scatter gun approach and just chuck them about till something sticks  this was different   I felt she knew me   that she had seen inside of me and found me wanting   an embarrassed silence was the precursor to deep despair

I have to report that I got very drunk   I tried to drown my sorrows   but my sorrows can swim    the flotsam of my life crowded my head with unhealthy vibrations   my clockwork messaging service told of rude change in the either region   either get it straight or go home to sulk   I have no home  just a domicile   somewhere to lie down when lying down is called for   somewhere I keep my junk   in case I need my junk

how banal   how very banal   the common place misery  the self indulgent woe why should I care what some stranger says    why did her words burn pathways of shame into my mind   it was a lucky guess that’s all    she couldn’t possibly know that I had no soul

I was sickened of my self pity   I was sickened of my life   if I was a real man I’d have a gun   I’d powder my nostrils with kif and royal jelly and bed every whore who gave me the glad eye   don’t ever let me outta here   I’m a serial disaster waiting to happen   I’m cooking up some of that good shit and I’m gonna lay it on thick and fearless   I’ll puke on your lap if you feed me enough   I always bite the hand that feeds    it’s expected of me    it’s part of my shtick

I got a third class education gleaned from the pages of stolen books   I was a part time visionary and a cut price casanova      but the charm of show business has long since worn thin   the antidote to glamour is working for a living    mind numbing boredom scoops your insides out and fills the spaces with dust  I’m not complaining  don’t get me wrong   I get high  I get low  repeat (ad infinitum)  the crest of the wave   the laxative slump   that tremor deep in the gut has me distended and extended beyond human limitations   I’m a regular chameleon   a hybrid human   a spaced out chimera

is my face on straight    do I look faulty   the phoney me   the painted smile  of synthetic man   the weight of me  the shape of me  everything is fragmented and broken   here in the marginal regions of sensory deprivation words don’t come easy   if they come at all  words are relayed by proxy here   laid out in some secret cipher known to no-one  but understood by all   there is no asylum here   no sanctuary   and no sanctity   there is room for one and one alone    it’s never an easy fit    you have to allow for shrinkage of the soul

mao tse-tung

it always rained in my hometown    the streets were slick as shit   beneath a toxic orange sky     where young aspirations  were squashed     each day at school   and dreams were all but murdered    when last orders came around    it was a place of broken promises     there was no explaining why

the dead    and undead   living    in the shade of the refinery   would pray each day to heaven     to deliver them from evil    but keep them in a job   to put meat on the table     and maybe save a couple if quid     for the saturday night debacle

poverty means crime   and crime means poverty   our lives were pressure cooked    in that bloody cauldron    violence was the release valve    and fearsome reputations   were forged in blood and gore    the mythology of violence      was part of our folklore    and we never questioned why

but we are the vital component    of the military industrial equation      living in barrack towns   hatched and batched as fodder    for some obscene machine     we have universal access    to the theatre of distraction     but we have no power over our lives    and we are forced to fight and toil     for other people’s pleasure 

it seems many may have settled     for criminal poverty      while others have been crying out for change    they don’t know what it means   but they know that change must come      that it will take a revolution   and there is no war   without blood   because all  political power     grows from the barrel of the gun

 

love bomb # 5 (covid blue edit)

where is my vodka   and the nubiles that I ordered?    I need a filler for an empty bed   some-one to sooth me   and help me negotiate the lockdown    I don’t need love   or anything transcendental   just serve me sexuality    and make it a big slice    it’s been a lunar year    since I tasted something nice   back when I still had lovers   in a former paradise

I appreciate the science     but the science is killing me   I’ve been walking around in circles     in something of a daze    and I’m dying to reacquaint  you    with my secret ways    so why don’t you come over   clandestinely    and spend a couple of days

I’ve been waiting for a woman   who will not run and hide   to come to my amusement park      and take a forbidden ride    so say  you’ll come on over    later     when it gets dark   it’s a breach in regulations    but it could just be the spark    that detonates our love bomb    and gives us both a lark

section eight

I don’t make the rules    I don’t even follow them   perhaps that’s where I went wrong  some have called me crazy   but that’s open to debate   when they opened up my head   to take a peek inside    they found I was haunted   by a demon of conscience   and was inked bloody with the stains  of unforgiveable depravities    but you never know what secrets lurk   beneath the surface of a man’s alleged insanity    believe me when I tell you   everybody is crazy   but most just don’t realise it  

I slay the beast every morning   and every fucking night    but they don’t give me medals    they just give me pills    and send me on my way     it’s a wild and torrid wind    that blows through my skull    and on any given day    of wonder and of peril   there will be a fearful storm    I’ve had a lifetime of bastard storms   and I demand a reprieve   and maybe stronger pills    from the very top shelf please   I have forsaken a peaceful mind    to make war with the beast  

thinking of the life I’ve led   the desolation I’ve endured   and the meagre mercy I’ve received   I feel weary   I feel heavy in my bones    when I brood on all of that    and the way I sought nourishment    with casual lovers and liquid fire  and then those sorry times  I was more beast than man    when the madness   the sheer fucking frenzy   fuelled by my boiling blood     raging with pathos and fury   would shame me to the core

 I am truly tired   of the burden I must bear   I could weep    and sometimes do    when my heart simply cracks    and my brain implodes   and I am the most pathetic excuse for a man   to ever shed his load   but the sickness which afflicts my life     does not define my soul    or rob me of my humanity    would you dismiss me as a crazy man     don’t you ever feel the same    have you never felt alone