real poets fire blank verse

 

dead horses saddled and flogged         the symbol of futility       ideographs of broken people      damaged and confused              forty years in the harness      dragging for the man      at the end of my bloody tether       I pulled a smash and grab        I stole an ounce of freedom           if only in my head       I took to scrawling words        to score some gravy with my bread         

those first were words ugly       but beautiful just the same        so I rearranged their order          and gave them different names       some they say there's madness in my method       that I have a turn of phrase       but from where I stir the pot        all words look the same        there is no magic incantation       no happy ever after          I may as well tear up those words       and post them down the crapper

hear my voice: "Dagger".

gently turn the tides

 

I ebb and flow         a creature born of circumstance        I apply strictly crooked reasoning         to this strictly crooked world                  I chart the geometry of being          deploying instruments         of my own design           it's an esoteric task       but mine is a ministry          a ministry of one         I'd love to touch the sun              with my banner fully unfurled      but for the moment     I'm consigned to ebb and flow       on the gently turning tide  

I ebb and flow         a captive of coincidence             I speak when I'm spoken to         this is no time for clever  rhetoric               they can lock you up        for speaking too loud       so I mind my own business        and mark my own time        worldly concerns are best left for those          who will carve a new paradigm       from the flotsam of the old        but in the meantime          I simply ebb and flow      while the tide gently turns

hear my voice: 'DAGGER'

The Crow Road

 

with the fullness of time      it will always come to this     that we shall walk the crow road       with the darkness in our eyes        and splinters in our feet      but we meanwhile shield our eyes        from the awful truth       we live an allotted time      and are one day rendered meat

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heroes

 

they say a hero is partially courageous   but mostly foolish     that maybe a hero is just a regular guy   who made an honest mistake   a guy who wants to run like everybody else     but doesn’t    what’s he afraid of do you think?

maybe there are no heroes    maybe we are all driven by fear    maybe we’re just a pack of dogs     marking our territories with piss   perhaps the real heroes know this    because they’ve been paying attention   and they know that this life just a childish game

just who is and who isn’t a hero?    that would depend who’s side you are on   one man’s hero is another man’s villain    we are all heroes in our own minds     few ever see themselves as villainous    until it’s too late    and the villainy is done

for some a hero is someone willing to die for a cause    maybe heroism isn’t about dying for something   but living for something    in truth the common notion of heroism is a fiction    an entertainment      our prisons are full of heroes     but nobody cares  about them

I’m told there is a hero within each of us     but there are more tyrants than heroes within us    I pity anyone who needs a hero    because heroes are thin on the ground   villainy is much more common     you can always count on villains to show up on time

*Image: ‘The Death Of Achilles’  Corfu, Greece

society

 

they tell us man was made   in the image of his creator    but society was forged    in the image of the beast    I’ll have no truck with society     society is a killer driven by hatred and greed    we gave power to our demons     and we’ll never get it back    from inside the prison of society

nothing ever changes   within existent reality   it will take a brand new paradigm     to really shake things loose    to keep your hands clean   you must live outside society   you cannot claim your freedom   while on your bended knees   

we’ve ignored the potential of love     to raise us above savagery    we’ve  embraced a machine        that celebrates conformity    and crushes individuality   in this bloody system    there’s little room for sentiment   we define our cultural history    as a record of atrocities

I once believed that to be human    was our highest attainment    now I see that to claim our humanity    is to admit that we are monsters    I reject the callous mechanism we call society    I never belonged to society    and it never belonged to me

Janus

 

stem your tears and dry your eyes      they are trying to steal your name   they want to modify your temperament      to make you feel ashamed    you ain’t been cutting the mustard     at the image factory     and they can delete your profile     any time they choose

get a hold of your sunshine    learn how to play the game     the benefits are obvious     there is no other way    don’t be yesterday’s hero    when you could eat this whole world raw      don’t tell them you’re a nobody     they pegged you for a star     just make your ego porous    and try to enjoy the ride

you’ll need two faces now     one for them and one for you    be careful who you trust with yours    because some would sell you out     they’ll imitate your action   even your mistakes      they’ve got no imagination     and no creative juice     they have to feed off you    you’re the only show in town

try not to worry too much     no-one sees your pain     they want you to be glamorous      and  maybe just a little flawed   that way you make good copy    when they nail you to the cross     they say the greater the exposure   the deeper runs the doubt    don’t bend yourself all out of shape    trying to work it out

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