modern babylonians

meanwhile…  …at your local shop ‘n’ save     the precepts of scientific management   churn out well adjusted slaves     they have chosen between conformity and freedom      they are willing to be managed     each has had their price      I’ve been damaged and discouraged       but I’m not crazy enough to join them       I dressed like them     talked like them    and even ate like them    but I could not think like them     I can’t be moulded to society’s requirements    I needed new horizons     and ever greater highs    so cut me some slack       coz crazy amounts of spoon    robbed me of my consumer status       and left me on my backside        you can sometimes buck the system     but not the dark forces      fear is the coinage of modern babylonians      fear is the quirt that keeps the herd in check      

ornithology

I‘m so high I daren’t look down      but I don’t even miss the ground     good riddance to bad vibrations     I’m just an infant laughing at the sun     the universe and I are one…      …it’s a perfect fit…     …hand in glove        …so don’t blow my high     let me fly with the birds     I got the ornithology       and there’s magic in my words    

but I ain’t bobbing for apples       this is a game I can never win     but I shoot when I’m hot      and I’m ready to fly    more often than not         …angling for the short prize      aiming kinda low…       I might just beat the system     it depends on where I go    sometimes I can fly away     keep the blues at bay   …gravity is patient with madmen…       …but I’m bound to crash someday

dynamite

mother preserve my soul      was I up to no good just then?      I seem to have drifted away…      …I was in the psyche ward again      and I was totally numb       closed off to the world      but seeing is believing     at least that’s true for some      …I’m peeking through the curtains       sunlight in my eyes      I’m tuned into eternity      and stratospherically high…        …now and in the moment      I know the world is mine     it was broadcast on the news     and it’s written in the sky     I’m dynamite this morning      but I don’t know how or why

AK 47

 all riches are theft     all rich men are thieves    revolution is justice     revolution is truth       the truth in our stomachs      the truth in our hearts     revolution is an act of violence     revolution speaks through the barrel of a gun      seven pounds of murderous intent   the unifying icon of perpetual revolution       placed in the hands of children      our modern day dogs of war

the deicides

one day we’ll return

to the place  where we belong     

but we’ll go the long way round

and make our way as killers    

scorching hallowed ground

until we learn to speak as children      

devouring stolen apples      

in the orchard of the sun        

where once we built

our monstrous war machines       

and turned them on our gods  

war again

 all words have failed us     so we turn to the violence boiling in our hearts       we’re talking war again       our words are crimson     with the justification of blood      an eye for an eye       the blindness of lust     but we will have justice       we shall wreak revenge       we shall kill in the name of humanity        vouchsafe our security   through the shedding of blood     we must defend our lives      and love the bloody sword      the only good enemy      is a dead one      they’re not even human    number them with their murdered children       their hearts are  breaking now      god grant them peace       when this madness is done

 

masquerade

 every face tells a story     but all faces are masks      and all lips were made for lies     there’s a kernel of truth buried in every deception     for we are purely abstract    a triumph over chaos    living in a world of pure theatre     we are all of us fiction woven into fact      our silence screams for truth    but even silence lies        we are what we hide   this is a world of illusion    reality is only glimpsed through an opaque lens       everything we do is a masquerade      a dance within the mind

methuselah

age smothers  with daily cruelty       and I’m longing for peace     but not too much      I’ve been imagining my death      instead of sleeping  away my days      there’s blood in the bathroom    I’ve been  spurting out life from my commonplace heart       I don’t court it     I’d rather avoid it      but it finds me     unprepared and alone        I’ve studied the science     and I must surely die someday    but I just can’t see it     it isn’t really me     I’ve decided to live to die of boredom in another thousand years    I’ve been living for tomorrow all my sorry life       but living for the moment       might be worth a try     because I’m dying incrementally       one fear at a time       one day we’ll talk about immortality      but today let’s talk about death    and why it’s stalking me

road kill

it was hard to tell what it had been      just a pool of blood and gore    plastered to the side of the road    another failed crossing?     or perhaps a suicide?       success or failure    are often hard to divine      is that my destiny?      it seems pretty bleak    that’s the stuff I’m made of    animated flesh and bone     spilled and spoiled     all dreams and aspirations      flattened by a truck     

I’m stumbling from crisis to crisis      with no clear outcome in sight       but I’m not defined by my problems     I rise against the wind      and swim against the tide      I rail against my fate    I will not be denied through inertia     or assuaged by momentary pleasures      I refuse to be another sudden impact       I want to leave something more than a stain in the road behind           

narcissus

I am my own religion    selfish cruel and beautiful     all who touch me wither and die      I’m the cat who got the cream      and I cut up nice     when I’m nice    but a little self love can be a dangerous thing       I bit too deep from forbidden fruit      my love is a burden to me now     love without theatre is a sad device      you can sacrifice too much      and have little else to give     but love without sacrifice is simple theft       I stole with my tears    I owe myself for misplaced trust    

I’m too old now to care what others think     my opinion is the only one I count       no one is ever as clever as they think they are       but I’m always right      except when I’m wrong      and I turn up wrong more often than not         on a purely subjective level     I’m a bonny liar      I lie to myself      night after night       but I won’t be diluted      or poisoned     I won’t be validated by others    I’m my own worst enemy      and my own best friend       I’m my alpha    and omega        in the forever amen

 

icarus (grounded)

 not all birds winter in the south      some of us are flightless       moribund and exhausted       some of us are accidents        car crash victims      veterans of unhappy wars       long since wounded    and purple hearted       they say having flown      you’ll forever walk the street       with your eyes on the sky       for there you have been and long to return       not to reap or sow       but to soar without constraint         beyond imagination

I have wounds       hidden scars        but all my surfaces      such as they are       present spotlessly clean      at least to the naked eye     but I’m filthy         by decent human standards     and my wings of wax     drenched in lust        fucked up and sorry         have failed me        in the hour of my disillusionment      forever fixed in space     in the moment of crashing         I am leaden now       and planted in the soil of my woeful discontent     

plastic gods

more than sometimes      during a powerful lunar phase     I get the spiritual impulse     to make my own bible      and live by its verses     to blow my own trumpet       till the walls come tumbling down      I am alive and always changing      the crown of creation adorns my brow     I’m truly living the human experience     the high of all highs     the most holy of holies     the revelation of incarnation    has lit me up     a beacon of truth      in the fog of ignorance

I’m getting into the world     and everything in it      riding the waves of existence    through the ever expanding now      where  everything ever imagined is real      we create ourselves from that mosaic of fancy      but we’ve evolved into plastic gods     makers and breakers of private worlds      each is imperfectly cast in their own distorted image   we are the graven idols in the temples of babylon    the worship of self is the religion of hubris     and hubris precedes disgrace     sure as the ebb and flow of every lunar phase