hip priest

 he smiled     and smiled     as if he were willing to play the villain if necessary and that’s the way of it     in my neighbourhood     he was slightly fleabag       you know the type     vaguely disaffected     stinking of skunk and sweat     he spoke low and slow      didn’t give away too much     he played a private game        no one knew it’s name      all human suffering       resided in his eyes      but he didn’t seem to care      he was nearly clued in      almost wise       his were written memoirs     pen and paper      torn from life     he was veteran of some ancient revolution     but he wasn’t a victim     he was a survivor     he’d seen thousands like me        eager to impress      with my vacuous knowledge    but he was a book closed to me     “…nothing matters anymore, the war was lost long ago…       …I stopped resisting the flow and learned to let go…    …it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but it’s the only one we know…”    he was an individualist      and if he ever got lonely he didn’t let on      he’d been weathered smooth       by millennia of dust and rain    I was an acolyte - he’d send me to the shops       but nothing he said was news to me      nothing he said seemed real

looney tunes

 ever since the funny farm     my self doubt is crippling      it’s an existential funk       bipolar flavour      I’m just a mirror to a world rotten with mediocrity      I’m a television head     I’ve abolished the dark of night    and bleached my brain with photons      my thoughts are merely the regurgitation     of twenty four hour programming    I’ve lost all sense of the real      I’m a cartoon man      moulded in a cartoon world      I manage my appearance     and the illusion of individuality     but there’s no such thing as real       there are only layers of fiction      and that’s all folks      that’s all she wrote     

semiotics

 back to square one      early doors       the milkman cometh    my war against sleep wages on      I’m sick again       wretched with it      my mind is in meltdown      there’s no silence left      not with the newsflash      the commercial breaks      and incessant chattering idiocy of the internet       there’s little sense to the information age      we’re in it for the money        we murdered god      and filled the void with primetime cheesecake       this culture  is universally flaccid     a succession of fragmented sensation      and random nostalgia      I’m sickened of it      I overdosed on signification      I’m puking my guts up on the swirl of empty meaning       back to square one      early doors      the milkman cometh…

nobody

 I won’t make a difference in your life     I won’t make a difference in mine    I have no power of attorney      no higher authority       the world will turn without me in it      I have lived as other men lived       I’ll die as they have died before me       without meaning      without purpose     directionless, and ideology free      life is an abattoir    no-one escapes the jaws of hell       I tried to build a heaven    in the void of existence      all I got were horrors     and imprisonment in solitary confinement

I can breathe     is that a sign of life?      I have the classic zombie profile    shambolic and loathsome    it doesn’t really matter       on a cosmic scale - nothing ever matters      I have wrestled with god and lost     there’s nothing left to try     I’m a machine       a machine of flesh and blood       my rage was pointless      my prayers misdirected       the universe is cold and relentless       yes, I’ve been swimming with sharks again       it’s risky, but I have no choice      they won’t leave me alone

 

it’s all in our imagination

don’t know about you      but my heart ain't in it        this is not my idea of a good time    hard knocks       tough questions      tougher lessons...     excuse me     I lost your signal     I phased out     heavy-lidded     a little stoned     vulnerable to kryptonite     went all buddha for a moment    the sun    the moon    the sky        never said I had a better way       there is no clearer route than your own heart     

you were mindful for the moment     you  kicked your shoes off and danced      and you scoped me out     with the most exacting eyes        gripped with power and wonder        can’t you hear the summer calling?     she calls on you by name         she didn’t want to be alone       she remembers the things we used to do      drunk on nectar in the season of promise     it’s all in my imagination      is it ever that way for you?

asphyxiation

 love is a mutt that follows you home       an overfriendly guest with a huge appetite      still, it’s your dime…       and it’s better than being alone…       isn’t it?      well, isn’t it?     or are you too tall for love?      too proud to stoop down low?    would you rather be a master than a slave?      well, love makes slaves of us all        some say love is life and indifference is death     surely it’s better to serve something      anything      than suffer that gradual asphyxiation?

I don’t always do as I’m told

 all truth is relative      all judgements subjective      nothing’s as concrete     as you’re led to believe       history is a lie      and so are you       but it’s too late now      to sing that song      I had my special k for breakfast     and fell down a rabbit hole     all the world’s tired old clichés      are gnawing on my bones      I stand accused      of stacking the deck       and playing by my own rules     but I don’t care      how far I go       as long as I get my jelly roll       I’m talking now as a friend       who understands the violence that breeds conformity       I have to stay real with myself     I don’t always do as I’m told

rehabilitation

 they sent a man from the council        to survey my state of being      he condemned the building       before he crushed my expectations         and flushed them down the crapper      he has a place in the country     said I could get my head right there      he promised me the good life      as he understood it      in supported living    fucking do gooder       has me on his list     but I won’t move an inch    I’ve embraced self improvement     I’m seeing beneficial angles     there might just be a score     in this rehabilitation racket

dear reader

we are all of us acquainted with sorrow     and that being said       we’re maybe better for it      if that’s the natural order    and it seems to be   dear reader     we have suffered      we have suffered to our shame     I hope for your sake     that your greatest regret    in this season of regrets    was an affair of the heart     that’s where it counts      because that’s the best of us     that’s where we live      love and betrayal      it’s a fearsome thing     but the crimes we commit for love       are perhaps our saving grace       

an empire of lies

don’t worry          I’m not about to forgive you        it’s not my place to forgive you       people tell lies for all sorts of reasons           it doesn’t mean they are bad       it doesn’t make them wrong        sometimes we lie to spare the feelings of others         most of the time we lie because we are afraid            fear makes liars of us all          whole civilisations have been built on well-intentioned lies        I know you meant no harm       I’m sure you had the truth in mind        at some point in the future          this will be the past       I’ve already burned my diary     my last statement shall be ash        life     my friend       is fleeting        we shall leave no trace behind us        and our troubles       will have washed away     diluted in the oceans of time

ascension

 long about midnight      a certain time ago      someone spiked my tea      before they rifled through my drawers       may long standing repercussions     settle on their bones      he who laughs last…     well, let’s just wait and see…       I’m too cool to care    coz my head is full of stars      I’m only a poor boy with a bloody hammer      I get high       I get low     the symptoms are axiomatic    they’re no problem at all    it would take more than a lethal dose    to silence this fat mouth            

brother, you gave me a mountain     but I climbed it    what’s that the image of?       men heaving over mountains?   or drowning in their shadows?     a man needs a mountain      like a bullet needs a gun     a mountain’s a load for one back     but I’m drawn to the weight of it     like a moth on a fatal trajectory    simply coz it’s there     coz it’s in my path    I’m just a poor boy with a bloody hammer     I survived the assassin’s cup      and occasional subsequent avalanches      but I’ve been to the top of the mountain      and I have seen the world        

 

bourgeois heroes

the swill of propaganda     and the opiate of aspiration   are pumped out 24/7     in the age of sexualisation     fetishized  commodities     and prostituted love     

the name of the game is power      and all power stems from oppression        our courageous captains of industry      spread the ideology of cancer      in a torrent of greed and lust     

way up on mount olympus       cadres of billionaire demigods       are forging tickets to heaven      from second-hand clichés    and promissory notes     we’re left counting pennies      while they organise a society     where hideous pagan idols     are feasting on our blood