ten thousand miles

 I’m sick of life in the hobo jungle       I’ll have to concoct an escape    I’ve marshalled my resources      my charms and brittle toys       but nothing’s ever real     so I’ll keep my place       wait for my moment          you don’t need an excuse to be poor      you don’t need a uniform to fight in the war         but you need a little faith    to help you through the night     it’s a long way from cleaning windows       but it’s hardly sunny side up       I’m like you      I have lived in the odd moment     and I remember what you said      in your little voice      you said     “I think I’ve had enough, so thank you and good luck”       I didn’t require your ministrations       I expected no gratitude for mine       but I could have used your hand      these last ten thousand miles

I thought I won the war

 I have a hard time waking most mornings     I have a hard time sleeping most nights      but  I dreamed I won the war     and everything was alright    there was dancing in the streets      and I saw myself on TV     but that was sometime  yesterday      I only own today   

when I get low      I get high       they can’t take that away     what do you make of a man like me?   I got one foot on the platform     the other foot on the train      I thought I was me for a moment       but I’m somewhere back in time     I thought I won the war      but it was only in my mind      

instrumental violence

 you can’t control me now     you’re no longer in my scheme     I’m not afraid of you       you won’t hurt me again      there’s nothing you can do      nothing you can say       I’ve had enough of you    and your brutal ways     you call your aggression justice      and my resistance crime      I’ll no longer play your victim     just as I’ll never play your thug    but if you think I’ll be a bystander     then you can think again     there are forms of subtle violence      that breed conformity      I will not acquiesce to them    you won’t get that from me

northern lights

 I hear the jets tearing across the sky      they’re on their way to hell    peals of rolling thunder    the muted cries of death      I’ve had my share of sleepless nights    but I’m at home in the dark     and home is where the heart is, right?     sometimes I think about dying      I think of little else     I’ve gone transatlantic    I’ve learned to fly myself      I’m drinking what you’re drinking     neat scotch    the drink of free men      the red eye to oblivion     I ripped a hole in the night      my dreams came tumbling out

maggots

 I’m not feeling too clever today      someone shrank my knackers     and obscured my true identity     I’m out of bed    or so I think     It’s still dark outside      but it’s darker in      there’s a hole in my bucket     I’m leaking spiritual energy      but I’m rid of her    and she’s rid of me      summer died, she blamed it on me      I don’t hold that against her       we both know I have it in me      you see, it was easy to smile as I lied     easier than the taste of fear and shame     but it feeds the worm inside     and he’s a hungry maggot      the guardian of my psyche      the one who’s in control        here I am fucking, eating, grunting      I’m just rotting meat in a garbage can       maggots rule my world       my maggots have a master plan      it’s called metamorphosis       on the other side of heaven        they’ll have sprouted wings      and they’ll be planting eggs in the fertile ground       of my decomposing mind

snitch

…and where am I now?     I’m in the glasshouse again      and where are you?     you’re home and dry   open the window and breathe in that gloom       it’s that kind of night      in that kind of room    don’t touch me now     you’ll catch something cruel     I love you some      I hate you too      but you didn’t bring me down      I did that to myself       you drink like a thief      one eye on the door     I should have seen you coming      I’d have spit in your eye      coz nobody loves a snitch     or trusts a fucking liar…

 

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?