The Blood In My Eyes

I brought the bad news

judiciously carved

into reasonable chunks

that were easy to swallow

but hard to digest

there was the momentum

of some terrible gravity

behind my every word

each was weighed

and then dispensed

on tablets of stone

saying; if you cast the first

then I shall cast the last

it was a diabolical pact

but I just couldn’t see

for the blood in my eyes

had so blinded me

.

Hungry

that’s me there   face to face   with the back of the crowd   fetching awkward angles between my toes    it’s always seemed that symmetry eluded me and I was dissolving fractions in a decimal world   a feline soul in a canine cosmos    I told a big stripey lie that painted me a permanent crimson and soaked my banner with piss ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

that was thirty years or so ago    and there’s been plenty of action under the bridge since then    it sometimes feels really late    but that’ll be the times    I developed humour as a mechanism to lubricate those rapidly diminishing hours   burdens borne with a smile sometimes feel like blessings in disguise……….…………………………………..

those hooks and punch lines are mine to own    but they aren’t all jokes   half of them are true   I hawk them anyway because there is little else to say    people expect lies in these days of photo-shopped selfies and fictitious biographies    so I get away with the odd deprecating truth    as long as I sugar coat them     no one accepts the sour any more     their palettes are acclimatised to saccharine and the soft candy floss of mediocrity……………..…………………………………………..

I stood in a long queue to receive short shrift and a parcel of unwelcome platitudes    I’m not complaining mind you    I got to where I am by the circuitous route    but I got here just the same    I’m quite comfy in my hollow    and if things are now slower than they once were    it’s only because I was speeding in the first place    it was always post-haste and frantic stratagems with me    I was hungry the way only poor boys are hungry    I’m still hungry    but it's an old man's hunger

Soulless Episode III

She robbed me with apparently no sense of irony. She was enraged and barely coherent. I had been rumbled again. She went through my pockets looking for anything she might have missed. She found a couple of condoms in my jacket. She held them up and laughed.

“Just in case Johnny? Or do you always go prepared?”

She tossed them at me with a gesture that suggested both amusement and contempt. She loved a grand gesture did Jane and she had the dramatic flair tae pull them off. She was a bonny lassie, but she would insist oan talking.

“Yer easy tae get along wi Johnny. Yer a good laugh and yer no bad in the sack, but yer lacking something.”

Here we go, I thought, the commitment lecture – it had to come one day. It always does. Still, I couldn’t help gazing at her near naked body and thinking that a man could lose himself in a woman like that, so why can’t I?

“Yer a coward Johnny. Yer afraid of commitment and yer afraid of love because yer afraid of rejection. Ye take nae risks ‘cause yer a cowardly fucker.”

I was smiling now. I didn’t mean to and it could only wind her up, but the whole scene had a familiar pattern to it. I had recognised the symptoms and I knew it was coming, but like a fool I had to turn up for the final scene. I was almost glad I did though, she was magnificent in her rage. She was a very beautiful woman of strong character. If I were ever to fall in love it would be with a someone like her. I wish I could tell her these things, but tae what purpose? I just lay there on the bed smiling like a muppet.

“You’re pointless Johnny. You’re a record wi nae groove, a fuckin’ bike wi nae wheels. You have a’ the charm and grace in the world Johnny, but ye huv nae soul.”

I groaned in psychic pain. Not that old chestnut. There’s no such thing as a soul. Even Buddha had tae admit that, sort of. The soul is a concept – an abstract – a fuckin’ falsehood. Why do they always pull that soul shite on me? If she meant I had no conscience – that I could bear. It wiznae true, but I could bear it. This soul malarkey though just got oan ma tits. I had soul – even Buddha said I had soul – whatever that means.

“There’s nae need for this Janie, we’re friends after all.”

“I dinnae want tae be one o’ your ‘friends’ Johnny.
 I’m no some wee whore fi the scheme who’ll let you pick her up or let her doon as ye fuckin’ well please. I deserve mair than that!”

“What’s the money for Jane?”

“I’ve been yer whore and now I want paid!”

“Do I make ye feel like a whore?”

“Aye Johnny – ye do.”

There was so much anger and anguish in her face that it silenced me dead. She loved me. She really did love me, and in that moment, I knew I loved her. It was too late though. Too much had already been said and too much had already been done. How could she ever trust me again? How could I? She would be better off without me, who needs a man with no fuckin’ soul anyway?

.

To Dream As Gods Do

your suicide warden
garnished in chains
inspects your arsehole
where morning has fled
your pot hole eyes peering
through a lysergic purge
witness only the contents
of your dingy abode
which encapsulates the wearying
trinkets of monstrous dalliances
and licentious attacks
of falsified intentions
these are the things you’ll remember
during those lonely repasts
of quaaludes and hard liquor
green tea and ground glass
.
you learned to sleep in shallow latrines
on egyptian cotton and busted bed springs
gazing up at refracted reflections
in cracked ceiling mirrors
where decades of hope
disappeared in a murmur
to dissolve and fade like baby aspirin
.
your aged gigolos and mutant dandies
dopes on the ropes fighting losing battles
are smudged entries in last year’s diary
so your electric wire and phony smile
seemed like your last best defence
in a life grown cold
from hustling for change
and god knows you need a change
there’s one more hit left in the locker
so lay back and relax to dream as gods do
.

Any Burden

I’m in chemical confinement
l a s t ..o f f.. t h e.. b l o c k s
held in a generous solution
replete with aspic crown
maybe something I said
crossed that invisible line
I offered them contrition
but they just tied me down

I’ve got no padded cell
just a tranquillized mind
this way’s more humane
and so it would seem
to the casual observer
but if he scratched the surface
the observer just might find
there’s more to skinning cats
than first meets the eye

I want more human rights
and far less human wrongs
I waited up all night
by the telephone
when finally you called
I said I wasn’t home
I didn’t feel no better
and I was still alone

but I’d bear any burden
and I very often do
I’d even commit a murder
if I could only get to you

*Image: portrait of the author as a young man