Golden Apples

channelling

exclusively

via satellitic intent

this monomaniac

is deeply fixated

on our nearest star

and that’s where

you’ll find him

from now on

lost in an orchard

dazzling bright

stealing golden apples

from the heart of the sun

.

Tragedian

Sally threatened suicide

she did from time to time

it was no cry for help

but a demand for servitude

I’d have given her anything

under any other terms

but she came as the victim

of numerous insoluble crimes

her eyes were always offended

they were tuned to disappointment

she said she’d turned a corner

on another dead-end street

.

I felt the momentum

of some terrible gravity

dragging at my entrails

hers was a brutal surgery

born of desperation

the decision was mine

my choices were limited

by narrowing circumstance

to a fight or flight scenario

so I reluctantly opted out

but I still have a pillow for her

if she ever feels the need

.

Jelly Beans

stop my mouth    anaesthetise me    I need panic pills      merciful medicine    my beautiful mutation  is murdering me    I’m withering into psychosis      so nourish me pharmaceutically     I know I’m bat shit crazy   the world makes me crazy   her beauty is fouled     from the misuse of mirrors     in the still of my room      I’m gradually transforming     into a psychiatric emergency

my heart beats too loud      I can’t hear me think       my life no longer sparks    I’ve been harvesting my sickness    I’m the effigy of moral weakness    I require psychotropic medication    it’s my rod      my staff      my crutch     my blood is charged with electric potential    the bipolar extremities beckon me     I need some proper insulation      faith is not enough         

in the shadow of existence   where the dark things flourish   surrounded by tender tyrants     and outflanked by awkward instance     I’m a hostage to necessity    and have demons to placate      I need a little something      added to my recipe     I require a magic bullet       to get me off my knees     so get me an extension    I’ll call for some assistance     to feed me psycho quackery      in the shape of jelly beans

 

Joe the Movie

Not so very long ago, and not too far away. There lived a man called Joe who’d worked hard all his life for very little gain. Joe was that dedicated chump that bosses all adore; he’d go that extra mile for very scant reward. He’d always be the first to arrive and very the last to leave. There was always one more final task to keep Joe working late.

The other men could count on Joe to always lend a hand. He’d even put their tools away when they could not be arsed. They said he loved to graft, that he worked like a machine. He’d clock up fourteen hours a day, for seven days a week. His family hardly ever saw him. He was a stranger in his own home and a mystery to the wife and kids he’d hardly ever known. They said that Joe would give you the shirt right off his back. There was certainly some truth in that. Joe was always giving out, but seldom getting back.

Then one day it seems that he’d finally had enough. Perhaps some grand epiphany had turned Joe’s head around. Or maybe the growing realisation that he was being taken for a clown. Whatever the reason, Joe turned up for work that day with a can of orange spray paint and daubed “Joe the Movie” on the factory wall. Then he squatted there beneath the sign, taunting his fellow workers and giving them the full rhetorical:

“You cunts are nowt but fucking slaves. They have you by the balls. They control your every move. They control your fuckin’ thoughts. They tell you that you’re free, but the combine owns you all! You’ll graft away your days to earn an early grave, but everything you make – they’ll simply take away. They give you with one hand to take back with the other, the combine has commodified everything you need. They even orchestrate your dreams to make them seem attainable, but these are only opiates tae keep your noses tae the wheel. Your only purpose in this life is to satisfy the greed of their insatiable machine. So you can work from now till doomsday, but they’ll never set you free!”

Joe refused to get to work, or to talk to management, or to answer to his slave name. As a free man he insisted on being addressed as “Seeker”. He declared he would be writing his own screenplays from then on. He wouldn’t be coerced into speaking other people’s words down the barrel of a gun. The bosses called security to show poor Joe the gate, but they were a little shy of him in case he ran amok. Eventually the cops were called and Joe was hauled away in chains. He was scrutinised by two quacks and sectioned under the Mental Health Act of 1983. That’s what they do to heretics in this day and age. They simply lock them away and castrate their minds with chemicals, they say it’s more humane than physical restraint.

They say a prophet is never recognised in his own hometown. The doctors labelled Joe as paranoid schizophrenic – he took to it the hard way round – and labelled them as his torturers and instruments of the combine. They pumped him full of Thorazine and other abominations, but he would not be silenced, he was evangelical in his cause. He would not be dissuaded through their psychoanalytical rhetoric, or through their chemical cosh. Joe planned to smash the system, no matter what the cost. He steadfastly resisted the combine and all its fiendish instruments until he eventually realised he was fighting a losing battle, simply because he had his tactics all wrong. So he adopted subtle subterfuge and employed a little guile. He learned to play the psychiatric game and responded well to treatment after just a short while. Joe was the soul of discretion and kept his cards well hidden. He never mentioned the dreaded combine, or espoused his true beliefs. So he passed his days quietly in relative grace and peace, while he awaited the revolution and his inevitable reprieve.

.

Tin God

I was always frenzied

with my Aztec instruments

and my rituals inevitably

ended in an act of betrayal

and the archaic justifications

of injustice and tragedy

the theme of my soap opera

and the playground melodramas

I classified as historic crimes

.

I cast a giant shadow

in the kingdom of the pygmies

my erstwhile sycophants

were eager recipients

of my every crumb

that collective approbation

really warmed the ego

but I could remember when

I expected so much more

.

*Image: Mesoamerican god  Xochipilli ‘Prince of Flowers’

.*