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?