Hinterland

the sky is dark and heavy
dismal as an infant’s funeral
tones of grey and black
divide the days
and we are hostage
to perpetual winter
the sun is dying
heaven is weeping
darkness reigns
in this hinterland
.

Crimson

nearly

never

or hardly ever
not now and then
but now, forever
sinking
they are out to get me
I know they are
their whispered fragments coalesce
to form steel traps
for my clumsy feet
tectonic plates shift
beneath the gut
beyond the entrails
into the deep
the heart of things
the ebbing tide

my fingers are stained
with nicotine and blood
I’m high now – too high for comfort
each horrifying impulse
passes through my colon
with a nauseous thrashing motion
tearing like baby sharks
devouring their birthing sacks

I cannibalised my ego
to construct this prison
with no walls
and no means of escape
this crimson shelter
affords no respite
from the luxury
of self-reflection
or the aching desire
for sleep
.

Crematorium

crematoria tears 
fell freely on the Monday
lapsed into silence 
on the Tuesday morn
we were all here
dutiful and penitent
we were all here
but you were gone
I heard you breathing 
shallow now
soft as snow
but far away 
someone still wept
through the aeons
that followed
for you had heard 
the mother of voices
she spoke to you
and not to me
.

Dinghies

 

It no longer hurts. I plucked out the offending instrument with bloody fingers and drew me a new one with eight crimson limbs – each an organ of enlightenment – according to my sponsors @badbuddha.com.

I believe there is no saving anyone, not even ourselves – especially not ourselves. We are each bound to a fatal trajectory; we all reach the same destination over time. We spend our days with the masses chewing the cud and shitting it out. We are all members of the one great herd - all bound for the abattoir.

But enough of this bovine philosophy – I have a boat to catch and my memoirs to forge. This shit does not cook itself. It takes days of careful preparation and intense deliberation to float these little dinghies. There’s a cheap and cheerful cliché – a clumsy metaphor requiring little imagination; little boats adrift on the glittering ocean; the flotsam and jetsam of tiny shipwrecks; no survivors to tell the tale.

Imposter

I can’t write. I have no talent, no finesse, no nuanced phrasing or beautiful prose. I recognise my key attributes now. I’m the devil’s bagman. I’ll poison your chakras and I’ll piss in your well. Just so long as I’m felt – just so you know that I’m there.

This woman – random bitch – in the hospital – called me an imposter, because I smiled when offered a cigarette. A crazy move in the locked ward. No one smiles in a locked ward unless they are staff. For them it’s a job, for the patients it’s more than a vocation.

I have me a new vocation – king of the night, burner of the midnight oil. I’ll sit and drum on this machine until I’ve squeezed the venom from my brainpan into some form of magic - something that leaps from the page and makes for the jugular. 

Here is the new credo – love is for suckers – hopeless sentiment for rascals and liars. I’ll be fooled no more by pretty words and winning smiles. I’m the singular and heartless beast that lurks beneath the breast of every man and woman who was ever burned. I’m an imposter; feigning interest in truth and beauty when all I care about is getting my rocks off and cataloguing my experience for the prurient thrill I derive from playing the game with style.

.

Reflective

back
in the laboratory
of my mind
I concoct solutions
to ubiquitous problems
the silken intrusion
and delicate rub
of afflictive memories
the cocks and cunts
of youthful infatuation
the fascination
of the flesh
meshed into pornographic
reference
forced into grotesque
and novel shapes
made to adopt
censored smiles
and null identity
but these subtle devices
imperfect in design
only breed new monsters
bittersweet and unkind
.

Ideology

you believe what you want to believe     but there’s no life in tablets of stone      and no philosophy that fills your stomach        there is no dumb eternal essence            no spiritual spark        that electrifies the synaptic gap           we speak ourselves  into being        and our language articulates ideology         we are the vassals  of whatever ideology  we call common sense         there are prohibitions that control our actions      and procedures to improve our ideology      

Dead Man

I write like a dead man
with knotted fingers
and a feeble grasp
I cast no reflection
into the pool of life
here on the outside
the far outside
there are no windows
waiting
no welcome in the hearth
and there are no songs
for dead men
to wrap their tongues around
.