Cabbage White

nothing corrupts a boy    like a father’s love    a few blows here ‘n’ there     some bruises     a little blood    and a thousand humiliations    cause you're a useless cunt    you're shit      you're a prick     an’ you’re  fuckin’ thick    words that once trampled my heart      like his big work boots     his filthy    ugly boots

 

I sought a place in the shade     closer to the cool earth     while fire poured from the sky       but it wasn’t as harsh as his words     there was a butterfly illuminated     in a corridor of light     it was nothing very special     an ordinary cabbage white     but it was beautiful to me     I’d have gladly flown away with him       but I was rooted to the ground       and couldn’t fly as yet

 

you know      that stony cold silence    the morning after a beating?     that fragile feeling    softly trembling    the queerness in the gut    when the ebbing throb reveals      the broken incestuous jaw     of the sacrificial lamb       in a garden untended       and filled with nettles

it’s a mouthful of blood       and a handful of hair       nothing to write home about      no need for tears       it’s not as if it matters      even then I knew too much        to take too much to heart

 

 

Popsicle

I once knew a guy, a square, who would unfold his elbows to disgorge great chunks of scripture from his ugly fissure of a mouth. He claimed to be an artist and a writer – a literally terrible Baudelaire under the influence of an evil river of semantic bullshit. I used to abhor the sound of his voice and his predictable Boy Scout denouement.

This bead twisting bastard considered himself to have been appointed God’s lawyer. His mission was to weed out and pull down the atheistic, agnostic blasphemer hounds of hell that kept bad company and cluttered up the corridors of hope. They only tripped up the unsuspecting with their weed, speed and jumping Jack Kerouac; preventing them from reaching a state of grace in God’s red white and blue heaven. It was his task to usher, forcibly if needs be, the vile unbelievers into the glowing light of HIS love. To this ends he would grind out sermons on every subject from evolution and the ‘monkey fallacy’ to homosexuality and AIDS as a judgment of the Lord.

He was a loathsome little bigot of a man who pulsed negative energy in every direction, but worse than that he was a complete drag who could banish a smile at three hundred yards. One day I spiked him with cyanic acid and stuck him in the freezer to cool off – I turned him into a Popsicle; bitter almond flavoured.

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Experience

There are no free lunches, there are no free rides. Experience is paid for with the sharpest of currency and often in blood. We gamble all and ultimately lose, for the game is rigged that way. There is no point in complaining, our only failing could be that we had simply not wagered enough. When it comes to experience it is far better to have been a spendthrift than a miser; to have been prodigal, than left wanting.

Truth

All truth is manmade. We make the truth; there is no truth that we did not create. Truth is dangerous, be careful with it. Truth can set you free, it can burn you too. Mostly truth is one big lie. The one big lie that ties you down, that draws you under. Beware of truth; truth is an imposter. Truth is stranger than fiction and usually less probable. They say that the truth will prevail, but it just isn’t so. Just as every lie contains a kernel of truth, so every truth is made of little white lies. Of course you should always tell the truth as you see it, but remember that one man’s truth is another man’s lie.

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Decisions

Between thought and motion lies a lifetime of indecision. Between impulse and action lies an eternity of procrastination. We live in the angles between those split vacillations; locked in the prisons formed by our accommodations, shut out by our deferrals and postponements. We are exiled to nations of the yea or nay behind the wire of choices, judgments’, compromises and reconciliations. Isolated from our feelings by other considerations; our final adjudications are questions of reason. There are a thousand judges awaiting our every verdict. The sentence is mandatory for acts of treason.

In the distance between the thrower and the stone cast lies an ocean of experience and shared guilt. Behind every curse there is concealed a blessing; a secret prayer for atonement through condemnation. Just as in every question lurks the desired answer, so every answer is a masquerade of some unasked question. Life is an island in an ocean of questions – questions and answers separate us into archipelagos of existence.

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