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23 July 2013

rubbers

Rubber

there was time to murder    down at the cemetery   where lecherous old doggers     retched and decaying    rolled off slippery with sweat and cum    having telegraphed images    pornographic in nature     to their casual hook ups     and anal slime buddies      who stood with their phones    in regimental order       their viagra fuelled members       stiff to attention

the klu klux midnight jamboree   is pursuing their orgasmic high    in a well worn car park    by the broken leisure centre     with his    or her    eyes   on tonight’s shallow prize    “we’ll go at it bareback”   declared the brassy young beastial   “so shed ‘em and spread ‘em    the devil take the hindmost   I heard he prefers his meat doggy style”

“you have a bonny mouth    lets you and me be friends      you suck real good     now put your teeth back in      the queen of sheba    is in the next motor   cannibalising mirrors    and playing the diva…”     he was expecting caviar  on crisp golden crackers    but settled for sloppy seconds     as did his lady in waiting     the unnamed bendy bird     with the black nylon hair

sometimes meat      sickens me a while     no doubt the occasional dalliance       brings pleasure to the senses    but it does nothing for my soul      so I’m going home      to an ice cold shower    that kind of love is hard on the haunches     besides the last rubbers left     with my favourite lover     but I still got her number     coz she expects meat       and I’ve got that in my locker    

 

18 July 2013

Yahweh

god_blk
a long time ago
the great god Yahweh
unleashed on the Earth
war, plague, famine, and death
in generalised semantics
those parasitic beings
called homo sapiens
bearing fatal messages
of peace, love and harmony
while they butchered
with glorious indifference
and espoused primal laws
the survival of the fittest
to justify their ignorance
pleased to meet you
you and me shoot good
we be friends
eat my gun
the end

.

17 July 2013

Flowers

Flowers

Whose grave did you rob
To bring me flowers
How much did you steal
To buy my love
Where did you go to
When I needed your shoulder
Who will you turn to
When I show you the door
.

13 July 2013

Doomsday Device

Bellsdyke
His name was Robert and he had a twin brother Richard who, he explained, was on another ward because they could read each other’s minds.

“Together we are too formidable for the nurses to tackle.”

He was a tall, slender, carrot top of about twenty eight years. When he spoke his hands fluttered in his lap like birds trapped in a cage.

“My father was a minister in The Church Of Scotland. He resented our gift. There was a massive power struggle and he locked us in a time capsule for the sake of science.”
He looked around furtively.

“We don’t belong here, but they had the idea we were building a doomsday device, so they locked us in here. No vision you see. No vision.”

He stalked off with a loping gait when he saw one of the nurses coming into the ward. He had some complaint or other; he had many quite fanciful complaints.

The wards were named after Scottish islands; we were on Islay and Robert’s brother Richard was on the neighbouring island of Jura. It seemed appropriate to me that the wards were named for islands, because each of them seemed just like a little island separated from the mainland of everyday life. The building that housed these islands was a vast rambling Gothic Victorian asylum, a bedlam as they were once called. Locally its name, Bellsdyke, was synonymous with lunacy.

I was placed there as a voluntary patient under the understanding that if I had not volunteered I would have been ‘sectioned’ under the mental health act as a danger to myself or others. It was a Hobson’s choice - volunteer or we will make you. I would be detained there under observation for thirty days until it was determined what would be done with me. I had come to hospital a fractured personality with certain delusions and suicidal tendencies. I was a manic depressive, but did not know this at the time.

During the first few days I kept myself to myself. I felt I did not belong there anymore than Robert felt that he belonged there. I was deeply depressed and withdrawn. The nurses tried to coax me into interaction with my fellow inmates, but I would not be drawn. Gradually though I began to acclimatise to my surrounding, at least during the daylight hours. At night I found the hospital a weird and frightening place. All night I could hear people sobbing or crying out in distress. I could hear doors slam and footfalls echoing down long empty corridors. The boy in the bed next to me would not stop crying, I didn’t blame him I wanted to cry myself.

It was several days before I encountered Richard. He was identical to Robert in every way, except that he wore a three piece tweed suit. He was standing in the recreation room of Islay ward watching a joiner replace the sashes in one of the old wooden windows. He turned and walked to the rec room table, which was festooned with books and pamphlets and picked up a notepad. He approached the joiner and flicking through the pad informed him that he had the wrong window.
“It’s this window that needs fixed.”

The joiner nodded and dutifully undid his work and proceeded to the next window. He was nearly finished when the sister arrived and informed him that he had replaced the sashes in the wrong window.

“But the doctor”, he said, indicating Richard, “told me it was this window.”

The sister smiled forbearingly,

“He is a patient.”

Richard quickly about faced and skulked off like a guilty schoolboy.

That night, after his parents had left, the boy in the bed next to me was distraught and he sobbed for hours. I despaired of ever getting to sleep, but the nurses gave him a shot and he was soon out cold. I woke up in the early hours with the lights flashing on and off. Robert was at the light switch.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked groggily.

“Morse code,” replied Robert.

“Why?” I asked.
He just gave me an indulgent smile, stupid question.

“Who are you signalling?”

“That’s a secret.”
“Please stop it,” I implored, “I’m trying to sleep.”

Just then we heard footsteps approach the door and Robert jumped into his bed. “What’s going on?” enquired the nurse.
“He won’t stop talking,” said Robert pointing an accusing finger in my direction, but averting his gaze.

“Get to sleep Robert,” said the nurse and closed the door.

Robert had an aversion to television. Most of the other patients were avid viewers during the hours of seven till ten when we were allowed to watch. He believed television would steal your thoughts. However, he did not leave the television room while it was on. He paced about behind our chairs making cryptic comments while averting his eyes. One evening he became particularly animated while we were watching Top of the Pops.

“It’s propaganda!” he exclaimed. “Turn it off,”
he made a grab for the switch, but was intercepted.

“It’ll melt your brain!” he insisted.

Then after many attempts to distract us he said in a sly voice, “I’ll detonate the device.”

We ignored him. He began a countdown “10, 9, 8...” When he reached zero he slammed his hand into the fire alarm and all hell broke loose. There were bells ringing everywhere. The nurses arrived from their station to see what was going on and to evacuate us from the building.

“It was just Robert,” we protested, but regulations are regulations.

The whole hospital was evacuated and we all, many of us in pyjamas, stood outside in the snow while we were counted and the fire brigade did a search of the building. I was standing next to Robert and he turned to me and said, “BOOM”.

The next time I saw him he was being dragged away by two orderlies screaming for help.

“John! John! Help me!”

It was two days before he arrived back on the ward. He was a shambling shadow of his former self. The ‘chemical cosh’ the other patients called it; a drug called largactil, a common treatment for schizophrenia. I seemed like a punishment to me, punishment for unleashing the doomsday device.
.

11 July 2013

Vicious Monkeys

Skins

vicious monkeys

getting frisky

all elbows and tongues

shaven heads

and swastika smiles

wrong man

wrong place

the power of the knife

twists in the stomach

men must fight

cowards must flee

with the pulse

beating in my throat

blood pool coiling in my gut

I fled

never looked back

whoops of laughter

still ringing in my ears

.

10 July 2013

The Last Message

Time

the heart is huge and soft
and melts like butter
you don’t have to ask me why
I still carry on with the Freudian Fraud
peace descends with God’s own medicine
the Japanese sandman commits hara kiri
bleeds on the sandals of Jesus’s son
the last ever message on the front cover
oh father – what have they done?
.

3 July 2013

Quislings

Quisling_01
I know that they have me under surveillance; some shady fucker with a telescopic lens hiding behind a neighbour’s blinds, undercover operatives tailing me in unmarked cars. You might think me paranoid, but these fucks are seriously nosy. Plod has an insatiable appetite for ‘intel’. I have a scrupulous fascination with privacy – there are conflicting interests at work here.

Tongues are wagging. Lies are being smeared. There are quislings in my camp – ready to turn me over. There are piggies with their snouts in my trough. They’ll know my schedule by now – they’ll have been monitoring my movements. Well, I can change my schedule, alter my movements. I’ll adopt a disguise and go incognito. They’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch this worm.

While they are watching me – I’ll be watching them. My eyes are peeled for signs of their presence and I have eyes in the back of my head. They lack the energy to keep up with me, I’m a veteran insomniac. While they doze I’ll be making my moves. I might be a target, but I’ll be a moving target. Crazy? I’ll show them who’s crazy!
.

2 July 2013

Rat Boy


A nightstand with an empty cup and full ashtray – a book of placebo poetry – pretty words strung together for abstract effect. I garner images like the crumbs of toast itchily deposited on my mattress. I neck my medication after carefully chewing each pill with care.

(ONE to be taken at night. If sleepy do not drive or operate machinery. Avoid alcohol. Swallow this medicine whole. Do not chew or crush.)

I go for the heavy stone – the terminal rush. I reach out for a taste of oblivion and oblivion reaches out to me. I have no fear of falling. Gravity is my best friend. That heavy hand on my shoulder – that warm envelope of darkness is the closest thing to the womb – outside of death.

I like to write. I like the exercise of assembling the words – negotiating meaning – no obfuscation – there can be no doubt, no room for mistakes. Mine is a struggle for meaning; it’s more than a mere obsession, it’s a life or death contest. The notebook on the nightstand is full of scribbled impressions – most are indecipherable to all but me.

The bedroom window is open just enough to let the night seep in. I feel the hum of the city streets, hears the howls of monkey bands making their way home in the wee small hours. Just before I succumb to sleep I think I hear a scratching sound somewhere in the room.

I dream of a long corridor with locked doors on either side. I am running from something or looking for someone. I dream about a girl, someone strange yet familiar. She is my woman and I have to protect her from some unseen threat. 

I dream that the girl is pregnant. She gives birth to a rat. However I try to care for the child I feel revulsion and I cannot help thinking that this is my replacement. It makes perfect sense; Rat Boy is the ultimate survivor. It’s only when the infant calls me ‘Dad’ that I wake up with a jolt.

The sky is grey, the light is thin. It could be anytime, but my body tells me that it’s six am. I always awaken at six am. I kid myself that it’s a lifetime of routine, but it’s junk and I know it. My body awakens me every morning screaming for ease. I am less well equipped for survival than Rat Boy, I shudder as I recall my dream, Rat Boy has no weaknesses like junk.



26 June 2013

Number Seven

Fire_01
I set number seven ablaze. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner. I was stoned at the time – when the impulse took me. I put the chip pan on and went out. It’s the most common cause of household fire, the chip pan. I was standing across the road watching when the fire brigade arrived. It was only then that the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I was shaking. I was in shock. I stood there among my neighbours and watched the smoke fuming from the roof. I could see the flames through the windows. All my possessions were burning. Everything I owned was being turned to cinders.

I was a bit embarrassed when the fireman guessed correctly that I was off my face, “the most common cause of household fires” he said. Fire cleanses, fire destroys and fire renews. Friends gathered around to console me, “At least no-one was hurt – are you insured?” At that moment I just did not give a shit. I would rise from the ashes. I was looking forward to it.

A few days later I was allowed to enter the building to retrieve any belongings that I could. To my surprise my bedroom – though covered in a thick layer of soot – was basically intact. I found a shoe box crammed full of old letters and postcards, a lifetime’s worth of correspondence. They were miraculously undamaged by the fire. I scanned through them – old lovers, friends, relatives – bitter sweet memories. They burned very nicely. One by one they joined with the ash on the floor.
.

19 June 2013

Manic




when it’s on me
it’s a speedball
an acid rush
the distilled rays of the sun
burned into my retinas
fusing the membrane
and flooding my head
with a rainbow song
then I’m a supernova
I’m a lightning strike
an atomic bomb
I’m the Empire State
and the monster Kong
I’m a gushing torrent
a tidal wave
I’m a rattlesnake
with a diamond back
I’m the seventh son
I’m a maniac
.




14 June 2013

Black Dog

Black-Dog4
I’m sick to the soul of this shit. My days are long and drawn out in a thin visceral stream that twists around the landmarks of my life. There is a quake in my soul - a quickening of pulse and febrile brow. I am atremble, a candle in a draft. I’m sinking into the mire, I can no longer help it and I no longer care.

It is always a step before and a breath behind me. A miasma of waking dreams played out against my pillow in the constant churning of my incessant consciousness. It’s there in the tangle of my sheets that the turning and returning of my memories break as waves across my brain pan. Every embarrassment, every humiliation, is played out in slow motion for my morbid delectation.

I feel so strange. I’ve felt it before, like something, somewhere, is all wrong. It’s coming from someplace far away and it’s coming for me. I buried something somewhere and some-one is now digging it up. Zombies from the past are trailing me. There are conspiracies whispered just beyond my hearing.
I’ve been here so many times before but I’ll never get used to it – that’s the bitch - I’ll never get used to it. It's an insidious and complex torture, always new and yet familiar. That unhappy shadow is always nearby – and the promise of inclement weather is ever on the horizon.
.



13 June 2013

Dead Man’s Shoes

Hangman_02
Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you a story. It’s set out on the edge – out on the hard road. It concerns a travelling man who slaved all his days for a handful of nothing; that’s where it all goes eventually - down the fucking tubes. Virtues turn to vices and vices turn to chains. It’s a rough road to travel for rich and for poor. Over time the luxury of indulgence becomes the slavery of convention; emperors and hobos both wear tin crowns.

I walked those uncertain miles in a dead man’s shoes. They pinched, they chafed, and they left little room for deviation from an idiot course. The path of least resistance led to the bottom of the bottle, more dead soldiers littering the sorry path to hell.

My cause was lost, the spirit had ebbed away, but I made my crooked way to where the grass was no greener and the people were no kinder. Always onward – never back – I kept on until they found a reason to hang me in those dead man’s shoes.

I’ve seen men hang, hang by degrees, with the life choked out of them over the course of decades. Lynched by the mob,  ostracized, and exiled to the barren regions. Naked men left out in the rain. Men without a friend, men without a home, men starved of love.

There are no second chances for those already dead. They say hope is the mother of all men, but I had no mother, no father, no companions. I’d nothing much to remember and nothing much to forget. I had nothing much to celebrate, but everything to regret.

Some say that Jesus awaits us at the end of this long road. That he’ll relieve us of our burdens and wipe away our tears. So put the pennies on my eyes to pay my fare, wrap me in a pauper’s shroud, but first take off these fucking shoes.