Monster

I’m sick of this tired old face. I want a new one – like my old one – like the one I wore when I was young. I see a hundred faces on any given day and every face conceals a story. What kind of story does my face conceal? At night I’m lost in a sea of faces that clamour for my attention – my dreams are full of faces; they crowd me to blame and shame me.

The girl at the back has a question – an unkind and supercilious question. Her query originates in the psychotic regions of a bleached mind and sounds an echo in memory – something about my missing soul.

“What kind of monster are you?”

I suspect it’s more of a rhetorical device than a question, so I ignore it. But later I get to thinking... What kind of monster am I? I’m a blind monster or I would have seen her coming. I’m a deaf monster, or I would have heard her lies. I’m a mute monster – because I said nothing. I’m a numb monster because I feel even less.

She was one gift horse I should have given the full dental. Those sceptic teeth made ribbons of ambition. I have little time for those awkward manoeuvres imposed by some milquetoast Mussolini. I have an agenda sublime to accommodate; others follow the mandate of their own hearts. I take solace in the fact that I may be a monster with no soul, but I’m closer to heaven than some.

.

Nettles

It’s the 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 incestual 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
It’s not as if you care
.

Fish n Chips

Oh Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some cheap thrills. This one looks game for a laugh; she’s all fur coat and no knickers, not that I hold that against her. I know her slightly - just enough to know I ought to maintain a little distance. She’s comely all the same and the mere idea of her gives me a hard on; the way that casual acquaintance does when you’re on a sexual high and possess little moral fibre. I’ve known a few mongrels in my time, but this one takes the biscuit and she takes it greedy like.

I don’t mean to make it seem that I lack respect, but I recognise the limitations of this faux romance. Still the pretence of courtship is all part of the ritual – though I doubt that she even remembers my name. We’ll do the deed alfresco – doggy style – with no inhibition or manners. We’ll grab some fish and chips after and converse inanely for the first and last time.

.

Ashcan

least said, soonest mended
so I dummy up nice
and batten down tight
stick it in the shade
and avert my eyes
from the unclean thing
that foul device
it’s just old news
bitter rebukes remembered
with a bullseye to the heart
I turn once more
down a path well trodden
but put the stoppers on
I don’t remember
or choose not to
those things that drag me down
who rakes for coals
in an ashcan full of yesterdays?

Promethean

what kind of monster am I?
I’m the man fortune made me
only as good as circumstances allow
and only as bad as I have to be
this heat and light are stolen
they obscure a multitude of sins
it’s an old cliché tailored to fit
and worn with a swagger
because I’m stepping tall
when I roll out my thing
this candle burns exceedingly bright
is neither hidden under a bushel
or extinguished in the night
.