Mescalito

The first hit of the day gives me that edge – a soft fuzzy boundary that cushions me from the agents of chaos. I’m surrounded by idiocy and brute ignorance. I have my blues for breakfast and wonder who they will kill today. They are rounding up all the queers and taking them to the bus depot. They are rolling bums in the alley ways and sacrificing school kids in the classrooms. We are all marked out for adjustment – it’s your innocence that condemns you, not your guilt. After all, everyone shares in the guilt.

I don’t belong here – I never belonged anywhere, but this town ain’t big enough to deviate in – I can barely turn a phrase that isn’t weighed and rejected as madness, or vanity. While wounded congregations pray for consolation I watch the cactus god tear open the sky and angels come pouring out as snowflake confetti to melt like whispers on the ground. Heaven is empty; there will be no resurrection, no day of judgement. There is no final authority – just unending stupidity.

I have my blues for breakfast and cacti for my supper. I walk with Mescalito who tells me that the actions which define us are often difficult to understand, but there is nothing unnatural in this or any other world.

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Manacled

it was bad patter
well out of order
and a bitter repast
for blackened eyes
and broken teeth

I was a pollutant
and filthy to the core
a bi curious creature
and apostle of magical thinking
young enough to hunger still
old enough to know better

those razor edged memories
slash through the 3 am
in procession triumphal
for they have conquered sleep
one day I’ll go straight
but I’ll never sleep again

crack giants
in suicide squadrons
loom large where dreams
once haunted my bedclothes
the chains my forebears fashioned
are branded into my flesh
wrought iron keepsakes
of love meted out
between the blows
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Painless

I never do house calls, but this radge was overdue and I was losing patience. He was all meek and mild till the talk turned to readies owing – then he turned bubblegum warrior. Scumbag tore me down, wrapped a rag around my face and blitzed me with a dirty one. Man I was sick. He then proceeded to dip my pockets; relieving me of my stash and less credible credentials. That was a boot to the nads – and me with no bullets in my gun.

Here was the neighbourhood leech rattling my cage and I felt the filth rising, but there was no point taking unkindly to him – he was doing all he could to alleviate the surplus in my pockets and bring comfort to my bleary head. The gear was no good, and the sentiments attached were bogus, but they nearly did for me. I was a cathedral full of blind mice tuned to panic stations – they sang the siren song of closet tweakers; quietly, tunelessly.

My knackers were withered, but my thinking was still deep enough to cover my space. So I fixed laughing boy with my good eye and asked, “Why do they call you Painless?” He just laughed and flourished his kit before commencing with the washing up; there was trouble brewing in his pipe, but I had my school craft down – this old dog knew a few tricks. It was well past noon before I peeled myself from his rock star wife to emerge victorious by the narrowest of margins – where I often do my best work.

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Thief

I wasn’t fazed when she shied away from my touch. I expected that, top bird like her. She didn’t just jump into a situation like that – didn’t give her affections away to just anybody. Especially the likes of me. I was an imposter and I think we both knew that, but I guess I fulfilled some need in her. I made her smile and I wasn’t demanding her life. I just wanted a little of her time. 

Boys fall in love with girls like her and they never forget them. They carry their memory in some sacred place within. I could have loved her and perhaps I should have loved her. Summers fade and lilies fester, but nothing lingers like words left unspoken.

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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.

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