Throttling a Lion (postal observation)

Dear old lady, clearly she doesn't know how to reverse park. Worse still, she is stuck in third gear, car engine roaring like a wild lion, new to the circus routine. She doesn't know how to change to second gear, or certianly has avoided doing it, why can't she hear the scream of the engine? You think that's a clean sound, I bet, like clear lungs, and comparatively quiet compared to the noise of airplanes, of which you have complained to the council about already. She is isolated, sealed in, in her mechanical world, laughably helpless in your blue sphere, head barely peering over the steering wheel. Yet she is determined, no doubt convinced of her own ability, certian of her own method which she has been using for years now. Revving the engine, like a boy racer without a clue, wearing out the engine hour by hour. I look at you with strain in my eyes but you look right through me, busy negotiating with the steering wheel how exactly to turn this car around and get out of this tiny street.

Eventually, I walk off, to post more mail down a quiet street of blissful ease of Orchard Park. I hear you in the distance burning the clutch, its screams in furious baritone. I laugh lightly, the sun appears behind the cover of a cloud, and look back seeing you tittering back and forth, think you were driving an army tank, blocking the entire road with army nurse precaution. More like a passenger thrust at the controls of a diving jumbo jet, you'd think. The world is truly circus mad. Thank god. Thank God the world is circus mad and the inhabitants so eccentric and dumb and cruel and lost. I walk away, my pack lighter, my walk brisker, a good start to the day. Eventually, Ms Lady, roars off down the road in your Chariot, one last throttle and crunch of gears, looking in the rear view mirror, absentminded and oblivious rushing to meet Rena in the tea room to gossip over the persistence of dying memories, and summer Roses.

Commander Poetry

Commander Poetry marches around the squad hall,
lecturing all the amateur soldiers on the discipline
of form and convention: the Sonnet, The Ode, Triolet,
Villanelle, War Epic, Paradelle and many more.

Commander Poetry slanders the troops into submission,
determined to educate them, bring them to their senses,
train with the utmost vigor of skill and tool required,
but they are despondent, lethargic, sloppy,
they don't want to hear a word of it,
they simply want to pick up their pens pencils
and create large spontaneous scribbles
write dodgy whim, a few poles short of some scaffolding...

The Commander is Furious! He cannot endure these Illiterate Soldiers!
He wants to march them up mountains and have them perfecting
the methodological craftsmanship of the Poetic Science Form!
He wants them shooting words with precise aim and intent,
not just target practice but intelligible clean shots, of highest order!

The Commander dismisses the troop and begins
to recite loudly, a truly humiliating couplet
against the folly of 'DIY! free verse foolery!'

The Poets leave quickly,
light cigarettes nervously,
talk amongst themselves:

'What a Serious, Fascist Bastard!'
Said one of the sloppy female poets.

'Indeed!' They all agreed.

'Haha...! If he wanted the fucking 'Brothers Karamazov',
he could have just gone to the bloody Library!'
Uttered one of the Manly poets.

They all walk home, agree to continue writing anyway,
(most of them probably couldn't stop even if they wanted to)
they return to their pens and pencils, table and chairs,
typewriters and quill pens and continue to write
their useless poor human prose...

meanwhile:
many beautiful things occur
sun rise milk and glancing
much horror much terror
world blood and bombshells
much private hell
anxious terrified and singular
much stupidity passes
dropping farts and nose picking
much absentmindedness
forgetting dribbles and hick-ups
and inevitably everyone soon dies
...including the Commander!
but some of the poems
survive.

A sentimental Glaswegian flower.

I have slept in secret for most of my life
with a sentimental flower pressed against my chest
always growing, but hidden, hidden in sleep and waiting...on fire!

thunder roars tonight

thunder roars tonight
sky is carpet thick
with grey cloud like the ash
from fired canon, and thunder
the roar of the canon!

rain sluices down, you can hear
millions of little rain drops,
their tiny feet patter onto the ground
and as they hit the ground they run
down the street into the gutter
down into the sewer: into the belly
of the earth, where they swim and drown.

the sky roars and delicate ladies jump,
in leather chairs husbands whince and
Glasgow is flooded with blizzards of rain,
and cars slow turn on windscreen wipers
so they can see clearer.

and the rain sluices down, you can hear
the millions of little rain drops their tiny feet
pattering onto the ground and as they hit
the ground they run down the street
into the gutter down into the sewer:
into they belly of the earth,
where they swim and drown.

the sky roars, and delicate ladies jump
in leather chairs, husbands whince and
Glasgow is flooded with blizzards of rain,
and cars slow down turn on windscreen wipers
so they can see clearer.

the Christian neighbours across the street
look out of their window, up to the sky,
I too, look out of the window, up to the sky!

I think of the ionosphere, of HAARP,
of the beauty of the thunder,
whips and forks and cracks of light,
like an orchestra:think of it!

the clouds slide over head
clicking in perfectly
then the rain pelts down
then lightning cracks and whips,
rumbles, as it a button had been pressed ,
and everything came together.
coordination working the mechanism
with the world.

and i lift up my arms and
wish for all hell to break
loose, for the thunder
to Sing at the top of its
roar! more thunder!! more
canon! for landslides!
for floods, for torrents of spin,
for soakings sake!

and the Christian neighbours look out
and think the rain is God
or at least, the rain of God,
and I think it is the urine of God
and the lightening strikes
like a camera flash!
perhaps God is taking photographs
of his children because he has
grown sentimental!

the sky rumbles and churns
like a giant greedy belly,
like someone moving a huge
chariot in the sky!

and the rain pisses upon
the land watering the land
soaking the city!
and many shut their windows,
rub their hands together,
close curtains, boil the kettle
with scottish water and watch the
television!

but i step out into the rain,
animal for the rain,
loving the great beast of
the weather.

then i go indoors
and pour myself
a glass of water
and drink it rapidly
in one gulp!

22 June 2007

Beached Whale

(For kev, with respect)

so he lay on the couch
beach whaled
harpooned by dope
too much vodka
his brain a theatre of smoke
his life already a stupid addiction
he worked like a trojan horse
he played out his weekend like
a demolition, a destructive fire

he didn't give a fuck.
having money
and time
and health - for now.

he just kept up the great game
the great intoxication
pissing it all up against the wall
living comfortably
comfortably neurotic

am i too fat?
i'm getting fat!
look at the stretch marks!
i haven't eaten in three days

you just sit in alone all the time
watching the t.v.
posponing everything
but your own death.

love
life
dancing with the world
you gave that up
for fear
for indifference
for the fat lack of motivation
for chronic apathy all day
and all night god help us.

All the people are
motivated day in day out
and when he says
i cannot be arsed
i do not want to do anything.
everything is here. it is done.

they look at me
as though
i had molested
their entire life
purpose.

i want nothing.
i need nothing.
i am a pearl within a shell
more like, a gassy shit in a paper bag.

i just want to be
crushed by the weekend
and ironed out by work.

the clock is ticking
my heart has no hands
when the blood has stopped
running through my body
like a kiss it will finish.

And
the
sky
will
remain
like
a
door
that
never
opens.

This Tumour of Darkness.

So what is it going to be then...?
Do you want to rape beautiful women
in dark streets, dominating, force them
into bed, to strangulate their throat a little:
you love the thought of pleasure and terror
at odds with one another?

Do you want to fuck
little hairless girls and slender boys,
just to prove you're still young,
and educate all that children have
sexuality too? Or do you want to fold
then gift wrap because you are
truly sick in the cranium?

Do you want to rub
faeces and piss and shit
all over your body
and spread it all over
your erogenous zones,
with your lover doing the same,
all arts and crafts and face painting,
because that's the kind of an animal you are?

Do you want to fuck your mother
or your father, or your little cousin,
imaging them nude in posture,
dominating you or you dominating them
again and again: a bed of incestuous
moans...?

Do you want to torture
a complete strange,
by hammering splinters through
the slits of their finger nails?
Do you want to stab them
in the stomach and photograph
them bleeding ?
Do you want to run rampage
through the streets with a hammer
gun bludgeoning and maiming
hundreds of anonymous innocent people?

Do you desire to bugger and molest
dogs, horses, lamas, mice and snakes?
Do you dream of erotic animal farms
in the most depraved and wicked
nature? Are you a bestial leech
sucking on the udders of a
family of Cows?

Are you privy to darkness?
Someone is...Someone must be...
With such depraved and wicked nature
Someone is...Someone must be...
For this litany of pitiful sick-on-a-cellular-level-Sins
Someone is privy to this tumour of darkness...

(I am obsessed with the darkness,
but I have a strong sense of Light
standing by me. I want to prize the world
open, to expose itself and clean
its insides outside...)

Which do you want,
do you hide?
Do you want these things?
What one is creates your darkness...

No?
You don't?
So what's your
bloody problem
with the World?

Arsenokoités and Malakos

-->

Fruits of Labour

Jam loved Honey.
Honey loved Sugar.
Sugar loved Strawberry.
Strawberry loved Lemon.
Lemon loved Salt.
Salt called them all:
FAG HAPPY FOOLS!
Got drunk
peppered their eyes
and never returned.


As Adam Early in the morning

Adam men make such strange women,
the hair on your ass is not Shakespearean,
and there is much that the world feels wrong,
but the universal whiteness of our bone is enough
to show God loves more than words confound.
Your touch is wholly more than sound.
Your body with my body is so brand new.
And together we learn to come around
realise warm to the touch, this is
what made world grow and love kindle.

An Archaeological Query

Queer all those dark passages.
Hairy, cavernous, filled with spiders' webs
and dark matter clinging to the walls.
This cave needs some excavation,
some manly or limp wristed Indiana Jones
must bring to light the Holy Legacy
and Fag Happy mystery
of the Arsenokoités and Malakos.

The Bagpipes!

What oddity you are a giant creepy crawly
with awkward daddy-long-legs body
a hybrid hexapod musical entity.

You are an intestinal track- a bladder
stomach lining - the Highland Cows udders.
You scream down Buchanan Street
we wince and bleed in the customary fashion.

A riot of screeches from a creche run amok.
Your drone and whine were first brought
into being to terrify the enemy from afar.
Now they pipe to keep folk tradition breathing;
and like tending to a long unused lielow
which we do not know has a puncture
we desperately keep pumping hot air into you.
Terrfied to let you go, terrified to listen to what you are saying.

Down Albion Street (excerpt)

Down Albion Street

Weekend, I'm walkin doon the road wae my buckfast tonic, startin tae get fired up, jist headin’ up tae Jo-Jo’s tae get mad wi' it, when a couple a wee dirty hairys walk up behind us and says:

'Awright ya wee fanny, whit you on yir ayn fir? You Billy-no-mates or sumthin..? Come wae us doon the park, here want tae get aff wae baith ay us doon the park, touch me and kellies fanny. Tell naybday but right, wee man....Here, geez a tan aur buckie ya div...Whit’s yir name?'

‘Wee Aldo…’

Yaas, a fought, I might get tae poke her or get ma hole… so we just walked alang and aw took a few tans of the buckie and the two lassies just messed aboot way my cap and pinched ma arse and giggled, jist messing aboot. I think they were pure into me to be honest – nutin serious but. I fink they wanted to go into the bushes and get bush happy. Ha-ha! If only Jo-Jo was here man, he's missing himself. What mad wee hairys they wir....still but...I would happily take them tae the bushes...But guess whit! As we walked alang the road a heard the big shout:

'Oi!! SCROTUM! YOU'RE GETTIN BANJOED!'

Whit! I didnay expect that. Ah, shat maself, on the other side of the road wiz a crew about 5 bodies, they were fuckin mental, and I was on ma own with two lassies. They might hink a wiz an arsebandit. I should daya bolt - run like fuck. But they wid chase me and batter me. I just walked alang averting my eyes, and the burds shout tae the boys and one of the boys says:

'Awright ladies...!'

The biggest prick all cocky and sureivhimself, cap tipped tae the sky, was with his team and they aw walked er the road. The burds smiled tae thum. A pack a dugs right enough man, tannin cans a brew, boaills uh cider, smokin bifters, lookin fir a fight or tae attack some yuppy cunt.

'Awright ladies...whose the wee scrotum wae you? Tellum to geez a tan of his buckie or we'll Chib him ear tae ear... don't try tae run bawbag '

He looked right intae me. I turned white. I wiz freakin out, about to run off, but the bastard got a hold of ma jaket, pushed us around. He pulled out a big carving chib. It looked like a fucking butcheries knife. He waved it about all callousletting it glint in the light. He held it near ma face. I wiz tremblin' trying no tae show it – but they could tell.

‘I’ll fuckin hit yee, wee man…WHIT! WHIT...! You know we could tear you apart. No chance wee yin...WHIT! WHIT!’

And he wacked me on the side of ma face and it stung cause he wore a couple a gold rings, but it didnae bleed, it just hurt and bruised over. And I just passed him ma boaill.... pure panicked and intimidated wae the big yin holdin my collar…and cried oot:

'Here mate! Have my buckie...take it...take it aw!'

But he just laughed at me. Grabbed the buckie and smashed the bottle on the grund. All the squad laughed at me in the street diggin insults at me. The big prick growled, looked like he was goin to belt us again. But he started chanting and pointing:

'SHITEBAG! SHITEBAG! SOAPDODGIN SHITEBAG! Ha-ha!'


I ran like fuck, sprinting back doon Alba Street, away hame. Leaving them aw behind. Couple ay thum chased us fir a bit but my adrenlin was pumpin - a bolted fast as a dug. Ended up, the burds went away with the five big cunts and probably went tae the park. Pricks! I went on hame tae build a few joints and watch the tele, which iz pish, but I couldnay be fucked going tae Jo-Jo's now. I fuckin HATE Glasga! It's filled wae fuckin jakies and nae cunt gives a fuck aboot anycunt.

So I got hame, slammed the fuckin door, ma ma and da were oot at The Wallace Arms, a jumped intae ma room and clapst on ma bed and started tae build a joint, and lay back and sparked it up took a few meaty draws and relaxed, and just as ah wiz smoking ma joint my big bra came intae the room and says:

'uryegauntaethegemmethemorra?'

'Aye...' I said. 'Aye...amgauntaethegemmethemorra.'

Auch, it wizny aw bad aw the time.

Headache and more wandering.

Headache:
It feelith as though
a brick bashith my skull.

It feelith as though
a knife sliceith my frontal lobe.

Decadence par excellence
in a European mind state
run by powder vodka fear and wine

A migrane migrates through a Nation of spine.
*
It is not because the Sagrada Familia has yet to be complete and may never be complete in my lifetime. Nor is it because I have not eaten a tomato in several days. Nor does it have anything to do with the fact workmen have been opening up the street and feeding cables into its belly. Nor is it the fact that I indulged in a big power bag of cocaine on the weekend. Nor is it because everytime I pass that Church it has a sign which says 'Jesus: The Evidence'. In fact, I don't no what it is that it being referred too.
*
Headache: Migrane:
such aliments are alien to me.
Knives do not stab my brain.
Asprin does not know my name.
When I am asked to swallow
pharmaceuticals
I retch and reach for the water.
*
Stress is a large office block in the middle of a City.
Every City is a highrise stress, but no one asks
out loud 'when will City regress to open field?'
*
There is a man who rapes women and when he gets home devours five gravy soaked steaks, but we don't know that and never will, all we know is that he has a ferocious taste in women and meat - lives alone.
*
In this suburb at night, if you stand outside in the dark, nothing happens: for hours and hours: nothing occurs - it's as though everyone had died or fallen into sleep. A great boredom hangs. No explosions here: noone screams. Everyone is safe. Everyone locks their front door at night. Everyone locks the toliet door even when the house is empty. Everyone puts the snib on their front door in the middle of summer. Everything is safe but noone can be trusted. Old ladies whince when tall men fling bags over their shoulder. Couples walking dogs cross the road when hooded figures come strolling by. In this suburb at night, if you stand outside in the dark, nothing happens, and I never will: that's why the writing is so bad.
*
Walking along the road -I'm hyper with coke-this bald headed guy comes walking out of a dark lonely alienated park across the road (the park is alienated because it is the only park for miles). Cleave - we'll call him Cleave, for now, I never got his actual name - walks toward me all big strides, sure of himself, and pulls something out from inside his jacket pocket - a meat cleaver. Oh shit! What does he want? He's going to attack me. Quite clearly he is off his nut. Cleave wants me to come with him and help him stab another man who insulted him earlier that evening. What possible reason could he have for believing this was in any way not an absurd and sociopathic question to ask anyone, in the middle of the night? He obviously had no idea how but he is clearly frenzied with beer and spirits - one minute good guy, next intimidation. So, Cleave walks along beside me for a short time. He talks but I do not listen. I look straight ahead. I don't want to know. I do not care. I want rid of him. As we walk along he notices another couple across the road...he leaves me, with his meat cleaver, and goes to unnerve the couple, to make them feel a special private street walking terror.
*
BOOOOOOOOOOORING!
rang the doorbell.
SHIT!
said the toliet flusher.
I'M THIRSTY.
said the cold tap.
GET NAKED.
demanded the shower head.
LIE DOWN BABY.
insisted the bath.
- it was the evening of the strange
and forward bathroom
in someones else house.
*
Having no money you realise
All along the table had been rigged.