To be opened up, read, and discarded.

A letter to myself.

Three pit bulls with razor wire barks scream at me, like starved prisoners, behind an iron fence frothing at the meat of me as I pass. I only want to deliver the post, get through without trial, or some yapper priming for my fingers, gnashing at my heels.

The owner of the dogs is a large building of a man, strong lean, with scar and muscle, a face haggard with rage and alcohol. 'Awright...' He sits with his dogs in his garden, looks at me smiles is content. 'Not bad, some weather we're having. Murder hiking up all these closes, in this heat. Somebody's definitely left the oven on!' I reply while eyeing the dogs and move on.

I strain into the sun walking through its heat into another close. On the second floor there sits in the middle of the stair a bucket kit for smoking hash. I move on up the stairs delivering then I walk back down; a group of five young approach the bucket, begin to stone their minds inhaling large potent lungfuls. I watch their pliable minds, play dough for the drug, sooner or later burning into dust.

Back into the heat, I shift my large post bag, stretch my arms up into the space of the sky, with its weight pulling me down, I close my eyes, moan in prayer to the sun. 'I fucking hate stairs: all 1467 of them.' I'm like a woman in distress carrying a filing cabinet on my back, but the job must be done. It's rational, insanely rational, to post the mail, juggling letters like an idiot clown in a circus prelude to hell.

Monkey’s every last one of us, burning in the sun, sagging in the brain department utterly happy splashing in the dregs of ourselves. I'm roasting. Somebody offers me a bottle of chilled water, and they are a miracle. A non-descript unasked gift of a moment. Thank you, Mrs Anonymous someone. I guzzle the chill down the desert of my camel throat. It is a snow ball of ice to me; I finish it off, rapidly.

I march with my steel toe caps and think of Sisyphus. Carrying his rock like it was the meaning of the thing, or a punishment stubborn and convinced, like a man who has finally grasped something of his own dull recurring suffering. An idiot man sitting inside the workings of a clock, with which he is baffled by.

God. I'm delirious with this labyrinth of steps and stairs, and the turmoil of dark closes, the reek of damp dog hair. The presence of the day. I cannot wait to end this mountain. Only to begin again and again climbing this dragon.

The Old Boy

My Mum and Dad say I’m an angel,
who must always do his homework.
Clean the dirt from behind my ears.
Listen and never be afraid of honesty.

Once they took my brother and I
to a cliff near the site of the battle
of Bannockburn. We peered over the edge
and Mum said, ’don't go too near the edge.’

The folks says people are just people
at the best of the time and at the worst.
If they lie they think it is worth it.
I don’t think I like people anyway.

I'm sad when alone at night
when the house is frozen quiet,
and no one appears alive it's then
I think of them all alone in memory.

Dad says to never turn the music up
too loud because you can’t hear what
people are saying. But he says I can enjoy
the dress up box and achieve anything if I dare.

The Laughter Epidemic.

Laughter raised the roof off of a house while it rained. Everyone inside the house was soaking wet. Their champagne glasses refilled with rain water. They cared not. The fish tank became one with the living room. The water level raised steadily. Some women took the initiative and started handing out snorkles, and scuba gear, to those taking it all a little too seriously. Arm bands, and rubber rings, came out. A man started doing the doggy paddle in the shallow end. A row boat careered down the waterfall of the stair case, from the attic men dove into the down stairs bedroom. There was no a life gaurd to be seen. Neighbours came round to see what all the laughing was about. They cared not. They cared only for the the laughter, and the laughter inside of the house, for laughter is a house without a roof, alive with people soaked to the skin and happy to the bone.

Featured Poet McGuire Interviewed.

Tell us about your poems.

What: I am a playful poet but also a dark artificer. I write about everyday life, the hundreds of characters we meet, as well as psychiatric darkness. I write informal poetry, filled with flights of fancy, keen observations, philosophy — so anything that snags on my muse or strikes out to me in curiosity or unexpected coincidence. Erratic and temperamental, what I write is ignited with an almost nervous, kinetic energy, if my poems could jump or dance or be drank down in one gulp, they would.

Why do I write: because I once went into my mother’s underwear draw and discovered a letter at the bottom which revealed family secrets, real and true. This embodies my need to write and my long literary obsession with secrecy and honesty. I want to write what has been left unsaid, what has been hidden from sight; I want to find private letters beneath underwear smothered in private truth.

How do I write? Dare, I say, I take notes. I write rather slapdash and sporadically. That’s how I approach most of my writing. Write first, think later. I write in bursts of nervous energy, frenzied sessions of typing and diatribe, followed (perhaps days or weeks later) by precise reform and edit. I don’t like to butcher the poem with correction. As Sir Walter Scott reminds ‘many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.’ I’m not saying I’m great or original simply that I like the unpolished feel of my poetry, down to earth, never seeking professionalism. I like my poetry like my prawns – raw.

-Read the whole interview please visit: One Night Stanzas

---


Many thanks to Claire Askew for considering me and putting me up on the site. It was a rare and unexpected bit of exposure. Despite my rather long winded and rambling replies, I feel I managed to convey my tiny human dignity and my little flicker of soul-poem. Thank you anyone who reads and anyone who takes the time to care.

Grazie tanto! ;)

If I had to have a Christmas tree.

If I had to have a Christmas tree,
it would be as compact and inviting
as a log fire.

Understated yet bright and nourishing,
like a piping hot roast dinner on a
bitter Sunday winter evening.

īnfāns

Death is lurking somewhere in the maternity ward.
The nurslings scan the room and find a shadow
on the ceiling above their droning incubators,
what could be a shadow of black smoke.

They giggle, grab out, cry or curiously frozen,
look out wide eyed, staring in question, above the light.
Caught in neutral moment, cooing, caaing, ommm aware.
Like an angel chorus fresh alive with space and time.

Then, a live one comes in, a Mother of Sunday,
serenely calm in sleeping gown. Warm with affection,
She lifts one baby, her baby, a boy, swaddled in white.
Mother and Son walk into a corridor of nightingales,
make their way, a pair in pact, to the family room.

Parable of the fence

One crowd was putting up the fence
While the other was busy tearing it down.

Very little was achieved.
This went on for quite some time.

Concrete Irrationality

(A mental written collage, for Tristan Tzara, whoever he was.)

:)
:(

Sexual perversions disguised as poems
as you read, a hand slips under your skirt.

8000 attitudes later
and still this boy here!

1500 sexualities in this head alone.
All wearing identical smiles!
Pretending they don't notice each other,
pretending to be shy as they undress
for the 4800th time.

There are many Grey Chair people
who do nothing except let other people sit on them.

The boy who was a thief of consciousness
Stole someone's memories and took over their life,
and regretted it because it reminded him of his own mind.

The Great Dictator
who told all of his friends he hated them
while stripping them naked and flaying them
destroying their personalities, scoping out their souls
As they stopped to sip red wine and eat
delicately cook swordfish.

Several thousand light bulbs later,
And the light is still not any lighter.

Chrysanthemums picked fresh from the earth
deep fried and then dipped in olive oil,
Sprinkled with pepper and salt - Delicious!

A heart rolls out of the left trouser leg
quickly stood upon,
Shell smashed soul yoked all over the floor.

Take off your first clothes, then your second,
then your third, then your forth, then the bones you bare,
then the heart, then the second and third heart, all off:
Welcome to the House of Subgenius!

A Surrealist must avoid weightlessness:
words are arm bands, rubber rings, life guards.

Did you hear about the boy
who got nutrition from language
only if it was sung to him?
He died young of anorexia.

My Philosophy so far: the principle of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, stupidity uncertainty and cynicism and the rejection of the laws of beauty and social organisation. DADA IS GOD! DADA IS EASY! DADA IS ALGEBRA! DADA HAS TEN BILLION TANGIBLE SOULS! DADA SLEEPS FOR ETERNITY WITH EYES OPEN! DADA EXPLODES! DADA IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD! DADA IS HISTORY! DADA IS UNCONTROLABLE! DADA IS POURING ALL OVER YOU NOW - IT’S MYSTERIOUS CONTROL! DADA IS THE END OF NONSENSE AND THE BEGINNING OF NONSENSE! DADA IS NO POET OR POEM! DADA IS WIEGHTLESS ARTLESS DIATRIBE! DADA IS CATHARTIC VOMIT! DADA IS A PLAYGROUND! DADA MAKES SERIOUS CLOWN OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE AND DEAD TIME!

Alex Millsom

(Too many years ago. 1980/1996)

'There is nothing more appalling than being alive and having to die.' - McGuire.

Damn! The memory of Alex, 16 Years Old: DEAD!
Smashed over an L.A. highway lying there like
an open wound for every one to see and remember
their own childhood. All the cars that passed and
all the passengers that looked, would never know
that Alex would be on a life support machine
for one week before it was finally switched off.
No, they still do not know that and nor should they.
Nor do they know that Alex's parents where Scottish
and that on the day he lay dying on that road
the woman who came to comfort him in his pain
was Scottish and the last voice he heard was Scottish.

Keiran's first death:

(Dedicated to Maw McGuire, Oatlands, Glasgow, 1901/1990.)

Keiran cried for one day without stopping. Someone had passed away in the family. A distant Grandmother had died in his family. Keiran was eight years old. This was his first death. His father had woke him and told him early this morning:

'Maw died in her sleep last night...' The words were spoken solemly but without urgency as if all along it had been expected. These words held a silence that spread over the entire day. He knew death meant something irretrievable.

Keiran wept in his bed, wept over his breakfast, wept walking through the park, wept in the supermarket aisles, wept in the car, wept on the couch, he wept in the bathroom, he wept at the dinner table, he wept in his bedroom and finally he wept in his sleep.

The next day he did not cry a single, solitary tear, he had thought out death.

The window pane

(Dedicated to a window on Kings Park Road, Glasgow.)

The window is crying. The tears are disguised by the rain drops. The window is so lonely, invisible and thin. It stares out blankly. It cannot move or call out. It cannot make itself known.

The window is crying. It has no hands to cover its face. It has no face. It is simply a window pane that people look out from or in through, and that can be great company, especially when a warm hand presses against the glass momentarily.

The window is crying - it stares, bare glass, thin, skeletal. The tears roll and fall in time with the rain. The night is dark, the amber light from the street lamps cast out. The traffic is unconcerned. The window is shattered and lonely in the distance.

The love inside of the balloon

(Image by Bansky.)

This is a short story about one large balloon filled with love that a small child let go of and how it kept floating up, up, up into the air and everyone panicked for the child, for the balloon and for the love inside of the balloon. The child cried. People stretched arms high, clutched at the sky, in a last scrambled attempt to catch hold, but no one could bring it back down from the sky; it continued to float away, further and farther, higher up in to the atmosphere, escaping in to space where, like an illusion, it eventually burst.

Boy at the zoo

Boy at the Zoo,
you feed a peanut to an Elephant
through the wrought iron fence;
she graciously scoops it from your palm.

Peanut! Pea nut!
Nuts! Nuts! I think.
Will you discover later,
how devastating the world is,
and why the fence grows higher still?

The Sun glints and pokes my eye,
and I move on to the monkey enclosure.

WW3

'All Wars are one war' - McGuire

'Lest we forget'

The Third World War is on its way
and all the while everyone sits
patiently drinking tea sleeping
or fixing bolts on to large sheets
of metal, slaving over pliable life.

I'm in the bath:
The War is a million miles away.
I know a decent set of mountains.
I know basic survival.
I know how to run.

If I am not caught in some
atomic explosion melted down
to my basic puddle of atoms
then I'll find a way to ignore
all the hell and horror
and set up my own Croft
somewhere beyond
City and Contract
and the wall of War.

I shall grow
Giant Vegetables and Fruits,
learn whittling
craftsmanship
sing at the top of my voice.
And no one will know
the secret of my escape…

Olaf the apolitical optimist

'The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter'- Winston Churchilll

O Olaf, even when you weep
the tears laugh as they roll
down your Joke Face.
Olaf, come on!
Let's play at Singing
and blow up balloons in
Glasgow Chamber of Commerce,
because we cannot join Mensa,
Neither start nor stop revolutions.
And we refuse to educate ourselves
in economics because we have
shortbread attention spans.
O Olaf, despite everything,
even when you weep
the tears laugh as they roll
down your Joke Face.

The troubles of George Eliot

(Sketch of a Glasgow Grandfather, Kilmartin Place, Arden.)

I keep forgetting myself more and more. Just the other day I was looking for my glasses ages I spent, hunting through the house. Lo and behold, where did I discover them? Perched upon my brow. A common stupidity I suppose. The obvious is easy to forget. A busy mind cruelly absentminded. Even Margaret is finally going spare. She bites her tongue mind. Honestly, only this morning, I said wearily to the postman as I walked to the newsagent:'Is it Saturday or Sunday, Son?' He said:'It's Friday.'

I was mortified, a tad disorientated too strolling cringing at my absentminded. Seriously, I'm forgetting everything, imagine. God help when it's something serious. God forbid I should forget something vital that could lead to serious danger. I'm looking at trying out those brain train games. They are meant to work quite well I hear. Keep dotage at bay. Keep you alert. Keep you from losing it completely. I mean, I'm a grandfather, now.

Poem for the Moths.

You are fragile tracing paper thin.
Easily a berry between two long fingers.
You dart busying yourself searching
for bright heat or the light of purpose,
which only moths know and talk about
in moth think moth talk and moth love,
perhaps the pursuit of safety.

But why is the light so maddeningly important,
you hover there like late Buddhas,
in the air of time. Are you Trapped in
moth size, screaming toward the light?
'Clip my wings! Make me larger!
Don't want to be a moth anymore!'

What nonsense; mistaking lamp bulbs
for flower heads. You remind me
of a certain someone species, a certain civilised
manwomankind. They appear clumsy, fluttering
foolish but sincere in the heart of the matter
like you struggling into the small hours
but generally they turn the light off and go to Sleep.




*I realise the Moth muse is staid, over done, but I like the poem, its nonchalance; a lackadaisical muse upon a moths flicker, while smoking alone, one night, in the back garden of the close.

The forgotten Jesus

The Forgotten Jesus:

I keep making people fall asleep;
whenever I sit beside them for long enough
and say what needs to be said they slowly
but surely doze off into tranquil snooze.
I am left with eternity all around me
twiddling my thumbs, lonely for my Father,
who never calls; perhaps he too has passed out
on his Heavenly bed, dreaming of everyone
and everything, besides me.

Team Work at the Post Office (excerpt)

Terry: 'Awright Spacecadet! Ya fuckin' dandy boy, yee. How come yir in at yir work early the day? You here tae shirk work fir a bit longer?'

Colboy: 'Am no a spacecadet, a keep tellin yee, I'm a fully qualified Astronaut. And, a work like fuck in this place, we all day. A pull ma weight. So don't make oot am freeloadin or no breakin back in this joab.'

Terry: 'Aye, Son, lot a pish! just you get the heed doon, and stop fuckin' waffling.'

Colboy: 'It's the system, the organisation is fucked, we can't work within it, we canny cope, we just tolerate it, we shouldnay tolerate any of it, we are the system, and wir no that systematic, believe it or no. It has us tearing each other apart, when we should be dismantling the shite system.'

Terry: 'Ack! Yir all talk bumboy. Lot a pish! Just get on with yir work and shut it! You don't know your livin, Son.'

Colboy: 'Is that right, Dad?'

Joe: Is that terry and col havin a shouting match? HAHA! Terry, ya fuckin' inbred beast, shut the fuck up and get a wife! Stop being married tae the joab. Ya jobsworth Proddy.

Terry: 'Ha! You shut it, Joesy! Ya catholic cock. You catholics, all shaggin wee boys!'

Joe: 'Ha! And you proddies, all fucken memebers o yir ain family. Fuckin beasts. A tell you, beasts, man.

Terry: 'Right, shut it, every body get the fucken heeds doon and do some work. Ya shower o reprobates.'

A Skittish Boy

(Me, aged roughly, 4 years old)

The Ancestors’ albums
All the photo albums of my family history
Are stored in the eves of the attic.
In the night the attic doors shudder in the wind,
And depending on the strength of the wind
Sometimes the rattling wakes you.

Queer memory
A hot summer tent, flap flailing in the breeze.
We climbed in and out, naked, blithe. Two boys uncovered.
Our clothes still inside. Our bodies without recoil.
Little luminous white skins not without a blemish.

In Art class,
We made Valentine cards
and marked our kisses with an X.
I never painted much always drawing
stick soldiers in battle scenes.
Later adding underground bunkers for safety,

now here I am
And I’m thinking,
(And the thinking screws it)
become a type writer,
a word dresser, an honesty monster.
Something straight along the line.

Chaffinch

Little bird
upon the branch
singing;
you have no
National Insurance
number and that
is beautiful.
You fly, live die
and cannot be arrested.

So many faces I can pull

So many faces I can pull,
like Mr Sad and Mr Cool.

On Sunday's young boy Halo
On Monday's old man gloom.

And on occasion Mr Angry
concedes that he loves Mr fool.

Cause we're all in this together,
all the faces I can pull.

But most of all I love Mr Big Laugh
And sincere, Mr Wink-if-it's-True.




*This is definitely one for the kids book.

Car Park Poem

car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car
car car car car car car car car

Car parks,
as a space,
offer very little poetry.

Invalid Night

Twiddling in a barrel of darkness,
desperate to beat upon my chest
like the Orangutan.
My life is a single room,
and I must gather my head there.
Like an invalid.

I have seen slivers of
private night, my skull is
soggy putrid apple core;
and there are children that
have been mutilated by no love
and too much love.

And my head is rotten through,
with rats of affection
and disgusting compassions.
And minuscule patches of bursting
flowers pink and blue.

I nibble my thoughts
like the terrifying Eucharist.
Dumb to my seriousness.

All the invalids want
to shit from the sky
like seagulls.
But they will all die,
horizontally.
No cure for the inevitable.

In the hollow space of a graveyard,
atoms form circuses and carnivals.

The One that Missed the Boat.

I believe I'm the loneliest odd sock in the world. I have been residing for nearly ten years in this empty cupboard draw. I say reside, but such a word implies an amount of willingness on the subject to live in the accommodation, but I do not take residence here comfortably. I am utterly stranded.

My friend, nothing has moved in this draw, in this cupboard, or indeed, this very room, for over a decade. Neither sock nor pant share this derelict cabinet. Why this silence? Driven mad with asking, I tell you! I have called out for answer, sung wild chants to attract, but there is no other presence that has yet acknowledged.

What of the human feet? The humans themselves? Dare I even wonder where fate has taken us! I swear, I must tell you, at times, in contemplation I panic within my condition. My thoughts dart and riot against me, with the terror of my isolation. The weight of silence like a presence all the more. The other, remains always an acrophobic absence, which I need, no long! to reinhabit this space.

Has life loosed upon them death? Plague...war, genocide! Destitution.My friend, I must leave! I must venture alone. But I am only a sock, how am I too move? To get out of this drawer! Damn, damn, damn....ten thousands damns for human hands and feet. The hands to pick, the feet to wear! That's the way it is, was. Must I take this much longer!

Sister Karmelita Borg.

Sister Karmelita Borg sits in a Church.
She says nothing. I sit beside her,
equally silent.

She fingers her rosary beads,
in a rigid pinched gesture.
Her contemplation
far removed from the world,
mourning the merciless voice of God.

Like the memory of infinite childhoods
righteously scraped and deplored
against a religious sentence
quickly hushed into silence.

But all I hear is the faint echo
of her sharp whispers moving off
the vast cathedral walls.
A cathedral so indebted it can ill afford
the concrete imitatio of Christ.

Hymn

This is a sentimental poem.
A love poem without a lover,
an erotic poem without a bed.
A love poem that seeks the ideal
not of the perfect body but the ideal
of finally meeting someone of silence
interrupted by light affirmative confession.
Please do not forgive this sweet conceit
on my part, the soul is lonely for its lover.

I seek him still more than ever.
Nothing catches on the nets of my love yet.
I seek him still more than ever.
His body and my body in answer
to each other. I seek him anonymous lover
as yet untouched, unknown.
I seek him and he seeks me
but we know not each other.

Foolish Paradise

This is a wee surrealist sojourn. I enjoy writing in such a fashion, it's like a great big comforting yawn or stretch: leisurely strokes for a leisurely imagination. It seems to describe a kind of child-utopia, utterly impractical unreasonable and full of naive delight.

The Bananas on the Banana tree explode
like fire works bursting upon branches
they blow out bright colours!
The colour of Yes is an exceptionally
bright colour indeed like the colour of paradise.

The Apples and Oranges walk down the road in Autumn,
their rolling is walking and they walk far in form,
the leaves fall from the trees leaf hands waving
as they fall to ground they rest gust around,
fiddle with themselves eventually leave.

In Art galleries the paint pours from the painting
onto the ground and the people walk over the paint
and it sticks to the souls of their shoes
and the shoe paints their smile-print over the ground,
no body is concerned because that's just the way
these people are slack breezy walking about
with large glasses of orange juice chinking
with large ice cubes...no one complains
the sun lasts for days and the nights cool
with breeze keeps them content.

In summer cars hover leaves talk,
birds sing and bears laugh
water tickles and every body has a body
which does wonderful things
and occasionally if you stop to listen
you will hear nothing which is perfect
the sound peace of calm air.

until a banana explodes upon the tree
and the birds adorn bowler hats
and flocks imitate clouds
jokes abound
musicians stir the dream
lost is found.

A glass of orange juice.

A glass of orange juice lights up the kitchen.
The juice is spilling over the brim.
Olaf picks it up, and it dribbles over
his knuckles, and through his fingers, spilling
onto the carpet.

'You're getting juice all over the place, Olaf!
You'll! ruin the carpet!
A passerby shouts from the back lane
through the open kitchen door.
'Why must you fill your glass so full!'

Olaf turns and winks at the passerby.
'Don't worry, my friend, carpets can be replaced,
but life must be drunk rapidly with affirmation,
even if there must, on occasion, be horrible spillages.'

Olaf, with precise intent, drunk the juice
in three large swift pure orange gulps
some of which pour down his cheeks and chin
then wipes the juice from his joke mouth
with his white shirt sleeve, before he exclaims:
'You see, I have just answered a question!'

The passerby looks at Olaf curiously,
and then with a jolt
they burst into easy laughter.

Pancakes

'Yir a wee puke'
That's whit ma Granny
used to say tae me.
'Yir a wee puke'

And, ah think whit she meant was,
ah was a wee bit soft in the heed,
a wee bit sensitive and dependent,
a mammies boy like, daft wae it tae.

'Yir mammy and daddy,
see only the Angel's Halo
above your heed, Boy.'

She didn't mean it nasty.
Maybe she was a bit jealous.
Bit she meant it in a way
that was just a wee observation.

'That boy, he's as saft
as a Caramel Sundae.'
Ma gran used to make
pancakes every Saturday.
A large tray of them.

And ah wid watch her make
the mix up, wae eggs
and flour and sugar.

She'd spoon some mix oot
pouring it ontae the hot pan,
in a wee circle it wid form,
and it wid cook.

Then she wid flip it over
and it would be golden broon.
And she'd make about thirty
pancakes, fir the whole family
to eat wae thur tea and coffee.

And ah wid just stand beside her,
and watch the pancakes being made.
And ah wid smell them like a wee prayer.
The sweet baked smell clung tae my nostrils.

And ah loved that,
watching her make the pancakes,
wee circular pancakes,
wee, saft halos
that we all ate.

Death in Venice

'Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.' - François de la Rochefoucauld

There is a certain
someone boy
plastered to my mind.
A certain
someone boy
whose lips I cannot find.

The boy has placid blue lagoon eyes,
(this boy actually exists)
eye wide to stare obvious and neutral.

Chiseled chin camomile skin
fixed adonis stare
self portrait alive with looks,
shy catching eyes, calm smile;
some intuitive air filling
the space between us
an awareness
of each other in passing.

The Political Opinion of Musculus

-->

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.

Big Issue

Byres Road:
Outside Hillhead underground,
I'm standing in the street
handing out free newspapers
that no one has an interest in
but I'm getting paid for it
so I'm not overly concerned.

After a bit of standing and handing
Along walks a Big Issue seller he takes up stand
not too far away from me, he's with his boss
the guy who makes sure
all the vendors are in their stand.

They notice me handing out my rag
and i think cringe: Aw no, no!
They are eyeing me up thinking
I am a fool for standing here
near the Big Issue sellers spot
handing out a cheap paper
while he is tryong to sell a paper,
at the very least with a purpose.

But both come over say hello...
the boss pulls out two apples from his bag
and hands them to me in a friendly manner.
I put one in my left pocket and one in my right
and the boss says 'it's cold oot here the day'
I reply 'Aye, it's, Baltic. Thanks for the apple's.'
and then the Big Issue seller says
'Don't worry son, you're no standin in ma spot'

His boss moves off and
we stand apart from each other.
I go over and buy a copy of the Issue
then I go back and stand in my space
and continue to hand out more papers
to those who want freepapers.

After six hours the cold gets to you,
hands and feet numb the people pass
and the rain urinates down relentless.
And with that I decide to get the bus home
So I say goodbye to the big issue seller
he says: 'i'll see you some other time Big Man'

I get on the bus soaked and freezing
the bus is cold as well and after a bit
the windows start to steam up with
condensation from all people giving off body heat
talking and waiting to go home for their dinner.
Just like I was.