Thursday, September 08, 2005

moneybags

moneybags

don't call me moneybags

can`t you seeI got credit rating waiting

wishing my life away

on ikea-dream baiting

pissing it away

piddling in a circle

in a corner painting myself

and all the whores on billboard hoardings

cavorting and gyrating, stating

you can be up here too, in TV land with me

a land with no fear or pain,

preserved from death and ruin, beautiful and vain

I just end up hatingthe way my down at heels feel

my coins fall down the grating

preserved from god knows what, like spending masturbating

my entrails like sausages, in my hands all empty

trying to descry the future

but theres a big grey cloud waiting

the ghosts of our future deaths won`t cross

so unnerving,so swerving off the path

we go mopping our brow,

and go shopping

words

words can intoxicate and obfusciate and tittilate and innebriate
words can muscle in and fuss and tussle with your gristle and muss up your bustle
they can sprinkle tinkles that tingle like spangles on your winkle
or stick toots to your boots and send you cahoots
they can impress or depress or simply digress
they can hide quite alot or contain nothingness
words form a web of half truths round the worlda net that enshrouds every object we see
words can't ignore us we're walking thesauruses words can explore us or leave us to shame
they can be demeaning unseeming or dreaming there's millions of meanings locked in a name.
but there's one set of words that's as straight as a cough
so don't misconstrue me when i tell you to 'f*ck off'

disatisfaction

dissatisfaction is a higher state of conciousness than satisfaction
for satisfaction creates complacency, and complacency encourages sleep
we spend our lives yearning and searching for that elusive final happiness
but we are all the worse for finding it, it lessens us as concious beings
how acute and sharp the pangs for the state of freedom from the hungry enslaved and downtrodden
and how numb and weary the feelings of those who know only the luxury of boredom
like being ill we only appreciate our comforts when they're no longer there
we have a life sentence of discomfort and unhappiness ahead of us
or we can choose to sleep and not really live, if you can call that a choice.
sounds like we got a sh*tty deal to me, well nobody consulted us about it.

amazing

wow I just have to tell you about this.. it's amazing! the only thing is that it only works if you actually try it, it sounds silly but if you only give it a go you'll be amazed! i have this strange guru friend, now i'm usually the most cynical of people about all things 'new age' and holistic, i think there's a lot of lazy thinking and half-baked ideas hiding behind it, that once you start looking into new age literature for answers you find you start absorbing a whole cosmology of assumptions that you have little reason to believe in, before you know it you'll be mixing up cocktails of belief systems like a saucier chef, of course not including their least palatable aspects, ooh a bit of buddhism here, a smattering of hindu philosophy there, garnished with a bit of crowleyism and drizzled generously with arthurian fantasy.. you'll be booking in to get healing foot massages and electro crystal therapy.. it's all so easy when all the answers are in books, like why read the koran or the tora with all that uncool rules bullshit when you can have a loving healing spirit for a god who wants to give everyone a hug... when all the complicated stuff can be answered by simplistic one liners from consumer gurus, like we must 'be before we become' and we can just go wow, that's so deep. after all who wants all that dark stuff that lurks in the corners and untended recesses, those unpleasant truths that pop up when we think it's all going so swimmingly, those crushing gulfs of despair upon gazing into the inhumanly endless unforgivingly empty abyss... the ant like feeling we get when we realise how swamped we are by the vastness... you know what i mean? oh god maybe it's just me who does that... please say i'm not alone in this! anyway! getting completely sidetracked here like roonnie corbett on coke which he probably already is.. erm anyway as i was saying, i met this one blooke who could be a real candidiate for a guru, he was totally without posturing, not dressed for the part, just sort of dressed in camoflage really, normalish looking trousers and shoes etc, unremakable haircut, he said the information which he was bequeathed by someone greater than he was dangerous stuff to share, and that he'd rather not cause a lot of chaos and destruction by releasing it on unawakened souls... he felt there was a war going on between the... oh anyway that's beside the point. just take it from me this guy has something that makes your hair stand on end, it's like he sees all the dark matter and dark energy surrounding us, he is clear and lucid enough to see the real thing, and it is quite a scary thing, but this man isn't without compassion.. he discussed how we learn from others and how our conciousness raises as we go through the process in the proper order of pity, sympathy, empathy, admiration then love.. he said it with such a feeling understanding of the frailty of the human condition it was like the hug you'd been longing for all through your childhood but never quite got, then finally getting it through another's thoughts... anyway when asked what we could do to change our conciousness he replied that we should do this thing: if you repeat the word 'gullible' very slowly, very loudly and resonantly, eventually it starts to sound exactly like 'i love you' and no matter how you try it sounds more and more like it. if you aren't hearing it yet, then you need to say it a bit more slowly.. really draw out the syllables, and fill the room with your voice.. but you really must try it. you see as you hear the words transform within you, it feels like you are crying out with your love for the whole universe and that love is requited by the most loving and embracing warm glow which floods through your body in the most intense way.the words by a strange co-incidence echo the ancient sanskrit phoenetics of 'eghulh al ellbhul' which means 'i reveal my inner self', which may be a mere chance connection but you never know. believe me i'm the most cynical of people, you'd never normally catch me doing such a thing, i was always the kid at the back of the yoga class sniggering when we had to do a bit of chanting, i can't help but see the cool goa-trance dreddlocked beachcomber going 'home' to his parents come christmas, i glance at the cieling whenever my airyfairy hippyfriend goes on about the latest sad new age fad draining her pockets, i really think one of the human race's worst failings is to be duped into believeing the stupidest of things, but this thing really works, just try it, you'll never know untill you do, and if you don't throw away your judgement for 2 mins and throw yourself wholeheartedly into it you'll never find out, and believe me, you'll be really missing out on something amazing. i would just love it if this could spread, like light from a candle... love for the universe just spreading like the glow of dawn as the whole world unites in their joyful chanting of the words... guuuu-uuulllll-iiiiiiiiiiii-bbbllllllle just try it, it will awaken you.but please remmber, i am only the messenger; the man who discovered this principal is yet to be discovered, but he walks in disguise amongst us... just keep your eyes open...but try this thing right now, don't think about excuses or put it off till you've forgotten, don't worry about what your neighbours or family or friends will say, this is far too important, just take a chance, it could change your life, take the risk and try it.. just say it...gullible... gullible... gullible.. guuullliiiibblllle.. guuuuuuuuuuuulllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibbblllllllllllllllllllllllllllle... guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullllllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibbbbllllllllllllllllllllllllllleee.....

home security

I’m just so angry, I’ve been kicking cupboards and slamming doors and stomping my feet around my flat, snappy to my friends, grouchy with my children.. it was just a couple of days ago that my mother rang for a chat and blandly mentioned that she was having cctv installed in her home. I was just like gobsmacked if you’ll pardon the phrase, it’s the only way to describe how I felt, just speechless with surprise and disgust. I just can’t believe it, I thought it might happen one day, just your average conspiracy theory paranoid idle fantasy really, but it has finally arrived. ‘I feel so much safer’ she informs me. Safer! How can she do it to herself she has just signed away her privacy to the idle bovine gaze of some haw-hawing buffoon of a securicor guard, picking his nose and randomly viewing my mother picking up the newspaper or the phone, going to make tea, ironing, sitting trembling inwardly with fear whist she watches end-of-days style news reports showing the tidal crimewave threatening to engulf us, that makes the streets outside our homes into buttock clenching alleyways of fear...’well I’ve got nothing to hide have I dear?’ she says, ‘and with the state of the world these days, all the robberies and violence it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind’.. I am just standing there unable to vent the wrath that’s gathering force deep in my guts, ‘why don’t you have it fitted? I could pay for it if you liked’ … sharp intake of breath.. ‘mum, I just could never even think of doing it, I’d no longer have a life of my own’ ‘whatever do you mean? If you aren’t doing anything wrong there’s nothing to worry about is there? Pat Teasdale said she just had it done and now she feels so much safer in her own home, Margaret warren is having it put in next week and I think you really ought to give it some thought, and there’s a sale on at the mall this week on them, I could get you one for your birthday’… I am so incensed and stultified by the ridiculousness of the situation that I really can’t grasp what to say, but merely mention some bland pleasantries to hide my wordless thoughts and get off the phone as soon as I can.. though it can go on a bit… her being a typical mother in that respect, she gives me a quick rundown of how tired she has been at various times of the day.. what she had for lunch, what was on the parliament channel, who rang, asks me to come round and get something off a high shelf etc etc… oh you’ve probably been there yourself, bless them… but I was just gurning in my room to get off the bloody phone so I could stomp.. which I did… righteous ire pumping in my veins I stomped to the kitchen where I bashed the plates at each other in defiance of their fragility, I sneered at the radio it it’s lousy attempts to convince me that everything’s ok in the world… I stomped into the living room and put on some spiky stompy music then stomped about thrashing my limbs about like a yob in the springtime of dysfunctional yoof, I stomped over to the phone when my brother rang.. ‘do you believe what she’s doing? Cctv in the living room and hallway? I’ll never be able to relax again in there, it’ll be like being on stage in prison.. it’ll be like living in a shop window… it’ll ruin going to visit her… what on earth is she thinking of?’ my brother just breathes in slowly then ambles into ‘it’s not really that bad, after all they only watch you randomly and just keep the tapes for a month or so, and it is for your own protection not surveillance or anything, and as they say… why should it matter if you haven’t got anything to hide..’ please andy tell me you’re kidding me, you must be joking can I really believe I’m hearing this, for god’s sake you used to be a hippy once.. have you no principals??’ my brother sounds defensive… ‘well, I’ll have to pay a pretty high premium on my insurance without it, and it’s going to be really hard to apply for a decent job in engineering without it, it’s sort of becoming normal nowadays anyway..’ ‘normal for wankers’ I said and slammed the phone down.
there's fairies at the bottom of my garden
their darkened eyes twinkling out of the gloomy gleaming
hungrilly yearning their eyes full of feelings
of unsated appetites of monocrome meaning
flitting featherlike spiky through the shadows
their faces sparkle with pixie dust sprinkles
glimmering with starry sweaty oily dreck
did i say fairies? i meant junkies
and it's not really a garden more a patch of land
that enshrouds this block like a hand
in which this towering middle finger stands
expressing it's outrage at it's own inelegance
a giant f*ck you against the omnipotence
that stares down at it unaware and seemingly uncaring
to see it's children squandered thus
to wander nonplussed across the once plush but barren terrain
looking for dogends or lost cash in vain
knowing that they'll never know home again
and endlessly trying to switch off the pain
huddled in bundles in the dankest dark corners
staggering bleary like lost drunken mourners
pouncing on prey like there's no relief
tearing up fur with their shiny white teeth
did i say junkies? i meant animals
animals squirreling deeply in holes
cute little animals with faces like voles
that flit through the spaces and into their holes
not ever wondering if they have souls
just eating to live and then living to eat
nightime is garnished by the sound of their feet
pattering scattering right up the street
unconciously heeding to their every need
they were born to earn and they're born to feed
and only survivors further their seeds
only successful and full of blank greed
led on thin leashes they're dragged till they bleed
drugged on the ice palace temples of spending
running on treadmills made neverending
running to earn their right to exist
to pay for the earth that's under their feet
did i say animals? i meant consumers
eaters of vanities consumers of all the humours
who humour their need to define themselves
through consumer goods to express their wealth
so they too can breathe that lovely cool air
that encircles the models who look like they care
really deeply about the clothes that they wear
the wind waving glamourously through manicured hair
dangling their perfect prodgeni and heir
to the lifetyle choices that they have to bear
their ordered lawn franchise of castles in air
with unkempt dark corners in dingly dell
for every nice heaven conceals a hell
where the dark figures of night lurk and dwell
waiting for nightfall when they can descend
upon your abode and steal and upend
your lifestyle they're jealous as hell
for they too are under the corporate spelland
run on the hamster wheel like we do as well
did i say consumers? i meant fairies
there's fairies at the bottom of my garden.

the feathered serpent

it seems like only yesterday, or a million irretraceable yesteryears ago that i looked out from my balcony to see what was making the building shudder and creak so ominously, to discover our nasty smelly block had been wrapped about by the vast plumed serpent from the fifth heaven, the building groaning like a ship in sail as it's huge coils flexed with latent muscular power. oh christ this block is shitsville itself, nothing to send a postcard of after all it's just one of many, almost designed to be bland and indistinguishable, why did this draconian beast choose our yard as it's roosting post... well naturally the morning conversation in the lift was all about the loch ness monster, the xfiles, raining frogs you know the the sort of stuff which people like to decorate their otherwise drab realities with only this time it was real, there's this huge f*cking monster wrapped around the building. the local press came over to take a few snaps in between covering children’s parties and charity fun days, snapped up a few soundbites then drove off in a flurry of confusion getting stuck anxiously in a bunched up group like nervous horses at the bollards that cut this estate off from the nicer end of town. well we have to have some amusement, and the confused blinkered expressions of the journos trying hard not to catch anyone’s' eyes whilst grinding their gears in steadily rising panic as the morning risen zombie crack-troop opportunist lifters shuffled towards them almost made the day worth it. on the way back from the shops i encountered the duty caretaker mark, he's a nice bloke, well not exactly nice, nobody here is nice, but he's real and trustworthy and seems to genuinely care about the people here, a rare talent for a caretaker, and one that will probably take him out one day and mangle his head before the block has finished having it's awful way with him, but i digress.. mark the caretaker, slightly drunk from an early morning conversation at the grove.. staggers into the lift with a distant but vaguely benign smile on his distant but vaguely benign face, he breathes deeply, noisily, unconsciously.. 'alright mate', i say with fake mockney roguery, 'nasty business with the dragon eh?' i said... he sighs and remarks 'well it wouldn't be the first time, i've logged it with the council but they say there's not much they can do since anything that is larger than 60ft tall is beyond their jurisdiction and suggested that i contact the council for upper beings and gardening procedures who might or might not follow it up with a report within the next financial year depending on the parks and gardens overspend.' so it doesn't look like anybody is going to take much notice of it really, it'll be left here hanging about for a long time till it decides to bugger off itself. typical council i say, if this had happened in a posh area like ‘upper’ kingsdown they'd soon be on the case, the residents committee would be up in arms ranting about it, they'd be reading questions to the house about it in parliament and generally they wouldn't just bloody ignore it like they usually do. so now there's this ridiculous blitz spirit going on in the lifts now that we all have something in common to moan about, like how the scales are scratching the windows, how it's blocking out the sunlight in some flats altogether, it's 'singing' is keeping us awake at night.. what the hell is it singing about anyway? or is it snoring? eventually a few lost looking second-rate tabloid journalists turned up looking like they wanted to leave as soon as possible, asked a few disinterested and unimpressed residents some questions that inevitably tailed off into diatribes about how the council hadn't fixed their leaking water pipes yet or some suchlike minor gripes. the hacks ended up getting thoroughly exasperated by the whole idea and so slunk off to kill the rest of the day in the printers arms with their peers, to end the night mumbling about the crappy stories they have to cover, laughing at the thick attitudes of the inner city pocket of deprivation, we're just a joke anyway, just waiting our turn to be evicted to the outer-outer beyond burbs, where the native inbreds pick on townies like us as ready prey… divide and conquer or something. the guy on the 12th said he saw a cnn crew here the other day and sure enough we were the 'and finally' story of a dozen news channels for 25 minutes but another tube bombing sort of pushed us out of the way and now we're just an embarrassment, our predicament is ignored, and you'd think a 400ft high anaconda with bloody rainbow feathered wings wrapped round a block would be pretty hard to miss, but it just doesn't add up to the picture of cheerful touristic visitation that the council would like to promote in this city. after all, it's going to scare the tourists away isn't it? It’s just not bloody normal is it? I’m just amazed at people's lack of imagination and dullness though sometimes, maybe it's a great human fault, or merely a virtue that lets us continue to exist in the face of madness.. but i swear nobody seems to notice it anymore, they scurry along the ground level to the shops and back with scarcely a glance upwards at the monstrosity that sways high above the roof of our sky-rise kennels. pushing open the balcony door today i was greeted by the hysterical whoops of crazed children sliding down the balustrade spine of the feathered worm, twirling it's candy-cane coils in a lazy artful spiral round this scruffy artless monumental shaken fist of a tower block, insulting the very sky with it's graceless gridlike functional pointlessness... the dull transported to the inspired as it points it's way into the giddy skies, well, there it was this serpent coiled around it like it was nursing the block like an egg, looking up at it produces a vertigo lurch, realising the scope and scale of those powder blue, gold and emerald plates rising in twirling stripes, provoking the angry thunderous skies into cracks and flashes as it's swaying neck rubs the bullying clouds in cool reptilian slinky arcs. the scales glittering in the burnishing heat, as songbirds nestle safely by it's shady underbellies, bees scud across it's sun-baked armour following it's faint but overpoweringly heady exuded sweetness on meandering never-ending one-way missions, as it shimmered all along it's glassy skin in the hissing heat as it slowly creaked with the slow and barely perceptible throb of life energy, a huge engine just purring quietly at rest. it's feathered rills trembled and thrummed in the hot distant sea breezes carried over the rooftops, a clamourous drone of reeds and piano wires, Aeolian harps, windchimes, the heat swallowing the sounds into humming silence, the tuneless whistles and moans as the feathers jump and whip, jolly as harbour flags, comforting our sad dull block in it's liveried hug...anyway, today was one of the first days that you really feel that summer has properly arrived, there was that continental smell in the morning of heated air lingering from a sultry night, the tang of solarised diesel fumes, cooked grass, ozone, baked tarmac, it's a sort of indefinable haze in the air that promises on it's life that today will be a scorcher. i blinked out of the balcony at the wince inducing flashes of white hot sunlight refracting off of the car-bonnet smoothness of the snakes long scales, and heard the tinkles of childrens' laughter from above. turning i was amazed to find children of all ages hurtling down it's glossy sides in a helter skelter ride, mad contorted faces twisted with inexpressible glee as they shot past at alarming speeds. god some of these kids couldn't be more than five years old for christ sake, can't their parents take more care of them? it's about 120ft high up here and they are sliding all over it like it's a swimming pool ride. it's going to hurt... i stand transfixed by the spectacle, feeling that if i lose faith in their ability to not fall off then they will just slide off the glistening scales, off the edge and a long way down, my loins twinge as i think about it, the broken child lying limp and bent like a discarded doll, and shudder to imagine it as if my imagining it would make them falter and fail, and make my vision become real.. i was paralyzed now, how could i turn my back and not feel that i was the one responsible for the inevitable carnage that would follow.. i must believe.. and yet i am a rational being too, so another part of me was laughing in derision at the stupid train of thoughts that had led me to this place, how could i possibly believe it to be so, who am i to influence fate in such a way? but suddenly, the fear and concentration riding me, such a cruel jockey, yet fixed in place as if locked and pinioned.. well, suddenly i knew what was happening... this snake which had seemed inert and dead, like an architectural carbuncle, like some nasty scaffolding, this edifice became alive to me, i knew it was aware suddenly, and could feel it latch onto my awareness with the intensity of a moth that sees a flame jump into life in the darkness of unknowing, i could feel it's achingly slow breaths, shallow and panting in the shimmering morning haze, could feel the baking energies radiating from it's nuclear core, see the ripples of bunched muscles as they twinged so subtly and slowly. Knowing inside for the first time the life force within this beast, i felt not indifference, but a strange benevolence coming off in waves like an aura. those children would never fall because it guided their mad descent by miniscule adjustments to the hundreds of muscles that cradle and weave crisscrossed across it's mighty spine. finally i felt i could understand, this creature was like an elemental guardian spirit, born from the earth, summoned at a time when we are destroying our gene pool, a huge warning trying to redress the balance that we so precariously seek to destroy. the leviathan is here to pass on a message to those that dare to traverse their hearts and travel across their minds to meet it, not that you can meet the gaze of a reptile or bird let alone such an inhuman being hundreds of feet tall, but it has it's own language, it's own history and it is indescribably ancient, indescribable since we just can't grasp any such length of time. I felt myself being locked into a fearful statue, rendered immobile and speechless by such a cold glare of illumination, and now knew that I was aware of it’s existence it wanted to annex my mind so it could use me as it's own cctv camera, willing me to gaze and report on the needy, to monitor every flex of it’s ancient dancing sinews. i have a responsibility here that is pressing me flat like a ghost image, i can feel it's breath on my neck, my neck no longer moves, my eyes creak with strain to see into the clouds as it's proud snout twists to glare down, frozen in it's headlight stare i shudder inside with a cold slab in my stomach, my insides are gasping like i've just hit the apex of a mad bigwheel as it's vertiginously lofty head sways and swoops down toward me in a targeted plummet my frozen limbs tear at themselves to flinch from the incoming impact but i am made of stone now, and that movement seems like a distant dream, the snake almost skids to a halt just seconds from my eyes, wavers then tilts bobbing to line his side glance straight at me, it's the oldest eye i have ever seen, beyond pity, beyond cynicism, beyond care, beyond time… but full of infinite sadness for the children who cling in deadly terror to it’s flanks, skidding helplessly on a deathly candy-striped helter skelter, faster and faster as it’s sides steepen gleaming in the flashing sun, their peals of laughter peeling away into howls and sobs as the height and distance become real to them again.. and that terrible single yellow eye just buns itself through my eyes deep into my brain, i feel the waves of crackling energy soar up his scales to the heavens, fertilising the turgid earth below so strewn with rubbish, like atlas holding up our sky it labours at a terrible and thankless task, performed out of instinctual need, it's huge fatigue bourn with hive-like singleminded devotion to duty, and now i see it’s brothers and sisters hissing round the trees and steeples and lamposts and buses, all of them seeding the earth with the sparkling dust of life, but this energy is too awful to see, we can't let ourselves know it, i have seen, and now i must be removed before I can tell, i can feel my fingers harden on the balcony rail in fossilised tendrils, my feet becoming part of the slab of concrete that supports me, my last thoughts as the stultifying matter spreads to my brain is, could i be wrong? maybe it isn't actually here, maybe it wasn't filmcrews at all but bin-men and council surveyors, maybe i was imagining the news reports, seeing what i wanted to see, i think how my only hope might be my intelligence, if i could grasp the situation for what it really is rationally i might be able to unlock myself from this puzzle-locked mental straightjacket of my own making before i convince myself i am really made of stone, but it's too late i feel the dry tundra creep into my thoughts as the grey slate invades the corners of my mind, i can feel my very thoughts setting into stone, a petrified forest of frozen dreams, maybe i could have thought my way out of this, but now i know i glimpsed the solution too late, that it's fading into the rockface losing it's definition, i am... i... i... ...