disphoria

Waste

2010-12-01T03:31:00.000Z

Many the ways he sought exhaustion
But his mind would never rest
And all his loved ones ran away
From his strangeness of request
He used up all his money
Buying fleas to set them free
And used his time up writing
To those he could not see

holes

2010-04-17T00:14:00.001+01:00

i am as deep as the
wide as the
cold as the

i am as dead as a
cold as a
ruined as a

words fail as
leave falling farewells on deaf
tears tear
shreds throbbing pulsing reds
trial by
branded by
scorched by
quenched not

you left a
when you left
gaps punctuate the maps of my
like a punchcard, punch drunk, punch hard
unresolved like a huge unanswered

empty words begat empty
and hearts entwined became
strangled vines
ripping chunks when they
leaving deep scars upon our

now my life sentence is un
i cannot finish my
for the holes have become too
for me to

shadow

2009-08-18T02:42:00.001+01:00

there's a shadow on us
all our celebrity drivel dancing
celebrated global trolley dashing
our cellophane frippery
and nylon honesty
our dizzy waltz through paradisical malls
somehow palls

when the shadow catches up
to see our jollity
the frozen smiles of fear
on news screens
our amused nonchalence
and indifference to the souls that writhed
to keep our shelves stocked
will catch us

when we're placed on the scales
no longer riding the top of the wheel
who will defend us
who will weep for us?
when we had it all
and forgot compassion
in the blur of fashion
who will cover us
but our shadow?

a cold hand rests on our shoulder
turning our hilarity stale
our heaped rewards now look sinister
when we catch a glimpse of the hungry eyes
waiting for us to fall

permission

2009-04-01T05:12:00.000+01:00

do you know that you have permission? permission to be alive, to taste the world, to smile a big wide smile at the world. you are allowed to risk hurting yourself and others in your quest to feel alive, you are allowed to risk poverty through your generosity and injury through your recklessness. you can ruin your health and lose your shape through self abuse, you can lose your friends and step on lover's heads in your quest for ambition, because nobody will stop you, nobody is qualified to judge you, and nobody is really watching.
but now that you are free, just what do you want to be? if there is no judge but you, who do you want to be?
if there is no right and wrong, no god watching, no kharma to pay, just how would you want to live? if all your sins didn't lose you any sleep would you still have values that you believe are worth living up to? if nobody was impressed by your values would you still want them?
i am asking because so many people live on autopilot, following values which they have never truly considered, feeling guilt or fear of a god that they've never really believed in, or felt squashed by a conscience that they've never really thought about. are we good if we are good through fear? especially if we are not even certain what we are afraid of.
perhaps you have been seeking the approval of your friends or family, but have you considered how you would feel if they were no longer there to judge or approve?
if nobody was watching, would you still care?

performance

2008-12-10T09:25:00.003Z

this is for you
and for you and you
thankyou

thankyou, for adding to the daily diet of drivel
for pilfering and plagiarising meaning
for reducing heart-rending emotion
into clever laughs and knowing smirks
for breaking into all our works and
pulling us down from our pedestals
making our yearnings easily repeatable
with council grants to re-emote
so we can self promote our heart strings
and play our brand of plaintive notes
for claps
and sit on your collective laps
stroking your good taste until you purr

but i am here to bite the hand that feeds
to say you! and you! and YOU!
and you will clap to see such rebeliousness and spiky bravery
like a smoker convincing himslef that the safety warnings 'aren't for me'
you'll never see that YOU! means me

the me inside your poised body
hoping to see and be seen
in this rather highbrow scene
the hidden me
only realised in dreams
the hunger fear and anger and the greed
the empty lost enormous need

poetry is decoration
the words are paint that colours bring to life
but behind the words lies the indescribable
behind the paint behind the lies

behind the entertainment lies the lurch
the jolt the jerk
when we awake and see what we really are
and what we've missed
and how huge the world
how huge the abyss
and the question
the question we can never shape into a word
that we can never form to hurl
into the dark
futile and dwarfed by the unanswerable answers that will never come

but i advise you
to clap politely
and to hope you weren't included in my scope
when i turned and broke the pact
that lives in every act.

because you and you and you
i love you all i really do
because i know without a doubt
behind our flouncing posing pouting
the human race really sucks
and every one of you like me,
are well and truly f*cked

alone

2008-12-10T09:22:00.001Z

we're born alone
we die alone
and always know that ourself awaits
alone in the dark
when the talking has stopped
alone in our eyelids when distraction has gone
lying wrapped round a loved one
knowing that one day they'lll be gone
and we alone must carry on.
we get a glimpse
when our babies are born
that we're joined fast to others
and we're not alone
but we watch them outgrow us and long to leave home
we catch another who longs to hold us
and our eyes reflect the other's soul
holding closer than arms alone can touch
staring deeply hearts reaching out
knowing inside
that one day it will go
and we'll remember
that ultimately
it's a life sentence
and we're always alone

bristol sound

2008-07-01T09:54:00.002+01:00

listen to the beat of swaying feet
that creak beneath bare trees
and hear the breath of yesterday
playing in the leaves

the tattered flags of rags
hung down scarecrow knees
the rebel sons of riot got caught,
exported to expire in toil on sunburnt fields

does it matter that the caves
that supported these proud banks
once groaned with the shackled branded and enslaved?
that the rivers of blood that shekled this trade
that built these streets with stains of red were paved?

that these docks uprooted and transplanted
entire nations to plantations
orphans, betrayed and underhanded
robbed of history and permanently rebranded?

so who inherits this dockside town
who bears it's ill-renoun and stands up in it's dock of shame

does it matter when the sun is shining
and the city looks benign
and pretty people flip flop down the streets
in chilled and breezy ease?

with every week a spectacle
to keep us entertained
content with bread and circuses,
we'll cheer the media games

we'll gaze in struck-dumb wonder,
at the crystal leisure domes
giddy with our reckless credit,
we'll buy it all if we are able
and stuff our faces till we're numb
with crumbs from the merchants' table

after all who cares, we weren't there
they're dead, it's not our problem now its theirs
their cries aren't here to stain our ears
those tears can't soil our eyes
their pain won't ruin our years
cos history's the stuff of squares

so lets chill out and party,
this banquet's hardly tasted
it's friday night so lets forget,
so lets get out, get wasted

glass

2007-10-20T00:10:00.000+01:00

she was made of glass.

she was so beautifully made
an ornament to the world
that made you tremble
as she passed
but he didn't dare
scare or shake her,
way too fragile to ever make her cry

his trepid steps grew featherlike
his tread a whispered sigh
as he danced round her
with mutely muffled glee to see her
shining sheen of ether,
stooping to inhale her,
heat quenched for fear to break her
for she was made of glass.

so never daring to tease her
for fear he'd make her siezure
he couldn't tug her hair
or ruffle her nor squeeze her
he didn't dare
to make her shoulders shudder
for fear the tears might crack those eyes
that shone so dark mysterious
splintering her clear and crystal heart
for she was made of glass

carousel

2007-08-08T00:49:00.000+01:00

if only our wishes were as real as we'd like them to be, if only the pot of gold didn't melt when we awoke clutching the pillow, and we could be every bit as strong and pure and beautiful as we imagined when we described ourselves... there's always a gap between what we would love to be and what we end up being. would a trip to the other side of the world bring the happiness that seems so glorius from afar? would exotic strangeness still breathe it's allure once the fragrant air of mystery transforms into the pungent tangs of stale body fluids... when we look into the mirror to see a hundred stories written on our faces in tiny etchings and wonder... 'is that all there is?'
so to turn to fleecing the souls of life's most lonely could justify itself to anyone who had known the unflinching pinches of hunger in a crowded street... necessity can lend an awful authority to one's own single-minded survival... but one day survival succeeds into greed, and we all will join in the circus of consumption, whirling giddilly around the carousel of shopping bewildered and bewitched by the twirling lights, only to remember our once proudly borne soul once we fail and fall off into the gears and works below, wondering at last... was it a magic roundabout... or a treadmill? so remember your soul, you are a brother and sister to us all

random word list functions

2007-05-07T05:12:00.000+01:00

redundant clichees vie and pound the ground with their vapid sounds and if i had a pound for everytime i heard myself say 'if i had a pound for every time i heard myself say' i'd have a pound. if i was found in an unplanned land and landed on profoundly i'd shout for the sound of my last breath which was lost and wandering bereft throughout the length and breadth, my last stand, standing there astounded with my heart in my hand, unaware again of the gains and losses in the pain, regarding the trelliswork armour and deep tracery of scars and hardened weals from the urge to dare to feel, to dare to reveal and be alive, vulnerable foolish and open, it stings but i'd rather live than sleep. casual is ok but i'm already highly vexed what else do i need it for than some sort of perspex filter to armour myself with, already perplexed to see the scar tissue circling the heart, hardening and benumbing when all i want is to really feel, to deserve to be alive, to thrive and strive and take the flak with never a backwards look, never regretfully glancing back, but to take the knocks with pride for daring to share and care in a world that tells us we're not important and we're not there, and it's hardly clever to be clever in a world where nothing is really cool, where cool is really crap. i own the ground under my feet, the sky above my head and that's all i need to take my place. i'm beyond disgrace. whoever said my stance made sense, or that it needed to be understood, you'll find my thoughts buried deep deep down deep in the woods. look in the cherry blossom tree and you'll see me smiling eventually in the pattern in the fallen leaves. i refuse to be what you see.

inhumanity

2007-03-30T14:02:00.000+01:00

angry? of course i'm angry
was i ever asked?
did anyone invite me
to this stupid endless party?
was i included in consensus
when i first woke into this senseless joke and found i joined humanity
while i shook the amniotic bile from my attempted smile
that turned into a roar, as the rawness burned me
of that first electric dawn, on the scales forlorn alone
stranded from velvet luxury that was all i'd ever known
and was i asked to join the class?
that squashed me right down to the last, that two-way stretch that ate my childhood
life sentenced and disowned from happy home
they told me and they told me off, but was i asked?
i tried i tried to make some sense inside when outside all was chaos and immense
cruel humour made my armour harden
till my eyes forgot the garden
and the money tower they all looked up to like a father's monstrous hard on
it's a hard one, but was i asked?
now all i feel is sharp disgust
to share the wiring with this host
that gloats to boast of it's excesses
impressed by it's capacity to distress
the cowering self with it's own shocking nastynesses
that's proud to burn out it's insides
takes pride to flaunt it's ugly side
to make the world express it's sickness
feel the girth of it's mindless thickness
till they have made a stupid world
as spoilt as they are, spoiled it rotten
the stupid trees that wave so mindless in the stale and stupid breeze
oh look the green and rustic dream of old country
repetetive and dull, the fields a giant null
stupid insect killing grounds the only unchecked thrill
and distant tides of motor rides the only sound
where all the leaves are grey exhausted ill
yes welcome to the stupid earth
smell the human smokestacks as they choke our tracts
smell the shells of unprovoked attacks
the groans of tortured men on racks
those shivers on them, heads in sacks
knees on cuts, welted backs
the smell of blood upon the dirt
the snarl of joy in industrial hurt
the smell of blood up peoples arms
drilling childrens eyes, slowly with cold leisure
taking revenge in righteous pleasure
smells that invade you and pervade you in parades infected thoughts
and was i ever asked?
to join this cavalcade of farce? though the joke is rather sour
when they're drunk to gulp and glug the anger and the power
the shock of hatred such a drug that shrivels every flower
the sensual shiver of horror to become the thug you fear
your burning soul burns out your tears
is this the best that we can strive for
is this what we survive and die for?
these humans ugly angry pests
swarming their polluted nests
wired to self destruct and self digest
or take us all down whilst they're trying
and watch it all burn as they're dying
for dying's the best thing that they do
in ever more novel cultured, intricate polluted ways
they delight to fight and praise themselves
to find beastly ways to end their days
push button beasts that beg for whims
that squirm for treats, that thirst and eat
perform for their chunk of meat?
was i asked to be included?
in this con i'm so deluded?
wired up for aspiration, wired down for mad frustration
mired with bloodied stains of your vain gains
include me out, so sick of your game
so sick to bear the name of human
if that means i share the means to become just like one of you men
sick humanity, stoned on vanity
escape me from this body of shame
before this timebomb brain goes off
and burns me so i share the same
the same nature, if you call it nature
and if you call it nature then the world's sick too
let me out before i end up just like one of you

protection

2006-12-10T00:46:00.000Z

a hard white pill of flawless glass
my bright-shined armour's all you'll see
nobody will know, tight-zipped, so small
you'll never catch me as i fall

cold truth

2006-09-26T03:38:00.000+01:00

when the curtains were torn
to peel back the gloom
angry spites of white dust
tore stripes round the room

we saw all our sore eyes
blink lemon juice tears
and smiles became vices
clamped to our ears

spat wet from the mouth
that kept us well fed
slipped naked in shock
as bells shook our heads

we shivered with joy
when the spots hit our grins
and truth stood before us
hard icy and thin

lights whiten our souls
our eyes burning holes
feet slide on bright glass
to be free, joy at last

grey

2006-09-15T23:39:00.000+01:00

is this the grey
that we fought like death to keep away?
this the sleep
that muffled our dried and weary weeping?
was this the numbness
aquiescence past the tempest
the bare bleached glare
of a waxen mourning stare
shorn of hope. forlorn?
was this the prize,
worth any price,
where's the trace of this burning race?
whose steps ran through the dreary waste
and washed away at salty shores
a path that vanished in the mist
rinsing the prints that marked our chase
when unpeeled senses ached to taste
give me a bite, bite deep.
make my senses run bright, fight sleep
wake me up shake me
i'm fading from sight.
dissolving unfolding till i'm flat as the screen
when you'll never believe that we lived in that dream

lose yourself

2006-08-02T02:41:00.000+01:00

who invited you to the party?
were you ever asked if you wanted to be here
standing with your empty beer
full of empty cheers
gazing at the masses waving glasses
with nervous grins and groping passes
streaming classes of backstage passes versus punter arses
on chairs getting theirs, what they came for
and you're no more than just a frame for their airs and graces as they get off faces
out of it and lose themselves. escape themselves like escape artists on crusades
of escapades, evacuees from their own disgraces
forgotten and off their tits forgetting their sad places
twitching yawning itching with chemical knobs on
what's the potion of the moment, watch your poison
ride you from inside, you become the freak
unique to each bleak alchemical streak
cokehead smackhead crackhead speedfreak
we know them well, and watch our friends become them
ridden by the new you, acne is the new acme
aches and pains your dismal gains
as each dawn brings you back to home with groans
for fleeting feelings you have known
the glass shows your past, how you're past caring
merely yearning for the first collagen hit
that reinflates that scribbled page of past excesses
where unaware you bear your cares before you
your cure for ills is only pills away
so you wait till evening, and count away the day.

spit

2006-06-29T11:00:00.000+01:00

I am the spitoon that is spat at
And spat out, spitting fire, I`m shat out
And shout out, splitting the sky with infant bile
Carving an arc across this dumb grey dome
Our cave, our cage, our home
Beneath whose bleak forbidding glowering eye,
We cast our lies
Our griefs, our needs, our compromise,
Carve vastly impious vainglorious lives
Imperious, imperial, vile
Or hunched beneath the skies dark carcass
Our carapace, our canvas, our catacomb, our mausoleum
We spit fire and smoke upon the jeweled cloak, spill petroleum
Choking around us, the hell we provoke and promote
Terminal antfarm, building sky-scraping nests to the stars so remote
While eating our world, pests of endless appetite
One day our world will be but a wound
Scarred and dead as mars
Infancy holds it, spitting ancestral rage
Tiny fists, it`s marching infantry
This is our hard-wired legacy of idiocy
But only idiots can really see,
And we ignore idiots, don`t we?

glass sealing

2006-06-18T22:57:00.000+01:00

all the feasts of loving bliss
are just dust on the tongue
just a mime, a fake drunk kiss
the sunset doesn't show the sun
oh errant soul you take the piss
so dreary is the sweetest song
that warm inner glow a cheap light show
the telescope is pointed wrong
my heart won't start to hit the throttle
i climbed in with the message
now i'm sealed up in the bottle

insect collector

2006-06-09T11:53:00.000+01:00

your paisley iridescence didn't fill her eyes with wonder
the shining tearful colours didn't rend her heart asunder
the arabesque of limbs and carapace did not inspire
nor did your fleet fluttering shake her heart with thunder
your dance across her lawn was futile and forlorn
now you lie here skewered in her book
pinioned by her collectors hooks
and once you're ticked off and purveyed
you lie there with your beauty on display
breathing your last sighs regretting
that you ate up all those lies forgetting
to beware the punter, the consumer
they'll consume you an experience
happy that it looks so good to the imagined unseen audience
your limbs glued down your arms out splayed
the taker cannot taste your honey
and sees your words as so much money
your gold's invisible
to those that hold it
your soul is squandered once you've sold it.

love vs lust

2006-06-05T00:24:00.000+01:00

lust so greedy, needy, tasty, testing
sometimes selfish, sometimes giving
a burning light it's hungry stare
it's lurid glare can fill the air
unforgiving if you're not willing
to give in to it's thrilling ride
not to surf it's glossy sides
but stand and fight the tide
you'll stand dejected and rejected
alone and swept aside
stop fighting it's inviting
you to join it's manic funfair ride
like a moonward nutter stuttering
you mutter unheard litanies
cluttering your insides with fluttering wings
sliding down the edges of a hole of passion
like common sense has left the fashion
whispered hoarse invective
like a whinneying foal on hot coal
it tears you up and makes you whole
it burns you out and makes you heal
it turns you inside out reveals the real
and every nerve end screams to feel
delicious devouring slutty feeling
looking down from on the cieling
lust we bathe in it's aromas
sweet and dreamy deep in soma
in darkness dancing fingers carve the hills
like mad cartographers on happy pills
inner pornographers fill the map's gaps
the thread pulled taught enough to snap

but fires can leave you a hollow shell
the curse of ever lonely hell
returns to snuff the candle and reverse
us into isolation and remorse
your heart is torn and badly patched
you're lying in a sticky patch,
a stranger in your arms you think
you need a piss, you need a drink
lying staring mourning, at the unseen darkened cieling
as the first grey stabs of gristly morning uninvited steal in

but what if love could be like lust
not fluffy cuddley story stuff, but deep and strong as trust
maybe there's a love that's tough and bracing
that wakes the soul and sets hearts racing
that's rude and proud and knows no fears
that's wild and loud and sheds hot tears
love can terrify, when it threatens it's removal
or paralyze and stultify by lover's dissaproval
but maybe it could really be all the things we pray for
lust and love cojoined like twins, no guilt for us to pay for.

circles

2006-06-05T00:08:00.000+01:00

had it up to here with fears
ridden and riddled by troubles
wavering and too much paving gazing
to chase the baubles and the cheers
stood in the puddle of a bursted bubble
bearing my foibles, hobbled and knobbled
i need to strive to push aside the crowds in waves
to stride out of the deep, craving
to wade into the sunlight out of sleep
not shrink blinking from the current thinking
but forge against the common tide
against the current, thrive and walk with pride
but for now i got deep shit
i'm walking round inside the pit
my spirit shrinking as i fast
on the treadmill everlasting
the listed chores are long and boring,
always listing, sway me from the way
again i don't acheive what i believe in at the end of play
dreams postponed to keep the home and keep those streets at bay
life's expensive business... we're just here to pay

weeds

2006-05-17T03:51:00.000+01:00

when spring is singing in the air
and breezes freshly wash the streets
don't overlook as commonplace
the marvels at your feet
walked on overlooked ignored and downtrodden
their short elusive brilliance stood on and forgotten
in the fagbutts and the ringpulls, the restless dross and scum
nestle tiny buds whose brave blues shine and hum
tiny marching armies, galaxies of stars
strew the roadside corners blown by tides of cars
invisible to striding feet that rush past unaware
unknown to those who never slow, to those who never care
their gesture sad, so futile as they garnish grimy ways
and all their beauty once unfurled instantly decays
then gone they never caused a stir
or stirred our hardened hearts
but they don't care for they were there
to frame the dirt with art.
you could write us epic songs
that squeezed our hearts for hours
but never yet completely get
the beauty of those flowers

is that it?

2006-05-11T00:37:00.000+01:00

is that it?
i'm just a sex machine
just push my button
and make me dream
is that all there is?
all of our biz
just a means to an end to get our ends away
just triggered biological responses, just so much jizz
is that all we are?
sex machines and mindless f*ckers
some talk of love
like a gift from above
but its just push and shove
just to get it on
its so shit
if thats it

empty

2006-04-28T01:24:00.000+01:00

my soul's so empty
so hungry, needs feeding
feed me with words
till my ears start bleeding

turn your lips into leaves
hissing seas in swaying trees
whispering the winds' sins
secret airs sung in the breeze

change your tongue to a swan
that sings it's last song
mouth mute suffering
your sweet breath fluttering
the leaves of a wordless book
gush forth and babble
an unchecked brook
fill every nook of my dry parched head
drown me in words, i starve to be fed

lies

2006-04-23T19:46:00.000+01:00

your children's eyes sparkle to be told pretty lies
the best girl in the world with the prettiest curls
and it's only too easy to smooth off your lines
as we play sleeping lions, and lie side by side

like gifts, lies are better to give than to recieve
lies are the currency of our world and beliefs
but you find as you drag them around like a snail
you're burdened and stressed when you dress in tall tales

adverts sell envy, make us jealous and greedy
bred on deceit, we're so empty and needy
the streets that we walk down are facades and props
as we act out the lifestyles we bought in the shops

it's a tangled world hacking through sharp thorns and briars
when spin spins our heads selling shit dressed as feasts
for our sake our governments set countries on fire
sold as peacekeeping as they turn men to beasts

so no matter how pretty i never need lies
no knife in my back when i lie by your side
allies are few but as precious as gold
for a world full of lies is dark lonely and cold

body memory

2006-03-07T03:57:00.000Z

the curve of your back is art
thoughtful poetry in your walk
there's wisdom in your smile
spinning music when you talk
symphonies caress your subtle skin
illumined thought shines in your hair
soft lips entreat redeeming sin
an archane musk perfumes your lair
but ghostly silence cloaks your words
your mute mind swathed in mittens
deep felt unfelt across your heart
an apple never bitten

flat earth

2006-01-30T17:14:00.000Z

inverse copernicus, columbus in reverse
tracing the contours of a flattened universe
ignorant to the flattery of sales-patter banter, idiot battering
whilst mountains threaten to shatter and shit on and flatten.
all forms are shorn in a digital dawn folorn
worn down to a flat little screen of 2D
where all peaks and troughs are shaven off, equalled
shriven and wizened, all lust of life reduced to dry dust
unempowered by dead batteries' dry acidic crust
our idiot eye has us outmanouevered
as our dried essence is sucked out and hoovered
empty we gaze deluded of our elusive quintessence
reborn dumbed-down without a scream
being told to live out all our dreams
but electric dreams are private hells
where there's no taste and there's no smell

sick

2005-12-01T13:38:00.000Z

ever felt you're sick of being me
sick of the same old face staring back from the glass with those slack sad puppy pupils
sick of treading carelessly over broken empty scruples
sick of playing jakes with your values that are fake
sick of blundering thunderously over your own gozunders
sick of being me
when you wake it's still the same bundle of troubled fears and half-truth vanities
speak for yourself mate i hear you say
but unfortunately i'm sick of being you too

it's all downhill from here...

2005-11-17T01:51:00.000Z

put my back up
back in my safe warm cage
where i can bat around
these four squares in a rage
cause i was out on a limb, on the piss and on the lam
a human fizzing babysham
but now lookwhere i am
escaped the finery of my empty golden room
into trumpton with my trumped up frumpy dames of doom
into the silver shiny streets
tasting the sweaty tang of piss and sweets of sweat
the vapour trails garnish the streets that make us wet
but not in ways you'd want to get
it's never quite like on the telly
after all it's rather smelly
and the cold
makes your bones so rusty old
you might aspire to transpire the frosty haze
but get repaid by bronchial flu for days and days
so hiding from cold i'm in this box
that's sealed to wield the mace of smouldering socks
and last night's icky stew
it's like a glue that sucks me in
no dirty stop out i'm stuck in
alone and pissed
it's come to this
round the hamster wheel
in turgid bliss
round and round without a care
the threadbare tiger paced his lair
lonelyness his only fear
but you're never alone when you've got beer

anger management

2005-11-01T02:38:00.000Z

as beings we are flawed
but maybe awe inspiring too
the very fact that you read this
means you are probably one of the nice crew
that chew not their bile and eschew
the nasty sides of life prefering to repose in thought
self taught your ways may be fraught
by the beings who resplendently shine full of their anger
but don't raise a clamour of disdain cause anger is our name
in vain we aspire to attain the clearer view when
men who ride the anger trails prevail
just think one moment your pen primed with ink
your mind on a brink of brilliantine thought
but look we're caught in angers' management
we just get bent by it, sent through hoops and spun on loops through chemiical soup by it
we are it, it's knitted like furroughs into the burroughs of our souls
we're like big holes filed with it
ridden by it, or ridden on by those who throng to it
oh anger you're a chant sung by masses
the seething murmur riddling the idle classes
if you don't see it you need glasses
cause anger is the bliss that seals us in a kiss of fear
tears run down our collective face to be immured with it's embrace we are it
our hairy selves find wealth in it's disgrace
make a monkey face at the sky and lie and squirm with it
we get down with it it's happening bro it's like erm..
we are too in it to see it
hoping that we rise above it don't partake ignore the ache of it wearing you thin
ignore the itch of it under your skin
there's plenty throbbing in it, blob their sputum through it
bile so vile rising and burning up the midnight streets that gleam with the spit of it
be not so aloof of the youth who trample our quiet lawns into cristal nights and scarlet dawns
that fill the angel trod aisles of casualty and a and e, of e and r
we are making them daily, these young bloods and sharp blades that pervade the glades of social programming architraves
our malls no longer safe from waifs who scowl and gurn disdain to earn who want to learn us
we spurn them as life's gross dross but the more we don't give a toss the more they are us
'cause anger's like a curse which functions in reverse with unctiousness in it's incongruent unguents
dip your finge rin and rub it on the affected area
feel it's idiot grin and the world just got scarier and hairier
memory of our hairy selves, when we were elves and trolls
but now we're modern modish plastic dolls and above that
but look it courses through our veins as insane unreigned bloody horses
it fizzes like impasses and cataracts like wind across endless tracts of tundra
so full of awe and wonder
it makes you heave and chunder with the force of it
so you reject it and it's beckoning finger
it's not a place we'd like to linger, so go figure
we're just scum in it's electric hum
it's bigger than money and sweeter than honey
it's the ultimate high the smoke in the sky that we'd readily die for
buy or sell ourselves or steal for
line up and chant encore for
so deal with it, we are it.

everything must go!

2005-10-25T01:44:00.000+01:00

'anger is holy' shouted mark stewart all those years ago and it sounded like the most dangerous thought ever uttered to those who heard it and they were few, the scratchy repulsing sounds warning off all but the most faithfully curious to hear the new, the news, what's happening... and they were shitty times, when we needed to be shaken into wakefulness more than ever, when anger was being channelled in ever more subtle ways, where our fear was being sold to us, where we bought into it, when we lost our innocence finally becoming our destiny, when we became units instead of beings, when the all seeing eye finally closed the gap, and we lived lifestyles instead of lives, where philosophy became a decoration, when people started saying cool, but nothing ever was, it really doesn't matter if it's cool, who really cares? if you become cool all you'll generate is envy, and who cares if the cattle moo their approval at your doings? it wasn't always like this, but tell that to anybody and they'll just stare at you blankly, they are too inside it to see it, yes we're all in the bubble now, cradle to grave direction, the last nails are being nailed in as we speak.. entombed in a parody of real life, the image of the world has taken over the world and we walk in it's pictures. no longer is a sunset ours till we have recorded it, squashed it onto our phones, the glory and wild forces of nature reduced to a thumbnail image, but that's now better than the real thing, the thumb that says 'i was there' the experience consumed like the chemical gloop we stuff our poisoned faces with..with the same tasteless relish as we hold the image of the smiling model bursting with healthy vitality as he/she spoons it out in the golden studio sunshine... it's too late it's too late but we'll ever notice we are a part of it, we are it.. stand outside of it and be sentenced to loneliness and shame, people will forget your name and you'll fade away invisible, a risible translucent joke, the buffoon who leaves the room.. so it's better to just go with it.. after all who'd notice? anger is holy.. oh yes... they obviously gave him such a long lead knowing how anger is the province of youth and the lure of leisure furniture and safe houses will entrap us all eventually... let the teenagers get all angry about the war, they'll change when they get a bit of comfort to protect, some children to worry about, forms to fill out.. anyway, i saw mark stewart a couple of months ago and let me tell you i was excited, this man's music used to drive me mad, unlistenable sometimes but i still had to listen to discover this kernel of truth lurking within in the most unsuspected of places.what must he be doing now? now that technology has freed us all to make any sound we like without the chore of splicing long reels of tape, rigging up loops of cables and piling rooms full of equipment that had hiss and crackles built in. and also our ears have acclimatised to newer more extreme sounds, breakcore, drill and bass, psy-trance, no wave, how has his music responded to the change of landscape? and then what of the man? there's a war going on, there's bomb scares, there's the internet, how has he responded to the world? where has his thought taken him? i was so excited as the band came on.. the music was a bit old fashioned maybe but give them their due, the musicians seemed to know their stuff, at playing jarring off-key notes they are masters i suppose, let's not be too negative after all it cost a tenner to get tickets and it was a bit of a scramble to raise the cash before they sold out the previous day.. but who is this old paunchy bloke who looks like he had to be prised off his armchair where he was watching some bland reality tv show in case something good came on, who's girlfriend had just spent an hour whinging at him to let her replace the furniture with this year's model, where the marks of boredom and sluggish thought smeared his face into nonentity? yes trottting out his greatest hits like anger is holy really made my day, like watching the Four Tops playing Butlins, like prisoners of their time in the sun they were condemned to repeat their moth-eaten tunes till they rattled like tinnitus in our empty heads. so this is entertainment. oh well i hear the sex pistols are reforming for the third time, might as well watch them while i can since i missed them in 1976 being a bit young to go on my own and 3quid seemed like a fortune when my pocket money was 90p.. little did i realise that the music i craved to voice my teenage rebellion was just a product, that it was the end of values, that i was watching the end of time, now we hardly exist at all unless we're famous, but don't worry we'll all be stars on cctv one day, and face the world with studio smiles... but maybe we have a chance if we don't let ourselves forget... anger IS holy.

moneybags

2005-09-08T12:56:00.000+01:00

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

2005-09-08T12:52:00.000+01:00

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

2005-09-08T12:51:00.001+01:00

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

2005-09-08T12:51:00.000+01:00

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

2005-09-08T12:50:00.000+01:00

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.

2005-09-08T12:46:00.000+01:00

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

2005-09-08T12:45:00.000+01:00

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... ...

stardust

2005-08-04T15:36:00.000+01:00

i'm off to the shops today to get some happy shopper milk and honey, I live on the 11th floor of a 13,000 floor mansion house in the centre of a huge amusement park that contains little amusement and where you'll get your car clamped if you park. when the sun's shining you can almost convince yourself that the world is pretty but it's the grey illusion of misery that cloaks this building most days. well the sun is burning down like an angry spotlight today making the rubbish strewn alleyways look like partytime bunting, a thousand flags of discarded consumer products decorating this antimall of broken hopes. i shut the door and double-triple-lock it shut, glancing carefully over my shoulder to check the wandering eyes of opportunist petty burgulars haven't clocked my exit, or i might have to pretend and shout to mr nobody 'i'll see you in a minute!'... the stairwells reek of the unsavoury tang of uninvited internal fluids, they crawl into your nostrils like infected worms, you don't want them in you so you breathe shallowly, hoping to stay their progress into your lungs by holding your breath over the stained patches that are the modernist paintings of the unempowered and lost souls. I never managed to walk up the 13,000 floors to the top of the stairwell but there are rumours abounding that babies are made up there from sprinkled stardust, we see angels walking downwards, their wings growing progressively shabbier with each step, the lights dwindling in their eyes, their dawn bright halos dwindling into tobacco stain yellows and smeared dubious brown smudges, by the time they get to my floor most of them look lioke thewy have forgotten their stardust ancestry, they merely exist in a low energy gloom, breathing just to annoy people. further down the stairs they lie in pools of their own excretia, torn designer gear hooked off of skips and the tumbleweed piles of detritus that roam the streets. they might offer to sell you a broken toaster, to beg a light that becomes a ciggarette that becomes a quid that becomes a life story you really wish you didn't have to carry with you that day. the life stories accumulate like sticky paper on your shoulders till you bear the weight of a thousand tattered lives, dragging their pain around like a snail. i pass an angel, his eyes are darkened, like empty holes, he's left his soul on an upper level during his descent, his wings just vestigal stumps that display a few thinning feathers like a mockery of the glory that his peackock display used to illumine the sky with. he lies there, barely daring to remember the fresh faced child full of hope that used to dream of riding the wild pegasus across the steeples of fairy castles, the tinkling bells of crystal laughter that ran like fresh spring water across the lawns of endless parklands, the warmth of his mothers milky smell and the total trust of the newborn that the world is not a scary place but like a huge endless hug that welcomes the earth's sons and daughters into it's bosom of love. but now, he's forgotten, as if he is forgotten, as if he is invisible and no longer useful or wanted by the spirit that permeates these walls, like the light is switched off and all he can see is the grey fogthat makes everything asttain the same level of shittyness. as his eyes scan me without feeling he makes a quick judgemet to see if it's worth scamming me for cash, for sympathy that never arrives, for someone to take the burden of his story away. but then he sees that i'm already a mule for a thousand fools, that my shoulders are already full, that i have no more room for another story, that my pockets are empty, so he gives me the puppydog look questioningly, then the tired eyes cloud over like curtains being drawn over his hopelessness and he nestles into his dirty corner and nurses his unsated hunger again like a dead baby. every once in a while you meet an angel going up, a rare event but worth it for the look of peeled back terror and racing excitement that pulls their glowing cheeks back into gnashing toothed smiles, gurning like cherubs chewing tobacco and chillie peppers, the light streaming out of the holes in their tattered shirts, their wings burning the eyes with teir brightness, their eyes fixed on the upper stairwells as they head towards the stardust. sometimes i might take the lift, like a funfair ride that makes your heart lurch, playing lucky dip as the doors slide open, you might find a gurgling baby, the stardust still brightly littering it's moist newformed skin, laughing to see another being, or an old tired man whose face creaks audibly as it attempts to remember the muscular contortions required to form a long forgotten smile, but with eyes that no longer sparkle the smile ends up looking like a parody of happyness, like a skull grinning from the tomb, sometimes the lift is empty but this is worse, as the doors slide shut on your silence the souls of tormented jukies that died alone in this block flock round you like hungy moths, urgent for your freshness and life, lost and frightened, endlessly reliving their last moments in loops of tangled thoughts, settling on your stomach like icy porridge. at last the ground floor rises to meet you, passing the empty poetry of the unhinged illiterate and innexpressive scrawlings that decorate the sarcophagus of the atrium, hyeroglyphs of unfocussed anger and lust, flashermac thoughts that expose themselves in all their animal gracelessness. the door beeps it's low whine as you step out and another couple of crack inebriates sidle through the cracks hoping to pass unobserved absurdly in their awkward crab shuffles. now the day is brightly reflected off the stained paving slabs that the djinn caress with artful dances of rubbish, the pretty plastic packaging that once was pristine on the shelves of supermarkets, displaying our right to buy our lifestyle choices, we won't be buying food unless it is illustrated, branded and decorated, and we forget that the perfect golden orbs that glisten with plasticised eveness were once living fruit that grew on trees, where lazy bees carved endless figures in the air around them and all you could hear above the distant traffic was the lowing of mournful sheep, bred beyond their inner natures that once saw them proudly leaping chasms across the tinkling laughter of mountain streams, but now trudge mindlessly munching the dirty grass by thundering rush hour conduits, awaiting their inevitable demise, sacrificial lambs that have had even their natures removed for our endlessly empty bellies. but all that is a distant dream as i cross the stream of traffic past the hopeless 'allright mate's of the vagabond tribes that drift like windblown litter.. searching for the next topup to remove their pains, eternally hungover or withdrawal cramps tickling and pinching their gritty insides. the shop is called lifestyle, which always makes me laugh, it's llike a parody of advert land, where everything we do is aimed at earning ourselves a lifestyle, that we pawn our days away to earn the right to define ourselves through the consumables we buy as if they have the magic power to inbue us with that heady glow that clothes the airbrushed models on the billboard advertisements, we want that halo for ourselves, as a palliative to help us forget the real halo we lost when we forgot we were angels. i look at the children, they are the only ones that have anything left to teach us, they are the only ones who are not yet corrupted wholly by the tv screens lure, but even they are now sporting the advert tshirts that say they need to partake in the carnival, that even they need to pester their parents for the consumables that mock us with their empty satisfaction. the shop is like a trial, quickly judging who's eyes to catch and who's to avoid, some peopel are not worth tangling with, the staff are weary, they've seen it all, they may muster the ghost of a service smile if you are lucky but it's never real. milk and honey is cheap, but tastes of nothing, not like it ever saw a bee or cow, but the packaging proudly displays the rolling hills of a yesteryear rural dream england, where farmers chewed straws in smocks. so i buy the dream, but my mouth tastes like straw. but i love the worlld so much, it just stings like sand in your eyes if you look too closely.. and i miss the tickle of stardust in my belly.. it's running out of steam.. winding flat.. leaking it's life uselessly.. but the tv will fill our empty souls, take the pain away.. and our lives will pass us by without too much pain. we need love so much but we need to look with our own eyes to see it is knitted into every atom of all we are, even the piss stains on the walls glow with all the beauty of creation, just take off you filters, your glasses of culture and look right in front of your nose.. not tomorrow but this moment.. don't just see.. look!with lovemikex