A Modern Lunch

Jesus accepted all-  even the addict and the whore; 'yay verily', he even took them greater into his breast than the pious and the just, for in their delirium, renouncing all earthly things, they came closer to the Lord than any man had ever recourse to know.

A tribute to Burroughs:

I drink the extracted black liquid of the Java bean for breakfast on a crestfallen Monday afternoon: there is no reasoning behind this day and no desire pulls me in any direction but the urge to smoke and obliviate myself. The urge to toilet raises me from death-sleep, though I try to postpone from it as long as I can, short of pissing myself. I am on the drive to destruction- a burning car plummeting down a dead road at night, lit up only by stars and kept hot by its own exothermic reaction
"Hurrah for energy!"
"Watch, now, as I make myself disappear..."
Hear the sound of the great, white, wail as man bends towards his own end;
"Tharr she blows"- man makes mass squeals pumped full of ego-ridden amphetamines, "watch the showers approaching overhead," advice for those, to be taken, who insist on living ruthlessly.
I reel from another biscuit as visions of grandmothers come at me, apprehending with trays full of 'sweet-treats' you just can't eat. Sickness invades the human stomach and makes 'ass-souls' expand like colonialism. I hear the howl of a painted white plane overhead and wonder if it ever read the words of Ginsberg. How long have I felt like a "junky" now? My body's whole sequence of events indirectly affected by undigested chemicals within. Beauty is skin-deep; I dream of tattooed girls and shark attacks; Shaved heads like a crying singer- Nothin' compares 2 U- text speak like a baby, the way she does, will I go the way of all things?
Plunged down the eternal world of the mouth to be shit out safely on the other side. Fenrir, the wolf-mother finds me washed up drunk on the planes of Tartarus, another jumbled, fading, soul with a mouthful of spit and gristled flesh ripped by bear (trap) teeth from my belly as I prepare to bear all unbearable burdens and 'bare' all at once to be bent over and fucked by the next constitutional climax of my life-
"Paid your tax? Paid your bills? WHO ARE YOU?!"
A man with no name leaves no trace as he passes, wind that leaves an acrid, airy, smell that dissolves the hairs of the nose until another hair-brained scheme is concocted to trap the 'invisible man' who is so insensitive to light that he emits no sound as it pulls right through him, penetrated like a bullet tweased right out of the exit-wound by steadfast, surgical hands. "No need for a rhinoplasty; he knows which way to go"
"Twease me baby, shine a little light on me."

The Modern Werther

A tribute to Goethe

You are the very image
of perfection;
and all my heart and happiness
resounds within;
your very eminence
perfumes the air I breathe
and fills me with compassion.
My ideal is formed of you.
And what is sleep to one who takes
such pleasure from holding
the softness of your arm, or,
gently delivering a kiss?
But I am no longer comprised of the parts
that equal, in your eye,
the very reality
of my love.

Notes in Passing

Fingers digging in flaccid flesh
carries the stench of soap and sex;
enema clean,
thoughts of pondering unexplored skin,
crept in like dirt under the nail-
But baby, if I don't
how ever will I know
the breadth of your cave/hole/love...

Baby, I don't mean to be rude;
I just want to get into you-
feel like I'm falling through.


                                              ***

Afraid to call it what it is-
Coward- Took two years
to bring you here;
Spent so much
time.
Time is nothing.
Counting hours like counting cuts
Silence held like my body in your arms,
always looking out- looking away
watching the leaves fall
with x-ray eyes-
see through smiles to whitened teeth
and heavy hanging words
in the curdling atmosphere.
Wanting to be someone else,
far away; think in distance.
Trapped in a bell jar
between pit and pendulum
screaming silence:
Get me out of here.

Notes on the Outside World

It's taken a long time to build myself up to the stature of the figure thus presented, and every day, I lose a little more. These are notes, in passing, of a journey that brought me here...


Everything is unsure,
unsteady footing, ground
that trembles underneath
with turbulence.
Nothing stands to reason.
Nothing stands at all,
invested with time-
bitter delays of a prophecy
gave way unto decay
and entropy.

                                               ***

Broken hands make heavy work-
hands that bleed
shake with trepidation
and make frail structures
where cuts smart.

                                               ***

Cancer!
Rot gut!
Bring it on!
I have need of venoms,
and will waste away
as a beggar who is always hungry
but I will never be
too scared to live!

                                               ***

Old red brick
against a pale blue sky,
so serene,
feels like dreaming
as my heart sinks hollow
in my belly,
holding hands with Paradise,
why?
It feels good to be outside.

                                               ***

Empty, eternal, grey
like gelid windows
glazed over blue
in infinite space,
vastness stretching from time immemorial
open roads lead to Rome
where my beauty sleeps...

                                               ***

Freezing cold,
kisses hurt the worst,
cuts a little deeper
in winter. Love like sun
thaws cracked skin,
brittle as bleached bones
on snow.

                                               ***

Rumble of a
'smoker's' cough, stagnant
like a burrowed toad
digging in to me;
dying to get in to you

                                               ***

Love rhymes with apathy
it is nonplussed
c'est ne plus

                                               ***

Insides hurting badly;
body broken,
bruised, black and blue-
waiting for buses at sunrise-

On Work, Debt, and Feigning Sleep

What rank display of injustice is this; that four young graduates, new to the ways of the world as fledgling sparrows, pushed to take flight, should be treated with so much enmity for what they thought they'd done no wrong in, or else, for their ignorance in such maters, or their impotence alone, (which is hardly indefeasible in such a world of shifting states...) that for accruing- what is to them- a portentous debt on behalf of the city council, who should then be stirred to threats, and even more, add to such sum a little extra- for the cost of sending out a bailiff (as though a phone call would not suffice...)- so that salvation seems an ever fainter glimmer somewhere else, afar, ashore, and all the while we work hand to mouth, the richest men hide their money beyond the reach of the 'taxman', but elicit no response and elude the 'blind' Justice ever still.

I hear the songs of that place play out in my head when I sleep-
the repetitious myriad like a taunting that keeps,
as alike sirens; fade out and then leap
upon your conscious but only so brief,
but then it goes on so long and I still never sleep.
   I lay awake, feigning motionlessness, and time passes:
I breathe.
I turn from one side to the other,
as my ear turns numb, and I think
'how it seems I must be up in not so long!'
  I grow weary at that, my lids heavy to bear,
and though it darkens my vision,
I yet feel caught in a stare,
or better a snare! A snare to be sure-
for only a snare could keep one feeling so poor.
Yet despite this, there is better be done:
there is always, as yet, to tiredness succumb,
so I conjure at this, as I try to breathe slow-
my legs begin to feel cold, so I pull them up from below-
and I empty my mind-
or at least, I do try, but always get to thinking:
"If I do, then am I?"-
then the pursuit of dreams fills me and all anxious I lie,
hoping that something might just transpire
but I'm suddenly reminded- for no reason at all-
I still have no money and my overdraft's full...
   They tell me they'll take my possessions away,
but I only have little,
and what I do wouldn't pay;
it's mostly all broken, or falling apart,
but that doesn't mean that it would please my heart,
for all that is all I have to claim, and thus:
all I have to tie to my name,
and the man who owns the land
still wants his rent
but it's hardly as though all of this could be said,
and as it is, the only place to rest my head,
though it's certainly the nadir when it comes to my bed.
   And oh, this bed! Prithee, why so small?
That my toes breach the end
and my head hits the wall,
certainly, once it was said I were tall
but you wouldn't say as much to see me curled up in a ball.
Then my knees start to ache,
but I must move all day at work,
and work! That duty could hardly be shirked,
but to work at my best, I must first get some rest-
and that's the whole reason of this, don't forget,
and I wonder how much time has been spent,
as I turn,
ever more anxious I must be getting up again.
In the life of the sequestered, I am,
perhaps, at the top. I scratch my legs for a moment
but consider to stop:
anxious rashes are a bad habit better not indulged,-
this thought occurs for every time the act is expulsed.
I turn and I wonder if an hour has passed
and think, with affection, of the time just last,
when I had left, of a warm embrace from my dad;
kissing my mother on both of her cheeks;
indulging my nephews; entertained by their charms and caprice;
my beloved sisters and dining at a table seat.
And it is for such things that cause me to weep,
and the guilt that I feel for acting ignobly,
not least of all for being remotely haughty,
an injustice, if ever, it were to be true, I conclude,
as an hour awake softens towards two-
I consider to read, at least it's something to do,
something enriching, 'Yes, that's what I'll do.'
... But I don't. I exhale and wish I were simply asleep...
I thought I was, once, but the moment passed and I thought
maybe I hadn't slept at all.
I begin to think ,maybe I'd just forgotten it,
or maybe thought of something else,
and it strikes me as strange that something you just had
can as quickly become irretrievable.
Initially, I try to get a feel for what time it could be:
how many potential hours to sleep I have ahead of me.
I don't reach out to check, not because I'm afraid to know,
but because time is irrelevant.
I sleep for what seems like seconds, stretched out
across a span and randomly interspersed, as alike
breadcrumbs dropped into sand- cohesive, but not concatenate.
   I turn again, my finger hurts,
I am reminded then of work,and the cut I received
that made it surf with a wash of blood
in spurts that first occurred, when-
in what was only yesterday, I tried to put a glass away-
and so it is that flares up now
and evinces my countenance to scowl,
though such cuts, of course, are nothing new-
since my time at work, I've gained a few-
but just my luck that as one wound should mend,
another cause brings me pain again.

A Farewell to Winter

The winter months had chilled my bones and left me, somewhat, senseless; with their exit, I welcome the coming Spring.

The winter months find me cold.
It isn't just the hum-drum
of an ever present grey sky;
because even then, trees stand out
starkly against the bleak, grey, hue
in a beautiful contrariness.
It isn't just the temperature, which,
clutching at my toes, makes me
layer upon layer and retreat under my duvet.
It isn't even just the mildness, the indecisive
never one way or another all throughout its drizzle,
never kicking up a storm or blowing snow-
 a purgatory license sort of weather-
no.
The winter months find me cold
all because I am not loved. I have; receive, affections:
little things that make me smile and slightly
warm me up- a tentative touch on my hand;
a kiss from a friend full of feeling enough to burst...
They make me smile, certainly,
but it's never quite what I want.
I balk a little, under pressure; retreat inside a hollow
heart-shaped cave and try to purge myself of all animosity-
for like only attracts like-
and as the cold creeps in I realise just what it is I want:
this sturdy ground to set me up
and give me strength to carry on:
It is to fall in love, and know I'm
equally loved.

A Note in Passing

Much time has passed since last I was more faithful; in such a span I have committed myself more to certain things and less than others. As was my intention to put the following piece up at a time when it was more relevant, over the proceeding month, so will I now list it as another note, in passing.

It's hard, you know-
coming back to this room
once you've been
and gone
leaving me to only traces
of your passing. Leaving
me, otherwise, alone.
Leaving you is an affair
where words can say
too much;
my lingering touch on your hand
says more than any word:
"I do not want to let you go."
But, like air,
you slip through my fingers
and I look back-
you are gone.