The dead are like those alive: Paranoid, mad, and clicking with nobody. Newborn souls buzzing around, trapped in a honey money modern mayhem medieval ancient digital world hive.
There’s no escape. Tracker dogs sniffing them out and tracking them down. Ropes or chains or rat face torture cages or red tape and surveillance squads unearthing corpses still breathing underground.
How is it in the afterlife? Can you still keep in touch? Back and beyond, betrayals and ambitions as cutting as a quality steel knife? Does it matter that much?
Not knowing where to start while looking forward to the end, this week has been one long headache and Friday topped it with a computerised migraine. Nothing works and I broke it anyway cos I lost my temper with cables and connections that tied me up in knots round the bend. Would take my guitar to the mountains but I can’t play, and I can’t climb but worldly fakes can feign. What’s your poison? Same again?
We beg on the street. We roam the roads as puppet mongrels on a string. We are roughened up. We are weak as can be. We put you at risk and we are ready to risk anything.
There’s a longing in every astronaut-dog’s face. A survival lottery in every litter’s birth. As whistles go whistling off to space bones come hurtling back down to Earth.
Would we run after them and bring them back? Might we pick at the leftovers with the pack? Would we wag our tail at any kind of kindness or bark ’n’ snap out of fear of being defenceless?
We follow our noses. We track down what we’re after. We stray. We sleep. We dream of having a master.
AT LEAST FOREVER MINIMUM The psychedelic pseudonyms written on your birth certificate are illegible on soggy paper and going for a song at your old school fete.
You’re sweating in a heatwave. Wrapping up to keep away the cold. You’re not bowled over by anything anymore. Wear dark sunglasses to be cool on streets of gold.
ON MY BALCONY Sitting on my balcony. it’s eleven o’clock whenever that may be looking down on chess piece people check mate happy far away below wherever that squared street is I see.
Meanwhile I’m booking whatever flights of fantasy may boarding card me to greener grass destiny as my cat is playing with the dangling string bookmark in whichever ‘notes for poetry’ notebook I happen to have tattooed on my knee.
Both of us restlessly resting from overnight infamous anonymity.
A SEAGULL strode across my small-hours square. Noone there. Acted like it owned it – strode in defiance. Then flew away when it heard a human break the nocturne silence.
VICIOUS CIRCLE SERIAL SERIES Those animals kill like humane humans order a coffee at a bar. Those animals pretend to be humans still and get a prison cell with a star.
If their names don’t come up as a lead they’re happy. They don’t speak to keep victims dead and buried. They end up wanting to get caught to boast of their crimes without setting anyone free.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Hit those machines cos they’re mean and don’t work on purpose with their hocus pokus.
Computer driving you nuts for two hours? Punch it! CD player stuck on track 3? Shake it! WiFi not working yet again? Scream at it! Internet radio getting on your tits? Throw it!
Show them who’s boss or they’ll have yer! Time to start giving a toss cos they’re taking over.
FAN CLUB I’m your biggest fan. I follow you everywhere. I’ve got your autograph but it doesn’t stop there.
I got your number and on the back of my shirt. When things go bad I feel your hurt.
SORRY BABY PIGEON You were helpless and asked for help. What to do? Did nothing. Twelve hours later too late.
Had a chance but in the wrong hands. Such a sad end. Ending so sad.
Poor little baby pigeon Abandoned and lost. Walked towards me and that was me being useless.
MR AND MRS MONEY He counts on her. She counts on him. Obsessing with what they’re worth Investing on each other’s whim.
They share what’s in stock. Their market moods swing. Open the door when opportunity knocks and close it when their heads fluctuate and spin.
Have child benefit for their childhood memories. Have a mortgage for where they live. Have mortal assets which they freeze and a pension plan in place for every day they cross fingers with.
Mr and Mrs Money say money’s not important ‘cos they have it. They flip a coin for whether love is more important than property.
PARADISE OF DEVILS Live life for the moment under a volcano as hearts in ashes over-the-top blow like passionate loves that went.
I count on your visits. Help me get through my time. Free as a jailbird that sits preening feathers that off plume don’t rhyme.
Pure joy out of everything to lose. Singing in a city full of blues. Celebrate one of Dante’s circles with a passport to a paradise of devils.
OUT OF IT Someone dies and you know them as you stick your head under the sand cos you don’t want to know. Do your CSE maths on how long you’ve got to go if their life was yours in Death Row.
Then there’s those who die before you fresh as a daisy and with a wreath pressure. Some maths don’t add up like 2 and 2 and tragic it is for sure.
I always hated maths lessons. Never got Mr Colman and what he meant by ‘O’ level glory. Survivors get on their knees to read obituaries and bless ‘em. Glad I’m no part of it and out of it, end of story.
MYSTERY DEATH Lots of clues but nothing to build a case on. Witnesses and testimonials but it was a mystery death as mysterious as any death any book had been written on.
Take a deep breath after that last sentence.
Death’s a mystery as mysterious as anything could be. Birth is easy. It’s as predictable as any rarity.
IN A PERFECT WORLD Wars don’t exist. You do your health good by getting pissed. Nothing once living is ever on the menu. The many stick it to the few.
It turns in everyone’s favour and it turns out we all get what we deserve. I’ve got too much money to spend and you score the golden goal in extra time in the end.
When influenced by your inspirers be careful you don’t get carried away. Write your poems, paint your paintings, outlie your liars but chances are, however much they’re somebody ,a nobody you’ll stay.
Listen to a bass line. Remember a line you were told when you had no way of knowing what it meant. Say everything’s fine Give up saying the truth for lent.
I’m sorry I put you down, but I can’t help but fight back. In another life, on my death bed, I’d reach the unreachable. In this one, I’ll get the sack. Isn’t it ironic that I could avoid my mistakes, unimpeachable?
The old preach to those who don’t give a shit as the young throw them out of their punk pulpit. Pop is a dream dreaming of pop and what you can do and what the others could not.
Some old stay young and some young who never were get unceremoniously thrown. Sing the songs you love and ditch the ones you don’t unsung. Pop dreamers decorate their own.
I look around at powers that be. Feel powerless unplugged with no volts energy. Arrogantly know I’m right and dream pop every night.
Chances go begging for fate as street photographers get the shot too late. Soup kitchen protesters making an almighty din end up under spin doctors’ knives sticking their fork tongues in.
Government policy forces pensioners onto the streets to march hardly able to make it across the road with their gripes and groans in a shopping bag. Vinyl records blaring out from old peoples’ homes. Hospital porters spinning around on their bums. As, lurking behind, tape-measuring funeral directors lag.
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 