another me

this could be another me.
see the man down there with his suit and polished boots?
this could be another me.
all confidence and cock-a-hoop bravado.
feeling this world shift cold glass to chrome with all the emotion of a cactus. i still recall those tender days when the monkees fell about and television didn't reward the talentless.
and the hope and hearts of humankind lay in the hands of children with flowers in their hair and foolish dreams in their rolled up reefers.
this could be another me.
not traped within these cold confines that limits imagination and brings my days to a close, a life of chasing paper.
i could dream.
i still dream.
and in my dreams i dance with the ghosts of tomorrow who hold me close, in arms verdant fresh and strong, and spin the dance on polished floors down mirrored walls where silver cobwebs hang and trophies watch from lichen lintels the passing of my thoughts.
but who will hold me when the spotlight fades? when my childrens faces retreat from me?
the door will close.
the light will cease.
a failing of wings and cloudless mumbles of goodbye.
such a waste when summer trips into the fallen leaves.
crumbling brickface.
ivy marks the windowsill where lovers once would climb.
and in the garden there is a pond and in the pond a statue stands but the fountain has gone dry.
i'm rambling now
but let me ramble for what harm can it do?
see the man down there?
a shriveled husk of once-a-go whose children used him like a slide, a climbing frame for them to bridge.
arms will grow to jelly and the spine will twist as wire but the darkness doesn't scare me just the missing of them all.
this could be another me.
maybe i could make a deal with god?
cheat the fates and bone collectors as i thumb my nose and skip away with all memories and loved ones still with me.
this could be another me.
the man who like all men fears the unkown.
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all words and art are copyright © of cocaine jesus.

pillows

i collect their dead hairs and push them into pillows that i sew and manufacture and then sell.
lace and filigree. satin and velvets.
a selection of cushions and pillows for my customers to lay their heads and elbows and sore spines against.
a feeble industry.
cottage.
in all the years that i have been selling my artifacts not once has a glimer of suspicion been cast my way.
it is only a matter of time i know but the fun is in the game isn't it?
one day.
someday.
but not yet.

one

funny how the ancestors of immigrants can so easily forget their history and turn against the immigrant with bile and rancour as if they were to blame. as if all their true history can be consigned to some dim and dark cupboard where no one ever looks any more. where the truth can be shackled and hidden away the better to twist the myth. as if being a member of the human race is not enough you still have to join and subscribe to their tribe. their clan. their faith.
what ever happened to one god. one faith. one human race?

white azalea

i follow full moon
over bridge and stone
water wets my brow.
silver cast and callow,
palms held aloft
like tree branches.
shadows fall around me
dappled dark and cold.
a breath to harrow me,
a breath to slow me.
river flows like life.
an inexorable ticking
of water over pebbles.
recall the day in mirrored stream.
moments flee free fall.
the curve of her waist,
a distant memory.
hands held knuckle white
in desperation.
the hours sped quicksilver slick.
petals form a crescent moon
spilt on green lawns,
an azalea weeps white tears.

love is...

love is just an empty word
found scrawled on old exercise books
honey tinged and glossy lipped
flacid and lame.
moths gather by guttering flames
now burnt so low.

DEFECATING DARIUS

When Darius Slightlump defecates he defecates a strange shape. This strange shape takes the form of a tiny teddy bear with a smiling face. Having completed his defecation and arising from the toilet seat the smiling teddy bear poo then follows on behind Darius. Wherever he goes it goes too and always in his wake. Up hill and down dale the smiling teddy bear poo follows. Into shopping halls and even the library.
The only problem is when it rains.
Perhaps Darius should buy a cocktail umbrella stick and give it to the smiling teddy bear poo?

"this could be the last time"

it was the dusty golden light of nineteen sixty five.
life was glorious and hospital traumas lay somewhere gone and somewhere to come.
the kinks were playing.
"the taxmans taken all my dough..."
the sun visited me with sharp pine needles that splintered my day and drew circles in the sky.
it was the best of times.
it was the start of times.
pre-puberty.
pre-angst.
pre-teenage rebellion.
it was upminster, dury falls, and my first year at senior school. i was scared and haunted, a little daunted by the prospect of this place. the school my parents attended. their expectations and my natural reserve and shyness. my feeling of being an alien in a mirror ball world.
the lessons meant nothing to me.
dull words spewed out as a meaningless diatribe. chalk symbols written in hebrew, arabic, greek.
in fuck knows what.
my natural inclination was to gaze out the window or scribble words that rhymed or draw superheroes in my exercise book. the one marked geography with a subtitle of boring.
the playground was the place where you hunched your shoulders and glared. you looked tough to frighten away those you were frightened of but i was only first year now and no longer a member of the hierarchical senior pack. a pleb. an oik. a stain on someone’s gym shoe.
the fit hit as fits did mixed with my usual reluctance to ask any help of anyone and with a sudden violent impact that threw my pre-teenage world into an ugly turmoil. a parody of a dance.
the word spread.
the spotlight shone.
here was a kid, a new boy, dew drop, spastic motion, spasmo, soft little scrote ready for the taking. ready for the bully boy brigade to heavy muscle in and have some fun with.
six onto one was no fair odds. especially not for the tender innocent who still believed in jesus and love. who still thought people cared for people.
the circle was formed and the dummy was shoved. a spinning tub of tears held in. an angry spinning, bruised and hurt child whose anger grew and grew. and the more they spun the more the fear died.
from scarlet to acrid black.
the fear died.
the fear died only to be replaced with something far uglier and far more sinister and twisted than anything the thick ticks who need to impress with their might could ever dream of.
rage.
a rage that burnt all the innocence away.
brimstone black and bubbling.
it inflamed and incensed me.
later, i took my protractor and snapped it in half and armed with only this revisited three of the cast.
i was never bullied again.
the hurt remains and always will.
they made me act like someone i wasn't and it is this that remains with me.
this that hurts more than a broken jaw.
not their act of terror but my reaction to it. the way it changed me forever.
the way it reshaped me from being someone untouched by violence or thoughts of violence into someone able to react with the self same ugly fist.
the same senseless thuggery.
the way it has coloured my views on racism and sexism and homophobia and every form of bigotry is a positive but the way it formed me into something as equally unpleasant as them, equally able to reduce my own humanity to random acts of violence is a negative.
history repeats but nothing gets learnt.
it just machine feeds and we all get pumped out the same rusty mechanism.
sympathy?
fuck off.
tears?
wasted.
but it is here, in our starts, our childhoods, our infancies, our schooldays that the changes need to be made. fundamental and long lasting changes for mankind that probably only woman kind can bring.
but now, with the passing of time and having witnessed my own rage grow rabid I have come to the conclusion that this was all me feeling sorry for myself. rage doesn't help, it just make things worse. the change needed was in me and not the curled fist.