Young

When I was young and green- swollen with sap
A bursting boy, primed to dance among the girls
My nerves conspired to queer me in their eyes
My fumbling frowned their hearts and spurred their mocking

Oh suffering, oh tragedy like death
Their brilliant breasts were hidden from my eyes
Their lips denied me by this knot of fate
My heart burned like a violent Vindaloo

And so I followed like a puppy dog
Behind she who had captured all my soul
Nice guy behaviour- just trying to be a friend
Except when I’d had too much alcohol

Necropolis

Mouldy loam envelopes bones
Alone and cold like a dead frog
Soaked in ghosts and maudlin memory
Rot and worms and festering bone dreams

Under drooping trees, topped with moist graceful grass
In a hoary necropolis with legions of dead
A skeleton waits for resurrection
Humble bones longing for new flesh

No stone marks the place of the bones
Too poor to afford a tombstone or plaque
Unremarkable life, unremarkable death
Mediocre till his last breath

The soil is weighing heavy and pervasive
Wood of the coffin rots into earth
The bones all alone while sun spears sky
Just like the other bones waiting to die

The Mask and Myth

The mask and myth of the man contain magic
As the old man fades and consciousness burns
The mask and myth of the man contain magic
No ghost within- no homunculus pulling levers

The mask is impervious to sanity and shame
Embraces drunken hours and stolen kisses
With wild red-lipped wanton women in seedy bars and clubs
The mark of the man is the power of myth

The myth of the man leaves the old man lost inside
Alone and hollow like a broken bulb
The old man rots, the old man dies
While myth and mask grow stronger outside

The mask and myth of the man contain magic
The myth is debauchery, decadence and power
Wine and wild women and punk rock enthusiasm
The mask and myth of the man contain madness

So long worn the mask cannot be moved
The mask and myth of the man contain madness
The man now the mask has nothing inside
Personality blended with extravagant creation
The myth and the man have nothing to hide

Primary School

Burrendah Primary School in the outer suburb of Willetton in Perth
New plants- short stubby bushes and asbestos clad buildings still in primary colours
Kids in maroon uniforms- swarms of little boys and girls

The little blonde boy stands alone in the withering wind in the undercover area
The Fremantle doctor has come in again
Pole straight he stares into the cold steel pylon, hiding behind it from the other children
Willing the school day to end

Oh infinite aching solitude
Oh twisted random mind
Churning full of white noise
No other children talk to him
Except the bully who pushes him over so he scrapes his knee on the bitumen

When he gets home he is happy
Immersed in the rich private world of his toys
His parents never know how he suffers
Like John of the Cross in a box

Jack Mack loves his smack

Jack Mack loves his smack
Dream juice is his poison
Sinks into his wasted splendour
Like a warm inviting bath of angels’ tears
Seven times a day
Needle and spoon are his intimate friends
He’s fucked up every vein in his arms
And every one in his legs
He’d even fucked up the one in his cock
So he shoots up in the jugular vein in his neck
His blood is corrupted by Hepatitis C and his liver slowly rots
And every day is catalyzed by the alchemy of need
To take a break from hanging out, he sometimes smokes some weed
And benzos, codeine cough mixture, anything just to take the edge off pain
Of hanging out for opiates- nothing else matters
His habit is huge- a monk in the order of our Lady Perpetual Decadence
Track marks crucify him on every single vein
He’ll shoot up anything called dope then he’ll shoot again
His whole personality reduced to machinery to score
So he’ll keep on shooting skag, always wanting more.

Suck it and see

A problem unresolved has razor claws
Pour Wild Turkey on it and set it on fire
Rivers of paranoia flow through my skull
The rush, the rush of insanity in my veins
Paralysed by all-consuming anxiety and confusion
Transfixed in a spider-web of conundrums
Stretched-out over an ants’ nest of irritation
Bite, bite inflammation infestation prickles
Red spotted skin rash
Flaws and faults overwhelming
Engulfed by dystopic day dreams of a world gone feral
Mothers eating babies
Father’s raping daughters
Madness and disorder seeping into nature
Birth defects and mutations horrifying to behold
Foetus with two heads
Foetus with no legs
Foetus with one eye
Foetus with no brain
Foetus with six cocks
Foetus with two snatches
Wake up, wake up
Not real, can’t be real
Awaken in a bath of blood

Crack bone upon your mobile phone

Crack bone upon your mobile phone
Come out of sky-scraping Satanic towers of Moloch and Mammon
Do a silly, sunlit dance like an insane drunken hobo all over the moribund urban streets
Moon the captains of industry, reptile lawyer-monsters and asshole accountants
Live your life by dream language and weird associations
Paint the sky psychedelic rainbow colours of love
In your life’s roller disco
Send messages of peace and hope down the new song-lines of the suburbs
And bless each moment with love

Do we all need to be lost strangers in poison empty rooms?
Can we reach out and love our neighbours
Even the guy who stole mobile phone
Even those who beat me, ridiculed me and shaved my head
It’s complicated
Making connections,
Forming a friendship network for socially awkward people and weirdo poets
Does everything have to be so desperate and lonely?
Tear off the shroud of suffering and rise to new psychic energy.
So a new day of compassion and empathy may begin

Solitary Man

Solitary Man
Dead inside
Aching all over
Fading away for want of a good woman
When will you come, insatiable one?
Woman with eyes of fire and sensuous curves
Woman of wisdom with gorgeous hips and pouting lips
Woman with ripe breasts and marvellous hips
Woman from my deep unconscious, loving and healing with abandon
Woman- a heavenly angel who burns down my personal hell

Solitary man
Bent and rendered kinky by loneliness
In a room with precious cuddly guinea pigs
Unhygienic trash and garbage all over the place
Miscellaneous crap on the floor
Dirty coffee cups and plates
Full ashtrays and empty energy drink cans
Underpants drying on top of the TV

Solitary Man
Trying not to listen to the song of solitude in his heart
Blocking it all out with beers, bongs and fags
Anxious and depressed beyond rational thought
Skirting psychosis in paranoia
Getting weirder and weirder inside his mental psych ward
Longing for love in mastarbatory moonlight
Pacing the room with his balls blue as the sky
Scratching and scraping the bones of reality

Solitary Man
Imploding

Heaven

Rapacious corrupting cancer of the throat
Metastasized and devouring the poor bloke in at least ten different body parts
He shrinks into a corpse-like shell on an old chair- waiting for death
At three in the afternoon he arises from his dead-weight slumber and says
‘It’s time’
When he stops breathing, the whole room is suffused with light
Pale blue refracted through infinite white light purer than sunlight
Soaring angel music constructs crystalline castles of cold beauty
Music beautiful beyond words
His soul leaves his body, enters the arms of cerrubim
And begins ascension to Jesus
As angels fall and rise down a heavenly staircase singing Hallujah
He says good-bye to this world of tears and suffering

Paedophile

Predator, predator
Reptile fuck-brain
Stick out your forked tongue
Then pull it in again
With your cold reptile eyes you watch little girls
And offer them lollies in toy departments.
You take pictures up their skirts
While their mothers wait for them in the next aisle
And gibber and gape as their innocence decomposes in your sickness
You rape their minds and their bodies like a macho football team
And leave PTSD and terrible dreams
Paedophile, paedophile
With your sick grin and vile Satan-smile
Dead behind your eyes,
Your soul corrupted like a rotten apple.
What made you this monster?
Who fucked your ass?
To make you a viper, a shark, a cobra
Hundreds of little girls
All fed to your lust and spat out broken
Into unbearable lives
I hope they haunt you forever