5 Poems

The Bone Machine

And if life debases your soul
I’ve got to ask myself do I want to live on, or shoot through
And if I can feel the chemicals drip through
Shall I take the whip and disprove

And if sin remains legal without impunity
And fools send butchers to war
And art is classed as filth on T.V.
And culture is classed as a rich man’s whore

Then logic is deemed unstable
And compassion derided as obsolete
Forgiveness is seen as weakness
And a martyr a bleeding Jesus

Forget

Shedding skin, scales, teeth and nails
Burning clothes in sulphur vat‘s, and never looking back
When your past is like a knife that can cut and scratch
And your memories blow down the boulevard off the beaten track

You’ll say, I was made for something better
I was made for something pure
For something untouched and beautiful
As your friends walk out the door

So sally as you chase down the alley
and sing your sweet, sweet song
Think off me regular and often
and forget that I am gone…

Psycho Analysis

As I walked down the corridors and halls
I met a man, well a boy really
who talked of repressed feelings and taboo intentions
So one day I killed Oedipus
I didn’t agree with his politics
And I thought it was the ultimate irony
being that I wrote for psychology weekly
Really I should have tried to sell him a subscription!
And of course, I’d heard of Oedipus and Sigmund
but found their motivates base and crass
I dunno their was something Nazi in their outlook
and the faculty didn’t like that.

Art

So I send a poem, to your shit magazine
3am, 3am it’s highly acclaimed
Won awards, been in broadsheets
Caused a stir!

No, no, but it’s
not a poem about a shit-stabbing queen
a third-world cause or a literary masterpiece
“is it breaking the boundaries?”
“will it make us look DANGEROUS”

“I don’t know, but can I say it’s surreal?”

So Transgressive art
Transgressive to who?
To poor-writers and hanger’s-on
existentialists and faggots
Yes, yes your starting to get the hang of it

Maybe it’s good enough to publish.

Shift Pattern

And so I saw them work the factories,
and warehouses, and theatres of death
their luminous fingers broken, and bodies
bent and repressed
the shift pattern from Thursday to Sunday
the never-ending grime, the unfulfilled lives and promises
the spirit that couldn’t decline

Everyday a mini-suicide, a 1000 day war or march
A question without an answer, a fire without a match
And in here there’s no noble savages, or prophets, or great men
No philosophers or pioneers
just Jesus son and men
And I am one of many, not special or rich
just one that’s seen something better, that longs and pains to switch

But he saw me walk the floor, with my arrogance and delusion
Observing from his golden bars, my ignorance and illusion
“What make’s you think you’ll escape this place?”
‘What make’s you think you’re different?”
I’ve seen hundreds and many, that thought they had
the answers and plenty….
And with the entropy of my youth,
battered and receded
I walk this lonely floor
disused and unneeded
And from those golden bars, that man since long deceased
another took his place, and continued said disease