Merry October…….

I work in a shop. This darn music lark is sadly a long way away from being able to feed and shelter me just now, so I live each day in a warm and fuzzy retail hell. Last week we were informed of our Christmas opening hours, and those of the other shops around the high street. It was some pretty bleak information all round.

I’m afraid I don’t believe in Santa Claus, or immaculately conceived babies born in barns. But I very much enjoy Xmas day. Outwith the gifts, food and merriment it is just nice to have a day when everything stops, when the over-powering static of everyday life quietens down a little. The roads are empty, the shops are closed. I’m pretty sure it used to last more than one day though, I remember Boxing day was once a fairly non-existent day as well, and a few days around new year. And away from the festive season, I’m pretty sure I recall a time when most things were closed, or at least open fleetingly on Sundays. Granted, a lot of this is was due to peoples mad religious beliefs, but it is surely good to have a little time away. It was only a few years ago that I remember the shops opening at about 12 o’clock on Boxing day, then closing again at 5. Now it seems that everywhere is open at about 8am to launch their sales. One shop started it. Made some serious money, so everyone else wanted to get a bit of the action. Now its commonplace. But where will it end? Some bright spark decides to open his chain of over-priced shite-shops for a few hours on Christmas day, makes a killing, then a few years later it’s just another 9-5 day for everyone. A lot of cities have late night shopping once a week, so the school kids, students and office workers can pop in for a few evening purchases. I’m sure they make a fair bit of money. Perhaps some places will then stay open late for two or three nights a week, fuck it, why not all seven?

This will undoubtedly sound like the sentimental waffling of a confused young man. But I just get the fear that in a time not far from now we will be living in a world of twenty four hour super-malls, open three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Where nothing ever stops, or slows down, people will become zombies, deprived of time to feel human. Who knows, maybe global warming will step up a gear and the seasons will blur into one, then we will live in one long continuous day, decaying pink robots, never quiet sure what or where we are. That new Westfield mall in London scares me. Opened up in a prime are so that the only way to get to the 2012 Olympics is through a monster retail world. I cut out a picture from the newspaper the day after it opened. It was a picture of the thousands of people that crammed into the mall on the day it opened. Every single person looking unimaginably miserable. Weighed down with bright shopping bags.

I think it will soon be time to go feral. Form a society in the trees, living off of wild berries and insects, hunting obese children and shitting in a hole. Or perhaps not. Just a little more time to feel alive and experience humanity would be nice.

xx

Glue Up My Tear Ducts

We are on the road to ruin. We are going to drown in our own tears. Quivering wrecks perched on the end of our sofas, afraid to move, unsure of what a real emotion feels like, but knowing that we are so very emotional.

Advertisers, TV producers, politicians, anyone out for a quick buck, the holy grain has been found, throw away your original ideas, emotional torture is all you need. Every advert is like a small movie trailer, with some sob story at its centre. LOOK AT HOW OUR WHITE SHINEY PRODUCT HAS DEEP RELEVANCE TO YOUR LIFE!!!! DOESN’T IT MAKE YOU FEEL SAFE, AND WARM, AND BRING BACK MEMORIES OF A HAPPIER TIME. I marvel at the advert for Google with the father putting down a timeline of his daughters life in emails and documents, all set to warm comforting music. Few things in the history of earth are as offensive as that advert. Every TV show now seems to have an emotional slant as well. There is always a back-story, something that the audience can relate to. Something to have them reaching for the tissues. Some mildly attractive seventeen year old future prostitute sitting in an Ikea chair telling her hard luck story, the whole thing sound tracked by Adele.

Best-selling books about abused children. Films about the doomed romance of two plastic faced morons. The Pride of Britain Awards. EVERYTHING SOUNDTRACKED BY ADELE! There is no place to turn without some sort of canned emotion being unleashed on us. And we are lapping it up. Until the day when one tear too many is cried and we all snap. We will dehydrate. Millions will die. The survivors will be weepy vegetables, unable to leave their shit stained beds in fear of hardship and disappointment.

We shall start a breakaway sect. Go feral, like in all good post-apocalyptic films, live in the caves, away from TV screens and billboards, in small groups, fuelled by actual human feelings, experiencing beauty and sadness first hand. Then one day it will all be over, we will be the last ones left, having to start again from scratch. I shall emerge into the light with my eyes glued shut, waving a malnourished fist in the air, wearing the skin of Adele as a cloak.

MELO-D.

LAVENDER HANDS
The smell of cinnamon hung heavy in the air,
as the candle on the desk flickered in the breeze
from the badly fitter window.
His lavender hands have intentions
Stay close to keep warm.
Outside the people are marching in the snow
Flaming torches for the capital city
Heavy shoulders hung low
Swollen hands fill empty pockets.
Three stories up the buzz of the street camera drowns out our words
I’ve got so much to say but I hate talking loud
Outside the spiral winds down
We’re running out of time
But tonight darling
You’re mine.

MY ALABAMA
Is this the happiness you’ve always talked about?
I’m never happy when my guard is down.
I’m a detective now, I’m always looking back
I’m green with envy now, this heart attacks
Woo Haa!
Fingers and tongues and thighs, twist in the heavy light
I’m going to take his eyes, because you’re mine
You’re Alabama and Ill be your Clarence,
I’m going to kill everyone that’s come before
Woo Haa!
Baby put your hands around my throat
And tell me that you’ll never let me go

STATUES
Famed for your, restraint in times
Of great desire, when fear has no place
Self control has left you cold
Just relight the fire and blaze like the sun
I am nailed to the floor
Fear of desire keeping me here
Can I put my hand in yours
I wont look at you if you don’t want.
Under your spell, always
Day dreams take me over
Day dreams, take me, I could have been something
If I could wake
Day dreams take me, I could have been something
If I could wake
Feeling like a smoking gun that no body had fired
Sure but no quite sure enough to say that I’m alive
Ill be king on other worlds, before I’ve conquered mine
Just sit beside me darling, there will be no sleep tonight
Day dreams take me, I could have been something
If I could wake
Day dreams take me, I could have been something
If I could wake

ST.PETERSBURG
Slow this down, frame by frame
Show me what’s wrong with it
Show me pain, show me there’s a victim
Chocked on guilt, I can see
Another teen tragedy, it ties me down
Binds my hands together
Every head turns on masse
Screaming out “scandalous”
She’s so young, he’s so very awkward
You want this
You’ve got it
We’ll take off with the foreign dreams
St Petersburg is calling me
We’ll live like fugitives and martyrs
I’ll consult with the greats
Spit or swallow my mistakes
Everyone has to learn the hard way
Now as we take our last breath
There’s no burden, no regret
We can say, we are free to die now
You want this
You’ve got it.

BROKEN CROWN
There’s a tidal wave moving through my blood, it shakes me to the ground then picks me up
Born the single heir to a fathers curse, going to kill him or he’ll me first
Heavy black steel weighs my jacket down, warming my side with its smoking guilt
I could play the part of the fugitive, taking five shots, I’ll save one for me
Wont you ride with me, to a safer place
I just want to start again
Suddenly I’m free, former destinies
Never catching up with me
Turn the lights off turn the music down, death is at the door and he’s come for us
Knocking four times with his skinny fist, come to take back what’s rightly his
Trying to decide if my future’s worth, starting a war with the underworld
If you tell me that you’ve hade enough, I’ll take my last shot, give myself up
Wont you ride with me, to a safer place
I just want to start again
Suddenly I’m free, former destinies
Never catching up with me
Devils come, I’ll be waiting
I’ve been damned from the start.

BULLETS IN THE WALL
What’s left to die for, love is all we have
I want a cause that is keeping me alive
What’s left of freedom, show me the fight
Put me to the wall and I’ll show you what I’m thinking of
Put me to the wall and just take your aim
Keep your blindfold I want you to see the making of
Every nightmare as you take your aim
Come all you faithful, come all you damned
Plastic messiahs breathing down my neck
Come all you faithful, come all you damned
Lets get together and start again.
Put me to the wall and I’ll show you what I’m thinking of
Put me to the wall and just take your aim
Keep your blindfold I want you to see the making of
Every nightmare as you take your aim


WHITE RABBITS
I’m giving up my life to someone else’s dreams
I’ll take you by the hand, to places I don’t know
This guilt in ecstasy, it doesn’t sit with me
I’m serious too much, I look but do not touch
How can the cause of this still be the medicine
I’ve got blood on my teeth, I spit but keep the taste
I push my chest out, I am a man now
I push my chest I figure I am the last survivor
These nights are killing me, forgetting how to sleep
Drink for the sake of it, drink to feel whole again
And when my doorbell rings, I know its fate calling
And what he’s offering I know I wont resist
I’m screaming innocence, I’m screaming it’s your fault
I’m screaming leave me here so I can fade away
I push my chest out, I am a man now
I push my chest I figure I am the last survivor
Fill our glasses with temptation top me up then let me go…


PULSE
I won’t be your enemy until you say you’re mine
I wont treat you like a dog unless that’s what you like
I’m always here
I’ll be around
Every look you fire at me is saying back away
Just get your hand off of my thigh and maybe I’ll obey
I’m always here
On the ground
Stop and breath
Stop and breath
Saying things that I don’t mean to try and get a spark
What’s the use in showing up if you don’t leave your mark
I’m always here
I’ll be around
The warm pulse of regret is creeping underneath my skin
Keeping out the cold but keeping the frustration in
I’m always here
On the ground
Stop and breath
Stop and breath

VAMPIRES
Don’t leave my side, until the sun is gone
We can spend our lives, chasing dawn
In this warm twilight I’ll be king
You can be my queen, we will reign
As I run my hand down your back
You just smile at me, there’s no words
I’m facing up to the fact that this cant go on
When day comes
I’ll walk back home, this bridge my own
The peaceful waves whisper my name
I’m no Werther, I’m weak you see
I’m just one more romantic waste
I want you more than you could know
I need you more than could know
(your twisting the knife in some more)
I will wait here, existing like a car crash with no victims
Tragic but no worth your concern
And I will wait for temptation  to pick me up put me down
And set my soul on fire
On fire
On fire
On fire……..

ONCE A KING
I was once a king, but now I cannot see
The million little things that flash in front of me
Where are the heroes I used to know
My mind is bending, as my body breaks
I don’t want to fear another little waste
The sun must rise, just to set
Write down everything that goes through my head
So I don’t forget how sensation felt
Where are the heroes I used to know
My mind is bending as my body breaks
I don’t want to fear another little waste
The sun must rise, just to set
Shot out of focus, lost in the noise
The street is a forest drowning in light
The dirt on my fingers show where I’ve been
But where I am going is unknown to me
This map of bruises is no bodies guide
All that I wanted, I’m going to find

THE WINDOW
Dawn never comes, we can sleep forever
With my arm draped round your shoulder
Ill never move, I wont breath
I’d tear my eyes out just to save this moment
Oh my love, the stars stay out for us, under the window
Oh my love, we’ll never be alone, under the window
I’m torturing myself with ideas
as you smile but keep your eyes closed
We built these walls to keep the world out
but the world keeps getting closer
Oh my love, the stars stay out for us, under the window
Oh my love, we’ll never be alone, under the window

Murder on the 96A. Part 3.

Three separate voices, each having their own conversation, each of a similar volume, but at three varying tones. Two females, one slightly higher in pitch than that other, and one young adult male. All sitting behind me. I am reminded of the telephone switch board operators that you see in old movies, where a whole bunch of people would be sitting in a room together, speaking loudly but not to each other. I sometimes fear that my ability to describe things has been ruined by cinema, it is very easy to refer straight back to a scene from a film to get your point across, something which has increased with the development of CGI and computer wizardry. The further that technology develops the less we need to use our imaginations, as well as our natural human strength and problem solving skills. Perhaps we are a few generations away from being fleshy blobs that live for 200 years, convenience getting to a point where we no longer need muscle or brain. What evolution built up, technology will break down. Hell, perhaps humanity is in a constant loop where we evolve up to a point of saturation, master technology then begin to decline, ready to start again. Maybe not.

I digress. Three voices, from behind me. They are the only ones I can hear on the bus, which make them stand out. All the seats are full, but being home time for most 9 to 5’ers no one is really saying much, eyes to the floor, the familiar whiff of defeat in the air. I try to ignore them, and rest my head against the window. After a while the gentle rocking of the bus, coupled with the steady blast of the heater against my leg make me drift towards sleep. I find it hard to properly fall asleep on busses and trains, no matter how tired I am. So I drift around a sort of semi-conscious twilight, warm and numb. Suddenly my three voices loose there singularity and become one sound, a sort of rhythmic beat, like Morse code tapped out under water. They are in my head, sitting right in the centre of my mind, not coming in through my ears, put pulsing from within, I can easily forget all of the other things around me, the cool window against my head, the fact that the warm heater is slowly burning my leg and my forward motion. Sometimes it feels easier to concentrate in such a state. Perhaps it is in a similar vain to meditation, all the static of everyday life lifts like a clearing fog and one true thought remains. In this instance it is a sound more than a thought, but similar rules apply. I am reminded of The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley, a book I enjoyed, but only in parts. He wrote of the effects of drugs on our perception of the world, how perhaps it is only when we rid ourselves of all the unnecessary noise that we can truly see what is really there. It has been a while since I read it, but I’m sure he also mentioned the fasting and sleep depravation in certain cultures and religions, where people would have “visions” after giving up on natural urges of the body. Do we ignore so many obvious and glorious things while we fire on through our everyday lives? Do these religious visions and the drug induced beauty of usually mundane things point to a world sitting on the edge of our usual perception, things that we should try hard to involve ourselves in? Or is this just the mind playing tricks on us, and just drug induced stupidity? I can’t really decide.

Ten minutes into my journey one of the voices stops. Then one of the others, until eventually all three have ceased. I have shaken back into reality, and force myself to stay awake, not through any war on reality, but merely to stop myself from dribbling on my black jacket. The silence on this busy bus feels almost unnatural. As we approach my stop I run through the usual checks, wallet, phone, keys etc, I have everything I got on the bus with, so I shuffle to the end of my seat, press the buzzer and stand up. The people sitting around me all face forwards. Motionless. As I step into the aisle I notice an iPhone laying on the floor to my left, so I look back a little to see where it had come from, there is blood on the floor. Three bodies lay sprawled up the walkway of the bus. Each with their throats cut. The people in the seats sit still, faces as unimpressed as they were when they got on, no one is shocked by the sight, no one looks guilty or appalled. I try to catch their eyes but they stay looking down at their feet. I get off the bus, thanking the driver as I pass him. 

3

The human memory is violent tool.
It takes just one spark of feeling to set a chain in motion,
that almost knocks you off your feet.
Guilt is a strong one, especially when it feels, on the surface,
to be completely unfounded.

I feel like I did then, so I taste what I tasted then,
my skin contracts like it did then,
The weight that pulled down from behind my lungs
now pulls in the same way.
The smell, the colour of the air, and the unflinching sense of oncoming doom,
all as vivid as they were then, and the time after that,
and will be again.
The same bubble rests in the bottom of my stomach,
keeping me from sitting at ease.

Soft flesh, pink air and a dry mouth.
Strained eyes and an unexplained smell of burning.
Every step feels like another on the slow trot to the gallows
and I really can’t explain why,
this is two thousand and eleven
and I am pretty much the model citizen.
Yet I still sentence myself to death.

Again and again,
coming back to a feeling I cant shake,
stuck on a loop
Destined to re-live every feeling I know,
always ending in the guilt.
Perhaps this is purgatory.

Murder on the 96A. Part 2.

Two ladies over my right shoulder, fattened hens, roosting in the glare of the early morning spring sunshine. One melts into the other, a beige, two-headed mass of trouser suit and blouse.

They laugh in a slow and considered way at the end of every sentence, giving ample opportunity to switch meaning at any given moment. One talks of Madrid, she has done Madrid before. She doesn’t see why she should do Madrid again. Her friend laughs. Slowly. They speak in middle English accents, homely and moral. They talk of travel for around ten minutes. The cities they have visited, how their friends envy the places they have been. But then curse Debenhams for being too expensive to shop in. What are these creatures? The poor holidaying class? Lounging around in the major cities of the world in a Primark two-piece. Further evidence comes when they talk of husbands. He just has a social membership for the golf course. Doesn’t get to play any golf on the course, but gets to attend all the “do’s”. They went on a murder mystery weekend not long ago, it was really nice.

The façade reveals itself. Keeping up with the Jones’s. Catching up with and then sprinting passed the Jones’s. The Jones’s themselves had to re-mortgage the house to afford the full membership and the plane tickets. No one knows who is winning, everyone is running for the line, but keel over and let out an almighty death rattle ten metres from the finish line, wallets bursting with plastic, a well stamped passport and skin tanned to a fine leather, but not a drop of blood left in their veins.

It is Sunday. Judging by their attire and tone I will guess my travel companions are off to church. The churches in St. Andrews are always full to capacity, actual queues form outside, if you get caught up in post-prayer stampede you will suffocate in Avon perfume before being crushed to death, and/or converted to conservative Christianity. I guess the people of this town have a lot to be thankful for, praise be given to the gods of well off comfort. 
I think I have an eye condition, or just really sensitive eyes. Actually fuck it, I just really like wearing big black sunglasses.

So anyway, I’m in my seat, the blob wobbles in it’s seat behind me, the static created by their clothing makes my hair stand on end. I figure that these two old girls are probably going to do some pretty bad shit, I sense it, I envision it, they are team Fritzl, locking their unwanted rape children in the basement of the semi-detached, so I decide I should dish out a sharp pang of justice. I push my sunglasses on to the end of my nose while I rake around in my canvas man-bag for my trusty justice stick. I lean my neck back, almost touch the hands of my new enemies with my hair as they grip the handle of the seat, my sunglasses fall back over my eyes, and in a perfect one hundred and eighty degree pivot, reaching over the back of my seat, without moving my seated lower body, I stake both of them through their shared heart. The bus breaks into sudden applause. I take a bow. And stand over my victims, like a colonial soldier that has just slain his first lion.

Murder on the 96A……..

He wears a beige leather jacket, and his jeans are tight around the crotch but loose in the leg. He dyes his hair yellow blonde, his wet look gel holds the teeth marks from his comb.

“Cheers Boss” he says to the driver as he skips off the bus, landing in a confident yet non-threatening swagger. There is a desperation to his style that makes those around him a little uneasy. He was at the top of his game in 1996, his middle parting an unflinching monument to those days. His knuckles are almost transparent, he is holding on so tight to the days when he was a young man, one of the boys. He will be 22 forever.

He goes into a quiet looking pub as the bus passes around the corner. Tonight, on this warm bank holiday weekend he will drink and he will dance. He will try and he will fail, until in a scene he has known many times before, he will find himself behind a bus stop at kicking out time with this hands wrapped tightly around the pale neck of an 18 year old girl that said no.

Shoulders on The Canvas

I was just born, but I’m already too old. I came into the world pink and bloody and blinking in the harsh light. By the time I had mustered up the courage to open my I eyes fully I was a 6’4” Robinson Crusoe look-a-like, cast away in a modern adult life.
The seed of an idea has always lived within me but I could never let go of the log on which I floated, I could never let myself sink into the unknown depths below my feet and be baptised by the sea.

So now I let go, I sink, I drown, and I am born again. Sadly freedom is not so sweet. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when you stand up tall, push your shoulders back and get ready to step into a new life, only to realise that every skill you have acquired so far is at best useless, at worst completely contradictory to your beliefs. 

“… there was blood and raw meat everywhere….”

I've always been pretty sure that the majority of women in late middle age are completely nuts. Those professional types, aged 40-50, that have a rather alarmingly good seat within the moral majority. The kind that are forever “up in arms” about the latest buzz issue.

My theory was given further weight at 7.30 this morning. I was on the bus to work, head buried deep in my Burroughs, reading a passage about young boys in rainbow coloured jock straps fucking each other in a penny arcade. Safe to say my shock threshold was fairly high already,  but this didn't prepare me for what was to come. My ears pricked up when, through the general hum of the morning commute, I heard the lady tell her travel companion that “there was blood and raw meat everywhere”. I started to take notice.

Seemingly her Cat had taken a piece of defrosting meat and dragged it around the house. Simple. I began to sink back to the text in front of me, but I was already tuned in, so the voices of my two characters refused to leave my consciousness.

“I think I'm going to get a tortoise” announced lady 1.

“A live one?” questioned her blonde pal.

???????“A live one”??????? Do I live in a world where deranged women make pets of dead shell dwelling creatures?

Lady 1: “Yes, I think I could really fancy it up.”

Lady 2 “Oh yes, there is so much you can do with them.”

Baffled. Well and truly. “Fancy it up”?

Public transport is the greatest place on earth for picking up the finer points of insane human nature. This particular episode is second only to the time I sat opposite a man with a small mouse in his top pocket. A situation made stranger when the gentleman then took one of his headphones out and fed it into his pocket, giving the mouse an opportunity to listen along. I preferred him though, he was proper piss your pants, sing to the pavement crazy, unashamedly so. I imagine the tortoise ladies probably see themselves as the most sensible folk on earth.

x