Rainbow head

Pre 9am

Main road mono

She passes me on the

Inside

With striped rainbow hair

Rainbow head

Outside and in no doubt

And other colours

Maybe every one

Up and down her legs

Backpack

Eye shadow

Mid-twenties I guess

Unconcerned about opinions

Defying the locale

Grey puddles en route

Laying still

Unreflective

While the red yellow

Pink green

Orange purple, blue shine

Not crazy

Or maybe just crazy enough

Finally

She turns a corner

The streets are greyed

I am tired and lazy and broken and

So

I count her as my

fuck you

To the world for today.

I want I want I want

The kid is in that stage now

Of nothing is enough

I want I want I want

Glass half empty

Grass is greener kind of shit

I don’t rise to it

Because just wait until we’re not paying

When he has to shell out for

Whatever

Out of his own pocket

It’s then you realise

Those feelings never cease

New clothes

New shoes

New car

New house

There’s always a bigger fish

A higher high

A rose tinted memory

Lying to your future self

            It will never be that good

Again…

I used to make lists

Strings of idealistic words

In the backs of school exercise books

Scraps of paper

Post-its – anything nearby

No target or goal in mind

Just lists of things I needed

(with hindsight this was a way to keep the world in order

to keep the wolves from the door. Hindsight doesn’t help shit)

But

30 years later

Nothing changes

Except now I don’t write the lists

I keep them in my head out of shame

But it’s all the same

Then

Now

Later

I want

I want

I want…

Yaad

Those times are over kid

I was there

In part

Briefly experienced it;

Whole house

Front yard, back yard

A dog

A cat

Both maybe

But those times are over

Kid

You get what you can now

You sit back and suck up

The last of what’s on

Your plate

And be thankful for it

Sure, snow rarely falls

But the summers still come round

And the people

Those next door

Across the street

They still live

Just farther way

More distant from each other

Drifting out and out

With the rest of the universe.

Disbelief

Reality is a walk in the park

The circles of terror become old and dusty

They slow and grate and are at last

Predictable

Gates stay locked

Fences high and strong

Razor wire for your ambitions

It comes and goes but the walls are always

There

Yet

The hardest days are a simple equation

Comedy is after all just

Tragedy plus time

All you need is patience and imagination

Knowing when to believe the lie

When to buy into the story

Suspension of disbelief is invaluable

But

You can’t always win

And that’s fine

So don’t listen to those movies where they

Tell you otherwise

If you truly believe…

If your heart is pure…

If you are doing what you love…

It will all work out

To throw caution to the wind in this town

Is the same as pissing into it

There is still a time and place for the

Fear brought about by risk

You can still jump

Without breaking a single bone

You just need patience and imagination

Reality is a walk in the park

But at night

In the darkness

Wide awake as young foxes scream

It is your dreams that must be overcome.

A small sky (after Georgia O’Keefe)

Dreams of what will remain after I am gone

Thoughts and words followed by spilled drinks

Silence

They will never say

            He grew up under a large sky

Though I may ask someone to lie about

That.

Cold hearted

I am told sometimes

By those few closest to me

That I appear unfeeling

It goes from accepted joke

to truthful criticism

And I disagree

Cynical maybe but not

Defeated by any of them

I remain unbroken by the rocks crashing

At my sides

Nor taken by the saltwater

Not harsh or inhuman

Although the humans – well…

But still not cold

Quite the opposite in fact

My heart

This heart I feel beating

Now in my chest

Is a raw nerve

An open wound

It is a raging campfire

Burning through a rainstorm

And it must remain lit

Otherwise I look around and

This

All of this

Will dampen it to ash.

And then the churches lock their doors

And the people ran

Not away, but toward the altars

Towards broken bread and cheap wine

Towards Him

And so consumed do the buildings become

Overflowing with single celled organisms

That white collars swing thick ropes across the

Great wooden doors

And heave them together

The mourners and preachers and believers

Stuck together like one holy puzzle

Man woman and child

Are closed in and safe and

Proven right

At least in their own minds

The shared mind

The terrified mind

Friedrich would laugh

And Wilson and McKenna

And Bucky Fuller

Meanwhile the ghost of Voltaire, pisses

Down onto the ornate steeple and roof

Those inside exclaiming ‘praise heaven for

The tears of god!’

And outside

On the shining cobbled streets

We few are left with

All our hearts desire

The space and freedom and divided truth

Anarchy and love

With no sirens or flags

No clowns dressed as dictators

Our own version of the world

And the world as it should be.

Tool

There goes me, really really slowly…

  

Dan is a weak swimmer

Dan wants to live surrounded by the largest waves in the world

Dan is a liar

Dan wants to be loved by everyone

Dan has weak legs

Dan wants to get stronger

Dan has a bad memory

Dan keeps drinking red wine

Dan doesn’t want to copy Bukowski

Dan can’t help but write the way he does

Dan is scared of black people

Dan is scared of white people

Dan feels pity for the hundred year old Indian man who lives across the rd

Because he can see himself when he looks at him

Dan hates his name being written or spoken over and again

Dan loves too much too often

Dan feels too little too often

Dan wants to get paid for his poetry

Dan hates journalistic and professional writers

Dan idolises Gallo, and Dali and Billy Childish

Dan wants to meet Robert Anton Wilson

Dan gets on with women better than men

Dan needs to get more red wine

Dan is a potential murderer

Dan is full of ideas and hope for the world

Dan wants to just stay in bed a bit longer

Dan wants to turn over after the alarm clock cracks his head

And sink into blonde hair for 2 more beautiful hours of sleep

Dan is a scoundrel

Dan has confidence that things will be ok

Sooner or later.

(circa 2006)