Magic, mystery and fate

I haven’t written about love for a long time,
because I haven’t felt it.
Sometimes it is best to lock our jewels and precious stones away safely.
Sometimes, we find ourselves amongst wolves and jackals, running alone through the night.
A thin blade glitters, concealed within a discreet hand.
When this dark night ends, maybe I will have time and freedom enough
to take from its box that beautiful, blue, precious gemstone.
I'll gaze into it again.
See the dancing lights of magic, mystery and fate.
Hear the mesmeric sound of distant girls laughter, of soft panpipes and flowing water.
Smell the sweet scent of rose and jasmine.
Feel the intoxicating sensuality of another’s touch;
Ecstasy, bliss, peace and completion.
And then maybe I shall begin again
my search
for what I once found
in you.


For Corrina

Snapshot of a certain moment

I have a snapshot of a certain moment
It comes around every now and then
The movie is different, the delivery, the package it comes wrapped up in,
but the effect upon me is always the same;
Fear, terror, incredulity, frozen, FROZEN! Run, RUN!
Survival at all costs, kill if I have to.
Survival at all costs.

Chill on the morning breeze

A chill morning wind blows, another day arrives at your feet,
and there is some kind of victory in that.
Hell, you actually feel pretty good!
Dark obelisks tower in the sky as dawn light begins to break.
You don’t need much sleep these days.
The FEEYAH doesn’t cut in quite so deep anymore either.
There is a resigned ness, still soft on the inside, just used to it hurting.
The hurt, they say, tells you that you are alive.
Fucking L.I.F.E.
What the hell is it?
You’ve got your theories, and they are all pretty dark.

There is something beautiful, calm and optimistic about this time of day, though.
Not much traffic and the awareness that today, maybe today will be the one you have been waiting your whole life for;
Your lucky day.
When you get out of all this.
When you find the road to some kind of success.
When you win out.
When you make it, finally.

I never gave up hope.
But I cant deny what that chill in the morning breeze has always been telling me.

RED!

Letters to God – written in a street at 5am (sober, for the record)

I don’t blame you, but I know it is a waste of time asking for an explanation.
We make our own beds down here, right?
Well maybe something is crooked in me, and I am not sure it is of my doing alone, because I am wholly unable to rise into my dream of how life should be, yet I am 100% genius at ending up sat on my cold ass at 5am, on concrete, in a city I don’t belong and barely know.
Waiting, skint, tired, afraid, hurting, alone.
Are all adjectives I am emotionally involved with right now.
Is it too much to ask for a touch of the miraculous?
I know exactly where I want to be.
That is why I am writing you this letter.

It is cold. It is 5am. I am in a city I barely know, but it could be anyplace and I suspect it would be the same.
I am no closer to realising my life than the day I began.
I am skint.
Hungry.
Waiting, always waiting.
But I have got my health, right? So what’s to complain about, I hear you say.
Funny guy.

Maybe it is selfish of me, I know you are busy, but alone I don’t seem to be doing so well at this thing called life.
So I guess what I am saying here is, I could do with a little help. And by the way, I am not the only one.

Yours truly
Bezlebub

a note on suicide

If I were going to do it, it would have to be a shotgun under the chin. Or better yet, a good size heroin and cocaine snowball. I don’t have a problem with the ethics at all.

I think the world of people generally sucks.
The laws of the universe are parasitical and predatory,
the creator had intention but lacked compassion.

People like myself are better off moving on.
I sometimes think I was designed for the next world, not this one.
Something about it makes more sense to me.
This place is retarded.

I have looked and I have tried for 41 years to get what I do here right. I have done my best to rinse some semblance of joy from existence, and I succeeded surprisingly well.

As I get older the options get less, I get wiser and I find I dislike the conditions here all the more. I have decay, senility, obstruction, and the company of myself to look forward to.
I don’t have a problem with suicide.

But while another person who loves me still lives and breathes the air of this world, I would not do it to them.

It wouldnt be hard, wouldnt even be painful.
Just take yourself to that edge and begin to fly.
Higher and higher until this place really doesn’t matter all that much anymore.
Your spirit letting go, and you are gone.

It’s no big deal, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.
Life, death. It is all just happening.

As I finished writing this I knocked over a glass and it smashed.
Funny how things go.

Revolting

Every time I see a music video these days
I am reminded of the old punk adage - we are all prostitutes
I have been saying 'oh you SLUT!' to the tube a lot of late.
and sorry, but R&B videos are the worst offender
take note Justine Timberfake
pathetic poseurs and stupid slags trying to sell some hot choreographed booty shakin' shite at me.
puullleeeaaase!
Just take it away!
Is this a turn on to anyone?!
really?
fuck.

But I don't actually mind
because I have seen this kind of global tension in the market place before,
the sameness.
Everywhere.
bland. empty. packaged. bullshit. BULLSHIT!
and it tells me
soon.

very soon.

Revolution is on it's way.

I always like a bit of anarchy.
it's in the blood.

Ambition

winners and losers
rich and poor
failure and success
ugly and beautiful
Is there any place in the world where these basic human conditions are not relevant?
I want to be there.
Imagine how different life would be
if they really meant nothing to us.

smokin' guns

There was no guide book that came with the kind of life I chose to live.
There have been hedonists and the decadent.
And there have been the decadent hedonists.
I did roll up at the crossroads but the weird thing was
I changed my mind at the last minute,
just said -
No.
Sorry.
I changed my mind.
Fuck your deal, oh devilish one.

I walked off.

And here I am 25 years later at the end of the party
Feeling like the one guy left standing after the gunfight in the cemetary.
as the smoke clears he blinks and discovers,
he is alive.
It doesnt seem fair.
but who's complaining.

It's disgraceful.

How in gods' name
does one grow old gracefully?

After all I have been through now

After all I have been through now,
I am surprised to find my arm stuttering across the page.
Words. Experience. Don’t seem to come.
Nothing appears to want to write itself.
I am not sure there is anything left to explore.
I have seen sunsets and sights, canyons, rivers, creatures of all kinds, flowers of all colours, oceans of all size, mountains, deserts, rains and ravines.
I am not bored. This is not what I am saying.
I have had queens and princesses, whores and sirens, wailers and screamers, fighters and biters, virgins, vampires, vermin, vixens and tramps.
I mean, what is left?
It is not that I tire of these things.
Just uncertain that there is much else to conquer. Nought that I wish to at least.
Darkness begins to draw close, on my last day of freedom.
You can not run forever, so they tell me.

A piano plays gently in a coffee bar at the station.
I could have stayed out there, in the wilds.
It is just that I heard another calling, calling me back.
The piano tells me credits are about to roll on some b&w movie.
I guess that’s how the story plays out for me this time.
Loneliness used to break me, but solitude was ok once private thoughts became my closest friends.
I’ll probably spend the rest of my days in moments like this;
Train station cafes.
Looking back with melancholy and forward with a non-committal air.
Knowing nothing will ever amount to much.
And once a year, in places like this the world over, they play Christmas carols
Just to remind lonely souls how long it has been.
Beautiful women walk by.
And I realise.
That in a world full of steel, rock, concrete and death.
They are my only source of hope.

There is no feeling quite like it.

There is no feeling quite like it.
You have no place to stay, your nearest friend is a thousand miles away.
You are in a city you don’t know. It is late and all the cheap hotels are booked.
You are left facing a night on the streets.
You know you wont sleep much.
You’ll spend the night fearful of people, or the law, and thinking about how your life came to this.
It was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it?
Your bank account has nearly run dry.
And it is raining.
It cuts a groove in your personality, a welt of an experience that will heal over tomorrow when you board the 6am train and escape this madness.
But.
It will never fully heal.
You’ll feel it there sometimes.
A dull throb, not altogether numb.
A little painful.
And you’ll be reminded of those times that lightly litter the story of your existence.
Nights spent on the streets.
In various anonymous towns.
Invariably feeling sorry for yourself.
Always alone.
Wondering how you got there and quietly praying,
that when dawn light comes,
it will be the last time you ever have to face a night like that again.

On nights like these...

She found me browsing a bookstand in Federation Square.
There was nothing significant about that,
but I knew at once there was something different about her.
My trouble was I had been away from home, alone for so long, just out of contact, I had forgotten what normal was. I was in a time and place where everything seemed strange.
I watched her as she walked. I was trying to work it out, what it was.
I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
She was beautiful.
She was in black and white, I mean, as I recollect her now it could be a movie. Yea, she’s gonna be a star. I could see that.
(Of course I wouldn’t guarantee it, Death has a funny way of touching the most beautiful long before their time.)
I could see something in her. She was like glass; you could see through but in doing so, you missed everything that was there.
She was good, and yet she didn’t know it. People are at their most perfect then.
I could have fallen in love with her easy.
I was enchanted and aware of every movement in her.
Her heart and mind. I could hear them beat.
I listened in.
Stared into her eye.
She didn’t break my gaze, she had guts, I liked that.
It wasn’t lust that drove me. It never really is anymore.
Why take the body when you can revel in things of the soul; I was bathing in her light.
But she wasn’t ready. Not for the likes of me. Not yet. Hell, maybe never.
It didn’t matter.
In this life we are only ever passing through.
She said; ‘Hello, I think we recognise each other, don’t we?’
I smiled and looked away.
Sipping my vodka tonic through a straw, a view out over the lights of yet another city.
Two stars alone in a rooftop night.
As trams rolled by in the streets below.
On nights like these you could almost believe that a good soul could make it.

People walk by the street outside

People walk by the street outside.
Rain drips so endlessly it could be England, but it isn’t.
I have been alive these past months in a way I had forgotten;
Passion rekindled, lust for life, fires re-lit.
That energy with which I used to burn through the world has been back upon me.
Flames lick around my shoulders
where my wings could be.
It is slowing now,
gently coming to a stop.
Soon I’ll step back into the world of men.
Where I belong? No. Where only a part of me belongs.

I tasted freedom for a while. Solitary. Distant. I was gone.
40 days and nights.
It wasn’t a time of peace, it was War.
Battles. Struggle. Survive.
There is blood on my hand.
A gold ring glitters on the little finger of my left, anchor and snake etched into it.
I wonder about my family. Wonder about each one all the way back.
Some little piece of all of them etched into my being.
Things I don’t know about, cant fathom, yet are.
My soul tempered in an altogether different fire.

People walk by the street outside.
Rain drips so endlessly it could be England, but it isn’t.
I am here again, arrived back into the world of men.
There is blood on my hand, and purpose in my heart.
I pull my collar up about my neck and step out to walk among them.