I don’t believe in myself
in the way I don’t believe in Santa Claus,
in good ol’ Tricky Nick of yesteryear
– always leaving the stockings empty.

And by now I’ve learned to fill’em with songs of your skin,
whispers of better days waiting in the wings.

I pass by this smoking blonde
– yeah, smoking in both senses of the word –
and flinch at her pin eyes; a doll in her voodoo world.
May my day be the taste of her on my tongue:
it is L&M.

Saying I never wanted to hurt anyone
doesn’t make me a good man.
Saying I wish you nothing but good
doesn’t make it any more true.

(Broken, yet I function.
Kinda like a cracked-screen smartphone.
Yeah, kinda like that.)

Into the emptiness of air I raise
a fist forged of malice
and allow it to float there, to deflate
to defy, defy Pantheon
and surround me with the ringing, stinging noise
of the feedback loop.

The first rule of my feelings is.

My peace is a playlist
of The National.
Please take me away from this city
or this city away from me.
Purpose bloody purpose:
I’ve spent books, beer, smokes and night’s air
honing this mind, yet it has stayed dull
– and is yet to save a single life.

I’m one story but telling another
50% of me
and you won’t know the half of it.
I walk the nightwalk
eyeing bicycles – but each is locked
and I’d never ever steal,
but still… well, you know.

Fuck fuck fuck the €20 sushi that ain’t worth it and that I keep buying.
Fuck fuck fuck my rent – yeah, I blame myself for not being on the market to buy 50 years ago when shit was cheap.
Fuck fuck fuck your vinyl collection.
Fuck fuck fuck the nightlife that’s more like nightdeath ’round these parts.
Fuck fuck fuck the Instagram accounts and The Trend – I’m prepared to stay far behind this evolutionary curve.
Fuck fuck fuck this ghetto of the Young & Creative.

And I’ll live this life – ’til it brings me trouble.
And I’ll move this direction – ’til it earns me infamy.
And I’ll bear witness – ’til bearing motivates me.
And I’ll speak the words – ’till they shudder at’em.

I stood around for the time
it takes a cigarette to burn
at the playgrounds of Eshing

and watched a toddler
smash with a two-year-old’s violence
– and that malice which itself
in mirrors does not see –
together the heads of two ragdolls

by pushing to contact
and pulling to separation
and by rinsing and repeating
this process to the two

and mused that never a more apt
allegory for our marriage
has there been
and doubted if there ever will be.

I’ll get up today and self-destruct
with no better reason than “because.”
And it’s a practical joke as told by life:
I raise my middle and index finger to my temple,
push down the thumb and mutter “pow”,
forgetting my fingers are loaded.

Kapow.

So, anyway:
My God’s despotic but fits in a pill.
My Daimōn’s neurotic, moves at my will.
And I break my head like wawes
in a place behind my eyes
in a place that has no name
against the platinum door till either gives in
nevereverminding the key’s in place
and there’s a painless way.

And you don’t know what I’m afraid of.
I’m afraid of you knowing what I’m afraid of.
Now you know what I’m afraid of.

I am smoke and I am cinder – I am null and I am void.
I am check and I am mate – I am over and I am out.
I am dust and I am ash – I am bait and I am beast.
I am always a missile headed home.

(You know, every now and then it occurs to me
that people wearing safety orange and bicycle helmets…
they must be the winners of this world.
Must be winners since they’ve concluded
that it’s worth it looking like a fuckface
since they have something to lose,
something they must protect with that rag
they call Life.)

Bury this world in powder and dust,
in a cascade of better bitter pills –
chemical design that kills pain;
and I’ll step downwind of quicklime anger
that erases victimhood and erases fault,
that erases my snakehead and eyes
that are black marble, black fire.

The happiness of others is not the happiness of me
and we are but specks of dust upon specks of dust
that are but specks of dust upon eternity.

Life is an effort of slitting the throat of Fear
each dusk and dawn, all over again.

The drugs don’t work and neither do I.

Everyone is hated by someone
But to be someone hated by everyone…
That’d be something else!!!

I go to parties where I know no others
since that’s how it’s done
and start fires to see what happens
since the world just might yield

On a bus there sat a couple, him talking
She was busy looking bored
And I thought and made handcraft wishes

None of us are going to happy heaven
so let’s not waste time
’cause we really shouldn’t

You have sweet eyes. I have nasty eyes.
You have nasty eyes. I have sweet eyes.
And we are but pawns to endgame.

Heads morphed to bowls of glass
to carry fire and flame ;
and I’ll make a stepping stone of you
by stepping on you;
and you’ll be the words “death before dishonor”
with “death” underlined 10,000 times;
and our fury shall lack nothing
but direction.

I don’t finish everything I start
and I did not start some things
that I’m about to finish; and day by day
it’s becoming clearer we won’t find God,
that we’ll lose this round of hide n’ seek n’ destroy.

And as we take our stance ‘neath auburn skies
we are deaf to the uncoiling of vipers in the grass.
And you can ask yourself
if they would spare a thought for ethics.

Neither of us
a unique and beautiful snowflake.