Confessional, from the side of the mouth

19th March, 2012

 

I live in a house with a cat and some ants. Everyone is sated.

I went to my local church and was refused service. I waved my baggy genitals at the man in the frock. The birds whistled a song of acceptance. God peed himself. Everyone went home.

The record shop is overflowing with films. We need more gun shops that sell heroin. We need more live butchery. We need rock and roll salvation.

Spring is arriving and the days creep into evenings. Buses without headlights, women without tights. See the sun arc higher and higher into the northwest. The comedians are coming to town. Pale footballers redden, the lollipop men blush in glinting afternoons. I know where they hide their glossy magazines.

If I really thought about my life I’d redeem myself. I’d take matters in hand. But I wear blinkers, muffs and a face-mask. I watch the world weaken through yellow eyes. I’m a pipsqueak and a piss-artist. I’m an expert in my field.

Now my handset is an image exchange. I feed it unfocussed flesh and it blurts back tiny football fields, needle-sharp and idiotically green. People’s teeth blink like a mad white rash. They’re all talking at once. I’m sleepy and I demand the wool of an ancient wireless. Wi-Fi? Why, fie?

Pack a bag and go to another room. Water, sweets and a torch. Take some books and a little wine. Hang sheets from the lampshades. If there’s a stereo take an axe to it. Don’t listen when they ask if you’re alright. You’re alright.

The electric guitar is in crisis. Slashers, jazzers and botherers are all empty of ideas. Select, copy and paste. The world requires somebody with a big nose and a decent measure of insanity. Somebody with a cracked plectrum and a bone to pick. Somebody to spit bleach through the amplifier cones. Somebody with love to spare.

The man who mends my shoes went to my old school. Two successes right there, in spite of what they put us through. I’m spoilt, spoilt for all time. An undeserving glutton, a black hole, a drain on the state. Everything is input. All I put out is shit and bad breath. The world doesn’t need me, I’m gross and I’m greedy. My kids have all ended up in jail living on rich food and lying on silk pillows. My old hair clogs the gutters and my used skin fouls the beaches. It’s rum, it’s rich – it’s a bitch, baby.

My neighbour is a military man, buttoned up, tightly wound, slightly wounded. He wrote me a note asking for applause. I made him a medal from a bottle top and an old scarf. He seems good with that. I saw him yesterday brimming with pride. Now I’m at ease.

I went onto the internet looking for new things. I found a foal, four days old, I found a soul singer and a hammer swinger, I found a hole for fading stars and some messages from Mars. I found little I didn’t know before but I found a whore.

How do you know when it’s time for bed? Does a bell ring, do your eyes stop opening? I have twelve books on the boil, you should see my kitchen.

The sun sank today like an actress’s bow. I’m in love not out of it. I’m going on with it. The graceful curtains fall with the flick of a finger-click.