it always comes out of america, it really does!
  you start listening to these guys
in the 21st century talking about psychedelic
"pioneers" from the 20th century...
- hey man! like take this l.s.d.
- n'ah man! d.m.t.! 15min of fab!
- magic mushrooms!
               to be honest, i wouldn't do that -
i don't know why i wouldn't...
       maybe because it's no longer a secret?
carlos casteneda's anthropological study
of a yaqui shaman, don juan -
and don juan says: keep it to yourself!
but no... the americans in the 20th century
had to write poetry... shout the mystic experience
from the rooftops!
and i'm like: well... that's ruined, what's the point
of doing these eywa roots?
              eywa? the avatar planet goddess...
i'd love to have tried those things,
but these fungi have been contaminated by
other people's experiences, which they noted down...
is it really that bad? someone might ask...
                                               yes!
it's a bit like disrespecting other people's privacy,
the term privacy? should anyone attempt it...
          you can easily create junkies that way...
i was watching this video once...
  this american girl went in search of ayahuasca
in south america...
   she posted regular videos...
                             after a few videos, and she's
back home in america...
                   she's no longer eating / smoking it...
whatever... she's injecting it...
             move it back to europe...
                                    well, compared to you
"cool kids" in america... (apart from the dutch)...
  we're still going: give us enough *****
and a good song, some tobacco and we tell you
of mysticism of another kind: the type you see
with your naked eyes.
            i can't remember how many times
i had mystical(?) experiences drinking and listening
to music... usually nordic, but also germanic
music... ok even some slavic music...
                               english music?
                          you trying to bribe with candy
and a heart-numbing anesthetic?
                    you think i'd emotionally get-off
on english music? some henry the 8th greensleeves
suite?                        but, it's, only, alcohol...
   i'll mystify alcohol for you... end up feeling
so much that you have to burst into tears
    without any "enlightening" images,
geometric geriatrics...
                                i base everything on sounds,
**** the images, if there's a heaven i want to be
sitting next to homer, blind as a bat, as he ended
up being.
                  you want to know a mystical
experience from europe?
  well... yesterday i woke up with this unforgiving
pain in my neck, like i might have popped a ******
and it got stuck in my neck...
                 i blame the builders making a racket
too early in the morning...
                      so last night i was like: that's it! i've had
enough! **** this *** is good...
      so first it was 70cl of capn' morgan's white ***,
not bad, not bad at all...
              and then onto the pièce de résistance
   capn' morgan's original spiced gold -
                    making up about a litre of ***: in m'ah belly...
i'll be doing an apache yawn in a minute:
   ap ap pa pa pa - lazy onomatopoeia, i know:
i can't be bothered exacting that battle cry...
      but the zenith of this mystical experience came
after i butchered some food (ate it like a ravenous
wolf) - but i said to myself: not tomorrow!
   i'm not going to lie in bed with a neck-ache
like i might have popped a ****** and it got stuck
in my neck (austin powers' ref. third movie?) -
   and lo! behold... i woke up today chirpy like
a sparrow... chirp chirp! chirp chirp!
                                   and did the oddest thing
imaginable... i watched a "movie" -
                      watched batman: arkham city...
the walkthrough... up to chapter 20...
                                  now i see the funny side of professional
gamers... i can sorta start to build up a respect
for them now, before today i thought they
were a joke...
                               it felt like: the opposite of an audiobook?
in my life i might have listened to about 10minutes
of 1 audiobook... couldn't stomach it...
       but these game walkthroughs? now that's an
area i'm really going to discover after today -
they're practically movies (games these days) anyway -
   i remember times when playing games
meant you had sore fingers... like the first
time you pick up the guitar and one of your arms
starts aching because your fingers are getting
fried on the copper strings...
                           for some reason i can't imagine
myself playing a game like the one i ref. -
                     i prefer the game of hacking google...
but yeah... these games are great to watch,
but actually play them?
                        i'd rather shoot myself in the foot
before i start playing them...
    so yeah, the zenith of yesterday's mystical
experience...
    a. about a litre of *** (white and amber)
        b. 25mg of amitriptyline
   and crucially    
                                    c. 500mg of naproxen.
and this is for you, *******, having ruined
       the potential of having a psychedelic experience!
i didn't want to know... but thanks for telling me...
    **** yourselves, 20th century buggers
                                      and your poetic buggery.

I was watching TV
and the topic on the Geriatrics Show
was Life Support Systems -
you know, about how people are kept
on pipes and machines and tubes and liquid
and I hollered to my wife in the kitchen:
“Darling, if ever I become life-dependent
on liquids and machines, just get rid of ‘em
and free me…”

“Sure thing,” my faithful wife said
and she turned off the TV
and my cell phone and my laptop
and she emptied my bottles of wine and whisky
and then she turned to me and she said:
*“I just freed you.”

I am quiet in front of the ambient lights.
Confronted among these Ambien nights,
with alluvial life, a hot bed of technical idolatry-
It is hard in the valley of the sun
the people who over-extend
self, carry impotence and
a loaded gun-
The land of geriatrics filled with frolicking snowbirds
who cast out their alcoholic offspring
to grind under gears of the economic machine.
Modern man is genuflecting in the sanctimonious pantheon of self.

Can’t wait to be seventy
With knees that hang
Like fleshy skin tags
Over my knee highs
And Custard feet
All squelched into my Clarks.

No prunes
In my grocery basket
Just lots of cheese
Chocolate and beer
Which will make me gassy
So I’ll ask for a backrub
To get my wind up.

I’ll say those things
I’ve always wanted to say
And not come off
Like a social landmine
Because people will just think
I’m batty.

They’ll smile
And nod
And make corkscrew gestures
Behind my back
But I won’t care.

I shall say
**** a lot
Because people
Will not expect that
From a portly granny
With a blue rinse.
But I shall never be unkind
Of all of the ugly words
You can use
**** is probably
The most benign.

I shall read great books
Filled with ideas
And speak to the deaf geriatrics
In the old folks home
And say things like-
So what did you think of that?
And even as they
Clutch their hearts
To prepare for their exit
From this world
I shall say-
I feel that strongly too
And in this way
Everything shall
Be part of my interlude
It shall all be about me
Me
Me
Me

What is it really like to be old?
Read along, and you'll be told,
Well, there's spectacles and hearing aids,
Also along the way, by the way,
There's dentures in glasses,
Zimmers on greys who want to make passes,
Then there's incontinence aids, bad hips,
Appointments at medical specialists,
Then you're off to the pharmacists,
To get all your scripts,
Then there's the alphabet song,
Read along, read along,
A is for Arthritis,
B is for Bursitis,
C is for Constipation,
Always a grey consternation,
D is for Diarrhoea,
And no doctor wants to know ya!
Finally, Z is for the big sleep at the end,
No wonder geriatrics go round the bend,
Yes, greys, these are our golden years,
Have fun learning, no need for tears!

So what did happen to old Cocky,
Swearing away, profanity?
We gave him a new abode,
A cage in a nursing home,
Old Cocky struck it lucky,
Full of parrots, like he,
Cocky believed in sharing,
Oldies heard unique caring,
In his inimitable way,
"You fat f...ing c...s, get out of bed!"
Not sure this is what geriatrics meant,
Cocky and Co. abuse the residents,
Yes, Cocky was communicating,
Soon every cocky was proliferating,
Cocky's happy ending! Let's pray,
He is  still alive and swearing today!

From the age of six to weak bones and homes for geriatrics
We all still wanna **** the same eighteen year old actress
So go home *******, switch hit and call it practice
And I'll go home and write some rhymes about these ******* fascists

Pray my humble words find wings and fly about the atlas
Play like in my best of dreams when words become the catalyst
To tear apart the great machine 'til the haves have never had less
We'll both wind up with a sticky mess and possibly a bad wrist.

I think the root of the wonder of childhood comes from a
Malleability of perspective.
Radically prismatic shifts that
Expose dry truths through a lens of amazement,
Rightly justified
As a young mind recognizes what
Crystallized geriatrics like me can no longer see:
That the bland fundamentals of the world are truly worthy of awe.

these are the days we live by
bemoaned by youth
with ether coated fingers
scoffed at by geriatrics as the
wind their wristwatches
and we in the middle boomers post and pre...
wring the blood from each hour...
looking back, to hard memory
looking forward to retired
ecstasy
we live by these days,
waltzing through.....not
but plodding mostly
some days in ourstep
a skip, a jump, a hop...
each generation eyeing off
the others
and finding lack and want
when needing to step back
step up and take a gentle overview...
and taking up some slack
so the line... from begining
to end don't droop somewhere in the middle
recreating primodial soup
big bang or no.... generation
a to xy and z  all  gone back
to history.....
these are the days to turn it
around.
these are the days, compassion still can be found
these are the days, my friend
these are the days...
close...so close.. to the (b)end

You can leave on your feet,
or feet first, sweet,
Is that a stir or what?
You look fabulous, male ****!
Don't let geriatrics drag you down,
They do get confused in this town,
They can get very boring,
All their scripts rotating,
You can leave on your feet,
Or feet first, sweet!

The Twilight Zone
In the nearest town and close to all amenities
such as hospitals and funeral parlours my wife
and went to look at an elderly people’s hotel
where people of a certain age get a small flat to
live in, yet it has a café for the social evening with
where young ladies who have gone to university
and studied geriatrics, sing and give the recital of
something suitable not to offend and often
a priest comes around and talks about Jesus.

Sunny Lodge the place was called, and we thanked
the manager we should think about it and was given
brochures to read. Driving home my wife cried, she
has a daughter who is no quite there I have no offspring
we decided to live in our cottage as long as possible
egoistically, I hoped to die before her it would save me
the funeral and sorting out and throwing away my private
collections of bleakly second-grade poetry, blowing in
the dusty wind of forgotten time.

At the foothills of vintage age
you feel perceptibly less somber
for there are only meager remains
of mostly forgotten days -
      little to smile, rue or cry for
and an amorphous
yet obligingly finite future -
      trifling to put together or fight for.

So dear Chandra:
here is a congratulation:
It must be awesome -
this imminent privilege of geriatrics
and this stolen bit of transient freedom;
      the real laissez-faire to yearn
      and to die for.
timorously cajoled
from time’s exacting, puritan dictum.

Another Sunday morning
Crouched in the beam of headlights
Steam coming off coffee and breath
Fumbling to pin race bib to pants

A romance
Of sorts; this dance I’m addicted to
Those magic numbers: 5k, 13.1, and
The boss lady: 26.2 (I’m coming after you)
But why? Friends ask
You’re crazy they say on posts
Of me on each early Sunday

I say nothing back, but heart the comment
I can’t explain what the rhythmic pound; the sound
of New Balanced footstrike does
For the broken part of me
How the week’s aggression
That needs suppressing is sweated out
And gathered up in Nike’s moisture-wicking fabric

How weaving through the crowd of neophytes
Wearing today’s race shirt, alternately
Sprinting then walking

And the kids, eager, then over it
The moms reclaiming a body that sheltered
The now-strollered baby
The geriatrics, shoes well-used
Nimble limbs, not brittle but abused
From pounding pavement years before this

This environment, atmosphere
Big race crowds or small informal
Stopwatch race; doesn’t matter
Just involved; a part of this kinship
Unspoken club affiliation; in passing
Not a wave, but nod
A head bob of appreciation
For another’s association;
Obsession with times, miles,
Post-race selfie smiles
Because I know there will come a day
That my body will betray
My runner’s soul.

But for now I stand at the start
Ready for race gun and one more mile

Gentrified geriatrics fill the land,
to the brim I might add, and,
'perhaps its time we make a change' I've said,
not happy nor glad
about the situation at hand.

The man with cowries around his neck,
Has thrown a mighty stone in the river of our conscience,
And ripples of hope, once again, begin grow...and grow,
Threatening those geriatrics that have refused to embrace relegation.

"He'd never annex Crimea," said political analysts.
Until the day he did.
"War in the Donbas? Never!" opined the seasoned journalists.
Then there was. Just because.
"He'd never do it to Ukraine,"
said geriatrics sans a brain.
Then flushed their opinion down the drain
Three times burnt,
You'd think they'd learnt
The word 'never' doesn't apply
to the Kremlin's mighty guy
Yet, "He'd never press the button!"
Mouth politicians over their mutton.
While world watches, eyes incredulous
West End movie in slow-motion
As the Monster, persistent, sedulous,
void of feeling and emotion,
presses button, rings the death-knell,
smiles as east and west do flounder
pulls the rope, rings the death-bell
on humanity to fall and founder
to burn in fire with their hater
the world a crisp on incinerator.

Children of  state are cannon fodder for shameless political geriatrics,
Insidious devilish minds that swim in the blood of the innocent,
Feeding fat off the aspirations and hopes of vulnerable minds,
To the further, to the further! All you fiendish maleficent goblins of state.

Pearl the partially deaf parrot
resides at Christina’s care home..
l’m not really sure how this will go
but here’s hoping it makes a rhyming poem

Well this large establishment is a dwelling for senior living care..
It is full up to capacity
with geriatrics living there

Now Pearl is quite a character
perched in a cavity on the wall and
occasionally when her cage gets cleaned she flies loopy around the hall

Although her hearing isn’t good you see she’s getting on in years..
there’s not a word that goes unheard coz she often gets it wrong I fears

Clive Clipper the old cockney..
he always speaks in rhyme and he calls all the females “Me ol duck” all of the time

Haha but thats not what pearls says
although Clive doesn’t care..
when that pesky bird copys him but then he ends it in a swear

Then theres Josie Jenkins well she is the eldest of them all.. She
tells all the visitors she is “Wise of wit” as she sits shouting in the hall

But as you can probably imagine
Pearl changes this abit.. and
everybody chuckles silently
when it’s squalked “Size of ****”

So you get the picture there’s lotd of rude remarks in the house..yet
It wouldn’t be as noticable if Pearl spoke as quiet as a mouse

Oh and there is Peter Waters
always cuddling his tabby cat..now
he hasn’t given it a name as yet..so
Pearl always yells  “Scabby TXXT”

Haha it is fun for the workers
when they are on their shift..
Coz they are never entirely certain
of the conversation..If you get my drift 🤣