Rub-a-dub-gubbed,  
three men in a club,
And who do you think they were?
The addict, the faker,
The first time taker.
They all sailed away in a flea.
Twas enough to make a man aware.

We sit, screaming secrets that speed through the highways;and from our finger tips we cry out our hearts. We Spill'm across those highways, till languished love arrives at our recipients doors.  They sit and reply in kind. It’s a whole lot of blood, for such little time.

We’d sent each other fifty messages in five minutes, and, although my heart was typing for me, I felt that every word was worthless. Just like each one of these: I want to talk in ink. I want to wield a pen that men will fear, respect and pay heed to. But, here these words appear from buttons bashed by boredoms fingers; the madness of mind renegade.

I guess the thought doesn't count anymore.

The clock clapped his hands
and told the time to go **** itself,
while the walls stood wobbling,
scared of the confrontation.
The telly turned herself off,
for fear of adding to the noise
while the lights flickered
as they thought of something to say.
But still, time marched on.
The clock made two fists
and waved them with fervour
as the walls tried to hide
behind their hangings and features.
They telly, still silent,
cowered quietly in the corner,
and the light bulbs no longer
had any bright ideas to voice.
Time marched on, uncaring.

There's nothing wrong with a rainbow,
every hue of you is there reflected.
So how can you object to it?
How can you feel sick with disgust or distrust ?
How can you sit and resent it?
Lets stand hand in hand with man and man,
woman and woman, man and woman
and guide the children to a better view.
From the top of a hand built mountain
we'll sit counting rainbows in the sky till its no longer blue.
But every single shade of me and you.

It builds itself faulty.
It teeters as it grows.
It knows its own weakness.
It knows its own strength.
Unfortunately, they conflict.
So, of course, it comes crumbling down.

Watch them sleeping.
Watch them slowly drift away.
Does it feel like creeping?
Cause you're never there when they awake.

It takes patience to make a replacement
But she erased my face,
and hid the photos in the basement.  

Oh if I was to be real enough.
Oh if I was to be real enough

I'd grab her by the scruff of the neck,
lay her on the deck. And
Go back to protecting her.

Oh If I was to be real enough.
Oh If I was to be real enough.

Not just a ghostly little gasp of air

It's not that I believe it doesn't end.
Its just the angle- I cant see for the bend.
I've been walking this plastic corridor since
I pushed through the blackened door unwittingly.
And it's not that I'm longing to walk it with a friend.
I just hope that I make it out the other side fittingly.

Because what If I've grown
Much to large for my humanly confines?
And what if all I own
Is the rags on my back and a collection of fines?

Will I pass through the doors without interrogation?  
Or be doomed to walking this squinted corridor
with nothing but a tireless and ever wasting patience?

I need something from you.
I have in the past, I still do now
and I will do in the future.  

So, no matter what you do
I'll be there. As the biggest
bully in the playground,
I wont allow anything to happen
to you.

And though it's breaking my heart
to watch these innocent children suffer
and burn,  in the fires of a faithless war.
I will not turn.
I will not turn my back on you.

For I still need something
and I will still need tomorrow.

And though I know you are
savagely slaughtering and starving
the innocent in the name of feeble retaliation.
I will stand behind you, as the strongest of all
nations.

" UNCLE SAM YOU ARE SPENDING SO MUCH TIME LOOKING TO         THE FUTURE THAT YOU CANNOT SEE WHAT IS IN FRONT OF YOU"

Stealing defeat from the jaws of Victory.
A feat that was tall, fought for then slipped away.
The Scottish way it seems, to let it disappear.
To come so close with hands open as we near
then through our fingers we let slip another year.

Disappointed and down, we maintained a disjointed crown.
We could have swam for freedom but in the open water we drowned.
The lochs turned to black, no clock can turn back:
Freedom was for the taking, but under the pressure we cracked.  

Scaremongering, propaganda. Down right lies.
The told the feeble to stay together, and there would be a prize.
Hungering for a land. A place to call home.
They listened. Now no longer can they roam

Or swim in open waters that are their very own.
They are bound by unity yet completely alone.  

So from a foreign land I think back to the time.
when I felt a part of it. In land that was mine.
But no desire to return. The lesson I learned:
Fire always burns out. We had heart but no spine.

Hell of a hole you've dug here.
Forty feet deep you could scream and no on'ed hear.

"Well I thought it would keep us safe,
at least until the coast was clear.

"Well I'm confused what you think this is"

A black voice behind us sneered.

" It ain't no safe detention it's a God forsaken fear.
The kind
that steals your breath just to whisper it back in your ear "

NOW what the hells going on?
My friend who do we hear?

"I've spoken with him before when he isn't right he's still sincere.
And he's been with us this whole way, growing with the years."

Get a job. Get a girl. Get a house. Get a coffin.  
Get a jump on the morning and eat an omelette of worms.
Get a newspaper with your morning loaf and
read that thing cover to cover.
Get real, get prepared, get in line.
Get your orders from the horse's mouth
and follow them to you're told otherwise.
Get a grip of yourself, young man!

Don’t get yourself in trouble, infected or in jail.
Don’t get up after midday or go to sleep after midnight.
Don’t get used to coming in first
or you’ll be a wimpy sore lose.
Don’t get cocky kid; don’t get smart.
Don’t get ahead of yourself and think
you're the man to lead all the others.
Don’t get too big for your boots, young man.

Welcome to our world.
Curled toes on the newly matured.
Are you sure you wanna stay?
The girls heads twirled, then they hurled.
Then they were invited back to stay.  

Creeps prowl the streets like wolves howling for sheep.
Sexualise the innocent dream, split the fabric at the seam.

The naked reality might not be so real in actuality .
That glistening woman was a young victim assuming
the man in the suit could help her in her pursuit.

Consuming the explicit. Cross the blurred line to the illicit.
Its trick kid! do you want to swallow or spit it?

Pennies rolling roon a scaffy auld purse.  
Last year wis bad, but this year is worse.
Winter comes freezing these auld joints,
An'a cannae make it to the bank or any cash points.  
And If A could A wid see nothing but zeros.
While the men in suits cut budgets and call themsel's heroes.
But I guess, once again, it's that auld December curse:

Heating or Eating ( Or perhaps a penny to quench ma thirst)?

I can feel the blood in my veins.
Like cold steel. It rushes. But no pain.
Only discomfort in my quiet disdain.  
And that trembling little voice sounds
so desperate, he might as well be praying.  

So as the shaking erupts violently,
my chest caves as I scream silently.
The world sinks, it seems finally.  
Just like they told us it would:
it all ends, in ways unwieldy.

Yer heads just a bed for others opinions to lay in;
growing bigger, badder and bolder there,
until they’re covered in sores, manky and reeking.
Yer heads just a place for others thoughts to leek in.
But dinnae get disheartened by their chat.
Remember its your head thats dain aw that.
They never said a word, its yer head that ye heard.

'The mind's just a sky. The mind's just a sky.
Life's just the lie that we live til' we die.
Hell is in my head, but heaven's there too.
I quite like them both; so should each of you!  
The mind's just a sky. The mind's just a sky.
We will float and fall through it, learning to fly.
You can’t loose the sky, or be out of it
(and If you can you should be proud of it).
Oh to walk in the heavens oh so high and out of it. "

He crashed as he landed, and banged’s hollow head;
it shattered like glass and began spilling
out thoughts onto the carpets itching thread.
His ego bruised as theres savagely fed
on the headless body that was left- filling
themselves full with the foolish words he’d said.
They are the foulest of the foolish,
                                                        the cruelest kind.
Ego's without heart, brains without mind;     W

Backs
           without                                                       A
                       spines,
                                    teeth
                            without                             ­          L
                      bite,
             actors
without lines. Down the stairs they climb.        L
To the top of the bottom, only to find
that the endless sky, is the very thing that confines
  
                                      US
                                     ALL.

The mind's just a sky: another endless wall.

I’m a  twentieth century baby,
  and a twenty first century man;
  Preceded by the definite maybe’s
  of a fickle generations attention span:

"**** the alarmist. Dissect the murderer.  
Round up the lost lot. Ground the ponderer.
For we are the witless wanderers”

We are born out of confusion and into anxiety,  
we swallow up old decades for a pastime;
they're digestible bytes to the digital society,
and their ideals oft’ so easy to mime.  

But we’re witless in our meter-less rhyme.

The doctors cant give you anything for the pain.

The shortest of fall,
                          from the highest of grace.
Then off we crawl
                             back to our rightful place
                    in the middle.
                            

Count
          each
                   step  
                           on
                               your
                                     way
                                             down.
                                                      
                                             Pass
                                      your
                               ego
                       and
                  the
         clown
That you used to dress up as on nights out.

A single shot through both of their heads.

    The ego, the ego, the ego is dead.

Stories boot' boots an' ants
over beats of boots and cats.
The social rants dinnae' stop
till the cats oan the mat, wagging
his tail at the horrendous chat.

Here lies the body, here dies the verse.
Words whisked off into an unforgiving air.
A eulogy for no one, an insult for a care.
There goes the poor poet in the hers.
Off to be buried in grass green and fair,
Where lies his wife, naked and bare.
No one says a kind farewell, for no one is there.

Here lies the body, here dies the thanks.
The bankers hands rub together at the news.
A life they lead on, a death they’ll abuse.
For the end is a cheque cashed in his banks.  
No kin can collect, or have his house to use.
Mould reeks from windows- filth and mildew.
And no one dares to enter except for the cranks.

But in his filth they find old heaps of paper.
And in his words the find old and sweet peace:
A world, A vision, a home to more than lees.
A life to lead, a truth to seek. A world much greater
than the one around them that crawls about to cease
of any kind of kindness. And here hope is deceased.
Take his words, leave your worries. We can all worry later.

Angst sees a way out but it’s not one to be desired; a bleeding white light at the end of the tunnel. He pushes himself toward it, gasping for the air as he does so. “ This is it This time This time it’s it” ,rambles his wee head. Alisdair had told him before of these big mouths in the streets, but he had never believed such fancies until sure enough he fell in face first. Now he can see the end, he can see the key, and he can see the truth: that there was somewhere elsewhere. Somewhere you have to find but can never just pay a visit. 

He is not in the middle of some inter dimensional drift (although for logics sake you could believe so if it pleased you), he is as here as the words that here appear. It’s something else thats went elsewhere- his mind. You could be quick to label this a condition of his, or you could just as easily label him a condition of this “ drift”  if you like. Either way, he’s in his own little world I guess you’d say- well almost there.   

But as he pushes on through chocking, and growing weaker with exhaustion as he stares out into the white light, with the sweet hope and heat it promises, he thinks to himself just how much easier it would be to die again.

I am, not be, something I can not see.
And it turns me tormented to face
my own reflection, over and over,
closer and closer, to cutting that nose
from my face. And laughing as I do so.
But instead he mimics my lack of conviction.
And he winds fictions of me falling slow,
trying to hold the curves of the world as I do so.  

Even Atlas' strength was humbled by it;
The weight of this world could never have
been on my shoulders. But thats where I feel it sits.
So selfish, so arrogant. I am but not be.
I do not ever tell of this weight on my neck.
Instead in quiet torture I find my own respect.

I think we failed, sailed to no avail.
too far from where our tale began.
Well what was the plan again?  make it to a greener land
and walk hand in hand with the internet stuffed in a mannequin.  
and send them panicking, span across the whole globe challenging
what it truly means to be pointlessly rambling.

I’m no feart’ of dying here doing so.
"Haven’t you noticed no ones looking for us”

Vacant people with vacant peepers
stare with them fixed on flickering screens.
Monday morning's wide-eyed sleepers
sit missing the window's passing scenes.
Mere millimetres apart from each other,
they drift in worlds a million miles away.
Bodies so close, close enough to smother,
as the train rumbles along, they sway.

We- The streets that fathered the lost freaks. 
Let them step on us, **** on us. Now the whole town reeks
of defeat. The concrete crumbles under their feet. 
Splits and cracks now the living and hell dwellers meet. 

Soulless creatures cut the preachers nose from his face. 
Tie his ******* knot to stop the loud talk. 
Then chase the lost children away from gods grace 
to taste lust on their young tongues. To waste breath 

    with blackened lungs. 

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down? 

We- the town that belongs down here now-  
Watch the children bow to the man with the crown now. 
Red skin, black suit-  and it really burns how
his tongue twists truth like a noose for a neck. “Bow

      Your little heads”.

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down? 

The little flowers in full bloom don’t long for a groom. 
Instead they swoon for the creatures and take them to their room. 
The smell of sweat, lust and perfume. We can only presume 
That it won’t be long before theres a monster in the womb. 

      An Ungodly creation.   

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down?

The first baby is born- and every parent is mourning. 
The devil has sworn that by the time his hairs thorning
he will be all knowing- they will be saved by his fore-warnings. 
Unless, torn by his human half he seeks a quiet cold morning 

     above ground. 

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down?

And What can a parent do? Staring at the cold truth
in their fiery endless doom, they can only cry for the fate of the youth.  
They can only obey the orders of the red crown and black suit.
They can only watch as he takes each and every single tooth

    of their young.  

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down?

The new mother struggles without a man to aid her.
Her earthly father smuggles food to try and save her
and her young two week old son from their slaver.
But caught, he’s left to rot and told over and over he betrayed her.

     His blooded hands cease fighting.  

Half hell, half town. 
Can’t you tell we fell down?
    
 We are the redemption of an eye for an eye.
We are the blind world that it leads to.  
We are the bodies hung high and dry.

*You are but the mouth that this world feeds through.

Hunger is a gun to your head.
Can you feel it pressed up against
your temple or is your tummy full?
Do you hear it cocked and ready
Or does your lunch sit happily on
your warm breakfast and cup of tea?  
I think it's high time someone like you
                                    bites the bullet.

You in your fine-tailored, Italian suit.
You in your penthouse apartment,
who leave homes empty here and abroad.
Yes, you.
I know you know someone who knows
someone who grew up in a tenement flat.  
I know you know someone who knows
someone who works with disabled people.
I know you haven't heard any complaints.
But I know you and we have here this gun.
And I know just what we'll do with it

Cut throats for comedy.
And cut close to the bone.
Speak and be honestly.
And be what you condone.  
But do not condemn those
for their differences.
Uniqueness is our reason.

"Judge not less thy be judged"

Run your mouth till it runs off
and bites off her tongue.
Words flung like phlegm from
the bottom of blackened lungs.

The singing hero becomes the unsung.

The name don't ring bells,
it breaks down the house door.
Lays the residents down flat
on the floor. Panicked to their core.

Then cracked tiles snap.
Falling through the floor, as the
water pours. Floods the basement,
drowns the poets and the dwelling.

Smelling the decomposing, the
neighbours dread the scenes gore.
A simple drug scandal?
Or the ****** of a *****?  

For years they couldn't bare
to think for any more than two
seconds about what stories played
out behind that door.

But their tongues twisted truth
like it was a noose for a neck.
No empirical evidence, yet told
all when the police did inspect.

Funny how the mind winds fiction
out of nothing but simple prediction.

Away wae ye, dinnae bury yer heed.
This time the morra we could aw be deed.
So take the day by the tail and walk him,
and live a life that yer proud tae lead.  

I'm a sky, I'm a seashore, I'm the day drawing dim.
I'm a highway, I'm a mountain, I'm whatever ye need.

They say we’re so selfishly rational,
and so modernly savage.
A plague thats scale is international,
and makes us easy to manage.  

Some say we’re predictably irrational.
I’m more inclined to believe this.
Patterns in chaos,  lead by morale.
Decisions made in ignorances bliss.

Some people robbed a bank
and had to serve twelve years.
Some banks robbed the people,
and were forgiven after tears:
“ I am ashamed. I am ashamed.
  Isn’t that punishment enough?”
The law forgave, forgot and then blamed
those who were living harshly, cold and rough.

A young woman caked in makeup
hangs from a tree caked in concrete;
She’s alive and well, smiling gleefully.
But the tree doesn’t look so good.

If the bogey man should come tonight,
When your tucked in safe and tight,
and his cold hands creep so slight,
how would you like to be a baby girl tonight?

Or an unconscious, intoxicated woman?
He slips right in well she isn't moving.

She wakes and she wishes it away,
But still the spinning eyes of his face
turn her sick as mind starts to to race.
How would you like to feel like you have no name?

You're the Unconscious, intoxicated woman,
nameless and shamed, and no longer feel human.

Old Gods die hard.
I lay here between bones, and glass in shards,
and watch them cling to their miserable lives.
Ten bullets, one pill, one bottle, and ten knives.
Forty virgins, forty mothers, and forty wives
will await no one, and nothing is in this feeling.

Old Gods Die hard.

To no-where I go in the nothing I feel,
Spinning like an old coin or a wayward wheel.
I tumble as I twist, throwing myself on
through the falling mist of the new red dawn.
Battered as I bounce, I trip on with zeal;
Spiralling, Spiralling, Spiralling on,
till I’m spiralled from anything I thought to be real.  
Till concrete crumbles and the green grass is gone.

Here, I stand, in those bizarre acres of mine.
Where geometry fails in the plans I design.
Where math melts like memories of my boyhood,
and the laws of motion ******* to be understood.
Come falling upwards, plummeting to the sunshine.  
We’ll swing and we’ll sway on the old wise wood
of trees that hang from the skies like a shrine
to nature in reverse, and truths in falsehood.

Boldly through the cauld' batters on the sonneteer
wae thick work boots an a sobering heed;    
blisters form on his heels and start tae bleed,
as the new builds part and the river appears.
Doon by the clyde, the old sickly mistress,
he sparks a snout in the ease of the mornin’.
The usual grey sky turns dark wae a warnin’,
but he draws in deeply and breathes out stress.
If only I could follow him further through the city.
If only I could ask how tae write upon these streets.
Should I run with the crowd and speak over beats?
Or speak in concrete and make them buildings seem witty?  
I hink I’ll let this river run until the day I know
how tae speak and spit wae the tongue of Glasgow.

Blood soaked barrels roll down the cragged hills
Gathering speed and flattening all life  
in their path, until they run into the mouth of the sea.
And though you might hear their desperation  
shrieking madly across the sunburst sky,
do not pay it any mind.  Close your eyes;
and drift away in the thistles of Summer.

"Lay down upon a couch of your comfort,
and come walking down the stairs;
Come falling, sleeping, through the sunburst
sky, as your feet find themselves without cares.
Lay that little soul out bare, stripped of sense,
and under the scrutiny of my stare.  
Let me see why the now makes your past tense.
And why your head holds your stomach in suspense. “

I am the churning thoughts- turning
in the mind of the killer.  
You are but the stomach in knots-
burning with unease
as you watch the thriller.

I am the tension rising- the swell
to the dwelling mind.
You are but the audience- blind.
Fickly figuring the plot
as it begins to unwind .

I am the blunt instrument- and the brute
that wields the weapon.  
You are but the cross critic-
Cynically disappointed
that there seems to be no lesson.

I am the redemption of an eye for an eye.
I am the blind world it leads to.
I am the bodies left high and dry.
You are the mouth that this world feeds through.

Public thoughts intertwine in a world inside of mine:
they fight, they **** and they follow one another.
Thoughts unfiltered - and images heavily so -
clutter the air in an **** of senselessness.  
They attack from all angles, and show love in all places:
They show the purest of passions and the vilest disgraces.
Here one man's cringe is another mans thrill,
and one woman's cage is another woman's will.
Here the voiceless can scream from their fingers.
Here they can hide from each other and themselves.
Here they can rid any question that lingers,
and scream from the old stinking web down into the delves.

The neighbours never took any notice
of his silence although it spoke loud.  
He was a man shrouded in mystery-
not a part of anyones history, he blissfully
existed, persistently kept to his own space
distantly. “ Did you miss me?” he asked
his greyhound the same day he was found
dead- his dog didn’t reply, so he put a bullet
straight through his empty head and on his
corpse the dog fed for two weeks before
the smell reeked and leaked up stairs
and half the neighbours fled instead of
calling the police. But there is only weeks
left on his lees and soon the landlord will come
to collect his overdue fee’s:

Now he arrives with a knock on the door.
Something isn’t right of this he is sure.

But it’s just another case of Dennistoun Door’

I’m not going to tell you
you’re more than the sum of your parts.
I’m not going to tell you
the thing that I’m after is your heart.

But I might ask to take you home.
Only because you look like you live alone.

In the morning I won’t ask
If I can stay here just a little longer.
Because We’re not in love,
We’re in fear of it and thats stronger.

But I might ask you to give me a call
Whenever you are feeling down or small.

Cause thats when you like me best.

You won’t find me in an innocent laugh
or in some greying beard’s wise words.
You won’t find me on recoveries roads
or in the gay songs of morning’s birds.
No, you won’t find me in the bluest sea
or on the hills that pucker to kiss the skies.
I’ll never be in true love’s fiery throws ,
or in some sweet and un-jaded eyes.

I’ll be here, in the heap of ****.
On the drunk drivers tongue, in the junkies spit.
In beauty broken by unseen hands,
in the plane that crashes as it lands.
In the crippling fear of the abused,
and in the power that the abuser used.  
I’ll be here, in the heap of ****.
I’ll be here, for I am all of it.  

I am weak, and I am so resolutely.
I am power corrupted absolutely.

Inside me is a stranger, a queer and frightened freak.
A frayed rope smile and on a face crafted from straw.
Rocking-horse knees that stand his scarecrow posture.
Her staccato limbed demeanour's too awkward for company.

I used to let him out in the safe homes of friends,
where judgements eyes never burned on the back of her head.
One night, a boy with bullying hands threw him to the floor
and pounded her fist after fist in a burning fury.  

Now he won't come out.
She doesn't know who she is.  
And they're sick of being told who they should be.

The transparent man says he has thick skin,
but bursts into tears when he stands on a pin.
He wants to write a classic, but cannot begin,
because the littlest thing sends him off in a spin.
Oh I pity you old fool, for you have never learned.
You’ve spent a lifetime in school,
but no knowledge have you earned.

A crawling blue veined nightmare
drags itself through the hole in my head;
drooling, *******, and vomiting.
It's nails dig deep, and peirce through my mind
like the screech of'a rusting train,
grinding itself to a halt that never comes.  
I can taste his filth upon my own tongue,
as the air of regret starts to fill these lungs.

Nested, now, behind my ever open eyes,
he and his filth pile up and clutter my sight.
I blink and I turn blind,  
as sleep wakes him into white and a blinding light.

Tidal waves of the titanium sea
threaten but never bring the disaster.
They are great statues stuck on the horizon-
mighty monuments of atrocity.
One day I will set out to see their glory-
I’ll walk years upon this old cold sea,
I’ll run if my feet and heart are able,
I’ll trek till my days end if I need to,
And when I finally get there...
I hope the horizon comes crashing down on me.

My baby's got a whispering hat.
It tells her grand tales, and sings her to sleep.  
My baby’s got a whispering hat.
She listens to every word of that creep

She goes out for a run, and he goes with her.
She say’s it's to save her ears from the cold.
She rejects anything I try and give her,
cause that whispering hat has taken his hold.  

In our marital bed I hear them laugh;
The sounds mingle like blood in a flea.
His breaths in her ear, gets her high with the gas,
And they don’t care that I can hear and see.  

I hear her in the throws of deep passion;
and so I burst down the door in a rage.  
“ You are mine. All of you! Not just a ration!”
Then take of her hat, and close her cage.

I ask my baby’s whispering hat.
But he will not say a ******* word.
So I burn my baby’s whispering hat.
“ That’s it. I’m done.”  
            The last words from her I heard.

With blood we ran through the city like a river/
The givers gave out and stared madly with a shiver.
" You can take your time... So take it"
screamed the clock, so I had to brake it.
The glass pierced the skin, my knuckles began
to bleed and joined with the river as it ran.

The plan was not to have one. To be a man.
To be good, or thought of highly. But the
blood keeps running on by me / I know
in this I''l drown. Spiral down to the underworld.
To be hurled by the winds of punishment for
my lustful, spiteful, vengeful acts of selfishness.

No doubt theres bigger fish to fry,
but I'll be burning along side them.
In truth I only ever told a lie.
So il wait here until the tide comes.