Life in addiction - Hello Poetry

Jul 2015

Irving MacPherson

Barry

I had a dream the other night,
                   I visited an old friend
                      who had died last Halloween.

He drank himself to death,
wet brain, liver failure,
the whole nine yards.

In my dream I asked him
    what it was like to be dead,
he said "Oh it's okay....
can I borrow five bucks?"

I don't know I said,
    "How can I be sure
               I'll get it back"

"Ah come on" he said,
"I'm five bucks short for a case"

I relented and we called a cab.
       The cab driver comes
            and he says to Barry,

"What's it like to be dead?"

Jun 2015

Irving MacPherson

Hot Air

The air is thick with water beads
***** water beads
That fill my lungs
Making it harder to breathe

The yeast
In my belly
Is causing a sickness
That nothing can remedy

My head is full of
Dead ends and barricades
The yellow and black
Bumble Bee signs
Warning me to
Keep my feet on the ground

Just as a hot air balloon
Spills its people
Onto jagged rocks
Breaking their bones
And giving them ****** noses

Jun 2015

Irving MacPherson

Skin Deep

Skin deep in her cold green sea,
a dark and gnarled sky above.
On the curved horizon a side reads:
She believes in angels but she can't believe in love.

Insane in her reverie, wings sewn cross-stitch
down the spine of her back.
Rattling panes that the wind blows
are just a reminder of all that she lack.

Saw teeth across metal is music to her ear,
the shriek of the tea kettle full of insolent childhood fear.
Rude eyes shout; forget the devil, he has no bite.
She knows better though and she's not going down without a fight.

Her attempts to speak of the things she has heard
are the sounds of a cat who has sprung on a bird.
To spread her wings is to spread her legs
and embrace the power the darkness has made.

Oh, the suffering of heartache after hearts ache
while pulling the wings off of flies.
She can make you laugh, she's pretty smart eh,
but it isn't the same as being wise.

Every bit of her life, it occurs to her,
yes it does, it just occurs.
Now is it being selfish or just being blind,
if fooling people well is her way to unwind.

A portrait of a lady I know. When she read it she was thrilled. I was thrilled that she was thrilled... if that makes any sense.

Jun 2015

Irving MacPherson

Only Hope

You're my only hope
I need you near
I'm in Deaths scope
It's the end I fear

Jun 2015

Irving MacPherson

Good Gear

The crackheads
want the good gear
even though it doesn't matter
they are going to take that eight-ball
and smoke it all

All wide-eyed and sketchy
teeth rotting out of their head
scanning the floor for any dropped crumbs

Another run for a twenty stone
to be drawn down deep with another and another

Good gear they say while grinding there stubby stumps
too wired to think of anything else but the crack

The sores on their bodies skinny rakes for a frame
A bad reputation with their drugs to blame

The nights and the days they very much mesh together
until they run out of funds that were begged for borrowed or stole

The crash is inevitable the cycle as well
the lives they lead are a living hell.

Sad but ugly as well.

May 2015

Irving MacPherson

"Here's Your Hat, what's your hurry"

I used to
  Drink my face off
     'get lost' to this world

I'd stare at my insides,
   My red raw meat

Up to full speed
    I  wiped more off my chin
       Than most others drink

    Life was going down the tube
And I wasn't helping the situation none

Everywhere I went I wore out any welcome
  My rude, angry self, had no restraint at all

The face left me
   Was nothing I could live with
   I  had to clean my act up,
       Make me a more presentable me
           Blend in with those  I chose as my peers

Imagine that,
No more 'Bums Rush'
No more bloodied noses
No more " Here's your Hat, what's your hurry"

May 2015

Irving MacPherson

Junk and Foibles

insult
    to
        injury

               egg
          on
    yer
face

fobbed out

whats

   da

madda

             fo

                  you

broken
   rice
     bowl

                 kamikaza
             pilots
         wearing
     helmets

                -why-

shame
   shaming
      shammed

          junk
     and
foibles

Not meant to offend

Apr 2015

JM

*******

Tasting shadow and ash,
I crumble again.
The futility of it all is crushing.
The weight of centuries
grinds my bones to dust
as you stare out your window
at a thick dead sky.

*Why aren't you here?

Jan 2015

JM

Belly

Nocturnal bloodlust.
Pale Luna cries tears of stone.
He drowns in her fruits.

Jan 2015

JM

Now

In violent light,
shadows are sharp, crisp and clean.
Heavy is the night.

The salt of your skin
rests uneasily on my swollen tongue
as I ******* like your life
depended on it.

How many times have I wrenched
the impossible from the ether
and left you slick and aching,
bereft of any intelligible thought
save for the feeling of having
been entirely filled and
completely consumed
in the same
endless moment?

One moment can change
your universe.
How long
does it take to lose an arm,
to come for the first time,
to surrender?

How long does it take to cut too deep?

I can become your
deity in the violent light
of our sanctuary
and you can take my
blood while I sleep
in your hair.

Heavy is the night
but your skin is cool
and all I want is to
die inside you.

The salt of your sins
my only meals as I
burn in the furnace
again.

I can't take my eyes
away from the edge
of our shadows
in this
violent light.

I can't take my eyes away.

Jan 2015

JM

Touching the Great Nothing

"Write what you know."

I want to write about
beautiful things,
but I only know
ugly.
Ugly hearts and stone blood.

Fetid loyalty.

I want to write about a love as pure as honey,
but all I know are the poison-tipped thorns of betrayal.

If I could put the right words
in the right order
at the right time
and explain what it means to lose you,
nobody would care.

I'd like to write about
my happy family,
laugh filled birthdays
and joyous gatherings,
but I only know
fractious,
secretive,
*******.

I want to touch another soul
make a connection with my words
share a part of my self
and help someone in the process,
but all I have been taught is
taking
keeping
lying
hiding
running
ruining.

I would love to write
like Pablo,
of wheat
and bread
and fields that don't weep,

but all I know are
desperate fumblings
in ******,
beer soaked bathrooms,
back alley
drunken
*******
by black
barely passable trannys,
diseases and
barely consensual bloodstains.

I cannot speak of such things.
It's bad enough I think about them,
even worse I write about them.

I write what I know.

Jan 2015

Irving MacPherson

Problem Solved

Under nourished being of a human being,
Gobbling up the cobble stones on a stroll through town.

Mispronounce the words on the page
Of a book you mistook for the gospel.

Someone will shoot you some bones,
Then when all alone you'll draw your comfort up in a spoon.

You lay waste to a world that everyone puts such stock in.
Thumbing your nose at rich and poor alike.

Trickling down through the roots, your behaviour stains loved ones
With a work that blackens the eye of love.

I cannot turn my back but I will not be played while being betrayed.
I'll leave it to you to lift your own self out of the mire.

Your 'now' passes quicker than a blink of an eye. The time was now ten years past.
I see you, but I won't follow, leaving your slug trail that has the texture of spent ***.

Hollow eyes out of focus, viewing no pain that matters.
The death of you will stop your need.

Alone and unwanted, your sums worth tallied in the red.
No surprise there they will say, and so will I.

Jan 2015

JM

The weight of nothing

Thick and cold, sharp night;
Milky skin drips under a sky that turns
from ebony to scarlet as the bugs find their way into our blood.

Take me into your heart like a dagger; what I want to do is live in your pain until all I know
is what makes you cry into your pillows.

Bury me in your long and heavy shadows
until the pressure of your fear consumes me like I was never anything more than fluids for you.

I'll take these chains off and
break my bones to give you something to mix your paints with. Just whisper in my ears so I can finally sleep.

*Whisper me to sleep in this cold night,
wrap me in your heat.