WELCOME TO PLANET EARTH (2020)
by Walking Doctor Tonnan
1.Welcome To Planet Earth
Welcome to Planet Earth
It’s a pleasure to meet you at your birth
Now we’ve got a lot of problems we’d like you to solve
But don’t worry too much, you don’t have to get involved
Well, we’ve got plenty of slaughter but not enough schools
Hell, we’ve got plenty of water but too many fools
We’ve got seven billion people with acute frustration
Bored with a heaven full of mass altercation
Welcome to Planet Earth-- it’s a pleasure to meet you at your birth!!
Now we’ve got a lot of problems we’d like you to solve
But don’t worry too much, you don’t have to get involved
Now let me introduce you to some of the people on the street
You probably won’t like them, but you might as well meet
I’m the Queen Mother of the United States
This is my brother; we clean plates.
This is a woman; she is your date.
Oh, you’re inflating with lust! I trust you can’t wait!
Oh my God, the date’s blown up.
Well, good job it’s the chorus, let’s turn the sound up.
Welcome to Planet Earth-- it’s a pleasure to meet you at your birth!!
Now we’ve got a lot of problems we’d like you to solve
But don’t worry too much, you don’t have to get involved
This is Franklin. He's a frog.
This is Douglas. He's my dog.
My name's Bob. I'm a dentist.
My name's Dot. I build fences.
This is bedding. This is Muriel.
I’m an actor. This is some cereal.
I’m at a wedding. I’m at a funeral.
This is a tractor. This is a urinal.
And I’m a singer and I wrote this song.
Now wouldn’t it be great if y’all clapped along?
Welcome to Planet Earth-- it’s a pleasure to meet you at your birth!!
Now we’ve got a lot of problems we’d like you to solve
But don’t worry too much, you don’t have to get involved
Hey, yeah that’s right!!
I know you’ve some questions you want to ask
I’ve tried to explain but it’s a very big task.
2. Endorphin Dolphin
It wasn’t a shove, as such; imagine a prehistoric push, lush beyond human flaw.
She touched me like he wanted to be touched & of this I can’t say much more.
Short of the possibility of God intervening, I’d say that there’s no reason to pray.
And she never did believe in meaning, except that you make it up along the way.
But as the sun wakes & the day breaks, the years fall down his her my cheeks.
“Every atom of last night”, I’d say, “spoke brighter than words can speak…
all except for yours…. endorphin dolphin of these shores.”
3. You Are The Catalyst
If God is the reason why we exist,
I guess I’m a god-fearing hedonist.
And I can’t resist the catalyst.
And I can’t resist the catalyst.
But oh! oh no! You’re the catalyst I can’t resist.
You’re the catalyst I can’t resist.
I tried to see yet I never saw
The impossible dream’s probable flaw
Yet there stood all my dreaming raw.
I saw the flaw of dreaming’s door.
But oh! oh no! I was dumbfounded by awe.
I was dumbfounded by awe.
And you know who put you here
And – no! – it couldn’t have been you
Yes, the future ain’t that clear
But what on earth else is new?
I tried to hear yet I never heard
Your flippant heart’s filthy word
I puzzled long over the wind-up bird
The catalyst is addicted to the absurd
But oh! oh no! I became addicted to lemon curd
I became addicted to lemon curd
I tried to feel yet I never felt
Your answer to my hunger melt
We must deal with the cards we’re dealt
And I fell under the catalyst’s spell
But oh! oh no! I fell down a well – you’re the catalyst!
I fell down a well – you’re the catalyst!
And you know who put you here
And – no! – it couldn’t have been you
Yes, the future ain’t that clear
But what on earth else is new?
4. Sheep In A Lorry
It’s a shame you chain-smoke because it kills the taste of food.
We broke up the rain and it put you in a really good mood.
You yawned a whole orchestra and thought of the fat cat in her hat.
I drank coffee so tragic like any magic dog would that could do that.
But if we’re sheep in a lorry then I can’t say I’m a lamb.
And when I say that I’m sorry then sorry is what I am.
When I say that I’m sorry it means that I give a damn.
Been sleep walking clear so much – talking is as dear as touch.
Even smoking fails as a crutch… searching in the dark depends on luck.
I’m scared of myself more than anyone else: 9 pills a day to take off the edge.
And at the end of the end no one knows what happens because we're dead.
But if we’re sheep in a lorry then I can’t say I’m a lamb.
And when I say that I’m sorry then sorry is what I am.
When I say that I’m sorry it means that I give a damn.
Oblivion obliterated midnight with schmaltz about types of plumbers.
The flu-riddled son threw up a chicken that waltzed to random numbers.
I’ve been singing with the sinners I’ve been dancing with the dead.
I’ve been hiding from the hunters that run inside my head.
I’ve been drinking wine since seven. I drunk myself a well.
I fell straight up to heaven but I'm wallowing in my hell.
But if we’re sheep in a lorry then I can’t say I’m a lamb.
And when I say that I’m sorry then sorry is what I am.
When I say that I’m sorry it means that I give a damn.
5. Grave News
Victim of law, they spiked her telephone
Her past undreamt of, unwritten, unknown
The bandit who boasts of his innermost ghost
Begs for forgiveness then proposes a toast
Please open the door, just name your price
We’re barefooted pilgrims; your life is a(d)vice
We’ll show you the Queens of Tyras, the banquets of Rome
And then the sparrows of Egypt will carry you home
For though children change and their gods decay
We'll show you tomorrow if you give us today
The flight of your tyrant, the night of our soul
Will undress the death and swallow it whole
Your kings move their lips, they wallow in word
Their meaning is stripped and nothing is heard
Yes, your hunger is splendid and noble and true
But your slaughter of lyres will not herald the new
What of the garlands we knitted our daughter?
Where are the gardens we fought for and brought her?
You're nailing the wrong snake to the stake
You're bitten and smitten and cannot escape
So, forgive me, forgive me, for my awful sin
I woke to your secrets and drunk all your gin
The man you crown saviour, I deem a thief
While I scream for love, you dream of relief
When I doubted my darkness, I sprouted two heads
And I lay deep in her heart begging for bread
It's you who sells nonsense disguised as the truth
Your hundred decisions preside as the proof
But your army of infants will abandon your cause
Because your rival, your friend will not sign her clause
He knows what we cherish, he knows what we gave
You follow her footsteps, he'll spit on your grave
6. Steepled Sequels
Your movements were married to the most mystical of Mayan music.
I plummeted into your groove which proved fiercely human.
Our pounding hearts started to make our first date seem so stupid.
I felt like Bonaparte when I emailed you my art, but it bounced straight back to Cupid…
I’m very lonely, love.
You are my only love.
This is no phony bluff
But enough of the crony stuff.
So I’ll say this: fuck me.
I saw steepled sequels in your body’s versed trance.
I know I knew what I’d never known before just at first glance.
In some ways (on Sundays) it’s fun to die in advance.
I swear you’d show me nowhere! We’d go there to dance!
I’m very lonely, love.
You are my only love.
This is no phony bluff
But enough of the crony stuff.
So I’ll say this: fuck me.!
When we were eighteen, you told me chewing gum is a therapeutic costume.
Your breath of breakfast bread became a bitter treat, a shitter perfume.
I can picture us now shooting up to talk to God in God’s room.
You’re my first favourite future since I fell in love in the womb…
Your photograph eyes, my amphetamine we heart it!
It’s no surprise that we laughed as parted!
You are my homey, love.
You really stone me, love.
You know me, you show me love.
This baloney isn’t holy enough…
So I’ll say this: haha! Fuck it!
7. Bird Volcano Event
A bird slurred a song of sorrow he borrowed from tomorrow's awe.
A cat purred along as she heard the third's absurd swoop and soar.
It's half of something squared, a shared laugh, a prayer to time's shore.
The chords run towards the sun and climb the stairs to rhyme's door.
Nature's law dictates fate creates a gate before you explore the core.
And it's a hurricane of cocaine in chains as champagne raindrops pour.
But words can't explain the pain of bliss in the refrain's sublime score.
Picture this volcano where earthly ecstasy loads
To return your dreams in a burning stream that flows
Into the snow forest where mercy grows like a rose
And algebraic angels compose acid odes in a doze,
Painting the paradox of a paradise no saint knows
Where death has no foes and the hurricane sows
The codes of the unknown into celestial rainbows
Until the lone saxophone blows and trombone explodes.
Hear the harps hum a hymn as the limbs of death shine their light.
See the grieving leaves fall form the trees breathe in the night.
Now listen to the weeping colours christen the spark of infinity:
I found a dark sound on the ground that let me be free.
Twilight murmurs a mighty miracle and the midnight fades
Into the graveless enclave which brings peace to the old parade.
The lullabies crafted by the lava colonnade bake as love shakes
The trees which are guardians of the lake where we awake.
8. Reality Or Reverie
With the untameable harp of dream arrested in your palm,
You deny the dormant deity’s call for a slumberous calm.
But it’s there the world awakens in unburdened wonder,
Where lover and beloved are nameless without number.
Reality blasphemes the future and smokes like it’s the law;
Reverie conjures places and faces you’ve never seen before.
I know which one I’d choose if the choice were mine to make;
I’d rejoice in the music of your voice and I would never wake.
We’re all cracked: crucifix of time, hanging round my neck,
I’m born to live and die in this fusion of heavenly heck.
We play chess with every breath: but the odds are stacked,
For all consciousness will meet death or siesta's abstract.
Reality is advisable and definable: you’re there or you’re not;
Reverie is sizeable and excitable: you forget that you forgot.
I know which one I’d choose if the choice were mine to make
I’d rejoice in the music of your voice and I would never wake.
Louise, fathomless heart, pirouetting like a children’s globe,
We live because there’s time to kill or for the thrill of the strobe.
Either we’re shambling without style down the shopping aisle;
Or we’re flying through a world as our being utters a smile.
Reality is no joke and there’s no cart blanche: each day is as it is;
Reveries…colours evoke avalanche of phantasmagoria aura bliss.
I know which one I’d choose if the choice were mine to make;
I’d rejoice in the music of your voice and I would never wake
9. I’ll Love You Until Friday Never Comes
With your river flowing the angel must be joking when he says ‘love is blind’.
Your strumpet clothing and your magnetic blowing live enshrined in my mind.
The trumpet of loathing love and yet loving loathing majestically combine.
I wonder if I’ll love you until Friday never comes or if I’ll ever call you ‘mine’.
There are those who see the God above who never knew the pain of bliss.
And those like me who dream of love with one like you on nights like this.
Though I confide the absurd, I cloak my heart of hearts and I hide my hiding too.
I impart a liquored divide of blurred feeling for it resides in any evocation of you.
You woke me up and you broke me down; those three words that I spoke are true.
You beautiful slut; you truthful nut; I adore your strut to tut to pokes of voodoo.
There are those who see the God above who never knew the pain of bliss.
And those like me who dream of love with one like you on nights like this.
Wherever I am the same one is there; I swear without him I wouldn’t have a care.
You and them are beyond compare; you repair my world like a prayer rarer than rare.
They smoke like chimneys and joke incessantly but never laugh and avert your glare.
From your hopeful horoscope of dope to kaleidoscope of nope, I’ll love you until I am nowhere.
There are those who see the God above who never knew the pain of bliss.
And those like me who dream of love with one like you on nights like this.
10. Your Fingers Were A Cabaret
Though God knows the ride of time flows slowly, snidely and forever,
So it goes that if I chose suicide as my bride, nothing would be severed.
I suppose I had to grow up so fast that even I don’t wholly know me,
But I dreamt a moment and in my bridled mind a vision presided holy.
I observed the mirage of you there, tattooed in secular and unsecular places.
Curved figure camouflaged by hair, you grew a vector of inscrutable faces.
I fought the desire and felt its beautiful fire melt through my happy veins.
It was like I belonged to your scenic song, which purged me of all my pains.
Your image said I cooked myself thin but you took my soul as your twin.
Your image said salvation is law and horizons widen in beginning of sin.
And though in awe I swore I knew just exactly what you meant,
All beagle-eyed eternity fried as the future of love became its present.
Back then our limbs did the talking as we let the longing win.
Your fingers were a cabaret and how our souls did begin to sing.
11. Like The Sun When It Swoons
There’s a solemn prayer that the sparrows recite.
The wind whispers it carefully where Winter’s sole witness is night.
It’s hard to render in words, that which are finite.
It’s a childish account of the earth's surrender to dark until dark emerges light!
I didn’t think you’d plummet into the summit of majesty.
I felt you fall in love with me, tonguing me easy and happy in the marquee.
My love for you won’t deplete like the sun wouldn’t swoon at the height of sorcery.
If history is doomed to repeat, let us meet again under the moonlight.
The next day, I drink from the chalice of youth so deep.
On the brink of discovering the calloused truth, I drift into the seer of sleep!
I lift you up in an exultant reverie & I’m so lucid that I leap!
You’re the same woman I fell in love with, and I’m so happy I could weep!
Now I perceive the grieving angels in the leaves travelled blind.
How cruel destiny can be to some and to others how kindly it aligns.
My love for you won’t deplete like the sun wouldn’t swoon at the height of sorcery!
If history is doomed to repeat, let us meet again under the moonlight!
The truth is disguised there coated in lies as soon as you rise.
They tortured me in the orchard; I cry until my soul and body dries.
You smoked my heart, you woke my art, the start is done.
I always wondered if you were the one, the sum of sums, the one next to none.
The sun rises, I realize we were simultaneously old yet young.
God knows what the rest will become, their destinies unsung, ours too yet to come.
My love for you won’t deplete like the sun wouldn’t swoon at the height of sorcery!
If history is doomed to repeat, let us meet again under the moonlight!
12. Twirled
It’s easy to translate a broken heart into art; I should know, I’ve hated myself from the start.
Now I’m paranoid about everything from schizophrenic spliffs to what ifs to Cupid’s dart.
She walks & talks mad like a phoenix; that don’t make it brick but it makes me glad to be sick.
And now waterfalls of tears recall the snakebite while arrears are politely signed in blood running thick.
I will always remember you, but I love to get lost within the why.
You realise there is no meaning but that which we ascribe when we try.
The skies are perfectly sad tonight & each soppy star is a secret cherub stud designed just for you.
The sun is a photograph of the humming moon’s dance around the globe and its Oxygen zoo.
Promises aren’t made to be broken, so relish the rain like a pained painter in a robe on the job.
Your library eyes spin tales of youth, but my solitary confinement mind fails the truth of the mob.
I will always remember you, but I love to get lost within the why.
You realise there is no meaning but that which we ascribe when we try.
I feel to finger the linguist, yet my celibacy lingers on a single thing a touch too long.
Epileptic triggers may extinguish the English but stay strong & belong to the crutch of song.
Lord, I was a sinner until I felt the mascara of angel dust so strange on her window flesh.
Now I vow to begin again; I’m not morose but I want to doze to a dose of the gross afresh.
I will always remember you, but I love to get lost within the why.
You realise there is no meaning but that which we ascribe when we try.
I want to feel alive and twenty-five and drive and survive and arrive at midnight’s design.
I want to fail to recall word, I want a tail like a small bird – yeah, I want what isn’t mine.
Someday somewhere, sometime someone somehow will do something so happy.
We’ll just spend all day enjoying it, but I’ll never forget how you both trapped me.
I will always remember you, but I love to get lost within the why.
You realise there is no meaning but that which we ascribe when we try.
First you were a churlish magazine cover, but then you were an orphaned girl.
Now you are the private pearls of another, now your kindness cannot unfurl.
My tongue curled too; the sun begun to numb me so much I could’ve hurled.
This is twisted. This is twirled. The existence you hold is a spaghetti igloo world.
I will always remember you, but I love to get lost within the why.
You realise there is no meaning but that which we ascribe when we try.
WALKING DOCTOR TONNAN
by Walking Doctor Tonnan
1. Yesterday Died
Ain’t it just like the dead to conquer your head
With all the things that could’ve been said?
Society hangs its hate by human thread
Then on a plate they serve your head
Though we bear the weight of worlds they dread
We can only stare as fate unfurls in red
I did it though because you cried popeyed
I nearly died because they deified their side
I haven’t forgot what the dream seemed to hide
Your intoxicated copper gobbles trout and sprouts
As Buddhists meditate on the devout route
And politicians pout their doubting snouts
Spouting bullshit until their lungs give out
As huddled masses shout about a man of clout
Who can stand to flout his pout without a doubt
I did it because your hands of time were my guide
And because of the tried trance they applied
Not because of the way that yesterday died
Your hero (in your dreams) consumes forbidden fruit
And returns to the womb with his orphaned flute
Soliloquising that each angelic accident is absolute
As tears stream down her face to his embryonic suit
Where the air is polluted by your new destitute boots
But who can refute that materialistic minds prostitute?
I did it though because the ride was wild
I only lied when I was beguiled as a child
I still can’t forget the way you smiled
I saved some for me but you took the rest
Whatever God’s doing can only be guessed
So pay no heed to one that’s blessed
With a crest etched across his breast
For it’s he that leads this lonely quest
But it’s he that’s bequest to those oppressed
I did it though because my hands were tied
I nearly died to let our dreams collide
I can’t seem to forget the way they lied
My essay on yesterday reviled, I was exiled
Society… who has the guile to attend that trial?
I’d only be thinking about you all the while
I did it though because the ride was wild
I only cried when my dream was defiled
I can’t seem to forget the way that you smiled
I did it though because you lied popeyed
I cried too because my bride deified the bribe
I haven’t forgot what the dream seemed to hide
I was embarrassed, embarrassed, embarrassed
I ain't saying a--thing
2. Inside (feat. Tonnan's Brother)
A future lover walked up to me in the bar.
She winked and said, “I know who you are!”
I replied, “Chances are I’m not what you think.
But would you like a memory in which we drink?”
I live inside her now but I don’t get homesick.
It’s too late I know but in circles we go so quick.
I simply can’t dance, mister, but I’ll chance the night.
Your sister can’t buy a future, but your kitten might.
Girl, you don’t need alcohol to calm each qualm.
But maybe our world is a greedy computer farm.
I live inside her now but I don’t get homesick.
It’s too late I know but in circles we go so quick.
I loved you but you’re indifferent to me now.
I’d change your mind, but I don’t know how.
We discussed our star-signs on the school bus.
Now I can look up how you are without extra fuss.
I live inside you but I don’t get homesick.
It’s too late but I know in circles we go so quick.
I live inside you both but I don’t get homesick.
It’s too late I know but in circles we go so quick.
3. Angel Made of Acid
Well, God forbid my heart is hid/his/hit & I'll be yours if you'll be mine.
Angel made of acid I was just a kid [cept’ where the sun don’t shine].
Mad/bad breathless beauty shot time into rhyme.
In deathless duty the serpent stars entwined.
Yesterday I was falling but today all I do is climb.
Yet singing these songs never earnt a dime.
If you grow up restless, the best breakfast is wine.
The law is thine while the doors align in the Sublime.
Lust at first sight
Becomes Love
By the end of the night.
Restless, I tested how far I could go: the real foe isn’t what you don’t know.
I smoked more, opened a big door & added more flow like Rimbaud.
Your four kaleidoscope eyes reflect the spectre of the circus skies.
Beyond the ravines of what has been lies a future we’ve yet to realise.
My day is a dream I don’t want to wake from as our lips spar.
It’s as if you’re almost in me yet your tongue doesn’t leave a scar.
I’d crawl across your soul’s river covered in Old Holborn tar.
Yeah, it chars my heart to be apart so let’s say bonjour, not au revoir.
Lust at first sight
Becomes Love
By the end of the night.
The state-funded rain of the over-soul makes me whole & I’m on God’s parole.
I’m emboldened at a golden anniversary; conversely becoming 50’s my only goal.
With your Neptune ease & my bended knees & heck geez who called the police?!
The necklace daydreams created & your lips laid grace to the place of release.
In a spectacle saved for the holy beginning & final wreck you kissed my neck.
You beckoned in a dozen dying dreams & we shared ten thousand seconds of sex.
My recall stalls before last fall when I saw you: is this it, mon amour?
Watching falling raindrops pour, I never knew love could be a war.
Lust at first sight
Becomes Love
By the end of the night.
4. How Could An Angel Be So Strange?
Gunshots the force of a hundred horses
divorce reality from art.
Departed dreams and Neptune’s screams
break the moon’s heart.
God will be sole witness to the end,
just as God was to the start.
To me your touch was more sacred
than fudge and I was spellbound.
It didn’t take as much as a nudge
to clown my sanity upside down.
Now profound hunger hounds me
and ecstasy is a vision of your sound.
You are my first love, because you are you.
This is the worst love that I ever knew.
I hope that not all love is fast love, true.
So I hope that this’ll be my last love, too.
I feel this ecstasy blast above my mouth.
The real thirst is always further south.
You’re going to make me change
How could an angel be so strange?
edesire spent, you came & went:
Cops on your trail, fingernails pale as a pedant.
My future was a divorcee I'll never meet.
My past was an angel dressed in leather.
She was as sweet to me as sweet can be.
But now it's probably better to forget her forever.
My happy tears don’t bore me
And my story isn't all that odd.
Allah's essence isn't an allegory
Nor will I ever see or know God.
WORLDS THAT LOVER BENT (2023)
by Waljking Doctor Tonnan
1. Sparrows On Thistle Hill
Do you remember nuking the naked nothing?
Did you puke out the fluky nucleus of art?
Did society’s schemes already seem to sting?
Did you warn of the stream at the dream’s start?
Is there artifice to every compartmental heart?
Do we try to be mortals or die to play the part?
Can man dodge today’s arrow yet live the dart?
Did you forgive the dream at the stream’s start?
I'm part-LimeWire, part-desire, and part-sparrow,
and my cowed heart is now a semi-retired seal,
but my body is atoms of Kratom and marrow,
so why can everybody but me see how I feel?
He was this slender-fluid stupid new kid druid,
a boy who died inside her and his toy crucible.
When a lucid friend fixed us up with a cup,
then we dreamed a dream that you knew it all.
And when the final whistle finally got blew,
then we grew three fistfuls of myth out of two,
and it rained wistfully free and painfully true,
so we came to Thistle Hill to be with you.
The past flew fast until repentance outgrew it,
but the moon bird questioned all that she heard,
and I knew it to be absurd soon as her lips drew it,
but the name I heard became my favourite word.
When Joker chased the face of the if on the cliff,
then Poker-face replaced the condoms with shit,
and we quit the hieroglyph spliff of blissless myth,
three drifters who admitted that two just didn’t fit.
She figured the old world-riggers were soul-diggers,
but if he wanted it stiffer then she wanted it bigger:
that’s where they differed and that was the trigger,
but she lifted him so do forgive her and the river.
My belief in relief overthrew my beef with the chief,
but as twinned mythic winds blew through our tree,
we realised we grew up pinned to the lies of a motif,
so we spied a new leaf and we three flew truly free.
Before limbs of a God gifted the hymns of a King,
the war hurled the world into a girl with just one ring,
but if darkness in Winter’s park is yet to spring,
forgetful hearts harlot the hints of every single thing.
My art on your soul, your heart could rob me cold,
but God should discover that His mother grows old,
for you control the rod or your sole's part of the shoal,
but a look of longing on a crook in a book unsold.
If being together bent forever but overthrew the true,
it was because the chief never again flew through me,
but if she meant what she sent then she outgrew me too,
as the twinned wind blew him like a bluebird to a tree.
No meaning grows if the road flows like an arrow,
so the pope developed hope to clean up the tarot,
but love is so dope and its kaleidoscope is hallowed,
and the scene glows green as both our scopes narrow.
As ears near the blizzard-moon soon appears the hail,
but if these words fail to bail you from your own tale,
remember we’re just lucid druids stoned on the trail,
ones who can move the nuns but not remove the veil.
When harrowed crossroads download our sparrow,
then re-code my arse so their souls don't control my scars,
and if the weather tethers forever to our marrow,
the feeling glass-ceiling of this star isn’t far from what we are.
When she replaced depression with a question,
then his ghost wept violently for my every face.
When we leapt together into forever’s expression,
then our souls silently slept almost any place.
The theory of progression may be a popular obsession,
but time's weary procession fades into rhyme's race.
The shrink will think “you get better every session”,
but I still drink to help me forget my selfish disgrace.
It beggars belief that The Chief once stood in my shoes
as thought thieves seek relief & leak ampersand booze
and The Master of the Past at last lives with his muse
to give everything the myth that it’s sure not to lose.
We three stand on the beach where futures meet,
and they help me forget what’s left to be forgot,
for mermaids and computers have rituals to repeat,
and the heat is as much a treat as touch is hot.
All of the rhyme stops grinding when the new mind is true
but when time flew humankind back to the statue of the zoo
then I climbed their skies to where lies grew and fact withdrew
but because those numberless joints point to the blue alien screw
my slumberless keys dance above the hunger that love blew
and three cartwheeled to glue feeling to the voodoo of two
but as the drinker kneels at the ceiling all he can do is think of you
2. Just A Prayer
There was a time committed long ago,
when enzymes of rain turned pain into snow.
Every fate burned the brain of the promised land,
and the mirror was no nearer than yesterday’s sand.
But the cattle battled rattlesnakes to wake up forever’s frost,
and poltergeists priced the Christs who never crossed.
My slow sunset soon grows a new moon to forgo its sinking,
two loonies glued together in a church that’s forever shrinking,
marooned balloons searching for the sound they found drinking,
and so I board the sleepy thought-train of sort of not thinking,
as fasting dogs bark for the park's vastness on a diet of rain,
and artisans guard our past so at last we can try it again sane.
Like bluefish wishing for delicious dishes of visionary dove,
like a computer neutering a missionary future of fake love,
like a trooper going squish to wake in a baking lake above,
may your eyes materialise the light of today’s dark somehow,
may your thoughts be short and tight as my night is right now,
and may your river flow the full distance that the living heavens allow.
Banned drinks are manufactured by the soap lab,
but the gold they controlled was sold back to the tab,
and so as pearled worlds unfurl like stabs to a scab,
we board the taxicab crab towards the Arab confab.
Today’s photobooth truth is emotion unspoken,
and so may the good books open for us to elope in,
as purgatory’s guards pray hard for a promotion,
and the new-born pope is sworn in to let the hope in.
That swanky banker thanked the lanky anchor who pranked her.
It was the perfect advert for the hankie and his banshee’s anger.
But that apple chapter in the chapel left my mind much blanker.
And it killed the touch of the moon who filled me as I drank her.
The gypsy looks back
Goodbye to Utopia
He cannot stay here
Sweeping sea sleeping
Dawn explores cordless colour
Somewhere something sings
Natural cycles
Bigger than a bearded man
Eat drink shit love die
Like bluefish wishing for delicious dishes of visionary dove,
like a computer neutering a missionary future of fake love,
like a trooper going squish to wake in a baking lake above,
may your eyes materialise the light of today’s dark somehow,
may your thoughts be short and tight as my night is right now,
and may your river flow the full distance that the living heavens allow.
While I am aware that I’m not quite nowhere,
Kleopatra might not share my senile despair,
and though true lust is rare I mustn’t dare compare.
Sometimes I swear that Xinx is just a prayer,
but when no pair is there to care for,
there’s just one more war to prepare for.
The cattle battle rattlesnakes in the lost frost of forever.
Sacrificed poltergeists & Christs are crossed & tossed together.
Parrot on pillow
Man alerts the Fire Brigade
"Sir, that is your wife"
3. Happily Dead
If you've got to save somebody,
Why not save your secret self?
Become a bum (brave dogs run free)
Or wallow in a cave of wealth.
Though I am me almost all of the time,
I’m still a stranger to who I really am.
Every phony reason for love dies in rhyme,
Like each season’s new self-help scam.
You squeezed my “geez” like the breeze when all is said,
For you were Queen of the Bees and I was happily dead.
Yes, I adored you as soon as our eyes met:
I worshipped the moonish lilt of your voice.
I’m not sure that I cared what happened next,
But your viper lips were so refreshingly moist.
You loved me to the clock that’s right twice a day;
I loved you to the sound of birds giving birth.
We loved to the melody of serious artists at play;
We loved forever or whatever forever is worth.
You squeezed my “geez” like the breeze when all is said,
For you were Queen of the Bees and I was happily dead.
Well, me, I’m still a hopeless romantic;
I’m another hopeful puppy in love with a dove.
My infatuation was bigger than gigantic,
But I had a military-grade dose of the stuff.
Here’s to the few at war who ignored your beauty;
Here’s to the many who fell under your dolphin spell.
May Blue Eyes who you married out of love or duty
Know that his wife grew a haven in a garden of hell.
You squeezed my “geez” like the breeze when all is saide
I love you like we're brothers
I love you like a living colour
We both lost our only mothers
We won’t ever get another
History isn’t music
Mystery is mosaic
Love me til I lose it
Dope won’t improve it
I’m sorry for the secret
I hid it in my stale heart
Sometimes I get greedy
The mailman drags a cart
One day we’ll be an atom
One day we’ll be together
I used to drink Kratom
I still like getting leathered
I’m sorry you weren’t there
I’m sorry I just wasn’t here
I don’t know why you care
You were always near
The preacher sued the projects
The teacher was a dude in love
The mirror angel just rejects
I’m a shadow of a person's love
18. It's Always Your Birthday
She's pumping oestrogen into your earlobes as existentialist paste banoffee onto your iris.
Global sadists depart thru stately wardrobes and fisting is the official vaccine for Billy Cyrus.
Reflected in the image of mirror-love is the sneering Prince of Slough,
And somewhere far away from here they’re celebrating the end of now.
Hey, if you stay in today,
It’s as they say -- it’s always your birthday!
Hey, pray for a new day….
Many say today truly may end anyway!
There’s a pair of bears in the garden who throw jargon at the passing commuter trains.
The couple parody history’s great lovers in the rain, one dancing and the other in chains.
All despair is in vain for love’s cruel games remain in the brain anyhow
And somewhere far away from today they’re celebrating the end of now.
Hey, pray for a new day….
Many say today truly may end anyway!
Hey, if you stay in today,
It’s as they say -- it’s always your birthday!
I met the dead again and yet when they read the forgetfulness in my eyes it was you who let my sensations starve.
Despite the cremation of all expectation, I do truly think the tall kinky pelican specimens are pink as charged.
How I’d love to swim with you in the sea above the clouds where coward hymns are free and at large.
But now I forgive what God there is for this river of prose whose living flow archives the drive of this barge.
Though the unfurled truth of the world may seem so lent that it’s bent,
They say the true way to live today is to forgive how yesterday’s pay was spent.
And because I know that it was Nothing that opened Everything’s broken now,
I’ll chase my dreams to where the past will be spoken by a lasting but empty vow.
Hey, pray for a new day….
Many say today truly may end anyway!
Hey, if you stay in today,
It’s as they say -- it’s always your birthday!
Dreaming to the rhythm of jazz & drinking to the sacred blindness of angels,
screaming for the sunken prophecy, hurling the Book of Changes to its resting place,
my therapist tells me that the beginning has ended and it’s time to start again,
my therapist thinks I’m gay so I started hitting on her to complicate the diagnosis,
my therapist doesn’t even exist, but now she’s pregnant and it’s all my fault!
Epiphanies! Confucius! Einstein! What happened to the sin of following?
What happened to the message? What happened to the massacre?
(Where are you Mother? Where are the weepy-eyed relatives that came for you? What happened to the snoring man you slept with occasionally? He’s gone, Mother, you took him with you and now he’s nothing! This is the beginning of the end, Mother, the beginning the of penultimate breakdown! O the Bliss has stolen my innocence and we are ready to undertake the final picnic in heaven!)
O, what happened to all the drunken triumphs and golden touches? It’s all eroded into the endless machinery of dawn and the secret insatiability of appetite has returned to fool the lot of us. It’s always been easier to fall in love than to be alone, and now even that’s gone too.
O fool me through the darkness
O fool me like a cat
O fool me like you fool yourself
O fool me like a rat
O sing a song of sorrow
Where the docks and water fight
And the old soul singers sing a song
Until the soul emerges light
I breathe my breath for birth and death
I left the rest behind
I tried to turn to Jesus
But the Christians changed my mind
O kiss me like a goddess
O kiss me like I’m a man
O kiss me like you kiss yourself
O kiss my because you can
O trance me to the tractor
O trance me to sky
O trance me like you trance yourself
As your dreams go floating by
I only care for sex and love
The rest is obsolete
I’m running back to that mad old orgy
Where the pen and penis meet
O love me to your strobe light
O love me to your mind
O love me like you hate yourself
O love me til we’re blind
Hey, pray for a new day….
Many say today truly may end anyway!
Hey, if you stay in today,
It’s as they say -- it’s always your birthday!
19. World Without Time
Love was the heart of the head up there in my hair.
Love drew crayoned ponds of art beyond compare.
Wherever I came, she touched my self-made soul.
We shared the same goals and blame and control.
God created a myth that was somehow never fated to be mine…
Now I wait patiently at Forever’s gate for a world without time.
There’s a trinity of hyperbole encumbering the cucumber of ‘3’.
There’s harmony for the apple tree and infinity for you and me.
We took a stroll to the chapel, and you shook my soul.
You darted into my heart as your artful looks took control.
Fate may grind on your state of mind, but leave mine behind…
I won’t grieve Forever at the gate to a world without time.
In my single bed, I forget to forgive my own troubled double head.
If only the heart of the truth lives, is part of it already dead?
That truth is absurd! Something’s unsaid! I’ll follow forever wherever I’m led.
I heard an eternity’s worth of birds swallowing the words that they once bled.
I read the signs: they wed the herd to rhyme, and so I tread the line…
Soon I will never see Forever’s moon again in a world without time.
When she arrived in my dream, I was alive in the comma of a coma.
I woke with a hellish scream, for I well knew I smelt her aroma.
God created this myth that was somehow never fated to be mine…
Now I wait patiently at Forever’s gate for a world without time.
Fate may grind on your state of mind but leave mine behind…
I’ll never grieve Forever at the gate to a world without time.
20. Talkin' Miss Solitary
Three years ago, I jumped off a bridge.
In case you’re wondering, I didn't survived.
I gave up smoking yesterday.
It was an anxious twenty-four minutes.
I tried to escape from myself once.
But I looked in the mirror and there I was.
With two new pimples.
Hey, great, I thought: a new me.
I have pimples now, which are the next big thing.
I used to want to be an actor.
I couldn’t act, so I turned to comedy.
I wasn’t funny, so I became a musician.
I was tone deaf, so I became a drug addict.
If you believe I listed those occupations in ascending rank order, you are probably a drug addict, actor or a drug addict musician. With that said, if you are listening to this you are probably more likely to be some girl who wants to play Leonard Cohen in a movie about his life than any of those things. There is no moral to this section, but if you are bad at something you should do something else.
It makes me laugh when some people say hello.
Hell? O… how did I get here?
I prefer to say hi, because it reminds me I am a drug addict.
But I don't smoke weed every day, because I don't have enough money to do that.
All of the people I’ve fallen in love with have names starting with L. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something,
but Lindsay Lohan is out of my league. So are you, come to think of it. Take what you will from this but bear in mind I once wanted to be a rap star.
I don’t have a girlfriend.
At least I think I don’t have a girlfriend.
This is because I do not count the time I went out with someone and she forgot she was going out with me because that did not happen to me.
I don't like the bit where I said I can't sing. I can sing. It's been scientifically proven. Everyone can sing.
I’m a simple person. It’s kind of complicated. And I'm single. You could say the reasons for this are simple yet complicated. But if the person I caught a glimpse of in the 245 bus ten years ago is listening, I want to be your friend.
A common misconception is that true love doesn't end. I figure the people who say true love doesn't end have not properly contemplated reality. One day everything must end except the extent of your stupidity.
I like thinking about infinity.
I wonder if infinity thinks about me.
Surely it must do, because infinity is everything, including you.
You are infinity and can do a number of things that exceeds infinity.
They say you should 'live for today'.
Ah, so that's how the superhumans do it!
I always thought yesterday is where I should be hanging out.
Time to play Pokémon Go and listen to Drake.
I have brain damage. It kind of sucks, but it was nice to have a brain while I did. Some people don't have brains in the first place. Ask the future president of the United States or those asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk immigrant communists that are taking all of our jobs. The problem with talking to some future Presidents is that you’re probably wasting your time, because some doesn’t speak English too good so follow scripts written by people that are paid to speak good English and I do not believe this question would be in their agendas. Anyway, I guess soon the future president could be anyone, so you are going to have to hedge your bets when trying to find him or her or them.
Donald Trump says he is going to build a wall that keeps the Mexicans out for a sum of 10 billion dollars. I don’t know about you, but that’s 10 billion more dollars than I will ever possess. I reckon he should build a moat instead. It would be cheaper and I’m told that Mexican people cannot swim or do not have enough money to buy a device capable of immigrating through a body of water.
I like both kinds of pie. I used to be able to recite the first three digits of pi. But now I'm brain damaged and I can't get passed 3.14. Pie is great, but nothing tastes as good as skinny. Skinny is my favourite food, because of my longing for nothing. The problem with being dead though is that there is no consciousness to experience nothing. I'd rather be out of my head or in someone or eating pie. I don't know why some people die.
My favourite number is 69, because it is so symmetrical. I wrote the last sentence and then realised I am so brain damaged I misunderstood the term 'symmetrical'. I wrote the last sentence before I contemplated the art of slicing equally horizontal and vertical. I wrote the last sentence before I remembered diagonally is a word. I wrote this sentence when I realized that the third to last sentence in this section of this song offers an unattainable solution.
My boss once asked me why I don't at least pretend to be working. No, I said, why don't you pretend I am working and then we can kill two stoners with one bird.
The problem with sex & smoking is that they only last so long. Once I was inside a smoking woman for nine months, but I don't think we had sex or shared a cigarette once during that time. I don’t think it was the time of life, but at the time I didn’t have much else to compare it to.
I don't like it when people tell me I need a shower. I have a shower already and I don't tell you that you need to read the dictionary.
I’m pretty famous in my house. My brother told me that my writing is verbose, so I looked up verbose in the dictionary. He was right; like most famous people, I am defined by excess.
I like to be surprised unless the surprise is bad. But sometimes I relish being surprised by bad things like Self Portrait by Bob Dylan or some forms of cheese. After I eat said cheese, I drink a banana milkshake, because I know banana milkshakes are good and I am tired of bad surprises.
I hate people who are always right. You can be a genius, but don't make me look stupid because I can do that by myself. And if you are always right, your life must be pretty boring. There would be no novelty. Hooray! I am right again! For the nine thousand and thirty second time in a row! I am so smart I choose not to say too much; this is also because I do not wish to kill my winning streak.
Once I smoked a ton of weed and realised I was gay. I was gay for about ten minutes after that, but I gave it up because I am not a sexist and I don’t want crap on my ears. I do not have a problem with gay people but I have been the problem of one or two gay people. I know you're sorry; I'm sorry too.
When I was locked in solitary for 48 hours, I didn't think I would ever get out. It wasn't boring. I didn't do anything
noteworthy there other than finger myself for the first time but the walls were really interesting. I kind of miss solitary. Miss solitary would be a good song title or a name for an ex-prisoner that prefers to be by herself.
Three years ago, I jumped off a bridge. In case you’re wondering, it wasn't an accident but I do not plan on doing it again. I do not think trying everything once is a good idea. Perhaps that’s why people murder each other: to tick another item off the list. I'd tell those people that there are a lot of species of animals to feed coconuts to. But if ticking things off that list is one of the things people aspire to do, living beings are doing kind of well because we live in a version of infinity.
I don't think I can walk on water, but I haven't tried. I don't think I can fly but I wasn't trying to when I jumped. Still, it would have been a flipping revelation. Hey, I can fly! Forget suicide. I shall solve all the problems of the world by flying around it and pissing on criminals.
How am I doing now? Not bad. But not bad must surely include terrible, especially if you are a pedant or a person who does not speak any languages. I would love to have grown-up kids, but I stay away from pedants and people who do not speak any languages whenever possible.
Someone asked me whether I consider myself a poet or a song & dance man first and foremost. Firstly I consider myself a civil servant and eighthly and foremost I consider myself a polymath.
Here is a riddle for you. A poor man has blank. A rich man needs blank. If you eat you blank, you will die. The answer is nothing but it could be everything too. Not many answers to riddles express such paradoxes.
"If this isn't funny, then it's a poem." Bill Hicks said that.
"I'll be the hero in your dreams if you'll be the one in this score". Bob Dylan implied that.
"There are those who see the god above who never knew the pain of bliss
And those like me who dream of love with one like you on nights like this." I wrote that and it took me five flipping hours.
21. Is The Truth Truly That Ugly?
Did you ever even love me?
Did you really feel above me?
Was I just your favourite junkie?
Is the truth truly that ugly?
Sure! I adored you for more than seven million minutes or thereabouts roughly.
You’d weep through the news too if you were to sleep in my shoes, my lovely.
Oh, how our sacrificed Christ howled for the now of Heaven’s discovery…
The tattooed kangaroos at the nunnery had no clue Winter could be so Summery.
Sometimes I drink so much I can barely think or touch...
22. The Voodoo of Dream
The first heartbreak always awakens the worst thirst.
Then again even every Buddhist once felt Eden’s curse.
Sometimes not being lonely means agreeing to the phony.
If only she would phone me, we could ride those ponies.
Tattooed angels view you from the goofy avenue of the ceiling.
The screaming voodoo of dream do seem newly appealing.
Try to fool those serial schoolers who rule imperiously.
Watch cornflakes wake! Please take cereal seriously.
The emptiness of love fills my brain to the brim.
She can come with me or she can stay with him.
Businessmen sue many a dude with a killer’s pen.
The voodoo of dream do seem truly lude again.
The steeples are feeble and needles are penal now.
But all people will be equal in the sequel anyhow.
Your two blue lips are the vows of lovers embracing.
My favourite art empowers my heart to start racing.
If depression is a 24-7 profession, what is expression?
Jump into the voodoo of dream to answer the question.
23. Here Is Exactly Why
In a past life you were my best friend & wife and we had a Mercedes.
You and I loved to mate and meditate on fate like two crazy old ladies.
We would have put ten grand on Nihilism and had a band damn good.
Your gloved hand could have loved me until I understood all I should.
I ain’t forgot when we got pissed and kissed, but here is exactly how.
We can be madmen on a tryst to the moon as soon as now. Oh wow!
A fool achieves nought by thought so school taught me how to play.
Yesterday ain’t tomorrow but sane people are all the same anyway.
I danced to death at the rainbow disco waiting for you to appear.
You were a crush & a crutch & an ear and how I wish you were here.
I ain’t forgot when we got pissed and kissed, and here is exactly why.
I’m that guy who don’t want no other lover but don’t want another cry.
24. Make Tomorrow Up
Shawls tight around our necks, tonight we are alone.
Let’s fall lightly into dream and find the unknown.
I love you for what you are but can’t hide what I am.
If you don’t like me, let’s call it off and I’ll scram.
Now the town is blazing with the circus song.
You understood every word you heard all along.
Forget the rest but don’t forsake the hollow cup.
We all try our best just to make tomorrow up.
I walked through your tall & sweet brown gypsy fire.
Talking openly about nothing makes anyone a liar.
Yes, at dawn your Queen transformed into a pawn.
And the lieutenant yawned as he hunted for his fawn.
Now the cackling flames spell a sickening name.
Well on my way to hell above, I can’t hack the game.
Sleep soundlessly, my love; don’t wake sorrow up.
I guess I’ll try my best just to make tomorrow up.
The birch will hide the morning light where you’re curled.
I shall search for my guide while you’re dead to the world.
I wish I’d read the warning signs but I am not a Chief.
In a year’s time, you’ll be more than simple relief.
Now I smoke a cigarette and watch the moon retreat.
I think I finally won you, but soon I will be beat.
To get by in this world, you just have to make it up.
I can’t hear tomorrow breathe, but heartbreak is sup.
25. Talkin' Christmas Blues
Well, I was sitting in my room and the radio was playing all the festive tunes, and I’ve got to say it made me feel gloomy.
Something must be done about Justin Bieber, who is practically a beaver… to all the Beliebers out there: don’t sue me!
It was five days to Christmas and I decided to go for a walk to clear my head of all the talk about how cold it is and stuff.
I had no destination in mind and I was blind to where each fork would go, but I felt kind of bold & that proved to be enough.
Being bold does count for something or other, but you can’t be too bold, because then you’d just be a silly stupid old fool.
[If a girl calls me Santa once, I don’t worry; twice, that’s okay, too; but thrice, running fast as my body can is my general rule.]
Anyhow, my pedometer said I’d tread ten thousand steps when I took a rest after passing my old school and the pool.
As I was catching my breath and freezing like death, I saw an withered yet handsome man sat on an ancient stool.
His sign read, “I have magic powers that can change your life; please just buy me a bite to eat, and please: no plastic.”
My mind was intrigued but I wasn’t sure if the sign was sarcastic, for claiming to have magic powers is drastic.
I went to the nearest bakery and brought to him two croissants, three doughnuts and a cup of coffee.
Mister Mystery said, “Took you long enough to bring my stuff, but I love all the food you got me.”
“Now forget how to remember,” he whispered in my ear, “and the sum of what you really want shall appear.”
I forgot it all on that freezing December day, then out came the sun of May, the same one was here!
I said, “Wow, mister, that was sick; please show me another trick! Teach me how to play guitar & sing.”
Mister Mystery replied, “Not a soul could magic that, boy, but enjoy what fun the sun & money can bring!”
I wasn’t sure what to say but finally replied, "I'm glad you seem happy, and I'm grateful destiny didn't do that to me.
You can't tell by looking how someone really is, because everyone has one or two demons or maybe even three.”
He replied, “While the best things in the world happen with a smile, that's often how the worst news is delivered too.
I don’t use a sign that says ‘I grew up an orphan’, but I am and my life here represents the pudding of the proof.”
“I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you, but I will say life will get better for you at least today”, I replied.
“Why would it?” he asked. “Because I’ve got hash!” I said. We smoked until sunrise that day and laughed so much we cried.
It seems most people love Christmas themes, so I wrote this Christmas song in a February dream… wow, Santa is a cash-cow!
I will be Christmas sometime soon… in fact, it could be Christmas now! I say this because I’m the real Santa, anyhow! Ho-ho-ho!
26. Jumped Out of The Mirror
Ain't been a long time since I wrote a song for liberty & thee, the caged free and the aged seer.
Jumped out of the mirror, dreamt a dream so clear I feared it, no wonder it disappeared.
The ventriloquist is blinder than a bat, but the beggars hand mis/understands its victim.
And he'd smoke the proffered cigarette but he knows the satisfaction would addict him.
I recall the majesty of the wind's time and the air smuggles a secret back to the deep blue sea.
But my heart won't be hurt by whatever curt 'whatever' this here unforever is clever enough to hurl at me.
Scared of the solace her sister seeks in the jailhouse, the cat chases her tale as it's a mouse.
Meanwhile the hubristic law of the liar cries that the grouse amounts to nothing but a new spouse.
After the caffeinated clowns occulted the opera house, they higher a new town now.
I wept for the sorrow that crept up on and I could see the only moment the vegans thought was cow.
The heart forgets the breath of the wind whose air smuggles a secret back to the deep sea.
My heart won't be hurt by every curt whatever this unforever is clever enough to hurl at me.
27. Blissful Tears, Broken Mirrors
It was the fission of a vision & a mortal voice.
I wouldn’t forget a second if I had the choice.
In the end my friend you used the heavens as a hoist.
They’re nothing like the wind & the weather’s moist.
But if it’s nothing you’ve nothing to fear.
I don’t dwell in the past, the present’s enough of a riddle.
But I remember you racing in a wheelchair around Lidl.
Five years ago I grieved fifteen years in four hours.
I remember your face & your embrace & your flowers.
& how I wish you could be with me here.
It’s been a while since I broke that god-forsaken mirror.
The end of seven years of bad luck is getting nearer.
Any day now, those blissful tears will appear.
The moon is a baby phantom & the sun is a seer.
I saw us walking together last night; you were chain smoking.
You sadly reasoned as I gestured madly, my fingers poking.
Yes, I want to go to heaven; no, I don’t want to go to hell.
Though you raised me well, the more we hurt the more we fell.
But if it’s nothing I’ve got nothing to fear.
It was dark in the park & we sat on a wooden bench.
My heart fell apart in a way my mind can’t start to clench.
If heaven is a physical plane, then I don’t want anything else.
The angels are made of melody played by eternity’s elves.
& how I wish you could be with me here.
It wouldn’t be so lonely if only we all broke the mirror.
No, people aren’t the same; no, we’re not even near.
Any day now, those blissful tears will appear.
The moon’s a pained witness & the sun’s a pioneer.
Grieving doesn’t deceive me into believing I’ll see you again.
But ma! ma! there are the happy tears in the woods at ten.
I remember the feeling but forget the words.
The bird slurred it like it’s meant to be heard.
& if it’s all for nothing you’ve got nothing to fear.
Midnight’s memory is pinning me to God’s rampant sinning:
8am ambulance screams chasing a world back to its beginning.
I woke as the morning broke, heard the news but couldn’t cry.
In a dream the angels spoke of how the birth cord wouldn’t die.
& how I wish you could be with me here.
I see you every time I peer inside the mirror!
You’re not here but still you feel kind of near!
Yeah, blissful tears are beginning to appear!
The moon’s an urchin & the sun’s a queer!
Blissful tears, broken mirrors!
Blissful tears, broken mirrors!
The moon’s an urchin & the sun’s a queer!
28. Destiny's Dragon
Whenever my mind lingers upon the four weeks I spent working as a concierge at Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel, a wistful thirstiness envelops my body and colours the contours of wherever I am. The mere thought of that big old musty mansion – a realm where dreams seemed to be made or broken – exercises unilateral authority over my existence, sinking into all the atoms of my memory banks until my brain is rendered, in its tempestuous entirety, temporarily powerless. If I can, I sit down to collect myself and drink some water. At the very least, I take a few deep breaths. You’re not there anymore, I tell myself, you can relax.
Because of the fire that obliterated most of the building, I wasn’t employed at the hotel for very long. That manacle-muddled era evokes imageries that are both vivid yet hazy. Sometimes it feels as if that month of my life didn’t happen to me at all, and instead represents a story that’s been repeated to me, time after time, against my will, by some kidnapper at gunpoint. Nonetheless, the fact still remains that I was there the day Destiny’s dragon set Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel ablaze. For what it’s worth, too, I remember the event itself with such cinematic clarity that it’s hard for me to describe the whole affair succinctly whilst remaining faithful to the details of what actually happened.
It’s important, first of all, that you have an idea about the rationale behind the selection of the clientele: the owner wanted to create a secret, invite-only hotel for chic, wealthy guests. He bought a quadruple-glazed mansion in Sandycove, and started by inviting one billionaire, who could in turn invite two friends to stay, who could in turn each invite two friends to stay, and so on and so forth. Within six months, three hundred different people – all affluent & invited – had stayed at the hotel. This was back in 2005. I became a concierge there in 2007.
The staff of Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel were hand-selected by a distinguished jury of wealthy shareholders. Each candidate for the job had to be invited to apply by someone who had stayed at the hotel. The interview was complex and three-parted… the first section of the selection process involved a series of fifty questions on anything from the applicant’s familiarity with the works of Hank Williams to a description of their first kiss, the second involved baking cupcakes, and the third required the completion of a triathlon.
While I was there, I had only three other colleagues. Though the guests were rather flamboyant and will probably remain caricatures to you, my fellow staff and I were rather more pragmatic, though so ill-suited to the job it is a wonder we passed the interview stage. I didn’t know a thing about Hank William’s back-catalogue, but I described my first kiss as a ‘blissful dialogue of leftist politics’, and that went down a treat with the owner’s son, who cackled with his head back and mouth wide-open.
There was The Lollipop Lady, an affected middle-aged woman with crimson hair who manned the front desk. I remember her quite affectionately. She always carried candy and chocolate in her pockets and though she often offered a ‘hand-picked selection’ of her ‘finest’ to me, I can’t remember her actually ever eating any herself. Ah, The Lollipop Lady! She wasn’t eccentric as such, but she had a distinctly peculiar aura about her. She exclusively used one-syllable words and seemed incapable of flouting this lifestyle choice. She referred to the Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel as ‘this place we are in now’ and she called herself ‘Nat, The Sweet Girl’, but everyone else called her The Lollipop Lady.
And there was Brian The Actor, a mastermind of a thirty-something actor who never made it big because though his brain was pretty brilliant, he spoke so quickly that he wasn’t suited to speaking roles on stage or film. Apparently, too, his agent had been circulating a rumour that he had once slept with Britney Spears; whether this peculiar piece of gossip was the truth, or merely an effort to catalyse or jeopardise Brian The Actor’s career in showbiz, we will probably never know. He dressed in a purple or beige suit and worked as the only cleaner on the premises. The extravagances of our guests were sometimes so catastrophic that even the keenest of cleaners could not combat such messianic mess while still having time to rest or sleep. So, although I’m not implying that Brian The Actor was lazy, Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel’s rouge carpets would win no prizes for pristineness.
And there was The Frenchman, the chef, a twenty-year old fat man who claimed to hail from Paris yet spoke impeccable English without the hint of an accent. He would swear to himself in perfect French while cooking – ‘merde, merde, MERDE!’. Despite cooking for a living, he disliked most food that wasn’t bread, butter or cheese.
Then, there was me: the bellboy, the concierge, the custodian & the waiter. I was twenty-five during my time at Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel. I’m known as ‘The Dope Cat’ to my close friends and as Neil to those who don’t know me too well. I’m not particularly worldly, my tastes are idiosyncratic, and I’m kind of verbose. Sometimes I get lost on my way home, pretty much around the same time every year I discover I like the taste of cheddar again, and though I have only just learned the meaning of ‘phantasmagoria’ I have been using the word (ineffectually or wrongly) for years. You can reach your own conclusions about me, but I don’t take much for granted: thankfully, I’m an alright storyteller and I have a content yet desolate disposition. Before being employed at Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel, I lived off the fat of the welfare state on about 150 euros a week.
I write whenever I can as it’s the only thing I can do well, and I’ve attempted suicide only once: that I am writing this now indicates that I’m not very good at dying either. One immature yet demonstrative effort was enough for me to recognize that even if I don’t belong in this world, this world belongs in me. The pretext of boredom or longing for another dimension are both self-fulfilling, self-sustaining cycles. You should be grateful you have the time to be bored, and a waste of time is a waste of time only because you have time in the first place, whose unit will, somewhat soon, be foreign to you. Wait a day and the world will be a different place, in a small way. Things can always change. I could swear I was someone else yesterday. I was in another three-act play, another tiny human drama.
I suppose it’s also true that some things never change. For example, pretty much every living adult dragon can breathe fire. And when the dwarf of a flame starts to breed, it can spread into dozen dwarfs of a flame. And if they in turn transform into an enormous blazing inferno, you can expect to see some people dead.
***
Destiny was forty-two. She was beautiful; I don’t think, you know, that I’ve ever actually met anyone so beautiful. She had shoulder-length black hair, tanned skin and moved kind of like an ostrich. You’d have to see her in action to understand what I mean by this. Destiny had a demeanour that alternately danced between the outward invitation of intimacy and the introspective pushing away of whoever she’s talking to. She didn’t drink alcohol but smoked Marlborough Lights intermittently. It seemed like she had a lot to lose but what this was you couldn’t really say for sure. Destiny’s voice was high-pitched, and her choice of words were spritely and sweet. On her second night, she invited me to repair for the night with her to share her secret despair; of course, I refused as I had professional standards to uphold.
“Do you want to spend the night with me?” Destiny had inquired then, somewhat quizzically. “My soul is quaking with this secret sorrow that only a man can fix.”
“Uh, thanks for the offer. But I can’t. I’m working. Would you like me to make you some Camomile?” I had offered.
“Serving it is how your night duties will begin, and drinking it is how mine will end,” she had replied mysteriously. I nodded, but I doubted she was correct on either front.
“Have you met my pet dragon?” Destiny had said distractedly, as I made to leave.
“No, I haven’t.” I’d heard rumours from The Lollipop Lady on this front, but I wasn’t going out of my way to meet a dragon, and for some reason I was keen to change the subject. “Anyhow, I’ll bring you some Camomile.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I have a question: how would you describe the sensation of taste to someone who cannot taste?”
“I guess it’s kind of like a smell. A coloured smell. Yeah, that’s how I’d describe it.”
“Fair enough. I think it’s more of an audio-based thing. But that’s just me.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Taste is kind of like a sound,” I said obligingly, though I didn’t know in what way taste is like a sound.
Pretty much every living adult dragon can breathe fire. And when the dwarf of a flame starts to breed, it can spread into dozen dwarfs of a flame. And if they in turn transform into an enormous blazing inferno, you can expect to see some people dead.
***
You know, I never did get to meet Destiny’s dragon. But when Destiny’s dragon set Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel ablaze, I almost didn’t have to. Apparently, it ran manically around the hotel, setting fire to every flammable thing in sight. Anyhow, very quickly the fire alarm went off & everyone migrated outside. Soon, the flames were cackling & beautiful. It was everything you could possibly want in a fire. The fire brigade arrived but to no avail. The better half of the building was incinerated within the space of ten minutes.
I love to watch fires spread, like I love to watch the sacred tsunami of democracy spread across the world like butter on bread, like the hysteria at a circus act gone wrong. Yes, seeing that fire was like witnessing a huge Jenga depiction of the Eiffel Tower collapse bit by bit in front of its creator. There was nothing the fire department could do. The building’s foundations gave way & three stories became two and two became one. Everyone stood there, crying & talking & ogling. Luckily the only victim of the fire was its perpetrator, the dragon. Destiny yelled & shouted & yelled but he wouldn’t come out.
That fire in particular was so beautiful to look at that it made me forget my personal vendetta against myself. Yes, I remember when Destiny’s dragon set Dublin’s Mushroom Paradise Hotel ablaze. It was beautiful & perhaps a little sad.