A Small Trip Down South

The blue blue bus is waiting for us/ 
wing singing American dream cream/ 
a rainbow edged warrior scream/ 
Jim Morrison, the lizard king/ 
another mother’s son/ 
anyone/ just anyone/ 
any which way/ 
shaman baying to the moon/ 
emptying out his ransacked rucksack 
on the long road south/ 
laughing a madcap laugh 
as his house burns to the ground.

Tunnel down deep into mammary earth/ 
bowel of moistness/ 
uprooting child within/ child without/ 
and shout out/ the blue bus/ 
awaiting the opening of the gates/ 
swing swung rusted open/ 
mother wide smile/ ovary smile/ 
a house of sorrow/ house of shame/ 
dead father/ fucked mother/ 
digging down deep/ 
ruby fields, rosy folds 
and sour-sweet 
love-me-more, love-me-more sweat/ 
house of love-hate/ 
church of innocents/ inner sense/ 
incense smouldering/ damn fire and hell nation/ 
smell of sour musk/ feral firecat/ 
crawling along the hard shoulder/ 
the blue bus turning, turning, 
turning over/ burning/ flesh melting/ 
pouring from the raw bone/ 
here, broken along the hard shoulder/ 
crawling away from the wreckage/ 
a fistful of dreams/ 
dreams of waking/ dreams of snakes/ 
ride, ride, ride the kingsnake/ 
his skin is gold/ 
gold as burning highways.

First rule on the road to heaven: 
board the bus, ride the snake/ 
the snake so long/ his song endless/ 
seven friendless hours of tarmac moon/ 
city linking/ 
the lunacy of too much thinking/ 
and home is nothing/ 
nothing but for the leaving/ 
home is seven hours of hell to heaven/ 
the highway south/ 
the low road/ 
and ne’er will I see this city more/ 
never return/ rather to burn 
in the sulphur and hellfire of London town/ 
the gold paved muttering streets/ 
eternal gap sites of dereliction/ 
the erudite diction 
of deliciously fingered degradation/ 
poet of cunnilingus cuneiform/ 
the bohemian uniform of contempt and boredom/ 
Monsieur Rimbaud, mon frère, mon ésprit/ 
leaving behind the province of inertia/ 
the sinking sludgy byways/ 
opening unswung gates/ 
striding anarchic down Hammersmith Broadway/ 
swinging through the nirvana of Notting Hill/ 
a narcotic necrophiliac/ 
a mythic young burning visionary/ 

here, these magic mushrooms melting windows 
and we are flying the halcyon nest of fishing queens/ 
a thousand miles above the sleeping skyline/ 
beyond the borderhills, the ghosts of rivers whispering/ 
sweet Clyde, by Abington I sat myself down and wept/ 
laughing in my leaving/ 
you and me, Jimmy, 
tripping in reveries of could-have-beens/ 
will-fucking-well-become/ 
emotional in hallucinogenic rush/ 
the sign speaking polyglot welcomes/ 
a land of angels/ land of angles/ 
those sexy saxons/ sultry sassenachs/ 
and that black kohl eyed punkette 
staring moodily out the disintegrating window/ 
sulphate girl/ and us fireflying down burning tarmac/ 
cars smiling sinister minister smiles/ 
headlamps lapping up our youngboy flesh/ 
twisted metal joy-riding the back of the kingsnake/ 
black and gold/ 
weaving thru’ burnt up red brick hick towns/ 
writhing sexual now, the snake/ 
dark poetry in pockets/ 
dreams of dreams/ 
two fucked, wrecked poets/ would-be heroes/ 
must-be-martyrs to the hellfire within/ 
that was me and Jimmy, 
in the scorched summer of seventy-nine.

Me and Jimmy 
in the scorched summer of seventy-nine/ 
giggling thru’ Charnock Richard services/ 
fat wobbling auld women/ 
lard swans with prima donna handbags/ 
gravel voices/ ay up ducks/ 
two spiky punks on magic mushies/ 
tripping thru delirious junk food pleasure domes/ 
coffee frothing clouds of infinity/ 
blowing out lines of amphetamine poetry/ 
here a factory of fire/ 
there a field of broken glass/ 
here a crowd of broken souls/ 
there a clockwork jerk off fantasy.

Rolling raucous onto the blue blue bus/ 
tinny sounds of squelched bus stereo/ 
this is the end, my beautiful friend/ 
wishing it was the fucking end/ 
restless as bag of ferrets/ 
squirming in sticky seats/ 
swimming with young blood hormones/ 
itchy for metropolitan paradise/ 
the six in the morning yawning 
empty bellied arrival in post-narcotic 
knife-lit city, 
with nowhere to stay 
but the address of a squat 
from a friend of a friend/ 
with rucksacks 
and folders of poetry 
and big shiny dreams…

And then the clouds clear 
and the near full moon 
screams rainbow moonbow starsparks 
into tripped out retinas/ 
will you fucking look at that?/ 
giggling into empty night/ 
tut-tut women going down to suburban friends 
glare sleep deprived/ 
tut-tut anger cast in cigarette smoke/ 
black spirals/ 
and sucking down righteousness/ 
good hard working protestants/ 
and you and me, Jimmy, 
with our dole cards 
flashing unemployed laughter into their tax bill faces/ 
ha ha/ ha fucking ha/ 
merrily merrily merrily merrily/ 
life was but a fucking dream/ 
in the scorched summer of seventy-nine/ 
with the moon weaving aftershocks 
of the whitest white you’ve never seen/ 
god inside her ghostly belly/ 
sweet, beautiful mother moon/ 
pair of us laughing and crying/ 
chucking down a few more mushies 
for the fuck of it/ ha fucking ha/ 
life’s just a pearly pink oyster/ 
and I swear to fuck 
I’m going to just sit down 
beside that wee punk lassie 
and give her a fistful of mushies/ 
a fist full of dreams/ 
me and Jimmy are poets, I’ll tell her, 
fucking bohos of the first fucking order/ 
and I can feel these mushies coming on/ 
coming up/ and I’m out the window, 
way over the horizon/ 
warm summer wind on my naked belly/ 
here, my tattoo blowing dragonwheels in the breeze/ 
down the aisle with my fuck-the-queen t-shirt 
and giving black kohl eyes the cheeky smile/ 
head coming apart/ 
brains dribbling out my ears.

And I’m pissing rainbows into the shaking pan/ 
Morrison screaming: driver where you taking us?/ 
then puking up/ 
a million mushrooms 
following rainbow piss 
into the blue blue disinfected nowhere/ 
head expanding and contracting to amyl nitrate heartbeat/ 
throb of hellfire/ oh god/ oh fuck/ oh no/ 
vomit bits down t-shirt and chin/ 
smell of ammonia and sulphur/ 
heavenly hell/ 
body disintegrating into sick bits/ 
curling up round cold pale blue plastic stem of toilet flower/ 
and don’t forget to fucking flush/ 
cold protestant bastards 
giving me the tut-tut evil fucking eye 
when I finally get it together/ 
and Jimmy laughing his arse off/ 
ha fucking ha/ ha ha ha…

Time ticking on and off/ 
LCD blinking of bastard cunt-face clock/ 
speeding up and slowing down to a stop/ 
then dawn giving off its supernatural glow/ 
east of Wolverhampton/ 
stars twinkling off to sleep/ 
wee fairy lights switching off into neon nowhere/ 
and the punk girl snoring 
into her mohair jumper…

And I’m asking Jimmy if he ever wanted to fuck his mother/ 
raving now/ 
the lizard king infecting my dead head/ 
your mother, maybe, says Jimmy/ 
and that’s the end of that one/ 
ma blonde bimbette mammy with her big milky tits/ 
and I’m tripping over the edge into serious landmine country/ 
the angle terre of Freud fuck ups/ 
staring out the snoring punk girl/ 
boring into her dreams with razor eyes/ 
this is just a trip/ this is just a trip/ 
father, I want to kill you/ 
mother, I want to bluueeaaaaaaaagh/ 
Morrison twisting poison 
endless scream into my tinny ears/ 
sun screwing yellow orange red into my guts/ 
and I just want to fucking sleep/ 
Jimmy breathing nicotine into my fucked up air/ l
aughing to himself/ 
soft as a crone whisper, 
into empty empty space/ 
and then I’m just sinking into thoughtless sadness/ 
coming down 
as we’re coming into London overspilt conurbation/ 
concrete vacancies/ 
and I’m just totally fried/ 
hate-love pumping thru muscle, blood, bone, brain/ 
the blue bus twisting snake streaks 
thru sleeping streets/ 
dazzle of red gold green traffic lights 
on dew wet gold paved streets. 

Ambling out of Victoria station 
at quarter to six in the wrecked fucked drizzling morning/ 
shivering in unslept bones/ 
coming down/ coming down/ 
with a fist full of dead flowers/ 
wandering aimless round friendless Pimlico/ 
along the sludgy Thames Embankment/ 
up past the houses of parliament to Trafalgar Square/ 
sitting down by Nelson’s column, 
broken glass in our bones/ 
the sun breaking through cloud/ 
God’s fingers reaching down and touching us/ 
with our rucksacks and our folders of poems/ 
there we were, at last, in delirious London town/ 
way beyond the constraining provinces of blurred Alba/ 
two heroes, two poets, two losers/ 
beautiful and innocent/ 
fucked up and burned out/ 
in the scorched summer of seventy-nine.