Dignity

On the street at the peaky heroin pulpit
the heretic spat soliloquies of prophecy
and bullshit
between the stars and the stones of the pavement
while the shadow of his slight frame slipped between the cracks in society
the drone played by the wolftone the only home
he ever knew was dangerous.

Kiss and kettle comfort long gone
there’s a hole in the wall where he punched it
and how he acted wasn’t on
he heard words that stung like nettles
and needles
‘theres no need for you to be such a prick
and voices that were raised like cathedrals
shattering glass and empty echoes
it’s not my fault I am dying sick

Back to the pulpit with him
to sermonize
with rheumy eyes
shimmering in his tinfoil cloak waving smoke to choke the moat of three castles with the spit from his broken jaw
sob stories about bad da’s and sad ma’s and dya know it’s not me fault.
There’s tricolours on the coffins and swastikas on the walls, knock knock on the magic door.
Except you’re not wanted back in inchicore.

I am not even sorry. I am not even sorry. I’m not sorry at all.
Runts of the litter, dirty river, dirty canal, junkies in the hall.

I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry at all.

What are you bleeding looking at?
A blackeyed cyclops says his sister works in catering and she’ll batter me, and he didn’t mean to be funny
but sure myopia has a tendancy
to miss out on the duplicity of things.
And there’s an wretch in the air of piss and cider and the whisper of the smoke of that tinfoil sucked up through a pandemic note rolled up between his teeth and the blanket on his back swept the street and he couldn’t get a nod off it not one bit and
not fucking fair man living through this shit.

Who am I to be looking at him askew as if he needs it
When I’m out here too looking for my next hit
Gimme something city, something sexy or something violent, give me the peace of knowing that what’s inside me isn’t impossible to silence.
Turn up your sirens
Make the chaos cradle me like I’m a child back in the tornado of my dysfunctional family.
Make the whiskey boil up into some sort of pain or revelry
Let me forget about the shame that keeps me insatiable for everything.

You see
I’d prefer the company of another honest junkie
than anyone else whose bothered pretending that any of this is healthy.

And i’m not sorry, you’re not sorry, no one is sorry, cos there’s
no pity
no fame
no love
no money
in the world that could feed our blackhole bellies
it’s absurd
but at the least these
words are worth remembering

We think it’s normal to live in a crisis
And it’s our pride in our pain what keeps us divided
even though
you don’t owe
me any explanation for how your life is.
and I don’t you any justification for why I am like this.

Whether it’s cash
Sex
Status
Drink
Phones or
Loneliness

Have the dignity
Dignity
Dignity
to admit
we’re
all addicted

And at least take the grace
to contemplate
what kind of machine
could masquerade as fate
so as to isolate
and subjugate
to seperate us from love
and live in weakness.


Consider this

who makes your choices
And who dya think would choose this?