Addiction

Desperate,
Dead-brained.

Talking in my sleep again.

Eyes twitch,
REM phase.

There's a sentimental something.

Your thoughts,
They burn and burn.

| was that cinder falling slowly through your dreams

Skinny Puppy (as interpreted by D. Clisby)

The Threat of Being Better People

It's a Friday night.

I’m off work.

The week was a bastard.

It’s late.

Moneymart is open 24 hours.

A black bird is perched on Democracy’s torch.

You can’t help but shiver
when a poppinhead
or a harbinger

hangs his shabby, ak

greasy coat

in your hallway

and takes up residence,
looking down at you

with those beady black eyés of his.

Maybe I was the only one to see it

as we all skip-danced
past

the booze cans “
and the dance halls oh

and the raving

and the ecstasy searched for,

all on our merry way to nowhere,

enjoying the fire works,
tractor pulls,

the nights of culture
brought to us by beer,
cigarettes

and car companies.

Like that saying goes,
ugly gets better
the more I drink.

Worry about tomorrow's hangover

when I get there.
Have another drink
for family violence,
for lung cancer,

for rioting in the name of hockey,

for dead friends and family

in the seat next to me

or for strangers in the other car,

Stop to piss on
poppies and tulips
and memories of dead soldié
and sadness and yesterday -
Everyone knows

a pint of draft
is always cheap
at the legion.
And the war goes 0

 
   
 

 

Fs

 

®

*

I don’t want the breweries
selling me on a lifestyle,

like that’s the end of it for us.
I want to see those
moronically hip
mack-jacketed

lover boys

- who bounce through scenes
of endless rock and roll

and gyration -

to be rinsing

the puke

from their paisley shirts

in front of a million households,
just like real people do.

I don’t want my morality
spoon-fed to me

in the pabulum wash

of advertising,

as if buying clothes

or drinking Coke

will make me a better person.

designed

to reduce every ugly part of us,
beautiful people

singing their praises.

They make us forget

how a walk in our own neighborhoods |

every evening

after rush hour dies away
and just before the city
sits down to dinner,
children still playing in the pa
the sun magrtiificent and warm”
in.its curtain call o

all in a hurry
to be better people.

by S.R. Duncan
Me

 

 

 

¥

I don’t want any of the gadgets and gimmicks

 

   

  
      
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
    

of

 

Craving, wild,

fat moons in wide open eyes,
I run

from the planned wildemess
that boxes

me in.

I stand outside

my earth rooted cover
seeking a way to get in

but lonly

teased

by the moonlight

| see reflected

off thick dewy spider webs
laced between the trees.

Desperate af

| throw my body

into the thickest darkest
clump of trees

to insulate me

from the pulse

of the angry city

but | am repelled,

each time I hurl forward

I feel the sticky webs
stretched out across my skin

pushing me back.

| stand blocked, Pd

breathless,

while sounds

of wailing sirens,
horns

pollute my thoughts.

By. Niki K

AL hone

*

 

 

6 August 1996 The Other Press