Tomorrow it is Thanksgiving Day in America and as an eager participant of over indulgance and alcohol I shall be celebrating with gusto as if the hounds of hell are at my heel. Nevermind that I am Welsh and living in the wilds of West Wales, the turkey will be roasted, the bread sauce whipped and Jagermeister chilled to within an inch of its beautiful life.
November is usually a miserable month in Britain, with its dark early evenings and biting, cold winds so hijacking another countries holiday to brighten up a few days is a much needed boost to the chilled marrow system.
The modern Thanksgiving holiday I understand stemmed from a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season, so it might be argued it comes from the British. And as a limey desperate for action I have taken this information as licence to celebrate on turkey flesh and alcohol.
We globally share so many holidays I am suprised we haven't latched on to this one too. Little matter regarding the real meaning as most have abandoned the spirit of other more grand holidays. Halloween has become a gore fest and Christmas long ago been insulted by greed.
Thanksgiving 'feels' like a dressed down version of Christmas from this side of the Atlantic. It is how the Silly Season should be without the silliness and without being bloated to vulgar states. We know of Thanksgiving here and some celebrate it (I cannot be the only one can I?) but we don't laden it with gifts and carols. Of course if I were to skip over the pond it would no doubt feel different but as it is right now, to a writer hammering this out from the lush, green bosom of Wales, it feels right.
Eat, drink and give thanks for Life and a bountiful harvest but forget about the tinsel and gaudy baubels. Who had the Christmas number one song, or gave the biggest gift is neither important or classy. To be blunt they serve only as further proof of how cheap a person is.
It is quite honourable to give thanks to simple things and for one will be in merriment and giving thanks in earnest. It is the only proper thing to do, and one can only hope next months festivities get restored to a more humble level. We are supposedly celebrating the birth of a Saviour afterall. Humans are ever so fallible and often get lost to real meaning and all the cards and glitter in the world won't mean a thing if we forget that.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Death's Head
The dead lay warm in their graves as the sun and seas roll over them oblivious to their sleep, and not only am I envious of the warmth but positively fascinated. The subject is a burning vine through my heart, a stitch in my hungry soul.
One would think that the amount of time we spend dead is sufficient reason to stop me from constantly returning to the grim topic but like a cat toying with its terrified prey I find reason (and occasionaly comfort) in wallowing in morbid thoughts and ideas.
Executions, alcohol, disease, tragedy; everything skull shaped invades my mind. Blood salts my insatiable tongue. I see no joy in death and do not possess the serial killers lethal attraction to it, I am plain morbid. Ghoulish, I delight in the title. I want to read the eyes of someone being executed to look for clues to the afterlife.
There is nothing new about writing about death, my ilk have been immersed in it since time began and I have decided to add my thoughts to the grisly mix. I ought to be comfortable with death, afterall it sits on my shoulder daily like a stubborn imp but I am not. There is little fear in death itself, more the dying. I doubt Id be courageous under gunfire, but quite settled in drinking myself to the grave. (A long process with lots of pit stops I should imagine).
What frustrates me the most is leaving a loved one behind - that death can rob us in such a miserable way is an affront to all that is decent and fair.
We can think this without sounding like a spoilt child because the ultimate plan is beyond our reach.
There must be clues on the face of the dying. Is it in the grimace of pain? Or in the pinched look on a corpse? Some people are quite peaceful looking after leaving their mortal shackles. Beyond suffering, their final silent statement that death is not so bad afterall.
One would think that the amount of time we spend dead is sufficient reason to stop me from constantly returning to the grim topic but like a cat toying with its terrified prey I find reason (and occasionaly comfort) in wallowing in morbid thoughts and ideas.
Executions, alcohol, disease, tragedy; everything skull shaped invades my mind. Blood salts my insatiable tongue. I see no joy in death and do not possess the serial killers lethal attraction to it, I am plain morbid. Ghoulish, I delight in the title. I want to read the eyes of someone being executed to look for clues to the afterlife.
There is nothing new about writing about death, my ilk have been immersed in it since time began and I have decided to add my thoughts to the grisly mix. I ought to be comfortable with death, afterall it sits on my shoulder daily like a stubborn imp but I am not. There is little fear in death itself, more the dying. I doubt Id be courageous under gunfire, but quite settled in drinking myself to the grave. (A long process with lots of pit stops I should imagine).
What frustrates me the most is leaving a loved one behind - that death can rob us in such a miserable way is an affront to all that is decent and fair.
We can think this without sounding like a spoilt child because the ultimate plan is beyond our reach.
There must be clues on the face of the dying. Is it in the grimace of pain? Or in the pinched look on a corpse? Some people are quite peaceful looking after leaving their mortal shackles. Beyond suffering, their final silent statement that death is not so bad afterall.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Dope Fiends Suss Another Cafe Window
Click: 'And local councils have unveiled...'
Whirr..Click: 'This weeks top ten....'
(Teeth grinding)
Hiss..click click: 'Rain followed by high winds..'
(Blood swells against temples)
Whirr..Hiss...Click: 'Visit the Butterfly fair for all your sober needs...'
Off Switch/Switch Off
I have quit tuning in to British radio. I can't abide the popcorn being drilled into my ears and butter plugged up my ass. It used to be a constant background noise competing with songbirds and wretching but ever since the Celebrity Tsunami hit our isles and people became obssessed with reality television, I cannot suffer it any longer.
The music is stale and the stories tedious, and the less said about the irritating jingles and advertisements the better. The airwaves have become high on voltage, making tongues drool and knocking eyeballs together like bells in a storm.
You surf the wicker man frame in hope of discovering a distant oddity or raging choir but each twist of the dial brings more shitty dough. The jewels have fallen out of the speakers and there is no panic on the streets because audiences are numbed, they have swallowed the lie that 'celebrity' makes the world go round.
And this is where the internets tricks come in to play. With two clicks of the mouse I am able to access radio from around the world, and American radio I have taken to like a werewolf to buxom damsels. Of course there are still annoying adverts but being a newbie (to stay within internet speak) it is all fresh and exciting, seldom do they grate on the nerves. Also the stations I have discovered do not seem starstruck with rotten celebrity/reality shows.
Its as refreshing as a drunkard finding a new watering hole where all the regulars have deep pockets and long snouts.
Granted the weather and traffic reports are not very useful, and the local news bulletins not critical to learn but it is still better than sitting through snippets of local mush. And hearing the names of alien road names and boulevards at least adds a peculiar layer to the days chapters, the buzz of travelling without leaving the home.
I can't imagine ever going back to local radio now that my net has snagged such foreign baubels. Doing so would be similar to returning to a bar you had been barred from in that you would be familiar in its surroundings but still hold resentment for being banned in the first place.
Radio in the UK has gorged itself so much on tabloid tales and petty scandal that it has become bloated, weighed down in bullshit. Its stilt legs have buckled under pressure from the sugared gossip of the world and no amount of oiled cleavages could rescue it. Only the soulless now follow their rancid scent, and stale tigers need disease to reignite their flesh.
Of course im not as naive to think this grave new culture hasn't reached the United States because it has, the glossy virus has spread worldwide sending millions into an idle hysteria but it hasn't filtered onto the stations I frequent and until they do I am as happy as gas with fire amongst the truck driving ads and reports from death row.
Whirr..Click: 'This weeks top ten....'
(Teeth grinding)
Hiss..click click: 'Rain followed by high winds..'
(Blood swells against temples)
Whirr..Hiss...Click: 'Visit the Butterfly fair for all your sober needs...'
Off Switch/Switch Off
I have quit tuning in to British radio. I can't abide the popcorn being drilled into my ears and butter plugged up my ass. It used to be a constant background noise competing with songbirds and wretching but ever since the Celebrity Tsunami hit our isles and people became obssessed with reality television, I cannot suffer it any longer.
The music is stale and the stories tedious, and the less said about the irritating jingles and advertisements the better. The airwaves have become high on voltage, making tongues drool and knocking eyeballs together like bells in a storm.
You surf the wicker man frame in hope of discovering a distant oddity or raging choir but each twist of the dial brings more shitty dough. The jewels have fallen out of the speakers and there is no panic on the streets because audiences are numbed, they have swallowed the lie that 'celebrity' makes the world go round.
And this is where the internets tricks come in to play. With two clicks of the mouse I am able to access radio from around the world, and American radio I have taken to like a werewolf to buxom damsels. Of course there are still annoying adverts but being a newbie (to stay within internet speak) it is all fresh and exciting, seldom do they grate on the nerves. Also the stations I have discovered do not seem starstruck with rotten celebrity/reality shows.
Its as refreshing as a drunkard finding a new watering hole where all the regulars have deep pockets and long snouts.
Granted the weather and traffic reports are not very useful, and the local news bulletins not critical to learn but it is still better than sitting through snippets of local mush. And hearing the names of alien road names and boulevards at least adds a peculiar layer to the days chapters, the buzz of travelling without leaving the home.
I can't imagine ever going back to local radio now that my net has snagged such foreign baubels. Doing so would be similar to returning to a bar you had been barred from in that you would be familiar in its surroundings but still hold resentment for being banned in the first place.
Radio in the UK has gorged itself so much on tabloid tales and petty scandal that it has become bloated, weighed down in bullshit. Its stilt legs have buckled under pressure from the sugared gossip of the world and no amount of oiled cleavages could rescue it. Only the soulless now follow their rancid scent, and stale tigers need disease to reignite their flesh.
Of course im not as naive to think this grave new culture hasn't reached the United States because it has, the glossy virus has spread worldwide sending millions into an idle hysteria but it hasn't filtered onto the stations I frequent and until they do I am as happy as gas with fire amongst the truck driving ads and reports from death row.
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Bile Delicacies
Alcohol withdrawal can be pretty messy and is always uncomfortable (I claim the understatement of the year) but along with the tremors and sweat comes a beautifully gothic image. One exclusive to drunkards and the occasional pill head. A picture of sick delight; a human being going through spastic motions, behaving like a wounded animal wishing for End.
It truly is a marvellous scene if one looks beyond the clawing fingers and itching ribs, and one I have acted word for word many times; sweating out toxins, fits which make you believe you are about to plummet into death, bringing up bold blood and zany green bile, watching shadows become fiends on the walls, vices crushing kidneys, carousels stirring the mind, anxiety beating the nervous system like a sadistic elf toying with kittens, feeling murder in the guts, it never ends.
This crazy beat up pantomime and the will to go out and do it all again gets more vicious as the frame gets older. And the sick persist. Stubborn gluttons wallowing in whiskey and gin, only to try absolve their sins by fire and withdrawal.
It would be a fine method of torture, and get fantastic results, either in the drunken stage or the subsequent withdrawals but the cowering yoghurt masses would deem it too cruel. Too unusual, even if the act of drinking has become more natural than brushing ones teeth.
There is undoubtedly a dark side to alcohol, a place of utter shame and darkness where wet brained zombies wail for the clink of a bottle and werewolves lurk in anticipation of a good meal from decieving them. But there is no denying the beauty in such images, subtle bright streaks born of raw actions and emotions. In much the same way as Victorian asylums, there is always a lush pasture to be found in hell.
Withdrawal is a terrible thing to have to endure and many agonies are unveiled to the temporary crippled man or woman. Fever seems too gentle a word for it is like being visited upon by ghosts intent only on carnage of the flesh and twisting the brain, and time and again I myself have been silenced by its leather wings.
It is vile and it is also exquisite. Plentiful in horror dreamscapes like koi fish swimming in fetid swamps. Fantasy framed in realities realm. There is a daring to the chapters of suffering, a devil may care attitude which attracts the ghoulish hoardes. To some (and I exist among them like a fat gargoyle) there is charm found in sickbeds and coffins, and we grow from them, morbid stalagtites glistening with fresh luminous bile.
It truly is a marvellous scene if one looks beyond the clawing fingers and itching ribs, and one I have acted word for word many times; sweating out toxins, fits which make you believe you are about to plummet into death, bringing up bold blood and zany green bile, watching shadows become fiends on the walls, vices crushing kidneys, carousels stirring the mind, anxiety beating the nervous system like a sadistic elf toying with kittens, feeling murder in the guts, it never ends.
This crazy beat up pantomime and the will to go out and do it all again gets more vicious as the frame gets older. And the sick persist. Stubborn gluttons wallowing in whiskey and gin, only to try absolve their sins by fire and withdrawal.
It would be a fine method of torture, and get fantastic results, either in the drunken stage or the subsequent withdrawals but the cowering yoghurt masses would deem it too cruel. Too unusual, even if the act of drinking has become more natural than brushing ones teeth.
There is undoubtedly a dark side to alcohol, a place of utter shame and darkness where wet brained zombies wail for the clink of a bottle and werewolves lurk in anticipation of a good meal from decieving them. But there is no denying the beauty in such images, subtle bright streaks born of raw actions and emotions. In much the same way as Victorian asylums, there is always a lush pasture to be found in hell.
Withdrawal is a terrible thing to have to endure and many agonies are unveiled to the temporary crippled man or woman. Fever seems too gentle a word for it is like being visited upon by ghosts intent only on carnage of the flesh and twisting the brain, and time and again I myself have been silenced by its leather wings.
It is vile and it is also exquisite. Plentiful in horror dreamscapes like koi fish swimming in fetid swamps. Fantasy framed in realities realm. There is a daring to the chapters of suffering, a devil may care attitude which attracts the ghoulish hoardes. To some (and I exist among them like a fat gargoyle) there is charm found in sickbeds and coffins, and we grow from them, morbid stalagtites glistening with fresh luminous bile.
Wednesday 11 November 2009
Kerb Crawling With Rotting Heads
People get all dressed up like stalkers on a Saturday night hoping for a giggle and maybe meet someone they are attracted to and settle down. But a month later when the make up has been shovelled off and the chat up line withered like a slug, the attraction is dead and like the last choke on a cigarette, peoples lives begin to resemble cold ash.
Drink got me at an early age. Smoking caught me earlier and sex was my first addiction. Boy or girl, it didn't matter. Both were the same with closed eyes under a blanket. Nobody knew. An orgasm is an orgasm. (Although different faces do sometimes rile the fantasy).
I remember once receiving oral sex on a sand dune from a girl with a passion for slugs. I closed my eyes gently in that blissful way, tilted my head upward towards the moon and tried remembering the most popular girl in school. It didn't work, my brain was in a spiteful mood and I kept picturing boys.
In school I was the freak. The rat-tat-tat machine gun stutter of my lips could be heard on every corner of the playground. 'Here comes Tommy gun!' The sterile bully doomed for failure would spit.
Cursing both teachers and pupils, I would prowl the corridors in search of my next True Love(tm). The eternal handshake did not seem possible then.
Sex was rampant on everybody's lips. Every dream reeked of condoms and suspender belts, each holiday had a conquest. But Cupid could smell the rot, firing his most faithful shots into loins not hearts.
What was sex at that early age?
To me it was sinister, a monster. Friends would speak of sweaty fumblings at the back of the weekend cinema or cheeky fingerings on the school coach on summer trips.
It remained a cyst to me throughout those ridiculous but beloved years.
Not one kiss dressed my lips. The only consolation I had was knowing the fantasies inside my head were better then the lies and exaggerrations whistled by other, more insecure boys.
Pornography introduced me to sex. It was the knight which slayed the demon, and I was no longer afraid of sex. Instead I feared women. The first kiss, the first caress of drunken skin filled me with dread.
The first sexual conversation I had with the opposite sex was during a correspondence with a young woman four hundred miles away. The souvenir perfumed stocking she sent me now lays under a bed of dust in the attic.
Sex was a giant hurdle and alcohol became the springboard I used to get over it. I was always a cheat.
At sixteen I had the sort of qualities that I didn't like in other people. I dismissed habits that I often did myself. I hated the Pepsi and Adidas kids but drank and wore them both.
My years of vice were plenty. I cavorted with whores, splurged on drugs and had oceans of booze. Teenage boys tend to chase girls, I headed straight to the Co-op top shelf. It seemed all my desires were found on the highest shelf in those days. The unattainable, perverted itch.
The evening on the dunes with the slug girl pricked my sleeping penis, tuning it to stench and vulgar dribbling. I awoke with it and refused to listen to moderation. When you meet a tramp dressed like she was I always discard limits.
Neon lights were flashing red, blue, red, blue in my lusty mind like a multi coloured abbatoir on a first acid trip. A sucked dick doesn't have a conscience and this vegetarian girl blowing for gold was raw meat to me, sending horny ideas into the stratosphere.
What a fine introduction to oral sex! One minute im murdering slugs and swigging vodka, the next there is a strangers head sucking on my zip. I actually imagined birds flying overhead having smiles instead of yellow beaks and winking gormlessly at this perverted abandon.
It clouded the attraction to sex for me slightly. I had always believed in fairytales. Princesses locked away in castles by kings who were interested in incest.
The girl I encountered on the sand dunes is probably smoking someone elses flesh now. Someone with a hard on for frogs and wildlife.
I lost my virginity at eighteen and almost instantly regetted it. Consequently I have been searching for it ever since; in bottles, bins, drains, cemeteries. Even in the sex of other women. Quiet girls, modest girls, girls who enjoyed fucking while I was drugged and drunk.
Indeed I have known both depravity and Love since casting off the sober bowl haircut I wore to school. And depravity stings less.
Drink got me at an early age. Smoking caught me earlier and sex was my first addiction. Boy or girl, it didn't matter. Both were the same with closed eyes under a blanket. Nobody knew. An orgasm is an orgasm. (Although different faces do sometimes rile the fantasy).
I remember once receiving oral sex on a sand dune from a girl with a passion for slugs. I closed my eyes gently in that blissful way, tilted my head upward towards the moon and tried remembering the most popular girl in school. It didn't work, my brain was in a spiteful mood and I kept picturing boys.
In school I was the freak. The rat-tat-tat machine gun stutter of my lips could be heard on every corner of the playground. 'Here comes Tommy gun!' The sterile bully doomed for failure would spit.
Cursing both teachers and pupils, I would prowl the corridors in search of my next True Love(tm). The eternal handshake did not seem possible then.
Sex was rampant on everybody's lips. Every dream reeked of condoms and suspender belts, each holiday had a conquest. But Cupid could smell the rot, firing his most faithful shots into loins not hearts.
What was sex at that early age?
To me it was sinister, a monster. Friends would speak of sweaty fumblings at the back of the weekend cinema or cheeky fingerings on the school coach on summer trips.
It remained a cyst to me throughout those ridiculous but beloved years.
Not one kiss dressed my lips. The only consolation I had was knowing the fantasies inside my head were better then the lies and exaggerrations whistled by other, more insecure boys.
Pornography introduced me to sex. It was the knight which slayed the demon, and I was no longer afraid of sex. Instead I feared women. The first kiss, the first caress of drunken skin filled me with dread.
The first sexual conversation I had with the opposite sex was during a correspondence with a young woman four hundred miles away. The souvenir perfumed stocking she sent me now lays under a bed of dust in the attic.
Sex was a giant hurdle and alcohol became the springboard I used to get over it. I was always a cheat.
At sixteen I had the sort of qualities that I didn't like in other people. I dismissed habits that I often did myself. I hated the Pepsi and Adidas kids but drank and wore them both.
My years of vice were plenty. I cavorted with whores, splurged on drugs and had oceans of booze. Teenage boys tend to chase girls, I headed straight to the Co-op top shelf. It seemed all my desires were found on the highest shelf in those days. The unattainable, perverted itch.
The evening on the dunes with the slug girl pricked my sleeping penis, tuning it to stench and vulgar dribbling. I awoke with it and refused to listen to moderation. When you meet a tramp dressed like she was I always discard limits.
Neon lights were flashing red, blue, red, blue in my lusty mind like a multi coloured abbatoir on a first acid trip. A sucked dick doesn't have a conscience and this vegetarian girl blowing for gold was raw meat to me, sending horny ideas into the stratosphere.
What a fine introduction to oral sex! One minute im murdering slugs and swigging vodka, the next there is a strangers head sucking on my zip. I actually imagined birds flying overhead having smiles instead of yellow beaks and winking gormlessly at this perverted abandon.
It clouded the attraction to sex for me slightly. I had always believed in fairytales. Princesses locked away in castles by kings who were interested in incest.
The girl I encountered on the sand dunes is probably smoking someone elses flesh now. Someone with a hard on for frogs and wildlife.
I lost my virginity at eighteen and almost instantly regetted it. Consequently I have been searching for it ever since; in bottles, bins, drains, cemeteries. Even in the sex of other women. Quiet girls, modest girls, girls who enjoyed fucking while I was drugged and drunk.
Indeed I have known both depravity and Love since casting off the sober bowl haircut I wore to school. And depravity stings less.
Wednesday 4 November 2009
The Conger Alley
A sunbeam would light my cigarette if I still indulged in nicotine smoking that is. I put the stinking habit to the wall, blidfolded it and fired until its tobacco guts scattered to the wind as soon as I noticed ugly, yellow stains spreading on my fingertips.
But if I did indulge I would not use a lighter. Sparks from my flint teeth could light a cancer stick, or as I said first, a sunbeam.
The tar that clings to my lungs now will have to stay there of course but sometimes a cough feel like a tombstone in my throat. Well deserved too.
I dislike smokers, their illnesses are rightly earned. In fact if I were to speak honestly I dislike most people and distrust them even more.
I talk to books and walls nowadays (although I only speak to bricks if a wallflower grows on them), I find pages more reliable than society.
I ventured out into society once and was bitten by its ferocious jaw. I tried to cushion the roar of teenage engines, scruffy boy-girl scraps and corner street tarts with beer but it didn't work. At least not my advantage.
Every weekend hooligans with no idea what real trouble was would gather to form a frankeinsteinian garbage of smoking, swearing and fingering and myself always being drunk became known to them all as a rebel messiah with the devil in his eyes.
Each night I would stumble, denting locomotives with each step and the street greetings would shower me in a volley of teenage teething rings. Of course I was a poster boy to them, a certified lunatic of cool. A body of broiling snakes and leather fury.
It rankled that nobody really bothered to sit with me but the blame is with myself, too high-handed and separtist for my own good. In truth my hand had never fully plunged into the studded barrel of vandals, and whatever pinches I did manage to pull out of it were miniscule and not worthy of obssession. Still in my crippled thinking a half baked respect was better than solitude.
With a junkies warpaint blazing on my flesh I could crawl into certain notoriety and hide in the fragile shadow. I found no one there either.
The exaggerations and yarns I spun only dug me deeper into bony clutches and on sobering up regret would be upon me, flashing its pus.
On warm days the local harbour and sand dunes became my drinking haunts. Bitter sands like a pikanter sauce littered with driftwood, dried seaweed and lager tins. A ribald throne from where I could look across the sea where Gower and Rhosili rose, green forboding leviathans which you believed you could touch if your aim was true.
Sometimes I would lay back against the distinctive red topped lighthouse that locals seemed to love. It became my temporary headstone as I rattled through the gin, the horizon laid before my eyes like a celestial flatline.
There I would slip into dreams of Medusa and fire, ploughing onward into escape with unquenchable thirst. It was a comfortable place to doze, knowing that within twenty footsteps undiscovered sea creatures were chasing fish into conger alleys and deathly knooks.
But as is usual with good things they end, and I would be brought back to life either by a stray dog slobbering onto my rosetted cheeks or by the scent of a ladies hemline wafting into my airholes. Death has never had my full attention regardless of my perilous appetite.
The walk back from harbour to front door was short as the reaper flew but in baby steps, stitched by the devil, it was the longest walk imaginable. The space inbetween each lampost stretched for miles, allowing villains and psychopaths of all persuasion to assail my imagination as I clunked onward to the threshold I considered blessed at the time.
What disasters hid under the soles of my feet? What power was it that lifted me higher than the suckling mob? It stirred. It smirked. It curled its cataract lips over crooked mouth. It never once showed its wings, or revealed its plan, but it cared. It knew where I was heading before I did and it led me as long as I trusted.
Young cubs and vixens lined the pavement as I rolled my eyes down the street, following like a demon flexing its muscle. The tensing fist by my side made them talk amongst themselves, perhaps trying to decide whether I was drunk or mad. Maybe both as I passed unhindered.
I moved through drug dens, dog yards and scumparks filled with the diseased and perverted, never once bothered by the blades or affected by the moonlit barks. Bad people are aware of something worse, something wilder and whether this tic shines in my eyes I know not but I always reach my vertigo kingdom.
From harbour walls to castle dungeons, a legacy from the dark.
But if I did indulge I would not use a lighter. Sparks from my flint teeth could light a cancer stick, or as I said first, a sunbeam.
The tar that clings to my lungs now will have to stay there of course but sometimes a cough feel like a tombstone in my throat. Well deserved too.
I dislike smokers, their illnesses are rightly earned. In fact if I were to speak honestly I dislike most people and distrust them even more.
I talk to books and walls nowadays (although I only speak to bricks if a wallflower grows on them), I find pages more reliable than society.
I ventured out into society once and was bitten by its ferocious jaw. I tried to cushion the roar of teenage engines, scruffy boy-girl scraps and corner street tarts with beer but it didn't work. At least not my advantage.
Every weekend hooligans with no idea what real trouble was would gather to form a frankeinsteinian garbage of smoking, swearing and fingering and myself always being drunk became known to them all as a rebel messiah with the devil in his eyes.
Each night I would stumble, denting locomotives with each step and the street greetings would shower me in a volley of teenage teething rings. Of course I was a poster boy to them, a certified lunatic of cool. A body of broiling snakes and leather fury.
It rankled that nobody really bothered to sit with me but the blame is with myself, too high-handed and separtist for my own good. In truth my hand had never fully plunged into the studded barrel of vandals, and whatever pinches I did manage to pull out of it were miniscule and not worthy of obssession. Still in my crippled thinking a half baked respect was better than solitude.
With a junkies warpaint blazing on my flesh I could crawl into certain notoriety and hide in the fragile shadow. I found no one there either.
The exaggerations and yarns I spun only dug me deeper into bony clutches and on sobering up regret would be upon me, flashing its pus.
On warm days the local harbour and sand dunes became my drinking haunts. Bitter sands like a pikanter sauce littered with driftwood, dried seaweed and lager tins. A ribald throne from where I could look across the sea where Gower and Rhosili rose, green forboding leviathans which you believed you could touch if your aim was true.
Sometimes I would lay back against the distinctive red topped lighthouse that locals seemed to love. It became my temporary headstone as I rattled through the gin, the horizon laid before my eyes like a celestial flatline.
There I would slip into dreams of Medusa and fire, ploughing onward into escape with unquenchable thirst. It was a comfortable place to doze, knowing that within twenty footsteps undiscovered sea creatures were chasing fish into conger alleys and deathly knooks.
But as is usual with good things they end, and I would be brought back to life either by a stray dog slobbering onto my rosetted cheeks or by the scent of a ladies hemline wafting into my airholes. Death has never had my full attention regardless of my perilous appetite.
The walk back from harbour to front door was short as the reaper flew but in baby steps, stitched by the devil, it was the longest walk imaginable. The space inbetween each lampost stretched for miles, allowing villains and psychopaths of all persuasion to assail my imagination as I clunked onward to the threshold I considered blessed at the time.
What disasters hid under the soles of my feet? What power was it that lifted me higher than the suckling mob? It stirred. It smirked. It curled its cataract lips over crooked mouth. It never once showed its wings, or revealed its plan, but it cared. It knew where I was heading before I did and it led me as long as I trusted.
Young cubs and vixens lined the pavement as I rolled my eyes down the street, following like a demon flexing its muscle. The tensing fist by my side made them talk amongst themselves, perhaps trying to decide whether I was drunk or mad. Maybe both as I passed unhindered.
I moved through drug dens, dog yards and scumparks filled with the diseased and perverted, never once bothered by the blades or affected by the moonlit barks. Bad people are aware of something worse, something wilder and whether this tic shines in my eyes I know not but I always reach my vertigo kingdom.
From harbour walls to castle dungeons, a legacy from the dark.
Monday 2 November 2009
Catching The Appletooth (Alcoholism)
Suffering is not word enough. It seems gentle in comparison. There is not a word for the destructive, evil pains which stem from the bottle.
The odour from popping a wine cork quickly fades.
I associated a bottle of alcohol with a vase of flowers, the flowers themselves being the intoxicating spray of bubbles that set me free (free from what I did not yet know as I was only sixteen when I gave myself that poisonous bouquet).
Never have I been so wrong! Flowers don't grow from the bottle, only thorns and getting caught in that thicket is an experience only alcoholics can describe.
When I took my first drink I was unaware of the addictive personality that stalked tiger-like in my system looking for a vulnerability which would bring me down. At sixteen I began the descent into a private hell.
There were parties, drinking with friends, summer holiday binges and teenage curiosity. Alcohol has always been a clever demon with an ace up its gothic sleeve. It can take on various guises, one only has to look at the supermarket shelves with the laced colas and grinning lemonades.
I lost my drinking (L)earner plates at twenty years and by the time I had reached twenty two I was thoroughly addicted to booze. Armed with a hard drinking reputation I could be seen being swallowed every morning by an off licence mouth.
I could not let go of the bottle, it might as well been glued to my lips and fuelled further by endless days of kissing the sun, my alcohol intake was increased and I went hand in hand with oblivion. Thinking that with an iron will I could control the drink but with every glass the iron is rusted and withers away to nothing.
For the first few years my body took the full assault; hangovers, trembling, vertigo, nose bleeds, anxiety, aches and shivers. These alone would have made a rational person quit but alcohol had become a medicine, a solution to life's problems and it was available anywhere. I was not capable of rational thought, I didn't even know if I was human anymore. Everything save alcohol and its beautifully grim hold seemed pointless.
The hangovers got worse and days would be spent bringing up bile and other rainbows of sickly colour. The cure was more booze and in my mind its magic knew no bounds. A three day hangover was instantly topped up with wines and spirits. I was deaf to my own liver screaming.
Days got longer with sleep only occurring between three and seven in the the morning but eventhough the days had lengthened the only things I knew I had done was open a bottle or tin, got drunk and annoyed sensible drinkers in public houses, or sober families in supermarkets.
I was young and standing on lifes crossroad and had already thrown two promising relationships to the wind.
When it had finished ravaging my body it turned on my mind and everything went upside down and fell to pieces. It is the way of poison, the only way the thorn can move is by severing and cutting.
I no longer had friends, pride or respect. There was not even a life outside the frantic, urgent drinking. I needed alcohol everywhere I went; in cars, out walking, in cinemas, at train stations, everywhere. If I was ever without a bottle I'd become soulless, unable to do anything sober.
Simple tasks became mammoth chores with being alcoholically spiked. I walked around in the shadow of 100% drunkeness, envious of care free people around me laughing and talking as they followed their lives. I could never lay my hands on a sane tongue.
Vodka; what a wretched word that is to me now.
The Smirnoff days tuned me into a fantasy world, I substituded real friends for television characters, turning them as real as I could without tripping entirely into the clutches of madness.
One or two episodes of a favourite programme made up a whole day in my life, desperately I clung to bizarre fiction. In hindsight I realise that I must have had one foot inside a breakdown of sorts but nothing else knocked at my door.
With vodka in my hand, supporting my body like a noble gentlemans cane, I hid from life, dreaming of rivers flowing wildly with serpents froth. Vodka binges were comfort to my soul but weighed heavily on money and when all funds have been exhausted by vodka an alcoholic will catch the ruffian wind of the Appletooth. Cider drinking.
Cider is the most available drink of them all to heavy drinkers (barring methylated spirit). Everything about it is cheap; the plastic bottles, the two shilling names, vicious bubbles and its foul scent. Even the bile caused from drinking cider looks different, with its neon green warning choking every breath.
I caught the Appletooth and every miserable copper coin was spent in lousy cider shops with dry tobacco air and shifty tills. From then on my beloved vodka was a luxury and it was the ginger whore who banged my liver.
Every minute rotated around alcohol. For nine years I didn't wake up from sleep, I simply came around as one would from anaesthesia. And booze opens newer vices on its sinister, downward path.
It was alcohol which introduced drugs into my world. Cannabis, lsd, ampthetamine, mushrooms, nitrazepam, temazepam, diazepam, even morphine sulphate and a brush with heroin.
It was dear alcohol that pushed the first morphine filled needle into my arm, giving me Heavenly pleasures and it was alcohol that melted the temazepam and crushed the valium to give it an intavenous kick.
Tablets do not look good in a needle but I wore sunglasses of 8% tint. Blinded from common sense and moderation, I wore iron blinkers which allowed sight in tunnel vision.
Alcohol and occasional drifts of drugs. I enjoyed drugs but the sauce is where I truly fell in Love. It was my devilish trigger, drugs a mere substitue. Life is both tiring and perverse in addiction and soon I lost all control.
I call this the semi-madness stage. Delusions of grandeur, talking to ones self,, obssessive behaviour, severe depression, personality disorder, suicidal tendancies and self mutilation (a fleshy, scarred crucifix still swings from my neck).
When it got to the point of switching the television or radio off to listen out for 'other' voices, I knew for sure that alcohol had become an enemy, one not to be trusted or given consideration.
I had reached the grand old age of twenty five and had been drinking relentlessly for eight years. Eight years of shameful lies and wasted coin. Looking back to the beginning of my drinking career the memory darkens. It had started as an innocent fashion accessory with a few laughs along the way, had I known the final chapter the bottle would have stayed on the shelf.
It no longer gave the warm glow and comfort, it no longer acted as a stimulant. Alcohol became a nagging, tedious aggravation.
The reader should now begin to understand some of the agonies it takes an alcoholic to suffer before admitting any wrongs. The hundred sermons and thousand pleadings from those not cursed with the disease will always fall like Icarus in flames, (a point I cannot stress enough).
A wagging finger and lashing tongue will be ignored by the drinker. He or she wears an armour that will not dent with a simple rebuke because alcohol teaches stern lessons. It discards moderation and common sense and nurtures its tragic followers on excess, self pity, selfishness, anger, frustration and deceit.
The lies which have been told in the name of the glass are countless, along with the pain it inflicts on both drunk and sober. The havoc and violence it creates could fill a battlefield and a bruise just one of the bottles many colours.
A clever thing to be able to shrink away from blame which is what happens because alcoholism is more often judged on the person it afflicts rather than understanding of the illness.
Alcoholics are frequently described as weak willed and hopless yet nothing could be further from the truth in the case of recovering alcoholics throughout the planet. It is harsh, all of it because of the disastrous spell it weaves to those involved.
There is no nobody stronger than someone who successfully beats an addiction but before fighting that addiction one must first face it, and getting an alcoholic to admit having a problem is usually the hardest and highest hurdle of them all.
I was caught in a whilwind romance with the Appletooth and was slowly drinking myself into the grave (or padded cell), but while the sauce was still in my hand I was without ear to the voice of reason.
Nothing seemed quite right without it and I came to believe that life would be that much better if I slept straight through it. Death was always hanging around and whilst the first drink gives courage the last one will always bring cowardice.
To be scared of life and frightened of death is a terrible place to be. For years I slept with a bottle under my pillow and I kissed my cruel 'bride' often, with vigour. It was only when my mind had begun to crack and a breakdown sat on my shoulders that I knew I needed a clean and final split from the demon which had kept me chained.
In the beginning alcohol had handed me freedom. It had given me fantasy in the place of reality, I lived in a cartoon and was king of nonsense. But Life (the one that bites) soon rained down in stone and the cartoon was buried beneath misery and empties.
The first step to recovery as has been previously stated was admitting to myself I was alcoholic (it applies to all addicts of course). Without this all else will fail because like the pulling of a tooth, if the root is not cut out the problen will remain.
I felt no shame in admitting I was alcoholic, it is a disease afterall, and instead I felt relief. After years of torture and self abuse I had finally broken the first shackle of my gothic vine.
The next immediate step was detox in an alcohol rehabilitation clinic where I was introduced to fellow drinkers. At first I didn't think my temperament would allow sobriety and in my first week in the plush clinic I was dogged by constant thoughts of one more binge. I had real doubts and many times I imagined quitting the programme to feed my addiction in a homely bar.
I attended many A.A. meetings and was drilled by group therapy and relaxation techniques. It was at one of the meetings that my doubts on a sober life disappeared and I discovered the true strength and determination of the human soul.
Here was a group of people who had allowed themselves to be whipped by a bottle until even their minds had bled, and allowed dignity and pride to slip from their reach.
With alcohol on their lips they were useless, cowering cripples unable to perfore the simplest task, but without it they stood taller than their previous shadow and sunlight was welcomed on their flesh.
After a month of treatment I went home eager to pick up on a fresh horizon without the sting of drink.
Weeks passed and the clouded days I had waded through prior to my stay in rehab became filled with hope. My bank account started to grow again and I found time to do the things that beer had prevented. Fresh air no longer clogged my lungs like it had with alcohol and confidence came flooding back as I busied myself in work.
Health wise it was thrilling, energy raced in my system and my brain found found sanity from somewhere. But still I lacked the companionship I craved. I had been two months without a drink and not a single knock arrived at my door. The 'friends' with which I had occasionaly shared a drink with disappeared. Can sobriety intimitate some people? I believe it can.
Sober I remained and each day brought more confidence, one of the bottles stickiets traps.
Too much confidence is deadly to alcoholics because it leads them to believe they have conquered their addiction and are able to finally control the booze.
It was that, coupled with emptiness that drove me once again to the off licence shelf and with that first drink the macabre circus started to rev its familiar tune.
Everything I had built and restored in those two sober months were smashed within a week. The first drink (which I tried desperately to control) had its claw into me again. A.A was a million miles away, caught once again like a fish thrashing in gunpowder.
The drinking was even more intense the second time around, I drank at all hours and the hangovers, if they could be described as such, were so severe after binges that for days later I writhed in bed, a wounded animal struggling in its near death throes.
Even personal hygeine was neglected as I sweated out toxins only to be seduced by the bottles charms again and again.
Alcohol has a powerful relationship with the alcoholic and the illness is dismissed by the ignorant who have no understanding at all. Why should they? It doesn't effect them.
They see addicts as either a person who is drunk twenty four hours a day or in the gutter with a duffle bag and little else. The ignorant are both deaf and blind.
Nothing in life has ever affected me as deeply as alcohol and from now until I am in my grave I will only be sober for one day at a time.
I am still alcoholic (that part never dies) and I still have scars from the past, but without booze they need not be re-opened. I know that it would only take ONE DRINK to start the hellish downward spiral yet again so these days I try not to look at the shelf.
Steven Francis May 1997
The odour from popping a wine cork quickly fades.
I associated a bottle of alcohol with a vase of flowers, the flowers themselves being the intoxicating spray of bubbles that set me free (free from what I did not yet know as I was only sixteen when I gave myself that poisonous bouquet).
Never have I been so wrong! Flowers don't grow from the bottle, only thorns and getting caught in that thicket is an experience only alcoholics can describe.
When I took my first drink I was unaware of the addictive personality that stalked tiger-like in my system looking for a vulnerability which would bring me down. At sixteen I began the descent into a private hell.
There were parties, drinking with friends, summer holiday binges and teenage curiosity. Alcohol has always been a clever demon with an ace up its gothic sleeve. It can take on various guises, one only has to look at the supermarket shelves with the laced colas and grinning lemonades.
I lost my drinking (L)earner plates at twenty years and by the time I had reached twenty two I was thoroughly addicted to booze. Armed with a hard drinking reputation I could be seen being swallowed every morning by an off licence mouth.
I could not let go of the bottle, it might as well been glued to my lips and fuelled further by endless days of kissing the sun, my alcohol intake was increased and I went hand in hand with oblivion. Thinking that with an iron will I could control the drink but with every glass the iron is rusted and withers away to nothing.
For the first few years my body took the full assault; hangovers, trembling, vertigo, nose bleeds, anxiety, aches and shivers. These alone would have made a rational person quit but alcohol had become a medicine, a solution to life's problems and it was available anywhere. I was not capable of rational thought, I didn't even know if I was human anymore. Everything save alcohol and its beautifully grim hold seemed pointless.
The hangovers got worse and days would be spent bringing up bile and other rainbows of sickly colour. The cure was more booze and in my mind its magic knew no bounds. A three day hangover was instantly topped up with wines and spirits. I was deaf to my own liver screaming.
Days got longer with sleep only occurring between three and seven in the the morning but eventhough the days had lengthened the only things I knew I had done was open a bottle or tin, got drunk and annoyed sensible drinkers in public houses, or sober families in supermarkets.
I was young and standing on lifes crossroad and had already thrown two promising relationships to the wind.
When it had finished ravaging my body it turned on my mind and everything went upside down and fell to pieces. It is the way of poison, the only way the thorn can move is by severing and cutting.
I no longer had friends, pride or respect. There was not even a life outside the frantic, urgent drinking. I needed alcohol everywhere I went; in cars, out walking, in cinemas, at train stations, everywhere. If I was ever without a bottle I'd become soulless, unable to do anything sober.
Simple tasks became mammoth chores with being alcoholically spiked. I walked around in the shadow of 100% drunkeness, envious of care free people around me laughing and talking as they followed their lives. I could never lay my hands on a sane tongue.
Vodka; what a wretched word that is to me now.
The Smirnoff days tuned me into a fantasy world, I substituded real friends for television characters, turning them as real as I could without tripping entirely into the clutches of madness.
One or two episodes of a favourite programme made up a whole day in my life, desperately I clung to bizarre fiction. In hindsight I realise that I must have had one foot inside a breakdown of sorts but nothing else knocked at my door.
With vodka in my hand, supporting my body like a noble gentlemans cane, I hid from life, dreaming of rivers flowing wildly with serpents froth. Vodka binges were comfort to my soul but weighed heavily on money and when all funds have been exhausted by vodka an alcoholic will catch the ruffian wind of the Appletooth. Cider drinking.
Cider is the most available drink of them all to heavy drinkers (barring methylated spirit). Everything about it is cheap; the plastic bottles, the two shilling names, vicious bubbles and its foul scent. Even the bile caused from drinking cider looks different, with its neon green warning choking every breath.
I caught the Appletooth and every miserable copper coin was spent in lousy cider shops with dry tobacco air and shifty tills. From then on my beloved vodka was a luxury and it was the ginger whore who banged my liver.
Every minute rotated around alcohol. For nine years I didn't wake up from sleep, I simply came around as one would from anaesthesia. And booze opens newer vices on its sinister, downward path.
It was alcohol which introduced drugs into my world. Cannabis, lsd, ampthetamine, mushrooms, nitrazepam, temazepam, diazepam, even morphine sulphate and a brush with heroin.
It was dear alcohol that pushed the first morphine filled needle into my arm, giving me Heavenly pleasures and it was alcohol that melted the temazepam and crushed the valium to give it an intavenous kick.
Tablets do not look good in a needle but I wore sunglasses of 8% tint. Blinded from common sense and moderation, I wore iron blinkers which allowed sight in tunnel vision.
Alcohol and occasional drifts of drugs. I enjoyed drugs but the sauce is where I truly fell in Love. It was my devilish trigger, drugs a mere substitue. Life is both tiring and perverse in addiction and soon I lost all control.
I call this the semi-madness stage. Delusions of grandeur, talking to ones self,, obssessive behaviour, severe depression, personality disorder, suicidal tendancies and self mutilation (a fleshy, scarred crucifix still swings from my neck).
When it got to the point of switching the television or radio off to listen out for 'other' voices, I knew for sure that alcohol had become an enemy, one not to be trusted or given consideration.
I had reached the grand old age of twenty five and had been drinking relentlessly for eight years. Eight years of shameful lies and wasted coin. Looking back to the beginning of my drinking career the memory darkens. It had started as an innocent fashion accessory with a few laughs along the way, had I known the final chapter the bottle would have stayed on the shelf.
It no longer gave the warm glow and comfort, it no longer acted as a stimulant. Alcohol became a nagging, tedious aggravation.
The reader should now begin to understand some of the agonies it takes an alcoholic to suffer before admitting any wrongs. The hundred sermons and thousand pleadings from those not cursed with the disease will always fall like Icarus in flames, (a point I cannot stress enough).
A wagging finger and lashing tongue will be ignored by the drinker. He or she wears an armour that will not dent with a simple rebuke because alcohol teaches stern lessons. It discards moderation and common sense and nurtures its tragic followers on excess, self pity, selfishness, anger, frustration and deceit.
The lies which have been told in the name of the glass are countless, along with the pain it inflicts on both drunk and sober. The havoc and violence it creates could fill a battlefield and a bruise just one of the bottles many colours.
A clever thing to be able to shrink away from blame which is what happens because alcoholism is more often judged on the person it afflicts rather than understanding of the illness.
Alcoholics are frequently described as weak willed and hopless yet nothing could be further from the truth in the case of recovering alcoholics throughout the planet. It is harsh, all of it because of the disastrous spell it weaves to those involved.
There is no nobody stronger than someone who successfully beats an addiction but before fighting that addiction one must first face it, and getting an alcoholic to admit having a problem is usually the hardest and highest hurdle of them all.
I was caught in a whilwind romance with the Appletooth and was slowly drinking myself into the grave (or padded cell), but while the sauce was still in my hand I was without ear to the voice of reason.
Nothing seemed quite right without it and I came to believe that life would be that much better if I slept straight through it. Death was always hanging around and whilst the first drink gives courage the last one will always bring cowardice.
To be scared of life and frightened of death is a terrible place to be. For years I slept with a bottle under my pillow and I kissed my cruel 'bride' often, with vigour. It was only when my mind had begun to crack and a breakdown sat on my shoulders that I knew I needed a clean and final split from the demon which had kept me chained.
In the beginning alcohol had handed me freedom. It had given me fantasy in the place of reality, I lived in a cartoon and was king of nonsense. But Life (the one that bites) soon rained down in stone and the cartoon was buried beneath misery and empties.
The first step to recovery as has been previously stated was admitting to myself I was alcoholic (it applies to all addicts of course). Without this all else will fail because like the pulling of a tooth, if the root is not cut out the problen will remain.
I felt no shame in admitting I was alcoholic, it is a disease afterall, and instead I felt relief. After years of torture and self abuse I had finally broken the first shackle of my gothic vine.
The next immediate step was detox in an alcohol rehabilitation clinic where I was introduced to fellow drinkers. At first I didn't think my temperament would allow sobriety and in my first week in the plush clinic I was dogged by constant thoughts of one more binge. I had real doubts and many times I imagined quitting the programme to feed my addiction in a homely bar.
I attended many A.A. meetings and was drilled by group therapy and relaxation techniques. It was at one of the meetings that my doubts on a sober life disappeared and I discovered the true strength and determination of the human soul.
Here was a group of people who had allowed themselves to be whipped by a bottle until even their minds had bled, and allowed dignity and pride to slip from their reach.
With alcohol on their lips they were useless, cowering cripples unable to perfore the simplest task, but without it they stood taller than their previous shadow and sunlight was welcomed on their flesh.
After a month of treatment I went home eager to pick up on a fresh horizon without the sting of drink.
Weeks passed and the clouded days I had waded through prior to my stay in rehab became filled with hope. My bank account started to grow again and I found time to do the things that beer had prevented. Fresh air no longer clogged my lungs like it had with alcohol and confidence came flooding back as I busied myself in work.
Health wise it was thrilling, energy raced in my system and my brain found found sanity from somewhere. But still I lacked the companionship I craved. I had been two months without a drink and not a single knock arrived at my door. The 'friends' with which I had occasionaly shared a drink with disappeared. Can sobriety intimitate some people? I believe it can.
Sober I remained and each day brought more confidence, one of the bottles stickiets traps.
Too much confidence is deadly to alcoholics because it leads them to believe they have conquered their addiction and are able to finally control the booze.
It was that, coupled with emptiness that drove me once again to the off licence shelf and with that first drink the macabre circus started to rev its familiar tune.
Everything I had built and restored in those two sober months were smashed within a week. The first drink (which I tried desperately to control) had its claw into me again. A.A was a million miles away, caught once again like a fish thrashing in gunpowder.
The drinking was even more intense the second time around, I drank at all hours and the hangovers, if they could be described as such, were so severe after binges that for days later I writhed in bed, a wounded animal struggling in its near death throes.
Even personal hygeine was neglected as I sweated out toxins only to be seduced by the bottles charms again and again.
Alcohol has a powerful relationship with the alcoholic and the illness is dismissed by the ignorant who have no understanding at all. Why should they? It doesn't effect them.
They see addicts as either a person who is drunk twenty four hours a day or in the gutter with a duffle bag and little else. The ignorant are both deaf and blind.
Nothing in life has ever affected me as deeply as alcohol and from now until I am in my grave I will only be sober for one day at a time.
I am still alcoholic (that part never dies) and I still have scars from the past, but without booze they need not be re-opened. I know that it would only take ONE DRINK to start the hellish downward spiral yet again so these days I try not to look at the shelf.
Steven Francis May 1997
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