Acid Verse

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Acid Verse

Lis’ning to psychedelic music,
Joss stick sending up a stream,
Lava shadows on the ceiling,
Red wine drifting off to dream.

Don’t need drugs to taste the acid,
Just an over-yellow mind –
It’s gonna be one of those fitful nights
When the gears of my conscious grind.

Too much psychedelia,
It’s not from the drugs, this trance, though –
I swear, just wine, and a lack of coffee,
So why do the colours dance so ?

I guess that I must be dreaming ?
I really hope that I’m dreaming…
Cos if this is really psychotrope
Then I’m trapped inside a kaleidoscope.

I guess there are folks who deal with this ev’ry day –
Does it make me a bad person to say
That I never wanted to end up that way ?
Like this way.  Like slipping down the slope.

Lis’ning to psychedelic noodling –
Are they slurred, or only me ?
It sorta sounds like forty-fives
That are played at thirty-three.

Don’t need drugs to hear the acid
Needle jumping, stuck on repeat –
It’s gonna be one of those Mobius nights
When Alice can’t find her feet.

Too much recycled diorama,
But if not drugs, then what have I taken ?
If only I’d swallowed some bloody caffeine
Cos I need to reawaken.

So why am I still here dreaming ?
Or what if I’m not here dreaming ?
It’s not any pills from off the shelf,
But maybe my brain has brewed some itself ?

Maybe it’s cloning its own serotonin all day,
Or morphing endorphins to help it to play.
Or doped-up on dopamine, drooling away ?
Who’s to say ?  Is it madness by stealth ?

Lis’ning to psychedelic mumbling,
Are they blurry ?  Hard to see…
This cover art is always changing –
Which side’s A and which side’s B ?

Don’t need drugs to see the acid
Sparking somewhere, distant, bleak –
It’s gonna be one of those unplugged nights
When the doors of perception creak.

Too much psyched-out sepia –
I don’t even own a secret stash,
But these uninvited thoughts wanna dance,
Now this party’s about to crash.

Can I still hope I’m nothing but dreaming ?
I gonna need help if I find I’m not dreaming
Cos I just don’t know how I’m gonna survive
If I’m right here awake and I’m streaming this live.

I don’t want to crash, but I don’t want to stay,
So help me to crash to an overcast day –
Cos there’s so many colours, I can’t find my way –
Help me, pray, when the DTs arrive.

Lis’ning to spaced-out psychic music,
Sometimes my mind is not my friend,
Cos psychedelic may sound angelic,
But it’s based on the blues in the end.

Pump Up, Soak In, Churn Out

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Pump Up, Soak In, Churn Out

Ev’ry time we turn the music on
And spin that single, dream that dream,
We’re really lis’ning to the Man.
For ev’ry time we place that needle,
Fire that laser, hit that stream,
We’re all just following the Plan.

Rock & roll ain’t noise pollution,
But it sure is toxic waste
To manufacture vinyl, drop by drop.
And digital is nothing without phones,
Upgraded in a haste –
The beat goes on, the beat must never stop.

The constant chemicals that we abuse
Ain’t pills and coke,
They’re plastic pop and heavy metal ores.
For all our music’s rock music in the end,
To burn and smoke –
We’re so unhip, we groove to dinosaurs.

And where is all this power from to fight the power ?
Nukes and coal.
Our phones get fat while the rainforest gets thinned.
How can we let the sunshine in
To let the records roll ?
The answer, dudes, is blowing in the wind.

See, Elegance !

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Caenorhabditis Elegans by Taylorcustom (I have been unable to discover the actual artist)

See, Elegance !

All the world is nemotodes
By dozens by each cubic inch –
The soil is crammed to overload,
The oceans feel the pinch –
These tiny, tiny vermiforms
In crevice, desert, gut and tree
Together make such mighty swarms
More massive than humanity.
From ocean trench to distant beach
To icecap, there they burst –
Wherever we have strived to reach,
The threadworms got there first.
Whatever we may think about them,
Still these parasites abound –
We cannot live without them,
For the roundworms make the world go round.

Twins I Have Known

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Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Twins I Have Known

My first twins, way back in infants,
Were Maisie & Daisy.
Or was it Daisy & Rose…?
Either way, their namers were lazy,
Whichever version they chose.

In second’ry school, I met the Sterlings,
Jenny & Tom,
(Always spoken that way round).
With an Scottish Pa and American Mom,
And nicknamed two-for-a-pound.

At college, reading quantum symmetry,
Alfie & Ollie,
As close as you get.
Sharing a coffee, sharing a brolly,
Sharing a karaoke duet.

On the reception desk at work
Sat Carrie and Claire –
Each geminus trying to be unique
With diff’rent clothes and diff’rent hair,
But dead the same in how they speak.

Now on the local council,
Were bipartisans Rhys and Ariadne –
Two-faced politicians !
Their name, it always seemed to me,
Belonged to competing naming-traditions.

And down the club, in mirror shades,
There’s Barry, on his own.
I’ve met his brother (forget his name),
Alike to the very bone.
He somehow felt like surplus, all the same.

The last set of duals, to date, are my own –
Baby 1 and Baby 2.
So what should I call them, my clone-i-kins ?
A running theme ?  No, that won’t do,
Then they’d forever be but half-a-twins.

Insomnia

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Insomnia by Sarah Park

Insomnia

Until tonight, I always found that beds, any beds would set me free,
Ev’ry nudge and ev’ry sound could not breach my security –
But here I lie awake, so wide awake, so pointlessly unresting
Perhaps I ought to take a break,
Fill up the kettle –
No coffee, though, please !
A morsel maybe to help me settle,
Though best lay off the cheese.
I always thought the night was full of creaks and banging pipes and stuff –
This house is eerily quiet when it speaks, not noisy enough !
The night and I both lie stock still,
Like the hush on the hill and the lull in the valley –
And yet, like me it also breathes…
But only one of us is keeping tally of the sleep the other thieves –
Adding up each stolen minute in my deficit of rest,
Ratchetting my stress as I know I’ll never get them back –
How long before I crack ?
Oh, to be falling into dreams,
To softly sink into its streams
To fall upon that netherworld where moonlight always beams.
But meanwhile…
The ticking of the alarm is not a friend,
Nor one I dare to silence –
Or how will I know when this Hell shall end ?
But the ticks just won’t shut up, even under the pillow
And then there’s the birds of dawn in the willow
That I always thought so pretty until this very morn.
And oh, here comes the headache –
So it’s back to the willow, it seems –
Though, hang on, does asp’rin keep you awake ?
Not that I’m exactly full of dreams right now,
Taking them on an empty stomach, too,
But anything to stop the throbbing in my brow.
Swallow them with the dregs of the wine –
Oh, it’ll be fine.
I’ll wash the glass since I’m here, as you do,
And spend a penny, I guess –
But if I’m getting up I might as well dress.
My thoughts spin round in my unsought leisure,
Till I’m sick of my company
And to think that sleep was once my pleasure –
How can it now be stumping me ?
I should be swimming through the deep of my mind,
Down and down, leave it all behind,
I used to find it all so easy,
One-two-three and off we go –
But tonight, there’s nobody home below.

The Sky’s the Limit

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Photo by Pedro Figueras on Pexels.com

The Sky’s the Limit

I hear they’ve found another Super-Earth
Around another star –
A bit bigger round the waist,
But still as rocky as we are.
The gravity is stronger,
So the mountains are all lower,
But there’s no reason at all
That some life is not a goer.
Maybe life much smarter
Than the likes us down here,
But life that never gets to cross
The endless void, I fear.
They, like us, can only run so fast,
Can only reach so high,
But they must drag a greater ball-and-chain
Before they fly.

You see, that could have been us,
Had the Earth and Mars collided
In the days before the days
Before the proto-cells divided.
Life could still arise
From the planetary ash,
But could never hope to reach the Moon
(If the Moon survived the crash).
Rockets can only burn so bright,
But the g-force rises, ev’ry thrust –
When you have to ride a nuke to fly,
You’ll orbit as a smear of dust.
That’s the price of gravity’s embrace –
We’re hers for keeping –
And she’s a hard mistress, gravity,
Possessive and unsleeping.

Except, of course, our planet is
Just small enough to jump and fly,
(Not that we have, we grounded individuals
Trapped beneath the sky).
But others of our species have,
And probes have sent our eyes to dance
With Jupiter and Mercury –
And all because we had the chance.
And when the Sun is old and red,
Then we’ll be gone to boldly go –
Yet till that day, we only get to dream
Of all we’ll never know.
We may be stranded in the well,
But we are safe and warm, all told –
I hear it’s very beautiful up there,
But oh, so cold…

Vanity

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Vanity

“Van Go”, he said, thus mangling it
Quite in the American style –
Yet in the accent of a Brit,
From maybe Preston or Carlisle.
So natur’ly I had to cough
And stem this slovenly display –
“I think you’ll find it’s said ‘Van Goff’,
Misspoken in the English way.”

Too Fast

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Too Fast

Pop tunes reckon that they haven’t got long,
So they splash their chorus in the first few bars –
They’re terrified of the fingers that skip,
They’ve got no time to take a trip.
The ear-economy for any song
Must reach us in shops and lobbies and cars –
There’s no slow build-up any more,
Just one-two-three, then four-to-the-floor.

Static

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Photo by SplitShire on Pexels.com

Static

Ev’ry hour on ev’ry radio,
On ev’ry station, Beatles, Bach or Blues –
Upon the hour, come what may,
They force on us the news.

We come here for the music,
But we have to hear the gossip and the noise.
And even worse, the traffic, sport and weather –
What a buzzkill, boys !

And in an hour, then up it pops again –
Just the same with nothing changed, just comfort food.
Headlines full of factoids – got no time,
Yet long enough to wreck the mood.

I don’t mind DJ chat –
At least a human’s in the process somewhere –
But this sounds like an algorithm
Padding out the wavelengths, filling up the air.

Well I’m no luddites, I can read the papers –
Keep abreast as best I can.
I don’t need constant interruptions
Thinking I’ve got no attention span.

Give me a station full of talking,
But let’s keep the others where the music never stops –
No news is good news, so save it for the Albert Hall –
And the top of the hour for the top of the pops.

Challenging & Worthy

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Challenging & Worthy

Ballet, op’ra and poetry –
Loved by luvvies and the BBC
But otherwise ignored by all and quite right too.
Up their own arses, these brown-nose arts
Are permanent’ly trapped in a bubble of farts
Just like the upper-chattering classes talking poo.
Please, oh please, let me never be trendy,
Keep me away from the cognoscenti,
Shovelling tax-pounds into their bottomless troughs.
I’ll take my chance with the free-will market
Than crawling on my belly on a critic’s carpet –
They may be lefties, but trust me – they’re just a bunch of toffs.