The Strange Town - JLG Clift

There’s a child chasing change into the strange of the midnight moonlight town where the clowns strip their smiles with their tears and tell their fears to the Sisters smuggling G-strings and G cups beneath their peeling habits shedding as red lights go on maggots writhing on their beds in their bread meds managing their meta-morphed minds to make time seem faster to make life less lasting as the men lament into their loins sympathy by the hour dead flowers in a homemade vase on the sill practically pettleless the boy staring through the stems still waiting for those bills to come down from the black of the sky like a swarm of dry leaves died mint green but he doesn’t think they ever will. They’re gone.



Between the thorns fornication begins torn linen sheets housing bodies flailing like fish out of water someone’s son someone’s daughter now ruins rutting in a rented room fumes from Camels rising into the dampened ceiling sexual healing blaring from the strip club across the street Mother Moon casting down a cruel crimson heat that makes the boy imagine his feet are sealed to the spot like he’s standing on a road wide soldering iron left on by mistake the sensation rising up his legs into his gut he’s sweaty he’s fused to the concrete the Sister and her patron glistening like chunks of cooling solder smoldering in the sweaty sheets.



And then they’re gone, and the next man comes in this one losing his lunch and his boxers to the bin skid marks dark against the faded white he cums and goes like the last his shallow shadow follows slowly in the dullness of the Sister’s light. More enter and exit just as fast until the last man leaves in the sunrise his priest collar tight against the skin propping the double of his chin up.



The boy watched it all through that musty screen of glass pinned to the wall. His mother called but he was hypnotized by the sights horror reaching up like a virtual virus clawing like a vulture greasy talons blunting in the hollows of his gut and his mind binding him to the spot; seeing pious preachers giving in to sin put a whole new spin on right and wrong for him and now he’s changed.



All of the holy rollers roll out with the sideshow clowns and boy follows the no-muss-no-fuss exodus from the strange of the town but what he’s seen doesn’t leave him. His shadow has sticky stains running through it thick chords like oil slicks pulsing on the pavement in the waves of the darkened heat. In the sun the money in a swarm continues to run but starts to tire and starts to rain across the land in the strain of the wind it spreads.



The scene in the window with its curtains closed reminds passers-by of a TV thick quilts of steel wool blanket look like sputtering static dead air nothing left to scare the boy anymore until the watershed begins again when the sun goes down and once again the strange town tends to open like clockwork and goes on to drive the minds of men and the mouths of busy body mothers’ berserk.



A 50 hits the curb at the city limits and looks around and sees that the world is limited to it. There’s nothing but sky and grass and trees and leaves and life beyond buildings ahead and the thought makes the note crinkle in disgust and in a gust of wind it rides back to the world it always wins in where gas goes through chrome chimneys that glisten like tin so bright they eclipse the sunset. They’ll all be back to the set to get their kicks soon now that night’s looming. Or blooming, depending on where you stand.

Suburbicidal Thoughts - JLG Clift

Suburbicidal tidal thoughts ride high as us tonight; no BPM on the tracks a glitch I suppose because the tracks play away just fine blue hues of drops to come and drops that have been that look like a skyline split in half by its own reflection in a water front or feature the sights catch my eye while discussing Hemingway and Kafka and Burroughs in equal measure with this guy I’ve just met but no matter how interesting the conversation is for some reason my eyes are still tethered to the cityscape sound’s reeling rippling as a razor of a thin red line scalps the writhing static of fluctuating colour tumbling with a rigid flail into the darkness the red line’s scalping has left behind.

Rinds from a half-eaten tangerines in grand reams look like ripped ribbons around the deck and a couple of cans of Fosters and Carlsberg’s; ejected seeds resting on the rim of the can at the back good shot but not quite in the black of the hole; looking up from this I see exams and Oxford reminders bound by twined tape to the mantel with reminders for this and that distributed evenly surrounding. Everything’s in its place and its place is everything. There was a family on the wall earlier but they fell and no one’s up them back up yet glancing down ears back I see the set still going hue by hue; no stars in the deep mauve of the sky tonight just sunset jets of a darker shade chasing strips of cherry red from the head of the sunset along with the purple until only the ash of the anti-colour remains. House bleeds black there’s a crack more like a clatter on the patio two forty-somethings doing nothing but drinking the woman’s heel sinking into the pure of the AstroTurf she stacks and with a crack a vase comes to a pile of pieces varnished by the veneer of the porch lights and the fairy lights barely glowing anymore beside the shards a dilapidated 20 deck trampled into the soil with some unwanted crudités and some foil coiled into chunks in the mud and the grass; down the path in the rows of flowers crumpled cans grow and glow louder and brighter than the plants the party reflected on their surfaces in distorts like fun house mirrors the party quivering from seeing itself but going on. There’s a conversation about children and futures and commendations on the torte that we apparently have to try but I meet these people’s drink induced enthusiasm with hedges faux pleasantries and after they’ve left earshot sighs. I’m not into drinking or tortes, I just get high.

There is a god.

We got the score, we’re in the room Munich’s on and before my mate’s set’s over downstairs in the dining room turned dance floor the game is gone the score’s been removed from the draw and the zoot’s rolled - it’s cold outside on the street near the secondary school we hopped the fence to cotch under a nice grove we saw in the distance we’re drunk and giggling and semi-stoned and the sudden urge to pick up my phone and call home comes and goes leaning on the willow high on the lowest trunk my mate on the highest branch his flannel shirt’s billowing in the wind about his torso like a blank flag; out of sorts briefly we discuss the girl he’s courting who sounds wonderful, better than the last from what I gather but this conversation passes quickly and we discuss other things and I think about the lost boys in their tree, and how free they were and the image of us right now in the greased reflection of the canteen door does make my mind stir with links between us and them – summer’s come around quick with a sickly speed as I smoke this ganj and it’s approach makes me think about the Falange movement but I don’t know why never mind soon enough in a plume of smoke that train of thought is gone too; tonight I keep thinking about where I belong every song every word every drink every bird I’ve chatted to tonight all the sights I’ve seen teeming in the serene suburban sheen of the house party on the quiet street the idea of placement perturbing nothing around but me and I get down, because the only thing to see is suburbia in its semi-detached display period houses tiled rooftops look like they’re fraying when the moonlight hits them they look like they’re splitting like they’re bleeding and I find myself inwardly pleading for more than what surrounds.

Why do I exist, what’s my place? On what mantle do I sit?  

I exist to get pissed and block doorways and spend my days chasing fiction waiting to be kissed by an inspiring pair of lips thumb outstretched hitching more than states, more like whole tectonic plates away from the path everyone seems to have a laugh on.

Roads less travelled bare such burdens but such wonders if you can plunder them successfully. That’s who I want to be, I want to be one of the lucky ones that not only plunders but whose mind and whose journey thunders into infinity I don’t give a shit about this girl back on the balcony rambling about her bracelet from Tiffany’s. People just aren’t seeing that all these brands are making the hands of language viral, transient, these lusty labels and tedious fables about an escapade at the shops or a stint of underage drinking at the Locke or whatever spiralling through the rooms making me feel weathered turning the rooms into tombs where the trivial thrives and brilliance dies.

 I’ve had an epiphany tonight, sights have changed but stayed and once the playlist’s been played by the morning where I’ve overstayed my welcome quite possibly I leave the house that seems to have been hollowed by the party lifted no wash no shower the beer cans still glowing among the trampled flowers that used to tower above the litter before people with a few pints of bitter in them came along.

We belong to belong in the world where labels, where sight, where earth, does not exist to cloud our vision and only the search for self-improvement persists in a world of no lows just highs and with no suburbia or city to block our eyes from the sky.

My phone goes.

“hey wanna get pissed again? There’s another party tonight”

 It’s sad that already I know what my answer’s going to be.

The feeling returns in the dimness of English daylight that I am doomed to have this suburbia cloud my sights for the rest of my mornings and my nights at this rate.

"sure"

'There's This Girl I Know or Don't Know...' - JLG Clift

There’s this girl I know or don’t know depending on how you view things blonde hair black roots hanging low down past the blades of her shoulders to her waist or thereabouts flowing in fine feathered streams that I remember her preening until they were gleaming no matter how dark the day was.

I remember her looting through ethics books searching ever little nook and cranny wafting through articles about world wars global warming and the Vatican’s opinions on trannies among other things for some quick fix knowledge to scrape though another past paper her book was new and fresh; mine was old, taped up tapering and tattered at the edges I can still hear her nattering away at the back with her mates about the state of marvellously meaningless things.

I don’t recall whether she acts or sings but I remember her filing away to drama once a day occasionally I’d pass and catch her saying something about nothing to her fes wearing thespian eternally equestrian pal with a jaw like a loose pes dispenser dispensing a frankly dismal rendition of Hamlet’s grand soliloquy misquoting constantly so badly sometimes that I was sure they’d been toting joints between frees she had no interest in jobs or degrees I don’t think; she was all mouth all looks all smiles all winks all drink all drugs all hugs charming and disarming in equal measure - Or maybe not.

 I can count our conversations on my fingers yet she’s managed to tether herself to my thoughts all she’ll still linger for years to come her name from time to time ringing in my ears if I run out of ideas:

Where’s she now?

Where won’t she be?

Well that’s the beauty of her I don’t know and never will she could be anything or everything or nothing a blank canvas to paint a story on untainted by cold black fact that likes to hack away at my unrealities gracelessly gleefully ceaselessly. Her existence is a peaceful reprieve in a way she’s given my writing a new lease on life yet she said nothing and is nothing to me or for me but reason’s relentless baying is nothing but an unsuccessful attempt at treason against the powers of inspiration.

Today I write about the girls hair blowing in the wind down the street in spring in my head returning from a shift at GAP or maybe an arts and crafts store she owns or works at for or maybe a bar or a lunch the people around her are hunched and dark in bright clothes material rainbows reaching head to toe going back and forward to a soft focus nothingness a cityscape of soundless shudders like shadows or in rippling streaks grey scale tail lights high exposure their trails repeating over and over into the distance around the girl who’s extensions and dye are stripped like dandelion flowers back to her roots in her breath that's blowing back on her. She exhales the winds of change that change her and me led lifted from my mind leaving me to roam the endless stories of what the girl in pearl studded Uggs with a smug thug on her arm in one story setting off smoke alarms nonchalantly consciously unconsciously for fun in another rebelling ideas of what she could do swelling endlessly over the brim of my psyche – all these stories of what she could be rattle on listlessly as lovers in the rungs of discovery.

And I might be right I might be wrong but regardless in ignorance I carry on telling stories through her about her; to her; it doesn’t matter that she won’t know about the seeds she’s sewn that have grown into lush green ivy with golden brown leaves the gold leaving the beauty of the brunette behind blossoming throwing stones away that blocked a path I wanted to travel down. If she ever found out she’d probably laugh – or maybe not.

I don’t know and won’t know but in my mind it could go either way. In ambiguity I plan to stay and play with this pen and paper occasionally charting the capers of that girl I sort of know, or knew now I guess, and her tie dyed locks that love to shock.

Or maybe not.

Leavers 2013 - JLG Clift

Leavers of 2013 exit here drunk delirium no fear showing grey skies wind blowing hard outside earlier today there was no sense of times changing of tides raging no real sense of despair Dub Step colliding with Retro beats and synthetic snares lick the air repeatedly in the common room.

The prospect of a barbeque blooms and then to the Locke where the real party begins beer whiskey and gin flow briskly the real party starting quickly since everyone’s fucked and fucked is fun then after the sun falls down, down drunk into the night where we are soon to follow I’m already hollowed out over a bin form my G&T and a few Bacardi and Cokes too many the tonic stings my throat still, there’s a couple of equally fucked students to my left arguing about whether Dre ever did better than the Chronic on a flaky bench. I sober up when someone’s tearing up to my right a melancholic mnemonic that brings it all home.

I know some of these people don’t want to go because what is there beyond this day and this last call for the academic flailers for the nai-sayers this afternoon pogo-ing in roll up slacks his gold tie torn twisted in a knot around his cube shaped head right now trying to bind his gloom with a few more drinks. Kings today peasants tomorrow for them I feel sunrise comes with shears to shed hair from their heads the future comes with dissatisfaction for a withering wedding bed it brings endocet it brings debts and steals the wet from your water on a dry summer day straining against youth-less skin clotted with age with no sage like Wismon imbedded in those wrinkles you dreaded.

Or maybe it will be good maybe the fears that arrived tonight are misplaced who’s to say that in 20 years I won’t look around and see a year of smiling faces gleams in their eyes from the shirrmering victories of making dreams realised.

“I want to be a scientist”

“an accountant”

“a singer”

“an actor”

“an astronaut”

“I want to see Venice”

“I want a mansion with a terrace in the countryside”

“I’m going to drink I’m going to fuck my days away with a guitar in my hand and a mic in my face”

“I’m going to let my luck lead the way and see how that goes”

These dreams and wants gracing the air tonight are like streamers and banners multi-coloured never ending bending but not breaking in the sternness of the bleakest breeze an icy veneer stalking the Locke and the party and the sky. Who’s to say what we want won’t be? Who’s to say we won’t bring fate to its knees and get it to let us do as we please?

I don’t hear anyone, even after the celebrations are over and we stumble slightly humbled by the gallons of booze consumed I don’t even hear a mumble of doubt in the rising sun marking the hangovers overcoming us all.

They’ll still be talking about us to 6^th formers in that hardwood hall in years to come do not mark me words but remember that you have seen then and let them leave traces in your mind.

We are dismissed and loosed onto mankind, at last.

 

Lucy: Lost or Found - JLG Clift

 

Walk down the rose red aisle closeted thoughts collecting in the distant distorts cascading from the top of my shadow in the black of its shade fed head to where the darkness ends and I begin at its hinges on my heels the royal red carpet rolls on beneath our pounding souls the chorus howling hymns about the glory of the holes in His hands at the back tarpaulin that this morning was draped across the Almighty rattles at the base of his cross as a lost wind riles up the doors and the people in the pews go up and down listening to the good news about how the Lord with in the crown of thorns with the colours of dawn leaking down his face from his Temple saved the poor and the whore to a lip service score that makes me feel like I have leprosy crawling sliding on my skin flaking scales peeling back behind the pale of my clean white shirt how long will this charade continue? How long have my thoughts and my wants laid straining in my sinews contorted distorted by the Man with his finger on an Bible toting Taliban who plays gentle when the flocks around but will be all guns blazing if I confess the truths continuing to malaise my psyche but it’s not my fault that I’m like me is it? It’s not my fault I don’t believe it’s not my fault I’m not what they want me to be I don’t want them to brandish their blessed grieves and cleavers and arms shotguns cameras flash bulbs like suns spitting sparks at ‘the freak of nature’ hammer wielding nuns getting ready to punch nails through my palms and leave me hanging by my hands over some wasteland farm out in the sticks near the M6.

 For being me. For wanting a she instead of a he, for thinking free.

 Doesn’t god except everyone regardless of taste? Isn’t that the message that was laced through our thoughts during all of those course Catholic lectures about His love between articles about crusaders casting arrows from above like lightning brittle snapping as they enter the gapping between heathen armour.

“jesus was like a farmer. He made his people grow strong”

And then his descendants started making rules about who did and didn’t belong and warping the rules on right and wrong to fill their pockets to stick their dirty keys into the lockets of youthful concubines bound by silence bound by place fear tracing the bags under their eyes ravaged and savaged if they spoke out against the monks they died as liars in the crackling fires of the Devine and Sublime word of god that became sodomised before my eyes down the years as I found history the mystery of how things were and how things will be that had before failed to find me found me and freed me from my guilt. I started to see that Popes not as giants, but as little old men on rotting stilts begging to break so that the falsely appointed can tumble down to the ground to drown in their greed crimson seeds bore spurting fruit gushing flutes of feral red empty creeds ringing around the silent dead.

“and what name have you chosen my child?”

Lucifer

“Michael Father”

"an unusual choice for a girl my dear"

who's this fucker think he is to sneer at me and my choice?

I want to voice my views but my choice cannot be. My mother's to the right eyes brimming glee hands clasped in prayer it doesn't matter that i don't see what she sees the point is she does and I wouldn't be any better than this fucker making an over-analysed letter T over my head if I hated her for what she said she thought.

I say nothing and this expulsion stings my skin skins my tongue rots through every rung of my being. Oh how freeing it would be to set forth from Heaven like Lucifer keying Christ’s Holy Beemer free thinking slogans trailing on streamers on his exit.

How many more times must I stalk this aisle an invalid braking my back to please the lazy lay people lying in their seats cheats freaks geeks this house full of the meek too scared to speak too scared to reach beyond what they’ve been told too scared to be bold and stand for what they believe, for what they conceive as right or wrong after all who’s to say who’s right or wrong about anything? Sexless beings with wings like Barbie Dolls and Action Men? Kings of Kings hands coated in bloodied rings and stolen things? I think not, we’ve cast our lot in on a losing horse choosing the course of least restraint because tainting your mind with unique trains of thought always hurts. But it’s worth it in the end, the wounds of independence never mend and never heal the pain of thinking is very real, but it makes you feel.

It’s good to feel something.

The Little Man - JLG Clift

A connoisseur of rotund clunge he longs to lunge forth fornicating on the floor to commercial grunge raw as it gets the Little Man never out of luck never at a loss for words brags about his fucks chucks the same sagging synonyms and pseudonyms around in the school in his stool legs dangling down like he’s a varnished ventriloquist dummy listing names and moves like he’s fooling us all into thinking he’s cool or something  and he really expects us to believe all this bravado about his ‘skilfully’ staccato (as if that’s a thing) fucking rhythm when he ploughs the bigger of the female organisms around Arnos Grove and the suburbs below and beyond while also playing the profound guitar strumming slum dog millionaire the air to Dylan’s worn wooden chair writing cliché words about his eternal sense of despair or his undying love for his current swan like lover that looks more like uncooked foie gras when beached on the back seat of his brand new car.

He lives in a nice neighbourhood he’s never understood what it’s like to hear shards of serrated lives come through paper thin walls like knives he’s never had to see someone was stabbed he’s never had to work his hands to calluses grinding steel in the sweltering heat of a factory iron mill floors sticking to his feet through a bubbling black sole holes forming tearing the boots apart like bubble gum while the machinists hum and the machines squeal beneath a teal sky blocked out by the rusty rafters painted matte black cracking above their leaking heads their joints weakening eeking through the hours wondering why they’re still going knowing that life won’t be any better tomorrow suffocating in industrial sorrow but still they persist for no reason season after season thoughts of freedom and treason long gone among the sooty faces travelling in droves at sunset back to dismal places back to Pivot ghettos passing the motorway on foot like ants the chorus of desperate stilettos of Loreto’s girls marching with their he-she pimp in a tattered row already wasted their lives echoing over the Cats thumping against the concrete pumping up scorching heat.

So many tired feet tread the street day in day out day in day out and no matter how much the Little Man claims to be among them over tired acoustic notes in that same tired style that’s so infantile it makes me hurl the point is he hasn’t and he won’t and I don’t think I can fucking take these uninspired songs unfurling into my ears and more.

‘And now another number for my one and only girl. The pearl of my eye’

More like another cherry for that bag you’re dragging the one that you keep bragging about having to have to carry your fan mail around in because they ‘liked my cocktail – lol do you get it man? Cock tail’ man this guy’s so cringe he drives my fucking skin pale with shame and just to think all the talk and the metaphorical bag that he stuffs with papers every now and then when he thinks his tall tales are starting to taper is just to convince us he’s not a fucking fag.

‘this guy I know is straight but thinks about guys sometimes  -what do you think that means?’

My fucking god just drop the vage and get a cock maybe then this fucking bull shit will stop once some Mandingo or Fernando  pops your cherry I’m sure you’ll be very merry maybe then you’ll actually smile and stop trying to fuck those vile girls that you toss around pretending when they’re moaning if they’re moaning that it’s actually some Lothario groaning maybe once you get a guy you’ll lay off the fucking hash and stop wearing that Byronic sash you’ve donned that never suited maybe you’ll root around a bit inside yourself and bring out something actually worth something anything’s better than nothing but nothing’s better than the little shit you are now. A cover track a week to pretend your relationship’s all squeaky clean Disney songs and covers cliché ballads for loathsome lovers original material about an ethereal being with a Cherub’s looks duets with Yvette or Ivon whatever her name is it doesn’t matter because she’ll be gone soon like the others once you’ve stained her covers too soon cocooned desires hidden behind a born liar’s smoke fires in the mire of your psyche like memories of your acne and your love/hate relationship with Jackie or Johnny or John or whatever he’s calling himself these days. It’s only a matter of time before your lies fray away completely and I wait for the day when I see you collapse meekly exposed for what you are. You don’t like girls you don’t like the Bell Jar you didn’t get that car second hand you don’t live in a council estate you own fucking land in the Lake District it’ll be great when people see you for the first time.

It’ll be like giving birth, and you’ll feel every minute of it and when it’s over you’ll be forced to sit and stare on the ground that self-made stare mangled your leg like a hound of its leash and you’ll be able to hear the ruins of your life screeching like the machine works in what resembles a rusted preach that finally reaches you and drags you down into the mounds of what you always said you were, realities stirring around your ears brings you to tears all your hopes laid to waste by the fears you always had of what could have been.

Well now it is, and you can see it all beyond your smouldering rizla, packed too tight, its light going out at last.