My
mind is adrift today, flying high.
I let it glide awhile in the gentle breeze,
As high as a kite, soaring in the sky,
Blissfully, trustfully, controlled with ease;
Fly little fledgling, wherever you please,
Beautiful kite; it’s all under control;
I’ll pull you back safely, child of my soul.
Long ago, I was a boy of nineteen,
And probably immature for my age;
I had not the wisdom to calm my spleen,
Nor lover to still my frustrated rage;
I wore a clown’s mask; spent much of that stage
Of my life, inebriated, or high;
And rarely, if ever, wondering why.
Does that sound familiar? That chestnut
Of teenage angst and unsatisfied lust?
Youthful frustration’s a pain in the gut,
A hard path to tread, but tread it we must
(And some, never making it, turn to dust).
Yes, we’ve all been there, at some point I guess;
Rare’s the teenager, whose head’s not a mess,
But to return from that slight digression:
Picture a night; August 1980;
I had some acid in my possession,
(As did many others, incidentally,
These being the days of pre – ecstasy)
Ying Yang blotters, scored earlier that night,
In a quest for psychedelic insight,
And I, nigh an hour after taking two;
Waiting impatiently to no avail,
Saw another dealer, I barely knew
Entering the pub with, “White tiles” for sale;
He said “These will work for sure without fail”.
I purchased two of those tickets to hell,
On top of a wrap of sulphate as well.
Si and I took a trip in a taxi
To the Essex University where
I bought a blotter immediately.
I’d already had four, and without care,
I took the fifth one just for a dare;
We got in a lift, went straight to the top
Of a tower, with a very long drop;
I peered o’er the edge of a balcony,
Watched the ground, like a giant lift rising
And I had a kind of epiphany;
Stepped over the edge, not realising
My mind was playing tricks and disguising.
The distance between the top and ground floor
Wasn’t two feet but a hundred or more.
Let’s pause for a second (as I did then).
Would be Buddhists, meditate on this:
Was God contrived by superstitious men?
Did Satan tempt Jesus at the abyss?
With a voice, gentle as a mother’s kiss
Saying, “Isn’t it strange the ground so near?
Jump off the edge now, there’s nothing to fear”.
Was that you, my mad mind, talking to me?
If Simon hadn’t stopped me, I’d have jumped
Like a happy child into a warm sea
And my young heart would no longer have pumped,
My immature life, by death would be trumped.
The memory of this cuts like a knife.
I thank you Simon for saving my life.
Sitting in a flat on the highest floor
Surrounded by people I barely know,
Talking nonsense. There’s a knock on the door,
Someone opens it and outward we flow.
The spiral staircase to the ground below
Goes on and on and on and on and on.
When we get to the bottom, my head’s gone.
The memory of this causes me pain,
But to unearth the truth, it’s necessary
To review the line between sane and insane,
And lay it bare so a reader might see
An account of total insanity;
And though it was merely down to a pill,
And so long ago, yet it haunts me still.
I’m sitting in a bar, sipping a beer.
I’m feeling agitated, paranoid
And inferior to everyone here.
I’m an insipid bore, one to avoid,
Open to ridicule, or else destroyed.
My face is a book, a bland one indeed,
Very wide open and easy to read.
A man of superior intellect
Looks at me and says “Infrared complex”,
And those two words have a profound effect
On me. It’s like he knows his phrase reflects
Exactly how I feel and my reflex
Response is to feel humiliation
And lose my bent of communication.
I suddenly find myself in a room
Full of people watching a video.
I sit down with Simon who I assume
Has led me here but I really don’t know
If I can concentrate on a film show.
There’s a “Clicking” sound from behind somewhere,
I turn around but I see nothing there.
I try to watch whatever’s on TV.
“Clickclick, cliclclick, click….”What the fuck is that?
I can hear laughter too, but I can’t see;
It’s way too dark, “What are you laughing at?”
Simon simply gives me a shoulder pat
And says “You’re making it a bad one mate”
And right now, I’m in a pretty bad state.
We’re having a row now, Simon and I.
He’s annoying me as much as that sound.
I get up, chairs, tables and glasses fly.
Somebody screams but I don’t turn around,
I’m heading for the exit, homeward bound.
I have no money for a taxi fare,
So I walk alone, into a nightmare.
A madman wandered along a dark road
Toward his landmark; a water tower.
He watched it jumping around like a toad,
He bade it “STOP”, (but he had no power).
He bowed and drank piss (it tasted sour),
He looked up, noticed the tower had stopped.
Then looked down again; his trousers had dropped.
Some drivers (teenagers?) mocked him and japed
And others remarked as they passed him by:
“A lunatic from the mad house escaped,
Standing in the road like he wants to die”
And, “There but for the grace of God go I”,
“Another casualty of drugs or drink”,
“I wonder, what must his poor mother think?”
He wandered and wondered “Why am I here,
What is my name and where do I come from”?
He saw the water tower disappear;
In his head, a mantra beat like a drum
And then it exploded into a maelstrom
Of despair, anguish and things meaningless
And he quite forgot his name and address.
That was when he knew that he’d lost his mind.
All his inhibitions had gone away.
To reason, meaning and logic now blind,
His worldview was warped and in disarray.
He’d no concept of time, of night or day,
And if he could talk, he then would have said;
“I hate this feeling, I’d rather be dead”.
So then, a grim choice before him was laid;
Life as a madman, or death as an end;
This considered, his decision was made;
Death’s end was an incomparable friend.
As from buildings afire jumpers descend,
His suicide, born of desperation,
Was an instinctive consideration.
He jumped in front of an oncoming car,
That knocked him down but alas didn’t kill.
He smashed his head back against the hard tar
But unconsciousness evaded him still.
He smashed it again and again until
The driver came over to remonstrate;
“Why did you do that?” He heard him berate.
A crowd had gathered around him amazed
(They’d come from the pub where they’d been drinking)
He looked at them all as they stood and gazed,
Oblivious to what they were thinking;
Bewildered, he asked, wide eyed, unblinking;
“Am I a witch? Are you coming to take
Me off somewhere to be burned at the stake?”
A woman approached him, kindly, concerned;
She asked him his name and where did he live?
Unknowing either, his answer returned,
Asking if she had some water to give,
(His voice cunningly disguised and plaintive).
She gave him a glassful, which he smashed
And into his neck, repeatedly slashed.
An ambulance came and took him away;
As life vividly flashed before his eyes,
He thought of his Grandpa; what would he say?
Only then he began to realise
That Heaven’s a place for someone who dies
By whatever fate deems, but not suicide;
He was Hell bound, where the tortured reside.
To Hell’s gate the ambulance soon arrived:
A demon - policeman disguised - asked his name;
He thought of an answer and then contrived
To fool the demon, and make a false claim;
Staying silent until more demons came;
And being dead, his awareness restored,
They wheeled him to where Hell’s furnaces roared.
Demons, disguised as doctors and nurses,
Placed me on a high bed and lay me there;
I uttered unrepeatable curses,
(Being dead, resigned and beyond despair)
I swore and spat and punched and pulled hair
And kicked and smashed a cabinet of glass;
They held me down and injected my arse.
As the needle went into my backside
I screamed at the demon’s effrontery.
And like an apathetic child I cried;
Questioning their methods and cruelty.
One demon shouted “Police brutality!”
Then I was handcuffed, my legs were bound tight,
And I, thus restrained, was drained of all fight.
I lay for a time in Hell’s waiting room
(If time can exist in infinity),
Pondering a Hellish afterlife doom;
A landscape of tortured humanity;
I retraced the path to calamity;
Revised my decisions; gave them deep thought;
Concluded, my life’s summation was nought.
A policeman held my head in his lap,
As I came, gradually down from the brink;
He freed my restraints, releasing each strap;
Asked me if I wanted something to drink,
And as reality started to sink,
I looked at that kind human being
Scarcely believing what I was seeing.
They drove me back home to my bedsit flat,
Read out the charges and made it quite plain
That I was in trouble, but for all that,
My treatment received, was decent, humane;
One said, “We don’t want to see you again”;
They got in the squad car, and off they sped;
I was fairly copped, it has to be said.
I awoke the next day and felt my neck
And the bandages, placed there by a nurse;
I was a mental and physical wreck,
But still alive, for better or for worse,
And to dwell on that, is to weaken this verse;
The young foolish boy’s long since departed,
And his history can’t be restarted.
My mind is adrift today, flying high.
I let it glide awhile in the gentle breeze,
As high as a kite, soaring in the sky,
Contently drifting and controlled with ease,
Like a loved pet or child, easy to please.
Precious possession child of my soul,
I’ll pull you back while I still have control.
