2

2

 

The traveller landed in the chosen city of his chosen land around ten o'clock in the evening local time. Sipping on coffee, he was still unable to shake from his mind the utter sorrow that so plagued it. The other side of the world he may be but it was still a world that was ending. This was supposed to be an adventure, yet he could only feel a sense of delaying the inevitable conclusion that time was already running out on this romantic quest of self. He was tempted in his frenzy of mind to turn back, go home now before he confronted the abyss, but he soon relaxed. His worries subsided (albeit briefly) and he felt at peace with things, it was almost like a spiritual intervention, for the sake of the quest. This would happen again.

 

Trembling, the world has grown smaller

I wander without a guide

Ludicrous romantic notions be damned!

From love I should not seek but hide

This quest could be suicide!

 

My solace and my mother nature,

she appears..

To her spirit I ask, to me she has said

"Be calm & live carefree my dears,

Love will come, sooner of later"

 

Awoken, disturbed and confused, our romantic explorer took to the backroads, still hurting deep within. As he rode a train, humanity's sorrowful shame appeared in the form of a group of homeless huddled round a large, burning metal can, fighting over scraps of food and dregs of wine. Perhaps any remaining, fading scraps of dignity and pride too. He could not help but look, thinking about that kind of life, true loneliness and misery, the never-ending road, the way of the hobo.

 

Journeys long and treacherous

Only the cold winds for company

To own not a possession

Can be somewhat liberating

But to be a nobody nowhere

Riding in box cars, a permanent stowaway

Makes you give up all your values

Just to catch an even break

A friend is hard to come by

A foe will stalk you all night

I once had an audience

Infront of a trashcan on fire

I'm clean on the inside

Some nights I live on the beach

Asking the ocean for answers

Warbling through the sickness

Rambling, dirty feet and sinners

Eat the promises of the apostles

Spit them up on the dusty sidewalk

This is my leisure time

The real work starts at nightfall

When I fight to stay alive

 

After this he found himself with a huge stretch of open road to walk into and beyond. Just before embarking, he stopped by the side of the road and had a cigarette. He had quit years ago but liked to keep a pack on him for so-called emergencies. Sometimes a cigarette would help him think, this one doing just that as he paced around aimlessly. His mind was racing again, he was close to shaking with fear, with panic, with utter sadness dulling his insides. How could he possibly be on this foolish expedition to find himself or find romance, whatever he was vaguely looking for, when the world was in such decline and its peoples in such decay, both mentally and physically?

His continued wallowing had made his entire being, his heart, his legs, his mind, so very heavy and concluded that venturing into  barren urban landscapes was not the right thing to do right now. Time to find the first motel of the trip. It took him nearly forty-five minutes to see a glorious, neon 'Vacancies' sign (glorious certainly when one is so tired and in such a weary state). The shabbiness of the place could so easily be traded for character and the eerieness of the surroundings quaint and peaceful, even in this pitch black. A good nights sleep could take care of the most restless minds and travellers. Picture any motel from any American road movie. Similiar aren't they? Well this one looked exactly like you are picturing. Although extremely tired, sleep was hard to come by in this environment. Around four am he was jolted from his wandering thoughts by the sound of breaking glass, very loud Christmas music and hints of not screaming, but painful yelps. Stepping out onto the front balcony he saw a woman come running up the stairs and started banging on the door where the noises were coming from. She was shouting "Bobby! What's going on?! Are you okay?!" while from inside the room only a muffled, repetitive "B***h!" could be heard over the misplaced merry, jingly tunes. As he accepted no sleep would be got here tonight, he listened to the pleas of the banging fist and the heart-wrenching screams of the man a couple of doors along, obviously losing his mind as he screamed "She stole my heart!"

 

The despair of the winter night in a motel room

Bobby stepped outside for the first time in a month

He set fire to the suicide letters and howled at the moon

Ran barefoot across the boardwalk to wait for rising sun

 

He danced in the light and he danced in the dark

Came face to face with his soul as he found a girl

She protected him and told him jokes

The girl's sense of humour was to rip out his heart

 

Drunk on misery, high on solitude, tortured by her pain

He cast aside her photograph and started to slice his veins

The blood put out the fire, envy and heartache closed his soul

He cursed the thieving comedienne for the life she had stole

 

Tonight he suffers winters chill

As the Christmas lights come on

The carollers sing in praise of this happy time

Bobby had to close the blinds

For him, winter only kills

 

The long and barren road stretched ever longer in his exhausted state, with only a passing, monstrous truck and scraps of roadkill for company. Barely able to keep his eyes open as he walked, he meandered into what appeared to be a caravan park. Unfortunately with it being so dark, he failed to notice he was on the grounds of an abandoned funfair. The creak of old metal in the wind helped him drift off into sweet dreams on a deathly road.

 

The merry merry carousel spinning on the breeze

Abandoned merry-go-round where the laughter stopped

Silenced, only an eerie cackle to be heard

The demons rose with bloodlust in their eyes

A medley of evil

Descended into the darkest of human hearts

Devastated by the destruction of the dearest liberty

A carnival of cannibalism

Aborted a cacaphony of cheer

Witchcraft and devilment

Rip through the pure

A misdemeanour, becomes mayhem

Misbehaviour, becomes a murder

Even those who meander without weapons

Have blood on their hands

Hate in their hearts

The wishing of sweet dreams implanted

Terror in thy mind

Fierce vengeance reaped by the forgotten and the ill

Liberation became fuel for plans of payback

Centuries of repression, smirking revenge

Tearing down the walls unleashed pride in the form of inglorious deaths

Executions will only lead to new religions

Devolutions will only lead to mass riots of nonsense

Believing in a movement dressed in self-pity

Neurotics are my politics

I march with no-one

No use for sunshine on my road to death

You may blend in with the scenery

Become part of the furniture

A cog in the wheel

You could also be the epitome of evil

The martial arts hero, fighting bravely

And with dignity to the end

Mauled by toothless creatures

The rejected will rise up

No flares, no fanfares, no slow descent into the fire

Hatred seeps from every pore

Creatures without meaning, purpose

Beings without dignity, compassion

For we minions who had nothing

Lost that as well

Tear the love from your heart infront of your very eyes

Did you really think an apocalypse would never come?

It festers in our bodies every day

This is the meaning of darkness

This is what the nihilists actually believed

But feared more than God

There is no army there is no leader

This is the culmination of and reason for our pain

The carousel and the merry-go-round

I am not victorious nor am I the punisher

I suffer as much as thee

At our humanity's perverted sense of being

Existence obliterated, drifting on the breeze

 

When he woke from this most disturbing of nightmares, he had no idea where he was. Although aware he had been dreaming, the vividness and stark lucidity of the horror made it seem like a vision rather than subconscious flashing images, as if he had been briefly gazing into a nuclear future. He only felt safe because he was sure he was dreaming now, such was the clearness of the voice of mankind's fiery demise. Settling back into what he was sure was reality, panic over, he remembered his reason for being there, his trip. The time was nine thirty in the am and he set off again. Nearly another hour of walking passed until he clocked a roadside bar that surely indicated a nearby town. Despite it still being relatively early in the morning, loud noises could be heard from within. Perhaps this was one of these places where partying goes on 24/7, outwith the regular jurisdictions and etiquettes of closing times. He stepped tepidly inside, not knowing what he would find. There were people, two men and a woman, dancing a bizarre, ritualistic dance by the jukebox in the corner of the room. A large biker man passionately kissed an orange-haired lady on top of the pool table. Our traveller sat at the bar, waiting for someone to emerge from the various facets of mayhem and serve him a drink. Moments later, a man with his face painted black and white stripes and a wicker holster slung across his torso lifted his sunglasses his up to reveal colourless eyes not unlike those of an albino (perhaps he was) and smirked knowingly. The increasingly petrified traveller found himself sipping on a thick, green liquid that began to warp different shades of reds and purples. Think of drinking a lava lamp. A ska-lite figure blared tunelessly on small trumpet before bursting into insane giggles. There was a snake in a goldfish bowl behind the bar.

Onstage a priest took the microphone from a searingly beautiful woman in red, who had been singing. Everyone ceased their individual eccentric displays and fixed their eyes on the priest, who stood silent. The bar was all of a sudden a picture of calm. Soon they were all dancing to the same song, something unmistakably eighties, led by the father, his sleeves now rolled up and a pale blue furry tophat donning his holy head. Smirking relentlessly, the man in the face paint grabbed a young blonde woman, who would not have looked out of place in a 1950s American high school, and stabbed her in the shoulder with an arrow. The room began to spin and all its revellers took on horrifying, otherwordly, bestial apparitions. The priest fired a gun and all hell broke loose.

 

Put your faith in the priest with the foxes head and a bucket of lead

Small denim skirts and oversized shoes

The unmistakable sex aroma fuelled by booze

The man made of liquorice points his arrows

At a symbol of the halo and crown

He thought long destroyed, in a faraway town of unshakable vulnerability

Where lived a frog - militant in nature, Spanish in birth

Of kingsmanship made, through the earth he scours

Drunk on power, dazzled by jewels

Captivated by the jazz cafes of Bruges and Aberdeen

Betrayed by a morris dancer

with a talent for origami and a love of feather hats

 

A crystal meth queen, who was taught the tuba

By a man in green, on his path through Guernsey

They met again in the Eastern Bloc

Where their sexual awakenings were perturbed by a devilish stare

Of a moustachioed man who was strengthening the regime

During a carnival fair, no more did the man wear green

Her glittered eyes on a television screen

The search for redemption is a hunt

The hunt is on, blood will be shed

In compliance with the wishes and habits of a zombie parliament

Where skin was soft yet razorsharp like a septre of God

Lies wrapped in silk, truth kept in the cellar

A burst accordion and a spiteful cat

Ensured that war was waged

 

The spirit of the battle as they raised the flag

A sharp sting of metal in the flame of the spirit

The disputes over agriculture

Heed none noble deaths

The truth is out there - in paintings?

In the instruments of those with magic in their fingertips

But hopelessness in their sense of freedom

The shattered souls of the casualties from a long ago war

That rages on still

In the eyes of a fox

Heart of a frog, lips of a queen

Fingers of an artist

The battles they fight, the paths they take

In the hands of he who holds the truth

In the tip of his poisoned feather

 

Again he could not be quite sure whether he had actually seen, hallucinated or merely been dreaming these murderous creatures and their individual stories, for whatever was in his multi-coloured drink was sure to be ludicrously potent. Whatever the truth, these visions of anthropomorphic animals and holy leaders at war through the centuries, appearing to him like a twisted sketch show, sound tracked by blaring’s of obscure musical instruments would haunt him for the longest time. Though he could never repeat his visions to anyone he knew. Whether true or not, premonitions, liquor-fuelled reflections or just dreams, were too far into the realms of impossible horror and insanity. The sights and sounds of that bar were so horrendous, so full of evil that he had completely blacked out and found himself miles down the road, asleep in an automobile. It had started to snow, not white and wonderful but so grey and flaky that it seemed like it could be the ashes of vanquished ghosts. Was it even really snowing he queried to himself, struggling to remove himself from his state of disbelief and horror. Suddenly it fully dawned on him, alone and effectively lost somewhere in the world, that fairly soon it would be Christmastime. He thought about his mother, wondering if her only son would be at home this Christmas.

 

Wintertime is here again, faces nipped by the chill find time to smile

And the snowflakes fall, bring magic to every mother & child

The fables and stories come true; it'll be a white Christmas after all

 

Hiding away from this most joyous of occasions

It's supposed to be magical

The Christmas lights don't brighten it all

A white canvas sweeps the nation

An entire year's worth of happiness, an angel's hark

Celebrate a saviour's birth and our salvation

The snowfall only leads me to the dark

The darkest places in my heart

 

Wondering where that skyline, so full of wonder and dripping stars

Has taken you tonight

As I wonder where you are, a thousand miles from home

The lights & the tree, the sense of goodwill undone

Nothing could ever be bright

 

Christmas could be beautiful, the loneliness aches

The breath of snowflakes, catches me on my own

The glistening of merriment drives me off the railtrack

To a discarded tinseltown, wondering when you'll be around

Wishing stars won't bring you home

The morning comes, where was Santa and the reindeers?

He didn't bring you back

I fill up his glass with my own cold tears

Toast a sip to wonderful Christmastime

So magical, beautiful, except when you're alone

 

At first he feared the car wouldn't start and he would be stranded in this snowy, lonely wasteland that could really, be anywhere. When the car eventually got going, it became evident that the vehicle itself was in control, taking him to God knows where. Whatever twists and turns the car decided to take, they would not stop before nightfall.