Alchemy Lesson No.666: Portents and Signs

Don’t wait for the weight of dead days to drag you down.
Don’t listen to the wind if you don’t want to hear the awful truth.
Don’t talk to yourself if you can’t take the company.
Don’t talk back or double backtrack; don’t litter the sidewalk with panic attack or stumble too long on the edge of the sea.
Don’t shout at the waves that crash at speed control barriers or throw insults at aircraft carriers.
Don’t cross level crossings with bells and whistles strapped to the inside of your head.
Don’t you dare listen to armchair electronic philosophy; sucked as it is from the marrow of my anatomy.
Don’t wander the halls of useless facts, there to collect your lists and league tables, your score cards and rosettes.
Don’t sit on your hands when your feet are for walking.
Don’t bite on your tongue when your blood calls for talking.
Don’t fill the position that’s moulds you to fit; that coats you with mould and mildew and shit.

Watch for the water that rises by moonlight in the basement of secrets.
In the fear room where you keep your implements of torture...

• your thumbnail sketches and electric toasters long burned out on overtime loafing
• your tongue depressors for tone deaf depression
• your truth serum for lying in good faith
• your blackmail and whitewash
• your tins of metal paint and plastic wood
• your rubber nails for crucifying a prophylactic future with loneliness
• your liquid rust and solid state euphoria for hedonistic nights of lust and destruction

...here is the corpse of your stitched-up curiosity

In a place of dead dreams; anti-litter legislation and bad alliteration...

• where mattress springs coil in silent anticipation of a tomorrow unscarred by today’s nightmares
• where slipped disks are passed from hand to hand under surreptitious shop counters and discussed in hallowed whispers by insurance brokers
• where money changes hands without changing lives and corruption is swept under the trees’ autumn carpet
• where nihilism meets Neanderthal on a level playing field
• where the pyramid meets your mummy with bandages unravelled

...in this place are the answers your questioning mouth clogged.

In a world made of paper and piss and paranoia...

• at the crossroads of calamity where the devil does deals
• at the apex of your thighs where your lost lover sighs
• at the warehouse of souls, bleeding-art fresh
• at the schoolyard of forgotten lessons where double dealing is done

...here is your heart in pink icing carved; your long lost love of life waiting to thrive.