Obeying Not Behaving

Jackets, jumpers thrown down for goal posts
Boys kick the ball at each other
A punch is thrown in anger

Dust yourselves down boys, get on with it
Sort it out amongst yourselves, boys
Bright eyes, happy joyful noise

Boys playing on an all weather pitch
Identical uniforms, matching kits
Kicking off with the ref's say-so
He shows them cards red and yellow.

The favour of authority depraves
They learn to obey, not how to behave
Submit to teacher's smiley face
Joyless remnants of the human race.

Lost In Loneliness

A shout, a tear, should have been enough
Or just the odd word of protest
To say, I'm here, I count too
I matter! It's not all about you.

It's too late now, too late to speak
You wouldn't have listened any way
I go to the shop to buy pills
But I need Doctor to say I'm ill

Just a small bottle, please, I beg
Just a small bottle of pills I need
'Can't do, sorry, people have died,'
I can't even commit suicide.

Out on the street a light rain falls
Cold and hungry I need to eat
I don't eat, my hunger is gone
You don't eat when you have no-one.

Down into the underground warmth
Don't know which station, no idea
Late afternoon, I think, must be
I hide in the crowds, forlorn, unseen

They take me wherever they want
No will, no purpose, they choose for me
Hollow inside, going nowhere
Lost in loneliness, just don't care

The train stops in the damp dark night
Journey over, time to get out
Out to sorrow, alone with just me
Alone with no hope, alone and free.

I stare at the grey grey river
Birds are flying round and round
They have nowhere else to go
When the river no longer flows

I thought I had you, you were mine
Unable to read the signs
I was so incredibly wrong
You were looking and he came along

I thought that you danced to my tune
Singing in my pretty cage
But you had a music of your own
You broke out and now I'm alone.

I Dreamed I Saw Raskolnikov

I dreamed I saw Raskolnikov
Alive as me and you
Tearing through these suburbs
In search of the Last Taboo
With certificates in triplicate
And a coat of babies' bones
A century of crime behind him
And no intention to atone

Haha, haha, he laughed so loud
He sounded quite insane
Crime, it no longer exists, State and
Society are the same
Everything is permitted
No thought is your own
It's all been bought and sold
The free gift is overthrown

I dreamed I saw Raskolnikov
Shouting out to the few
We no longer need our uniforms
To march together two by two
I dreamt he told me he was the one
Who had found the Last Taboo
In times of universal deceit
We must never state the truth

Something Like Lager

I'm sitting here on my own
Drinking; it tastes something like lager
The same old thoughts tormenting my brain
I can't take it much longer

Like a boxer striking air
All my enemies have long since gone
Fighting old battles covered in dust
Ghosts stand up, march on and on

The crazy man walking by
He's talking to himself  -  just like me
His lips are moving, now he laughing
His mind unmoored drifting free

Going down this troubled road
My glory days are far behind
What  could've, might've, would've been
If I'd known what I would find

Soon  my eyes will fail me
My knees are worn, my legs broken down
Trapped here inside this dying body
My mind whirls round and round

Like the wheel the mouse runs on
Ever returning to the same place
Reality is losing her hold
I no longer know her face

I hope I die, I hope it's soon
I've run my marathon for far too long
Come sweet death, I'm reaching for you
Toil and struggle will soon be done.

Sebastian - Madness - Fernando Pessoa

Mad, yes, mad, because I wanted a greatness
Which fate does not give
Certainty within me was boundless
But to the sand my body I give
There remains who was, but not he who is

My madness, others may take from me
And all that is my fate
Without madness, man, what is he
But a future corpse that waits
A healthy animal that procreates?

Autism Park

When I first met you I thought you were a bit rude
But, you being young, I made allowances for you
Maybe you disliked me, like many people do
You couldn't leave off your phone for a moment or two

Maybe you were contacting some lover
Arranging a delivery from your dealer
Finding out the latest Test Match score
Or, perhaps, you were simply a bore

For all my irritation my interest was fanned
Why was the blasted phone forever in your hand?
You were playing chess with a guy in Azerbaijan

I walk past the War Memorial on the way home
Twenty lads staring at their phones
Twenty sad bastards all alone.

Broken In Three

I just wanted to love her
To kiss her over and over
She was my perfect lover
And now it's all over

I thought I would take a chance
She caught my eye with a glance
That sent me into a trance
My heart began to dance

I brought her home that night
Yeah, she really flew my kite
Feeling good and getting tight
Until the sun shone bright

I woke up she wasn't there
On the pillow a golden hair
Her sweet perfume filled the air
She'd gone without a care

Yes, she was too good to be
Maybe just too good for me
Now she's just a memory
My heart is broken in three

A Bag Of Salty Chips

We are here for such a short time
I heard her say
There's no time for guilt and stuff
Let's seize the day
She laughed and took my hand
I'm just made that way
Truly, he knows what I am
An easy lay

No honour, no loyalty
Only today
Why waste your time feeling sad
Come on! Let's play!

She took me to her boudoir
And together we took a shower
No time for getting flirty
Just get down and get dirty!
It wasn't the best time I've ever had
Really, a bit sad
Lying back, blowing rings she says
It's good to be bad

She said, all his kisses weigh like caviar
Upon my cherry lips
But now and again I long to taste
A bag of salty chips

At The Crem

Farewell old mate, we all agree
That you were a good man
It was plain for us all to see
That you were a good man

There was no priest nor minister
Just a sweet giggly woman
Telling us stories with sad laughter
How you were a good man

Providing well for kids and wife
Ready to lend a hand
Long hours you worked all your life
Yes, you were a good man

You were no drinker nor smoker
No gambler, no wild man
Never cruel, nor a sneerer
You were just a good man

Football you really loved watching
You were Macc's greatest fan
Come rain or shine you were cheering
'Cos you were a good man

A van ran into your wagon
You were parked up, then bang!
You were left shattered and broken
Though you were a good man

Everything was for family
Your girls they understand
You were really a great daddy
What a very good man!

Your wife upped sticks and left you
Went off with a young man
Wanted some spice and some fun too
With a very bad man

She wanted passion, desire, life
Holidays, a sun tan
The bitch, the whore, the anti-wife
But you were a good man

I really liked you, like we all did
But a thought comes in my head
You're there, under that coffin lid
'Cos you always were   -   half dead!

The Fascist Impulse

Oh, the homeless, oh the children
Oh the women, the weak, the absurd
Oh the blacks, the poor, the down-trodden
Oh the passive, the hungry, the bruised

Self-pity the spring of Fascism
Indignation on which it feeds
Resentment ugly and servile
No love, hate is what we feel

We're all marching on together
The self-righteous right-on raging mob
The know nowt pseudo-educated
The thoughtless, heartless, mindless blob

We hate them, yeah, Tory scum
The witch is dead! Let Thatcher burn!
Leavers are all evil racists
Zionists! Soon it'll be your turn!

Oh, we really hate the haters
We hate the living and the free
Oh we are 'left' and always right
Power is every thing we need

Our boots stamp you in triplicate
Crush dissent! We will not hesitate
If you want your certificate
Be sure you hate who we will hate

Onwards! Progress! Equality!
We shout with one almighty voice
We hope you'll soon be joining us
You do not really have a choice

Oh the homeless, oh the children
Oh the women, the weak, the lame
Oh the ugly passive victim
To blame is the name of our game.

The Mystics Of Anarchy - Part 7

It is amongst these same unhinged lone spirits, amongst those whose suffering causes hallucinations both physical and moral, where mysticism germinates, and which tomorrow will become fanaticism.

In the last pages of his excellent novel about Lourdes, M. Zola shows the close connection between the two, anarchy and religious mysticism, the first being the daughter of the latter, and his hero, a disillusioned priest, his mystical spirit passing from one to the other, lead by the force of events, through a natural sequence of ideas, ‘without apparent transition in the troubled depths of his thoughts.’

These bloody mystics of Anarchy have had precursors who have drawn thoughts of crime from the same poisoned well. They were the Anarchists of their time, these religious mystics, these ardent Catholics of past centuries, Jacques Clément, Ravaillacs, who knifed Henri III and Henri IV, just like Caserio knifed the unfortunate President Carnot. It is the same mystical and fanatical thought that prepares the criminal hand, all of them dreaming that the murder of a few will assuage the suffering of all.

Mystics, religious fanatics, such are these common criminals; but just so as to conform this thesis, we have here in the full, entire, glaring light the strange ‘comrade’ who goes by the name of Sébastien Faure and who plays such a large role in the world of Anarchy, who all the defendants belonging to the sect claim as their advocate before the courts, who travels throughout France agitating for Anarchy, with his pockets full of money from unknown sources. We discover that Faure is the son of Royalist parents, that he has worn the cassock of the Society of Jesus, that he has been a novice with the Jesuits at Clermont-Ferrand, nurturing his religious exaltation, fanning his ardour.

On 18^th February 1894, the newspaper ‘Le Temps’ gave us the following report, that nobody has denied, about this strange man.

‘Sébastien Faure is an old member of the Society of Jesus; he spent a number of years as a novice in Clermont; it is, therefore, an ex-Jesuit in whom the Anarchists put their trust.  Faure was born in Saint-Etienne in 1858. He belongs to a respectable merchant family, well known in the town for their religious feelings and their monarchical opinions, placed by them in the Jesuit College, the College of Saint-Michel, where he was a brilliant student.

With a lively piety, an almost mystic imagination, he became a novice at Clermont-Ferrand. There he was drenched in religious exaltation and fervour. He had a remarkable facility with words, a polished nuanced language, a great subtlety mixed with wit in his arguments, qualities that he has not lost, qualities that had him marked down as a preacher. He was the essence of a missionary, of a converter, the Fathers said of him.

What happened to him? What incident produced him? We do not know exactly.

Sébastien Faure left the Society of Jesus and became an insurance agent in Bordeaux, then a trader on the Paris Stock Exchange. At the same time he became involved in revolutionary politics and as Socialism already had its command structure he placed himself in the avant-garde, that is to say with the Anarchists, at the head of the column and leading it.’

So there we have him, Sébastien Faure, Jesuit pupil, Jesuit novice, a true Jesuit!

Oh yes! It is only the hatred of liberty and democracy that can forge such dreadful bandits, menacing modern society with their horrible crimes, blowing the violent wind of reaction over our republican country.

It is impossible to ignore the mysticism of the Anarchists or their religious education. The reactionaries cry out with joy at their crimes. For example, M. Paul de Cassagnac has declared, ‘The effect of Vaillant and Henry’s bombs will be salutary. Blessed are the bombs!’

What are we to make of the anarchist Marius Tournadre. Many letters found at his house told of how money had been sent to the ‘comrades’, letters that had been sent by priests! These priests are the propagators of Anarchy! Their aim is political and religious reaction, which they think is good and right. They apply exactly the same principles as the Anarchists, murdering a few men to further advance the happiness of all.

But they are not the only agents of Anarchist propaganda. There are others who are unconscious of the fact. These others are the sceptical and neurotic Parisian crowd, all those who live in that overheated atmosphere, in the artificial milieu of our lively exciting capital. This crowd, although it is the first victim of Anarchy’s crimes, is one of the main causes of the murderous bombs.

Those who work, the workmen, small businessmen, shopkeepers, all those who suffer in their spirit from the rigorous necessities of work, remain steady and sensible, are rightly furious with the Anarchists, and if they could catch them in the act, like Henry at the Terminus Café, they would lynch these bandits. But the revellers and the layabouts, the rich boys of the boulevards find it all a bit of a joke. They laugh about it, think it funny. The bomb is a spice for their jaded sensibilities. Their idiot neuroticism is added to a stupid sentimentality and a hateful posturing, such as all the hullaballoo surrounding the subscription to help little Sidone Vaillant. This neurotic sentimentality has encouraged more than one Anarchist, has unhinged more than one brain in making it fall into the rut of these fashionable doctrines.

Let us not be mistaken. The Anarchists most ardent and fervent help comes from these cynics, bon-viveurs, neurotics and agitated souls of the Paris salons and cabarets.

In our century of human solidarity, of yearning for universal fraternity, Anarchy fixates on its destructive doctrine, the atavistic remains of ancient barbarism. Anarchy is a plague and like all plagues it will come and go.

For the moment the Anarchist madness has gone, but the mysticism of which it is the child, will always be with us. Only this mysticism changes according to the century. In the Middle Ages it was religious. In our age it is Anarchist.

What will it be in times to come?

The Mystics Of Anarchy - Part 6

The Anarchists, shall we say, are fatally religious, and the state of the spirit, of all those who practice the so-called propaganda of the deed, is that of fanatical ferocious propagators of religious doctrines, of Arabs putting the coasts of the Mediterranean to fire and sword, of Charlemagne slitting the throats of the Saxons in order to convert them to Catholicism, of monks in times past who built the monstrous pyres of the Inquisition. That is so true that even the theoreticians of their party, the philosophers of their sect, even those who are incapable themselves of committing anarchic murder, are impregnated with the idea that it is necessary to sacrifice some men, a large number even, in order to achieve the human happiness dreamt of by their imagination.

So we find in the reports of the assizes of the Seine for February 1894, amongst the convicts, one Jean Grave, theoretician of Anarchy. In his writings Jean Grave had incited conscripts to desert or to ‘puncture the skin of their superiors’ skin.’ The Anarchists have a supreme hate for the army and for the nation. He has written these lines, ‘The struggle should be directed principally to destroying the institutions, setting fire to legal documents, property deeds and other devices of lawyers and advocates, boundary stones must be overturned, everything must be taken in possession in the name of everyone, putting everything at the disposal of everyone……………………………  Should one of the bosses be executed we must hang a sign around his neck explaining that he has been killed as an exploiter, or that his factory has been burnt down for the same reason. In that way there will be no mistake as to why we have acted this way and we can be sure to be applauded for our work. Our acts should always be rational and flow from a guiding principle.’

These are the theories of Anarchy. Various witnesses said that this man with his monstrous ideas was a fanatic, an apostle and a mystic. One witness, M. Elisée Reclus, who is an Anarchist, but also a man of great intelligence, universally well-regarded, incapable of speaking contrary to his beliefs, spoke thus of Jean Grave: ‘He is an elite spirit. Even though his primary education was not completed he has pursued his studies on his own and he has become a remarkable man. As far as concerns his moral values, they are superior to most people’s due to the profound sincerity of his convictions, and I can vouch that he is one of those few men who has never lied.’

A second witness, M. Octave Mirbeau, a Parisian journalist, with no connections to Anarchy, spoke thus: ‘This is the first time that I have seen M. Grave. There has been no correspondence between us, but he holds such lofty ideals that I have conceived a certain sympathy and regard for him. Moreover, I find that I am in almost complete agreement with him. I consider him to be an apostle and a logician of the highest calibre. He pushes logic to its extreme, and that is why he reaches his extreme conclusions.’

Upon being asked by the chief prosecutor about the details of Jean Grave’s theories, M. Mirabeau said that, “there is no great harm when the storm knocks down some greedy oaks if it gives strength to some more humble plants.”

That just about some up the basic idea of Anarchy. It is the mother ideas, which may be jumbled up in the uneducated minds of the sect’s disciples, and which is expressed by a man who knows how to read.

It is the same idea that guided the executioners of the Inquisition. It is the same idea that lit up the stakes in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in France during the time of the later Valois and the Bourbons. Is it not this idea, that some must fall to give strength to others, that led to the murders of St Bartholomew’s Eve? Cyvoct, Emile Henry and Vaillant are the direct descendants of the frightful torturers of Spain and Rome. It is the eternal need to pacify their own suffering which pushes the wretches to the maddest and most mystic theories, sometimes unleashing sinister and bloody furies of fanaticism. So it has ever been, in the dark days of the Middle Ages and in our own neurotic century.

The Mystics Of Anarchy - Part 5

And his ‘comrade’ Meunier, an Anarchist convicted by the courts of Maine-et-Loire, did he too not possess the same mysticism? He too began in the monastery and ended up in Anarchy, passing through all the same petty crimes. He had first been an oblate, then a brother before ending up in court for swindling, the same court that he would later end up in for Anarchist crimes. He was a mystic and a common bandit.

And Caserio Santo, the wretch whose crime has weighed so heavily upon our nation? He is certainly a religious man, a proud mystic, like Henry believing in the importance of his apostles’ work, the fruitful harvest of his martyrdom. He too was a proud mystic, this ignorant little Italian peasant whose only guide was his immense vanity.

He too was brought up amidst the smoke of incense, brought up with the childish festivals of the noisy religion of the south. This is what his brother had to say about him.

‘Santo, when he was a child, was as pretty as an angel and so he was chosen to represent St. John in the processions, and on that saint’s day he had to walk half-naked, covered only by a goat skin. Later he would hang around the sacristy and serve at mass; he was a very gentle character.’

He commited his crime after writing a letter to his mother , where, like all apostles, he showed absolute disdain for his family, for what the religious fanatics call ‘human weakness’. Those people’s cold reasoning disdains the most noble sentiments of the soul.

‘No, no,’ he wrote, ‘it is not necessary to think of a mother’s tears; it is necessary to think of one’s own duty and to struggle against present society, to destroy these harmful insects who are the exploiters. As for me I will always cry ‘War! War against the exploiters!’

Caserio Santo, a mystic like the rest, like them immensely proud and immensely vain. To understand the immensity of his pride and his vanity it is only necessary to read this portrait of him written by a Lyon journalist who attended his trial.

‘Caserio seemed younger than his age. One would think him no more than eighteen. But although his face was boyish his body was fully developed. His arms, like those of most criminals, are longer than usual and his hands are large. As for his mental state, Caserio seems to be some sort of visionary who, in so far as he his conscious of having committed a crime, gives it a special interpretation and importance. In his mind the man he killed was the incarnation of the highest idea of the bourgeoisie and he glories in his deed. His most salient characteristic is his enormous vanity. He is eager to pose for the gallery. It is with undisguised pride that he tells the court in his Franco-Italian gibberish of the preparations for his crime and its accomplishment.  He does not boast. Although he is sometimes seen to smile he is not a man to sneer at the magistrates and the jury. No, he poses as the hero of an idea. If he has killed a President of the Republic it is to become famous, to put himself on a pedestal and offer himself up as a show for the gawkers.

‘I always saw the pride in him, and it is this that led him to his crime,’ the priest of Motta - Visconti rightly said.

The word ‘pride’ admirably sums up the state of his spirit that led him to commit his crime.

Finally we come to Boathède, the last in this sad series, coming long after the others, like a forgotten fuse that ignites after the firework has gone out. He too is a mystic. He too, like Henry, is a failure: he has secondary education, but he has failed in everything in life: it is his pride, his rage at his inability to succeed that has spurred him on like all the others. He is from a religious family with relatives in the priesthood. Like Cyvoct he was an ardent mystic, being very pious before he turned to Anarchy.