Photography by @DraganTepic (www.graffitiwalls.London)

Poetry by Craytus Jones

swimming the magma rage you walk
down a street howling soundless madness.
you stop to think.
think about what?
an escape? a medicine?
a Jesusing cure?
and, there he is.
a filthy kid in oversized pink flip-flops
is sitting on the ground playing with
something even filthier than himself.
he hits you with a gap toothed grin.
he’s broken.
ten years old at best,
and already broken.
he’s not evil or malignant.
but, you know he’ll see the inside of a jail cell
sooner than he’ll see the inside
of a happy family.
you make a paper airplane out of a dollar bill
and sail it down to the kid.
shit.
maybe it’s enough to buy a sandwich
or a gumball or some-damn-thing
less filthy than he is.
you look up, and see a man.
sort of.
a walking catastrophe headed straight for you.
his green eyes are sharp as scalpels,
but his mouth hangs slack, betraying
a lack of something deep and necessary.
he’s the one.
that’s exactly what this pink flip-flop kid will blossom
into.
and he’s the one that popped
the top on your volatile mind
and set you swimming
the magma rage.
you hand him a crumpled 20.
he hands you a small plastic bag.
it’s something.
but, it’s not what you wanted.
not what you asked for,
so there’s no “thank you.”
just a nod, and a long walk back
to some place quiet and dark.
a place to smoke a substandard joint,
empty a worn out soul
and try to forget this rotten
day.
coffins are built from days like this.
shit.
whole cemeteries.
but, not my coffin.
I’m not dead yet
you bastard world.
not yet.

front porch

for practical purposes,

my eyes suck at twilight.

can’t see much. so I sit on the porch

sipping hot tea, smoking bowls,

generally loafing and sorting through mental ruins.

then some weird internal shit

always happens.

I can see whatever I want. not the surface of things;

not the skin, but the stuff beneath it.

and, I see you:

I see you flirting with flaccid art mongers

on the dining porch of  some uppity

coffee joint.

I see you smoking cigarettes and

making unreadable faces

at manic depressive wolfmen

dressed up as paint-splattered sheep-shit intellectuals.

it’s okay.

this is not jealousy.

hell.

it’s not even concern.

just a better tragedy to watch than the ones on TV

tonight.

I do miss you sometimes.

but, only in little pieces:

I miss your smile, but not what that smile meant.

I miss your voice.

but, not the words you said.

shit.

I even miss the touch of your skin.

but, not the price I paid to taste that cookie.

you’re like my favorite song being played

by a lousy cover band

in a burning slaughterhouse

full of preachers and politicians

arguing about road maintenance and

estate taxes.

I’d rather go deaf than to dance that dance again.

oh well.

bowl’s cashed, night’s falling

and I’m tired of this miserable moment.

guess I’ll go masturbate to an exercise infomercial

or read the owner’s manual

for my new weed whacker.

wonder if I have any lunch meat left

for a dinner sandwich.

any decent wine?

hell.

I don’t know.

I wish something would catch fire

or that a meteor would crash into my house.

every thought I have makes me feel

less alive.

maybe a stroke or a heart attack?

but, then they’d find me dead on my front porch

still thinking of you.

what an embarrassing fucking eulogy.

guess I’ll have to go on living

until I can find something worth dying for.

oh good! red wine dregs and turkey on rye.

and, here, I thought

I was cursed.

dragon ass

a dragon in a cereal bowl
singing folk songs written by dead people

ghosts floating on marshmallows
dodging the spoon
whispering to the dragon
making fun of my bed hair
then, the news takes off her shirt
and lies spill out in colors and screams

it’s a strange morning

like a real dinosaur showing up
to an elementary school
to tell the science teacher
he has it all wrong

or a man complaining
to the doctor
about how awful
his own semen tastes

sometimes I laugh
just because I’m here
and because “here”
is a ridiculous word that means
nothing

I think elephants know more
than they’re telling us

perhaps they could explain
this singing fucking dragon

or why I am here
and

whatever the hell that means

late for work again.

fucking bastard dragon!

selah!