And now my fingers too are dripping
all your joy is easy
and that's praise, my friend
that's praise

a message from the Gulag, November 1908:

Fuck, I don't know. I really don't know.

End message.


a message from Cancun, July 2018:

Fuck, I don't know. I really don't know.

End message.


Hayley made this little gasp when she came.
It filled me with pride.
I want to add it to my CV.
I want to mention it casually at parties.
I want to wear a badge that says:
I made Hayley make a little gasp.

I've been away for a little while.
I've been getting better.
Not recovery.
I mean, I've been getting better.
Better and better.

My leg was shattered, in some respects.
I'd taken a hit on the job.
It was always going to be a challenge.
I cannot tell you how strange it is to miss the killing and the heat and the horror.
But I miss it.

Anyway, my leg is on the mend.
Sometimes I take the tube like a person and I balance on my mending leg.
People look at me.
I stare them down.

A woman fell in the street.
I helped her to her feet.
I spent the next hour feeling guilty for feeling good.

Scorpion called and said his baby died.
He sold his meagre belongings for medicine, but it was too late.
His wife has left him. Rumour is she's a prostitute again.
He asked me for help.
I spent £40 or so on cigarettes, and more on drink. I thought of him the way a child thinks of a pet.
I felt guilty for that.
But I thought of him.

Deanna wanted to come to meet Matt Berninger. I made my excuses.
I felt guilty for that.
And then I didn't.
He ran into the crowd again.
So what. It will never be enough.

Someone said something to me about love
and I tried to recall a name.
I tried to focus in my mind, an image, a face, a feeling -
there was a name that almost came - I was so close to striking harmony, to finding that name -
I spluttered out in hope and exploration
the name of my bank.
I felt low, after that.

You wouldn't believe how it feels to take a life.
You wouldn't believe how little you feel, standing in front of 60,000 eager fans, who sing to you your own songs.
Perhaps you would.
It will never be enough.

I was reborn once. It lasted a year or so.
I was reborn and I was chastened.
It was necessary.

You know I was there, when Terrence Malick was scrambling on the floor for... well, you know.
When Abel had his moments of guilt, or self-doubt. When he didn't know the difference.

They made a movie of Noah.
What a fucking joke.

Hayley groans, and the waters in her firmament come forth.
I pass my judgement upon her.
Together, we engage the curse.
Oh my love,
I have divined in you the second coming.
I have devised a third.
I martyr myself between her thighs.
I baptise myself between her thighs,
and Hayley says
'Hosanna, Hosanna in the Highest.'

And now my fingers are dripping,
and I am full of shame
and full of life
and listen:
you aint seen nothing yet.

Do not expect things to go on, unchanged, the same after the same.
Don't be so naive.
Your boredom and your restlessness - that's just a failure of perception.
You live on the verge of catastrophe and rapture.
Like it or not, you will be stirred.