Welcome To The Magnet

tis now the very witching time of night
when fun-pubs yawn and breathe out
drunkards to this world; now I could drink warm four-x,
and do such bitter business as the day
would quake to look on;
sampled dirges rise from sick slums;
phased synth like backmasked druidic cursing
surges up through muffled kick drums;
the distant shift of poles reversing;
lift a teaspoon like a licked digit
and watch it gnarl into a signpost;
magnetic north – its pull exquisite;
pierced acolytes twitch like meathooked ghosts
at its queer gravity,
and while fainter hearts repair
shandy-addled to womby tenements
we trudge, half-dead, towards this lair
of rank depravity –
hungry, frost-eyed revenants;
how much piss
to slake this army’s thirst?
what bangin choons
to make this company of cursed
shuffle bent-backed
coughing like hags
to make war on the chequered dancefloor?

welcome to the Magnet –
it’s time to pull;
o strange attractor, I have witnessed such horrors
as would make Beelzebub himself
pop out for fags
and ne’er return;
the sepulchral gurn
of a long-mashed face
digesting itself;
teeth for calcium
lips for protein;
eyeballs floating in a rum and coke;
friend, I have seen noses unified like Berlin,
oozing thick fingers of snow-spackled claret
down a chalk-white rictus grin;
and its queasy draw rubs off
as if we were a stack of pins;
did that bouncer just sidestep-clap at me?
am I imagining things?
daylight breaks across the land
the milkman’s round is close at hand
while creatures circle for a chance
to terrorize y’all’s underpants
and whosever shall be found
without the soul for Funky Town
shall stand and face the club from Hell
and wonder at the corpsey smell
the foulest stench is in the air
the funk of forty thousand beers
and grizzly girls from Everton
are closing in to seal your doom
and though you fight to stay alive
your body starts to shiver
for no mere mortal can resist
cirrhosis of the liver;

even now, Vincent Price’s cackles echo through my dreams,
I wake sweat-slick, my skull alive with screams;
the plate in my head is pulling me north;
I watch empty tins follow an invisible piper
rolling against the wind;
my compass needle jumps to a baseline
deep and steady as a heartbeat;
the letters on my fridge have started
speaking in tongues;
I’ve lost all sense of direction;
scrapyard cranes give me immense erections;
I went to the Magnet kitchen showrooms
but it just wasn’t the same;
my hangovers fade too quickly;
I rub shoehorses, croquet hoops,
whispering your name.