It was 1999
Bonfire Night
When the red mist first enveloped his character traits
He found himself with no control over his fists wailing on some dickhead's face from his council estate
See many moons had passed since the hope of a 2 point 4 landlubber life style had been smashed into smithereens
It was a year ago this very day that the intravenous sludge pumping had taken off at a wild speed
He found himself a regular at the phone boxes
Cherry Lambrini
Bicarb from the corner shop
Back to the mould covered wormhole mattress stained practice baccy packs full of flints and butts stinking
Nuff guzzling drugs
Vein deposit lumps clogging his mug stuck in the mud the AM doth greet him
Spastic Max sat in a deluge of acid tabs
Flame retardant trackie pants and garage raps sketching
Seldom seen was he between A to B
Missions to spaghetti junctions paints on the underpass
Hanging off the highest bridge
Rangoose quackathon
Throwing breeze blocks through speeding windscreens passing
He would climb electricity mains and cut the power from his home town and roam the streets reeling in the panic
And cotch in cul de sac hedgerows watching single mothers sparking matches in the darkness of their living rooms
His grief flourished like anthill communities
Couplets from an undercurrent colour source beneath the grey concrete corridors and monoliths in and around the pissy stairwells and pissy lifts in which he found his peace
Beneath the bread line
Bread knives sliced at the smart price car crimes carnage his hair greyed
Cracked enamel pegs inside a garbage pail kid cabbage patch tapping veins until the sun decayed
He moved inland for better dope
Cast away bastard face forgot the names of his school mates
He moved inland like seagulls sacking off trawler ship cast off's for landfill luncheon
The coastline haunted his thoughts and so he thought ever more about taking a saw to his neck side
He had visions of blood dripping over the floor of his four by four foot box bedroom next life
He'd open paperbacks but only paint the pages black and use a magnifying glass to spark a map of memories
Words would get deleted quicker than a 100 metre dash
Another night laden with some fear and loathing imagery
You might have known him
The man behind those ram raids
The man behind the letter bombs sent out to several primary schools
You might have known him as the dude who scampered down the side of your house and made off with your penny farthing bicycles
He used to watch the freight trains
He used to fish for carp and beat his catches to a rancid mush with heavy ended claw hammers
He used to sneak into the cinema and sit in front rows and laugh his head off to the hammer horror matinees
He used to talk to people and people used to talk him too
That was way before the crack the whores the drugs the sniffing glue
That was way before the days of simply nicking pissy booze and jumping queues of peeps shopping for shitty supermarket food
See life wasn't ship shape life was shit mate
Life was hookers tied to his bed frame with grip tape
Blindfolded piss games
Net curtains shit stained fist gape listening to Rick James' mixtapes
He was his mother's only baby pains
His mother's only labour day
His mother's one and only angel saint
His mother never thought she'd see her grave before the day that Max was raking cash and chasing pavements to the stock exchange
His mind felt heavy cracked skull matter case fragile flesh with lead brick sat inside throbbing
He felt his face change shape and time ebbing away the vital signs of life ankle deep inside a teak coffin
Sitting in the fourth dimension he felt the raw depression of forty horsemen stretching his organs awful essence
He was ever omnipresent as a portal peasant looking in the mirror clock a devil dressed in his reflection
During thunderstorms he found peace with life
He saw the rain as writing letters with Jesus Christ and with his fingers he'd scribe letters across the sky in the hope that constellations would free his mind
But deep inside his rancid flat
Light flicker movements mapped white face wrinkled grimace lager cans and baccy ash
Lost in the soil fodder
Spastic Max
Six foot two six foot box six feet deep inside the cancer tank