We grew and became more complex and more brilliant with the less we had.
We understood that the pursuit of the dream is often the death sentence and that romantics die such terrible deaths, always.
Our art and romance is safer in the doldrums, is more sure when you’re starving and drug-sick and your lover hangs on to your dreams and madness only because it's too hard to turn back.
One Day a Summer - Lines for Joe M
Souls of Goldhawk Road - Lines for Joe M
Lines for Joe M
#1 (this is a dead cert!!!)
It’s a well known fact: the gamblers like the drunks and the drunks like the gamblers, but no one likes the junkies.
#2 "I know what's behind it... the years' worth of dust and smog and grime which has settled there. I know the piss and the dampness and the weeds at the bottom and the fat brown slugs which slither out by night. I know the scrunched-up cigarette packets, the pigeon's shit, the rusting empty beer cans and the 'Black Nurse with a Cock' Call-Guy flyer stuck upon the side. That's what I know about contemporary verse, right there."
#3 He wheeled himself right up to me. I thought he was going to spit at me or ride his stump of a leg into my knee. He did neither. Rather, he parked his chair an inch from my toes and said quietly: "Why are people like you such fucking Philistines?"
Cowardly Men of Words
I rarely mix with other writers. Other writers don’t interest me, are not like me. They look like writers, act like writers, speak like writers and narrate like writers. Poor bastards. They even walk like writers. You know that funny waddle they acquire like they’re trying not to fart. Jeffrey Archer and Salmon Rushdie both leave literary gatherings in that state. What a hell of a fate. And yet, from such promised promise, very few men like that are writers. It's easy to understand why. It's always the same old story.
What an absolute shit he is with those restrained, self-censored sentences and the myriads of literary devices that keep him sane. An absolute fucking rubbish bag. If the guy ever got a whiff of real life, he'd be carried out unconscious from the smell of it.
“Animal intestines!” I screamed in his face the last time I saw him. He stood there looking like a commercial jet had just passed low over his head. He slowly put down his glass of orange juice and wobbled away like he had drunk a brewery. The shitwipe was in shock. SHOCK! He had only just stopped twittering on about conflict and resolution, foreshadowing and fleshing out his little wooden characters. Oh, I'd like to scream a few intestines at that dollop of crap right now, take his rotten pen and pop it right through his retina, bring that old retro typewriter that he uses down on top of that thick skull which protects his packet of air and gunk. No, I just don't associate with literary men. I never have and I certainly never want to become one. There are only three fetishes men like that have: pens, typewriters and words. No doubt they spend their nights with a cheap biro rammed up their anus, their cock shoved under the space bar while they type out the most ridiculous orgasm. But no… Strike that. I could admire a man like that: someone like that could possibly be a guide to great literature.
He doesn't know I watch what he does, but I do. One of the worst writers I've ever stumbled across, and yet he spends all day on social media, picking out grammatical and structural problems in well-known writers' works.
"Ha! He wrote: ‘Thought to himself’!!! Unnecessary phrase! All thoughts are to ourselves! What a novice. No time for novices or pretenders!
O, I wish people would learn the bloody difference between "your" and "you're" and “there" and "they’re" and “their"! Come on people, smarten up. Tut tut tut. Introductory clauses must be comma'd off! When will people learn the very basics of usage and punctuation. Hope he never needs to use a frickin' semi-colon!”
And it goes on. And if he’s not picking over someone else's work he'll be constantly yapping on about his own. Reminding people in every update that he is a ‘WRITER’:
Hmmm. Frustrating afternoon with the conflict resolution scene in chapter 9. All finished, alas, and the readers will feel so much better rewarded for it!
Show don't tell! Just gave a second pass over chapter 7, honed down some of the mid-section tension and worked on the progressive tempo which will drag readers into the final third of the book! 50,000 words today. WOW!
Now, I'll tell you a few things about shit bags like that:
They will never write anything even half decent or worthwhile in their entire lives. Their writing will always read like common stock, like anonymous writing that is found in some free magazine or the crap that people who enroll in free evening creative writing courses churn out. Such people will never comprehend that grammar is only ever a guideline for those already in above their necks, that there is not a single grammatical rule that cannot be flushed down the toilet with the waste. And yet these shitbags would disregard a man's life work for a typo or a badly- placed comma on the first page.
"Misuse of comma! Ha! Instant binning! Idiot. Shouldn't be allowed near a pen or typewriter!"
And it is right there, in the need for someone to be such a stickler for rules and guidelines, that tells us that such a person could never write a succession of great words, and rarely even a succession of important words. They are walking a tightrope with a safety net below. They are literary cowards. And when writing is brought down to a series of rules and devices, that is where writing becomes constricted to the point of predictability and death. It is no more than writing by numbers. It’s where writing becomes uniform, publishable but uniform. And, much like most journalism, which is also a victim of guidelines, there ends up no real need to even put the author’s name below the piece, because it could have been written by a thousand other gutless souls.
Such people are dangerous. They are dangerous because it is arseholes like them who end up in stuffy editorial rooms, deciding on who gets published and who does not. Such people are the foes of literature. If a great writer’s work ever landed on their desk, they’d bin it in a fury of contempt. Imagine such a maggot, sat there in his gaudy office, still typing up letters on a cranky old typewriter and becoming aroused over the smell of the red and black ink spool. There he is, evolved into a bizarre kind of mite that never sees the light, and the work of Faulkner or Joyce or even Hemingway is put before him. Why, he’d completely miss the brilliance of the work for what he’d no doubt interpret as grammatical peculiarities and outright errors. It would go in the bin with the corner crusts of his afternoon sandwich, and the author would be ridiculed until the next one came along. Imagine a Cormac McCarthy novel coming that unfortunate way. These cretinous cowards would be so aggrieved by the confusion of his words that they'd no doubt send an insulting note back saying that his manuscript made for nothing but good tinder, and a second one giving him tips on how to write and formulate sentences! These are the vile people who are only kept sane thanks to the walls of the madhouse; who need rules, baby-steps, to lead them to where they are going. Such people are the spoilers of great writing, the enemies of the illiterate, the bullies of the dyslexic. They are literary cowards, condemned to 3 point 4 million words of nothing much at all.
Lines for Joe M - One for The Lungs
Let's hope we do better than last time. Sorry no reply to your last comment... Have been a little poorly for a little while now. Am feeling better than I was though.
- - -
I've never known a heroin junkie who did not smoke; I wouldn't trust one who didn't. I don't even trust the ones who do.
Sshhhss My Darling, Shsssh... This hell is ours eternal.
It was a lonesome old world and my lover tonight would kill me tomorrow.
Lines for Joe M | The Night That The Storm Came In
Let's see how we do this time... Gotta raise our game. X
- And I was walking around town, miserable with life, a rotten heart, poor lungs, circling the old square and thinking about young whores and young love and how I had no money to rent or keep either
- I want to tell you of the eyes I saw, how lost they'd become and how I knew we'd never survive another.
- 'Dog Found Stranded on a Raft. Weak but alive. BELIEVED TO HAVE A HEART!'
Lines for Joe M ~ 2 Stories of the Sea & Love
My Joe M lines for the post are:
- I looked at the sea. There were a few people out in it, bobbing around like sewage between swollen rows of waves.
- You'll be OK me old mate, I thought. Just a minor bump. You've the joys of love to flatten you yet
- Up above the sun appeared dazzled by its own brilliance. It was beating down, so hot it seemed to muffle all sounds except the heave and sway of that fucking ocean.
Lines for Joe M - Desespoir
Four
thousand euros. If I had four thousand fucking euros I'd be a
resident some place else.
O Sir, I eyed your staff, and the town hall gardians, sweeping before you as you walked and wafting away at your behind as you went, fanning your wind to either side of the red carpet and scooping up your droppings as they came to bear.
What kind of a fucking doctor would ever levy such a miserable tariff on a dying man?
Cut Line: You're so far too the left you're on the fucking right!
Lines for Joe M - A Syllabus of Deceit - Part3
My predictions of the lines which will satisfy the great man Joe M...
So, I began my attack on Trey, determined that by the time I was ready to leave that he would be no more welcome at Theo's than he would at the Westboro Baptist Church.
This boy had such a propensity for dishonesty that I'd not have been surprised to see him try and steal his own stuff.
His septic interior was of little importance to him. Trey obsessed about his physical attributes, his money-maker: how attractive he was; the tightness of his arse; how little or much his cock bulged through the crotch of his pants.
Lines for Joe M - Down on the Low
Prediction of the 3 best lines that Mr Joe M will choose.
He looked like he was playing the fucking harmonica to my bullshit.
“Well, don't kick me,” I said. “Go and kick a sack or something. I'm not up for being kicked today.”
Someone who never finds anything because he never has to; someone who's life was safe beyond the need for luck, who wouldn't want luck anyway as luck is always on the precipice.
Lines for Joe M... Landlord
You returned looking like a ghost who had been told he would die again.
That stupid balding head of yours shining under the dull compartment light, the few front strands of hair looking like something one would blow away and make a wish upon.
But the thing is this: I have never met an honest landlord and I seriously doubt that one exists.
Lines for Joe M
...the kind of cheap plastic rubbish
which make children cry on opening them.
I eyed my way up his body and it only
got worse.
Lines for Joe M #1
Predictions of Joe M's pick of the of the best of the worst...
“...... then things fell thru. I forgot how fuckin' shite life was."
“and the most exciting thing which happens is news of a new colostomy bag or something... an amputation or DVT if they're really lucky."
“They did not break and roll but sat against the lip of his bottom eyelid like a clear ripple of shoreline.”
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Happy Birthday Memoirs: Blowing My Own Trumpet
The official anniversary of Memoires of a Heroinhead was 26th February, but it will come as no great surprise to know that I missed that big event opting instead to spend the day (month) bent over double on the toilet and dribbling onto my laptop. One month late I offer this belated gift to my sorely neglected blog: the words and comments that followers and readers of Memoires have left in its trail. These compliments make me sad... I cannot explain that or say anything greater. If this post makes me look like some narcissistic retard, well that's because I probably am. Anyway, enough of my words, here's yours...
* * * * *
“I feel sort of dirty reading everything you write, and all the comments other readers leave. I need to shower, my vagina is dirty, and its just disgusting. I think I've said enough...”
Wow--you write so beautifully. That is my first thought. My second thought is that I wish you didn't do heroin.
You have such a wonderful style of writing. Beautiful!
Look forward to your next ...parable. Funny, the blogs seem sort of like that, like little mini lessons in life. From the Darkside!
You're killing me. This is really intense and sickly wonderful. I hope to God you're a liar and this isn't really happening to you. I thank you for the great read either way.
The genius/writer/poet/painter/all-around Renaissance Man, Shane.
I am actively reading this and questioning my self at the same time. This is the power of your writing, and I am an instant fan.
A blog that is poetic and profound in its amorality. Unrepentant and inspiring, I am happy to join your legion of readers.
I intend to be the first on line at City Lights or whatever cool as hell bookstore is selling it, when you collect these all in a few years and publish. I just have no doubt you will.
Let me finish by telling you something I did tonight that I almost never do, and certainly have never done with blogs or articles - I read this aloud to my wife. The whole thing. She was blown away.
"Oh my God this is so depressing, it's just misery upon misery."
I don't find it miserable somehow. I guess the facts are, yes, but somehow this just doesn't feel hopeless to me. Someone is out there on the fringe, in a space I wouldn't walk, and mailing back poetry to tell us how the weather is. And somehow the weather is fucked up, and the weather is fine.
ive been reading your blog page after page after page.. im so captivated by your words.
its too heavy man....frankly speaking i cant bear it more
Astounding! Sir, starting writing your book. I, for one, will purchase it.
"The effortless poetry of the Unsinkable Man. Please please please check it out."
Reading your story and your frank honesty humbles and amazes me. To say you are talented would be an understatement. Its a fancinating read and I almost feel guilty for "enjoying" it.
Stunned..
I sit here reading your blog, and you have left me feeling as bad as my last little bump when its gone, and i know theres no more, no way to get it till another day. All i can do is ponder the smell and after taste in my mouth...
The Wait has begun... . your writing style is euphoric!
Sir, you are a remarkable and strange person (I mean this as a compliment).
this is fuckin poetry, man. I loved it.
Even non believers may be forced to utter "my god" after reading this. Seriously man, i wonder how ur able to see all this atrocity so objectivetly.
I love your posts so much, I think i had no choice but to follow!
Amazing !!! Just that !
Glad to have stumbled upon this splendid page. You got yourself a huge fan :D
you are excellent.
Once again, I thank you for trapping bits of your soul in your writing.
You're brilliant and write like you are 63 not 33?? (You're 33, right?) I have no idea how/where I picked that. At any rate, you get my point. You write like someone who has lived a long time.
Hurrah! You have a great way of saying things, and great things to say. Love it.
"You seem to get off on being a loser and coming from a family of sickos. Very sad."
I love your writing. If you wrote a book it would be one I could not put down, I'd stay up late reading. Aside from being a entertained by your posts I am also being educated.
This is hard-hitting stuff. As potent as a shot of vodka before breakfast. 'Memories of a Heroinhead' dares to tread where other blogs don't.
Whether you have thinly disguised your life by fiction, it does not matter. This form of writing desrves a global audience. Judging by people's comments it is obvious that we would love to see a book of yours on the shelves someday
Wow Shane, Now that's poetry.
Thanks for another great (but harrowing) read.
Your blog moved me... I mean PROFOUNDLY.
I am addicted to your writing. I'll sit down and read anything you've written any night I can.
Nothing about your life sounds lucky. Getting busted would have just been a little more misery than your life usually is.
I think your life is anything but unremarkable and you are one of the most remarkable people I know of.
My heart still has to go out to someone in pain, especially when they've been covered so thoughtfully and soulfully by the Heroinhead.
You really are a Renaissance man and a hell of a writer.
I just love your writing....no matter what you write of, it captivates.
You're brilliant. Your writing captivates me. I love it.
Don't you ever stop writing. I swear this was written amazingly.
"you feed into every pore that is hungry for the morbid and macabre. I think why reading your blog is so “satisfying” is because nothing is left out."
It's great to see the truth and honesty of your life impacting so many people... and all this from a kid out of White City, hey?
You're a tremendous writer.
You made me cry like a baby.
I have tears in my eyes. I haven't been so disturbed reading anything.
If it was a book I'd say I couldn't put it down. Instead I'll say I couldn't close my laptop.
Thanks for your beautiful writing, the soul you've bared in this entry especially. I absolutely think you're brilliant. I wait with baited breath for your next entry...
It's like when I think you can't possibly get any better you always do. My favorite Memoire of a Heroinhead is always the last. And, consistently since the first post, I always feel terrible for enjoying it.
fascinating.. why isnt this blog made into a book?
Absolutely amazing writings.
I read lots of blog's on all sorts of subjects, sometimes when I start reading and then see how long the post is, then it kind puts me off. So I will rush and read between the lines. With your posts however, I do not want them to end. This was brilliantly written
You are a fucking genius.
Great work as usual Shane. In my utopia this would be a job and you would be employee of the month, with stock and cash thrown your way.
I just started reading your blog and I can't summon the words which could try to explain my amazement. Your writing is perfect and I can't believe I spend so much time on one blog!
After all this time i have finally found and am able to read thoughts that are real and plain, with a touch of intelligent poetics. Your the man Shane, i have garnered more peace and understanding from your blogs than any counseller or key worker can ever give.
Oh Wow... Beautiful absolutely beautiful. It made me cry with pure joy. Awesome art man. You have the eyes and heart of a true poet.
writers like you make life worthwhile,
So I'm assuming you know you're an artist with words, creating pictures one has trouble looking at, trouble turning from as well. Like a car wreck.
I truly hope this will all end up in a book someday. Amazing.
It's amazing how many people actually believe your made up stories. If any of this shit is true why don't you prove it- police records, etc.?
I can't believe any publisher would turn down what you've written so far - I mean, economically, the Nilsen aspect would sell it alone.
What I really meant to say was that I most of all like your great poetical/philosophical style -
Your writing is just so amazing. The way you observed this man is art, they way you describe him poignant, the way you relate to him soulful...
as always, another masterpiece from u shane. :)
"You're such a great prose writer. I've been having withdrawels."
You have the soul of a poet.
You created a lyrical, sublime masterpiece out of a series of poignant, painful memories.
That entry was so intense and masterful. As always,I am humbled and a better person for just reading it.
Wow, just wow this hit like a truck full of bricks. You're an amazing writer
A truly beautiful, piece of writing, full of artistry.
I always feel inspired by reading here, and it gets lazy me writing more myself.
u r talented... u r one of a kind.. a lot of people r interested in ur writings...ur photography and ur art.. phenomenal.. A talented human u r, that can be greatly successful and renown... other ppl dream of the talent u have.
You've snagged me Shane. Please, write. I will again, wait in haste for your next installment
OMG . . I have incredible goose pimples after reading all of that, especially the closing paragraph! You are such a wonderful writer that I feel your pain and long to stretch out and touch your cheek.
"This blog has been an assault sometimes, an assault on the senses. We are pulled in by poetry, but often it feels like the author, once close enough to touch, suddenly grabs you by the ears and pushes your face into the carpet to smell all the mistakes and the badness.
I've SMELLED heroin, and the heroin life, through this blog. I've smelled impoverished junkies' asses and feet through this blog. I've smelled their deaths, their bloated corpses, wide-staring eyes looking at me, mutely saying "how the fuck did this happen to me? Oh, that's right..."
I've heard the most awful things on this blog - mothers screeching hate, fathers conniving to steal from kids, and friends betraying each other forever. Even the humble narrator has revealed himself to be an awful person over and over again.
This blog is the sights and sounds and smells and feels and even the tastes of honesty. When it comes to heroin, there's just no way one could read this and rationally, normally, think "yeah, that's for me. Can't wait."
Herbert Barry Woodrose
I find you extraordinarily inspiring... Wonderful wonderful writing.
You are a wonderful story teller.. I love your posts, even if they do make me cry
Christ this was so good I want to get violent. You talented Fuck! I want to keep getting the shivers when I read things like The Man Who Looks Like Life. I have some serious back-shivers right now from this FUCK shit! Goddamn, we love you man.
Pheww! It gave me goosebumps.
Let me tell you I HATE READING but that was an absolutely friggin awesome piece of writing
It had been an elevating and sometimes a heart breakingly beautiful experience reading your posts
I wanna see a book by you. I really do. You suck me into your world.
You know it but I loved this and the rest of your work and of course you too.
Shane is one of the most talented writers I've ever encountered. And I think I know talent when I see it, damn it! This entry that I'm linking below made me cry, it was so beautiful. And you all know SB is a hard-ass motherfucker, so if my ass cried, Shane's writing is some touching motherfucking shit. READ IT.Link to one of the most magnificent posts EVER in the world EVER (and I mean that shit too):
One of the greatest writers I've ever read. That he's posting free online is a crime.
A masterpiece in itself...
how wonderful indeed!
your description is like reading thoughts of mine somewhere deep in my mind ( how i wish i was Nuran!)
This is blog is a fascinating, stark, and honest glimpse into the real life world of a using heroin addict. It's beautifully written although painful to read at times. I highly recommend this blog to anyone who has ever wondered what being a 'heroin head' is like.
Oh I am so torn. I am very anti-drugs and their promotion in any way (even in an indirect way, as on your blog) pains me. That said, you have such a wonderful style of writing. Beautiful!
http://memoiresofaheroinhead.blogspot.com/ seriously check this blog out... hauntingly addictive!
And anyone/everyone I recommend clicking his username b/c he writes one of the more fucked-up but well-written blogs you'll ever see.
I only came across his blog yesterday, and was drawn into reading every posts of his straight away! I have never done that before with anyone else's blog !
Shane, how could a skag-head like you been such a talented writer?!
Are you sure your a skag-head? LOL?!!
About Shane, he has talent, real god given talent. Lucky bastard. I can only hope to learn to write as magnificantly as him.
There's Shane X, author of the brilliantly witty and intelligent Memoirs of a HeroinHead.
your writing is beautiful.
Have you had any interest from the literary world yet? I imagine if you haven't, you will very soon. I didn't know about your blog. Now I'll be a reader, despite the heartache.
"Depravity spits back!"
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