her name was

her name was

she asked me to remember her

but i was already trying to forget while she plied me with pints of Lagunitas at the bar of the Crazy Horse.

she hoped that the alcohol would make me love her,her name was

or at least act as though I liked her,

for a few moments more of this short escape that was for her so exotic.

i fucked her once

up against her brand new Buick

under thin trails of moonlight at the side of a black country road in the forest close to where i had taken a room for a month.

she was a good, sweet, stupid girl

who probably deserved happiness more than most.

she liked fishing, John Wayne, and sending me photos of her perfectly fake tits that the weed farm had paid for.

i don’t think i will remember her,

but i will save her here

as i fly into a storm

towards a place the limits of her imagination will only let her dream of.

“I’m going to get a passport next year.”

memories cost more than distractions now.

i suppose they always did.

it was just that before the body fooled the mind into thinking the cheques the ego passed would never need to be cashed.

for the irresponsible they never really are anyway.

we brush off our debts

with a heartfelt embrace,

mad tales from the other side,

and an honest smile that sends you back to the bar happy for another stolen round.

the roads that take us away are simply different.

pot holed trails down the centre of nowhere.

in the middle of Rajasthan,

for example.

riding too fast with an Israeli yoga queen on the back,

armour-less and unprotected from anything outside of our bubble that could befall us.

for how will fear ever find you here,

floating almost formless off the map?

it caught up with us later

a lost front tooth, head injuries, tetanus shots, screams (not mine), scars for life, and a violent end to another soirée.

but that was minor

worthy wounds to exchange for those moments of life that you cannot forget,

those which set our cycle apart from the dumb merging into this thing that some call the solid ground of our dominion.

i’ll trade that every day for a motorcycle and something less than a village beside brutal, beautiful farmland in a gypsy desert.

slowing down to high-five naively naked, dirty little children who never saw a white man before.

then tearing back on the throttle,

flying along this path that we that we should never have ever taken

(could only ever have taken)

with just the sun and instinct as a guide and promise

that beyond the shimmering horizon of this place we didn’t plan to see

a slightly more formal reality lies in wait.

arriving anyway, of course.

sun burnt and ridiculous.

flighting not long after in the deep alcoves of the windows in our overly-elaborate, decadent hotel room.

the stubborn scorpion defining his fate once more, 

as he stares into the too weirdly turquoise lake of Bundi that bubbles under the April sun.

or was it still March then?

regardless,

that slow motion fall onto the asphalt is set in motion.

decreed in this awkward needles silence post some argument about sex,

or something else.

25 kms from Pushkar.

a shriek of unnatural collision. 

the flashback of a whole life.

the desecration of joy that was this unhindered roar through just another crazy day in a country that we know will never be tamed.

the one they cannot comprehend will always be so without ever having stood here

bled

cried

fought

laughed

learnt

and loved

here.

and understanding now,

in that eternal moment,

instantly frozen

before teeth meet ground,

that what you prayed would never come to pass was in fact essential and inherent.

a point of payoff.

the entry fee in part reimbursed for your gall to face off against the might of this great beauty which hurts as much as heaven.

the same heaven that is itself the pure light of love and wonder we pirates carry in our open hearts.

a vaunted gift i bow down to in supplication whenever it demands i touch the earth,

and resist a while longer the endless empty call of the Dharma bliss.

i still remember your name, Molly.

maybe not for much longer.

but Always

and Now i apologise for nothing.

No true soul need ever be sullied so.

Get your passport.

Ride the punches.

Dodge the snipers who know not that their bullets are only the bitter ballast of protection that masks the desolation and pain of their own lives’ sorry regret and envy.

Dream with me.

Fly,

Fall,

Forever. 

28/01/16 (For Saphir)

28/01/16 (For Saphir)

You want to take a step back from the monster

but you do not see that this void is all consuming

and that within it there is no such thing as movement.

you, the monster, the void, and I are all the very same thing.

My weakness and failure is that I pretend to let your naivety and ignorance control this deception.

To not explain to you

how the monster is your mother

brother

dead father

sister 

and son.

that the monster is not a scarred result of rape and pillage

but a new born baby filled with as much love, light and hope

as the raging fire of lust and attraction you fight to extract your searing skin away from now

the irony IS

that i too

daily reject the monster you flee

that i too

must believe in witches

mythology

false gurus

fake friends

and the true non-believers

who will turn all that is the best of our monsters

into the very essence of what sane men should fear.

it is normal for you to be running backwards from me.

and sad.

sad

that you will only make it back to where we already were

once i am nothing more than a memory,

or a nightmare that will never disappear.

You treat me like a killer.

A murderer of emotion with no feelings of my own.

You, the distraught bloodied victim

I, the rabid dog

aimlessly infecting the weak

and immature.

In 6 days the world around us was created.

In 3 i rip it up and tear it all to shit.

and how many days will this suffering last out

until sun down?

the next offer of an awkward fuck with a stranger i feel nothing for?

or until we have worn each other down right to the very bone?

there is nothing worse than love

left to die.

love

too fearful to breathe.

LOVE.

within the very centre of all the shared pain that is our love

all i want is to hold you close.

to simply lie still at your side

hold your hand

have your head lay on my chest

and whisper together

the spells of a language we don’t understand.

incantations,

that will undo all of the things that never cease to torment us.

what do we talk about when we talk about love?

Carver wanted to know this

and now

today

i understand.

love is not for life

it is the second where your fingers pulled softly away from my own

and i knew that it would be the last time i ever touch you.

love is not for life

it is the first words that we never even spoke

and the sly smile you tried to hide behind them

love is not for life

it is the provocations i can’t control

that turn us all into monsters

out of fear of being forever alone

and in pain.

love is not for life.

it is for secrets never to be taken back

then held over our heads like weapons of war

forever suspended in the ever nearing knowledge of our brutal end.

love is not a shortcut

that can be reached by the back road of Up Beat Beer

joints

and cocktails of Xanax, Valium, Tramadol, and Klononpin. 

love is not for life.

love is not for the living.

love is not for those who can never grow up

and compromise.

love is certainly not for a beautiful jewel

who belongs only to the universe

and knows nothing of these mortal fools

she has been forced to live amongst

love is not for a man

who fits not in the skin he was given

and takes fright each time a mirror reflects his image.

love is not repetition,

and nor is it soft.

it hurts and burns.

by your own hand

it slices indelible suffering into your skin

which in turn leave its own eternal imprint on my too soft heart

love is boring.

no, it is not.

it is never that.

love can be found

but only at the very edge of insanity.

love can be shared

but only in flashes.

like shooting stars

jumping dolphins

in the silhouetted glide of an eagle across the sky with a snake in its mouth

(and this I did say)

love is the falling sun

that we can never stop from leaving

even when we know that its tomorrow will bring

nothing more than fraud and pale imitation

of this perfect day that went before it.

love is nothing that is not romantic.

it stands alone

beneath the beauty of the stars

under which we are all eternally dying

at the same pace

in the same moment

stranded

grasping at the futile nostalgia for that other light we never even saw.

love is blah blah blah

a joke.

a poem of nothing

sometimes of everything.

a madness that has no cure.

love is the help that those from outside of us

bring to make us strong.

it is my brother who sees me walking only tall like a king

it is your sister who wipes your tears away when you cry and reminds you that you can never be anything but beautiful.

love is long.

yes, it is.

very short sometimes too.

love is a secret place

where i sit with Indians

and think only of you,

hoping that one day,

far away

these words will make you smile,

feel stronger,

and love me back in return a little,

even if only for a second that i will never know existed

love is everything that is lost in communication.

it is schlug.

sheshbesh.

mine-i-mum.

and “translate.”

love,

this love,

will come to an end

it will stab me in the heart

with my own spear

as i pass you on the beach

and turn in the other direction

knowing that where once you wanted only a smile

now you cannot bear to see my face.

love is the darkest part of my mind.

all that is confusion.

every dark spot that covers the light.

and love is a mirror.

one you must be afraid of.

the one which i stand before

but in which you can only truly see yourself.

love is knowing too well

that what hurts one so deeply

will only destroy another even more.

love is something i have never known

but fight to guess at 

and grab for everyday.

love is Sisyphus.

Sisyphus walking his hill,

arms and legs sore

under the terrible weight of his rock.

his love is that which punishment could not take away

and which he continues to carry in his heart.

love is the wife Sisyphus fooled the gods to see just one more time.

it is the colour of the sea.

the sound of his son’s voice.

and your smile.

then the sudden,

momentary enlightenment,

where his arms and legs hurt no more

the rock bears no weight

nor the hill any inclination.

and Sisyphus is still

Sisyphus is…

I don’t know what the fuck Sisyphus is.

Our Coffee Temple, Pushkar

Non-Fiction: La Paz Collective

I have 14 tattoos now. Sorry, mum. The last one I did last night with my brother and skilled artist Aaron Walsh. This was the third piece of art I’ve been fortunate enough to receive from this true friend after we did two earlier beautiful pieces at the Sai Baba Hotel in Pushkar when we were both staying there in December.

Just two days before working with Aaron last night, I’d spent the best part of the last two weeks working with another friend on a purely organic and unique 25 hour arm piece. I laid out on the porch of my room at Kudle Beach beside the ocean and Oliver poked every single piece of ink individually onto my arm forever.

With Aaron the work was spontaneous and simple but incredibly important for me in terms of the significance of the symbols and the word they represent.

It was something I had wanted to do for years and now all of that is infinitely more special because he was the one who inked it in. In spite of the importance of what was being set into my skin, we couldn’t help but laugh our way through most of the whole session because that’s what happens when two really good friends just hang out. In his small hot room, with me lying under the pink mosquito net, my hand stretched out to be held by his, Aaron rocking the head light, and us both wearing very little clothing, there was definitely a strong Village People vibe being given off; at least until a pair of angels turned up with a couple of cold beers. It was fun and later we all went out together and got pissed.

With Oliver it was an almost mythical experience.

Oliver doesn’t have a single tattoo on his body, but he is a pure artist and was trained by some serious tattoo masters at the time we both met in the Himalayas six summers ago. When our paths finally crossed again here, we talked a little about what we wanted to get out of the experience then I let him draw free hand onto my skin in white paint the design that we would later turn into the tattoo. I told him nothing about what I needed in terms of philosophy or style and just let him get on with it. I put pure trust in his ability to create and to connect with me as a friend.

The result is an incredible monument to the effort he put into it and the time we spent together just going with the flow while under the shade of the coconut trees we worked away as the waves crashed against the rock less than ten metres away. Friends came and went at various points of the day to drink and smoke with us. People we didn’t even know properly would offer to bring us cushions, or food and drink from the restaurant. It was an incredible experience and on at least four almost other worldly occasions time literally stopped for us both. It was amazing and before he headed off up the road again, on a 36 hour train journey to Orissa, we hugged it all out.

Every one of my tattoos tells its own tale.

For my first piece I blacked out onto the floor mid-session after smoking a joint in the car before we went up to the studio. The magnificent cover job over that same piece was done by the hand of the best and most beautiful of all Barcelona tattoo artists, Soledad Aznar. The Goa pieces. My Sisyphus. Buddha facing down one of the Hungry Ghosts. My ripped off heart from Andy Warhol to mark the most intense and insane relationship I ever had in Rio de Janeiro one summer. They warned us to stay far apart but I flew to her anyway and It was worth every second. The same eternal seconds that tell my grandmother who brought me up, and who I could not get back in time to touch and talk to one last time before she passed, that the words written in her native Irish tongue on my wrist lift me up and carry me on her strength and love every single day.

My tattoos are a road map that remind where I came from, where i’ve been, who I was with, what I did, and where I need to keep heading towards. These feelings are heavy for me right now because I wear coconut oil as I write this and the ink on my arms is still to dry out, but it is also equally true that I believe tattoos can be random, fun, and sometimes just plain silly.

A crazy French friend of mine here told me about how one night he had to sleep in a car. He was bored, had a tattoo gun, some ink, and decided to randomly hook up the machine to the cigarette lighter and drunkenly etch Made In France to the bottom of his foot, just because he felt like it. A beautiful Israeli angel I know has a weird little space ship tattooed onto the base of her spine. She did it in El Borne in Barcelona and doesn’t even remember where exactly she went to get it done, or even why she did it.

And that is the thing about tattoos.

You get them impulsively on the road when travelling and realising that you are in the midst of an incredibly special moment that needs etching onto your skin forever. Or it can be a piece painstakingly designed and doubted over for years by your own hand until on the exact right moment when the stars align it is finally and uniquely delivered to your body. Or they are words or symbols, irrelevant to others, that you know need to resonate on your outside because you feel the same thing a hundred times as strong in the depth of your soul. And then there is simply happenstance. The heart-stopping beauty of an image you see in a temple or a gallery. Or the flower blossom you watched fall from a tree and land at your feet in Japan. Six simple words from a song you hear sung in a language not your own on a beach in Paradise. The best, magical moments, thoughts, or ideals of your life you know you must be reminded of daily for the rest of it.

It’s no coincidence that 13 of my 14 tattoos have been made on the road. There is something about the transient nature of travelling or living in a place not of your birth that reminds us that our days are forever passing too quickly and that one way or another we should always be looking to leave our mark. A tattoo announces that sentiment to the world for the rest of your life, but the journey never ends. 

Simon's Place, Pushkar

Pushkar Lake

Non-fiction: La Paz Collective

The Royal Enfield Experience

The Royal Enfield should be familiar to those who have ever spent a prolonged period of time in the parts of India that ebb and flow with the movements of her long-term travellers, artisans, pirates, digital-nomads, and hordes of Israelis. These beautiful old-school motorcycles are as much a part of the territory as chai, chillum, charas, and chapatti.

If you were in India and don’t remember seeing one, you didn’t stay long enough. Even if you don’t remember seeing one, I guarantee that you heard one of these little beauties tearing its way out of town, or ticking over sweetly as it awaited a passenger outside a restaurant or guesthouse.

I first tried to learn how to ride a Royal Enfield with my good friend Dante on the side of a mountain as the sun set somewhere near the top of the world in Upper Changspa, Leh. It was a wholly futile first effort at taming the beast and the next day I awoke at 5AM to take the weekly local bus to our planned destination. 12 bumpy hours later, a Spanish girl and I stood in dazed silence at the side of the magnificent Pangong Lake; a place that was to change my life forever.

Two years later I was back. I went to see Mukesh (a great man and hero of many stories) at his shop in Pushkar and bought a Royal Enfield Bullet for myself. I had a bike but didn’t know how to ride it, so a Palestinian girl, travelling with Mukesh and some other bikers, drove it down to Goa for me with her little dog nestled on the petrol tank. I took the train and then once they caught up with me in Arambol I learnt on the job exactly what it takes to become an Enfield rider.

Three mad months later I needed to escape Goa. Somehow I had learnt how to ride and with my Russian princess singing soothing lullabies in my ear on the back, we first fled south through the jungle to Karnataka and Kudle Beach for a 10 day rehab in paradise, and then flew like two loved up angels all the way back to Pushkar. It was a magical, unforgettable trip of a lifetime.

A Royal Enfield allows you to see this amazing country in ways that a quick flight or a 36 hour train journey never will. You can take off into parts where foreign skin is rarely seen and you are turned into a travelling circus upon arrival. The bike opens the door to another, realer India, and quite possibly a whole new you.

The trips below are for those who want to find out what the noise is all about and really discover something deeper about the country, the bike, and themselves. These are scenic routes designed for those adventurers who have the luxury of time on their hands, want to savour that great entity to its fullest, and have the capacity to process the great downloads of wonder that will surely come along their way on the road.

I have simplified the trips into stages which won’t all necessarily get done in one day. Sometimes you’ll just have to find the way for yourself because getting lost and making it back to where you were going, or ending up in a completely different destination all together is a large part of what doing something like this is all about in the first place- enjoy!

Arambol- Mahalabeshwar- Ellora Caves- Mandu- Udaipur- Pushkar: Arambol to Kudle Beach is a beautiful little starter ride that can be done in a long day, but this one is only for the fully initiated. The ride up the coast, once you’ve negotiated the weird little ferry north of Arambol that connects you to the mainland, is stunning and forever rising until you turn inland and head up even further for the strawberries of Mahalabeshwar and the amazing scenery in all directions around this quite bizarre hilltop town. You’ll then give the big cities of Mumbai and Pune as wide a berth as possible as you seek out the Ellora Caves and step back into a world long lost in fables and story books for children. You keep going because you have to get to Mandu and the most beautiful middle of nowhere that ever existed. Then, a little tired, you push on further north where the desert of Rajasthan and gypsies older than time itself await to welcome you home.

Pushkar- Bundi - Agra (Taj Mahal) - Orchha -Khajuraho - Varanasi:

This is a trip for serious culture vultures with a lot of stamina. Pushkar is the perfect jumping off point for any trip to India and the half-day ride down to Bundi is a good way to ease yourself into this marathon journey. After a couple of shanti days around the lake and old Maharaja palace in Bundi you’ll have a long cross-country slog to encounter quite possibly the world’s most beautiful building. There is little else to see in Agra other than this incredible piece of architecture and monument to love, but what more do you want? The ride down to Orchha is a gentle one and this old temple town on the banks of the Betwa River is ideal for a few days R&R. Rested up you’ll head to Khajuraho and its exquisite collection of Hindu and Jain temples, 10% of which are covered in the erotic art of the Karma Sutra. The excitement of this stop-over will power you through towards the mad heart of India and Varanasi, where for over 3000 years the fires of the burning ghats have not ceased sending the dead directly to paradise via the portal of the great Ganga River.

Vashist - Rohtang La - Baralacha La - Pang - Leh:

This is a ride into heaven so it’s fitting that you’ll start from Vashist which sits serenely in what is known as the Valley of the Gods. One last dip in the hot spring before you head out and the snow of the Himalayan mountain tops will quickly come into view as you reach Rohtang La. Rohtang literally translates to pile of corpses as this pass was part of the old Silk Road and people would always attempt to cross too late every year meaning that they were stranded up here with no route out in any direction. You will have no such problems as the road is now only open in the spring and summer months and you will be exposed to nothing more than scenery and views unlike anything you’ve ever seen before as you drive through Spiti Valley in the direction of Ladakh. There is only one way to follow at these heights and while the going is undoubtedly tough the sheer beauty of it all will keep you thirsting for more even though you are mentally and physically drained by the demands placed on you by the road. Beyond Pang you will make one final push over the world’s second highest road pass at Taglang La and then it will be relatively plain sailing as you drop down into the Indus Valley and follow the river to Leh, with perhaps a quick pit-stop at the incredible Thikse Monastery and a prayer of thanks before you roll up into Upper Changspa for a very well deserved rest.

 Unplanned Footnote: Last Saturday I was blind-sided off my bike and bounced across the floor on my face. I lost half a tooth, got a weird circular hole in the top of my head, bruised ribs, and numerous cuts and bruises on my arms, legs and hands. My passenger got a nice collection of bruises to accompany the fright of her life and messed up her foot pretty badly too. We were very lucky.

A life cannot be lived without risks, but your own and that of any passenger is massively rocketed up towards the limits of peril when you come to India and choose to explore it on a Royal Enfield.

Always be aware and never forget that you are riding a very pretty but not always reliable lump of metal around roads full of many people who genuinely have no consideration for the sanctity of your life.

I’m thankful just to still be here and my smile is bigger than ever, even if it is a little bit crooked at the moment.

Love the ride, but please be careful.

Girl On A Wire, Main Bazaar, Pushkar

Sunset, Main Beach, Gokarna

Poetry: Red Fez

the coming insurrection

 Simon Friel

all my heroes are junkies.
visionaries,
holy and defrauded in rejection,
comatose on a lost highway to paradise.

sleeping dogs lie awake.
tempting night.
                mourning
knells at dawn:
automatic resurrection floods day into subjugation.

city is isolation peopled.
pre-paid advertisements of bought fears
moments
movements devoid of contemplation.

embryonic decimation of self.

silent bones of living dead chime in the half-light.
half-life.
this nirvana is a false and perishable commodity.
the ringing in your ears true;
a shrill echo from the abyss which has swallowed your soul.

open your eyes to the sky.

pale faced Selene draws brilliance from violet dusk to night.
howl at her.
hold her in the palm of your hand.
eat the sun.
beyond
within
whole worlds await
to devour you.

salute a single magpie.
you are privileged
a precious gift that can be beautiful.
shed doubt.
believe.
realise.

the new nature is green
brown purple
blue
and perfect.

we have surpassed our heroes.
the path before us is clear and determined.
small stones whisper entreaties as they scatter down from our mountain top.

the coming insurrection is now.

Transcend and Include: Foy Sagar Lake, Rajasthan

Royal Enfield Road Trip to the Villages Outside of Pushkar

Pushkar, Rajasthan

A lake formed when Brahma dropped a lotus flower,

Or from Shiva's tears.

A story is never simple in India. 

Paharganj, New Delhi

madness impossible to be understood.

a place relinquished of any pretence at control.

a magnificent rotten world born of the deformed extremities in life

 whose festering, fetid heartbeat

will never stop.