…I want to scream, for screaming makes the pain seem less acute
for the briefest of moments and in the end brief respite can surely only be noble.
I should buckle under the weight of it all and prepare my coffin suit
and place my emotional trust in the fall out quality of Chernobyl.
You have been the most faithful of companions, conspiring harridan.
Never wavering in your ability to astound and fuck me over, friend
time and time again, if personified, you would make the most evil of men
We are so sorry to inform you
that we are going to have to close you down and take your licence away
after finding disturbing material on your premises, now be careful what you do
or indeed what you say,
for there is no arguing with the evidence of you supplying hard
karaoke to the citizens of this town,
lethal stuff that would confound the most elegant sounding of any bard
and in which it sounds like cats you are trying to drown.
I charge you with section 101 of the criminal penal act,
How can it be in this a civilised age
that we can fail not just those who try to change the world,
the young and full and ideas and sense beyond the crèche
of the Westminster island, but those who find
their way to emulation is to stand scowling at the passers by,
the feral
dogs keeping guard, the accessory to modern sainthood
as they patrol the streets in black armour, the modern knights
of the uneven and tattered pavement.
How is it possible to see the divide between the same coin,
She used to only call me when she was drunk,
or in need of some way to be herself,
to flop down on whatever couch or bed
I had in the spare room
for five minutes and allow the weight
of the world to be unfurled and hung out to dry.
When she was drunk I could cope, she was never there for long,
and always courteous to my own need for space.
When she was sober, she would wheedle her way into my head and dare
Our relationship has always been based on the need of one side,
yet today has been calm, composed and full of peace
and I wonder if the positions were reversed, in me would you confide
and I wonder if it should have always been like this, a tranquil release.
I sat back, I relaxed and did nothing but listen to you breathe,
your sincerity of spirit I realise I had kept always out of sight
I had asked you many times silently to leave
but in my head, you talked away unhindered, secretly loved, never used in spite.
I don’t remember standing in line with my hands held open,
a wooden bowl and half gnawed wooden spoon, chewed and nibbled at,
distressed over not through hunger but through fucking pain…
but I’m not meant to talk about it, complain or discuss it because
it shows a weakness, it shows lack of moral fibre that my great-grandfather’s
generation would have called Victorian values…the same Victorian
values employed that never allowed a heartbroken woman to grieve properly,
that allowed a monster onto the streets of Whitechapel
I can’t think of anything worse to find on a gravestone
than the words, born, died, and nothing in between,
save two dates and the inscription dearly departed…
…is that truly all that is left behind once life leaves
the departed behind.
If I stand before my gravestone now, a mean feat and fate indeed
as I would like to think I would go out fighting a bear somewhere
in the Canadian outback, armed only with a blunt potato peeler,
an old yellowed and damp from the abundance of snow that
I was there on the day that the Devil was kidnapped by God.
I wasn’t sure exactly which one it was
as they all look the same to me
but I know she had form as a hijacker and usurper of religions past
and now was after the biggest bruiser of the lot to aid in a deity war
that would confuse humanity.
Bundled into the back of a long black hearse,
I hid out of sight as the Devil kicked and cursed and bemoaned
The river runs deep if it is allowed to flow freely
and the clutter and wreckage of the abandoned shopping trolley
covered in slime, the mess of one generation passed down
to another in shrink wrapped, tightly wrapped, always trapped;
is removed and placed far out of sight.
The free flowing river, the conscious of independent thought
should not be stunted, diverted and allowed to stagnate in some form
of pruning cultivation, the flower should be allowed to grow
and take over the muddy ground that lays along the bank,
The Rapper smiles at the free soap box he is given
and he uses it, controls it, manipulates and exploits it,
until the box irrevocably falls to pieces,
joist by rusted nail, plank by frayed duct tape…
yet even when his vitriol makes no sense, when the fans
take the shit he spouts to be gospel and they don’t even
question music history and the small cog in a connecting wheel
he plays, admittedly a hundred times bigger than the mechanism
I run at full speed upon and forever going backwards,