the back of my rough knees, bleed and scream
I have dry thoughts and ugly shavings
my cracked hands look brittle, uncouth
as a bareknuckle boxer’s tooth
eczema is for anarchists:
red and black
through and through

morning
the beans, they scare me
the chocolaty smell a siren song
the darkness: my dreams with clipped wings
you call it coffee breath
​I call it hot anxiety vapour

​market
 
I want it like sour yoghurt and over-ripe melon
I want it like Camden market - spread me over tat
grab my hair by the horse statue, caress his metallic behind
 
take me below the pricey cheese shop, I want to smell the churn
make the red bus magnets wobble and fall
lick me by the green canal, the Wetherspoons side
 
drink me like infused gin and drained tenners
slap me, I want to feel like a worn DM on the oldest punk’s foot
treat me to all you can eat for 8.49
 
trap me like a tourist, string me up with keychains
I need it like a breath of crisp pollution
or the last Malteser and half a pork pie
 
I crave it like shit rollies and dead eyes
give me the whole hill to die on. take me quick
then bury me deep under the never-ending sprawl

​This pandemic living
I’m tired of these four walls
I’m tired of thinking dark thoughts
In these darkened halls

Sick of government incompetence
I’m tired of fucking lies
I can’t quite visualise all those
Who have lost their lives

I’m tired of a life 
Reliant on working to death
My creative deficit
Not got me feelin’ my best

And all the things I could’ve done
Just don’t get achieved
Feel like a prisoner
Of human malice and greed

I can’t help but wonder
If anything I said, did or wrote
Could ever change things
But I know it won’t 

Political systems
Designed to stifle dissent
With anger and hate
Left to carefully ferment

The absence of sense
In a world run for elites
Will this wretched earth
Ever know peace?

This pandemic living
Trapped in a moment
The contradictions and problems
Are both shameful and potent

But where is the solution?
I can’t see another earth
I see another idea
But it’s trapped in a curse

I fear the outcome
Will just be continuation
Of devastation, destruction
And human alienation

I’m tired of pretending that
Our response is something new
This pandemic living
Got me feelin’ blue

​I'm in love with people I've never even met before
In love with rebel thoughts and broken metaphors
I'm in love with messy plates and dirty hands
Rubber bands, itchy sand and empty cans
I'm in love with asymmetry and imperfection
In love with rejection, delusion, repression
In love with the folded corners of posters
The pack with three jokers, the sound of dying motors
I'm in love with the homeless, the drifters, the used
In love with the valleys, the peaks and the dunes
In love with the pest, the fox in the bin
The inside animosity, the strop that's within
I'm in love with the teacher, the shaman, the healer
In love with the leaper, in love with the Reaper
Day-old pizza, and songs without features
Swamps without leeches, churches without preachers
In love with the East, in love with ideas
The top deck of a night bus, the gleam in a tear
The lies and the smears, the foolishness of man
The sound of a cowbell, getting flights with no plan
Abandoned prams, and sultry bands
Bakery smells and mammary glands
Ceylon tea and walking uphill
Pints of milk and tweets of Dril
I'm in love with the solar system and all of its flaws
In love with slamming windows and sliding doors
In love with zebras, camels and bees
Canadian geese, leafless trees
Missing teeth and scary thoughts
Gingerbread men and pillow forts
I'm in love with that icy slap of wind to the face
In love with the chase, releasing anger and rage
I'm in love with loud fonts and neon signs
Quiet minds, petty crimes and Kefir limes
In love with dark hair, laughter and clouds
Scarlett letters, guesses and furrowed brows
I'm in love with imagination, people before nation
Pure lamentation and soiled reputations
I'm in love with regretful tattoos, black boots
Bamboo chopsticks, Dollis Hill and bad moods
In love with the loners, the readers, the sleepless
The speechless, the meek, the mild, the dreamers
The schemers, the believers and those who don't know
Those who often feel down, empty and low
I'm in love with the powerless, the cold and the small
I'm in love with my heart, I'm in love with it all

Guess you were right about my cowardice
Arrogant, flaccid, talentless
Scarred and bloated, hopeless
Pompous mind full of potent bullshit
Suspicious of smiles, lazy, distrusting
Wasted flesh, good for nothing
Tears down relationships, builds up walls
Bury my phone in the sand to avoid the calls
Unsociable loner, downer, groaner
In every space an out-of-towner
In every face that one blemish
Everyday cancer, societal haemorrhage 
Suicide fetish, self-harm dropout
Heart is a vacuum, a wasteland, a drought
Criticises others with no jurisdiction
A lack of personality better suited to fiction
Nothing is warm, nothing is homely
How can I hate people and still be lonely?
Does it all matter, is life even a factor?
​Here's to turning the final chapter

Rain. Oh, cleanser.
Healer of heat, rapid release.
Mosquitos, diseases,
Soaked skin and raw bone.
Downpour of danger,
Slutty cloud break and sultry heartache.
Grey air.
Lame stares and rivers of rage,
Festivals of light,
Mice praying to the hand above a cage,
Drips and drabs cover shit spots.
The drenched veneer of a better today
Waterboarded,
Violent and washed out,
Stifled and repressed in the alkaline.
Sputtering, moaning, pathetic,
A tidal wave of quashed resistance,
Dark and runny, 
Deep as a pit, placated, soupy.
Carry me away,
Take my seed and drown me.
Dance to make the sky cry, never dry,
Just my water and I.

My thoughts are hollow
Metallic, shrill
A smudge of grey cocaine
On the back of a bill

A damp sock in the rain
An amusement park closed
A devil's wishbone
Nuclear glow

Half the disease
With all the effects
In loco parentis
Let's try wolves instead

My wont is cyclical
As the wheels on a wagon
As the dynastic curses
On this coffin I'm dragging

I abandoned good faith
On a gentleman's bet
Now my mind is the fat,
The tears, the tread

The swollen fortress 
The decayed trigger finger
Oh how I wish
The slush wouldn't linger

And slop and swirl
My brain is a fizz
Bubbles and hurt
And anguish and piss

And festering wounds
And never-forgives
And cold dead tea and
My private mountain of shit

And this mountain of shit
Is my personal peak
Conquering it 
Is a flagrant defeat

I never thought you would get under my skin
The seeds in my bread, the bite in my gin
The fight in my spirit, the red in my blood
The fire in my forest; my thunder, my flood

Yet there you were when I rolled back my eyes
Passively judging each one of my lies
An attack of conscience in the Reaper's disguise
A flash of lava under aluminium skies

I was thinking of you as I emptied my cage
As I severed my fingers and stifled my rage
As I rinsed my corrosive blood in the rain
Thinking of you as I cried through the pain

And I thought how between us, nothing was said
But an invisible wink, a solemn nod of the head
Now your existence is etched in my brain
In a way I couldn't even hope to explain

Your omnipresence is the ghost of my prayers
Now I can no longer stand the jeers and the stares
I once could have dived, I once could have flown
Now just one of those lives you've claimed as your own

I wandered through the maze
Searching for a truth
Finding nothing but
The deception of youth

And reflections of you
In the infinity pond
When my eyes gazed up
Your spirit was gone

I saw the madness of history
Trapped in a prison
And my own sullen blindness
Reaching out for your vision

I saw the passages of time
Reduced to a speckle
And the flame of the future
Engulf churches and temples

And the supernova split
Our weak reality
Smashing the core 
Of this human tragedy

And through this catastrophe 
I still longed for a hand
A rope off a roof
A note in the sand

Your soothing voice
To depend upon
Just tell me the maze
Is still going on?