Poems

Saeculum come save us. Our way paved from predecessors pains us. We cannot find the turning and the fourth quarter comes all too belated. Burning will remain despite flameless, we say it swaying in sync with peers and off-track with ageless. Their iciness despite any flicker of natural cold; they despise without a spine to frame them. When transcendental optimists birthed their preachers, that womb sacrifice was a waypoint of laid aims. Maybe half a decade left for you to teach us of the swooning sun that lurks past these spiral-stained pages. Merits unfounded, we’d be wise to reclaim and paint the future changed.

Hid amidst the divots, parts of their hearts slickly ripped.

As the world returned, pivoted again, a people raised of

Pragmatism and action.

Or at least they moved for motion,

In fodder soups, thickly dipped any remaining bread.

Burned their names—any notions of what they could create,

Chucked to a gorge of lost faces

with other words, pointlessly said.

Out of the darkest tunnels bursting

Our much awaited and self-proclaimed greatest.

We will come to know we are

Just shapes of waves that grow around us.

Does a spiral angle down or does

It find itself that way?

In swathes of clearing currents,

Mothers, those who sewed the uplift,

Mustered up the whisperers.

They played in silence when skipping light flew by them,

Spouting sonic booms, harmonies of might.

If they had spoken up, would their successors

Believe of themselves that much?

Voiceless from interrupting noises.

Caned my fathers for their decibel misbehaviours.

The music never waited,

It rang despite its tastelessness,

Toying with those who couldn’t

Come to deign themselves a label.

In the gut wrench of

Stomach needs unmet and

Parents hung with the plaster cracks,

They were decidedly nameless.

On the wall, where their

Masters danced with answers yet undecided.

Cast in upper deck fates,

They could only watch their

Daughters prancing under ever

Lasting setting sun,

Oh we know it hurt.

Onlooking, with innards stripped,

Sickly fixed to chairs, eyelids split to fixate:

A rebirth.

And these happy earners that

Blossomed from woollen will.

The blood in Papa’s bosom;

He smoked as the opposites approached,

– On the way home –

When he read the paper,

Ashed aside page turning.

Perhaps the tar scarred ‘em up enough,

That when the bullet came,

It wasn’t too tough for the thickest skins.

In his soul, and fingertips,

Any scrap of innocence churning.

He glanced up.

Knew for sure they ain’t deserve it.

Knew for certain

They were worth it, nonetheless.

He downward gazed for days

Until his sight weren’t quite aright,

Smiled at his family around him.

All reverberating men lost

To planet mess hoo-has

Would not resonate with

The proceeding style compounding.

A shake,

Loved ones grimaced because

They didn’t know the dirt to fly and

Shirt parts to tatter apart from

Bodily casting.

That’s some effing cracking

Human flinging.

That was when flashing brigades of

Balderdash backed by buffoonery boasted fantasies of

Pasts that never existed.

Whether they fixed others, or inflicted

Their ideals in unorganised territories,

Unobjective correctness was

Slowly chosen over self-governance –

What heresy?

Those deposit ‘it’ boys,

With their wonga singing of apex echelons,

Counted to 10 for bountiful manhunt in

Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Preying on a victim to silk-lace,

A fibre to spread, lake’s to sap sweet.

Rarely as animalistic in Congo,

Swimming where the mountain’s spilled,

Headlines read:

Desire for Superpowers,

We Need a Losing Saviour.

Opals were marbles,

Stuffing pockets and faces filled

Till brimming, that’s better (much more human).

A mountain razed in Aberfan that mangled,

Reminiscent of back when mortars scattered sand

And houses keeled.

After, flee became Cornwall June.

Where terraces kissed, they now

Spied one another – My parents’ parents

Washed in an inch deep.

Cooked their own meals.

And their grandparents’ grandparents

Were remembered with elegant etches of feather.

A doctored nobility concealed – its pinions

Propped above proper axiom wind,

Models that weren’t actually ever endeavoured or supplied.

Testing for their Grammar,

Before stock was taken public,

And the clever pockets skimp,

Fingering golden tickets,

Until the folds became so crimped. 

Clicked the keys and met

At the cemetery gates a decade after

The day the music died.

For a high ridden is a sucking depth for some.

Under tonnes of wet in ‘77

When waves of women and students coalesced, swelled,

Broke institutions in seconds,

That was the surfer’s heaven.

Dylan’s man weren’t in the mirror.

Instead, He was peddling coal,

The packhorses’ jagger,

A tenner for rent,

20p for a pint,

But the latter

took the Mick outta Bianca.

Grantham’s Iago sent a February shiver

Down country’s nape, she haggled for price,

Traded with worth, said you should thank her.

In Somerville she plotted to own an Earth that,

By my Grandmother’s death, was hers.

That’s hardly Davidsonian.

My dear Ben,

Who spoke of the awoken

Joke of a social net,

While the smiths and their

Nephews bet on the wounded –

Those with no digits at limb ceases.

Cassio was the fucking unions.

You blithering idiot.

Can you not see the ghastly and raspy-touched elite

Moving in utter unison

To see our disorder and fragmentation complete.

They told you of a lot,

And only showed you stagflation.

Oh, the order, we saw alright,

We were the audience,

Watching the latest reincarnation

Of Shakespeare’s most misremembered.

Major John,

I salute your attempts to maintain

That level of meddling.

I also ask you turn to your senior:

General austerity,

To witness a proper sentencing.

Every season of Friends,

Back-to-back without a break.

Repeated on a loop, unending.

We spied the knife, its cut and twist,

Do not try to defend her.

Surely, if we know it’s happening,

We can fight it?

So is thought.

Or at least implored to be taught.

The difference is pedantic, my reverend.

Euthyphro caught you at the altar,

With his eye on ball, others probably missed,

You shoulda known the inevitable result.

And as the changing waves faltered,

Set gliders became pool bladers,

Searching for substantive flat-ground,

Birthed the street skaters:

Nascent, wu-tang adjacent,

Aiming their grabs at the

Degradation of cities and

Power sliding over pebbles and grates.

When our icons incentivised unravel,

Spoke against fate, died on that hill,

And owners staked their wills too,

With messages that’ll thrill you:

You’re nobody till somebody kills you.

At free parties buying LSD from traveller children,

Taking an E regardless, forty k or so mates,

Swerving the gavel,

Raving, maddened by their mixing masters

(as mulligan condoned)

Whilst Blair feigned his care and dug

Desert coffins –  filled in after – sands of bone

The punks say they’re the heartless ones?

Some tributaries never ended up in the mainstream,

Spot the amalgamated lot right there,

At the peak of outselling,

The top of bursts, where

Subtle pops meet their tone-deaf maker.

By the thousands, those with

Stamina came clean to offspring.

But those out of breath,

Dirtied their Thames, Avon, Severn.

Grab Sabrina out the river,

Or the sea she needs a rest,

Some warmth and tea,

She’s left Linus for the Seine.

And Amy came and went.

From her, Lilly rose, and,

Thank Bob she made it out,

They’re only two years apart,

But the cellar seemed older,

There were only tinnies in there,

At festivals, £3 a pop, supposedly

Free at home.

Remember back in those good ol times

When artists performed for a dime piece

And cult or social leaders were

Sexually revolting.

Oh just stop the farcical nostalgia,

Look ahead, there’s a corner next

Approaching and we’ve barely

Enough doping to drift.

We’ll be utterly sober as October leaves

Us with the breath of fire.

It shimmers and conspires in

Forests, where the fliers contest of

Heating air and dwellers are spared an elongated death.

In the mirror, I’ll swim,

Pass me a dainty floaty and if I see

Another part of self, a twisted joker,

I’ll dap him up for keeping it weightless.

Take us to that rising tide,

We’ll watch a film on cruise boat rides,

About white people in a Thailand tsunami.

That’s Thomas, hardly.

If the trees were great by now there’s

No doubt I’d know about it.

My mate could FaceTime me.

I wouldn’t dream of blurry lime rows

When he shows them, so uncloudy.

I was 5 when skies turned worser,

6 or 7 when the 2010s brought their populism.

It stunk of degradation.

I could sense it in the air,

Even back then.

I could see how granny frowned at

Eye-wool and powerful credence.

Now I see too much of you, smiling along.

How wrong to keep that grin in presence of

Those never winning.

Will-ever-thinning, say it louder

For the people at the back.

Home from school, computer on,

I’ll go dance on the LCD, ignoring

Crowds of dusty bodies,

That’s just rubbish,

Chuck it on the piling stack.

Libya, Syria, Yemen, I must’ve been 14 the last I heard’a’that.

I’ll be 25, like my mother when she had my eldest brother,

Naked in bed, scratching my inner thigh

And lying to people on the interwebs.

Being meaner the more their profile pic annoys me.

I’ll drink and eat some crap just to

Spite Eddie and Oliver,

Use one hand to type,

Put my shoes in a dishwasher,

Become my own cobbler.

Trading real daisies for ethereal blocks.

Some might say, eff it,

Upload me to the cloud,

I’ll float up there, allowing myself what Nozick

Warned against. All jelly like, elastic.

I won’t fund bother to what’s authentic.

Rarely tearing up, I can simmer there,

That oxy looks eerily similar to a tangfastic.

I’ll scran it, akin to fructose eating liver.

I’d rather fade to nothing than become

That type of being.

I’d prefer to talk a lot, say absolutely nothing,

Than be a being without utterance.

Before we, us yungens, become that something which

Is better set on highest steps and con

descending.

10 years from today,

Within some deep south country scape,

Beyond the gates that plastered wanderers away,

There’s a lusty wizard flailing his arms,

His controlling curse is out of scope,

In disarray, he can’t conceive,

Those less magical aren’t falling for the thaumatrope.

On one side he placed a man, frolicking free,

Turn it over, there’s prison bars made from gen-z accountability.

He’s spinning the illusion,

You fall for it, believe it’s us.

You reckon that we fuss enough

About what you can and cannot say,

To truly lock you away.

Whilst his coin has syphoned off your rights,

You point to the sect of society facing most heightened abuse,

And think they mighta tightened this newfound noose.

You sternly suggest the people targeted more common

Than not,

Are the ones that plot to cause the rot around you.

But I know you. I’ve seen you.

I’ve found you, often missing the shitting point,

This is not belittling; this is sticking it straight.

Why anoint despair and gloom as our

Favourite pair of gods.

Their awe so enclosing, we stare at floor to

Forget the stakes.

If we do not hope, what is it that we wait for?

We can price our outrage and attention.

Or,

We can trade with love and affection.

I speak to us, who the weight is on.

We’ll bear it through the floods,

Fly, opposing our direction to the wind.

We’ll trudge through the mud,

Living off the sight of dryer earth beneath.

We’ll preach to our children:

turnings that predate our records,

Slating ancestors for their furnacing.

Check-in, board the plane with hardship lugged

Into the hold, begging they ain’t sold too much.

There’ll be so little mercy and

Plenty spineless, hurting,

We can rent cushions from the cusp.

Pay for them with bankrupt flirting.

By the 2030s, we can but pray,

That our reinvention was enough.

Saeculum, please.

At the hardest gradient the hilltop is teasing, and I reckon we need to dream again. Speak the spark into existence. Grab a stranger’s laugh, giggle with them, and call them a friend. Tension between strings that prop up sunken men and the puppeteer meant to keep them neck-tight, is only belittling if we let it be. We ought to chat less on things so greedily drunken. When we’re back at best we’ll see the drop and confess our hopeless sin. I’ll meet you there; sadly aware of what’s to come, I can but put a hat on in the sun. Build myself a shadow from silhouettes of wishful young. They play up there, those who cannot breathe their teenage years. They had no chance at breaking innocence before we forced them into decline. Give us rebirth, if it comes from principles thirsted first, middle lines, or ends of earth like spheres arctic, tell us, I beg, that the tears will not run depressed yet highly cathartic.