CHECK ON

I find myself
with my feet on the air
and head on the ground
the consciousness
rounded
the stainless
painful
steel
to my skin
fingernails encrusted with other people's leisure
and careless conversation
club soap
white heat
and endless wine
drunk to the point of tiredness
confessing of my ignorance
to the fat man with perspiration
armpits,
breasts:
swollen
made holy in their generosity
holes in their pockets
they walk out,
ashamed

check on
check on

the next one to die
gets to go home early

ANGELHEAD

you think you're the bees knees,

don't you?

well please,

let me suggest

that you're only the best

at being an asshole

holy only in you're cracked smile

meanwhile

your mick jagger swagger

impresses no one

a rolling stone gathers no moss

but you seem to have gathered

all the kate moss wannabes

screaming victims of heroin chic

clinging to your ripped jeans

and make believe bands

so why, in moments of weakness,

do I want to be like you?

before realising

I'm just the dog shit on your Chelsea boots

your nonchalance is nothingness

your macho-ness is meaningless

your bullshit bursts my spleen

listen to me as I tell you how pretty you are

with your platitudes and panda eyes

thighs wrapped around her loneliness

your phoniness is killing us

i'll catch you in the rye

and poke you in the eyeballs

you're a ballache

hiding behind your fine taste

and tiny eyes

wide,

as you bore us with stories of hallucinations

I wish you'd trip right down the stairs

like the howling man said

you're an angry fix

burning

with bearded delight

lighting your cigarette so smugly it hurts me

I wish you'd see

the painful glamour

of the wanker

you've become

YOU'RE GOLDEN

you're golden,
man
not the golden brown of what you put in your arm
but your pound coin aura
(you're worth an infinite amount of them)
and I wish you'd believe it
but your glass isn't half empty
or half full
you threw it on the floor
now you're drinking from the bottle instead

nearly headless
with the less than questionable sense of consciousness you get
from all the wrong places
like the men behaving badly
trying to appropriate from you what's yours

sat on pink concrete
pins and needles
needlessly surrounding you
as you try to understand how you got here
wishing you were her
wishing you were golden

BRICKS

every time I pull one out

another one falls into its place

making my head spin

thinking about all those things

to the point of personal explosion

momentarily losing myself

to the tetris days we're falling into

KETAMINE KATE

ketamine kate, do you care to explain?

you used to be a woman of integrity

now you're leading a life

that between you and me

can only go one way

(and it's not left, right or up)

maybe it's much ado about nothing

or maybe i just care too much

what they think about you

 

ketamine kate

you proudly told me your name

not that you should be ashamed

but have the grace and wastelands of this town

taught you nothing?

unless the lesson you learnt

was to turn back around

from all the opportunities that came your way

or maybe they never gave you any

and the many man knocked you down

before you could understand why

the high-flying birds

are nothing compared

to the 808 state you're always in when i find you

trying to associate yourself

with your dissociated mind

and the society of lying bastards

that you're sadly a part of

all gladly partaking

in the fucked up olympics

you call your weekdays and ends

heat seeking to keep you from speaking your mind

while the shiny happy people piss you off

the poppers and purple hearts

don't get you off like they used to,

do they?

 

you might still be a child at heart

but it's not '94 any more, kate

and i know you hate how you've become

outnumbered

by the runaways around you
and the sounds of silence that meet you
in the rare moments you're sober

but whatever katy did,
now it's over
as her heartbeat slows down
to 10 a minute
then none
learning too late how much her name would cost her
as her friends look down
and realise they've lost it all
they go through her pockets
and rack up another line
on the plastic floor

WARFARIN

why bother with non-stop actions
when nowadays it's better to die having not tried anything
than to try at all?
all the apathetic ones
trying to mind our own business
as the big business pushes us under buses
trust words and trust no one,
you're only on top of the world when you're at the north pole

i'm rolling in it
(shit, that is,
not money)
ruling everything around me like tutankhamun
armed with whatever i can fit in a plastic bag
and if that's my head then i'm ready,
the holes they put in it is the only thing stopping me
cutting my losses
and dropping off what you gave me

- a neat gin and warfarin
to make it go quickly,
quicker than he did

SAY ANYTHING

all our dopamine
hopes and dreams
confuse me.
excuse me while I throw up,
because growing up is easy
when things please me like they do today
but maybe
tomorrow will be different
and the difficulty of thinking it through
will move me sideways,
less like a high 5
more like the floor,
moving underneath me

understanding the big easy
the way you see it,
with my itchy feet,
is nothing
when you're thinking of all the ways
your ankle could break.
learning from my mistakes
like a kid taking time to ride a bike,
but they don't make stabilisers for real life situations
so take my money
and run away

they say we're good for nothing
but nothing's all I've got
what'll we do with the costume party days we're in?
and with the sinking feeling I get when I stand up
and the double dutch
which isn't much use
when I can't speak
and you can't hear
him,
her
or anyone

2,
3
bodies with 1 heart
starting to think this was a bad idea
nearly clearing the room when I open my mouth
and hitting my head when I open the door
surely £10 wasn't worth it?
when all we do is burn what we get
and play with our heads,
Gameboys and girls
holding steady
getting ready
for everything to hurt when we wake up,
turning to reach for what we grew from
when we knew that the problem was the solution

but if 2 opposites are the same
then 2 sides of my brain are in trouble.
blowing bubbles can't save us now
so clap your hands 'til they fall off
and cough up your lungs 'til they blow up,
throw up again
and bend it like anything
because devil tricks
for a bitch
will catch up with us soon
screwing us over
like the screws in your new leg

tell me I'm more than the horror stories
and paranoia
that made us
let me trust you when you say we're ok
and maybe i'll sleep before 4am
and say I'm sorry to my body for the things we've done
and the fights we won but
didn't have to
smashed knees and broken teeth along the way
say something,
say anything
before it's too late