Cities are Flammable

Saturday night, remember me
the windows wide open to the city
the music of the traffic casts a shrill
staccato beat of car alarms 
our breathing is ambient
our smiles static
long stares caught suddenly
in the flash of car headlights
smiles don’t last forever but
they go pretty far and
like columns of smoke they linger
mists of war dissipate
a deaf platoon sings dead songs
hymns to the unkind world
painting a picture on this old factory wall
uncertainty guaranteed now
compass all fucked up
directions misaligned like
dice shot into the rusted bath tub 
at certain intervals I like to
stare at the sky
no one is listening
no one is listening…
no one is. 

Oxygen tasted good,
clear and cold
black and blue
the lights below are like
circuitry and symmetry
dots fed into the system
desperate calls
heard even up here
I drank ale and whisky
all night and I’m not
scared

Like the downbeat man
who makes a break
in his off-license routine he
shuffles there every day
and says modern life
is a punishment
a wound you must survive
a widower in the winter
who pulls the woollen
gown over her head who
shuts the world outside
and lets the snow gather
up on the windowsill
until it becomes insulation
holds in your guts
keeps the flesh internal
a woven skin knitted
tightly over a frame
that’s me I’m a carefully
stitched mess fraying
slightly and almost ready
to pull apart in case I
get stuck on a wayward
nail jutting from unfinished
walls I’d form at the bottom
of your bed for you
sit for a few hours taking
in the scent of your room
absorbing your smell into
my skin I wait for you
resting gently just
above sea level
I can see the underwater
city from here the lights
glow dimly and are
distorted by the waves
of the muddy banks of
our English rivers

Two directions I could go but
why make a choice why
chose anything
the rocks on the beach feel
as uncomfortable as
anything 

To-do list:

• Erase old to-do list
• get car
• lock doors
• drive to coast
• no music allowed
• bury self on beach 
• soul slithers from body
• by way of the mouth
• lights on the beach front
• flicker out, slowly
• electricity failing
• at four in the morning
• the board walk on the seaside
• the failing penny arcades with 
• people inside them 
• they never smile
• they never wave they
• stay glued to their machines
• their souls left too they
• were buried here just like me
• and the smooth pebbles clash
• with the clattering jagged rocks and
• the discarded bones of a
• non-existent fishing industry
• give off powerful fumes
• a thick grey fog that 
• blankets this old sea town
• where the hollowed out
• burned down buildings
• didn’t get rebuilt they
• just lay there on the front of the coast like
• old bones that weather away and
• secretly exist in-front of everyone
• I make my bed on the beach
• mighty uncomfortable bed
• pour on the pebbles
• cover self up to neck
• get comfortable
• sleep 

I don’t have a house and I don’t have a job yet all I care about is meeting girls. There is definitely something wrong with me when I care about my love life more than the fundamental basics of living. Jesus christ. Is it really that wrong to admit it? To admit that, frankly, I’d rather have a date with a girl in town and not have to deal with all of this crap? I hope that’s pretty normal. It sounds pretty normal to me at any rate.

Hopefully I won’t have to, but, whenever I’m sitting in the dole queue after graduation some form of love life is exactly what I’ll need. It’d just be nice to know that if I really do hit rock bottom at least there’s someone there to drag me up off the floor by my scruff and scream at me to do better in life. As much as I feel like such an out of touch romantic dickhead, I just think it would make all of this crap easier to swallow. I don’t wanna live on someone’s floor, and I don’t really want to spend my weekend at the job center either. I just want to tell stupid jokes to girls  and make them smile and buy drinks for people and get blind drunk with my buddies.

I need to sort my life out. Everything’s all back to front, and I don’t have a safety net like everyone else. If I fail, I’m kinda fucked. Like, for real fucked. Uuuugh. Too depressing. Quick, think about pretty ladies being kind to me. Mmmm. That’s better.  

I’ve not moved a lot today
movement suggests victories
won by endless grit and 
frustrating toil we’re the
farming machines that churn
the dark brown dirt
old mechanical contraptions
left to rust in old American
dustbowls

It’s nineteen thirty-two out 
here and the old American
preacher said
so long
it’s been good to know you
we’re fleeing the deadlands now
we’re tearing down the
lack of colour and sound and
replacing it with amplifications of
da vinci’s eyesight
we splash internal organs on walls
still beating even when burst 
desperately trying to pump
blood to the vitals
like connecting tube stations in
London city
carry a map always because
they don’t give ‘em out at birth 
it’s a world with roads that
only you can travel because
each map is different and
each map comes from somewhere
in your brain so
pay attention and
face life with passion
passion provides you with
something that reason cannot. 

Many months ago, I wrote a lot fluff about cynicism, and the use of cynicism by intellectual cowards. I wrote, quite passionately, about the manner in which cynicism is often deployed by people seeking quick, easy answers to their problems and the problems of the rest of the world at large. I, quite rightfully, asserted that this mindset was bullshit and a cop out for anyone who takes life seriously enough to comprehend it in an intellectual, complex way. This is an idea I still believe in. The idea that resigning yourself to extreme cynicism about humans is not only cowardly but also shirking your duties as an educated human being in that you must face the world, in all its unflinching ugliness, and all it’s powerful, bright, colourful beauty. You take the rough with the smooth. You think about it, a lot, and you should come up with some kind of grey area answer for a lot of things. It’s the reasoned approach, it really is.

But it really pains me to say this but, I think I, too, am falling victim to the thing I hate very much; cynicism. Cynicism about people, about life, about the slow and steady flow of time that passes between us. Time is a lake, and we’re the fucking twigs. We roll with the tide, blow in the wind, tumble down the throat, and other crappy metaphors that suggest lack of control.

For years I have wore my political beliefs on my sleeve. I was politicised age 17 while listening to bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Stiff Little Fingers et al, and I appreciate the precious moments I spent memorizing every note, lyric, and anguished cry on those records, because it inspired me to become opinionated very early on, in the midst of the Blair years, when my peers didn’t give a shit, I did. When people fawned over world cup results and x-factor winners I was asking ‘why?’ Because the Blair years for me was mainly characterized by screaming, uncaring apathy. And I looked at that culture and I said ‘no, not me.’

So colour me utterly surprised when years later, a culture of activism rises in reaction to the coalition governments cuts. Pretty fucking rich, I thought, seeing as I could see this tidal wave coming a mile away yet people voted for this crap anyway, but hey, I was happy to have the support, finally. I took part in the protests, I kicked in windows, smashed up barriers, said fuck you to cops, and I admit, it felt good. I felt like people had finally stopped being so selfish and started to care. Sure, it had to actually affect them first before they got off their fat fucking lazy complacent behinds but again, I was totally happy to have the support. I was there at Millbank and I stared cops in the eyes. One of the female officers looked truly scared and I was glad. It’s just a shame she wasn’t on our side. 

That was two years ago. I wake up this morning to news that Boris Johnson has been elected to a second term as mayor of London. I look at the anti-cuts group for my university and there hasn’t been an update in months, and the students protests died with the fee increase. For the first time in years, since being 17, since those lonely, isolated days when no one cared, I feel exhausted. I feel totally, utterly, emotionally and politically exhausted. I can’t physically offer any more effort in to the movement than I already have. I’ve been politically active for seven years, roughly, and I don’t want to care anymore. I just don’t want to. It sucks. It fucking sucks. I put everything into caring about this and when nothing improves, when it only gets worse, when there is no end in sight, well, I don’t know how to say this but… it makes you feel like you’re being defeated. Like you’re losing. And normally, I’d be okay with losing, in fact I fucking love losing as long as I’m enjoying it, but this is different, this is politics, and if you lose in politics, well, that shit has real effects, real outcomes. Real lives are affected.

And here I am, when I should be revising, contemplating the fact that I too have become the cynical person I’ve always hated. Here I am, resigning all my beliefs, my colours, my flags, ready to throw them away because I’m sick and tired of people fucking the world up. And you know what? They do. They’re fucking the world up and we’re letting them.