Football’s Coming Home

Think about it…just for a minute. Or hell, give it a while, blaze up the Good Stuff and lie back and wonder – why do people care, at all, about the limited possible outcomes of an outdoor pursuit engaged in by total strangers who are undeniable twats? As a sweeping generalisation, football fans vehemently hate overpaid lazy snobs, but that’s exactly who they’re beating people up in defence of. And the sport? There are so many pastimes involving grass, balls, and sweaty men; why does this one drive people to such frothing hysteria? It doesn’t make sense, not after a few hits of the Good Stuff. But the thing is, it isn’t supposed to.

The football doesn’t matter. The players, the teams, they’re all replaceable rotating names puked out of the same foreign sausage factory. At its heart, all of it is just a cover story.

In a parallel universe, it could be a sheepdog playing tug of war with a welly. What matters, what really matters, is the blissful blanking out, the excuse to get pissed as a fart, to have a lager-blurred bonding experience down t’pub, and then stagger out, and beat the shit out of foreign people. If there aren’t any foreign people, well, we’ll fucking create them –  you support Man UTD, not City?!! RIP OFF HIS DICK!! But the thing is, this is the original-and-best way people make friends, starting as tiny children – hell, you’ve probably seen it, probably got some hazy distant memory of being a part of it – bring together a group of children who don’t know each other, and the very first damn thing they do is create a scapegoat, then bond over dissing him, tormenting him. No group collusion is possible without a common enemy, without a ringfence that makes an us –  take away the them and we’re all just wandering about with nothing in common, avoiding eye contact like we’re stuck in an elevator with a co-worker we’ve known for five years and suddenly realise that we still can’t fucking remember their name, but oh god, oh god, it’s too late to ask!

It’s an element of the human psyche we’ll never eliminate. The lowest common intellectual grouping will always find a way, through football, through anything involving aggression and beer and thousands of sweaty bollocks rattling around in a big noisy arena. They have to do it, it’s the only way to stay sane when you lack social skills – this emotional crippling is the soft, broken, degloved-penis root of it all.

Football. The easiest common ground for every awkward uni-browed grunting bloke. Throw yourself into it, fucking hurl yourself into the abyss of being a bloke, gulp down pints of Stella, watch the footie, smash up the opposition supporters, and fucking CHANT – never ever stop fucking chanting, like some despairing, mocking cry of anything approaching human understanding, as if your mates really care about you, as if your mates even know you at all…because the moment the chanting stops, the moment the Stella wears off, the silence is fucking crushing. They won’t look you in the eye, sober. They can’t find any words when your wife dies of cancer – the vocabulary of Down t’Pub has no emotional depth, and now they’re flailing, drowning, in the true depths of the human experience. They don’t fucking know you, your mates, not really, how can they? These people are all facade, it’s a masculinity that can never be anything but a big dangling steel nutsack, denying the existence of any squishy central parts. No words, no honesty, no vulnerability, until the Stella and the chanting and the football and the fuckin’ foreigners have rotted out anything that ever used to be there, until they’ve all become so skilfully trained in their Bloke Voice, Bloke Words, Bloke Persona, that all neural plasticity is lost forever, and there’s no going back.

But is it more, even, than that?

Is it all a distraction, any maybe a wilful one? A distraction from the fact that you’re short, you’re bald and tubby, you’re not good with the ladies, not educated, not listened to, just a fucking ground-down cog in the depths of a political machine that ups the ante every year with its austerity measures and job closures and zero hour contracts and the failing NHS and the housing crisis and a never-ending waterboarding torrent of Eton-farmed Tory aliens who live on some foreign planet made out of butlers and ponies and completely non-ironic Enid Blyton nicknames. You’re fucked, mate. You probably realised you were fucked early on, and maybe you had a phase of youthful rebellion, grew your hair, started a band of gangly Adam’s apple-popping kids thrashing away in the spare room with more vitriol than talent, more passion than eloquence, until you realised how stupid you looked for even trying, you realised that people took the piss out of blokes who actually cared about stuff, like politics and injustice, and other stuff with big words that made you look like you thought too much of yourself, like you had ideas above your station, tossing around words like that, hiding a fucking thesaurus under your bed, who d’you fuckin’ think you are, you ponced-up little wanker? Maybe the blokes down t’pub gave you a right royal battering the night you tried to up your local rockstar cred by wearing a flamboyant shirt – that wasn’t right, you can’t be flamboyant, you’re a bloke, blokes have to look identical, have to wear a uniform of football shirts and jeans and short hair and a pint, a pint in your hand so you never look uncertain.

So the band broke up, or maybe you broke it up yourself, since it was scaring off the women, and you’re twenty now, for fuck’s sake, it’s time to get married to anyone who’ll have you, to have a litter of kids you’re not ready for, a litter of kids who instantaneously shoot you into the position of The Man of the House, and you’re never…you’re never allowed a chink in that armour.

The armour is hollow.

There’s nothing in there anymore, just a tiny frayed scrap of a soul, piloting the machine, raising the frothing pint to the lips, keeping the chant going.

Don’t let the silence in.

Don’t let the doubts in.

Football’s coming home.

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The All-American Addict

People, these days, they act as though there’s a gulf, a chasm between junkie and upstanding member of the community. You have to pick a side, when it comes to junkies – is it ‘they’, or is it ‘we’? It’s no bloody wonder no one really wants to quit, when it’s no longer a matter of just chucking out all your dirty rigs and finding a favourite TV programme to get you through the rattles – these days sobriety seems to come with an automatic fucking gym membership, a new pair of obnoxiously neon-white running shoes, a plastered on shit-eating grin and a natural tan, an interest in yoga and a subscription to a magazine about caravanning or some equally noxious shit – sobriety isn’t a choice; it’s a LIFESTYLE – picture those words exploding across a bright blue sky, belched from the rectum of a light aircraft flown by a grinning maniac high on green tea and activated charcoal smoothies, then snapped into a stillframe and splattered all over the cover of a glossy magazine lying on the spotless counter of a million glossy rehab facilities with futuristic chairs and comfort lighting, flotation tanks and equine therapy and every other goddamn thing you can’t afford  and don’t fucking need, except you do, you do – buy into it, drink the kool-aid, suckle at the tit of the billion dollar addiction industry that tosses you pills to get you hooked then bemoans the prescription drug crisis, and haw-haws all the way to the bank with a gigantic insurance cheque. Pharmaceutical reps harvested from modelling agencies and cheerleading squads, I shit you not – they know a pretty face can sell anything; they’re not doctors, they’re not scientists, they’re a walking advertisement for a many-tentacled money extractor built on ruining lives and rebuilding them in an image as bullshit as the American Dream. Millions of runny-nosed junkie saps all over America, whinging and whining that they can’t possibly get clean ‘cause mah insurance don’t cover it, maaaan, ah cain’t do this bah mahself, ah gotta go t’rehab, maaaan, Dr Phil says it’s th’only waaayyy, if ah don’t get clean ah’m gonna end up deeeaaad, y’all know that, don’tcha, IT’S TH’ONLY WAYYY!

Poor wankers. They just don’t get it, but then I suppose why would they. They aren’t real junkies, the kind of junkies who’ve thrived and died throughout history, self-assured and willful in their (usually bad) choices, no, these are a new generation of junkies, and the only thing they’re guilty of is painful fucking naivety. They’re the epitome of advertising culture – these wankers could end up with a serious IV meth level addiction to the goddamn shopping channel, because they believe everything they’re sold. I mean, remember when someone posted a picture on the internet of Spielberg with a dinosaur prop and claimed he was a big game hunter who was driving these righteous beasts into extinction…and then thousands of brain-walloped zombies actually believed it, shared it, and got fucking God’s Vengeance furious about the incoming extinction of the dinosaurs. That, my friends, that is the kind of grade A mega-numpty we are dealing with.

I mean, your real junkies, the old school lot, they got into gear knowing full well it was a terrible fucking idea, but also knowing that the reason it was a terrible fucking idea was that it’ll give you the best goddamn feeling on Earth. Better than the best orgasm, better than love, better than any weak, watery tepid pleasure dredged up from genuine human experience; all that, and just a tenner a bag. And this kind of dilemma, it splits the herd – most of them value their braincells, don’t want to disappoint mumsy and daddy, quiver at the word illegal, or the notion of becoming one of those gibbering broken-brained wrecks hurrying in and out of the pawn shop. Just Say No – this is your brain on drugs… The other lot, well, it’s a moth to a flame, a seedy fat man to a red light; fuck the consequences, life’s full of those, and death’s an inevitable one anyway. This is just a ride, my body is an amusement park, take my tenner and run, got any pins, mate, I’m not one for half measures.

That’s your solid gold Original Model junkie – they may make some bizarre, regrettable decisions, but they do make them. They think for themselves. Which ultimately means, if they live long enough, and it gets bad enough, they’ll dig themselves out of the hole they put themselves in. Rehab? The only damn point of rehab for this lot is spin-drying, you know the thing – appease your family, maybe the police, by going in for thirty days, then come out and spout off all the expected pro-recovery lines, immediately hit the streets and revel in the reignited glory of the first hit – spin-dried, cleaned out, tolerance dropped. All rehab means is the ability to get seriously high again. Devious, yes, but undoubtedly well thought out.

The new lot, the modern lot, they’re completely different. I present to you, the All American Junkie. He hasn’t had an original thought since he was four years old and made to recite his country’s indoctrination prayer at school, hand on heart, eyes gleaming with youthful naivety and apple fucking pie. He was probably everything his mummy wanted him to be – a child model on the cover of a sell-out board game, a jock, a football star, blonde and tanned with big white teeth, homecoming king and a frat boy, on track to the most stodgily predictable life you can possibly imagine, until…one day…he hurt his ankle in a football game. The cheerleaders wept, the coach polished off a bottle of Jack, and…although Brody-the-Jock’s ankle was barely more than a sprain, and would, in any sane country, be treated with nothing more than a paracetamol, a pat on the head and a bit of a sit down, good ole Brody’s college physician was convinced of the goddamn downright American importance of him playing college football this week. So, he slammed out a delicious bucket of Oxycontin, maybe even a bit of Adderall on the side to make sure the former wouldn’t make him too drowsy, and Brody nods and smiles and winces heroically, then does what he’s always done.

He does what he’s told.

All his life, he’s been trained like a smiling fucking Labrador to trust authority, and if good ole Doc Riley with his grey hair and white coat ain’t authority, well spank mah ass and call me a biscuit, ah don’t know hhhwhat is. Down the hatch for weeks and weeks, well past any semblance of ankle twinges, Brody’s high on a cocktail of smack and speed, in laymen’s terms, and pretty soon he’s all fucked up, and he knows it, ‘cause he ain’t doing what he’s told anymore. That’s new – he doesn’t give a fuck about football, the homecoming queen’s dumped him for falling asleep during sex, and Doc Riley’s wagging his meaty finger and saying no more pills, kid, then BOOM, Brody’s drenched in sweat with his heart beating out of his chest and he thinks he’s dying, so off he goes to beg one of the weird stoner kids, and it’s snort this, dude, it’s just the same but cheaper, and awwww nawwwww, Brody the All-Star Superjock has officially become a junkie! What will he do now?!

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? His fix, his real fix, is doing what he’s told. It’s being mainstream, being comfortable, being all-American, and what’s more goddamn American in the 21^st century than Narcotics Anonymous and rehab helplines? Brody believes everything he’s sold, and what he’s being sold, all day long, far harder than the smack he’s snorting and the oxys he’s chasing off tin-foil, is the Recovery Agenda. At the heart of its destructive black web, Brody is told he’s powerless – he’s a junkie now, and he is lost, he’s not in control, it ain’t a choice, boy, it’s a disease, you cain’t help yerself for nuthin’. So, Brody starts smoking crack too, starts experimenting with meth – he can justify that, ‘cause it ain’t his fault, he doesn’t make choices, he can’t even consider just sitting down and stopping, because nobody does that, do they? They cain’t! He just hides behind the big wailing siren of AH GOT A DISEASE, MAAAAN – his whole life’s going down the pan now because the only goddamn thing that can possibly, possibly save him is rehab, and it better be a bloody good one too, expensive, like, ‘cause if you ain’t getting’ equine therapy you ain’t never gonna get those down to earth, real life lessons, like understanding how to corral your demons like a big fat overfed, overpaid Quarter Horse, or that’s what they say – we believe everything they say, don’t we Brody?

But it doesn’t stop with rehab – why stop there when you can sell a whole lifetime package, with infinite add-on options. Where do you think they came from, all these slogans – once an addict, always an addict, one day at a time, the belief that you have to dance through trip-wires forever and ever lest you relapse, and boy it’s gunna take some cash t’keep y’on the straight ‘n narrow, now you got this disease – nobody goes to rehab just once, do they? If it fails the first time, hell, the first fifty times, you just gotta keep crackin’ at it, but this time go for an intensive one, might cost a few bucks more but heck, you cain’t put a price on the health of your own son, can you? ’cause it ain’t just Brody in trouble now, oh no, his insurance stopped covering him after the first two stints, and now mummy’s being guilt tripped into blowing her savings on lovely rehab holidays in Malibu with world-renowned meditation gurus, and she’s so fucking stressed out by it all that just like Brody, she does what she’s told, and goes to the doctor for some Xanax and Abilify and Effexor and Klonopin, but that’s ok, they’re not rehab drugs, not yet, they’re all-American well shoot, hun, it just shows you gotta busy life drugs, she’s alright, bar the memory blackouts and the sleep-walking and the weight gain and the lethargy and the sense of complete fucking emotional deadening, but she’s alright, yeah, she’s alright, just gotta get Brody into another rehab, this one’ll do it for sure, it’s got crystal healing and Reiki, and anyway, you cain’t blame the poor boy, he’s got a disease, maaan, you gotta do everything you can for him.

Until you’re broke. I mean, flat, flat broke. Once you haven’t got a penny, once no one in the family has a penny, well, you’re a tapped out mine, your worth in the capitalist machine of the all-American health industry is a big fat zero, and the message flips on its head.

Enabling.

This is the final buzzword in your journey, the ultimate way they shut you up. Never enable an addict; if you enable them you might as well be killing them with your own bare hands. They have to hit rock bottom, or they’ll never change. If you help them, in any way, they’ll live in denial ‘til they die, and Brody ain’t never gonna get better, never mind all that crap we sold you for five years about rehab, nope, nope, you were enabling him all along, and it.has.got.to.stop.

Mummy drops a handful of xannies and kicks Brody straight out of the house, tells him never to come back unless he’s been to a rehab he can’t afford and is living a stable, clean life that he’s too confused and fucked up to manage, and Brody ends up homeless and dead in a ditch with a hepatitis-riddled needle in his pocket, just another American-bred beef cow, function completed.

This is the modern junkie. He’s not hooked on heroin, or oxy, or dilaudid, or fentanyl – at the heart of it all, he just can’t think for himself. He thinks an apple a day is the same as anything else the bought-and-paid-for state-sanctioned doctor prescribes, and even when he realises the pill-popping’s become a mess, he can’t admit to himself that he dun fucked up, that where he made a mess he can unmake it, and he doesn’t even blame the doctor, not really, not in any meaningful sense, he still thinks he has a damned disease that needs more medicine to treat it, in the form of rehab after rehab, in the form of a million drugs for a million mental health conditions and restless less syndromes the TV has convinced him must be the cause of all his problems, and naturally, can only be rectified with a pill. None of that cheap stuff, neither, it’s gotta be the one y’all saw on TeeVee, with the smiling woman walking through a field of daisies. That’ll help, it’s cain’t be a lie, the TeeVee said so!

This guy, he’s fucked. Put on a white coat and a treacle-thick tone of smug condescension, pin a certificate to your beige wall, and he’ll do whatever the fuck you tell him to. If he succeeds in rehab, he’ll become a Narcotics Anonymous fiend for life, he’ll spend a fortune on every health trend that comes his way, barefoot running shoes, squash club membership, titanium tennis rackets and hemp yoga mats and smoothie bullets and nutritionally balanced muscle bulking powders, because he has a disease maaaan and he has to fight it every second of every day, that’s what they’ve told him, that’s what the TeeVee says, until Being Recovered becomes his entire identity, and he doesn’t realise, he doesn’t ever realise that he’s just become yet another step in the advertising process – the walking success story, the aspirational bright-white Invisalign smile on a rehab brochure, on a Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet: it worked for me! No cost is too high to save your life! Look at me playing tennis, look at my shiny car, my perfect wife, look how perfect your life could be, just dial 1-800-REHAB-SAVED-ME for a personal quote with ten-year finance plan! Addiction kills – don’t wait, call today, 1-800-I-GOT-SCREWED…

 

 

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1-800-ADVERTISING-PLUG: my book is available on Amazon, search ‘The Putrescent Vein’ today for a bunch’a stories to read while you survive Brexit & the Trump administration…

ET VOILA!

This is not a story, though I suppose it could be…

“Once upon a time, there was a young girl-shaped boy, who had a vampire in his head. The vampire came everywhere – it ate hashcake in Amsterdam, it wandered up and down lurid neon highways through warm Floridian nights. It tried to tell its story in hot, dingy Spanish internet cafes, but the boy and the vampire couldn’t reach an agreement, couldn’t communicate, and they both got pretty pissed off.

The girl-shaped boy stopped travelling, because there was no money left, and the vampire refused to lend a hand, so instead they both ended up at a crumby little university in the the Shitlands of England. For several months, the boy and the vampire endured tedious lectures that weren’t about writing at all, and then they drove home very fast and engaged in their mutual passion for heroin. But then, one day, on a dusty blackboard, the vampire saw a picture of something it recognised, and got very excited. The boy wrote it all down, and the vampire said Yes – like that! Well, more or less…something like that, anyway…

Together, they barely bothered attending the crumby university anymore – they had far better things to do, like talk in the same language finally, and of course, shoot up heroin and smoke so much weed that the boy’s fingers turned yellow and he always found his bony elbow in the depths of an ashtray. The university was so crumby it gave them a degree anyway, largely due to the vampire’s self-proclaimed genius; he, and his friends, because by now there were several vampires, introductions having been made all round, they taught the boy to write their songs, and tried not to be too rude when he mangled them horrifically into life with his shiteous guitar playing.

Over the years, they wrote seven books, seven, in rapid succession, never able to say goodbye to each other, but that didn’t matter, because the vampire had been alive for absolutely fucking ages, so he had a lot to talk about. The boy tried to understand the vampire better, spending hours walking and driving around the city at night, suffering through endless, tedious nightclubs, surrounded by humans, who weren’t anything like as scintillating company as the vampire was; it was always a relief to get in the car, to put on the old, old music they both enjoyed, and cruise home through the night, the vampire reaching out a thin white finger to distastefully prod the dashboard, stating that One day, we will drive something FASTER than this! I’m going to make it happen – I’m going to CONQUER THE WORLD, and you’re coming too! The boy was rather dubious about that, by this point, but it didn’t matter – even if they drove around in slow cars forever, and even if none of the humans he met really interested him, he had the vampire, the vampires, and that was really all that mattered.

One night, the boy had gone out to The Pub, with some humans. It was ghastly…it was worse than ghastly, and then on the train home, there were so many obnoxious drunken humans, he couldn’t even hear the voice of the vampire in his head, which made it even more awful. So he started writing, just so that he didn’t hit anybody, but not about the vampires. He wrote about something else, for the first time ever, and that Something Else turned into several Somethings. The vampire didn’t mind – it gave him some time off, because vampires have a lot to be getting on with too, like killing people and playing volleyball with their decapitated heads. He and the boy kept working together, along with all the Something Else, until the boy hardly went anywhere at all because the entire world, or all the parts that mattered, were either in his head or in his computer.

Some humans would have been miserable, but the boy was actually very happy, in general. And eventually, it came the time to round up some of those stories, about the Somethings, and about the vampires, and send them out into the world…

So he did. The internet made it possible – scary, confusing, but possible. Now those stories are floating about in cyberspace, like embryos bobbing about in the electro-amniotic currents of data, waiting to be adopted and taken home.

The End Beginning”

…that would be it, if it was a story. But the real stories are actually on Amazon, as of today, and you can read them! Most are horror stories, or dark erotica, but The Vampire decided he had plenty to say too, so he wrote a whole novella and then threw an enormous tantrum until it was added to the book. And all of that, can be found right here!

The boy and the vampire hope you enjoy them, and promise not to spend the money on smack 😉

Fuhrer, Ubermensch

I am like him.

He would not do that for you, would not lower himself for your pity-scum needs, and I am like him. I resented him for being a steel trap, steel-grey eyes under lowering skies, looking out from an icicle tower, yet I am like him. I cover my eyes in cutesy lenses that seem wide and open as a summer sky, and people fall in love. Behind them lurk the steel-grey truth, the cynical, bored-with-you Surrey drawl, that I am like him.

I can smile at you, and hate you in the same breath, for my smiles are not for you, they are simply for the way I rip you apart inside my head, the way I laugh at you when you are gone, and I am driving a car you cannot afford. I am like him.

I can fake it, and I do – not just in the bedroom with you, but everywhere, to everyone, to the world. I crop, I edit, I polish. The truth is, I believe you beneath me…for I am like him.

I am male seed, no feminine softness, I can hate a child, I can loathe a cripple, and the moment you inconvenience me I will hurl you into the abyss to rot forever. I am like him.

When I first realised this, it appalled me. I hated him for so many years, all these cynical, vile, vulgar things, yet they each and every one mirror me. Now I type this, and I smile – I will succeed, in everything, because I am like him. I will wear diamonds and drink from crystal and need nothing but the low electric hum of my money-ticking cyberworld as I sit in that icicle palace and look out upon the deer that run through an ancient park.

This is my destiny.

I am like him.

Untitled, 4am

So I’m sorry it’s so late at night

But there’s a lot of shit I just can’t hide,

Anymore.

My best friend just fucking died,

Everyone betrayed me,

But never Jazz,

Never, ever Jazz

 

He didn’t call me by the name I chose

He’d come up and lick my fucking nose

And bitch, my foundation is expensive

But nothing compared to you

Who I’ve lost, forever

 

I texted your phone yesterday,

I know it’s dumb, I’m know it’s stupid

But I wanted to reach your niece,

She might get it,

She’d rail at me, then speak to me

I hope.

 

I have to talk to strangers because friends are just too close

I don’t want to hear advice, I just need to talk

And talk and talk and talk

My attention jumps around like a fish on a hook

I’m not over the concussion

The whatever happened to me,

A scar still in my lip

 

I can’t help thinking, Jazz –

Last night, those chavs picked on me for wearing black

No mohawk that night, but still, they yelled

“Trick or treat!”

And I picked a fight, I asked the fat kid,

“You starting something?

You ready? Let’s go, bring it!

You wanna hit me, fucking bring it!”

That kid, and his two mates, they pussied out, they walked away,

From one solo ‘girl’.

I walked ahead, they could’ve sucker punched me, I knew it,

But still, I didn’t care.

Who the fuck am I, picking fights?

If I was Jazz, our gay, Indian, goth Jazz,

I’d have been kicked to pieces.

 

I can talk a hard game

But in the end we’re all the same,

Just want to walk down a street,

Make friends with dogs,

Like Penny – she jumped up and licked my face

I adored her – so why?
Can’t we take a lesson from a freakin’ dog,

And just treat people with civility?

 

I’ve got three brothers.

Two of them vomited blood,

After they were battered by chavs for looking goth.

And goths are pussies, we all know it –

We wanna stay up late reading books with the Cure on,

Candles, incense burning, so silent, so perfect,

Not punching bags to Eye of the Tiger

 

I’ve lost my thread, lost my point,

Jazz is… Jazz is…

What?

 

On holiday, like usual.

He’s lying on a beach, or hiking over the hills,

Wrapped up in a sleeping bag at a festival

 

That’s where Jazz is.

He’s fine.

He’s coming home soon,

Because anything else is impossible.

 

I don’t understand.

 

No morgue, no funeral,

It’s so unreal.

 

Suicide, an overdose?

We don’t know,

They won’t let us know

 

But I’m back on junk, Jazz,

Whenever I can afford it,

And everything’s gone to shit.

 

Dude, you were the person I’d phone,

Late at night,

I want to phone you right now,

Just to see who answers,

It won’t be you, but someone?

Your niece, a teenager, honest and blunt,

Exactly who I need,

Who’ll talk to me, explain

Pain.

 

It’s nearly 4am, I can’t phone them now,

Can I?

I don’t know

Who can ever understand death?

 

I need more gear,

Need it here,

I stayed clear, for so long,

Because I thought I’d die

And then you did instead

After that, I ceased to care.

 

I shot up dope, for the first time in years, and it was beautiful,

Sublime, beyond…

 

I survived

It didn’t kill me.

2011, I’ve got you back,

Dope honeymoon, take two…

 

But I’ll never have Jazz

And do you see what I mean?

How my brain’s a useless spleen,

And I can’t keep a track, can’t even try to attack

Any subject?

My mind is a flying fish,

Leaping from the waters of logic

I can’t keep track

I can’t go back

Why would I pick a three against one fight,

While wearing a skirt that stops me kicking?

I like my nose, I don’t want it busted,

But I TAKE NO SHIT, not anymore

I’m not your slapped up ego-whore,

No more,

No more.

You can’t break me now

I’ll take it, I’ll fight, and I’ll lay it out,

For my brothers, for Jazz.

 

And then my brain turns in the water, slips free,

Becomes another part of me –

Was it a bad batch of junk, or just concussion,

When I got so sick,

Scar in my lip

My head hurts

I’m tired.

 

I miss you all

Gretchen, Granny B, Jazz, Ellie

Ellie. My daughter – the baby who never came at all

 

I can’t care, or I care too much

Jazz. Cannot. Be. Gone.

 

I can’t wrap my FUCKING head around it,

Jazz, gone? Forever?

 

Ellie…

Will she ever exist?

Will she ever be in me after all these stupid meds,

Do I even want a kid?

Will I ever not hate myself,

Want to slice myself out of my own body?

 

I’m done,

Mic drop

I’m through,

There’s nothing I could say to you

 

To make you understand.

Candyflip Memories

I miss the crystal mayhem

The music like a velvet band

Like lace

Stretching with every movement

The writing on UV lights

It would change

A mobile phone like a puppy dog

The 20p on the bathroom floor

I still have it

Because I watched the walls vibrate

While playing Snake

On a Nokia 3210

 

Then the club burned down

And it burned my memories too

I got sick

And it’s all gone

I’ll never drop another Shuriken

Not even a shitty Mitzi

It’s all gone

 

But I remember the neon and beauty

I remember seeing the afterlife

Zinging purple and white

Souls without boundaries

Infinite

Infinite

It has to be the Glis remix – it brings me up every time

It’s better than wine

Not as good as a decent pill

 

Assemblage 23

They meant so much to me

Let Me Be Your Armour –

It spoke of everything

I still need armour

But my armour sucks

I suck

I lost everything

 

Neon Midnights

I still miss them

I just write about them now

Sing about them

But they’re gone

 

Just the dust of memory

The residue on scales

It’s gone.

Everything is Weird

You gotta wait half an hour for your dinner

I’m sorry, that’s just how it goes

You take a pill then wait for your dinner

I love you

You’re the best dog on Earth.

 

I’m concussed right now

I met a dog up the road and he wagged and licked at me

But he’s not my family right now.

 

I’m so spaced out,

I thought you were dead when I came in

You were so still

You’re nearly 16.

 

I love you, like you like tuna

My dude

The ambula men asked if you were called Dude,

Cause I kept calling you, like

‘Dude, shut up!’

You were barking at the ambulance lights.

Your name is Presley, Dogdog, Dude –

It doesn’t matter, you’re deaf anyway.

 

Under any name, I love you.

 

More than words.

 

The ambulance took me away,

You were scared like me

Everything was on TV

Surreal

I had a seizure, or something.

 

I love you.

 

I love everything who reads this

I hear my name echoing in everything.

 

I’m not here.

 

I keep tlling them that everything is weird

I can’t type anhy,ore.