Dead man’s switch.

I feel like I’ve let go,

let go of the the fear. 

Years of it. 

The version of you in my head has let go of the red button,

the one that when pressed detonates our relationship. 

My world. 

Everyone I’ve ever known,

Every soul to know me as a whole. 

All the people who love me, completely. 

Gone, obliterated, a black hole.

It’s been so lonely, but safe. 

Worlds smallest planet, floating in space. 

Crashed into another one and doubled its size. 

There’s so much more at stake. 

So much to lose. 

The red button within your reach, ready to let go of the cosmic union. 

But I’m not scared you will do that anymore, because I’ve pushed my own red button,

Our relationship ends over my dead body. 

Turn of the century.

I remember being baffled as a kid, that people born in a different century might still be alive. 

Not really taking into consideration how close to the end of a century that birth might have occurred. 

Then again, I am also a late-last-century birth. 

I wonder if I will grow to be unfathomably old, an object of interest. 

I wonder what questions I’ll be pestered with. 

Do you remember the war?

The rise of fascism?

The horror?

A peculiarity of time, it’s cyclical. 

See, those are the same questions we asked our old guy. 

Same questions, same problems. 

Seen it all before.

Round and around. 

Same ham joint in the background of scooby doo, same wedge of cheese. 

Turn of the century,

360 degrees. 

Quarterly report

All the fours gather, and get in lather, about who has the best skin, how gay. 

A patriotic display, in a shit way. 

Not the 4th of July, just July the 4th.

For centuries, the white cliffs of Dover have stood sentry, barring the entrance of barbarous migrants a plenty. 

So true, yeah, stopped the Vikings, and the Norman’s. 

More than you can count. 

So yeah go on lads, stick these red crosses about, paint the white cliffs, the pale English gentry. 

Paint a big massive red cross, tell them dirty bastards that they are denied fucking entry!

All your problems gone. 

That’s all it took. 

Poof!

Holding so tight onto your whiteness, get a fucking grip. 

England is England, so if you live here-you’re English, regardless of whether you took a dinghy trip, or just happened to have slipped out of your mothers dingy minge, exactly in the place you wanted to live.

Lucky you. 

Now imagine, you were born in a war. 

Maybe it was caused by the place you wished you were born. 

You’d risk your life to get here too,

only to be met by you. 

What a shit welcome. 

I for one am ashamed. 

Seeing those hateful flutters make me rage and sputter until I am red and cross, then the irony of that sets me off. 

I’m hoping for a future where every colour can take pride in that flag.

A rainbow, how gay. 

My hope is having to stretch a bit further these days. 

Velocity animosity.

I miss when the choice slider went from 1 to 2,

piss or poo.

Couldn’t pick a higher number even if you wanted to. 

Now, I’m spoiled for choice. 

But not by choice. 

It’s foisted,

The billions of voices crying for choice, rejoice!

Not me though. 

I miss when everything was less fast, more slow.

It makes my brain carbonated. 

The other day Abbie overtook me, on the walk to the settee. 

How am I being raced to a chill-out?

Like there’s a fire on the sofa only my ass can extinguish, 

Distinguishingly relinquishing some act of youthful delinquency. 

She’s as bonkers as hammers. 

But, she moves faster than me. 

Most people do, racing around, always on the go. 

But, she didn’t push me, I wasn’t cursed.  

When the rest of the world insists I move fast,

she let me be slow.

What a privilege to be allowed to come last. 

She’s always putting me first. 

Small.

i’m so big, all of the time. 

i’d love to shapeshift.

not to save people or fight crime,

or anything major really,

just minor stuff. 

i’d fit perfectly into cars,

i’d buy nicer shoes;

for my dainty size 11 feet. 

eat what i want. 

find a nice little draw in which to sleep. 

keep myself to myself. 

the little things. 

I ain’t made of sugar.

I feel calmer.

Far from harm or, bitchy karma. 

A farmer, outstanding in his field. 

Proud of all these crops, 

That came out of my land!

Pulled from the earth with my hands. 

There’s this niggle though,

giggling in the background,

Sewing a seed of doubt. 

‘You’d better make hay while the suns out!’

But for how long?

Is this my magnum opus?

My best yield?

Is it going to piss it down?

I don’t see the storm clouds anymore. 

So, has it passed me by, or am I in the eye?

Oh well, what’s another downpour.

End of the line.

I find it hard to believe an acorn grows an oak. 

Or grows anything at all. 

Well, actually only some acorns grow oaks. 

Others stay acorns. 

Does the acorn decide?

My great grandfathers, grandfathers father decided to have a boy, and so did every boy since. 

Since the cosmic mess coalesced. 

Since the sea became the scene.

Since that first step and every one since. 

My forefathers successfully seeded the soil that would one day grow me. 

All that time,

Oak, after oak, after oak. 

This family tree bares the weight of all that history. 

The pressure, 

The myriad rings. 

Ever decreasing concentric circles. Closing in to one single point. A full stop. 

ima do me.

spit your acid venom,

burn your own lips. 

shout sharp shaped words,

sick sticking to your throat. 

you do you. 

i prefer sweetness,

softness. 

kind words that taste nice. 

i’m selfish like that. 

Super lemon haze.

In all the miscellaneous myriad ways people hasten the days.

Footie, a ciggie, a tuggie?

I don’t like booze, I just snooze and ooze from my tummy. 

I don’t like the gym, but I’d like to go once, so I could say: “a real weight has been lifted.”

I’ve paradiddled and paradabbled in drumming, but sadly, not naturally gifted. 

There’s only one thing that sets me ablaze. 

The Mary jayonaisse. 

Huey Lewis and the doobs. 

Darth vapour.

Super lemon haze. 

Spectate.

I love this,

This liminal space between obligations. 

This softened darkness,

Host to my truest selfishness.

If only I could slice the ether,

Dissapear.

There goes the fear,

the weight of perception. 

It’s quiet calm salves my chapped senses.A life of my own, 

to be swathed by the outside.

The ghost at the feast,

the third party. 

The free.