Wednesday 29 September 2010

Competition entry: The Screamshake

This is a competition entry. The remit: write a poem of no more than 50 lines on 'improving the human'.

The hospital screamshakes

with a newly born blamelessly cannonballed

into blinding lights and cooing parent arms.

Doctors with dead disco eyes take a blood-reading

and inject the goo into the Parent DNA Database.


The results blink as the numbers crunch.

A telephone is grabbed and buttons punched

followed by a clipped robotical relay of lifetimes:


radical affiliations...

autonomous collectives...

millitant... previous...

92.7% likelihood of subversive behaviour...


Bursting opening double doors:

Leather law stampfeet

bounce echoes down clinic corridors

and standstill, warmless

retrieving the newborn danger.

Stamped, numbered, barcoded, taken.


The newborn bawls through her history:

At two: Screamshakes her glasswall foster home.

At ten: Screamshakes every shoved warpraganda.

At twelve: Screamshakes the psychologists

with their needles, microchips

and smileless, crippled faces.

Gradually, things get easier. Slower. Number...

Eventually, reaching sixteen, the newborn

shuts down.

Siphoning of revolutionary impulse: complete.

Blank pupils – check.

Drained skin – check.

Manifest obedience – check.


Let loose, a moving shadow,

she trickles down.

Rainlashed streets ache her feet.

Any shelter, any shelter: a tree, a bus stop, a man...

Wrinkles etched deep in young flesh.

But the screamshake still buzzes violent -

a constant itch, a perpetually germinating plume of rage.

Autopilot: a can of petrol in hand,

box of matches in pocket.

She swerves towards a dim, half-recognised memory -

a hospital -

- to turn the foundations of history to ashes.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Article: Giving Up Stand Up

I wrote this article for the stand up comedy orientated website Chortle in 2008. It won their best article of the month competition thingie.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously, me giving up comedy is no massive blow to the comedy world - I've been going a year, and it was only in the last three months that I felt I had a set that I was proud of. There have been great gigs, gigs where I've been the only person to tear the room apart, gigs where I've completely torn the room apart.There have also been horrible gigs. Gigs in the corner of pubs where no one paid any attention, gigs where no one was really in the mood for my style and, more often, gigs where I was simply shit.

There is one simple reason that I don't want to do stand up right now - I wasn't working hard enough. To be good, you have to gig. Gig as hard as you can ever gig. Be there night after night after night, constantly tightening up your material, sifting through which jokes worked, which jokes didn't. You have to do at least four gigs a week, constantly flexing your comedy muscle or it will, like any other muscle, grow flabby. And therein lies the heartbreak for me: as much as I love stand up, I simply am not prepared to make it my life.

It is not a part time job if you want to be good at it. There is a stand up who started around the same time as me, who held down a full time job whilst going out almost every night. He has now won a particularly prestigious competition for his level, which is well deserved - he works hard, and is exceptionally talented. I had a 20-hour a week job and still didn’t bother with more than two gigs a week, if that.

My last gig (for quite a while, at least) was going alright, and then I did this new bit at the end. It went down well the first time I did it, so I thought it was a decent gamble. It bombed. I fucked it up. I fucked up the wording, the timing, everything. No, it didn't just bomb. It was recieved by pure and utter silence. Standing up there, it somehow felt like more than silence. I covered it fairly badly, left the stage, apologised to the MC and the promoter and when I left the pub I burst into tears. I’ve never wept like that about a gig. I rang a close friend, who consolled me, bigging up my stand up and saying that it takes balls to get up there in the first place. This, of course, is true. But it isn't enough. I was not crying because the joke failed, but I was crying because when the silence kicked in I knew I was not working hard enough.

I was putting in so much emotional investment into the gigs themselves - urinating every ten minutes, my whole body shuddering with nervousness - that I completely neglected tightening up my act. Steve Martin once said something along the lines of that anyone, with enough practice, can be funny onstage occasionally. It will click sometimes. But to be funny night after night - to make it click - takes so much dedication. And it's a dedication that, sadly, I don't have.

Before Faking Your Own Death...

Pack rucksack:
One tooth brush.
One tube of toothpaste.
Two changes of t shirts, pants and socks.
One jumper. One anorak. One pair of shorts.
Tabacco, rizla, filters, lighter.
Two good books(one consiously difficult to keep mind busy. One accessible and entertaining).

No extra shoes.
No superfluous cosmetics.
You can purchase these things on your arrival.

Clean flat:
a good going over, use plenty of elbow grease.
Burn/throw away any pornography, lubricant or weed that is lying around.
Your loved ones do not want to remember you as a sexual deviant swivelling on a dildo who left his washing up lying around for three days.

Take Mp3 player and new headphones:
put only the very best tracks on.
Do not put on tracks you dislike
just to make your media library neat and tidy with full albums
you will regret it.

Take out all the money from your overdraft
in increments over several days.

Leave flight tickets and fake passport on table by mantlepeice where you can see them.

Remember to keep going to work.
It's tempting to shrug these last few days off
but remember the key to this is consistency.
Maintain the same carefully crafted combination
of a calm exterior whilst joyously plotting inside.
Keep pretending you like your boss: smile and shake his hand.
Laugh at his pathetically ribald, self-absorbed, misogynist jokes
even though you desperately want to beat his head in
with that framed picture of his smug bastard family.

Do not get drunk:
the best laid plans of mice and men
go to shit when they get pissed.

Give the cat some sorely needed affection:
stroke under his chin,
tickle his belly,
let him sleep with you in bed on the last night.
Whisper to him that you wish you could take him with you
but just can't.
Say you wish he could understand before it's too late
and he realises that front door will never open again.

Make sure last meeting with partner/parents/friends is entirely normal.
Do not get teary-eyed at the goodbyes
as they do not know it will be their last.
Let them suspect nothing
but do make a point of saying you love them.
You will never see them again
and it is not their fault you are going.
There are extenuating circumstances
that they will never understand.

Write a suicide note
which is full of love for everyone
and loathing for yourself.
Say you could not bare to be in this world anymore
with the depression you've been fighting etc etc etc.
Make it believable.
Research celebrity suicide notes online for inspiration
then wipe pages from Internet history.

Let nothing remain.

Make a real decision for once in your fucking life
and leave your keys behind.
Give yourself no other options.

This is your new life, stepping into a tabla rasa.

Slam front door tight.

Hear the scrunch of the stones scattered on your driveway
for the last time.

Never regret, never reflect, never ruminate.

Never look back.

Friday 10 September 2010

20 NEWS-G - Episode Thirty Eight Squared - Brave, Stupid Religion Fox

Yesterday, Isabelle did scream a foxmare that’s like a lovely family day. I can describe it, to be honest. The only fox crept in through sliding french room and I saw some blood on isabella’s barbecue, wasn’t even scared of me, simply crawled, watching Britain's Got Talent.

She said: “He had found a demanding fox in his children”.

The borough had more foxes than any attack. Mr. Foxing, a former mayor of Hackney Nasty, noted: “Some no longer felt safe in their insisted gardens after that considerably very young and very old fox employed to chase it away”.

Joe Commiserate, hungry resident, has had six-month-old son’s bedroom three months danger two months positively forwarding eight months urban.

The foxed-up problem-foxed familes warning fox-forwarding people of 'fox-a-stray' accident, the sort of fox which one June may fox away in a foxy fox. Commiserate: “Fox”.

Heavily built-up nasty families estimate a mauled Edinburgh (apparently, without Dartford), rural London, pounced Slough. Close proximity to Tufnell experts attack, give tetanus, injection rare, toddler mental.

27 Eastwood babes per square. “Per squared”, corrected larger lamb, bushy tailed country listen.

To the lunged explanation girl Muslims (but to everyone): skulking mentally ill fox townie did not budge some schadenfreude. Fox alliance, obviously, has little time greeting delusions and whiffed.

OUR MAIN HEADLINES AGAIN (againtown):

Twin towers unburn urban Koran.

Muslim-hunting ban is a hypocrisy patio.

Cousin? No, it isn't.

John and Terry Venables share awkward roller coaster.

20 NEWS-G - Episode Minus 1 - The Cow Before The Storm

The leave felled on yesterday violently as the yard was questioned by nine bleeding probes and an heart conclusion - not a heart attack...
London's Boris demanded 'a fast and last manslaughter.'
A spokesperson states: “Police police police” as Nazi-Church-Storm-Farmers go fresh over anti-capitalist milk riot... the soft violent squats Blitzkrieg the milk and France's Muslim Cop milks G20 Plans in Cairo...
Night prices spread Night Riots among Knights of The Round Londoninium... The last and fresh cop on the scene said:
“Johnson died a sick, sick Milk... I vomited out my lungs fast... then laughed.”
Later, mayhem trippers dragged “symbolic” wooden cart through piles of pelted Brighton brick... One bottle was arrested. Front Mob cowered from Manic Anarchist Cop as she erupted weeks after...
Used Maniacs today issued the following abuse:
“Polite police please police pleasingly... Period.”

World rage spread about some violent concerned “dream-it-out” panic. Mr. Facebook, the communication demand, claimed the young interference was the result of poor quality of quality, heavy quality text and poor quality government.
Mooicide Police are queuing up because doom-deaths are growing up by the hundreds... and they can just about walk.
Here's the weather:
The country's biggest snarled winter for travellers is simple... The main country conservatives have obtained figures in which they say: 'Britain has only eight days left... with light showers. Back to you, Dick'ring.

Thanks Flaps... Our Main Headlines again:

G20 heart World Cow Government x-x.

G20 panics at front milk Cop.

Facebook Police go maniac on Anarchist's Lung.

Soft, poor States hospitalised sick on the milk.

Johnson trips the night Londoninium.

Stay tuned for Danny Dyer Investigates: Illegal Albatross Fighting In Occupied Gaza.

Video: performance of Battlecry of the Sexes

Video: performance of 'Between The Gaps'

This was filmed at Ryan's Bar, Stoke Newington, London on 13/06/2010.

Poem: Trust In Stan (an ode to estate agents)

Note: this was written specifically for performance. You can see me performing it here:



Hi there
I'm Stan from Stan, Stan and Stan Estates
How are you?
Good good, I'm glad
Glorious day, glorious day
Except for the massive storm obviously
Look at my hair!
It's a kind of gel
It's all crinkly and messed up
It's supposed to look casual
But I spend five hours every morning
Making it look just right
Look at my tie!
Pure penguin skin, I'm assured
Spanking suit and sparkling shoes from Topman

Look at my shiny teeth
And concentrate on my voice
My confident, fast-talking, I-know-my-business voice
Look at my face
Look at my face
I love my job, you're my new best friend
I am a human being
And I'm certainly not doing this for the money

Anyway, this is a great area, great area
That wasn't a gunshot you heard it was a dog bang-barking
This is the building
Crumbling to the ground some say
Near dilapidated some say
Responsible for the death of five elderly charity workers some say
But no, no no
It's not old
It's archaic, from a lost era
Before all your modern fancy “health and safety regulations” came to the fore
Don't look at the front garden
Ignore the severed leg, dead cats and used needles

Concentrate on my face
Look at my face
Look at my face

Let's go in
This is the hallway
No time to look at it properly
What's that?
Smells like a three week-old corpse that's been drowned in its own piss?
Oh, I love your sense of humour
Let's go upstairs
No wheelchair access
But then again
It's their fault for pricing themselves out of the market
By getting all crippled up

Ignore what I say
Just concentrate on my tone
Look at my face
Look at my face
Look at my face
LOOK AT MY FACE

Right now, this is the flat
It's very comfortable and compact
This room is a bedroom slash kitchen slash bathroom
All mods cons
Walls, ceiling, everything
That's not mould, it's just got a very lived in look
Don't look at the mould!

Look at my face
Look at my face
Look at my face
Look at my face

There's no toilet as yet
But there is a very deep sink in the kitchen
And you look like the kind of practical person who will make do
You like animals, right?
Great, great
Then you won't mind the incredibly cute
Special breed of rat-looking mice we installed just for you

Oh look, there's ones now!

Look at my face
Look at my face

What was that?
Oh it's only nine hundred pounds a month
Very cheap for this area
And think about it this way:
It's only a month's wages for you isn't it?


Look at my face
Look at my face

So that's two months rent deposit
And one month rent in advance
And the contract handling fee
Is a hundred pounds
Because, despite what I said earlier
I am in fact a slick, heartless cunt
Haha! I'm joking, obviously.

So are we agreed on the price?
It's not like you have a choice, is it?
Fantastic.
Sign here.
Brilliant.
Pleasure doing business with you.
Are you getting the bus home?
Well, good luck, I'll probably pass you in my Merc
Which you've helped pay for.

Have a great day.

Poem: Joke Rape World

Note: This was published by Erotic Review. You can see it here: http://magazine.eroticreviewmagazine.com/magazine/104/17/

The comedian’s onstage
And he’s pissed at the poncey liberal middle classes
So far up their own arses
He wants to explode their politeness
Test their preconceptions
Which he can seize, rebuild and freeze
And then hold up them high
As an example of comedy’s progression
He’s had several Bill Hicks sessions
He knows the score
Thinks comics who talk about nothing are a bore
So he decides to be “dark”
He decides to be “edgy”
And anyone who doesn’t laugh
They’re just too cagey

So rape joke after rape joke
Shoots out of his mouth
And it’s all cool
He can handle the audience’s “ooohhh”s
Because if you’re offended
He’ll refuse to mend it
He’s being ironic, y’see
And doesn’t really mean it

So for a few minutes that room becomes Joke Rape World
While downstairs in the pub a girl
Goes to the toilet, her staggering ever so slight
She’s had one too many, but that’s alright
It’s Saturday night
And after a hard week’s work
She deserves to relax
But as she turns her back
Her date gets out his wrap
And pours the powdered white fellas
Into her Stella

And the following morning, naked, she wakes alone
Although she swears somebody walked her home
Her heads thumping
Stomach’s churning
Usual Sunday hangover burning
But then
She feels a sting in between her thighs
Reaches down, lightly touching the pain
Examines her fingertips, and her eyes strain
At the dark, drying blood
And she feels the red rising of silent shame
And because she can’t remember
She thinks she’s to blame

The comedian continues
Leading the audience through the world of sarcasm he’s built
And after every laugh
They have a tiny collective spasm of guilt
But there’s no looking inward as to why
Waving that social conscience goodbye
Because the chances are good the comedian doesn’t hate women
Just loves the superiority of the stage
And the glow of winning
The rape jokes are just short cuts
To an easy reaction
And there’s no harm
As long as he’s funny
And his timing’s tight…

… Right?

But just because he’s not a misogynist
Doesn’t mean he can’t preach it
And just because he’s attempting rebellion
Doesn’t mean he can’t teach the shit
We’ve been fed all our lives
Irony without a reason
Is just an empty excuse for teasing
And it takes the piss
Because when that comedian leaves the mic
Joke Rape World still exists
It insists on slicing our ears
To the sound of billions of women
Hammering at every wall of all the years
And rape just becomes something
That happens on our TVs
And as the audience leaves
No one sees
The guy leading the paralytic girl
Towards the humming taxi

Rape jokes just keep rape in its silent cage
And irony puts a stitched smile on the victim’s face
It’s all about emphasis and perspective
About where all your comedic rage is directed
And this is where the problem gets dissected
Because there are some funny aspects of this harsh subject
Tearing into a system that gives longer sentences to weed dealers
Telling us a girls deserve it just because they’re too easy
Being drunk, wearing short skirts
They’re asking to be hurt
All these things can be the aim of satire
A torch to set fire to unthinking views
And this our cue to put a stop to it
Because if irony’s a comedian’s only excuse
It just doesn’t fucking cut it

Poem: Lingers

On coffee smudged
and tobacco stained fingers
the smell of you lingers.

The catchy ad jingle of
your drunken laugh being helped
up the stairs by an empty echo.

Glitter sparkled
pink scarf crumpled carpet.
Two empty plates and

abandoned toast crumbs.
Two crimson stained wine glasses
and snowywhite powder

Speckled table.
Messed bed.
Punk posters.

Memories of moans
bounce the walls.
Tightening fingerprints

tattoo skin.
The stroke
and the sweat

and the movement
and the empty head
and the sigh.

Now bloodless
empty
gone.

Everything about you
lingers.

Poem: Gluing Together Burnt Toast Crumbs For A New World

Ladies and gentlemen!
Roll up roll up!
The world as we know it is
ending
crashing
crumbling
crumpling
bleeding
like a car wreck engineered by retarded geniuses.

Ladies and gentlemen!
Welcome to the UK!
The spanking, sparkling
uber-liberal, CCTV-ridden,
apathetic, workaholic,
racist, immigrant-dependent,
calm, ordered, collectively psychopathological
state of now!

Ladies and gentlemen!
I implore you!
Observe your streets! Observe the rot and decay of your streets!

Over there -
A minor celebrity, twice forgotten
crouching in a skip
mobile aloft
happy slapping herself through strings of ragged, twisted blonde hair
whilst chewing exotic animal genitals for scraps of attention!

And witness, witness if you will!
The obese family
being forcefully and rectally examed by fitness and anti-fat fascists
with Golden Arches
that have been melted and reconsituted endoscopes
The crowd gather round and cackle, laugh, guffaw
at the poor family who don't the floating empty time
to luxurise their eating, reading and thinking habits!
And the obese siblings and parents cry, cry, cry
their tears of molten toffee!

And gander, gander, yonder!
Genetically modified gibbons selling slathering human gimps
from the back of a truck.
And every time one of the gimps vainly struggles
to rid itself of its shackling chains
the guard gibbon grabs a binlid
and, with suprising precision ferocity,
smashes the poor leatherbound creature over the face,
who in turn, cowers into a ball, muffling foetal shrieks and weeps.
The police station barricades slowly split
as the pus-dripping undead
(their wounds still fresh from gunshots and truncheon batterings,
their blank eyes maced puffy)
swagger, moan and hammer against the doors.
Finally, they break through
and, mindlessly staggering, disappear into the building.
Gunshots
endless violent plumes of black smoke
scatterings
shrieks
screams
gurgles
skin tears
limb hack
split heads
bloody, scampered footprints
and, finally, the twitching of soaked socks
and dull black shoes
are all assumed to have happened.

Pre-robbed televisions stacked showing
the same image folded over and over -
duct tape being ripped off the singer/songwriter's boyish, fleshy lips
as he begs the television screens through tears for his release
from the vigilante mob of studded leather punks who hold
shards of shattered Crass records to his tight, pulsing throat.

The Reverend grips a petrol-dipped crucifix.
In one quick match stroke, the cross is aflame
and spinning towards the television screens...

Cut to:

Freeze frame on the crucifix's impact, shattered glass fingernails hang still in the air. The Reverend's face complete red rage.

Professional, fashionable, mastabatory opinions primed to spray forth. The Presenter turns to his three faceless guests in the claustrophobically minimal studio.

PRESENTER: So, Francesca, your thoughts?

FRANCESCA: This is clearly a metaphor for religion's insidious power. Look at the ferocity with which he throws the crucifix – it perfectly reflects the aggression of religion as it eclipses people's natural rationality -

TIM (Cutting in): - Francesca, I have to disagree with you. The fact the crucifix is burning is clearly important. The burning crucifix, of course, is a classic symbol of the Ku Klux Klan and therefore The Reverend is in fact making a statement about the racism that is endemic in our society and in Christianity. Jesus' somewhat magical transformation into a white man, for example -

PRESENTER: Jane, what do you think?

JANE: Well, I think The Reverend is basically -

PRESENTER: Well, that's great. We're all agreed?

FRANCESCA: We agree in some aspects, but not in others.

PRESENTER: Fantastic stuff. Good night!

Fade out

Cue abrasive, self-aggrandising theme tune.

Cut to black.

Over the black...

Right wing tabloids shriek:

THE END IS NIGH DUE TO UNEMPLOYABLE PREGNANT TEENAGE LESBIANS WEARING SHOES MADE SOLELY OUT OF ORGANIC YOGHURT

Left wing tabloids shriek:

THE END IS NIGH DUE TO THE RIGHT WING TABLOIDS SHRIEKING ABOUT THE END BEING NIGH DUE TO UNEMPLOYABLE PREGNANT TEENAGE LESBIANS WEARING SHOES MADE SOLELY OUT OF ORGANIC YOGHURT

The government shrieks:

THE END IS DEFINITELY NOT NIGH, WE HAVE A PLAN IN PLACE, IT'S ALL BEING SORTED OUT: THE PREGNANT TEENAGE LESBIANS WEARING SHOES MADE SOLELY OUT OF ORGANIC YOGHURT ARE BEING REPLACED BY TALL GOODLOOKING WHITE MEN WITH JOBS SO KEEP VOTING, PAYING TAXES, SHUT UP AND STOP WORRYING YOU GORMLESS GAGGLE OF CLUELESS CRETINS

History, culture, politics
(known in professional circles as hiscultics)
all reaching their epochs...
Burn the clocks and burn the books for fire.
Every pocket slowly repeating itself
Molding, folding, refolding
Holding on to nothing
but a fuzzy, static ejaculation of futile gestures and
empty shimmers.

There's anger in retention!
Opposing thesis and anithesis
creating tension
unaware they are, in fact,
trapped in the same wheel of Being
and they completely depend on each other's rage
for their subjective ideas of Progress
but the wheel is slowly rusting
but somehow spinning faster and faster.
The sparks are flying,
the doors have split off,
the steering wheel's melted,
the engine's exploded,
each seat is aflame,
The Driver's bailed,
the passengers clasp their hands together
and scream muffled mutterings to the sky.
No one above answers the call

but below, plates shifting, creak, rub...

The streets break.
Slowly first.
Cracks appear.
Dogs' heads crane
feeling the soft burblings underneath.
The burblings become rumbles.
Doors shake.
Windows shiver and collapse.
The cracks get wider and wider and wider and wider
as the streets split with the angriest grin
as if ripped apart by the maddest hands in the world.
People try to run
but everyone fails, falls
eventually tumbling in
some crying
some silently accepting
the anti-nothing swallowing everyone and everything.

When everything is gone
the rumbling subsides.

And then there is quiet.

For hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, maybe even centuries...
there's no one around to tell, and the clocks have been burnt.

Then, one bright afternoon,
a hand reaches up over the edge.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
A million, a billion hands hauling bodies up to the surface.
Dirty, thirsty, tattered, dripping with cold lava:
the people rise.

The skies, like a fever breaking,
swell, then spit, then drip, then scatter, then torrent
cool rain over the people
washing their skins of recent non-history.
Newborn fresh eyes seeing a kalaeidescope
of new times, new dimensions, new splits in the road.

Fractured, battered,

we step forward regardless
into the inevitable, unstopped future.

Poem: Seven Years (For R.B)

It’d been seven years
Seven fucking years
And between when you left and came back
There’d been flirtations with meeting up
Quick snatched chats on MSN
But I thought, nah, this is the end
Another friendship gone
Time to move on
Because anything rooted in rootless nostalgia
Is doomed from the start
All sugar and violins
With no muscle or heart
And I remember the afternoon of your depart
Your eyes
Glued to the train window
Shot through
With a sad bulging and blue
And I imagine
The ticket back to the States
Wet from sweat in your hand
And we all waved
Stood there, waved and waved
The painful awkwardness saved
By your train pulling away
With an ugly metallic creek

Over the seven years
Seven fucking years
I get little trickles of shifts in your life
Through friends and friends of friends
You’ve got a long term boyfriend
Then a fiancée
Then you’re pregnant
Then you’re married
The baby’s called Liam
(And I'm slightly annoyed he isn't called Captain)

These all arrive as tiny muffled bombs
That I defuse in the margins of my brain
Because I've got nothing but disdain
For that kind of way
All paid up
Cuddy and settled
Tagged with sickening pet names
Like “monkey” and “petal”
And just the words “coffee morning”
Dissolve my mettle
Make me want to take a shitload of pills
And have me running, raving, screaming for the hills
A shell devoid of thrills
That's exactly what they want

You, blunted at the edges
Viewing existence as tiny steps
An insistence on living life like a pet
Kept in line
Like stopped clocks kidded into thinking
They’re still keeping time
Because I hear you’re serving coffee at Costa
And I think it’ll cost ya
Your whole future
And I’ve got images of you serving lattes to dickheads
With a sweaty forehead
And a forced smile
And I think you’re worth more
Than a billion how are yous
Would you like anything elses
And thankyous

But I’m still struggling for independence
Still trying to fit the pieces together
Still a bit naïve
Still trying to make sense
Still dressing like a teenager
Still talking like Peter Pan just tripped over Chomsky
But the rent's piling on
And HSBC still have me by the balls
Still too often making that pathetic phone call:
“Alright Mum, can I borrow some money?”
And I have the nerve
To think of your life being gift wrapped
but who's the one who's really trapped?

Seven years
Seven fucking years
And I admit
I was originally tempted down to meet you
By the promise of free food and booze at Wagamama’s
Because our friend works there
And I’m fucking skint
But
I see you
And become a mess of garbled words
Waterlogged with clichés
Because you’ve got that same bounce
Same glow
Same shine
And you hug me and it still feels like a billion pillows
But really though
As we chat I feel all the stitches I sowed undo
Because you talk about all the waiting you've had to do
That love for someone else sometimes holds you back
And I realise that a lack of compromise
Sometimes leaves you stranded, empty handed
On an island of your own making

I’m lucky enough not to have wait a single second
Lucky enough not to have reality really beckon
No babies, no marriage
No responsibility
Time to sit around and talk punk rock, veganism and anarchy
Life frozen
Posing for action
Hands out for the catching
Ratching it up
So still but so assured...
But that's time that most people can’t afford
I remember the cut of a cord
And think of my mum:
She was moored with two growing boys on her own
Maybe it’s not what she really wanted
But people get older and some things fall out of range
Their parameters change
Stupid real life gets in the way
Missed opportunities
Missed hopes
Missed dreams
Sit on the waiting pile
A mile from our concerns
Feeling the breath on the back of your neck from your boss
And sometimes it's best to just burn your losses

And I'm no a hippy
I'm not saying go with the flow
Camp in a field, rub some stones
And get rid of your negative energy
Or any of that shite
And I'm not saying some things aren't worth the fight
But just for a moment respect that
Sometimes free will is a luxury
And reflect on the fact that
Choices aren't always right
And just when you think you've got
Your shit down tight
The ceiling might just cave in
And with all your might
You've got to scramble out
To reach the daylight

Sitting still
Doing nothing but reading
Watching
And rambling
Is never a gamble
Never a risk
But putting your life on hold for someone that you love
Putting your life on the line for something you believe
To look at the explosion straight in the eye with a blackened face
That takes balls

She dusts her bleeding knees off after every fall
And still keeps going
With her, there's no “shouldn'ts” no “can'ts”
And she taught me what it really means
To take a chance.