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.

Poem: Sloppy Smiles

I’m not smiling because I’m happy
I’m smiling because I’m wrecked
Because for a weekend I can heal
The bleeding head from all the pecks
From the pecking order
I can cut the cord
And breathe with my friends
We’re not gonna stop til the very end
Pub
Club
After party
House party
Couple of hours passing for sleep
Then back to the pub
I don’t even know if I’m enjoying it anymore
It’s my only chance
I’ve been talking to fucking idiots all week
And now I just wanna dance
To feel something pure
The blinking of computer screens lighting up my face
Is replaced by roaming strobes
And drum n bass
Sad or happy?
Who cares?
I’m ignoring all peripheral wears and tears
And I’ll get hammered quicker if my dinner is just this cheese melt
Fuck the recession making me tighten my belt

It’s elemental now
Just stinging sweat and this sticky floor
Just the lights, the beats, my feet and nothing more
Avoiding Monday kicking in my bedroom door
And shackling my ankles
And, bleeding and sore,
Dragging me to work
To avoid being poor

Flashes of the news talking about binge drinking
Thinking they’re linking it all together
… whatever…
They’e saying I’m to blame
Over the centuries, it’s always the same
Just another scapegoat
Older generations scared of the young
No idea about this pill tripping to my throat from the tip of my tounge
Unaware that the system they’ve created
Cremates my faith and makes me not care
I’ve got loads of surplus cash but so little time to spare
So how fucking dare they?
As I pour my heart out
Eight hours a day
Five days a week
Then say it’s wrong for me to get twatted
And feel strong for once
Those hypocritical cunts

Maybe I just want a taste of feeling
Maybe it’s a simulation of love I’m needing
Give my reality a tweak
Then maybe, just maybe
I can make it through next week

Poem: Bored

I’m bored
I’m bored of being bored
I’m bored of being bored of being bored
I’m bored with being so bored
That all I can do is sit and reflect on how bored I am
I’m bored of the left
I’m bored of the right
I’m bored of being told that the only options are fight or flight
When the option that most people choose
Is simply being bored
I’m bored of working
I’m bored of staring at the abyss of my overdraft
I’m bored of it being someone’s birthday every fucking weekend
And not having the money to buy drinks
And it makes me feel like a cunt when someone offers to buy me drinks
On their own birthday
I’m bored of seeing the same people at every party
And having nothing to say
I’m bored of getting needy to all the new people I meet
Because I’m so pathetically desperate for something new
(and cheap)
And friendship apparently costs nothing
So it fits into my budget perfectly
I’m getting bored of me and everyone I know
Casually shagging, then dating
Then going out with each other, breaking up
And then going back to casually shagging to start the whole sorry predictable joke
All over again
I’m bored of debating
I’m bored of staying up too late
Pissing about on the Facebook for no reason
Other than to avoid doing something productive
I’m bored of teenagers being loud on the bus
And I’m sorry but sometimes I don’t give a shit about the social and economic conditions
That cause you to behave in such a way
Sometimes I just want you to shut the fuck up and turn your fucking mobile phone off
I’m bored of your face
I’m bored of this street
This town
This city
This country
This continent
This world
I’m so bored I could kill myself
But it’s so much fucking effort
I’m bored of this poem
I’m bored of my voice
So
let’s
just
end
it
now.