Wild Bunch

 

I bought you some flowers

They were incredibly cheap

However cheap you think they might have been

Think deeper

These were cheaper

There were more expensive bunches

I mean, it would have been basically impossible

For that not to be the case

But they kind of sucked

All tasteful and kind of polite

Creams and pinks and seven different shades of white

These, the ones I got, are not refined

They are colourful and mad

If they could talk they would chatter and laugh

They are pretty

They are daft

The best ones are the ones that look kind of blueish

Lilies? 

Something like that. Maybe irises?

So vibrant a violet

So violent a hue

With weird long lips and rapscallion tongues

Like ragged holes through which

A Summer sky comes

There’s red ones and I’m pretty sure these

Are roses. They’re

Famous and romantic, 

But they wear it lightly

Tilting their vermillion heads at rakish angles

As if to say, yeah

There’s more to romance than flowers and candles

And there are some little yellow guys too

Popping all over

Weird little optimists

Babbling around the others

Full of love, little explosions of bliss

So very, very cheap, this glorious bouquet

I picked them up and put them back 

And looked at them

And picked them up

And I did that for a bit

And then I committed

And now they’re yours

And I know that you’ll just think they’re great

You’ll put them in sunshine

And you’ll know their names

And though they cost less than a Crunchie

You’ll love them ‘til their wilted bunches

Say a sad goodbye

Which will be in about three days time

And then I’ll find something else small

And weird

To make you happy for a while

I know no present ever lasts

So I’ll just keep on doing this

For as long as it makes you smile

Wonky

 

There’s a missing beat, a pause, a gap

A silent, shapeless crack in space

In the corner of my eye, in mirrors,

In the echo when I hear my name

A version of myself, if I fit better

Into this world, if I was brave

It looks like places I don’t go, 

And it sounds like all the words I never say

Around me, people move like dancers

Like they feel the currents of the air

Trailing beauty like streams of butterflies

While I move, awkward, 

Spilled ink staggering across the floor

They speak in song, 

In keys my fractured voice can’t reach

I stumble. My words come out in

Random jumbles

I’ve put my jumper back to front

My shoes on the wrong feet

But you

You tilt your head and see me different

Hear my words and catch the tune

Deconstruct the shape and story

Of a world that gets me wrong

You see the fragments knocked away

By hurt and pain and days like these

You clear the dust and shattered stone 

And see the sculpture it reveals

You call my broken phrases “poems”

Say the tangle of my thoughts, 

Scrawled like spiders, gets there faster 

Than the straight lines they all draw

You call my awkward dancing beautiful

In truth I’m usually not trying to dance

I’ve mostly tripped and I’m trying to style it out

But I’ll take it, yeah. It’s dancing. Thanks

And I know that I’m not done being wonky

I’ll fall down and I’ll get it wrong

But it’s OK to be this kind of mess

‘Cause it’s through your lens and 

In your world

That I belong

Not My Tempo

 

And they sing endless songs about freedom, 

And love

And you’ve listened for years

And you’re used to their drum

But it hasn’t felt right for a while

They’ve got rules

On who can be free

And who can love who

And you want to stand up

And you want to defy them

But there’s thousands of them

And they’ve got perfect timing

Their fingerclicks set irresistable rhythm

And your arm and your hand and your fingers are twitching

And the pulse is bewitching

It would be so damn easy, to let go, to join in

And you want to kick back

You want to click

Against the beat but 

You’re not

Sure you could hit it

Not against this ticking

This metronome precision

To not click at all, that would be something

A act of defiance

From a position of silence

But the stacatto snap of a hundred fingers clicking

Sets a ticking in your heart

That’s so. Hard. To. Resist

And who would even blame you

Everyone would understand

They’d know that these things are out of your hands

You can blame the chorus of

A thousand other people’s voices

You could claim you never really had a choice

But you can’t let it go

You know that a chord is made up of 

Individual notes

That by taking an action you’re casting a vote

So you open your mouth and you say 

“No”

You say, 

“This love that you’re scared of,

I give it my blessing

This thing that the rest of you say is forbidden

This joy that your rituals say should stay hidden

“This offbeat notion that doesn’t keep tempo

With your Sunday School songs

I expose

It’s not me that’s out of time

It’s your heart that’s beat is wrong

“You’ll call me a heretic, say I’m out of step

But this is my rhythm and 

I’ll click how I like

You’ll call me a sinner, well

This is my confession

My way is not your way

It’s better.”

Violent Baudrillard

 

We draw our nails across the sky

And scratch the blue away

A jagged line, a hole in space and time

A fissure in the surface of this world

This false world, I should say

If you look close you’ll see the folds

And creases in the map

That lay on top of streets and buildings

Passing for the real 

So tightly is it wrapped

But it, like paper, comes away

We tear and rub and work it loose

There’s truth behind this thin facade

We’ll see, once it’s come apart

We will not let ourselves be fooled

All around, like paint on glass

People move and sing and laugh

But they will see the truth revealed

We’ll scrabble, strip and scrape and peel

Their joy is no more than a photograph

We score away the shallows

Of this unconvincing simulacrum

Rub right through this thin veneer

Religion, romance, music, power

We tear apart this weak illusion

And now, at last, the work is done

No longers will the shallows of this world deceive

The surface is all scored away

We will see our real faces

Reflected in the mirror of the deep

And there, beyond it all…

Is nothing

An emptiness. A silent void

A cold dead blast of empty sky

An endless ocean of white noise

The surface we have ripped apart

Had been, it seems,

Sincere

Not truth, exactly, not “the answer”

Often contradictory and random

But in the end, the closest thing we had to something real

Cobweb thin, those tiny brushstrokes

Painted in the world, each day

A fragile pact, a shared illusion

Truth though a million scattered visions

And we 

Unconvinced by what we saw

So clever in our quest for something more

We had scratched it all away

The Tricky Kid Whose Rhythm was Arithmetic

 

Jason was into maths and music

And music that sounded like maths

And maths that moved like music

And it gave him an emotion

Like a sort of

Slow explosion

Those beeps and pulses and angular noises

Turquoise waves inside his chest

Endorphins fired by electronic voices

A nameless delight at this aural precision

This choral set of complicated decisions

He’d tilt his head at a geometric angle

To catch the wonder of the frequencies

Time signatures describing patterns in the air

Interweaving harmonies

In fibonacci sequences

He had no friends

Well. That’s not quite true

He had people whom he’d play the music to

And they listened because they liked our Jason

Even if they were intimidated by

the music he would play them

And they would have said, “Yeah,

Jason, he’s our mate.”

But it wasn’t a sentiment

The man of maths could reciprocate

To him they were subjects to be exposed

Living spreadsheets to be filled with notes

On his aural adventures in a complex equation

He’d give them questionnaires

About the music he’d just played them

With its algorithmic beats and 

Quadrilateral melodies

He'd drum his bony fingers on his perfectly

Aligned knees in complicated rhythm

A cacophony to all but him

He heard structure deep within

And didn’t care, when the others made their excuses

And left him

His eyes were fixed on things more pure

Sonic architecture, shrinking in infinite regression

Jason smiles, warm at the beauty of it all