Lament This!

If you don’t feed them

and they can’t fuck you

Then where in the world do you belong?

You don’t belong in the locker room (Your eye rolls don’t provide the camaraderie that has become the norm)

You challenge, demand and don’t nurture

Fucking awkward bitch

Man hating slut

Lesbian cunt

Progenitor of insubordination (Proof of intelligent life, you see?)

You don’t have the ‘pool player’ hair, don’t wear polo shirts, and don’t apologise

The only reason you back down is for the job retention, there is no power there for them, they know that you know that they know it (if I know it, you know it)

There are no words, actions or influence they can wield to carve you into a fit

No matter how they try they can’t clean away your hard edges (“You win” spat and showered over you, ingrained in particles of saliva)

I won, a fight I didn’t join, but was pulled into by oestrogen and a millennia of existence.

I won, allowed a grudging respect of a dictator before he signals the hangman to kick the stool away

I won, this round, without having to even get a round in

Yes. I won, a battle that began with destruction and early sexualisation

I won, entered into the championship of self loathing, of self destruction, of breaking over the wheel.

If tolerance is the trophy and hands off is the tag line, where is the grand prize? Where is the elite? Where is the line of contestants waiting to (not prove their worth) but prove they’re worthy

Let me take you (pt one, how to teach your child to avoid femicide)

Let me take you, my love, my small heart

I will walk you into this glass world

Where sight is distorted and you stumble, foal legs, tentatively

Let me tell you my love, my small, small heart

That your cunt is forever a bridle

Securing avoidance, submission and admission

Under this hand, this great hand

My beautiful one

I will supply you with the armour

The escape plan, this bullet proof vest

Underwired, holstered and only for the purposes of display

Let me show you my love, my small, small heart

This well-trodden path that our footsteps follow

Chasing the aesthetic, your mind divided in a flinch

Let me whisper these words my love, my small, small heart

Of torn minds, broken bones and secrets

Whispered upon hollowed skin

Under his hand, firmly in persona

Appeasing. I’m afraid, I’m sorry

That you may not recognised your binding, fixed position

Until he drowns his thirst in you, absorbing words into penetration

Wrapped in an ovarian chain of expectation

Let me paint for you my love, my small, small heart

I will keep you safe my little one

Firmly in persona, your mind undermined

One day you just stop

I spin the lie around me

Each mouthful filling a hole

For the moment at least

I wither you see

Parched, desolate and so far away

I wither you see

Looking out at the warmth and so far away

I suppose you could say, I represent

The fine grace of denial, irony and combat

We all know the faded sense of self

Is a cliché for a reason

I never swallowed it for a moment

I absorbed myself as a shoddy replacement

Each mouthful filling another hole

For the moment at least

For one more day, one foot in front of the other

Marching on

I wither you see

Looking out at life passing, high speed

If only I could reach it

Pick the pace up, its raining

You could say it is a cry for help

That sense of abject space while brushing an arm against yours

The only thing that connects us now

Is this sense of contentment in the certainty

That we are bound by the same threads

You, who never gave freely

A sense of purpose or a sense of care

The words and blows got to you before I did

Stripped out the care that fleshed you out

This wreck we made pulling that thread

Each moment snaps another

Your back, silently leaving

As my back howls against this…this thing

This small poison

Unsent and Spent

Dear Love

Have I ever told you that I hate the quiet? Some people fill it with busy minds, myself? I reflect, which is possibly the worst thing that someone can do when they have no pieces of them left that are useful.

Remember me? Am I ageing with grace I wonder, I feel like I have retreated further into myself, even now, on dark days, I cannot reach out a hand for someone to touch, inside, deeply caged, is the small soul, crying for some sort of connection, and yet… Here I am, unmoving, unyielding, unmasking.

I’m supposed to heal, you know?… You do the maths, you follow the instructions, you do the maths and the resolution should be to take the past, remove it, clean it, filter it, replace it with some brand new resignation to your experience… I am still waiting… Please, take my heart, take my chill away, I have whittled away to nothing, an empty space where thoughts began.

Dear Love, do you only get one shot? A gamble that never paid off, that pushes to the brink, saved only by intellect? All the things that you brought to the table

• Wanting to touch
• Wanting to be touched
• Wanting to feel the world caving in

You just strip them, leaving like that 3am fuck, semen spent and bruised, emptied or filled, in the open with only the hating thoughts of your own judgement.

I’m supposed to heal, the silent promise of this is what pulled inside out the mess I made, the pressure that broke, from violated to self violating, from self hate to self help, from prime to aged, the promise was implied… you improve, you work, you hope… Until hope dies, the work reaches a conclusion, the improvement ends… What then? Where are you my love, promised by implication, abandoning your commitments… Don’t you know I am no use to anyone now? I made plans, quietly built my truth, my mind fueled by this belief

My love, you left it too long, there is nothing left here to scavenge.

It’s not about anything other than control

The splinter sometimes works its way through

Just deep enough under the skin

To provoke the split

Between outside and in

A view through the haze

Of bare survival

Of dampening down every nerve

Still beating a rhythm

I scream

Impassive responds

With the like

There is nothing of note here

Other than duty, capability

Duty, duty, duty

Nothing builds

No structure

What will breach

And birth the waste

Screaming bloody, hoarse, loaded

Impassive responds

With the like

This is not what I do

There is no right time to pull through

No shoulder, no deeper, no grace

No space

For leading the way through the impassive

No anchoring line

To be is too much to ask

I hear the whispers

Baby I hear them speaking the truth

To fall for you

I’ve heard your words fall from a thousand lips

From faces no longer clear

You can’t have me

Pay no mind to my consent

Pay me no mind

There is nothing good left between

 

Glacier passion devoid

If it makes you less sad

Consider me a broken thing

Beyond emotional recovery

Still fit to ride

Past investment

Holding fast and whittling away

 

When the light falls

And I become a still, solitary shadow

Don’t turn it into something it’s not

You took all I have

Frozen cunt

Disengaged gag reflex

The place where I feel home

Allegiance to the static

You can take my mind on an adventure

Show it the world, let it sin and stain

Until it becomes static

A head on the shoulders

Of age

Pain

Fearful living and failure of oblivion

It is so easy to remember the sweet

Drowning of the mind

The quiet

Now the volume is a solitary mute

You changed

I did not change

You grew

I grew stunted

And looking into your eyes, I see the climate change

Further away from you

My bruises show

My

Allegiance to the static

How to save a life

Small music on my mind

Brings me to you

In a haze of humiliation and bemusement

I remember those drowning days

Of pained misery

Here I am, standing the way I am supposed to be, stilled and silent

Inert for that few moments of relief from the paralysed blood sluggishly driving me away from reality

My mind whispers, an explosion in the silence

I just really want to fucking feel anything but this absence of

(heart) (head) (hope) (ambition) (noise) (warmth) ( of

(heart) (head) (hope) (ambition) (noise) (warmth) ( of

(heart) (head) (hope) (ambition) (noise) (warmth) ( of

(heart) (head) (hope) (ambition) (noise) (warmth) ( of

My body is battle worn, scarred and no longer up to the challenge of a fluttered eyelash

Without the body, the walls are a thousand years in standing, a thousand ships launched and dashed like hope

This body is cleaved, deformed and moulded now to a fearsome sight

The mind is a bear chewing off its own leg

Absent and running on instinct

Give it all away

I lost count of the number at that cold, calculating age of eighteen

And some months

As another slightly shrivelled disappointment

Pumped the last of its vigour

Into the empty receptacle at three in the morning

Behind the NCCP car park near that little club with the sofas

Before comfort became a necessity in nightclubs

And excess was a necessary outlet for madness

That beautiful insanity that accompanies the absoluteness of that cold, calculating age of eighteen and some months

The number rose, the incessant pounding wearing the walls smooth

Worn, weary, a thousand years of subtle change, to evolve

Lackluster, listless passion dissipating into resignation

Once I was indignant, with the world at my feet and the bay at my mercy

Until I stopped counting the numbers