in all the wrong places

insanity is in all the wrong parts of the world,
and the crash of a wave,
is not a lone sound,
but a thousand million simultaneous bubbles
going pop.

mental breakdown is rife.
but don't blame madness
- it's the world that's got the jive.
sociopaths run our unelected empires,
gambling labour hours and life insurance
in a rigged virtual market,
and half the world's greatest poets will have died illiterate,
never having had the chance
to set one word of ink against another.

why then shouldn't we cry at the skies?

oh insanity, how could you have been so misunderstood?
it is not always a breakdown,
but often a breakthrough
- a blitz of searing honesty!
not a glitch
to be put down
with sertraline
and a day's (unpaid) leave,
but a moment of clarity.
anything but drip-dry-compliance.

insanity is relative divergence.
it is escape,
it is survival,
it is digestion,
it is novelty,
it is love,
it is imagination,
it is the great quirk in the sky,
it is exploding mould,
the cracking of dirt,
the messy catharsis of desperate expression,
loose, mania,
a force, needing to be spun,

insanity can be an attempt at freedom.
insanity has been lost.
insanity is in all the wrong places.

message to my sensitive sardine

i'm typing too loudly.
the tap is running.
i piss at 3am.

how can i react to that?
what is it that you give these sort of people?
what do you say to that?

well, sucks to be you mate;
there's an old people's home across the street;
oh no there isn't, we're on the bethnal green high street.

fuck you, 

you fucking fish

untitled pigeon poem

sad little pigeon
sad little deformed pigeon
sad little footless stump
in your little grey overcoat
hobbling aimlessly
pecking at dirt.

sad little wart
that headbutts the ground
forever chased
by giant children
who do not know your stupid pain.

in the rain
the world dribbles on you
from a broken throat
comes a sad, little, melancholy coo.

sad little threadbare wings
thick with soot
and city death.

you common little dreg
hopping on one leg.

coming into focus

i remember
somewhere in between dreaming and awake
somewhere between death and life
half-empty and hung-over
small and swollen
moving with tides of nylon and polyester
groping at important blurs
and bulges that smelled of home sweet home
unable to command my extremities

somewhere between the conscious and the void
there was a kind of emerging colour
...
after that it's all a bit grey.

places i have slept

under bridges on frozen streams,
in smuggler's caves looking out over the atlantic,
in abandoned lots 2 to a sleeping bag to combat the cold,
in derelict asylums,
in squatted hotels,
naked on hospital roofs,
the countless unfinished houses and construction sites,
in fields under trees with bags hung high to stop the mice from nibbling,
in lay-by motorways ditches,
in train carriage cubicles,
in the rubble of dumpsters,
in leaking sheds next to burning bins to keep warm,
in hangars under cardboard duvets,
in parked cars that had the window down,
in shop doorways that left the shutters up,
under lorries to keep out of the rain,
in circus tents wrapped in curtains,
in abandoned tram depots,
in a tiny igloo that someone had built in the amsterdam frost,
in parks and in bushes,
by hotel vents for warmth,
on the incomparably uncomfortable metal grills of bus depot and train station benches,
broken into lofts,
children's playground structures,
the heads of wooden dragons or the hulls of colourful pirate ships,
the innumerable floors and beds of friends and strangers,
grassy hilltops and sandy beaches,
under suspension bridges,
in hidden basements as quiet as can be - save disturb the family that owns it,
in the mosquito ridden glades,
in trolleys,
in californian weed factories,
in the cockpit of an alexanderplatz crane,
in the room saturated with cat piss,
in the room full of fossilising dog shit,
in the unfathomable pitch black catacombs of derelict friedrichshain,
on the steps of the great post office museum of washington,
in seminars,
in coitus,
in clubs
and in cells.

these are places that i have slept...

mug shot screen shot

first day at university

looking around the class, i gaze into the faces of the local population. the flora and fauna - the beasts and the vegetation. the trout with the sunken face. a dog with hanging chops. a porker who looks like a baby who's had a hose stuck up its ass and been inflated like an exploded uncooked sausage. a girl with huge, red, frizzy hair like an imposing clown. a scruffy lion with a chestnut mane and claws to match. geeky chinchillas twitching and hiding behind fringes of split ends. a gaggle of geese quacking incessantly into their digital talismans. middle class house cats stroking themselves and playing with their hair. a whole row of friendly waddling penguins wearing an array of obsidian niqābs like black bowling pins. pale equine faces, long with boredom. a beady-eyed little stoat fidgeting with his stationery. a straight up potato - boiled. a pig with a bubbling blow-torch face. an attempt at a bird of paradise, a few peacock impressions. a few rats. there are always a few rats. there are rats everywhere. I think i may be a rat.