There's Nothing of You Back There
There's Nothing of You Back There
Sometimes I’m reminded of how I saw the sky,
How my shoulders must’ve felt a little lighter,
Without just a jacket holding them together,
Without the wind to breathe it all away.
But when I’m tied to new walls in my sleep,
I hear those same words grasping at my neck.
That crawling silence, maybe I’ll always hear it,
Let it bleed into those moments as I walk home,
To fall over and over into what I can add to it,
To fall over and over into what I could’ve done,
To fall over and over into what I could’ve said,
To fall over and over into who I could’ve met.
“There’s nothing of you back there,
Nothing to look for,
Nothing to hold onto,
And nothing you can leave behind.”
Collages
I’d like to think we’re all collages
Made up of the bits and pieces others give us
You listen to the same music your parents did
You wear the same shoes your mates had
You wear the scarf your mum had
You breathe the way your aunt showed you to
You went and got the same haircut as your cousin
You still cook the same breakfast your dad did
You say the words that you were taught to say
You speak with the voice the world has given you
And that’s got to be what we’re lucky for
Their Blood
The same faces I once knew
Now in others on the street
Refected back through stained windows
Shining through their single sheet
Maybe they'll be in someone new
With another name
When they're pulled out of my chest
And wrung out of each vein
A Million More Reasons
What was present
Has now passed
What was of the mirror
Is now just shattered glass
In the eyes of reason
They’re only little pieces to lose
Between the floorboards
The Architect didn’t choose
So send it all off
Burn it all away
Remember how they spoke
Of moving on for another day
So you might as well get too close to the sun
Write them a million more reasons to stay
Go and strip back the room
Until the numb walls lay
Cutouts
Most of the time I don’t feel a thing
Torn out of my own paper spine
Resting back on some false cutout
Pulled towards the light of the flame
And it’ll fold down eventually
Creased along the long line of my sky
The same I thought I’d seen lit up
The same one I thought I’d seen burned away
With the lighter in your hands and eyes
Portrait Of The Sea (excerpt)
Remembered only by my scattered phrase and missing form,
No longer in person, but living on a tape.
So use your words as a canvas,
And speak louder over those with blind eyes
Go and paint the sea into your life,
Its endlessness,
Like some obscure portrait,
Only to disappear completely,
Left to crack and fold, exposed to the eternal spray.
Your Past
I remember being sat at the end of the gallery looking at the glowing portrait in the corner. Its eyes had reminded me of my mother, warm, and unmistakably so.
‘Have you ever forgotten your past?’
I felt something tear down my back, realising I had heard these words from someone before. I wanted to ask her how she knew, but she read that thought, too.
‘I just observe. I don't make a choice to get out of bed in the morning. I'm laid over canvas.’
One day, I'll forget it ever spoke: maybe that's what it knew for sure.
Modern Creativity
I often see a world that crushes creativity and likes to pull apart the vulnerability that comes with it.
I believe that creating something purely for yourself will always be the truest form of self-expression and is the real purpose of being an artist. Even if you do a rubbish scribbled-out drawing of a dog, it still represents the thoughts and feelings you had at the time. It is not truly meant for anyone else. It does not prove a point or exist to fill a frame or a gap. It is not just ‘content’. But today, I think that the art and creativity we see has been forcefully distilled into it. It is always served up to us by an algorithm, an Instagram feed, a YouTube page. Nothing has the same worth, there’s only popular or unpopular art. Only safe or challenging. One image has a thousand likes and another has none. By choosing to accept that our art and its emotion is like this, just an item on a conveyor belt amongst billions of others, we will never see the breadth of differences we have as people.
So everything is unique, and everything is vulnerable, so we shouldn’t push it into something it shouldn’t be.
Glass Eyes
I looked in the mirror today
Saw the reflection of everything
I am, I was, shunned behind light
But I’m torn from it, torn from framed guide,
So push us both back into the glass,
And shape skin around its cracks.
There it is again. That hum. Behind me, through my walls. It’s not the radiator. It’s not a streetlight. It’s only been here for a week, but it’s always there. Always underneath everything else. Always at the back of my mind. Always pushing into my skull. A reminder of the stuff I’ve done and the stuff I haven’t. Always underneath everything else. Out of my control.
I took a sharp and cold breath in as I stepped into the hallway to console what was left of me now, and I saw my thin and pasty face reflect back as I walked past the mirror centrepiece. I watched a car drive past the window, flickering in the single-pane glass. Could I really be alone with this now?
Threads
Have I always been spun into your cotton head?
Some five words against our pulse
Not the clothes that tie my bones together, no,
But the phrase that repeats nothing said
"Don’t leave yourself a wreck,
And you’ll
fall
down
never"
So thin out my own thread
For you’ll be the only one to recollect
Commute
I felt my skull rattle as I lent all of my body into the side of the train once more. There was still that unshakeable pit deep inside my chest the closer I got to the station. Never-mind the hours of preparation I had done or blissfully running it through my head - I knew I was out of control this time. No matter what I would say, how I said it, no matter what I would do, or how I did it would end up swaying the members of the board into my hands. ‘I am only a junior’, I so ignorantly reaffirmed myself. ‘They don't care for your sugar coated demeanor or risky financial ideas.’ ‘It will mean nothing.’ ‘You mean nothing.’ God, I'm such a nihilist.
The mile of street that paved the way to my office seemed as though it only served to lure and trap commuters like myself and the unemployed there. Job adverts, posters, street signs, shop windows and bus timetables always took you patriotically up, and further up the road. Many of them were for the same firm, my firm, too. ‘Build the future of tomorrow today!’. I'd be jealous of whoever was reformed enough to have joy to work sparked inside because of those words. Maybe working a 9-to-5 was never much of a positive life outlook.
Dead Flag Blues
Fire embers, floating in the darkness.
The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
A middle-aged man stands on the side of a road, only a silhouette, stuck in stupor watching a car wreckage burn.
A body of a young man, lying headfirst in a shallow river. The roaring fire lights up the water.
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
A strong wind rushes through the trees, blowing the embers away from the fire.
And a dark wind blows
Buildings on the street, raided, abandoned and in ruin.
The government is corrupt
The middle-aged man turns on a sink, washing blood and dirt out of his hands.
He empties a tube of prescription medicine into his hands, swallowing most of it aggressively, leaving the empty bottle and the rest in the sink.
And we're on so many drugs
He walks to his bedroom, looking out at the orange light shining through the veil curtains.
With the radio on and the curtains drawn
A ruined lighter rests in his worn jean pockets. His hand, resting at his side, twitches.
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
The exhaust of an old car starts, spluttering out smoke.
And the machine is bleeding to death
Blood drips from the fingers of the man as he switches the lighter on.