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[i]

Everyone around me seems to fit,

they seem connected to something,

something I’m not.

[ii]

It’s like I have no past.

Nothing I have is real.

[iii]

This is where they took us from.

We used to sleep right here.

We had nothing except each other.

They took that from us.

[iv]

Your name was: considered disposable.

[Envoi]

We never needed your consent.

Yours or anyone’s

[Un objet trouvé]

Interpretation

Our father of suffering,

we thank you for your gifts of pointless pain;

we all of us are worthless.

We blame ourselves completely

for all the mess that you made and put us in.

We hate ourselves in your name:

bestow on us all your wondrous works of self-loathing,

fear of success and crippling insecurity of spirit.

We praise you for your poverty of kindness.

Raise up our crosses, Lord,

and nail us to them in your wise benevolence.

Accept the contrition of our pain and anguish

as proof of our devotion.

Maim us, torture us, kill us

as sacrifices you created to suffer in your name.

Send us down to Hell where we belong

with all your countless sinners,

while you survey the catastrophic heap of your creation

from your throne on high in highest Heaven

where only you can sit

in perfect isolation: a smug, conceited, condescending, patronising

version of love

which only you can know

or even understand.

Where to Now?

Let’s force the sinners into Heaven,

for happiness is overrated.

                                *

Fill every day with dumb distractions

which ride the falling waves of pointless.

                                *

No memory could match those losses

found in my unknown father’s grave.

                                *

Your table laid with food I could not eat:

I ended up both starved and poisoned.

                                *

Reality viewed upside-down was

no less confusing than my latest poem.

modull

the job is difficult and skilful

pull intellectual face (glasses)

intense demands of being handsome

stare into distance (point)

some days I have to leave my stubble

laugh at nothing (big jumpers)

it’s not a job that everyone can do

to look nonchalant in pants (not mine)

I have no words to speak but silence

legs on catwalk (Paris)/face in catalogue (Argos)

nameless

making sense of the impossible

the rage of years channelled into verse

defiantly fucked up

the magnificent catastrophe

the majestic disaster

on the glorious occasion, of this splendid defeat

and it all comes back

the drama

the horror

the cruelty

to live in the wrong skin

with the fury

and the anger

the compulsion and catastrophic thinking

defiant against the travesty of the past

the people

the evil people

and so today