Let Them Eat Chaos Read online

  Contents

  Let Them Eat Chaos

  A Note on the Author

  This poem was written to be read aloud

  Without contraries is no progression.

  – William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

  – John 4:18 (KJV)

  Let Them Eat Chaos

  Picture a vacuum

  An endless and unmoving blackness

  Peace

  Or the absence, at least

  of terror

  Now,

  in amongst all this space,

  see that speck of light in the furthest corner,

  gold as a pharaoh’s deathbox

  Follow that light with your tired eyes.

  It’s been a long day, I know, but look –

  watch as it flickers

  then roars into fullness

  Fills the whole frame.

  Blazing a fire you can’t bear the majesty of

  Here is our Sun!

  And look – see how the planets are dangled around it

  and held in their intricate dance?

  There is our Earth.

  Our

  Earth.

  Its blueness soothes the sharp burn in your eyes,

  its contours remind you of

  love.

  That soft roundness.

  The comfort of ocean and landmass.

  Picture the world.

  Older than she ever thought that she’d get.

  She looks at herself as she spins.

  Arms loaded with the trophies

  of her most successful child.

  The pylons and mines,

  the power-plants shimmer in her still, cool breath.

  Is that a smile

  playing across her lips?

  Or is it a tremor of dread?

  The sadness of mothers

  as they watch the fate of their children

  unfold.

  In now.

  In

  fast.

  Visions.

  The colours like drugs in your belly,

  churning.

  Your skin pulled loose as a pup’s,

  shaken

  then tightened.

  Now everything’s flashing.

  The waves are magnified as they roll up

  towards you

  And you’re tiny as sand,

  just a speck.

  As you approach the surface

  all of that

  peace

  that you felt is replaced with this

  furious

  neverknown

  passion.

  You’re feeling.

  The people. The life.

  Their faces are bright in your body.

  You’re feeling.

  You want to be close to them.

  Closer.

  These are your species,

  your kindred.

  Where have you landed?

  Uncurl yourself.

  Stand up and look at your limbs.

  All intact.

  Clothed in the fashion of the hour.

  This is a city.

  Let’s call her

  London.

  And these

  are the only

  times

  you have known.

  Is this what it’s come to?

  You think

  What am I to make

  of all this?

  At any given moment in the middle of a city

  there’s a million epiphanies occurring,

  in the blurring of the world beyond the curtain

  and the world within the person

  There’s a quivering.

  The litter in the alleyway is singing.

  People meet by chance, fall in love, drift apart again.

  Underage drinkers walk the park and watch the dark descend.

  The workers watch the clocks, fiddle with their Parker pens

  while the grandmothers haggle with the market men.

  Here, where the kids play and laugh until they fall apart,

  it’s kiss-chase and dancing

  till it’s mistakes and darkened rooms.

  Too fast too soon

  too slow too long

  We move around all day

  but can’t

  move

  on

  Is anybody else awake?

  Will it ever be day again?

  Overflowing plant pots.

  Fence-posts.

  Decorated door numbers.

  Motorbike beneath a tarp.

  Beaten-up Punto.

  Goalposts painted on that green garage door.

  There’s a rainbow on that wheelie bin.

  There’s stickers in that window.

  Smart flats. Rough flats.

  Can’t-get-enough-cat flats,

  you know, seventeen cat-flaps.

  Rich flats, broke flats.

  New flats.

  Old flats.

  Luxury bespoke flats.

  And this-has-got-to-be-a-joke flats.

  Pensioners, toddlers.

  Immigrants and Englishmen.

  Family with six kids.

  Single businesswoman.

  Everybody’s here trying to make or scrape a living.

  The fox freezes on the alley wall and stands still, sniffing.

  Bare branches sway in the front garden.

  The lionmouth door knocker flaps in the breeze.

  Streetlights glint on the Beware of the Dog sign.

  The beer cans and crisp packets dance with the dead leaves.

  It’s 4:18 a.m.

  At this very moment, on this very street,

  seven different people in seven different flats

  are wide awake.

  Can’t sleep.

  Of all these people in all these houses,

  only these seven are awake.

  They shiver in the middle of the night

  counting their sheepish mistakes.

  Is anybody else awake?

  Will it ever be day again?

  Is anybody else

  awake?

  Will it ever be day

  again?

  We start on the corner,

  with our backs against the wall

  next to the old phone box

  where the tramp leaves his bedding.

  The road runs ahead of you

  Houses and flats either side.

  Walk down it;

  go past the yard with the caravans,

  there behind the hedges.

  In the house opposite:

  black gate-post

  with the concrete frog squatting on top of it.

  Through the hallway,

  ancient wallpaper,

  nicotine gold.

  Up the stairs, rickety,

  loaded with history.

  Here in the top flat – flowers on the windowsill,

  little breeze

  fluttering the petals

  as they stare out at the city streets.

  Jemma is awake.

  What woke her?

  Open eyes.

  Streetlights float slowly through broken blinds.

  She watches as the light plays across the tattered carpet,

  and she holds herself tight in the room’s half-darkness.

  It’s cold.

  She wedges her hands underneath her armpits,

  It’s 4:18.

  And Jemma’s thinking

  Before I was an adult, I was a

  little wreck,

  peddling whatever I could get

  my grubby mitts on.

&nbs
p; Ketamine for breakfast,

  bad girls for drinking with.

  I gave them puppy-dog eyes

  for the acid on their fingertips.

  Heads in the bass bin.

  Lips without faces,

  getting feisty,

  halfbaked in the bakery

  eating pastries.

  Desperate for a body

  who could save me.

  But I never really wanted

  what they gave me.

  Boiling in the chill of the dawn.

  Sweating in the dole queue.

  Spitting like a villain in a pantomime,

  old shoes,

  bad teeth.

  Drinking in the rain

  with my ghosts,

  sitting in the back of the class,

  comatose.

  Villains on my back in the dark

  hold me close,

  but you never held.

  I did some things I swore I’d never tell.

  That night you tried to kill me,

  run me down with your car in the snow.

  I didn’t realize

  how far you would go.

  Every day I’ve lived

  lives in the day

  I wake up in.

  My dreams are all screaming and fucked

  but I’m fine now.

  Happiness reigns

  its carts pulling me.

  Yeah, my future is bright

  but my past’s trying to ruin me.

  Tried to change it

  but I know,

  if you’re good to me,

  I will let you go.

  Tried to fight it

  but I’m sure

  if you’re bad to me

  I will like you more.

  I saw some things

  when I was young

  that made me

  who I would become

  I feel them with me

  every day

  coz if you try

  and run away

  They run beside you

  pace for pace

  trip you up

  and drag your face

  Through the mud

  of every wasted chance

  and every

  bitter taste.

  My heart is sprayed up

  with the names

  of all my friends

  who lost their way

  It doesn’t change,

  it all remains,

  it eats your strength

  and feeds your shame

  All I want

  is someone great,

  to make me

  everything I ain’t

  But the only

  ones for me

  are the ones

  that shouldn’t be.

  Even though

  I’m doing good,

  I’m working hard,

  the work is strong

  It might be fun,

  just for a while,

  to go back where

  my hurt is from

  And rinse myself

  to emptiness

  and push

  my body close

  To anybody

  that can recognize

  the presence

  of my ghosts.

  Tried to change it but I know

  if you’re good to me I will let you go.

  Tried to fight it but I’m sure

  if you’re bad to me I will like you more.

  In the basement flat by the garages

  where the people dump their mattresses

  Esther’s in her kitchen, making sandwiches

  The slats on her blinds are all wonky and skewed

  You can see her from the street

  before she moves out of view

  to kick her boots off tired feet

  She wipes her forehead with her wrist

  She’s just back from a double shift

  Esther’s a carer

  doing nights

  Behind her

  on the kitchen wall

  is a black and white picture

  of swallows in flight

  Her eyes are sore

  her muscles ache

  She cracks a beer

  and swigs it

  she holds it

  to her thirsty lips

  and necks it

  till it’s finished.

  It’s 4:18 a.m. again.

  Her brain is full

  from all she’s done that day

  She knows

  that she won’t sleep a wink

  before the sun

  is on its way.

  She’s worried ’bout the world tonight.

  She’s worried all the time.

  She don’t know how

  she’s supposed

  to put it

  from her mind . . .

  Europe is lost

  America lost

  London is lost

  And still we are clamouring victory.

  All that is meaningless rules

  And we have learned nothing from history.

  People are dead in their lifetimes

  Dazed in the shine of the streets.

  But look how the traffic’s still moving.

  The system’s too slick to stop working.

  Business is good.

  And there’s bands every night in the pubs,

  And there’s two-for-one drinks in the clubs.

  We scrubbed up well

  We washed off the work and the stress

  now all we want’s some excess.

  Better yet: a night to remember

  that we’ll soon forget.

  All of the blood that was shed for these cities to grow,

  all of the bodies that fell

  The roots that were dug from the earth

  so these games could be played –

  I see it tonight

  in the stains

  on my

  hands.

  The buildings are screaming

  I can’t ask for help –

  nobody knows me.

  Hostile. Worried. Lonely.

  We move in our packs

  and these are rites we were born to

  Working and working

  so we can be all that we want,

  then dancing the drudgery off

  But even the drugs have got boring.

  Well,

  sex is still good

  when you get it.

  To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach.

  To each a dream.

  Don’t weep, don’t scream.

  Just keep it in,

  keep sleeping in.

  What am I gonna do to wake up?

  I feel the cost of it pushing my body

  like I push my hands into pockets,

  and softly I walk and I see it:

  this is all we deserve.

  The wrongs of our past have resurfaced

  despite all we did to

  vanquish the traces

  my very language is tainted

  with all that we stole to control and erase and replace

  in a country still rich with the profits of slavery.

  As yet, there’s been no reparations.

  We clothe the corpse of our culture

  parade it as Great Britain,

  hark back to dead times and dead thinking

  Call on the pillars of dead men

  stifled and unloving.

  No isle is an island

  unsure and divided

  just one little clod off the mainland, sinking.

  I am quiet

  Feeling the onset of riot.

  But riots are tiny

  though systems are huge

  Traffic keeps moving,

  proving

  there’s nothing to do.

  Coz it’s big business, baby,

  and its smile is hideous.

  Top-down violence.

  Structural viciousness.

  Your ki
ds are dosed up

  on prescriptions and sedatives.

  But don’t worry ’bout that, man.

  Worry ’bout

  terrorists.

  The water level’s rising!

  The water level’s rising!

  The animals –

  the polar bears

  the elephants are dying.

  STOP CRYING START BUYING!!

  But what about the oil spill?

  Shh.

  No one likes a party-pooping spoilsport.

  Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes

  ghettoized children murdered in daylight

  by those employed to protect them.

  Porn live-streamed to your pre-teen’s bedrooms.

  Glass ceiling. No headroom.

  Half a generation live beneath the breadline –

  oh but it’s Happy Hour on

  the high street!

  Friday night at last, lads,

  my treat!

  All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar, place went nuts – you can ask our Lou – it was madness, road ran red, pure claret. And about these immigrants? I can’t stand them. Now, mostly, I mind my own business. But they’re only coming over for the benefits.

  England!

  England!

  The blood of my kinsmen.

  And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

  It goes:

  Work all your life for a pittance,

  maybe you’ll make it to manager

  pray for a raise

  cross the beige days

  off on your beach-babe calendar.

  The Anarchists are desperate for something to smash

  Scandalous pictures of glamorous rappers in fashionable

  magazines

  – who’s dating who?

  politico cash in an envelope

  caught sniffing lines

  off a prostitute’s prosthetic tits,

  and it’s back to the House of Lords

  with slapped wrists.

  They abduct kids

  and fuck the heads of dead pigs,

  but him in the hoodie with a couple of spliffs –

  jail him

  or deport him.

  It’s the

  Boredofitall Generation

  the product of product placement

  and manipulation,

  shoot ’em up, brutal

  duty of care,

  come on! new shoes!

  beautiful hair.

  bullshit

  saccharine

  ballads

  and selfies

  and selfies

  and selfies

  here’s me outside the palace of ME!

  construct a self and psychosis

  meanwhile the people are dead in their droves

  but nobody noticed

  well actually

  some of them noticed.

  You could tell by the emoji they posted.

  Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes

  The lights are so nice and bright

  and let’s dream

  But some of us are stuck

  like stones

  in a

  slow stream

  What am I gonna do to wake up?

  We are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost we are lost

  wearelostwearelostwearelost