It is society's fault
that the world is rotting,
that we are
rotten

when everything is gone
when everything that was
created so carefully and
sculpted so spectacularly
is taken,

blame yourself

everyday we take,
we gain and
we pride ourselves on greed

what we own is who we are

the amount of money we spend
on clothes and technology,
we could spend on food banks
and help stop poverty,

we take what we can
and we build on that beautiful world,
and the more we make, the more we ****,
and the harder it becomes to be somebody
who cares

i’m meant to be able to do it,
for a long time
it’s been the only thing i’m good at,
i never felt inferior when learning it,
and getting my grades back,
was like a dream come true
finally some As in the bag,
for someone who truly,
only, ever really got Cs
and when i did my GCSEs
the questions flowed through me,
and the words placed themselves
on the page without me
barely even thinking,

i knew what i was doing then,

and now, well, i sit and stare
at the poems without a thought in my mind,
and i read Dr Faustus
and pretend like i don’t care, that
i can’t conjure a single, original point
and i can’t analyse the words
because i don’t know what they mean
and i can’t write my essays with that
familiar confidence i used to contain,
now i sit and i struggle,
without structure or form
and no context at all,
then i’m surprised when it comes back as a D,
the As are gone, and so are the Cs.

i will find hope in anything
if it means there is a chance
you will love me
i will scrape every bit of hope
from the tunnels of our conversation
in order to sellotape a crack in my heart,
i want to believe in the chance
you will love me more than her,
but it is hard to be someone’s world
when they are looking for a country,
she is a town
and i am the universe
however in your eyes,
she is simply
more
than i could
ever be.

there is an energy
that is bursting out of my heart
with flames that have
entrapped your soul
only you don’t know
that inside my mind
there is an unlocked piece of you
that has drowned itself
into every memory
where the love we have
is so vivid
that colour enshrines from the stars
and a vast array of red locks our hearts
together in a stroke of purple,
pink and violet
and when your brown eyes lust at me,
all i see is gold pouring from the
seams of your affection.

do not focus on your minor stresses
look toward the sky and find
stress in the stars
look at the unknown and fear it
embrace that fear and love it
find your soul in a constellation
that screams your name,
wipe away the colour of the day
with the silver of the stars
and the blackness of the vast
eat out your own heart while
craving every star
and tell yourself
that it is beautiful to fear a desire.

there is a lily on my eyelashes
weeping with every blink
when the door of my soul shuts completely
the lily will spill out of my
dreaded soul
and cover the grey ground in red
the grass of my body will overtake
each street and
i will decompose like a common carrot
in the midst of winter
where no one will remember my name
the snow will keep falling
burying me sweetly
with a lily on top of my
unmarked grave

where my soul lies is different story
if my consciousness survives then i am alone

at least with a body you can feel
within your own mind
you are all alone.

you can’t whisper favourite in my ear
and pretend you don’t love me
although i don’t think you are pretending
the truth in my mind is
scribbled and swallowed and affected
by the circumstances and horrors of
my jealousy
i can’t contain it
because you open me up
i want you to open me up
want you to love me more than her
is she gonna be with you forever?
if she is
then i won’t be
i am not even around now
barely in your mind
i’m like fine, red hot, wine
but she was the shot of apple sourz
and your mouth is coated in her
she is tacky why don’t you see that
she is tacky
i bet she smells of cigarettes and benefits
i smell of a levels and a hidden prestige
you like the smell of smoke
you started smoking
she could not spell bourgeoisie
let alone know what it means
i have all these theories in my head
about passiveness and television
and the marxist revolution
about how maths can’t be true
and about the truth and these concepts
and my mind always focuses on you
focusing on her whilst she probably
focuses on you
and i bet her dainty feminine thumbs
type and take pictures of her *******
and every time you open them
you send one back, *****
she is wet
and i am
crying
over another minor tragic flaw
in my personality
my downfall is my delusion
and my jealousy
to believe i am greater than i am
to think that you could love me
i mean
you said i was your favourite
and as you wrapped yourself around me
i thought
this is what it is like to feel warm
it was the late stages of hyperthermia
you put on a picture of you and her
you wouldn’t put one on with me
i don’t think you want to hurt me
but your words scrape along the rusted sides
of a personality i want to forget
but you are so enshrined in me
that your words sound heavenly
but if god existed he knew this
would not be fair
to fill my chest with a heart so big
but a mind full of jealousy and despair.

how come my mind does not work in the way that
it can master science and maths
the subjects of rationality
and the ones that society holds closely
how come i sit here
too emotionally
annoyed that i cannot
tell you instantly
what five times seven is
how come i am friends with those
who could easily
lord their subjects above me
and welcome knowledge into
their rounded brains so
subtly
i prize maths so highly
and the sciences,
physics and biology
and i see myself as someone
who could handle those subjects
but actually i do
sociology
it is familiar and repetitive
yet interesting theory
however i wish i could write poetry
about how the stars work above me
and how cells divide and multiply
all i can say is that
i am sitting here quietly
knowing all the social ills i could know
upset because i cannot solve anything
it’s like education left me behind
when they saw the boys in front of me
do their times tables quicker
when i was crying on my own,
watching society learn and grow
instead of learning the things i needed to
in order to be considered
clever.

your eyes repulse me,
so much they warp my soul
and i become ashamed,

i’m not afraid of you
i never was,
even when you pushed your knife into my organs,
like you pushed yourself
into me,
with force and pleasure and greed,

i was never afraid of you,
but you piled the shame on me
made me think it was my fault

but you loved me didn’t you?
and i didn’t feel the same but

your love

cost me my skin, my safety
and my life,

when i speak about it, i crumble,
because of the embarrassment that i
had anything to do with you,
that i even knew you
is enough to
corrupt me,

you are not a man, you are a shadow, you are a creep,
you are not relevant to the world,
but you wanted to be relevant to me

so stick ******* down my throat and call me a liar,
but baby you know this is the truth,
you will never break me.

you are a million stars trapped in one body
the embodiment of light and the glowing heart
of the sun
your eyes can tell a million lies whereas
your mouth can only one
that you could never love me,
and in one blink
the colours change from grey to golden
and all the love in your heart pours into
vivid eyes and wild smiles
all the love in the world has conquered you
because you make me a queen
with a crown made from the jewels of your soul,
you look at me with heavy, sad yet gleaming eyes
that tell a shining story of how you love me
and how your heart bursts into each and every rainbow
that overcomes my own gloom
each tear that falls from my face causes you a
heartbreak that you cannot fix
all the love in the world cannot save us
so when the blink ends
the world turns back into grey and you lie like
you were never golden.

i looked up at you,
and it was freezing,
but you didn’t care and
the sun shone on your face,
and you were golden,
nothing but light,
and my love,
i was in awe of you,
i loved you so much
it hurt,
i fell in love with you in that moment,
never realising i could never
actually get out,
and honestly, i don’t even think
you looked at me,
but that was okay,
because i knew there was something there.

she felt like the stars
weren’t real because for her
darkness was everywhere,
filtered into her thoughts
and congealed her soul,

the stars were like compliments
to a dark empty vast of nothing,

space shone inside her mind
and from her eyes she saw
the stars go out one by one.

Oh the stars are a divinity
That could never catch me not
Looking at you
With a face that screams with glowing light
And a heart that burns with lies
That fall deep into a transient state
Where your serene features
Turn into the devils claws and rip the
Skin of my heart into a wide opening casket
Where all my love for you is buried underneath
A pile of shameful dust
Because every time I have ever looked at you
A piece of me rots.

sometimes, more than sometimes, but not as often as everyday,
i think about how those eyes you have consumed me,
the way their darkness was in complete contrast to the light you expelled,
and i think about how they would linger into my deep green eyes,
often that look was a wash of colour, but yet it was a pool of feeling,
i felt your love in that look, in those eyes, no matter how many times
they broke the colour so quickly that everything was bland, i felt it in the way
you would smile like your eyes were the ones that were hungry
and i wasn’t your prey, but i grew the light you would shine from, and
you grew the happiness i would have to bury, the tombstone that you carved broke into shards of colour all of which turned black when you cried yourself to sleep in the unholy grave that you made me dig.

we were born into a sky full of colour and stars

when grey would turn red, and
when lips would touch and people would kiss,
and it would cause heavenly earthquakes to stop and lightning to strike,
into the almighty home that we call earth.

we were born into a world of pure, honest and heavy love,

and now we grow up in a world of hate and ******,
where the stars mean nothing and the moon doesn’t shine,
when the world is on it’s knees and it’s begging you to stop,
we live our hell on earth now and our heaven is a myth,
because even the brightest colours can’t ****** the darkness
that we produced ourselves,
and when you kissed me just for the sake of it,
i felt the blood on your lips, as my heart tore you apart
and the world brought you down to the floor,
this is what you did to me
she screamed as she roared fire
through the colourless sky and cut your throat like you were nothing,
and that is all we are
when the earth and the end collided
so did we,
we watched the world burn in needful horror,
and we died silently, hand in hand and felt the fire that we had
created, consume us.

we fell back into the ground that killed us,
and we realised that when everything went black, silent and still,
the stars could never save us, and the colour could never intrude,
we born into this world of hate and ******,
and all the love we had ever felt, wasn’t even true.

with regard to those who believe time has let us down,
it is not our fault that we expected more in life than the
simple basic pay that we force ourselves to earn,
that only a minimal few get more than £4 an hour
and earn a million in a day
they take and they take and we give our all,
to a job that will eventually fire us, retire us and
dig our grave, all to provide ourselves
with a mortgage and a tax paying wage
that some of us can never afford,
and we **** ourselves because of debt and
we stare at our kids with resentment because
they’re
dream killers
but they’re a social norm, and if you don’t fit in
you don’t make it
social darwinism,
liberalism
conservatism,
socialists, Marxists, communists,
left wing advocates,
the ones the poor ‘take advantage’ of because
we believe people deserve the best chance in life,
and unless you’re incredibly lucky and
you’re born at the top
you are bred with that chance,
and the rest of us are at the bottom because
meritocracy
doesn’t
exist
it never will because those  
who believe they’re better,
the elite-born
who’re at the top come from the brightest schools,
the most expensive and they gave them
confidence and money
something we don’t own being in the northern region of a
divided country
and your prime minister killed our jobs and i find it funny that
people still vote for your two faced, pragmatic party
you haven’t been remotely interested in us since
Disraeli, but even he tried to help us selfishly
the working class,
the proletariat
is divided because of the lies you feed us
through the media,
you honestly think you’re superior
and you are
but you ignore poverty and you accept inequality
and society isn’t like a human body
because if it worked
this wouldn’t exist, this divided society that you
don’t even acknowledge because why would you
when you have enough money and power
and overall glory that you have been smothered in
your whole life whereas we have
seen what your policies achieve
and you try to buy us off with basic low wages and
give starving people benefits which take ages
to come through
and you don’t care when they die because
they weren’t employed,
didn’t belong in this capitalist economy,
which you gladly enjoy,
while we sit at the bottom in absolute despair,
that I don’t even know if we’re really aware
of the exploitation we are put through every single day
all to make enough money to pay
for the taxes you evade,
and i wish for the whole world there was something i could do,
because if i had any money,
i would share it with you.

she doesn’t think
she just talks,
with nothing important to say,
on an important subject, she knows
nothing about,
she sits there and laughs at jokes
that aren’t funny
and she cries at things that aren’t
even sad,
she makes her own remarks that
aren’t even mean,
and she wears an invisible crown,
pretending to be a queen,
she’s a plague on my mind,
with secrets on her body and so
many to hide,
she smiles all the pain away
like there’s even anything wrong,
an attention seeker,
and when she cries
i’m expected to be there,
even though she knows,
i don’t even care,
manipulative, selfish,
and a little bit thick,
we all know,
she’s nothing important.

i know what you thought of me