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Janek Kentigern Jul 2019
This moment, this juddering dread.
Its purely circumstantial
and it will pass
One explosive act, drunk on adrenaline I chose to be strong
for once
and Now I look where it has got me
“you did the honorable thing” they will say.
And they will be right
“for the first time in living memory”
They will add.

Scooping up the layers of ugly truths that coat this place
these walls, today, this life
like so much finely powdered snow
like so much asbestos...
easy to ignore. But never forgetten.

I wash them out out of my eyes each morning
And start my day.
Dismissing them as mere dirt.
I empty my pockets and find them there,
They are under my fingernails.
A taste in my mouth.
The parts per million build up inexorably .
I will sicken and die.
You are kind. You try to help.

But you are wrong.
Soon you are contaminated. Sickened.
This failure to do what's right
provides the background white noise to waking life
The scratching and chittering of the conscience
Like rattling pipes, Like rats in the walls
disturb sleep
you see the powdered snow
Innocently.
Trying to clear it up
hands cracked
Thinner, weary
Uncomprehending and trance-like. You have felt the sunlight dim.
You have gazed into the abyss to long…

“It's time to talk about this” you say
I resist, deny all knowledge, stare out with detatched wonder
at the swirling blizzard
of toxic flakes
That blows in through the open window.
You begin to talk about this

I cough out a weak joke,
splutter some excuses. Polluting the air with benign untruths.
Which settle in heaps about the place like finely powdered snow.
Your face it streaked with tears.
I scoop up the snow, now discolored by age and filth,
Compress it, hard like a diamond
Your face is streaked with tears
Your eyes, your ears, your pores are open,
At least you are brave enough to feel something.
You face is streaked with tears.
Your eyes bright with the still-hot fire of life, are desperate to meet mine.

Downcast, I shrink from them
Merely distracted, not happy, not sad
Solemnly kneading the crystals of poison snow in my palms...
Bent Double, wrenched inwards  in an agony of unfeeling calculation.
The task is beyond my Jellied spine.
You are pleading for me.
The man, the ******* man
To make the decision.

Somewhere beneath the layers of carcinogens an old voice, rendered unfamiliar by time is crying out.
I listen.

Unsteady. Drunk on adrenaline. I take aim.
Doubled up. Wincing. God only knows what how you felt when it hit.
When the full weight of these months of accumulated deliberation
and guilt
and truth
made contact, with the face I have kissed a thousands times before.
And now here a quiver, judder
a lame and broken invalid
I first time I made a decision.
“You did the right thing” they will say.
I pray that it's the last time.
Janek Kentigern May 2019
I made mistakes
I gave some people venereal disease
I acted with ****** impropriety
I ****** the girlfriend of my best friend
Multiple times
And I didn't even do a good job of it
I wasted my time here on Earth
I played video games
Past the point where I enjoyed them
I smoked ****
Past the point where it offered any insight
I took drugs and partied
Past the point where I thought I was cool
I made friendships
Which I allowed to fall by the wayside
I procrastinated
Instead of doing the things that I needed to do
I drank alcohol
As a matter or course
I worked jobs
Where I hated every second I was there
And I was too cowardly quit
I sacrificed my life and my health
For those rotten *******
I smoked cigarette after cigarette
Whilst encouraging my friends to quit
I moved to a country
Where I could better exploit the white privilege
That I was too inept to exploit in my home country
I masturbated
Over bizarre things that made me feel ashamed and full of self loathing
I loathed myself
I betrayed the trust of lovers
In order to gratify an abstract ego
I made racist jokes
Knowingly upholding principles
Which I'd often rationally rejectect
To get a few cheap laughs
I sat on my bed
And looked at internet memes until my eyes dried up
Janek Kentigern Mar 2019
It's nights like these
With nothing prepared
Just a few close friends,
And some time to spare.

Talk some ****
We've talked before
The same old stories
But I don't get bored

Theres been a week of work
You faced four separate tests
Small talk with strangers
Gotta get it off your chest

it's just like grooming
It's just Like we're of apes
Connections found in the mundane
Analysing mistakes

We'll play a bit of music
Start trying to impress
Have you heard this cool new ****?
But Ego is all that's expressed

Found comfort in the familiar
Dropping the facade
Luxuriating in nostalgia
When memories were still made

Open up a seventh beer
Only one working day remains
Work is gonna hurt tomorrow
But so does bearing all the stain

Of a life of repition
Janek Kentigern Jan 2019
We're gonna build that ******* wall,
We're gonna build that ******* wall,
Cos over here, yeah
We've got feelings
And over there they feel nothing at all.

We keep suffering out of sight
We keep misery out of mind,
We didn't get where we are by seeing ****,
And we're stronger when we're blind.

Well it ain't my job to care,
And I ain't paid to give a ****,
You see my grandaddy came and stole this land,
If it was yours, then you're **** out of luck.

They want a doctor when they're sick,
They want a house were they can live,
They want my air and my food and my water,
Well I ain't got a **** to give.
Yeah I ain't got a **** to give

they coming for your church,
And they're coming for your beer,
They're gonna make your wives wear the veil
They wanna make your kids grow up queer.

They tell me that the world is round
They tell me that we came from apes
They're tryna vaccinate my children
And there ain't no way to escape.

You see I love this ******* land,
I ******* love this blood and soil,
I love the colour of the people that I see in my town
And I don't wanna see it spoiled.

Don't you know that they'll take away your job,
And They'll take away your gun,
And now "free speech" has been outlawed, yeah,
They wanna take away your fun.

Well it ain't my job to care,
And I ain't paid to give a ****,
You see my grandaddy came and stole this land,
If it was yours, then you're **** out of luck.

They want a doctor when they're sick,
They want a house were they can live,
They want my air and my food and my water,
Well I ain't got a **** to give.
Yeah I ain't got a **** to give.

Put away you libcuck virtue signals
Cos civilization don't need your grief,
If the boot was on the other foot now
I know they'd kick out my ******* teeth.
Janek Kentigern Jan 2019
So your motorbike gets you from A to B
With no hiccups or fuckups or stops in between,

No ponderous walking just to **** time
Or impromptu chats with a friendly old guy,

An excuse just ramble and gather your thoughts
Explore a some places or visit old haunts

If you find something new in an old part of town,
You find that there's worse things than sometimes breakingdown.

I admit it's frustrating to get to work late,
Or have your dinner plans foiled whilst out on a date.

But When friends say "just get a bike that works'
I reply "one that doesn't sometimes has its perks."
I live in Hanoi, Vietnam. There are worse places to have the occasional breakdown.
Janek Kentigern Oct 2016
Sadness
it's strong stuff...
I've had so much I can't walk
without falling
I can't talk
without stalling
And slurring
Can't think
without blurring the lines
between problems
and mere actualities.
Lacking the faculties
to sort factual reality
from the masochistic fantasies
that lurk at the back of me;
Passively, I watch them attacking me
ransacking stacks of ****
that once brought me happiness
laughing mirthlessly, cursing the birth of me,
tormenting, caressing,
augmenting the worst of me,
Cementing self pity, bitterly nursing the urge
to revel in misery. Rolling in muck
and mire of recent history,
desiring nothing.
In anger I pander to these base demands,
Mistaking mere sickness
For something more grand
Avowing the charge of my own propaganda,
Allowing this world that I loved
to be slandered
Cowed
My friends are pulled down to an
unflattering angle. From here they appear
(no matter how dear)
to be traitors and thieves,
with knives up their sleeves.
I'll believe every lie my sick mind can conceive.

Don't give me the keys
'cos I'll drive off a cliff
Don't give me a pen
Cos I'll only write this
There's nothing unique in the words that I speak,
and this piece is nothing but
cliches,
mixed metaphors you've met before
similes sing of sick malaise.
Tongue out of cheek,
Dazed.
I'm released from policing
my verse,
Sad soul knows no quality Control,
As the heart beats crazily, I proofread lazily
sentimentally, hazily.
Without a **** to give
I chuck away the voice that says
“Don't write if it ain't great.”.

Days achieving nothing
but self inflicted *******
Gouging self-inflicted chasms
between loved ones and I,
apoplectic rage in spasms,
fits of fleeting normality
Bridge defeat, despair and insanity.
Weaponised hatred for all of humanity.
A small inconvenience
becomes a calamity.
Then revert to intertia perverted by vanity.

Next, corner a companion and
complain away the pain and drain your glass again and again without restraint

Explain the ways that your to blame, oh the shame the shame,
Dissect regrets, reflect until you've bored yourself to death,
(let alone the poor sod who kindly nods and slyly checks their watch, before they stammer out excuses,
Hints which I'm too hammered and useless to hear,
Too wrecked to check myself. They've done their duty as a mate, but remember,
steer clear of the fate,
Of getting ****** down into the vortex, of depression and regrets.
We've all got our problems. He's out of cigarettes.)
Whilst here I  reading aloud
still sore texts, to detect traces of affection.

Sad ****, sad drunk, alone again,
Get my coat, forget my phone. The inconvenience provides some light relief,
From the background grief.
Now tomorrow's replete with distraction s and tasks to complete.
The horizons' brightened with the prospect of splashing some some cash, and so much to choose!
Afternoons busy spent perusing reviews,
Megapixels, memory, which brand do I trust?
But I know I'm just
buying time,
Before the consumption high subsides
and I'm back with this background mosquito pitch whine saying "maybe I'm better off dead".
Bite you lip, hold on, its temporary. and whilst it feels scary, remember
Your not sick, you're not dying, your just heartbroken,
trying to move on, and maybe occasionally crying.
And that's healthy.
The weeping ain't that bad,
It's the cold light of day. It's the misguided logic. That's says "you had the best time of your life, now you've lost it,
All that was worth having,
Is behind you, and may I remind you,
You ain't getting younger, it's starting to show,
And times flowing towards the end, the time you spent on earth was wasted, getting wasted, not facing life head on and you'll never change. It's not strange that she's found someone better"
etc etc

You've been here before and each time it gets better. If you could write a letter to your younger self you could share a wealth of knowledge about Dealing with horrors from within.
Emotions invade us, but we can repel them. But you have to embrace them before you expel them.
So whilst it's not fine yet
And whilst I still pine, yeah, I'm resigned for the time being,
seeing the bigger picture.
And we're designed to recover then remove the stitches. No plans go without hitches. At last, whilst they might not go as fast as we like,
In the night take respite cos
Like the drunken high, and this ******* Hangover
This too shall pass
And one day you'll wake up sober.
Janek Kentigern Apr 2015
Your life is threadbare
and it's cosy

Uncomfortable
but safe

Poor
yet secure

It's not killing you
but then neither are you living.

The head is above water,
Struggling against the tide.

Grinding along on a hamster wheel
that badly needs oiling

I mean

You now earn less than you did at your first job.
It was **** all then

and that was 5 years ago.

The years have not been kind. The hairline has crept upward
Roughly in line with inflation.

A job's a job's a job's a job's a job.

There's a damp roof over your head.

Are you ready to trade all this in for a taste of adventure?

A main course of personal growth
washed down with a side order of

Drudgery

loneliness

and Japanese Encephalitis.

Will they find you out?
Will you be pulled into an office

while a polite local
explains how her English is better than yours?

That could all happen, says the head

but the frightened, quivering heart longs to change.

To jump into the fire and emerge reborn
strong, dynamic, brave. All the things you aren't now.


Just don't hope for too much.
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