Stand up. Give me your full ******* attention.

Don't pretend you can effortlessly, carelessly produce a "real work", seated, with one eye on self-awareness, a tongue wedged in a cheek with one foot in the grave of perceive- opinion, not yet received, with a cool smirk on a proud chin sat atop a cool fist on a hard wrist on an indifferent arm held up by numb tendons leading down to a self-deprecatory elbow, the joints forming a fierce coalition of empty strength, that separates you from the hellish fire of embarrassment, the horrifying depths on mediocrity, that tempers the hot heart with a cool head.

Cast asunder the filthy cancer stick who pours its stinking grey ash upon the clacking, laughing keys. Throw that glass of water (for tomorrow) on the floor, step on its shards and dance, embracing them in soft padded flesh. Castrate the ***** of the feet and bleed out the last vestiges of your projected third person that stalks you like a shadow.

Ignore the clock that tocks and ticks towards tomorrow, towards a real life of bills and rent, distill your repent and drink deep brother. Sense the too-familiar scent of childhood fear borne out of decades of internalised guilt and tell me that it isn't sweet tonight, if this isn’t worth staying up for then I dare you to present me with a life worth going to bed for.

So strip yourself in front of this mirror, off each layer of potential, pretension, self-satisfied introspection, flawed, self-assured contentment that whispers that if only you applied yourself once in a while the confused mess of thoughts, regrets murmered under-breath, and little deaths that never escape the abstract place might one day add up to something of concrete beauty. Shatter the sardonic prism through which you view each new offering from those whose cardinal-sin was actually trying -that affords your cackling Medusa that the caustic chorus of “I could do better if I wanted to”.

Well don't you?

Tear down the veil between you and what you can't put off any longer; inspect the flabby mess of sores, leaving the limp **** to shrivel against the chill. Let the goose-bumps cluster like tumours. Like it or not this is you. Better live in bitter disappointment than forever bear the dead weight of mendacious expectation.

Cast poisonous complacency aside and hurl yourself against smirking canvas. You cannot win. You will die in a fluid florid flourish of movement; you will look this creeping inertia in the eye and just hope.

Give me black despair any day over this living death.

Give me the truth, without distractions.