Conversation With A Homeless Man On Shoreditch High Street

Yeah bruv, no one’s giving today. People get fuckin’ miserable when it’s raining, it’s like the sky takes the sun right out the people. Ya know, people think you got to be dumb to end up homeless, but look at these people bruv, any of them can end up smelling like the shit they walk into. Even my dad said be careful of women, they fuck you up bruv, alcohol and drugs were invented by men trying to run a woman out their skin. Nuff men top themselves over women, I get it, trust me bruv. If I could start over you know what I’d do? I’d leave the crazy bitches alone and I’d learn three words a day in another language. Within three years I’d speak five languages, there’s a lot of money in language translation bruv. I got a daughter ya know. Beautiful little girl, I don’t see her cause’ the mum fucked me off. Bruv, you ever felt your heart in someone else’s hands? Women don’t have finger nails bruv, just blood and fucking claws. I shouldn’t be thinking about this shit too much, you can’t think yourself happy bruv. I had a mate who read a lot of books, he was into that radical black shit about Africa and shit. My man went fucking psycho, shot two policemen on his doorstep then shot himself, it was the books bruv, he went fucking mad. I got two books, the dictionary and the bible. Yeah, there’s this barber shop I go to and they cut your hair for free if you say you believe in God. Bruv, I walk in there holding my bible so I can get a free shave too, they say I got to look good for God. I think its bullshit though, I just want a free cut in case I see my daughter. Wouldn't want her to see me looking like this. Anyway, bruv, you got any change?

The sun has come out.

Solid In The Hopeless (in prose)

never felt much solid in the hopeless, they build themselves on fault lines,
they shake themselves down to the ground to bury God in their guts
or their gutters. they say it’s naive to be happy in a world of catastrophes,
you cannot belong to the gravity on this planet and carry humanity
without taking lashes. I’ve been reading books to look for some beautiful sense
of the “I”. I’ve been performing my gender, my sexuality, my race and my non-belief.
I stand up in the place I think I belong as it breaks into earthquakes and the only friction I can’t shake is the infliction of my birthplace. I can’t read history without sucking the pain of the past into my face and wanting to punch some people alive today. Until I find a way to acknowledge the sufferance endured by people oppressed. This is a stone drop, heavy on the past, to kick sandstorms inside those deserted from the idea of what they are. I’m tired of wearing history like the raw colour of tattered skin and a fractured heart snapped from the branch of my chest into the dark of my stomach to dissolve in a puddle of angry acid. these poems are so hard to resolve. there are ways to balance the baggage you happen to travel with and when I find optimism in people, I’m glad to breathe it in because I’m sick of losing tears over heaps of hopeless reasons... and with all the intellectual readings opening wounds I didn’t know existed, I was never blissful in my ignorance I was always too inquisitive... and I want to tell these pessimists that laziness is our enemy and excising our minds with conspiracy theories about how powerless we are is alternative mental slavery. My heart used to be a waiting room without an entrance and it took me years to notice that no one could enter. I was a community of emptiness, confused by the point of living and tied to the exhausting view that I can never make a difference because the majority of people are stupid... basically... I was a self righteous prick and it got to the point I noticed how useless that is. I would criticize anyone who took action, I would have told you your efforts are pointless, the system will counteract them, told you go home and wait for the establishment to collapse on itself and I have no idea how I ever felt this submission would help. I’ve never seen the future set in stone and this prose is not written on any tablets and I haven’t been talking to any burning bushes... I’ve just come to some conclusions that the flaws of others have got to stop depressing me... and I’ve made peace with the lashes that damaged our backs with our history. we can look back but we can’t stay there, we must progress until we can all believe it’s not naive to be happy.

Raymond Tells The Truth (in free verse)

Looking down
my arms at my palms
where skin is blistered
yellow from weight I’ve lifted
feeling light because I’m strong.

Looking down
my torso at the tattoo
on the left side of my chest
that says something my dad
said to me
when his heartbreak became intense.

Looking down
my own legs at my feet
where land is cracked
and dry white from long walks
that cleared my head.

Looking down
my own belly
at the button
where gut feelings are fastened
by scars.

Looking down
my own pelvis
at my penis
Which is just another vulnerability
of mine.

only eyes on the inside walls
of my clothes
know how naked I am
when I’m not on stage.

here I am.

Looking further than the horizon, never seeing the sky as a ceiling
as
I
come
back
to
earth

squinting eyes

thinking...

I need to write to lift meteorites that...

pin
me
down
and
keep
me
out
of
flight.

my body is an environment
built with iron, asteroid shards
and protein shakes
so I can be the shape of superman
but I’m no hero

I cannot save time
without making it feel
used
and I cannot sleep next to
a woman
without creating the type of silence
That can’t be slept through.

But when I do get to dream I lighten up
and shake that shadow, see
I am a hero but only when my eyes close.

When I'm not a hero
I'm awake...
in a real life.

I cannot shy away from something
I have to facelift to look like I'm brave
although I know what it means to be weak and look
that way

there are too many women to impress that say...
they like their men to be men.

Back when I was a boy
I was so self-conscious I didn't see other people
I just saw other people seeing me.

When my voice broke
and
fell
deeper
it wasn't how it sounded when it was inside me
like
dark
echos
in
a
wishing
well

some people say the voice they hear inside them
is God.

But I wouldn't trust my ears to hear God's voice
and even if I heard it correctly I'd be too cynical
to believe it.

Looking up my own dictionary
at the names I get when I'm rejected
by people I approve of.

Looking up footage my heart is heavy with -
I can't edit it.

Looking up my own love
at the best part
where arms lock -

and my heart learns a name it will know until it stops....