they made me watch question time
on a loop
forever
and every time i screamed
they added another episode
on another screen
until i faced a wall of it
wider than the horizon
brighter than any sky
any sun
any laser fired directly through the eye
and into the brain
and every time i wept
they turned the sound up
and up
and up
until the entire world throbbed
with ignorance
and hate
from which i could not escape
___________
Notes:
1. Written on October 29th, 2020
__________i have never hated anything
as much as i hate printers
and using them
to print
_________
Notes:
1. Written on September 23rd, 2020
2. After a day of using printers
3. And weeping
4. At the futility of it all
there was no plan
but we followed it exactly
__________
Notes:
1. Written on September 4th, 2020
__________1. An image of a man eating a raw egg, a sidelong glance and a half suppresed smile at the camera as raw albumen runs down his chin.
2. Bin bag sliced open like a belly, an intestinal trail of even more bin bags unwinding out from within.
3. Close up shot of an NHS rainbow aped to a window, all the colours running together after three solid months of rain.
4. Four women in a car with no wheels in the middle of a playing field, all drinking cider straight from the biggest bottle in the supermarket
5. A child wearing a Manchester United kit with the name of a player who left at least three years ago on the back.
6. Seventeen men bellowing into the night, each one convinced all the others are wrong.
7. Poignantly discarded face mask in oil streaked puddle.
8. Boarded up boarding school.
9. Fenced off boarded up boarding school.
10. Several closed roads.
11. High street horse trough filled with leaves, vomit, crisp packets, hint of piss.
12. Inexplicably angry letter in the local paper about a pothole and/or potholes.
13. Inexplicably angry letter in the local paper about the prospect of tax rises.
14. Inexplicably sanguine letter in the local paper about the unneccesary deaths of 60,000 people.
15. Someone on their phone moaning about how everyone else is on their phone.
16. Someone not on their phone wishing they had a phone so they could moan to someone somewhere about everyone else here being on their phones.
17. A row of park benches all too uncomfortable for anyone to sit on.
18. Inexplicably angry letter in the local paper about someone sitting on a park bench for too long or too loudly or with too many friends or maybe all three at once.
19. Town map affixed to high street wall, where every single advertised business has been closed for at least a year.
20. Pub with racist graffiti in the toilets.
21. Pub with racist joke on the chalk board out the front.
22. Pub that’s now being turned into flats.
23. Pub that’s burnt down.
24. Pub with faded plastic children’s slide that’s been blown over in the mud since at least April or maybe even March.
25. Miniature pub that used to be a hairdressers.
26. Florist of dead flowers.
27. Graveyard with new field opening soon.
28. River full of choking tears.
29. Lifetime of self-silenced screams.
30. END
__________
Notes:
1. Written on September 2nd, 2020
2. Title taken from One Hundred Famous Views Of Edo by Hiroshige
They said I should apologise. But I did not apologise.
Instead I did the same thing again, and again.
And again, for good measure.
I knew I had done the right thing. My conscience was clear. My followers went up.
If I was lucky, I could keep this going forever.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on September 1st, 2020
2. Slightly amended on September 2nd, 2020
3. Completely forgotten on September 3rd, 2020