writing

All writing is from 2021 – Present.

Domestic Cybernetics, Poem, 2021. Published in Live Projects (2022) and Circuit Brain (2021)

bodies

Should it be known,

When we had sex after the horror movie,

I wasn’t sure when the bodies started

And where I ended.

In this flesh prison,

It felt one in the same.




Android

Have you ever felt like you’re suffocating?

Or drowning without water,

a mouse cornered by a cat

with not hole or crack

to shimmy your way out

of this new predicament.


I always wondered

if I’m brainwashed,

if my own thoughts are my own.

Do they allow me to question

to avoid suspicion or am I defecting?


I don’t know what I would do

beyond this life,

I escape to the worlds in my head.

But that’s because I’m bored.

I’m an android walking in the halls

of my ship as I walk to the kitchen.


But if I were a robot,

I would be able to focus,

think straight and turn off that looping programme

where I check my phone every minute.


But I’m not an android,

I’m a cyborg, my mind has been hooked

into the mainframe since thirteen.


Keen to unplug

I can’t just leave my brain behind.

I’m infused,

A hybrid of the new age.




The Immoral Fatality of Screens and Teens

I once dreamed of the stars,

the sky, the spaceships,

the companions of

robots and monsters.

I dream of them now and again,

but I think I am them now.


The robot I am in the morning and night.

The monsters I am inside.

I am united and separated,

All at once.


Communication, media,

newspapers, work,

entertainment, social media,

stressers, relievers,

judge and executioner.


The future isn’t real.

Some kind of mystical end will come

between then and now.

We’ll get switched off.


We’ll become the dinosaurs!

We are the dinosaurs, we are not superior,

they could kill us instantly.

Some wouldn’t give it a second thought.

The top dog got wiped out.


So why do you think we can defeat

the end that is coming?

We won’t see the Pink suit until 2103.

I won’t be able to see how the blood in the fabric has aged, or not.


I’ll be 102.

We don’t deserve to see it, she made her point.

He killed him. They killed him. We all fall down.

I saw his head on the cold table.

Why were those released for me to see?


Even his blood soaked, ripped and drenched shirt.

But they protect a damn suit.

Some people entertain, even in death.

In blood. In body and bones.


He was a human too. Did he stop being human?

When do I stop being human?

Human life becomes human artifact for all to um and er and think about.

Dissected by you and me and some doctor.

And now I see his void and bones in every scalp that walks by.


If you slow it down, you can see his scalp flying off,

isn’t that funny?

Isn’t that funny?

I’m so morbid!


The Challenger explosion looks like a lobster, look at this.

Another man killed himself live on the internet for all to see.

Watch it. Watch it. Watch it all. Know every detail.

Every story. Everything. Consume until it consumes you whole.

Add it to your trauma pile like a new skill.


Be positive. Be aware.

Wake up but sleep.

Stay in but stay out.

I’m a mouse between two tigers.


They’re inching in,

claws be drawn,

sinched from their scabbards,

and pointed towards me.

Their teeth snarled, eyes squinted.


I’m losing time.

This time and the next.

I don’t know who I am.

I am the void.


I’m the end of time.

I stopped being human in the end of it all.

I have that power. But I don’t know how to stay.

here, with you, or anywhere. I don’t owe you anything.

I should be free and open and see where life takes me


But that terrifies me.

I want stability but I’ll feel trapped,

I’ll have to see where life takes me, but that’s not how I want it to be.

So I exist and wait for the tide to take me.


Polish me, break me, swallow me, spit me. Until I sink.

One day I’ll wash up upon the shores of Cornwall

and I’ll be picked up again, or put in a pocket.

Am I an interesting stone or a tumbled piece of glass?

I can’t tell, break me open and discover my treasures –


Or get blinded by my shards as I implode.

I become the stardust, floating aimlessly.

But somehow, I am home among

the company of the cosmos.





The Well

My brain is loud,

full of all the people

who keep me company

in the silence of it all

and yet I still don’t know what to say.

I haven’t practiced for this,

no one gave me the heads up.

“Sorry for your loss.”


I’m at this road again,

I stare at myself in the mirror.

I can feel the edges of my body,

where the skin ends,

where I begin to decay.

Always crying,

slowing dying.

I’m all dried up.


I don’t know when I lost her.

I’m stuck,

between her memories

And her death.

I was the only one who cried,

when she died.

The men in their suits, barely holding it together.

You can cry too; I did.


I’m a well,

in a desert

with nothing to give

but dirt and ants,

crawling all over

inside

and out.


The connection between

the nail and flesh.

I can feel it

coming apart.


The ant crawled out;

You can look inside my foot

if you would like.

I pulled out all the garlic cloves.

I’m hollow and hole

And full of ants and dirt.


I am well,

In the desert

In the wake of it all.





Let her eat Cake

All this

For cutting the cake

When the mirrors broke

On me.

The villain appeared to shift

From me into you.