Hold Your Own (7 page)
Authors: Kate Tempest
it became the great oppressor.
And without God, the wars seemed crueller
life seemed bleaker. Art seemed foolish.
Death seemed stranger now than ever.
What was mankind for? What terror
flooded us to understand
there was no point, no grander plan.
There was just living out each day.
Work. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Pass away.
Without the fear of retribution
we found guilt-free pleasure
but we lost the sense of union
that had kept us all together.
We needed something new
to fill the emptiness that grew;
and what’s better to believe in
than all-you-can-eat Freedom!
The joy of being who we are
by virtue of the clothes we buy.
The dream of getting rich enough
to live outside the common life.
And now, there is no purpose
that exists beyond our needs.
Now there is the worship
of convenience and speed.
We run around the circuit,
pit our grace against our greed
And all we have is surplus
to what’s needed and we feed
our callous little urchins
in the best way that we can.
And then wonder how they’ve grown
to only know what’s in their hands.
Now we have the Screen,
and it rules.
Our kids are perma-plugged into its promise,
admiring all its jewels.
And couples eat their dinner,
in the glimmer of its rays,
we stare until
we’ve learned the world’s ways.
Pre-teens learn what heart-throbs are.
Heart-throbs gorge on hot pork and watch sport.
Reality played for us to sneer and weep at –
here is morality at last! See us caught
in full colour, high definition.
Look – a cripple on a blind date.
Look – young people getting fucked in Magaluf,
look – the mother of a dead son, weeping, irate,
look – a celebrity eating shit and singing Agadoo.
We used to burn women who had epileptic fits.
We’d tie them to a stake and proclaim them a witch.
Now
we’ll put them on a screen if they’ve got nice tits,
but they’ll be torn apart if they let themselves slip.
We’ll draw red rings round their saggy bits.
And flick through the pictures while we eat bags of chips.
You can either be a beauty or a beast or a bitch,
you can either be cool or kooky or kitsch.
Before
you were damned for the things that you did,
or if you didn’t live how the villagers lived.
Now
You’re handed the mould and told – fit in to this.
And maybe one day you could really be big.
Behind-the-scenes footage
of a famous last gig.
Backstage close-up
of the singer’s last twitch.
Before she pulls her gun out
and blows herself to bits.
The world is your playground,
go and get your kicks,
as long as you’re not poor,
or ugly, or sick.
We never saw it coming,
like all the best tricks.
Once we had the fear;
now we have the fix.
They cornered me
and held their knives up to my throat.
They asked me for the football scores.
They asked me for the winning horse.
They asked me for the lotto draw.
Six numbers each and bonus balls.
All I could see
in flickering, ultraviolet pixels
Were their great-grandchildren
ripped to pieces by the missiles
To really see the state of things is lethal.
It’s safer just to see what we can bear.
Exhausting being fear-struck; howling, weak-willed.
Much nicer to be bathing in the glare
of all that we have built to shine and soothe us
what use are eyes at all in times like this?
Please don’t bother raising arms to shoot us,
we’ll shoot ourselves. No really, we insist.
No guns. Just give us brands and bills and wages,
and rent that takes our dignity away.
Don’t trouble yourselves with handcuffs and with cages.
There’s cleaner ways than that to make us pay.
What good can come from listening to our instincts?
You think it’s easy putting up like this?
Don’t make a fuss, you know us, we’re the English,
and peace on Earth won’t help us feed our kids.
Our eyes are trained on pinpricks in the blackness.
The telly helps to end a dismal day.
The visions come when we are at our weakest.
But they don’t last that long, so it’s ok.
The weather will change,
We’ll think it malicious.
Speak hurricanes’ names and worry in secret.
The waves will build somewhere way out in the ocean,
And flatten whole towns when they break on the beaches.
It won’t be enough. We’ll plough on
The mightiest we’ve ever been.
Standing like gods on the shoulders of history.
Or tossing our curls in the sun.
We’ll stare down at the screens in our hands
And smile at the photos.
Didn’t we laugh.
Strange voices will sing from street corners.
Powerful men will mumble it into the backs
Of the people they fuck.
This is the end.
Health and safety slogans will resonate like ancient proverbs.
Don’t use the lifts in the case of fire.
Make yourself aware of your nearest exit.
We’ll bury our heads in the sand of our lovers.
The waters will boil in the oceans.
Dead things will float on the waves.
The ice caps will thicken to slush puppies
As hurricanes twist
Like boxers in sleeping bags, trying to throw punches.
There’ll be fires in the forests, floods in the cities.
And men too rich to swim will die.
The skin on our children will toughen and harden.
And still we will debase ourselves
For that piece of land or mineral
That rock or bomb or golden egg
That might allow one dying person to imagine
They are worth more than another.
Whatever follows us
Will hunt for footprints in the lowlands,
And piece together fragments of our habits
From the internet.
A fossilised smartphone preserved behind glass
For the new young to traipse past on school trips,
Yawning.
I feel a peace beyond these fumes.
It’s coming. I can feel it surging.
Drumming on the curbs, it’s burning up,
It’s gaining ground.
A peace that we are born deserving.
One we learn to think absurd.
It’s in us, or at least, the yearning.
Quickly, stamp it down.
It must be getting nearer.
We can feel it shake within us.
While the echo of each violence done
Pulls out our teeth and breaks our fingers.
Each time you walk the street and flinch
At shadows, see a demon coming,
Visualise your body falling
Under trains or into nothing,
Every time you sense a figure
Running for you, grabbing hold,
To beat you down and leave you dying,
Rob you blind and leave you cold –
It’s not the fear or the desire to fall.
It’s a memory.
Each wrong is repeated relentlessly.
All thought is eternal.
All life is empathy.
The streets are thick with everything that’s ever happened anywhere.
Feel it in the presence of the crowds.
Shouting in your ears when you are bowed and in tears.
It’s here.
We can turn our backs forever but we’ll never drown it out.
Every time a body’s bled its last,
A child dead before it’s learned that life is fast,
It stays behind, repeating.
You say you feel the monsters in the dark,
They are not monsters,
They are memories of human things that need to be addressed, appeased.
But there is peace, not heralded by muted brass or soaring strings,
Not worried by the children necking fizzy drinks and sticky wings.
But in us, throbbing, telling us we resolutely must
Not partake in one more horror
If we’re to learn to trust.
Fine enough for poets, but in real life
The blood is flowing.
Fine enough to know it,
But it feels like
The love is slowing down,
Getting tired. Cannot lift its weary head.
And all of it continues.
And still nothing can be said.
We are not hateful creatures,
We are good. Our goodness screams for peace.
Everything that’s happened can be felt.
Each mouth deserves to speak
Whichever words come to it in the throes of truthful feeling.
But instead
We plunge to numbness.
It’s much safer, safety’s so appealing
And
what’s wrong with wanting comforts?
My family are worth protecting.
Why should I concern myself with people that I’ve never met?
And no one’s got my back, so why should I have theirs?
My heart throws its head against my ribs,
It’s denting every bone it’s venting something it has known since I arrived and felt it beat.
He’s drunk tonight.
He can’t bear another moment
of all day committed to a calling
he never asked for.
He’s singing at the roof tops.
Nobody is listening.
He is the old crazy walking into parked cars.
If he sees you strolling home with your arms around each other
he will shout wildly at you and you will smirk knowingly, while you try and shake the terror that he’s airing your most secret dread.
That deep, raw bark is his calling.
Even tanked up like this, he can’t put it out.
Tonight, you see him at a party,
jabbing the air with his fingers,
some kid picked him up on the way over.
Thought it would be funny.
He stands smiling into ears and necks,
dancing like the ancients used to.
But there will come an hour when the dawn is nearly dressed,
when he will start to sway with purpose
and all the laughing kids will hold their sides
and find each other’s eyes, like
have you seen this guy
?
!
While he bows his head and makes his incantations,
singing like a rabbi.
He’s summoning their destinies,
sentencing their spirits;
poor things, the joke’s on them –
they think he’s rapping lyrics.
See him, the old man, blind as our greed,
Alone in the caff with his meat and his gravy.
Witness to every great nation that rose up in hope
And fell prey to itself.
This is slavery
.
Is that what he says to himself? Was it maybe
A mumble that meant something else? Was it
baby
I miss you
? He gets up slow from the table.
Gripping his cane so he’s able.
Shuffling, lonesome, sipping black lager,
Park-drunk. Spouting maniacal laughter.
Hard up. Head down. Scarf, gloves, parka.
Every other bastard with a half-arsed grasp on the last judgement is sitting in his bathtub
clasping his palms. Each night got his guard up so far that he can’t dance till he’s half-cut.
No damn charm, all they want is to be martyrs.
He spits brown phlegm at the oncoming darkness.
He ridicules grandeur
He understands squalor.
Cake for breakfast.
He can do what he likes.
If these are the last days,
They’re no more fast-paced
Than all of the other
Last days and nights.