performance

this is for you
and for you and you
thankyou

thankyou, for adding to the daily diet of drivel
for pilfering and plagiarising meaning
for reducing heart-rending emotion
into clever laughs and knowing smirks
for breaking into all our works and
pulling us down from our pedestals
making our yearnings easily repeatable
with council grants to re-emote
so we can self promote our heart strings
and play our brand of plaintive notes
for claps
and sit on your collective laps
stroking your good taste until you purr

but i am here to bite the hand that feeds
to say you! and you! and YOU!
and you will clap to see such rebeliousness and spiky bravery
like a smoker convincing himslef that the safety warnings 'aren't for me'
you'll never see that YOU! means me

the me inside your poised body
hoping to see and be seen
in this rather highbrow scene
the hidden me
only realised in dreams
the hunger fear and anger and the greed
the empty lost enormous need

poetry is decoration
the words are paint that colours bring to life
but behind the words lies the indescribable
behind the paint behind the lies

behind the entertainment lies the lurch
the jolt the jerk
when we awake and see what we really are
and what we've missed
and how huge the world
how huge the abyss
and the question
the question we can never shape into a word
that we can never form to hurl
into the dark
futile and dwarfed by the unanswerable answers that will never come

but i advise you
to clap politely
and to hope you weren't included in my scope
when i turned and broke the pact
that lives in every act.

because you and you and you
i love you all i really do
because i know without a doubt
behind our flouncing posing pouting
the human race really sucks
and every one of you like me,
are well and truly f*cked