Eighteen Sheets to the Wind

I want to go home
and read a book.
Perhaps eat a whole
packet of biscuits,
drowned by sweet tea.

I want to do this
because I cannot take
this muddy
brown-scarred
chafed city
for another fucking minute.

I want London to burn bright
so something new can rise.
A new colour of
rage that manifests
into a contagious smile
maybe.

Pretentious crap I know.
Its what I feel though.

Why?
Something an hour ago.

*

I was sitting in my office
on the third floor,
peering at a
lottery funding application on my screen
that I knew to be a fraud.
I knew it
because I wrote it.

An application that
will be granted hands
down.

I can always pull it off.
I'm a winner.

And a liar.
That's the secret to getting money.

The theatre company that I work for
has a mission statement.
'We Exclude Nobody'
Oh dear.

Nobody except for the poor office assistant
who caught the Artistic
Director snorting up a large
white line of old Columbian
in the loo
yesterday morning.

The Artistic Director meanwhile has
pissed off back home to Yeovil and
the duvet of his parents.

He is claiming tiredness.

So,
here I am,
holding the fort.
The good administrator
and fundraiser
staring at a document that I could wipe
from the computers memory
in an
instant.

I will not of course,
because I am a winner.

*

An hour ago from my window
I saw a man across the road from the office.
He was pissed as an arse;
he tumbled into the street
like a pushed rock,
he tripped and fell
into the edge of the road.

And there he stayed.

I started to print the Lottery document,
eighteen pages of goodness
that the will alleviate the
conscience of the Home Counties,
the Hackney Guardian readers.

Oh how we love to care on our front doorstep,
just don't let them
through the door.
that's all.

The man lay in the road,
kicking like a
synchronised swimmer.
Cars,
bicycles
dodged.

Shoppers passed
gave him the acknowledgement
of a piece of rubbish.

Someone would
surely help him up soon.

It started to rain.

The Lottery paper printed
its tune in front of me.

Ariel bullshit.

I made a phone call to the bank;
the government funded youth agency
that I had been in bed with
over the last six months had just deposited
eighteen thousand pounds into our current account.
An advance
on our 'Crack Awareness' project
in Dalston,
East London.

Money that
will be spent on pointless meetings
between overpaid youth workers who
are addicted to
African trinkets,
organic hair products
and
Tori Amos.

The man in the road
attempted to stand,
scrabbling at the kerb he fell
back again.

Busy windscreen wipers ignored,
broken puddles chilled him to the
bone.

I could not stand the it anymore.
I grabbed my coat and
ran down the stairs
out into the sepia street.
I signalled at the
traffic to stop as
I crossed the road facing the man.
I was met with
hooters of derision.

A cyclist passed,
laughing at the vision of
death warmed
up in the
road.

The most terrifying emotion
is the absence of feeling.

We voted for that.

I hauled him up and
he immediately fell.
A rotten sack of potatoes.

I lifted again,
dragged him to the wall,
his eyes knew nothing.

I crossed the road
and went back to the office.
The printing of the funding application
had finished.

After ten minutes
the man walked away from the wall,
he was steady
now.

Wet rags heading west.

*

I want to go home and read a book.
Perhaps eat a whole packet of biscuits
drowned by sweet tea.

I want to do this because
I cannot take
this muddy brown-scarred
chafed city
for another fucking minute.

My finger hits the delete button.
I format the hard disc.

Eighteen pages of greed
take flight out
of the office window.

I'm going to work in a flower shop.