dreams are upcycled images
where the dead are alive once more
*
half-eaten food on a deserted plate
in a city that I thought I knew inside out
but I feel the same and it seems to change
around me and I don’t feel like I’m fully in it
*
I don’t know whether I am what is in my head
or whether what is in my head doesn’t know what I can do
*
monetise
monetise
monetise
what are you worth
*
I want to know why I am alive
not how I should survive
*
I am a higher force
cramped into a human body
and in it it’s hard to not succumb
to the human terror machinery
*
that gets me down
gets me down so hard
makes me despair
makes me feel helpless
makes me feel worthless
*
job after job after job after job
they don’t want me to live
they need me to function
they condemn quick and obvious murder
but not the slow-burning hidden kind
that happens all around us all the time
legalised monetised idealised capitalised
*
how can life depend on money
*
everyone pretends to care
because they don’t know how to
*
I don’t look like the wreck they anticipated
so it can’t be that bad
they came to see a performance
what they saw on television
just live in the flesh
how can that be so disappointing
there are no effects
no perfect lines
just the truth hitting them in the face
and they are so numb
they can’t even perceive it
*
there’s disappointment in her
there’s revulsion in him
both have long legs
tailor seat
powerful and overwhelming
directed at me
but they come from an old place
older than myself
and yet I’m the recipient
sometimes I think they are not in their own bodies
someone else is
lots of others are
and they can’t even see me
looking at them
trying to understand why I’m so wrong
and their eyes feel absent
letting someone else through
and we’re going somewhere
and someone can’t get through me
and electricity fails
disappointment is an aging ghost
revulsion is a stubborn curse
they eat their children ever after
Croque-Melpomene 