into my groin, pickling my kidneys in vodka,
ditching dismembered bodies in remote lakes,
or boarding the suicide express.
When your first childhood memory
is of masked men bursting into the squat,
fighting with your drug-dealing father,
and almost falling on top of you.
When you see your father accusing
your mother of poisoning his food,
and he splits her scalp
with a dinner plate.
When he beats her most nights,
berates her most nights, strips
away what little dignity
her parents left her,
and you’re too small and useless
to protect her from anything.
When you witness a schoolmate hit
by a train one blue-skied afternoon,
and you get an unwanted insight
into what colours our interiors.
When your father dies alone
and rots for a week before
anyone cares to find
his yellow body.
When your mother falls into bed
with broken men, and one worms
his way in by seducing her
with pills and powder.
When he beats you most days,
berates you most days, strips
away what little dignity
your parents left you,
and you’re too small and useless
to protect yourself from anything.
When you’re ten years old,
covered in bruises, wounds, dried blood,
and no one kisses the ache away.
When you discover your mother’s
found a way out of the inferno,
and there’s nowhere for you to go
but through deeper circles of hell.
When you’re left to carry
the weight of failed parents.
When you’re fourteen years old
and thrown out onto the streets
like the bloody offal
of a medieval butcher,
and you’re left
to survive with junkies,
winos, thieves, prostitutes,
and future murderers.
When you’re slashed open
with an eight-inch kitchen knife
and your wound’s red lips laugh.
When you’re stuck in a foster home,
and the carer plays you a videotape
of German girls groaning as giant
genitalia glide into their guts,
and you think there’s no place
sacred from the beast of man.
When your friend kills himself
because he couldn’t cope
with the fact his alcoholic
mother stole his virginity.
When you understand starlight
is dying out, and the cosmic
void will reign victorious.
As our absurdity careens
through fields upon fields
of wilted sunflowers.
As our black dogs
howl in unison.
As our souls stride on
despite fractured ankles.
By now, I should be pushing heroin
into my groin, pickling my kidneys in vodka,
ditching dismembered bodies in remote lakes,
or boarding the suicide express.
But by some miracle
I am still here, lucid,
without addiction,
opposing the odds
for those of us
who passed through the jaws
of this apathetic
meat grinder.
And I
have developed no superpowers.
And I
wear no golden mythical armour.
And I
hold no sacred treaty with the gods.
Each day, I rise, tread out
into the world’s feral wilderness
with a smile
and calm fortitude
in the face
of the elements.
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