I’ve come to hate my mother’s womb I’ve come to know a secondary sense of shame I’m glad that I am not tattooed - I’d struggle to reintegrate I’ve come to face the un-writ truth I’ve known my own reflection in its muted guilt - my shame: to love the moss that grew upon the lie she built I want to flay my pale, sick skin - malignant neoplasia on stolen bones I want to burn what’s left inside the crumbling family home

presented with a warning it refuses to heed: it’s perfidious Albion on speed silencing extraneous transoceanic tongues (with a spokesman named Francois, they could come undone) they laugh so hard at the liquid lunch, their eyes began to bleed they’re perfidious Albion on speed staggering back to second homes, they bolt the front door they want a minstrel show renaissance and a third world war she roves across the countryside on horseback in red and riding-crops her neighbours’ protestations to death “don’t you say a *fucking* word to me - I’m little miss perfidious Albion on speed!” the lower rib-removal? it went remarkably well! he swills a gallon of himself and disconnects his doorbell he waits with rabid fervour for The Daily Telegraph ‘but [he] only [buys] it for the puzzle section, mind - [he’s not] daft’ yes, they’re fetishistic unilateral loonies, just maybe but you can answer to their pro-life, anti-vaxxer MP he is the emperor of an uncontested Hertfordshire seat; he’s perfidious Albion on speed they’re the realest Anglo Saxons; the English pedigree they’re sneering at the “neoliberal Kraut conspiracy […] “resuscitate the LDV for whack-a-mole FP!” perfidious Albion on speed…

“Bullingdon boy - stop playing with your ham hock! “pass back the shuttlecock! “ta! yah! rah!” “Bullingdon boy, fiddling with chitterlings, “Daddy’s got an opening, but you seem preoccupied… “croquet?” “Bullingdon boy - how’s about a pogrom? “it’s us against the hoi polloi! What do you mean you’re ‘busy’? “you’re no fun, you rotter - have another trotter - you’re no fun, you rotter” “Bullingdon boy, dawdling down Magdalen; a tremor in your gait; “a pained expression on your shiny, shiny face - “are you quite gay?” “Bullingdon boy - where do you go nightly? “we don’t really see you anymore… “but the rumours, they abound… apparently, your private anatomy is lively - decidedly” “Bullingdon boy - you’re a sly swine. Why do you look down upon everyone all the time? “Bullingdon boy - you’ve done twisted, twisted things. May you be doomed to obscurity…” A narrative switch now - back in time some weeks - to that fateful evening in an undisclosed location at which it had been decided the foul deed should take place. Masters and their minions gathered with a photographer, united by their boisterous cheer, flagons of expensive wine and bleak, bestial fancies. Our hero takes a seat and breathes deeply, as hooded masons gather in a ring, and chant the scared ritual: “we like to play with David ’cos David is our mate “and when we play with David he porks the face in in 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! “oh what fun!” “hard-ons for lardons…!”

Gary didn’t try very hard in school (he’s a weapons dog breeder in the ashtray of England) Crystal’s very thick but she has ‘great tits’ (she’s a madam of the Big Society) Gary never asked very much from life (he plays away from home ‘cause it’s what he wants to do and he’s getting pretty tired of explaining that to you with your ethics and your feelings and aversion to tattoos) life’s writ large on the back of a fag packet (only incidentally eventful - if at all): ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer you’re better off embracing the fall’ twenty-one centuries it’s taken so far and still we haven’t really got it fixed and ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer’ so sit Crystal has a client in her bleak front room: a pervert with a penchant for a uniformed masseuse name badge on the placket of a sheer white blouse, she garrottes him with a stethoscope until he is aroused Crystal didn’t try very hard in school so she’s forced to make use of what she has: sexual appeal in a seaside town - hen’s teeth attributes for raking in the crowns life’s writ large on the back of a fag packet (only incidentally eventful - if at all): ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer you’re better off embracing the fall’ twenty-one centuries it’s taken so far and still we haven’t really got it fixed and ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer’ so sit ‘Gary, do you love me?’, Crystal sighs astride his swollen gut ‘you’re getting in the way of the screen again’ is what he offers up later on the promenade, they kick about a can and slip behind the dustbins unashamed the sun goes down on the seaside town, embarrassed to have shone on it again life’s writ large on the back of a fag packet (only incidentally eventful - if at all): ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer you’re better off embracing the fall’ twenty-one centuries it’s taken so far and still we haven’t really got it fixed and ‘success is stress and stress causes cancer’ so sit

swing low in the pine-panelled office! (don’t disgorge on his new Desmond!) just forget the rising the kerfuffle - enjoy the two-hundred-and-sixty-knuckle-cabinet-shuffle! meanwhile in England’s fields, truck cab curtains twitch all day… (the whited sepulchre gets what it pays for) …and then someone sends a nail bomb to the cabinet of Charlie Cairoli! pour yet more petrol on the pub quiz curriculum where values are usually sourced from the cobwebbed vaults of every discourse! a ceremonial sword on the shoulder - you’re not even slightly sorry Don Juan’s loose in the chamber, looking for loopholes to quarry …just as someone sends a nail bomb to the cabinet of Charlie Cairoli! God save clandestine committees! God save tea and the peasantry! and God save the landed gentry: Hapsburg lips on queening seats! and lengths out in the halls of power! no eye-contact on the street! gripping the pigtails of interns, make sure they kiss your feet... …and wanton, chubby finger-marks will smudge your ‘queens and kings of England’ ruler …and living on an island will be really quite embarrassing quite soon… …when, then, someone sends a nail bomb to the cabinet of Charlie Cairoli… I am in the new Red Orchestra - I’m learning how to play the bassoon!

you like this sort of thing, don’t you: gold-leaf and hype and some limited-run magazine-supplement gloss-coated fun all screaming and scoffing on BBC One ‘cause rich people went and had coitus again, writhing on silk bedding paid for by us - well, you like this sort of thing, don’t you bet you love this kind of thing, don’t you: temporary road blocks and terrorist threats (in mild-mannered, middle-class Windsor, no less!) all coverage for jingos in tabloid printhead as merry tax exiles become more inbred an idiot mass for to worship the few - you love that kind of thing, don’t you oh, you love that kind of thing, don’t you you just love this sort of thing, don’t you: the privileged, powerless gentry of yore embalmed by a misguided nostalgia for scandal, parades and imperial war; the arbitrary signing of inarguable law; Clubcard point redemption on palatial tours… you love this kind of thing, don’t you you love this kind of thing, don’t you you just love this kind of shit, don’t you

to mortgaged acres wake the Middle English in hamlets quaint daybreak on the green birdsong hate proud union flags held by the English breeze “…and thankfully, the council only made us make room for one family of refugees “yes, we did quite well here - just one family… thank goodness it was just one family!”

shame is: a blue passport with this citizenship of mine, in present times Strasbourg, could you take me: a defector; a fugitive; whatever you would like…? ‘europa endlos’ - je vis dans un endroit plus haut qu’un espace sur la terre our aged binary - well, it just slays synthesis; I’ve had enough of this “there’s no autarky in team,” moan the empire’s bones, tossing-off with a knife 25,000 leagues underneath the north sea, digging for ‘victory’ we’re just Celts with newspapers and electricity who will a-bomb England back into Norman history “there’s no autarky in team,” moan the empire’s bones, tossing-off with a knife 25,000 leagues underneath the north sea, digging for ‘victory’ oh, Strasbourg: paramour, evermore - somewhere else! a Japanese glare; a Danish fear: covering disinterested ears…

hauled over the cobblestones, his mangled body in shock offal spills over the cordon line from the Oxford alumnus spatchcock dragged up to the scaffold; hacked, legless and scared to exuberant cheers from the maimed and queer, the Halifax Gibbet’s prepared ripped out of his manacles; thrust down onto the block pigeons descend on the ex-PM and mutilate his limp lunch box oh, black austerity! out fat candle at last! it’s a glorious day in the European sun: bring something to throw made of glass! we had cried, and we’d suffered; we had languished enough in a poverty constructed to oppress taking matters into our own cracked hands, we rose for ourselves - nothing less! we laughed; we cheered; we could finally fly an English flag high and proud together on the big society’s big psychotic day out!

Monday bus, the seaside town; can of wings and teenage wife your trainers were immaculate; your haircut was your life pints of ale: the peeling pub; bits of tankard; kitchen knife your sweatshirt was designer and your haircut was your life on your neck, the wisdom inked: ‘the price of joy is pain’ oh, it’s just the kind of thing I’d hoped you’d say monkeys see as monkeys do - I don’t suppose you chose besides, you seem quite satisfied to me mouldy cul de sac: you’re seen in Casanova’s discount jeans… the web of infidelities with youthless single mums of three… you’ve bits of kids and bits of cares and bawdy top-shelf magazines the out-of-working week is long for scratch-card libertines and guilt is just some fagging notion you can drink away children can be silenced with cocaine do you know (I wonder) treading swill is really strife? do you know your haircut is your life? of course, mate - yes; okay - alright…

when will you finally move out of time? when will you finally leave? are not the splendours you leech satisfactory? aren’t you ashamed of your greed? why hasn’t yet somebody done the good thing and impounded your pelletised feed? when will you move out of time? when will you leave? when will you finally shuffle on into the pages of history books? why will it take us four hundred years longer than the French proletariat took? and why’s it distasteful exactly to have an aspiring, modern outlook? when will you move out of time into history books? don’t proffer the thesis they so often do: that business is booming and all thanks to you don’t act like you aren’t only all too aware that if you were gone, a republic could care… how much more clandestine sexual depravity? how much more banking offshore? when will you move out of time; the future is bored when will you move out of time, you blue-blooded whores when will you finally move out of time? when will you finally leave?

is that the best that you can do - botched alchemy of truth? it’s shaping up to be a fairly scoundrelly new Jerusalem you’re building well, that can’t be all you’ve got - that’s one sad excuse for a haven… what’s with all these barbed-wire walls, please? what’s them medals for? filthy notions to revisit, virile in your hand: government-funded life support for Nan well, you can have her - I renounce the land is that all you could come up with - a plastic day-trip for the jingos? oh, have a clap - they all like that - keep them happy; give them wartime it feels foul to be cast in this Angloid skin but I’d feel worse if instead it was more humbling is that the best that you can do - the warning signs in baby blue? you strike while they are miles away; you slit the throat of England dreaming! and Thatcher sold your Mum and Dad their shit-house for a song, but you made something, so you’re alright, Jack well, you can keep it - I’m not coming back and I will heed the klaxons…