by Kate Tempest
And he’s paying the mortgage off.
He doesn’t know why
he’s not sleeping at nights.
He could get up
Try and walk it off.
But he’s got to get to work in a matter of hours.
Is he awake or asleep?
He can’t tell,
he can’t dream,
he can’t feel,
he can’t scream,
man,
it’s 4:18
Life’s just a thing that he does.
He rolls over, cold pillow, warm body,
at the end of his tether as usual,
he breathes softly,
he burrows down deep,
closes his eyes,
and he thinks, is this really what it means to be alive?
The days go past like pictures on a screen.
Sometimes I feel like my life
is someone else’s dream.
Most days I’m dazed
walking round
I’m working
talking
perking up.
But always feel I can’t be certain
that I’ve woken up
at all.
Is this life?
Will this pass?
This feeling
like I’m looking at the world
from behind glass?
Even when I’m laughing hard
or falling on my arse
Or half plastered
before it’s even dark
Or when some hard bastard
barges past
When I’m passing my targets at work
I can’t shake the feeling
that life hasn’t started
It’s worse
in the evenings at parties
I’m standing apart
My heart’s hard
I can’t hardly be heard,
but I’m harping on, barking out words.
Is this me?
Is this what I’m doing?
I know I exist
but I don’t feel a thing
I’m eclipsed,
I’m elsewhere.
The worst part is
I don’t think
that I care.
What am I gonna do to
wake up?
I know it’s happening,
but who’s it happening to?
Has it happened to you?
I know it’s happening.
But who
is it happening to?
Has this happened to you?
I try new things.
I shoot films on my phone.
And play them back
when I’m alone
– Did that happen?
I walk around,
trying to understand every sound.
Trying to make my feet connect
with every inch of ground.
The sky flattens my cap,
battens me down.
Everything in its category.
Package and sell.
Flattering girls,
battle reality,
it’s Battle Royale
Everyone’s chattering,
nothing is Real.
Collect my salary.
Cooking a meal,
rice and vegetables.
I exercise regularly.
How do I feel?
Whistle a melody.
Is this
all
that’s ahead of me?
I always thought
that life
would mean more to me
eventually.
I hate to think I’ll make it to seventy,
potentially
seventy-five,
And realize I’ve never been alive,
and spend the rest of my days
regretting,
wishing I could be
forgetting.
I know it’s happening
But who’s it happening to?
Has this happened to you?
I know it’s happening
But who’s it happening to?
Has this happened to you?
Just two doors down
in the first-floor flat
in the old ramshackle house
with the novelty doorbell,
the lights are still on.
Zoe plays her music low.
She’s got a bottle on the go,
everything’s in boxes
It’s been a
long
night
packing.
Clothes in black bin-bags.
Blu-Tack greases the paintwork.
What the fuck is all this stuff?
There’s the road sign stolen from Quickshag Street.
Shirts and skirts
posters, CDs,
comedy coasters,
broken TV.
Birthday card that her sister made
in the distant past
when she turned thirteen.
Hair stuff, books,
love letters she can’t bin,
and outside the night
and inside the last hurrah.
Limited edition Air Max One Tens
Che Guevara Bust
complete with his ornamental glass cigar.
For years
the landlord never fixed the shower
The mould kept growing up the kitchen walls.
He’ll do it up nice now
sure
repaint it.
He’s tripled the rent.
He’s gonna get it and all.
Only got a few hours left
to get the room all packed and clean.
Zoe goes to the window
looks to the street
lights up a smoke
it’s 4:18.
The squats we used to party in
are flats we can’t afford
The dumps we did our dancing in
have all been restored
Pints are up two quid
the staff are beautiful and bored
You think it’s coming round here?
It’s falling on its sword.
It don’t feel like home no more
I don’t speak the lingo.
Since when was this a winery?
It used to be the bingo.
I’ve walked these streets for all my life
they know me like no other.
But the streets have changed.
I no longer feel them
shudder
Alright alright, I get the gist.
Whose city is this?
It doesn’t want me no more.
I’ve had a glimpse
into the future.
It stinks.
London’s a walled fort,
it’s all for the rich,
if you fall short
you fall.
You know where the door is.
Board up the broken,
do it up,
sell it back
make it bespoke.
It’s all out in the open.
It’s fine, man,
hike the price right up
and smile with your friends
in the posh new nightclubs.
My streets have been dug up.
Re-paved.
New routes for commuters.
The landscape has changed
I’m looking for the old tags,
the graffs that once meant
safe territory
but it seems
every hieroglyph gets whitewashed
eventually.
All I see is
luxury tenements
woebegone residents
leisure-bent resin-heads
puffing on pleasure
Everyone reckoning
something is beckoning.
Never a minute here.
Only forever.
Towering towerblocks
Scaffolding rattling
Th
e Tube is a battering ram
full of passengers
smashing its way into town.
We are scavengers
scrapping around in the sludge
for our sustenance
Paradise partylife.
Rubbing our shoulders
into the mould.
We do
what we’re told.
We’re Sisyphus pushing his boulder
The kids are alright.
But the kids’ll get older.
And so I’m moving on. I’ve got it all to play for.
I’ll be the invader
in some other neighbourhood.
I’ll be sipping Perfect Coffee
thinking, this is pretty good,
while the locals grit their teeth and hum
Another Fucking One Has Come.
Up the stairs: chip-fat grey and London green with damp
On the fifth floor, where the wind grips your jaw
and holds you in its clamp
there’s a red door, bordered by mottled glass
and inside
a lighted lamp.
Pious lives here.
Pious is tired but can’t sleep, she twitches. Wired.
She lies beside a sleeping body, a girl she barely knows.
She met her in the pub
and it went the way it goes.
The girl’s name is Rose,
But Pious is lovesick for her Thorn.
She left her in the summer,
and since then Pious can’t get warm.
She’s carried her, stuck in her side, since the day that she was born
She dreamed of her and knew her shape
long before she saw her form.
It’s 4:18, and Pious
has been staring at the blinds for hours
She tells herself it’s all her fault.
She doesn’t love.
She just devours.
Can’t sleep.
So much to do.
I’m trying to get closer to you
And you’re
so far away.
I’m trying to get hold of what’s true.
And what’s true
isn’t true
when it’s day.
Tell me, how can I sleep?
Got so much to do.
I’m trying to get closer to you.
And you’re so
far away.
All that I say and I do
are things
that you do
and you say.
How come I’m becoming the one
that I’m running from,
hunted by?
Slurring my words in the pub
Feeing nervous
and overexcited
Arms round the waist
of a girl who might make it alright
for a night.
Yeah, she tears me to pieces.
I lie beside her,
awake
while she sleeps
And I feel much closer
to you
than I felt
when you were still here.
Spill beer till you reappear.
I’m thinking of
you.
And the things
you do to me.
I’m thinking of
you.
And the things
You
do
to
me
Pain in my liver.
OK.
Shame. So much shame
can’t bear my frame
Can’t bear your name.
OK.
Can’t bear this game.
Let’s play.
New rules.
Old rituals.
Guilt trip.
Heartstrings snap
Want to, can’t go back.
Too Much.
Not
Enough.
I can’t get your claws out of my guts
I’m thinking of you. And the things you do to me.
I’m thinking of you. And the things
You
do
to
me
This is my head
GETOUTOFIT
You didn’t want it.
How come you’re still hanging around in it?
This is my body LETGOOFIT
You didn’t want it.
How come you’re still fucking controlling it?
This is my night. Get lost in it.
This is my bridge. Stop crossing it.
This is my face,
stop smiling.
This is my space.
You been gone
so long
How come I still find you
hiding?
Fighting me.
I’m fighting.
The light’s too sharp.
I’m frightened.
Nightmares.
Tighten
my hands
round my own throat
You’re the snake charmer
and I’m the old rope.
No hope.
Just go now
please,
just leave.
You’re still in the air that I breathe.
I’m stranded.
Arms outstretched for a body
Any body
Here’s a body
But I wake up
and I can’t stand ’em.
I feel so grubby.
Don’t want can’t stop just love me
Breath like a cigarette stubbed in the gutter
Come close,
no wait –
don’t touch me.
Ugly.
Push and pull phonecall beep beep looking through
names for the one that feels most dangerous.
I can’t believe you’re in love again.
I can’t open my heart to anybody but
strangers.
I’m thinking of you.
And the things you do to me.
So: here is our moment.
Frozen.
We’ve seen our seven,
unmoving
in lonely homes.
It’s been 4.18
and dawn’s still
hours off yet
My god and they are cold and listless
not quite sure that they exist
here in this moment
slow as glass
lips haunted by the ghosts of kisses.
There is the endless saturation of the days
and here they are
There is nothing moving
but their breath
But watch now
as the breaking storm outside
animates the frozen moment.
The sky cracks into a wild-mouthed grin
and unleashes all the water that it carries
Vapour grown heavy
from every distant puddle,
every lapping wave-tip,
every churning river
contributing to this
rain.
Pete on his doorstep looks up, mouth agape.
Drops his key in shock and laughs a howling ancient laugh.
The lightning charges through them
rips the sky and startles every roof into stark relief
and they see their city
new.
Esther hears herself shout a strange bark into the silence of her kitchen.
Jemma sits bolt upright in bed wide-eyed and she stares at the rain as it smashes itself against her window
Zoe puts her boxes down
Bradley reaches for his dressing-gown
See it from above.
Seven doors to seven flats open at the same time
and light the raining pavement.
Seven broken hearts
Seven empty faces
heading out of doors:
Here’s our seven perfect strangers.
And they see each oth
er.
Strangely dressed, one shoe and one slipper, socks falling off, smiling, gathering slowly, tentatively in the middle of the road.
Shielding their eyes at first
but then
tipping their necks back, unhunching their shoulders,
opening their bodies up to
the storm
And their hair is flattened against their heads
or puffed up madly outwards
And their hands
slip off their chins and cheeks
as they clutch their faces
open-mouthed
Amazing! they shout
You seen it?! they shout
As they walk towards each other
dragging themselves like the wounded
and band close, close,
shocked and laughing,
soaked to the skin.
Joined in it, known in it
Witness to a shared thing, theirs as much as anyone’s
Bones struck, ringing in chorus.
And in the morning when it’s over and they start their days as usual
They will be aware of this baptism in a distant way.
It will become a thing they carry close like the photo of a dead parent
tucked always in the inside pocket
Fading like the heartbeat
Picture a vacuum
Pitch in the vacuum
Pictures and pictures and pictures
And vacuums
Indigenous apocalypse
decimated forests.
The winter of our discontent’s
upon us.
Desolate apostles
slurping Strongbow at the crossroads
We are nothing but an eating mouth
Oesophagus colossal
Will not stop until we’ve beaten down
the planet into pellets
before the interstellar mission to inflict more terror.
It’s killing me it’s killing me
It’s filling me
I’m vomiting.
it’s still in me.
Everything is fine really, silly me.
Poor kids shot dead
Poor kids locked up
Poor kids saying
this is the future you left us?
Stocked up, lunchmeat
Processed punch from an unclean fat cat
Tasty tasty poison.
Carcinogenic
diabetic
asthmatic
epileptic
Post-traumatic bipolar and disaffected
Atomized
Thinking we’re engaged
when we’re pacified
Staring at the screen so
we don’t have to see the planet die.
What we gonna do to wake up?
We sleep so deep
It don’t matter how they shake us.
If we can’t face it, we can’t escape it
But tonight the storms come.
She’s screaming, she’s screaming.
The drones
turned her beautiful boy into a pile of bones
No body to bury
Nobody is home
Running from war
The boats full
The boats sinking
a mile off shore.
No beds in the hospitals
Our minds are against us
Imagine your daughter was gunned down
defenceless
on her way to school,
there’d be uproar –
but she’s collateral damage.
