There’s no word more middle class than ‘FLABBERGASTED’
But it’s not a word I heard many tongues say
During my teenage years,
Spent in a semi-detached at the back of a council estate.
We didn’t have that vocabulary, too busy being chip butty battered and bruised…
But if we did, this is how it would’ve been used…
 
Remember that time we camped out in the woods?
Clothed in tracksuits like polyester gypsies
Getting tipsy on shit cider,
Pituitary punks chewing cheap skunk,
Getting higher and higher
When that crack head came and set our tent on fire
We were… FLABBERGASTED
 
Or that day at my mate’s
Playing mind-bending gut-wrenching games on a clapped out X-Box 360
Twenty rounds of Tekken in the time when his dad was out at the pub, that slim slice of safety
Between the fatherly thumps that happened so routinely…
His mum was upstairs having a wee
When the police banged on the battered back door, no need for a key
Tipped off about the speed she kept in the cupboard
Next to the Kellog Crunchies.
The only way she saved herself from financial harm,
With a husband propped up every day at the bar.
That was nasty. We were… FLABBERGASTED
 
Or when my second hand bike got nicked, twice in one night.
They came to that house party with a hedgehog they’d found by the A35
Drop kicked that mal-prepared mammal like a spiky bag of shite
And when we tried to stop ‘em? Started a fight,
Fists flew to my chin
Then they tipped over your wheelie bin
Sweet and sour skin heads lighting fags and laughing.
We were… FLABBERGASTED
 
And then… That time we ran past that flat filled with wrong’uns
The football was on and… We said their team was shit.
So they came out, didn’t catch me but kicked your fucking head in.
You were too unconscious to feel hurt, splinters of teeth scattered by the kerb.
And the council house next door to them, home to an old man that they called a paedophile when probably he just had special needs and a lonely life.
Front door always open, wafting smells of warfarin and stale wee,
Hadn’t washed in weeks ‘cos they’d turned off his water,
His only oasis, His liquid catharsis.
He died that month, no one found him for weeks that poor bastard.
We were… FLABBERGASTED
 
But back to you, madam.
Standing in the queue for an expensive drink at a John Cooper Clarke gig.
Through off-white teeth you said you were ‘FLABBERGASTED’
At that work do BBQ when your colleague Miranda the Business Manager
Let her kids wear clashing shades of beige trousers. Sounds like shocking stuff.
I’m not surprised that after a week of struggling to survive such events,
You’re here for some working man’s poetry - money well spent.
And I hope that in between your rose-scented bathwater laughter, Middle class sniggers snaking up to the rafters,
That your Marks & Spencer sensibilities Aren’t too shook.
That when you hear poems about poor people, piss artists and abusive partners,
You aren’t left feeling too… FLABBERGASTED

In an attempt to be honest, I wanted to say
That i’m not feeling so great, pretty far from Adonis
No sixpack, no muscles;
just a four pack of cheap beer from Brussels.
It’s moments like this that I don’t feel so lucid
But it’s somehow important that I try to be truthful
Mental health is not just some pigeonhole for the unfortunate
Just like pigeonshit it can change you to something you thought you weren’t
Whether good, bad or in between
It’s something we all experience; and it’s somewhere I’ve been
It’s normal to feel overworked or stressed
It’s normal not to want to get dressed
It’s normal to feel like you’re one in 8 billion
That if you weren’t here, that would be nothing significant
And sadly it’s normal not to talk about it or cry
To take to our screens creating parallel lives
And to be honest, there’s no easy solution
I’ve tried everything from athletics to drug-based pollution
But what I do believe is that there’s strength in numbers
That if we work together we decide when our time’s up
That if I can tell even one person that I feel like shit
And my whole being is hurting
Then at least I’ve tried, and when it comes back around
I can be the one to pick you up from the ground
Get a coffee, a beer
Another hole in your ear
Get a brand new pet, read a book about Tibet
Do whatever you need, even if it's doing nothing instead
Because I promise you more than anything in my broken head
From my brain to my balls
That you are never, never
n e v e r
Better off 
Not here at all.

I was in the English Riviera, round the back of River Island
Sidling through the alleyways where men and women hide
And one thing that I saw, I swore
I’d try to write about…
A man, discrete on concrete space
Next to someone’s storage waste
These black wheeled wonders in a refuse shed
Next to a human with no roof over his head.
What kind of world am I living in
When a person’s worth less than a wheelie bin?
They say that if you sold a body, weight by weight and bit by bit
It would be worth around 100 quid.
But somewhere along the line
We’ve forgotten the value of human heat and intelligent minds.
The homeless man who gives the dog his last warm chip
Or the woman on benefits that hands back a wallet when somebody’s dropped it.
And I know that it seems we can’t stop shoving rubbish inside us
Treating ourselves like landfill ‘til the whole world despises us.
But the last time I looked, a man’s worth more than a bin
Every single one of us knows where we’ve been
Knows we have the right to be safe and be clean.
Knows we deserve safety, respect and motivation.
To live in a compassionate, civilised nation.
So next time you jump on a bandwagon
Of callous callouts, just imagine;
That could be you with a little less luck
That could be you if you’d come unstuck.
Three paychecks and some bad decisions,
That’s all it takes to lose a little vision, so consider.
Next time you walk past someone who’s made some mistakes
Don’t think about whether they’re homeless or fake
Sit down, lend a hand, offer your ear.
When you do that you realise
There’s much more to hear.
 
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The year is 1969
Your eyes are stars, your arms are strong
I wish you were around me neil, we’ve been in orbit for too long
You’re my lovely lunar crater
Neil I think that you’re the greatest!
There’s nowhere I would rather sit
Than next to your cockpit.
You’re my one space odyssey
I wish that you and me could be reunited soon
But I’ll just sit here waiting for my man to get back from the moon.
I know that you don’t love me back! I know that you’re not into that!
And NASA said we’re not allowed
But metaphorically and literally
My head is in the clouds.
I’m your lonely rocket ship, never getting nearer
This atmosphere is killing, I’m sure you understand.
They say it’s one small step for man
One giant leap for all mankind
But I wish you’d take a step to me
And put your spaceman hands in mine.
 

​I went swimming the other day / and a fascist was getting changed
I tried not to listen to what I knew wasn’t true
As he got out of his speedos on the far right of the room
He said he wants to get rid of anyone who’s not quite white
Although he did enjoy his curry last night
He said he doesn’t hate them, just wants ‘em to stop stealing his job
Let him get back to his ham sandwiches and tiny nob
I could hear him talking about Nationalist Power
As he washed his bald head in the dirty shower
He went on, and on, and on
With his vitriolic bollocks, I don’t even know how
The whole time wiping his arse with a union jack towel
I could see last night’s curry, half digested in flecks on the flag
As he rolled it up in his sporty little bag, I could still smell the stink.
And I thought: ‘Next time you go swimming Dave, I hope you sink’

​Craig has got his Christmas tie on,
A gift from his wife when his son turned one.
In hindsight, the best present he’s ever had - Once he won the lottery he thought it would be happy families;
Holidays for mum and dad, a golf course and caviar - no going back.
Turns out, two million pounds can’t buy happiness - His wife left him to party in his one man mansion.
Craig has got his Christmas tie on,
A gift from his wife when his son turned one.
The other end’s round a chandelier,
The colour in his eyes long gone.

The problem with swimming in the sea is
That it's where the porpoises play with their penises
So next time you go in for a dip and get covered in foam
Be sure to go home - grab a flannel
Because it's probably bodily fluid
From a quite aquatic mammal.

​I wish
I could put my finger on it
This illness.
Is it Winter, seasonally affective?
Pathetic fallacy turning us defective?
Nights out seep alkaline from our heads
And employment is just a marriage of convenience,
The meaning we sandwich
Between the Monday blues and Friday’s fires.
The rest of the time we sit in bed,
Geometric patterned curtains protect us
From the pestilence of post-pubescence.
We, children who never grew up
A Neverland nightmare of false starts and fuck ups.
We wither and I wonder,
When it might get better.

Remembrance Day and Bonfire Night both fall in November - But for them it’s not less ‘lest we forget’,
it’s more lest we remember.
​
Why is It that in the same month we glorify war and burn the man who tried to blow the doors off parliament?
They don’t want us to make a statement;
They want us to stay tired, trialled by the day’s tasks lest we remember and take heart;
Remember Mark Duggan
Remember every family in Iraq who lost a loved one
Remember the Trans Atlantic Trade Deal
Remember slave labour and colonisation
Remember that Churchill starved a whole nation
Remember the hatred that, in different forms they have stirred in us from the start
With war, the rich/poor divide and broken bodies.
Keeping us in our place, freezing wages so we’re working so hard we can barely tie our shoelaces,
Let alone complain.
While they continue with tax evasion, profiteering and destabilising nations,
Choking black streets and pruning the leaves
Of their magic money tree.

Yes, since day one dollar bills have spoken
But if you can make a statement without money then you’re half way to being woken
So as you wear your poppy and burn your dissident this November,
I hope you know that for them It’s not ‘lest we forget’,
It’s lest we remember.