Well huzah poesy posse! I finally got my hands on a microphone. I can now tentatively present some works in progress for your critical examination, eeek! I’m not sure why I’ve chosen to post this piece first. It’s by far the longest and least comedic part of the set and therefore not exactly easy to digest. I thought I should start with something a little out of my comfort zone so that I could get maximum benefit from any feedback you’re kind enough to offer.

The poem is essentially a day in the life of a man who’s lost in the busyness of his business. He has no ownership or authority over his existence. His life is a nebulous splodge of barely repressed neurosis and self destructive diversion. The only structure being the imposed sequences of a meaningless job and the temporary escapism of toxic excess and mass entertainment. I wanted to explore the alienating cycle of work, TV, drink and drugs, and the belligerent trepidation of questioning the habits that form our lives.

It’s easy to succumb to the lifestyles that are dictated to us, most of us have at some point in our lives fallen into routines we begrudgingly accept, without ever stopping to analyze how we got there, or how we might escape.

Our lives can overtake us; we can drown in their commotion. It’s easy in this circumstance for our actions, thoughts and relationships to become perfunctory and homogenised, leaving us in a befuddled hinterland where all activities become emotionally indistinguishable from one another.

I’ve spent a fair chunk of time over the past few weeks stalking office workers and unethically eaves dropping on their conversations. Many people spoke about their lives as though they were somehow separated from them. Feelings of disaffection and purposelessness were common place.

The following is a snippet of conversation I overheard. A smartly dressed woman was discussing her existential crisis whilst sharing a cigarette with a suited man outside an office in St Pauls.

“I don’t even know what I do any more; I don’t even know what I actually do, it’s a shambles, everything’s a fucking shambles, and David Tennant isn’t Dr Who any more, and my flat mate drank all my shitting Baileys and I don’t even like moussaka”

Its confabulatory confessions such as this that inspired the poem, and I’m sure we can all relate, David Tennant was a great Dr Who.

For some reason this site won’t let me space the poem the way it is intended, so if you’d like a copy of the text, msg me and I’ll email you one. In the meantime TO LISTEN TO AN AUDIO FILE OF THIS POEM, CLICK THE TITLE LINK BELOW, THEN PRESS PLAY ON THE VIMEO PLAYER.

Boiling the frog