Wednesday 4 January 2012

Richard III



I have always been revolting
Born 24 August 1984
A concoction
Cooked up by my parent's loins
Submerged for nine months
I emerged from the bump
Cut loose from umbilical noose
To take my first deep breaths
When I was shocked to find myself
By the doctor, upside-down
Who had me by my feet
Like an amniotic bat
He slapped me
So I slapped him back
And I spat my first words
Right there and then
His stethoscope for a microphone
Welcome now to the summer of your discontent!

And from there, hell-bent
On bending rules
When I first attended
Primary school
School reports report that
"Emeka follow does not instructions"
There's a reason for that, Miss
I'm not gonna sit
Like a prick
Wasting my time
And yours
Doodling dumb hieroglyphics
Jumping through the hoops
In the loops of my Ys
And you give me screw-eye
Because I question
Your authority
And ask why
Aged 11
I waste an hour a day completing handwriting exercizes.
In short:
Your instructions are
Scholastically analogous
To being told to
Bungee sans elastic
Off a cliff.
So whilst I know
The reasons for your reasons
Your reasons are often unreasonable.
No backchat, Emeka
Is what came back
And I got sent
To the back of the class.

I have always been revolting
That's me, horse bolting
On Grand National Day
Bit between my teeth
And I run away.
I don't do jockeys
Don't try and stop me
It's not your decision
If or when
I jump the fence
It's my volition
In. My. Own.
Time.
My prize for being
The colt that bolt
Dad's belt beat
My arse black and blue
But that don't stop the truth
His sticks and stones
They bust my bones
But the insurrection
Never left me.
"Respect your elders
Or I'll conk your nose"
And he'd conk my nose
Every bloodied nose
He knows he's lost the war
'Cos I'm stood there
Like Rocky in Rocky III
And he's Mr T
And I'm like
I can't be beat
I won't be beat

I have always been revolting
At first, I thought
I was averse to hard work
But now I know
Every boss I worked for's a jerk.
Micromanagers
Sat subterraneously
In an office
In a basement
Watching me
On CCTV
Maybe
I'm pornography
And he
Can only
Micro-manage
To get an erection
Through
My Disaffection
A despot
Who rules by decree
Won't say thank you
Nor please
And always with
The third degree
Diminutively
Talks down to me
I reckon because
I got a degree
So many chips
On your shoulder
I thought you were
Ian Beale.
And so,
If you think I didn't
Properly stack your shelf
Be my guest
And do it yourself
When you say jump
They might say how high
I say
In.
My.
Own.
Time.
And I don't even wear a watch
So how do I even know what time it is.
Me tells I what time it is
Unitary measurements of time
Are a made-up construct
I don't eat dinner at dinnertime
I eat when I'm hungry
I don't go to sleep at bedtime
I sleep in the morning
When y'alls is yawning
At the crack of dawn
Nine-to-five
For forty years?
No need to wake up
You're already dead.

And I'm a flipping hippy
Because I believe in better
So-called troubler of
the poor world's peace!
This world ain't peaceful
It's in pieces
And not the kind you get from Reese's
If you cede consent and control over yourself and your affairs now
What happens later?
The rat race isn't a greasy clamber to the top
It's a dive to the bottom
And at the bottom
It's a dive
Full of faeces
That we've been
Dropping on each other
While the big boys
Like voyeurs, watch
As we fuck each other
Consensually
Complicit
In our silence
We don't get up
Nor stand up
No backchat
In case the slipper comes back

I have always been revolting
It shouldn’t shock you
I don’t get a thrill
From adding to
Milgram’s leccy bill
Or that I won’t stand guard
At Stanford
Or stand for governments
That do extraordinary renditions
Of governments
With their extraordinary renditions
Of justice
I’m suspicious
So say no now
Before Zimbardo becomes Guantanamo
Apathy is violence
Watching the bully
Is to be the bully

I'm not a bible basher
But let's not bash the bible
They made some valid points
Like do unto others as you'd have done to you
And what do we do?
Usually drink
Usually dance
Usually keep calm and carry on
Turn the other cheek?
We turn the other way
For centuries
We fought like braves
When bruised underneath
The yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny
They no longer clothe
Their naked villainy
In odd old ends
Stolen forth from holy writ
Society became successfully secular
Jocular retorts to holy writ
But
Now
Nothing's sacred
Everyone's naked
And we celebrate like
Nihilistic sluts and fuck some more

Two years ago
I get to 25
And after many an impasse
With the agencies
I think to myself
Why am I still revolting?
Why do I still volte-face
In the face of authority?
I’m not a teenager
But I remember
When I was a kid
I’d dig on Durkheim
And he says that deviance is functional
Without deviation from the norm
Progress is not possible
When Rosa Parks said no
She made the improbable a certainty
Be the change
You want to see
It seems fairly obvious to me
Whilst there’s poverty
In abundance
That things need changing
I’m an activist
Not a terrorist
My principles are principal
And by definition
If it’s revolting
To be revolting
Then I’ll always be revolting.

2 comments:

Will said...

great stuff

top-notch anti-established order rant

I think the bit about complicity with the bully is interesting because complicity seems so important in our lives. We are rewarded for complicity in the system and its injustices and degradations.
It's difficult for one to progress if one insists on resisting degrading oneself and others

Jason Pilley said...

"And I don't even wear a watch"

Amen, bro!

"do unto others as you'd have done to you"

I tried that; she screamed.