Albion

 Michael Faraday’s vast conductor

Spreading like veins

Throughout the myriad streets

Of a dull sleeping city.

The night bus home

The midnight train,

Compressed with drunks,

Bulging with freaks,

With me squeezed in the corner

Sheltering a hard on

Under my bag –

 

This island,

This pathetic Albion.

Lost in the time

Of imperialism,

Is now dead –

For England no longer

Has an identity.

This United Kingdom

So full of contradictions,

The bigots, the clowns,

The beautiful losers,

The various religions

Who live off the state

Yet denounce our ways

Is something,

That makes the lives

Of soldiers lost, in

Our past wars

Seem, pretty pointless…

Worthless and inflammatory –

 

Through the steamed

Train window, I catch

The glint from the

Outside steel rails –

Through the midnight

Darkness, I see lights

Caught in the glass

Of shabby drawn

Window frames –

 

 

The illuminated train

This long rattling

Electrical Asp

Journeys through this night

Shooting streaks

Of venom, polluting

The declining air.

 

My vehicle of transportation

My chariot home,

Is packed and stuffed

With a cast of weirdo’s

Young lovers and spinsters

The peaceful and the hateful.

And the drunks, mumbling and spitting

Conveying confusing

Nouns, verbs and words,

That are as soft as putty,

Phrases as lost,

As damaged cartilage,

Pouring from their mouths

That moves like a cartoon characters –

Loony tunes: The lot of them –

 

The past,

This concussed history,

That has left us

Marooned at this cracked

Rib in time.

Where the flies

No longer land on s**t,

They’ve moved on

To caviar.

This past,

Sticks in our throats

Like a cancer.

 

This heavy mood

Of feeling shot –

Shot to the bone

With the weight of

Expectancy, slowly tightening

Around my nature, like

Wood in a vice.

Stripped of bare emotions

Force fed by insecurities,

I regurgitate the hate,

Regurgitate the waste,

Throw up the dour

A diet of s**t,

An inner world not sweet

But sour –

 

So this generation,

Of fast food and play station,

Is built on the Big Mac and

Games for the computer.

Where East meets West

In a deadly fusion

Of multicultural beliefs

In a cocktail of

Suspicion and suicide bombers

 

I feel alone,

Alone like a junkie

On a health farm.

Isolated –

Like a steaming t**d

On a perfume counter,

Where,

I count our cost.

 

I hear the students,

Conversing on the train.

On how they’re the first

To arrive at their opinion.

On how they’re so, so, so

Very original,

Poor, poor fools…

Like a convict on a rack

They’ll slowly be stretched

Of ambition,

Tortured by experiments that

Can only go wrong.

 

Oh this life,

Of hi-fis and finance

Is a weight too heavy

To move,

Too absorbing to leave

Too destroying to believe.

 

Oh this world

Of global warming

And starvation,

Of poverty

And desperation

Of religions caught

In-between they’re past beliefs

And our new civilisations

Is a world

Without relief,

A planet stuck in

Perpetual disbelief

A bright sad globe

Dying on its feet.

 

Albion

Hear my song.

Albion

Take courage from

The frailties of man.

Albion

Adrift from the shores

Of its wondrous history

Be firm, be strong

Be whole, be complete.

Albion

If it had a direction

It would truly move on

Albion

Our Beautiful, beautiful Albion…

Sing to me

A song without words…

Albion…

Albion…