Maxwell’s Bullseye

“They’ll never forgive you but they won’t let you go (let me go!)”
—The Libertines, ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’

“I’ve done some things that I shouldn’t have done
But I haven’t stopped loving you once”
—Arctic Monkeys, ‘The Ultra Cheese’

Everyone I have ever had to give a shit about doesn’t understand a word I’m saying; and if I could be honest
With them, I barely recognise myself either: I’m trying
To straddle what’s casual with a twinge
Of literary pretension; it means
I’m speaking to no one I’d really like to talk to, longing
Backwards for something mindless and intoxicating. Though don’t think me patronising. Be flattered.

I’m off out tonight to throw a stone hedgehog through a solicitor’s window
And to stand creepily close to people in nightclubs
While I stare, because as you can hear, I am bored
Here, it being

Too easy being a… sculptor… and I no longer require the therapeutic benefits
Of marble, instead missing the comfort to be found in the unpredictability of dysregulation
And abuse; which I now

Of course can mix with a lifetime of resentment
For what I could’ve won
To create these self-referential statues that I’ll be chiselling for the rest of one’s career.

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