LYRIC: The Trap

A question

I want you to answer me

If you can’t be yourself can you really be called free?

Employment

That shackled compromise

To give up who we are so our bank accounts can rise

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD

The system

To which our membership is birth

And from which we can’t escape until we’re buried under earth

Is to trade our greatest days for the promise of a wage

And trade possibility for the comfort of a cage

Where we can rage amongst the beige until we reach retirement age

Exploited at every stage like Karl Marx warned on every page

Of those books we never read because we had to get ahead

Working hard, overtime, I can relax when I’m dead

Except I can’t

Because I’d no longer exist

And the one life that I had was just an opportunity missed

All those things I never did, all the sights I didn’t see

All because I strove to be a dedicated employee

First to start and last to leave

Achieve each task you could conceive

Sacrifice and sweat and bleed to serve my boss’s every need

And for what?

Why did I make this sacrifice?

So I could pay all my bills on time but have no time for my life?

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD

The trap

Which seems to sucker us in turn

Is the idea that a living is a thing you ought to earn

You don’t earn what is a right, it should be yours without a fight

And what we buy would still exist if all the costs were just dismissed

Because the price is far too high if we must work until we die

Yet to ask why, and not comply, is a sure path to suicide 

We took all their fictions and lived like they’re real

Economists laugh with duplicitous zeal

And inside our bones you know we all feel,

That we’re not paid enough for the hours that they steal

But that alarm

Rips us from sleep again each day

And too tired to complain we can’t see another way

But to climb on that treadmill and to our daily grind commute

Stuck in a rut, routine set, we cannot see another route

And out we sell our precious days, as entrenched, the system stays

But at least we’re getting paid, as we endure this masquerade

And as we die a little death and feel our will begin to fade

We know at least there are new toys on which to spend the cash we saved 

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD

LYRIC: President Grab-a-Pussy

Make America Great Again by making Americans hate again

President Grab-a-pussy
President build-a-wall
President golden showers
Awaiting Putin’s call
President carnage
President Fake News
President intolerant
Of anyone else’s views
President little hands
President insecure
President winning
Like we’ve never won before
President no tax
President billionaire
President who thinks a blind trust
Can be a family affair
President Islamophobe
President election hack
President taking all our progress
And turning all that progress back
President American carnage
President America first!
President 45
who made 43 no longer the worst
President Apprentice
President You’re fired
President who so many racist, sexist, assholes you have inspired

I thought I’d have something clever to say
After Donald Trump’s inauguration day
The crowning of a President endorsed by the KKK
In the same week we celebrated the birth of MLK?
But what words are left that can make any of this OK?
And at the same time acknowledge that this isn’t going away?
That orange Hitler was the victor and that he’s here to stay?
That our deepest ideals are about to be betrayed?
And so far from what is decent we have very clearly strayed?
Besides, how many more times do his failings have to be displayed?
The sheer number of disqualifying factors could form a fucking parade!
Yet that didn’t seem to matter on last year’s election day
And it is too late now even if they did somehow persuade
So we are forced to pull the covers on this rotten bed we made
And slumber four years with one eye open the fractured sleep of the afraid

President Twitter troll
President repeal
President the art of making a fucking deal
President thin-skinned
President litigious
President who lies so much that his bullshit is prodigious
President unethical
President regrettable
President whose war crimes soon won’t be hypothetical
President birther
President body-shamer
President class of ‘13 WWE hall of famer
President insulting
President inflamer
President who put to rest the claim they’re all the samer
President real estate
President corrupt
President who like his businesses will leave us all bankrupt
President climate denier
President nuclear slaughter
President who creepily seems to want to fuck his own daughter

Whenever I picked up my pen today
Or opened my mouth up to vent today
The words died on my tongue or the page today
Just “President Trump” then I’d start to fade
That sentence alone and the joke was made
Cutting deeper than any satirical blade
Four syllables that feel like a hand grenade
Like a burning hot day when you can’t find shade
You can’t even laugh you feel so dismayed
Depression so heavy it can’t be weighed
A bill that’s so large it cannot be paid
So this is the best I could serenade
These lemons not even Beyonce could turn into lemonade:

Whatever your politics
Whoever you are
Let’s agree Reality TV has now gone too far

LYRIC: The Lofty Oracles

My old friend insomnia’s here
But just once this last political year
I want to sleep election night without fear
My eyes stinging with tears
Wondering when the dust clears
What it is I will hear?
Is it sobbing or cheers?
And whose cheers and whose tears?
Will I wake up amazed that the old order’s been razed
Our society finally awoke from its daze?
Or with the sucker punch of recognizing
My fellow citizens have been lionizing
The lies
And swallowing bullshit down whole when they go to the poll?

Believing budget-butchers slash with compassion rather than to let the business cash-in
Assuming competence with the economy comes at the cost of our humanity
Hoodwinked by media-trained faux passion
Following spin-doctored narratives the way the shallow follow fashion
Ignoring the catastrophic situation of our growing homeless population
A social welfare devastation – you see them sleeping rough around the station
And as the trains get more expensive – don’t even think about what your rent is
Or how our jobs get less secure as our bosses demand more and more
And how our wages aren’t enough to buy the never-ending stuff
We need to buy to stay alive – our cost of living a living suicide
With our healthcare no longer healthy, it’s funding cut by the super-wealthy,
And a diminishing education due to austerity’s financial obliteration

But we’re so quick to cite futility,
Invent inherent inability,
In the name of false stability
We choose decline with such rapidity

And I find it so regrettable
The agenda’s so easily settable
By those desperate to make inevitable
The idea utopia isn’t gettable

But there’s no evidence detectable
Revolution ain’t selectable
Even though THE LOFTY ORACLES
May have denounced it unelectable

And I must say I’m curious
Why it is we’re aren’t all furious
And how it is so many seem contented
With unnecessary inequality which could so easily have been prevented
Instead becoming cemented like no alternatives have been invented
Which could’ve been implemented to untorment the now tormented
But each solution that’s presented is always swiftly circumvented
By the ones who all assented to the policies I’ve documented
We’re abandoned and unrepresented; a selfish greed unprecedented
But we just go about our day like this destruction is okay
We shrug our shoulders, shake our head
Avert our eyes from all the dead
Normalize what should be scandals, legitimize economic vandals,
As systematically they dismantle rights which underfoot they trample
And we pretend the mood is not so sombre; that’s the propaganda we all conjure
As the wrongs keep getting wronger
The waiting lists keep getting longer,
The vulnerable forsaken, fundamental rights keep getting taken, yet so many refuse to waken to the truth of our situation!
All this corruption, all this bribery
My outrage could fill a fucking library
But while we should be out marching down on the streets
Instead pearls of non-wisdom are set to repeat
How this is “the real world”, how life “has” to be
Manufactured demands treated inerrantly
“Educated” opinions that hide strategy
Promoted and parroted adherently
Clung to despite the incoherency

All hope discarded in this cowed paradigm
Of the self-harming Groundhog Day we vote for each time

And there’s no evidence detectable
Revolution ain’t selectable
Even though THE LOFTY ORACLES
May have denounced it unelectable

LYRIC: The Ballot Was a Bomb

It’s like we booby-trapped the future

An open wound bleeding out and there ain’t no hope of suture

I wish I could wish a happy new year

But I’m watching wheels rolling forward to a catastrophic fear

Dormant malice now awake

I barely recognise a world in which this wasn’t a mistake

But the mistake that I won’t make

Is pretending everything we hold dear isn’t now at stake

Before a storm there may be calm

But if you think that means it’s over be prepared to be alarmed

Because the ballot was a bomb

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

June 24, November 9

Grief-stricken, the saner citizens came to terms with our decline

I hold passports in both places

A dual-citizen duelling with the thought of all those racists

Walls and borders instead of embraces

So much hate in so many faces

But the sun came up and life went on

And you could almost make believe the worst was never gonna come

Hoping that it can’t happen here

But it always does and always has on this the history is clear

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

The ballot was a bomb

X in the box lit the fuse and some forget the fuse is long

It reminds me of oh-nine

All that false hope after the world crashed and you thought you had survived

But unravelling takes time

You’re dangling from a rope; don’t see the strands start to untwine

Because that poison acted slow

The Great Recession already got you but you didn’t even know

Cut by cut they chopped us down

You didn’t notice you were falling till your body hit the ground

So yeah – he’s not even President yet

But I get no comfort from the tweets of the President elect

Or the big business bigots he has chosen to select

Or the petty little grudges he seems unable to forget

And our Brexit may lay in a Schrodinger state

Both in Europe and out until the trigger date

But a stay of execution merely postpones our fate

And can’t erase the result of our referendum of hate

2016 fucked the future – our votes flipped the switch

Is it any wonder those celebrities chose to die and jump the ship?

It hasn’t happened yet, but by the pricking of my thumbs

The ballot was a bomb and something wicked this way comes

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

LYRIC: The Tone of our Oppression

It’s easy to say they’re all the same

Same ideologies under a slightly different name

And I remember, as a kid, thinking Bill Hicks was so deft

With his “puppet on the right” and his “puppet on the left”

I’m just as guilty as him as I sang “vote for change”

Implying the choice is fiction when you’re choosing from a range

Of options limited from pretty bad to even worse

I sang democracy’s eulogy and packed it in a hearse

Because it’s evident to all of us that we’re not truly represented

And if voting could change anything they’d have made a law against it

But while I confess we are being oppressed, I think that history’s shown

When it comes to our oppression each election sets the tone

Because there’s a tone to our oppression

We choose the tone of our oppression

What is the tone of our oppression?

There is a tone to our oppression 

Each campaign sets parameters of what we should debate

Do we pick the puppet who speaks of love or the puppet who speaks of hate?

Each candidate has a worldview of what problems we all face

And this worldview is instructive of where priorities will be placed

For while utopia remains a goal, we’re not in utopia yet

And we can’t afford idealistic gambles with our social safety net

Because people actually live and die based on policy decisions

We might agree they’re not perfect but don’t tell me all politicians

Are all basically the same when that is blatantly untrue

The lesser of two evils entails a better of the two

It’s not a lot but it’s not nothing and it’s time we heed this lesson

Their rhetoric sets a mandate for the tone of our oppression

Because there’s a tone to our oppression

We choose the tone of our oppression

What is the tone of our oppression?

There is a tone to our oppression 

We choose the tone of our oppression

Real lives will be affected by who is and isn’t elected

LYRIC: Another Day, Another Worry

I see others breeze through life in a way which seems so alien to me

Unburdened by the weight of their days darkened by anxiety

Never knowing what it’s like to not feel normal in a crowd

Undisturbed by nagging voices planting concerns oh-so-loud

It’s like a war is going on but the only soldier fighting’s me

And no-one else who shares my flag can even see there is an enemy

The main collateral damage is my day-to-day sanity

“The price, we think, ain’t worth it”, says a grimly smiling Secretary

“This war will be a long war and we cannot see an end in sight,

It may well be that in your life a day won’t pass free from this fight.”

Another day, another worry

I’m not recovering in a hurry

They say it takes time but I’m having doubts

How much time before my time runs out?

When I was a kid they used to say I was the serious one

Always picking problems where the other kids were having fun

Get these ideas in my head that I just couldn’t seem to shake

But I learnt early that a smile was a thing people liked it if I faked

Familiar feelings of a heart crank-speeding in my chest

Constricted throat, no breath, my hands and face encased in sweat

I’d look around for help but knew no help I’d ever get

External weapons could make no contact with this internal threat

And so I learned to cope by learning that I probably never would

And that the sort of life which others had was something that I never could

Yeah, I would never never know a day that would be footloose and fancy-free

I would never know a day I would be free from my anxiety

Another day, another worry

I’m not recovering in a hurry

They say it takes time but I’m having doubts

How much time before my time runs out?

I suppose at this point we should start talking about meds

The use of chemicals to put right problems in our heads

The kind you get from doctors and the kinds they cannot give

The drugs that ease the pressure and restore the will to live

Except I never took a thing, and I probably never will

Not that I have anything against those who try to get help from a pill

It’s just a code I arbitrarily imposed — maybe once there was a reason but now who the hell knows?

That I wouldn’t put those poisons in my veins or up my nose

Couldn’t see a reason to add addiction to my growing list of woes

Some tell me I’m straightedge because I’m scared of losing grip

Others tell me that I seek control and a life I can predict

Me, I think it has to do with drunken people being dicks

But it could be emetophobia and my fear of being sick?

Most likely its my dad and all the harm I saw it do

But it’s also got to do with what is false and what is true

Because I could achieve synthetically the state I’m looking for

But to get better authentically would mean a whole lot more

Another day, another worry

I’m not recovering in a hurry

They say it takes time but I’m having doubts

How much time before my time runs out?

Did I bring it on myself or is it in genetic code?

Was it the way they brought me up or did I do it on my own?

Always fearing for the worst and seeing clouds in silver linings

Seeing everything will fall apart with a clarity that’s blinding

Thinking about those origins – the problem in another form

Anxiety about anxiety: was it made or was it born?

The fact is, it doesn’t matter how it came but that it’s here

And I’m sick of every day filled with a litany of fear

But the alternative is worse so I dig in and persevere

Because although I’m terrified I’m still glad that I am still here

Cuz I refuse to be held prisoner by some voices in my head

And I’ll perform my prison break each day I rise up from my bed

I’m not convinced I have discovered yet the key to set me free

But I keep picking at the lock to escape each day’s anxiety

And I feel good about my chances as the battle rages on

And I will conquer every day until my last tomorrow’s come

LYRIC: Only Dying

The message comes in morning mail

The envelope is thin and pale

A single page is all it holds

But even so your blood runs cold

There’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

Don’t bother tryin’

And there’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

There’s only dyin’

A doctor’s name and then a date

The tests that will decide your fate

The thing you hoped would go away

Has just grown strong while you delayed

God’s non-existence, though displayed

You think it might be time you prayed

Dear father who art in heaven

And mother who art there too

You died too young, and left me shaken

I count the hours, till I’m with you

It’s not a way to live your days

One foot inside an early grave

But grief has scarred and left its mark

So happy days dim into dark

There’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

Don’t bother tryin’

And there’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

There’s only dyin’

Got too good at writing eulogies

Thinking about terminal disease

They tell me it will all be fine

Routine procedure, happens all the time

But they said the same to dad and mom

And moments later both were gone

There’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

Don’t bother tryin’

And there’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

There’s only dyin’

I barely sleep, as dreams are plagued

A hundred diagnoses made

And when I wake I sit and shake

And pray the nurse my blood to take

Another night staring at the clock

Another night wondering what I’ve got

Dear institution founded by Nye Bevan

Hallowed be thy name

Thy will is being undone by conservative scum

And I fear we’re all gonna die in great pain

Am I terrified of finding out

Or am I terrified of losing doubt

The day draws near and time will tell

If I’m ill or if I’m well

 And there’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

Don’t bother tryin’

And there’s no runnin’

There’s no hidin’

There’s no delayin’

There’s only dyin’

 The message came in morning mail

The envelope was thin and pale

I clasped it like the holy grail

Results inside, end of the trail

I felt my body getting frail

My fingers twitched my breath was stale

Will I pass or will I fail?

The message came in morning mail

LYRIC: ANARCHOPHY

When I was 12 I was angry and bored

Found music by Green Day and Faith No More

It was different than other stuff hitherto heard

But the difference could not yet be put into words

Skip forward a year, 1995

A new album by Green Day comes into my life

I’m told “this is punk” and I dye my hair green

As I fumble my way into this revivified scene

Believe it or not it was on MTV

That I first saw a band called Dead Kennedys

Jello sang “Life Sentence” and my mind was blown

On Alternative Nation these first seeds were sown

I headed to Tempest and purchased a tape:

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death my catalyst of fate

At first listen I wanted to take the thing back!

Not as tuneful as Green Day, I thought it was crap!

But the guy back at Tempest flat out said “no”

Said to “give it a chance”, said “let the sound grow”

And I already knew that the bastard was right

I’d been humming California Uber Alles all fucking night!

And the noise soon endeared the more that I’d hear

Graduating from Green Day I developed an ear

But the more that I listened the more questions I had:

Who were Reagan and Thatcher?  Were they really this bad?

I caught up with the 80s in protest and rage

Ignorant to the incidents on which lyrics were based

Time to pick up a paper and read a few books

Look deep into places I had not before looked

The Cold War, The Contras, Zinn, Pilger and Chomsky

My political awakening soundtracked by fast punk beats

Freedom of style

Freedom of thought

Anarchist philosophies go from is to ought

This is the world

It ought not to be

A better way is possible

You’re not gonna stop me

 Caught up to the 90s, new faces same villains

New modern excuses for old imperialist killings

It started with Dead Kennedys, it still hasn’t ended

Music and politics will forever be blended

The reading went on, from Sixth Form to Uni

I studied Politics alongside Philosophy

I now knew the players, I wanted the theories

The justification for a world so damn dreary

A nightmare so sickening and getting worse yearly

All while our leaders tell us we have to be cheery

I wanted to see why it was nothing changed

How identified problems continued to reign

And as the world progressed backwards and repressed ever faster

I accumulated degrees — first my bachelors then a masters

Through dissertation and thesis I sought for solution

A social and intellectual revolution

And yes, I delighted in the irony

When I secured government funding for my PhD

About anarchism as the only power structure that’s legitimate

A hundred thousand words and I think that I proved it

But what was the use of these writings on power

When locked in the basement of some old ivory tower?

I’d speak at a conference, argue with academics,

Who’d roll jaded eyes at my youthful polemics

Less interested in life than in words and their meaning

Reducing discussion to mere linguistic preening

I wanted the world to be changed by ideas

But it won’t ever happen if nobody hears

I thought of those records that started my path

And I left academia.  I didn’t look back.

Freedom of style

Freedom of thought

Anarchist philosophies go from is to ought

This is the world

It ought not to be

A better way is possible

You’re not gonna stop me

Through all the years I kept all these notes

Poetry and prose for found and lost hope

It began as a kid in my ongoing journal

Poems and lyrics to make thoughts eternal

Diaries and blogs, novels and music

If I don’t jot it down I’m terrified I’d lose it

Embalming my thoughts: each sentence a snapshot

Some moments to be shared; some moments — perhaps not

But all of them part of an ongoing journey

Of trying to solve all the things that concern me

Political, personal, ancient or new

In writing I’m trying to unlock the truth

Been putting them in songs since Green Day’s “Insomniac”

I put down the guitar now and then but I keep coming back

Sometimes it’s punk rock, sometimes it’s hip-hop

What’s clear to me now is it’s not going to stop

So what is ANARCHOPHY? What does it mean?

This mixture of anarchy and philosophy?

To me it means freedom and an enquiring mind

Poking at pulling all of the lies that bind

Analysing even the most sacred cow

Speaking the thoughts they try not to allow

Questioning structures of authority

Calling bullshit on bullshit when bullshit I see

It’s a name for the thoughts I can’t not put in rhyme

All those burning questions I’ve asked for a very long time

It’s a 12 year old boy listening loudly to punk

It’s a PhD thesis that still no-one’s debunked

It’s having a voice and deciding to use it

It’s demanding the impossible all set to good music

Freedom of style

Freedom of thought

Anarchist philosophies go from is to ought

This is the world

It ought not to be

A better way is possible

You’re not gonna stop me