Spicy Shelob - Racing Thoughts

I have felt sick for the last two hours,
I think the rats on the street are staring at me,
They probably don’t exist,
Their eyes are like burning pebbles,
I think they have suffered abuse,
They are on a drip,
They will soon decease,
Someone will press a button,
The button will say that they are deceased,
I am tired and have lower back pain,
It feels like a long time until someone presses the button for me.
 
I am looking at pictures of yellowstone park on the corridors,
There is a strange magic in them,
I drank two large cappuccinos,
I am so tired my bones are cold,
My head feels like it did during periods of heavy drug use,
Perspective has become strange,
The room is weirdly recessing around my head,
There are faces in it.

A poem about a racist person.

Do you think it is
morally reprehensible;
ostensibly condemnable;
eminently disgraceful;
despicably objectionable;
abjectly scandalous,
that one of Trinity College’s most generous financial donors had a
happy
twinkle
in
his
eye
as he was telling a story about how in the good old days he used to stand on some wall in Trinity and shout into Balliol, ‘Show us your black man!’?

Or is it fine? 

I <3 lie-ins

Wake up, the screen is shining,
The daily march is dawning,
Wake.
Drooping eyelids, yawning,
Stretching, checking
Facebook.
Wake, the screen is glaring
At you. No news.
Wake, to go tearing
Through the hours,
Wake, fulfil the twilight promise              
With newly promised powers:
That new energy, and meaning.
Show yourself you were not dreaming
Those resolutions, or that resolve.
And then turn, tired, in your bed:
Turn, yawn, dissolve
Into the sheets.
Rest your head and curl your feet
Around hers. Dissolve
Into the soft and warm
Of her arms, and curl your feet
And sigh that she’s not there,
It’s the lonely pillow’s heat. 

Against Time
And it’s a strong start for this,
Our latest pair of opponents.
So early in the season,
Expectations are low and
Neither can think to know
The other’s trajectory, or
Who will falter first.

One lap down, they converge
Into the closest lane,
No doubt attracted by
The profit this tactic presents.
They’ve same pace and stride,
And they hound each hurdle
Side by side.

This is, however, no marathon.
In fact, there’s only so long
A pair can surround the same centre
Before they, too, become caught
In the trap of a circular track.

It is for this reason, among others,
That when the game ends
And victor turns to vanquished,
Red-faced and shaking,
Success smells not so sweet
And each is forced to ask
Whether it was really worth it,
Why they raced in the first place.

Two Hungry Clowns
The first to touch the future is the winner said the teacher.
Simon Barker asked the future as an object or a distance?
No one listened. Someone crumpled little ribbons in the corner.
Lorna Wilson circled hurtful dissertations on her notebook

Hoping no one looked and saw them told the teacher. Holden
Caulfield said the teacher: what your thoughts on this might
Be might be important; equally might not be. Bottomley,
The slovenly dysfunction on the front row won’t go home

This week; his parents fight at night and he’d prefer his quite
Imperfect friend Tom Benjamin’s abode to all that screaming,
Begging, bleeding. Feeding pigeons will attract them, said
The teacher, but the cause to which excites them might be

Out of your control. In most examples, harmful potents,
Martha Grossman won’t you please leave Eve di Santo’s
Pants alone, go home and be indicted, go to jail, grow old
Inside and die there, please? The Catcher in the Rye; there seems

To be a copy missing; Poppy will you stop pissing on me please,
You know when I go home it will freeze. Jeez; Louise; Laura;
Simon’s speaking, listen. Simon, please continue on the subject
Or the object, or whatever. Heather has my folder, Simon lobbied.

Heather lobbed it at him, got him on the chin, Simon gobbed
And hobbled out to mend his pliant wire-framed spectacles
(Whether bent by Heather’s throw or only noticed then no
Earthly power can know; this must have puzzled him.) A dog

That has a bloodlust must be muzzled. Philip, does that
Fillet steak fat fucking thick skull even know what a muzzle is
You fuckwit? Yes, my mummy put one on me once, he says. Ok,  
Now, Philip, listen: go direct to Jill, Jill in the office, do not pass

Joan, do not collect two hungry clowns. Tom Benjamin,
Do you mean to miss the point or does the point not pierce you?
Hearsay, gossip, daily floss, Indira Ghandi did something
Important once before you cunts were born, suffice to say,

But much the same one day Hearsay and Gossip too will
Be forgotten, Myleene Klass will lie under the grass and
You, my keen class, will pass no further judgement on her.
Poppy, your piss is getting everyone wet, OK? Take a tip

From Tom, Tom Benjamin, that is, Tom Benjamin has never
Pissed in class and no one asks him to, does that make sense?
If no one finds the missing copy of the Catcher by this weekend
I will beat you all unconscious with a Pole that once built half

My garden fence, so please would everybody keep their eyes peeled.
There will be no Judo today. Revolutionary socialism also has
Been discontinued, if you need to call home do so now with haste.
Now Lorna Wilson pricks herself to bleed and cries profusely,

Pleads for mercy, leaves the classroom. Simon Barker’s glasses
Now being mended sees her in a marginally different light
And falls in love with her. Already on his knees he, Simon Barker,
Asks if she will be his lawful wedded wife in ten years’ time. 
She kicks him in the shins. Philip falls and lands among some bins. 

Races
We’re all running races
You and I
Running to someplace
Some fragile place
Running
Bodies bruised
Eyes shut
Like the day we were born
We were born to run away
To run fast
To run races
Hurling forwards
For the unknown
Unknowable broken world
We run to it
We run from it
We race it
Bruised bodies
Running
For nothing
Because
We’re always outrun. 

"races"