WERE YOU AN EMO?

I don't think I have ever claimed to be an Emo. That is to say, someone who lived by and intended to die young by the lyrics of certain self-pitying musicians or poets, whose core problem with life was that they did not grow up in broken homes, were properly financially supported, loved by their parents and as a result had nothing to wreak their creative rebellion and adolescent agression on. Except their romantically attached, comfortably off, adoring mothers and fathers of course.

Having said that, I did find this poem earlier when I was cleaning out my childhood room. On the one hand, it smacks of a sex-starved and confused younger Me, but on the other, as if in amber, it captures the exact way I felt when I first headed off to London for University. Which is why I thought I would share it with you.


Tap go my feet as they
Take my body hostage
Down the sunwash street,
Surrounded by the soothing azure
Of those tall air conditioned cathedrals of modernity.
Each has their own air supply,
Infused with the zesty aroma of Italian coffee. Rich,
The new nicotine...new sex?
Percolated ambition, without the side effects.

But I am homeward bound, on the range,
Where the heart is.
And as I make my descent all I can
Do is regard the cold, grey, petrified flesh
Which lines the walls of the Underground
And think how strange
That something so cold and hard could be so stimulating.
Grey matter, electric signals coursing through in every direction.
The pattering of my feet echoing their goodbye.

Then, I am ripped away, propelled at 100 Miles Per Hour
My senses drowned in scalding-hot nothing from the train buffet
And as I near my destination my chest
Is deprived of the excitement and noise which
Once filled it to the brim.
Like a bass line fading into the distance.
How can my heart be in two places at once?
The hum-drum of home leaves vital organs numb.
London is a shock back to life.

The silence is so deafening, I think my eardrums will explode
Shattering this body as it lies curled up
In the void.
Itching for my social fix, clawing through
The dulcet tones of a family dinner
My conscience turns to mush and sticks to my skull.
The food is delicious, but it is a play.
Its taste coaxes the mind to succumb to passion on a plate,
I am suspicious, for it brings no real joy
To cure my heart's ache.

Looking out, I can see distant lights shining in the rain,
Glowing like the rides at a funfair
The far away promise of unleashed ecstasy
While here I slowly bleed,
Victim of the journey home.
And even still your blood and bone
They watch, unaware that a bag has been pulled
Over your face,
Suffocating in the mellow Oxfordshire air.

Eating at my urban lungs like cyanide gas.