Signing On.

 

I picture you slammed, knee-sprawled,

upon a Jobcentre Plus carpet

crawling for familiar certainty of grey office desk

body-buried beneath crumpled vacancy forms

skin peppered with paper-cuts

stationary digging bone deep

draining black and blue stains to white spinal cord coils

 

let’s flashback to what’s actually happening:

It’s 12.45pm: I’m taking your stern handshake

suddenly seeing myself a fragile lad, the flickering statistic

spreading my future fully across your lap – try me?

You blink coldly, icily clock my wear,

figure I couldn’t give a toss

as rivers of apathy flow awkwardly

from behind clinical frames of business glasses

I slouch smaller on a swing chair

knuckles sweating ripped denim-jacket pockets

 

injustice trickling way too fast inside my headspace

drifting to daydream:

 

you’re a set-to-kill robot

metallic fingers dangerously tapping

keyboard keys like clicking triggers

a rusting juggernaut with clinical brown slacks

slickly parted brill-creamed hair

 

my capability? the vast city your computer chip

is programmed to shut down

wipe clean off the map, self-esteem massacred

by cluster-bombs of arrogance

remnants of any skeletal potential traced away

with searing laser precision

 

so I start imagining morphing to a magnificent Komodo dragon

glowing skin speckled-red

snorting nostrils enflamed by your assumptions

webbed wings thrashing

 

because I swear you know nothing more

than my National Insurance Number

stricken by such sympathy to a skinned head

wracked in grief, over these torn tracksuit-bottoms

my shaking fingers pausing at the tip of your Parker ball point

believing they’d be better scratching out your hardened soul

 

for I could fill five thousand of these job steps

etch childlike sketches by each vacancy I tried applying

write thick lyrical rhythms of my secret skills

in silent invisible ink

slapping silly smiley faces boldly upon the page corners

paint rich gold, every grey and white bland box

 

but you? Would sit blindly, imagine me

slumming in drugden drouts

slamming half-finished chicken kebabs

against speeding car windscreens

 

I want you to feel this passion sweat-staining

the fabric of my Notts County away strip

I want you to know my tattooed fists won’t touch you

only tremble against first-forming dawn clouds

that I will clasp the keys to my pokey-proud flat

 

that I will cradle the kisses my girlfriend

places upon downcast eyelids

as scowling jobsites wound my pupils

that I will comfort my heart as I freeflow verse

all of our pin-prick dreams

whisper-spitting each word like

they could be swallowed whole by God

 

I want you to see me..

 

I just want you to see me