1. Apex Predator – Easy Meat

A stampede to rush forward,
yet I'm in retreat
Far horizon greedily
sucks in the keen
Descend down the scale
on drooping stumps
I've wished to shear
Come, the predatory to luckless
Spread-eagled, I am easy meat

A mound for a quarrel,
none more austere
A lebensraum in landfill
I had once pieced (together)
Tail the higher caste and shovel
whatever foulness they excrete
Come, the predatory to luckless
Razed to the ground, I am easy meat

Tenderise chunks of a weakling
Claim on bare bones for bleaching
Thousand-yard stares
for the meeting

Apex predator – easy meat

2. Smash A Single Digit

Crunch a number,
grinds your gears
Crunch a number,
root out a stiff
then tightly squeeze
Wretch after wretch

Non-expressive matter
designated to perish
Smash a single digit
Wretch follows wretch

Cleave to progress, rotate the cull
Cleave to progress, this ranks
lower than collateral
Louse after louse

Non-reflective minions
who must labour and perish
Smash a single digit
Louse follows louse

As there is no lower to plunge
No heed is paid to consequences
There's no sum when
you're not a part

3. Metaphorically Screw You

All you can eat,
on all you can feast
All that can be really
cheaply played
All a noise of nothing
but scheming
You are deftly swayed,
vigorously splayed

Metaphorically screw you

All you can eat,
on all you can feast
Tongue-lashed till you're
fucking swayed
There's a sea of impenetrable
jargon to submerge
those pauper's graves

If you please in triple-speak
– a clammy helping global hand
What it means in triple speak:
yanked down a yawning crevasse

All you can eat, on all you can feast,
you're crammed with triple-speak
Not a trickle through the floodgates
The dumping ground of fabled
inclusion can't dissuade
the deftly swayed

Based on need in triple speak
they've metaphorically screwed you

4. How The Years Condemn

We are not invincible
Nor are we indestructible
There are choices – points of return
Will the path be easy?
Nothing is easy, but that's reality
For the sake of my loved ones
I will remain on this earth

It's the last chance to face the fears
I have always known
Better that than
to fear the unknown
How the years condemned my
heart to a plague of madness
How the years condemn

I think back on a life of friendships
Now, more than ever I cherish them
Was it you that had my back,
my absent friend?
I have to take these challenges to head on
No more excuses or fragile promises
I hope now I finally understand,
my absent friend

5. Stubborn Stains

"No" is the utterance duly
strangled by omnipotence
Dire comebacks call a halt
to any visions of furtherance

Doggedly scoured away
like a stubborn stain

For I am a product inferior
to inferior product
I am snarled in the links
of your supply chains

Malcontent
Left to spread
Treat as stubborn stains

Of molestation and machinery and man
No molestations in those
quirky ad campaigns

I am long pinned down
You'll find me under buildings and
your tawdry, hateful malpractice
I am long pinned down
I am the invisible smear on your
sorely tempting price tag
And as perishable as your product,
I can just be thrown away
I am the invisible smear

Treat as stubborn stains

Spurious lament
Without a neck to hang their
corporate heads in shame
They will breeze on through
quite unscathed
Turn a profit and turn away

Of molestation and machinery and man
Short-lived stubborn stain

6. Timeless Flogging

History consigns the post
The frame that dislocates

Ah, yes, no angry stripes
on my back

Evidently I'm spared
I've been spared?

Excruciating instruments
can be dismantled
Excruciating instruments
can be dismantled across
my every waking moment
Dismantled via a time-stretched
crack of the whip

Physicality in short bursts
might be nullified
Physicality in short bursts
might be nullified, but repackaged
as grinding daily slog
Nullified amidst plastic folly peaks

This kingdom I can survey
One king of a strong-arm state

7. Dear Slum Landlord…

Big strong boss
Have a query to raise
with my head underfoot
Face shaved on stone and
it's answer enough

Big strong boss
Safety for me
is many steps too far
You're the cudgel
dripping with gold

I am improved when
rhythmically clubbed

Deserving case,
lousy deserving case
Lowly deserving case,
deserving case

Safety for me
is many steps too far
Face shaved on stone
and rhythmically clubbed
I am improved
– it's answer enough

Deserving case,
shirking deserving case
Backwards deserving case,
deserving case
At your service!

8. Cesspits

As long as things sit
pretty over here
Don't hesitate to dolefully
flatline over there

Don't overstep

Cover your hole please,
but not in my glory...
...Don't!

Deluge a chasm

Depart this dominion please
And slope off to your cesspit
Cesspits

Equal footing, as it would seem,
in pursuant to containing
the human sludge
Rank sludge, foul sludge,
the sludge

Standing of the near-immaculate
must still be shielded from
the unfortunate's junk
Just junk, weird junk, the junk

As long as things sit
pretty over there
Passed off as equal footing
Cesspits

9. Bloodless Coup

Taking charge by force chills
down to the bone
Visibly futile and strangely pitiful
Transfer of the hulking yoke and
grievances unclosed
Hands the batons on to take
free swings just because

Really? Just because?

Taking charge by force with
free licence to lunge
Snarl and take a potshot
– feels good
You've toppled the order
but are now the same enforcer
Scaling new heights of severity
just because

Snap decision to snap into
Amplify what's been done to you

Such a rush – righting wrongs
This is not right from wrong
Wildly, sporadically righting wrongs
This is not right from wrong
Paving ways without force

Pull the punch before it floors
the unwitting pawn
With all we can muster
– divide and conquer
Recognise it and reverse
the zeal all because

Succession after succession
to fall right into
Regenerated to suit the few

You sprang when pushed
Now no right or wrong
Fabricated rights and wrongs

Because vengeance is
no kind of leveller
Bloodless coup
Ultimately save
the strikes for the structure
Bloodless coup

10. Beyond The Pale

We stray beyond the pale,
beyond the failsafe
Narrow escape, authorised access
Beyond the pale,
beyond the failsafe

Looking in from the outside
Appealing resistance to equality
As we fall by the wayside
Producing our offspring
in captivity

Looking out from the inside
Accessing wreckage
from powers that be
The effects of a landslide
No financial gain
to restore poverty

We live behind the rules,
we are the living proof
Machines are set in constant
motion without an indication
of emotion

The medium creates the wave,
with the potential to enslave
We're dominated by the pull and so much easier to rule

Unprecedented need,
the tools are in demand
Machines are set in constant
motion without an indication
of emotion

Obviously feeding on the plains
An independent sinister exchange
Bombarded by a placid
neutral stance
Developing without
a second glance

Beyond the pale

The surface tension
is venting fast
Another social violation
Closing the space on
the present and past
We live beyond the pale

11. Stunt Your Growth

Spread of seed
over many expanses
Cycles
It would grow regardless out
of these behemoth's clutches

Claimants to the last drop
Patents block the begging bowls
Owned to stunt your growth
Stunt your growth

Basic subsistence hinges around
this fundamental biology
Jaw-dropping concessions
to cabals viewing anything natural
as commodity

If this is what it's come to,
we can ration out the oxygen
We can rule on replication of
bodily expression
We can wholly stunt our growth

If this is where we're heading
this is the height of ludicrousness
We could count on ruination
whenever the wind blows
Strewn – and stealthily stunt
our growth

If we waive natural liberties,
the GMO literally consume
to control

12. Hierarchies

Endless hierarchies
Distortions of human nature
The myths and their gravity
This world we have created defies
our natural evolution

Nature versus nurture
Obsolescence reality

In a state of collapse
Led by the invisible hand
They tip the scales of equilibrium
Structured delusional system
disorder

Nature versus nurture
Obsolescence reality
Nature versus future
The endless hierarchies

We pushed it all too far
Those vicious cycles, ecocide
We spilled the blood of innocents
Hierarchies

Endless hierarchies
Distortions of human nature
Nature versus future
Obsolescence reality
Nature versus nurture
The endless hierarchies

13. One-Eyed

Kill this channel
– it needs to be switched
I offer a vendetta in exchange
for a split second to blink

In exchange for
a split second to blink
Dragged from view,
so no split second to blink
Hide the hovels,
give not a split second to blink

Kill this channel – less for more
lifestyle stink
I spread out saved silver
In exchange for the broken spirits
toward whom I won't blink

I stockpile for the impending...
what?
But who's paying?
Who is paying?
But who's paying
Lift the lid and it dawns
– who's paying?

Bereft, desperate, the belittled,
the devalued to no value
– they are paying
Should stoop ever lower,
bow and scrape – they are paying

So take a split second to know
that abolition didn't lift them
off their knees

From plantation, transplantation
behind suburban curtains
The upshot of their exertions
a vacuum-packed ambivalence
Get them off their knees!

14. Adversarial / Copulating Snakes

I'll skulk expectantly and
open wide, shall I?
I'll position myself for
readjustment, shall I?

Be bared for tools and
debilitating friction, shall I?
Be passed around like pickings
for scavengers, shall I?

Adversarial

I'll passively be defined
as shockproof vessel, shall I?
Then reprimanded for every
snapping sinew, shall I?

I'll take the strokes because
I skipped a beat, shall I?
I'll be accepting that my time
ceases here, shall I?

Adversarial
Adversarial – manhandled
off my plateau
Feral? Uncivil? Adversarial
I'm almost pacified
by your incredulity
But these bondage ties
reserved my right...

Adversarial – Base? Remedial...

...Soon though, resistance is
but strangulated pangs
Intertwining around any inkling
that I might stand and be counted
Perennial the serpents that
proffer then throttle

Awe at copulating snakes
Copulating snakes
Copulating snakes
These are copulating snakes

Almighty conglomeration
of writhing prowess
The muscles that mute me
in tandem
Rallying cries jab my own throat
as I terminally clench.

Dispatched by copulating snakes
Copulating snakes
These are copulating snakes
Copulating snakes