The Gilesgate Monologues

Or A Deadline Extension on the 8th Day of Creation

Or confessions of a shitboy

Lloyd Bolton, age 20

Raised on red milk

I′m pretty young for my age

I have my mothers eyes and my father's contempt for Roger McGuinn

I left school with 12 GCSEs, 3 A Levels and only one good song

I′m just another Russell Group punk

Just another Distrokid kid

Just another dime-store Tom Verlaine

Waiting for my 15 seconds of fame

When the child was a child

He ate Coco Pops for breakfast

And so he does even now

Even now I take pains to restrict the time I waste on the PlayStation

My temporary enemy but eternal friend

I take comfort in the only button on my phone

'Please Mr. Zuckerberg, look and see

Is there a message on messenger for me?'

I listen to my Spotify On Repeat on repeat

I am left with no time to read anything but Penguin Classics

Sitting on the grass with a book and an outfit

Skimming through the mysteries of life

While the sports kids step-step around me

No one in this house opens the curtains

The girls watch the news in their sleep

Night after night, what does it mean?

Drum machines and ketamine

Crawling out of bed for the lunchtime kickoff

Gracelessly frying an egg with shallow hopes of a goal for Mo Salah

I lock in to another 48 hours of worthless depression at the hands of my own fantasy football team

I saved £4.49 on Amazon shipping by bringing my order total over £20

By adding a book of poems by Allen Ginsberg

And the winner is Late Stage Capitalism

My basket was a baby

Crawling towards that free shipping

Morning noon and evening

I hear the Hermes knock, the Yodel knock, the Amazon knock, the parcel force knock, the Uber Eats knock

And finally Royal Mail slip a leaflet through the letterbox

France Gall is called France because she is from France

Nobody really calls me Frank

Except my dentist and all important documents

Tomorrow I shall embark upon my first year as a schmuck

I leave university with first class honours, a graduate job and no girlfriend

Grandmothers slowly enter the digital age

Kicking and streaming

Welcomed to a world that isn′t terrified of smiling adverts for Amazon

Of films that play at double-speed

Of bands that don′t exist

Welcomed to a world of violence aestheticized, anaesthetised

A Netflix Original Series

Keep your friends close and your animes closer

Welcomed to a world endlessly hurrying towards what?

Game shows, jazz, trains, Brigette Bardot, consciousness, comedy, Bob Kattar, architecture

The San Francisco 49ers

We scream at eternity for 80 years

But what do the immortal dreamers do all day?

Nikolai Fedorov waits in line for a cup of coffee (faces in top corner like news)

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky scans his Clubcard to earn Clubcard points

Kazimr Malevich builds a CV from an online template

And I read it up

And write it up

Only to conclude that man must ask for a deadline extension

On this the eighth day of creation