Gulliver's Travels
I spend countless hours walking the same route
through a town I’ve always lived in
and I often get asked a question I absolutely despise:
‘Why?’
‘Why don’t you just join a gym?’
‘Why don’t you buy a car?’
‘Why not shake it up a bit?’
As if walking the same route
through a town I’ve always lived in
isn’t as shaky as the hand of a man signing his own death warrant.
Because there’s something indescribable
about being at the center of a passing world,
watching cars drive by and houses age
and people grow into themselves.
My friends have joked that they’re my ‘travels’,
that I’m a Gulliver in a land of tiny people
but that romanticism of ‘know all, be all’ is so overrated
that I wanna smash the whole damn city and set fire to the king.
Because sometimes knowing what goes on in an ill-explored town
is enough reason as to the lack of exploration.
When you come from a place labelled as a terrorist hell-hole
and go searching to find a spark of goodness
but instead find destruction and clichés in the form of
thugs and anti-social teenagers,
seeing reckless drivers with five phones and no headlights
make a line straight for the pavement,
walking by empty condom wrappers in alleyways
and streets knee deep in trash with empty bins.
As I get told to fuck off by a ten year old
whose mother stands at the side,telling off her four year old son
for standing too close to a dog sat watching the clouds float by.
And I’ll keep searching this town
and every single scrap of truth in its reputation
until find it redeemable enough to leave behind as my home town.
And I’ll spend countless hours walking the same route
through a town I’ve always lived in
until I find something in it good enough
to use as a reflection of who I am,
until I can justify to myself that the place that built Gulliver
isn’t this.
through a town I’ve always lived in
and I often get asked a question I absolutely despise:
‘Why?’
‘Why don’t you just join a gym?’
‘Why don’t you buy a car?’
‘Why not shake it up a bit?’
As if walking the same route
through a town I’ve always lived in
isn’t as shaky as the hand of a man signing his own death warrant.
Because there’s something indescribable
about being at the center of a passing world,
watching cars drive by and houses age
and people grow into themselves.
My friends have joked that they’re my ‘travels’,
that I’m a Gulliver in a land of tiny people
but that romanticism of ‘know all, be all’ is so overrated
that I wanna smash the whole damn city and set fire to the king.
Because sometimes knowing what goes on in an ill-explored town
is enough reason as to the lack of exploration.
When you come from a place labelled as a terrorist hell-hole
and go searching to find a spark of goodness
but instead find destruction and clichés in the form of
thugs and anti-social teenagers,
seeing reckless drivers with five phones and no headlights
make a line straight for the pavement,
walking by empty condom wrappers in alleyways
and streets knee deep in trash with empty bins.
As I get told to fuck off by a ten year old
whose mother stands at the side,telling off her four year old son
for standing too close to a dog sat watching the clouds float by.
And I’ll keep searching this town
and every single scrap of truth in its reputation
until find it redeemable enough to leave behind as my home town.
And I’ll spend countless hours walking the same route
through a town I’ve always lived in
until I find something in it good enough
to use as a reflection of who I am,
until I can justify to myself that the place that built Gulliver
isn’t this.