LAST SEASON'S WINNER

there are only a finite amount of times

a man can die 

in an undisclosed room and location 

before all other systems shut down

replicate him in the world 

quietly kill the original 

When the fever takes hold

the gold dust fills my lungs

I can see my name in lights 

everyone’s reaching out for me

 

this is a recording

of a man 

conducting surveillance

gathering the tools

straining to understand

how he is the prey

and in his mind, whatever he captures

re-spawns in his heart

 

Underneath the floor

there is a cardboard box

filled with plastic bags

to replace you when you’re gone 

The wind turns

and I watch the missing person notices

blow away

The soldier of fortune 

cannot concern himself with reading

when he cannot keep count

of the snakes coming from the walls 

 

Have I lost the ability

to process death?

Just one more prize

around the corner

then I promise to come home

 

The red mist surrounds me

blocks out the light

My father does not recognise me

and this turns my bones to powder 

There is a lady here

who looks like the Queen 

presiding over skeleton keys

to our buffet of nothing

 

We need something to distract us

until the silence passes over

to turn strangers into family

We will do this threescore plus ten

 

I vomit on her Corgis

run something over in a Lamborghini

Everything slides into the swimming pool

Everything sinks to the bottom

When did this water become so heavy

 

The party planner

doubles as a discount funeral director

Smoke and fire

hold their applause for the actors

sometimes in these rooms

I can hear the blood

uneven in my body

 

Is the ultimate goal

to be loved by the entire world

One after another,

tsunamis of static

The outpouring of adulation exhausts itself

 

Is this the hypnosis

that leads a man

to build a wall inside himself 

 

the monitors are not designed to feel

and this puts everything at risk

they will alter the ending 

to void the beginning

I have not seen a death ray in a long time

 

I try to kill everyone

but this studio has left me slowed, softened

I am overpowered by everything

 

I must be in a bag 

for the ease of the cleaner

His little engine hums

as he drives down the corridor 

the audience is dying

to welcome new heroes,

follow vapours,

prolong life

in the image of man 

 

their days are filled

with waiting

staving an insatiable hunger

groping one another

to meet that special phantom-someone

then disintegrate in front of a screen together

 

the timeslot for the vigil for the dead

filled over by a new challenger’s arrival

And many hands make the illusion feel light

This exposure makes me struggle 

to tell where the edge is

I stare at myself, submerged 

and objectivity slips further

Am I standing on a dead body?  

 

my brothers, are they coming here

where the water is not yet

and everyone is from a defunct television channel

 

the trance makes my skull so soft

a small child could push its finger through it  

 

The interaction of living things

affects nothing

Their numbers ever-dwindle

There are no more rooms 

for water to fill

 

And hiding behind generations 

of accumulated sleep

will come the whirlpool 

to collect the fissured-out circuitry