Three poems for Lionel and McCauley. Technical arachos. He barely knew me, maybe not at all, and I didn't know him the way I should have. Met a few times under hazy lights at Wickham Art Centre. He retweeted us like there was no tomorrow. I was looking forward to seeing him again. I have this theory of colour. It's not about race and reflect vitality. There are colourful people turning heads when they walk into rooms. I collect them like butterflies, but without the cruelty. Lionel, you lit up the room when you were in it. Your words had power and still have it. Your name conjures the face which conjures the magic. You were a brother in arms fighting the good fight for a better world. A world you believed in but will never see. And I wonder what you would have made of life after Covid. Something beautiful, no doubt. An opportunity to reshape society into something better. And now I know we owe it to you to make that happen. When I think of you, I don't see sadness, just love, and compassion, and understanding. They say a man isn't gone until the echoes he left fade away. And so you haven't gone nowhere, you've gone somewhere. The echoes have colour, a legacy of Cynicezier. The echoes are strong and getting stronger. Month of June. As of June 30th, 2021, a total of 440 civilians shot and killed by police. 74 of them being black, of course. The rate of fatal police shootings is much higher amongst black Americans than any other ethnicity, standing at 36 fatal shootings per million of the population. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, football players are lambasted for taking knees and get attacked by trolls on Twitter for the colour of their skin. You'd think it gets better, but sometimes it doesn't. Now it's the month of July and bigotry and divisiveness. You know there's still buzzwords used to sell clicks and win elections. Pretty Patel cries gesture politics then pretends to condemn the racists. There's nothing right and nothing honorable under her regime. They try to tame us, all of us. They try to dock our claws and tires to the rail tracks, distract us with cats and fax stacks of cash. They try to catch us like a cold, try to tire us down in search of a mortgage. Four kids in a marriage no one wanted. I've been reading about our language, built on immigration and unfortunate colonialism. We stole more words than come from Anglo-Saxon, but that's okay. I'm Danish anyway. The two worried about Joseph Mallard William Turner and his fighting Temerair. Not that my pockets aren't empty, I was never not in double negatives. They stole our children and taught them to fight the French for freedom. Bomb voyage mes amis, setet en banje en aim, et lia vie la guerre, et nuetion des espereilles. We're living in the United Kingdom of irony, the United States of whatever. I'm a do what I can if you promise you'll do the same. It's not easy being free. You could say it never has been. They killed the Queen with a knee to the neck, no justice, no peace, no nothing. We change lives one step at a time, a middle finger up to history. This is step one. Big Papa. The cat's got my tongue again. He loves it when I call him Big Papa. Proper nouns notorious when he dreams of dreamies and his flippity fish. He came in with two friends, both imaginary. I don't think he's lonely, but he is alone, just like he likes it. Kurt Cobain flow when I got you in utero. You see, Cobain is my last name and it wasn't my first one. It might not even be the last. More insensiside than incesticide. You'll only get it if you listen to the album. The deer in my name stands for dandy, desperate, dain living dangerous, deeply allergic to deaths, death and dust mites, deeply in love with the feeling of loving. I'm no ignoramus, my name is dain and I'll say it again. My name is dain and I didn't change it. I don't change anything except when I'm changing my guitar strings. I string together words and chords until I'm singing songs that people don't listen to, but then it's busy and the lights are down low and people are drinking just like I used to. I was never a politician, a publican or a publican, just to scatterbrain mesh shaping something out of nothing, just doing my best like we all are. My moods go up and down just like everyone's. My inner monologue exceeds 150 words per minute which makes it faster than I can type. I'm just throwing darts at a board in the hope I can make a 180. If there's one thing I've learned, it's not to shoot the messenger. Better be a better man now and not tomorrow. Tomorrow might not come, at least not for all of us. Those cliche mongers who say you only live once have got a point. I just don't know what the point is.