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Kate Tempest
The Bricks that Built the Houses
For my family, both blood and otherwise
For Dan Carey
For India Banks
And for south-east London
They told me that the night and day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up;
And they inclosed my infinite brain into a narrow circle,
And sunk my heart into the abyss, a red round globe hot burning.
LEAVING
It gets into your bones. You don’t even realise it, until you’re driving through it, watching all the things you’ve always known and leaving them behind.
They’re driving past the streets, the shops, the corners where they made themselves. Every ghost is out there, staring. Bad skin and sunken eyes, grinning madly at them from the past.
It’s in their bones. Bread and booze and concrete. The beauty of it. All the tiny moments blazing. Preachers, parents, workers. Empty-eyed romantics going nowhere. Street lights and traffic and bodies to bury and babies to make. A job. Just a job.
People are killing for gods again. Money is killing us all. They live under a loneliness so total it has become the fabric of their friendships. Their days are spent staring at things. They exist in the mass and feel part of the picture. They trust nothing but trends. The most that they can hope for is a night out smashed to pieces, sloppy-faced from booze and drugs that hate them in the morning.
But here they are, leaving the stress and shit food and endless misunderstandings. Leaving. The jobcentre, the classroom, the pub, the gym, the car park, the flat, the filth, the TV, the constant swiping of newsfeeds, the hoover, the toothbrush, the laptop bag, the expensive hair product that makes you feel better inside, the queue for the cash machine, the cinema, the bowling alley, the phone shop, the guilt, the absolute nothingness that never stops chasing, the pain of seeing a person grow into a shadow. The people’s faces twisting into grimaces again, losing all their insides in the gutters, clutching lovers till the breath is faint and love is dead, wet cement and spray paint, the kids are watching porn and drinking Monster. Watch the city fall and rise again through mist and bleeding hands. Keep holding on to power-ballad karaoke hits. Chase your talent. Corner it, lock it in a cage, give the key to someone rich and tell yourself you’re staying brave. Tip your chair back, stare into the eyes of someone hateful that you’ll take home anyway. Tell the world you’re staying faithful. Nothing’s for you but it’s all for sale, give until your strength is frail and when it’s at its weakest, burden it with hurt and secrets. It’s all around you screaming paradise until there’s nothing left to feel. Suck it up, gob it, double-drop it. Pin it deep into your vein and try for ever to get off it. Now close your eyes and stop it.
But it never stops.
They leave town in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina. It’s night and the city is full of itself. There is thunder in the sky. The kind of clouds that make you bow your head.
