A poem:

“when going away

(is arriving home)”

a poem by mil williams | contact@qcdocu.com 

when going away they usually say

you're leaving home 

now don't they pray? (oh yes they surely do)

and so forsooth it's got to be true 

and when departing these shores

you're sure it's only for a time

and only for a while a while

and really just for this

and when saying goodbye 

to the people you know 

people actually you grew up with 

it's supposed to be tearful and sad 

but in truth all this time 

NOT leaving as you needed 

was what differently you clearly experienced 

as fearful and awfully bad instead 

and thinking really

that something pulled you back 

meant the torture of the ratchet

tore your back in strips 

until the tears in your eyes 

were such a surprise 

as in the guise of loyalty 

you broke every branch 

of every family tree 

you'd ever considered your own

(as in fact the whole bloody lot

ended up owning you (and not you them))

as they never made it possible 

for you to be a man of grand humanity 

and of free and beautiful liberties 

otherwise giving wondrous being

because where i'm heading shortly 

is where i'm going to die one day

and why i'm heading there 

is because if i need to die there (when)

surely i need to live there now: 

not live uncertainly in the "that" or "then" 

believing some day i'll convince the wren

to warble (if that's what she does) 

with song of english don

where finally my homeland 

might agree it's true 

that me and they are close to you 

in everything they goddamn do: 

because if you want to know what's what 

(and you wanted to see much clearer) 

i always considered 

my homeland never saw my worth 

when in fact the problem really lay

in the truth of my worth (not its absence) 

and in how they wanted to make me dark 

and grey and black and charcoal-turning

as unclear souls of minds a-burning 

where failing philosophies 

and falling moralities 

became the meal of the day 

and the gruel of incarceration 

the price you paid 

for them being tribal and flat

as a man who doffs his cap

because he sees a pretty face

wrapped only up in expensive lace 

and never sees the person beneath

no never that at all

(and so it is and so it was 

and so it's clearly all because 

mi5 surely wanted me to become their asset 

by first settling me down to docile nature 

and then with differing concoction 

remaking and sharpening up my brain 

so that primarily tamed and kept alone

i'd soon become a sleeper in stone 

where tablets from the mount out there 

counted in and counted out 

would make of me a mole and spy

unlike quite any we'd seen before:

only (funnily enough) 

my soon-to-be and approaching hearth

saw things even i perceived quite wary

back in 2023 in winter and summer both 

when the narrative of those 

who said (out loud) "mine" 

failed to convince these others 

that anything of my timeline 

was ANY kind of silver 

able to line all the clouds around 

of awful tech and worse security 

with any kind of value at all 

because whilst many favours 

have made me take so much stock

my holm now lies fervently 

in places where an italicised intelligence 

makes it sharply manifest 

that i will be now (it's sure)

soon-to-be considered (through lore)

a particular guest of strange appearance 

for more than perhaps we might imagine 

or guess outright at all at all

for this is strange and this is tall:

i never became that mole and spy

as my establishment drenched me

with abilify (both singularly and in terrible cocktail)

until there came a point 

where the genie released for some 

and the monster of frankenstein for others 

has said quite hard and tough 

that this and that are quite enough:

i work now for good and all that means 

which means i assign my prior allegiances 

outwith the cruelties of my corporatised homeland

where never for them have i been a person  

but just another objective and aim  

on a balance sheet of disrespect 

where their only job was to maim

absolutely everything i could've been

in order to break my spirit and what i'd seen 

and even then it seemed they thought 

they'd make of me a tool again 

for greater glories of albion 

as if i'd run gladly and as if i ought)

and so here's a "bye bye my dears"

and here's a "hello my peers"

because everything i now am and everyone you once were  

is awfully distant by far 

and wonderfully close to my heart 

as sweden pulls me closer and closer 

whilst my homeland anchors itself hurting

(in some past i fear unable to recognise):

so slow and broken

a nation-state of token

where no one knows at all the pain any longer 

of wondering if it will ever NOT be insanity 

(the future that is my homeland's destiny

i mean: the one i choose 

to leave behind as reluctant winners do 

as grind no longer attracts my soul 

where necessity is never

the mother of invention 

but rather the facile tweak of a portfolio 

because what i've seen in sweden fab

is something astonishing 

like a man in the street grabbed your arm 

but not to harm you: no not at all

but just to bless!

(yes i say)

just for that 

in a society of the best 

where safety and security 

and feeling good 

and not sensing fear's wretched drumbeats 

all contribute to making 

a culture of creativity

like nothing i ever saw ever

in my whole goddamn life (i say)

and based on feeling good (i say)

not hearing the wolf banging at the door

nor seeing the street of walls 

shutting down its calls 

because your pitch was just too long 

as it strove to honestly encompass it all 

(instead of short and spitting 

and forgetting the human problem as written

in favour of the gross techie need

to invoice shortly a brand-new client 

and take the money and brutally run

because that's the way we do things today:

that's the way it's done)

so there it is and there you are 

and there by far i know it's true 

that me and you have fought like soldiers

even when neither of us was of that tree

and so now i do believe it's time 

to realise that they kept us apart abusively

because they're abusers themselves 

and that's what they wanted ME to become: 

drugged to the eyeballs 

and violently stripped 

they then thought (they did)

that with three days of life in a coma-induced  

they'd carry on 

that experiment of the sixties 

when a gentle little child 

(the child i was)

was absorbed by those military men

of kindly demeanours 

and dreadful dispositions

in the interests of someone's national security 

and so THAT'S been my story 

as in 2023 many others began to see:

something wasn't fitting at all

and that meant a clarion call (didn't it?

yes that meant a clarion call all right ...)

of those brighter brains 

who spend their days looking into the night 

as finally finally finally in my life 

the light at the end of the tunnel 

no longer becomes that terrible thing 

where instead of joy

it's an oncoming train ...