[ CW: Suicide Mention – Self harm Mention – Eugenics Mention – Ableist Slurs ]

I welcome you all to this
A pondering on your mortality?
A sudden shift of your if’s becoming when’s? Welcome.
A group of financed old men you’ll never meet being in on it? Welcome.
But even I’ve been rudimenting it a little more lately

Maybe it’s the world burning, maybe it’s the virus spreading
Could be the confirmation that progressive politics by large
Are destined to be gutted to shreds by queerphobic racists
But pals; I don’t think a passive attitude is gonna save the world

But what? You’re expecting something from me?
Trust no one’s been more impatient about it then I am
But this is what I’ve been rudimenting on lately
My fury and my body you see, they don’t see eye to eye
Been that way my whole life, my intentions are always good
But give it a few weeks and my soul dilutes from my cage
From advocating for autistic rights, to stacking B&M shelves
Give it a few weeks before steel starts colliding with flesh

Hours of hours researching liberation psychology
To the rallying cry of dismantling the fallacy of democracy
But it doesn’t amount to much in the end
It can’t be me, you see? It can’t be any of us.
Cos our fury, our pain and all the trauma accumulated in a austerity
You process it through our bodies and you don’t get anything
But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the pacified
Tapping their pencils, after a day wasted on the doorstop
They really think a paw with Fibromyalgia
Is gonna be the one to throw the first Molotov?
The British centre-left has become beyond parody
It’s supposed to be you, who converts our pain
Into the psychical spaces we can’t roam
Instead you’d rather sit and wait for the end of days

They’re gonna kill me and my autistic family with a DNR
Anyone with the power to stop it says: “We need to canvas harder”
Oh god no
Everybody’s gonna sit at home as our lungs collapse inside our bodies
Round of applause, for a lost cause
As they throw my corpse into the Argos converted into a morgue

They couldn’t do it through homelessness
They couldn’t do it through PIP
But through toothless deincentivising of key workers
They’re finally gonna get do it
Cash in the bounty on my head
Another non-essential life snuffed out without fanfare

You see I’ve rudimenting on my fucking mortality lately
How two hours standing on my feet triggers chronic pain
How a eight hour shift leaves me staggering towards the train tracks
How even community action doesn’t enable me
Nothing to do in the case living
But even less I can do about the case dying
How long till it gets brought home?
We call 999 I get carted by the ambulance
Then the NHS leaves my autistic ass in the corridor to die?
Cos a spastic life isn’t worth the change in your pocket
It’s not like I could’ve been a barista
I couldn’t of been a receptionist
I couldn’t work in a warehouse or a shop floor
And never ever from a lack of trying
But from an aggravating need to stay alive, yeah gets in the way
They made sure there wasn’t a use for any skills I got
So they can dismiss me like “No biggie”
I’ve not spoken to my friends in weeks, yeah it’ll be no biggie

Cos it’s ‘When’ not ‘If’
It always was
But I used to reckon I’d have a decade left at least
Now I’m questioning of I’ll make it for the rest the week
But catch me working on my thesis in case I survive 2020
Cos living is beyond parody

Yeah I’ve been rudimenting on my mortality
But maybe for once I should stop….

Sebastian Noël