I sink slowly into tarmac, dark black ocean Hoping that these lights approaching Don't come close enough to open up my tired eyes It's brighter when they’re closed I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman The sky made of diamonds, the wealth made us giants The cash cow leather on the belt of Orion The fates wove our defiance The prophets sold hope to the fangs of desire We are the children of the Nile The wild crocodiles taming grass with the scythe Sometimes you’ve got to eat a child The river we’re delivered in is crimson at the mouth with the blight We’re born too late in the fight Some are dark underwater, but my skies stay bright and clear That’s just the price of doing business I fly high, I don’t cry for wingless, dear Why miss heaven by inches? Smoke a rainforest like a blunt, stay ignant Mix that petroleum with gin ‘fore you throw it back Serve it over glacial ice, the ship’s sinking I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman The sky so vast that I can’t see the edge The lie so smooth that it felt like breath The wound so deep that it felt like flesh We take it as a given ‘til it felt like sense Safe to assume that we’re already dead So, it’s back to the everyday stress Back to the bills and the tax and the rent Back to the strangers that felt like friends Back to the illness the pills and the pens Back to the onslaught of thoughts in my head I read the receipts of the time I’ve spent I’m in debt, so I withdraw every second that I have left And even if I was sure it’s the end By now, I’m too numb to care so it depends Does your Boogeyman only hunt those with regrets? I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman I’m not afraid

I’ve been stripped to the waste I’ve been lost in the race I’ve been caught in the chase I’ve been quick to erase Floodwater waist, floodwater, floodwater (Yeah) I'm sitting in a car somewhere the road doesn't matter Scattered are the droplets on the window, that have gathered It's lathered in a condescending condensation Coalescing contemplation is a sadder scheme Yeah, a sigh sinks its teeth into the shroud of liquid steam Flattened fog is hiding green, screaming stagnant meaning As I ponder through the scene, from the back seat Yeah, I'm moving ever forward whilst imprisoned in this chrysalis The coldest caterpillar revealing feelings of dissonance At the end I'll sleep, no longer shaken by the vehicle that has stolen my dreams It seems I'm woken by the turbulence of cracks in the road And I’ve been coping by ignoring what my guts already know With eyes closed, I force my perspective to soften Divorced from the cause, I won’t wed the problem A passenger, only passing through I’m at an impasse, so I pass it to you Yeah, I’m a passenger, only passing through I’m at an impasse, so I pass it to you I’ve been stripped to the waste I’ve been lost in the race I’ve been caught in the chase I’ve been quick to erase Floodwater waist high, I waste time Trying to escape time, the days die And I’m anxious, double down just to feel anchored I drill through the core like a cancer I am crude oil burning, I am crude oil burning I accrue this debt, and the world keeps turning I am the bodies in the abattoir, I am the bodies in the abattoir When I craved that marrow of convenience I was sucking on the bone like a rabid dog Vision is a mirror, and this weather won't define me In passing time, clouds resign to give the sun it's due So too this day will pass me, I'll drift happily But right now, this moment is reality I’m moving ever forward whilst imprisoned in this chrysalis The coldest caterpillar revealing feelings of distance I’m determined to exist here I kiss goodbye to the thought of non-acceptance I listen to the wisdom in the stomach and intestines I let my lungs fill with the flames of intention And then I exhale that wasteful resentment I don’t know if the storm will end But this moment, and this car are neither enemy nor friend The droplets running west on a car that’s speeding east Know not their own direction, know not the nature of the beast I’ve been stripped to the waste I’ve been lost in the race I’ve been caught in the chase I’ve been quick to erase Floodwater waist high, I waste time Trying to escape time, the days die And I’m anxious, double down just to feel anchored I drill through the core like a cancer (quick to erase)

It’s brighter when my eyes are open My grandfather's first kiss My grandmother's first sip of brandy The first African trafficked to the Americas The first rice grain cultivated in Sahel The release of Nas' first album The first execution sanctioned by the first emperor of Mali The first hieroglyph carved into sandstone The first self-replication from the first cell to divide The fusion of the first helium atom in the heart of the first star These may as well all have happened on the same Monday September 22nd, 1997, the day before my first birthday My first memory, crying in the dark My parents igniting a tungsten halo on the ceiling of the purple room, comforting me My mother holds my hand with her index finger, my father sings me a lullaby The argument that they were just having, fades into a past Which is as distant as the first words spoken in the language which would soon become Patois This is the first time that I truly glimpsed the concept of ‘coming back’ from darkness The first time I became aware that things don't ever go away That there is no ‘away’ to go to All of these moments are just here, in the storm We separate them for our convenience, but in doing so, what do we miss? This is not the first end of the world We are not the first to live and die Something always survives Our children always survive The survivors must labour in the aftermath of their ancestors’ decisions We must accept that we are already dead That we are the stewards of the afterlife We must tend the garden for the next weary souls to die There is no ‘away’ for our waste to go There is no ‘away’ for our technology to go There is no ‘away’ for our responsibility to go There is no ‘away’ for us to go When we dispose of, it doesn’t go away It fills the craters of the Earth with plastic pus When we decompose, we do not go away We fill the stomachs and lungs of our kinfolk with nourishment We cannot draw a clear boundary between ‘us’ and ‘nature’ We are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us All of these natural beings: The trees, the buildings, the internet, the coral reef, the magnetosphere The fanged teeth, the toxins, the atom bombs, the drugs, the food crop, the temples, the mycelium, the daydreams, the TV static, the summer rain, the night sky They are just sitting here, in the storm We separate them for our convenience, but in doing so, what do we miss?

I emerge from the tarmac and open my eyes I’m not afraid of the Boogeyman, I know his disguise Because he hides in the apathy, denial, and lies He sows seeds of indifference to will our demise And I'm complicit in the violence that butchers the sky Oh my, I’m so tired of this viscous interior Caught up in machinery tearing me into pieces of scarcity This convenience tethers me to atemporal entities, uh I've been catastrophising, across my many lives and I don’t want to feel despair, but I can't deny it When I try to fall asleep, I just lie here crying Sketching prayers on my screen 'til my eyes tighten It feels quiet sometimes, like a secret It's not materially real, until you meet it Bigger than the small expressions of weather or death It’s bigger than the biosphere, bigger than the end It feels like a distant existence, but it’s a part of me Wave forms all collapse like a harmony Or like a bombshell, like eruption Like the rust scorching holes in the armoury I took a drive last night tryna clear my head Make the humming of the road what I feel instead I took a drive last night tryna disappear But every moment I'm alive I am still here When this ends then where do we go, huh? If it’s already done, how will we know, uh? When this ends then where do we go, uh? If it’s already done, how will we know, uh? Dark nights are so deceitful, these skies hide constellations Inside our light pollution all we see is our reflection But hope is my direction, our dying breathes are precious These tiny droplet choices, this future worth protecting