Lias Saoudi
Canopy
Unilateral disdain, comprehensively educated,
Your irksome pledge sprang forth from its pocket
And sang for itself neath the fragrant pits of some half-baked student of fruitology.
The taste was that of the perfectly-riddled, heavenly-bemused sideways-glancer.
Refute! Refute! My entry was blue and now colour has no memory,
The patterns are collapsing across the 6-inch callous that coats my wet little game.
My hunger has learned to prance, now we must dine on movement alone,
Gone in a satisfaction grey-hot, the double yellow lines behind the dinner ladies’ eyes,
The bruise from county milk expansion.
Fuck you, farmer boy! I have barely begun and already the fields are unfolding.
For every crucifiable, inexhaustible pink-panther-munching maverick pop tart,
For each sinking arrhythmic skin-and-bone heart-attacking moment after midnight,
Where Grandpa forgot about his knees and walked a fleshy mile
Beneath the hopeful taunts of a mammoth-scented elderflower,
Where the crowd-sniffing never stops, amidst reason, chaos, and chorus,
47 falsetto coal-black voices, they called you things like ‘reasonable’ or ‘friendly’
Or ‘nonchalant’ or ‘up your own arse’ or said ‘I love the taste of your cock’,
They took first and asked later as a trickle found its way into a stream of rewinding accountability,
A little bit of lung, forward across the mitre, the brow descends.
Pick up please, please, please! Whale fat surrounds me now,
Ribs tidy along the sides of the savoury ungrindable,
I dedicate my futility to the triumph of these pink pretenders,
Glowing proud atop an eon long orgasm,
Searing the cumulus with its black-black talk,
Talk of Indian hair in steel containers floating to Brixton,
To mimic youth in the pantries of middle age,
To kiss life into gear,
To untouch what is clearly all too taintable,
Foaming at the Levis I waltz through your secession, I count carefully to ten
Detritus blossom!
Do not feign, unpunishable in your slack drawn need, can you hear that?
Crab of crabs! My leaning into next week has taken a terrible toll,
I’m too tired to grimace, I can’t be bothered at all,
Watch and fixate, its coming now, but damn!
That unpronounceable scent, the one you were leant that you can’t lend back,
It’s an onion farm on fire, belligerence part 168,
Hepatitis A, B, C, D, E, F, MUM. Worm like notions have hijacked my dream gland,
Sinew turns on bone, bone turns on marrow,
Marrow is sucked out by hefty Algerians behind ancient conversations.
Why couldn't they put me down a Tuesday or a vision of yourself succeeding.
Now I am the haemorrhage and everybody knows it,
As my minutes dole themselves out to anyone who will listen,
They force themselves down dry, witless throats,
They smell their fingers in the street afterwards, shameless as Christ on the cross,
They unionise into uncontrollable hours and pledge an end to any kind of tolerance,
They are pruning every limit with their brilliant vacuum,
They are coarse and without need, they are un-approvable,
They are mine, they are all that is mine.
So, beetroot enjoy your pebble, absorb what you can, it’s worth the paranoia,
Blood is thicker than your hangover,
There is glamour in them there hills; do you want to know how it feels to radiate?
To breathe is to admire; aren't you fed through yet?
When will you grieve over the corpses in your sweaty, sweaty wake?
When will you forgive Fauntleroy?
Birth is a lesson long hard delirious then dead,
It’s not your call and it never was. Imagine, if they could read your regrets out loud?
What wonders. A hareem of tiny cataclysms huddling around somebody else’s erect soul.
The morning is stuck in your lungs, it’s two o’clock now still I can’t cough it up.
I’m drowning in the recent past.
I’m having visions of cucumber-wielding barbarians shifting across New Malden,
Grunting in and out of chain pubs; my vision ceases,
Still that rancid taste. Leaves for lips, what’s the word?
Tarpaulin? No, it’s like foliage, but pretty . . .
Outside goes on a bit,
Drag,
Canopy, the word is canopy.
Lias Saoudi is the singer of rock bands Fat White Family and The Moonlandingz. Born to an Algerian father and a British mother, he grew up in Scotland and Northern Ireland before moving to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. Since forming in 2011, Fat White Family have released three acclaimed albums of insalubrious post-punk and are known for their provocative live performances. Along with author Adelle Stripe, Saoudi wrote Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, a biography of the band published in 2022 by Orion.