It was 1999 Bonfire Night When the red mist first enveloped his character traits He found himself with no control over his fists wailing on some dickhead’s face from his council estate See many moons had passed since the hope of a 2 point 4 landlubber life style had been smashed into smithereens It was a year ago this very day that the intravenous sludge pumping had taken off at a wild speed He found himself a regular at the phone boxes Cherry Lambrini Bicarb from the corner shop Back to the mould covered wormhole mattress stained practice bakky packs full of flints and butts stinking Nuff guzzling drugs Vein deposit lumps clogging his mug stuck in the mud the AM doth greet him Spastic Max sat in a deluge of acid tabs Flame retardant trackie pants and garage raps sketching Seldom seen was he between A-to-B Missions to spaghetti junctions paints on the underpass Hanging off the highest bridge Rangoose quackathon Throwing breeze blocks through speeding windscreens passing He would climb electricity mains and cut the power from his home town and roam the streets reeling in the panic and cotch in cul-de-sac hedgerows watching single mothers sparking matches in the darkness of their living rooms His grief flourished like anthill communities Couplets from an undercurrent colour source beneath the grey concrete corridors and monoliths in-and-around the pissy stairwells and pissy lifts in which he found his peace Beneath the bread line Bread knives sliced at the smart price car crimes carnage his hair greyed Cracked enamel pegs inside a garbage pail kid cabbage patch tapping veins until the sun decayed He moved inland for better dope Cast away bastard face forgot the names of his school mates He moved inland like seagulls sacking off trawler ship cast off’s for landfill luncheon The coastline haunted his thoughts and so he thought ever more about taking a saw to his neck side He had visions of blood dripping over the floor of his four-by-four foot box bedroom next life He’d open paperbacks but only paint the pages black and use a magnifying glass to spark a map of memories Words would get deleted quicker than a 100 metre dash Another night laden with some fear and loathing imagery You might have known him The man behind those ram raids The man behind the letter bombs sent out to several primary schools You might have known him as the dude who scampered down the side of your house and made off with your penny farthing bicycles He used to watch the freight trains He used to fish for carp and beat his catches to a rancid mush with heavy ended claw hammers He used to sneak into the cinema and sit in front rows and laugh his head off to the hammer horror matinees He used to talk to people and people used to talk him too That was way before the crack the whores the drugs the sniffing glue That was way before the days of simply nicking pissy booze and jumping queues of peeps shopping for shitty supermarket food See life wasn’t ship shape life was shit mate Life was hookers tied to his bed frame with grip tape Blindfolded piss games Net curtains shit stained fist gape listening to Rick James’ mixtapes He was his mother’s only baby pains His mother’s only labour day His mother’s one and only angel saint His mother never thought she’d see her grave before the day that Max was raking cash and chasing pavements to the stock exchange His mind felt heavy cracked skull matter case fragile flesh with lead brick sat inside throbbing He felt his face change shape and time ebbing away the vital signs of life ankle deep inside a teak coffin Sitting in the fourth dimension he felt the raw depression of forty horsemen stretching his organs awful essence He was ever omnipr