Why I Love My Job (Incendiary Device)

never was a punk, but the older I get
the more I hate the blood machine
and all its little feeders
signing themselves up
to open up their veins and say
take a pint, take twelve;
don’t you love to be useful,
bowing your pretty heads
before the chairman of the board
drinking yourself sick
in his service?

I’m re-winding myself to a time
when I was too scared
to even be a bedsore on the backside
of the board, reading an old copy
of Maximum Rock n’ Roll
bought at Probe Records fifteen years ago,
letters from angry kids
who understood instinctively that Johnny Rotten
was right, anger is an energy,
and the only useful emotion is hate

love only leeches your faith
in the righteousness of rage;
but I love my job because

every day is demeaning and demanding,
and I go home every night with my head
burning like a petrol bomb
ready to ignite: every hour of every working day
tells me I am not like you
and do not need to be like you
I laugh when I look at myself in the mirror
and see the tie and the name-tag
the dog-lead and dog-tags,
my perfect disguise

no matter how much blood you suck
there will be always be enough left
to smear on my face until I become
the real Rotten: I am a dog, a rabid dog,
and I will tear your head off
before I let you take me alive