Embedded Reporting

I’m telling stories to you out the window
From a citadel of lies
(maybe the sleeping pills are wearing off)
I seem to be a patient here
Or inmate or detainee
Everyone is perfectly nice, everybody smiles
It is nice and clean, I like it here
Please send money and clean underwear
Thinking of you all the time
Send my love to the children.

Can you read the code here?
Can I read the code here?

The secret cipher is apparently
All part of my delusion
I use it as a means
Of asserting control over my situation
This has its origins in my childhood
When I was cruelly invited
To watch television
And participate in the death throes
Of consumerism.
I must learn to love plastic
To enjoy its taste
Spatulaed on the roof of my mouth
As their fingers root for happy pills
Beneath my tongue.
I could grab their bollocks real easy
But they already have me by the nuts
And I haven’t the balls to do it.


James Piers Taylor, 21/7/2006 London

IMAGE: Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon coming on (The Slave Ship) (1840), by J.W. Turner