Part of the problem. (a poem by Sam Cottle).

The wheel of passion girds all the brightness of the Earth. And mass media moans on groaning out existential threat here, there, everywhere; all is doom and chaos. The slugs on my wall don’t seem to mind. They’re happy, content in their own transient struggles.

A girl I once knew accuses the slugs of being homeless because, unlike snails, they do not have shells. And I sympathise with that. Or, part of me does. The part that’s been homeless sitting on a camp bed in a room shared with other stinking men, feeling like one of those

slugs, but still not too desperate or alone; still trying to reach the roof of the building (as the slugs often used to do); still going for something and to be someone. Not that this matters. This is only being churned out online in the hope of a few likes, a whiff of approval;

it passes like rain in the bitter pile of human musing, and miseries, turned like the spin of the void into something that does me good. i don’t write for you. i write selfishly. you’re the interloper looking in. the curious looking in over my shoulder. we’re all part of the problem.