Some lines on leaving, by Jonathan Jones

Strange how ‘The Smiths’ made sense only
after I had no more use to make
of melancholy.

Self-deprecation
self-hatred, teenage stereotype,
self-taught.

Johnny Marr’s insouciant cool,
and if I don’t fit in today
it’s not merely nostalgia talking.

Merely a band that I came to
too late, in order to sound
like a true outsider.

Now is principally
the struggle to identify.
Stream pain’s banal

commodity. One cannot
live outside a wail
or wall.

Someone asks
me whether I am English
like a stage sans

seven ages.

Democracy without a doubt
Armada-like.
No way with words.