Disability Arts Online

Angus originally trained as an actor at Rose Bruford College in the early 1980s and later the University of East London.

He’s performed with a score of bands, theatre and dance companies including Wicked Witches, Mind Citizens, Debacle, Para Active (now known as ZU-UK), TARDIS Dance Co, Foot in Hand Dance Co and East London Wheelchair Dance. He is also a member of the Together Poetry Group in Stratford.

In 1995, Angus became disabled, contracting ataxia, a neurological condition, and spent a year in hospital rehabilitating.

After this he became an advocate for disability rights, promoting the rights of disabled people and trying to mitigate the attacks being made on the most at risk in our society. 

Rock’n’Roll Suicide for the 21st Century (Covered in Sin)

Honey bee and white skinned Yoda
Girl and boy in darkened rooms
Why do you believe me Jesus
When lurid colours burn my eyes? 

Ride a crescent moon to Beckton
The number of the beast is 366
238 and 147
276 or 69

Pushing hard through the hail and rain
We struggle to the upper deck
Hide the act, complete transgression
Disabled crime is fighting back 

What shall we do deep in the shadows
Of the 25 to Ilford Mall?
In love with you, my Fuschia Groaning
My gothic queen again, again

What do we do deep in the darkness?
Situation anxiety
You say I hold you back in public
I use my lips of stiffened fly

Look at you, covered in my sin
It’s in your eyes, I know where you’ve been
I now see clearly in the dark
And found a place to leave my mark

Cripple crack and river ratting
Moving money for rival cops
Austerity will hold us captive
Wheelchairing, not homeward bound

Look at me, covered in your sin.
Talk to me, and guess where I've been
It wasn't me, it wasn't me
My body here, but I had left my brain

You are not a virgin goddess
Alabaster, unfulfilled
Creeping to me in the darkness
Suck the silk of your dress’s hem.

Look at where my body begins
It is a sin, societal sin.
Why should it be so bewitching?
This cold, steel, shiny, gorgeous thing

Fall in love with Erica Impey
Or fall in love with Tony Stark 
Rock’n’Roll Suicide for the 21st Century
A freaky circus in the park

©​ Angus McKenzie-Davie
 

Evidently Crippletown
(After Evidently Chickentown by John Cooper Clarke)

The fucking bus is late again
And when it comes it’s full of prams.
The fucking mothers won’t move over
Didn’t they read the fucking poster?
The fucking next bus, ramp gets stuck
Fucking should have stayed in bed.
Fucking West Ham lost at home
The fucking ref’s V.I. again.
When I’m up they bring me down
East Ham’s fucking crippletown.

Get a train to fucking Bangor
The fucking lift is out of order.
The fucking refurb takes forever
I’m fucking stuck in sweet suburbia.
The fucking lifts are full of piss
The fucking guards are full of shit.
The fucking step is fucking massive
How dare they call this fucking access?
Fucking government full of clowns
They make me live in crippletown.

The fucking roads are full of holes
Fucking shops all full of whores.
The fucking streets are full of dogshit
The fucking kids are full of bullshit.
You sure you need that fucking wheelchair?
Just fuck off, you fucking wanker!
Mothers with their kids in tanks
Fucking rude and fucking blank.
So fucking try to get around
It’s evidently crippletown.

©​ Angus McKenzie-Davie

A Second Life

Give me a second life
Because when the first one seems over
I want an island in the sun
And a boat in the harbour

I met you on an asteroid
We rode in silver machines, spaceships not wheelchairs
Take me to goth clubs
My sister of mercy

Houses in the sky
Homage to Cthullu
Islands of fear
A wasteland forever

Animated icon
I loved you on sight
You walked on the seabed
And flew through the air

I was rolling my stone of love up Sisyphus hill
Will it roll over me again?
Crush me like a small furry animal
Next time I’ll leave it all in the alley

It rolled me like a footpad
What it was all for?
Does this happen every time?
Am I so naïve here?

Islands of Buddhists
Avenues of pain
Shops full of freebies and cheap Japanese hair
Virtual and insane

My body strained with all this effort
Love’s labour exhausted every sinew
Now look where I’ve ended
Body crushed and rock departed

Second life is over
And now I need a third one
Meet me in the nearest sandpit
We’ll redesign our world, make an even more absurd one

©​ Angus McKenzie-Davie

Stay with me tonight
(For my Pixelated Princess)

Stay with me tonight.
I feel her close to me tonight.
She is the tapping on the windows.
I hear her on the stairs.
But most of all,
I fear the part of her inside me.

Please stay and help me fight.
Push this silver knife deep into her soul.
Even if she's in me.
Especially if she's in me.

Come and dance with me.
Swing me round in the
Multi-coloured
Incandescant 
Psychedelic light.
In the music that is too loud to hear.

Dazzle my eyes with this rainbow.
Burst my ears with this pure white noise.
And my demon recedes to the back of all this.
To wait for the darkness again.

©​ Angus McKenzie-Davie
 

Borneo - A Trilogy 
(From Recollections of Former Soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

1. Borneo

Malay peninsula
My brother died in Malaysia
I fucking hate Americans, they don’t know how to say hello, just bang. 
That’s not the way to say hello
Traumatised

Brown, Blair and the other one
That bastard
Blair’s unhappy
Because truth is like a knife
It cuts away the lies
You can’t do that from records

2. Navy man

I was a young man
Rough Brigade
Sukarno
Something special
You don’t know what you’ve found
I am a clean man, but what I’ve done
It was bad
So now you know about me, and you are correct
Now you can learn more

All those friends, Bluebelle
Harlem princess, and black 
Wish she was here
Wish they were all back
Not buried in the war, long dead

Can you believe how hard they can bring a hand down?
Wanna do something useful, something good
Put it all in
Good for humankind
And the truth? How bad am I?
I’m a nice man

3. John T. Light
 
American, CIA
I come from a terrible family
Terrible
Long ago was a… whoosh!
Its true, long time ago
Dreadful; unbelievable; horrible
Old time
They were horrible people
When they killed that king, they murdered the king
I know what they did
It had to be done

I’m nicer, I’m not that way
Tell me the truth
I’m a nice little fellah
I’m better than them
What could I do against that?
We’re meant to be nice to each other
What’s wrong with being nice?
I’ve been in battle
You can tell by this tin leg
Why can’t we be nice to each other?
We can make life unbelievably nice

©​ Angus McKenzie-Davie