the next poem will be called the gilet years

the next poem will be called the gilet years
sugar rush stroll, the last of my 30s, then back to the wall
more nippon, this time kitchen, with an ambassadorial element
i’m 40 tomorrow and honestly everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff

well that was a year ago. so now i’m 41. and i’ve been working on the gilet years for six months. and its nearly finished!

i had been out for japanese food with my good friend and collaborator, r.l., and he was telling me about his new job, which was like his old one, but with a more ‘ambassadorial element’. all poets are also thieves, so i wrote that down immediately.

as i write today, i can honestly say that pretty much everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff. but i do have doms from trying a new type of squat in the gym and a sore shoulder from lifting a weight that was too heavy for me. there have been long lithe periods in my middle age. i remain fit and healthy, and i am grateful for that.

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse
honestly i’m just trying to live the most wasted, safe life
antediluvian nipponese amble celebrants and another two bunnies

i’m so unsure about the bunnies and their place on the superstition/beauty in number/deistic force spectrum.

on the way to our holiday in italy the other month, my girlfriend forgot her passport. that’s bad luck. but it was good luck that we had time to circle back in the taxi and collect it. and i suppose it was good luck we could afford to do that.

then arriving at the airport, there were two bunnies frolocking. oh no! i thought. two bunnies having been established to be a bad omen, i think. but luckily we saw the third bunny nearby. crisis averted. and we had a lovely holiday with our friends and their little meat ball. i’ll explain the meatball next week.

if everyone had to pay market rent on their home forever

if everyone had to pay market rent on their home forever
the market would reach an equilibrium that would be better for everyone
except the rentier class, who belong in gaol, and may well end up there

so my idea is essentially to fix the housing crisis by replacing all property taxes with a new ‘market rent’ tax.

the tax will be charged at the full market rent that the property would achieve on the open market. any rent or mortgage paid in the same period relating to the same property would be deductible from the tax charge.

if the mortgage or rent paid in the period was greater than the market rent, the excess would be given to the tax payer as a tax credit.

this would mean that lots of old people who live in large houses mortgage free would have to sell up. the mass of properties becoming available would reduce the market value of properties (at the moment, the property market is extremely illiquid – only, say, 1-2% of properties are on the market at any time, which creates artificial scarcity, driving up both rents and house prices.

by using the tax system to recalibrate the market so that everyone is effectively paying rent, we would effectively increase the size of the property market to 100%. there would no longer be any scarcity and the market would reach an equilibrium at an affordable rate.

it would also destroy landlordism, as landlords would have to pay market rent on the properties they own, whether tenanted or not.

liberty’s light will lead us there, libraries gave us power

liberty’s light will lead us there, libraries gave us power
elongate the environ of the emblem of they who shall be emancipated
pishhead magnetism combines us, their yolk won’t define us
(con)serve – not conscripted infantry but torpid flabby midgetry
superiors drink-sodden day-to-day erudite popinjays
oh god this ship is sinking fast, just hope we make the buddha last

i was lying there face down with my arse in the air getting my forearm tattooed. for several hours. i came up with quite a few lines in that session. i often turn my mind to poetry when i am suffering.

physical pain. the pain of boredom. emotional turmoil. these are the big beautiful building blocks of the poetry of n.n. benn.

in this section we have (another) reference to the manic street preachers (libraries gave us power) which set me off on a bit of a charge. i started thinking about christopher hitchens – who was famously called a ‘drink sodden ex-trotskyite popinjay’ by george galloway during an argument about the iraq war. i’m not a fan of galloway, but that was a good line.

my loyalties are very much with the drink sodden popinjays of the world. by and large, it’s well spoken men in tailored suits who cause the world’s wars and hardship. if we all just concentrated on getting pished and having fun, the world would be a better place.

all through the night, we have no past, we won’t reach back

all through the night, we have no past, we won’t reach back
dilatory breathing, with the inmates chewing fat
i always laugh when i chop onions, ever since my pet cat killed himself

all through the night is a cyndi lauper song. its a banger! what an artist.

dilatory is one of my favourite words. i am curious about the etymology – is it related to delay? if so, why isn’t it spelt delaytory? – but not so curious to look it up. another of my favourite words, i think i mentioned before, is demonstrable. a combination of demons and monster. quite scary.

chewing the fat means blethering or gossiping. shooting the breeze. we have loads of words for banter and patter round our way.

do you laugh when you chop onions?

the prophecy came first much too soon, then again a bit too late

the prophecy came first much too soon, then again a bit too late
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

we are all imperfect beings. perhaps forgetful, clumsy, prone to greed, unintentionally rude. we break things, we make a mess, we keep people waiting.

we lay demands on each other. we stress each other out.

and i think… well. nobody really knows why we are here. everything just happens to us. there is no such thing as normal.

so, although it is hard, i beseech you – forgive your enemies. don’t wait for them to forgive you.

on the verge of an irretrievable memory, a texture, a vague sense

tangled shoe, cockapoo, over you, road rash tattoo
honestly what are the odds?

i was running down the canal towpath when a cockatoo got all under me, then i got all over it. i was mostly fine except for some road rash to my forearm, where i had a fresh, unhealed tattoo. which reminds me, i really should get that retouched…

memory is a funny thing. i’m always forgetting what i’m in the middle of, trying to do many things at once… you know when you are talking about someone and lose their name, or forget the word for the specific thing that is due to appear in your story… this happens a lot to me.

i remember once losing the yoga word for many hours. i was at a yoga class and the teacher ended the session by inviting us to make an ‘appropriate gesture’ and i wanted to say namaste but it was gone and everyone else in the class was i think being overly culturally sensitive by not saying it.

thankfully it came back to me in ikea later that day. (more ikea later this month, meatball fans!)

and hybrid work means shivering alone by a lockfast window on a sunny day

my favourite track, the album’s last
round the oval, and pound the quad

persons unknown want persons all to commute to work again for reasons unknown. and you get there and none of your colleagues are there. and its sunny outside but cold in the office. this was the human experience of service workers in 2024. i wonder what they will make of it in a thousand years. if anything…

the next day, i was cycling down by the sewage works when i felt a strong need to pull over, in the peak of the smell for some reason, to note down that my favourite track is always the last one on the album. its not necessarily true of all albums but i think it truly describes the kind of song that i typically would select as a ‘favourite song’ at any given moment. something a bit epic, maybe a big melancholy balled, or something just a bit strange. but in researching this post, i have discovered that a lot of the songs i thought were the last one on the album… were not. i guess i listen on shuffle a lot.

i still think its a fair description of the kind of songs i tend to sometimes like anyway.

you meet someone you know from gossip

our hour our sense our self
in each case you can choose to cooperate or cheat

i wasn’t thinking of any particular meeting or person, just the idea of how sometimes characters can go from sort of fictional, like a friend of a friend, and then you are introduced and you feel like you already know them a bit. and maybe they even know something about you…

at the time of writing, i’m just back from a weekend of cycling with my club. we had glorious weather for a weekend in argyll, scotland. we cycled 220km with 3000m of elevation. i ate so many squashies and cereal bars. i’m looking forward to returning to my regular diet.

the roads were great, although a bit busy with cars at some points. devoted readers of the blog will know that i dislike cars. there was one particularly bonkers point when we were almost mowed down by a fire engine that i can only assume had been stolen. then a sports utility van thing that almost crashed head on with another car while overtaking. breathtaking stupidity really.

[post script] i have now been back from the holiday for two weeks, and the experience was dampened quite significantly when i learned that one of my club mates sadly died suddenly shortly after the trip. he was older, and had a heart transplant, so i suppose he had probably done his memento mori and made peace with mortality. but death never fails to shock. i didn’t know him well but he seemed like a good guy. rest in peace, s. d. (a different s. d.)

pun-ridden doggerelly sub-nonsense

in funereal nomenclature and dress
but i did have six toasts today, all of them doublers
(lentil, tuna rocket; salmon shallot; ched spicy)

i met my old friend s.d. for a few beers, and was reminded of his old homestead webpage. it was very funny and claimed to pertain to ‘subnonsense,’ a posited form of nonsense which i still find funny. and i guess i’m giving an honest appraisal of my work in these lines… as a poet, fundamentally, my building blocks are puns and emotional turmoil.

the next day i had many and varied sourdough toasts.