typist, poet, athlete, hi

get jacked up,
no imposter testostero-monster
typist poet athlete spy,
i wonder why i have this tie
to the human condition
a horny cowboy,
clit eatswood on a mission
it took me forever to realise
what consequences were
and remain
i’m still not sure i really get it
as we stand on the verge of
nuclear armageddon
let’s discuss commodity fetishism
from an original position
rejargonise my vocabulary,
please, textbook on notation

i was trying to find a balanced way of living. making money, while also being creative. it was creeping up to the new year, when i would start publishing my poetry, and i had a lot of nerves and apprehension regarding this. i still do.

i also remain anxious about nuclear war. and i was starting to try and learn about music theory. a year on, i can just about bash a tune out of a piano. i’m better at melodica. haven’t got long enough fingers for the piano really. really crap at guitar.

oh and some of these lines were originally ‘funny’ ideas for my online dating profile.

the inhospitable hospital

i’m much more comfortable
dwelling on failure
success is trite.
just comes down to luck
it’s in the losses
that we make our bones
wandering in sonder
through other souls’ stories
in a shared bubble of
mutual miscomprehension
five leafs left, so i turn one over
the motorized spaghetti moat
keeps patients at an asthmatic gap

i try and remind myself that success, victory, achievement — is fleeting, and brings with it new pressures. the more we achieve, the more we expect. both of ourselves, and also on a societal level. expectations creep, yet we, the humans, remain exactly the same. limited. at the mercy of chance.

so i am always just trying to find a way to live that is sustainable.

thinking about public executions on the subway

a higgledy-piggledy queue
of spewing machines
an unexpectedly bustling tube
with elastica from the high rises
stretching out rope for hangmen
pickpockets do operate
in the gallows’ courtyard
the good souls forgive,
but are they influential
with headsmen?

since the new trains have been on the subway, there have been some issues. maybe its sorted now. i don’t use the train that often. i’d had dinner with my parents then got on the subway home, its maybe 9pm on a weeknight, and its unexpectedly madly busy, standing room only. i think maybe some earlier trains had been cancelled. anyway, i was thinking about how capital punishment isn’t really an effective deterrent.

hat!

chapeau, cav,
did never ever
cross your mind?
you’ve earned intense relaxation
and benign mischiefs
after a slight return
prepare to overcome;
my melodica fingers play
an old faithful tune
like riding a bike?
but am i charming anyone?
chapeau, cav!

mark cavendish retired with the most tours de france stage victories of anyone. his first in 2008, his last in 2024 — a long career, that saw a long draught as he battled illness and depression. i’ve always adored cav. he cries all the time. i can relate. so passionate and unguarded in interviews. i got into cycling in about 2009, more seriously in 2012 when i finished uni and had weekends free of work for the first time. at first i didn’t really care so much about the sprint stages, but cav made them essential viewing. so many moments of joy he provided. who wouldn’t cheer for cav?

self-care weekend

search term “gumtree”
eight hundred items
cried three times
in a basic way,
people are just
what they do and say…
cold dry, hot dry,
hot wet, wet wet
transcendental massage
happy tears ending,
middle,
and a bit near the start
when she took my feet
like yeshua of nazareth
then clasped my palm
like the virgin mother

i was really worn out, i’d been busy in work, i’d had a big disappointment after missing out on a job i really wanted. i spent a weekend sorting emails and then went for a sauna and massage and it was just what i needed. i am a tense person and i have a lot of neck and shoulder pain as a result. and when i’m sore and burned out and incommunicative, i want a deep sports massage delivered with firm certainty.

but there’s also something very intimate about contact with the palms and soles of the feet. a lot of nerves there i suppose.

bad election

i’m freewheeling with neil in a sodden cloud
commiserating on the unproud
behold the convict’s re-ennoblement
i live with my pain, i own it
and i don’t care who knows it
chain-whip for a strain
against the pain
with every novel
life-stage crisis
i achieve a new, anal
level of organisation

i remember tidying my room after a particularly bad bout of depression aged about 18. i think it helped. i remember even at that time being always stressed out about the files on my computer. and my email inbox. i had no systems. files had stupid names. data was saved all over the place on various hard disks. at some point i actually managed to lose gigabytes of original music recordings i’d made over many years. i’m getting stressed typing this.

when i had a bit of an identity crisis after being diagnosed with autism, amongst other things, i assembled all my school reports cards and exam certificates. and i sorted though all my emails since i got a gmail account in 2007. i try and maintain a system of sorts now. i like to keep my flat tidy.

war poetry

poets operating in your area
have taken ten per cent off gdp
put out and pensive
(to be is to be)
we work best from the trenches
the snipers are barely interested
in no man’s land i meander
absorbing vile inspiration
trying to get my head
in your to cross hairs

write poetry like nobody is watching, i often think to myself, as nobody watches. its a niche choice of endeavour. there are almost certainly more poets than there are readers of poetry. that’s why i make my blog posts to cutting and pithy.

as a poet

at work once an i.t. guy
told me his wife was employed
as a poet!
a real life poet and
(poet and educator)
this man changed my life.
unfortunately,
via a mishandled data migration
that caused me to career
onto life’s soft verge
in a slow motion car crash.
my poetry remains unsuccessful.

i won’t bore you with the time i took on too much at work during lockdown and ended up having two years of burnout and misdiagnoses. it encouraged me to make a lot of changes in my life anyway. i think i’m getting to a better place. its fun writing poetry anyway. maybe that will never be my profession. but reducing my hours at work has at least given me time to do it.

the you/me confusion

you know,
when you want to please
to mask, to be accepted?
you know,
i mean, why do we say you
when you clearly mean me?
when i clearly mean me
when i mean to say
i’m a people pleaser…
but i’m not good at it.

do you ever find yourself saying, ‘you know that thing where…’ and then you find yourself describing your own strange anxiety or neuroticism and you think to yourself: this was me i was talking about the whole time. we talk about ourselves specifically in this universal manner. we put our situation into the listener, and ask them to empathise, and forgive, but we don’t have the strength to say: i am weak. i need your validation.

the failure and possible redemption of language

we don’t yet have the language
for the time in which we live
the 2010s, the 2020’s,
don’t feel lived in like the 90s
like naturally stressed 501s
two sizes too big
in every direction
y2k was the last mass adopted nickname
there is no confidence yet
in the unfolding millennium
so i propose a radical redetermination
y2k of d2k,
then d2k.1,
now 2k.2,
or, i posit “point two”
in practice

i mean obviously i don’t expect this to be taken on. its quite abstract. but i hope i can at least draw attention to what is a serious problem. we can’t be going around calling this the 20’s, it’s preposterous.

but you never know. this will probably go viral. by next week i will undoubtedly be a very famous poet and everyone will agree that this is d2k and maybe even that this is y2k.25? anyway, if we are going to live in the future, we should start talking in a befitting manner.