Category: i] toblerone (a brexit poem)

smell tomato paste and cheddar, my da’s cooking, my home

i was just making some toast and cheese and i thought i’ll make it a bit fancy since, let’s be honest, this is what i’m having for dinner.

so i mixed some seeds and tomato paste and olive oil and salt and cheese into a lumpy paste, spread it on wholemeal pitta bread and bunged it into the oven and make a sort of turbo-pizza snack. and i remembered cooking with my dad when i was a wee boy.

we would buy pre-made pizza bases from the supermarket. or even just a crispy morton’s roll. and then tomato paste and cheese. so my version is a wee bit fancier. but that’s just a generational shift. there’s more stuff in the supermarket now than there was when i was a kid. nobody cared about mixed seeds and whole grains then. the food my parents eat now is different from the food they are then.

that’s why nostalgia is so emotional, and can hit so hard. it’s that longing that you didn’t know you had for a thing that you cannot have, because it just doesn’t exist anymore.

i cut a lana del rey tattoo into my arm, is that self harm?

it’s actually only sort of a lana del rey tattoo. i got the idea when the queen died, and there was a new king. there was stuff in the news about the king’s new cipher, c iii r, which replaced the queen’s e ii r (charles the third rex, lizzy the second regina.)

i thought, what would the american cypher be? so instead of the british crown it would be the one from the statue of liberty. and the monograph… l d r, for lana del rey, or, alternatively lana the 500th regina.

oh and also. i love lana del rey.

never socrates unsatisfied nor pig in shit: / we are socrates in pig shit, always and 4 real.

would you rather be socrates unsatisfied or a pig in shit? the life unexamined is not worth living… but the pig is actually happy isn’t it? at least, it is in this philosophical paradox.

but ultimately, even if you choose the socratic life, ultimately you will still need to clean your toilet and take the bins out.

i remember distinctly an evening of childhood. my mum had made pork. i was chewing the pig in my mouth. overcooked. dry. tough. i left the dining table and went to the kitchen and spat the mouth-full into the bin. i thought about mortality: this was a dead pig i had desecrated. what a waste. i too would die. and i was scared of that. but if this pig could do it, maybe it wasn’t such a big thing.

a few years later i became a vegetarian, and i have mostly been vegetarian for most of my adult life.

i read about his suicide on teletext in the 90s / a poet tortured, bill teller of the apple orchard

i was listening to a lot of elliott smith, who i just found out was neurodivergent. i would have guessed that, to be honest.

his music is so hauntingly beautiful. he has a unique style. melancholy and melodic.

his life was short and tragic. he actually died in 2003, but i am pretty certain i did read about it on teletext.

i used to read planet sound on channel 4 teletext every day, and even wrote in. presumably it would have been email by then, but i have a vague memory of at least once having to actually post a letter.

one time i posted a hoax to the streets message board under the name ‘john hoaks’ claiming to have worked in a studio where mike skinner was doing a collab with chris martin of coldplay, and felt sort of embarrassed and guilty when i saw it reported as news on teletext a day or two later.

bevvy bivouac, coke and jack in the sack

people look down on the homeless. they smell. they are drunk. they are addicts.

but we are all only a calamity away from destitution. so i try and give gratitude every day that although i don’t live in a society or a world in which every person has the dignity and security or a safe place to sleep and sufficient food and comfort, at least, currently, i do have that luck.

remember that the reason for homelessness is societal. we could change our politics to eradicate poverty. as a society, we choose not to.

so when i wrote this line, i was just trying to empathise with a homeless man who i had encountered near my flat. he was drunk. and i reasoned, if i had to sleep on the pavement tonight, i would probably want to get a bit drunk.

as is common with autistic people, i have struggled to get to sleep all my life. even in my comfortable bed in my warm flat, i really on medication to help me sleep. i’d really need to up the dose to have any chance of sleeping on the pavement.

this bipolar love hurts so much round infatuated hertz

i like to try and keep my desert island discs up to date. you never know when lauren laverne might call.

right up there, maybe my favourite song of all time, is ‘why does your love hurt so much?’ by carly simon. and love does hurt.

falling in romantic love is a massive, multifaceted thing. it involves accepting vulnerability. it means taking on another’s pain, as well as sharing in their pleasure. you sign up for the highs, but the dips can be brutal.

and as you fall in love with someone, you change them, they change you, and you change yourself. and, if it is meant to be, after a while, you will have grown together and found a way to be together.

have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn? / it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else / i have a theory that brexit is the sack of london, by hitler / different, but the same

i talk about toblerones a lot. i was eating them a lot during lockdown. a funny habit to get into. currently trying to quit squashies. i don’t think i can be happy in a day if i don’t do something that is just unhealthy and doesn’t further any amibition other than to be enjoyed for its own sake. like, a sacrifice of health for short term pleasure. it’s a reasonable sacrifice to make on a daily basis. we’re here for a weird time, not a healthy one.

but are some things unforgivable? / let’s hope good souls can hold a grudge with compassion.

i’m so sleepy today. i had a busy few days. i did a big cycle. i climbed a mountain. i saw old friends, drank negroni and was merry.

i often have ‘low power’ days. if i don’t schedule some quiet time, my body enforces it. is it autism? a delayed hangover? is my immune system battling an infection? who knows. i’m gonna take it easy anyway. read a good book. make a loaf of bread. try to avoid talking.

are some things unforgivable though? i want to say no, that there is always the possibility of redemption. but i fear it may not be true. some crimes are so great that it’s hard to believer the perpetrators could have souls. and i’m too tired to want to think about this today.

but considering the crimes and trespasses that have been committed against me – no, there is nothing i can’t or won’t forgive.

the universe is comprised of information thoughts are but ephemeral forms / deleted from the records for eternity, locked within an evanescent system

i try and fit the world into schemes of universal truth. the simpler the principle, the more beautiful, and hence better. but as soon as you take philosophy into the world, it is battered by complication and complexity. the universe is chaotic.

for this reason, i have a general fear of the future. planning makes me overwhelmed. there is too much of everything. too many books to read. songs to write. sunny days to bathe under. routes to cycle. dinners to eat. so many millions of choices, so many infinities of experience that i necessarily will miss out on.

and that’s before we come to thoughts. for we live in two worlds – the external world, which exists perfectly well without us and of which we know almost nothing – and the internal world – of which ONLY we know, and yet we still can’t remember everything. we can’t remember our every action in the external world. but we can’t even remember the events of the internal world: the ideas that drifted away before we could commit them to paper. the emotions we felt. the dreams we had. all gone. as if they never even existed.