endless time

how would you feel

if everything happened forever

if every moment of your life was still ongoing

everything always in total contradiction

i want the unexpected

off script, dumbfound me

astonish me quick

with your attention to retail

when they finish the history books we’ll see

we just have to just accept the past

it happened

i think about time a lot, the hopeless impossibility of the past, its unchanging nature, its doubtful nature. do facts remain or do they change over time? i worry that the despots of the past, henry 8, pope urban, alexander the great, ghengis khan become sanitised by history. i dread a work 1000 years hence on which the crimes of fascism are forgotten or decontextualised and hitler is remembered as some great socialist leader. perhaps in an eerie, whitewashed slave globe.

it’s important to remember that the rich and powerful are only in it for themselves. the pharos put their slaves to death. the romans were a plunder economy. social democracy is not normal and if we want it we always have to fight for it.

love me like a holocaust

influenced by scottish ned culture

a natty factagonal

revolutionary rear guard

my interest is piqued,

love me like a holocaust

quirkful monogamy

unpromised and distant

transient specs

in the universal scheme

sonic balance

tripping me

who was influenced by scottish bed culture? pretty sure i read it on wikipedia. maybe it was gerry cinnamon. love me like a holocaust is a maniac reference. it was a difficult time. my mid life crisis was unwinding and i had sought refuge in the angsty left wing rock n roll of my teenaged years.

christmas cheer from ear to ear

i was sent from outer space

to complain about the traffic here

with christmas cheer from ear to ear

and elephants never forget new year

there is finite information

in any place at any time

but my question relates to the data

pertaining to time past

i mean, i feel the breath leave my body:

how can i get it back?

the last couple of years, my friends from university have sent me a christmas cars which is a picture their son drew. they are always quite absurd, and i hope to receive more of them. being, essentially, and adult child, i like to try and reply with something on theme. so last year my christmas card was an elephant wearing a santa hat standing next to its igloo. i hope the tradition carries on, but d and k’s eldest son is in high school now so perhaps he will outgrow it. i certainly have no plans to outgrow drawing my own christmas card in response to anyone who sends me one they themselves have drawn.

no ai pish though.

chorus of the lost weekend

are you ready for your advent wafer,

manger wean?

‘tis the season of debt and accumulation

i have a theory an arbitrary line

divides the mad from the sane

different but the same

that was the last of stanza 11. part two concludes in stanza 12, from tuesday 2 december. new poetry every tuesday, thursday and saturday. and don’t worry, part 3 starts on 1 january 2026. the love epochal just continues.

embiggened by a little soul

be lovers on standby,

not friends with benefits

celeste’s carnation

in the barrel, in the gun

chuck your moveables in

for a risk-free freebie

even a little soul

embiggens the forgiven

it was the lost weekend. my lover and i were on a break. considering our options. but i knew fine what i wanted. then celeste caeiro died and i wanted to commemorate her. she was a portuguese communist who was working as a waitress in 1974 when the fascist regime was overthrown by mutinous soldiers. she placed carnations in the soldiers’ rifles, and this became the visual motif of the revolution.

embiggened is, of course, a simpsons reference.

returning the oversized funglasses

can you come to terms with who I am?

can i?

in d2k i rhymed ‘if soon i don’t die

i’ll wonder why’

and still i wonder why –

the complexity infinitely expanding

reluctantly giving it all my attention

beat up and run down

an ex murder victim…

i wish i was more confident

but i am returning the oversized funglasses.

i wanted a pair of yellow lensed glasses, so i ordered the only pair on the ray bans website but when they arrived they were of a scale hitherto thought improbable. i seriously considered it, took a few selfies, but there is a limit to how silly i am comfortable looking.

oh and i once worked with someone who described their baby daddy as an ‘ex murderer’

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 headsment?

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?