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 ned 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 card which is a picture their son drew. they are always quite absurd, and i hope to receive more of them. being, essentially, an 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 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?