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.

airport toblerone

airport toblerone? spoiled child
and a backpack of packs of lambert and butler
i have a theory that good things wait for those who come
different but the same

i remember back in the heady days of the european union when there was free movement of goods and persons. when a soul could stock up on several thousand cigarettes at the airport shop, sold in such a big packet that it came with straps so it could be easily transported back to blighty.

we have always lived in absurd times.

many vietmans

a day without contact,
perhaps it’s really passed
two, three… many vietnams.
now detente,
defcon four, defcon five
cooled down conflict. digging trenches.
trying to stay alive
love is unconditional, but trust can be lost
a provisional impasse that can’t last
defcon three, defcon two
don’t turn the dial to first
but good souls have forgiven worse

this was the beginning of the lost weekend. a two month long weekend. i was in the depths of my postdiagnosis identity crisis. i suspect i was insufferable. my diary entries were long and messy.

vulvic pud

fruit forward vulvic pud, touched,
lingered upon, picasso pubic crumb
a tender rebirth, but is this the beginning or the end,
reprise: why does your love hurt so much?

i was out for dinner with friends at a fancy italian restaurant, and honestly, the dessert was so obscenely vaginal it could not have been an accident. luckily we were are liberal, open minded people and we were not offended.

it was also a very rainy day.

the hoarse foreman of the acopalypse

the firewater fades to a numb, dumb dysphoria
as we tag along
behind the hoarse foreman of the apocalypse
on foot due to cutbacks
we lost the yoga word to an armed counter revolution
modish clatty vogon rogues
namaste, karaoke, ok?

technological advances continue at a barely digestible rate. yet we must always find efficiencies and makes savings. the nation states have given up on space travel. now, that is only affordable for the owners of multinational corporate groups.

we have more resources, more potential, than at any time in human history. yet we must increase the retirement age. and cut the welfare state.

as a disabled person, i worry. i could lose my job. and there would be nobody there to stop my fall. i’d have to spend all my savings, sell my flat, and only then could i claim £75 a week or whatever the dole is. enough for an ok lunch for two at a restaurant.

i’m not flash. i am happy with cheap beer, pasta and cheese. bananas. i could give up holidays as long as i still had time off. but i’m unusual i think. i think a lot of people would like to have children and buy a semi in the suburbs, but they just can’t make it work in the current economic settlement. that sounds like failure to me.