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.
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.
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 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.
life under actually existing capitalism continues;
a unique combination of boring and stressful.
face it, i’m never going to be a hot porridge-man
i think trusts are somehow fundamentally immoral
for tax wheezes and to sneeze-on late diseases
build car washes and slag heaps on the green belt!
speed eden’s fall to it’s infernal conclusion
i don’t want to be too political, but i don’t like the world that much. i don’t claim to know how to fix it. but it’s just not that fun. work i mean. we spend years in training, like 13 years of school, then maybe college as well, you’d think we’d be like smart enough to make the world work without everyone spending most of their waking life just trying to keep on top of their emails.
an odd feature of actually existing capitalism, is that the essentials of life, you know, shelter, food, raising a family, entertainment… are priced as luxuries. lots of jobs just don’t pay enough to support such things. i don’t claim to understand economics. but that seems to me like an abject failure.
gloriosa, parliament sauce,
crises on the high seas
a paddling pavarotti leaves
in degrees of blue cheese
graduates to a sextet roundtable gaff christening
make the dog wait late to get out in the rain
halved iced raw lobster twitching
piled up plates in the kitchen
was there a thing about the three tenors and high c’s? sometimes i read this poem back and i haven’t much of a clue what was going through my mind. i think this was about my girlfriend’s flat warming but honestly. it was a tough time. maybe we just leave it at that. need to get better about oversharing…
in my second novel, tentatively titled ‘sleaze in san estaben’, there is a character called pavolvia who is loosely based on pavorotti. except it turns out he isn’t really italian and has a gruff new york accent. and he’s a bit of a sex pest. man i need to spend more time working on my novels.
hey. imagine if everyone knew everything
not about the physics and philosophy and the universe,
god and the mystery of life;
but about every dirty thought you have ever had,
and all the gossip since the pharaoh and moses
smoked camel lights in negotiation
round behind the pyramid
not just who horsed who,
but every weird wet dream too
we would be more liberal and better behaved i should think
subterfuge stymied,
the obfuscated elucidated.
an idea i think about a lot is that of the book at the end of the universe. i like to think that, when this whole thing is over, all the players will be invited to inspect the logs and find out what the other characters were thinking, what actually went down, who thought they had got away with cheating, and so on. like, the ultimate compendium of gossip.
so for the purposes of this thought experiment, we accept that this book exists. the question then is: could it have existed before the universe started? does it already exist? but only the players who have already quit have access? or are there superplayers who have access to the book now? and would reading the book change the book?
i only realised i had dimples
when i was 39
its fair to say i have a disconnected
state of mind
my health so misdiagnosed
i associate doctors with hurting mine
so let’s let this limerent love sing fine
aside regular meltdowns,
it’s still the honeymoon time
we bond beyond the boundaries of skin
and trust that good souls forgive everything.
when i was in my early twenties i had a girlfriend with facial dimples. how, how did it not occur to me that i also have dimples. even as i was researching the idea on google images i was doubtful. but ultimately accepting. diagnosed with dimples at thirty nine years old. with autism at 40. what next?
i shall need several weeks or months off work
in the early stage of a new religion,
i need time to make it up
pull an apex grin
888 my spectral sum
charm a devil at an intersection
and sell your soul for sin
best check the small print
because i learn slow
but at least i know
i had been down the autism rabbit hole for a while by this point but by now i was in a full blown identity crisis. who am i? am i someone else now? does the process of self discovery actually involve the construction of a new self? is this like the electron whose form is altered by observation?
i consider the parable of the bluesman who sells his soul to the devil to play rock n roll guitar. i’m tempted to seek out an autism super power for myself.
but on reflection, post diagnosis, the person i am most like is the young me, who blogged and wrote short stories and dreamed of being a novelist or a rock star, working passionately and amateurishly on artistic projects. the need to express myself on the page or cassette. the planned, edited, polished, dialogue. perhaps because i am not the best at expressing myself in the moment.
which is fine. i think. i’m sure i heard somewhere once that the irish say that a writer is a failed talker. i’ll take that.
all my life, baby-boomer woman
have told me i’m good looking
and from hereon in such women
shall be by heroines
growing up, women of my parents’ generation were always telling me i was handsome. women of this generation remain the most likely to smile at me unprompted in the street, even when i’m not walking a dog.
but mainly, i am prone to echolalia, and the day i wrote this i just had the couplet stuck in my head all day and i felt like i was going insane. now, a year later, i’m quite comfortable making a conclusive diagnosis of insanity.
the love epochal. n.n. benn 