socrates in shit

i read about his suicide on teletext in the 90s
a poet tortured, bill teller of the apple orchard
never socrates unsatisfied nor pig in shit:
we are socrates in pig shit, always and 4 real.

i was at the climbing gym the other day, i like to run over there, i put my climbing shoes in a wee run bag, it takes about 20 minutes if i go slow, sometimes i race back, anyway, this is all besides the point, so, i arrive at the gym, decide to go pee, in the disabled loo as it was closest, i’m there, nearly flowing, but the pan is full of unused female sanitary products, like a couple of pads and three inserts, all still in the plastic, so i’m like well i can’t pee on that, but i’m also like, if i leave now the next person is going to think i’m a mentalist who fills the toilet with sanitary products.

so i fished them out with my hands as a public service and put them in the bin and i hated it but i suppose this is just what its like to be an adult. and that reminded me a bit of the poetry above i suppose.

a common question asked by philosophers is, ‘how does one live a good life.’ which leads to the question: is it better to, like socrates, live an ‘examined life’ – and probably be constantly unsatisfied as a result. is it perhaps better to be a pig rolling in shit, just living?

but i find that often life forces us to be socrates in the toilet, actively disliking what you are doing, and thinking a lot about it.

and while i’m here, the first two lines were references to elliott smith and william burroughs, the death of the first by a somewhat suspicious suicide, and the killing of burroughs’s wife, joan vollmer, by burroughs, in a drunken ‘game of william tell’.

benn’s law

from snowy summits are mountained limbs of venomous frogspawn
here is to the life pudendal
blessedly unaffected by format rigidity.
going home, i see the most expensive chocolate bar
i’ve ever seen, heard of or read about
and in a fog of lousy vibes await an operative positive.

i was in the pub with my friend i.h. the other day and conversation turned to inflation and high prices. mars bars in particular. i remembered distinctly (meaning, probably, inaccurately) that a mars bar was 27p when i was in my youth. a particular memory – i was at the swimming baths while my brother was taking a lesson. and reading the adrian mole diaries. and i’m sure i read him spending his pocket money on a mars bar in 1982. and it was 15p. so i reckon i read that book in 1995.

1982 15p
1995 27p

that’s an increase of 80%

so 13 years later, in 2008, you would expect it to be another 80% higher? rounding up that’s 50p. and i’m pretty sure that’s what it did cost in 2008.

so in 2021, how much was a mars bar? the model says 90p. I would bet you 90p you could find a mars bar for sale for 90p in 2021.

a mars bar today costs… £1.05.

so based on no underlying data other than my own memory of the price of mars bars, i was able to determine that the price of confectionary will increase by 80% every 13 years.

or, more snappily, we can extrapolate from our data that the price of confectionary doubles every 15 years. and i call this benn’s law.

(and we can take the calming news that the inflation we have suffered recently is relatively normal)

and yes, i know this ignore the fact that mars bars have also shrunk. the real rate of inflation is higher.

toblerone [remix]

hamstrung by the ancestors of landlords
beneath the distant barren peaks of a toblerone—
the traumatic trough entrenches resilience.
a slight slide and crunch underfoot on icy steps,
the organism (the leviathan) slips into disequilibrium.
revolted by bolts of thunderous chunder, and a cold sweat
a risky coffee poured into the evacuated gut.
in a feverish daze, i found the courage to ask for help
and was restored—with my problems undiminished

there is a nut on my bath plug. it can run up or down a screw length. no clue why, at first.

one day, after one of my many long baths (like the one i’m in right now) i turned the knob that ejects the plug. and it had no effect. so i was reduced to spending my evening emptying the bath into the loo with a saucepan. then i went to drill a hole in the plug, but before it made an incision the jolt of the drill burped out the seal and the plug came out.

i inspected the nut on the plug and inferred that clearly i must turn the screw all the way down to the bottom, for maximum ejaculatory force. i did this, and then for ten years or so, generally when i tugged the knob at the end of the bath, the plug always came and the water drained.

but then the knob ceased to have effect again. it impotently refused to drain. twice again in the space of a few weeks. it even made it into the poem (perhaps not yet published, i can’t remember, and, as i said, i’m in the bath.)

i don’t understand, i thought, the second time. the nut is screwed maximally to the bottom?!

a few weeks later it occurred to me. maybe i should try screwing the bolt leftwards, up to the top of the shaft. sure enough, with that setting, the ejected plug sat a good half centimetre further out of the water.

thank fuck i never spent that £2.49 on one of those rubber plugs that you just pull out and never ever have to try and extract with your toilet plunger ten years ago when i first had this problem.

cohen again

i listen to cohen again and wonder if i’m obsessive
in the wet, warm drink i sip the spirit water, and ponder
i react first with emotion, the weight takes a while to settle
i’m let down and i let down
there is no reasoning with the passions.
sometimes i feel like i’m not a real person—a lack i’ve sought in others
credit for debit, the difference solo temporal
evolve the revolving door, better round than in
any task, i’ll find a way to do it
my first instinct may be wrong but given infinite time…

i mentioned earlier this week my trouble with receiving unconditional love. my confused adolescence. well last month i had romy on my playlist. her album, mid air, has been on repeat in my ears for a while. highly recommend.

‘my mother says to me, enjoy your life’

i’d seen my mum for my birthday dinner the day before. i was tired. at the gym. listening to my angsty feminist icons playlist. and i felt overwhelmed by emotion when this came on. the instruction is both comforting and implausible. why is it such a struggle to be happy?

i grew up in a loving family and still managed to be traumatised by it. i felt so unworthy of my parents’ love. if you too have been troubled by this issue, then i suggest the way to deal with it is to pass it on. to try to love universally and unconditionally. i don’t want to make excuses for everyone. but it’s not easy living in the complicated world, and we all have different perspectives and abilities. there is no right level of selfishness, anxiety or generosity. similar actions and intentions lead to dissimilar results. we don’t always know the consequences before we cause them.

a mouthfull of blood

hazy jane mountain range and a mouthful of blood
the chip shop salt and vinegar on the edge of the breeze
decline is the consequence of a millennium without conquest
bring all ye visigoths, only the sack of london can save us now
sometimes perspective illuminates

this is an excerpt from my may 2024 stanza, ‘the sack of london.’

its 4 july and the 249th anniversary of the american revolution. and it seems to be winding down. we associate america with freedom but its useful to remember that it was founded as a white supremicist slave state. it has a horrendous history of violence and imprisons more of its citizens than almost any other country. it is also the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against civilians. now, almost a quarter of a millennium in, the constitution is being stretched to breaking point – a nation divided between two similar but intransigently opposed blocs. and the republican arm seem intend on establishing some sort of achristian theocracy.