soy flat white

she goes by hot chocolate, that makes me soy flat white
karmic on the balcony, sharing a thunderstorm,
writing this poem, i hear my queen through the wool
and feel the love epochal
in napoli, where love is king, the pizza is immortal
and a thousand wonky steps climb to a hot pink moon.

in the queue at the starbucks in edinburgh airport, a young black woman was in the line ahead of me. she ordered a hot chocolate. the (white, timid, young, male) barista asked her name, and she said ‘hot chocolate’. obviously, this made the barista quite uncomfortable, but the woman who ordered the drink clearly found it hilarious.

then i ordered my soy flat white. but i just said my name was benn. poor boy.

then i went to napoli and waited for my girlfriend to join me from sorrento. when she arrived, she took me running in quite intense heat and the route she plotted just seemed to go directly up in the air. afterwords we napped and listened to nick drake.

and from this little verse came the title of this body of work, the love epochal. which to me anyway embodies the search for meaning in an amoral universe in which love, joy and happiness coexist with alienation, despair, poverty and war.

men only

“men only” in the gents loo
none of your wokery pokery for sure
in our punishment society, though i advocate for justice
each disaster brings a wonder that our
species carries on with
this system that penalizes age, health, gender and bad luck
the strong are loud and like atlas they shrugged
so by the seat of my pants and a matchbook of gyp
i watch the green place dip from the cauldron’s lip

I’d been at l.b.’s 40th birthday at a tennis club. i’ve known l.b. since high school. i remember her vegitarian mother cooking bacon for me one evening after a boozy night out. and i’ve been vegetarian myself for a more than 20 years, aside from a lost weekend in the late 2010s.

it was nice to see so many old friends on a humid summer day. in the club however, there was a sign that said ‘men only’, in addition to the usual stick figure. i took this to be anti-trans sentiment. i thought it was a bit embarassing. but it turns out the supreme court agrees with joan rowling. which i suppose reinforces the idea that ‘progress’ can’t be assumed. there are no universal human rights – we have them because our ancestors fought for them. they are granted to humans, by humans, through the exercise of political power.

then i went to meet my girlfriend in napoli. i took the bus to edinburgh and enjoyed a nice vantage point from the east – glasgow sits within a sort of cauldron surrounded by gentle slopes. slopes i know well from my cycling addition.

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.

the universal now

we live in the spur of the moment
and we can protest or conform, it
is a choice we make from minute
to minute within a limit and maybe within it
there’s a justice extinct clink.
am-me-sia, a daily battle with with my lived reality
and it’s not reckless to travel vulnerably
not if it’s premeditated….

the experience of living in the universal now is common to folk with audhd – that is, both autism and adhd. a combination that was, until fairly recently, thought impossible. a diagnosis of one meant you couldn’t have the other. i have only been diagnosed with autism, but i relate quite strongly to audhd people. my favourite podcast at the moment is ‘audhd flourishing’, presented very ably by mattia mauree. the other day she mentioned that for her there are only two times, now and not-now. i have a fundamental sort of inability to imagine the future. i have no visual imagination at all, a neurodivergence known as aphantasia.

in another life i was an award winning criminal law student. so the last lines are a reference to the two mens reas of murder in scots law, intention (to kill) or wicked recklessness – a sort of wilful recklessness, a behaviour so thoughtless and dangerous that death is an inevitable outcome.

britain used to be famous for its liberalism. but there has always been an authoritarian streak, and in recent years the government has clamped down hard on peaceful but ‘nuisance causing’ protests. so we live in a world were poor wee crusty hippies spend serious time in jail for trying to make the world a better place. whether we agree with protestors or not, a healthy society should be able to argue its case without resorting to violence.

naked to the invisible eye

naked to the invisible eye is my conscience
so jaded, they almost shot the president; i didn’t buy the paper
the elbowed class are occupied, betting the house on forex
honest labourers: poets, cleaners, cooks, balance on the breadline
not even the climate crisis promises to kill with equality
that’s ermine hegemony, they’ll colonise the moon
before one less race, people or nation leaves immiseration
so on every day’s agenda keep an item just for you
say no, instead of yes, and swear allegiance to yourself
and see yourself in every other soul

an old friend, don john, who i have not seen or heard of in probably 20 years, once accidentally said ‘naked to the invisible eye’ rather than ‘invisible to the naked eye’ during one of his tutorials at oxford. a creepy mistake which cuts to the meat of the disconcerting level of surveillance which seems to be a feature not a bug of late capitalist society.

i remember around the turn of the millennium seeing a movie about the stazi in east germany. the level of surveillance by the state against its citizens was rightly seen as shocking. it was one of the most effective arguments the western allies had against actually-existing state-socialism. do you want to live in a cliping society where thugs go through your garbage?

but then the snowden leaks happened and it turned out the us and european governments had been illegally spying on their citizens for years. we can probably be sure they still are. but on top of that, we now have unelected tech megapolies monitoring us and we are freely giving them our data, and that of those we communicate with. we tell their ai chatbots our darkest secrets. maybe we just aren’t very smart. maybe these technologies are generating issues and possibilities that we aren’t yet capable of understanding.

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 man in high viz

brain foggy social pariah, a covid redux
the pistoled bard of excise rejects my claim for input
useless plugged nose, gunged the viral info into the schnoz exhibit
assaulted. i’m looking for a man in high viz.
with a trust deficit
and a driving ban
and a financed tinted window sports utility van
or an elegant young woman-but will she let me ride her to
ingliston horse shop, mount blow, nasal and wet
soaked in sweat, shivering, bottom lip quivering…
i have the taste in music of a precocious teenage girl
if your gonna whack the boss, it better not be botched
[sniffs] you smell that, son? that’s football, and it’s coming home
ah no, they lost
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

i managed to catch covid for i think the third time. it wasn’t too bad, but i did have gush issues, nasally. i didn’t let it stop me riding my bike though, nor longing to get my girlfriend out riding with me. and that did eventually happen. i’m looking forward to a long life of riding bikes with my love.

that ‘man in finance’ thing had gone viral and a friend, l.r., was looking for a more manly sort of man. she is very funny and such a generous person.

then in other news, expresident trump survived an attempt on his life, unlike his would-be assassin. which reminded me of omar, in the wire. then england got into the final of the european soccer championship. i think they lost on penalties and then sacked their manager. it’s well paid but i think stressful and insecure work, hence why i have pursued poetry as a career rather than international elite sports coaching.

it’s jagged timbre

as long as a hand and as tall as a long finger
there’s comfort in it’s jagged timbre
no banks but thorny river banks and building societies
deep section diversion, shrine and a cuppa tea
on the juliet, the wind cries mary jane
jesus christ, socialist, there is no pope in heaven
romeo, no devil below, no hell but earth we know
this exact moment is the only thing happening in your life right now
and it’s a powerful thing to be loved, regardless
regardless of anything you ever have or have not done

the first line refers to the size of my wireless radio, which i was contemplating taking on holiday. i think in the end i just took the ipad for my music and podcast need. i like to always own a battered old wireless though. the current on uses rechargeable aa batteries. the aerial is snapped in half and the battery enclosure is broken and long lost. the only station saved in the presents is radio 4.

i used to listen to radio 4 more or less 24 hours a day. i would leave it on as i slept. then i moved in with a girlfriend about 13 years ago and this was one of the things i had to give up. now i tend to have my noise cancelling headphones on and a podcast on. i don’t even know what i’m listening to right now. turns out it is the financial times ‘economics show’. but really its just some predictable radio friendly voices talking calmly in my ear.

it’s a powerful thing to be the recipient of unconditional love. i speak from experience. i felt deeply unworthy of this love as a teenager. i was only diagnosed as autistic as an adult and i wonder how helpful that information might have been as i struggled all my life to understand myself, all my contradictions and struggles. i’m not 100% per cent convinced it would have been a better story. but it might have kept me out of a few scrapes.

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.

just ruthlessly enforce them

now i’m 40 i can’t work computers or my phone
i don’t make the rules. i just ruthlessly enforce them
at least i no longer leap to the tories’ whim
girl gang, geoluhread mango tango continuum
90s memes are back in favour
things can only get better bet moar dead raverz
first to the pub and the tank lager is off for permanent
but there is no better feeling than voting out the government?

i use to play scrabble with my friend m.l. at tchai ovna in shawlands. its long gone. we would drink tea all evening. surprisingly good buzz from a long night on the oolongs. one evening i got a bit confused and made a foul move on the scrabble. it was a basic and clear error. and m.l. correctly called me out. ‘i don’t make the rules,’ he said, ‘i just ruthlessly enforce them.’ so that stuck with me.

i think it may also have been m.l. that told me that until the discovery of the fruit, an orange, there was no word for the colour orange in english. geoluhread is just an old english combination of yellow and red. please don’t quote me in your english language essay and i am not responsible if you fail.

i always planned on starting a band called ‘moar dead raverz’. let me know if you fancy joining?