locker 91

whenever i can get it i take locker 91
the needle as the razor ice cold like a gun
bounce a buttcheek out the bottom of your beltskirt and i’m shook
but don’t jump, please god don’t jump
overmorrow will come and tomorrow will be yesterday
I am an intellectual and I watch election special (eh?)
rich e. sunak gone with the small sound of a [cough]
neither feared, loved or loathed
a dog that never bit, or barked. just soiled and wet the bed
may he eat out a career, helped out to get ahead
by the mediocrity reapt from our tired ground
which through the veins of parliament abound

hello, it’s july now and we are now into part two: getting there (a brexit prayer). it is really a continuation of part one but it comes with my own acceptance that i don’t really have time to post every day or to make a new song and video every month. so for the next six months my plan is to post new poetry on tuesdays and wednesdays and revisit stuff from part one on fridays.

also today is my album launch so please check it out on apple music, spotify etc.

anyway, this is a fun little bit i think. locker 91 is the locker i like to use at the gym. 1991 is the year my girlfriend was born. its a good number – its a palindrome. i remember being told this in 1991. that the next one would be 2002. a date so ludicrously far in the future that i discredited reports that it would eventually be more than twenty years ago.

we were on a run along the river, me and my girlfriend, and there was a stand off at a bridge. they were trying to talk a suicidal person down. i hope they are ok. i hope they found meaning and purpose in the last twelve months.

then rishi sunak lost the bizarre 4 july election he called. i always felt that rishi was inappropriately seen as a sensible person. perhaps in comparison to truss and johnson. but he was chancellor during the bizarre era of bounce back loan fraud, ppe fraud, and he tried to stimulate the economy by reducing vat on dining out during a pandemic. our polity will not miss his cool helmsmanship.

there are also two references to the godfather in the lines above.

have you tried the toblerone, insolent infant?

have you tried the toblerone, insolent infant?
it’s cheap if you can afford a lot of it
i have a theory identic twins in tandem
are set at random on their paths
different, but the same

and that’s the end of part one! i think i enjoyed it . it’s been a lot of work. i’m tired. i hope it resonates with someone out there in the ether.

i’m going to do something a bit different for second half of the year. tune in from tomorrow for more poetry in ‘the love epochal part two: getting there (a brexit prayer)’.

ditched blade draped bed and became bin overladen

ditched blade draped bed and became bin overladen
something about ikea bed linen
i watch a boring football match in communion with a centimillion europeans
all good souls forgive each other

i tend to associate ikea with car sickness and lots of milk chocolate, for this was my childhood experience. there is an ikea ten minutes from my flat now, but when i was a child the nearest one was a four hour drive away. and i do not travel well.

but anyway, i understand a lot of people associate ikea with meatballs, which reminds me of my recent holiday in italy with my girlfriend and another couple and their baby.

we went for lunch to a lovely farmhouse one afternoon, sikalindi it was called. the host was a cheerful and enthusiastic woman who had given up her career in milan to come home and make a success of the family farm. and she loved the baby, who she called ‘polpette’ or, ‘little meat-a ball-a,’ in classically italian english. check it out if you are ever in southern puglia.

champagne dog run sling factory tour bonnie umbrella

champagne dog run sling factory tour bonnie umbrella
honestly right now i feel ok about myself,
grateful for what ive been given and have achieved in my four decades so far
maybe i’m ready to start reading novels again
found the partick co-op for a just poetic society
if things are going to change anyway, they may as well change for the better

i have been reading novels again. i spent a long time in the non-fiction wilderness. since 2022 i had a series of medical events. i lost weight, got misdiagnosed, brushed up against mortality. went through some big life events. the events in my life were disorientating and confusing. i didn’t have the mental bandwidth to care about the characters in novels.

so i spent a couple of years going down rabbit holes: nutrition, health, psychotherapy, ptsd, autism, music theory.

thankfully, i seem to be about back to normal. i’m just about to start sally rooney’s latest, and i just finished klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro.

the next poem will be called the gilet years

the next poem will be called the gilet years
sugar rush stroll, the last of my 30s, then back to the wall
more nippon, this time kitchen, with an ambassadorial element
i’m 40 tomorrow and honestly everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff

well that was a year ago. so now i’m 41. and i’ve been working on the gilet years for six months. and its nearly finished!

i had been out for japanese food with my good friend and collaborator, r.l., and he was telling me about his new job, which was like his old one, but with a more ‘ambassadorial element’. all poets are also thieves, so i wrote that down immediately.

as i write today, i can honestly say that pretty much everything hurts, throbs, stings or is otherwise stiff. but i do have doms from trying a new type of squat in the gym and a sore shoulder from lifting a weight that was too heavy for me. there have been long lithe periods in my middle age. i remain fit and healthy, and i am grateful for that.

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse

were there lots of you? well that’s a posse
honestly i’m just trying to live the most wasted, safe life
antediluvian nipponese amble celebrants and another two bunnies

i’m so unsure about the bunnies and their place on the superstition/beauty in number/deistic force spectrum.

on the way to our holiday in italy the other month, my girlfriend forgot her passport. that’s bad luck. but it was good luck that we had time to circle back in the taxi and collect it. and i suppose it was good luck we could afford to do that.

then arriving at the airport, there were two bunnies frolocking. oh no! i thought. two bunnies having been established to be a bad omen, i think. but luckily we saw the third bunny nearby. crisis averted. and we had a lovely holiday with our friends and their little meat ball. i’ll explain the meatball next week.

if everyone had to pay market rent on their home forever

if everyone had to pay market rent on their home forever
the market would reach an equilibrium that would be better for everyone
except the rentier class, who belong in gaol, and may well end up there

so my idea is essentially to fix the housing crisis by replacing all property taxes with a new ‘market rent’ tax.

the tax will be charged at the full market rent that the property would achieve on the open market. any rent or mortgage paid in the same period relating to the same property would be deductible from the tax charge.

if the mortgage or rent paid in the period was greater than the market rent, the excess would be given to the tax payer as a tax credit.

this would mean that lots of old people who live in large houses mortgage free would have to sell up. the mass of properties becoming available would reduce the market value of properties (at the moment, the property market is extremely illiquid – only, say, 1-2% of properties are on the market at any time, which creates artificial scarcity, driving up both rents and house prices.

by using the tax system to recalibrate the market so that everyone is effectively paying rent, we would effectively increase the size of the property market to 100%. there would no longer be any scarcity and the market would reach an equilibrium at an affordable rate.

it would also destroy landlordism, as landlords would have to pay market rent on the properties they own, whether tenanted or not.

liberty’s light will lead us there, libraries gave us power

liberty’s light will lead us there, libraries gave us power
elongate the environ of the emblem of they who shall be emancipated
pishhead magnetism combines us, their yolk won’t define us
(con)serve – not conscripted infantry but torpid flabby midgetry
superiors drink-sodden day-to-day erudite popinjays
oh god this ship is sinking fast, just hope we make the buddha last

i was lying there face down with my arse in the air getting my forearm tattooed. for several hours. i came up with quite a few lines in that session. i often turn my mind to poetry when i am suffering.

physical pain. the pain of boredom. emotional turmoil. these are the big beautiful building blocks of the poetry of n.n. benn.

in this section we have (another) reference to the manic street preachers (libraries gave us power) which set me off on a bit of a charge. i started thinking about christopher hitchens – who was famously called a ‘drink sodden ex-trotskyite popinjay’ by george galloway during an argument about the iraq war. i’m not a fan of galloway, but that was a good line.

my loyalties are very much with the drink sodden popinjays of the world. by and large, it’s well spoken men in tailored suits who cause the world’s wars and hardship. if we all just concentrated on getting pished and having fun, the world would be a better place.

all through the night, we have no past, we won’t reach back

all through the night, we have no past, we won’t reach back
dilatory breathing, with the inmates chewing fat
i always laugh when i chop onions, ever since my pet cat killed himself

all through the night is a cyndi lauper song. its a banger! what an artist.

dilatory is one of my favourite words. i am curious about the etymology – is it related to delay? if so, why isn’t it spelt delaytory? – but not so curious to look it up. another of my favourite words, i think i mentioned before, is demonstrable. a combination of demons and monster. quite scary.

chewing the fat means blethering or gossiping. shooting the breeze. we have loads of words for banter and patter round our way.

do you laugh when you chop onions?