tangled shoe, cockapoo, over you, road rash tattoo honestly what are the odds?
i was running down the canal towpath when a cockatoo got all under me, then i got all over it. i was mostly fine except for some road rash to my forearm, where i had a fresh, unhealed tattoo. which reminds me, i really should get that retouched…
memory is a funny thing. i’m always forgetting what i’m in the middle of, trying to do many things at once… you know when you are talking about someone and lose their name, or forget the word for the specific thing that is due to appear in your story… this happens a lot to me.
i remember once losing the yoga word for many hours. i was at a yoga class and the teacher ended the session by inviting us to make an ‘appropriate gesture’ and i wanted to say namaste but it was gone and everyone else in the class was i think being overly culturally sensitive by not saying it.
thankfully it came back to me in ikea later that day. (more ikea later this month, meatball fans!)
my favourite track, the album’s last round the oval, and pound the quad
persons unknown want persons all to commute to work again for reasons unknown. and you get there and none of your colleagues are there. and its sunny outside but cold in the office. this was the human experience of service workers in 2024. i wonder what they will make of it in a thousand years. if anything…
the next day, i was cycling down by the sewage works when i felt a strong need to pull over, in the peak of the smell for some reason, to note down that my favourite track is always the last one on the album. its not necessarily true of all albums but i think it truly describes the kind of song that i typically would select as a ‘favourite song’ at any given moment. something a bit epic, maybe a big melancholy balled, or something just a bit strange. but in researching this post, i have discovered that a lot of the songs i thought were the last one on the album… were not. i guess i listen on shuffle a lot.
i still think its a fair description of the kind of songs i tend to sometimes like anyway.
our hour our sense our self in each case you can choose to cooperate or cheat
i wasn’t thinking of any particular meeting or person, just the idea of how sometimes characters can go from sort of fictional, like a friend of a friend, and then you are introduced and you feel like you already know them a bit. and maybe they even know something about you…
at the time of writing, i’m just back from a weekend of cycling with my club. we had glorious weather for a weekend in argyll, scotland. we cycled 220km with 3000m of elevation. i ate so many squashies and cereal bars. i’m looking forward to returning to my regular diet.
the roads were great, although a bit busy with cars at some points. devoted readers of the blog will know that i dislike cars. there was one particularly bonkers point when we were almost mowed down by a fire engine that i can only assume had been stolen. then a sports utility van thing that almost crashed head on with another car while overtaking. breathtaking stupidity really.
[post script] i have now been back from the holiday for two weeks, and the experience was dampened quite significantly when i learned that one of my club mates sadly died suddenly shortly after the trip. he was older, and had a heart transplant, so i suppose he had probably done his memento mori and made peace with mortality. but death never fails to shock. i didn’t know him well but he seemed like a good guy. rest in peace, s. d. (a different s. d.)
in funereal nomenclature and dress but i did have six toasts today, all of them doublers (lentil, tuna rocket; salmon shallot; ched spicy)
i met my old friend s.d. for a few beers, and was reminded of his old homestead webpage. it was very funny and claimed to pertain to ‘subnonsense,’ a posited form of nonsense which i still find funny. and i guess i’m giving an honest appraisal of my work in these lines… as a poet, fundamentally, my building blocks are puns and emotional turmoil.
the next day i had many and varied sourdough toasts.
i haven’t made a sourdough loaf in a couple of weeks. i’ve been out of routine. travelling a lot. started a new job. i won’t have a chance to make another loaf until… not that long before this blog is published. by when it will have been maybe 3 or 4 weeks. my poor starter. i shall have to feed it a couple of times before i leave. or give up on the whole routine.
i have been thinking about it. quitting. it’s a pain in the arse. but it slows me down. it means planning for a whole day at home. and its always a thrill seeing what comes out the oven. every loaf a unique little masterpiece. the sight of my labour, mixed with the grain from the land, a little salt from the sea, a process that connects me personally to my ancestors, a process that dates back to maybe 5000 or 6000 BCE.
hmm. i feel the weight of history upon my shoulders now. i guess i’ll feed my starter.
i schedule noxious imbibition and obnoxious noise projection with colleagues, on a rager, dipsomaniacal
i was thinking about stars. what do they symbolise? parts of empires. 50 stars for the 50 states of america. or the stars of the european flag, representing the 12 founding members of the european union. or the 27 states/districts/stars of brazil. i don’t know what the australian stars mean but whatever it is, i mean, we are in empire territory, aren’t we?
and boo a ghost. haha. it’s meant to be boo a goose. but an old friend’s colleague used to say ‘x would be scared to boo a ghost,’ which i found hilarious as its an altogether different prospect. it would be a flimsy character who wouldn’t have the matter about them to boo a goose. an encounter with a spectral being would likely put one so firmly on the backfoot that any booing would be bizarrely foolhardy.
space tunnel violinist, what did we do to you? reflect on convalescence’s end, my reaction improved
i’d just finished a period of convalescence. a period of autistic burnout. had processed some things, felt a bit better about them, had some regrets, but by and large i was starting to feel a bit better after a rough stretch.
meanwhile, my girlfriend was off running one of her scandinavian marathons. fortunately this activity doesn’t involve me. i love to run but 42 km seems like too much of a good thing. i ran 10km yesterday and spent a few hours working on a song and i’m absolutely beat this morning. we all have different energy i suppose.
i am perhaps the space tunnel’s biggest fan. it is a tunnel (through space) that connects the scottish events campus to the exhibition centre railway station. not sure why they didn’t rename the railway station when they renamed the exhibition centre 🤷♂️ anyway, not sure what the violist wanted revenge for, but he set about it mercilessly.
this is the last part of part one! i will be dissecting it in the blog over the month. i’m not going to post every day though. this six months of contect has really taken me more like 18 months of work, so i’m slowing down a little.
the poem continues of course, but from july i will be posting less frequently while i work on new music, and on my first novella ‘comin’ up: a neurodivergent memoir’ which will be published later this year.
chaos vikings marchin’ under summer’s radiation space tunnel violinist, what did we do to you? reflect on convalescence’s end, my reaction improved stars are parts of empires, feart to boo a ghost i schedule noxious imbibition and obnoxious noise projection with colleagues, on a rager, dipsomaniacal the bread, my sour domain, hers an egg on top perfection is a conspicuous imperfection.. pun-ridden dogger-elly sub-nonsense in ifunereal nomenclature and dress but i did have six toasts today, all of them doublers (lentil, tuna rocket; salmon shallot; ched spicy) you meet someone you know from gossip our hour our sense our self in each case you can choose to cooperate or cheat and hybrid work means shivering alone by a lockfast window on a sunny day my favourite track, the album’s last round the oval, and pound the quad on the verge of an irretrievable memory, a texture, a vague sense tangled shoe, cockapoo, over you, road rash tattoo honestly what are the odds? the prophecy came first much too soon, then again a bit too late we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.
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
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 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 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 jail, and may well end up there 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 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 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 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
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
i was reading the periodic table by primo levi recently. primo was a jewish italian chemist, and this book tells the story of his experiences during the second world war, living under fascism, and ultimately becoming part of the resistance and ending up in auschwitz.
we didn’t mind the british bombs, he said, they were allies against fascism. but while the italians believed that mussolini would fall, they thought that the germans and the japanese were invincible. and that the americans, too, would prove invincible. war would continue for twenty years perhaps more, bloody and interminable, remote stalemate, ‘back and forth on the steps to the ukraine… would never come to an end.’
and to some extent, this has indeed come to pass. not twenty or thirty years of war. eighty and counting.
the love epochal. n.n. benn 