this was a spinal tap

they are taking the piss
a hospital day in boring pain
on my way to the spinal tap
they paywalled tour de france
doffed and donned by a duo
of up-duffed doctors
two days in the hospital
and i’m walking like a train wreck survivor
it was only my neck that hurt yesterday
a new diagnosis,
coital migraines…
i’m done with western medicine, man.
and that was how i met fah.

weirdly, i find myself writing this on 15 december 2025, the day ron reiner, who directed the spinal tap movie, was murdered. and for some reason trump has weighed in. what a miserable world we live in. but it is at least better for containing the great works of ron reiner.

entertainment. it’s there with food and shelter as one of the core essentials of life. even without food and shelter, one will seek entertainment.

this poem however is about some mysterious migraines i’d been having. i actually went to the doctor about my sore neck. i mentioned the headaches and before i knew it i was in hospital undergoing a gruelling litany of tests. on leaving the hospital, i noted that despite my two days in hospital, the neck pain i’d presented at the doctor’s with was if anything, significantly worse.

i complained to my barber, and she recommended a massage therapist called fah. i’m not going to claim she works miracles, but i did go on a cycling holiday to the canary islands like a week later.

archival sleeves

i take a bridge to the opaque sky, 

cranes peak above the mist

sanity is no identity 

likely to inspire me.

the storm comes, 

a lockdown redux

trapped and claustrophobic.

pulling up archival sleeves

although i’m not 

the most thoughtful typist

stoic, waiting, 

on the fundamental 

life changing news

a decade to the day, 

again it goes my way

ah friend anxiety, 

my quitting finger itches

tomorrow’s loaf will be a belter, 

yesterday’s a chinese whisper

my girlfriend got trapped at my flat on the day of a big storm. she left to go home in the morning, but it was so windy she came back. i was just having a normal work day, she was climbing the walls. she baked cookies with chickpea flour. they were pretty nice.

i went through a big archival urge about a year ago. started sorting documents. sketching out timeframes. i think i was preparing to write a memoir. i was worried i was planning on doing myself in. well, its a year later, and i’m glad to say i’m working on a memoir. although, it is not a true story. in the traditional sense.

echolalia

echolalian
echo-location
finds me where?
a lack e acumen;
black pepper and cumin
or is it turmeric?
i use all three for safety and
dod on and dod well,
two is too many bills
moving like a statue,
a foot-soldier,
mystified and amused
das kapital
to cap it all
ex marx the blues

a lot of my poetry comes from echolalia. daft little phrases just get stuck in my head and i want to say them just for the pleasure of the words moving through my mouth.

moving like a statue was a funny thing i heard in a podcast. the speaker meant that they were moved to an emotional response, like they might have on seeing a great work of statuary. but i heard it literally, and my brain said no, statues do not tend to move.

waiting

i wait on a call
and fret on making a call,
feeling powerless, unable
and this is what i mean
when i say i’m strong and stable
wrap up warm for the gilet years
lasagna al forne and an afternoon of beers
it’s like 10 thousand spoons
when all you need is the bus fare to partick
ah well, we’ll get there in the end

i had a job interview. i was waiting for the news. i’d had a couple of disappointments. didn’t want to get my hopes up. but had a good feeling that i dared not develop.

this is the first chorus of part three — which we are calling giletdonism. 2024 had been rocky and i was planning for a somewhat cosier year to follow on.

roll, again

we roll again
through cold thick cream
a runner for four seasons
i believe in
the beauty and
the romance of numbers
fact patterns:
four ones, nine nine nine,
four eights
i can’t help but add
together spectral sums

earlier in the year i wrote of coincidental couples day — we only live in relation to each other. for any two people, whose lives overlap, there will be a day when one is twice the age of the other. i like to celebrate the anniversary of that day with my partner — it was 11.1.1999. four ones and three nines. it was meant to be.

time, again

we feel like time is all we have
when we are under its spell.
but we could abolish it
now,
not tomorrow,
neither yesterday,
in the universal now.
clocks and calendars
are metaphors for our
warped perception of a dimension
that we can not comprehend.

the earth is forever moving in space, such that the events of last week took place literally millions of miles away. are time and space one and the same? does time mean anything at all, on the universal scale? time is relative, even within a single planet there are an infinite permutations of 12 noon. in britain we run with greenwich time as a compromise to keep the trains punctual. but the sun isn’t directly overhead in greenwich while it’s immediately above lerwick.

obligation ii

today i made
a lovely little loaf.
am i a valid toiler?
instead of,
or as well as,
a poetry mine despoiler?
have my met my
productivity minimum
am i entitled to a break yet?
i posit that if workers suffer
ceo’s should go to jail
follow the money to personal wealth
pierce the corporate veil

is it the natural condition of humans to work? how are we to know when to stop? why are we doing the work we are doing, and not some other work? trade under capitalism, we are told by liberal theory is not a zero sum. its beneficial to all parties.

but is it? a huge amount of effort goes into busy work on behalf of the very rich. lawyers, accountants, luxury goods firms, builders making skyscrapers and mcmansions. but most of the world is poor. even in rich countries, there are homeless people who own nothing. should we not pause on space programs for trillionaires at least until everyone has somewhere comfortable to live?

obligation 

as a child the buildings
and roads scared me
in their scale
the work of a million lifetimes,
where did they come from?
and what was my obligation?
all my life i’ve suffered
discrimination
just because i’m shy and lazy.
and inattentive
imperceptive, defensive
and stand offish
and prone to mischief.

i am terrible at job interviews. i am naturally averse to self-celebration, and not fast at thinking. a bit overly literal. dumbfounded by even the most predictable tell me about a time when. however, there is one question that i could answer endlessly — tell me your greatest weakness.

the yaktrax

a pointless punishment
for my eczemic fingers
janurian resolvers avoid
pavements rinkish
speak to the sun, the sky,
the sea and the trees
mass palomas fly,
sneeze around disease
rife and virulent,
bring us to our knees
re-shorn past the
pine scent xmas ceme-tery(eee)

my fingers were sore from the cold. the streets were asheet with ice. i bought myself some yaktrax, remembering them from a personal injury legal report. but the ice was gone before i got to wear them. meanwhile, people were throwing out their christmas trees, fed up of love and goodwill and all that sort of stuff.