the knot is twisted back

i wish i knew what i wanted. for dinner.
monday morning and the knot is twisted back in my gut
the thirteenth rodeo, the second non-event
month-end creeps up, the knot does too
patch anxious rum for philosophy on the radio
make a random avizandam on a tandem with the phantom fan
cross the eyes and splot the teas
cracker please

i was having an anxious time, hating my job, going through the process of getting formally diagnosed with autism. but what i really want to talk about today is packing.

i am packing my bags today for the third time in like two weeks and honestly man i hate it. its exhausting. so much stress. why do i need so many artefacts? why must i live in a historical epoch of such complication?

but on the plus side i will get to go on holiday tomorrow so that’s good. although, by the time this has been published… i will be back from the holiday. so that’s sad. but it will be a sunday at least so that’s good.

sorry if you work sundays. and i realise today isn’t sunday. i will get back from the holiday on sunday. i am having trouble comprehending the linearity of time right now.

timetable tragedy and timetable farce

of course, next year with the introduction of the new calendar,
the edinburgh festival will move from august to hedonia
should i feel nonplussed by a non pluss-one-ing
when the price of capitalism is eternal vagrancy
twelve hours in edinburgh twice from quarter to twelve
twice no train at half eleven, tragedy and farce
catch up on couch and life’s little errands

each august i meet some friends and go to the edinburgh festival. last year’s highlight was my fellow poet tim key. this year josie long was the best thing i saw.

josie mentioned that she was horny for a particular type of glaswegian man — moustached boulderers with whimsical tattoos. i’ll maybe say hello if i see her at the climbing centre. she further clarified that she was only interested in autistic and dyslexic men. i mean, its all a joke, but its good to know that there is a type of me… i’m not the only one.

last year i told everyone to get the train to edinburgh at 11.30 am — we met at the station and there simply was not a train at that time. then i rushed us to the station in the evening for the 11.30 pm to glasgow. again — there was no such service. i’m sure hegel mentioned somewhere or other that all great timetabling errors happen twice. what he neglected to mention was that the first error comes in the form of tragedy. the second as farce.

human misery, revenue & customs

i conclude it must stand for human misery,
revenue and customs
israel is a strategic geopolitical position,
a frontier of colonialism,
and its postsoviet bravado is borderline offensive.
i stand in opposition to ethnic cleansing,
whoever practises it
and i guess i’m soft-versus all conflict;
gies peace fae yer game a soldiers
the lifespans on the cusp of either or
then i walked into my bench with such force
that i shrieked and writhed on my floor.

this was what i wrote a year ago, and things only get worse. the world is a terrifying place. i think we should be very scared. we aren’t safe.

chris died for our sins

bloviate, bee, big bottomed anarchists
he died for our sins did chris
at least he would, if we asked
purple and green sweetie hills and a puddle of rust
the life chameleonic, commodified, in crisis
for the third 13th and final time,
k imparts her counsel and i’m not cured
but tearful and reflective. i think she liked me after all

i was out for a bike ride and a pal was categorising the types of person that lived in various parts of town. he liked merchant city, where the gay people go. not as interested in the yummy mummies of hindland, or the big bottomed anarchists of govanhill.

which reminded me of the chris died for our sins sign on the church on victoria road. it was lit up at night but not the t. i used to go past on the bus home from university. usually asleep.

the hidden room again

sometimes my fingers tingle with emotional pain

did my therapist just fire me for my autistic brain

i find a new hold on my struggle

like that hidden room in my house

your scent a silken foam on a bubble 

on the stratosphere 

well that’s how is smells to me.

three punctured wheels transport me 

to a helpful little place

they can’t replace my tube, 

but confirm my diagnosis

and i return to you and sandpaper away the imperfections

but we are sure to leave a few, 

so that things can be perfect enough as they are

besides, all good souls forgive each and every imperfection.

strictly speaking, speaking as an unqualified solicitor, every meal i have eaten out has been a breach of contract on my part. you see, when the waiter says, have you got any allergies? i always say, not so far thank you.

but i do have an allergy. shinguards. when i was a schoolboy footballer, i insisted on getting the ‘proper’ shinguards. like a toeless sock, it provided some ankle cover, as well as holding plastic armour against the shin. they felt much sturdier and more protective than the flimsy sort that you just inserted into the front of your sock.

but actually the design was perfect bad. they would get wet with rain and sweat and my shins would get itchy. and i love a scratch. after a month or two, my legs were a state. red raw. the doctor told me i couldn’t play football until the shins got better. i had to sit out of gym class. and the other children at school made fun of me. they called me and my girlfriend itchy and scratchy. 

anyway, it was only many years later i realised that the professionals don’t use that type of shinguards. and that actually footballers prioritise the way their kit fits.

anyway, i guess it doesn’t really matter as shinguards aren’t an ingredient in any type of restaurant cuisine, meaning my failure to disclose my pre-existing condition is probably not material to the consensus on idem re buying a meal at a restaurant.

step change

down for pinting up the soft and pleasant hues of bath time 

step change, ladders direct, 

get a price on a dark moneypiece

what about pantries is it that brings me to tears?

meltdown quietly, astir all night, 

we each start new two chapters

wind our stories together

inky pupils blotting out, 

another lost doppelgänger 

i learned that a moneypiece is a way of dying hair, and bought the wrong ladders and returned them for smaller ladders. then i had a horrible shut down / panic attack thing on an insomniac evening and felt really weird.

wet salty hotdog

i believe in a barista, coffee and jog 

to cut through the morning fog

primary cafeteria, inchoate aroma 

of wet salty hotdog

you get the key to a new place of great significance

brompton over, you invite; but take your moment first

i get there and the floors are up

circular saw sounds erupting

drag a trail through the dust

alone, together, us two and all of us

my girlfriend had just bought a flat and started doing the place up. she is very handy. i was getting in the way. on a run, i had a sudden recollection of waiting to get into the cafeteria at lunch in primary school. i usually had a packed lunch so it was novel. the food was terrible. it was notably briney.

excoriated content

i just realised i am probably autistic

sign up to my only fans for more excoriated content

my natural selection is intensive introspection

medley relay, amazed, amazed 

that butterfly is a cromulent procedure

sour jam and feta pancakes, likewise sensational

the funny thing was that people had said to me in the past that i was autistic and i just thought they didn’t get me. after i finished sorting through all my emails last year, i thought, i wonder if i should read all my text messages. i curiously looked at my earliest messages and found ‘you are autistic’ from an unknown number. 3 july 2010. i remember a guy i found weird telling i had aspergers at a temp job in like 2003 or 2004. clearly i didn’t look further into it.

the 13th month

the bell chimed, it’s time 

to introduce the thirteenth month

rationalise the calendar with months of 28 days

plus an extra day, a global holiday 

for all workers

during which the bourgeois financiers 

shall man the (beer) pumps

and another one the same each leap year

and the extra month should be a holiday too

slide it in between july and august

call it hedonia, for a long free summer.

we all work too much. why can’t we rest more. i’m sure that if we just cut out all the pointless jobs that are just done to make money, and just did the stuff people need and love like cooking and nursing and entertaining and building good places to live in and growing stuff etc, then we could probably all have a pretty nice life where nobody wants for nothing. but some rich guys want to own everything, so we have what we have.

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’.