rage

@poet’s corner 25 nov 25

sometimes in poetry, the words really tell you everything and it doesn’t get any deeper.

prick threw an egg through

flashback to the day 

apple watch ultra two was launched

launched like the egg 

some rocket threw through my open window 

thanks for that. prick. i

’m going to clean that up one day

or paint over it.

—-

i had a mid life crisis a few years ago. caused largely by interactions with the medical industrial complex. lockdown was tapering off, and so was i.

i inexplicably lost a bunch of weight for no particular reason. i’ve been fit and active for most of my life, but i am prone to beer and sweets and my figure always reflected that. but suddenly i just couldn’t maintain my weight. i

t was a bit scary at first but by the time i wrote this i figured, lean in, just eat sweeties whenever i want.

the tempo of doms

to the sweetie shop why stop there’s no consequence 

i run and i come as close as i’ve came since whence,

rage rover through the stroll pastoral 

cape town to mugdock bog, 

wide spectrum gossip, conspiratorial 

prone to panic about other’s perceptions

a tendency revealed through a habit of projection 

concept album? i am living a concept life

into the tempo of doms i go, abandon strife

the internal rhyme rolls the rhythm, through indecision to precision

yes i am getting organised, on a mission

to rise up contra to mindless repetition

yet once again i combine olive oil chilli and paprika in the kitchen

—–

when you find out you are  autistic, there is a tendency to temporarily get more autistic. i have actually only had a few meltdowns. i am a quiet person. i am prone to shutdowns. i don’t like to draw attention to myself.

the few meltdowns i have had have tended to get me in serious trouble. like, hospitalised, or mortified.

on this occasion, i merely smashed a phone that was already quite scratched up and to be honest i probably wanted an excuse to buy a new one.

anyway, i had a hot bath to get over it, and when i got out, the plug was stuck in the bath. i had to empty the bath one bucket at a time into the loo.

plug stuck

am overwhelming day, 

a meltdown throws my phone away

the bath is full of soapy water, 

the plug stuck in its circlet

it’s thursday the 12th, 

what the fuck will tomorrow bring?

i start the drill and it’s enough 

to scare the plug from its crown 

——

recently,. i was a victim of attempted violence. a guy tried to knock me down twice, one of the times actually on the cycle path on victoria road. i had the guys licence plate.  

I had to decide if should i report the crime, and myself propagate violence (via the criminal justice system) on my assailant? 

i know victims of the police, i know that the punishment is often worse than the crime. i thought it over for a couple of days and my yearning for revenge declined quite dramatically. no doubt the same man will one day kill me and i will rue this.

choruses three and nine

have you tried the toblerone, pleasant child?

i have a theory my anti car philosophy i

s not strictly environmental 

but because i was in two major car crashes 

before i was 10

different, but the same

brazen child, pray share y

our toblerone with me

i know you pinched it but i’m no a grass

i have a theory 

that the criminal law system 

propagates violence in place of justice

different but the same

lonely consequence

maybe we can choose 

our consequences

and gain energy as the 

days accumulate 

have i mentioned my inability to visualise the future?

scared, listless, 

unreadily forced to bear witness

a dusken golden moment lighted

a sudden recognition; 

that leaden feeling 

when they tell you are going to die

is loneliness, 

as much of it as you can have.

i was once diagnosed with a terminal illness. that was the start of my midlife crisis. i was then completely undiagnosed on my 39th birthday. a misread x-ray was all it was. so why don’t i feel any better?

i remember the days after diagnosis. feeling so heavy. feeling like i could forget to breathe. it was only later than i realised that this was the loneliness of the universal truth that we die alone: it is the end of the internal world, the one we can only try and share through metaphor and simile. 

endless time

how would you feel 

if everything happened forever 

if every moment of your life was still ongoing 

everything always in total contradiction 

i want the unexpected

off script, dumbfound me

astonish me quick 

with your attention to retail 

when they finish the history books we’ll see

we just have to just accept the past

it happened

i think about time a lot, the hopeless impossibility of the past, its unchanging nature, its doubtful nature. do facts remain or do they change over time? i worry that the despots of the past, henry 8, pope urban, alexander the great, ghengis khan become sanitised by history. i dread a work 1000 years hence on which the crimes of fascism are forgotten or decontextualised and hitler is remembered as some great socialist leader. perhaps in an eerie, whitewashed slave globe. 

it’s important to remember that the rich and powerful are only in it for themselves. the pharos put their slaves to death. the romans were a plunder economy. social democracy is not normal and if we want it we always have to fight for it.

love me like a holocaust

influenced by scottish ned culture

a natty factagonal 

revolutionary rear guard

my interest is piqued,

love me like a holocaust 

quirkful monogamy 

unpromised and distant 

transient specs

in the universal scheme

sonic balance 

tripping me

who was influenced by scottish bed culture? pretty sure i read it on wikipedia. maybe it was gerry cinnamon. love me like a holocaust is a maniac reference. it was a difficult time. my mid life crisis was unwinding and i had sought refuge in the angsty left wing rock n roll of my teenaged years. 

glaswegian hospitality

@ poet’s corner. 12 nov 25

in about 2016 i had an idea to write a very long poem about brexiit called toblerone. but i didn’t know where to begin. eventually it clicked and  i started work on ‘toblerone, a brexit poem’ in january 2024. and this became part of a larger work called the love epochal sometime later. i’m currently working on part 4, tentatively called this is techno. i have split it up into poetic chunks and try and post to my blog three times a week.

i’m going to read three on theme-ish extracts

this first bit is called ‘vulvic pud’

i was out for dinner with my girlfriend and some other couples at celantano’s, and honestly, the dessert was so absurdly vaginal it could not have been an accident. luckily we were are liberal, open minded people and we were not offended.

it was also a very rainy day and i could had a feeling my on again off again girlfriend was going off again.

vulvic pud 

fruit forward vulvic pud, touched, 

lingered upon, picasso pubic crumb

a tender rebirth, but is this the beginning or the end,

reprise: why does your love hurt so much?

—— 

this next bit is called green. the link to glaswegian hospitality is a bit less clear, but it was inspired by my pal n. n. (no relation) back in the early days of the millennium he had a weed dealer in ibrox. he would go around and buy his stuff and part of the transaction was that you had to awkwardly hang out with the guy and do a bong with him.

one time, at a loss for conversation to make, his pal d. made the horrible mistake of inviting the dealer round to theirs for a party.

the guy turned up with about 100 bams who promptly trashed the whole place and stole the few things of value. 

n. n. came around from a blow to the head to find a policeman leaning over him. is that yours, son? he said, pointing at a piranha flopping about in a puddle in the close, surrounded by broken glass.

i’ve been working on a novella largely based on mad anecdotes n. n. has told me and that i have stolen, and this little piece will be the introduction.

Green

is the colour of the dear green place

and behind my ears

so are my salad days

like the herb in the bowl…

green, green, green

and ashen faced

the colour of money

washing corporate sin

green, green, green

with jealousy they will say

like envious, wretched souls 

as they are prone to be

——

this last bit’s called ‘wet salty hotdog’

my girlfriend had just bought a flat and started doing the place up. she is very handy. she had had the key about two minutes by the time the floors were up and the sander was out. i got there and was greeted by lungfuls of sawdust.

i was getting in the way. 

earlier, while out running, 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 to get hot food. the  hot food was terrible. it was notably briney. a flavour that has echoed discordantly through the epochs.

wet salty hotdog

i believe in a sativa, 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

christmas cheer from ear to ear

i was sent from outer space 

to complain about the traffic here

with christmas cheer from ear to ear

and elephants never forget new year

there is finite information 

in any place at any time

but my question relates to the data 

pertaining to time past

i mean, i feel the breath leave my body: 

how can i get it back? 

the last couple of years, my friends from university have sent me a christmas cars which is a picture their son drew. they are always quite absurd, and i hope to receive more of them. being, essentially, and adult child, i like to try and reply with something on theme. so last year my christmas card was an elephant wearing a santa hat standing next to its igloo. i hope the tradition carries on, but d and k’s eldest son is in high school now so perhaps he will outgrow it. i certainly have no plans to outgrow drawing my own christmas card in response to anyone who sends me one they themselves have drawn. 

no ai pish though.

chorus of the lost weekend

are you ready for your advent wafer, 

manger wean?

‘tis the season of debt and accumulation 

i have a theory an arbitrary line 

divides the mad from the sane

different but the same

that was the last of stanza 11. part two concludes in stanza 12, from tuesday 2 december. new poetry every tuesday, thursday and saturday. and don’t worry, part 3 starts on 1 january 2026. the love epochal just continues.

embiggened by a little soul

be lovers on standby, 

not friends with benefits

celeste’s carnation 

in the barrel, in the gun

chuck your moveables in 

for a risk-free freebie 

even a little soul 

embiggens the forgiven

it was the lost weekend. my lover and i were on a break. considering our options. but i knew fine what i wanted. then celeste caeiro died and i wanted to commemorate her. she was a portuguese communist who was working as a waitress in 1974 when the fascist regime was overthrown by mutinous soldiers. she placed carnations in the soldiers’ rifles, and this became the visual motif of the revolution.

embiggened is, of course, a simpsons reference.

returning the oversized funglasses

can you come to terms with who I am? 

can i?

in d2k i rhymed ‘if soon i don’t die 

i’ll wonder why’

and still i wonder why – 

the complexity infinitely expanding

reluctantly giving it all my attention 

beat up and run down

an ex murder victim…

i wish i was more confident 

but i am returning the oversized funglasses.

i wanted a pair of yellow lensed glasses, so i ordered the only pair on the ray bans website but when they arrived they were of a scale hitherto thought improbable. i seriously considered it, took a few selfies, but there is a limit to how silly i am comfortable looking.

oh and i once worked with someone who described their baby daddy as an ‘ex murderer’

typist, poet, athlete, hi

get jacked up, 

no imposter testostero-monster

typist poet athlete spy, 

i wonder why i have this tie

to the human condition

a horny cowboy, 

clit eatswood on a mission

it took me forever to realise 

what consequences were

and remain

i’m still not sure i really get it

as we stand on the verge of 

nuclear armageddon

let’s discuss commodity fetishism 

from an original position

rejargonise my vocabulary, 

please, textbook on notation

i was trying to find a balanced way of living. making money, while also being creative. it was creeping up to the new year, when i would start publishing my poetry, and i had a lot of nerves and apprehension regarding this. i still do.

i also remain anxious about nuclear war. and i was starting to try and learn about music theory. a year on, i can just about bash a tune out of a piano. i’m better at melodica. haven’t got long enough fingers for the piano really. really crap at guitar.

oh and some of these lines were originally ‘funny’ ideas for my online dating profile.