the inhospitable hospital

i’m much more comfortable 

dwelling on failure

success is trite. 

just comes down to luck

it’s in the losses 

that we make our bones

wandering in sonder 

through other souls’ stories

in a shared bubble of

mutual miscomprehension 

five leafs left, so i turn one over 

the motorized spaghetti moat 

keeps patients at an asthmatic gap

i try and remind myself that success, victory, achievement – is fleeting, and brings with it new pressures. the more we achieve, the more we expect. both of ourselves, and also on a societal level. expectations creep, yet we, the humans, remain exactly the same. limited. at the mercy of chance.

so i am always just trying to find a way to live that is sustainable.

thinking about public executions on the subway

a higgledy-piggledy queue 

of spewing machines

an unexpectedly bustling tube 

with elastica from the high rises

stretching out rope for hangmen 

pickpockets do operate 

in the gallows’ courtyard

the good souls forgive, 

but are they influential 

with headsment?

since the new trains have been on the subway, there have been some issues. maybe its sorted now. i don’t use the train that often. i’d had dinner with my parents then got on the subway home, its maybe 9pm on a weeknight, and its unexpectedly madly busy, standing room only. i think maybe some earlier trains had been cancelled. anyway, i was thinking about how capital punishment isn’t really an effective deterrent.

hat!

chapeau, cav, 

did never ever 

cross your mind?

you’ve earned intense relaxation 

and benign mischiefs

after a slight return

prepare to overcome; 

my melodica fingers play 

an old faithful tune

like riding a bike?

but am i charming anyone? 

chapeau, cav!

mark cavendish retired with the most tours de france stage victories of anyone. his first in 2008, his last in 2024 – a long career, that saw a long draught as he battled illness and depression. i’ve always adored cav. he cries all the time. i can relate. so passionate and unguarded in interviews. i got into cycling in about 2009, more seriously in 2012 when i finished uni and had weekends free of work for the first time. at first i didn’t really care so much about the sprint stages, but cav made them essential viewing. so many moments of joy he provided. who wouldn’t cheer for cav?

self-care weekend

search term “gumtree” 

eight hundred items 

cried three times 

in a basic way, 

people are just

what they do and say…

cold dry, hot dry, 

hot wet, wet wet 

transcendental massage

happy tears ending, 

middle, 

and a bit near the start

when she took my feet 

like yeshua of nazareth

then clasped my palm 

like the virgin mother

i was really worn out, i’d been busy in work, i’d had a big disappointment after missing out on a job i really wanted. i spent a weekend sorting emails and then went for a sauna and massage and it was just what i needed. i am a tense person and i have a lot of neck and shoulder pain as a result. and when i’m sore and burned out and incommunicative, i want a deep sports massage delivered with firm certainty.

but there’s also something very intimate about contact with the palms and soles of the feet. a lot of nerves there i suppose. 

bad election

i’m freewheeling with neil in a sodden cloud

commiserating on the unproud

behold the convict’s re-ennoblement

i live with my pain, i own it 

and i don’t care who knows it

chain-whip for a strain 

against the pain

with every novel 

life-stage crisis 

i achieve a new, anal

level of organisation 

i remember tidying my room after a particularly bad bout of depression aged about 18. i think it helped. i remember even at that time being always stressed out about the files on my computer. and my email inbox. i had no systems. files had stupid names. data was saved all over the place on various hard disks. at some point i actually managed to lose gigabytes of original music recordings i’d made over many years. i’m getting stressed typing this.

when i had a bit of an identity crisis after being diagnosed with autism, amongst other things, i assembled all my school reports cards and exam certificates. and i sorted though all my emails since i got a gmail account in 2007. i try and maintain a system of sorts now. i like to keep my flat tidy.

war poetry

poets operating in your area 

have taken ten per cent off gdp

put out and pensive

(to be is to be) 

we work best from the trenches

the snipers are barely interested

in no man’s land i meander

absorbing vile inspiration

trying to get my head

in your to cross hairs

write poetry like nobody is watching, i often think to myself, as nobody watches. its a niche choice of endeavour. there are almost certainly more poets than there are readers of poetry. that’s why i make my blog posts to cutting and pithy.

as a poet

at work once an i.t. guy 

told me his wife was employed

as a poet! 

a real life poet and 

(poet and educator)

this man changed my life.

unfortunately,

via a mishandled data migration

that caused me to career

onto life’s soft verge 

in a slow motion car crash.

my poetry remains unsuccessful.

i won’t bore you with the time i took on too much at work during lockdown and ended up having two years of burnout and misdiagnoses. it encouraged me to make a lot of changes in my life anyway. i think i’m getting to a better place. its fun writing poetry anyway. maybe that will never be my profession. but reducing my hours at work has at least given me time to do it.

the you/me confusion

ou know,

when you want to please

to mask, to be accepted?

you know,

i mean, why do we say you 

when you clearly mean me?

when i clearly mean me

when i mean to say

i’m a people pleaser… 

but i’m not good at it.

do you ever find yourself saying, ‘you know that thing where…’ and then you find yourself describing your own strange anxiety or neuroticism and you think to yourself: this was me I was talking about the whole time. we talk about ourselves specifically in this universal manner. we put our situation into the listener, and ask them to empathise, and forgive, but we don’t have the strength to say: i am weak. i need your validation.

the failure and possible redemption of language

we don’t yet have the language

for the time in which we live

the 2010s, the 2020’s, 

don’t feel lived in like the 90s

like naturally stressed 501s 

two sizes too big 

in every direction

y2k was the last mass adopted nickname

there is no confidence yet

in the unfolding millennium

so i propose a radical redetermination 

y2k of d2k, 

then d2k.1, 

now 2k.2, 

or, i posit “point two” 

in practice 

i mean obviously i don’t expect this to be taken on. its quite abstract. but i hope i can at least draw attention to what is a serious problem. we can’t be going around calling this the 20’s, it’s preposterous.

but you never know. this will probably go viral. by next week i will undoubtedly be a very famous poet and everyone will agree that this is d2k and maybe even that this is y2k.25? anyway, if we are going to live in the future, we should start talking in a befitting manner.

airport toblerone

airport toblerone? spoiled child

and a backpack of packs of lambert and butler

i have a theory that good things wait for those who come

different but the same

i remember back in the heady days of the european union when there was free movement of goods and persons. when a soul could stock up on several thousand cigarettes at the airport shop, sold in such a big packet that it came with straps so it could be easily transported back to blighty.

we have always lived in absurd times.