christas traditions

a message from a fond reunion,
hidden in a bottle
overdrafting on my sidling savings
a big bright banging badhead
brings a boozeless bath
often when alone i think,
“this is exactly what an insane person would do”
and that means i am sane
i feel the agony of love
and recall that the future never happens

consequential couples day was covered in stanza 5 of the love epochal, published may 2025. i will quote as it explains it quite nicely:

every coincidental couple share or will share a day
(assuming all live lives that lap over and aside)
when one is either twice or half as old as their partner.
we only live in relation to each other:
brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children we are all

anyway, the day that my love and i share is 11/1/1999. 1111 999. it’s a message from the universe. i don’t believe in soulmates. but some people do make a lot of sense for each other.

and the future does never happen: it appears that we are eternally doomed to live now, in the present.

hate don’t beg

do we believe in the power of love
to conquer all?
hate doesn’t beg patience
and demand generosity
maybe i’d have preferred life in an asylum
in my bedtime mind pops
my first foreign trip without my parents
there i am, eleven,
living in a world i don’t want to live in
still here, alexithymic through fear
decoding signations from the incarcerated adjuster
interpreted via reddit memes

between being diagnosed with a terminal illness, then undiagnosed, then diagnosed with autism, i spent a lot of time with therapists from age 38 onwards. i was first diagnosed with depression as a teenager. i remember waiting ages for a referral to therapy. finally getting there, jittering, a nervous sweaty wreck of self-harming, substance abusing, poetic teenager. i just sort of wanted to unload on someone about this one time, when i was eleven, that i was bullied relentlessly while on a trip to austria without my parents. the trauma of which i had just buried as deep as i could, before trying, flailing, desperately, to make myself an entirely new social circle at high school. and i’d since left high school and found myself in a similar predicament (although this only occurred to me 20 years later.)

that’s not really the sort of thing we do here, the therapist told me. i felt utterly humiliated.

inconclusive, in conclusion

anyway, that was yesterday,
with that we close the chapter
for now the winter sun flits
over scarecrows, toclips and frosty nips
and it all begins to feel conclusive
but then the things as usual
start to get ambiguous
and once again of the good souls
we must ask forgiveness

my on and off girlfriend and i were finally turning the dial fully to off. we were taking active steps to move on. it seemed like that was what we were going to do. i decided i would focus more on my housework and compiling my personal archive. play more melodica. but as usual. the temptation to check in arose. on both sides. and we weren’t sure of our relationship again.

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 ned 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 card which is a picture their son drew. they are always quite absurd, and i hope to receive more of them. being, essentially, an 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.