lanzarote iv.

fly a magic carpet ride

on the greenback camel trail

and bury my radar

deep at wounded knee

boquerones on the lounger,

bocadillo by the sea

agree to be fleeced

for an airport charter

nintendo cheesecake

or deep fried mars bar

waitress seems genuinely surprised

by everything we say

or oder

last day jog 12k

no joint issues

hoppipolla yoga

i love eating cheese sandwiches on holiday. with a little tin of beer. then a little cake. or ten. bikes rides, lounging in the sun, loads of carbs. feeling very tempted to abondon writing for the day and book a holiday.

lanzarote iii.

lizard pulse pathos

and egrets on the gravel cut

fling a ring around the thing

regret declined burrata

fact checked on carbon i rediscover

archaeomagnetic dating,

did you know the poles

will switch

and north will

become south.

prohibito biciclette

celestial waves

lapping rusty mounds

baps boobing

a breasty boundary

round emphysema

cowboy country

before i went on the bike holiday i’d had a period of poor health that culminated in a trip to the hospital and a spinal tap. i was on medication for migranes, but it made me sluggish and slowed my heart rate down, so i started the last climb of the day a bit ahead of my pals in case i struggled. i was fine, but i got lost and had to reroute my way back and i went over some very sketchy ‘gravel’ roads. quite stressful. being lost in the desert alone is not what i hope for.

lanzarote ii.

el grifo abandonado,

aquapark de los muertos

pizza tres quesos,

no blue,

snide salad.

poolside morning yoga

and think about the future

fall asleep in my clothes

fresh from the waffle shop boys

sick in the toilet at midnight

maybe thanks

to the waffle shop boys

i eat a lot of cake on cycing holidays. on this occassion, i think the late night waffle after dinner was a refined carbohydrate too far.

lanzarote i.

exhausted by the tyranny of choice,

unable to sleep

four alarmed hours,

panic

then mile-high boredom.

bad pizza is still kinda good,

parched stroll less soo

cacti burrito,

a visage

of the village

in the mirage…

reinforcements parachuting in

petulant torrents of surf,

energía de la patata grande

pumice piss,

curtain of cliffs

and scattered sand

past the chain-gang (squared)

by fag ash straits

of jagged lava,

literal poetry in motion

i’m not much of a photo person. i’m not sure why, as i have total aphantasia which means i cannot see anything in my mind. i can’t just look once at the view and recall it forevermore.

maybe i should. but this disability has meant my internal world has always been dark and wordy. so when i’m on holiday, i like to record the holiday in poetry. this short series describes my cycling holiday with friends in lanzarote last year.

the crops blaze

a sunny eve with keith, watch the crops blaze

dump, no whiff of a gap, sewer works (the job pays)

i dispel return to indefinite limbo

doing surveys shirtless on the deckchair, a himbo

you know i cried every day for a year after i left

and 17 months on my life’s still a mess

weirdly, this same pun was in private eye the other week, but done much better. they had ‘water treatment works’ – with the punchline ‘well why aren’t they doing it?’

i postulate a remedy

i postulate a remedy that dismantles temporarily

the apparatus of the mind that filter and sieve

and obfuscate the things historic versions of the user

have deemed to be unhelpful.

the patient’s neuroplasticity is augmented,

the user returned to her pure, infantile character,

unvarnished by cynicism, laughing at the creases on her fingers,

laughing and forgetting everything.

available from all good doctors.

hello, welcome to the new month. i hope you enjoy the lines above, regarding a medicine that i think many people might enjoy. because you know, it’s wild out there on the mean streets.

just today, i was cycling down v. rd when a lunatic tried to kill me for no reason. he almost hit me at a junction, unintentionally but carelessly. i gave his bumper a wee tap with my hand to let him know i was there. he took this as an invitation to try again to kill poor me.

he then raced to try and hit me at the next road that the bike lane crossed over, but got there too late. so he reversed back onto the main road, and tried again, driving road onto the bike lane outside the post office. fortunately he didn’t get me. but he did get out the car to confront me – i obviously just raced away.

anyway, one of the posties got in touch with a photo of the vehicle. should i shop him?

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.

men only

“men only” in the gents loo
none of your wokery pokery for sure
in our punishment society, though i advocate for justice
each disaster brings a wonder that our
species carries on with
this system that penalizes age, health, gender and bad luck
the strong are loud and like atlas they shrugged
so by the seat of my pants and a matchbook of gyp
i watch the green place dip from the cauldron’s lip

I’d been at l.b.’s 40th birthday at a tennis club. i’ve known l.b. since high school. i remember her vegitarian mother cooking bacon for me one evening after a boozy night out. and i’ve been vegetarian myself for a more than 20 years, aside from a lost weekend in the late 2010s.

it was nice to see so many old friends on a humid summer day. in the club however, there was a sign that said ‘men only’, in addition to the usual stick figure. i took this to be anti-trans sentiment. i thought it was a bit embarassing. but it turns out the supreme court agrees with joan rowling. which i suppose reinforces the idea that ‘progress’ can’t be assumed. there are no universal human rights – we have them because our ancestors fought for them. they are granted to humans, by humans, through the exercise of political power.

then i went to meet my girlfriend in napoli. i took the bus to edinburgh and enjoyed a nice vantage point from the east – glasgow sits within a sort of cauldron surrounded by gentle slopes. slopes i know well from my cycling addition.

you meet someone you know from gossip

our hour our sense our self
in each case you can choose to cooperate or cheat

i wasn’t thinking of any particular meeting or person, just the idea of how sometimes characters can go from sort of fictional, like a friend of a friend, and then you are introduced and you feel like you already know them a bit. and maybe they even know something about you…

at the time of writing, i’m just back from a weekend of cycling with my club. we had glorious weather for a weekend in argyll, scotland. we cycled 220km with 3000m of elevation. i ate so many squashies and cereal bars. i’m looking forward to returning to my regular diet.

the roads were great, although a bit busy with cars at some points. devoted readers of the blog will know that i dislike cars. there was one particularly bonkers point when we were almost mowed down by a fire engine that i can only assume had been stolen. then a sports utility van thing that almost crashed head on with another car while overtaking. breathtaking stupidity really.

[post script] i have now been back from the holiday for two weeks, and the experience was dampened quite significantly when i learned that one of my club mates sadly died suddenly shortly after the trip. he was older, and had a heart transplant, so i suppose he had probably done his memento mori and made peace with mortality. but death never fails to shock. i didn’t know him well but he seemed like a good guy. rest in peace, s. d. (a different s. d.)

cycling down a road like the dream where i find another room in my house / moist stroll, jelly tower shuffle, cheesing postbox, very cruel

i used to always have this dream where i found another room in my flat. ‘all my problems are solved,’ i’d think to myself. how did neither i nor the previous owner or like the builder or the estate agent notice? but i haven’t had that dream in a while. life changed i guess. i got a bit smaller. need less space.

and the road is a real road. that runs near a road i know well. i am aphantastic. on some level, i don’t believe that the world that i can’t see exists. new places frighten and amaze me.

how vivid is the imagery of your mind’s eye?