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” 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.
whenever i can get it i take locker 91 the needle as the razor ice cold like a gun bounce a buttcheek out the bottom of your beltskirt and i’m shook but don’t jump, please god don’t jump overmorrow will come and tomorrow will be yesterday I am an intellectual and I watch election special (eh?) rich e. sunak gone with the small sound of a [cough] neither feared, loved or loathed a dog that never bit, or barked. just soiled and wet the bed may he eat out a career, helped out to get ahead by the mediocrity reapt from our tired ground which through the veins of parliament abound
hello, it’s july now and we are now into part two: getting there (a brexit prayer). it is really a continuation of part one but it comes with my own acceptance that i don’t really have time to post every day or to make a new song and video every month. so for the next six months my plan is to post new poetry on tuesdays and wednesdays and revisit stuff from part one on fridays.
also today is my album launch so please check it out on apple music, spotify etc.
anyway, this is a fun little bit i think. locker 91 is the locker i like to use at the gym. 1991 is the year my girlfriend was born. its a good number – its a palindrome. i remember being told this in 1991. that the next one would be 2002. a date so ludicrously far in the future that i discredited reports that it would eventually be more than twenty years ago.
we were on a run along the river, me and my girlfriend, and there was a stand off at a bridge. they were trying to talk a suicidal person down. i hope they are ok. i hope they found meaning and purpose in the last twelve months.
then rishi sunak lost the bizarre 4 july election he called. i always felt that rishi was inappropriately seen as a sensible person. perhaps in comparison to truss and johnson. but he was chancellor during the bizarre era of bounce back loan fraud, ppe fraud, and he tried to stimulate the economy by reducing vat on dining out during a pandemic. our polity will not miss his cool helmsmanship.
there are also two references to the godfather in the lines above.
head on over to edge of humanity magazine to enjoy my latest publication, a short work called “green”. it is an extract from a novella i have been working on called “comin’ up: a neurodivergent memoir”, a tale of sabotage, folly and accidental murder set around the second millennium c. e.
i have a new verse out today – the text was previously published in edge of humanity magazine, so please check that out if you haven’t already (see link below). now live on youtube, spotify, etc.
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 in second place again, lo siento, i feel your pain then a vow: to talk much more on the telephone hazy jane mountain range and a mouthful of blood the chip shop salt and vinegar on the edge of the breeze decline is the consequence of a millennium without conquest bring all ye visigoths, only the sack of london can save us now sometimes perspective illuminates sunny convalescence; can i modify my betrayed reaction? is there space for love without condition between event and response? the universe is comprised of information thoughts are but ephemeral forms deleted from the records for eternity, locked within an evanescent system but are some things unforgivable? let’s hope good souls can hold a grudge with compassion.
chorus
have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn? it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else i have a theory that brexit is the effective sack of london, by hitler different, but the same
this bipolar love hurts so much round infatuated hertz bevvy bivouac, coke and jack in the sack 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 cut a lana del rey tattoo into my arm, is that self harm? each generation must make the material their own smell tomato paste and cheddar, my da’s cooking, my home a feeling of disconnection between body and homunculus post-prandial down-dumpsy meek remainderman rain run ink on scar tissue, perineum to the sun this isn’t a cover up, the red rose, the guerilla’s fist i am a loaf of bread, origami, a process in purgatory every pain and every pleasure you caused will be inflicted back and you will judge yourself getting there—a tired prayer to monotony four goes on the playstation then i eat the whole bloody toblerone all that’s left is our dismal materiel we all rely on the good souls who forgive us
chorus
have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn? it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else i have a theory that brexit is the sack of london, by hitler different, but the same
it is one of the main tenets of stoicism that you are best to focus your attention on that which you can control. and that means accepting that there isn’t much you can actually control. and your body is one of the things you can’t control. it gets sleepy. it gets ill. it carries you about and it will one day kill you.
all that i can control are my character, my actions, and my reactions. my thoughts and my judgements upon others. to some extent, as much as i may worry about trump, putin and nuclear war, no good will come of it as i have no control over the outcome.
stoics also embrace the temporary nature of living. things may be how they are today. but that doesn’t mean that its justified, or will be the same in the future. i’ve only lived 4ish decades and how many atlases have i seen rendered obsolete?
this did happen but it wasn’t actually traumatic. i’m not entirely sure if F was really mum’s BEST friend. but a friend of long standing anyway. anyway, F just collected me from primary school and took me swimming. i think i had fun. but it did spell the end of that friendship for my mum. and was probably a symptom in the unwinding of F’s marriage.
i’m not good at swimming. i don’t think i could have swam without arm bands when this happened. i’m still crap at swimming. i hate cold water.
can you convince me to join the cult of ice cold water?
what is it to be a human? in any instant, all there is are the sensations you feel, see, hear, etc. a temperature, the weight of the earth pushing against your feet or arse, your shirt label on your neck. and then there is the story you tell yourself these things mean. but you know, you could be a brain in a vat being fed false experiences by a computer. and you are free to tell yourself that story if you prefer it.
i can’t really throw. or catch. i’ve got a bit better at it over the years, but i am just not a hand eye coordination sort of person. likewise, i am not designed to use raquets. i once chucked a tennis raquet into the air in frustration, only to catch it with my face shortly thereafter.
i don’t think i have ever successfully struck a shuttlecock. and how anyone can hit a baseball with such a narrow bat i’ll never comprehend.
so it’s little surprise that i am also hopeless at chucking sticks for the dog. yet every time, i’m a bit disappointed in myself. a bit of me seems to believe i’m eventually going to get the knack of it.
ah well. so it’s a year i’ve had these airpods now. returning from an early morning climbing session, my airpod escaped the ear canal and went for the drain instead. i presume anyway. i looked for a while then went to argos and bought new ones. can’t live an adequate life without headphones.
the love epochal. n.n. benn 