she goes by hot chocolate, that makes me soy flat white
karmic on the balcony, sharing a thunderstorm,
writing this poem, i hear my queen through the wool
and feel the love epochal
in napoli, where love is king, the pizza is immortal
and a thousand wonky steps climb to a hot pink moon.

in the queue at the starbucks in edinburgh airport, a young black woman was in the line ahead of me. she ordered a hot chocolate. the (white, timid, young, male) barista asked her name, and she said ‘hot chocolate’. obviously, this made the barista quite uncomfortable, but the woman who ordered the drink clearly found it hilarious.

then i ordered my soy flat white. but i just said my name was benn. poor boy.

then i went to napoli and waited for my girlfriend to join me from sorrento. when she arrived, she took me running in quite intense heat and the route she plotted just seemed to go directly up in the air. afterwords we napped and listened to nick drake.

and from this little verse came the title of this body of work, the love epochal. which to me anyway embodies the search for meaning in an amoral universe in which love, joy and happiness coexist with alienation, despair, poverty and war.