Tag: #poetry

smash and ooze

you smash the avocado, bring the force within you down

your zeitgeist, your energy and spirit

oozes, you infuse us in it

but our guests left us with an odd moment

mutually dysregulated, endlessly in torment

good souls do forgive all souls, but is every corpus soulful?

i was randomly flicking through my old emails from university and noted quite a few where i had emailed tutors chasing for essays. i hate uncertainty, hate waiting for the answer. i remembered logging into to websurf, the university’s online student platform, to check my exam results. just mindlessly refreshing the page. then eventually, my degree certification was there. it came through first, before the rest of my exams were uploaded, and i felt such relief. joy, general excitement, but essentially relief. a non-shameful result.

i had dropped out of uni after first year. had a difficult time after leaving school, suffering from autistic burnout. after a few years i was ready to try again. i didn’t really have any expectations, the best grade i had got in first year was a c i think. i just wanted to stop myself from drifting into a life of unrewarding cycle of repetitive work, burn out and unemployment. which felt like not just a real possibility, but probably the most likely outcome for me at 19 years old.

anyway, that relief and joy was tempered almost immediately when i realised i didn’t have a job, wasn’t especially suited to one, to be honest struggled with all the entry level positions i’d ever had, and was useless in job interviews.

i’m proud anyway.

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 

when you find out you are probably autistic, there is a tendency to temporarily get more autistic. i have actually only had a few meltdowns. i am a quite 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, arrested, or hospitalised.

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.

oh and the plug got stuck in the bath. i have written about this before! it was annoying! check the archives!

5 beta 1

i make a million lists 

and enjoy morning mist 

from november 2016

us cyclists are cut from different stuff. 

but not very much of it

aged 39, version 4.0, aged four-zero, version 5 beta 1

you gotta believe me, life comes for you, son

so i had a mid life crisis from 2022-23. i got misdiagnosed with emphysema and spiralled a bit. got very depressed. went through a break up. fell in love. then got unmisdiagnosed.

i sort of jokingly referred to my mid life crisis as benn 4.0. but before i even really got into the swing of it, i found out i was autistic. so i decided i’m not on benn 5 beta 1.

diarrhoea and dandruff

put primo down, nobody cared, not even humoured 

zapped and solitary, unarchiving and decrypting 

violent gut, cash drop, 

shy black sheep dribble down a gravel path…

as a poet it frustrates me no end that I am able to articulate my identity crisis

only through the bodily language of diarrhoea and dandruff.

i’d just recorded the first song of my album, toblerone, but nobody was very interested. that remains the case – it is available on spotify and all other good record streams though if you are interested. seach for ‘the love epochal’. at the time i was planning on releasing a new song and video every month.

one of the things about autism is that it can be hard to work out how time consuming a plan is going to be. it turns out that schedule was incompatible with having a job. but i managed it for six months and that’s quite good i reckon.

and when i wrote these lines, i was having an identity crisis and was suffering some physical symptoms. itchy scalp. bad gut. good thing i had my poetry to keep me going.

iceberg lean-to

i construct and unscrew, 

mucky pup grana podano iceberg lean-to

banana brought to the monkey puzzle tree party

interoception fails me, intercepted daily 

life in general is supremely () based

release back lever,

push the back backwards 

and it pings back forwards

yeah i’m bringing back sexy back

i was helping my girlfriend with some diy, mainly just getting in the way and slowing things down. we took a break and went for pizza on v. rd. very good pizza. the best in town. and for a side we got an iceberg grana padano lean-to. it wasn’t really a lean to. it was more of a pavilion of lettuce in a snowstorm of cheese. i took poetic licence.

then i read a sentence in a book about autism that said life in general is supremely socially based, which i laughed at due to the internet meaning of based.

then i played with my office chair and reflected on justin timberlake.

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?

the knot is twisted back

i wish i knew what i wanted. for dinner. 

monday morning and the knot is twisted back in my gut

the thirteenth rodeo, the second non-event

month-end creeps up, the knot does too

patch anxious rum for philosophy on the radio

make a random avizandam on a tandem with the phantom fan

cross the eyes and splot the teas

cracker please

i was having an anxious time, hating my job, going through the process of getting formally diagnosed with autism. but what i really want to talk about today is packing. 

i am packing my bags today for the third time in like two weeks and honestly man i hate it. its exhausting. so much stress. why do i need so many artefacts? why must i live in a historical epoch of such complication?

but on the plus side i will get to go on holiday tomorrow so that’s good. although, by the time this has been published… i will be back from the holiday. so that’s sad. but it will be a sunday at least so that’s good.

sorry if you work sundays. and i realise today isn’t sunday. i will get back from the holiday on sunday. i am having trouble comprehending the linearity of time right now.

step change

down for pinting up the soft and pleasant hues of bath time 

step change, ladders direct, 

get a price on a dark moneypiece

what about pantries is it that brings me to tears?

meltdown quietly, astir all night, 

we each start new two chapters

wind our stories together

inky pupils blotting out, 

another lost doppelgänger 

i learned that a moneypiece is a way of dying hair, and bought the wrong ladders and returned them for smaller ladders. then i had a horrible shut down / panic attack thing on an insomniac evening and felt really weird.

wet salty hotdog

i believe in a barista, 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

my girlfriend had just bought a flat and started doing the place up. she is very handy. i was getting in the way. on a run, 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. the food was terrible. it was notably briney.