Tag: #poetry

chorus number nine

brazen child, pray share your 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

it’s funny that i find myself writing this blog on the day i was a victim of attempted violence (see tues 2 — i postulate a remedy). should i report the crime, and myself propagate violence (the criminal justice system) on my assailant?

the punishment is often worse that the crime. i need to think this through. i believe we shouldn’t judge people by the worst thing they ever did. but i also realise that if crime is unpunished, criminals become our rulers.

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

back in the mid life crisis phase, one thing that happened that partially led to my initial interactions with the medical industrial complex, was that i unexpectedly lost a load of weight for no particular reason. i’ve been fit and active for most of my life, but i’d never had visible abs. then suddenly, i couldn’t maintain my weight. it was a bit scary at first but by this stage i was more thinking well i may as well just eat sweeties whenever i want.

i do try and eat healthily but i’m still lazy and i require daily treats. and i think i have gained a bit of the weight back now. i stopped weighing myself and the problem became less stressful. it doesn’t make any sense, but i can’t waste my life looking for the answers to absolutely everything can i?

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?’

mortal again

in how many people’s memories do i still live?
what degree of blur, how precise an image?
there is nothing mere about mortality
there will be humdrum finalities like the last cup of tea
the last step in the sea. the last shag
the last time taking out taking out the bin bags
so i say memento mori at least every day
and when things get hard, i’ll try to be there

i genuinely do try and say memento mori every day. there are so many sad things about life. but life, as far we know, is the whole show. so you’ve got to try and make the most of it really. try not to spend all day reading the news. remain in denial about creeping authoritarianism and the collapse of the world order. who knows, maybe things will get better eventually.

i think i’m going to start watching star trek from the beginning. i think i’m ready.

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. search 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.