even the rich and powerful will die. trump will die. starmer will die. kardashion will die. i will die and you will die. except i am a fictional character so maybe i won’t die. or maybe i will in some stories, but not in others. what if we all are characters in novels, who only live when our book is off the shelf?
my girlfriend managed to time her visit to her sister’s such that she was not in town when i got home from the bike holiday. i think she was holding me to a long tease. absence makes the something something. i was missing her.
throwing darts with some colleagues, i realised that if i really pay attention, i can reliably hit the board, and occasionally hit the thing i am aiming at. i came fifth out of eight. not very impressive. but why would a good soul care? they may be compassionate if, for some reason, darting competence was important to me. but the good souls don’t care about competence or endeavour. they just love other good souls.
the best bike rides have boats in them. that’s just a fact. we were nearing the end of the holiday, and fortunately the wind calmed a bit and we got an epic ride over the big mountain in.
i was comfortable and cool in the breeze, and considering one of my favourite writers – milan kundera. he writes perfect prose, light yet weighty. deep with philosophy, shallow with the needs of flesh. the story is unimportant – the storyteller is the whole show. characters, plots and places are tools which the author uses to carve the meaning of life into his reader.
it’s funny how the tease works, that the hint of a thing can be better than a lot of it. the feeling of being left wanting more. i think that’s why cigarettes are so popular. so fundamentally unsatisfactory that you need an infinite amount of them. typing this makes me want one now. and i quit a long time ago.
i do try and be a good stoic, and i touch on themes of stoicism often in the poem. every day i make a point of thinking about the fact that i will die and i don’t know when. and i try and remember to think of one specific person, and remember that they will die too. a different person each day. people i love, people i wish were already dead, people i barely know.
i think i’d heard on a podcast that the carthaginians were excellent navigators and seafarers. in fact, they even visited the canary islands, where i was when i wrote this line. both my grandfathers spent time at sea. ‘worse things happen at sea,’ they say. well, i was struggling with the stormy weather enough on dry land.
it’s a new month, so i have a new verse out on the youtube / spotify / apple music. it’s called the slugabed. hope you like it.
i just spent two days solid sorting through emails. all my emails since gmail was invented. almost 20 years of emails. so many rejections from jobs. from the lowest paid, lowest skilled, right up to the top – board level. no matter what step of the ladder i aim for, my skill profile doesn’t quite work. so that’s why i’m a poet and a cyclist. and this line was my lonely, dyspraxic protest against winds that i was too scared to ride in on my bike holiday.
when i was younger, all my friends were my age. we shared a frame of reference. same teachers, food, tv shows. as you get older, you start to recognise differences that passed you by. different types of parent. differing wealth. different trajectories.
now i have friends of all ages and it has really struck me – everyone’s experience is unique. there are generational flavours of course. but in a way, we are trapped solitarily in our experience, knowing the things we know, being the people we are.
volcanic shores and gales of fearsome solitude mapped out like a navigable carthaginian, i was not so, a stoic, i mourn each day a day lost and think a blushing thought of soft skinned twins of twins just a finger’s pinch, a shallow bite, a nibble not a repast but the popped french cork starter pistol for a glorious wedding breakfast.
the wind cools and we race to the ferry and over the hill comfortable in the air between fiction and essay— a soul impressed by power and wealth is not worth impressing: momento mori and more is yet to come. i’ll be home soon, waiting for you i’m skylarking back with the new month’s tunes and there is an elder geezer in louis vuitton shoes his amex was in a stolen purse has 1000 euro cash money and wants a chicken wrap pours his heiney to a flexy tumbler, up to the brim thanks the kindly lass across the aisle for a short term loan and i listen to cohen again and wonder if i’m obsessive in the wet, warm drink i sip the spirit water, and ponder i react first with emotion, the weight takes a while to settle i’m let down and i let down there is no reasoning with the passions. sometimes i feel like i’m not a real person—a lack i’ve sought in others credit for debit, the difference solo temporal evolve the revolving door, better round than in any task, i’ll find a way to do it my first instinct may be wrong but given infinite time…
our reunion was a salty affair, trolling agents and sellers ebitdata scientists don’t budget for trauma: cutting teeth. immersed in the pain pearlescent I wonder if being kidnapped by my mum‘s best friend as a child had a lasting effect? unrelated: the knot in my chest will spring from my mouth and rip out my guts leaving a slugabed trapped in a pole vaulter’s libido territorial, barking at my next door neighbour on the landing, hello stand up for yourself, for [] sake ah, woof! we all rely on the good souls who forgive us
all stoned poets think they are funny—well i am funny or unusual anyway shilling for a limited europe, my identity fading, delaminated not drunk, just exuberant. and well nourished cycling down a road like the dream where i find another room in my house moist stroll, jelly tower shuffle, cheesing postbox, very cruel charge another hour to diary management you simply must believe the story you tell yourself (excuse me for hoping to feature so prominently in it a big and empty feeling filling a sad gap why do i act like ive found the one true way of being when it doesn’t me happy?
but then bliss is in my life and the doldrums abate we extend the family table, aware the ides of march once again i chop chillies then piss and my dick burns i count the first lambs of spring and dig a few hills fitments suitable for various screws, but none of this massivity a sombre lover, indolent turbo, fresh strain spring clean shower interrupter a plan for mouth and fingers, mutuality of idyll desire a hotbed of fervour, preachers on manic street indigent, indignant and surplus to requirements always leaving, never gone, tomorrow never will crystallise the turncoat, former scapegoat, grasping for a banknote but there is no antidote. we hereby shall rely (on the good souls who forgive us)
chorus 3 – march
have you tried the toblerone, stupid child? i have a theory my anti car philosophy is not strictly environmental but because i was in two major car crashes before i was 10 different, but the same
shrinkflation, skimpflation, it’s hard not to feel like we are living in troubled times. despite technological advances, we seem to be continually told we need to work harder, and for longer, and that we should expect less.
the love epochal. n.n. benn 