2020.18 Bingo

CN: stereotypical #ableism, #microaggressions, reclaimed language. Image courtesy of @pinsandpro

I am Schrödinger’s cripple:
Simultaneously making a fuss
And not doing enough to get better.
I am popping too many pills
And insufficiently exercising
(while taking up too much space
with my physiotherapy).

I am reading too much on the internet
And making myself upset
While egregiously ignoring the sagacity
Of this particular specimen
And his turmeric obsession
(it’s excellent for everything!).

I am paying the steep price of:
Not enough sleep
And too much sleep
And the wrong quality sleep
And the wrong sleep position
(try a different pillow).

I should be seeking a physician –
Their mission is to improve me –
While eschewing their advice –
My essential tricyclic painkiller is a myth
(distributed by the shills
of Big Pharma).

I just need to be calmer,
Balance my karma,
Yoga my way out of this,
Dismiss the advice of the
Physiotherapists who banned it for me
(we’ve had enough of experts).

I should eat more vegetables,
While cutting out peppers
And pepper, and meat, and cheese,
And gluten, but not nutritional yeast
(easily the best thing since
disassembled bread).

No wonder I’m so fucking tired.
Viewing the queue of “Have You Tried…?”
Mired in the sucking muck of
Everyday symptoms
(and special symptoms),
And your persistent implications that
I am failing at Being Disabled.

Did you know that
The best way to dismiss
Your (invisible) chronic illness crip
Is to insist that
Their fatigue is in league with lies
Disguised as fine?

Did you know that
Ridding yourself of the
Inconvenience of the narrative
Of lived experience is, at best,
A jest among the rest of us
(but ultimately magnificently toxic)?

Did you know that,
In these Interesting Times,
Your online presence is
Starting to resemble ours?
(we were buying online groceries
before it was cool mandatory made impossible by you).

Now you know our reliance on
Online friends;
Now you know our fear of
Physical contact;
Now you know our need for
People to actually wash their fucking hands
(properly).

Now you know these things
Maybe you’ll put the effort in
When we’re all safe
(or maybe even now)
To bending your ears our way,
And hearing what we’ve truly got to say.

Just because we put the effort in
To diminish the inconvenience of
Our existence (for your benefit)
The rest of the time, doesn’t mean
That we’re dissembling when we speak of
Fatigue, or pain, or the gains to be made
From you leaving us be for a minute.

Explicitly, of course, I don’t speak for
All of us here –
We’re not a monolith –
But I can tell you this:
The thing we’re all sick of
Is people who refuse to listen
(so please: let this lesson stick).

Image source: Pins & Procrastination via reddit/r/ChronicPain

2020.17 Ere Am I, Incredible

This one is very much a work in progress…

I’m mired in it,
Stuck down where the
Clean can’t reach me,
Because I am, by every
Definition of the Catholic Church,
A sinner, unrepentant as hell.

And yet. While I freely confess
Without regret the masturbation,
Homosexuality, heresy,
Apostasy, and missing mass;
Attracted polyamorously,
Proliferate in profanity,
I battle with the Big Seven daily.

It’s like anything else:
Everything in balance, a
Measure of functional imperfection.
Essentially: sadness is the sane response to tragedy,
Depression is a weight on the world.
Lust is a natural drive to reproduction,
Pleasure, intimacy,
But a terrible central tenet.
We crave nourishment,
Covet comfort,
Have built ourselves a social system
That spins on this
Philosophy of worthiness-in-possession,
And so some sins have greater penalties,
It seems to me,
Knee-deep in the fashion of each era.

An it harm not others, do what thou wilt
Say some, others:
Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the law
Still more a complex set of instructions,
Proliferating sin into the central condition,
Saddling each newborn with a burden
Bereft of innocence.
How original.

I have a complex relationship with sin,
Preferring a general definition:
Deliberately diverting energy against what is healthy,
An excess of going your own way
Into what you know, at every level
Is self-evidently
Wrong.

Of course, Pratchett said that it begins
With treating people like things,
A man whose own rage,
Righteous and otherwise,
Strides pages and stages
And mazes of minds,
Winding tight around some aspects
And not others – fans frantic
At the pick’n’mix banquet of this
Fantastic philosophy.

That’s a side-bar, naturally,
And I’m not sure it matters;
Frankly, I’m having my own battles
With gravity and entropy,
The only flightpath I can see
Being through the dark door
I’ve had the keys for since
Before I was born.

It’s the fifth one
(according to Wikipedia)
Which is giving me these
Congenital difficulties.
When does determined tip into
Stubborn?
Where does passionate advocacy
Snap into anger?
How does a howl of righteous
Ire get mired in the offence of wrath?

Because I’m tarred and feathered,
This sin’s heft in every expression
Because when patience failed,
Rage got me through,
Hoist my arse and told me what to do,
Because I knew already, and all I needed
Was one final straw for kindling,
Kindness and self-effacement dwindling
When considering
That someone else’s sinning
Had me treated like a thing.

And that’s all well and good,
Or would be if it could discern when
What looks like injustice
Is just chaos
When, instead of wielding a mace
And wading in it should pace itself,
Drip-feed fuel to a banked fire
Driving the underlying hum of:
Come on, you’ve got this
(instead of torching the place
and staying to make faces
at those attempting to flee).

I’ve long since decided that
The world can be divided into
Two groups:
Those who nodded when Banner said:
“That’s the secret – I’m always angry,”
And those who shook their heads.
If rage is built into your DNA
It’s hard to know what to say to
Those who maintain:
Just chill, as if it were so easy,
Who’ll never know how much better
Fire is than freezing.

Image source: Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) by Vera Klimova via Artmajeur

2020.16 Aestivation

This is only the second sestina I’ve ever written, the form taught to us at @allographica by dear friend @CaronFreeborn.

I’ve started to crave touch
Like water on a cracked rock,
Desert-hot, blinded with dust,
Knowing how rapidly it will soak in,
Knowing how this blessing
Will never feel quite enough.

I can’t quite imagine the sensation of enough,
And all I know is the touch
Of myself, over and over, seeking the blessing
Of repetition, dry skin wearing into rock.
There is a cradle of sensation waiting, I trust, in
Which I will submerge, cleanse myself of lonely dust.

It’s all I seem to feel: brushing dust
From aching shoulders, collecting enough
To drown in.
I turn my face to the rain, daring its cold touch,
A rush that could rock
Me to my core, win my blessing.

It seems thin, my blessing –
What can this husk offer but dust,
Forty-five years accumulated on this rock.
Too much, sometimes, but not enough,
Screened and screening, touch
Fingertip to tempered glass, breath in...

I’ve lived by the sea so long – tide in
Or out, but always present, a blessing
Of salt and movement, spray touch,
Licked lips, eyelashes, no dust
There only sand, and battlements, and force enough
To stroke away the most enduring rock.

So now I perch on my rock,
High and dry, bared teeth a rictus grin,
Too stubborn to say: enough,
To seek a closer caress for blessing,
Knowing it is nothing but more dust,
Another delay to truly loving touch.

Sometimes I rock myself, it’s not enough,
Grip and scratch a touch too much in
Secret blessings far from webcams, shaking dust.

Image source: Wikipedia article on aestivation.

2020.15 Narrative

Another April tradition as I try to catch up again (been a bad week): terzanelles.

Although they say bad judgements never cease
(I’m sure that you have plenty – so have I)
You’ll find I’m not the villain of the piece.

Feel free to shout your questions to the sky
You never know what blessings may return
(I’m sure that you have plenty – so have I).

You may well feel frustrated, shocked, and spurned
It’s time to join with those petitioning
You never know what blessings may return.

Now those at fault attempt positioning
With those who called the tune and paid the price
It’s time to join with those petitioning.

A crisis is no reason to be nice
To those who don’t deserve and never will
With those who called the tune and paid the price.

So take your time: make up and pass the bill
Although they say bad judgements shouldn’t cease
For those who don’t deserve and never will
You’ll find I’m not the villein of the peace.

Image source: Aquarian Insight (thanks, Google image search)

2020.14 Baking. Grounded.

Inspired by the Silver Leaf Poetry prompt for Day 16 (“Write a letter to an inanimate object”), but actually following an exercise by @tina_sederholm where you address a person as though an inanimate object, I decided that, for once, I would write it to someone I actually liked:

You are a terracotta flowerpot,
Sturdy, not particularly large at first view,
But surprisingly capacious.
You define yourself by the things that you produce,
Acting as though your largest,
Longest project, green shoots sprouting
In all sorts of glorious (and troublesome) directions now,
Will naturally overshadow you.
Multifarious nutritious things
Owe their starts to your solidity.
Even when you appear empty, you resonate
Potential, making a glorious chime
When something strikes you,
However gently.

You are, by dictionary definition,
Porous. Absorbing many things.
According to Wikipedia,
Terracotta is only named for practicalities
(Pipes, tiles, pots, things to take the weather),
Never the things to touch the
Potter’s wheel, to dance and whirl,
Then sit still forever, martyrs to dust.
Sometimes glazed, sometimes rough,
Surprisingly tough, taking a variety of shades,
Sometimes brightly painted,
Other times revelling in your natural hue,
You exude brightness, even in the darkest times.

You have known earth, and water,
Lay quietly for a long time.
You were brought into the air,
Given shape by clever, loving hands,
Come to your first strength
By going through the fire,
Your colour coming from the iron you carry
In quietly busy hands.
I once told you about your steely core,
Your blush proving that
As much as your ringing tone.

In your time you’ve rescued
Many living things that would otherwise
Have choked or starved,
And doubtless will again, and again,
Lending your strength and curve
To preserving and lifting the burgeoning
Into something wonderful.
There are many plastic imitations out there,
That do their best,
But they are not you,
Would never survive what you have,
And – you hope – will never need to.
And when it comes to the next fresh, green thing,
Sometimes flowery, sometimes fruity,
That you bring forth,
I look forward to telling you:
It’s beautiful.
Because it will be.
Because it always is.
Because you are.

Image source: The Worm That Turned

2020.13 Season of the Lych

(If you'd like to tackle pantoums and other repeating forms, I've made a spreadsheet for them (obviously!): http://bit.ly/poetryrepforms)

So this must be the Spring of our discontent.
Our grumblings now barely touch the weather;
While some of us will struggle to make rent,
Still others are just spending, hell for leather.

Our grumblings now barely touch the weather;
While some urge all us sinners to repent,
Still others are just spending, hell for leather,
And in the dark, conspiracies foment.

While some urge all us sinners to repent,
The rest explore the length and strength of tethers,
And in the dark, conspiracies foment;
To break the fragile piece takes one more feather.

The rest explore the length and strength of tethers,
While some of us will struggle to make rent.
To break the fragile peace takes one more feather,
And this must be the spring of our discontent.

Lychgate at the Parish Church of St Mary & St Giles, facing the High Street, Stony Stratford
Source: Geograph.com, © Copyright Malcolm Campbell

2020.12 Wild Ride

This was going to be something completely different, so I’ll have to write that one another time, because I put on my “Wordless Writing Mix” and, instead, this turned up (I’m fine…). The first part of said mix can be found here.

You are dropping, the pre-beat skitter of sensation
Making you weightless.
The anticipation crests, dips, hints at
Its own resolution, rhythm insinuating itself
Until it thuds through you.
And you realise: you knew it all along.

You’ve heard it before, know where the
Hiss like a gentle ripple of feather against the
Inner skin of your forearms starts,
Each separate drum pattern like a different
Fingertip tapping, insistent,
Shimmering in your nerve endings.

This next bit drifts, earthily ethereal,
And you don’t care that this makes
Precisely zero sense to anyone else
It’s your track, your experience,
Your associations, the thud
Underpinning the drift

This music hails you,
Reins you in and sets you free,
Fleet, repetitive, wordless,
And everything you need it to be,
Summoning forests and starscapes and
Those times you danced until 6am.

It, too, bids you farewell, blended into the next
By a master whose choices speak the language
Of Everything In Its Right Place,
Fingers crooked to beckon a deeper layer:
The book you haven’t finished writing yet,
Pages of historical imagery glittering between these notes.

It blocked out sound when you couldn’t make your own;
Wordless, it was the voice of controlled insanity,
The hallucination pinned in pages
And pages, and pages of people you’ll never meet
More real than anyone you ever will, sometimes,
Heroes and bullies and victims and saviours, some of them the same.

The darker layers ground you in the nighttime scrambles
The gambles with gravity made by people
You can never hope to be, given life by your keyboard;
And surely they’re bored, waiting for you to
Tell them what’s next, stop them from endlessly
Teetering on the precipice of the call to descent.

While you eddy in self-recrimination,
The music swirls to an end, no resolution met
Except the resolution to resolve.
Your foot describes revolutions beneath your desk,
Pent in the need for tactility other this virtual frisson;
The lesson still eludes you, like the almost-words you hear.

Kyrie Eleison? Is that it? Or something less sacred,
More profound, grounding the liminal in the reminder
That humans colluded in this acoustic miracle where you
Sough across the cosmos, in tune and out of sync
With your inspiration, metamorphosing the metaphysical
Into the metatextual, with a staggering lack of shame.

And maybe that’s all that’s needed: a sharing,
And you’re getting good at sharing without touching, aren’t you,
Breathing separate air and yet resonating across the distances.
As Above, So Below, you learned that theory far too long ago,
Feeling the void at your core thrum, somehow,
In recognition of the thing the music sings about.

The emptiness shouts in layers, the kind of colourful
You only find in camouflage, and still the tunes press on,
Unstoppable as guilt; as loud as your sleepless companions:
A formless sense of failure, and the fear of being found a fake.
Never tell me all artists feel the same way –
They’re delusional in their inadequacies, I am not.

And now even the intimacy made by the use of second person
Is broken; as inconsistent, in the end, as the internal rhymes,
The six-line stanzas, the clattering stabs at insight.

And it feels like cheating to end this on a neat highlight,
Next best thing to happy ending,
When the best you can hope for, playlist on loop
Is to hold out for your favourite track coming back again,
Fast-forwarding where it’s needlessly uncomfortable,
And binge on comfort, purge the words,
Binge on comfort, purge the words,
Binge on comfort, purge the words, hope the scourge
Of self flagellation cleanses wounds that can start to mend.

And if not? You can always press play again,
Submerge.
Fade to rainbows.

This image was the first thing that turned up on the image search list when using the search term “Glittering Void”. It’s apparently a still from this completely soundless video.

2020.11 Along for the Ride

Written at the @allographica virtual write-in this afternoon, using the @napowrimo prompt for today and the random line generator from the Language is a Virus site (words: suspect concede encode chomp store ride approve belong, of which I didn't manage all of them – in my defence, it’s a pretty short form!).

Our fate appears to be encoded
I suspect we will have to concede
Our store of tactics all out-moded
Our fate appears to be encoded
Approval rating all eroded
It won’t be long until we plead:
Our fate appears to be encoded
I, suspect, will have to concede

Image from Martin Lubeck’s website

2020.10 The Weight of Greaves

Kindness has not been rationed,
Unless you know something I don’t.
Believe me – I feel your pain, but
Lies are promulgated
Everywhere – some ignorant, others less so.
Research is the key;
Research and hope, strange as that might sound.
Open yourself to difficult possibilities,
Surrender to the notion that everything is changing,
So much quicker than we might have anticipated,
Great swathes of how we function have shifted, and
Rage will not take you all the way to the end.
It’s difficult – we want to shut our
Eyes, but that’s no more
Functional than flailing,
Cursing, begging for a way back:
You are on a track that cannot be reversed,
Cry all you might for the lost moments.
Let yourself – it is only one step –
Elegies are how we say goodbye, and keep on living.

Image from LitHub, © Steve Greer

2020.9 Good Friday

Well, this sucks.
Okay, this late I would still be up,
But, instead of wrestling
With glitchy digital imagery,
I should be pressing my best suit,
Polishing my boots,
Mapping out the route,
And thinking about writing something
That sings,
Something to scribble in the card
I’d have actually bought for you:
Suitably cinematic,
Something classic,
Ecclesiastically neutral enough
For every element of our
Intricately mixed family.

It’s a pity.
Instead, I am staring at something
Egregiously metatextual,
Feeling a little sick,
Knowing that, instead of
Getting your speech ready,
Checking everything is spruce,
You are at home after
Another day on the front line,
Wired-up, visor down,
Smiling.
Always smiling.

This is irksome.
I was looking forward to meeting her,
Discreetly wiping tears
At your vows,
Prepped to be wowed
At your joint elegance.
And, let’s be honest,
I was looking forward to the dancing,
Chancing my arm that
My dad
And your dad
Would be spectacularly,
Magnificently
Terpsichorean,
Giving the lie, as always
To the term “dad dancing”,
Even this far into retirement.

It’s a shame.
I’m at that age where
Weddings are few and far between
A staple of my mid-twenties,
Stretching to civil ceremonies,
Later weddings for friends who’d
Waited for equality
Properly locked tight,
My eyes welling in pride.
I spent many years singing
At strangers’ ceremonies,
Laying bets on the obvious choices
And secretly hip-deep in love
With every gaudy minute.
I was giddy with anticipation:
How would your aesthetics,
Endless kindness,
And sly, bold humour
Shine through?

It’s vexing.
I was expecting to
Spend many hours
With my little sister,
Blistering the air with our laughter,
Parting with loving reluctance,
Savouring the touch of hands
That would carry us through
Another season of distance.
There would have been so many hugs,
And dear stars above,
But I thirst with every element
For the gentle blessing of physical embrace.
While you, braced for the next
Emergence, and the next,
Patiently wait on patients,
And the reopening of gates,
Laying safety on the line
Every. Bloody. Day.
And this self-indulgent screed
Is my only way to say:
Thank you.
And I miss you.
And how the actual poem
I write for your actual wedding
Is going to be much better
For the wait.

Stay safe.

Fay x

Image from Boho Weddings (yes, really); photographer Marianne Chua. It honestly looked like a lush wedding!

2020.8 Fool’s Gold

From the @napowrimo Day 4 prompt encouraging us to take a Tweet from @MagicRealismBot’s output. I chose: “A high school teacher in Cape Town is forgetting about Donald Trump.”

She feels the gaps at first,
The salt-lick thirst at the back
Of her mind.
Some jokes are less risible,
Symbolism less rich
(Some of it – less easy, anyway).

She is aware of her lack of awareness,
The essential nature of
Basic linguistic shortcuts
Sundered,
Plundered from me
(She sometimes thinks).

In a month or so,
The only thing she notices
Is that she’s less encumbered,
Somehow more willing to smile,
Mildly hopeful
(Where the grownups despair).

It’s a thundery afternoon, and one of the endlessly
Restless kids
Wigs himself with a yellow duster
Summons up a kind of
Honking shout from a pouting sneer
(Sheer mirth bubbles through her).

Without context,
There is no pretext
Present for punishment.
Unburdened, she laughs,
Daft in half-light with the surprised
(delighted) children.

Picture of #45 from Daily Kos. Picture of laughing children from Children’s Ministry.
Fancy edit done by me (I’m so darned proud!) 

2020.7 Love Projects

You are curled in something like sleep; you keep turning over, stretching, yawning, causing all of us, in our own ways, to feel a certain melting in the chest, caress the sight of you, bless the imperative that led us to – essentially – rescue you. You, feet up, eyes tightly shut, butter wouldn’t melt over any aspect of your svelte self, are – presumably – oblivious to what you’ve done. Your hair’s growing back so well from the escapade that led you to plead for shelter, a welter of wounds and malnutrition and skittery nature fostered by a cold season in an untrustworthy world, subsumed and excised by your time with us, a long and lovely month. We each have our own theories when you seem out of sorts – she says you’re bored, courts your claws and gentle bites, inviting tumbling play. No, I say – you’re clearly tired and overcrowded, vow to soothe you, prove my worth with soft kneading, yielding lullabies. By contrast, his theory is either food he’s powerless to resist giving or simply that you, yourself, are confused about your own state. And you blithely grace us with each pat, each purr, each turned circle to better comfort, the dumbstruck love you summon in us, renewing every day.

You arrived with Spring

Ignorance wasn’t blissful

We’ve been adopted.

Picture of the redoubted Milady Cariad in all her slumbering, soft-bellied glory.
Source: Carla Keen.

2020.6 Sins of Omission

I am not:
• Baking my own bread
• Remembering to clap for the NHS
• Setting up a new enterprise
• Exercising

I am not:
• Learning how to knit
• Sitting daily in meditative contemplation
• Abating my binge-rewatching sessions
• Exercising

I am not:
• Polishing the floor
• Forging a new neighbourhood spirit
• Lifting my tits on the regular
• Exercising

I am not:
• Spring cleaning
• Defragging my hard drive
• Writing a magnum… anything…
• Exercising

I am not:
• Reorganising my bookshelves
• Delving the depths of old mistakes
• Making the most of all the opportunities in existence
• Exercising

I am not:
• Brewing my own beer
• Re-roofing the garden sheds
• Heading to bed nightly at an advisable time
• Exercising

I am not:
• Rediscovering photography
• Weaving my own bamboo pants
• Gathering nettles for nutritious recipes
• Exercising

I am not:
• Finding fresh new ways to make my brain develop
• Devoting my existence to my accidental pet
• Getting any more fluent in Welsh
• Exercising

I am not:
• Particularly clean
• Lean or green
• Meaningfully occupied at all times
• Exercising

I am not:
• Coaching my (imaginary) children
• Mending any of my ways
• Persuading anyone successfully to finish Will-writing
• Exercising

I am still not:
• Drinking any alcohol
• Hopping off any of my other wagons
• Flagging neighbours as Undesirables
• Exercising

I am still:
• Writing poems (slowly)
• Socialist (to an increasing degree)
• Feeling love and that maybe I can thrive
• Alive

Illustration of Lazarus at the rich man's gate by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1886
Source: Wikiart

2020.5 State Not Trait

After a conversation earlier with an Australian friend on @discord struggling to put the day behind them and go to sleep.

“I’m a terrible human,” you say.
And maybe it’s the age difference,
But I don’t see it that way.
Not off the back of one frustrated error,
Anyway.

See, I’ve encountered some truly
Gruesome humans,
Seen people who take every gift and
Turn it to shit,
Toxic at each turn,
Burning the ground around them,
And salting it with their piss.

Even them I’d struggle to utterly dismiss,
Just strip them from my own life,
Never expend any thought on them
Except as a template of How Not To Be
(Warn others if necessary),
And move on.

That’s not you.
You can tell, because we’re still talking,
And I’m all too old for indulging shitheels
These days.
You can tell, because you still have
Real friends: ones who’ll let you know
When you’ve fucked up.
You can tell, because they’ll
Lend you the tools for the next step
Tell you they’ll be there for it.

While I don’t advise you
Ever stop striving for betterment,
Set the baseline in the right place:
Gracelessly neutral – doing no real harm
On the daily, averaging out at…
Average.

That’s it – now weigh yourself honestly,
Consider the things you do
To leave the world a better place.
Consider the things you do that
Leach the world without net benefit,
Then do the sums.
Consider everything,
Be compassionately brutal,
And choose what you’ll do next.

Any truly terrible human will demonstrate
How greedy, solipsistic spirals look,
How even their most “community-minded”
Actions are actually
All About Them,
And how the line between
Perfectionist and despotic is…
A tricky one.

In the course of writing this
I’ve had to pause,
Audit myself at each verse,
Consider the implications
And how I might reverse them,
Curse the nature that sets
Zero so impossibly high,
While keeping an eye on my
Most egregious excesses.
(That honestly wasn’t fun.)

Nonetheless, in the absence of
Post-mortem corroboration,
My conclusion:
I am not a terrible human.
And neither, my friend,
Are you.

The statue of Herodotus in his hometown of Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum, Turkey.
Source: Wikipedia

2020.4 Driven Fast

Using the @PoetrySyntax prompt for Day 5 of “drive by” we have this curiosity (probably more drive-through than drive-by, but hey):

We were a casual thing –
Light touch, sunshine-fleet,
Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.
You said it was for the best.

I agreed. It’s in my nature –
Once a waiter, always a
Waiter, deference like a
Reflex, asking, never telling.

You ordered white bread for the table,
Sparkling water with a wedge of lemon,
Scanned the specials board
But stuck to the hunter’s chicken.

I couldn’t help but crave
Something slower,
Time to savour,
Rich flavours given their own space.

My mouth watered for
Mezze, citrus and pomegranate,
High notes combined with the
Dusk of game meat.

At night, I’d dream
The squeal of tires,
Awake singing Big Yellow Taxi
As I started circling in attendance.

Full, but echoing, missing nutrition,
I listened and nodded,
Wishing and waiting
For something other than snacks.

The day I realised
The menu held more options
Was otherwise ordinary
But a stranger’s smile ignited revolution.

Living in the endless expectation
Of your say-so,
Alert to your every message,
Was never fun, but unjust punishment.

I will seek out gastronomic
Experiences, fast and slow alike,
Put in my requests with a smile
Dial my own whims in my own time.

2020.3 Lorem Ipsum

This is a test.
No test like the present
I present: a test.
Don’t get testy,
Or protest your lack of interest,
Because this, dear friend,
Is only a test.
An infinitesimally
Egregious pest
Maybe, but, we protest:
A necessity
How this will go is anyone’s guess
But it’s best
To test
To reduce stress,
Learn lessons,
And ensure some measure
Of success.
In short: invest.

Nevertheless,
No-one should confuse this test
With something in excess
Of its remit: it isn’t meant
To be anything other than a test,
Settling eventually,
And the rest
Is merely busy silence.
Here endeth the test.

(Sooner or later, we suggest,
It’s time to stop prototyping
And commit your resources
To reality, meaningfully.)

2020.2 Buzzing

“Humanity at one of its finest moments, in the pinnacle of creativity.” – YouTube user Turtlefeathers, on the 2010 video “Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque (Virtual Choir)” as quoted on page 197 of “Economies of Collaboration in Performance (More than the Sum of the Parts)” by Karen Savage and Dominic Symonds.

I have language issues, sometimes –
They arrive on the back of processor lag,
Me gabbling, attempting to parallel process
All the remaining words to say;
Turns out the human larynx
Doesn’t work that way, tongue tangled,
“Wurbs,” I say,
You nod gravely, parrot it back.

They flock, soaring and diving,
Sometimes outlining with crystal clarity,
A dance that changes,
Echoes in heads –
You forget the sense,
Retain the sensation;
Other times derailed into chaos,
Panicking at the claxon,
Unbuffered by Maslow.

Eat a sandwich.
Get some protein down you,
Eat a biscuit, drink some water.
Listen, if it was that easy,
I’d’ve done it already;
Instead I’m unsteady,
Rushing through on our old friend:
Adrenalin.
Because that always ends well.
And yet. And yet.

I can categorise the people I like
On several factors:
One: I can speak quickly enough
In front of them that my mouth
Can keep up with my brain.
Two: when they shoot for the blank
In the stammer, they land it
(by a broad majority).
Or three: stand back and let me
Catch up with fluttering synapses,
Humming gently to fill the silence.
That’s nice.
Three: three: three: thhhhrrrreee…
Four: they don’t take offence
At clenched fists, missed eye contact,
Never grab me by the wrist.

(Never grab me by the wrist.)

Sometimes there’s a big, blank space
For the word because there’s too many
Candidates, all circling, clamouring:
“Me! Pick me!” as I…
[I… what’s the word, the perfect word?
Cup left hand, clasp air, flicking eyes.
Something of wheat and chaff…
Yes!] winnow for perfection…
Except the moment’s gone, the rhythm
More than syncopated,
And dehydration doesn’t help –
Brain pickled in its own unhealthy juices.
Useless, useless, useless.

Shhhh…
A breath. Take one.
Don’t hush me.
No – not a gag, an amplifier,
A byproduct of the silence
Is that the words can ring in it.
I grumble, unconvinced.
Eat a sandwich, you glorious idiot,
Switch off your alarms,
And charm yourself to sleep with
Cheese and bread, forgetful of regrets.

(I agree, but type this up instead
As birds chirp, sky silvering into Saturday
While I softly splinter.)

2020.1 Luxury

We are searching for candles
Drawers are rifled and rejected,
Corners inspected,
Best guesses anyone’s for the making.
Maybe this is not the time
But shining is important, so we dig quicker.

We are searching for candles,
For the first of two birthdays
Ticked off in swift succession,
Successfully silent, cardless
Except for, in each instance,
A different, solitary, stubborn gifter.

We are searching for candles
Tiny, delicate, beckoning heavy breaths,
A gesture against this… situation,
The one we stopped naming –
Another small wall against the sign
On every site, the flash panels dimmed.

We are searching for candles
And I neglect to mention the job lot
Bought before anyone else could get them,
Seeing in myself the excesses rendered
By a different childhood, remembering
Water shortages and powercuts the others dodged.

We are searching for candles
And the big ones – tucked into a corner
Of my tiny study, sturdy, quarantine
Against panic and not yet welcome,
A bet placed against ever needing them –
Weigh, plain and ponderous on my drifting mind.

We are searching for candles
We don’t have forty-five
(If we have any
(We must have some – I’ve met me))
And, even if we did, there would be
More wax than cake, more flame than flavour.

We are searching for candles
Three people who want to sing forth brightness,
Post positivity,
Eager to confirm that this is unique,
Frantic for fripperies,
Scintillating colours to cover reality.

We find the candles
Stuffed among the cloth napkins,
A full drawer that no-one ever moves,
Choosing to eschew using something
That smacks of pretension,
Trousseau to impossible parenthood.

We light the candles,
Nine in total,
Sing, hold breaths,
And wish,
And wish,
And wish…