6 - Douché

#NaPoWriMo Day 6 and today I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by the “official” prompt yesterday to write about things we dislike, “… particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.” Challenge accepted!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the five preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/douche-154960772 (and it has sound effects!)

---

I hate taking showers,
growling at the necessity
for nakedness and standing,
and my skin sheds anyway,
take the grime with it!
Stupid, itchy, blithering,
witless skin. Shut up!

I’m in now, glowering at
flat, white surfaces, shivering
in the chill of an unplugged
updraft from somewhere,
staring at familiar objects,
objecting all the while,
grinding my teeth.

UGH! The water hits my
griping feet, sleet-cold,
growing violently hot,
scotch bonnet sensation
grating, turning skin from
blue to red, and I hop and
test and flex and grimace.

I sweep the grudgingly correct
temperature up my shuddering
frame, blame society’s weird
propriety and turn to get drenched,
wrenching a comb through
tangled locks and cursing,
nursing each strand free.

I go through the soaping
motions, swaying in the heat
beating against scalp and
shoulders, moulding my
mouldering bits by ancient ritual
into a different me, free of
crust, chemically sweet.

Then my timer chimes, the
real world flits in, reminding
me of outside responsibilities,
a grief of gravity claiming
this blameless mer-wraith,
making me desist, persistent
in its insistent linearity.

I hate quitting showers!

---

Portrait of the Poet as a Wet Little Guy

I went searching for a Creative Commons picture which responded to “grumpy shower”. What I got was a swamp of GenAI nonsense so, on the grounds that doing it yourself badly is better than using GenAi, behold, an original!

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

2018.2 Cycle

It all crowds my head. Your heat flickers inside me
And there’s no release, no means to breach this
I am lost in the white noise crackle, dappled in the harmful,
Gullet full of other people’s bile.
And I want to help. I really, really want to help
Help me. Help me stop this. Help.

Stop.

Step away, but that’s not far enough
Say it clearly, cite the parallels they’ve learned to adapt to -
Kitchen utensils as a measurement of capacity.
Acknowledgement
Affirmation
Just one more thing.
No more.
No more things
No more citations, no more debate,
No more inference that my interferent noise is not great enough
To break the signal.
No more, please - I’m not a debate, my existence
My existence isn’t theoretical, charity, a lack of clarity
I AM NOT A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE.
Google terminology
Google visibility
Google why jokes are important, actually
Google “kicking down”
Google cultural signifiers
Google privilege
Google check your fucking privilege
Google those who’ve been able to say more clearly: this is not a joke
Google the statistics
Google the death statistics
Google the deaths
Google why me opposing your entitled bullshit here is as important as opposing state-sanctioned bullshit in [pick a country where human rights are a big issue and insert here]
Google why my existence doesn’t invalidate yours
Google why words are important
Google the fuck out of why I’m calling you out.
Google us. Read the fucking names.

Breathe.
Just fucking breathe.

Mount the bike,
Take the time,
Spend the excess adrenalin,
Make physical pain the coin of distance, of deliverance, of perspective.
Make.
Make cloud patterns
Make nods at joggers and dogs and kids on scooters
Make a third personal best on that curve north
Make good headway against return headwind
Make faces at other cyclists, and returning geese, and cows, and

Is that a hide or a bomb shelter?
Is that a war memorial or an abandoned pump?
Is that

This is broad lungfuls
This is the body’s heat, whispering into entropy
This is glissades of temporary
This is

You are.

Breathe.
Signal.
Manoeuvre.
Return.
Breathe.
Be.

Now, what were you saying?

2017.1 - DK Oblivion

He strides up to take the spotlight
Bedecked in the essence
Of everything he’s ever heard,
And burdened with glorious purpose.

He starts bold, stance strong, voice clear:
“Dear Geography teacher...” he preaches,
Reaching for shared disappointments,
Anointing himself the mouthpiece of youth.

Soothsayer, truthspeaker,
A peak of platitudes and gratitude
Screwed to the sticking point of
Oxygen-stealing line lengths.

Depth! Regret! Insight!
The clarity of distance!
The angst of yesterday!
The way it fits so neatly into three minutes.

In the circle of his usual,
Mutually exclusive demographic
He telegraphs his copy-and-paste
Graces to clicks and roars.

But here, in the open,
He chokes on the silence
Reflecting the abyss that beckons his
Dissolution, resolution wavering...

Hey! No! Raise the volume,
Boom across an abruptly unclipped mic,
Dive free of constraint into the teeth
Of these zombies

Homage is lacking, blank eyes merely polite
What kind of witchcraft is this?
Hisses and shrieks of feedback greet his
Inevitable momentum across the speakers.

Time’s up and he steps from the light,
Bright with sullen flames,
And waits for the explicit verdict,
The indications of his numbered worth.

On the way home he Tweets,
Greets reality with passive aggression,
Abetted by peers sneering of
The obvious ignorance of others.

Comforted and cozened he makes his way,
Braving disappointment with denial
Wild vows aimed anywhere but inwards,
Arcing further into solipsism.

The lesson of this is... complex
But, in essence: when you stop learning
You burn your bridges into a wider life
And I... am at least as guilty as the next poet.



This started life with another stanza (“This poseur supposes/ His notion momentous/ And shows off his woke ass/ Erroneously”) but then it went elsewhere in the putative build up to said stanza, so here’s what happened instead... And yes, I guess this is written to perform, and to purge, and probably makes sense if you’ve seen a slam or two...