Quickie

Today's poem, at request and with a tiny bit of help from a man known as Tom. It's a haiku...because I've been busy. Also, I realise I got muddled up with my days...so this is now day 10.

Days

Some days I feel like
a power station. Some days
I feel like a noose.

Not Even an Introduction

I don't even have a title today, or the will to finish it properly. Now that I've been indulged with a social life again, I can't keep up with the intense demands I've put on my psyche. But I don't expect anyone else to either, and that's why I'm running for Mayor next season. But also, this is a lie. End monologue. 

I start the day sneezing.

There’s nothing like it

to wrench your chest open

and expose your heart

to the cool wind of the morning.

In the milk light

time passes at double urgency.

My mouth makes its way

around various seed compounds

and my pancreas smiles.

I’m getting ready for something big.

We all are. There are songs about it

written inside toilet cubicles,

songs so cryptic that cracking them

would crack the egg at the centre of the earth

and then we’d be sunk, for sure.

But what’s it all about, Alfie?

I don’t know, and this poem

Is proving to be a lot more difficult

to finish that I thought it would be.

Complete Relevance

Evening all...or any of the very few people still reading this epic poetry journey I'm making. Yeah, I know guys, calm down! Poetry is awesome and really a real thing in the public eye! I get that what I'm doing is really stirring shit up here, but just deal, yeah?

No recycled poems today, this is brand new and coming at your eyeballs like the wrong side of a flashlight. Bonsoir!

The Mulberry Initiative

Upon examination the body was found

to contain deeply coded messages

etched onto the shadowy curves of the joints.

They had been written while the body was still alive,

but it’s unlikely to have caused any pain.

We can say things like that, because we actually don’t know anything.

When the bones were cracked open,

seventeen knitting needles were extracted

from their tubular innards.

There are teams working around the clock,

knitting an exact replica of the Coso Range.

In doing this, we hope to find freedom,

at which point, it will be hefted into boxes

shaped like catamarans. These boxes

will be burnt while spectators sing about falling off chairs.

The heart and lungs of the body

were bought by an anonymous bidder,

who chose to pay with their own heart and lungs.

The transaction was carried out online

and the delivery has yet to be received

due to a postal strike over font disputes –

many postal workers are offended

by the use of Times New Roman,

citing it as “old-fashioned”, “ageist” and “racist”.

The trial continues.

At the Carnival

Dear all...

I'm afraid I've had to cheat a bit today because I'm so bloody busy...this is not an entirely new poem. Well, it's actually not new at all. At least not to me. It SHOULD be new to all of you though, and that's what's important, to me at any rate...it also means I can go out and get my love on with Alex, who writes a super sassy blog over at Inferior Design.

Please try to enjoy this, despite my betrayal - I've chosen this poem especially to highlight it. I appreciate your pity. 

Old Friend

My friend and I were friends for a long time. We grew up together in a shanty town just outside London. Not many people knew of its existence and the air of collusion that wove its way through the streets seemed to bind the residents irrevocably.

I’m flicking through the old photographs of us. Me, dressed as a bald man with a limp; she laid on a towel in the rain pretending it’s summer. It causes me a certain pain to remember what happened; pain just below the jugular, as though there’s a small man in there, opening tin cans and throwing the lids around with little regard for his surroundings.

For a long time my friend had acted strangely, pursing her lips when she saw me coming and speaking only in pound coins when I said hello. She started dating an old sea captain from the 1600s. When I tried to tell her it was an impossible relationship, she said, “When the witch watches the walkers in the woods, the woods won’t wake for the walkers.” When I told her I didn’t understand, she laughed and called me a philistine.

The day was June 16^th 1972. I knocked on my friend’s door and asked if she’d like to come out for some Estonian street food. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve fallen into a deep depression. The ocean of my despair will drown you.”

“I’m a good swimmer,” I said.

“Not good enough,” she muttered. Behind her, I could see a dinner party going on with an empty place, just big enough for her to fill. I took our friendship from around my neck and put it in a small cardboard box shaped like a mausoleum. “Bring this back to me when you feel like you want to talk.”

Sixteen years later I saw the box in a charity shop. I opened it and found it empty but for a few blades of grass, which acted as a perfect metaphor for the knives now lodged so firmly in my back. I called my friend on her old number.

“Hello?” she shouted over the Carnival of Betrayal going on in the background.

“It’s me,” I said.

“It was never you,” she replied before putting the phone down like a cancer-ridden Labrador.

I head out into the garden with a box marked old stuff from the past you’ve tried to forget and put it into the hole I dug with my hands last night. Six parts petrol, one part match and the smoke is waving its farewell into the evening.

Return of the Swing

Hey hey hey hey heyyyyyyy! I am....almost drunk. Because I'm back in Edinburgh this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah, for anyone that didn't know, I left Edinburgh. Did I mention that earlier this week? WHO KNOWS?? Not me, for one. Point proven.

Anyway, I'm back and I'm excited and happy. As promised yesterday, today's poem is not dark. But it's not exactly see through. Let's go with playfully opaque. But you know, when you've read it, I think you'll agree, we've all been there.

"Love From" and all that vajazzle.

On Arguing

Due to unforeseen circumstances,

I’m hiding in my swanky inner-city

apartment loft conversion.

Franco, my churro-lipped lover

is standing outside the door shouting,

“Mamacita! Mamacita! Let me in!”

“Go away, Franco,” I shout back.

We had an argument tonight

about the political impact of the burrito

in modern society.

He believes we can improve government

one pinto bean at a time.

I think there’s already enough sour cream there

to last a lifetime.

I pull back the curtains and inspect the city.

Opposite me, a cat pops his head out of the window.

“Where’s my Vera?” he calls.

“Where’s my pig?”

I know that cat,

he plays bass in a jazz band.

His slap is as violently persuasive

as a TV infomercial.

“They’re dead and buried, Johnny,” I say.

“We ate tiny sandwiches at their wake, remember?”

Johnny stares at me for a long time.

Eventually a tear ekes from his eye.

In it, a tiny sandwich evokes itself.

Franco bangs on the door

in an insistent club anthem.

I find myself lost in ecstasy

and everything is forgiven

in the sweaty embrace of its whirlwind

so I let him in again.

As Johnny has taught us,

life is too short for political debate

amongst ourselves

and the Mexicans we’re in love with. 

Particular Activity

Hello and welcome to Day FOUR of your life.

I often like to listen in to other people's conversations when I'm on the bus and such like and today's poem is based on a little conversation I overheard. I've elaborated on most (all) of it. I was going to write a longer introduction, but Casualty is on now, so that's IT.

Preparations

“I’ve seen a lot of things,”

said the girl on the bus,

talking to her girlfriends.

“Too many things

as far as most people are concerned.

I once saw a wasp stinging a pig’s teat.

It was poignant,

but I got over it.

I come from good stock.

I’ll not be sent out as glue.”

The bus was clear, light.

It was filled with summer endings,

there was a scent of Soltan factor 5.

“When I get married,

I want everything to reek of perfection.

If anyone spoils it,

I will have them slaughtered;

brutally and immediately.”

Their bags were stuffed

with bridal accoutrements.

When one of the friends

reached up and scratched her arm,

the other said, “Don’t do that,

you’ll ruin yourself before my big day.”

“And another thing,” she continued.

“If you wear a yellow dress

with a white cardigan,

you’ll look like a child.

I don’t want you to look like a child

when I get married;

that would be ridiculous,” she said,

painting fast food icons

onto her fingernails.

“This wedding should be like a Range Rover:

as unnecessarily large as possible.

I want this wedding

to make us look small and insignificant,

so we can grow together

throughout the marriage.”

She held out her hand

and admired her artistry.

“I’ve stared at other people’s food

for a long time.

Somehow it doesn’t seem real

unless I’m the one eating it.

That’s how I know,

I’ll make the perfect wife.”

When they got off the bus,

they left the day behind, the sun dipping

under the Earth’s eyelid,

into the strange milk of twilight.

Fossil Records

Hey gang! 

Welcome to day 3, which for most of you is almost over, though for some is just beginning. And that's the point I'd like to run with in my poem for the day...BEGINNING. Now I'm not really one for evolution; we all know the dinosaur bones were just an elaborate rouse hewn of plaster of Paris, and that lobster eyes hold the key to the secrets of intelligent design...SO here's my take on the early days of one of the creatures we share the Earth with. Can't be that far off, can it?

A Brief History of the Long-Toed Salamander

It started with a nubbin,

black and slovenly.

And then it rained.

In the water

there were little pockets

filled with dollar bills.

The nubbin went to Macy’s

and bought two pairs

of snazzy boots,

proclaiming them to be

the hot dammin’est boots

it ever did see.

It paraded through the sagebrush plains,

basking in the attentions of the sun.

“Hot damn,” said the sun.

“Ain’t you just a surprise.”

And with that,

the nubbin gained sneak skills.

In the winter

the nubbin stored food on its back;

tins of Spaghetti-O’s and pineapple slices.

So heavy were they

that the nubbin crawled to a cave

and collapse with exhaustion.

When it awoke,

the tins had melted

into a neat black tail

and the glistening spoon of a head

that perfectly matched

those darling bootees.

Nowadays the nubbin works in a meat factory.

Inflation makes prancing about in the sand

a difficult buck to hang onto.

At night it opens up a can of Budweiser,

puts on its boots

and shoots a gun at the television,

thinking about the desert,

wishing it would rain again.