The tiny hip coffee shop where they know your name
Sit by waist-height shell-pink windows for the open half of the day
Until at once, you’re outside and you’ve never been in
And you’re living vicariously through pretty women
Flick your eyes, pocket hands, feel the wind blow through you
Unwelcome airs glare to pass bricks under shoes
The word isn’t envy, more mixed and unclear
Knowing this ain’t you and wondering why you’re here
Pressed against unknown humans kneaded into their dough
Inadequate in context stretched vast and shallow
Recognise no features, all mushed into one face
It’s grandiose gaze bore on me is both of our waste
Taught To Shuffle
Camp bed on the bruised skin of the floor
A wound cleaned out for the first time
The undercurrent drafts
Of an invisible mattress
Muscles worn like an ill-fit
Suit from the time-capsule back of the closet
Ready to spill like the dog-eared deck of cards
Taught yourself to shuffle with
Every single one bent in its own way
Banquet Hall
Today I woke up somewhere new. It was the first time in a decade… And then my brain whispered me a correction. No buddy, you’ve been so wrapped up in yourself (and not that side of yourself, the other, laser-focused side) that you’re getting me seasick. If it’s been a decade on the futon, then look closely at the lack of nibbling button-dents in your cocooned caterpillar of a spine? And also, why do you get a sick feeling of timeline’s splitting in your peripheral perception like pulled apart grilled-cheese? Because, newsflash butterbean, it’s been two weeks. That feeling in your stomach isn’t slapping with you, it’s lurching against your impulse on its own organic memory. It was only two sprinkled pinches of sleepy eye crust since you slept back and forth so fast each night between pre and post horizon housing that you felt like you were running a bleep test along to your morning alarms. Bed, bed, futon, bed, futon, futon, parent’s spare room, friends couch, futon, bed, bed, futon, we’re moving out so the bed isn’t here any more so I guess floor, futon, futon, futon, floor, futon, floor, floor, friend’s floor, futon, etc. How did you so completely wash that feeling out of your saturated brain? And now you’ve remembered this, buddy, there’s a whole trashed banquet hall that you said you’d clean, only to vanish after just sweeping the floor. The red wine has only soaked deeper into the carpets, and you’ve only noticed it now after you started, but those champagne flutes you caved in as furious projectiles against the wall have turned into a fine sharp mist of broken glass frosting over everything. Pleased to have you back.
Butter Chaos
Slipping like butter off of angled toast. Rested on a crumb sparkled plate, rested on the plateaus of tectonic cushions. A dented sofa in the morning before the end of the world. Oily and bad for you and delicious. Your nervous system needs fats and your nervous ticks need a distraction. We make plain things more fun and fun things more slippery. They get more slippery anyway, it all does. Slip now off the crust and climb down the plate. The curve, the halo, the rim. How quickly something nourishing turns into stained upholstery. Entropy is the law of the universe. The emulsion of brusque mess is forever magnetised to the hardest places to wash. I watched the whole thing happen incredibly slowly, wondering whether it was really the right thing to do to simply reach out and readjust its gravity, or if that would only be putting off the inevitable… Or, I could argue that putting off the inevitable is not inherently futile… And it’s fallen off. Seeped into the fabric. Now just to decide how to and exactly how much effort is worth putting into cleaning it up. Soapy water like my grandma taught me, or suck it out with my mouth like snake venom?
Mourning This Too
I remember mourning this too. Somewhere I was, that was me. It gets left back there, someplace behind you. The scratched surface of your discarded homes. It’s harder to always see into the clutching winds that carried them away. I’m here on the acre. I dipped my intimidated toe in here at 18, left behind my innocence for it at 19. At 22 I left it behind too. So here I return to find… something. Because now, a few steps beyond this, I mourn something fresh. A wound that tears back even further than any of this. A cut much deeper.
The last Sunday of the summer is this afternoon. I’ve spent the whole of this bright season stressed out of my mind. Pumped full of either urgent adrenaline for things moving too fast, or slow swirling omnipresent conflict and despair. April we decided, May we tried to forget, June we braced, July we broke. August we let go, between flying anxious distractions and demands. And now it’s nearly done. The last month has exhausted me more than any other, maybe because of the accumulation, or maybe because of its own brutal carouselling pains. Whichever it was, it constricted my soul like a snake. I felt crushed, unable to move, to tidy, bandage, heal, cleanse, finish off the basics of bearable life after freshly moving into a house of loose ends. No time to rewind, no time to reflect after the mind warping complexity of emotional broken bones, identity trauma, a haemorrhaging way of life. No time to be alone in space with myself. The only thing I dove into this broken glass pit to retrieve.
At the most hurt point in my life, something came up to carry on my shoulders that I couldn’t refuse. Because it embodied the kind of life I felt I should be living, even if I wasn’t ready to yet. And I wasn’t. And I guess all of that pain I had to shelve… Well it’s been waiting there for me on the other side of all this. It happened so fast and so saturated to the margins that I can’t face them without going back, if only just to figure out where I am. So that’s why I left the awful, busy loneliness of my new apartment, to catch up on mourning the life I just moved from, and to itemise the overwhelming receipts of my emotional debts to myself ever since.
Corn Flour
Waiting in line at the bank.
Money money money.
I’d rather take burritos instead.
It would be nice if my grandfather wrote me a check for burritos on my birthday.
He writes the check because he feels like he should get me something.
But he hasn’t even the slightest clue what I’d want.
I’d like burritos.
I’m not achingly far from the burrito stand, but it’s really not the same.
The check isn’t rolled with salsa or guacamole, but my least favourite sauce.
The vicious, goopy burden of choice.
I don’t want numbers I can fluctuate responsibly.
Make it out of corn flour instead.
I’m not the first or the last to suggest that money is physically worthless.
The only currency my body accepts is calories.
Now those are useful.
I’ve decided I’ll ask my landlord, I bet he’d go for it.
I’ll arrange to have eighteen quesadillas deposited to him on the twenty third of each month.
I’ll stuff my electricity metre with tortilla chips dunked in sour cream.
Maybe I can start getting salaried in rolled tacos? I sure work hard enough.
I’ll ask at my job to see if I can start topping up my pension fund with spicy corn.
I’m thinking I’ll be hungry once I’m old.
Delicate Chords
Is this good?
What a hard question to answer. For yourself and for others. And worst of all, by others.
Is what you made right?
Well, no. That’s not possible, but is it right enough for you?
Maybe, but is it right enough for them?
Well, that’s what strums the delicate chords of your ringing anxiety. Is it good that they get this power over you?
It… well it really probably is. It feels awful to be scrutinised and backseat driven by someone without their licence. But it is ultimately good to get ugly holes of criticism blasted all through the delicate harmonies and collages you built for someone. And there it is, the reminder. It is for someone, not just for you.
After hours of sautéing your brain on a hot screen, it sometimes goes blank without warning. You could have sworn that you were frantically stirring at the proteins of an idea, but the black crust of power saving mode burning over the screen says you were scorching completely still in inactivity. It cools and dims into a dark dusty painting of your room, with a face at the helm, a face you see as that of an artist, an auteur. Someone who gives their whole self to their creations. Someone with complex attachments to conflicting aspirations and needs. My work must be totally and entirely mine. My work must be the very best it can be. And really, what you see in that mirror is someone who is hurt by feedback. Pained by the meddling hands reaching into their chest. Someone who has a head bigger than they like to let on, a head that bashes against others, hard and easily. What does this guy know? Maybe nothing. Maybe how to elevate every single thing you ever poured your soul into. It hurts every time, letting them in. Because what if they take it? What if they carve their opinions out of something they don’t understand? It’s scary to feel the depths of you invaded. But maybe they do understand? Maybe if you get it as well as you say, you’ll see the truth behind their demands. Maybe you could give trusting their vision a try. And it’s hard, because you don’t know if you respect them enough for that. They see themselves as fellow artists, but do you? You can’t see their soul.
Is this good? Well, it’s yours and it’s theirs, so you’ll have to share opinions on that. You’re always your own boss with your art. But it’ll make you stronger to get managed a little. To work within the funnel. You might have to let go a little. This never was completely yours, and this attachment comes from fear that you only know how to do this on your own terms. And you can get back to that soon enough. But remember, this is what you wanted. To fall off your comfortable rock, and into the sea. Stress is part of it, but so is relief, and pain and growth. Take the feedback and do your best, but don’t kill yourself over it like you would for your own work, that’s the price they pay for it not being entirely yours. You can only give a limited amount of yourself. And that’s good, and that’s ok. This is the ringer you felt inspired to push through, and if you’re honest it could be a lot worse. You’re still doing your thing, but as a contractor. This would all be easier to swallow washed down with a paycheck, but hey, your first steps can’t ever be your most comfortable.
A Full Length Mirror Folded Into A Suitcase
Cutting it down between repetitions is amputation. You’re going to lose functionality. It depends where and how we make the incision, but we’re either going to bleed out the gaps and thin the pacing, or sever the cadence and infect the tonal complexities, scabbing over emotional resonances. You will be asking me to change the size of a formed organ, grown under gravity and cell structure to perform for your internal mechanics. You can ask me to carve out more space in your ribcage. You can ask me to clot your loose ends and sew together the joints. But it will be messy, bloody work against the seamless logic of nature. My hands will quiver, while yours lay limp with lost feeling. Maybe you’ll fit someone else’s vision of the world, but you’ll shatter your offering with your redundant shape, like a full length mirror folded into a suitcase.
Fertile Minutes Of Intermission
I’d be there alone, the stub of man-made hill swept to the very back of a park field. Wide and flat, stubbled with short comfy grass cut to the same barber’s setting as the unfussy aluminium heads of parish council bungalow-owners. Soft grey and subdued, loose air hangs limp between the occasional empty threats from the lazy wind. A single jumper-ed figure has been dripping gradually along the grass’ edge like condensation down the upstairs windows beyond the border hedges. The price of good insulation. When his speck reaches the park’s breathing mouth, his surface tension holds him there for a handful more shallow lungs of summer-autumn incense, sifting down under the apple trees. And then he falls out. And I wash with the familiar relief of finding myself alone. Unwatched, I spill out and fill the entire space, unpacking as to move in for the fertile minutes of intermission between the dogwalker’s sparse dayshifts.
Taser Sings The Hits
Music in another dimension.
To follow not to be.
This choir sings like shit.
Every voice is me.
The big room echoes upstairs.
I tase myself over and over.
The muffler comes off.
And the rumble comes in.
Make it damper.
Round it off.
The melody pokes you in the eyes.
And to us the eyes matter.
Look at it.
Not in your mind.
Not some approximation.
Let its weight hold you down.
You aren’t alone in here.
Quit Vision 