So They Say: the spasticity of time and the meaninglessness of everything

A Digestion of Slaughterhouse Five

Listen, they have lost their time.

It is as useful to write an anti-glacier novel as it is to write an anti-war novel. Without wars there would be less art. Less art is less humanity and less progress in the sphere of the humane. And more war. Their art is not possible without a dance with death.

So they say.

Their truth is discovered among the dead. They have no other truth. The only use of their wars, and lives, is death. They are afraid. Their war is an art form of history, to be studied leisurely in warm rooms with loosened ties and full stomachs.  Their truth is dead.

So they say.

A Smooth Beginning

It’s in the liver he says. I shiver, or is it quiver? when I think of it sitting there, ticking, an unheard black clock. Bare. I feel some sort of stare in the end of my fingers. In my nails. The eyes of time make me fidget. If I had a tail it would be between my legs. That’s a given. The unknowable is now known. But not forgiven. I have a date of departure. The waiting is over, I am a futureless feature. I am a dying creature. How time has slowed down now. Every moment is as infinite as I like it to be.

From here to there

Envelopment

Envelopment

Hands are tied to time a threat

let it in or in it let

Make believe is what is seen

undo the leaves of what I’ve been

Box of shadows and future tense

hands a furniture face a fence

Out and in same sides I doubt

the measured feels no voice to shout

Alone to rise and bones to fall

nothingness holds a lonesome call

Heart unfolded fate and colour, I my universe my only lover

Head of felt sees sight of sins

knees of knelt no saviour brings

King of skin of bloody groan

I a breathing of mean unknown

The line of life a straightened cross

just as judged I am nothing lost

The atom might of lighted eyes

hears cloud of cries and cradle lies

All I done I done in good stead

all I lived I lived without dread

Nothing today of tomorrow be part

nothing said can save my depart.

Poem for a man who lost his son in the Iraq war

The love of my life

The world has stopped turning
The clocks have gone mad
The buses won’t stop
And the planes won’t land.

He was the love of my life
He was the apple of my core
He was the sun of my light
And today he is no more

My heart, my kidney
My little boy son
The world has not stopped
But he has impossibly gone

 

Death by Williams Carlos Williams (+ doodle)

I love the the first line of this poem, and have done since I was 18. Dog, death and potatoes. A lovely mixture.

An old favourite poem by Dylan Thomas

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives the Flower

poem for my wife and child

i carry your heart with me by e.e.cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

This morning I pinched an inch from nothingness

This morning I pinched an inch from nothingness. It came away in my hands. Like crackling from an over roasted pig. The mornings in my house open with such optimism, like the opening night of a new musical, yet unmauled by critics.

I dance around the breakfast table like a circus bear preparing bacon and eggs for me and her, cereal and bread for the kids, pretending not to hear the sharp whip of the bony aged man in the corner. The crazies in the eye of my beholder hang off my shoulders but the kids can’t see them. Nor can she with her lank eyes. But we all feel their presence in my trembling grins stretched over tea full mugs and strawberry painted toasts.

The Terminal Squad

I can’t tell you what this fucking feels like. At 69 to be stuck in some traffic jam in shit hot sunshine trying to get across town to join my few remaining mates for a celebratory drink. We’re not really celebrating much, just the fact that we are still alive and able to fucking meet up in a bar across town for a celebratory drink if we want. And obviously to take our minds of the death which is just around the corner. None of us know how long or tight the bend is, but we know we are leaning into that bastard bend. We know that any moment any spasm or recently discovered pain could be the signal for the time keeper’s fat wrist to flick the switch on his watch, or whatever the fuck he uses to count us down to death, and start the tick tick tock of our last days.

Wants by Philip Larkin

It’s good round here

It’s good round here. I can’t remember. Was it today or yesterday. I don’t remember as it makes no difference really round here. One day is pretty much the same as any other. Life’s days ebb away soundlessly. No one notices the old turning older. Only babies grow. Only babies change. Here nothing is the same but nothing changes. I see nothing most days. Most days I think nothing. Nothing I can remember anyhow. And I, apparently, have a photographic memory. But there’s nothing to photograph round here. Therefore I guess that is why I don’t remember much. There’s nothing much to remember. Its good round here I tell.

Wanting

I’m not sure why I am here. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I have done is what I mean. We’ve all done things we shouldn’t have. I don’t think I deserve this though. This room. What is this room? I’m just waiting. Waiting for something but I don’t know what. I have seen no one. I have heard things though. Sounds. Mechanical sounds. I have heard sounds I can’t describe. Sounds of bone against steel. I have heard similar sounds in butchers.

Win & Lin Forever

The small thin boy, whose mother left him and went to heaven last summer, never went out without his snorkel, mask and flippers.

When anyone asked the small thin boy why he wore his snorkel, mask and flippers all the time he just mumbled that he was in training, so it was best he wore them at all times. He never told anyone what he was in training for. Not even his Nana.

He was a strange sight to the people of the small village next to the sea where he lived, and a lot of the people laughed and pointed at him at first. But after a few months they got used to seeing the little boy whose mother left him and went to heaven last summer with his snorkel, mask and flippers on all the time, and they got used to hearing the slow calm sound of his flippers flip flopping on their roads.

The supermarket had become a hell hole

The supermarket had become a hell hole. Competing feelings of guilt, shame, fear, low self-esteem. A wonder around the aisles caused a massive bout of self analysis and questioning.

Did he not care for the plight of the banana growers of South America?

Cocaine flush

metal crushed to the pulp of mush

cained session of cocained flush

rolled notes silver noses

I knew you were you when I saw you

I knew you were you when I saw you. I couldn’t help but go up to you and ask you who you were. I knew of course. But did you? I could tell your eyes were made in my vision. It took a while but you saw it too.

Lady luck

If it’s ever going to be Jack’s day it’s gonna have to be today. He can feel it in his bones this morning as he waits outside for opening. His knee is giving him jip and making the grinding noise it only does on special days. Something is up today he knows it. The jackpot hasn’t been won on machine 2 for a month now and all he needs is a little luck and his problems will be behind him.

4.

I think I had a need for love.

I think I had a need for love. More love than any mother could give, or any friend, the love that only complete strangers can give you. The  love of superiority, of individuality, of being pointed out to visiting aliens as one of the ‘special humans’

Other Ps

a scrap or scrape of matt or shine

a scrap or scrape of matt or shine

body and wood that light mistook

She’s too beautiful to be pretty

She’s too beautiful to be pretty, you said she was pretty! whispered my mum once Celia had gone to the bathroom. There’s air freshener under the sink she shouted after her in the same breath.

Elvis has skinny legs

I can’t believe I’m not me. They looked me over and told me so. I’m not the me I think I am they said. I am a me, just not that one they added. How could that be? All this time, all this life, and I am no where it seems. And if I am not the me I think I am, what me am I ?

Poemitos

the lips of ships

the lips of ships

touch at the hull of hips

where the sand’s of bells and

Pale Blue Dot