deep seated urban decay

the first time i read this i saw: "oppressive society crashes into the crawling pen". which is nice.

television is the opiate of the masses

smash your screens...

What would Descartes do?

On a day like this, I wake up wondering; what would Descartes do? I expect if he were me and woke here, when the sky isn’t quite sunshine and the morning isn’t quite over, he would curse himself for sleeping so late. He had important thoughts which needed to be considered, so getting up was pretty important. And then? I wonder if he would make himself coffee and put on clean underwear, or whether he’d tumble out of bed urgently with words and notebooks to record everything that happened in his sleep, discover whether or not he really was dreaming. I would like to know. It would be nice to have something to model my mornings on, to see if it resulted in my own genius utterances and spasms of recognition. Perhaps he would go for a walk to clear his mind. It might work, but first there would need to be the daily debacle of dressing, washing, breakfast…and before you know it all of last night’s thoughts are tangled up in toothpaste and normalities. So perhaps not. I do know, however, that there are things which Descartes would not do. He would not, for example, dance round a bedroom in his underwear all caffeine high, or lazily check his emails, or put on lipstick. So there’s a start to take note of. Maybe on a day like this Descartes would not get up at all. Perhaps he would sit up in bed and start to think, and carry on thinking all day, while children learned arithmetic on blackboards, and old women bought squashed tomatoes in markets, and wives conducted seedy and tawdry affairs, and people ate and washed and talked and drank and smoked and kissed and danced, think until the sun set again, and still not sort it all out. It seems a shame to miss out on the joy of these daily mundanities, even if there is the ultimate nature of reality to be considered. But then again, I’m not Descartes, and the sun is starting to shine behind the clouds. Time for more coffee.

things which bother you

.

You left without declarations or promises
And that irritated me
So I sat in my room thinking
Of things
Which irritate me:

Like smoking cigarettes in summer
When it’s too warm and too bright to see your exhalations
And you feel cheated
Giving up seven minutes of your life
When you can’t watch the smoke rings

Like ash stains on the skirt
You intended to wear
To pick two pence coins from the ground
To pretend you have an ass worth writing about

Like permanent marker scrawled inanities on your arm
When you’ve been drunk for a week
And too hungover to wash

These are things which bother you
When all the mornings start after lunch
Too late to brush your teeth
And end with empty bottles and full ashtrays

But tonight I’m thinking of much more important things
Like sandwiches with avocadoes
And sunshine on puke-stained streets
When cigarette butts cower in the gutters
Like sunshine in February
When summer is coming

your cigarette

.

The cigarette you rolled before you left
Is still in my room
I wouldn’t smoke
But it’s in my ashtray
And it’s 5am
And you left.

I know if I smoke your roaches and down the dregs of wine
And pass out in front of the computer
With dribbled words
That make less sense in sobriety
Then I will wake
With a room which smells foul
But charmed
And a mouth that tastes like the days
When we drank till dawn
And like socks, cement and fenugreek.

I think that it’s ok
And that I’d rather wake with your discrepancies
Seeping into my walls
Than with an optimism
That will glance at the light
From the shoddily pulled curtains
And bubble like milk left out too long
Tingeing the afternoon
With stale disappointment
And bored opportunity.

I would rather finish your cigarette
And taste bad
And remember
Than sleep soundly under covers of sticky dreams
And try to forget