escape

7-11 stores, sterile and reliable, cool as refrigerated chocolate

rows of products

vibrate
tingle

like a mushroom trip

wrapped in technicolour packaging

shiny floors make your feet look dirty

blackened roadstained toes and broken sandals

red bull for kicks and amphetamine extras

5am salvation, whisky hallucinations

until the 10am wakeup calls

all sugary sweet and tinged with acrid marijuana

whis

per

ing and tickling in the back of the throat

lending hazy bubbles to disperse the everwilling threat of clarity

lending poetic licence to boat trips and mountain tops and exploding diamond skies

burroughing through lungs diving deeper

on phosphorescent coral trips

horizontal on decks with fishermen promises

jellyfish ridden swim missions

diving from piers

fish in your underwear going slip-slop-flippety-flap

in the yelping night

which sleeps in bedbug mattress itching fits

which wakes with clouded views through mosquito nets

reality tempered in white transparency

confusing the mornings

confused sunblared outdoors

screams -

moto!

moto!

for straddled speeded insanities

past the shopfronts and stalls

past the flashing light stop sign roundabout

faster into oblivion mountains

with the fallside trees

and waterfall themepark slides

carved off the side of a mountain

falling

falling

falling into oblivious oceans

all happy-high and giggling

all imagined notebook frenzies to record

all endless summers which stretch past the night

into the morning

and keep burning like after image flashbacks

white light retinas

vibrate

and

tingle.

forgetting it

.

brautigan is writing about women
who don’t love him anymore
whose fingers he cannot forget
sadness washed down with acrid black coffee
in the muttered morning hours.

I didn’t want to write about loving
losing
misery with sidetinged loneliness
damp, like old spinach
and bitter,
like me.

so I started a poem about summer
where I reminisced:
first flushes of sunbeams on grubby kerbs
kids demanding cigarettes
in Pilrig park
like jakies on a comedown
ale on the grass
and the fluttering light through the open gallery windows -

where I sat listening to your guitar.

and there I ran out of things to say
but not before I noticed that brautigan was writing about
women
and that turned out well
so I tried a girlfriend
instead.

for c, a personal aquaintance of The Stupids

Today started with The Stupids. The Stupids creep up on you when you know you deserve to expect it. Well, they’re not even that good at creeping actually. The Stupids whump onto your eyelids at the first sign of waking and stain the entire morning with coffee-table bruised shins and an inability to read mail. What The Stupids really thrive on is lack of caffeine. Then they giggle around your head with all the final tcp vestiges and induce a persistent narcolepsy in your frontal lobes. Damn Stupids.

Fittingly, on this day where The Stupids were attempting to take over, turn all the philosophical essay writing missions into dribble, I was out of coffee. Time to go shopping.

Outside was bright and shiny and filled with morning tendencies which I found vaguely terrifying. I bumbled to Fresh Choice, with their rack of “fresh” fruit and veg dumped unceremoniously on Clerk Street to rot and shrivel among the Special Brew morning drunks and oversubscribed tanning studios. This morning, next to the 69p avocado tray and shrink wrapped oranges, the piece-de-la-resistance: peaches.

“Fresh Peaches” said the Fresh Choice sign.
“Yum yum,” said The Stupids.
“Yum yum,” said Jane.

The Fresh Choice man understands. He has seen many things since they became local saviours for Blackwood Crescent. There have been 9.55pm rushes for extra-strength cider, giggled rizla and crisps missions, 8am Sunday morning Tenants pleas, slouching come-down pizza missions. He is not the hangover man though, that honour is bestowed upon Mingtons in respect of their favourable proximity. The Mingtons’ man does not sell me peaches for breakfast, extra-strength cider, or the fine array of cardamom pods, chillies and cumin seeds Mr Fresh Choice displays so proudly. But he is within slippers distance of the flat, does not require facing the horror of Clerk Street mornings, and stocks Heinz spaghetti hoops to cure what ails you. However, The Stupids are not a hangover, and this morning I needed more than his shoddy offerings. So there I was in Fresh Choice, lurking round the bread aisle. Clingfilmed croissants. Tasty.

The caffeine front was less forthcoming. Nescafe gold blend; Nescafe Arabica; Nescafe supersize; Café Direct decaf. Le sigh. Mr Fresh Choice did not understand. “You want cheaper?” I stared dolefully at the Nescafe. The Stupids held up the moral conscience card with a triumphant flourish, mockingly headlocking any sensible thought processes which tried to fight their way out. Farewell morning. Maybe there are other shops.

Spar did not understand either. I told them of my morning caffeine dilemmas. The Spar man refused to grasp to concept of Fair Trade decaf.

“You know they employ African children to crush the caffeine from the beans with their bare toes. It’s all a con. Just buy the fucking Nescafe”

Stupids – 2 : Jane – 0.




to be continued post-coffee, post stupids, when the thought processes kick in once more.

incongruity

The alcoholic’s life is incongruous
So are nuns outdoors at 4am
Greasy tracksuits glistening under candlelight
Ladybirds on telephone receivers

“Cats don’t belong on tables”

Well, there are many things which don’t belong…

Tweed elbows perched anywhere
Forks in handbags
Two piece suits with skinned knees
Port left in the bottle

(Improbably)

Men’s shoes on my bedroom floor
Fingers in my bra straps
And your tongue

(Inexplicably)

In my mouth.

when the cellos kick in

Today I am going to wake up when the cellos kick in.
I will lean out of bed just as far as is possible while still clutching the duvet round me for warmth and tug-flick at the curtains until a stream of light hits the bed and I can relax again, knowing I won’t drift back instantly into hazed myopic visions. I will lie there for a few minutes, tipping my head back to see if the sun is shining over the tops of the tenements and if the neighbours are undressing in their bedrooms. Eventually, I will come to comprehension and pull myself to the kitchen and bumble round the kettle cursing for my favourite mug, the chunky 50s diner “Try our coffee, It’s delicious” mug. Somehow the kettle will boil and the coffee will be stirred into boiling water and I will return to the bedroom with a steaming cup of caffeinated goodness. I will put on house clothes, baggy trousers and a vest, but paint my lips unnecessarily in red and kohl the eyes. Just for giggles, and looking in the mirror. At some point by now, I will have thwacked the stereo into playing, some guitar driven morning shouting music to sort me out. Perhaps if when I first part the curtains there are shafts of blue and the grey stone is reverberating in the light, I will leap out of bed then instead, with full volume tunes and spacked underwear dancing. But it’s unlikely. Always the coffee first, then all else follows. I will sit down at my computer eventually, check my emails and think about the day. Whether I will write or attend classes or buy courgettes and avocadoes or get high and draw beautiful women or start the day with wine just for experiments sake, just because Buckowski did. At this time, providing I have woken before lunch, everything will seem stretched out and endless through the long afternoon and evening, just waiting for something to happen. In all likelihood, nothing much will happen today. It’s a Monday, and Valentine’s day no less, not the kind of day where mountains get climbed, that’s for sure. But people are saved in different ways, and Mondays can be days of small victories. Sometimes. Perhaps the first chapter will get written, or I’ll find a Raymond Carver anthology in the bargain bin of the charity shop. Perhaps I’ll listen to this album on repeat until dinnertime, then watch the news and consider the evening’s plans. Who can tell? It’s enough to know that those thoughts are there, all enticed by the prospect of fruition. It’s enough to know that when the cellos kick in, I will wake up and there will be the day. Waiting.

to hell with all this hip. beautiful. shit.

To hell with torment that sounds poetic
Because it’s said by people who are attractive
Or that sounds tragic
Because it’s from those who are not

To hell with your phonecalls
And expectations
Which make me chew the edges of my fingers with guilt
So my hands look unattractive in the morning

To hell with your staying in
And sobriety
To the black marker outlines of judgement
Round your every word

To hell with not drinking flat beer
Because it is flat
And you are used to better

To hell with not smoking at 5am
Because you’re precocious
And your life is worth more than cancer wards
And tracheal examinations

To hell with you not replying
And the twenty eight times I check my email a day
For the crap and mundanities
You would deign to send me
To turn the keyboard to dribbles
It’s fucking rude.

To hell with your rejections
That you offer out like candy
Because you’re bitter with experience
And your pleasures in playing editor
Who gets to decide

To hell with my typing after a cigarette
And the inability to spell
It induces in my fingers

To hell with you thinking
I’m always on drugs
Because you’re scared to dance
Like you mean it




add your own hell here...