all the trinkets of the day
I went to Poundland the other day,
full of contraptions made in China,
and a thought struck me: if back in the day
a one-pound coin—called a sovereign—
had found its way into Tommy More’s pocket,
could he have bought a Ming celadon for mammy,
not just a hex key set for himself?
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I masturbate before going to sleep—
such a perfectly unremarkable statement,
and yet it would evoke a look of bewilderment,
embarrassment even, were I to say it outright,
unlike mentioning that I brush my teeth after every meal
or leisurely read The Diary of Samuel Pepys
at lunchtime.
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I envy those who venture forth
into the seagulls’ hunting ground—
also known as the Morrisons car park—
with a Chicken Caesar Wrap
or a sausage roll in their hands, as if they knew
that nociception is not the pain
of appetitions I only know
from a thesaurus.
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I filled the cabinet above the toilet
with rows of loo rolls—three-ply,
enriched with lotion and fragrance;
it is the perfect elegant paper,
or at least that’s what the description
on the back of the packaging says.
Quite the frippery for a derrière—
even one as fine as a poet’s.
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I’ve never been good at living;
with every letter—a hostage to schedule,
too petty for heroic self-restraint,
too indolent to be determined about anything—
I wonder what’s better: to share a rib
or bad breath in a rented flat, so refreshingly inhospitable,
like one of those polite expressions we use
when depicting a whore in a yellow poncho
who happens to be the only one who knows
that promiscuity wears sweat like a coat of arms
and ‘no’ is not the same as ‘I don’t think so’,
leaving me with Keats and table tennis as the Last Rites
or another Tuesday.
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I like mashed neeps and tatties
and odd locutions—the otiose pursuits
of an idle mind in the age of Catullus—
yet, a creature of modest means,
the day I discovered the fear of ignorance,
I asked, ‘What if we no longer try
making our utterances perspicuous to ourselves?’—
fully aware that I can’t quite see the difference
between a rose and a cauliflower.
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Anger is not the offspring of circumstance;
it is born out of unsolicited existence
in a panopticon, where we are free
to role-play yesterday with a descant dawn—
for the sake of tomorrow that never quite happens
in the realm of phonetic empathy and burnt dinners
triggering the fire alarm in the tenement every other day.
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There are words, though distant,
that make me weep;
always;
and despite learning new ones,
short of stage directions—
as if coughing verbiage dyed in royal blue were my destiny—
I’m still unsure if the expression I intend to use
is sufficiently peculiar to pass
the ‘neither nor’ mark.
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I have never tasted onigiri
seasoned with furtive tears
nor horumon grilled as a will,
yet with my ageing heart
professionally demolished
by I Want To Eat Your Pancreas,
how can I still be surprised
that in kanji, even whining
might look like a rapture?
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