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 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 believe in words;
I’m just not a fan.
And I sleep too few hours—
just enough to realise ‘I don’t exist’
is a self-refuting idea that I’ve deserved
after half a century of procrastination
and warm saline gargling—still convinced
that time has tricked me,
leaving me uncomfortable behind
the greatest invention of all:
lined curtains.
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Sometimes I don’t remember
to breathe, waking up
in the middle of dreaming about Thriday
to answer the call
of a voiding anaphora—
Lady Nocturia—a girl with a big nose
trying on my latest peekaboo trochees
and fortune-cookie wisdom,
where the magical word ‘suppose’
might put on high alert the unassuming,
unaccustomed to word scavenging.
At least she never offers the fiat currency
sung by the god of others’ idolatry
and all the proponents,
where a Spider-Man kiss lands
as an awfully lively practical joke
in a reluctantly diagnosed deepity
after years of accumulated damage—
how very humane of her—
once a sudden rain washes the easel
with dark pastels and a splash of ink.
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Is life unisex, like an indie band
you vaguely remember from a film
watched with the girl next door—
the quiet one, painting swimming pools
full of sea wasps and talking
about second choices, whom you admired
for her freckles and occasional mischief,
and who was mostly indifferent,
though casually cruel—your only
intended girlfriend?
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I have no particular thoughts
on logic, which is logical
since I’m not a scholar—not a smidgen
of salonnière upbringing either—
yet the wainscot brothel in my study
lacks no Montague, or Boole, or Frege.
Ultimately, I could only devote myself
to discovering how many gods died
in a demitasse of mocha.
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A coward, a lazy and selfish one—a man
(doesn’t sound particularly bad in earnest,
a little wry, perhaps)—a flat noun, striving
to define the gap between ‘me’ and ‘mine’,
yet barely passing by the em dash, like the man
of every Raphaelite and Ogilvy, only dozing off
in old age, never quite striking the right chord.
And I’m still not sure if that’s hubris or abjection.
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I guess I’m no longer looking for anything—
anything in particular, at least
(subject to the occasional surprise).
Perhaps that’s why I have settled on films
with Miss Kendrick—somewhere along the way,
I left behind a pile of first-edition hardbacks,
and my collection of Ikea nutcrackers fell victim
to the financial proceedings—the final stage
of love.
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A lifelong cinephile,
I no longer watch films—
I’m perfectly content
with trailers.
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