Sometimes I yearn for days with a gentle flavour,
like Thriday—marking the upcoming long weekend—
or a late birthday eve when I have to count out
a few dozen candles to decorate the cake.
I guess I’m starting to get tired of the daily toddling
from one lamppost to another, consumed by the desire
to bargain, whether it’s relationships in decay
or evening classes in applied thanatology.
I can’t stand waffling on
and have always appreciated the brevity of style,
but even for me a simple ‘I love you’ won’t cut it anymore—
I’ve learnt my lesson.
Perhaps next time just say
nothing,
whoever you are.
Wrapped in a blanket,
I pass the morning (it’s noon already?!)
with GLS’s letters and a piece of flatbread
with peanut butter and dried apricots
since peeping at long bygone lives
and inventing odd dishes is the most I can do
while I wait for the final act of misfortune
I brought upon myself when, in a hormonal haze,
I followed tradition and a state-sanctioned
cursed primal urge.
Which goes better with afternoon tea—
yellowcake or magpie?
Does a barber make the barbed wire
to crown a wooden head after the March equinox?
What’s my pleasure if you’re welcome
is never yours?
And so you explain the intricacies of English
for forty quid an hour, but truth be told,
the naive questions of a rebooted life novice
wouldn’t pique your curiosity enough
to answer the one he really wants to ask:
Oughtn’t you to be in love?
It is such a decent vice to have,
or at least an interesting one,
like a minor stroke or veisalgia,
and once you’ve got over it,
you don’t even need a physician
or a chemist—just a solicitor
and perhaps a poet.
Sometimes you have to have faith in yourself,
even when the mirror screams ‘old and ugly’
and your desire for sex—meaningless or otherwise—
no longer goes beyond the topic of an article in a rag
casually opened while waiting at the hairdresser’s,
or so they say, and there may be some truth to it—
atheists decorate Christmas trees too, after all—
but it’s hard to shake the hand that just castrated you.
I’ve only ever talked to myself, even if the words were directed at you,
and you wouldn’t hear my voice anyway, as you aren’t here—you never were,
now that I’ve realised that in order for you to appear before me,
I must first dramatise you, assign you a genre, and only then deconstruct you,
finger by finger and toe by toe, until there is nothing left but a bare midriff
with a navel scar, the only evidence that we were once one.
I still can’t believe I like dark chocolate,
and pesto, and a few other things I once found unbearable.
Does that mean I’m capable of changing,
or that I just don’t care anymore?
But it can’t possibly be the latter,
because when I think about it,
there are more bits and bobs I’ve learnt
not to like over the years;
case in point, an indentation on my ring finger
is long gone, but it still hurts
I had it in the first place.
I tried ice skating once. It ended badly—I killed a little girl,
or rather would have if I had hit her in the head with my skate
instead of the leg, which wasn’t far off, considering her height,
when I suddenly fell—all just to have a song with someone
(it didn’t work out in the end) or at least score another point
in that petty midlife skirmish of mine.
hidden pilcrow 