I don’t really know why, but I have the sense I’m not feeling.

love!

Him

She could have sat anywhere but she chose to sit next to me.  I glanced at her reflection in the darkened window next to me.  I opened my palms.  I breathed freely.  I tried to see what music she was listening to.  Where had she been tonight?  Where was she going?   I toyed with the ring on my finger.  I wonder if she’ll notice I’m reading Oscar Wilde*?

Her

I wish he’d stop looking at me.  If a seat becomes free perhaps I should take it.  Why is this bothering me?  I should turn my music down.  That way if he alights before me I can move aside without looking at him.

*Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

don’t forget your headphones

Ah teenage adolescent.

Don’t raise your voice.  I understand.  You want us to know.

The passengers on the bus are to bear witness to your phone call.  It might be love and it’s happening to you.  You feel like you’re in possession of a secret.  We should want to listen to you.

But I don’t.

Your young heart causes you to falter and doubt words before they’ve left your lips.  You accentuate pauses.  There’s a lump in your throat stuffed full of lurid thoughts you can’t set free.  You laugh uncontrollably and spastically despite your attempts to stifle yourself.

I know you might not care.  But I’m embarrassed.

I know what it’s like.

Really I do.

To interrupt her like you did just now.  Only to give yourself an excuse to say her name out loud; because her name is all you can say with conviction.

And I know you’re not really homophobic.  That your attempt just now at some exertion of your masculinity is just because you’re frightened by how weak and helpless you feel under the weight of each breath she exhales into the telephone.

I know how it feels.

But it pains me to listen to you.

I’m sorry.

All you need is a couple more years locked up in isolation masturbating and contemplating suicide.

After that, you’ll be just fine.

the chocolate in the advent calendar (contains spoilers)

It started with a dispute between a couple over an advent calendar.  Something about the type of chocolate.  I wasn’t really listening.

I came to thinking that the chocolate didn’t matter.

Once the 1^st window is opened their interest in the calendar will start to ebb because they already know the future.  There will be no more surprises.  They know in 24 days they will duly open the final window.  The end might as well be the beginning.

It’s enough to make you indifferent.  When time becomes monotonous it feels laden with a sense of inevitability.  Sometimes I feel like there’s a long corridor in front of me and wonder what will happen if I try to change time by turning back.  But you can’t.  Like you’re in a video game; an invisible force stops you.  The corridor is an incessant conveyor.  Before the dust from a memory has had time to settle you’re drawn onward.  On through an opposing door to a day, a week, a minute or a second.  To a bus or car.  To a footstep or to sleep.

What’s left to do but do as you’re wont?

Take interest in your cereal and your chocolate in your advent calendar.

Or stray.

Grasp at diversions and let yourself fall into recesses on earth or in our mind to find some sense of forgetfulness.  You trace your fingers in the darkness for something tangible to hold on to.  You find the lowest point and become accustomed to seeing with parochial vision.  Unaware of what is imaginary or real or desperate.  You catch sight of a spark and chase it in the hope it will become a flame to comfort you.  You arrive elated and frightened..  but it was the same light you’ve seen before.  Illuminating shadows on the creased up languid smiles of those that welcome you back.  They doubted your conviction.  They were right to.  The door at the opposite end of the corridor will be in the same position from whence you saw it last.  It will be the colour of your fears.

I write turgid words as if they will barricade my future whilst I work things out and prepare to move on; but they only embellish emptiness.

Or dream that love will take our hand and lead us.  That a tall dark or small light stranger will claim us.  Their otherwise morose tale becomes somehow ethereal, we absorb their adventure with interest and suspense and cling to a notion we saw in a film with desperate hope.  Our eyes widen in awe as our new hero becomes the essence of our existence.  You find your forgetfulness.  You dance in the clouds and let yourself fall safely in their comfort.  As ethereal as it is tenuous.  A thread flickers above you.  It binds you and you wake up as though from a coma.  Where once romance allowed you to see your own blissful reflection in their eyes; now all you see is the darkness you’ve been hiding from.  It was there all along.

You condemn yourself for falling into a pit of fallible hopes and dreams and try to convince yourself that your time wasn’t wasted.  That your time is unique.  It pains you to accept that there are a million other souls straying from the path, just like you.  Trying to blind themselves.

Just.  Like.  You.

Take solace.

In 24 days the window’s on the advent calendar will all be open.  You will come through unscathed.

Let the fear dissipate and lengthen your spine.

After all, the end might as well be the beginning.

enough

Of lies.

Of drinking.

Of money.

Of work

and working.

Of toothache, headaches,

and fucking nausea.

rearrange the pillows

I turned over to my side and closed my eyes.

I can taste blood in my mouth.

It’s 3am.

 

“Like one who, on a lonely road,

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turned round, walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.”

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

price of paradise

it was a mistake to open my eyes today.  and even when i close them, to my mind it seems as though they may as well be open.  but although tumult,  i can hear the trickle of piano through my headphones.  it makes me imagine a waterfall.  and you’re in an advertisement, bathing under a waterfall.  and you’re a  naked and beautiful woman.  you could even wear khaki without upsetting anyone if you wanted to.  you glisten with the foliage in the sunlight.  and you’re stood there, wondering how to use your new word and it occurs to you:the word in the city is amelioration, but you’re not convinced one bit.

the average price of a bottle of shampoo is $3.50 – $5 in Canada.

accidents

13.7 billion years ago,

we were forged in space.

at 2:47pm on tuesday,

my nephew smashed a window.

odd sock

sometimes i think,

if i were:

adrift, adroit and adept.

then i’d finally be

a (/) part of you.

Go, VW, Go!

I don’t have any interest in VW camper vans. but I had nothing to do on a Saturday night and I heard the (very rare) song: ‘Go, VW, Go!’ by Johnny Cymbal and thought it needed something to accompany it.  So I made this to make myself laugh: