Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

The universe sings a snatch of a song
That jerks the lobe of your ear.
You sing it back, feeling fake
A mocking bird, mimicking meekly.

But,

Let those few notes sing, let yourself sing them.
Follow the universes's melody
With your own tuneless timorous tune,
No doubt sung poorly, no doubt sung prosaically,

But,

Nevertheless,
A poem.

In Summation

Abacus snicking, I calculate

The accumulated total of

Teary pillows, full of

Feelings, each busy feeling.

They number too many.

Salt sleep soaked sockets

Subtract and divide me.

Propped up by mounds

Of pillows, suffocation seems

The neat simple solution.

Oh

Two = an irrational number.

The mathematical problem is

I swore off love,

Properly. The dramatic, repeated

Hand-on-heart kind

That somehow sticks, stickily.

I choked it effectively.

Now the integers integrate,

All the series correlate,

All the factors escalate.

And

Two = a complex number.

When the equation balances,

The formula replicates. Replicates.

The pillows are dry;

The vow, once given,

Cannot unravel, it loops.

Love eschewed, a cycle.

Freedom lives in freedom,

It inhabits the mind.

Now

Two = an imaginary number.

He flickers at first

Parenthetical on my periphery,

This piece of Greek.

I ignore, obdurately ignore,

Turn my pillow, collude

With its cool, but.

The random pattern entrances.

So

Two = a real number.

I carry the bracketed

Cluster of symbols, allow

The additional clause. Arcane

Words and pillows dissolve,

Sequences converge, joy multiplies.

The mesmerise is infinite.

Yes.

Two = a prime number.

This poem was first published in The Weary Blues journal by New Binary Press in December 2013. It was my first publication.

Untitled Poem

You wanted divinity
I was laughingly crude.

You wanted oblique mystery
I was openly yours.

You wanted feverish dysentry
I was body temperature cool.

You wanted polished refined sweetness
I was half raw cane sugar, half-tart.

You wanted a glass of Pinot
I was a luke-warm Tipperary apple juice.

Whatever else they may say of love, 
It does not bother with check-lists.

Start at the Beginning, he said. I know it's hard to find where the beginning is...

Start at the beginning, he said. I know it's hard to find where the beginning is, in real life, but it helps to start there.

I was sitting on a hard chair in the therapists's utilitarian office, wishing I was lying on a leather couch, feeling like a cliché. A cliché would have been able to start talking, cut to the quick, pour out the story, bleed on the floor, mop it up, and suture themselves afterwards.

Instead, I wanted to cross my legs, but was afraid of looking too fidgety, so I sat uncomfortably still.

I don't know where the beginning is, I said.

Well, let's start with the beginning of coming here today, then. You made an appointment last Tuesday, why did you decide to telephone the office?

Well. I was feeling lousy, and not really sleeping, for weeks really, or longer, and I am pretty sure that I look like a wreck and I see people smiling at things I can't imagine myself smiling at, and I hate them for it and for making me pretend to smile and I got sick of hating them when they are perfectly fine people, really. So I googled therapists near here and telephoned, I decided it would be a good thing to do. I thought that maybe you could give me some tips about setting things aside.

I stared at the fake plant behind him the whole time I gave this excuse. It looked as if I was looking at him, making eye contact (I hoped it did anyway), but it was easier than actually looking at him. The dreaded eye-contact.

When did you stop sleeping?

Look at him - one sentence reply to no non-specific description and already ready for specifics. Now that's what I call a therapist.

A few months ago, I guess.

Evasion feels like my teenage best friend, someone you keep close but who does not ever really help you.

The fake plant is dusty, and is a kind of irritatingly exotic green colour, with leaves that are meant to look waxy, that you would really only find on a mountain in Spain, next to an olive plant. It's really the most fake looking fake plant I have ever seen. A veritable piece of chicanery. The base of it is hidden behind his chair so I can't see if the creators of this pinnacle of blandness have gone done the cliché route of having the soil covered over with fake pebbles bit at the bottom.

The silence has grown bloated.

I am sorry, I have never done this before, it all feels a bit awkward and I don't know where to start. It feels a bit cliché, you know, girl sees therapist hoping to cure a broken heart.

Is that why you are here? Because of a broken heart?

I suppose so. I mean, I think the broken heart stuff has led to all the other stuff. I can kind of live with the broken heart, but all the other stuff is distracting, I can't get any work done and I can't quite click back into normal one-player mode the way I want to.

His shoe-lace is undone. In an annoying way.

Normal one-player mode. I like that.

Really? Huh. My parents find that quite odd and kind of try to be funny about it, but still really, they just find it quite odd. I am a coder, you see, in the gaming industry, I do other online projects too, and coders, well, they think like coders. People who don't do it for a living don't really get it, but we really actually think like coders or like gamers - commands, if/then options, player modes. And, when you spend time with other coders, like when you are working all the time, and they think the same way and they joke the same way, and, well, it gets harder not to code everything, really.

So, how are you coding your broken heart? How can you code a broken heart?

Well, hah, this will make you laugh. On a whim, I actually googled that. Hello Google, how do you code a broken heart? Regards, me. All the responses were about coding a broken heart symbol in Facebook. Which I knew how to do if I had every really thought about doing it, but which nobody would really ever want to do. Can you imagine anything worse than everyone knowing you have a broken, sore and messy heart? If you can't imagine any thing worse, let me tell you there is one thing - trumpeting it on Facebook as though it's something people either a) want to hear about or b) aren't already laughing about among themselves. Except, of course, if that is what Google responded with, then there are people who actually want to do that.

Why would people laugh at your broken heart?

Well, it's about who broke it, I suppose. I mean ordinary people aren't so horrible that they would laugh at someone getting hurt, or at least they mostly aren't that horrible. It's just because of who broke it that I think my friends would roll their eyes and say, well, you had to see that coming really?

And, did you see it coming?

Yes, God, yes. That's the awful thing. I have had a Cranberries song in my head for ages now, even while things were fine actually – you know the one, the verse goes: the thing that makes me mad, is the one things that I had, I knew, I knew I'd lose you. And I did, even when things were blissful and impossibly good, I knew it wouldn't last. I am such an idiot.

Last song on the album. Best song on the album. She does a live version on Jools Holland, I bet half the Youtube views are mine.

I don't understand why you would think you are an idiot for getting emotionally involved with someone. Do you want to explain that to me?

Ok so, maybe you are right, in normal circumstances. But it wasn't exactly normal circumstances. The only way that I can really explain this is by starting from the start.

Sunset Snippet

The sky is cornflower blue
With candy floss pink clouds
With butterscotch caramel streaks
A lovely lickable sunset vista

Minding the Dog

She's grand. Don't fret. 

The dog's alright. 

She's had her dinner heated.

Two minutes in the microwave,

Stirred half-way through.

Organic porridge oats added.

She's had her tummy rubbed

And her ears tickled, gently.

She seemed disdainful, though, somehow.

She's had her paws massaged,

With frankinsence.

And a hot towel cleanse before it.

She was flown by magic carpet

To the boutique walking location of her choice.

There was no interference in her choice.

She had her pick of postmen,

Or politicians to bark at, and she barked.

Then she walked away, disappointed.

So we fed her again, as she indicated

She was hungry, for cheese only.

Gruyere, some brie. Of course, some cheddar.

We put the fire on, just for her.

She roasted and cooled, in stretches.

The scented candles helped, we thought.

She is in her bed now, lightly snoozing.

The dog's alright.

She's grand, don't fret. 

Poor pooch.


Tipperary, 06/04/2013

Poetry is scum on tea

Poetry is scum on tea

Because the water's limey

Poetry is part of me 

But someone else's scripture

Poetry's a honey bee

It makes all else unsightly

Poetry is not for free

It lives there in the margins