Actual Bodily Harm by doggerel

POETRY

I write poetry whether anyone asks for it or not. If they didn’t, then it’s usually for me. And still if they didn’t, I’ll ask – only a very few people – if they’d like me to. Sometimes they say okay, because I can write poetry which is violent, makes them take another look, and see how others see. Bodily harm in poetry is just invisible tattoos with a blunter instrument…

THE INVISIBLE TATTOOIST

There’s a difference between wanting to be helped and being found. When help doesn’t need to be wanted but it knows it can, then it longs to be given. I can’t help writing poetry, even in terrible dreams. I’ll always be a writer who can find beauty in horror and vice versa in the mirror.

Tending the Echo Beach garden

POETRY

Swimming through the grass, cutting names into trees, writing words in the sand, before they’re swept out to sea…

Shawn Byous

…a park bench, floating in the ocean, but the names we carved in the bark will always be there. Otherwise we’re alone.

No walking frame required

POETRY

The weather is cloudy where the sun never shines, wherein lives a poet of sorts, writing about mutual facial weather events, tears by proxy and fair weather friends, right outside your door.

“We’re not truly gone until we’re forgotten, and the grief we feel is joy. We don’t know that because they’re not our tears…”

SLEEPWALKERS

I believe the departed still walk among us (most recently, my friend and neighbour, and my brother-in-law; before them, more friends and family, with my auntie Margaret apparently paying a visit whenever I’m watching a royal documentary on TV), and most of the time we don’t know they’re there, because they live in a different physical form. When we’re reminded of them, I think that’s because we’re subconsciously aware that they’re with us, that they’ve spoken and we heard them, or that we felt them touch us. My dad’s still around but he’s alone. I hope he can hear me.

I believe we’re never truly gone until we’re forgotten, and the moments of grief we feel must be joy for the departed, because they know they’re being remembered, like we’re waking them from a long sleep. We’re crying tears of joy, but we don’t know that because they’re not our tears.

The matter of mortal history

POETRY

MORTAL INFINITY

I’ve been to Eastbourne too*…

POETRY

Swallowed an Apple tablet…

AVOCADO CAPITALIST

*So What (The Anti-nowhere League).

Projectile dysfunction in humans

POETRY

THE PREMATURITY OF HUMANITY

‘Memorial to a Species’ Brent Stirton, (EcoWatch)

I lost it halfway up the Escalator

POETRY

For a friend who’s lost the plot. Like I’ve been left so many times, they just want to be by themselves…

Identity lost in the post. Hold on to the handrail, keep your head up kid.

The poeticism of animal farming

POETRY

The minimalism of verse, existentialism with anthropomorphism… 

Mushrooms grown in the dark are best served as appetisers.

Who’s afraid of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings (or Paul Jennings)?

 

Shooting up with the oceanic

POETRY

How to get to nomad land…

INK IN THE SKIN

Gas Station Horror

If you can’t write your dreams, remember to live them. Then maybe someone can write them for you.

The art of drinking lemon bleach

POETRY

Whenever I don’t consider my life mundane enough to share it in a meandering blog post, nor so profane that it warrants anyone with time on their hands reading a short story, I search for fewer words to say more. Then a part of me reminds me I’m supposed to be a poet. How I became one is a matter of speculation. Perhaps because I find it hard to talk.

MATCHBOX

Whether a match to a joint, or a candle to my own arse, the art of poetry is a way of swallowing a whole moment in life.