Diminishing Returns

A flattened shopping experience feels like a symptom of
malignant narcissism.
I'm just trying to make small adjustments now,
I've got to be careful of rationalisations
they are the pathology, overspilling.

So one week I think I'm being haunted by home,
that a JD Sports will open round the corner,
be shuttered by autumn,
another and I think well, whatever informs my opinion
is just a constellation
and so my friends and where they live,
are a constellation and getting where they be
is of little consequence,
the arrival shall bleed off annoyance.

But diminished returns I keep referring to:
when the narcissist is borough bought
and sold on the town tale
to interpolate-

-that being surrounded is enough,
an elevation

but in the end dominion isn't
improvement, right?
If it's just a wrench to something familiar
if I accept JD
if I'm not running from the fire sale
I have diminished the return,
ready for the new wave
to churn the scatter,
toss out the cockles,
to wash us over.

Front & Centre

Stepping behind this

grabbing its wrist and pulling its own punch

if I squint, or if steeped in coffee

and redding out a sphere encloses

perhaps this looks like

look at me

it's historic grandstanding

I haven't seen anything like it.

I'm in the seventh year here

and yes I'm from a place

where events are

knots on a 

cat o' nine tails

may as well be a

cat o' no tails.

The cat of, where?

History is not better served as the lego of facts.

And this is my observation here,

the endless hope that those knots

could be slid off like in a magic trick

scooped into a pile

vs the childish impulse

to start flicking them at those

still writing,

still perfecting their pen grip.

Jaysus

Good god core of an onion
snowballing down a hill,
getting more and more
of a -
halfway down and enough
layers there's a wonderful
green glow
you don't notice the patina.
Onion:
down the hill
and more layers
it's even worse than we
imagined,
you take an onion core
bereft of mind
already on the wrong fork
cosseted in reverse
growing stronger
glowing green -
patina.
And then the complete onion,
sloughing off paper skin brown
gungeing in the crisper tray
un-re-pro-duced
the bubble burst,
chips are down.

Ordering Out Of Embarrassment

Weary tack of the skin,
not sweaty but things stick.
You can't keep a magnet
on a stainless steel fridge,
but peel you off of one,
why don't I,
like the coaster
from the countertop.
Fresh from the shower,
clean tack,
a child's hands,
cold, damp,
offsets Sunday's attitude.
Just give me the menu,
and let's get on.

The Barrys

The squirrels that learned

all the tricks of the garden,

with nature's persistence,

she came, note after note after call,

a time lapse of honeymoon text,

with all the pluck poured into her.

What, she wanted for me? 

I retain what I retain, I move in the present

with somnambulant precision 

I talk when I talk

so what. You want.

I find myself making less excuses;

history is not fond of her,

and the counterbalance? 

Forget it.

I can't be arsed to think about 

myself, then.

I was reasonable,
but it was untenable in its practise.

I gaslit myself. 

Forget it.

My practise, since, is my masterwork,

but her recent email,

casual enough,

relentless enough,

what I'd read between the lines,

the hubris, the automatic neck and necking
of my tasking.

Years of becoming more reasonable,

so I could discount myself, then.
New youth, my youth seems abstract,

she, less relatable.

When the corollary of time,

should have, "Oh, and what of?"

No round O

I discounted myself, then,

so nothing couldn't open me to the missive.

----------------------------------------

Years of masterwork,

Erin needs not to hear of

all the pluck,

the Barrys poured into me.

Soft Spot

From the crow's nest, a crow's nest myself,
carpet bunching up softening features,
the tilting head, lolling
bringing the road to eye line
cross hatching me,
various routes so I must find the jam of the world now,
a road for each shoulder,
I am alone with taxis
and we're are alone as we consider
by whose standards should I give up
answering the question of last year's waste.

Dinged

Garrotte someone with my hamstring,
fish with it, even. I hope for its utility beyond the
disconnected kitchen shuffle into disinterested fridge audit.
Hamstring, drier than the cake of mustard on the jar thread,
if it snaps, what do I stem the tide with next?

Civvy Street

This too, must pass,
too much a mantra for me.
Listening to Met Food music,
production tropes
shifting between the aisles.
Still, I think, this too, must pass.

Was it better before
when boredom was studded
with hiss,
my forehead flattened,
and, stamping,
I'd crank out the hit --
I want this to pass.

Prague

Between turrets, below barrels,
beet stained and slipping on the cobble slick,
maw warped by tonguing of ham hock strands
caught where the gum recedes.

Swamped by the lexicon
of number plates,
oh we're dripping with details,
and supposed to think that
only here emerges
starch from soft leather bounds.

Stapled domino topplers,
handed over,
scrunched into houndstooth pockets,
we suppose.

How Was It?

How was it,

which is a centrifuging question,

a heavy, heavy question,

a question you must answer

in order to peel oneself from the wall.

Words deposed actions,

an action is not free,

it exacts some kind of cost,

so when your body finally packs it in

you must exact gratitude,

no-one wants you left there

clacking, and, marble molared 

lower jaw down and out.

The Purity Of Hate

To flag a concern, to be judging,
to even have to consider that
and the stakes and rupture,
to think, well, neither of us
can come back from this now.

Two boats, four arms,
and an attempt to push
each other at the same time,
and maybe the timing's great
and something graceful will pass.

Here then I sense that
we are post-push -
one is just spinning aimlessly
and the other has pushed too hard,
is leaning over and trying
to fall back in their seat.

Planking

Planking today I took five
put the cat on my chest
went somewhere else.
I slid arse first
down the shallow end
felt the paint ripple
around my heels
Butlin's blue
in a faded snap.
On golden sands
a paraglider hit the rocks, groaned
25 years before
a stream cut through the dunes
dad must have carried me across.
The beach's commodity was once itself,
the swirling sense you'd come to the edge of this universe
and would have to wait
for a new map to load up.
And on returning,
craning the neck,
avoiding snacks,
and the next man to fall from the sky.

Track Listing

The dog filter, footsies, the fact that I persisted in saying

Trump was not inevitable, up until five minutes before

I stopped watching the count. It's shocking to think someone's

saying fuck you about me as much as I do 

when I see that bloody Snapchat garland.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Do I fidget too much on the

train, do I sound human when I'm overheard,

just one day, if I could, be a facsimile,

sit in on myself in judgement. 

Be tricked, dream dissonance, go see 

a nightclub mirror play. 

Split in three,

sleep with everyone,

be a reasonable messiah,

cook dinner,

sour the grapes. 

Sequencing an album,

trying to take someone somewhere,

teasing an arc out of disparate elements

knowing this is becoming a lost art 

of careful scooping,

of making a record seem like precise,

controlled distribution of wet stuff

on the belt at the biscuit factory;

always looks better before it comes out the oven,

in its glazed certainty, drippy optimism,

knowing back on the floor,

the pint glass won't come at my head if 

a track is out of place,

wondering what it is then,

that drives teens crazy.

Wondering if it's turning over far too fast now;

you're embarrassed by your twenties,

embarrassing in your thirties.

Can I be a fuck you?

Fuck you too?

I am a fuck you?

Fck u.

Brake Fade

I've got brake fade,
so the things holding me in place
aren't going to regenerate
unless I stop using them for a while.
It's not a fault of design,
it's where we are with physics.
I don't particularly want to think of my restraint,
it's not restraint if I seem curt and old.
I shouldn't cycle through coffee and wine,
I want new markers of a rough patch,
so I can say I'm still growing.

I put the tree out today.
That it's necessary to pay
credence to luck,
that I can't leave the blasted thing in here
until Feb.

I love you, tree; it's why you had to go,
you don't need to see what the
beanbag does to my back.

Riser

What's a colour like amber but isn't amber?

Burnt orange?

I drove past a lake this morning

and it sent this colour back to me,

through broken umbrellas,

vinyl peeled away,

and I'm rarely awake anyway,

so I could be imagining this now,

a five hour flight,

slow dripping horror,

cleansing the palate,

between different perceived nostalgias.

The line between nodes is a careless visual -

it promotes completion

but being anywhere on that line,

or even the line itself,

does it ever seem as undeniable

as looking at a line?

Today it was two couplings,

one chewing like no-one's business,

and the other, on the carriage,

charging from end to end,

exiting,

coming back,

the blocking precise and as whittled

as their tools of dispute;

don't touch me

vs

what are you scared of?

Cream Of Mushroom

Diamond life, unfinished lunch business,
mortified and
beyond the table's boundary
there is a diamond life with an X-rejection,
an absurdity of an absurdity,
seems cool, seems scary,
seemed cool, seemed scary
seemed in, seemed up.

Seems like I'm nowhere near that,
bounded by chair and table
it's so personal for me,
with food, its provenance,
and the provider,
less hungry as I fill with what I have done
what will I not.

Diamond life,
time reveals it at as a lesser crime.
where's it now, why?
None of it,
none of it seemed dumb,
there was so much fun,
so much to be done.

Cold war contracts,
pulls back turf of the tundra,
the curling lips over dog teeth
"…for I've been on my knees my whole…"
from the bahnhof
to the banlieues
from one cold muck to another,
"…my whole life…"
notes scrawled,
but let's negate,
read the nail dirt instead.

Let's migrate.
Papers please.

Whilst the fax clickers into action,
the dot matrix taps out its pattern,
this cold soup,
the clotted cloud,
rotoscoped,
the emptying dining room,
and thinking about what I have done,
or what I will not.

The Urge

Deadline fetish,
well worn furrow in the veins.
Calcified,
blood bottleneck; the pressure.
I'll fill like a marigold gag,
like a percocet allergy,
alert, ballooning into action.
Edging, overwork, the short pants of pre-sleep,
a firm note on the desk,
instructions issued, issuing four hours from now,
200 words, then, and thus far.

Cloth

Thumbing the evening down to the seagulls, feather crust, gumming chunks, crumb.
Shite-y artefacts of a meal royally deconstructed.
For the best case,
living inside and out of it,
I'm moving towards when I'll finally get laid open
and, clattered by the kids,
looking up to see who has passed,
I'll have been run through, clutching my bare shin in agony.