Polyp

If you let words sit in you too long, they ferment and become a bloated palimpsest of rancid phrases and overfed sentences that bear little resemblance to the lucid ideas they once were.

And they make you ill.

There is a piece of work, a spot of writing, the thought of which once sent happy tingles through my head. It was my private pleasure spot which I would fondle with delight every now and then in anticipation of epic gratification. It was the perfectly located itch waiting to be scratched, the epicentre of a giant orgasm that my client was about to experience, the promise of paradise where all good prose is meant to repose.

So I admired it and stroked it and nursed it and fussed over it, afraid to let it out for fear of being overwhelmed. Sometimes the thought of it got so unbearably exciting, I had to put it away promising myself a quiet moment in which to really indulge the joy of expressing it.

Somewhere between then and now, It became a tumour.

A turgid, insensate knot of mangled phrases that have mutated beyond recognition from overstimulation and are choking my head.

So now I need to cauterize it.

What a charming start to the year.

Jazz

You do not want to read Morrison when there are tendrils of heartache tracing old fault lines in you. Not even those trivial tremors from when you didn’t email me when I thought you would, because if you do, read her then that is, then goodbye and thanks for all the fish because there’s no way you’re going to work out of her words whole.

And there’s no point in reading her really if you aren’t that well-lived we’ll say for properness; well-lived enough to have old fault lines, cracks, musty little secrets and memories that aren’t worth reliving.

Because in the smooth jagged exuberance of her notes lie the adolescent memories of a brazen old city that refuses to become jaded, the secret twist of an unsmiling dead girl’s intentions, the difficult knots of unlove in a maturing marriage the fierce madness of silence in a house where parrots are fed on affection where things lie exactly where they should and not where you expect they should and there’s also the stunning depth of a blank starless city sky and it’s all so casual you could miss it in a blink if not for the sudden sharp shooting sensation of recognition that crackles through old fault lines and fissures.

Thanks Go[ld]phish, I’ve barely begun. [Aptly, because I know you’re chuckling, I have nowhere to link your name.]

Skinny Cats

[Since we're on a pissy poetry roll, dahlings.]

***

Skinny cats
Slip through cracks
Deftly, softly, swiftly.
Their thin veins
And underfed frames
Make them agile and shifty

'Skinny Cat', by Ben Ditmars

Angry poems about you

WARNING
If you’re not eighteen yet, then don’t read another word. This post is not for you. Not because you can’t piss me off, but because this post contains inappropriate and uncensored thought and verbiage.

This is for all those who've pissed me off. Fuck you very much for chancing upon my life.

Radical You
I like sanitised environments
I like them
I like them
I like them
Neat. Sterile. Safe.
You can store all that intellectually stimulating chaos up your anus thankyouverymuch.
I’d much rather be safe.

My Many Nike Moments
Just because I laugh at your jokes
And look you in the eye
Doesn’t mean I like you.
Not this way or that
Do yourself a favour
Get stuffed.
Don’t think. Just do it.

Sleazy Platform Ticket Counter Man at Nizamuddin Railway Station
Your mouth is like a urinal mister
Your words slither like excrement
You’re violating me with your fuliginous spewage.
I want to poke your filthy groping eyes out.

In Public Spaces
Swagger an inch closer
I dare you swaggering swaggerer
I’ll stick your dick with an all-pin prick
And watch you stumble in pain.

Road Rage
I’d corner you against a wall and ram your rear repeatedly, but my car can’t takethe trauma.

Taximan and Automan
Who knew you had such talent?
Driving forth, looking back
Through the passenger watching rearview mirror!
Oh that long probing fondling stare
Makes me think you’ll do just as well without them.
So then, may I poke your eyes out with a rusty wrench?

My Childhood Paedophile
At the Chittaranjan Park Fish Market
For every chop chop chop
Quiver, flail and death
I picture the ceremony of your emasculation.

***

Fark along now. I've nothing more to say to you.

Unworthy

There is a nightmare on the prowl, my baby disappeared in a rambunctious carnival crowd; left me comforting my fingers on a bottle of ink, discovered in horror on a leaky sink. Awash with shame, I sank to the dirty loo floor, where’d my poor neglected child go? Hungry and spent she must be dead by now; I haven’t the courage to step out this door. Perhaps I’ll just die of desperate sorrow; they’ll discover my ink stained body on the pot tomorrow. But guilt is such an insidious thing; I’m awake in the afterlife, still feeling like shit.

Dear Blank Page

Don’t stare at me. I will have you arrested for attempted mind wreckage by the mind control police. You will be defiled with all kinds of disreputable, putrid, incoherent verbiage, and after every inch of you is covered in insulting nonsense, you will then be expunged into the ethernet unceremoniously, where you will disappear without a trace after languishing in an anonymous spam folder for a month.

Oh and. Some words mean exactly what I intend them to mean and not what you might think they’re supposed to mean just ‘cause some dictionary said so.

Sincerely
H

Dear Chinese stroke Taiwanese Spammer

Thanks so much for your spammy comments. They’re very pretty.

I’m planning to print some to decorate my office soft board, and for once I think U’s going to rue the fact that he doesn’t have his own blog.

Now, I really don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful or anything, but this note is to let you know that I have enough. My collection looks quite complete and I’m pretty certain I have a sample of every symbol in the script. So, really, you can safely exclude me from your next party list. I promise I won’t think the worst of you.

Hope the loving and playing for world peace plans go well.

Thanks for everything, again!

Will keep you posted [haha] on how the decorating goes.

XOXO [that’s British for snogs and hugs]
H

Still waiting

I’ve convinced myself all I need is just that one sharp, clever phrase to skid right back in here.

But. I haven’t found it.

So I keep creeping back secretly to check how the mounting count of indecipherable spam comments are maintaining the illusion that there is activity on Shout – that my routine utterances over the last three years continue to touch lives far and wide [porn peddling, viagra endorsing, real-estate mongering faceless sales-avatars count, of course] even though my head has collapsed in a slothful slump that seems unconquerable.

RBoH and LBoH lie fused, forgotten and unchallenged, wallowing beneath this new state of uncomfortable placidity. There is no friction no despair no sudden searing thrill of anxiety and therefore no jumpstart angst-ridden gritting of brain against brain that might birth a clever phrase or two.

It might be too optimistic to say I’m cured of my chronic inability to cope with nightmares, traffic and bad hair days – as a matter of fact I am sporting very bad hair. Newly acquired, thanks to U’s exceptional skill with blunt scissors, my quest for adventure-in-the-absence-of-angst and perhaps an inherited streak or two of borderline masochism.

But. The point is, I still haven’t found that phrase.

There is much I’ve endured in anticipation of its arrival. Not least my own poetry. I've written poems. I've sung to traffic. I've passed wind and it's passed me by without a flutter of inspiration.

Not a feather
Or a fart
Not a letter
Or even
Half a phrase
That’s middling tart.

There. Bear with me. I’m obviously not bearing down hard enough.

I know

It’s like fighting nausea. Constantly.

Such consummate know-it-allness.

Someone very wise said of someone who believes himself very wise “he has the amazing mental condition of thinking he's always right”.

***
I’m curious: how do far-out mainstream management environments cope with such an overwhelmingly acute concentration of collective I-know-best-to-the-power-of-infinity-plus-one-up-on-you Alpha-ness? Why don’t they implode from the ferocious sentience of it?

There has to be a neat chemical equation for this.

I just know there is.

Cut Cut

What is the point in writing fast and meeting deadlines when your writing lacks soul?

I’m pretending I know all about soul. Mostly I don’t.

But criticism is a God-given talent. And God, bless Her soul, gave everyone enough by which to live, love and prevail.

But I’m feeling defeated. And punctured. And tired. And weepy. [There’s got to be a fifth thing I’m feeling. There is. But it’s unrelated. It’s gorgeous. It’s like scaling mountains and crossing seas and turning cartwheels and winging bird flights and singing to a valley of flowers and honeybees.] But back to this. This horrid sense of being trapped.

I’m so afraid to take the plunge. To jump in and sully my fingers with the mess of mauling her words. One by one by one. It’s as M said “some people don’t like ever being seen as the bad guy. Even if it means sacrificing things bigger than themselves for it”. I am a selfish bastard like that. Selfish and weak.

This is where I stick out my lower lip, creep around on all fours, hold up sad-faced emoticons on eff-b and soak in your pity. Golum I am.

I wish I were Lady Macbeth. I’d edit ruthlessly.

***
Maybe I am. I just did. Liberation. Lalala.