Month: September 2017

#PoeticAnswers 85 – Why Do You Think They Call Them Trash?

The kings and queens of the hill,
The top of the trash heap
Have nowhere else to look
But down.
And they’re only happy
When they’re frowning down upon
Anyone or anything else,
As if they were some
Creature from hell
Trying to crawl and claw
Their way to the top.

Because they’re better,
Based on their opinions that
They’ve dressed up as fact to
Discriminate and separate the
Weak from the pack
So they can launch an attack
And call it defence.

But even being top of the heap
Still means you’re part of the heap.

Question from Michael Clark from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 84 – Why Is 42 The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Physicists and philosophers
Have pondered the expanse of
Life, the universe, and everything.
They have been searching for an answer like
Addicts about to crack while hunting for
An honest needle in a haystack of politics,
Like the answer is a holy grail or
A point on a map that no one ever drew.
And then when a man said it was 42,
They didn’t know if it was the real answer
Or a note of latitude or longitude,

So instead of trying to take it further
They accepted it like
A man broken by a barrage of religion
As it battered down his door accepting
It’s doctrine as his lord and saviour.
Stooping and not stopping to
Question truth and reality until
It was too late.

But yesterday’s later is today’s now,
And we’ve began asking questions of
Why and how and when and why not,
Questioning the world and what we’ve got,
Acting like the status quo was just a band
And nothing more and now we’ve got
A lot more to stand for.
Like the truth.

So we asked and stripped down forty-two
With interrogation and maths,
Breaking it down into God Particles and
Jesus Lizards and quantum paths through
Space and time and time again,
Seeing what we want to see and
Finding we’re wrong and we’re right.
The constants are constantly changing
And the more we break life down,
We discover that maybe
Life isn’t made, it’s what we make it
Or life isn’t worth it at all.

But the truth is hidden behind a wall
Of uncertainty and fear and
We won’t look behind it because
Maybe it wont be the answer we’re looking for.
So I’ll move to believe in the great fourty-two,
And I won’t ask questions anymore.

Question from Hanne V.B. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 83 – Do You Have Any Kinks?

I have a threesome every day
And I’ve been having threesomes
Every day for what seems like
My entire life.
I don’t expect you to know
What that feels like but
Let me tell you,
It’s exhausting.

It’s a constant barrage of
Twisting and tossing and turning
And pushing and pulling
And burning and biting
And clawing and cutting
In a never-ending search
For happiness.

A happiness that never comes,
Much like myself because
I am too generous,
I am on the receiving end of
Two toxic partners working
In discord and out of rhythm and harmony
To give me the best worst fucking
Of my life.

Partner A:
Definitely built for speed and not comfort
And when I say speed,
I don’t just mean in terms of firing rate.
I mean the drug, because
He lives at a million miles an hour,
Never slowing, taking me by the hand,
Taking me to the brink,
Taking me on a rollercoaster ride
Where there’s no safety bars,
Where there’s no speed limit,
Where there’s no means of self-preservation,
Only self-destruction and sado-masochism

Partner B:
They like to take it slow,
Painstakingly, mind numbingly slow.
And it’s not so much sensual
As it is sensory, with a blend of
Substance and pain,
Blood play and asphyxiation,
Everything is a threat and a challenge,
Like waking up or doing literally
Anything because she leaves a mark on me
Brandings of bites and bruises
And cuts and cigarette burns.
Like I’m her property.

My bedroom is a BDSM dungeon,
A Bipolar Disorder and Sadomasochism Dungeon,
Where I’m locked in my bed and my head
With two lovers who love to fuck me
At every given opportunity.
And it would be fine to
Take them one at a time,
Treat each of them with the right
Time, dedication and medication
But unfortunately, I often find
I’m locked in a situation where
They’re both fucking me at the same time,
Tearing my body and mind apart
With thoughts that cut like a knife
And fingernails that run
Over and under my skin.

I have a threesome every day
And I’ve been having threesomes
Every day for what seems like
My entire life.
I don’t expect you to know
What that feels like but
Let me tell you,
It’s exhausting.

Question from Michael Clark from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 82 – Are You A Poet?

I know it seems hard to believe
That I wear my heart and soul on my sleeve
And my vocal chords and
Stand up in front of my fellow humans
And regale them with poetic tales
And awful rhymes about
My time on this earth.

Because I don’t fill the traditional mould,
I’m not young enough to be fresh on the scene
And I’m not old enough to be established
And I’m not clean shaven enough
Or too beardy to seem as wordy
As I try to be.

And I don’t have a degree in English
From a top university like Edinburgh or Cambridge,
I went to a uni out of sight and mind
And studied sound and lighting design
So I understand the quiet rage
That some people have when I step on the stage because
I spent years trying to hide from it.

And I don’t have a beret
Or skinny fit jeans
Or a memory strong enough
To remember my own poems and
It feels like I’m in a dream because
After this I have to go back to the
Corporate machine and

I don’t have books of Wordsworth or
Shakespeare and I don’t write every day and
It gives me the fear that I’m a fraud and
All of this will disappear like
Chalk on a pavement or rational thoughts into a beer so
I’ll take this neuroticism and use it to
Justify all my actions and make this seem real, so

Yes I am a poet because
I’ve got crippling depression and
And a a tormented childhood
And a mental state that barely exists
And I’m not afraid to show it and
That makes me a troubled artist.
So yes, I am a poet.
But I’m not sure I know it yet.

Question comes from a work colleague who didn’t realise what I do as a sideline.

#PoeticAnswers 81 – Did You Get Any Sleep Last Night?

There were flashes of darkness
In between the whirring of electric lights
And the hunger pangs of newborns,
In between the screams of neon sirens
And the late and live music of whisky and wine,
In between the negotiations of mice and owls
And the hard labour in the room next door.
Which might not amount to much,
But even a little of a good thing
Is better than nothing, right?

#PoeticAnswers 80 – Why Do You Continue To Eat Dairy When You Know We Will Both Be Choked Out Of The Room Tonight?

How can you complain about choking
When you are slowly suffocating me
With these dietary restrictions?
When we met, I thought it was feta
But I cheddar known better.

It’s not an addiction,
I could give it up anytime I want,
I just don’t want to.
But you seem determined to milk this for all it’s worth,
And it’s grating on me that you’d put your needs first.

You’re not the first person to complain,
My father was just as intolerant as you,
When he took away my cheese, I thought “how dairy”.
It was for my own Gouda and would change the condition
Of my allegedly toxic and deadly emissions.

I thought you’d have sympathy and kindness
But it appears you lactose and
Now we are at an impasse because
You won’t compromise because you can’t
See my emotions and needs on another level.

They don’t get pasteurise.

Question from Sarah M. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 79 – Still?

You’d think after all this time
That things would change and
I wouldn’t feel the same.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t
Be like you or be liked by you
Or convince you to stay.
But much like the champagne
On our wedding day,
Our love fell flat and lost it’s fizz
As quickly as you lost interest.
Now all I do is invest my time
Looking at these photographs
Of a different life
As I wonder if everything
From the kisses and the smiles
Was just a lie.
I never saw you cry.
It was as though there was no
River of tears behind your eyes,
Just frozen lakes on frozen nights
And frozen in time, fixating
On never changing, fixating
On stopping, fixating on silence,
Building it like a fence to keep us apart
Because it was easier to feel nothing
Than to feel pain.
I wish I could feel the same
But there’s a fire in my heart and brain
That stops me from being as cold as you are.
And no matter how hard I try,
I cannot will my heart to stop,
Despite the torment and the
Blame game you played,
Playing me into taking the blame
For us drifting apart like
Falling stars from the night sky,
Falling into nothing and silence
And out of existence,
Despite your insistence and
The hurt and distance that
Lies between us,
Despite all of this,
Darling, yes.
I love you, still.

#PoeticAnswers 78 – Are Millennials Ruining The Table Industry?

Today’s headline in
“Let’s Blame The Millennials Daily”,
Aka The Internet,
The people,
Aka the privileged few pricks who
Pissed away the economy,
Have decided that my generation
Has brought on the untimely death of
The Table.

Yes, that’s right,
Due to sheer laziness
The millennial has now rendered
Fine carpentry a redundant industry.
They say it’s because we need everything
Put in front of us as though it’s obvious
And this is why the table is dying.
We’re a generation of laptops and lapdogs
And laptrays on which we display
Our meagre diets of ramen, avocado and IPA
As we sit in front of TVs watching indie cartoons and superhero movies
With subtitles on because
Millennials are so lazy
We don’t even listen to what we’re watching.

As a Millennial who
Does not identify as a Millennial
Due to the sheer stigma,
I would like to counter this argument.
Maybe if the economy was stable,
Buying a good table would be easy.
If good wood would be cheaper,
We’d spent less time in Ikea
Buying flatpack backpacks to
Carry our lives around as we
Rent our way through life.
I have seen too many tabletop games
Played on wooden floors and carefully angled doors
Which proves we want what we can’t afford or have.
Maybe it’s your determination for
Deforestation which had added limitations
To the wood industry and consequently tables.

But once again, we’re young and wrong
You’re old and right-wing,
And you’d rather have status quo
Over cash flowing to your children.
But one day, you will learn
Your argument is much like the table I don’t have:
No leg to stand on.

Question from my flatmate

#PoeticAnswers 77 – When Will I Be Better?

I am sick,
I am sick of being sick.
It’s been six or seven years of
Things being in a constant state of wrong
With my brain and my body and
Being used as a punching bag by bugs and infections,
Leaving bruises, scars and lesions and being beaten
Black, blue and bloody by my immune system
And I am sick of it.

I spent seventeen years in education
Yet my blood, brain and urine
Have been through more tests than me.
And they don’t get it easy because
There’s no pass or fail,
Just sets of numbers I don’t understand
And positives that can have negative connotations
And negatives which could be the best thing for me.

I’ve spent the last five years,
Going in and out of doctors and hospitals
Leaving barely enough time for the revolving doors to spin,
Travelling between wards and beds like
Hotel rooms on the worst overnight stay of my life,
Never staying still long enough to sleep
Or see the latest test result.

I’m treated like a science experiment,
Laid bare for doctors and nurses to test
Both myself and themselves.
I feel like a broken vending machine,
With pills being poured into my mouth
Like pound coins of imprecision
By professionals who can only pray for
The right result.

I’ve spent far too long
Being a rebel crying out for change
Being told that my version of better isn’t the best thing for me,
I’m sick of waiting for eventually and tomorrow and the next day,
I’m sick of wasting my life away in
A busy hospital terminal, waiting for my
Flight number to be up.

Question from my good friend, Courtney.