Straining my brain for juices for poetics because I am rushing out a poem to impress my friends and to some extent myself. Everything is written to impress another – oh, look at how expressive I am, look at the complexities and contours of my makeup heart. Sometimes I don’t have anything good to say. Sometimes I don’t feel like saying anything so I write instead. To write without concern of looking like a prim and gentlemanly scholar is the primary concern of the privileged folk who do nothing but read Yeats and jack off in shiny new tuxedos. I’m more of a layperson myself, and I say this heavy with irony, like sagging swollen breasts full of words that will not sustain anybody.

Curses upon curses like layers of sentiment, I often find myself in.

Meet me by the lake in your ugliest outfit, the outfit you got punched in the face by your dad after a heated argument about giving up violence and becoming religious, the outfit you got rejected by from your first crush / date / partner / job interview / teacher / society / life / the world / the world / the world.

What am I doing here? I am a piper drawing out all the rats to come for a swim with me, except funnily enough I haven’t learnt how to swim. Rats can, however. They can swim for miles and miles. Me? I’m more content to float in this metaphysical, metaphorical ocean – it’s like I’m doing a performative art exhibition on how to drown in style.

I’m full of shit like that you see, constantly trying to outdo myself in the myriad ways to die, which is in itself a way to outdo the living at living, to outdo the dead by dying. I’m so competitive I like to break my heart first before everyone else. I’m so self-centred that when you show up in that horrible outfit of yours, I will be completely naked, covered in mud and weeds.

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way.