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A POEM CELEBRATING SOME THINGS THAT DON’T WORK

Acrostics. Academia. Balancing work, life and a healthy sleep schedule. Breaking up in your head with people you don’t even go out with. Confessing to your first love at the wrong place and time. Denial when you don’t mean it. Even if you do mean it, does that really work? English as second tongue. Editing. First strikes when you don’t have the time to think them through. Fuck as a vulgarity, not a noun. Falling into love at first sight – how cliché. Generosity just because people ask. Honesty when no-one does. I as a singular noun. I as a concept. Just joking, fake philosophy and pseudo-spiritualism. Jamming words together to sieve out poetry. Kafkaesque as a word. Keto. Listing out words and calling it poetry. Laying out scenes and calling it love. Lying about the writing process. Love as an independent variable. Misreading the Tao Te Ching as Dao De Jing. Making an audience hum while sober. Memory loss. Monkdom. Never making the first move. Or just being content with letting things slip. Or just being content with repeating yourself. Orientialism as a concept in the 21st century. Pretending to be woke when you’re still asleep. Puns that no-one appreciates. Puns disguised as poetry. Quokkas. Quips about things no-one cares about. Quantum theory. Running to lose weight. Rote memorisation. Rhymes that don’t rhyme. Lines that ruin your form. Short-term memory loss. Slaying your daddy unironically. Slaying as a concept at all. To be honest about things that you’ve never thought about. Thinking about things that you’ve never thought about. Thinking about people 24/7 that you’ve just met. Thinking. Underestimating when love can strike. Overestimating when it does. Forgetting to keep to form again. Uniqueness as a selling point. ‘Valen’-themed lines because really, how many times do those work? Writing poems to people who will not read them. X starting any word other than xenagogue. You spilling your personal life into groups of 5000 strangers, give or take. Zen Buddhism, but as an aesthetic. Zealotry, but only for self-destruction. Endings without satisfactory closure

spwm day 16

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IN THIS STORY, YOU SAYING HOW YOU FEEL “ALL RIGHT” IS NOT A CAUSE FOR CONCERN

In this dream, you shed your skin
and cast away your leather wings;
from your pockets, spill these things –
antiplatelet medicines,

Clopidogrel, Aspirin.
Warfarin, for battles within.
In another, I hold your chin
and nothing else. Come, unspin

this long dream of safety pins
and other stories, wherein
the might of the might-have-been
becomes the force that underpins

the breath of your life worn thin.
In my dream: we swap our skins
you and I, identical twins,
draped in the light of Kuan Yin,

lost in the mist of has-beens
and has-nots, the lines blurring
like your life – now, a tailspin.
I memorise your next-of-kin,

my final act of discipline.
In this dream, we both begin
realizing: that being
alive’s the holiest sin –

prisoners, of human skin.

Spwm day 14

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13 Superstitions for a Damsel in Distress

On the backstreet home, watch out for black
cats stalking your footsteps. Don’t step in
puddles with your high-heeled horseshoes:
the clack draws all sorts of bad folk. Knock
on wooden doors along the way – let them
know you are there, once, or twice:
unexpected deaths come in threes.
Ring every bell – let chimes cover you,
light the path home, keep watch.
Needless to say, avoid the ladders.
They take you nowhere useful enough,
except upwards. Pennies on roads
are only shiny traps – they are not worth it.
Likewise, check both ways when you cross
your fingers, or your reflection in street
windows. Shatter them if necessary.
Take a photo if you must, to save your soul.
Let the itch of your palm be a prayer that you’re home.
Salt the door. Let relief open like an umbrella.

spwm day 13

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From Z to A, A Lovebound Zoetrope Trips In Her First Pair of Dancing Shoes

jazz, booze, brazen pizzazz, zouks daze, putz rezones
contemporary votary youth. yell, yes, yourself yearns
inexpert, co-existing, bemixed jukebox. next, proxy
‘howdy’ – who, which fellow, why? walleyed, worship
quivers: reserve leaves, salvation arrives volubly,
requests. puzzled, you jumble, quake, jumped-gun.
mother, tortoised beneath table, watches daughter’s social,
reminisces pregnancies. warns – his compass veers
otherwise. overprotective, mother stereotypes:
quiff-wearing queer, queasy antiquation, quite passe.
palpably, pulse presses pata-pata, peekaboos
into down-linen intercourse, lip-top soon drowsed – or
not. never. necking? non-zero chance – nonetheless
mother’s wisdom must remain germane. men times
love equals feelings leaking, trickle following slit. lies:
look. seek quickened love-struck awkward skin-on-skin
jam. conjugate. join. enjoy – rejoice, jambe-de-air.
in totality, girl finds rapidity, spins in pirouette,
that, huzzah, her who-knows-which left-behind
girlhood goes exploring, willingly digs aground
feeling, finally finds freedom from family.
ena – tie her, leave her behind.
deny mothermade denigrations:
cha-cha, cowboy, compass. come,
be bound. bare brazen breast. but
absolve all fear. fall – learn affection. dance.

—
spwm day 11
every word in each line shares a common letter.

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ode to first strikes

oh, monday morning,
you gave me no warning
of what was to be: the unlikely story,
here we are, orbiting outside space
of closed bar, between us a bridge,
both of us victims of some violence:
you, the first stone cast, the queen
dethroned, me, the first to leave,
a nomad in this empty echo.
you look the same as in my head.
my hands latch onto your Viceroys,
finger smoke for the first time.
the first time I’ve held a lit cigarette
like a lifeline to shore, your smoke
trails dragging me into revised
histories. I spill my glass of beans,
fill you in on my first rebellion.
I burn myself on one, so I light
another, a torch to guide the way
into your night, the years you’ve
spent alone, compared to my
six years of dragging feet
like a long-drawn narrative &
you told me I should have
acted faster, even if I wasn’t.
we cried together and I set
my stone in the river. it sinks.
subsequently, another revival,
toeing two lines, reaching out
to another. after all these years of my cowardice,
you struck first. it was all good. let’s get shitfaced.

—

spwm day 8 

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Passengers

I am the first to awaken the first pod to crack open I am the unfortunate accident 90 years too early I am the lonely man the first man the first man to walk 90 years too early I am a system malfunction of a man I am the ship and its pods and the cracking I am silent I am cruise through asteroid belt I am in isolation malfunction in space isolated I am despondent I am an engineer engineering the fastest route to Nirvana 90 years too early I am the hammer cracking you open Aurora I am smitten I am reviving you I am revival I am sperm egg zygote I am your malfunction lonely man unfortunate accident 90 years too early I am devastated lying Scheffler in a pod floating through space I am the place/space in space/race only man in this space/race unfortunate I am prepared to die with or without you I am dying 90 years too early I am being written into your book covers closing like pod doors like millenniums like Buddha’s palms I am the We in the contrived ending I am sperm egg zygote Homestead and Avalon 90 years too early I am hammer glass shatter penetration penetration I am devastated in a pod floating through revival I am an engineer engineering Nirvana dying lying through space 90 years too early malfunction sperm smitten written malfunction unfortunate Aurora unfortunate revival 90 years too early Aurora Aurora Aurora

—

spwm day 6
For context:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/chris-pratt-jennifer-lawrenc…/