forgetfulsurf: poems 2013a collection

• 12/01/13

• i put the pedal to the floor

• captain america: a review

• what this is not:

• haiku

• eyes.

• x2

• sonnet one

• five responses to anon hate

• childhood games

• come on feel existentially restless

• flyover

published by egg rock press, 2014

these boots are not made for dancing.neither am i, my awkward limbs

refusing to adjust to the beats set by my brain.i enjoy this, the wide circle of movement

and smiles across the circumferencedresses and shirts and jeans and skirts

all next to each other, not really friends butno longer strangers, and i think

'this is happiness, and i did not know it'.

◊

I put the pedal to the flooris something john said about travel.tartan skirt, white blouse and coccinéo jumper. there’s a schoolin Newton-le-Willows and two pretty girlsare walking back to their houses.my feet are inexperienced,a pop star in a dress that pulls no punches.But what of that?i am trapped in a tiny hamletmy mind its own victimand that is of consequence.Not an inconsequential part, some‘gi-so-te-ma-par’ and round the garden again.when i think of you i think of how we never speak,an unfinished conversation that we always

captain america: a review

i am in a long distance committed friendship aided by skype. i am in a long distance and painful best friendship and when i see your face in that window it makes me warm up a little and feel something. i like the way that you draw your knees up to your chin while you are sat on your bed and put the bowl of popcorn right in front of you but far enough from your laptop that i can see it because if it were on the keyboard i couldn’t. i also like the way you offer me the popcorn even though it would be stale by the time it got to me from hong kong. at some point your torrent freezes or something (i don’t really know what mechanism we’re even using to watch this film) and we have to rewind and count down so we start at the same time and that is nice, two people on opposite sides of the world counting together. after the film is finished i have to go and walk my dog but instead i take you downstairs (that is, i carry the laptop with you in it) and lie on the floor cuddling him instead while you awwww from your screen. we talk about some stuff and it’s really nice but then like a fool i bring up my scars (i never had any before and when i’m alone now i can’t stop looking that them) and you choke up a bit and i’m sorry. but i love you and i want it all to go away because that’s what you do for me, you make it all go away even if it’s just for a little bit. and the fact that later once i’ve walked the dog i am about to raid the knife drawer when my mother comes home is irrelevant.

*****

five stars, would watch with you again.

what this is not:

- this is not a poem about self-loathing- this is not a poem about her- this is not a poem where i indulge my feelings (i should stop doing that)- this is not a poem about death- this is not a poem about her

- this is not a poem in which i try not to cry- this is not a poem about drinking squash in the park- this is not a poem about being uncomfortably attracted to everyone- this is not a poem about the way your smiles make me smile- this is not a poem where i plead with imaginary friends- this is not a poem about her

- this is not a poem where i want to die- this is not a poem about faking being okay- this is not a poem about being okay- this is not a poem about hugging you so tight- this is not a poem about arm cutting- this is not a poem about her

- this is not a poem considering the implications of baring my soul- this is not a poem about lying in the sun and finally being content- this is not a poem about how content is the best i can aim for- this is not a poem about loving someone more than you hate yourself- this is not a poem about loving someone- this is not a poem about her

- this is not a poem that is happy- this is not a poem that is sad- this is not a poem with any kind of emotion at all- not any more

eyes.

we are as imperfect as our eyes.

they are wired in upside down;the perfect proof of our flawed evolutionforcing the brain to compensatefor random and unexplainablebeautiful folly on the universe’s part, witha sight spectrum as narrow as the spanbetween your two leftmost toes.

be as beautiful as your eyes.

blue as the sea, green as the grass.let them dart from side to sideas you reread your final frantic draftsand take a long deep drag on your cigarette- it calms you down and it widens your irises.take solace in the idea of yourself as a draft:a product a million years in the makinghalf-baked and never quite done.

we are as imperfect as our eyes.

x2

i was raised the son of an engineer.i see numbers in everything - you smile like x squared, graphedacross the plane of your round cheeksyour hair a tangent to their curves - and when i breathe i count primes.two. three. five. seven.science edges slowly towards an understandingthat it’s fated never to reachand i feel like that about poetry:

to perfectly capture the essence of a feelingis my unending pursuit. my last theoremwill be light through glass, high windows,an incomplete proof of your hair blowing in the windscrawled on loose post-its on the desk.three. five. seven. eleven.read equations at my funeral.sing hymns from fibonacci. i will never reachthe lofty heights of a universal truth - my medium is too subjective for that,i am far more concerned with how you feelthan the laws that keep you feeling – 

but the emotion of a poem well finishedis like a perfect root, or a neat fraction;like untangling the X of my mind and the Yand your eyes, and for me it’s exhilaratingthat we can move people so easilywith a statement of truth, whether hung neatlyon either side of an equals signor divined from a mere twenty-six characters.

sonnet one

falling asleep on the mousepad of my laptop.so very dependent on the people i findat the other end of a thin, grey-silver wireand their incarnations in my day-to-day life:a striped jumper resting against my gooseflesh chest.it (figuratively) smells of her. memories.

more letters, more pictures, a bright postcard tacked upon a different wall, elsewhere, and, even thoughtheir sender is long gone from my day-to-day life,there is still the monotone gloss of happiness,of opening the unopened white envelopes and admiring their identical foreign stamps.

later i will wake up: find the xylophone printof a macbook keyboard embossed, card, on my face.

five responses to anon hatefor heather

1.you’re damn wrong. you’re damn wrong.

2.did you have a bad day today?did it rain? did you fail courseworkor get yelled at in class by a teacheryou thought had liked you? tired?are you on any medication for that?did he dump you? did you leave her?did you wake up to the sound ofyour parents arguing and not knowwhether or not it was about you?did you trip on the stairs and droppapers all over the floor? have youbeen crying? can i do anything to help?

3. if you look outside at night in the countryside you can see all the stars and they make me think of my best friend, who told me how they symbolize eternity and the spread of a universe that doesn’t care what you do and just wants you to be happy; i told her that my favourite star is the north star, because sailors used to use it to navigate and thereby find their ways home, and i like the implication that i too can find a home if i follow that star.

4. annoying reaction gif.emma stone in easy aor something ‘sassy’from supernatural.

5.i know.(and then you walk away.)

childhood games

the floor is lavai step across different events in my lifelike a compulsive on paving crackscareful, oh so careful, to avoidanything that is going to eat me up inside

the floor is lavaever since i was little, it has been like thistrying desperately to understand peopleand realising that i am not really like themoutwardly similar but not wired up right

the floor is lavabeing alive is walking across a minefieldand i’ve lost more than two of my legsjust trying to stay awake for you. pleasestay awake for me, so i can buy you flowers

the floor is lavabut you are the stepping stones

sufjan stevens invites you to: come on feel existentially restless

o’hare international. cement gray metro stationsand slushed ice on roads. welcome to second city,where the radio is all news and the news is all sports.a yellow-city-sized mcdonalds, and seven eleven.welcome to america, the land of bottomless refills:neon signs for hitherto fictional brands - legendarystories from post-ironic novels. this country doesn’texist, it’s just a compound of all the clichés we useand sometimes come across in our lonely british lives;strictly once in a while. the accents are just actorsand everyone is pretending, received pronunciationfor the digital age. chromium citypersonalities.

>walking thru the cloud gate - there’s no

heaven on the other side, just fog and slush.sleet: here, the radio calls it ‘freezing rain’.i can see myself reflected, years from now

sat in the starbucks across the road and writinganother alienated novel. preceding adjectives

and short sentences. walking thru the cloud gate- just a city on the other side. call me christian.

if only getting here had been that hard: if onlyi were really here and not just dreaming.

can’t you see yourself reflected in the ceiling?<

mexican food and houses in the proto-prairie styleswim before eyes hardened by cta neon. 63rd streetfrom oak park, all the way out west, down south. one.two. three coffee shops on the block. five. six blowsto the chest; death tolls have risen every day i am here.homeless men sing carols for money - excuse me,can you help me buy a sandwich? no. but no reason.ringing bells from the salvation army, black snow onthe street corner. sidewalk. roll the word on your tongue.side walk. tiptoe around the man with his dog for company;don’t think about the bulge at the security guard’s side,and remember to eat everything on your plate. do notthrow up, do not throw up, do not question what is wrong.do not lift your eyes from the pavement and ask for directions.

28th december - a flyover of london reveals it lit uplike tannenbaum in orange. at this early hour it isyet asleep, cars on tinsel roads like ants in amber.

from the ground i know it to be grey but the greyof skin and long-haul flights lends all a bleachedexuberance, forgotten soon enough by daylight

and earth-bound smallness. i do not feel ‘home’.