Black sheep, whore

Nurse – A Poem

  Hospital canteen staff surrender to predictable fatigue,

And wear their creased and fragile masks in silence,

Staring intermediate nothings with rusty plughole eyes.

  One nurse -a child - removes the name badge noose and

Now her throat is free to inhale the stale air,

The canteen air, the hope free air that waits expectant.

  For through Venetians and of the strip-lit flicker

Songbirds sing the sounds of sunrise,

In spite of black skies and orange glowed clouds.

  The nurse raised herself stiff limbed to the window

Engulfing herself in the avian tumult. What do they know,

The robin and the crow?

  The fluttering cacophony madness becomes too much,

Drives her inside, withdrawing from windows

And the ever coming dawn.

  An ugly grey clock ticks loudly overhead,

As the white noise slumber in her head remains, the double doors swing,

OK, so I have to start a blog, but I really don't want to. I don't want to because I don't like the amount of time I spend on the internet already. I don't want to because I feel my life is my own life. I don't want to because frankly I feel like I'm above blogging. Richmal Crompton never fucking blogged.

And yet here I am pouring unedited into the white noise and the river of useless bullshit that fills the internet, the digital oceans, polluting what really matters. Nothing that needs saying hasn't already been said, by better looking people with better ideas. 

But I'm here because I've written a novel and I want to sell my novel, that I've written reams of poetry and I want it published, and I have been led to believe that to be "marketable" I need to be "in London" and have an "internet presence." (I don't know who it is that I'm quoting there. It may be my own head.) So this is me: Blogging because someone who may not be right told me that I should. 

The thing is, I have nothing to say. Like at all. 

Sure, Arsenal lost again today but who really gives a shit? They always disappoint, and I'm used to it, and it's football, so actually who gives a shit. Sure, I'm overweight. Sure, I don't have a girlfriend. Sure, I don't have a decent job. Sure, I'm broke. Sure, I live w/ my parents. Sure, they're pretty disappointed with me. Sure, I'm pretty disappointed with myself, but like I say, I'm a white lower middle class 25yo male from Hitchin, so what the fuck do I reeeeeaaalllllllly have to moan about. 

But I'll have a go. Here are a selection of my problems, today:

#1 I hate that I'm obsessed with reading fucking Vogue magazine and following Cara D's twitter feed but at the same time feel physically nauseous at the value they (being the media in general) put on beauty and the idolatry of that beauty, unearned.

#2 Linked to #1...I hate that I'm having trouble rereading Jane Eyre because I'm wondering how hot Charlotte Bronte actually was. The same thing goes for Sylvia Plath. I'm reading Ariel, and, I like Plath partly because she's a terrific writer, but mostly because she was an absolute fucking babe. I masturbated to her book jacket photo. And I just get the feeling that neither SP or CB would be down with that. But that holds up as a world trend, because nobody gives as shit about Anne Bronte, because she was uggers, so hardly anyone at all has read her brilliant The Whatever at Blah Blah Fucking Yorkshire, even though it's a wilder, more poetic and much superior novel than either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.

#3 I hate that phrases like 'real babe' and 'down with that' and 'hot' have rambunctiously entered my into my lexicon. I am from North Hertfordshire not Southern California and I actually want to talk like Lord Henry Wootton, but North Herts didn't export it's culture so I grew up listening to Tupac and Chilli Peppers so now I know more street names in Los Angeles than I do in Letchworth. 

#4 I absolutely love The Doors. I love The Doors enough to have visited Jim Morrison's grave three times, and be genuinely sad when I found out Ray Manzarek had died. Thing is, all internet Doors fans seem really, really weird, and they're mostly South American, so I don't want to be part of that because it's incredibly creepy. It saddens me that I find it creepy, but it totally is fucking creepy. But what worries me most is that visiting a stranger's grave on three separate occasions is also really fucking creepy, so I am probably worse than all the Doors fans I hate. 

#5 I don't understand what's good about Breaking Bad, because I've tried to watch it, and it looks like a lot of bald guys saying a lot of words for a long old time. One of them wears a mask and does some science. That's about it.

#6 Other things I don't get: Minimal House, Palace Clothing, the Elephant and Castle Cycle Bypass, and Vine. 

#7 Morrisey. He is still very much not dead, and this, for me, is a problem. Fuck Morrisey.

#8 There's also a lot of other real world problems, like how I'm ever going to be able to afford to buy a house, like how I'm ever going to empty my Scrooge McDuck swimming pool full of student debt, like all this endless world conflict, like these massively impotent politicians, like why all the old people are still alive, like how dependant I am on Google and how much they know about everything, and like whether or not I'll ever understand how to use a semi-colon properly. 

So maybe I'll blog about that bullshit. 

Mainly, my point is, I'm not getting suicide-bombed for building a road, and I'm not spending my gap year in prison in Peru (even if it was totally their own fucking fault), so things could be worse. And the fact things could and should be worse only heightens my feeling that the world doesn't need another pointless white-boy blog. 

So here we are: I'm starting a blog to moan about nothing.

WORK.

I am sealed in a fifties sarcophagus, 

an everyday office, it is a bleak canvas.

And yet, fresh grass scents seep in

through unknown cracks, inviting me

to roll in the moss and the seaweed. 

Inside, under fluorescents,

blank screens mirror blank minds,

robotic and distressed eyes stare motionless,

ringed with bloodshot electricity,

smart-casual strangers

epitaphic in fortnightly bank statements

and shirt sleeves:

"Here lies...oh, we forget."

Man machines spew paper venom

into a hum of monotonous gossip,

whilst automatic doors 

shake their heads in stricken grief,

and the coat racks sag,

and under the blinking lightbulb stupidity,

a tray of instant coffee is

passed around, with soup-spooned sweeteners, 

on which the hopes of the day

are pinned,

but will eventually dissolve, and 

outside through the tinted glass,

a starling remains still in the grass,

Hangover anchors futility,

Because: What’s the difference?

An exterior nausea of broken choices and bad promises.

I’ve been in this room for twenty-three years

Balloon wallpaper reflects the same memories

Nothing new to uncover, no unheard echoes.

The knives are all blunt in the drawers,

So cellophane wrist skin remains unspoiled,

And whole,

And anyway –

Mandela – A Poem

  Mandela is dying,

Lying, semi-conscious,

Under hospital starched bedclothes,

Whilst the world lenses of eye and camera,

Wait for his clock to strike

Midnight.

But he is not there yet.

He still lives and inspires, no,

He is not there yet…

And yet…

Whilst he survives, he has a grandson –

A businessman of sorts,

A green-eyed fan of green,

Who plots and prints t-shirts,

And tickets,

Attends court hearings,

For the theme park he dreams of

Erecting around Mandela’s grave,

Where he hopes, that above

The site of Mandela’s final rest,

Trampling on his deserved memory,

Souvenir-clad fools will piss on the pages of history,

And buy expensive photos,

Which are slightly out of focus,

So that in future years they can look upon the photo,

And see their smiling image,

And tell their family and friends,

I’ve only met Sophie on one occasion, through a friend,

But I’ve been reading her Facebook wall

Sporadically,

Usually at night, usually after I’ve deleted the history of what I watched before.

Doing this helps to calm me, but sometimes I feel like I'm lost at the

Bottom of a very deep well.

No rope. 

No Bucket.

No ladder.

Only Sophie.

I think if we hung out, we’d get on pretty well.

She’s beautiful –

In an obvious way, and

She’s half-French and I’d like to marry her,

Though I just can’t find the right words to say