Reverse the Curse

I'm into leaning this way, even though I'm hard pressed to think of any part that might not creak off of me.

I'm properly propped, letting gravity do the work, becoming mattress sediment.

Habit and relaxing into the next chapter of discomfort. 

Decking

What I'm not seeing when the sun is not streaming through the patio door, what I'm refusing to imprint when I wake up and it's not there and I kick a cat bowl across the kitchen, the kitchen that is only grey tile and a step above the living quarters and I twist my back reaching over the counter for the radio switch and for what, World Service, service the world for Christ's sake, stop scaring me into a stupor, Quaker laughing at me from his perch on the oatmeal tube, daring me to fill a pan with water, boil it and start my food cycle over.

Doing a Thing

Doing a thing instead of enjoying what a thing is.
Hands on hips, cocked head, Wisconsin sass.
My ambivalence, my lack of engagement,
my terrible justification.
My not living, 
my not even doing a thing.

Stew

Glaring across the way,
46th St shysters, kid brunch of an excuse not to bag the leaves.
Late last year, I could see the scramble flying across the kitchen,
baby rolling with the eggy spoon,
soiled apple rash of a face, someone scraping like hell at a waffle iron.
My face, a rash also, of anger and shame at my anger
and shame for having bought into the dream,
for not having considered what happens
when similarly cranky folk,
harbour the same dream and are driven crankier by it still.

Across the way, tapping the 'gansettled snow,
46th St wankers, oblivious to the resentments of fall,
mucking about with a sled.
A baby flails, its experience righteously new, and calls out to no-one in particular.
My stew is still in the oven from last night.
Ten minutes from now will see to it that I am full,
slumped on the couch,
facing 44th St.

Oscar

Oscar Schmidt, 1871.
Bright idea.
Travelling, with traveller.
Shining script,
tradition piling, oral tradition,
piling on, piling.
Tradition, is about piling,
piling on songs,
making songs,
making bank.

Futures

If we all knew how to buck the system,
wouldn't we?
And we know how to buck it,
in front of us,
on top of us,
firing up the wire,
flickering so fast cats can't see it.
Blue gate,
blue gate,
not the entrance.

Those who buck,
buck downwards.
The one thing we all know.
Swallowing the kernel down with tuna melts,
or a wedge of Boar's Head.
Chewing a deli lunch, somewhere.

Mixology

Everything's changing,
I never act like this,
we were brought here,
yelp pilots, I will never act like this,
being here,
but I am,
everything's changing.
My world will never be the same.
I was but one,
in this bar for whom everything will be different.
We have but changed,
smashing towards the re-skin.

Italian Carnival Bread

We lied about the crusts I was trying to fry with tomato sauce and garlic.

Kitchen physics, the awry lie dodging what cannot ever be done with bread.

Italian carnival bread, we told her. For the festival of the pig.

Our misogyny erupting from the crevices of the sofa,

like the mould and maggots of the following summer. 

Waving away the Bean Feast,

mansplaining what should have been unmansplainable.

Cocktail Club

Wine bleeds into orange juice into vodka,
tie-dyed the drink, 
cool customer wakes up with marker on his face,
does care but carefully does not seem to.

Early years, where no-one states the code,
the parent heat-traced, red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
tie-dyed the drink, barely blue, the handprint on the cradle.

Belly-laughed, the fool. 
Guffawing at what we think the rules may have been,
no shaker, no stick, no list.
Wine bleeds into orange juice,
blends into it like piss in the snow.
Trickle down. 
Effect.

Headache, stiff neck, sugared throat, hint of a cold.
Bus ride, home.
Nothing to report on Monday,
though the teethmarks on our coffee cups
better than the bitten tongue,
than alluding that the weekend is 
what we thought the rules may have been.

Media Can't Handle Us

Incredulous;
What is this?
This self-awareness.
Ability to do the right thing the right way for the right reasons.
You didn't throw cash at it?
What?
There is no home here for that,
nowhere to hang the hat,
peg retracted.

To Sloop John B:

Eddie has a dream,
on minus 17,
we had no money,
so we signed the players on loan.
We play from the back,
with pace in attack,
he went to Burnley,
but then he came back.
Let him come home, 
won't you let him come home?
It's grim in Burnley,
let Eddie come home.

Sun,
footy,
sea,
footy,
sex,
footy,
blue rinse,
footy.

Harp on, journo.
Harp on.

I'm With Pizza

Can it, comment drone, saying something for the sake of something.
Someone for the sake of someone.
Quieten, won't you.
Your peace is not defeat,
it will elevate,
You, be the hook that resets the pole vault bar,
it's not rocket science.
Peace be peace for silence.

Crisps

No hands no, no, away from the bag,
no grease to grease.
No wish to be left alone,
but in wishing so,
no desire to accept other hands,
smothering my food,
breeding with the leavings
of other hands on it.
Away from my food.
No.
Don't touch,
don't taste.
I'm here,
but don't taste.

Rant: Over

Fugugly is one word in a rant.
Some racial epithet, another.
Racism is a weird one though,
the lone wolf,
drawing stereotypes,
hating stereotypes,
and positively bursting out of the skin of their own;
anything but to be.

Fish and Chips

Throat a tube full of toothpaste.
Feet crunched and rolled tightly into shin,
thigh, abs gone soft for winter, chest and on.
Squeezing out the soggy mass of batter,
no beer to cut the clog of milk and flour.
Fish, happy as larry,
towelled to death in the 
summer sauna mildew sponge.

Cake Sitting, Sunnyside

Sitting hard and fast,
guessing at cakes with bum,
key lime blobs on the formica.
All down the street,
a lace gust,
the net curtain synchronised,
twitching like the moustache
of a cartoon barman.

Sciatica

A stretch caught up and so many wires to
untangle anyway and what an inane task,
now shouldn't something else want
to be ticked off instead anyway, so off with you, back,
and off with me,
interesting and unsettling new pain
following me down the subway steps,
spine the snake, 
petrified on the barbwire fence.

Stainless

Fridge static cat hair dried juice 
can't hold a magnet.
I don't read my history as
someone who remembered me on their holiday,
just as the crust of milk drops,
that I swore I'd wipe yesterday
and that I will for weeks to come.

Man

Man, making a meal of his crisis, slowly.
What? Me?
What?
Me.
This crisis?
Wha.
This. Is.
Wha.
I did, me, crisis?
Wh.
This might be.
Crisis?
Pipe. No longer at jaunty angle,
flopped in half, knackered, at the pool.
How do people get killed.

Snare Sample

The tool, trade, the stock sample, mine,

my sole stock.

Revise what I do? Me?

I am what you pay for,

here's what I did,

it's perfect, finished,

handed back.

It's perfect,

I'm in Hawaii,

no recalls,

it's perfect,

you chose well,

it's what you wanted,

it's finished?

So perfect.

Date

I'm grinding my heel into the final dry patch of sawdust,
swinging back on the brass.
The only thing I relish is crossing over.
I make the quiz machine calibrate me,
I can refer back to the pattern of the demo sequence,
knowing how the flashes would have been. 
Having crossed, 
I have given in to what I imagine your room will be,
where my socks will be,
where my breakfast will be,
when my shower will be.