As Robert Frost wrote, a poem “begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never thought to begin with.”
http://www.hipsobriety.com/home/2014/10/23/howtohaveitall
http://www.hipsobriety.com/home/2016/3/3/how-to-start-a-recovery-blog
Where the house is cold and empty and the garden’s overgrown,
They are there.
Where the letters lie unopened by a disconnected phone,
They are there.
Where your footsteps echo strangely on each moonlit cobblestone,
Where a shadow streams behind you but the shadow’s not your own,
You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s bone, bone, bone:
They are there, they are there, they are there.
They can parse a Latin sentence; they’re as learned as Plotinus,
They are there.
They’re as sharp as Ockham’s razor, they’re as subtle as Aquinas,
They are there.
They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus,
They’re the wall-constructing emperors of undiscovered Chinas,
They confine us, then malign us, in the end they undermine us,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
They assume it as an impost or they take it as a toll,
They are there.
The contractors grant them all that they incontinently stole,
They are there.
They will shrivel your ambition with their quality control,
They will desiccate your passion, then eviscerate your soul,
Wring your life out like a sponge and stuff your body down a hole,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
In the desert of your dreaming they are humped behind the dunes,
They are there.
On the undiscovered planet with its seven circling moons,
They are there.
They are ticking all the boxes, making sure you eat your prunes,
They are sending secret messages by helium balloons,
They are humming Bach cantatas, they are playing looney tunes,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
They are there, they are there, like a whisper on the air,
They are there.
They are slippery and soapy with our hope and our despair,
They are there.
So it’s idle if we bridle or pretend we never care,
If the questions are superfluous and the marking isn’t fair,
For we know they’re going to get us, we just don’t know when or where,
They are there, they are there, they are there.
JOHN WHITWORTH (2007)
Why did you leave me?
We had grown tired together. Don’t you remember?
We’d grown tired together, were going through the motions.
Why did you leave me?
I don’t know, really. There was comfort in that tiredness.
There was love.
Why did you leave me?
You began to correct my embellishments in public.
You wouldn’t let me tell my stories.
Why did you leave me?
She is… I don’t wish to be
any more cruel than I’ve been
You son-of-a-bitch.
Why did you leave me?
I was already gone.
I just brought my body with me.
Why did you leave me?
You found out and I found I couldn’t give her up.
I was as shocked as you were.
Why didn’t you lie to me?
I was already lying to you. It was hard work.
All of it suddenly felt like hard work.
Why did you leave me?
I wanted to try monogamy again.
I wanted the freedom to be monogamous.
You fucker. You fucking son-of-a-bitch.
Why did you leave me?
I wanted you both. I thought I could be faithful
to each of you. You shouldn’t have made me choose.
Don’t you know what betrayal is?
I never thought of it as betrayal. More like one pleasure
of mine you should never have known.
You really are quite an awful man.
Why did you leave me?
It was time to leave.
The hour of leaving had come.
Why did you leave me?
It would take too long to explain. Please
don’t ask me to explain.
Will you not explain it to me?
No, I will not explain it to you. I’ll say anything
rather than explain it to you. Even things that sound true.
New Zealand-based art director Dean Poole started his presentation at Design Indaba drawing out the forms of the letters we use, and take for granted, every day.
A is an H designed by an architect
B has a figure and is working on it
C got separated from O and never healed
D ate too much
E is the cannibal with a fork
F is the victim
G swallowed its tongue
H raised the bar
I the naturalist
J the naturalist arouse
K shoots from the hip
L is flatfooted
N is a Z that never got out of bed
O likes to sing
Q pokes fun at O
R is poser
S suffers from motion sickness
T is I that branched out
V has split ends
W is Ping-Pong
X is busting to relieve itself
Y gives you options
Z sidesteps most situations
Tsumani, waves, sea, recurring, but it always passes and I always remain safe and unscathed in the house, but the house/etc are destroyed. The aftermath is pretty bad. In fact everything is destroyed except me.
Toilets, futuristic, impossibly sophisticated, mechanical, automated
Toilets, over-wrought sophistication (luxury, perfume and white flowers — someone’s lousy try-too-hard idea of faux luxury and sophistication, that did not quite work in reality, after several people had used the toilet. I also saw what it looked like before it was used. It was a dent in the ground, covered with perfume and large white flowers, which I guess you were supposed to pee over, but after you did that, it seemed like the flowers etc drained to the side, in a line?). Male basket and female basket. Female basket went down, Male basket was at same level. Male toilets converted to female toilets. Bunch of salarymen, Asian, possibly Japanese, in office wear (white, striped shirts, black pants) waiting to use the toilet ahead of me.
Lesbian sex, recurring, rape — I wasn’t impressed. Happened in the thick curtains before I got to the toilets. I felt the thickness of the curtains. He said, “It’s happened before, right? During 7-11.” But it wasn’t during 7-11, so I looked him in the eye and said no. His eyes were red. I tried not to cry after. Something he knew about me that he’s using as evidence against me.
Elevator going past the top floor of a block of flats, where it looks broken or unfinished
Escalators, rushing around looking for escalators going up, sometime to run into escalators that are both coming down (roadblock), confused, hurried
Spiral staircase, white sheet metal, not grills, very clean minimalist design
Another staircase, with polished wood banisters, very smooth, sliding downwards.
“I am still a staff writer,” to Mr Leet, while undercover as a “client” (media, member, high-society people.)
“What is the push factor?”
“There is more a pull factor — the call of the wild / unknown.”
“The problem / thing with you is that the self-motivation is so strong…”
“To come back here only to find that everything and everyone is still the same, including myself.” — disappointment
Writing test, accused of cheating, but vindicated by CCTV
