forgetfulsurf: poems 2013 a collection

12/01/13 i put the pedal to the oor captain america: a review what this is not: haiku eyes. x2 sonnet one ve responses to anon hate childhood games come on feel existentially restless yover

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 circumference dresses and shirts and jeans and skirts all next to each other, not really friends but no longer strangers, and i think 'this is!happiness, and i did not know it'.

"

I put the pedal to the oor

is something john said about travel. tartan skirt, white blouse and coccino jumper. theres a school in Newton-le-Willows and two pretty girls are 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 hamlet my mind its own victim and 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 unnished 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 couldnt. 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 dont really know what mechanism were even using to watch this lm) 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 lm is nished 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 oor cuddling him instead while you awwww from your screen. we talk about some stuff and its really nice but then like a fool i bring up my scars (i never had any before and when im alone now i cant stop looking that them) and you choke up a bit and im sorry. but i love you and i want it all to go away because thats what you do for me, you make it all go away even if its just for a little bit. and the fact that later once ive walked the dog i am about to raid the knife drawer when my mother comes home is irrelevant. ***** ve 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 nally 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 awed evolution forcing the brain to compensate for random and unexplainable beautiful folly on the universes part, with a sight spectrum as narrow as the span between your two leftmost toes. be as beautiful as your eyes. blue as the sea, green as the grass. let them dart from side to side as you reread your nal frantic drafts and 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 making half-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, graphed across the plane of your round cheeks your hair a tangent to their curves -! and when i breathe i count primes. two. three. ve. seven. science edges slowly towards an understanding that its fated never to reach and i feel like that about poetry: to perfectly capture the essence of a feeling is my unending pursuit. my last theorem will be light through glass, high windows, an incomplete proof of your hair blowing in the wind scrawled on loose post-its on the desk. three. ve. seven. eleven. read equations at my funeral. sing hymns from bonacci. i will never reach the lofty heights of a universal truth -! my medium is too subjective for that, i am far more concerned with how you feel than the laws that keep you feeling ! but the emotion of a poem well nished is like a perfect root, or a neat fraction; like untangling the X of my mind and the Y and your eyes, and for me its exhilarating that we can move people so easily with a statement of truth, whether hung neatly on either side of an equals sign or divined from a mere twenty-six characters.

sonnet one

falling asleep on the mousepad of my laptop. so very dependent on the people i nd at the other end of a thin, grey-silver wire and their incarnations in my day-to-day life: a striped jumper resting against my gooseesh chest. it (guratively) smells of her. memories. more letters, more pictures, a bright postcard tacked up on a different wall, elsewhere, and, even though their 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: nd the xylophone print of a macbook keyboard embossed, card, on my face.

ve responses to anon hate

for heather

1. youre damn wrong.!youre damn wrong.

2. did you have a bad day today? did it rain? did you fail coursework or get yelled at in class by a teacher you 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 of your parents arguing and not know whether or not it was about you? did you trip on the stairs and drop papers all over the oor? have you been 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 doesnt 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 nd their ways home, and i like the implication that i too can nd a home if i follow that star.

4.! annoying reaction gif. emma stone in!easy a or something sassy from supernatural.

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

childhood games

the oor is lava i step across different events in my life like a compulsive on paving cracks careful, oh so careful, to avoid anything that is going to eat me up inside the oor is lava ever since i was little, it has been like this trying desperately to understand people and realising that i am not really like them outwardly similar but not wired up right the oor is lava being alive is walking across a mineeld and ive lost more than two of my legs just trying to stay awake for you. please stay awake for me, so i can buy you owers the oor is lava but you are the stepping stones

sufjan stevens invites you to: come on feel existentially restless

ohare international. cement gray metro stations and 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 rells: neon signs for hitherto ctional brands - legendary stories from post-ironic novels. this country doesnt exist, its just a compound of all the clichs we use and sometimes come across in our lonely british lives; strictly once in a while. the accents are just actors and everyone is pretending, received pronunciation for the digital age. chromium citypersonalities. > walking thru the cloud gate - theres no heaven on the other side, just fog and slush. sleet: here, the radio calls it freezing rain. i can see myself reected, years from now sat in the starbucks across the road and writing another 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 only i were really here and not just dreaming. cant you see yourself reected in the ceiling? < mexican food and houses in the proto-prairie style swim before eyes hardened by cta neon. 63rd street from oak park, all the way out west, down south. one. two. three coffee shops on the block. ve. six blows to 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 on the street corner. sidewalk. roll the word on your tongue. side walk. tiptoe around the man with his dog for company; dont think about the bulge at the security guards side, and remember to eat everything on your plate. do not throw 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 yover of london reveals it lit up like tannenbaum in orange. at this early hour it is yet asleep, cars on tinsel roads like ants in amber. from the ground i know it to be grey but the grey of skin and long-haul ights lends all a bleached exuberance, forgotten soon enough by daylight and earth-bound smallness. i do not feel home.