Damaged Goods

Quelle domage…

What Damage!

Goods

It’s all about the

goods

Import Export, hormones hormones

Mighty Memory

Repeals the Ear Twist

She cannot stop

her brown-shoe tapping

Camouflaged to look organic,

Like Free-Run eggs

She smiles and twirls,

Like a lively tornado

Lovely Little lady

With reverent revenge

Damn her

She sickens with repitition

The same tired scene

wants to lay down

It needs rest.

And She, like a slave driver

(not the kind that sings the ‘wheels on the bus’…)

She demands attention

Attestation

to her interrogation

Do not deny her

she is ruthless,

Relentless

And either way

She does not sing.

Ripe Passages

After finally spilling ink onto the last unsoiled page of an old journal, I reread a few passages and found this:

“Here is some context for you (and by you, I refer to my future self) I finished work at 11:30pm; I was supposed to meet up with A – who claimed to be too tired to go out because A had slept all day. I called B, but B was feeling depressed and in a non-talkative slump. C hasn’t returned my message and D did not answer their phone. So off like a rocket, I took to my lonely drunken nook of ‘Else’s’. I sat down at a colourful little table amidst colourful little people. And here I am, waiting for a waiter to satisfy my thirst.

Everything is so busy in this insomniac city. Everyone is yelling and laughing, pleading with each-other for some attention. A strange state of affairs this is. I have an inkling that I should be soul-searching somehow. But my soul is not calling out to be found. I’m not feeling sad, not even particularly lonely.

No waiter yet.

I’d really like a glass of red wine. I can’t even tell the waiters apart from the bathroom-goers. The French and English mingle into sparklingly noisy waves rolling in and out of my ears.

All the people here stare at me indifferently. Only a slight look of scorn or disgust clouding their gaze. It’s as if I were merely the shadow of a leper that they can’t bring themselves to be fully disgusted by, nor fully acknowledge as existing.

How do life-long poets keep their inspiration?

Do handwriting analysts consciously change their writing in order to change themselves, lie to themselves, or show a more favourable writing facade to the rest of the world?

What did J.G. Whitehead do when he was alone? and why wouldn’t he tell anyone about it?

Everyone clears out shortly after my arrival. My entry is like a secret symbol of the degeneration of the clientele. And I treasure my status.

A tall, beautiful waif lifts herself out of her chair at a nearby table. Her two male friends supervise her movements, likely wishing her motions were for them. A third man comes to her left flank. They stand in a semi-circle before her. I sip my wine. They follow her out of the bar. She smiles. The waitress comes over to clear the drunken debris left in their wake. I wonder if the tables feel resentful. Like disgruntled whores tucking themselves in to bed after a long and arduous day.

The back tables have all cleared out, leaving me on the threshold. Abandoned quiet lies behind me, noise and booze cavort before me. I am in the netherworld, alone, as all souls must be between birth and death – where the numbness reigns. I’m really glad A cancelled out on me, but on the other hand, I kind of wish A would walk in with a bunch of A’s friends, and I would try not to be noticed. And if I were, I would ask to be ignored.

“Leave me with my pen and paper. They are my solace, and always at my disposal. I love them truly.” I would say, mimicking Elizabeth Smart’s prose. “I need to write words I barely know how to spell. How do you like them apples? I cannot be like you.” I would say as a closing statement, just to throw them off my trail. “I love my pen madly” I would mumble to myself as I crawled on all fours back to my wine.

Look at that: imagination is the key to excitement. I want to go skating tomorrow.

I love that the table in front of me has a Portuguese canister sitting on it. It is made of red clay and decorated with white and black paint. It is beautiful.

I want to go home and do Tarot. Ask the arbitrary placing of cards (which are arbitrarily assigned arbitrary meanings) what the depths of my soul consist of, and what lies in my future – Both of which are arbitrary enough questions.

Isn’t it incredibly strange that I am my mother’s daughter?

I think I have had too much sugar today. Perhaps.”