CV
The initials of a school
branded on my wrist.
CV
The token of my
very first performance
CV
Memories that will fade
just as the ink on my wrist.
CV
Memories that have been absorbed, --
stored -- into my skin just as the ink.
CV
Gone. Memories that are
just fuzzed images now.
Missing. A past that has
drowned in the ocean of Now.
CV
**CV

I wrote student fees and it autocorrected to
fears

My friend was drunk and said CV
when they meant VC

Volunteering is sold to us like a product,
it's not that it's good in of itself,
it's good for your self,
it'll look good on your CV

it'll look good on your CV
it'll look good on your CV
it'll look good on your CV

if only you could see me
if only you could see me
if only you could see me

you'd see the way my face freezes or flinches
either one,
there is a pain that runs across my face like an electric shock

dehumanising someone is like they invented a wireless, handsfree, bluetooth way of stabbing someone,
you can do it without touching me,
but I can assure the pain in my chest will tell you otherwise,
you have cut me

please help me find the plug at the wall
help me restart
help me find the USB charger
help me connect

you've convinced me that if I claw at my arm long enough
wires will spark and spit at me
I am a machine because you treat me as one

like when they ask for my number at Student Health
or they ask for my number at Studylink
or they ask for number at the Bank
I remember I am nothing like everyone else.

Does logging off look bad on your CV?

Dear Miss *,
We regret to inform you that unfortunately at this time we do not have space for you at our company.
Yours,
Xxxx xxxxxxxx

Dear Miss *,
We regret to inform you that unfortunately at this time we cannot offer you a place with our company as you are under qualified.
Yours ** xxxxx

Dear Miss *,
Thank you for your application. We regret to inform you that you are over-qualified for the position.
Yours,  xxxxxxx ***

Dear Miss *,
I don’t think so love. This isn’t even a letter, this is my managerial position on you handing me your cv.
Cheers, bahbye now

Dear Miss *,
This isn’t really a letter either, but despite how un-pc this is, we can’t hire you due to your gender.
Thanks anyway, save your paper.

Dear Miss *,
Thank you for your application, unfortunately we had stronger applicants.
Yours, etc.,  aaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaa

Dear Miss *,
Thank you for your application. Unfortunately we are not hiring at the moment even though we had advertised the job you applied for.
Yours, xxxxxxxxx xxxxx

Dear Miss *,
We had left it between you and another applicant, and couldn’t decide so we flipped a coin, and she won. You’re a lovely girl though.
Yours, fffffff ffff fffff

Dear Miss *,
I refer to your claim for Jobseekers Benefit/Assistance at VVVVVV’s CCCCCC local office. Jobseekers Benefit/Assistance claims are subject to periodic review, consequently, I would appreciate if you would attend this office for interview on the 31/17/78 and bring the following :
1. Proof of Identity (i.e. Passport or Driving Licence or Long version of your Birth Certificate)
2.  Proof of Residency (e.g. Letter from landlord/ Rent Book/ Lease/ Mortgage Receipt/ Letter from Parents + Household Bill)
3. Written Proof of recent job applications and replies.
4. Proof of job applications made through FAS
5. FAS courses applied for.
6. A copy of your Curriculum Vitae (CV): unemployed from
7. If your spouse/partner is an adult dependent on your claim, please bring his/her GNIB and Passport/Travel Documents.
Failure to respond to this letter may lead to suspension or disallowance of claim.
Yours sincerely,
* *
Local Officer

for Jennie in gratitude*

For days afterwards he was preoccupied by what he’d collected into himself from the gallery viewing. He could say it was just painting, but there was a variety of media present in the many surrounding images and artefacts. Certainly there were all kinds of objects: found and gathered, captured and brought into a frame, some filling transparent boxes on a window ledge or simply hung frameless on the wall; sand, fixed foam, paper sea-water stained, a beaten sheet of aluminium; a significant stone standing on a mantelpiece, strange warped pieces of metal with no clue to what they were or had been, a sketchbook with brooding pencilled drawings made fast and thick, filling the page, colour like an echo, and yes, paintings.
 
Three paintings had surprised him; they did not seem to fit until (and this was sometime later) their form and content, their working, had very gradually begun to make a sort of sense.  Possible interpretations – though tenuous – surreptitiously intervened. There were words scrawled across each canvas summoning the viewer into emotional space, a space where suggestions of marks and colour floated on a white surface. These scrawled words were like writing in seaside sand with a finger: the following bird and hiraeth. He couldn’t remember the third exactly. He had a feeling about it – a date or description. But he had forgotten. And this following bird? One of Coleridge’s birds of the Ancient Mariner perhaps? Hiraeth he knew was a difficult Welsh word similar to saudade. It meant variously longing, sometimes passionate (was longing ever not passionate?), a home-sickness, the physical pain of nostalgia. It was said that a well-loved location in conjunction with a point in time could cause such feelings. This small exhibition seemed full of longing, full of something beyond the place and the time and the variousness of colour and texture, of elements captured, collected and represented. And as the distance in time and memory from his experience of the show in a small provincial gallery increased, so did his own thoughts of and about the nature of longing become more acute.
 
He knew he was fortunate to have had the special experience of being alone with ‘the work’ just prior to the gallery opening. His partner was also showing and he had accompanied her as a friendly presence, someone to talk to when the throng of viewers might deplete. But he knew he was surplus to requirements as she’d also brought along a girlfriend making a short film on this emerging, soon to be successful artist. So he’d wandered into the adjoining spaces and without expectation had come upon this very different show: just the title Four Tides to guide him in and around the small white space in which the art work had been distributed. Even the striking miniature catalogue, solely photographs, no text, did little to betray the hand and eye that had brought together what was being shown. Beyond the artist’s name there were only faint traces – a phone number and an email address, no voluminous self-congratulatory CV, no list of previous exhibitions, awards or academic provenance. A light blue bicycle figured in some of her catalogue photographs and on her contact card. One photo in particular had caught the artist very distant, cycling along the curve of a beach. It was this photo that helped him to identify the location – because for twenty years he had passed across this meeting of land and water on a railway journey. This place she had chosen for the coming and going of four tides he had viewed from a train window. The aspect down the estuary guarded by mountains had been a highpoint of a six-hour journey he had once taken several times a year, occasionally and gratefully with his children for whom crossing the long, low wooden bridge across the estuary remained into their teens an adventure, always something telling.
 
He found himself wishing this work into a studio setting, the artist’s studio. It seemed too stark placed on white walls, above the stripped pine floor and the punctuation of reflective glass of two windows facing onto a wet street. Yes, a studio would be good because the pictures, the paintings, the assemblages might relate to what daily surrounded the artist and thus describe her. He had thought at first he was looking at the work of a young woman, perhaps mid-thirties at most. The self-curation was not wholly assured: it held a temporary nature. It was as if she hadn’t finished with the subject and or done with its experience. It was either on-going and promised more, or represented a stage she would put aside (but with love and affection) on her journey as an artist. She wouldn’t milk it for more than it was. And it was full of longing.
 
There was a heaviness, a weight, an inconclusiveness, an echo of reverence about what had been brought together ‘to show’. Had he thought about these aspects more closely, he would not have been so surprised to discovered the artist was closer to his own age, in her fifties. She in turn had been surprised by his attention, by his carefully written comment in her guest book. She seemed pleased to talk intimately and openly, to tell her story of the work. She didn’t need to do this because it was there in the room to be read. It was apparent; it was not oblique or difficult, but caught the viewer in a questioning loop. Was this estuary location somehow at the core of her longing-centred self?  She had admitted that, working in her home or studio, she would find herself facing westward and into the distance both in place and time?
 
On the following day he made time to write, to look through this artist’s window on a creative engagement with a place he was familiar. The experience of viewing her work had affected him. He was not sure yet whether it was the representation of the place or the artist’s engagement with it. In writing about it he might find out. It seemed so deeply personal. It was perhaps better not to know but to imagine. So he imagined her making the journey, possibly by train, finding a place to stay the night – a cheerful B & B - and cycling early in the morning across the long bridge to her previously chosen spot on the estuary: to catch the first of the tides. He already understood from his own experience how an artist can enter trance-like into an environment, absorb its particularness, respond to the uncertainty of its weather, feel surrounded by its elements and textures, and most of all be governed by the continuous and ever-complex play of light.
 
He knew all about longing for a place. For nearly twenty years a similar longing had grown and all but consumed him: his cottage on a mountain overlooking the sea. It had become a place where he had regularly faced up to his created and invented thoughts, his soon-to-be-music and more recently possible poetry and prose. He had done so in silence and solitude.
 
But now he was experiencing a different longing, a longing born from an intensity of love for a young woman, an intensity that circled him about. Her physical self had become a rich landscape to explore and celebrate in gaze, and stroke and caress. It seemed extraordinary that a single person could hold to herself such a habitat of wonder, a rich geography of desire to know and understand. For so many years his longing was bound to the memory of walking cliff paths and empty beaches, the hypnotic viewing of seascaped horizons and the persistent chaos of the sea and wild weather. But gradually this longing for a coming together of land, sea and sky had migrated to settle on a woman who graced his daily, hourly thoughts; who was able to touch and caress him as rain and wind and sun can act upon the body in ever-changing ways. So when he was apart from her it was with such a longing that he found himself weighed down, filled brimfull.
 
In writing, in attempting to consider longing as a something the creative spirit might address, he felt profoundly grateful to the artist on the light blue bicycle whose her observations and invention had kept open a door he felt was closing on him. She had faced her own longing by bringing it into form, and through form into colour and texture, and then into a very particular play: an arrangement of objects and images for the mind to engage with – or not. He dared to feel an affinity with this artist because, like his own work, it did not seem wholly confident. It contained flaws of a most subtle kind, flaws that lent it a conviction and strength that he warmed to. It had not been massaged into correctness. The images and the textures, the directness of it, flowed through him back and forward just like the tides she had come far to observe on just a single day. He remembered then, when looking closely at the unprotected pieces on the walls, how his hand had moved to just touch its surfaces in exactly the way he would bring his fingers close to the body of the woman he loved so much, adored beyond any poetry, and longed for with all his heart and mind.

“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.

They're ... TRYING IT ...
They're ... " Playing TRICKS " ... !!!
  
They're Doing Things ...
To Make Me ... QUIT ... !!!
  
"Your role will change,
we'll re-arrange,
your work schedule,
and change your day !"
  
These Are Things ...
The LIARS ... Say ...
  
LIARS ... " In " ...
Todays' Workplace ...
  
Those Who ... LIE ...
For ... "cowardly types" ... !!!
  
Those Who Wear ...
NICE ... Corporate Ties ... !!!
  
Now Things Are ... "TIGHT" ...
Their Plan ... Takes FLIGHT .......................
  
"Lets get rid of  
some troublesome guys !
What we need are
YES MEN types,
and of course,  
let's have more whites !
Let's remove, those dark skin types !
Clever ones, who've got some fight !
Turn the screws, let colleagues loose,
even let some give abuse !"
  
They Should REALLY ...
Be MORE.......................... "shrewd" .............
Before They're ON ... YES ...
  
Channel Four NEWS ... !!!!!!
  
cos' My ... " Patience " ...
Has ... RUN OUT.
  
This Is ... REAL ...
There Is NO DOUBT ... !!!
  
"Managers have gone down south,
because Big Virge, has left a rout !
Punching many, in the mouth !
That young man, sure has some clout !"
  
This Is ALL ...
Because of ... THIS ...  
  
..... "***** Games" ......
and subtle ............... " Tricks " ...
Just To Put Me ... "In A Fix" ...  
  
"Virgil, you'll start at 8.30 !"
  
"WHY WHEN I NOW  
START AT 10 !"
  
"Come on Virgil,
don't get shirty !"
  
"CHECK My terms of employment !
I think you'll find, that it's been signed ?
Right down there, on the dotted line !"
  
"Well, I can't say,
too much on that ?"
  
"It's cool, I know you
want me out !
Don't try to defend !
My working here, is near an end !"
  
"It's a job i've got to do !"
  
"Yeah OK, you stupid fool !
Those above, are using you,
to do the deed, that they know they can't do !
Push me out, without virtue !
I'll be looking, BELIEVE ME !
Can I have my old CV ?"
  
"Sorry, but we didn't keep,
a copy of your old CV !"
  
"You are kidding me !
You don't hold a copy,
of my CV ?"
  
"The system then,
was pretty bad,
CV's had, strange locations ?"
  
"You should be, locked in prison !
Things like that, have no defence !"
  
"It is NOT, personnel's duty,
to take care of ANYONE's CV !"
  
"Whatever, are you done with me !"
  
"NO Virgil, you're not happy !"
  
"What do you expect,
when you're messing with me !
Hours i've done, have proved loyalty !
You don't give a ****, about things I need !
You people are a really sick breed !
All you do is live for greed,
and to USE, people like me !
Power Trips, and THEIR Money !
YES You fool, can't you see ?
The cash you make, compared to theirs,
Those who have, controlling shares !
Keep on doing, what you do !
One day it, just might be YOU ?
Facing someone, pulling stunts,
who will stress you, just for fun !"
  
"DO WHAT'S RIGHT
Why be SO THICK !
  
Can't You SEE ... ?!?
  
"They're TRYING IT ... "

So the only thing you lay claim to
is you are a poet.

He was referring to my CV
where it was mentioned boldly
the art I dabble in.

But that’s no skill
shrugged the questioner
doesn’t hone your ability
in finance management
or marketing strategy

can’t fetch one good deal
for the company
your poetry

but to be frank with you
I too wrote a few
only to dump before it got me
your poetry

otherwise I fear
I would not have been here.

Outside were faces in nervous wait.

I wondered if among them
was another poet!

Brian Molko was already doing the current wannabe-trend of trans-sexuality long before trans-sexuality was a common "thing"... tracing back some ulterior taboo settings... today on my way to work i spotted my first trans-******: wow! obviously he had manly hands... large... he was tall... he had large feet... but slender legs... and a face, with all that necessary make-up of eyeliner... hair? not very long... shoulder length... yes... a deep voice... but then again my godmother has a husky voice from all the smoking and drinking... but i fancied him... the dynamic on the tube was magnifying... three women sat beside him while he was talking to his geeky (maybe, probably) boyfriend, a plump chap with eyeglasses... i couldn't stop thinking: ah... the solidarity of men... when in shortage of supply of women, men will find alternative avenues to compensate for women, men will find women in men... the idea that i might be a transphobe never occurred to me: but it did occur to me that women: for all their supposed glorification of acceptance would never allow men to be attracted to men who are: beyond merely the thespian gay-lord, *******... ally... this... "freak"... i fancied this man... i could omit all the stressed "imperfections"... but such a feminine-feline face... it really suited him... i wanted to kiss him... i was thinking... i'll tend to the "oysters" and all the tender bits and bites of being with him... andd do the butcher's work with a *******... problem solved... this skin-head middle-aged (i'm coming to middle age, or life expectancy, not the lottery of mortality, mind you) sat next to me and was sort of nudging me with a shadow missing in the full-glare of the lights of the tube... you fancy him? insinuations via body-language: yeah... i do... is it wrong? nope! check the women sitting next to him... do you fancy them? nope... me too... of the three or four women sitting next to this trans-****** specimen... none had a lovelier face... mutations just... "happen"... the eureka-oops moments... i could seriously forget about the shared dimensions of large hands twice as big as that of a geisha, same with the feet... i could forget the baritone voice... i really fancied this boy... in a way that gay-lords just make it difficult having mingled with actors too much and not retaining an aura of: suspense and: something in me is frigid, alien... i shouldn't but... hell... i really should! i will! benevolent London that is... he was prettier than all the women i saw that day... like my grandfather once said: there are no ugly women... there are only abandoned... if not abandoned then neglected women... to think that women could ever be neglected: says as much about neglected men... men will find alternative avenues to women when the women self-exfoliate in their "privilege" of: first-come-first-served-and-thus-the-only-served menu... **** that! but what was special about this trans-****** specimen? it reminded me of the time i fancied Brian Molko, still do... in a non-gay sort of way... in a Plato the Plumber there's a blocked toilet of reincarnation afloat... it was actually, sort-of, actually-sort-of-funny watching the women on the same carriage trying to read my reaction... for once a man was more attractive than a woman to me! wow! being accused of trans-phobia... in London? well... only if you can't pull it off! it's like saying: coulrophobia! fear of clowns! with the clowns being without make-up? conflating the Apex Twin gargoyle from Window-Licker?! yeah... scary ****! the grin that's the length of the equator... i couldn't be attracted to a standard homosexual... Thespian leeching or intellectually pleasing akin to a Douglas Murray... or body-building blah blah... but this trans-****** specimen? that's an affront to a woman... all women... a man can have a prettier face to a woman's if... a man deems the exampled woman to be nothing more than akin to a lineage of... never arrived at cosmopolitanism... beetroot countryside proud... all red and irritated... i fancied this one... i was one step away from askig him: can i have your number? again, to reiterate: i didn't mind the deep voice... i didn't mind the size of hands that could match mine or the size of feet that could match mine... i was... infatuated with the magic dust of PIXIES! maybe that's what i learned from going to the brothel... but if you're going to play the trans-****** game... can you please avoid the mishandling of the Hippocratic oath... so little is actually necessary to accomplish a ****-heterosexual confusion-attraction that leaves women feeling inadequate: you, wouldn't even want to begin to believe! i'm now currently thinking of that film: the Odd Couple... Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Jack Lemmon as Felix Unger... Felix being the male-feminine counterpart of the feminine-man slob child pampered to: or however this quadratic works... i wouldn't be doing the cleaning and the cooking out of a feminine dignity to avoid doing the hard work of society's demands... no... i'd be perfecting my cooking to match up to the sort of food available upon heading out to a restaurant, i.e. not eating out... i've seen some car-crashes of trans-****** attempts... but this one stuck out for me because i started to think along the lines of: who needs women if men can appear prettier than women?! i'll just close my eyes when hand meets hand... it's a sickly sweet sensation but i could stomach it: if the conversation was kept to a satisfying lubrication: and it wouldn't be even remotely associated to the feminist-gay "commonwealth"... alliance... i don't need homosexuals to tell me XY&Z... i'm actually grooving this trans-****** trend: if spotting the exacting specimen to curtail all the wannabes... if there's an authentic Brian Molko specimen walking around... wow! reimagining being *** starved on the Western Front... a few guys with more artistic inclinations... rather than the rough sea-faring roughage of **** on the spot job done become involved... prettier faces than those of women... i could: no! i would succumb! it's just the terror in the eyes and on the faces of women... hey presto! a stick has two ends! freeze eggs... follow a career... demand a car a mortgage blah blah... my my... what a curiosity this trans-****** worked up to a perfection specimen of disphoria awoke in me... good enough cushioning blanket of sleeping with enough prostitutes... now i really want to sleep with a man... which is not gay... i'm bored of prostitutes... they're like any other woman: you pay them... yet they still complain as if you haven't paid them when not getting a hard-on because of (x) tiredness, (**) distraction, (***) life... per se... whatever... but those female faces... i pretended to be snoozing... they knew i knew... i kept an itch of a blink at this specimen... woman: ANGRY... no... actually... not angry... woman... what the **** is going on? of the times i went to a gay club and didn't pick up a Francis Bacon i wondered: did i drink enough? homosexual lust and all that same-for-same feminine-pro erotica of the jealous stone-rub-stone-offensive... the trans-****** "confusion" is a bright light... if done properly... done... naturally... i'm mesmerised... without... obviously... without... people succumbing to the breaking of the Hippocratic-oath... obviously... i despise the gay-pride movement... at least the authentic trans-sexuality movement is subtle... it's philosophically laden with a curiosity of more lips and less **** stressing fist-*******... this morphing of the pareidolia toward: seeing a female in a man's face... or seeing a man in a woman's face... hardly gender dysphoria... *****-utopia and... just as children look alike, regardless of ***... so do old people... also regardless of ***... but to achieve a heterosexual attraction in the realm of trans-genderism? it can't be forced... it has to happen ha-ha-naturally! i'm laughing at myself... only briefly... i'm more inclined to see the female in a man without seeing the homosexual... because homosexuality is like that quote from... no... not Human Traffic... about being gay and eating *****... how... eating ***** is not for real men... while ******* **** is all All Spice Alles Mensch... whatever... the gays are too proud might as well look out for the shy, proper, proper shy... trans-sexuals without any anti-Hippocratic-Oath mishandling(s)... the women become jittery thus...

i should have come home and reflected on spending
the past several hours on a shift
in Bishop's Park, overlooking Putney Bridge
watching the tide of Thames' recede back into the great
mouth before mingling with the salty waters
of the North Sea...
     all loved-up with the cold the dark and the wind
putting on some Woljiech Kilar soundtrack music
from Dracula - love remembered...
well... i was in the mood for something like that:
i put the track on... nope... can't feel it...
i'm tired, i'm cold i need to put on something to groove
to... we ain't going out like that - Cypress Hill...
tiredness swells the imitation pigeon-strut
in my head... bouncy-Billy will also ask for a chance
to express himself...
    the joke ran with Martin's team (Chelsea)
losing for the first time since 2006 to Fulham...
         the police officers were in a good number...
they even brought their horses...
two stood across from us when the final whistle was
blown... one of them started "laughing": if that's
what horses do, i.e. laugh...
no onomatopoeia here: hey Martin! even the horses
are laughing that Fulham beat Chelsea in the most
local derby of London...
    Craven Cottage is what? a mile at max two from
Stamford Bridge...
          one can only love the ever infuriated Martin...
but still the Thames receding...
   at first glace i might have stretched across
the balustrade and probably touched the surface of
the water... by the end of the shift when the river-bed
started to be exposed i started to wonder:
all that volume and now apparent air where once
there was water...
  no river in the world akin to the Thames...
tide in and tide out... at Westminster it's a river
that rid itself of the kettle and is nonetheless standstill
and boiling - during the day...
while eating a chicken wrap of torsos and tortillas
talking to a Norwegian who came over to watch
the football for the week...
last time he was here in the 1980s... have things changed?
the oyster one-touch travel card...
sure... it has just become a little bit more expensive:
but nothing has changed that much...
but during the night, and if its windy... well: clearly
there's a flow... a tide in or a tide out...
by the time i got to Goodmayes i walked past the brothel:
thank god i have nothing more to prove
thank god i have satiated my base needs and that's that...
what am i looking for? a compliment to a pharma-knock-out
of generic painkillers in the form of a bottle
of whiskey...
    too tired to **** not tired enough to think:
maybe i could fall in love again...
   fall in love... fall in love: but... ugh...
               fall in love and not pamper a woman's needs
with all those basic "tattoos" of courtship...
i might as well ask any future father-in-law:
so... where's my cow, my wedding dowry?
                     where's the pick-me-up to work with?
well if manna from heaven will not drop into my lap...
i hardly think... who the hell needs a car in London?
given the oncoming ULEZ restrictions?
bicycle, underground and the trains, plenty of buses...

today i was sent the most odd message from a coworker
who i am supposed to do a shift at the ice rink
on Sunday...
i was rather surprised - a "box" i never thought i would
unbox (as it were)...
i'll be honest... she's damaged - seriously damaged:
i'm on the "top" of the pile of damaged goods...
a mythological schizoid - ageing - each year turns
out easier as the madness spreads around me:
madness or the crushing mundaneness -
mundaneness or mediocrity -
    in a democracy it's all and the same: in the grey yolk
of bureaucracy -
         pushing letters through keyholes that leave
no door open: unless playing the "system" like
a criminal or a mummy with five different shades
of children from five different fathers...

                       the trouble with Russian girls is that...
they don't like a boy who appreciates music by Placebo...
huge disagreement... her take on Nancy Boy was
rigid and could never be biding: no appreciation of the music
for you... well... that be that...

this girl is hurt... i am hurt: everyone's hurt...
but i still find reasons to find silly happiness in cooking
cleaning, general groundwork labour of changing
the garden - some carpentry: cycling...
keeping up appearances of a well-kept diet
and perfumery of all sorts... at least dressing like
my idol Karl Lagerfeld... like an animal wears its fur...

she even changed her name to Frankie -
Frankie... i.e. is that Franklin, Frank?
no... it's actually Francesca...
the running joke with another girl i work with
runs along the line:
wouldn't that be something, to put on your CV
if you managed to convert her?
convert? or reconvert?
after all she has managed to produce offspring...
god knows why she's not in contact with her daughter...
but it's not like she was always a lesbian...
forced lesbian... it's not something a priori:
it's a posteriori...
after the facts that include: her biological father
beating her biological mum...
her biological mum abandoning her and her siblings
to escape with her dear life...
    how her step-father is like her biological father
but then the problem arises: the mother is unhinged
and now her step-father is facing splitting up with her
mother... of all the siblings she's the only one
keeping contact with her mother...
the other siblings, at least one... is ******* up to
her biological father who was: the greatest intersexual
boxer of the domestic environment to have ever lived
(in her eyes at least, i bet Tina Turner could compensate
such allowances of vanity)...

she used to be a man's woman once...
but now she switched... ******* without all
the Hippocratic misdeeds of the modern, current, narrative,
cutting off ******* and other genitals,
hormonal treatments... it's almost as if Joseph Mengele
died in body but his spirit lived on...
it's like a never-ending Auschwitz or at least
encryptions of mad-scientists for thirst of knowledge
have continued on a side-note of eugenics...
but at least with the closure of the 20th century
there was safe ******* experiments undertaken
by individuals without any authority of government:
the boys would grow their hair long and put
on eyeliner...
    perhaps even use girly perfumes or wear
dresses, nail-polish... hell... even sniff ******* or wear
them... but not with medical authority creating
irreversible ****** changes...
the girls would put on more weight or work out
and pretend to be East Germany's Olympians...
cut their hair short... who came the Pixie girls...
get tattoos wear signets: those bulky rings worth not
a gram of gold but their own worth of bulk...
    and like Francesca get an undercut with a Mohawk...
change their tone of voice... defence defence defence...
and become suddenly less and less agreeable...
still retaining a feminine smile and the odd feminine giggle
that could be unearthed...
or like with her text...
'hey... i want to go ice-skating after our shift...
do you think you'd be up for it?'
sure... although i only ice-skated twice in my life...
a long time ago, 13? i fell every single time...
i looked like someone who escaped from having
suffered from Polio...
i'll still look like someone who suffered from childhood
Polio akin to Israel Vibration's
Wiss", "Apple Gabriel", "Skelly"
      or Ian "Lane" Drury...
                                    instead i sent her a text replying:
sure... but i'll look like a spider equipped with
roller blades... i'll need to bring a casual set of trousers
just in case i fall and rip my work trousers...
'ha ha ha ha(insert crying with laughter emoticons)...'

oh sure... it's not a date... i'm not just going on a date...
we're not going for dinner...
i'm going ice-skating with a lesbian...
a butch-lesbian a hiding woman...
tattoos six-pack and muscle...
no wonder: only hours prior i was admiring
a would-be Brian Molko on the tube...
        
she followed up with a text of yet more defence:
but i'm skint - it will cost £10.50 for an hour
and a bit...
      we'll see i reply... as if she was implying:
if we can't get in for free... would you be willing
to pay?
i didn't reply with agreement to paying for...
then again: i'm not thinking about ***,
or homosexual conversion therapy...
i just don't remember when a girl last asked me to
go on a date with her... after all:
isn't a girl asking a boy to go ice skating with her
sort of asking a boy to go on a date?
she said she was quiet adapted to ice skating:
she owns a pair (of ice skates)... and i'll be the hilarious
polio walker / spider strapped with roller blades
trying to swim in quicksand...
mind you... i'm trying to rid myself of the past two
interactions in the brothel... terrible ***...
that one with the madam where i was limp...
the fate of the Sabine men gripped me...
i won't deny it...
second time... she calls herself my favourite:
she isn't... she's deluded... to the amazement of the other
girls i like to **** in the brothel...
i only extended my per usual 30min stay
by clocking up an extra 30min because i was so close
to climaxing from a *******: knock knock on the door...
time's up... no... not this time...
i'm going to finish... ergo...
but even she has paved her way onto a path of too much
physical augmentation...
if the **** don't come first... then the duck quack lips
reveal themselves first... she's an aging *******
and she has never done anything in terms of work
prior... no laundry no till service...
pregnant aged 14 and in the profession aged 16...
this is the murk and the sully of the gallows
of everyone: once, former, youthful idealism of love...
trotting a horse with broken legs like
waking up into birth by a man sitting in akimbo
for too long... standing up with numbed legs...
moving awkwardly...

obviously i was going to be robbed of Khadra and Mona...
Mona became stupid for getting pregnant
with a customer... hmm... i wonder who...
last time i saw her i teased her without a ******
and this massive fright gripped her face
because i was only teasing and she thought i was
a premature ejaculator... clearly a ****** was subsequently
used and the deposit in it: **** knows...
she should know... i haven't seen her since...

i think i'll text Francesca (Frankie) and tell her...
bring your skates girl... if we can't get in for free i'll
pay for the two of us...
only two shifts prior she was insinuating about
going for a pint: i just replied: i would...
but i had to help my father write the fortnightly
invoice and send it in...
like tomorrow... tomorrow i'll have to help my mother
with the taxes and VAT...
they're getting a new accountant and she lied
about doing her taxes on a spreadsheet...
**** me... i probably used Microsoft Excel twice...
twice, properly... but since i only used it twice...
i'm a bit rusty... so much worth of secondary school
education or the university...
   they taught us the bare minimum of real-world
life-long tools of the onslaught of technology -
   hammer and scythe i can use to count heads...
oh well: there's bound to be some crash-course for dummies
on the internet...

i waited until 9pm for the three of us to sit down to
eat some fajitas...
i overdid it using Kashmiri chilly powder
and three fresh chillies in making the pineapple salsa...
but the hotness neutralised itself with the addition
of the tomato salsa i made... and the guacamole...
the sour cream and obviously cheese, esp. cheddar
neutralises all possible excess spices...
we ate, chatted... one big ******* family,
me, father and mother and my "brother" and "sister"...
well... at least the cats meow and don't bark...
oddly enough: i'm happy... mediocre sort of:
that scene from Hellraiser: Inferno...
were the protagonist - a corrupt police officer -
is forced into a nightmare of having to relive his
eternity in his childhood's bedroom...
living with his parents...
shouldn't the horror be... your parents getting divorced?
i don't know why mine are still together...
they must be freaks... i must be a mutant:
well... born only two weeks after Chernobyl:
no riddles, only clues...
     i keep the conversation going...
i help around the house...
  
                        Frankie dealt me two nuggets of hashish
in the past 4 months... once i was desperate
when the hashish ran out so she gave me the number
of a marijuana dealer: great green all the way from
America... i only used the service once...
maybe that's me being bulletproof...
i'm cutting down on drinking and i will never return
to smoking marijuana to achieve a Buddha-esque glow
meditating while high and hungry...
weighing in at 78kg... it's a bit of a yoyo with me these
days... from 99kg through to 103kg...
but then... i pinch myself: i summon the ***** to pinch
back... hmm! no man-****... so i could try out for
some amateur rugby matches...

a butch lesbian asking a boy for a date to go
ice skating... i feel... truly terrible for all the conventional women...
i would have offered a cinema date...
she beat me to the better sort of entertainment...
she said: let's go ice skating...
i would have retorted: i do own two bicycles...
how about we go cycling in the night...
round and round Raphael's Park...
round and round... and if we're lucky...
and if the winter air aligns itself with some idiot
setting off fireworks... we can get snippets of whiffs
of imitation autumn... as if the leaves of the trees
have fallen in the dry crisp air and someone
set them alight and there's no rot and knee-deep
digging of plush-decay exfoliating a sickness
in the air... how's that?

i'll send her the text... hell... i'll pay for her...
i'm not interested in ***...
she might be a butch-lesbian trying to hide her
femininity... but she still smiles like a woman...

oh sure... i remember the last conventional:
heterosexual date i was on...
we met in a sweaty night-club... if we kissed we kissed:
i don't remember... she gave me her phone-number
i gave her mine... i was in the company of
about 3 girls who i met elsewhere, otherwise:
also randomly...
at least one made something of her life...
she ****** off to Norway - totally off-the-grid...
by now probably breeding huskies for sleighs...

the next time we met... i bought two bottles of wine...
the "date"? a job interview... we talked...
subsequently we went to a pub while i had a pint...
she was feeling claustrophobic...
i was the alcoholic and she became the **** of boredom...
she excused herself: some prior engagement
with her girlfriends... i guess she thought she got away...
i way happy to get away by same mechanisation
of oppositional psychology...
all this talk within the confines of carpe diem that
centred upon: what do you / what's you living
should i think about life insurance - will we live to be 70
years old?
well... that's the cherry on top with Francesca...
you want to go ice-skating? sure...
you want to go cycling with me in the night?
sure... life insurance / what do you for a living?
how much do you earn?
             can we live a little outside a prison within a prison?!

so much for Dawid Bovie's idea of the androgynous man:
if i'm to be surrounded by "butch" lesbian
and prostitutes: that's my lot then...
i'm not going to succumb to the CV-project-veritas
in-vitro infanticide females with CHOICE
like... my spunking into a bucket and calling it:
falling asleep with the sound of rain
trickling trickling on a metallic roof...
in the night when the horrors come and horrors
claim all the little details of frailty
of mortality...

                  for every tear-jerking sympathy for
a Romeo there's the mantis of
   a Judith kissing the decapitated head of
                                                             Holofernes:
**** it... the prostitutes i truly loved ******* are either:
pregnant or on "holiday"...
i passed the brothel only two nights ago...
i spotted a man walking out from the door...
he froze like a doe in the headlights and didn't move
until i turned my head and kept walking...
i was about to blast out with wind and voice:
no shame in having to share women
we will never impregnate!
start thinking like a woman, dear man...
think on ground of evolutionary bias...
for every women there's this boast of:
50% of men reproduced successfully...
while all the whole lot of them the 100% of train-wrecks
and Piccadilly butcher's antics with the flab
have... their greatest success story to ever live...
i could be worse off... than right now...
i could have married an ugly woman:
by definition: if a most feminine man
grows his hair long and applies some slapstick
makeover creases of eyeliner...
i can forgive him his match-for-match size
of hands... height... size of shoe...
but never an ugly woman... UGLY...
that goes beyond mere the physical-glass...
i'm talking: character... there's no prime-ego
LEGO building block... no architect's corner stone...
there's nothing to work with...
just everything to work around...
to avoid...
                    
    if: for ****'s sake... i'm not planning: i'm providing
the revenue... i want to go ice-skating!
she doesn't have any money? i have "too much"...
i don't: but for the worth of life in life that's only
to supposed to span a month's worth of living it...
hell: i have no better idea to pass the time...

at one point i found out that Francesca has some Irish
roots... you're Aye-Reesh?!
              really? never would have conjured up
a sharing of ******* on a leprechaun...
**** it for good luck... like circumcision:
that's apparently Hebrew for: good luck...
with the addition of: ensuring your bride to be
be donning a niqab and all those "other"...
culturally sensitive, exclusive terms of
cultural-dis-appropriation: or whatever the **** is
coming out of H'America...
             once upon a time when that cultural export
was relevant: these days: nothing new to be
found... except the abandoned moon...

well... i sent the text... sure... i'll pay for the ice-skating...
but you have to promise me to go cycling
with me during the warmer months
with me... don't worry about having a bicycle...
you can have my mountain-bicycle
i use for the winter months
while i'll get on my summer month
road-bicycle...
we'll head toward Thurrock...
and elsewhere that's Essex friendly
and far away from London outer-suburbia...
fresh... fresh...
Jean Claude van Dame...
                       Fresh: that's her idea of working out
before the shift... and then going ice-skating...
FooR x Majestic x Dread MC...

                oh well... life in Loon-downs...
or is that: no apples... i'm sure there are no apples...
if she takes the bait...
i.e. i pay for both of us going ice-skating tomorrow...
she better go cycling with me during the
summer months...
she says no to ice-skating tomorrow
i'll become Trojan in my own defense...
if she wants to be all ******* lesbian defensive...
i can be defensive too...
i'll arm myself with enough brothel visits to erase:
first... comes... oh my grandmother disappointed
me... i could have been there for my
grandfather stabbing himself in the leg
while entering the state of AGONIA...

                    i could have been there: she? trying to protect
me against the advent of mortality?
or her... biting my grandfather's alcoholism she
induced by being a terrible woman?
his last pleasures?
crossword puzzles... cycling, fishing,
rekindling with the day-tripper postcard sender
vouch! you're the simulation tourist with
his... grand... chill... no... not -dren...
his... sole and only grand-child... i.e. me...
him buying me the books i read over the summer holidays...

women are so ape so cruel...
i stopped believing in what's idealistic and rare before
me: which i can't replicate...
i'm happy being freed from:
i don't earn the sort of money that the state
demands taxing me... weird? no!
i don't earn enough to be taxed!
weird... i'm sort of pretending to be a jellyfish
afloat... simulating gravity:
gravity is always a simulation in the medium
of water...
                by air contra vacuum:
the mountain breathes in winter a cascade of
frigid snow slides down...
a Michael Schumacher goes skiing...
****** races cars at 200kmh... one loose turn and twist:
cranium like an opening of a watermelon...
jellyfish fighting for life dead-locked style
in a sick-bed while people nearest to him
think about magic-spells: how best to live without
him: how best to milk the cow with *****
instead of milk... hmm hmm hmm...

if she wants to go on a date with me to go ice-skating...
and i'm supposed to be paying for it...
she better be readied to go cycling with me
during the summer months...
if that's not going to happen:
she shouldn't have suggested
going ice-skating in the first place, for ****'s sake...
like: anything by Bricktop in ****** is
Shakespeare to me... perhaps even more...
living with the times...

                                oh well some well: Samuel!
Samuel: you're not Samantha... learn to become
a transvestite first... before we employ the ****
Hippocrates to mutilate you, o.k. darling?
    learn to grow your hair long...
learn to put on make-up... learn to wear dresses...
learn to sniff female underwear...
Samuel! Samuel! you're not Samantha (yet)!
we will not give you up to the Joseph "Hip-replacing-******"
Mengele: shy away from everything American
in the realm of: worth being culturally exported
and influencing foreign cultures: esp.
in the basin of the origins of the English ZZZUNGE...
that's England...
                  
HIPS FOR KNEES!
                    America: beacon, former: beacon of the world
to come... came one Cain for every second cannibal
no Satan was spawned: at least that's Iranian paranoia
covered: converted, shut the doors on Tehran...
bigger whoops happened when...
Garry Glitter became pop once more
with the release of the Joker movie
and that mad dance scene...
on the 132 steps where Shakespeare Avenue
meets Anderson Avenue...

    i will never, ever... visit... anything... remotely...
resembling... or being curated as being:
North America... i've had too much north american
cultural anemia...
             prior to words not being so much politcal
as agent orange doing all the "talking"...
                                  
  tam tam tam dam dam dam... ditto... do no more than
the necessary "evil": just, bass: on the base
on insinuation;
hell... if the afro-cosmopolitan is the new "cool",
the new "groove"...
let's just keep it... marred: in murk: in murky.