Tag: loneliness

• A sonneteer trapped underwater breaks the rules

  

  I hate Shakespeare, Milton,

  and Petrarch. I despise 

  iambs, anapaests and trochees.

  I’m giving up on meter.

  All day long I stand 

  in this cage watching shoals of

  mackerels like grey lesions 

  on blue skin. I don’t know

  rhythm or time anymore, 

  and the only time I see something

  other than aquamarine

  is when a shark bites a diver’s leg

  off. I look forward to it now —

  red —

  beautiful, but violent red, 

  gushing, spreading faster than 

  the clock ticks. Day melts into day

  or is it night? 

  December 9, 2023

  creative writing, dark humour, free verse, funny, humour, loneliness, Poems, poetry

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• Meh

  I’m listening to No Surprises 

  by Radiohead and I can  

  relate to the song, despite 

  Thom Yorke’s terrible diction 

  which verges on drawling. 

  It’s like listening to a  

  dirge-lullaby or a romantic  

  funeral song, and I have to 

  look up the lyrics.  

  Yes, no alarms and no 

  surprises, and I mean it,  

  unlike those Insta-popular, 

  histrionic, selfie-takers 

  who champion it, but  

  love the glory, adulation, 

  and the 3 Michelin Starred  

  meal that comes with them.  

  I’ve led a depressing life,  

  a lonely, ostracised one,  

  reading non-fiction books 

  on Modernism to kill time. 

  What the hell is wrong with  

  me? Why should I care 

  if Hulme believed in human  

  depravity, or if Eliot wrote  

  something nobody understands 

  using myriad characters and  

  innumerable voices, or if 

  Pound misinterpreted some  

  essay on the Chinese alphabet. 

  They were all anti-democratic, 

  elitist snobs anyway.  

  It’s not like I’m writing  

  a thesis and even if I were,  

  I’m not going to  

  sit and read Ulysses. 

  The only worse fate I can  

  think of is doing it on  

  the beatniks, those weird 

  guys who stared at each other 

  after they snorted coke or  

  whatever and aimed at  

  telepathically connecting  

  or reaching some otherworldly  

  realm. Yes, Eric Cartman, 

  I hate hippies, too.

  Anyhow, I’m exhausted  

  and I’ve reached a stage 

  where I’ve fallen in love  

  with my loneliness.  

  Or have I? I guess it’s okay  

  as long as I’m euthymic, 

  without some bizarre train  

  of thought bursting forth  

  like lasers fired, urging me  

  to write, write, write,

  or some despondent meh 

  mood asking me to  

  give up and yada yada yada. 

  A constant strumming of  

  a minor chord, filling me with  

  ache until I eat,  

  order a burger and fries 

  and then pork chops  

  and then mutton  

  and then chicken  

  and you get the drift…  

  and yes, I’m unapologetically fat.

  So yeah, no alarms and no  

  surprises, and no batshit  

  weirdness straight from  

  the pages of Annihilation  

  or some other Jeff VanderMeer 

  book. We should replace 

  Kafkaesque with VanderMeerish. 

  Don’t you think the former is 

  dated and redundant?  

  While we’re at it, 

  we should also ban the word 

  petrichor. Ah! The sweet, 

  pungent smell of the earth  

  after the rain! How could you  

  possibly ban such a beautiful 

  word? Oh, I could 

  list several words we 

  should ban. Muse, poetess,  

  beautiful, dusk and dawn

  are a few.  

  Anyhow, here’s me signing  

  off. No alarms and no surprises 

  or whatever the guy’s singing  

  in a high-pitched, falsetto moan.

  February 2, 2023

  creative writing, depression, life, loneliness, poetry, reality, sorrow

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