I turned 31 this week and decided to write a ‘living diary’ on the 15th, noting down thoughts as they came to me: on my first clairvoyant reading (my dear old dad had lots of life advice to deliver from beyond the grave), on gratitude for my writing life (a journey which really kicked off in earnest here on WordPress when I was a teenager), on the working-class struggle, on suicide pacts, on old t-shirts, on strange weather.
‘BIRTHDAY DIARY’ EXCERPTS
A desire to make love while the rain lashes the windows, to have this insular little world of mine filled with nothing but the sound of our breath and water manically pelting glass.
Oh god, to lie sly and unseen…
But no, actually, fuck that — I want to be LOUD.
I am no longer frightened of the Grim Reaper. He doesn’t chase me anymore for he knows it’s a fickle endeavour. Instead he sits beside me on the sofa; we drink sweet tea and watch quiz shows. I iron his cloak, sharpen his scythe until the glint blinds. The menace has long since melted from his face. Sometimes he gives me a shoulder massage after a rough day.
What is the collective noun for a group of poets?
I’m feeling ‘an interrogation of poets’. That’s what we do: interrogate experience, interrogate feeling, interrogate language, interrogate memory, interrogate the page.
When there’s a stupid literary beef going on: ‘a shambles of poets’.
To write = a miracle.
I want to wrap my arms around you.
To be published = a miracle.
I want to wrap my arms around you.
To be read = a miracle of the highest order.
I just want to wrap my arms around you.
It is freezing cold at the bus stop. We shiver and we wait, bellies crackling with cheap champagne. We, our father’s children, cackle loudly into the empty night, regaling stories of why our Uber ratings went down. Mine for refusing to put my seatbelt on and then dramatically slamming the door of the Prius once at 5 a.m. His for vomiting out of the BMW window while speeding round the North Circ.
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READ: HISTORY OF PRESENT COMPLAINT
READ: EX-CETERA
Treacle Heart 