It's hard enough to want more from your life without being laughed at by the man in the corner-shop for buying just a chocolate orange and milk.
I'm so nervous these days, I can hardly look anyone in the eye.
I'm afraid of everyone. Everyone has an agenda, everyone hates your stupid ugly face.
There are those who will tell you they like you, that they want to caress you, they might even tell you they love you. I just cannot let it be. I cannot accept that any human being would want to act positively towards me. There is always an ulterior motive.
Past experience has proven that love is a difficult beast to tame, and usually you and your partner are fighting different battles on the same field, without either side knowing. Friendship too has a dagger behind its back sometimes - not always. But there are those who will use you and slash your face if you dare to come to them with a problem. Melodrama is one thing - but it may well be genuine; and what do you do as the blood streams down your face as you hug your best friend and their arms slowly drop, and you're left there once again, pouring bodily fluids into the bedsheets, just like old times. Who do you go to when you have no one who cares, or no one who can help, at the very least. Do you wrap the rope around your neck and pretend that that's it? Over and out? No, you're too dramatic for that. What's the point if you can't hear the applause? Or the jeers?
So love is a beast best swallowed whole, man after man, night after night, drinking milk from the bottle, not even bothering with the coco pops you bought because you can't stand the muesli any more. One day at a time. Thursdays are the worst. Wednesday has reasonable television - you can sit and switch everything off, not take in any food and regurgitate your sorrows to the void once again - and no one listens. Just like before. The world won't listen to you.
Everyone is afraid of everyone else. No one is afraid of the bomb anymore. Now there's something everyone can be afraid of - total nuclear annihilation. There's something we can all be worried about. Did we love better before the wall fell? Did people fuck better knowing that sword of Damocles was forever hanging, ready to crash to the earth and make barren the world?
We should be afraid of the bomb, not each other.
So everyone hates my stupid ugly face, and they don't even want my semen, they just want rid of theirs; where I put it I'm sure they don't care. Out of sight, out of mind.
I am out of sight and out of mind - and no one minds. I'm slowly drifting apart, just like that great continent all those years ago. My arms are separate, and I don't care what they do. My legs continue walking, and my mouth spews words and takes in genitals. Revolting pastime. There I am, an archipelago that no one visits, and no one cares to recognise, with that mighty set of volcanoes - spewing it's bile and ash and ruining no one's travel plans, silently down there near Australia. People who loved when they could walk all the way from the north to the south on my mighty mass cannot any longer, and so they hate me. Hate me because I am broken, and so they cannot stand the sight of me any longer, down there near Australia, spewing the bile and ash, and the world doesn't listen.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Hole
I couldn't begin to explain why that hole looked so tempting. Standing on the edge, feet inching ever closer towards the vast open hole in the earth, the wind licking my face like a snake, calling me forward. There it was though, in my living room floor, that mighty chasm had opened while I was masturbating in front of Come Dine With Me. The one guy was alright. He had a nice enough face. But it always angered me that I had to think of him to climax. No other did the job. That always annoyed me. Oh well. So there I was sat in my pyjamas and a great big hole opened up in the floor between the sofa and the television, black as the night sky and just as inviting. At first I thought I was imagining things, but really it was inescapable, there was a hole in my floor the size of the rug. The rug had vanished, no trace, and the coffee table. So as you can imagine I jumped to the only logical conclusion - that the universe was offering me a way out. A free ticket to oblivion with little hassle. That was fairly nice of it, I thought.
But there we go. I stood up, and crept to the edge, staring down into the quiet nothingness below, and dropped myself feet first into the empty spiralling darkness, and those bastards on the telly slowly dropped out of my head forever.
But there we go. I stood up, and crept to the edge, staring down into the quiet nothingness below, and dropped myself feet first into the empty spiralling darkness, and those bastards on the telly slowly dropped out of my head forever.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Celebrations
Hobbling across wet cobblestones, I look sideways and fly headlong into the mirror that curtly sums up my face, and calls me that name, the one you used to used.
Earthen faces dry up around my ears as they pass, spouting their gospel, wearing their ribbons. It's all so obvious and callous. Rain has been kind to me; all my convictions washed away years ago, in the nineties - or the eighties. Nothing left to stand on anymore, just this battered leg, bursting with muscular pain, just like the angina again. There goes the chest, again. They might as well pin a ribbon on - it'd hurt all the same, and mean just about as much.
I wonder what will burble from my lips when I am old, what anachronistic diatribe will send my tongue flopping about, slapping the sides of my mouth and grinding along the teeth, barely spitting with razor blade sincerity, words forming and jutting forth and drying up in the air, next to the ears, flitting away with the vapours.
Not something worth a damn, I hope. No one will listen. I used to yell louder than bombs, and no one would come running. Now they come running and await my every word. They stand outside the doorstep and I reject them with a smile, and a lie. I say so many things, and they cling to it, and repeat it, and they say such things that you could never repeat.
They were not there when the words were worth being heard - so what made the switch? Where was the trick? Was it the lies? The quiet? They will soon realise it is all a trap, all a veneer, and they'll notice my broken leg and lie down for me while I step over them quietly and drift away into the background.
Earthen faces dry up around my ears as they pass, spouting their gospel, wearing their ribbons. It's all so obvious and callous. Rain has been kind to me; all my convictions washed away years ago, in the nineties - or the eighties. Nothing left to stand on anymore, just this battered leg, bursting with muscular pain, just like the angina again. There goes the chest, again. They might as well pin a ribbon on - it'd hurt all the same, and mean just about as much.
I wonder what will burble from my lips when I am old, what anachronistic diatribe will send my tongue flopping about, slapping the sides of my mouth and grinding along the teeth, barely spitting with razor blade sincerity, words forming and jutting forth and drying up in the air, next to the ears, flitting away with the vapours.
Not something worth a damn, I hope. No one will listen. I used to yell louder than bombs, and no one would come running. Now they come running and await my every word. They stand outside the doorstep and I reject them with a smile, and a lie. I say so many things, and they cling to it, and repeat it, and they say such things that you could never repeat.
They were not there when the words were worth being heard - so what made the switch? Where was the trick? Was it the lies? The quiet? They will soon realise it is all a trap, all a veneer, and they'll notice my broken leg and lie down for me while I step over them quietly and drift away into the background.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Ego
Have you ever stared into the mirror for so long that the face in front of you begins to lose all meaning? A blank pair of eyes and that same tired nose, the one you wish you could rub out and redraw, those same dirty old lips that have committed atrocities, all the same old faces, resentment, bitterness, tiredness, all pouring out at once onto a blank canvas burning before your eyes.
It is not without fear that I take a step away from the mirror and enter another room, where more memories flood inwards, into my eyes and over that rickety shell I call my bones. It is with a sense of dread that I turn away, worried that if I do not continue to stare, do not continue to keep an eye on it, that face may wane, and vanish, disappearing into the void, turning the light out as it leaves, and I alone, no, not alone. Not even myself for company any longer, just the murky white sheets and the pillows, and the dark.
That face scares me shitless. It bares the scars of every crime I have ever committed, every lie ever told, and every squandered opportunity, and cunt stuffed with more ego than love. There in that mirror is everything I hate about myself, magnified, and intensified, and left hanging there while I gawk and rearrange my hair hoping to wash it all away, hoping to throw all the beady eyed fuckers in the bin with the stray hairs on my comb.
It is not enough to regret, not enough to wish for more, not enough to just sit and sip tea while the crowds linger outside, talking about all sorts of exciting things. I do not want to regret - I want to erase, scrub away at the flesh until all the vile grot inside pours out onto the linoleum and bleeds out into the carpet, with the coffee stains from that evening that I hated, the evening where I wanted to panic and throw my legs over the window ledge and pull hard on the curtain for balance, before spilling the coffee and having to clean it up.
Coffee does not come out of the rug all that easily. It works its way deep into the fibres, into the sinews, into the flesh of the rug, and there it remains, showing still, twenty years later when your next bang comes round and you remark Oh, it's a pity about the carpet.
All those coffee stains on my face are there and when the next bang comes round I remark Oh, that's just a fat wannabe. Don't mind him.
It is not without fear that I take a step away from the mirror and enter another room, where more memories flood inwards, into my eyes and over that rickety shell I call my bones. It is with a sense of dread that I turn away, worried that if I do not continue to stare, do not continue to keep an eye on it, that face may wane, and vanish, disappearing into the void, turning the light out as it leaves, and I alone, no, not alone. Not even myself for company any longer, just the murky white sheets and the pillows, and the dark.
That face scares me shitless. It bares the scars of every crime I have ever committed, every lie ever told, and every squandered opportunity, and cunt stuffed with more ego than love. There in that mirror is everything I hate about myself, magnified, and intensified, and left hanging there while I gawk and rearrange my hair hoping to wash it all away, hoping to throw all the beady eyed fuckers in the bin with the stray hairs on my comb.
It is not enough to regret, not enough to wish for more, not enough to just sit and sip tea while the crowds linger outside, talking about all sorts of exciting things. I do not want to regret - I want to erase, scrub away at the flesh until all the vile grot inside pours out onto the linoleum and bleeds out into the carpet, with the coffee stains from that evening that I hated, the evening where I wanted to panic and throw my legs over the window ledge and pull hard on the curtain for balance, before spilling the coffee and having to clean it up.
Coffee does not come out of the rug all that easily. It works its way deep into the fibres, into the sinews, into the flesh of the rug, and there it remains, showing still, twenty years later when your next bang comes round and you remark Oh, it's a pity about the carpet.
All those coffee stains on my face are there and when the next bang comes round I remark Oh, that's just a fat wannabe. Don't mind him.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
You had your dry cleaning and I think you're dreamy
It's difficult to imagine what life would be like without what we do in the bedroom in the lights off.
Perhaps celibacy is where it's at. Perhaps loneliness becomes fun after a while. It might even become intimate- legs wrapped around a pillow, thumping your fists on the pillow, tears streaming onto the sheets.
We promise ourselves so much - and we can't ever live up to it, we can't ever be that perfect version of ourselves that always makes the correct decision and never trips and falls and lands somewhere unrecognisable, holding our head and bleeding profusely, wondering where all the time went. The saddest part is that we hold our relationships to this too. We read the lines and when things aren't going according to the script, and we panic, and we fly right into the sheets again, hoping a quick spastic fuck might be the answer, telephone ringing off the hook, mothers crying. It's breathtaking what we do to ourselves in the name of Hollywood.
So there's this boy, yeah? Well he's pretty hot, and interesting. I think he likes me. (Mistake number one) I really think it could go somewhere. (Mistake number two) I wonder if he won't mind that I don't have a job or that I have a small apartment or that I don't watch the news or read newspapers but pretend I do anyway.
So at that point you have their number and so on and you text him wondering what he's up to and he responds in a suitably jovial manner and then as the conversation winds on you get less and less excited and realise that either you have nothing in common or he's not as interesting as you thought or worst of all and what we are loathe to admit is that he really isn't all that bothered about seeing me again (or for the first time). Because we want it so bad, and our last relationship didn't pan out the way we wanted to we try extra hard to convince ourselves that this is worth pursuing and isn't just a hairy waste of time stalking around on Facebook.
And so you see the cute boy at the laundrette and notice his cute clothes and impeccable hair and you want to go up and talk to him but then you remember your waste size and all the old feelings of inadequacy come flooding back, crashing down on the Egyptian soldiers of your self esteem.
Why is it so hard to fall for someone? Or more pertinently, why is it too easy to convince us that we're falling for someone and get burned because in actuality it's not even worth a second glance.
Am I so alone that sex with strangers no longer feels like masturbation?
Perhaps celibacy is where it's at. Perhaps loneliness becomes fun after a while. It might even become intimate- legs wrapped around a pillow, thumping your fists on the pillow, tears streaming onto the sheets.
We promise ourselves so much - and we can't ever live up to it, we can't ever be that perfect version of ourselves that always makes the correct decision and never trips and falls and lands somewhere unrecognisable, holding our head and bleeding profusely, wondering where all the time went. The saddest part is that we hold our relationships to this too. We read the lines and when things aren't going according to the script, and we panic, and we fly right into the sheets again, hoping a quick spastic fuck might be the answer, telephone ringing off the hook, mothers crying. It's breathtaking what we do to ourselves in the name of Hollywood.
So there's this boy, yeah? Well he's pretty hot, and interesting. I think he likes me. (Mistake number one) I really think it could go somewhere. (Mistake number two) I wonder if he won't mind that I don't have a job or that I have a small apartment or that I don't watch the news or read newspapers but pretend I do anyway.
So at that point you have their number and so on and you text him wondering what he's up to and he responds in a suitably jovial manner and then as the conversation winds on you get less and less excited and realise that either you have nothing in common or he's not as interesting as you thought or worst of all and what we are loathe to admit is that he really isn't all that bothered about seeing me again (or for the first time). Because we want it so bad, and our last relationship didn't pan out the way we wanted to we try extra hard to convince ourselves that this is worth pursuing and isn't just a hairy waste of time stalking around on Facebook.
And so you see the cute boy at the laundrette and notice his cute clothes and impeccable hair and you want to go up and talk to him but then you remember your waste size and all the old feelings of inadequacy come flooding back, crashing down on the Egyptian soldiers of your self esteem.
Why is it so hard to fall for someone? Or more pertinently, why is it too easy to convince us that we're falling for someone and get burned because in actuality it's not even worth a second glance.
Am I so alone that sex with strangers no longer feels like masturbation?
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