“Sucks to Be You”

I was in the standard waitress get-up, splotchy apron and unkempt plait, as tap water gushed into a customer’s glass.

“Aww,” a co-worker said towards a baby with a woollen hat enclosed around his ears.

“I want to be a baby,” I said to no-one in particular.

Back then, I was tired of sacrificing weekends to a red-faced boss. Like a doughy-faced baby, I ached to be doted on.

But now, looking around McDonald’s, all I see are straws searing plastic lids, yellow ‘M’s dwarfing a child’s excited face, eager for their mutant Mcnuggets, and the robotic bins dotted around the room, churning our leftovers.

In 2020, it’s the kids who have to save themselves.

Sixteen-year-olds have to mobilize if they hope for children themselves.  White haired men with dried up rivers creased in their skin are no longer needed.  It’ll be the young ones sweeping up our mess.

My childhood was during Hip Hop’s golden age, a yellow-tinged time, where afternoons were spent slapping mud onto a plastic table until something tangible was formed.  The afternoon ended with a bellyful of Monster Munch.

For the first time in human history, being a child is a curse.  And I’m so so sorry.

Happy Booze Year

The suggested reading on my Kindle have similar covers.  Empty bottles lay limp and sometimes wine pours itself into a quirky title.  Another is the figure of a woman blurred, either the back of her head or her legs, too ashamed to face the camera.

Tomorrow’s New Years Eve and it’s terrifying.  How do you celebrate booze-free? OD on caramel ice-cream instead?

Last week, my boyfriend’s friend visited and we stayed out until morning, destroying a few boxes of cigarettes a night, and sinking endless pints of beer.  On the third morning, one arose to find an eye sealed-shut, covered in a spray of purple, while the other had a sore egg-like growth on the back of his head.

The whole week was a blur of McDonald’s and cheap beer, encircled by a strange language in cloudy bars. By the end of the week, when the friend left, we hid in an eerie hostel with darkened halls, where obscene paintings stretched ahead as you climbed the stairs.  The most memorable was a topless woman getting her nipple tweaked on a bus, while another man robbed her.

Now we’re living in the forest and working hard to get money back up.  Christmas was drenched in vino tino and plasticy beer and I’m sure tomorrow holds the potential to plummet us into a dark, tangled mess.

This will be the first sober New Years Eve for 12 years, so we’re planning to eat pizza overlooking the sunset and feel the gentle shift into a new decade.

Happy New Years guys!

Always Leave a Trace

I don’t think it’s ridiculous to cry when you re-read what you’ve written and find out it’s shite. The dialogue’s so flat! So cliche!

The self-critic has the power to paralyze so you furiously stab the “x” button to keep the monstrousity lost forever.  Students have the luxury of the all-knowing red ink, crossing, circling, and underlining mistakes that have gone unnoticed.

But honing your craft alone is tricky.  All these blogs boom “read, read, read”, “practice, practice, practice” but what if your writing is still the worst thing ever?

Even though it’s cringey, we have to accept the wooden sentences and 2D characters that have found its way on paper.

But we have to keep records.

Whether you’ve left a short story on “Private” or it’s buried deep in your computer, bite the bullet and re-read your work.

I found my two-year-old blog the other day and decided to check out ~the past self~.  Was it really as horrific as I remembered?

No. It wasn’t.

And it broke my heart because doubt had sunk its claws into my temples and flooded me with self-loathing, disappointment, and zapped any confidence I ever had.

Sure, sentences were riddled with spelling mistakes and it was far from perfect, but it just shows how debilitating a lack of confidence can be.

OKAY, SO HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THIS & THRIVE?

The cure is to think like a male politician.

Not the sweet boy who chews his cuffs in the corner of the room but that guy who thunders his opinions the day after everyone’s wrecked, convinced his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and third-wave Feminism are correct.

It’s possible to emulate confidence.  You just have to tell yourself:

• “I’m always improving!”
• “It’s going to be an endless journey but I’m going to be gentle on myself.”
• “You can’t get any worse, you can only progress.”

This is the bolt of energy we need pouring from our fingers and onto paper.

We’ve got this guys!

Done With the Digital Age

I no longer think in handcrafted images or those made from swirls of acrylic paint.  My thoughts are contained to 280 characters, the font is Arial, size 12.  Every dot above an “i” is a million pixels and I spend my days wondering which keyboard symbol has the most: is it the “_” or the double-whammy “+”?

Tired, I suggest we go and see what lays over the sand dunes.

The sunlight sucks colour from our vision so everything is muted.  A pavement made from slabs of wood takes us over a strangley small body of water, the beach must have had a dispute with the sea so the tide stole away, taking with it many confused creatures.

Birds bob in time of the rippling water.  The winter sun glares down at us.  We’re trudging through the sand that’s been swept across the walkway and try not to grimace at the piles that have snuck into our trainers.

Electricity shoots through my closed eyelids as politicians gurgle about grey policies and celebs lay sprawling on yachts, flashing their billion-dollar tummies, worth more money than a starving country’s GDP.

The walkway invites us into a sheltered grove where, in the summer months, sunbathers steal a few moments in the cool.  A hammock fashioned from scraggly ropes stretches between two trees where a hooded boy lounges, eyes fixed on his phone.

My boyfriend is always a few steps ahead while pixels clog my brainwaves.  Does he love you if he’s always widening the distance? It’s like he can’t wait to leave.

Stay in the moment, meditation apps say, feel the plastic bag you’re carrying crinkle and move with the wind.  The weight of your backpack dragging you back to earth.  A faint ache of nausea, impossible to shake.

“What are you doing?” He’s now facing me, puzzled.

“Being in the moment.”

Half-eyes open, lips easing to a smile.  The plastic bag is carrying a crumby plastic container and several tissues wet with snot.  Is this what crazy people do?

You have to lunge every now again so you’re not sucked under the wood slabs, it’s like skipping over a boxer with knocked out teeth.  My gut swells and threatens to burst but before I can complain, his piss makes the perfect arch and we watch it disappear beneath the slabs.

I squat, push, and a river gushes into the dirt.

We dedicate the rest of the day to savouring every bite of greasy, stringy pizza, and I choose to write solely in a yellow notebook.

My bones grind under the weight of constant vibrations, pointless notifications, as I realize a NUMBER sums up how much a human is worth.

You carry on, I’ll stay here on the walkway and marvel the gathering of bushes on the left hand side, so full and self-assured, smothering houses so you only catch a glimpse of a peeping roof, while the right is handed to the waves, waiting to wipe out everything we know.

Just know when your time is drawing to a close, where memories and regrets take hold of the megaphone and tear you down, your social currency means nothing.  You’re left aching to have another heart-to-heart with your friends, trying to place the faint cologne on your lover’s skin, and how you never fully appreciated the magic healing powers of a cup of tea.

fuck guns

Watching the leader of the NRA spout his views on gun reform makes my skin crawl and my heart ache.  Taking away our guns is taking away individual freedom. Someone needs to take a gun and place it between his eyes, don’t shoot or even load it, but just so he has that momentary flicker of fear that so many victims had before bullets tore through them and stole their lives.

Perhaps then, he would replace his clunky metallic heart with something far more real, something far more warm.  To live on a planet where acquiring a weapon is more important than a life makes absolutely no sense to me.

now

when do you realize you’ve found it?
is it when drops of water no longer cause
a ripple effect
or
perhaps
when you have proof that your talent is real
and not only fabricated.

when do you realize you’ve found it?
perhaps it’s on a Sunday
you’re laid-back with a
glass of bubbly,
awaiting stretches of white sand.

when
you realize you’ve found it
perhaps your face will be leather
and
you can trace the flow of rivers that meander on
your skin.

when you realize you’ve found it
is
in the final glimpse,
a shot of colour
before black
and
maybe that’s when you’ll realize
that you had it all along.

alienation

two faces bore into my mind –
the pair hold one another
with their eyes,
a golden thread,
so warm and kind
that I try to warm
my hands on it.
their arms flow into gentle shapes
that
chase
the
words
that weave into their sentences.
laughter ripples the air,
as I sit in the corner
and watch a screen and think and
pray
that my loneliness isn’t too obvious
to them.

food fit for kings

munch, munch, munch
fatten them all up,
birds cows pigs
go on,
plump ‘em up.

2077 a year to remember,
starving land and starving man,
perhaps it could be stopped for
wouldn’t it be wonderful
to nourish our land?
to let baby calves
stay with their mothers
instead of being ripped apart
limb
by
limb and
slapped up by greasy lips?

wouldn’t it be wonderful
to thrive on plant-based foods
rather than smushed gristle and bones
that we crave at drive-thrus,
treating our kids on a Friday night to
a fabulous feast of
pig fat and chicken beaks.
wouldn’t it be wonderful
to listen
to our bodies
that need garlic and parsley
to fight carcinogens,
no dairy or poultry!

Oh 2077 –
the year of death and decay,
and that’s just the plants and animals,
for your grand-children
will be left nothing organic or tangible,
nothing at all
but dead land and empty seas.

 

camus x bechdel

i have fallen into the world of graphic novels and have just finished alison bechdel’s the fun home – also didn’t realize that the ‘bechdel test’ came from a graphic novel? amazing!

literary works are a super important theme in bechdel’s memoir, they strengthen the thread-like bond the protagonist had with her father.  i can 100% resonate.

but this passage really spoke to me, particularly camus’ quote on death.

on point.

❤

Silky riches slip between my fingertips,
diamonds and pink bugattis,
alabaster-white jets and infinity pools.
Pass by and expect to break necks as
he drinks in my crimson allure –
tipsy
with flushed cheeks,
oh the way
this dress captures my shape
like cat-like models
in opulent magazines.
My curves flow in a river of luxury,
and all for tenner
a new identity,
a whole new me.