olimpic flame

Between 1912 and 1945, poetry was an olympic event, and right from the start things were going to be weird, with the raging eugenics of the early 20th century permeating through institutions thought to be progressive, if only by their own memberships.

What rules were in play in this poetic performance? Did the sonnet, haiku and limerick each get their own event? Were poets expected to compose in situ or were entries prepared? Could poets be disqualified for doping? How do you even qualify for an Olympic poetry tournament?

"O Sport, you are Fecundity! You strive directly and nobly towards perfection of the race, destroying unhealthy seed and correcting the flaws which threaten its essential purity"

...From the winning 1912 entry, later found to have been written and planted by one of the organisers, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. What a fucking clown. I wonder what he would have thought of the paralympics...

*   *   *   *   *

it hurts to watch: clenched fibres, bright knuckles, the rippling and desperate grips. the grind of femur and tibia. all those guts, chugging away.

four years of going through the masochistic mangle to be spit out onto the track, mat and field. one step out of line and risk spilling out into an injured mess. grazes and gashes breaching our humble boundary and exposing its internal disorganisation.

bodily fluids have always carried thousands of words in them, so much more than the meat they animate: spit, sweat, spunk, blood, tears, phlegm, bile. they are sincere and hard to camouflage.

yet despite their honesty and innocence, i often fail to see spectator sports as anything other than a waste of time and effort. such exertion for such little material gain. then again, almost everything that's worth doing in this world is a struggle.

amber

i dont even like repetition
but it has to be
amber-amber-amber-amber

amber is the colour of static
 the colour of limbo
 the colour of are-we-aren't-we
 the colour of urban decay
of pompei

it is a gormless light
dull like a mallet
stuffy like the back of a never ending childhood car journey
made to live with rubber and polystyrene
 a midnight street
 a lost highway


amber indicates that everything must slow down
 it is petrified resin
 stale liquor and varnish
 it is deep brass horns, rings and the growing middle age

even when it flashes
 in an electric vein
  between red and green
  between yellow and brown
it doesn't glint or sparkle
but throbs muggily, like the dull hypnotism of windscreen wipes

heave n scent

this morning
the cream cheese smelled like the bad breath of adults
who used to bend down to wave their faces in mine
when they wanted to pass on some private smelly kindness,
causing me to squeam.
you know,
that musk that permeates the adult world.

then my coffee had the hint of a well kept public bathroom.
well kept in that the hint wasn't that of intrepid piss
but of the residual chemicals
that cling and radiate from 400 walls.

then the cucumber slices
(they went on top of the cream cheese)
tasted something funny.
something false and sagging.
the taste of burst vacuoles and stagnant water.

all this in the movement of tiny hairs.
a moment of bristling molecules in the darkness
of double barrel vestibules.

there is something wrong with my nose,
or else the world stinks.