Awake gap why

A colon seems the most obvious answer
Awake: why
An ellipsis could do a trick
Awake... why
But it wouldn't be the trick
Or the ticket, or the parthenon,
or whatever, just wouldn't be perfect:
the ellipsis would be... too dramatic.
Awake semi-colon why
is unfamiliar and captures the
disconnectedness, but not the
mundane familiarity of when
consciousness resumes each morning,
the same room, which is the same office.
Awake hyphen why or is it awake dash why,
ah, there's a degree of canny uncertainty,
and you know what, it's between that
and the colon - I can't decide.

wav's readers

The birds are chirping wild for the unreleaseds,
and that pigeon that only I can see, peeking round
an invalid chimney
wants an ID in the chat.

There's no smoking area
in fact, it's technically 11am
(as technically as it can ever be 11am)
so, we get
calls for...
replies, reptiles
chirps and lols
shouts and flames
avatars of unknown retro anime characters in fluorescent bike helmets -
it's all in the chat, where
there is more than one Matt H -
and, it turns out there is such a thing as
too much banana bread
[extremely stately] and you're it!

Having held off on the jungle until now,
when it pops off
and the prompt to Reconnect appears,
it begs the question:
Have I been looking at the static clouds for too long
or are they actually gifs?

Skeleton of a poem / On not knowing how to interpret the close of your last email

Am I free, or am
I cut adrift - or is
It not worth wasting poetry on these
These feelings? Maybe if
I only thought things through once, like
Like normal people
probably do,
Then,
maybe,
Maybe I could get
over,
                        get
over
                        you

Spring cleansing

"... if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas." Langston Hughes


To be kind. After all, liebe ist für alle da. That's probably why the van is there. A new schedule. 'TOMAS.' Big on blue. Used to pylons, things. Not used to being in quotation marks. Trying to do being kind, now.

Being kind. All the suddenly open shutters. Graffiti being removed. Cars being towed. Wondered, earlier, if I should raise the alarm with neighbours about that, or if that'd be creating an alarm. The possibility of state-sponsored graffiti. Final nails. There's now no excuse for not being available, you need to be as sociable as you can be, for the work, always online, contactable. Shopping as a necessity, as a thing that you have to do, to have an excuse to leave confinement. I'm shopping now, actually. To escape the complacency of home. To come to terms with my generally reduced levels of anxiety.

Wondering what's in everyone's rubbish. Not looking too closely - but it is just gloves. There's noone hanging around on street corners; alleys appear newly tempting. Complacency. False kindness. Hate crime's probably gone down.

~

I caught a sunburn, through the window. I don't matter - I'd invite you to hold me, or touch me, like a glance, for five minutes, but I haven't felt clean lately, and I'd wince, and it'd hurt you. I promise I'd hurt you. Stay clear?

~

It's too early to alternate to outside again. The plague can live for a long time in the souls of the elderly.

~

But if I went outside. If I walked to the common, to the picnic area / murder area. Would that be necessary? Would it be unnecessary, if I wanted to do it, and would be unhappy otherwise, or perhaps even murderously unhappy?

Stem: Death row meals

Death row meals

For my death row dinner, I would like
[invent a dish that sounds fancy - maybe French? maybe with some real words and some invented ones?], with
[another dish that sounds at least vaguely sophisticated; possibly slightly ridiculous; maybe obviously made up] followed by
[and the point is that you continue this poem, with every line ending with a connective, inventing weird concoctions, until it becomes clear to the reader that this is a never-ending, ludicrous wishlist, designed to filibuster]

Things I learnt from watching the Taylor Swift documentary

1. This poem has nothing to do with Taylor Swift.

2. I would be happy if I could write one great poem.

3. Be careful about who you bind your happiness to.

4. I really want to write a great poem tonight!

5. Sometimes when you're exploring, it's hard to find out if you're touching the inner ear.

6. I think this poem will be a b-side, in fact, I knew it instantly.

7. Tonight I created a 'not a great salad'.

8. Everytime I fail to make a breakthrough in my work, I feel like a total failure.

9. An album has 16-20 songs, she said, I think.

10. I am not sure I have a tremendous work ethic.

Not before

Not before
you climb on all the best roofs at uni,

not before you learn to cook
and learn to make, learn to be
someone's favourite dish,

and not until
you make your first brand new friend in sixth form.

Not sooner than
your full and glorious name is printed on
something published,

and not a second earlier than
you decide a song is 'your song' on a night out
or 'our song', on a big one.

Not in advance of
you telling a tiny version of you,
even if it's 2%, semi-skimmed you,
about things they can look forward to in life;

not prior to you, for instance,
hiding in a church from the rain,
crashing choir practice, with someone you love,

and not before you
meeting someone who for now
is being wonderful in space, just getting ready to meet you;

and not before so many things that
you can't expect the joy of
or expect, at all.

Not before Venice
or back from Venice
or before you've built on Venice
a new dream city,
and not until you've floated around that, too.

Not before someone's favourite poem
is you

and not before you've been read

and not before you've got up on stage
and sung the song of yourself.

"it was not the right time"

An act of resistance or acquiescence? I look enough at the BBC Football website, and have stolen one sentence from each story of the 12 that today I decided I 'had' to read before doing anything else. The tone of these aritcles made it harder than I was anticipating. So, I took snippets out first...

The striker was referring to difficulties he faced as an extrovert growing up in then homogenous Sweden - little did he know the statue itself would soon become persona non grata.

In the early hours of 5 January, vandals sawed the sculpture at the ankles until it collapsed, the final blow in a string of attacks following his investment in Hammarby that included cutting off the nose, spray-painting, and even an attempt to set the structure on fire.

Substitute Choudhury, 22, added bite to the Foxes midfield, and dispossessed [like the idea of this word being deployed as a positive action] Douglas Luiz in the build-up to Kelechi Iheanacho's 74th-minute equaliser.

"I like the fact that a referee makes a mistake because they're human and if I'm sitting in the crowd, I want to be able to celebrate a goal and not have to wait two minutes to see [I like the idea here of postponed celebration] if it's onside or offside."

"That's black and white isn't it? You know if it's in or out," she said. [Casey Stoney on goalline technology]

"Sometimes, especially in the men's game, it can win or lose you a game, or keep you your job, so I would like to see that in the women's game."

"But there's no point signing someone for the sake of it." [Graham Potter]

The detail was sketchy, but it was clear that something serious had happened. [about the Togo bus attack of 2010]

The government is "very angry" [find it ridiculous the idea that 'noone wants this, but our hands are tied', as if that is really true] about the Football Association's decision to sell FA Cup broadcast rights via a third party to gambling websites, sports minister Nigel Adams has said.

"We're very angry as a government as well with this arrangement, especially on a weekend when the FA very worthily had the Heads Up mental health campaign," said Adams - speaking on behalf of the Secretary of State for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport - in response to an urgent question in the House of Commons from Labour MP Carolyn Harris.

"We have asked the FA to look at this current deal, see what opportunities there are to rescind this particular element of the deal, and I will be meeting with the FA next week.

"It's absolutely right that the FA - [and] all sporting bodies who have links with sponsors across all sectors - need to be very mindful of impact that such deals have on vulnerable people."

United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said after the game that "it was not the right time" [this seems to be a theme across a few of these articles] to discuss Young's future, adding: "We can't weaken ourselves; we need to strengthen ourselves, if any movement is going to happen."

The group of seven fans [makes 'fans' sound like criminals] arrived at the Finch Farm complex, in the Merseyside town of Halewood, on Tuesday.

Brands spoke to the assembled fans [weird adjective if there were only 7 of them, and presumably they knew each other before and weren't 'assembled'?] for about 20 minutes in what is said to have been an amicable exchange.

Bath-born Sinclair, who began his career at Chelsea, was Scottish PFA player of the year in his first season at Celtic Park after being signed by Brendan Rodgers in August 2016.

Then I decided my title would be:

"it was not the right time"

and that I wanted to either begin with a slew of different ways of saying this from the article, or that I wanted to begin each new part of the poem with one. So, I got:

"it was not the right time"

[i.] it was not the right time...

[ii.] especially on a weekend when we, very worthily,

[iii.] what opportunities there are to rescind!

Now, it looks to me like this poem might take the form of a 'mea culpa'. Maybe an apology from a footballing organisation for not being able to control what its officials, owners, players and fans do? Or, for not being able to reconcile commercial interests with protecting the aspects of sport that fans/players love? That not be a 'unifying theme' amongst these articles but the idea is present in different forms in some of them. [I need to take a break.]

[I gave up. But I might come back to it?]

What is the Light?

There is a vegan alternative for everything good now,
Even next door’s brand new baby.
I can hear its attempts to say ‘Quorn’ through
The walls, if I squint with my ears.
I  am glad for walls. For anything that keeps us
In place, like commas at the end of lines,
Or roads free of cars just after the rush,
When they have finished their work and
Are just keeping all that’s above from
Everything below.

Words From Friends

I am not who you think.
I am a fresh global perspective.
What matters - I have commented on
my last post - much love, all in
one day! The right way.
And now, the opposing argument...
Scientific studies have shown that
is exactly *not* what I needed to read
this morning, popping up in a
haunted theatre. RIP.
I'm doing my part, dancing a
tango, what have you done?
I've written to an oven repair man
/ woman, poor service. Totally never expecting
such poor service. I forgot to provide any context.
It's an absolute pleasure. This God can be trusted.
The world must hear this testimony.
The long identical hallways. The soulless abstract art.
Strangers chatting in the hall. No past,
But an infinite present. We are spiritual
beings having a human experience.
On top of this, this man stating 'swords' as a blanket term
only further emphasises his ignorance.