POETRY
INK IN THE SKIN
If you can’t write your dreams, remember to live them. Then maybe someone can write them for you.
Poem
The art of drinking lemon bleach
POETRY
Whenever I don’t consider my life mundane enough to share it in a meandering blog post, nor so profane that it warrants anyone with time on their hands reading a short story, I search for fewer words to say more. Then a part of me reminds me I’m supposed to be a poet. How I became one is a matter of speculation. Perhaps because I find it hard to talk.
MATCHBOX
Whether a match to a joint, or a candle to my own arse, the art of poetry is a way of swallowing a whole moment in life.
Au milieu de notre rue
POETRY
Who owns whom? Who has freedom and who has shelter? Who’s happy to be led, and who is really in control? These are some of the things I discuss with my fictional intellectual debating society, when we’re all home at the same time. I’m not sure which of my ‘assistance’ friends is best…
CHEZ NOUS
I don’t have a dog, so I have to borrow an imaginary one to go walking in the park, the woods, to a restaurant, or around London. The problem is, my social tenancy bans ‘pets’, no friends allowed. And the outside world is slow to catch on to dogs for mental well-being, the kind which would allow their companion to go for a walk.
Echoes of a stranger population
THE WRITER’S LIFE | POETRY
Stranger people walk odd and indirect paths, which sometimes cross. They don’t follow signposts or conventions, happier inside to stop and talk things through with the people they connect with in nature, rather than a forced social paradigm; to complete the jigsaw from the inside out. The puzzle of life takes longer to conclude for them. While I have to balance breathing and swallowing, for some it’s a walk in the park…
These are the people I like to meet. Mostly they’re from a younger generation (like my own children), with an opinion on most things about the world which my era brought them into, an enabling age of permission.
These missionaries are the paradox of human nature, with no wish to conform and no reason to say thanks. They’re part of a people which transcends generations. They are the neurotribes…
THE ABDUCTION OF TRUTH
This goes out to my dad too, looking down at an unfamiliar carpet, in a nursing home where he can’t afford to live, watching the ghosts in white uniforms walk by.
The people most confused about life are often the most interesting to talk to life about, because confusion denies condition and defies convention. They walk a bit funny, as though concentrating on their legs. Because they don’t always feel comfortable on Earth. These are the starseeds, wandering the universe in their minds. They’re connected to us by biology, but free to question what we didn’t, if we allow them to.
They are the beacons of humanity who light the night sky.
The poeticism of animal farming
POETRY
The minimalism of verse, existentialism with anthropomorphism…
Mushrooms grown in the dark are best served as appetisers.
Who’s afraid of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings (or Paul Jennings)?
An infestation of the Cnut
POETRY
I share my studio with a fictional dog, chicken, and cat. Recently I got a new bed, and found there was barely enough room to share it with the camel who moved in at the same time as the futon. Beneath those packing crates there’s another cat, called Canute, or Cnut for short…
MY CAT IS A CNUT
Like sand in the vagina, the poetic literary voices continue to trouble Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.
No walking frame required
POETRY
The weather is cloudy where the sun never shines, wherein lives a poet of sorts, writing about mutual facial weather events, tears by proxy and fair weather friends, right outside your door.
“We’re not truly gone until we’re forgotten, and the grief we feel is joy. We don’t know that because they’re not our tears…”
SLEEPWALKERS
I believe the departed still walk among us (most recently, my friend and neighbour, and my brother-in-law; before them, more friends and family, with my auntie Margaret apparently paying a visit whenever I’m watching a royal documentary on TV), and most of the time we don’t know they’re there, because they live in a different physical form. When we’re reminded of them, I think that’s because we’re subconsciously aware that they’re with us, that they’ve spoken and we heard them, or that we felt them touch us. My dad’s still around but he’s alone. I hope he can hear me.
I believe we’re never truly gone until we’re forgotten, and the moments of grief we feel must be joy for the departed, because they know they’re being remembered, like we’re waking them from a long sleep. We’re crying tears of joy, but we don’t know that because they’re not our tears.
