rejectomorph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rejectomorph) wrote2024-02-04 05:32 am
rejectomorph) wrote2024-02-04 05:32 am
Reset Forty-Nine, Day Two Hundred Fifty-Four
Saturday afternoon I woke up long enough to fetch mail and eat somethings, but kept nodding off as I ate them. Not long after the sun set I returned to bed and luxuriated in the warm covers until I fell back to sleep. It was quite some time after midnight when I finally realized I had gotten hungry from not eating any actual dinner, and so got up and fixed some. I made a sandwich with bread heels, as I ate the last slice of that type of bread earlier, and I put avocado on it (four down, two to go.) The problem with avocado on a sandwich is that it acts as a lubricant, and when you bite down the avocado itself and other ingredients go shooting out the opposite side of the sandwich. Physics it seems can't resist making dick moves with avocados. I finished the sandwich with a fork. So far no indigestion.
It's been sprinkling for a few hours, and I've enjoyed listening to it. It is expected to get quite a bit more intense as day passes. There is supposed to be high wind too, lasting through Sunday night and into Monday morning. It's nothing in comparison to what other places are in for, and as long as we don't get any power outages I'm sure I can sleep through most of it and enjoy the parts I'm awake for. But I need to remind myself that I've got two artichokes to cook. A splendid stormy night repast.
Right now I'm finishing up a bowl of spicy ramen, a midmorning bedtime snack. It's a risk, but if I get reflux in my sleep and choke to death I won't have to bother with the utility bills anymore. Silver lining. And I did manage to get through the entire bowl without sending any of it down the wrong pipe, so that is surely a good omen. I'll be asleep quite soon and oblivious to all risks and dangers, as far as I know. Asleep and full of hot soup. What could be better?
Sunday Verse
by Carol Ann Duffy
In the bar where the living dead drink all day
and a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice
there is nothing to say. You talk for hours
in agreed motifs, anecdotes shuffled and dealt
from a well-thumbed pack, snapshots. The smoky mirrors
flatter; your ghost buys a round for the parched,
old faces of the past. Never return
to the space where you left time pining till it died.
Outside, the streets tear litter in their thin hands,
a tired wind whistles through the blackened stumps of houses
at a limping dog. God, this is an awful place
says the friend, the alcoholic, whose head is a negative
of itself. You listen and nod, bereaved. Baby,
what you owe to this place is unpayable
in the only currency you have. So drink up. Shut up,
then get them in again. Again. And never go back.
The house where you were one of the brides
has cancer. It prefers to be left alone
nursing its growth and cracks, each groan and creak
accusing as you climb the stairs to the bedroom
and draw your loved body on blurred air
with the simple power of loss. All the lies
told here, and all the cries of love,
suddenly swarm in the room, sting you, disappear.
You shouldn't be here. You follow your shadow
through the house, discover that objects held
in the hands can fill a room with pain.
You lived here only to stand here now
and half-believe that you did. A small moment
of death by a window myopic with rain.
You learn this lesson hard, speechless, slamming
the front door, shaking plaster confetti from your hair.
A taxi implying a hearse takes you slowly,
the long way round, to the station. The driver
looks like death. The places you knew
have changed their names by neon, cheap tricks
in a theme-park with no name. Sly sums of money
wink at you in the cab. At a red light,
you wipe a slick of cold sweat from the glass
for a drenched whore to stare you full in the face.
You pay to get out, pass the Welcome To sign
on the way to the barrier, an emigrant
for the last time. The train sighs
and pulls you away, rewinding the city like a film,
snapping it off at the river. You go for a drink,
released by a journey into nowhere, nowhen,
and all the way home you forget. Forget. Already
the fires and lights come on wherever you live.
It's been sprinkling for a few hours, and I've enjoyed listening to it. It is expected to get quite a bit more intense as day passes. There is supposed to be high wind too, lasting through Sunday night and into Monday morning. It's nothing in comparison to what other places are in for, and as long as we don't get any power outages I'm sure I can sleep through most of it and enjoy the parts I'm awake for. But I need to remind myself that I've got two artichokes to cook. A splendid stormy night repast.
Right now I'm finishing up a bowl of spicy ramen, a midmorning bedtime snack. It's a risk, but if I get reflux in my sleep and choke to death I won't have to bother with the utility bills anymore. Silver lining. And I did manage to get through the entire bowl without sending any of it down the wrong pipe, so that is surely a good omen. I'll be asleep quite soon and oblivious to all risks and dangers, as far as I know. Asleep and full of hot soup. What could be better?
Sunday Verse
Never Go Back
by Carol Ann Duffy
In the bar where the living dead drink all day
and a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice
there is nothing to say. You talk for hours
in agreed motifs, anecdotes shuffled and dealt
from a well-thumbed pack, snapshots. The smoky mirrors
flatter; your ghost buys a round for the parched,
old faces of the past. Never return
to the space where you left time pining till it died.
Outside, the streets tear litter in their thin hands,
a tired wind whistles through the blackened stumps of houses
at a limping dog. God, this is an awful place
says the friend, the alcoholic, whose head is a negative
of itself. You listen and nod, bereaved. Baby,
what you owe to this place is unpayable
in the only currency you have. So drink up. Shut up,
then get them in again. Again. And never go back.
The house where you were one of the brides
has cancer. It prefers to be left alone
nursing its growth and cracks, each groan and creak
accusing as you climb the stairs to the bedroom
and draw your loved body on blurred air
with the simple power of loss. All the lies
told here, and all the cries of love,
suddenly swarm in the room, sting you, disappear.
You shouldn't be here. You follow your shadow
through the house, discover that objects held
in the hands can fill a room with pain.
You lived here only to stand here now
and half-believe that you did. A small moment
of death by a window myopic with rain.
You learn this lesson hard, speechless, slamming
the front door, shaking plaster confetti from your hair.
A taxi implying a hearse takes you slowly,
the long way round, to the station. The driver
looks like death. The places you knew
have changed their names by neon, cheap tricks
in a theme-park with no name. Sly sums of money
wink at you in the cab. At a red light,
you wipe a slick of cold sweat from the glass
for a drenched whore to stare you full in the face.
You pay to get out, pass the Welcome To sign
on the way to the barrier, an emigrant
for the last time. The train sighs
and pulls you away, rewinding the city like a film,
snapping it off at the river. You go for a drink,
released by a journey into nowhere, nowhen,
and all the way home you forget. Forget. Already
the fires and lights come on wherever you live.