Farmers’ Market

 

 

 

Writing to survive writing to stay alive to stave off intensity

 

you put a stick in the shit and sent it

 

you put up with life’s admin 

 

yes no sense because it ran off

 

you live in a

 

chaos of words 

 

in the night dance daily

 

lifting sighing breathing 

 

stalk DNA 

 

drug test countermeasures

 

the struggle is moments away

 

regional police force 

 

do not have the manpower 

 

to fight these levels of criminality

 

festering in the margins 

 

of a burnt out welfare state

 

what hooks hold us up 

 

no dynasty to connect with

 

walking the phone to work

 

a life’s worth of direct debit follows you around

 

like a magpie in the periphery

 

trying to catch those shiny moments that gleam off centre

 

make it all worth while

 

go college get knowledge

 

I’ve got ADHD and maybe Autism or a combination of the both

 

if I could rent them out I would 

 

like trestle tables at a country fayre

 

slap a massive pumpkin on the forehead

 

work the vegetables make them pay

 

pickles and punches produce for sale

 

spiced apple chutneys lined up and labelled lovingly

 

go for a run now

 

don’t look back.

 

 

                                         'Capitalism is the virus'

 

Under the low concrete roof of the bridge in a shelter the shape of a triangular coffin. Sealed in a secure dwelling. Goodnight to the world. Edge-land sanctuary make daily forays across the marsh. To claim a place in the world. You wouldn’t know the anxiety and the necessity to alleviate it in order to live. Fresh daily produce market nearby. The virus is in the water. Survival instinct kicks in. Everyone like this looks worn out. Just existing is not enough. Is it?  Life so precious to us, we spend millions to save lives. Yet so many lives are a living death. Autumn’s chill brings dead leaves at the onset of winter. Transition seasons hurry us along. Remind us of what we all share. Birth and death and re-birth, maybe. Move the pieces around the board in a clever post-modernist dance; that reveals the mysteries of modern life. And how the privilege of money and health can only go so far in the explanation of it all. The virus makes us sick, it makes us doubt ourselves and most of all it renders us helpless. Once in this state we are captive; held prisoner by economic binds that allow us just enough to keep going, to feed the machine that makes us sick. All critical resistance must be nullified and culture must be reduced to consumer distraction. Sounds old, because it is. It just got more refined. So smooth now that it is barely distinguishable from Ordinary Everyday Life (OEL). But we can resist, we must. Resistance is internal, ideological, individual. You matter, you exist. Keep breathing.