Felix Culpa

"I’ll peel off the clothes
and decorate the floorboards
with all that you wore."

:p

landscapesproject:

colon p solo
small on the small screen
one new message
colon p alone
teased/one easy tease
typographical
iconographical
regression to the primal
components of expression

It defines you.

digital dots contain
analogue irises
meaning they retain
older and
darker and
younger and
longer than
looking

a lip pulled lopsided
behind your teeth in
awkwardness and
promise and
relief into
a face
screwed up into
no insult meant
none taken
the possibility
that p
might be
x and
x and
x

Every so often I go to a poetry event and someone gets up and reads a poem about how text messaging and facebook and twitter and all that are destroying our culture and language. Fact is, these are just ways of communicating, and they hold as much nuance as older, more established modes of language. Language: another changing landscape.

In my work for the University, I’m going to be using all of the big social media. So I wanted to write a love poem that expressed a little of the nuance found in a simple emoticon.

A responsible adult schools his child on issues of conflict resolution

idlehearts:

In life, my child, you will be faced with extreme provocation,
But know that nothing solves a problem like direct retaliation.
Forgiveness is the trait divine, but honestly you should do
Unto others at least twice as hard as they have done unto you.
My child, in life you will have access to a myriad means of aggression,
But right now I want you to hold this one thought: baked beans are not a weapon.

Now some prefer to get their own back with vicious streams of invective,
And personally, I think a well-placed knee in the nuts is infinitely more effective.
Subtlety is better still, and one day, you too, when alone
Will scrawl the number on a toilet wall of a posh boy’s mobile phone.
Some folks deserve it. They need to be got! And when you gotta get ‘em
Do what you like! Knock yourself out! But baked beans? Not a weapon.

Now I understand I’ve said it twice, and although I don’t want to harp, it’s
An absolute bugger to get on my knees and get the bloody things out of the carpet.
And I loathe them! I really do! I think they taste like vomit —
It makes me retch to bring you a plate with the bastards piled upon it.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind so much if you actually ate’em.
I know you like them, kid, but take it from me: baked beans are not a weapon.

That line encapsulates my life philosophy: “Forgiveness is the trait divine, but honestly you should do/Unto others at least twice as hard as they have done unto you”. You have put it so neatly. I will proceed to quote you ad nauseam. 

misswallflower:

“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.” 

― T.S. Eliot

A Brief Scene in the Existential Crisis of Fireman Sam

idlehearts:

He’s always on the scene
And his engine’s bright and clean
And you cannot ignore, cannot, cannot ignore
That he is the hero next door
But now he lies awake, unsettled, pondering
Wondering about these things and more
Why no one listens, why no one
In the whole idyllic village of Pontypandy
Knows one single fucking thing about fire prevention
After twenty years of pointing out overloaded sockets
And overfilled chip-pans and carelessly placed bunting
And slow-burning fireworks,
To which you must never, never go back -
And they always fucking do.
“Is it me?” he thinks. “Am I a failure?”
“Is my life worth living at all?”
The universe, cold, uncaring, offers no answer
Save the plaintive baa of Woolly the sheep,
Who gambols long after his bedtime
In the moonlight In Dilys Price’s back garden.
Station Officer Steele stirs under the duvet and finally, wakes;
He puts a hand on Fireman Sam’s naked shoulder.
“Darling,” he says, “go to sleep.”