You sat there alone, Cowled in dark thoughts; This disease, it gnawed your bones, Drew on your marrow, Sucker-punched your cells, one by one.
In your garden, Above an unraked pond consumed by dying tape grass; Blue tits worried the last of the fat-balls, Picking away until nothing remained.
Hiding your head in a hate-sodden rag I’d furtively gleaned from the newsagent’s, You found people, causes Onto which you could spill rancour. The NHS? Going to the bloody dogs. The younger generation? Brash. Selfish.
You’d fallen out of love with the world: A belligerent child with his last penny, There was nothing left that you wanted to buy.
As I drove you from your lumbar puncture, You maligned boarded shopfronts, Uncollected waste. Dark clouds consumed your skies. "Get away from all this,” you told me. "Travel the world while you have time.”
But you always were my world. How far could I go, with you, there; Like that?
The lawn turned grey. The birds went unfed.
Straining to scrape sodden dead reeds From the pond’s surface, I wondered how I could beg you To turn your open palms to the wind; Let the love of the world Move through your transient soul.
Eventually, the darkness became too much for you to bear. You let me glimpse The koi carp secrets that skulked beneath; Scales striking shards of Winter sun.
Now, the Oncology staff, Returning from the dogs, Trawl for your smile, your peace.
This afternoon, I trim your beard; Rub balm into your wasted limbs And watch you find your smile, Your peace.
Responsibilities and blame fall away. We look to bring you home, Where we can close in on your resting place; Where we can find you, finally, Falling in love with the world at midnight.
We’re halfway through 2023 and critics are slouching towards their Best Records Of The Year So Far lists. They’re rarely happy about it. If dicing releases every 12 months is arbitrary, then six months is labor on a factory line, wood chips for the content mill. But this year, I feel like they hate these lists more than usual. They’re having a hard time picking much. And maybe you are, too. P...
At the close of 2022, Bitcoin wasn’t just down—it was so down that its precipitous fall was breaking records. One report from Bank of America suggested that the collapse in value was the fifth-worst for any asset in financial history. Despite steady gains this year, it hasn’t even come close to its November 2021 peak, and now things are about to get shaken up like a bead in a baby’s rattle w...
In Ari Aster’s 2016 short film C’est La Vie, Chester Crummings, a homeless man, speaks directly and combatively to camera about his life and society at large as he wanders the streets of LA, surviving, begging for change and casually murdering people. At one point, he says: “You know what Freud says about the nature of horror? He says it’s when the home becomes unhomelike. Unheimlich.”
In Sig...
