A Memorable Weekend Quote.

"I had a jol in retrospect." 
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 - Heard outside Tokyo Star, Greenside.

Youtube Day.

I want the whole lot of Foals to live in my pants.

Flower of Love.

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Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was,
  Had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet,
  Seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
  Struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
  With some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the
  Kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
  That verdant and enamelled mead.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
  The suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as
  They opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned me,
  Who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
  On the threshold of the House of Fame

I had sat within that marble circle where the
  Oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
  Lyre's strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
  The poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,
  Clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtime, when the apple-blossoms
  Brush the burnished bosom of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
  Have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion,
  Known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
  We two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
  The canker-worm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
  Petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you- ah! what
  Else had I a boy to do,-
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the
  Silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
  When once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death a
  Silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for
  The blind-worm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of
  Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God's
  Own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
  Argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems,
  And, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle
  Better than the poet's crown of bays.

Oscar Wilde

Perception is Everything.

That's it really. Because it is.
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...
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I was making a cup of tea. There was a choice of mugs.
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None of my favourite mugs were there. In the cupboard. This upset me.
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There was one that I liked the shape of. But its rim was quite thick, making the actual mug-space seem quite little. 
And I wanted a big cup of tea. 
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It was also branded with the new logo of a coffee shop I used to work at. This gave me flutterings of anxiety 
in my chest. 
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I said to myself, "This cup is the same as other cups. I could probably pour out its water and fill another 'better' 
cup and it will be the same if not very similar volume. I could just not look at the logo. It is all my perception."
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But I got another cup out of the dishwasher and washed it. 
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Because perception is everything.

Fig Cheese Cracker.

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All you need really.

An Ode to Lack of Sleep Hangover Tea.

How pearly and unassuming your milky veneer
Which coats the clarity and sustenance I seek.
Your vapour whets my upper lip in anticipation
For your warm, charitable kiss.
The sweet leaves of your awakening embrace,
Dispel my murkiness
And allow for my continuation.

Goodbyes.

Reasons to like new friends:
1. You don't know much about them.
2. You can learn.

Thursday Loveliness. OR.

I just met a man at the traffic light trying to sell me a gigantic wooden clock and a USB. After some 'no thank yous', 
a couple declarations of love and the repeated use of a specific word I couldn't quite hear, I put down my music just 
in time for him to say, "Pretty, I love you. I know you don't love me but maybe one day you can give me your pussy." ... 
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On that note, here's the greatest love song of all time.





Sheeeeeiit, it just tears me up. Maybe I'll swing by that traffic light on the way back home...

Memory #192

I must have been about ten years old. When I had a friend called Jessica Kim. 
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A tiny Asian girl with long dark hair and a little mole near her mouth. Bad accent... She was new. We met at school. Both of us products of globalisation; picked up as if by pinched fingers from our home countries and plopped into an International school in the Middle East. I have no recollection of the beginning of the friendship, I was young. But flashes of house slippers and visiting her family's apartment in the city remain strong. I lived in a house in the suburbs and so the inner city (Haifa? Tel Aviv? I don't remember...) where she lived was daunting, made even more so when we went roller-skating down the streets. My childish mind questioned the safety. We may have had Burger King.
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Bad accent... I remember her ruining my surprise farewell that another friend was throwing for me when I was leaving to come back 'home'. Sitting on the kitchen table struggling to speak with her on the landline, it was clearly obvious that the surprise was now anything but... But I kept up the facade for the people around me, never letting on that I knew and gasping wide-eyed when the streamers came down. But that's another day and another memory, involving my first horrific 'slow-dance' (of which my father took an equally horrific photograph). 
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One blurry day I was sitting in the back of one of my parent's cars, in the middle seat, squeezed inbetween a few of my friends, Jessica to my right. We were speaking of nothing... Maybe of the indiscreet party. I remember her face looking up at mine - she was so small that I picture myself as an ungraceful galumph next to her. She was asking a question, something along the lines of "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). She was squeezed right up against me and her one hand was on my back I guess and the other she was rubbing on my chest, in circular motions. Asking: "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). And I was staring back at her with restricted shocked eyes and a pinched mouth and I couldn't say a thing. All I could think was... "What are you doing touching my boobs???" 
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Okay, so let's be honest, my 'boobs' were up in the air at this point. I was 10 for pete's sake. So boobs, baby nipples, air, whatever. But I was aware of my 'female' body. (My nipples tingle just writing about this.) I was aware that another female was touching it; touching me. And it was obvious that she was not aware of what she was doing, or how she was making me feel. It was... weird. Potentially uncomfortable, or embarrassing. But the little people-pleaser that I was just kept her mouth shut and went with it, letting Jessica's petite hand feel up my pre-pubescent chest, rubbing her hand over and over and over and all over while I stared, stunned, down at her face.
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...
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I have no idea where she is now; in the world, in her life. I can't even find her on facebook (gasp, no really). But if I ever do, I hope she'd be happy, or at least relatively amused, that she took me to second base for the first time. 
One love Kim.

Mayakovsky.

My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

 I love you, I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing

like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

 Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Frank O'Hara