Spatial, not special

Now look, listen, I see time and numbers as a grid
in my mind like that's anything unusual

So now I can identify
as a spatial-sequence synaesthete
add that badge to my achievements?

This has been the process since
playing Snakes and Ladders at Grandma's c. 1970

The numbers 1 to 100 are set out
from bottom left 1-10 then snake
round 11-20 right to left
21-30 L to R, and so on, twisting
round and making mental arithmetic an
exercise in visualised grids

I'm not saying I'm really good at it
although probably better than you

<John Lee Hooker voice> I don't know
        how you all do it, if you don't do it
        and don't you do it like that 

Do you get the picture, yes we see,
it goes up to 100 and then
the whole process starts again and that's
what I mean by the magic number grid

Years, clocks, calendars
all with parallel visual components
I don't know how you jokers
operate if you don't
have a mind map of numbers in some way

Woman flummoxed by contents of pockets

I found a stone in the pocket of my new jeans
like a triple sized and dried chewing gum ball
or shrivelled up wasp nest desert fossil
maybe the shrunken head of King Hamurabi XIV

Not to over-egg

But now thanks so very much to the portal
I see it's <almost certainly> a pumice stone
used in the stone wash jeans process
to give them an aged look and make it softer

'Yeah, in the 80s it was pretty common
to find them in your jeans actually'

Three cheers for the mundane

Conversation Piece 1986 (re: Bowie)

I like to take a walk to ease my troubled mind
Try and figure out what's wrong with me (or you)

Now some people think when listening to me
That I ain't got no education

Well that was a long time ago, and
Never was much of a deep thinker
Not much of a shallow talker

There's no one to talk to these days
And I can't see which way to go
There's so much noise in my head

I live above the chip shop
Owned by the Greek Cypriots
They often call me down
To pay the rent and have a chat

Michael jokes about his broken English
He's much kinder than his wife
When she's gone - 'You want ribs?'

But with all my years of suburban shelter
I can't think of a word to say
Apart from 'Sure'

I can't see the way forward
For all the thunder in my brain
Am I even human?

This life is so full of confusion
If my best friends don't even know me
How can they even be my friends?

They stroll arm in arm down the road
Straight into the frightening city lights

They're rude but right about my face
My murky, shifty, gloomy, lost face
And all my papers lay shredded in the bath

I go to work every day while
My stomach churns and my head aches
And my shadow self is mocking

    You're useless and numb.
    No one will remember you, and
    You can't see the future
    Because there never was one

I want your 🍆💦 inside my big █████ ███

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So if you're sick and tired
of living with weak urinary flow
Rub this strong spice on your back
Sell your home to Ziggy for cash

Vintage

My fire engine after all
these years still proud and shiny red
but covered in fluff and
glaze of spider web, I

Should gently clean with a tissue
restore my Bedford 1939 to
its original glory, rather than
let it rust in the sun
or shrivel in the cold
polish and protect is our motto

Let's set the wheels
in motion tomorrow

Sitting on a goldmine

She said, I was in this taxi once
real late at night it was
and the driver looked back in his mirror
and with a sort of leer he asked
if it had been a good night for me

I said What do you mean
he said You look like a working girl
        don't worry I've seem them all
       and I'm very broad-minded

I said, Excuse me I've 
          been at an office leaving do

Sorry love, he said, No offence
                             but if you ever
                         want a new career
                     it's clear to me you're
                 sitting on a goldmine

Drone operative, 1999

My sister my sister the magician
spent the first six years of her
premature life in the bathtub
suds ahoop plotting and a planning

She was really quite as normal
as any of the Caterpillar family

That Christmas after dinner, and
this was 1999 after all, with the
family stuffed and slumbered, she
casually sent a drone
aloft equipped with a phone

It beamed back 80 per cent
ginger carpet and bald spots
canine misdemeanours and the
last resting place of her
ballet shoe atop the shed

We hold her in our hearts