Common timelines

(based on suggestions from @_camer0n, @Quadelle, @marklawrence)

Accustomed to background chatter

Washes around like warm pub air

Local watering hole wrapped in a

Conversation management system.

If velvet monkey fingers have no

Hamlet to whicker out on the glass

Watch work-crap outbursts and

Let scroll the televised one-liners.

Snooze out goodnights and goodbyes

Odd comforts across time zones.

Wander down to the internet common

Someone’s always up for ice cream.

The cheer is crystal, no translation

from the latin is required. We all know

what #teamjellyjellyfish means.

If we don't, it doesn't even matter.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from three peeps:

• @camer0n: “ *imagines snoozing* HTML/CMS/BUTTON-MONKEY/WORK-CRAP Maybe not idea just outburst.”
• @Quadelle: “Goodbyes”
• @marklawrence: “Being off Twitter.”

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Twitter reminds me a bit of the Junior Common Room at college, while @matchtrick has likened it to a local pub. There’s a conversation going on pretty much all the time, and you can wander in and quickly be brought up to speed: “What are we talking about? Baboon boners? Ok.” Sometimes you miss out on hilarity and wish you’d been awake. Sometimes the conversation gives you the irrits, so you wander off. If you’ve got nothing to say but need some distraction, you can just hover in the background and watch. Sometimes Twitter is a lifesaver. Today, Twitter has been an epic place for friends.

Muse(ings)

(based on suggestions from @_camer0n, @ernmalleyscat, @realnixwilliams, @eglantinescake, @jellyjellyfish)

Inside of a sarcophagus, it’s too dark to read.

Sometimes we keep the blinds shut all day

and peer through the slick yellow bulb light

at our computers. It sounds like we’re stuck

on a bus, squinting out at those bright air folk

who stride the footpaths with their certain words.

Outside of a language, a dog is man’s best friend.

Young babies and old cats and medium canines

know exactly how to make their thoughts known.

A thumb and a forefinger, a claw and a stretch

is all they need. It says: “Keep me so closer.”

They say: “We need to touch you for a long time.”

Somewhere between outside and inside

is where you write words like you’re another.

Look back at a slat-blind dream of letters

Rake over your work with commuter eyes

Fear it is over and you have already touched off.

Happened before. It’s not over. Happens again.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from five peeps:

• @_camer0n: “Outside language, there is no self to express.”
• @ernmalleyscat: “Looking out the passenger window at passengers on a bus”
• @ realnixwilliams: “Peeping through venetian blinds”
• @eglantinescake: “Pincer grip – which Avery has mastered. (Carrying him is like carrying a little crab)”
• @jellyjellyfish: “Something to do with Egypt. Have excursion to the Tutankhamen tomorrow with one million tiny childs. SEND HALP”

You know how sometimes, very rarely, you write so easily that it’s like transcribing, like taking dictation? It happens so freaking little that you remember it like you found the holy grail. And you know if you could just get back into that mindset, you’d produce the most amazing things.

So you sit down at your computer or page, maybe at an Underwood if you’re lucky (and have kids that sleep really soundly). And the white blank in front of you draws all the blood and fire from your veins and turns it into bland alphabet soup. A couple of hundred words and a couple of hundred hours later and you probably should have cleaned the bathroom instead.

But every now and then (count it in months if you’re lucky, years if you’re normal), you sit down and before you know it you’ve transcribed something easily. It doesn’t happen very often. I choose to believe it will happen again.

As Margaret Atwood says, we can’t whine, because we chose this. No one is making us. We could just get another job, choose another thing to do.

The Sword Of

(based on suggestions from @timsterne, @realnixwilliams and @notcharming)

Cleaves like a V-Slicer

Rips through daisies

And slices mean as a

Papercut with lemon.

Flailing cooked spaghetti

At dwarves won’t pierce

No armour. Chain mail fail.

The blade of banality

Attacks reality tv shows

Sharkjumper dices series five.

Yonder, Dirk Prong carves up

Some excellent character names.

Wibbly wobbly swordy wordy

Overmentions that its scabbard is

Really big on the inside.

Despair, mine enemy, at our

Secret ninja trending skills.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from three peeps:

• @timsterne: “Dirk Prong”
• @realnixwilliams: “The blade of banality”
• @notcharming: “Cooked spaghetti”

To explain: last night on Twitter @timsterne’s hashtag #crapfantasyswords got trending in Australia. The idea, as you’ve probably gathered, was to make up names for crap fantasy swords. There was a lot of snorting with laughter going on – some of my favourites were “Dadjoke”, “Nohandle”, “Mostlyscabbard” “Papercut” “Overcompensator” and “Wibbly wobbly swordy wordy”. Hee. So today’s poem is basically a big in-joke (which sounds like a #crapfantasysword in itself: "Tremble, for I come bearing - The Injoke!")

The poem’s also an acrostic, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Autumn dogs

(based on suggestions from @_camer0n, @sulphura, @realnixwilliams, @Quadelle)

March sounds like a wet poodle.

It brings out the best in locked room

mysteries. There is no alternative

to clothes when the day turns cool.

All cotton shirts smell like

too many days in the machine.

Stretch on polyester, synthetic

crackle of background outfits.

There is the worst noise in the

back of my frizzy head today.

It stinks of ugly dogs but I'll

get them washed tomorrow.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from four peeps:

• @_camer0n: “Synthetic background noise”
• @ sulphura: “Jonathan Creek as an alternative to crap TV?”
• @realnixwilliams: “What autumn smells like”
• @Quadelle: “Best and worst of the day.”

I woke up late today and didn’t have time to write a poem. Then I had to come home from work, and spent most of the day asleep. I wasn’t up for writing one this evening in the slightest. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I have written one anyway. It’s short, because time is short.

In Stereo

(based on suggestions from @greenspace01, @1000yearsago, and @matchtrick)

Not enough music is carried

at shoulder height any more.

We annoy each other politely

with polyps tucked out of phase

Tiny boom-boxes secreted

about our person like

Potter in the broom cupboard,

voice coils and cones replaced

with expanding foam plugs.

Speakers used to manifest as fashion

A parrot for a sound-pirate

blaring like a million fire engines

chasing ten million ambulances

through a war zone. It squawked:

the funk soul brother was coming.

Right about now. Check it out.

It made the empty air bleed.

I’m not saying it was pleasant.

Played at a volume that squeezed

your vagus nerve in a group hug.

Vital fluids braked with a screech,

the bottom dropped out of the world

like a javelin broom handle.

A transient response wrote

beats on the wall of your skin.

It was unapologetic, it had balls.

That’s all I’m saying.

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Today's poem is based on suggestions from three peeps:

• @greenspace01: “Boom-boxes, broom cupboards and group hugs”
• @1000yearsago: “expanding foam”
• @matchtrick: “If there’s a chance you could squeeze DM’s take on Fat Boy Slim into a future poem, you’d be doing me a favour.”

Big stereos were awesome. They annoyed people without apology, not in the tinny-music-that-you-pretend-other-people-can't-hear-that-bleeds-out-of-crappy-earbuds.

This is all very 'back in the day' of me. But boom-boxes on shoulders were a statement. They said: "I don't care if you don't like my music. Complain and I'll cut you." Yeah.

The full Dylan Moran take on Funk Soul Brother is here.

They are very good at pleasure

(based on suggestions from @marklawrence, @eglantinescake, @pinknantucket, @_camer0n, @SeanMElliott, @hleighthree and @iFigaro2u)

They sleep in your bed for a reason.

Because their bones are growing,

children always look surprised.

Getting taller helps, it spreads out.

You know it's a sad day when your

child looks at you and asks

'Daddy, are these organic?’

I don’t see teenagers any more:

I see youths. Slumped S shapes

plotting something terrible

like making cider out of blood.

There are two types of wine, essentially.

There’s the one where you drink it and go

‘can we get 8 of those please.’

Then there’s the other one, you know,

the one that turns to Jesus.

This is children’s booze.

All great religions are built on shame.

Why not just have a physical afterlife?

It’s only going to escalate from there,

just come back as a tentacle with a set of lips.

Fruit... it's just God showing off.

Here, have a judge’s bun.

Chocolate bread! I was in Paris recently,

that’s how they start the day.

It’s the kind of place you go to commit

proper, serious pleasure:

smear it all over your face.

The cookery programmes are ridiculous,

it’s not really baking, is it?

Give me one of those chocolate guys,

not twigs fried in honey. Think of a bee.

Do you have any bee-keeping equipment?

Who has the time, though,

who really has the time to dip it in

duck’s tears and anything runnier than bread?

We suck stones for money

in order to attend the party.

The fact is that you’re not an adult at all,

you’re just a tall child holding a beer

having conversations all like,

"Hello. How are you?"

Adults are terribly confused, messed up people.

Children aren't like that,

which is why they look so young.

What a child hears is:

cake is the language of love.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from seven peeps:

• @marklawrence: “Our young children growing older. Cuddling them. How do we still hold on to them? Literally! Big=gangly=can't fit in arms.”
• @eglantinescake: “making bread.”
• @marklawrence: “Bees. Keeping bees in backyards?”
• @pinknantucket: “fruit buns”
• @_camer0n: “Transubstantiation & "Like hello"”
• @SeanMElliott: “commitments.”
• @hleighthree: “money orders!”
• @iFigaro2u: “time”

Several bread-related suggestions! So naturally I decided to make a poem composed entirely of quotes from Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Grieg (but mostly Moran because he talks about bread a lot). I haven’t added any words, but I’ve chopped them about mercilessly in order to fit in all the suggestions.

TTC

(based on suggestions from @_camer0n, @realnixwilliams, @notcharming, @ernmalleyscat, @slimejam, @SeanMElliott, @iFigaro2u)

We didn’t have any kids, but we did

get a new cat a few years ago.

Can’t be entirely a different tune

we were about to dance to.

How we concluded it was right

must have been the flick of the coin

across a doctoral submission. We were

bored enough with the march of days.

I knew about folate and caffeine

not getting boozed or too stressed.

The last night we went out drinking

I chucked in my handbag in the taxi.

A fine herald to tracking luteal phases

taking temperatures and vitamins

far too much knowledge about mucus

tinny chime of a thermometer in darkness.

Every site clicked out different snippets

of guilt and dodgy web design. These women

weren’t me, hadn’t eaten my history.

I didn’t fit their cycle of acronyms.

Sex was bound to dates, not inclination.

It’s wet weather timetable, folks.

Today we have to stay inside, even if

we’d rather run around in the storm.

I don’t know how many little sticks

I pissed on that came up single-lined.

I had already given her a title

she was named, in all but reality.

Each surprise of dark blood

gushed out tears and dispirited

bottles of wine. I snapped three

tests in half and stabbed the wall.

It is unbearable to suspect

your body is a failure. It feels

like a desecration of evolution

a misconception of simple biology.

When a second pink line glowed

in early morning bathroom light

I didn’t tell you straight away

in case my eyes had failed me too.

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Today’s poem is based on suggestions from seven peeps:

• @_camer0n: “in reality, in all but name.”
• @realnixwilliams: “stupidly designed websites”
• @notcharming: “deciding to start trying to have a baby”
• @ernmalleyscat: “stormy day at school stuck inside with the lights on”
• @slimejam: “new cats”
• @SeanMElliott: ‘Finding a title”
• @iFigaro2u: “music”

Deciding to try for a baby was easy (essentially because we had no idea what we were in for). Actually trying for one was a rollercoaster of anticipation, disappointment, anticipation, disappointment, overwhelming amounts of knowledge about fertility charting, anticipation, disappointment, really wanting to get drunk but not being able to, anticipation, and then, because we were lucky: joy.

I ended up knowing far too many acronyms about menstrual cycles, and Paul took on more knowledge about mucus than any man should ever have to. In the months where we didn’t conceive, I felt like a physical failure. Perhaps my body simply wasn’t up to the job? It wasn’t like I had treated it particularly well over the years. The idea of not being able to have children, and it being my own fault, was almost unbearable.

After several months, the baby I was convinced was going to be a girl (he’s not) was conceived. Photo is indeed THE pregnancy test that told me I was pregnant. 10 dpo, almost faint enough to not be true. He held on tight for the next nine months - until he was 10 days overdue, in fact. How disgraceful for a librarian to have an overdue baby.

I can’t imagine trying to conceive for years and years. We were so lucky. I am so grateful.