Marigolds

Dave says his brain can only flow with alcohol, and despite the car crash he still holds this mantra. I watch him hobble around on his zimmerframe mumbling harmless merriments, ‘‘where’s my 2pm visit? I want my back massage’’. Even though massage is code for Russian Vodka he's still my favourite patient.

He has the kind of appearance you’d avoid walking towards on the same side of the street. Sits down on a bus, and someone gets up. Definitely not the kind of character your nan would invite into the house for a cup of tea and biscuits, but a guy you’d see in your local park lazing his bony discrepancy on plastic blue swings, with his liquid habit to his mouth like a kid with a Cornetto. A shame, ‘cos his heart is plump, and conversation fat with jokes. His face shows a life dedicated to years of true decadence. I wish I could say those bursting capillaries weaving manically around on his bulbous nose came from the work of hard labour. But they are definitely the work of hardcore pub time, nine till five.

I also have a fondness for Mary, a seventy-two year old recovering from a hip replacement after a nasty fall, which smashed everything below her waist to dust. When I bathe her, she puts on a pair of diamond drop earrings and matching pendant, says it gives her nakedness aristocratic style. And as I wash under the folds of her once desired, pendulous breasts, I see it too. You should see Dave and Mary when they get together, their hilarity pops a pin in ward life. So I tell them to go fourth and spread their seeds of glee like good disciples of the hospital.

Most of the other patients don’t take to the ward with such light affection as Dave and Mary. Most expressions mirror the multicoloured wilting flowers homed on their drib bedside tables, kept there from day one. For them, everyday is like stepping in shit. And I’m tired of their shit filled footsteps snailing around the ward, for the perkier souls to potentially stand in. I call these patients the ‘Weeds’- their sole purpose being to strangle their roots of pessimism around the marigolds. Dave is a marigold, but he isn’t to be strangled. For I the Gardner waters the vibrancy of his pretty, orange mane every morning and night.

To Have a Twin

I have a twin brother Ki. Who, in the comfort and seemingly unthreatening home of the womb, pilfered the highs of my parents genetic formula. Leaving me to lick up the dregs of waste, like a perfect Darwinian story.

                  Click, to get the bigger picture. The detail will make you vomit.

He has also just started a blog, but deeply procrastinates, so expect to see very little over at kiyoong.blogspot.com

The Dentist

I completed my sixth and greatest Sonata four months ago. It will be performed by Vienna’s most regarded pianist, and I look forward to that with infallible joy. What inspires me is a question I have been asked repeatedly, but the truth could lay my success open to great perils. So I will leave the truth enamelled to assumption.  And tell only you.

I am dentist by profession, but a composer by default.

I discovered the slenderness of her neck as her head tilted back, her alabaster skin brought out a dewy pinkness in her lips, as they open from bud to bloom. The music followed. Every tooth had a letter assigned to it, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Letter G landed soulfully on her molar, her canine was distinctly F sharp, and the piece ended exquisitely on high C, upper incisor.

I have saved a few select casts from the most instrumental mouths. Placing them on my baroque mantelpiece and depending on my company they pass as contemporary art. Often, upon catching sight of my ornamental teeth the tips of my fingers tingle, and arch up eagerly to play the teeth like the keys of a piano. Of late Debussy has been thoroughly enjoyed.

One of my most well received Sonatas came from a set of short, tightly screwed teeth. They weren’t by any means lacquered with a Hollywood gleam, but their gritty strength made way for an effective staccato.

Braces have the power to change the melody of the mouth; they cause a transformation from the disjointed to the sublime.

Young

I twirl my fingers
Through your brown, greying hair.
Moisturising my tips
With the oil from your scalp.

I tease myself onto your lap,
Open your hand and admire
The thick veins on your wrist.
The television consumes you.
Trickles of lah lah lah.
Irritate my ears.

Foie Gras

''I’ve got to get her back, you listening? I’ve got to get her back!’’

My consciousness flickers, becoming momentarily aware I’m being spoken to, so I mumble threatening obscenities, exerting as little energy as possible in hope of returning back to sleep.

My roommate Karl begins to irritate me further, ''Mate, I saw Lorna, walking with some dirty ass cockroach of a guy, no way can she be seeing him, has to be her friend!''

''Your attempts will be all in vain, I’ve heard some guy from Oxford got his hands on her during the summer, it’s probably the cockroach you’re speaking of.'' I was never one to beat around the bush.

''Pffff, she loved me, and I didn’t finish with her in a nasty way, I never said anything bad to her'' Karl protested, but his voiced sounded fairly uncertain.

''It’s not what you say, it’s what you do that can hurt Karl.'' I stared at him with one eye, whilst my other tried to preserve sleep, but he just kept silent, letting his reflective grimace tell me to shut up. Which pleased me fine.

Karl had been seeing Lorna for most of the second year at uni, but broke it off when she started getting clingy. They didn’t match anyhow, Karl was an arty guy, cigarette always flapping from his bottom lip, and he talked about art like the media talked about celebrity. And he constantly wore yesterday’s clothes. Not that he was lazy, but rather, maintaining personal hygiene came far down on the list. Whereas Lorna, I saw as being a square, a pretty one though.

I met Karl, in our first year of uni, we had both joined the Literature society, and that’s where he met Lorna too. I remembered him because he called me Michael straight after I had told him my name was Miguel. I tried to have a conversation with Lorna that same day too, about poetry, I shared my liking for Ginsberg, and she replied that his political and social voice was vulgar. I gritted my teeth at that pompous, little remark. And when she gushed about Sylvia Plath I groaned,

''I got half way through that, and went looking for a rope and stairs'' which surprisingly didn’t go down well. I remembered her glass black eyes narrowed. I smiled.

When I thought of Karl and Lorna, it was difficult for me not to refer to the Oedipus complex; she was always mothering him, and he lapped it up like an impressionable foetus. Cleaning up after him, blowing crumbs off his face more than kisses, telling him the do's and don’ts of table etiquette. She fed him like he was foie gras about to be splattered on a Parisian plate. She had a marvellous way for making a capable adult look embarrassingly incapable, so when I came into the room one time and saw her feeding him nipple shaped strawberries, I left bemused. That may explain why he wants her back, there would be no dirty washing crammed under the bed, less takeaways, less questionable smells, and more finger fed food.

Throughout the first year, I didn’t really connect with any girls, I was quite satisfied simply admiring their hypnotically, gyrating buttocks glide past me, but saw few faces I wanted to talk to. It’s not often I’ll talk to a girl first, unless I’m really attracted to her. And in the second year, I was too busy scrambling for good grades. But now in my third year, I think I deserve a little light relief amongst all the books, so I’m open to suggestions. Got to try a little I guess.

I picked up the phone and dialled Lorna. Twirling my fingers around the cord.

The Vultures

We contemplated politics
Passed through Picasso
Jumped blind into our desires.

Spent the day in bed
Quilted with a primitive engage
Then sank into the night.

It was all moving too fast
Two engines colliding head on
No turning, no stopping, no break.

We wobbled on a tight-rope,
Arms flung out, buckling under
The first impressions of love

But as quickly as it came
It went even quicker
Spiralling off into the night.

A flock of vultures swooped down
The moment I saw your morals
Clear like blood on your hands.

Leonard Cohen

I marvel how 'everybody knows' builds up the feeling of a collective consciousness, in such a sardonic manner!

Candle

First,

your naked flame is coated

cold blue,

but in the cave of my hands

you widen.

Your torso smooth

like I remembered.

so white, you illuminate

in dusky night.

Curiously

tilting you to one side…

your liquid form

s

p
i
l
l
s
in the palm

of my cup.

I watch your transparency

harden white.

then peel you

away

from me,

my identity

imprinted on your form.

False Advertisement.

In his retiring manner Bill strolled into class, and expecting to see his creative writing class it came as a surprise when he was greeted with a class full of unrecognisable faces. But instead of attending to his surprise, he nonchalantly brushed it aside by taking a seat in the class to merge with the newbies. His arrival stirred no raised eyebrows since it was still the first week of uni. Various smiles, and hung-over expressions outlined the tables.
    Still set in sleep mode, a disproportionate amount of time was spent with a glazed look over his face. Thoughts drifted to the patchy accounts of the night before and to the content of his fridge, which homed a sorry supply of beer. Inexcusable since he'd taken advantage of coupons which entitled him to a ‘buy one get one free offer’ and every so often his attention would revert back to the class and each time he did, he would be comforted by discussions which made him curiously glad that he had taken a seat in this unknown territory.
    Bill glanced at his neighbour’s module handbook which was entitled Advertising. It went against his believes of consumerism; having enough unwanted clothes, gimmicky buys, and skint related aneurysms to learn that the art of media persuasion was bullshit not to be bought. But he was comforted with statements like ‘Making things that make people happy’, and although blurred with skepticism, the thought of making others happy pinched him with contentment. Maybe if Bill had been feeling cynical he would have thought a degree in Advertising would be sucking Satan’s cock, but he wasn’t and the debate with his inner self justified that he could do good things with advertising.
    The layout of the classroom was such that the students sat in a ‘U shape’, a layout which allowed Bill to get acquainted with the various faces without struggle. None of the faces were particularly striking to Bill, aside from two. One guy had a prehistoric look, like he was missing several genetic links in the evolution stage. And then sat quietly among all the erection killers, there was a girl who sent his imagination into pockets of deep filth.
    After the two hours were up he approached the teacher who had the register, and whether Bill had advertising in mind, the curiosity of the unknown, or the girl, his pen appeared before the sheet, and without little analysis of consequence, his name was added to the list, along with the final thought it's just a ride.

Food Porn

Oh my, look at you.  Utterly inviting with your thickness, and full-fat creaminess on display, you’re certainly no introvert. I crave to open the taste of your sweet unhealthiness like some sinewy-armed hooker, cheaply sexing her body for a bout of smack.

 My nostrils widen, and my eyes burn through you like a tiger honing in on its next prey.  I’m trying to calm the salvia that’s befriending my mouth, tame myself, and cautiously savour this moment, make this moment last for as long as possible. But oh Lordy it’s difficult!  You seduce me, like a taboo creature of darkness, I don’t know how to take you on, do I delicately pick the berries off first, and suckle on them like a Freudian child. Or like a lady of sophistication do I cut a slice, and feed myself with a silver spoon? No that’s not me.  I must act accordingly; you look fun, so I must eat you in a flurry of fun.

I look at your sculptured body in all its calorific glory and glance down at my body, and feel a pang of guilt, but with guilt comes denial and justification and so I tell myself ‘I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs, and I rarely drink, so let me satisfy my soul with you.’ So with a smile on my face, and a plastic spoon in the hand I take you, I take you to my mouth and my body, and begin to feel  you intoxicate my senses like a beautiful sea of sperm.  

My contentment lies in the consumption of YOU.

The Breathe of Life.

To Fart is to reaffirm existance.

Farting is truth you see. In farting we liberate the deepest secret of our internal workings, the noises and smells of our hidden systems as they continually work to keep us existing on this astonishing earth. When we hear a fart it is not just a flat inexpressive noise, no, it is much more, it is the voice of our stomachs, the language of our intestines, it is their song... a symphonic chorus of joyous farting.

Farting is a language not bound to words. When speaking verbally our meaning is constrained by our own language, we cannot express anything beyond the words which our language gives us. But with farts we are able to experience different levels of meaning, like music. Music speaks to us in a way language cannot, it speaks to our soul without the need of words and we create profound connections with it. Here lies the truth and beauty of farts: They offer us a way of communicating that releases us from the shackles of words, a fart can mean infinite things, love, hate, passion, indifference, comfort...so let it speak.

Farting is a communication of the senses: of sound, and smell, it seduces our olfactory senses to the same degree of a crimson rose in summer. Within our social constructs we are conditioned to believe that the smell of a rose is to smell beauty itself, and to smell a fart is to smell repulsion and disgust, but let us today break down these barriers and proclaim with certainty of mind that “a fart by any other name would smell as sweet!”

Farting is the language for life, as infants, before we take on a verbal language we communicate by means of our passing winds, we fart and we fart and we fart, until the horrid, appalling event takes place in our lives..the chastity of the fart or ‘fart shame’ as it is subversively known as. This is when we are ‘taught’ that farting is a ‘dirty’, ‘sinful’ thing, oh lord, how it makes my soul ache to hear this. It is only later on in death that we return to the truth of our infant lives, when we pass away we still fart, after our heart has desisted its once perpetual beatings we still release them..it is the secret language of the dead...releasing their final breath after the soul has departed...perhaps it is itself the departing ascension of the soul.. 

We can also learn a lot about ones character through their response to farting, for example some people love the smell of their own farts, but not others. How self-adulating! Well to those people, I condemn you, and I hope one day you'll meet a person where you wish to dive under the covers and breathe, breathe deep to inhale the beautiful  smell of their back passage, and then you my dear, will be redeemed from shelfishness.

So, my guidance to you all, in future do not twist your noses away from a fart, no, instead, open your nostrils, open them wide, and breath it all in. In doing so, you are embracing the fart, its beauty, and ultimately...what it is to be human.

I fart, therefore I am.

...

In the silence of unspoken words,
Do your thoughts get louder?

When you’re alone,
Do you want to silence the silent?

When you’re thinking,
Do you do it without thought?

When you write,
Do you think of the trees
By writing on the walls?

Call it a wall of thought.

When you have a mental block,
Do you call it a thought full of
Walls?

No escape,
No thoughts,
Just walls.

The Bird

He had noble hair
And a mustache that spoke experience.
He wore clothes that ruled with smartness
And a smile that spread unforced.
With eyes that harvested both light and truth,
I knew he’d never want me.
So I took his bird in
Vengeance!

[Artwork by Ki Yoong]

Into the Wind

Dance with me
In the pouring,
Roaring wind.

Open your mouth wide open
And swallow its

Swirling

Surging

Energy.

Feel it give a deep, wild,
Blow.