Morning Pages # 2

Another Lazy Sunday?

13/5/12

The table is purple plastic

and covered in cups, ashtray,

skin cream, tv remotes,

tobacco pouch, two issues

of TV choice, a memory stick

and some headache tablets…

Our supper plates are on the floor

by the rowing machine. Baskets

of clothes, piles of cds, bottles

of pop and a jug of water. Rows

of books, tiger posters on the walls…

Seven pairs of underpants on the rack

over the radiator, Jen’s computer

awaiting activation. It’s eight o’clock

on a Sunday morning – too early

to mess about with microwave and kettle –

back to Slumberland for a few hours…

Monday 14th May 2012

I’m in an American city and don’t know what it’s called. There’s no names on the streets, even the library is a blank. I’m too tired or dumb to ask. I find myself in a hotel room; food, a few books, my back pack, but no idea how I got out of England. I was hoping for heavy metal but daren’t mention the concert for fear of the Christian Right giving me false information. I’m stuck, waiting for updates on the news channel as to my whereabouts. No idea how I’ve ended up here, in such a stupid pickle.

There goes the telephone. Who can it be at twenty to nine in the morning. I don’t think it’s had six rings so the answer machine won’t have kicked in. Why do cold callers start so fucking early on a Monday morning? I want to ring them back and give them a long string of abuse. The fuckers deserve it. Ringing out of the blue to sell me some shit I don’t need.

By my bed are various books: Wanda Coleman’s Native in a Strange Land - Trials and Tribulations, The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis, Spray Paint the Walls – the Black Flag Story by Stevie Chick, Pleasures of the Damned by Charles Bukowski; and Songwords 1978 – 1989 The Cure by Robert Smith.

I’m going to get a bowl of porridge and a cup of Ribena, turn on the computer and see what happens next. 8.50 am.