gentleman-scholar - Tumblr blog

[gentleman-scholar]

i'm a really big fan of your poetry and very grateful that you are sharing it

<3 thank you. if even one person likes it that makes it worthwhile

[gentleman-scholar]

ESCAPRIL 6: CHILDHOOD MEMORY

lately i have felt frustrated with my inability to remember or my inability to describe what i remember without adding things or being generous with the truth memory is not a wave, it’s more like a sea wall eroding or the lacy scum left on the beach after the tide goes out

when i look at old photographs i think who is that girl i have never seen her before although certain things, the bluntness of the light in early winter or the wind in my hair as i bike down the hill, remind me that she is in here somewhere

like a dead body in a snowdrift like a handpainted russian doll inside a slightly bigger handpainted russian doll like a pea under a heap of mattresses like a broken ping pong table in a cellar like a cellar in a haunted house like a haunted house in a picture book like a picture book in a cardboard box underneath a lot of other cardboard boxes

at night i get lost in long corridors that look like a school i once went to and i wake up scared i am deeply affected by things that did not happen to me my dad in the car playing me fleetwood mac, saying can’t you see it? can’t you just see the albatross? and as he said that it flew right past the window a grove of olive trees in sicily shaking off a fine rain the snow came down in the middle of april like a million spiders on a million invisible webs and our cat died in the garden

i have never seen an albatross i have never seen it rain in sicily but one summer i got drunk and fell asleep on the lawn and in my dream i saw a dead cat get up and walk away like nothing happened

[gentleman-scholar]

ESCAPRIL 3: EYE CONTACT

if your eyes are lasers shooting red light into space then i am a spacecraft with a burning hole in its side if your eyes are novelty forks then i am a poached egg with the yolk running out i want to kill you in a hundred exciting ways i hope you enjoy this latte that i made for you with my own two beautiful hands and once you’re done enjoying it i hope you fall down a manhole and the sewer alligators have you for breakfast

[gentleman-scholar]

ESCAPRIL 2: THE INTERNET

i’ve decided to stop saying ‘i want to kill myself’ when things get bad because even if you say it ironically it still conjures it up the black possibility the killing-myself spectre the body on the train tracks and furthermore it makes everyone around you feel extremely uncomfortable so instead i have been replacing it with statements so ridiculous that nobody could possibly take them seriously

for example

if i see another weight loss ad today i am going to put on my heaviest hat and walk over a cattle grid if i see another conservative thinkpiece about gender clinics i am going to have passionate, physiologically improbable sex with a nuclear reactor if i see another scammer impersonating a palestinian refugee i am going to climb inside a steel crate and ship myself to antarctica if i see another graph depicting rising sea levels i am going to become a professional sword swallower via shakycam youtube tutorials if i have to sit through another 40-second-long ad before i can finish watching this video essay about the death of modern cinema i am going to enter a solo dionysian frenzy differentiated from a drinking binge solely by a sexy outfit and the presence of olive leaves if i have to read even one more article about this appalling world i am going to give up on all my goals and run face first into a tunnel painted on a canyon wall and lie down with cartoon birds twittering in circles around my head

i’d ditch my phone and live in a cave in the mountains but if i did that no one would pay attention to me

[gentleman-scholar]

ESCAPRIL 1: CHANGE OF STATE

the word body is evil, it sounds like something rotting, tastes like beetroot and mud.

all my life i wanted temples: tall colonnades and stone that won't grow, marble floors the colour of a dead man's face, vaulted interiors so vast and mysterious that they could contain anything. no door, just an upright slab with nothing written on it, and around its edge a crack so narrow it could admit only the finest blade.

i am learning my changing shape like a new language. its ins and outs. its quiet sayings. there are dimensions here that can be known, or learned. dig the knife in, hard, and crack it open.

[gentleman-scholar]

If you are raised with an angry man in your house there will always be an angry man in your house.

Sometimes you worry that you are the angry man in your own house.                                       This worry makes it hard to invite people over,                      so instead you spend your time making preparations for emergencies.

If a Komodo dragon is chasing you, you should run in zigzags,                       because they are not very good at turning. Also, a Komodo dragon’s scales are tough as leather, so if you are in close quarters with it,                                                                aim for its eyes.

In the event of a fire,                      keep low to the ground and do not open doors unless necessary. If you have to open a door                       check the handle first to see if it’s hot to the touch                                                             and if it is hot to the touch                                        stop up the gaps with blankets to stop the smoke from seeping through.                          Do not attempt to save valuables or pets.

In the event of an earthquake,                           hide under the table, or in an open doorway,                          or descend the stairs                           and shut the cellar door behind you.

All this meditating on emergencies has given you a bad feeling. Interrogate the feeling                   until it reveals its identity to you.                                         It will be one of the following.

The sudden panic of realising that no matter how hard you try, you cannot live up to expectations.

The abject desire to please a person you don’t even really like.

The shame of receiving a brutally accurate criticism from someone who knows you intimately.

The horror of being looked at with contempt by someone you respect above all else.

The knowledge that any vulnerability you may show will be taken and used against you.

Desire to be seen and terror of being seen, in roughly equal measure.

An inability to reconcile conflicting feelings of love and disgust.

An inability to trust your own perceptions.

An inability to verbalise your own feelings without resorting to exaggeration, overcompensation, self-abasement, allegory, or mistruth.

An inability to find any sort of closure.

A grudge that you hold like a hand.

You will be alone always and then you will die, et cetera.

The hangover from a nightmare; waking up with your mouth open wide, screaming                                    Get out, go away, leave me alone,           LEAVE ME ALONE --

Once you have identified the feeling, make friends with it. Sit with the feeling and make it a cup of coffee.                    Ask how its day was.            

(How can you hold on to all that? / Where can I put it down?)

                     Child-self        is asked to draw a place where he feels safe.       He draws a hollow planet with a house inside it, and a ladder leading down from the surface of the planet into the heart of the house. Years later he dreams of falling asleep on the pavement                     and waking up inside a snowdrift.                                            Nowadays he dreams, mostly, of being late to work, and sometimes of being locked in a great grey room                    with a man outside pounding his fists on the door,                                                     demanding to be let in. The lock                        splinters. The inside of the room bursts into flame.

26/11/2021. Italicised lines sourced from Catherine Lacey, Richard Siken and Anne Carson, respectively.

[gentleman-scholar]

bluebottle

I was dreaming that I was awake, and standing in a dark house – a cabinet, a case of wine. A woman I hadn’t seen in years came in  and spoke to someone out of sight, saying You let the child dress like that? Shame on you. Outside heat was shimmering over the gravel. Someone had made a chocolate cake that sat on a shelf inside the cabinet with maggots twitching in and out, wearing a metallic shroud of bluebottles.

The woman said, Here’s some for you and some for your friends; we’ll have a picnic in the garden, it’s good weather for it, go on now.

I took the buzzing plate and stepped outside into summer. The pond fecund with algae, the grass mown into candy-stripes, white mushrooms growing in rings like teeth in an open jaw.

Under the white-blue sun I called for you, but you were too far away to hear me and my mouth was filled with flies. I called again. I kept waiting.

[gentleman-scholar]

How To Respond When You Ask The Hairdresser for a Buzz Cut and She Says “Oh, Like This?” And Shows You Yet Another Picture of Emma Watson

Remain calm and stay where you are until help arrives

Become origami and fold yourself up until you’re so small that nobody can see you anymore

Remove your entire head of hair and gently hand it to her. Say, “This is yours now. Use it well.” 

Start Irish dancing, keeping your hands stiffly by your sides and kicking your legs out in all directions, until eventually your wayward feet become so frenzied that they knock all the clippers and brushes off the shelf and overturn a bin full of other peoples’ hair

Use your evil sorcerous powers to turn her into a beetle

Gnaw on her leg

Reflect on the decisions that have brought you here. Are you happy with where you have ended up? When was the last time you stood and simply drank in your surroundings, uncaring for once of the humdrum bustle of your unspectacular life? Have the years been kind to you? Have you been kind back? What is the universe trying to say? Are you even listening? Much to think about.

Scream

Tell yourself that one day, all this will be a beautiful memory

Steal a rowboat and put out to sea 

Writhe sensuously

Marinate for two hours in a bath of olive oil, then add salt to taste

[gentleman-scholar]

Our house is haunted by a ghost She does not talk, but only sits In her old chair that smells of toast And quietly drinks tea, and knits.

[gentleman-scholar]

Bats in the Belfry

This house is full of sounds that have no origin, like tracing paper laid over the world.

A man, whistling softly. Footsteps in the attic, a dog barking, conversations half-heard.

It breathes, it talks to me. You’d think that the echoes would make it feel more lived-in, more alive.

Last night my radio switched on, buzzed with voices, they said There’s no need to be scared  of us.

I’m not scared of them, but I do wish they’d decide whether they want to be here or not here.

[gentleman-scholar]

wooden doll

propped against the wall second shelf from the ceiling black mould grows on her

[gentleman-scholar]

Aneurysm

when the cyclone hit the explosion in my brain made almost no noise

[gentleman-scholar]

holy shit that "seeing other people" is good! you're an amazing writer!

Thank you! That means a lot. :--)

[gentleman-scholar]

Seeing Other People

He tells me on a Sunday, while we’re out in the back yard shooting bottles off the wall. “She’s just – she’s amazing,” he says, and another bottle explodes in a shower of green glass. “I think this might finally be it. She just gets me. That doesn’t happen often. Oh, and she’s great in bed, which doesn’t exactly hurt. Hey, you wanna try and get that one?”

There’s one bottle left standing. The August sunlight shines through it and makes it look iridescent.

“I guess it’s been coming for a long time, the two of us,” says Harlan. “But I just never thought it would actually happen, you know?”

I raise the gun, sight down the barrel, and fire.

Harlan brings her to the milkshake parlour on the corner of the main street, and we take a table in the corner, just like always. “You’re Cal, right?” she says. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, I’m gonna stop you right there. Cal doesn’t talk,” says Harlan.

“What, not ever?”

“Hasn’t said a word since I’ve known him.”

Marcie nods slowly, taking that in. “Huh. Okay, then. You two are pretty good friends, right?”

“Pretty good,” Harlan says. “Well, kind of. You know.” He elbows me, not quite hard enough to be painful. “Hey, Cal. We’re friends, right?”

The thing about Harlan is he once gave me a black eye, and instead of apologising, he told me it made me look tougher. Said girls liked that sort of thing. It was his own stupid way of trying to make up for it, I guess. And even though I don’t want to think about him taking Marcie back to his bedroom, fucking her once or twice, and then dropping her for someone more interesting, someone with better tits or a hot female friend who’s up for a threeway, there's nothing I can do. The milkshake sours in my mouth.

Friends. It’s the wrong word, but not for the reason you might expect.

"Your friend Harlan is such an asshole," says Marcie. "A real piece of work. You know he told me I was getting boring today?" She drains her glass, pours another. "I mean, we're lying next to each other, naked as Adam and Eve in the fuckin’ Garden of Eden, and he tells me I'm getting boring. Like, what? Who even says that?"

I’m still stuck on naked and all the mental images that accompany it. My throat closes. I shrug.

“You think he’s sleeping with anybody else?” Marcie says. I look up. Her eyes are on me, clear, appraising. I shake my head.

“You know,” she says, “Harlan’s not here now. You can talk to me. If you want,” and I don’t say anything, because I don’t want. Or perhaps because I do. It’s not important, and anyway, at some point she has to learn that you can’t always get what you want, although you can get something close enough that it hurts more than not having it at all. 

She watches me for a moment longer, then shrugs. “All right. Have it your way.”

Three nights later, she’s on my front porch, a ghost blurred by the rippled glass. How did she know where I live? Harlan must have told her. The porch light isn’t kind. It makes her look dead, but then again, it does that to everyone.

“You lied to me,” she says, as soon as I open the door. It’s not a question. Did she come all the way here just to say that? I bite the inside of my cheek.

“Fuck.” The liquid in her eyes is close to spilling over. “This is so messed up. I’m just – I’m done. You hear me? I’m done.” She spits at my feet. I stare at the pathetic little dribble of saliva, and say nothing, as always. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you. Either of you. Jesus. Well, you’re welcome to him. You deserve each other, you know that?”

When she slams the door, the glass cracks. 

“It’s like she thought we were gonna get married or something,” says Harlan, after draining his milkshake with a rattling sound. It’s darker in here than usual, and cooler, and very quiet. Everyone else is out enjoying the weather. “Fucking controlling bitch,” he says. “This is why we can’t have nice things, right?”

This isn’t a love story. It’s a zombie film, shoddy and low-budget with an ending that satisfies nobody. “Harlan,” I say.

He stills, then turns his head. He doesn’t look as surprised as I’d expected.

“You’re an asshole.” My voice sounds unfamiliar, hoarse with disuse. “I’ve literally never met anyone else who’s as much of an asshole as you. You’re a fucking sociopath. I just wanted to say that."

Harlan looks at me. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. The noise from the street outside feels very far away, like I’m hearing it from underwater.

The thing is: Harlan will be fine. He’ll meet someone else, another face in the parade of girls that all seem to blur into one girl after a while. Girl after girl after girl. I’ll watch, like I always do, as their relationship runs its mayfly course and stutters to an unsatisfying halt. I’ll listen, like I always do, to his play-by-play account of the relationship’s conclusion - the slow-motion highlights, a tutorial on how to use and abuse. And I will be silent, and supportive, and let myself get whittled down a little more every day, until there’s nothing left of me at all.

“Well, shit, Callum,” Harlan says after a long moment, and grins. “I mean, yeah. You too, man. Why do you think we’re friends?”

[gentleman-scholar]

Your poems are beautiful.

Thank you so much! That’s very kind

[gentleman-scholar]

Things That Men Have Said To Me On Dating Websites

Hey sexy, nice tits

Thank you. I grew them myself.

why are you lesbian?

Well, you see, it all started when I woke one night to the sight of a strange spirit, or fairy, at my window, with bright hair and a stare that could melt glass, decked out in rainbows and stars and grass, and of course she had wings (funny things, made from skeleton leaves, stitched and dried) and she opened the sash and she floated inside and said all sorts of peculiar things, like she was the cousin of a hedgewitch or a vampire’s bride or she was Sappho risen up from the dead or she was an angel who’d lost her head and fallen for loving another angel whose wings were the colour of a winter sun on a whisky bottle, or maybe on the barrel of a gun. Then she cast a magic spell on me, using words which sounded like the shush and sough of the sea and said love women, love yourself, drop the act, get out of it, leave the world behind, the trees, the fire, everything.

Anyway. That’s basically how it happened.

How you like my penis? 9 inch long

I don’t have a huge amount of basis for comparison, but I’m sure it’s very nice.

You have a killing eyes

Thanks. They come in handy when I use my solar-powered laser vision to burn the flesh of the unworthy.

Ok so like whats your actual name

They call me The Sound of Horse Bones Sinking Into The Fathomless Mud. But you can say Bones. It’s shorter. Takes less time. Is that my real name? Odd question. No. But it’s what they call me.

wyd right now

I’m glad you asked! I’m working for NASA, investigating things that fall to earth, all burnt up from coming here and breaking through the atmosphere like needles bursting through balloons or meteors destroying moons. Space dust. Music boxes that play strange tunes from far-off galaxies. Sometimes there’s corpses belonging to aliens or spaceman, dry bones, dead bones, skin gone slack, and I bury them to cover it up. One should never trust the men in black.

you live nearby? lol

Right now I’m lying in a ditch just south of Chelmsford. Rescue teams are searching for my body, but we have every reason to remain optimistic.

male or female?

Once when I was helping my cousin blow up the paddling pool in the back garden my grandmother told me to put a shirt on and I was seven and I didn’t understand why I had to wear a shirt but I put one on anyway. It was pink. Had sequins.

I’m sorry. I just made that up. It’s a problem I have, I don’t know how to tell the truth about anything that matters. Ask me a different question.

Into men or women?

When I was fifteen years old my friend asked me round to her house for a sleepover. We kissed, just for fun. She tasted like cherries. I guess it must have been her lip balm. I can’t remember what we watched on TV, but I remember the shape of her face in the dark and the way she panicked when the door opened halfway, and relaxed when it was only the cat coming in.

I made that up, too. Sorry again. I promise I’m trying. Anyway, that was the end of it.

Why?

We were too young, too different, and besides, her parents weren’t keen.

What did they say?

They didn’t say anything. But I knew.

And?

And what?

What was it like? Knowing?

[gentleman-scholar]

Down in Hades the rocks are made of char. By the banks of dread Styx pomegranate trees grow,  the ground beneath massy with split-open fruits  showing their noisome red insides. All the while the river wends north, soundless, and at its source savage Thetis holds down Achilles. Holds him down 'til he thrashes, quicksilver, slick ankle turning and sliding in her palm  like a caught fish, sleek muscle and peach-soft skin,  a chaos of bubbles hurrying towards the surface;  holds him down, hoping all the while  that their shared blood will be enough,  and wondering when his lungs will open up like flowers  and take in water as easily as air.

Kourotrophos, 09/10/18