Below the Line Poetry: The second election of Jeremy Corbyn

I wrote some Below the Line poetry for Neon Magazine on the re-election to his current job of Jeremy Corbyn.

The articles were all published on Sat, 24 September 2016 and the comments were taken as far as possible from the earliest commenters.

The publications in this case were The Guardian; Daily Mail; The Canary; The Sun.

The pieces in The Corbyn Suite were written/compiled/edited on Monday, 26 September, 2016

The nature of BTL is that it is malleable to almost infinite extent. The link also has a short explanation of the process.

Idle Wednesday

I am so idle I can hear the cat breathing.

Hfff hfff                hff hff  

Maybe

I could sit here longer and hear the tomatoes ripening. Wouldn’t that be something?

Straining with juices and fragrantly fattening.

Not like me.

Flagrantly fattening.

I don’t even really like tomatoes.

If I stop typing                                                   I can hear a bee buzzing                                               

                And there is another                      a chirpy bird, not too close           a slightly raised mum’s voice                       mysterious bangs                             three of them                                    buf buf                 buf

Low frequencies too. Undulating. Waves. Car engines eddie and flow into each other. The bottom of the soundscape

                Was that a futurist thing?

 I can’t hear my brain but the blood bumping up and down                                            is there                 fdp         dfd         dsp                              

 and I think that’s kind of 

where                          

       I                                                                       

        came                   

  in

ah 42 and the answer is minus 0

I am a writer, I suppose

I spose I’m a writer now, because I write things

But not much gets published. Does that matter?

I’m wondering if validation equals a career or

Maybe at least a vocation? No. A passion?

I don’t really think so. Of the hats I’ve worn

This is a fairly comfy one. Is it a compulsion?

Do I feel worse if I don’t write, and better

If I do? I guess I don’t obsess, don’t sing

My own praises enough. Or maybe too much

In passive-aggressive woe-is-me port-soaked

Nonsense. Who knows. Who cares? Pfff.

I can call myself a poet if I want, but nobody else

Really gives a toss about that, which is fine by me.

Actually I lie. Who wouldn’t want other people

To read what you do and say things like, ‘He

Really taps into the zeitgeist,’ or, ‘Joe calls

Things as they are, but you can see he believes

In something better.’ Stuff like that. Really. Truly.

But that’s really not the point is it? It’s kind of a self-

Obsession if I’m motivated by that. Again, though,

Maybe that’s the point. I think I’m missing something

Rather than the world missing me. So…

Journalism is different. Non-fiction books, all that

Is easy really once you realise that the story

Is already there. All your job is on that one

Is teasing it out, finding good quotes to stitch

Together. Chasing the ever-falling wordcount

And hoping to get paid. Nobody got rich

Off of these pulpy unauthorised biographies.

Well, not me, anyway. I don’t think they’re crap;

Some of them – all of them for different reasons – are

Pretty entertaining. I surprise myself when I read them

At some of the stuff I scribbled for a laugh. Ha. Ha.

Fiction? It’s stuff that’s made up, stuff that hasn’t

Happened. Or, stuff that could have happened, and

Is plausibly enough scrawled onto a page that it

Engenders hallucination of sorts, a mental movie

Translated from the printed black on white bits

And bobs that equal written language. And so we

Keep on reading, keep on dreaming way beyond

The confines of the ragged world’s constant spasms,

To lift ourselves from day to day drudge, or fear,

To stave off the urge to get fucked up or to fuck off

Altogether, and finally. Why? Well, the truth is: I have no idea.