Buy me a coffee

https://ko-fi.com/joeshooman

Thursday, 31 May 2018

Puppy not what it seemed


Family’s adopted puppy was not what it seemed

By Arnold Fuck

It was a cute little thing, sitting there just waiting to be adopted. Just a youngster, hardly weaned from his mother – and with quite the appetite. Mrs. Edna Fungus and her family just had to take him home.
“His pleading little eyes and funny little cheeky nose just made us melt,” said Mrs. Fungus. “So we took him home as the newest member of our happy family. The kids were delighted to have a puppy to play with. We named him Rover, because we literally have no imagination.”

But as the months went on, the puppy started to display some odd behaviour, according to its puzzled owner.
“Rather than playing dead, chasing his favourite tennis ball or sniffing other dogs’ arses in the park, Rover preferred squishing the moisture out of elephant shit into his mouth, eating squishy larvae and maggots, and cutting up camels so he could sleep inside.”

Piss
As Rover grew, he also switched to walking on two legs, insisting on climbing up sheer rock faces and jumping out of helicopters into jungles. It slowly dawned on Mrs. Fungus that the cute little doggie she’d thought she’d adopted wasn’t a hound at all.

“I looked again at little Rover, dressed as usual in a parka with knives in the pockets, shorts, and his own pissy T-shirt round his head to keep him hydrated,” she revealed. “My suspicions were further raised when the little imp began going on about his days in the SAS over and over again, and all the situations in which he’d had to drink his own piss to survive.”

“The penny finally dropped when, ostensibly on a survival mission, my little Rover had actually booked into a motel rather than constructing a makeshift shelter out of reeds, tree roots and ferns. It turns out that I’d actually adopted a Bear Grylls by mistake.”

Wildlife expert Roy Mears explained that a mature Grylls was not suitable as a family pet.
“A fully-grown Bear Grylls can reach over six feet in height, and with their second dan black belt karate skills plus unique ability to find an excuse drink their own piss every five minutes they present a real danger. Anyone who thinks their dog may display Grylls-like traits, such as climbing up Everest, paragliding in the Himalayas or joking with President Obama, should contact the authorities immediately.”

Mrs. Fungus added that the family had been lucky to get away without serious injury.
“Rover, or I should say our Grylls, never attacked us,” she said. “But we won’t make the same mistake again.”

Wildlife experts were called in and waited until the Grylls was busy constructing a makeshift raft out of wild boar bladders, sheep’s stomachs and twigs before luring him into a special luxury motel where he was destroyed humanely .

Sunday, 20 May 2018

none of this is poetry and I don't care


I dunno. Nothing to say. No, there is plenty to say but I am not able to do it. No, I am able to do it but I think my words are inconsequential. No, they’re of consequence, because I mean them. But saying them out loud, typing on screen, whatever: well. I dunno.

I suppose I believed myself when I said to send out love to the universe and let it distribute where it needs to be. I am trying to believe myself now, too. It’s not easy. And it’s not about me either, not really, only partly, I suppose.

I remember the last conversation. It was typically bland and slightly sweary and slightly mutually-insulting. The kind of insults that men say when they love each other. That was the long and short of it, and it was, as ever, a pause when the last things I said to him were:


👍
that's a left handed thumbs up
I wonder if they always are. Anyway. I go now goodbite

none of this is poetry

i don't care

for
words
sometimes

Friday, 11 May 2018

Where and what are you now?


Where are you now? I asked.
El Ollin, he said. And stop hugging me ffs.
And we laughed.
El Ollin? Was it? I asked.
Alaline, he said. Seriously, I’m trying to do my shopping.
(seemed we were in Tesco)
I demurred and thought of Estonia. Estonia? Why?


The morning came and I saw what I’d written.
Several variations:
El Ollin.
Allaine.
Alaline.

And this is what I found online:
El Ollin: an ancient Mexican symbol to represent a God without naming or drawing him. The four suns of humanity’s failure. We are the fifth: the middle of the ollin. It’s a kind of yin/yang analogue.
Allaine: a mountain also known as Gara Ti Bou Kalline, in Morocco. There’s not much there. It’s very hot.
Alaline: adj, Estonian. 1. Permanent.

If there’s one thing I think the last year has taught me it’s that I understand why religion can bring solace, meaning, comfort. Even if you don’t believe a word of it. It still works, perversely.

(By the way: "Permanent."
That’s a horrible word isn’t it.)

13-8-2024

I am hopefully going to start to learn Arabic this autumn.

When I was looking something up I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up on the entry for Allah.

The entry for Allah states that the word is related to a Hebrew word for God: Elohim 

I present this new insight without comment.

Should have. Shouldn't have. Twelve months. Fuck.


I never did go.
I thought I would and when I wrote about it I thought it was inevitable.
But.
I didn’t.

We went, in a car, to the darkest festival. People were making jokes.
I was making jokes.
But we all knew what was beneath the veneer.

Those who shared blood and wine, in houses and venues and.
No longer.
Not the same.
An absence.

And, as is the way of such things, there was laughter and there were lots of crying jags and collapsing in the hands of the moment and.
What the fuck are you supposed to do?
When does this feel real?
And why?

I lived away. I sometimes, often, sometimes think back to beaches and swim-up bars and lizards and strange little noises in the night (some coming from me). 
There was an absence then, too.
This feels the same.
But it is not.

Comrades have fallen before.

Lost. 

Forever.

I wasn’t aware enough to understand.
Now I am.
I don’t want to.

My legs wouldn’t take me there. 

I was a mile away; once, twice, I forget.
In twelve months. 
A mile away. 

But they would not move. 
They would not go. 
Would should could whatever.

Another fail. 
A gig.
A festival of belonging. Secret, lost songs reclaimed and rebooted and suited and all the laughter and dancing and drinking and hugging and crying. 
And I.
In bed.
Bronchitis.

Not the first time in the year since he.

Since.

A year.

Fucking hell.

If I go away again will he come back?

If I.

I didn’t go.

He did.

Away I?

He?