Tag: language

Strike

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

how did we let it happen?

this televised delusion

spectacularized demons who accuse us of their crimes

while they are still committing them

like a schoolyard bully asking

why are you punching yourself?

and we reply politely

offer counter points of view

and they laugh and call us snowflakes

and we let them

let’s go on strike

whenever someone uses a lying word like

snowflake

cuck

those people

those queers

those…aw, but we can’t say that word no more

go on strike

walk off the conversational job

demand better conditions

or walk away

“I don’t owe you my time.”

“You call it an opinion but to me it sounds like hate.”

“We work together.  We don’t need to be friends.”

“You’re talking about people I care about.”

“How could you believe that about another human being?”

do not do their labour

don’t scab yourself to their delusions

refuse to negotiate on the definition of your selfhood

or the selfhood of others

their lies have no authority in the court of your self-worth

they are the ones in prison

they have built the walls themselves

and here we are outside

you and I and all of us

together in the garden

loving

free

(23/03/2023)

I originally thought of calling this not-quite-a-poem “You Fuckers Wanna See Some Cancel Culture?” but sometimes short titles are better.

I also acknowledge that many of us live and work in unsafe places and cannot ‘walk away’ without causing ourselves immense harm. It’s perfectly acceptable to strike by simply not dignifying the offending party’s remarks with a response. A blank stare can work wonders when someone’s fishing for a laugh.

The Keeper

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

swearing cheapens everything

it fucking does

I went away to practice my elocution

why do you have to sexualize everything

you’re the one who insisted on the mountains

the snow like cream

the foothills dank with fir

sappy air that ignites when you snap your fingers

such danger

much fear

I went to practice elocution

the shape of words and

the morals

to every fairytale

eat the apple: sleep a thousand years unchanged

then fuck a prince

“so what’s the catch?”

(2023)

Have I written any poems this year?  I keep posting old poems to Insta because I’m lazy and I need content. I don’t write poetry with any diligence. Only when the words need to be poems and not my standard prose. 

But I went to an indie book fair yesterday.  Everyone in my town is a poet or knows a poet.  Pretty, pretty books everywhere. This is what I bought:

A photo of two books laying on a desk. The book on the left is “Poetry is Queer” by the author Kirby. It has a light purple cover with a picture of a surreal phallic shape outlined by white buttons and filled in with googly eyes. This shape is passing through a circle of white buttons. The book on the right is “Dream Rooms” by River Halen. The cover is mainly black with bold white text and a colourful photo of hundreds of pieces of discarded chewing gum. Both books are very, very queer.

“Wait, this isn’t a DIY page?”

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

What is a ‘fixer’? 

The term has immoral connotations, referring one who dodges, bends, rewrites the rules, gives unfair advantage to a certain outcome. Lawyers, generally. Mafia, frequently. People with the tools and ambition to bend reality to the shape they desire.

It’s a fun word, though. Flexible and ironic. To fix means to do many things. To repair or remedy, to put in place, to arrange, to neuter an animal. It’s a threat (“I’ll fix you!”) and a humble request (“can you fix this?”) It’s everything I like about language.

To fix is to set in place with a sense of permanence that time betrays.

To fix is to render an animal sterile. Fix a genetic line in place, remove from stock.

In the very best orgasms, time and space stop, and start again. That is the stuff in you that once was a supernova, that once was a star, remembering how it felt to be nothing at all. Why is pleasure not sacred? 

How can we be expected to fix ourselves when they won’t even let us repair our own phones? 

Fix this, fix that.

Fix it to the wall.

Burn the wall.

These are uncharted times. The schism between narrative and lived experience is more apparent than it has ever been. That seems like something we need to fix.