2018 in Review: A Poem
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#posts #year in reviewIn previous years I've written rambly, angry blog posts that tried to make sense of the world around me and mostly failed. This year I've given up trying to understand the world and instead have written a poem to sum up the year:
2018 in Review
This year was a bullet fired from a shaking hand,
screaming as it ripped the air in half
then burying itself deep into an essential organ.
Or maybe two. It was hard to tell with all the viscera.
This year we all turned to stone.
In many ways, it was a relief to be immobile
until we had an urge to scratch ourselves.
I did not spend enough time this year listening
to the whispers of the wind and the waves.
This year was full of half finished questions
none of which had anything resembling an answer.
We never stopped screaming them at each other.
At half-past three in the morning we would bellow
What now? Have you heard-? Can you believe-?
This year we noticed how fast the water was rising
but we were frozen in granite and marble
so we justified a fluid grave to ourselves
saying it was what we wanted all along.
All my goals this year were scrawled onto receipts
which I then tossed behind my shoulder,
carried on walking and never looked at again.
This year was a train derailing in slow motion,
a thousand frames a second so we could see
all the gory detail right there on the big screen.
There was no pause button. We just had to watch.
Thanks to the lovely audience at Lines of the Mind for listening to this one when I read it out a couple of weeks ago.
In the next couple of weeks I'll look at my favourite pop culture I encountered this year which is frankly more important than all this political nonsense. In the meantime, here's my picks from 2017 and from 2016.
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