Battery About To Die

Jim Hall

Apr 30, 2024

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Typed Wildly While Over-Vibing To ZONED OUT By Hot Milk And Woahing Over Refill Coffee In A Somewhere-Wetherspoon’s

Yet again so stupidly and beautifully reeling with all uppercase feeling when someone pats the head of their pint glass like a soon-to-go doggy.

The child in light-up trainers crayoning their unwreckaged heart into the softest edge of a smeared napkin.

Yikes over the 2-4-1 cocktail menu snapped brutally at the neck.

Cutesy aww of couple unable to order due to one suggesting pitcher of Blue Lagoon the other unable to explain that each day is a lagoon of failure and they are the worst swimmer of all-time.

A member of staff sashaying past the sudden lurch of wheelchair.

New practice: write like you are a phone and your battery is straight-up about to die.

Be ready to be so ready.

I cry brilliantly and often over oh so many and oh most unloved things.

The comment under a Bro Psychology video that someone left before they too left but forever.

‘Something is broken’ being a selectable option when clawing out of Tinder’s throat at 1AM.

Someone so hyped by whoever piledrived a last-minute rocket into the roof of the net that their fist let a window in the Men’s understand what it meant.

Dad recommends Andy Murray take my hand and join me in the mosh-pit instead of shattering one more racket.

My student sees me shake my head in reverence after they explain sometimes a poem is a place to put the pain everyone else is too scared to carry.

To seriously say so perfectly all of the things that shuttle through our bones on the daily is o dreamiest of dreams.

To spend the winter moved only by shitty death-metal B sides, the scent of raspberry vape liquid, P’s twelve-minute voice notes.

Patting pint glass guy now has two glasses of whiskey. Lips-kissing-close.

The whiskey stares at the pint glass. Aches to fill it with a whole new life.

One that involves luxury cruises, a hand on the small of a back when frying eggs, award-winning beetroot.

I swayswish my head violently because what is kicking in through these headphones deserves proper acknowledgement.

Someone wearing a Jack Daniel’s vest top looks me up and down.

Sure, I dare inside my head.

I’m so utterly weirdoed right now my man, you GOT me.

So over-into the most average of happenings.

So receptive it’s almost sexy.

I’m a freakish freakozoid.

Most pussiest of pussy boyz.

Let’s go.

I give you my little bitty piano brain and the urgency of its hammered keys.

I give you my permanent faith in overcomingness and the sun being a lie but still the sun.

I give you my split-second crushes on things like a skateboarder’s sweat and the glisten of nose ring struck by strobelight.

It’s yours.

Dude throws a head-nod.

Says something about me writing so hard I’m gonna pretty soon kill the paper.

When I write I so often feel like I’m just taking notes.

The real story is what happens away from the page.

Language dips like the sun.

Language takes a beer then bounces.

Language the bridesmaid’s lip gloss but never the bridesmaid.

Language the way you peel away from the city and clench

your fist because holy shit is there a slight chance I am briefly

and unbearably alive and I need you to care even just long enough

to maybe even start to explain.

Writing (To Get Us Writing) Of The Week:

Ted Berrigan - ‘Things To Do In New York City’

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55276/things-to-do-in-new-york-city

light cigarette

dress in basic black

celebrate your own

& everyone else’s birth

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Now We Write

Start Anywhere

Pick one line, sentence, or image from this week’s post that resonated with you.

Use that as a title / first-line / jump-off point to write freely.

List three locations near and dear to your heart.

For all the reasons: the good, bad, less good, tragic, the totally stunning.

A city, town, room in a house, live music venue, cafe, beach…

List three states of mind/mood/feeling.

Despair

Love

Woe

Euphoria

Pick either the location, or the mood, and insert it into a Ted Berrigan-esque’ title:

Things To Do In Derby

Things To Do In Love

Things To Do In Sutton-On-Sea

Things To Do In Grief

Write. Be it a poem, prose piece, sprawl of language, mess of notes.

Don't be afraid to be as playful as so-real with the truth of it.

See where it takes you.

Share Challenge

Consider sharing the results (be it the greatest-thing-you-ever-wrote-ever, a first draft so rough it needs a super long hug, or simply how you found the process itself).

You could post in the comments, message me, or let someone you trust take a look.

You could also abandon it because when the froth on that cappuccino is that dreamy, the only option is to bow before it.