How To Get the Most Out of Your Jet Lag:

was the title of the first book of poetry I've ever bought, after walking into a shop selling books by artists in Amsterdam. Turned out to be a total gem. Donald Gardner, the poet, couldn't be more spot-on about how I feel right now about myself, about my glum future, and about being uninspired in general.


Daffodils in Picadilly

I wandered lonely as a cloud,
speaking my pointless thoughts out loud,
till all at once I saw a tree.
My God, I thought, that tree is me.

The tree stood lonely in a field
shivering with nausea and cold.
"Trees aren't supposed to reason why,
but if you're me, then who am I?"

"Oh! tree", I said, "I was a fool;
I forgot the things I learned at school.
I wasted my time in stupid play.
If life's a road, I lost my way,

I wish I waved my arms like you
and grew as tall and slow and true
towards the sky; but oh! dear tree,
I seem to have lost my identity."

Politely then the tree replied:
"Your metaphysics is for the birds.
Just piss off with your bellyaching;
If you think I care, you're quite mistaken.

I guess I could squeeze in lunch with you
if you phone me in a week or two.
But I've a caller on the other line,
plus I've a date at 8 to dine

with Oscar Wilde in Piccadilly.
Spending time with you would be too silly
when I can drink hock in the Trocadero
with the wittiest writer of our era.

We modern trees have too much to do
to help sort out the likes of you."
So saying, he briskly turned his back,
straightened his tie and hailed a cab,

then, leaning through the window, said,
"a field's no place to make a date",
and left, not giving me the chance
to spoil his new Armani suit
by hanging myself from his lowest branch.


Pessoa Palimpest

Today I feel totally confused, like someone who has forgotten
everything he knew.
I'm a complete failure,
not a dramatic one, just unimportant.
Instead of the philosopher's barrel, it's the dustbin of history
for me.
I can't remember ever having done anything memorable in my
life; perhaps it was all nothing.
I was taught plenty of things; no one can say I haven't had a
good education; my knowledge might be called
encyclopedic; I threw it all away.
It wouldn't have done me any good anyway, since I don't
know who I am.


Chicken with Madness

(on poets, but just as fitting on artists)

...We make a fetish of decadence.
We think of sex the whole time.
We don't go to bed at normal hours.
Our brains are full of cobwebs.
We are walking examples of the harm done by masturbation.
We can't write without the aid of artificial stimuli - drugs or
alcohol.
We are totally lacking in self-discipline.
We represent a persistent and endemic failure of the will,
typical of our time.
We are incapable of any great works.
The forms of poetry are finished.
Nothing awaits us but insanity and an early grave.

...We have a Peter Pan complex.
We have a Hamlet complex.
We have a Faust complex.
We have an Electra complex.
We have a Medea complex.
We have an Antigone complex.
We have a Cinderella complex.
We have a Don Juan complex.

We have a vitamin B complex.

...We have no respect for tradition.
We are incapable of anything new.
We only know how to destroy.

...We give a new dimension to the word "pervert".
Our trances are self-induced.
we are exhibitionists, narcissists, catatonics.
The whole pschiatric laundry list applies.

...Who says we are damned?
And what is hell?