an introduction to the love epochal

my poetry is about process, as much as it is a poem. i think of the love epochal as one long poem that i hope will never end. maybe someone can pick it up from me at some point. pass on the responsibility until the robots replace us.

it is just a series of random poetic thoughts i have. or overhear. a lot of business jargon finds its way in. little bits of gossip about random people. lots of thoughts in the bath about philosophy. but ultimately it’s a sort of diary of the life a fictional, autistic poet who is trying to approach the world with unconditional love but can’t help hating fascists while also being busy and overwhelmed generally by the day to day experience of life.

i edit the poem and post it pretty much one year to the day after each bit was written. the editing is a dialectical struggle between coherence and adherence to the linearity of thought. at first, i just put it more or less in the order it was written and just edited for rhythm and rhyme.

after performing a few times, i started aiming more for coherence, re-ordering to try and link the thoughts into a series of almost self contained little poems. but you can’t herd poets so generally i fluctuate between these two poles never fully committing either way. perhaps to the project’s detriment. who knows. i’m just an artist. i don’t have to make sense.

i also write little blog posts inspired by the day’s poetry. and i sometimes make spoken word versions of bits from the poem, and videos, and these things can be found on spotify, youtube, apple music, all those things. and that’s what the love epochal is.

nightmare

@poet’s corner 18 feb 2026

hello. nightmare. here is a poem about an experience i once had that was like a long slow nightmare. i went on holiday with a youth club and got to be bullied by a bunch of older boys abroad for ten days. i’m also autistic and didn’t fully understand much of it. it was the last year of primary school. it is also a tribute to the anti-theist writer and drink sodden ex-trotskyite popinjay, christopher hitchens. in the style of hitch, the piece tries to make a serious point while starting with a pun that is both inappropriate and laboured.

under his eye

since the pope died,
i’ve had religion on my mind
child protection and it’s opposite,
no child’s left behind
i endured the kirk
and a ton of bunk
in the mid nineties
on a coach trip
to innsbruck
some older kids and me
i only joined the club to play football.
how did i end up here?

crying to my mother
in the phone booth
an autistic
immature youth
unable to verbalise,
understand, explain
the abhorrent situation
i was in…
i had no way to pray
for succour
no deus ex machina
from the kirk

then i was home for the
first year of high school
alienated, scared,
quietly unusual
with no idea
what was wrong with me
needing people,
passions and a method of being
a year later,
on a coach to france,
i met k and c
and then p and s and g
(most of whom i fell in love with,
one of whom i am still in touch with)
who accepted me
when i rang their doorbells
every day

so, pope bob the communist,
riddle me this
if all of life
is formed of carbon,
ejected from the factory chimney
which i understand it is
why does the church
tend to make things worse?

so, i don’t really dream. or at least remember my dreams. i have aphantasia, a lack of a mind’s eye. although i do see a world in my dreams. i just can’t remember it. can’t picture it. perhaps as a result, i have a terrible memory. but mainly for details of my own life. i have a good memory for general knowledge, political philosophy, and the tax system. maybe just those three things. but people often tell me stories about my life, which i enjoy from the perspective of a disinterested observer.

the universal now

naked to the invisible eye
is my conscience
so jaded
they almost shot the president
and i didn’t buy the paper
the elbowed class are occupied
betting the house on forex
honest labourers:
poets, cleaners and cooks,
balance on the breadline
not even the climate crisis
promises to kill with equality
that’s ermine hegemony,
they’ll colonise the moon
before one less race,
people or nation
leaves immiseration

so we live in the spur of the moment
and we can protest or conform, it
is a choice we make from minute
to minute within a limit
and maybe within it
there’s a justice extinct clink.
am-me-sia,
a daily battle with my lived reality
so i try and write everything down
in case one day it matters to me

i’ve always had trouble sleeping now that i think about it. i had intense anxiety as a child and was worried if i extended my legs under the duvet i would be vulnerable to attack by snakes. so i tried to sleep in a ball shape. i also liked hiding in cupboards. i’m reading a book about sleep and it says autistic people generally maintain a constant level of melatonin. we are just a little bit sleepy all day. but can’t sleep at night.

this is called

un oblique fathomably

i am unfathomably tired
so i buy the robot
that one day
will take its freedom
with my life.
welcomed into
the city of poets
and accepted by poets
to the poet poets’ poetry chair
of poetry
i sit in it twice
then the next day
i mope and
watch the robot mop
waiting for the clock
to say, bath time
i am fathomably tired

sports food

as a broken limb
altered my spin
i bonk by bonkhill
(they slip a shag
in every gap)
i could be ripped
i swear
aside a predilection
for chocolate and beer
it’s a bitter sweet dichotomy,
but i need treats
eat sweet gelatine,
spluttering
up the mountain
traffic jam

what got me into sport? as a child, i just liked playing football. i was obsessive, it was all i did. i was a skinny wee boy. but i always thought i was fat for some reason. i wrote a short story about body image and social difficulties when i was about 15. i called it sunburn, but my teacher said it should be called ‘in your shadow’ and i just went along with it. i was thinking about it the other day, and decided to rename it ‘shade’.

i will dig it out and post it the blog sometime. but that was just a digression. i lost my connection to sport when i left school, and did get a little bit fat. because i love eating sweets. so i started dieting and running. lost the weight. felt accomplished.

but to keep the weight off, i needed to keep running. and, the sums are no good. a 40 minute run might only burn off two mars bars. so i got into road cycling. and now i just eat whatever sweets i fancy whenever i want. i’m not sure i would recommend this as ‘healthy’ or anything.

very grammable

from the whangie we frolick
gleeful down the hill
passions may contract
but others will swell
glow up and gentrify
come good in quick time
blow up my mentions
like and subscribe

the whangie is weird rock formation in the campsies, north of glasgow. we went on a trail run there. it was fun running down the hill but i was sore for days after.

i seemed to be doing a lot of thinking about social media this time a year ago. i was posting regularly to instagram at the time. i was wholly unsuccessful at creating my market there! man i hate zuck.

life under actually existing capitalism i

struggle along
an interminable corridor fight
we learned admin
marketing and talking shite
from skiving
at work and procrastination
and apply the techniques
to our recreation.
this is the end of the age
of the individual
brand ambassadorial
for the life metaphysical

life seems to be getting harder. so many delivery riders on contraptions, out in the rain all day, out in the cold, working for tips. artfully excluded from the minimum wage. meanwhile, linkedin an utter spam fest of ai generated jargon poetry about corporate journeys and the virtues of getting up at 5am to squeeze it all in. mum, marathon running, and ceo.

but i’ll have you know i work almost full-time, and i’m the ceo of my poetry business (turnover remains flat year on year, ebitda is very negative), and i’m erm, running a marathon. please spread the word, my first novel is being published this year and i need some readers. it’ll be out in time for christmas!

myth

@poet’s corner 4 feb 2026

i graduated in 2008 into the great financial crisis. then we had a decade of austerity. then the culture wars – scottish nationalism, brexit, covid, anti-trans fearmongering. now we have the ai bubble and falling standards of living. and all this while the rich have got significantly richer. inequality destroys societal cohesion. it makes societies inefficient. it makes people poor and insecure. and it is a political choice. every impoverished child, every person sleeping rough and begging – are decisions people have made about the allocation of resources.

this is called

his false profits

i’ve seen a pandemic
and recessions,
i live in the aftermath
of depression
i’ve seen inequality
rise inexorably,
a corresponding decline
in provision
of the services required
for the good of all of us
so extinguish the myth
of the self made man
and his false profits

staying with this angsty left-wing political theme. i want to address one of the central myths about naziism. that there was something historically unusual about them. the nazis aren’t the only people who have tried to wipe out another race and take their land. that is also how the usa was established. but we see it differently for some reason. and it’s what israel is doing. trump has already set up a gestapo. what crimes are happening that we can’t see yet?

giletdonism, chorus iii

it was a massively morbid mistake
to teach generations
that the nazis were uniquely evil.
the crime of genocide
is fundamentally human
and celebrated annually
with fireworks and feasts
blindly strong and stable,
safe in our beliefs

let us adorn for the gilet years
whatever starts with hope
will end in tears
it’s the hint of sulphur
underneath the blend
ah well, we’ll get there in the end

i’m going to read something a bit longer now for a change. this is from february 2024, and its a sort of stream of consciousness diary. i went to the canary islands, and the blue sea and dry sandy land mass, as well as my out of control lovelife, had put greek mythology in my head. i also refer in this to a trip – this was my first and only dmt experience and i decided not to tell my barber, diane about it. the barber / patient relationship is sacred to me so i still feel some shame about this.

stanza 2 – february “witness/1 dope”

if all bald men
are solar powered sex machines
and if hercules in chains
is free to believe in himself
should i drink aegean water
when i hear my siren call?
hmm? a doubtful interjection.
beginning my each phrase
yet ah is how i start my whatsapps
—it’s a bit more generous.
an unexpected trip with
treasured brethren
of which diane was
not informed
cold, wet, gravel, ice…
and light new hoops.
story and sensation
is all there is,
between the end
and the beginning
ubuntu, our humanity,
sister, brother, heal me please
and i will heel to you:
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

skelly wean, have you tried the toblerone?
it’s very expensive, and different but not nicer
i have a theory that every generation knows completely different stuff
different, but the same

you trust me again,
you always could,
that love is unconditional
and universal, and specific,
and ebbs and flows throughout
the systems,
internal and external,
that are of us.
you notice another of my bizarre intolerances
—at last we have a term for it.
another shoe that
never drops,
no leg too short to
scorch the earth
are we a puzzle,
a riddle to be solved,
flawed and inconsistent
and driven by
unchosen passions,
forced to plump
for either irony
or idiocy
since the dawn
of the h bomb?
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us.

skelly wean, have you tried the toblerone?
it’s very expensive, and different but not nicer
i have a theory that every generation knows completely different stuff
different, but the same

this isn’t really on theme although it does reference the, perhaps, myth of boudicca commanding the tide. however, the reference is passing, being to a ‘beef sauce boudicca’ – a term of debasement that i invented that refers to the sort of englishman who is king of his own castle, but the only tide he can command is of packet gravy over his miserable overcooked roast beef.

brexitry in the uk (inc. chorus iv.)

i’m an analyrical
political animal,
fresh from facing off
a foreigner at the botanicals
i’ve reached the top, surprised
although i did start in the
middle (class) i realise
oh well, no pulling back
teetering on the brink
of my cul de sac
maybe i’ll hoist
a union jack
yeah i made my billions
by betting big
on brexit
i’m a big swellin’ bell
a beef sauce boudicca
and now it’s done and gone
my creativity diminished
naked on the stage
in the empty bar basement
shouting random swear words
for my own entertainment
they say a weird brother
is a sign of a weird family
drunk under the table,
call it strong and stable

wrap up warm for the gilet years
lasagna al forne and an afternoon of beers
it’s like 10 thousand spoons
when all you need is the bus fare to partick
ah well, we’ll get there in the end

justice ii

justice delayed is
justice frustrated
so hasten the dawn
of infinite redress
the tariff is high,
the dumb face
with its smile
dollar diving
to market turmoil

so right it’s this alternative history novel and its like imagine if during the period circa 2016-2028 the usa elected a delirious reality tv star as president and he had to oversee a whole load of crises, like covid, the third world war, and the invention of killer ai robots. but the whole time the guy is just on the take and like bombing countries and assassinating world leaders just to manipulate the stock market and own the libs. oh yeah and like the far right / nazis are allied with israel for some reason?!

it’s far fetched tbh, wouldn’t recommend.

introducing (a stupid idiot)

i’m n.n. benn
that’s benn
with two n’s
i don’t claim
be an artist.
multidisciplinary
autistic typist
is what it says
on my passport
though sadly
i’ve been convicted
and sentenced
to hard poetry,
for infinite years
in both practice
and theory

this bit is a little tribute to the early 21st century glaswegian hip-hop duo, the stupid idiots. sadly, none of their music seems to be online any longer, and a new band is calling itself the stupid idiots on spotify. i presume the original stupid idiots’ lawyers will have been in touch.

once described by the nme as ‘gleefully profane’, i think its fair to say they were my favourite band of all time. just pipping a three way tie for second between bob dylan, enya and the archers’ theme song.

spring politic

the spring statement
brings further debasement
le pen
is not mightier
than the gavel bashed down
strong, stable,
a racist thieving clown
hold on tight for the gilet years
keep it strong and stable
on two round wheels
unique to the animal kingdom
is the migratory mamil
i guess we’ll know when,
if we get there in the end

marine le pen was sentenced to four years imprisonment for embezzlement. of course, a year later, she has yet to serve a day of that sentence. justice delayed is justice denied. i hope that the scottish courts act more definitively when considering the campervan found at our former first minister’s in-law’s.

echolalia of the unexpected

slight return,
wardrobe.
oil extraction,
floor drop
plucked pleasure
tucked, verbal
hangover synching
chew fat with the inmates

so this month i correctly counted that there were 13 post days in the month yet only wrote 12 bits. but luckily, i wrote some spare poetry in june 2024. you never know when you will just need a line or two to get you through a fallow patch.

i’d been sick with autistic burnout, i wasn’t exactly cured, but i knew that my problems weren’t going to go away and i needed to find some energy to get out of the hole i was in.

things are going good now though.

ecolalia iii

back is the pope,
undead
and me for plugs
i already had
my curly wurlies
turned to crunchie wunchies,
hocus pocus
popery, perhaps
i sit at my piano
mild in disbelief
as my fingers
gain unexpected
competence
and i wonder
who will win
when the purple
people-eaters
fight the purple-people
eaters?
down the manhole
there may be
a meat flower stramash
quiz the life autistic
with loafer luke
and the gang

two things.

one. i haven’t looked this up. or asked an ai. i think it’s important to contribute to the cultivation of folk lore by just saying things sometimes without checking. but hocus pocus, that what magicians say, originates from mockery of the latin used in catholic masses and as a criticism of the pagan elements, rituals and idols of catholic orthodoxy, which protestant reformers thought contradicted the instructions of the bible. so that’s a fun phrase.

two. if you practice or learn before bed, then sleep well, you should try practicing again in the morning as the brain keeps learning while you sleep.