HAIL THE ROT

decay & decompose

1. You're Gonna Die Someday No Matter How Young You Look
2. Elegy for My Dad's Rash
3. Debug Log (Autoimmune Disease)
4. Social Contagion
5. Situationship
6. Sestina for Societal Collapse
7. An Hour to Rise

You're Gonna Die Someday No Matter How Young You Look

They want my body youngthinpretty,
want it perfect & unchanging as a glass
fresh out the soapy water, polished dry.

But the youngthinpretty dies with all the rest,
goes perfect & unchanging into a coffin,
into the soil, straight down a detritivore's maw.

The things I want include my body fat & happy,
nectarine split open in my jaw, juice down
a double chin, with laughter lines cut deep.

One day, yes, we'll rot beneath the earth,
and mould will sprout so vivid in my chest.
A thousand mycelial strands to sing a life not mine.

(So I may as well eat the damn chocolate
while my body is still here.)

Title taken from the Flesh World newsletter's sign-off.

I was really looking forward to what you were going to write this week! This is a brilliant poem, almost a memento mori, and I can really relate to it. The bodily acceptance made me so happy. Why hate yourself if we're going to die anyway? Putting the words 'youngthinpretty' together as though it is one subject idea, one ideal that everyone must fit, almost like a package deal you could buy. Looking foward to more <3

Elegy for My Dad's Rash

it was a fungal infection / he tried to treat it / with steroid cream / the rash got worse / the fungus spread / fed by the thing meant to kill it / this roided out dermatophyte / illegal athlete / lurching through his pores / and then cut down / by one swift course of antifungals / prescribed by his GP / the fungus had no way of knowing / what was happening / why it grew and why it died / did it feel it? / was it angry? / did it hurt?

4revgreen wrote:I was really looking forward to what you were going to write this week! This is a brilliant poem, almost a memento mori, and I can really relate to it. The bodily acceptance made me so happy. Why hate yourself if we're going to die anyway? Putting the words 'youngthinpretty' together as though it is one subject idea, one ideal that everyone must fit, almost like a package deal you could buy. Looking foward to more <3

Thank you so much!!! I was very much trying to get at that 'single commodified package' thing and I'm glad it came across.

Debug Log (Autoimmune Disease)

ERROR: A body is born.
ERROR: A body is held.
ERROR: A body bleats.
ERROR: A body runs.
ERROR: A body ruminates.
ERROR: A body encounters other bodies.
ERROR: A body lets in filth.
ERROR: A body attacks the intruder.
ERROR: A body is alone.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body complains.
ERROR: A body is disbelieved.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body falls.
ERROR: A body is handled by doctors.
ERROR: A body gets up.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.
ERROR: A body is loved.
ERROR: A body attacks its own cells.

Social Contagion

You soften when I touch you -

bits of you clinging to my fingers

as they come away, such that I

cannot help but touch you, such that

I am you am I am you am I am you am I.

I breathe in your germs, you mine,

succumbing to what ails you - ails me -

ails all of us, together, human system

that we are. Disease binds us together,

shows us that as long as we are vectors,

we have never been alone, will never be

an island but the all-consuming sea.

Situationship

I have a lover and her name is black mould,
scourge of all houses in temperate regions.
She reclines in my bathtub, scrapes one finger
across the soft white line of sealant binding
porcelain to the wall, smirking as she does.

I have a lover and her name is black mould,
accomplice of negligent landlords.
She clings to my airway, croons in my ear
that I should shut off the heating, close
the windows, let the glass grow damp.

I have a lover and her name is black mould,
killer of babies and bearer of spores.
I ask her to leave and she grins in response,
asks me to paint over her, tells me to move house,
says that I am the only one keeping her here.

Sestina for Societal Collapse

I can't stop thinking about rot,
or all things microscopic
that will writhe beneath our skin
when we lay limp and open to decay.
I promise not to harbour any hate.
I judge it part of me - of us.

Language, too, is part of us;
our words keep reaching for the rot,
invoking what disgusts us in our hate.
What would we say if we saw microscopic?
There are so many worlds inside decay,
but survival has us scrub it off our skin.

We slather sanitiser on our wasted skin,
annihilating all that isn't us,
waging war against our own decay.
Brilliant and hopeless. We will rot
despite all of our science, all our microscopic
vision, all our knowing and our hate.

What do I have to say about hate?
The worst of it is kept back by my skin -
and all microbiota, all my microscopic
selves are nothing to a system built (by us)
to separate and kill. Though we rot
it takes a system longer to decay.

And yet - and yet! - it cannot but decay.
This knowledge is the hope inside my hate:
that entropy exists, that all worlds rot,
that this life shall be shed like dried-out skin,
that there will be another way for us.
I know that if there is, it will start microscopic.

Nothing more real than what is microscopic.
Nothing more vivid than what is in decay.
We started out as cells. Now look at us!
Our beauty isn't cancelled out by hate;
some life survives the acid in our skin
and all of us are dying. Hail the rot!

An Hour To Rise

Dough yields beneath my hands with gentle force
and a fly is finding its way through the room.

Yeast comes packaged at the supermarket in plastic sachets
and has been mixed with flour and water since humanity was new.

The muscles in my arms are straining with the effort
and the texture of the dough reminds me of my lover's skin.

The window keeps the setting sun outside
and you and me are going to be okay.