Bunbury

“Gedicht zonder weerbeschrijving

Dus je wou weten hoe het licht hier valt
en kunt niet wachten tot ik weer een herfst
tussen mijn regels vlecht? Liever een lente?
Ook best. Zolang het maar niet klinkt
zoals De Bilt het zegt.

Een boerenhoeve in de lentezon,
de najaarswind die zich rond kerken kromt:
ik denk dat dit gedicht best zonder kan.
Geen kievit die de lucht in wiekt,
geen blauwe lentebries,

novemberbui of winterstorm maakt het
er beter op. – Vergeet
de nonsens van natuurlyriek en schop
de weerberichten uit de poëzie.”
― Menno Wigman

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.”

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well, then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!”
― Colin Nissan, It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

“I’ve fallen in love or imagine I have; went to a party and lost my head. Bought a horse which I don’t need at all.
—Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry, January 25, 1851”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Fucking in Cornwall

The rain is thick and there’s half a rainbow
over the damp beach; just put your hand up my top.
I’ve walked around that local museum a hundred times and I’ve decided that the tiny, stuffed dog
labelled: the smallest dog in the world, is a fake.
Kiss me in a pasty shop with all the ovens on.
I’ve held a warm, new egg on a farm and thought about fucking.
I’ve held a tiny green crab in the palm of my hand.
I’ve pulled my sleeve over my fingers and picked a nettle and held it to a boy’s throat like a sword.
Unlace my shoes in that alley and lift me gently onto the bins.
The bright morning sun is coming and coming
and the holiday children have their yellow buckets ready.
Do you remember what it felt like to dig a hole all day with a tiny spade just to watch it fill with sea?
I want it like that – like water feeling its way over
an edge. Like two bright-red anemones in a rock-pool, tentacles waving ecstatically.
Like the gorse has caught fire across the moors and you are the ghost of a fisherman, who always hated land.”
― Ella Frears, Shine, Darling