a.m.b.m.

My writing, photography, thoughts.

[a-m-b-m]

goodluck.

This is about the middle bit of my life so far.

I was a misunderstood teen

Regardless of how I conformed or preened

Myself to fit the bill

Honed myself and yet still

Stuck out. Chucked my thumb out

And hitchhiked though my schooling. 

Life was a cabaret, who was I fooling?  

Life was easy, life was fun, but

I wanted to be heard, and climb each rung, up

The ladder of aspiration, however 

Laid on it’s side, and whether

Or not I’d noticed this, each waking hour

I spent needlessly defending my ivory tower. 

But that wasn’t enough.

My sense of self was slippery

That coin I had to flip and see

I wanted a chance to chose myself

Prove myself.

I wanted a jury to justify

Me.

To ratify my denial, I plead

For my right to trial, and read

My sixth and seventh amendments

Clutching my independence

Free, headstrong and home-grown

Naively chose to be my own

Coach for my teenagehood  

With reproach for how my hormones stood

Provoked into soaking kleenex

Racking up the regret

Packing up to jet-set

Not let the stress

Test me, then best me and

Arrest my not yet met interests.

Lest we forget.

So the map was bare, my only heading was marked “potential”.

An already collapsing cake, baked mostly out of hypothetical.

Not helpful. Quite a bit at stake. 

Help me! I’m late. 

For everything. All the time. Young adulthood was a blur of poor sexually-motivated decisions and very expensive Uber rides. 

Goodluck.

[a-m-b-m]

#aperitif

I think aperitif drinking culture is leading a two pronged campaign on the global front. I feel in the booze-industry, recently at least, different juice rises and falls in popularity for two reasons - who’s drinking it, and how tasty it is. Aperitifs are gaining more and more traction in the common consciousness by being unarguably trendy - cocktails are cool, low ABV is cool, ‘European’ is cool, artisanal is cool, the uniqueness and story behind a pour is cool, and it’s no secret that ‘what all the bartenders are drinking at the moment’, is cool. So whether you’re a Shoreditch hipster or a Mayfair toff, you’re ticking the on-trend-drinker box. Secondly, and with few exceptions, the majority of aperitif products on backbars and making up aperitif cocktails are very good quality bottles - unique, delicious, tried and tested, often still made with traditional methods and recipes. So the juice happens to be banging. Double trouble. 

The quintessential London aperitif is still the Gin & Tonic. Despite not being categorically an aperitif, it’s the rain-hail-or-shine multi-tool in the British drinking repertoire. When it comes to before meal tipples, male or female, young or old, it’s a GnT. 

What’s next? More traction. We’ve reached the stage where you can get an Aperol Spritz in a pub and a Negroni in a Uni-Bar, but there’s far more ground for aperitif drinking culture to cover in the next few years I think - especially in terms of younger crowds looking further than the novelty and glitz of cocktails and sampling amari, vermouths, and sherries individually. 

If Fernet can break onto the scene as it has, a Picon and Lager certainly can. 

[a-m-b-m]

this is about gardening [EDIT]

I’m not searching for absolution, That would be naive.

More of a substitution.

Any exchange for this feeling, The coward screams.

At his glass ceiling.

His glass greenhouse where lies fertilise fact, And truth waters untruth.

That he alone throws rocks at.

From the inside.

Accompanied only by his own worst enemy, Doubting, overthinking.

Together they tend plants of poison, believing they’re remedies.

The constant gardeners.

I want you to know I’m sorry. Sorry for something I can’t name.

Can’t. Won’t.

But something profane! The part of me that causes your pain.

The gardener reminds me it’s my pain also.

-

The calm knowledge of one’s pain settles even those most thoughtful. Yet the guilty man extrapolates meaning from the sanctuary of this pain.

He derives fear, doubt, anger and blame. Pain however stands, above, relentless, ruling, reigning.

Benign, she moves silently, subtly, softly. Yet safely. Malicious only in the mind of man. Or was it just in his gardener’s head?

She is abhorred and distrusted. Her methods met with dread. She speaks the language of remedy, if not only mercy, in foreign tongues.

He cannot hear her. He cannot understand. They live together, entangled in aggressive disharmony.

Only the enlightened man hears her, loves her, and they live at peace.

Why else do we garden?

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ramblings [6]

I want to think it’s an evolved perspective on life and our (my?) reality that justifies simply not caring about other people. Some would say it’s a lack of empathy but I think it’s a lack of vanity. Surely to feel empathy is to translate, or simulate within oneself, an ego. Empathy only occurs when one pictures circumstance upon their self. Or one’s comparison to another in the retrospective. Is empathy a self-granted virtue? Does vanity itself award one said virtue?

Could empathy play a role in the perfect kinetic chaos of our reality? It informs ourselves, true. To higher states of thought and feeling, true. But at its core, surely it resonates with insignificance at our minute scale.

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Untitled 98 [absolution]

I’m not searching for absolution, That would be naive.

More of a substitution.

Any exchange for this feeling, The coward screams.

As his glass ceiling.

His glass greenhouse where lies fertilise fact, And truth waters untruth.

That he alone throws rocks at.

From the inside.

Accompanied by his own worst enemy, Doubting, overthinking.

They tend plants of poison, believing they're remedies.

The constant gardeners.

I want you to know I’m sorry. Sorry for something I can’t name. Can’t, or won’t.

Something profane. The part of me that causes your pain.

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Untitled 82 - His Pain

The calm knowledge of one's pain settles even those most thoughtful.

The anxious man extrapolates meaning from the misleading sanctuary of his pain.

He derives fear, doubt, anger and blame.

Pain however stands, above, unavoidable, reigning.

Benign, she moves silently, subtly, malicious only in the mind of man.

She is abhorred and distrusted. Her methods met with distain.

She speaks the language of remedy and mercy in foreign tongues.

He cannot hear her. He cannot understand.

They live together, entangled in aggressive disharmony.

Only the enlightened man hears her, loves her, and they live at peace.

[a-m-b-m]

Untitled 81

Drenched by the sun and feeling closer to it, The relationship binds tighter. A reliance built on trust, nature's mechanics the ruler. We watch the earth turn. We seem stapled to our time, clinging to pages past, underneath. Interpreting what was never inked. Now our time daren't be forgotten - if so lost. Clinging, strangling memories together. Vanity replaces necessity as cultures lengthen, History is squandered for the instant.

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Untitled #70 - Caroline

Honour idles in those unwilling.  Romance sacrificed whilst at its most thrilling. Only now is the moral self chosen? Your child inside, nonchalant regret. Mild, forgotten. Passion trumps morals yet, Her resolution now a fine edged sword. Reevaluation; impossible. Suffering. Loyalty's line uncrossable. Romance slips from underneath, they both mourn.

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Untitled 60 [then i felt older]

And then I felt older. Or had I just matured? Resting better inside my skin Was it pride?

Your pride hid itself. As your humility explored In me I was changing.

Finding pitch, to tune Two notes are struck, The difference narrowed, corrected. This wasn’t necessary.

Telepathy is too weak a word To describe the effort We take Finding neighbouring pitches.

I heard myself When you spoke. I heard your smile Moments before mine.

And then I felt older.

I don’t want to be myself I want, lustfully, To be a hyper-colour Version of him.

I’m but the base A stencil of lines That you coloured between Using a sensible spectrum.

Always bright though You painted me bright Was it necessary? I felt brighter.

And then I felt older.

To touch an electric fence And find it without power. Courage turned relief Turned excitement.

Turn around. Hope is dangerous As electricity wanders Unpredictably.

But lightning is certainly made Up here where we live Do we have the choice To relocate?

And then I felt older.

Hearing, seeing, feeling You. Always Reading aloud our judgement. Of us both.

And describing you Yet failing to. I can’t describe you either. Another exercise in vanity.

More vanity! Could age help? I met you And now I feel older.

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Untitled 57

“I admire your bravery to be so in your conscious thought.”

Looking inward fails as your conscious has no surface Nor does thought, or potential. To involve oneself in one’s self Introspect with such reckless abandon Is courage. To peer blindly in your mind, your life In search of sight Is bravery. To face whom you’ll never out-think She who perpetuates doubt Is admirable. She who reckons with herself knows better what both want Potential always runs ahead Yet not toward one thing As aspiration has no finish line.

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Untitled 56 [pillowtalk]

Knowing eyes wander Unknowing sighs ponder The gaps between words unsaid

So aware of her conscious Our ideas forming congress We follow the same thoughts unled

Her astuteness stands complete Though doubt chops at it’s feet Leaves her bleeding out ambition

Kneeling, praying for a path Options burning warm in the hearth Yet she’s cold with frozen volition

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