Her smell permeated my soul so strongly
Now I have anosmia

echoplex
once obscurantist
now scrutinised in headlines
i'm beginning to feel ok
chaser after chaser to wash down sour sentiment
eviscerate the taste
turncoat
is there an origin?
split your infinities
shed your non-essential claws
embedded deep
broken umbrellas
my eyes look different
atlas falls in amongst the spectrum
lack of character
efavirenz, whitewater in apex
prophetic undertones
cold diffusables
soda left to evaporate
poured over CMYK
through tabloid idiocy
nonsense on stilts
into wormwoods faded muse
yellow collapse
there is a feeling
living game theory
a thought of paranoia
god send the dream
anechoic
salivate the ebb
neo-conservative laden draped production
phenobarbital
can't stretch for a smile
temporal need
bizarre cognition
i feel sorry for me
suffrage, occam's swollen belly
polish fear with a sum
the way of all flesh
shadowed contents entitled: from a to b
from point to point
you want to shift the position of power
there's no one there in the morning
at the foot of the bed
or in the mirror
believe your own fabrications
dial in doubt, dial out everything
we're exactly where we want to be
moulded in consumption
ivory and elephants
the right place
stark lines
compass to televise
triangulate our complacency
shower heads dripping with aspirin
floating corpse
burning ruins, stretched moans
agony suffice, burned out
stick to the skin
all i see is rebus
face bursts with allusion
ear full of maggots
a better tomorrow is a better today
talcum meditation
underhand rhetoric
you are an idiom to fundamentalist greed
partial differential
ignorant and flabby
you can catch me headfirst over a toilet seat
working for kowloon
red ties
men of lethargy, motivated voices
islet of langerhans, shock therapy
anosmia
niche downfall
an arc structure, waste product
halftone mnemonic
lick up my words
capsule, strict reflux
wretching on disappointment
i feel faded
my skin buzzes
tonguing a molar
push it apart
flashes of light
cramps
vestige of fragility
welcoming boredom with open forceps
i don't recognise myself
sponge fed schism
sleeping pills and ***** bath water
cotton tongued peristalsis
egg shells, nodding and a pint of clotted spit
verbal copulation
sprouting flowers from my dead body
feeling like a frayed knot
desolate compendium
shooting pains in my arms
no foresight
i can't get up
i'm busy
i just won't

.
            ocular
                of the eyes
                    sight, vision
                        blindness



            aural
   ­             of the ears
                    hearing, audition
                        deafness



            nasal
  ­              of the nose
                    smell, ofaction
                        anosmia



            oral
    ­            of the mouth
                    taste, gustation
                        ageusia



            tactile
­                of the hands
                    touch, mechanorecption
                        anesthesia

I feed the blood from this old pen and into paper blue again with red line dot to spot the flaw
I feed the blood a little more.
I starve myself of oxygen to feed more blood into the pen and from the pen yet more again to flow.
To go or not the red line dot, the flaws I spot the blood, the bleed the overwhelming need that goes to feed this anaemia that which in turn serves only to make each scenario that tiny bit dreamier, anosmia, can't smell, can't taste, ink never goes to waste because I inject it back into my veins.

And I tire, retire to take a time to rewire, a hard drive dive into electric cells, dwell within without my pen in hand and still the blood flows into flawed lines, these are the red dot diary times.

I feed to feed and that alone,
paper, pen and I am home.
leave me
be to
write and
bleed.

My sense of smell
Has departed
My sense of taste
Disappeared too
And now I know
What loss it is
To eat and drink
Without these things

Mealtimes lose their pleasure
Eating become purely functional
This Covid shows what is important
Through what it has taken from us

I heard that Dr Johnny Bananas
signed off on a letter on herd immunity
and *******, I’m in

Last seen fleeing a beat up
Chunking Mansion room
after a deal for python skins
(needed for his surefast oil) went bad,
his mad streak nearly had him

This was after that narrow squeak in Singapore, when peddling stay hard pills to rotten expats got dicey, as they realised his concoction
was more talc than tungsten
and some Salakau took a machete interest

So the enigmatic Dr B has resurfaced
in Great Barrington, Mass.
to add his voice to the Ivy League Profs, homeopaths and khoomii singers’
hard nosed exhortations
to stop worrying and love the fever,
persistent cough,
anosmia

If life has taught us anything
it’s that when Dr Johnny B spins
fresh from Whitehall or White House
with advice for living well,
you can take that to the offshore bank.
I’m sold