792 Socks - poems from January '25
#1
Last year I got sick of writing. Institutional academia, bizarre journal/magazine submission culture, and rizla-thin worries about appearing to be a real poet (as if…) clashed together in my over-full head to make a big pile of shoulds. As discussed in depth via previous rocking chair anecdotes: fuck the shoulds and fuck the expectations – 2025 is the year I do nothing.
Obviously, as soon as I took all the pressure away and decided I wasn’t going to write.... I ended up writing loads, and properly enjoying it — one day I would like to be motivated to do something not in opposition to a restriction. For the first time in a couple of years I was writing things that were novel, immediately interesting to me, things that probably wouldn’t work but worth driving at anyway – about werewolf raves, and lost socks, and the time my dad saved a deer that was trapped in a fence. I very nearly had a month of really creative, strange poems with themes from all over the place.. then as life would have it, I had a couple of relationship breakups (the joys of polyamory) so half the month’s poems went that way…
I was almost able to offer some fun poems with a liberated and curious levity but now loads of them are somewhat mopey and self-involved– such is life, such is poetry.
Anyway, I want to share these poems with you. They were written for nothing other than because I wanted to write them. None of them were agonising to create, all of them, even the breakup ones (maybe especially the breakup ones) were actually joyful to work on - not as fun as like rewatching The Wire or eating an entire bag of fizzy sweets or restarting smoking, but close.
Anyway, I think I'll share two poems each week over February. The highest compliment I could possibly ask is that you’ve read this far and are interested enough to keep reading – if that’s you, seriously big thank you. If you want to let me know what you think or share them with other folks, that’d be extra good too. And if you are awestruck and foaming at the mouth in appreciation, there’s also the option to support with a subscription to keep me in warm meals and the poems coming.
Big love, enjoy,
Josh
Here’s the first..
792 Socks
Somehow down to a last pair
I knew a man, in fact, a great love’s
former love, who never lost a single one.
They must have been pulled to scraps if one
was never left behind a friend’s couch
or tucked sweet and wet under the cubicle edge
at the gym, but me, gifted a dozen
every birthday, every christmas, have seen very few
healthily age to threads before they’re gone.
The cosy woolen orange one patterned with tiny smiles
still riding the 56 bus maybe, fugitive of a laundry bag
hoisted up tired before the last stop, that single sky blue
with the fading seam mixed deep in the drawers of a home
gone, too transient to rediscover and save – or maybe
they all just fall through an inconceivable rift in the real.
My best guess at a place worth fleeing to:
some lavender paradise where socks and mittens kiss
and breathe easy away from damp, away from time,
safe from stitches, balled in permanences
we can only begin to understand enough to covet.
prompt:
This poem came from a Word Space Janurary workshop prompt: poems based on a calculation.. Creatively tot-up something in your life; the amount of socks you’ve been gifted and lost, the hours you’ve spent on hold waiting for a doctor’s appointment, the number of times you’ve listened to Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.. and dive off that into your poem
Have a go and comment with your versions : )