This poem belongs to a series of love songs I wrote to the UK. Flatmate Chitchat is a poem about stew and watching videos with my flatmate on how Rishi Sunak struggles to imagine what ordinary life is like. This poem is about the intimacy that's tucked away in kitchen drawers.
When I think about my writing process, I can't really find another explanation besides this: some words demand to be spoken.
I just need to hear the right set of words to spiral into creative euphoria and just witness the others fall out of my pen right before my eyes. The words that led me to write Flatmate Chitchat are "I wish I could give you everything your heart desires".
Since I came to the UK, my writing process has not changed, but my tone has achieved more variation. Or rather I have been reminded that not all my writing needs to be a soul-wrenching questioning of my existence. Since I started reading at open mics and at poetry nights, I have learned so much from others. I have started to play with my words a bit more.
To make myself comfortable with the idea that it is good to just speak about reality as it is.
No alternate universes, no simulation conspiracy theories, no fantasising about the state of me when there will be no more me. I started to look at my hands not as if they were disappearing in front of my eyes. I found a comforting feeling in looking at my limbs, my fingers, my thighs and simply believing they are mine and that the things that I do with them are real, and good and bad and fun. I found a renewed interest in the narrative of reality and not much has ever been so sweet.
In the last few months, I have been spending a lot of time in my kitchen. After fantasising about fist-fighting Rishi Sunak, after understanding the metaphysics of the Wigan Kebab; after discovering the stories of the lives I'll never live, I wrote Flatmate Chitchat. Flatmate Chitchat is a love story of the mundane, of the evening cups of tea sipped during average nights in our kitchen. It's the bliss of the ordinary unfolding of life. The overwhelming tenderness of finding myself devoted to reality as it is.
Here are the words that demanded to be spoken, after I watched a video of Rishi Sunak ridiculously talking about the chores he (never) did. Ps. KeirSdahmer is how you write it, all of you are just experiencing an episode of Mandela effect.
If you wanted, you could listen to Okay Kaya, Ascend and Try Again (instead of Sunak)
To my flatmate Maz, for slowly introducing me to who I am now <3
Flatmate Chitchat
Put the toad in the hole,
let it bubble, let it squeak
for tea, supper, or dinner
scoops of tatties, cabbage and leek.
I wish I had everything your heart desires.
Do you have bay leaves for my stew?
It’s cold and rainy and British outside
March wasn’t meant to be this cruel.
Maz doesn’t like Rishi Sunak.
Maz doesn’t like transphobia
Or the housing crisis, or inequality.
Do you have carrots?
Carrots and leek and bay leaves would due.
Maz loves cooking.
Cooking curries and custards,
Tattie scones, and stews.
I’ll have to go to Lidl, she says.
I wish I had everything your heart desires.
Maz might not like Rishi Sunak,
But she stacks the dishwasher like him,
sets the table like him
Rishi Sunak likes to stack dishes and plates and mugs
And Maz does too.
She tells me to find pleasure in my chores,
like Rishi Sunak does
Forcing forks into baskets,
placing plates on the racks.
KeirSdahmer would never restack the dishwasher.
He is not well suited to play mug Genga,
he would leave the ladle sideways,
cups covered in ketchup.
Maz may like or dislike the UK.
The music yes, the poshness no
BBC Sherlock and the Magical Doctor show.
It’s the torries and it’s labour,
pretending millionaires staking dishes
and the price of carrots leeks and tatties,
local products end up wasted it.
Rotting at Tesco’s, while we sit hungry in our kitchens.
I wish I had everything your heart desires.
But Maz does not allow disrespect for British food,
She doesn’t like the incivility of American YouTubers
judging this mushy pea country soup.
Yes it’s brown, mushy, murky, musty food.
Garnished with foolish politics.
But it’s her Brummie granny’s shepherd’s pie,
Yorkshire pudding for breakfast.
Bangers and mash on Sunday tables
and Scottish traditional haggis.
It’s cold outside and Maz wants stew.
And a better country for herself to come back to.
I wish I could give you all that your heart desires.
March 2024
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