I. The Friday Evening Poets’ Society

 

They gather in the back of a pub that reeks
of stale ale and better days,
adjusting their bohemian scarves,
pondering their polished brogues,
murmuring words like duende and liminality
as if invoking spirits.

A man with wire-rimmed glasses and a
ponytail (who once met Simon Armitage,
but only in passing)
clears his throat and sighs:
“This next one came to me in a dream.”

It is about pigeons.
It is, he insists, a meditation on late capitalism.
They nod, write “evocative” in the margins,
a muscular man weeps.

Next, a breathy woman reads a poem
about a lemon she once witnessed in Tuscany.
She says ‘Lemon’ three times,
rolling the word like a lozenge around her mouth.

A newcomer—young, unsure,
unaware of the rules—
reads something raw,
mentions fucking Baudelaire,
and the death of humanity.

A pause.
A sip of draft cider.
Then: “Have you considered something more… oblique?”
“Perhaps an allegory? A little restraint?”

The young poet folds their pages,
retreats into their coat.
The room exhales, relieved.
The ponytailed man adjusts his scarf,
returns to his pigeons, his hegemony.

II. The Gallery Opening

 

White walls. White wine.
White teeth flash beneath curated moustaches.

A neon sculpture hums ominously.
The artist explains:
“It interrogates the algorithmic gaze.”
Of course it does.

Patrons orbit the cheese table,
discuss hauntology,
gendered space,
the semiotics of rust.

A young man photographs the room,
tags it #perimetricspaces.
No one smiles. It wouldn’t be ironic enough.

A critic in loud glasses declares:
“Conceptually unresolved—deliberately so.”
Heads nod like dashboard dogs.

At 9:30, the wine runs out.
People flee to darker places.
Outside, a homeless man watches them go.
No one documents him.

Too literal. Too gauche.

III. Tents, Tantrums & Tapenade

 

They said it would be restorative.
She read it in a newsletter—
the kind that recommends magnesium baths
and mutual eye-gazing.

She booked the festival tickets
after a long conversation about
large viewing screens
and how their love had become too domestic.

He agreed—though only halfway—
and bought a camping stool
with lumbar support.

Their pitch was on a slope.
He mentioned it once.
She ignored him,
laying out the rug that was “a gift”
from someone he didn’t like.

A couple nearby were already meditating,
or just refusing to talk.
it was hard to tell.

A schedule was pinned to the entrance
of the Healing Tent—
“Sound journeys, conscious movement,
tantric journalling.”
She signed up for all three.

He wandered off
in search of beer and his youth
or perhaps a convincing reason to return?

At lunch, she said the tapenade
lacked “depth.”
He asked if that was a metaphor?
She didn’t laugh.

He bit into his focaccia
like it was chewing tobbacy—
as if somewhere inside,
beneath the lanyard
and low-grade regret,
a cowboy still rode.