Iona Winter

A new stream of consciousness poem from my uncensored self; about Reuben's weed shorts and our recent elections. I thought about adding a PARENTAL ADVISORY stamp to this, which would make Reuben laugh, citing drug references and profanity. 

Weed Shorts

the last time I voted you’d just died, and I wore your weed shorts as some kind of protest because it was a referendum, not a reefer-endum which would’ve cracked you up if I’d used that as a pun, for a substance that eased your pain without causing you bloody seizures or a speech impediment, oh yeah and one other referendum about it being okay to kill people, but somehow that one got through, and the general populous said no to the reefer, you would’ve been highly fucked off about that, so it’s probably a good thing you didn’t have to witness that madness, brought about by decades of propaganda, but this time I stood alone in a new place where nobody knows me or you, waiting patiently in a queue, and for the first time in my life I didn’t know who to vote for, because nobody saved you or me from this, no parties came close to trotting out their particular brand of religion to soothe what I manage every day, all I know is that all of them have betrayed us, at some time or another, split us apart, talked up their mantras, sold us lies, people have bloody short memories eh, and your weed shorts survived when I’d rather it was you still here inhabiting them, I dreamt of you this morning, nothing unusual there cos we’re often gapping around the place doing shit we’ve done before, sometimes super-trippy-arsed stuff, but I used one of my phrases for when I’m fucked off and you laughed your cheeky laugh, then I woke up thinking where the hell have you gone if you can still chill out with me like that, this year there are no referendums from the dum-dums, no you to debate the shit out of who to vote for, or the reasons why it’s a waste of time for people like us anyway, cos if you haven’t got money you’re pretty well screwed, and because of what happened to you I’m under no illusion that my vote makes any difference, cos it won’t, nobody will come and save us, except maybe the aliens who’re probably pissing their pants looking at the mistakes we humans continue to make, so I’ve had to save myself, not inside an individualistic silo, or some bunker in Queenstown waiting for the apocalypse, just day by day I keep shit real, listen to Gratitude by the Beastie Boys on repeat, be loving to myself and others like I always have, despite what happened to you, and find ways back to the essence of this existence, and I’ll keep wearing your weed shorts until they disintegrate, actually maybe I can be buried in those, along with your ashes, that’d be a laugh eh, it felt good to make my two ticks in different squares today, a fuck you to the status quo, even though the end result will be another shape of the same old rhetoric, I reckon this uncensored version of myself needs to come out more often, in your weed shorts and my bare feet