Sonic Poetry Festival Supplement Contents

Jason Voss: Artistic Statement

 

Dopamine

I like to drink wine at 10am, doom scrolling on my phone
simultaneously watching two different shows on separate screens paying no attention to any of them
It’s red wine, it’s healthy
All hyperbolic of course
I go to therapy
Meaning:
I watch people ten years younger on TikTok describing my diagnoses in more details than anyone ever has
What other choice do I have?
I went to my GP to get a psych referral
Their response: Good luck
Challenge accepted
Psyches “aren’t taking new patients” so I lost mine
So why not drink red wine at 10am, doom scrolling on my phone simultaneously watching two different shows on separate screens paying no attention to any of them
Don’t I have a job to go to?
I worked for myself, independently, supporting a young man with schizophrenia and autism
Eventually, three days a week I would have the shit beaten out of me
He once asked me how old SpongeBob was, I said 15, like you, bad decision
I was lucky when he came back from the kitchen, he only had a spatula
Not a knife
Maybe I should see a professional about that trauma
Oh wait, not taking new patients
Good luck
So why not drink red wine at 10am, doom scrolling on my phone, simultaneously watching two different shows on separate screens paying no attention to any of the them
I will never be able to own a home, although afforded the right to pay rent that costs more than mortgage payments but unemployment doesn’t allow that to happen because what if I couldn’t pay the bank?
It’s okay to be fucked over by greedy landlords who care not for the wellbeing of the renters
Requiring payments to survive harsh times of rising inflation, my heart breaks for their passive income and lack of sympathy, they are the true battlers
I should feel honoured they do the bare fucking minimum, expecting to be treated like the Saints of housing
So why not drink red wine at 10am, doom scrolling on my phone simultaneously watching two different shows on separate screens paying no attention to any of the the
Feeling helpless watching the rise of evangelical Christianity and neo-Nazis marching with police protection because they’re scared of drag queens reading to children in fear of grooming
Staying silent about pastors, priests and youth group leaders, statistically more likely to abuse children
And continue to do so
Trying to eradicate trans people for merely existing, stating how autism is linked to gender diversity, which is true, so guess what?
They’ll come for neurodiversity next
So why not drink red wine at 10am, doom strolling on my phone simultaneously watching two different shows on separate screens paying no attention to any of the them
Listening to thoughts and prayers
By those creating these nightmares
It’s not the blood of jesus I have in my cup, instead the tears he should be shedding for how bad he fucked this world up
I still want to give thanks to god though, for making me autistic, so I never have to believe in him again

**

Genesis

 Time does not heal all wounds, and good things do not always come to those who wait

 This is poetry,
Not every story has a happy ending

See, I spent 24 years with a neurotypical noose around my neck
A fact I won’t shut the fuck up about it
Coz I still feel those rope burns around my throat
Remembering how too many executioners were willing to pull the lever on an undiagnosed autistic child
Hooded figures creating, sensory overloaded pavlovian responses
My feet dangling and twitching but I’m still here

Much to the disgust of the impatient crowd

Those spectating eyes never cared about my survival
Spiteful types never mindful
Passersby supplied the cyanide, for no revival
Forget Lazarus, this ain’t the Bible

But this poetry is revealing revelations, a start to a genesis
Through chronicling my chronicles
Came an exodus
My Proverbs in numbers ignored by self-appointed Judges
So no longer will my lamentations slip through the Psalms of their hands
That’s, 10 books of the new king James

There are even more living rent free in my head
It was more important that I knew every single one before I knew who and what I am

 Do you really think I ever found comfort in Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah or Malachi
As useless as the friends I once had in Tasmania
Truly a place where the devil lives

Time does not heal all wounds, and, good things do not always come to those who wait
Forget Lazarus, this ain’t the Bible
I haven’t died yet
But I have stopped staring at the hands of the clock, it’s exhausting

I’m tired of shedding my skin
In an act of serpentine surrendering of who I am, so pearl clutching Toorak mums are not uncomfortable with being confronted by the damage that noose has caused, happy to be a part of the hungry crowd watching as we are led to gallows, hoping we die but then telling us to happy when we keep ourselves alive

The problem is, it’s hard to find life beautiful when you’re perceived as easily executable
This is poetry,
Time does not heal all wounds
Not every story has a happy ending
And despite all the executioners
My revelation, is a start to a genesis
Because I’m. still. here

**

Intrusive thoughts

I’m really tired after spending all night partying with the voices living rent free in my head

I say voices
They are more akin to hypothetical warped concepts I’ve convinced myself don’t like me anymore but I have never confirmed that to be true

For intrusive thoughts serve only to play invisible games
Games in which the rules are unknown to me despite the fact ‘I’ am the one manifesting every loss, forever trying to get that win through self-deprecating coping mechanisms filled with depressive anxiety

To manage things I pretend every day is my birthday so I can cry anytime I want to
A one-man party in a destructive celebration of frivolities
And a good excuse to buy a cake

Metaphorically of course

I’m not broken

I’ve just have been forced to plummet back into someone else’s concept of reality countless times
Shattering into thousands of tiny little pieces like an Autistic Humpty Dumpty

And forget the Kings men
I’ll figure out how to put myself back together once again thank you, this is not the first time falling from that wall

I refuse to accept outstretched hands apathetically giving me back tiny fragments of myself

They couldn’t put the original Humpty back together again so what hope do I have that those who serve the monarch truly care for the wellbeing of a mere peasant that relies on poetry for therapy because it’s the only form of healing that’s in the realm of his affordability, because he’s broke as shit

I do try to help myself though, coz I’m not lazy, I’ve just been practicing procrastination
I don’t mean to brag but I’m getting quite good at it

Eating dopamine as though it’s my last fucking meal, addicted to the fleeting taste of motivation and happiness

Then I swear too much to get my point across, but my internal monologue craves obscenities and depraved words of expression because it’s a fucking naughty little gremlin

And I hate myself for not hating myself enough to write poems about how much I hate myself
I don’t understand that either but I did write it down because it seemed to be more poignantly manipulative at the time

I apologise to inanimate objects more than I apologise to myself in the off chance they MAY become animated one day and seek revenge and I just don’t have the effort to deal with that if or when that day occurs

I send cease and desist letters to myself in hopes that I don’t defame my own character

Again

But this retarded brain is hell bent on litigation and I can’t afford a lawyer

I tell myself that I will remember all the amazing lines and words I can use in a poem, but I never do,
Convincing myself that they must not be as good as I thought otherwise, I would remember them
Then I remember my memory is terrible then wondering if I’m not remembering what should rememberable

Then I never know how to finish a poem despite being an MC of a poetry night and the irony is absolutely deliciously delicious

So, Happy birthday to me once again
This time I’ll try to not cry onto my cake

**

‘who am I and who are you’

RUOK

Just Four letters right, That’s easy

I mean I have at least 11 letters that I’ve been diagnosed with
Since Jesus decided to grant me the rhythm of the tism

But how am I supposed to understand myself to answer those four stupid letters

I sometimes don’t understand soup

Like, is it a hot smoothie?
But then does that make a smoothie simply a cold fruit soup but then you can get cold soup, gazpacho

So is a smoothie just a cold sweet soup or is a gazpacho a savoury smoothie
Does putting vegetables in a smoothie make it a bastardised gazpacho or a hybrid sweet/savoury cold soup

Is tomato soup simply a warm fruit smoothie?

Also, if I put ice in my minestrone does that make it a chunky Italian smoothie or just cold soup?
An Italian bastardry of cultunary criminality

What about a banana smoothie?
According to the internet and I quote:
“Bananas are both a fruit and not a fruit”
“It’s actually an herb distantly related to ginger”

But a more important questions lingers here:
Why the fuck do I care so much?

Why does the idea of soup permeate the entirety of what sits inside my skull?
RUOK???

No

How am I supposed to be ok when soup makes me angry and confused

There are 5 letters in ‘Segue’

Are we to merely sit and wait for this one approved day a year with fingers crossed, on tenter hook, with baited breath and filed with anticipation for someone, for anyone, to say those four sweet sweet juicy letters in which we can finally feel comfortable about being honest with what is truly happening inside our minds

Jargonistically oversharing in a blaze of horrific and glorified vulnerability, rising from the ashes like a weird screeching neurodivergant phoenix with profound awkwardness

Is 364 days of thinking relentlessly about soup and the ideology surrounding the entirety of the culinary discipline all A-Okay if we can rely on a cup of tea and a doughnut at work to show that:
‘We like to give the impression we care about those with mental health issues but refuse to alter any aspect of how we conduct ourselves professionally to facilitate change…Shut up, have another doughnut and most importantly, get back to work’

Is the 8th of September the mental health Christmas?

Do I mark it on my sexy firefighter calendar that a depressed and anxious Santa will awkwardly not drink any milk nor taste a cookie in the fear of feeling bad for taking someone else’s food from their own house
Then overthinking about whether or not he should have consumed at least something because he doesn’t want to effort to go unappreciated, leaving a magic note behind it hopes to smooth things over and quell the existential dreed he finds himself in

A note that simply reads

RUOK?

No

And now I want soup

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Jason Voss: Artistic Statement

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