“There is no depression in New Zealand
There are no sheep on our farms
There is no depression in New Zealand
We can all keep perfectly calm”
~Blam Blam Blam (July 1981)
Traveling,
yeah, I do that.
I use my AT Hop card
To pay my bus fare.
The card's falling apart,
much like myself, I can’t
afford to replace it.
I’m unemployable.
We’ll come back to that.
When I had a car, I was part of a white cis het heterosexist middle-class family.
That meant they were happy to supply me with gas-guzzling, environment-destroying, death traps.
Now they mainly ignore me cause I’m crazy, fat, trans and most definitely not part of their heterosexist world view.
I mean, I can’t even have a relationship that kind of suits the nuclear family concept.
Is it a concept?
Who knows,
there’s probably
a branch of the government
for that sort of thing.
Anyway, back to traveling,
I only travel for specific and very necessary reasons: hospital visits, therapy, psychiatry and, when it’s open, classes on how to write poems.
This is one. Not work, I did travel for work, well, actually it was so I could get bullied and told I was useless.
And there we are back at the unemployable reference. I was and probably still am unemployable.
They have benefits for us broken types, another reference to the state of my mental health.
You know,
I think
taking a holiday
should be
a political statement
for the poor.
Like a fuck you
to the middle class.
Cause when I was young and as I got older, I only saw white cis heterosexual people on holiday.
I guess everyone else had no money or hid. They didn’t go where the middle class went.
They travelled to another world where you could be yourself, not a heterosexist version of yourself,
nor a white one, if of course you’re a person of colour.
I would hope that
you didn’t do that
if you’re white
cause that’s like
black or yellow face
and that sucks.
Sometimes I sleep in a tent that’s not mine. I can’t afford one. Hence, no being able to go on holiday
in the backyard of my friend’s house with my government supplied CPAP machine, another thing I can’t buy,
and something I’d be dead without, and I pretend that I’m on holiday.
I don’t stay inside the house cause it’s a one-bedroom open-plan style thingee.
And privacy
is a must
in this age
of technology.
(Poem published with permission. Image original work by AlmightyMelon and p.)