Image: Yayoi Kusama – I Want to Live Honestly, Like the Eye in the Picture, 2009

Elden Morrow is a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham – BA in English with Creative Writing – and is returning there to do an MA. He loves poetry and music that always appears to withhold something – lyrics that use understatement or humor to mask the speaker’s true mood or thoughts.

Where We Are Now (or, Dulux Endurance Chic Shadow Matt Emulsion Paint)

I have wronged everyone I have ever met.
For example, just the other day I stopped by a local B&Q
and overheard this man asking for a 2.5L can of
Dulux Endurance Chic Shadow Matt Emulsion Paint
so I ran to the aisle where it was and found
there was only one can of it so I took it for
myself. He later, by chance, attended a
dinner party of mine and discovered my walls
to be freshly painted in
Dulux Endurance Chic Shadow Matt Emulsion Paint.
‘I thought they’d ran out of that colour,’ he said.
For that reason I was forced to murder him.

It wasn’t the murdering I minded so much but that
because of the blood splattered on my wall
I’d have to give it a fresh coat of
Dulux Endurance Chic Shadow Emulsion Matt Paint,
which by this point had actually been discontinued.
I didn’t mean for it to work out like that
but he rubbed me the wrong way and look
where we are now.

The walls are rainy days and my eyes are fathomless – all I had wanted
to do was hold you.