Nell Osborne Surreal-Absurd Sampler

“I’ve been sat here thinking about something worthwhile to say about my absurdist sensibilities hmm. A perceptive friend of mine says that my poetry takes place within deep social insanity. I like poetry and prose that behaves outrageously, or antisocially, or which doesn’t “reward” the reader, at least not in familiar or legible ways — I think that’s a personal preference — but it lends itself well to the experience of being alive right now. 

What's more, you can’t proceed as an intellectual, or by mastering the ‘English Department of the spirit - that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us)’ (Jack Spicer). You have to tune into some more secret, irrational, unfathomable realm. Perhaps Ray Johnson said all of this best, in response to questions about the intentions behind his unclassifiable art: ‘I don’t document or classify, or associate. I simply live from day to day, and write letters. When people like Mike Crane say I am a “naive draftsman,” I use that as a vehicle to state that Mike Crane says that I am a “Navy draftsman,” because of the Village People singing, “In the Navy.”’”—Nell Osborne

ABOUT THE POET

I live inside a dark cave that I fill up~
the décor is not at all prehistoric~
I painted a huge, basically naked portrait of myself looking
furiously happy
for the entrance~
no one can enter that doesn’t drop to the floor in admiration~
it’s a very fine painting on a technical level~
I drop my clothes onto the cave floor directly~

DISASTER RELIEF

I have this itinerant urge, it arrives at noon, to tell you baby,
hands around your throat like so,
teeth scrape at the delicate skin tented there,
If we didn’t have sex and death and spit,
then I wouldn’t get these kinds of opportunities,
I wouldn’t get to tell you baby in the future I prepared for us tonight,
I look after you, baby, repeating,
kiss each eyelid, baby, this poem isn’t easy to write,
and not everything matters, baby,
probably ruined things for us tonight,
can’t keep this up turns out,
probably rest mouth watch television,
meanwhile thank you to the staff at the Administration Bureau,
sometimes think about falling off a bridge into water

LIKE A FROG

Carbon-based mouth-breather dreams the
still-tremulous dream of freshly baked goods
Eating sausages every night for a decade. It was fine for me
fine for my compatriots. It was the ‘90s. What you gonna do about it?
Grew tall anyway, feel sad every day, but not cleanly, not metallic-
ally. Stay provincial, stay rancorous, that’s the froggy-froggy
That’s what we learned. What goes around
rolls around. Bread rolls please, mister!
In the bakery they serve you, know that you are just
that hominid. The house veins for my home body
28 donuts into a bin bag for the pigs. To be
enjoyed at the afterparty called: Get Ready
You Haven’t Much Time Left

I, BABY

The moon dreams in yellow—hungry, hungry rock—I
sweep my shards of cartilage into the corner of a room
to improve the room’s “vibe,” string coloured beads
just to dream about garrotting an intruder with a girlish thing
When were we going to relax? To inspect our plums—
rotten! TO LET
To swathe our feet in amorous calico. To candle!
Touching more surfaces (more animate surfaces)
lately. Some tenderness recovered
in the petrol-tipped grasses, the motorway verge
duh-duh-duh
Love is found wanting. Mould on the velvet curtain is more alive
than this: the mulch in the hot air: the hot, hot air
Rats deserve better
We need a serotonin storm, me and the rats. Then, we ride!
Take a trip to the zoo go totally
crazy after two glasses of House Red—
Feeding time at the piranha enclosure, I get predictably turned on
The zookeepers notice my enthusiasm, pitch and buck in balletic unison
sweep me back from the glass, sticky mouth straining
Everyone applauds. Then, we ride!
Me, you, the rats, the piranhas, the zookeepers—
I wish to be cared for. I want a healthy routine, a stiff little
business card, and a landline phone—
While I watch television, a tooth falls out from the desiccating
black horsehair innards of the sofa, an offering
that I hide inside my own skull
until I am repurposed as a sofa. Then I will split open and spit—
The structure of things has been severely compromised
Huh, I think. Big problems ahead
The ridged-windpipe gulps—the sofa sags well into the night

CONFIDENCE WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX

You are confident in all and
every situation
You are hearty
You are heat source
You have strong, sturdy legs
You are a smart and sexy addition to the furniture
Your personality is absolutely dripping
with wasted algorithmic potential
You are being watched
You are never, strictly speaking, alone anymore
(You are not without your flaws, of course)
You live that Big Daddy, Anti-Vaxxx lifestyle
You are exhaust
You are externalise all this rancorous debt
You are masturbating and thinking about the Dark Ages
You are one little ass-hole, in a sea of ass-holes
You haven't eaten all your ice cream, Little Lady
You are sharp-edged pixels emerging
just in time for the foot to land again
You strike the strike gold
Strike me in my big, fat face
You are the chosen blowhole for the straw
Your country depends on your capacity to suck it up
You are smooth and seamless
transaction of international peacekeeping
You are very demolishable, anyone at all could demolish you
You sometimes wish you could start over, with the knowledge you now have
You are full to the creamy hilt with cool detachment
You are nearly puny enough to love
Yes, we are nearly there

I’VE NOWHERE BETTER TO BE, OFFICER

I promise it’s perfectly innocent
the way I loiter here in the female changing
room long after my spin class has finished

/ to see the beneath of things
a colony of armored bodies moving nakedly
is such a relief I am so
bored of sex

Nell Osborne published her first poetry pamphlet, The Canine Redeemer Has Entered The Bungalow, in 2021 with Just Not. Her most recent pamphlet Thank You For Everything, is published by Monitor Books, and can be bought from here. Her debut novel, The Ghost Driver, is forthcoming with MOIST in September 2025.

‘About the Poet’ and ‘Disaster Relief’ are from Thank You for Everything. ‘Like a Frog’, ‘I, Baby’ and ‘Confidence with the Opposite Sex’ are from The Canine Redeemer Has Entered The Bungalow. ‘I’ve Got Nowhere Better to be, Officer’ was published in Bath Magg.