Sadness

In Covent Garden today, I came across one Kit Mackintosh.

Sitting on a simple chair atop the cobbles and with the sound of nearby buskers wafting nearby, I hear Kit excitedly punching into a sage green typewriter, with small white cards feeding through. Yellow laminated signs adorn the front of his small garden table and the back of his chair, offering poems about anything and everything, ‘about you or any topic’, for whatever price you deem worthy.

I am of course mesmerised by this purely analogue demonstration of both mind and machine. Teenagers approach to ask him to state his first impressions of them; another person asks for a poem about marriage. It’s a truly captivating experience and Kit appears happy to jab away at the keys.

“I’d like a poem about sadness,” I say vaguely.

“Would you like to tell me anything more? Would you like to add any names?” Kit asks.

“Not really, just perhaps how you would overcome sadness.”

He locks eyes with me briefly and then smiles. He gently feeds some white card into the typewriter and is away. The concentration on Kit’s face, as words are gently punctuated through his fingers is enchanting, and the stream of consciousness ends with a mechanical ping; the result coming out of his mechanical scribe is haunting and bittersweet.

-

‘about overcoming sadness’ by Kit Mackintosh

we exist at times uncumbered 

under ashen night 

we are swallowed 

by those figments of our

minds

at times by reality

by those concrete agonies

that have severed us from

loved ones

and at other times

they are those accidents

of mind

those sadnesses

that are whispered

in thoughts that

exist awry

and, in the former, we wait- we patiently

see that these agonies are temporary

and for those that are writhing in

our mind- we must learn to exist in the bliss

of sensation- in not feeling

we must seek to be overcome in thoughtless ecstacy