FOREWORD
I have done this for my brother James; but when I say ‘I’ it is a co-imaginative multiplicity of which he is himself a part. Only a few days ago I sat with but one collection on my screen – the book about music that contains my brother’s design of the new da Vinci circle. Then my other brother Dr. Robert over the phone said to precede it with the love poem batch. That means How To Be Free As A New Beat which was organised a while back now to replace my now-retracted first adult collection Rose Petals In The Ashtray and which is way better than that. As I was preceding the music with the love poetry, James suggested to augment the text with the collection of new poems I largely wrote for the webzine Snakeskin. So that became another; and then when that was done, voices, but who were they – my sister Hannah? – I think so – suggested to augment the text again with the collection I wrote when I was but seven, so that we had four. Finally, tonight my mother got me to go fishing for the book-length poem about walking my dog, as a fifth collection to add on the end, even saying it was my best work. So while I take care of the words themselves, the over-arching infra-structure or even exo-skeleton has been the gift of the whole family. I should be happy with it too because for a long time I flailed around complaining that I was unable to create a foundational collection for an eventual Collected Poems, like Allen Ginsberg or Norman Nicholson have, which I have both read and admired; and now I have the makings of such an eventual Collected Poems at the age of only 43. As stated How To Be Free As A New Beat was organised to replace Rose Petals In The Ashtray when the latter was cancelled. The Night The Bat Got Back From The Curfew is a correction on my book of music, or our book of music, Soundcloud Rain. Then we’re into the third collection which is comprised largely of poems I actually had individually formally published in a monthly webzine called Snakeskin – and that third collection is called Full, partly because the webzine in question likes poems that are full and rich. My early boyhood work I cannot ignore, furthermore, and that comes in at number four, still called The Sunset Child like when I first brought it out. Fifthly comes Chocolate Dog, which is a single book-length poem. So I went from a slim file to a fat file rather quickly and sit here nursing a whole career under my fingerpads.
I
HOW TO BE FREE AS A NEW BEAT
I KNEW THAT SHE LOVED ME
I escaped last night
into a heightened dream
from a dull and longing sleep
and the stars murmured
their cool ballad
to the approaching sky.
Secrets hung like ghosts
in the corner of my wanton world
all blurred and drugged too deep
and I knew that she loved me
from her invisible motions
and the dagger in her soft reply.
The questions concealed in her eye.
Her smile a luring prison.
Her blink a beautiful danger.
Her breath a poisonous magic.
And I knew that silence
would soon let slip its whisper,
knew that fantasy
had never been so real
and I knew that she loved me
because I knew everything.
I knew.
LE LITTLE LAPIN ON LE LAWN
Le little lapin on le lawn,
trembling in the dusky dawn,
forlorn as fallen autumn leaves
is the wave that misbehaves,
it makes you melancholy-mad,
where the wave-forms terminate,
mind the gap, wet, spastic mirrors clap,
you don’t need meaning on a plate,
you’re dying slowly as the light
pours forth from the glowing East,
the sun a hedgehog in the air but
slow and Bible-black the beast,
O little lapin on le lawn,
who sheds a secret tear for us all,
sup the flowers like a cup
before the rusty Autumn falls.
HELIUM
AUBADE
Tit
butter moat brink notes sprinkle
outside
open Darwin window down.
The
pulleys
are not for bullies.
Unbidden
comes the light of dawn.
Birds
are smuggling supercars to
an
Iranian overlord through
Persia
and over the mnts. Listen.
Tin
is their usual merchandise.
The
sun is a hedgehog’s defensive
needle
spill all over the garden.
I
watch through the old, Victorian,
stained-glass
window on the
creaky
mezzanine. I feel I
should
be smashing a trashcan in
a
back alley full of well-groomed cats…
gold,
frankincense
and
myrrh
are
purring in this Holy shine.
I
am
exalting
the senses this dawn,
propagating
my love of life.
Earlier
on, there was a numinous
alien
spaceship hovering in
pre-dawn
dark to the East; then
the
horizon became a bandwidth
like
a petrol-coloured negative;
then
colour erupted, plasmatoidal
resolution,
but colour is not enough.
Description
is not enough when
birds
play laser-flute in the trees!
The
mind’s ear lies beyond its eye!
This
Age could be one of Re-enchantment,
which
is en echo of The
Enlightenment
which
itself is the simultaneous
astrological
and sociological de-centering
of
Man – but what do I know?
I
am just a man in the middle of
things.
A
poet stranded in
medias
res
as
the
magic of dawn fades.
FISH
When synapses die, then it’s a case of seeing
if there’s a glint of life left in the eyes of fish being
eaten by the seagulls, then empty Unreality
grows a tint of menace, in all probability -
but not forlorn is this wave where angels descend
and clap at the trains that pass near the end
for I smell redolent flowers at the kitchen door
as I make myself a tea that’s not against the law
merrily merrily merrily we have run out of cream
to sweeten the humour that has the logic of a dream
as it breaks apart, widening in connection
between the expected and the unexpected direction
musical chairs it isn’t, but it could be a game
remembering how inside the flame there is no blame
in love that stuck like glue true bubblegum was perceived
until there was nothing to do, so in love we believed
we believed in the sea shore as a kind of horse
where of course waves have sexual intercourse
it hurts to work for sadness, that mother of dreams
whom it seems is beautiful, too beautiful for seams
but beauty bursts forth, with bounteous breasts
that amplify and emolliate sensation’s quests
such treasure as this should be sacrosanct in days
when the new contenders have also lost their ways
AN INWARD PRAYER
“The initial task was to widen the area of consciousness” - Allen Ginsberg
Blessed are all these miles of madness
bumbling around us
Blessed is Night w/ its centuries
of bright, burning eyes
Blessed is the secret of an inward prayer,
whispered to your soul,
disguised w/ shadow
Blessed is the joy
when tears break from their blue chains
and shatter from your eyes
Blessed is Brahman
and the holiness of Things
O Brahman! Regard me
w/ mine own eyes!
(Atman is Brahman
as the sun its light
cursed the wiseman to God
w/ his final breath)
Blessed is Buddha & Samadhi & Christ
and blessed am I for blessing them
Blessed is connecting to the
Big White Dream
in moments of vast, empty enlightenment
when suddenly wakened
you open reception
to Dark Dream Radio & the Infinite Broadcast
and blessed are its electric currents
(the channels of rhythmic ecstasy)
for Music, Sex and Idea
are the elements of miracle
& grasping your mind
in instant static pain
the sudden rush of apocalypse
like the visitation of God
or the angel in your eyelid
Blessed is falling through leering madness
& waking again a naked boy
Blessed is the sadness in things
and blessed also its joy
Blessed may be the end at last
under the sea
below the soul
in the upside-down
Oceans above us
(all that heaven sends is rain)
& blessed is the rain that heaven sends
it is the life for the poems around us
Blessed are the Four Pillars of Time
Milk Water Whisky Wine
milk is the silver semen of birth
water is the heavenly liquor
whisky is embedded in the soul of the poet
& wine swims through the heart of the gods -
O drown me in the heavenly fluids!
Blessed is the poet
struggling through headache
strung out in harmonious rhythm
like a chain of music from star to star,
beating to joy in a New Beat heart
Blessed is sin if it kills Ignorance
Blessed is the redness of blood,
The madness of kissing,
The promise of moments
Blessed is the wavering emergence of Now
The friendliness of meeting a stranger
The strangeness of meeting a friend
Blessed is the promise of words
That someday I may dispose of language
Blessed is peace
as blessed is 'FUCK!'
Blessed is the miracle of life
Atheist and holy in one
Blessed is choice and every decision
And choosing never to choose at all
Blessed is the rapture of the slender moon
And the danger in her wanton thigh
And blessed are we for our daring tongues
For being in love w/ being in love
Blessed is our small advance
beneath an ocean of weeping stars
for time is all that time can prove
Blessed is Discovery, Invocation and the dark
Blessed is pain for it shows you can feel
And blessed is death for it means you’re alive
Blessed is wandering the cruel edge
and seeming a fool in quest for height
Blessed is the rambling bardic child
Who never strays from his heart
But on vast miniature journeys through space
He arrives at Conclusion
W/out even thinking
Blessed is thought as absence of thought
So in the great, dark Over-soul of night
Above us all and counting time,
That thought behind
The back of your mind…
Let’s just say you looked into my eyes
And saw the scars of dreams had opened
And saw the glimmer of the gates unlocking
And saw the nobleman nod his assent
Tell the master calling for me
The servant shall not be disturbed
He is drowning himself in the laughing sea
And has seen the snake slowly recoiling
And has felt the womb of conception calling
And has found the Sea of Words
No let’s just say
I came and saw
And you almost heard
My soundless word
Blessed is word as absence of word
Last words change all the rest
And last longest,
Last word
Death.
AURORA FLOREALIS
Gilly flowers curtsey, not off the sound-map.
To make a flower-press would be womanly.
When our days still ended on cannabis
we would bemoan that flowers were legal.
To the tune of the wind I sink, then swim.
I no longer puff the evil weed these days.
It would be a reward, a kind of dialysis,
that separates the murk from the excellence.
I would need it to balance out my mind,
one homeostatic device for another one.
Now I worry that I am hurried and florid.
I hear an A. E. I. O. U. bird toot its long,
hollow horn out on the A595 and relax.
I hear its wheels go round, that it’s heavy.
*ketamineguitar*
AWAY WITH THE FAIRY LIQUID
As if even Natural things are given over once again to a Barthesian world of product placement, it might be instructive to consider the healing of my busted, dusty Hooverbag lungs… once I was away with the Fairy Liquid. I became interested in the switch thrown. There were new maps sprawled on the point of a pin. I hungered after The Snowbell Prize. My brief fling with the politics of flight kept me up all through the Ancient Night. Another high-powered dawn was born but what was the WATTAGE? Well, I felt a leaf, I fell out of life, probably no-one else knew, but then there may be some. I wallowed in my lazy swamp, languishing, lizarding, long. Interstellar Artois was the effect of fat, planetary raindrops beating down on sad, Lucozade lights, lying lambent on the paving stones. DogMuckels was not what it seemed. Quantity Streets were typical of consumer culture. By now, the National Hypochondriac Service have sorted me out. My mood is made stable on a sterilised table. Fakeazade does not come free from the kitchen Tap as yet, but we are working on it. Savlon is wrong. Erase the Dettol. There’s no such thing as cinnamon, but then again that is not strictly true. Well-weird this ward: words woke it: walls broke it: Weirds walk it: or they should, break it open to the light of day, straight away. There’s little to do except listen to the snap, crackle and pop of the cereal, cereal in the morning after a dark night of the soul in winter.
THE NEW MOON BEAM
O Flo’, O woe, O what am I ever going to do now?
As if to make sure I am still a nutter
the kind people of the intercom have asked the poet
to redo for you what I did for Nathalia
which is to climb on to the roof at sunset
here where the stars re-align
even though it is long past sunset
and write a series of strictly 12 love poems
out there, lying back on the roof at Cumpstones
which is as I say where the Plough alignment lives…
sooooooooooo within moments
of the kind people suggesting I remake them
just for you whom it would seem
is still to be my lifelong dream,
I found a pen, some paper, a buttercup-torch
and made my way to the play room in the attic
through whose Velux I used to climb
and O woe is me! The Velux no longer opens!
What am I ever going to do?
Instead I sit at this flat, anti-Romantic screen,
venting my spleen, my mood made stable
on a sterilised table far away…
gone is the day, and gone the day when
daring teenagers would smoke on the roof.
I guess the Velux must’ve sealed shut!
So no longer can you see love
as a search for much small proof!
I would be out under the stars, saying
it is dawn, and by dawn I would say
it is night, and you wouldn’t know.
I might’ve been in the city for all I let on!
It would’ve been interesting to see
if by now I had become the new Einstein,
and if the new, synchronised word stretched out there,
where I lay back in warm, altruistic night air,
under what Jim called a placenta of stars…
I would talk of the dawn in the dark.
Lament for the death of that lark.
It’s still not too late to separate
the wend from the stain, dream one.
Into the miracle-movie I try and move now.
Into the flow of words I go,
after the alphabet dancing again,
investing my mind, knowing
it takes passion to reignite
the long gone song in the heart.
Courteous blandishments and platitudes,
cruciform shapes of longitudes and latitudes,
all prior armour, can be gone,
as through love the switch is thrown…
needing to move for the retirement of my mum,
I think back to the bats in the attic,
and all that has gone on, and how
I would weep to leave, really grieve,
and lose my bond with the stars.
When I let you know what went on
in terms of certain Naturalistic Observations,
attestations, weird specimens, even
you had to deal with it and heal with it
and I regret ever letting anyone else in
but at least by now my main concerns
are all you whom it seems
is not smitten with the horseman
who’ll only let you down.
Out on the roof meanwhile where
flat, blank, Skiddaw slates are lying,
there is no-one to capture the rapture,
to see how far they can see,
to contemplate Infinity, if
the universe goes on forever,
how there’s no such thing as “almost infinite,”
how there needed to be everything
in order for there to be anything at all.
So although it was a brilliant idea
of mine originally, to write up there,
and now again of whomsoever it is
that feeds us, whom I hear call,
alas, O woe is me, O Flo’, O no,
the best work of a generation is impossible
and with that we land quite flat
as a screen, as a mental patient’s mood,
back in the posh, coffee-cake dining room
where I have made my bed underneath
a large, pastoral painting which seems
to smuggle God’s nostril into the cloud…
by now when I talk of wandering
lonely in the cloud, there is new meaning,
but all I do is sit here pondering,
who is calling, and writing…
I would like to liken your blink
to the fluttering of the butterfly,
like I did last time when this went on.
By now you might be starting to doubt
whether I am even dressed, and
what it is that I test, and which
exiled world is the best at every wrong decision….
At least we still seem to have some purple,
even when the people call out of fever,
at the radical, recalcitrant renegade in the middle,
grown repentant for all that’s gone wrong.
I would be calibrating a new, musical scale by now
had that window opened, and truly
am only starting to see that
it’s become a bit like us
who did not sieze the chance…
by now this rewrite of my first collection is getting full.
By night I write but am not on the pull.
I might be out there inventing a new force,
spelling “entropy” backwards as if to
frame the first, unformulated spark
of appetence in Nothingness preceding
Creation, but instead pleasure is fleeting -
a callous colour of mind overcomes me.
How I would wash you, anatomise you,
take you to the zoo, hold your hand,
oversee the growth of your dreaming gland,
expand your horizons – all gone.
Now my brother’s love is what I cherish.
WIRED TEETH
I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.
She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.
She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.
She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.
She slides the stick of it out of the pack.
She puts the stick of it into her mouth.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She puts the packet back in her bag.
She swings the bag about a little bit.
She walks past a little pub long shut.
She might go check out a flower shop.
She loves to chew and to suck the taste.
She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.
(Kilburn,
1997)
ON 4CMC
“I've got a new plot,” thought the dullard.
“Literature has started to release serotonin.”
He was on the new designer drug, a cathinone and
NPS called “4CMC” when he dreamed up the plot.
There was an holographic bike out the back
all through the Night. The dark was glittering
with tinsel. Mangled love was the overall effect.
He saw the world through the frame of angel
hair, there were weird, Escherian shapes in
the air, there was light deep inside the dark.
“Yes,” he thought, “Literature. Serotonin.”
For once you remove the inner monologue
you can become an open energy conduit.
Question the comfort and see for yourself.
At times it seems to be all just tall and telepathic
telegraph poles telling you what and what not to do!
READING MATERIAL
If there were paper under my heart there would
be writing on it and at last it would be red
like the blood-orange warning of dawn-burst
or nuclear-fall-out-in-reverse-of-dusk, whose
scattered, tattered-knicker clouds conceal
real live U.F.O's, and non-exchangeable
for a bus-ticket when the fiver-river drones.
That page, my wage, an underground organ,
with its meta-fictional shorthand and triplicate,
something like the opposite of a bus ticket,
in taking you on an inward journey forever:
surely it would feel shocked not to be legal tender?
[Silecroft Beach]
INVINCIBLE LOVERS
I’ll tell you how strange and wild
With wanton promise comes she
On an unknown hour
Like an uninvited guest
You’ve somehow brought to bed.
All night we’d
Sit and think of history
As if it hadn’t passed,
The great wars and the ancient peoples
And all the silly fears.
We’d think of how much we’ve changed
And how much we’ve remained the same.
We’d think of moments of mine
We somehow shared and how I longed to live
In circling illumination of all those moments,
Fragments gone.
And softly I wished
To expand history back into the past
And never to move again an inch forwards.
And to run through the memory of Time,
Ancient, timeless galleries.
Often we’d sit and think of speaking
Or retiring to bed or even sleeping.
Always we’d realise we never had
Time enough to waste or spend.
So we gloried in ourselves
Like invincible lovers,
Always boundless in new being.
And if I seldom spoke in sad regret,
She would turn and smile
As if to boldly offer
‘Come take my hand,
And we’ll wander across no-man’s land.'
(1997)
ON HEARTBOOK
[warning: contains voices]
Up all night working the guy who said he would plug his senses in the mains
incoming voices seem to be Smart-talking
Simon says fragmented for reasons of solidarity with the dispossessed of the world
feeling the Age of Communication = the Age of Alienation I am
chivvying words in different orders recalling the machine in Gulliver’s Travels that precedes the computer whom it seems might have destroyed the spirituality of Cabalistic permutation games of heart-purifying nature based on quest not arrival but whom it seems might not
sharing secrets on Facebook as if it were Heartbook
can’t upload spittle to philosophy chatroom
can’t pass the gravy over Facebook enough
started out writing a good book but laptop became huge container for storing the sum of all knowledge
thinking the surface area on which I write being infinite the story is now infinite, the content gone endless
still like Gulliver’s Travels and ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday’ – goodbye
still think if the windows were washed – every one - I would see nothing, nothing but the white mirrors re-affirming the quiet interior of this solipsistic kitchen of fiction where I write by night furtive in flight with the sprightly hypertext-sniper on Piper At The Gates of Dawn
when I look out of the window at dawn I sometimes see Eden, am like Adam walking in a prelapsarian garden with a bagful of names to scatter freely on things
the ingredients of apple juice might make a found poem called ‘Text Message From An Alien’
seems the internet is to writing as photography was to visual art
seems the on/off switch of the laptop is its clitoris
seems the omnijective interface of random access co-imagination is the new, synchronised word
through the rooms people come and go Smart-talking on magic alphabet radio
when I see the sun in the morning I think it is Holy not just a 2 pence piece
the kettle rises to its silent scream, its steam Ariel returning on Caliban’s chain singing sweet song my one note on hyper-vision this fair dawn
it looks like a good book is on the cards
it looks like Heartbook might’ve fled away with the Smartpoem
it looks like mutation in consciousness, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture without motion bones like sadness gene and dreaming gland and the pollen has gone under Gondwanaland and the ecstasy pill gone under the green hill and we are hiding from The Waste Land in The Waste Land still
was remembering recently the time my friend sent a text saying LIQUID CRYSTAL METH into space, and I was the one underneath it, the one to catch it
think it might be a psycho-technological post-poem pertaining maybe to replace the archaic sense of ‘gay’ gone to apathy, barrage and detachment
reminds me love is a choice of words
was WH Auden that said that not me
I still think love is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop
PROSPERO
IN AMSTERDAM
First
time I smoked a bifter
it
was like the sea
was
set alight to
with
petrol
and
burned.
We
were in the den
by
the beck in
the
Combe field
when
we smoked it.
My
bros seemed alright
as
if it were banal,
trite,
not the sheer,
cold
terror I felt.
I
went up
to
the attic to play
guitar,
and still felt
so
paranoid, as the steal
strings
of the guitar
were
strummed
and
the world
went
round
and
round the sun
that
I had to stop.
I
went for a shower
to
wash off the paranoia,
masturbated
in there,
and
orgasm was
so
long, so prolonged
it
changed my perception…
I
was suddenly absolved
in
warm, soapy
bubbles.
Supper
was
called. I went
to
eat spaghetti
bolognese
with my
family.
The threat
of
my parents knowing
diminished
to nothing
around
the table;
I
was sold on the
green
stuff, suddenly.
So
began a Romance
that
I would say
was
a Holy sacrament.
So
began the self-legitimising
pact
of the stoner
circle
too: how
we
smoked to get
sober
from the
advertising
trance.
How
we wished to abjure
temporal
wealth, bondage
to
surface Gods of
illusion;
renounce
worthless
dogma
to
consumerism
that
only robs us
of
our bodies; touch
the
texture not
name
side of life;
turn
life into love.
We
used to discuss
casual,
embedded
drug
references in culture:
Mario
mushrooms
conferring
energy;
Tinkerbell’s
dust
that
makes you fly;
the
field of poppies
in
the Wizard of Oz
that
makes them see
the
Emerald City.
As
I say this
was
part of the
self-legitimising
pact.
By
now I’ve
packed
it in. By now
I
know the brain releases
cannabinoids
naturally
for
moments of
Signification,
like
reaching
the top
of
a mountain; and
if
you flood your brain
with
cannabinoids
un-naturally,
meaning
and
signification
become
aleatory,
become
a mess: there
is
suddenly meaning
at
every point of
intersection
in the
crazy
palimpsest of memory.
Wishing
to still have
a
good short-term
memory,
wishing
to
not break the Hollow
Claw,
wishing to
still
be a poet, I
don’t
wish to
smoke
cannabis anymore.
SAFE FROM HARM
Fleeing the scene of the smoking crime
my shadow legs were failing falling
decided to run forever but fell
the cops were swift on my slow back
& slow to follow my swift soul
which grinning escaped through some hole
& down a road safe from
Ignorance perfectly un-noticed and perfect
The cell was hard like white bone
& naked like something blind and ugly
I slumped & swayed in openly stonedness
& opened my black, silken shirt
“the silent one” sulking & moaning
in hooded prayer to an inward God
The cells were sick & blind
some people advertised their Ignorance
in graffiti screaming from the walls
“FUCK THE PIGS” someone had scratched
I would have told him to fuck himself
for what worse is a pig than a sheep?
& so it appeared that Ignorance wins
only over Ignorance again
& I was thankful for this thought
& thankful that I felt wise
& winked eye to my mind
thankful that though I know my judgment
really judges deeper and wider,
unlike the pigs and sheep I don’t
insist my judgement is better
____________________
A TRANCE OF STALKS
I love the day the first, fresh scents of spring
suffuse the air and pervade the senses.
An AEIOU bird
toots its hollow horn
outside on the A595.
A celebratory genesis is everywhere.
Mother earth
is giving birth,
menstruating season
and ovulating dawn.
Fresh lovers maunder
hand in hand and
knee-deep in redolent flowers
into shade to take repose
by cool, running waters.
Sybaritic sylphs swoop in sentient air.
The blue sky arches and swoons,
I bridle the mind and
race apace to the shore
where seabirds scream
from the ragged rocks,
O is it their love-song or elegy?
Waves make gentle love to the shore.
In alchemy a galaxy
of stars exploding
into being above is perceived
as an orgasm, is perceived,
that is, in an erotic sense.
Liquid night arrives too soon,
O moon, O beautiful,
sleepless omen moon,
who shines like an
electric coin and seems
to be in love with the sea
or at least her own
shattered reflection:
she scatters her jewellery box all around.
Homework tonight
is to remember your dreams.
I
prefer telepathy to 10p.
THE INDIVISIBLE KING
(a psych-trance number written on returning from The Secret Garden Party)
Who do you think’s the indivisible king?
His name is writ on a butterfly wing
A fireface moon and a frozen rock sun
Collide in a dream and the dyes start to run
But Hamlet’s been healed by a shaman with spells
And vowels are our souls and words can be cells
You are who you love and not who you are
So set the controls for the prettiest star
The wings of a butterfly will bear my weight
One can be savage and one can be great
My temple is simple it’s inside your brow
Each day is a new religion now
To sleep on the ceiling w/ feelings of love
Or sleep on the feeling w/ star-tracks above
Say is the wick worthy of the flame
And as play dies and becomes the Game
Is ecstasy mc squared or a dove
Is numbness to love just as painful as love
And while I’m uttering crushed butterflies
If you ask no questions you’ll hear no lies
ERASING THE DEBT
My father told me he smuggled fine art,
told me adult things way back near the start
of my life and I was surprised – but it didn’t hurt.
He told me he smuggled art over the Berlin Wall,
sold his business when the Berlin Wall fell,
told me he donned faux Australian accent
and code name “Blue” – but in time I went
and found out that (as I had suspected)
it was pollen he smuggled. The story he told -
it was to keep his young family protected! -
art was but recourse to euphemism for pollen!
He didn’t charge the Germans for the return
of Russian-plundered, pastoral paintings
but had a pollen farm high in the Moroccan mountains.
My private schooling was funded that way.
Now I’m trying to think of something bright to say!
Blue was his nickname, Blue as the sky today,
through which a docile cloud-change migrates -
and he shipped tonnes of pollen to the States!
Now that he’s gone I can, yes, I can impart
what my father really smuggled when he said art:
tonnes of pollen, containing mascara bruise,
peacock feather, velvet flare, butterfly wing, whose
effects make me laugh at Flarf, snooze to News…
inducing tangential-thinking and demotivation,
it’s non-conducive to old-fashioned concentration.
We dreamed we could legalise it, make it free,
use it as currency or to cross the Irish Sea,
but came across the wall, the wall we adorned
instead of breaking down and soon it dawned
on me that like Michael Hofmann I mourned
my father before he even went and died,
which is called proleptic mourning, then he did,
left me remembering him saying “life is one”
under a bleached, wide, tired, madding, English sun.
[reconstructed]
THE
NEW BOX
Il
faut que je m’en aille.
Sometimes
you’ve just got to hit
the road and.
Start
learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from
some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass
the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of
the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul
and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the
speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees,
birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a
smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.
WHEN THE BECK TURNS TO ICE CUBES
On our first night up my dad took me out
In the back and asked me what I could hear,
And I did not know, so he showed me the beck,
Showed me the beck to open my ear,
Showed me the beck to open my ear.
/////////////////
We traced its source up the fell one day,
But found only bog and marsh, no fountain,
And the fell itself I should say by the way
Is twelve feet short of being a mountain,
Is twelve feet short of being a mountain.
/////////////
Down as gravity and katabasis require,
Beckwater travels, always choosing the course
Of least resistance, scentless and cold,
Bold to be long, as long as a horse,
Bold to be long, as long as a horse.
//////////
It's laced with ecstasia, the bright, deadly beck
That flows down from the fell’s striated way,
Underlaid with Technicolour unicorn hooves,
Brackish to Blue and dimpling to me,
Brackish to Blue and dimpling to me.
//////////
Paul Farley would pee in it like a punk,
But I like to stomp in leaking welly boots,
On a trance of green, THC-free stalks,
And let the wet water get in at my roots,
And let the wet water get in at my roots.
//////////
It’s like a long necklace of notes and stones,
Laid over a lucky lady’s milkwhite neck,
And whatever the southerners say of a stream,
It’s also the truth for a bright, northern beck,
It’s also the truth for a bright, northern beck.
//////////
Singing with longkissing sweet-throat BBC birds,
It falls two feet into a sound as sweet
As a kettle drum’s metal petals of silver bliss
That tinkle mellifluous on the carnival's street,
That tinkle mellifluous on the carnival's street.
//////////
It babbles down into a double-barrelled tunnel,
And disappears for a mile or more underground,
And bubbles up singing in a farmer's field,
For all the world a round map of sound,
For all the world, a round map of sound.
//////////
Optimus Prime leaves once blocked the tunnel
And water leaked in under the back door
To float a massive, abstract archipelago
Of our tasteful vinyl on the black-flagged floor,
Of our tasteful vinyl on the black-flagged floor.
//////////
Poor Ossie the dog was marooned in his basket,
Barking on the store sign for a gone HMV,
And record stores close and folk heroes pass
But the beck still lucid dreams down to the sea,
And by the BBC tears we do mean the sea.
//////////
So it laughs to itself, over what we don’t know,
As it makes that tear-clear journey down,
A fountain pen for all to write with – O! -
And sometimes gets so swollen in the rain,
And sometimes gets so swollen in the rain.
//////////
THE IDEA OF ORDER AT THE FOOT OF SEA NESS
Let us have a go then, you and I -
when we are tired of getting high -
when the note-well is filled with stars that swap
places when no-one is looking, let us kindly lie
down on the top of the oldest fell,
one midsummer night on the heather,
and munch our popcorn in front of the cinema.
Let us travel by xylophone up there, predictive
text, Robin Hood arrow, fountain pen,
or even better, to use imagination,
as the poet must again and again,
let’s travel by bullet up the top of a
telegraph pole opening piratical CD shops
at all the local telegraph pole tops.
Let us bypass normal societal procedure,
and stay there until we yawn at the dawn
and emerge from dreams as if from water,
brush the crumbs of sleep from our clicked-on
eyes, befuddled, encrusted with glue…
For up the fell no cars come and go
with backbeats blaring on the stereo;
and no go faster stripes of booze
are streaming on the unicorn’s side.
Ha, let us open a Burger King joint
at the top, not so much to reappoint
the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods
whom it seems disintegrate under their sods,
but to allow a new sense of archaic gay,
replace that emotion now gone astray
with gun and bud and band and butter:
let it be like writing a long letter
either to or maybe from a higher self
whose brain sits upon a Waterstones shelf.
Let us first dare the darkness to insist
we sip our flasks at night and get pissed
on firewater whisky – let us turn
to God and see what we might learn.
If dog still equals pi times mc squared,
because you want to think Him round,
and O is still the key of water, be assured,
and its most soul-assuring sound,
let us babble down in the morning,
all the way, heeding the warning,
to make as mezzanine our science,
in an increasingly competitive world…
already the elements have nettle stings for names.
The deep, green lane leads you home,
but first you must launch your song
into the blue ether like a Timeshare salesman
sizzling the dream of a plate of roast beef.
Draw on this dystrophy of darkness
soon coming to your cinema screen
now that we’re at the summit and can glean
honed alertness, awareness, from a purpose
achieved over a long afternoon of walking,
walking side by side and even talking
on telepathic walkie talkies of how no,
there’s no such thing as the Nirvana barcode,
how maybe in very Heaven every step
we’ve taken up the fell will be kept
in a pile for us to count and compare -
only to find no statistics up there!
Ah, I forget if we are up or down -
let us fetch the wines of the wise men -
it seems planes are the shoes of clowns -
but forgetting is part of escape and return…
there is only loss of self and recollection,
which templates over life and writing,
which templates over experience and data,
which templates over the now and the after.
Let us phone a supernatural female deity
on collect call, and find that she
never hangs up, after a prayer,
let us pray to the closing of the door,
the ordeal of the seer may well soon be over,
the on and off at once invention is far too clever,
let be the beck as it rambles and falls,
let know the flowing of dry stone walls,
let over be under and all be at one,
let the land of flying fairy cakes be fun.
Already the yellow DogMuckels M
atop the pole in the industrial park in town
is the postmodern churchspire, in
the spiritual vacuum, post-modernism
theme dissolved into message, and
semantics is a road sign not a place.
Already margins are centres, centres margins,
surface is depth, and distortion
clarity, and there is a ream of cheap tea
from Africa in among the supermarket bargains…
Hell, we’ll have another game of cards.
We’ll link to the internet in actual clouds.
Yes chink pelvises like champagne flutes
atop the fell wearing leather walking boots.
Sometimes in dreams I find an organisational system
for the organic whole of the magnum
opus, that living work of art
I might call Gondwanaland and
which is a living thing, which I should leave long,
not try and make cohere like Pound,
but when I wake and press my feet to the ground,
the Order I dreamed, the scheme, is gone -
and Truman speakers wake me like a gong
augmenting the end of ‘The Lemon Song.’
Who will renew the morning dew
that music has moved the green grass to?
All the birds have gone south by now.
I heard that they sing with their wings.
SYSTEMS
If you should not trust systems for they rule with fear
not love, fear would appear an epiphany of Hell
in the self, love Man’s highest emotion here
where the dream of love meets the oldest fell...
to engender an aesthetic anti-system like the
colours of the vowels in English you can
find pasta, tea, air, hair, water, clothes, that your ordinary
speech is surreal enough to qualify as an open-
air poem – quick get it down, get it down! -
your notes on hyper-vision dissipate in the air!
What wisdom you speak! Like Blake for the modern
ear… you remember when you had brains to spare?
For chatting in philosophy chat rooms all Night!
For
writing in a secret, alchemical alphabet or
not!
MUM’S
COFFEE BOX
The
lid is on mum’s
coffee box and
that
is a good thing seeing
as
coffee goes stale sooooooo quickly -
reacts
to the air; and she
loves
our ground coffee to be fresh.
It
loses all its coffee-ness
if
you leave off the lid -
even
for a few seconds.
Everyone
here loves their coffee.
We
have an instant coffee machine.
It
makes espressos: usually
we
make a double and add
warm
milk from the AGA.
Sometimes
I wish to plug
my
senses in the instant espresso
machine.
Sometimes I wish
for
instant travel. Usually though
I’m
content to just have coffee
and
the place where I’m free.
It
is far better than instant
coffee
and Monopoly Jail.
It
is midnight on a warm, summer
night;
and I might have a coffee.
Then
I might have a flashback
to a bad, vampiric, anti-social
Gap Year rhythm, needing
cashback to perpetuate an
adolescent fantasy world.
COTERMINOUS ORBIT
She does not know firking from fire,
logopoeia from logs for the log-box,
Negative Capability from negative equity,
bonmots from pink, French confectionery,
the colours of the vowels from alphabet spaghetti,
the Objective Correlative from ironic self-distance,
sprechstimme from the kettle rising to its
silent scream, its steam Ariel returning on Caliban's
leash, my one note on hyper-vision this dawn,
chiasmus from napkin-kissing-gates silting
their electron-haired dandelion-puff,
nano-language from the Nanny State,
hypertext poetry from notes on hyper-vision,
Aurora Florealis from Flora Borealis,
the derangement of the senses to attain
the unknown from the derangement of
the senses to attain the Eartoon, Eartoons
bloomed from barbecued tunes, the anti-
dactylus from the talking pterodactyl, the
psycho-sensitive flower – talkative and invisible-
from the psycho-technological error, but oh my,
pneumatic woman, aren't you a beautiful one?
AT
INSANE MATE
At
Insane Mate I lost my queen
whose
eyes it seems were Gondwanaland-green.
We
walked to the top of the Pompidou
to
read JE DOUBTE DONC JE SUIS,
and
in dreams ski down too fast
and
get our dreams in plaster cast.
We
married already in a pagan way
in
a dusky playground scattered with hay
but
I went down south to cross the border,
left
good love in a state of disorder.
Now
love works high up in the Tate,
selling
great paintings over a plate….
and
if she said she is in love with me
I
wouldn’t go taking it personally.
A FROND OF BRACKEN
[with apologies to Brian Patten]
You ask me for a poem.
I offer you a frond of bracken.
You say that’s not good enough.
You’re not buying it.
I say how mood
Is also a bracken frond
Drooping down and
That is why I chose it –
To represent ‘mood’
This mundane Monday morning.
You’re not buying it.
You want something textual.
I say I plucked it from the fell
Which turns in summer
From russet to green
Like an homicidal machine.
I plucked it at random at dawn.
You’re still not buying it.
I seem to remember a time,
Taking the old bramble road
At the Augustan/ Romantic
Crucifix w/ you
Where a frond
Of bracken
Would do.
GO MY SONGS!
Go my songs into the ballad-murmuring breeze!
Go and be well-equipped with a
toothbrush in your inside pocket!
Go and be not afear’d of the sounds
of the crowded supermarket aisle -
sprinkled as they are with pheramone sprays!
Go disturb the comfortable
and comfort the disturbed.
Go dislodge the algebra from
the brains of mathematicians
and replace it with timeless
ideas transmitted across Time.
Go melt death and attain perfect listening
and not remove the key from life;
go calibrate the key of telepathic grammar;
go walk down the ocular nerve.
Go escape the shape of the paper -
go from me like newborn
spirits of the dead released.
PURPLE
Voices also told me to write of the
colour purple. In Steiner homes for autists,
rational but socially inept, the corners
of the rooms are round and purple
because it's less threatening than the geometry
of rightangled corners. My room
turned out a little like that when,
as my dying father lay in the attic,
my screen bloomed a numinous purple
light daubing the walls until the
bedroom, an anagram of boredom,
seemed like a featherlite love poem shop:
a little girl's lava lamp of a room!
Sometimes the seeping foxglove aura
vacillated back and forth between
purple and its normal screen light,
refusing to settle for any long period of time.
My bro said I'd caught some virus;
the computer programmer down the pub
just said dying, and he was right,
for by the time Blue passed away,
Blue being the art-smuggling codename
dad used in his shady occupation,
the computer broke down. R.I.P. data-tree,
and farewell luminous dark of half Denmark!
Now all I can think to say on purple
is this: I would put it in my mouth.
And I would chew on it like a cow
grazes on grass, mulchy and blind.
And I would ingurgitate it fully
not spit it out like a child his dummy.
I would taste it like her name. It's
the colour of mystery and sex and
saudade and longing and shame. And
it's the colour we associate with depth.
When I first looked at the colours of the vowels
I noticed the presence of its absence,
as if you'd expect it there because
it's the colour of deep things.
POINTLESS ACTIVITY
Now that University is long out
I wonder what it is I am to do.
Now that I know, say, The Great
Gatsby is an infradiegetic heterotopia
pertaining to panchronic and
panoramic overview, like
a chronotope turned euchronia,
or else a word-world gone
polysemic with the multifarious
possibilities of hermeneutic autonomy
through whom the esemplastic has fled
away with the quadlibetical -
now that I know the lesson
of post-structuralism is twofold,
meaning a) the condition of being
a text can extend to any object,
any quotidian ephemera and b)
the condition of being a language
unto itself can extend to any
text – I wonder what it is I am
to do. My father, after his PPE degree,
under Karl Popper at the LSE, learning
of things like falsifiability and
of P1 to TT to EE to P2, well,
he
turned back to Winnie the Pooh.
HYPERTEXT
No fear, lost lover,
Science has the answer,
all wrapped up in its
rubber-gloved hand
and they’re soon
abolishing altogether
sadness gene and
dreaming gland -
for Science has told us
many of the stars
you gaze at tonight
are not really there
but illusions of the
light that takes so long
to reach the beams
of our glistening eyes
that for centuries
after the star has died
it still appears to
be hanging there,
a little, glimmering
crystal tear, in
love with the dark,
as bright and beautiful
as it would be if
it
were really there.
THE
READING
On
the train to Simon Pomery’s birthday party in Leeds I wrote in my
notebook, all the way there. I wrote the whole alphabet out:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.
Then
I went on a bit about ancient alchemy – about how to
alchemise the alphabet into something good, transmogrifying lead into
gold. It was going to be a reading at the party – but despite
all that I had written, when it came to pass I had nothing left
except
“I
felt a leaf,
I
fell out of life.”
WHICHAM VALLEY AS A SCRATCH ON A CD
If a place is still its own mind,
this one quietly dreams to itself
and falls ever further behind.
No, there is no Tourist sign to tell
how rich in natural and human history
is this valley by the oldest fell.
I heard the church is built on the foundations
of the oldest stone built monastery
in the whole of this fair nation.
Black Combe’s foothill Sea Ness (I hear)
was once named Seer Ness after
the trance of some kind of mystic seer.
Nature’s scales are all diatonic
and from all background static depression
here is her sonic, spiritual tonic.
The beck runs its hand smooth through
an angel’s hair in the garden and
assuages the soul when you’re blue.
On Sunday the posse of motorbikes
come for the valley’s sweet curves,
the flowing of troughs and spikes.
I could report on more, much more,
but shall just impart that down the beach,
waves still make gentle love to the shore.
POSTCARD FROM SILECROFT BEACH
The accents of the waves were Seamus Heaney
the clouds did not move for hours they hung
like search-engines in the big glass day I found
pink in the shadows and splashed and played
in the shallows the plush, corrugated, velvet
sands stretched out like a woman's thighs the
kites in the sky were fishing without capture
or video games of rapture in the window of
wind the stone thrown rearranged God I waved
a wand for the dog to chase the dropped icecream
melted under the tired, madding, bleached, wide,
English sun and the man at the van gave the
unlucky kid another one, a round cone, gratis.
LOVE ON SICKNESS BENEFITS
You'll bet I say this to all the fit girls
but I look at you and see only purple, silken swirls
I'd buy you troves of redolent flowers
the useless proof of a thousand hours
get out of my head, get into my bed, (baby)
To word/ hope/ dream you is not enough
you hit me w/ the pollen it has to be the real stuff
I'd sip from your eyes and taste your very name
like mother's home-made strawberry jam
get out of my head, get into my bed, [baby]
and we can chink pelvises like champagne flutes
atop the fell wearing leather walking boots
I see that your eyes are under-sea green
and dream I'm on some yellow submarine
get out of my head, get into my bed, [baby]
If love on sickness benefits can be done
it requires I imagine more co-imagination
and while I heard a poem is the opposite of bling
I don't need power just reasons to sing
get out of my head, get into my bed, [baby]
THE WAKE UP CALL
It has taken sooooooo long for me to see
that this has been just a heightened dream;
that you shouldn’t take your whole life
to click awake on a gone Paradise;
that there’s something Oedipal going on
that I have tried and failed to lick;
that a rose would smell as sweet if it
were called barmy as the army of
the new England cricket captain…
by now I see you and I may never be;
that I may never wear your sucrose garment;
that I must abjure nursing the suffering
of my ideals and get pragmatic; that
a poet is about as welcome on a creative
writing course as a cow in the Dairy
Farm’s Head Office; and yet that it’s all
good and I needn’t renew my taste for
waste ahead of fresh, minty, Colgate
toothpaste. In my dream I dreamed
that we would be the new Adam and
Eve in the prelapsarian garden with
a bag of Names to scatter freely on things.
THE
COLOURS OF THE DAWN AFTER A MIDNIGHT VOYAGE
I
see you in the luminescence of the dawn,
when
dawn is a salmon ovulating in the sky,
when
all night I have walked
in
your general direction, and, fatigued,
stopped
to make a fire of my poems in a lay-by…
like
John Clare, I drift madly to you,
only
to find my physical capacities
limited
where my dreams are not.
My
philosophy is ragged as when Rimbaud
lay
down in the Green Inn and let
roads
go through his head. My powers
that
be are but clouds, floating by
on
their sky-blue roads, wearing ripped,
blue
genes adorned with peace, love
and
anarchy symbols, also DM’s
on
their protest march high up above.
Knowing
that the dialysis in your pretext
extends
beyond the end of the world
I
find very comforting, and think
in
an alchemical sense about it too…
but
who am I to hold you prisoner,
like
a daisy sellotaped in the back of a note book?
I
deem you free as the weed should’ve been,
back
when the plan was Amsterdam.
FORGERY
The
mustard has to be English,
in
the Grand-dad Special,
there
is just one rule:
the
mustard has to be English;
and
blowing outside in the wild.
My
mother’s got a peace lilly
but
it might have died,
crossed
to the Other Side...
my
mother’s got a peace lilly,
waiting
in the water in the sink.
We’ll
leave it for half an hour,
to
consume a drink
in
the kitchen sink…
we’ll
leave it for half an hour,
then
hopefully it will be revived.
I love the fragrance emanating,
I love the silken folds,
the peace it holds.
I love the fragrance emanating
and wish peace everywhere in the world.
THE
SONG
Sooooooooooo
in the end the guys want me to rewrite the one about the time we
smoked a joint, Dr. Calculator Ptom and I, before the rugby match.
I
was playing full-back.
The
ball went up high in the air and I was underneath it.
I
was underneath it and dropped the ball.
It
wasn’t like me at all.
I
dropped it because I was still so befuddled from the joint.
The
dads on the touchline were tutting, asking who was this inept player.
It
was me; and my dad was also there.
He
was embarrassed by me that day
because
he was captain of rugby at his own school
and
in every way the star player of the team.
So
the lesson is not to get high before the Game.
Suddenly
I remember that God
is a game, that the game is based on permutation, that even
a game of cards can be a rehearsal for death. That
The Lords And The New You Know Who is also a game, a wide, yellow
circle with death the pinpoint centre and the circumference closing
in. Yet
this is not a media-compression experiment dreamed up on LSD under a
hot, Californian sun. This
is not to say “he who controls the media controls evolution.”
This is not about chance collocations churning up evidence through
the operation of a game.
I
seem to remember we lost the match.
I
seem to remember I was dropped from the team.
A
MATHEMATICAL GAME
I
imagine you would need a knife
to
chop your spring onion into two
then
three, standing at the chopping
board
of beech, which has known
the
chopping of flowers before.
I
imagine you standing there chopping.
You
– mother of all horticultural things,
might
understand that I meant chives,
not
spring onion, but am just, how
shall
I say it, outside my territory.
Yes
I imagine you standing there chopping
chives,
much like I chivvy words
into
different shapes and orders.
The
knife itself would have to be sharp
and
precise not lugubrious or soft.
It
would shine there in your left hand.
That
would be your creative hand;
except
the knife a thing of destruction.
Well,
I guess they are inextricably linked.
So
with post-Eliotious gloom I declare
that
death is birth or rather birth death.
On
a long enough timeline it is thus.
But
what of pretty plants? I sometimes
read
the writing on the wall, or the floor,
and
remark at a
saint’s
diary left alone.
The
words themselves are not very good,
but
it’s the places it gets to that amazes.
And
I imagine that the knife blazes!
POTTERING
AROUND
I
potter round the kitchen, find strawberries,
meringue
and cream. It must be mum’s -
her
idea of a paradaisical dish. So
I
crumble some meringue into a bowl,
find
it soft and wet in the middle;
slice
some strawberries; pour some cream.
It
makes a delicious dessert. I can’t
find
the right words to advertise it.
The
beef soup or stew left to rot
must
also be mum’s. Her values are
organic.
Her cooking home-made.
There
never was any Bisto in the kitchen.
Her
vegetable plot was the
plot.
No
weed-killer was allowed anywhere near.
She
always says there are nutrients
in
the soil, melatonin, good for the soul.
She
wrote the gardening column
for
the local mag, Around
The Combe.
I
proof read it for her, made it grammatically
correct.
The way she writes, you can
tell
she was once a rally driver, and
knows
hand-brake turns in the car.
Sometimes
I locate the perfect judge
within
and find its concerns grammatical.
That’s
when I am reading philosophy
and
turn inward my eye to investigate.
I
think the mind separate from the physical
world,
because there is no such thing
as
mind cancer, and that my position:
Cartesian,
in line with the Ontological
Argument.
But this has strayed from
flowers,
which mum puts in salad.
To
decorate and brighten it up I suppose.
There
are some after all that are edible.
Some
are poisonous though, so you’d
have
to know your stuff to be like that.
I
guess she’s just an ageing hippy,
and
though not as old, I am one too.
I
was brought up by hippies to not
be
a hippy, but
all
told, it isn’t such a bad thing to be.
ANALOGUE POEM
The fire in my heart
has not gone out.
There is no smoke
without fire; but
still I seem to be
sitting here, without
you, hoping for the
electricity to come back on.
It’s a grey, wishy-
washy day. It’s
Hamlet weather here in
Whicham Valley. Raindrops
plop in puddles on the drive.
I’ve gone analogue and
am glad the laptop’s
off too. Puddles can
form on the floor of
their own accord. Maybe
our dead dog’s up in
Heaven. Maybe philosophy
is just pasta; or maybe
an abstract prison.
It could be what TS
Eliot means by “garlic
and sapphires in the mud.”
I don’t like Nietzsche
but think energy can cleanse.
It’s still raining outside
and inside mum is drinking
gin, making bacon and
vegetable stew. The Lords
And The New You Know
Who is evil if talking
about it with a pregnant
woman affects her child.
That’s my new philosophy.
I needn’t go there, then,
with Cartesian doubt,
applied to the position
of being scripted witness, with
Kant, with empirical
and a priori knowledge
demarcated, with a paper
aimed at a foreseen
human repository
from the antique future.
So it is that one
door closes and another
opens. So it is a new
chapter begins and
happens to be a better
read than the one before.
With toenails in an apple core.
INFANT JAZZ POEM
Sometimes perhaps
down opening quiet
I am drawn down
long and alone
and my friend and
my foe recede
into deep sleep
sudden and still
like a dawn behind a
screaming veil
where silence
is born and all that's
loose and tight and
all that's light is light
like first morning
with no night
and wend my way
so slow to Freedom
and soft Infancy-lunacy
with harp-sure eyes
so I can live
the last poet's
last poem.
LOST MINIATURE DREAMS
This
text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of
the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts
have been made to order the bank notes but were not always
successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice
or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a
critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are
liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of
exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing
through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text
necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free
that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly
free” to consume. It is but an open-air poem, comprised of torn and
bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination.
Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a
fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.
Sullen, silken sulks,
we drink the same rain,
spit is clean
and
so is dirt.
Necklace noose,
reckless truce,
drooling before
wet, electric eyes
My name is David Bonky,
I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,
there’s a tear up my jacket.
(1998)
I’m
the only one left,
left
to shoot my own gun,
this
is the dead land,
crack
a smile and curse the sun.
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but
like butterflies.
Waves
[squiggle]
crossed
the FTSE
[squiggle]
and
the Helter-Skelter
[squiggle]
crashed
in the electric-sea…
Blessed may be the end at last,
under the sea,
below the soul,
in the upside-down
Oceans above us
(all that heaven sends is rain.)
Down
down
down
down
down
deep
blue
below
“eh,
up
mate,”
says
my
mate
and
is
it
safe
to
say
hello?
To plug my senses in the mains
might engage !00% of my brains,
but it’s gone wrong at the plug,
just a dream on a drug.
I
felt a leaf,
I
fell out of life,
probably
no-one else knew.
A trance of stalks walks on stilts
like a stance on talks only to the toilet
then back to bed to rest its head
under
the soft, Pink
Panther blanket.
She blows a poisonous magic
searched the corridor for a
crash had no survivors in Soviet
be weed
Il faut que je m’en aille.
Sometimes you’ve just
got to hit the road and
Colour circles red. How many circles?
Colour triangles blue. How many squares?
Colour
oblongs orange. How many triangles?
Leaves that played on the surface of the water,
these are the leaves they have in Heaven,
these
are the leaves of love.
Signed by everwell,
she couldn’t hit it sideways
or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman
with the hairgel of Dracula,
Atlantis,
Aquarius, the 60’s.
“Is there anything I can do to help?
Looks like I’m on washing up duty.
It’s fine I don’t mind washing up.
It won’t take long then I’ll be free.”
£34. 84 at the Take-away joint
can get you quite bloated,
not just quench’d and sated;
and by now I sit here wondering
just how much it cost.
My
fingers have crashed,
my
fingers have crashed
and
my mad, crashed
fingers
have connected.
A thesis as thin as the Rizla it’s in
can lead all the way to the loony bin,
can make you forget how to spell
Winnie the Pooh at the gates of Hell.
The
day is a dream’s balcony around mellow me.
I
remember when banks let pens go free.
Art
gets to its feet like a cartoon Bambi.
Love
has
gone
veggie for reasons of Disney!
The
future is no longer what it used to be!
I
still crave a greedy DogMuckels when
the
plush seat gets a hard-on at the end.
When
Paul was talking of “McTruth”
I
noticed a swarm of flies in the house.
Nobody
else could even see them but
me.
My
mother calls the
pills I
pop “poetry
buttons”
in motley conglomerations
like
pool balls or songcells and
their
names
should not appear
in poems.
Caroline
is the last yellow crayon.
This
could be the door to telepathy.
My
granny and grand-dad were in the R. A. F.
Under
a blanket in the back of a car -
I
think of it now I’ve got this far.
Alone
in the solipsistic kitchen
whom
it would seem is un-war-ful.
Walking
slowly down to the Irish Sea
to
see if my place in life is lowly
a
dying animal goes much faster.
In
the picture of the airport
I
can see… a runway,
two
planes, a cloud,
a
control tower
and
the ire ii net.
Hot
July brings cooling showers,
straw
berries and gilly flowers,
miles
away from paper powers.
He
found himself on a plane.
He
found himself on a.
He
found himself on.
He
found himself.
He
found.
P.
If
dog = pi times MC squared
it
is because you wish to think him round
while
O is the key of water shared
when
rolling round on the ground.
O for a Muse of fire that descends
from the brightest Heaven of invention;
Rintrah roars and shakes his icy fires
into
the burdened air, breathing.
One
night, Jim
Morrison pointed up
at
the night sky on LSD and said “look!
It’s
the infinite cocks fucking the infinite cunts!”
Barnes’s
goal against Brazil,
it
was was not born under a hill,
it
is the best goal I’ve seen still,
Barnes’s
goal against Brazil.
If
the windows were washed – every one -
we’d
see nothing through them ‘cept
the
white mirrors reaffirming the quiet
interior
of this solipsistic kitchen of fiction.
Bart
Simpson’s yellow zigzag hair apostrophe d
@
Van Goghian black border sun
heard
James Joyce would just use |||| 4
ROYGBIV
in Fibonacci sequence barcode smile
“I’ve
been writing about bifters.
Hello
my name is Pirripa.
[sound
of sucking in of smoke.)
That’s
my boyfriend.”
Now
we are gathered to appoint the Gods,
now
we are gathered to consecrate ourselves,
now
we are gathered to ordain this dust,
we
are gathered to live and to dream.
If
you believe it, it is there,
naked
under nearer stars,
softly
swashing, backwashing music,
music
in a room with no door.
A
A Yellow
A Yellow Pages
May dawn behead me
A Yellow Pages will suffice
A Yellow Pages will
Farewell my life
A Yellow
A
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,
NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,
H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,
ESA for extra sensory allowance
but I for one still don’t really know
if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.
I
remember happy, sunny days,
days
when we scored some weed and went
out
in the meadows, when Paul
would
turn to me and say
“wear
an emotional condom
before
you fuck my mind, man.”
Wouldn’t
it be pollen
if
Barnes has scored a chicken
and
spring is a red horse?
Enough is the hope the heart
literally needs in order for it to survive
without which it can stop, meaning
Duff,
which is H suspended in deafness
I cannot tell if sipping sugarless tea
or stretching honesty is the more easy
an encryption for the future that
ain’t what it used to be but I still
await the future with rapt uncertainty
and
cannot stand the suspense.
We
are the velvet e’s,
we’re
shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,
the
Roman Rd below,
beneath
us as we fly.
[enter
bass organ of ‘The End’]
Butter
is good when you’re a nutter,
but
I can think of something that’s better,
so
had better write her a letter.
Opened unto the gloom under
sliver moon I slide her over.
Semen spills like silver water.
We’re soon enough in the flotsam ether.
Forlorn
as fallen autumn leaves,
is
the wave that misbehaves,
goes
out taking E at raves,
and
soon enough no more believes.
One
thing I learned I shouldn’t say too soon,
underneath
this new moon,
but
might instead just impart,
it
is because I have a heart.
What
actually happened was, I ended up robbing a bank, with a banana
smuggled under a tea cloth and a balaclava on my head and face…there
was a get-away car outside, and we went far and to a separate country
too. We started to loan the money out and thus made money off it
which meant we had plenty with which to use for a blank canvas. We
had to be concise, when writing our contract on
the money.
The
police were onto us, so what we did was wait until we had
disseminated our message, and earned more money off the loaning of it
than we stole in the first place, and quietly stormed into the bank
with a banana openly
protruding
from a balaclava in my hand, and h-a-n-d-e-d the money – and the
extra too – back to the bank. The police then let us off the crime
and we went home, knowing our nodes were encrypted.
Of
all the work I had achieved, be it before or after my mental illness,
I still think of the binaural earphone album and the defaced bank
note text as being among
the
best. I think if you remain on the left it’s alright but only when
it’s phoney, for defacing actual bank notes is against the law. I
think if you have to read Homer in order to be a philosopher everyone
should get that opportunity should
they choose and
probably for free too. I
think that
is my philosophy and even more so, yours.
II
THE
NIGHT THE BAT GOT BACK FROM THE CURFEW
FOREWORD
I think looking back to days when my pants and top and leather jacket were often black I had a happy knack with musical concepts in my youth – for instance one was to do with Nirvana…
Sullen, silken sulks,
we drink the same rain,
spit is clean
and so is dirt.
Another was when I came into possession of a Pearl Jam ‘VS’ cassette tape that was cut in the reel. After a delicate operation to reseal the reel it had a small pause in the music, so the ideal was to do away with the small pause, by methods which included rhythmically chanting the mantra “another, another, another f**king joint.”
My mnemonic for the strings became Even A Dick Gets Big Erections. With friends I recorded a little album on binaural earphones, said on the record I would “plug my senses in the mains.” At Warwick University, I wrote a paper about whether or not Lucy in the soul w/ demons happens to be an actual substance but it got lost, maybe in the void!
My first mobile started to reverberate the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang from home. The air, the telly, the stereo, the laptop, would all start bleeping the monochrome and drone version of ‘William Tell’ then you’d hear my phone go in my pocket. There was also a movement to tattoo someone’s name on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, and finally the one that takes the biscuit is when I discovered my brother’s sheet where pictures grew.
The pictures it would seem do depict the lyric to a song I wrote back when I was trying to be Kurt Cobain in Oedipus Wrecks - but still it wasn’t mine because I didn’t lay it down. Anyhow that pretty much sums up what I was doing with my musical youth - and now here I sit ( ) striving not for effect but still struggling to just talk.
After garage and house comes library. Voices could be quavers, could be onjects, could be syllabubbles, could be sonic machinations at the periphery of sound and most importantly the colours of the vowels. They ask you to increase your threshold of Negative Capability. Meanwhile there’s something I think I know and shouldn’t impart but it’s because I have a heart; and writing a letter Dear Music could be instructive in mental health in the future; and putting Paradise Lost to music shouldn’t be done unless it’s going to be amazing, so it’s an aesthetic not moral question.
I also remember, when Aphex Twin’s new double album came out around the Millennium, it was comparable to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. I failed to make an essay of that moment, while my brother-poet Dedalus was writing of how Autechre is the heir to Wagner in the use of rhythm.
Sometimes, I look back and consider the road of rock n roll cliché as leading only to badness, madness and sadness. I hear the voice of my father saying “it’s alright if you’re especially musically talented but with you it’s just a vapid fashion statement suitable only for the rebellion of youth.” Well, I would say the music world is largely a wankered planetarium of ego – but then again at other times only picking up a guitar and playing a song seems to survive the shipwreck of the soul because songs are Portable.
Music is not just shaken air; it is also penetration of is-ness. It renews sensation’s quest. Meaning in music is solipsistic: it is faces in the fire or Hamlet’s three creatures in a cloud-change. The bands I have been in amount to five, like the Glastonburies I have been to, and the number of Lucies it takes to be clinically insane. The first album I wrote was The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob but it was only a family album done by young kids singing of the dog going round and round chasing his own tail and recorded on a ghetto blaster. Then at 15 or 16 Oedipus Wrecks formed and gigged in London and foreshadowed doom. Moving schools I then formed Secret Chord H with the best drummer of his generation Zach Lait. It wasn’t until my Gap Year though that I formed the Flood and we started to properly record, on earphones as I say.
By now I am in Black Hole Myths – an art therapy/ outsider art two-piece with Grant Aspinall. I am past 40 and genuinely don’t know off the top of my head if it’s 42 or 43 because of the way things have gone. This book contains only the recorded material that is available to listen to online. It doesn’t include instrumentals from the various albums – like putting in a note on a musical piece – but only the lyrics. It proceeds through the recorded albums with a chapter for each album.
CHAPTER ONE: THE FLOOD
Music went from black and white to colour for me when in my Gap year in Cambridge I formed The Flood who only recorded on binaural earphones. My brothers both assure me that the earphones were my idea to invent in a very prophetic speech I made in the barn in Cumbria before I ever set foot in Cambridge; but I did not implement the idea. I went down south and someone else implemented the idea. In around 2000, maybe 2001, we started to record on the earphones. You can hear it to this day as a play-list on Soundcloud. There are only six songs, and only two with a long enough lyric to warrant inclusion in a songbook but I would say it is a fine piece of work. We noticed that even the background static and feedback from an amp, when recorded on the earphones, as in ‘Voodoo Echo,’ makes a tone-poem in a neo-Classical sense.
The overall picture is more of a dark CD, dark in the sense of dark matter. I, who said I would plug my senses in the mains on the album, still hear the dark CD when I put on the dishwasher and the waves are accentuated into words! It can crop up all over the place! The actual play-list itself contains instrumentals such as ‘The Blasts’ and ‘F Sharp Minor’ that I am very pleased to have been a part of. ‘The Blasts’ is a math-rock number which I wrote when living in the shed in the band commune towards the end of my stay. ‘F Sharp Minor’ came together one night previously when we were at Agent G’s house and he h-a-n-d-e-d me a guitar in F sharp minor de-tunings. I think the idea is that when you detune the strings all the way down the streetname for E becomes “F sharp minor.” The guitar part I came up with in that one I would say was as good as the psychedelic guitar solo in the long version of ‘Light My Fire’ by The Doors.
We all met when Paul and I were busking in my Gap Year. Mark Velarde, a fellow musician and Beatnik was walking past with Tom and they stopped and asked for a song. I was singing one that went: “I confess my open heart/ is lying with her legs apart.” They invited Paul and I for a beer then we went back to their student digs, for they were at Anglia Polytechnic (APU). That was the start of the scene for me. When in time to come I was kicked out of Paul’s house by his mum, I moved in with the Anglia Polytechnic students, and was sofa-surfing. That was when The Flood formed with Paul and myself, with Niki who also attended Paul’s school and lived in the area, with Tom from APU and Steve too.
I took the name for the band from a quote from Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations, the first line: “when the idea of the flood had subsided, the rabbit, in among the flowers, said a prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web.” There’s also the Biblical event, serotonin disinhibition, proximity to the Pink Floyd, and the fact that there was a literal flood at the foot of the oldest fell where my parents’ house is, where water seeped in from the overflowing beck in the back and turned my dad’s vinyl into an archipelago. When we woke that morning the dog was marooned in his basket and the vinyl scattered all over the floor!
I remember sleeping on sofas a lot, in those nomadic days, the extended Gap Year, not eating very well, deeming pot more important than possessions – and how much I loved my friend Paul who was on bass. If you listen to the Playlist on rhythm guitarist Tom Woodhall’s Soundcloud page you find one song called ‘Mantra of a Madman’ where Paul and I are singing major harmonies: I inverted the Great “I Can, I Am” from Venice Beach, 1967 into the mantra “I am, I can,” because things had to be back to front for the earphones. You also find that my Floyd was very Freud.
When Paul and Niki went off to Leeds University and when I went to my own University, Warwick, in 2002, we would all still reconvene in the holidays in Cambridge. Mark Velarde, at some point, dropped out of APU and formed his own band with Jez. When I left Warwick with no degree I went back to live in Cambridge and that was the time of the school – a time when the youth artists commandeered an old, abandoned Primary School due to be torn down as a venue, a reading room, a rehearsal studio, a gallery, and a home. Some said it was like Warhol’s Factory. We loved it. I played an acoustic gig there one night, and the Flood also supported Mark’s band on another occasion.
So there was a period where I lived in the shed in the garden of The Flood’s commune (nicer than you’d have thought) and only down the road the School was going on. This was a time of road trips as well, for I seem to remember we were practising for Berlin. For our band or some of us and Mark’s band Tea With The Behemoth both went to Europe towards the end of the School. We went to Brussels, Paris, Berlin and then at some point The Flood came back via Amsterdam. I was eventually kicked out of the Flood and came home to the north to attend University a second time but still took holidays down there for a while.
I did after I left The Flood continue to have bright ideas for the earphones: one was to incorporate the theme tune from Withnail And I into a jam; another to put words lamenting the cricket being sold to Sky to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’; another was to put words to ‘The Firebird’ by Stravinsky, which seems to be “containment” of Grieg. When I came home circa 2003 or 2004 from Cambridge, where I’d been living in the shed in the commune towards the end, I wrote a poem starting:
The train of my thought is the 19. 30,
in one ear and out the other.
I later found out Syd Barrett himself, when he was going through his mental breakdown at the end of his time in the Pink Floyd, drew a picture of a face with a train going in one ear and out the other. During my time in the Flood in his hometown, he was rumoured to have been seen walking round with a fish strapped to his head. There was a lamp-post called “Reality Check Point,” where one night I spoke to some strangers about the possibility of injecting smack into the Universal Mind through the agency of snowfall.
Our little 6-song album wasn’t supposed to ape or mimic the Floyd: it was nearer the opulent light sabre fizz of Nirvana. Still it was said that in the song ‘F Sharp Minor’ we got the cat from Piper At The Gates of Dawn just right. That means ‘Lucifer Sam’ – that we got the slinky feel of it right on the guitar. The binaural album is best to listen to when high and up loud too. As I say there are only really two lyrics which are as follows...
THE WARNING
“Going to meet with the Otherness,
best go get a party dress,
play a stone, live in the wilderness,
I'm going to beat with the Otherness.
Suddenly their brain is an alien visitation,
suddenly I am the imposter againe,
lying in secret wait of myself,
knife ready to treat the pain.”
HUNGER
I e I e I e have I e I e I e have
I e I e I e have I have Hunger
I'm a sick magnet I e I e I e I'm in want
maybe all I need is a new pair of shades
I'm a craving slave for you
your pleasure's dust your pleasure's just
your pleasure's just your suffering's bait
it's a sucker's fate for you
escape escape escape escape
your home your clothes and all you know
leave no footprint in the snow it's just a photo
escape escape escape your name
your stain your skin your dead routine
for the pristine dream for her
I'm going to get your freshness back
plug my senses in the mains
it's just a bloodrush to my brains
I'm going to get pretty much f***ed up
flee this world on a midnight plane
dance with the aliens and the insane.
CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST SOLO ALBUM
Well, when I was kicked out of the Flood I returned to University, my local in the north, Lancaster; and when I had got my First Class Honours degree I got together with a fine musician called Grant Aspinall who helped me make a solo album. I don’t know what to say when it comes to Grant. At the moment I have a solo album he recorded for me on Soundcloud under the name John F B Tucker but there’s also an album of spoken word pieces called ‘Eternal Full Moon’ by Black Hole Myths (which is our band name as a duo) that has been recorded but which isn’t yet online. On the former there are a handful of interesting lyrics; on the latter I only contributed one lyric, a spoken word narrative, while playing guitar, and narrating Grant’s spoken word pieces. So I’m going to give you the lyrics to the solo album first. The album is called ‘Songs To Record With Earphones’ [Demo 3]. It isn’t actually recorded on earphones but in a more normal studio set up, in a secret location in Disneyland, Paris. Grant was really cool in allowing it to happen – he says things like “it doesn’t matter how old you are unless you’re in a boyband.” Also “you don’t have to be Syd Barrett, anyone can do it.” My mother’s generation, he likes Bob Dylan and the Pink Floyd.
GROG LADETTE IN G
Baby we create the dawn
behind a veil where silence is born
and dawn conspires with the sea
and everything untrue recedes
and down into sleep with no dreams
and all that’s left is you and me
and all that’s left is you and me
no-one knows how to free you
eeeeeeeeeeexcept for meyou
no one knows how to free you
eeeeeeeeeeexcept for meyou
horserace books in traffic light
colours through the ancient night
in the end it’s all white
in the end it’s alright
ONTIMEY
If this thing were a woman
I’d be in trouble by now
and if it wasn’t I’d
be in double by now
like a witch she says
take FACE instead of fags
and then I put my
wounds up on bright flags
READING THE LESSON FROM JOHN IN ETON COLLEGE CHAPEL
Once upon a time there was an acid-rainbow
that struggled from a black hole and smashed through a window
of a big cathedral and landed on a page
and rearranged the sermon the vicar was enraged
O but then he found it bore a strange notation
and it was so profound he needed medication
and then the paper bread turned to acid which was nice
and everyone was singing music from a black hole by Jesus Christ
all the congregation gave their neighbours a nudge
and asked if every good boy still deserveth fudge
the wine it came in buckets through the back of the song
and even the vicar too, he started to sing along
3484, 3484, what do you need one of those for?
I was at the beach I threw a stone to the sea
to rearrange the day and the deity
no-one was beside me except the pretty dog
oozing and exuding uncomplicated love
voices from the city they were heard between the waves
like lost souls trapped in the cracks between the paves
then I saw the mystery of the single shoe
and knew that it was time to drop a line to you
you were off your face on something by this stage
said there’d been an accident and were hiding in the cage
and Barnes has scored a chicken and blanes is a liquid knife
and wingers are allowed bikes in the afterlife
3484, 3484, what do you need one of those for?
IN A FIELD KNEE-DEEP IN GRASS
Lovers and tools are breaking their own rules in the game
mad children play unaware of the guilt and the shame
pirates are looting the world and riding the breeze
angels and thieves are kissing at the tips of the trees
and I’m in bed against you
wouldn’t bet against you
I’m in bed against you
shouldn’t bet against you
if all that I’ve loved is a bunch of telly snow
still you can’t take away the afterglow
Science says don’t touch your dreaming gland
it’s all Thumper to you VS Edward Scissorhands
and I’m in bed against you
I wouldn’t bet against you -
I’m in bed against you
shouldn’t bet against you
and I’m in bed against you
I wouldn’t bet against you
I’m in bed against you
and b equals d
[Note: this song seems to be concerned in part with a tape of Pearl Jam ‘VS’ that has a pause where cut and stuck together in the reel.]
CHAPTER
THREE:
THE NEW DA VINCI CIRCLE
Well,
the next phase of recordings is the most recent, when Dr. Robert
urged me to purchase Ableton Live and gave me some equipment, a
Soundcard and a compressor. He gave me a crash course in recording
which took half an hour and left me to record. A few weeks later I
had recorded much of my back catalogue and that was then structured
according to my brother James’s design of the new da Vinci circle.
James (because he’s a genius) designed the new da Vinci circle as a discrete system containing the international language alphabet in 4 points of difference, namely
@
<BEE> [long squiggle]
Infinity Symbol
which not only suggests <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet but by including a long squiggle might even simultaneously situate itself outside of the totalitarian machination of every word, book, sentence, paragraph, letter in every order which a new super-computer can organise.
James had also made another sheet to the <BEE> one that contained Badly Drawn Boy lyrics slightly imperfectly quoted and rendered as an anti-clockwise spiral that looks like a word-sunflower, a sunflower made of words –
sunshine inside of you
old sun warm sun
spreads over you
soliel all over you…
So I turned up to the barn where they were both left to rot; and I read them; and on the second-made document (the <BEE> one) saw a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes! There was no new da Vinci circle! I assumed the tabular arrangement of signs in boxes – which seemed like the international language alphabet laid bare – to be permanently available to sensory perception, and left it alone.
A further visit to the barn proved that it had gone – on that particular sheet, only the <BEE> diagram remained. Then when our father passed, a further visit to the den in the barn was when I discovered the Badly Drawn Boy sheet had bloomed or grown pictures – pictures that seem to depict the lyric to one of my old songs! This came at the end of a long chain of events that increased in numinosity according to the number of items in the series.
James
says to design the sheet where pictures grew took a deft left hand
born of another deft left hand (meaning my mum) and I can believe it.
So
eventually I structured four solo albums according to the new da
Vinci circle.
The
material was well-written but the recordings are not that great: they
are all an unchanging processed beat overlaid
with a couple of guitars and a vocal, leaving a big, bass-shaped
hole. I would say they are quite poor but at the same time they are
part of the new da Vinci circle, and even have things like the sheet
where pictures grew for a cover. So between book, record and
photograph there is a kind of un-categorisable machine going on where
the songs are as much scans or even scones as songs! So
I am going to give you the lyrics to those
four albums, album by album.
CHAPTER
FOUR:
‘THE NEW BEAT’
What
is
the
cover of The
New Beat?
It’s a picture of me looking good at Glastonbury at 16 with Dr.
Calculator Ptom. Dr.
Calculator
Ptom
actually named my second band Oedipus Wrecks, from way before The
Flood, and
we were
quite good – some
of our songs
have been infiltrated into the circle. It’s the same with Secret
Chord H who came after Oedipus Wrecks and only really had one or
two songs:
the
material has
been infiltrated into the new da Vinci circle. A
Secret Chord H number is the
first song as a matter of fact. It’s just a shame that the
renditions are not good and the songs not meant for the tron set up.
A tron would be a point of intersection between technology and art or
a post-poetic experiment with a psycho-technological edge. ‘Dream
With Open Eyes’ is a good song but with an unchanging processed
beat for a backing and no bass it suffers a bit. I
think this first in the cycle, The
New Beat, is
supposed to showcase me as a new Syd Barrett character and to be fair
I have had issues with drugs. The production, orchestration,
depth and arrangement
is nowhere near Piper
standard but I think the songwriting itself okay.
DREAM WITH OPEN EYES
(by Secret Chord H originally and used as radio jingle circa 1999)
Last night it seemed we couldn't
sleep but maybe I was dreaming.
The world expands inside my
hands it's getting heavy.
Of all the treasures I could
choose I can't seem to decide.
Today the shade was washed
away where I would hide.
Dream with open eyes, come
below and we can fantasise.
Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come
below and we can fantasise.
Last night it seemed we nearly
died but maybe I was dreaming.
It made me feel sooooooooooooo
alive and soooooooo in love.
Dream with open eyes, come
below and we can fantasise.
Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come
below and we can fantasise.
CHOCOLATE DOG
MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,
MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,
HE'S GOT THREE EYES
AND A BIG FAT NOSE
AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED
WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,
HE ONCE TOOK A PILL
THAT MADE HIM ILL
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL
(aged 8)
BAD DAY AT THE OFFICE
Such a bad day at the office
down the pub to get pissed
though I can't afford it
we'll never get a pay rise
stay up till sunrise
call in sick in the morning
spend the whole day mourning
underneath the covers
where the fuck is Batman
Sugar Candy Mountain
waiting for some action
heard it brings good fortune
papers want a scandal
tell them the truth
if you can handle
what a fucking headline
where in Hell is Tinkerbell
somewhere alone and dying
dawn calls in sick in the morning
what's the use in trying
don't believe in dying
it's shocking and appalling
it's four o'clock in the morning
and Paradise is boring.
CHIEF OF THE BLACKBIRD SPIES
Well I fell up a sycamore tree
and nearly spilled my glass of wine,
and though nobody came for me
I didn't mind it I felt fine,
for I was trading stories
w/ the chief of the black bird spies
amongst new leaves and old branches
that don't know how to tell lies...
He said to forget the job,
sack the boss, and hang the cage
which containeth all your rage
for but the minimum wage.
I said it's easy for you
in your neighbouring Otherness -
be Nature custodial or frightening? -
to avoid the mad enemy Stress.
He said he finds it fun-loving
to tense-hop all around
for cataclysm is catalyst for the cat
that sat on the map of sound.
Quite soon he spread his wings
until his wings were spread
and flew to Morrisons supermarket
for a tamed and manner'd head.
He’d said he thinks privation
is the mother of imagery,
and inconsiderate violation
at the root of the creation of beauty.
We’d bemoaned a lost society
w/ all its malaise and cheap talk,
its word-ways no better than
cheep cheep squawk squawk.
We’d spoken in no uncertain terms
and out in the great outdoors
where Mother Nature operates
according to her natural laws.
When he left it grew quite quiet
for he was a tremendous talker
and had a way with words
and had said I would go far…
when I left his sycamore tree
I was glad to see my own home
and return to my own kind
near the beach that’s good to roam
but I remembered that black bird
and his eloquent influence
performing from the end of a branch
in ways that just made sense.
SYMMETRY LIPS
Symmetry lips symmetry lips
kiss me quicks need a fix
make me feel natural and real
cuts heal with a plastic seal
I’ve been in your heart and danced in hot rain
I've been in your heart and danced in hot rain
now consciousness is everywhere
now consciousness is sentient air
the sky falls apart into place
I crave to sleep behind your face
everything in its proper place
live where the sky and the river freely give
live
where the sky and the river freely give
AIR RAID SHELTER
(originally recorded on binaural earphones in The Flood but not used for their record)
Air raid shelter, we're in it together,
let's not get entrenched too deeply,
fear and pain's our only motivation,
got to break free from that habit apathy.
Clinging to loveless, sweaty, rubber limbs
won't cure your heart, it's a painful art,
air-raid shelter, we're in it together now,
wrap me away in your wombs and duvets.
See this world from outer space minor,
saaaaaaaaafe distances have found
all our solid, common ground,
echo grammanon habeo amore.
Won't your spaceships come to find me,
pull myself right back to the centre,
attack on all sides, hold you soooooo tight
now that there is noooooo time.
I’m just trying to forget how to smell acid,
and still it seems acid isn’t flaccid,
but I think that you’ll find I still
got there in the end somehow.
THE NEW BEAT
Door the case / fluff the line / feel the last / dull the white / hone the drift / dawn the most / deaf the ear / grope the bread / fee the seat / blue the ticket / dream the lemon / boat the weed / I watched myself today in postures of raw decay because there was nothing else to do / mine the brick / dwarf the vote / peace the bull / D the random / renew the two / widen the road / steal the wings / gate the lane / mean the scene / send the head / rend the Hell / roll the ball / I watched myself today in postures of raw decay because there was nothing else to do / visual radio was on in the car and bike and train and bus and lorry and van / visual radio was on in the boat and tractor and plane and train and truck
(C/
Em/ G/ F/ G/ C)
LUCY IN THE SOUL WITH DEMONS
(warning: contains voices)
I no longer know if Lucy in the soul with demons
even happens to be an actual substance
but I know that acid can alter personality
and when home-made and strong be very scary.
Do not flinch at your own shadow when
you take its dark receipt into the glen
for panic in a wild stallion horse’s eye
can spread like wild-fire across the madding sky
where a digital wind of blue and green
blows in fake and chemical as glycerine
and the derangement of the senses can go
hang
its head in shame, dear Master neo-Rimbaud.
PRIVATE DETECTIVES AND SECRET SPIES
I sleep in a hole for the Hoover tonight
there's always something not quite right
look at a wall it's not too hard to see
all the cracks and flaws beneath the paint
maybe all we need is to decorate the place
private detectives and secret spies
seem to have uncovered all of my lies,
scar sand-birthmarks beneath my skin,
should I sever my face with razor blades
to show you some ugly truth w/in
well maybe I should but I'd prefer to
score your flawless body with sin
like two new humans made for life
with default buttons to wipe any slate clean
and one of them man and one of them wife
in Crufts as it is in the black angel’s death song
A SMALL ADVERT FOR FREE SEX
My name is David Bonky,
I'm a knock-kneed hummingbird,
there's a tear up my jacket
and I heard a different word:
Trans/ philo/ quis/ ation.
I fly through colours and shapes.
Lightspeed is my passport.
The countries are for apes.
A knock-kneed hummingbird
table on which to land and read
does not seem to me to be
such an unreasonable need.
I'll breakfast on snooker colours,
spark a dullard cigarette,
sail the wind of change and
have no room for regret.
I deem it quite Romantic
to go do the monkey bars
with my legs into her open
chamber underneath the stars.
I think love is both the all-
seeing eye and love is blind.
So wear an emotional condom
before you fuck my mind.
For that’s what language is,
the emotional condom of
the world into which we’re
all thrown in search of love.
Soon I must fly on, from
this gnarled treefinger perch,
and heal the glitch in the soul,
and join the Giant Search.
I don’t know what we’re
searching for but it’ll find us first.
Maybe just some peace and
quiet to slake the eternal thirst.
(reconstructed)
THE POWER-BALLAD OF MARTIN VICIOUS
[warning: contains voices]
I can see death and see flippers
coming out of his senses and say
“come closer you f***ing terrorist,
come closer you f***ing terrorist,
come closer you f***ing terrorist.”
It's because I live a life of all time leisure,
all drugs pure and the radiance just right.
I might be wrong but then I might.
Score some dodgy crack and die
here alone with nobody for a name.
I can be Proust and fathom ten
or eleven types of ambiguity and
rue them all cantankerously,
rue them all cantankerously,
rue them all cantankerously.
It's because I live a dream of my still
working, all love pure and trust in the night.
I might be wrong but then I might.
Score some dodgy crack and die
here alone with nobody for a name.
OCEANS SMILE
(originally Oedipus Wrecks)
Oceans smile with liquid eyes
and fill themselves with rain.
The tide goes out and leaves me
lost, the last thing a glass gene.
Follow me to the resurrection
while the blind get crucified.
My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.
Death will come on silky wings
but I for one will not go.
A soul is endless, oceans open
and keeeeeeeps a perfect O.
Follow me to the resurrection
while the blind get crucified.
My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.
Go drink the ocean with your tea
cup, give your heart far out.
If oceans smile with liquid eyes
then they'll give you a shout.
Follow me to the resurrection
while the blind get crucified.
My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.
Too drunkenly I sail the water
on Rimbaud’s smoking boat.
With whiskygills primed in fire
I sail the waves to Boot.
Follow me to the resurrection
while the blind get crucified.
My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.
(reconstructed
via the new, synchronised word)
CHAPTER FIVE: ‘SONGS IN G’
This second album in the new da Vinci circle contains only songs in G. It’s not that good, but you have to see the new da Vinci circle as one of the quirks of the net – an un-categorisable machine that includes music, picture and literature.
The cover of ‘Songs in G’ is the melted tape. The tape that had a pause where cut and resealed in the reel was a successful fusion and one of my favourite musical concepts. When it was successfully fused I put it in the oven for a writing experiment. So already the cover is a work of art. Then you’ve got the numbers and two of them are co-authored by my brother James. In fact the one for Flora is “James’s song.” I believe he actually knew her sloppy, angel kiss. She would’ve been the mating queen from the green pages in the flesh in my teenage love poetry, and was – but I never got the girl on that front. I did get other girls but not Flora. That’s why he got to do ‘Flower-press Love Poem Music’. When I say he got to do it, it seemed like I was writing the song, with the guitar in my hand, laying down lyrics, but the music came from James for that one and originally the lyrics were an American guy on live streaming – but I rewrote them.
The song ‘I Knew That She Loved Me,’ meanwhile, was initially written as a poem when I was at Flora’s school (Oundle) and only 16. It lately was put to music to gorgeous, Irish effect and I feel it one of my best numbers.
BONECHINA
Where has all my washing gone?
Maybe it has gone to Heaven!
Mirrors on the street rebound.
Everyone is happy and free.
My dream-meet experiment tended there.
Not the local DogMuckels.
All walks of life were gathered and one.
To wake from the dream is to die.
That’s when you put on your socks.
Unless they’ve gone into the sock void.
Don’t mind me I’m paranoid.
I’ve got some bizarre ideas.
If a clock is only as fast as a cheetah
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel
but I’ll pad downstairs and drink a cup
only at my own slow speed.
FLOWER-PRESS LOVE POEM MUSIC
If a flower-press ending on cannabis
could seem to equal a dialysis
then a love poem hoping to impress Flora
could seem to equal more a motor
but giving up weed in order to be free
I can’t see how this really matters to me
and if it’s a system I just love you still
and love has not gone under the green hill
if all the noise in the world would be quiet
I’d hide in the cupboard during the riot
if systems rule with fear not love
I’d half it and laugh it with an imperfect dove
here I am at the foot of Sea Ness
this anagram of boredom is in a mess
I’m all set up for a walk on the beach
to watch the waves rolling out of my reach
I trust my family and I trust my friends
I hope my dog’s life never quite ends
the kitchen is clean because I cleaned it myself
my father’s philosophy is up on the shelf
if all the greed in the world would go away
I’d still be Bede at the end of the day
if power is wrong at least it’s transient
a birthday came and a birthday went
and this is the me we all want to see
and this is the way I know to be free
and this is the Now that is in Eternity
and this is the leaf that came to the tree
if the wording of this little contract is mine
alas you are not but I’m still feeling fine
I’ve seen the stars that are out tonight
I’ve tried to forget exactly what colour is white
I’m drifting to E on the end of a stick
I’m searching my memory but it’s just a block
if only I could hold you in my arms
I’ve fallen for all your loquacious charms
(co-authored with my brother James P D Tucker)
ICARUS UNBOUND
(a finger-picker in the drone of G)
I really love you my friend Mark,
don’t get me wrong I am not gay,
it’s just a way for me to start,
it’s just something to say…
placing bets on raindrops running
down the opaque window pane,
I have been a melting robot,
then they said I was insane...
there you are across the water,
living on the Isle of Man,
if only my attention-span could
be more like Peter Pan...
you’re the one who taught me de-tunings,
stairs down to The Velvet Underground,
I am the one in love with Flora,
and that fertile map of sound...
you say it’s got too late to make it,
I hear you crawl through new air,
but I was never one to fake it,
I for one don’t really care...
in your room was a very high ceiling
and I remember it was bright,
I can almost taste the loving feeling,
even though now it is Night...
you could not tell if the vocal
in Aphex Twin was a demon
so made us listen to Nick Drake when
on another easy comedown...
lines are blurred in drug-slurred idiom,
lyrical streaks now open up.
I’m thinking of youth which has now flown
but I’ve still got a little plastic cup.
THE FIRE-DANCE
The fire-dance dwelled in electric drums
where ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap
and bells let peace form in blue notes
and peered at deer in the wood and ate of it
and wet let excellence sound out its criticism
and dawn let sting its unsheathed sting
and chloroform in the heart let see
if
only Game Over was seen in nights.
THE GREEN BLUES
I read through the news,
hats off to your blues,
a chimney falls under my head.
I stomach the wood
that tastes very good,
better than Jesus’s bread.
I glow for the coal,
don't bury your soul,
backwards in spire I get high.
I'd go for the house
that's quiet as a mouse
and emblazon my name in the sky.
I'd slip through the skin
of a thesis as thin
as the Rizla it's in and be born.
I'd light it and write it,
I’d burn and unlearn,
I’d even hairdress the dawn.
I'd sip on White Russians,
on white and South African,
and dance to 360 vision.
To take out my eyes and
see in all directions at once
is but one general direction.
SONG OF THE NEON DAWN
X-ray specs don’t lead to sex
and mobile phones don’t have gay undertones
and television is a big decision
and the internet can’t just forget
and laser beams are born in dreams
and digital clocks don’t come in flocks
and Ableton Live is my nine to five
and the latest App is an angel’s lap
and I sing for Kate whose always late
and I write the Night until it’s white
and my vertigo lives down below
and my neon dawn will be reborn
and we’ll renew the morning dew
and Google our senses out there like a tide
and dream of love aloft on wings
and try and forget the nights we cried
and the alphabet is the suicide note
of Nelly the Elephant if you deem it true
and love’s gone veggie over Disney again
and the grass is green and the sky is blue
and E is a bet with the myriad mind
and I’ve seen so much I’ve gone blind
and a poem’s a seat where you sit and eat
and a driverless car has gone quite far
and a use for dust is a beautiful bust
and the wheel of a bike is a map of the Lakes
and a rugby match is quite a catch
and an abandoned band is written in the sand
and a red skin cell is a state of Hell
and sadness seems the mother of dreams
but maybe that’s the other way round
and a flower grows just for your nose
BIRTHDAY OF I. A.
You’re not a knock-kneed hummingbird, / you’re not a birthday of I. A, / and who you are I’ll never know now, / and if I did I’d never say… / I am your med-banging elephantine, / and I cry on the windows of trains, / and maybe all I need’s a length of, / need’s a length of metal chain… / and through it all I wish you rainbows, / made for two and very strange, / and somehow what’s most familiar, / is what really can estrange you, / rearrange and slowly derange you, / oh yes it most definitely can. / So don’t run in the corridor / or you’ll sin in the eyes of Santa / as he watches on.
TELEPATHIC ELEPHANT
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
[Note:
this song
which was originally a Secret
Chord H B-side
concerns a cassette tape with a pause in the opening number where the
reel is cut and re-sealed]
THE SWITCH THROWN
Blessed may be the end at last
under the sea
below the soul
in the upside-down
Oceans above us
(all that heaven sends is rain)
and blessed is the rain that heaven sends
it is the life for the gilly flowers
some might say
it even falls up
and you’re going to have to think againe
for a clock’s only as fast
as a wounded cheetah
who knows how to
get drunk on cold Wifebeater
but gets drunk instead
on the rhythm and metre
O love thanks
for coming round,
O love cherish
your map of sound,
O love I dreamt that
we were drowned
I made such a mess it’s wasn’t cool
but at least I didn’t
give it away
that music is
the sacred pool
or whatever else I had to say
it’s half past four but then again
the Night is young
the switch is thrown
whatever could
the poor boy mean
he means his heart is yours to own
(N. B. co-authored with my bro Mr. James P D)
SAD HYPOCHONDRIAC
I know she's only a phone call away...
maybe she's got something to say?
Anyway by now her number's probably changed...
seems even numbers can't just stay the same.
You always used to say to me
“to love someone truly is to set them free” -
you always knew better than me
you always knew better than me.
I know she's only a daydream away -
transient rainbow not made to stay -
only made of sunlight and tears! -
beauty like that should last for years.
You always used to say to me
“to love someone truly is to set them free” -
you always knew better than me
you always knew better than me.
I’m just a sad hypochondriac.
Just another shooting rock star in love with the black.
Don’t want to die of a sudden art attack.
I’m just a sad hypochondriac.
I'm just a sad hypochondriac.
I'm just a sad hypochondriac.
I'm just sorry for everything I lack.
I’m just a sad hypochondriac.
WE COULD BE SO HAPPY
(played at a gig on a rooftop in London, the last gig by The Flood)
Serotonin dopamine
no Codeine or Diazepam
I got ruin'd you got wrecked
let's just say yes to each other’s plans
we could be so ha ha ha happy
we could be so ha ha ha happy
Buproprion and Fluoxetine
a toooooooootal loss of all
language-is-thought-control
it's just some sedative we'll
hide away under snow
I wake up dying for some
junk food to save my hole
when all the money has run out
and our housing contract expires
and the pigs come to track us down
the night will be filled with burning fires
the night will be filled with screeching tyres
the night will be filled with burning lyres
we could be so ha ha ha happy
in the future that ain’t what it used to be
on a drug called Strictly Free
on
the loss of the cannabis battery.
WICKER CHAIR
Baby I can see the tree kneel down
in Nick Drake’s de-tunings before you
maybe it’s just the germs accrued
upon the windowpane maybe it’s true
love what’s love halved in chaos
love’s the answer love victorious
love’s the hope the heart literally
needs in order to survive without which
it can stop and I love to be alive
so I thank you for bringing us together
everybody loves you between us is the weather
this fair day stay a while and play
trouble’s all gone away love is the only way
CHAPTER
SIX:
‘THE WHITE DOOR’
This is the album with the sheet where pictures grew as a cover and we’ve dealt with this by using the songs that are most dud, null and flat. Never before has flatness been so aesthetically accurate! It all contributes to the kind of multi-media that the new da Vinci circle attains. When I say the songs on this album aren’t that great, the first one for instance I decided to write and record for a mate while he was in the air on a plane – from start to finish – and send to him before he landed! It’s for the old drummer from The Flood. Naturally the song we mean when we say the sheet where pictures grew depicts a lyric is also contained.
HEARTBOOK
We’ll never take E on a green,
Glastonbury hillside ever again,
never see Love playing through dark,
aviator Ray-Bans after the rain,
we’ll never be young as we once were
and looking back I know it’s all gone,
the real E’s a she and she is not free,
but we can converse while you’re on a plane
flying over the Atlantic ocean
you message me online full of emotion
to say new material has emerged
I tell you you’ve never done anything
which you need to apologise to me for,
you kept me in food when in Berlin
I spent my last money on a whore,
Everything happened back in the day
and we isolate bits to form a narrative,
everything that is except for work,
and we used to say live and let live
flying over the Atlantic ocean
you message me online the ball still in motion
to say new evidence has emerged
If work sets you free I will never feel
freedom not like I did back in the day,
the day we were young, you and me
playing in the band, whatever we used to play,
and only the songs seem to survive,
the poems don’t seem to want to last,
and I’m trying to learn Ableton Live,
and get your message like a blast from the past
flying over the Atlantic ocean
you text me online w/ a true notion
to say unheard music by us has emerged
TRUE LOVE DOT COM
Dead clock plodding play a different song // we're waiting for some action and some change to come along // been waiting all night at true love dot com // you're only just starting to notice the mushrooms are still too strong // dead pedestrians thinking fumes stay in and get fat in your new chat rooms // we chase the wave forms of the dusky dawn w/ black shadow cat-prints going backwards on the lawn // and I confess my open heart is lying w/ her legs apart // and if she said she's in love w/ me I wouldn't go taking it personally // for love has no ego as everybody knows and something inside me she's given me grows // and a playground swing on the vexed edge of life sighs empty and forever and out falls a leaf // and not into love does that green leaf fall where wet Westerly winds swoop and call // we are the glitter on the Christmas trees and not the litter in the filibustering breeze // and the E comedown has no value in maths // and the loonies all walk on the wrong paths // and the grass is green on the Other Side // it pulls the ropes of the evening tide.
THE SUPERSTRING GUITAR
Cool white is the highnote if it's up to me,
cascading down to the deep blue sea -
will blue trousers over the trouser blues
fall down on the Excellent News?
Music penetrates is-ness,
renovates sensation's quest.
Out in the desert the pigeon-stars
ripe w/ new creatures won't bring out the Tsars.
Water splits but the desert's dry.
Stonemouth silence chewing gums by.
Why the high note seems to be white
is the sideways gravity in the smile of night.
The Super String Guitar was electric and was smashed.
Transcendence is the dream of anything squashed.
“You're going to get a dog w/ a laser brain.”
L to the pregnant snorkel = mc squared.
Impairing the wild pear tree to tears.
Impairing the wild pear tree to pears.
Flutter in the sideways gravity of the smile of light.
Phew for a minute there you lost the screen.
E = L to the pregnant snorkel.
E = L to the pregnant snorkel.
L to the pregnant snorkel = mc squared.
Flutter in the sideways gravity of the smile of light.
BAXTER
I love my dog
he’s barking mad
when he wants to smile
he wags his tail
his uncomplicated love
is healing for the soul
he has seventy words
like the book with smell
I wonder what the others are
maybe later I’ll know
mashed potato and stew
and a Pizza Hut
and the waves of the sea
go round and round
swim in mystery
but do not drown
ice cream is nice
on Freedom’s shore
so is sugar and spice
and more and many more
and so it came to pass
that I sat in a room
with the dog by my side
and the music on
and I’ve got the dog blues
yeah I’ve got the dog blues
which only means
I’ve nothing to lose
and the stream of life
flows on and on
and a cup of tea
awaits in the kitchen
and the dream of love
has not quite died
and I feel assured
deep down inside
because I love my dog
he loves me too
what more do I need
don’t need to sniff glue
to feel all high
when I have fresh air
and the Emperor has
abdicated againe
and a nice long sleep
will reunite me
with planet earth
at the end of the day
what more can I say
FAREWELL TO THE SEER OF SEA NESS
Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -
see you later when the future is less.
What will you do about your trance?
Will you send a postcard from France?
I hope that you have a lot of fun…
I hope that you may find someone -
and the scenery streams by the train
and the world is small beneath the plane
Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -
see you in the future when the past is less.
Will the future there be quite cold?
Will you feel sad and feel old?
I hope that your dreams all come true.
I hope that there’s hope for you too -
and the dreams stream beside the car -
and you make it Westwards quite far.
Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -
see you in the light we might bless.
Will the visual radio still swirl?
Will you still blame it on the girl?
I hope that your heart will beat on…
I hope that your hope’s not all gone -
and the freedom you find is the best,
and the beauty you dream is a quest.
Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -
see you in the middle released from the stress.
Will the sound of silence be heard?
Will they hide the mystic bird?
I hope that your love arrows down.
I hope that you don’t hit the brown -
and the light will puncture you
and the good life will still be true.
THE GHOSTS LAMENT (THE GUZZLER MEN)
[originally Oedipus Wrecks]
I'm the only one left, left to shoot my
own gun. This is the dead land. Crack a smile
and curse the sun. Death awaits to fuck me.
Give me bliss and give me kisses. Death a-
waits to save me. The ghosts lament, the ghosts
lament. Come on baaaaaaaaaby, you know it's e-
asy, don't say maaaaaaaaaybe, let's go crazy. Death
awaits to fuck me. Give me bliss and give
me kisses. Death awaits the same me. The
ghosts lament, the ghosts lament, no more ghosts.
||||.
[Note:
when years
later I
discovered the James
P D Tucker sheet
where pictures grew, and the pictures seemed to depict the lyric to
one of my old songs, this is the song.]
THAT BLACK NATURAL E
[spoken word narrative for B minor]
Where once I wandered far and wide
on a field-file, a file-field,
a fenceless farm without
security alarm where all hearts bleed
and all arts breed, now Hell
is very quiet, unadvertised.
McBreastmilk,
McBreastmilk,
don’t feed your kids.
Gentle face erasing cream,
smear it in and let it sink
down through the pores of your skin
to erase your deepest down dirt.
O stars the government
that truly speaks for us!
Get an extra kid for free
when you spend 99p.
Freefall 0800 down
your own black hole pupils.
Maybelline you maybe only make-believe
you may be the true mating queen of the hive,
may mad vampires stalk you,
stalking walls walk through
your vagrant dreams.
I see state of head
is more than Head of State.
Monster Munch can
always gobble up your food.
Cancerel can always
sweeten the stewed-
carfume coffee we sip in
this liminal afterlounge.
It’s getting cramped
as a tin of beans in here.
In emergency please
break glass and exit.
Credits at the end of innocence
are falling like numberless lists
of fallen autumn leaves.
Snatched handfuls of light
come to nothing in the dark room.
There must be a use for
this dust amounting.
There’s nothing like digging
a meaningless hole as if to cure the
spiralling lethargy of Hell...
and when I went into the
woods to bury my soul,
all the trees knelt down.
O perpetual orgasm of the sun!
Privation is the mother of imagery.
Prayers, ghosts and
e-mails chatter on
the ego-loss breeze.
The chitchat in the solipsistic
kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.
My new, motley fridge magnet
letters contain no question
mark in the pack but the first
qualification of Modernism
is enquiry and furthermore
wilful ignorance is a sin.
Meanwhile outside the
fallen Autumn leaves
are where bears have
dipped their feet in pots of paint
and danced across the threshold
of the paving stones.
Water clears its throat from the tap.
Gunpowder was only invented
for fireworks and a firework
is a champion sperm nosing up
blind to explode bright and wonderful
deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.
The world is a cool, bejewell'd
marble snug in Holy Orbit
suckling on a mother sun.
Supposedly there is soon
to be New Atlantis on the moon.
The cure for cancer
sustains your heart.
Robbed by a bastard vending machine,
somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper
to cleanse the doors of perception,
a drunkard attacks a wall
on an otherwise empty street,
a policeman forces himself
to come with a gun.
Hey salesman
slow down
with that
fast-food.
I don't mind
waiting here
for a year.
(2002)
WAVETABLE IN C
I remember when my mnemonic for the guitar strings was Even A Dick Gets Big Erections… now I don’t need one, I’ve heard a better one from a fellow autist, high-functioning autist – Even A – no – er - Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually. At the moment I’m on James’s red electric. I remember when he got it for Christmas and I got an acoustic, a Fender, an expensive one, and I wanted to be Kurt Cobain so I was annoyed that I got an acoustic not an electric. I was upset and offended my parents. And now here I am playing on James’s red electric. As I say my mnemonic used to be Even A Dick Gets Big Erections, but this one’s in C. I’ll leave it up to you to work out what that means. Your guess is as good as mine. It could be for countryside. It could be for court case. It could be for caliphate. It could be for civilisation. It could be for completion of the soul.
NO DEATH ONLY CHANGE
Don’t be afraid/ there is no death only change/ let’s pretend, let’s pretend/ there is no end of play/ tonight, tonight/ I only believe in tonight / so for once/ throw your cares and travel with me/ travel with me/ travel with me/ travel with me/ I for one/ have long gone/ out the door and far away/ down south/ mouth to mouth/ to exhume a brighter day/ live for this/ chance at bliss/ this kiss that wants to form/ on the air/ everywhere/ as the fungus sun beats down/ on the nervous under-town/ planes are the shoes of clowns/ yeah yeah yeah /
THE POSTMODERN ID
I’m thinking about the old days,
how the hippies are not ageless as the sun rays,
I’m thinking about the ideals of 60’s,
and though I don’t believe in pixies
the effect of global warming on the unicorn
succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn,
the summer rain falls with as many hands,
as there are names for new rock bands...
I’m thinking about the imminent future,
there has to be a place still for Nature,
thinking about the state of poetry,
the young light has dawned on me...
the effect of global warming on the unicorn
succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn,
the summer rain falls with as many hands,
as there are names for new rock bands.
I’m trying just to think about the present,
and how my life could be so pleasant,
don’t want to be distracted in daydreams,
by a woman as lovely as the sunbeams...
the effect of global warming on the unicorn
succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn,
the summer rain falls with as many hands,
as there are names for new rock bands.
I’m thinking about the doors of perception,
how literature is beautiful deception,
you might find the bedroom is hidden,
you might find the dawn is unbidden...
the effect of global warming on the unicorn
succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn,
the summer rain falls with as many hands,
as there are names for new rock bands
so try to pass the gravy over
Facebook now and be free.
Don’t know what a Dorian Mode is,
but I know who Toad of Toad Hall is,
and the lady in my life is all missing,
and the music’s only meant for kissing.
DOWN IN THE PATCH WORK QUILT BELOW
I like the light and the flight of arrows
I also love the sound of running water
Down in the patch-work quilt below
Where the river of sadness used to flow
It’s easy to trip up on a daisy
Lazy of us to let it get this way
Down in the patch-work quilt below
Where mad children splash and play
Art gets to its feet like a cartoon Bambi
She might go veggie for reasons of Disney
Down in the patchwork quilt below
Where the ego-loss breeze can freely blow
Heading down to the sea can free you
No-one knows how to free you but meyou
Down in the patch-work quilt below
Where we’ll inevitably have to flow
[N. B. co-authored with a little help from my brother Dr. Robert L G Tucker]
WALKING THE BEAT
(impromptu spoken word piece)
Women can be very beautiful
they can be sharp-elbowed too
they think when we discern their beauty
we are being blinded by love
love is a banana custard to them
man’s highest emotion to me
but single is my jingle these days
I sleep on a single mattress
if I ever do sleep that is
the dog’ll be beside me
he’s a symbol of gravity
and humour and katabasis
it’s been a while since I’ve been in love
and what lovely dresses they can wear in summer
ones with floral patterns on
that come all undone -
it’s winter right now
winter has her compensations
I’m sitting in a coffee-cake dining room
there’s a Christmas tree
adorned with baubles and bright white lights
I suppose they should come down
it’s the 2nd of January
Bertrand Russell’s History of
Western Philosophy is on the table
some chocolate from Finland
some baccy some papers
some of my mother’s driftwood art
Quality Streets which my dad
used to call Quantity Streets
and what else I don’t know
a toothbrush that hasn’t been opened yet
CHAPTER
SEVEN:
‘THE ALARM CLOCK’
This final album in the new da Vinci circle has myself sitting in a room with the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen for a cover. While my dad was dying my screen just bloomed this numinous, purple light. Its colour was co-aligned with mystery, sex, suadade, longing and shame thus to incorporate every vowel-sound into a feeling. I am holding a guitar, my brother James’s red guitar though Dr. Bob took the photo that forms the cover of the album. The album contains one of my best lyrical pieces – ‘Skunkfoot’ – that reads like a manifesto from my New Beat youth. Indeed there are those from my New Beat youth who would only have kept ‘That Black Natural E’ from the previous album and ‘Skunkfoot’ from this one. I like to think though that the <BEE> thing should contain more information, that it could be about packets of information. It could even be seen as a movie! This then is the final of the four in its cycle. Since the original which is now being remastered, I have had the idea to add a new song on the end, but it’s only an instrumental (‘Black Flake of Infinity’) so you won’t notice unless I tell you.
A POINT FIVE
“I was going to pack it with content… a clock is only as fast as a cheetah. I said that at seven. I got to the end and realised I hadn’t pressed the right buttons on Ableton. You have to press the right buttons in life. That’s more like it. Previously on this program oceans smile with liquid eyes and fill themselves with rain. Also I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too. Lucy in the soul w/ demons might happen to be an actual substance. And if a flower-press ending on cannabis could = a dialysis, a love poem hoping to impress Flora could = more a motor. That was it. Then I realised – see I was trying to put Jimi’s amp guitar on the vocal and it was full of feedback, squealing like an electric donkey. Then I realised the vocal hadn’t gone down at all. I’d pressed the wrong buttons. I am hoping I pressed the right buttons this time. You have to press the right buttons. And now we’re going to have a typing solo. I’m noticing the space bar is like the snare drum. I type with two middle fingers you know, like William Carlos Williams.”
TEST MONKEY IN B
We’re aliens looking for life on Mars
aliens trying to make life in jars
aliens homesick for the stars
trying to find home in the all-night bars
in a world with no more la di da’s
the sunset silts its knickers and bras
the night is bright with white guitars
the fat cats smoke their fat cigars
the wall inside is still the Tsar’s
I watch the passing of the cars
I’m through with reading inveterate scars
in a room resounding with loud hurrahs
SKUNKFOOT
(spoken word narrative to go over a drone of E)
Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland. It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows. I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity. Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains. It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real. Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven. The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.
(2002 - 2003)
THE WISH OF NIGHT
Madness swirls deep in the heart
A butterfly resides in you
A tragedy of feelings lost
surrenders to the wish of night
& in this world I can't explain
I know exactly where I am
Inside a crevice of desire
In the dreamy air of a lover's scent
Wherever you take me, that's where I'll be
In the weeping skies my mind gives up
& falls into the arms of sleep
I'd fade to know I thought of you
& the world has risen to my hands
& the earth murmurs beneath my feet
& the light of all that's good is true
if believing is the dawn of dreams
I guess that I'm afraid to tread
The purple skies for the risk of a word
But at least I'm sure of fear
As she gives me the strength to feel afraid
A whisper fathomed deep in mine
Well I don't even care to cry
& I don't care to face the edge
& plunge into the oceans dead
& the flame of love has lit my candle
& the sky has echoed my desire
& all the air is drawn into my lungs
& I know the secrets of the shade
& I know the wars that come from peace
& I know the mystery of love
& I know the resilience of the soul
& I'm sure that knowing you is true...
FIZZY POP
I’m a clown, I’m a clown,
a clown in the circus of death.
I had a mate who sent the words
“Liquid Crystal Meth”
into space, into space,
and I was underneath it,
shower down, shower down,
make me feel alright.
No-one knows, no-one knows
what I went through in life.
The sadness shows, the sadness shows,
the trouble and the strife,
but under the stars, under the stars
I dream of love eternal,
shower down, shower down,
make me feel alright.
Fizzy pop, fizzy pop,
gets drunk in Monopoly Jail,
time goes slow, ever so slow,
as slow as a garden snail,
but ecstasy is a teddy bear
back in the garden of Eden,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind,
if you let me off my chains.
INSTANT TRAVEL
[warning: contains voices]
Not far away in Magic Faraway Land,
there’s poetry written on the bank notes,
sadness gene is smitten with dreaming gland,
the God Particle foreseen in the dust motes...
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,
NHS for Lucy in the soul with demons,
H20 stands for your hypothalamus tattoo,
ESA for Extra Sensory Allowance -
so how about we take a long holiday there?
You buy yourself a ticket with the opposite of bling.
You’ll see through the frame of angel hair,
and might just need a love-song to sing.
Yeah yeah yeah, our love is the answer,
spinning in a circle around the tired sun,
waiting for the cure or vaccine for cancer,
seeming to be dreaming of the mid-day moon…
POETRY BUTTONS
Smart guitars between the stars
allow the ladies burn their bras
I don’t ask for whom the beck
puts a necklace on her neck
let us have a go then, you and I
when we are tired of getting high
piss on the dawn when dad is dead
poetry buttons are in my head
poetry buttons for endless revisions
and helpless self-derisions
got to keep the quavers at bay
got to make the monster go away
the monster is not me
he lives beneath the deep blue sea
when all the air in outer space
is consumed without a trace
through a prodigious systematised
detuning of the strings we rise
would you compare me to a tramp
now my face is on a stamp
the poet makes himself a tea
now he’s a mystic visionary
poetry buttons for endless revisions
and helpless self-derisions
got to keep the quavers at bay
got to make the monster go away
the monster is not me
he lives beneath the deep blue sea
voices voices everywhere
and yet not a drop to think
think of England when you’re on
drink of physical hyperlink
all the world is on a page
where we spend our petty wage
engage with the dark night of the soul
that dreams in meaning like a troll
poetry buttons for endless revisions
and helpless self-derisions
got to keep the quavers at bay
got to make the monster go away
the monster is not me
he lives beneath the deep blue sea
TEACHER OF MY HEART
I have found you you're the Teacher
of my Heart there's only one one
and though my mind is endless old
my tender heart is foolish young
and my timeless impassion'd battles
of emotion have sooooon begun.
You have lost me in a Teachers
whisky bottle drinking down down
down the shipwreck IS the treasure
harboured in my pirate undertown
where visions of the real Unknown
await us there when we drown.
They have told me it's a T-shirt
that's the body worn by the soul
O to have to discorporate and wash
our eyes in the Fairy Liquid bowl
it's good for you to know a goal
there is no music from a black hole.
THE STAIRCASE
Once upon a time I was spiked
and thought I could fly
jumped right out of a window
and fell through the sky
somehow managed to land
on my smelly size 12 feet
seven stories below on
the heaving city street
now I tour the public schools
giving talks to forewarn
all the youths about drugs
in the world where they’re born
taking LSD can change
your innate personality
take it from me please never
take the drug they call LSD
Splinter was the master of
the Turtles in the kids cartoon
and now he’s dead and he’s gone
beneath the morning moon
and I’m so sad to hear of that
for loss is painful in the heart
so may we all remember
him in our chosen art
Sitting at the back was a
boy whom I instantly knew
would do everything which
I had pleaded with him not to do
puffing on a cigarette
making all the others laugh
maybe he’ll grow up to be
a kind of talking giraffe
When I fell I broke both legs
and did some damage to my spine
but I can walk if only slowly
and am in my headspace fine
I can still sing but not dance
which I never did much anyway
and I sing about health over
wealth at the dawn of this day
WHISPER
(originally by Black Hole Myths when we were still called Funnelspirals)
I wanted to hear musac from a black
hole by Judas Priest but the guys
sent a parrot after a carrot and
through the conch to outer space
singing 'I won't always be an orange
just because you've sectioned me,
no I won't always be on Orange
just because you've sectioned me
but at any given time I'm working
in a crane' and Jesus said 'Syd by Ray
in a way Spiderman's handwriting
has been too obscene, I rake the
blade over the wishbone of my
legs Breakfast All Day/ gay
teachers can still lay eggs and
I won't always be a lemon just
because you've sectioned me,
no I won't always be on Lennon
just because you've session'd me
but at any given time Oedipus
is spying me up in the shower,
why I'll break the speed of speed,
rendered squander never priceless,
I'll never speed againe, at any given
time I'm a rare aquatic insect.'
(Hackney)
CHAPTER
EIGHT:
THE
EFFERVESCENT MOBILE PHONE
If
James’s <BEE> presents an hypothesis, I have something that
presents a Point of Arrival. This refers
to that
occasion when I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of
‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate
barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.
I actually did have a mobile phone that buzzed off before it rang, through every technological inlet in the room, telly, stereo, laptop, air. So I wrote that down – that monochromatic drone – somehow - and it became a song that falsified the Nirvana barcode through bastardisations and mishearings of other people’s songs, that nevertheless worked as a piece of music unto itself, sustaining narrative, meaning and musicality all at once. It has been called as good as Rachmaninov and goes as follows...
CHEESE DREAMS
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Bring bring
bring bring
“Hello?”
Gold member, you're the one,
the one with the heart of gold
Vowels, pure vowels
Immanuel Kant
will come to thee
with immanence
You come home smacked up you come
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
boom
boom
boom
boom
boom
how did we get down here from flat-top
wide tunnel cities self driving cars
bears in the moon and liquor and drugs
and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars
boom shanka, you're the one,
the one with the sonic boom
knickers knickers faster than lightning
skin up fall out of bed
and did those feet
in ancient times
rain down, rain down,
come on raindown
and walk the sun
fatter, hippier, less well connected
always walk the hallways
down to create my own
and in the meantime
and in the meantime
I'll do the monkey bars with my legs
manic depression has enraptured my name
don't know what I want but I just want shame
don't know what I want but I just won't shave
rainy waif, rain always,
lay back and dream
on a rainy waif
now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
no more laaaaaaaaaa la's
removal van canes will be turned into furniture
we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir
you never see me dead near an inch of closure
|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings
“and a record made of sound
goes round and round, conveying
music to the speaker through the stylus,”
says the radio as I turn it on.
Well, although there is no
such thing as the Nirvana barcode
it opens up a discussion about
the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how
if barcode is rain barcode is phone...
and at least I have
the grace to come
back and say that the
extinction of consciousness
has no monetary value.
It is past dawn
and I see that
that first mobile
phone
has gone.
(2015)
CHAPTER
NINE:
AGAINST
JEALOUSY
Who
knows why your phone goes like that when it does? Imagine
if it was a present from someone to reward you for helping invent the
net at seven. I don’t wish to enter a trance about my condition or
blow my own trumpet. I wish to upload the songs of the new da Vinci
circle onto Bandcamp as they are structured in this book, but am
reliant on my brother fixing my old computer where the recorded
material is stored. Even
if it isn’t possible to get the albums back online, it’s still
the best book I have done; and I can only blame myself for taking
them down in a fit of vanity. My bro is actually in the kitchen with
me putting tomatoes in a toastie with cheese right
now.
Some people might be jealous of what he has done, or I, but the whole
point is, there is nothing to be jealous of, it’s not a
competition. It’s not about better and worse those vain,
materialistic, Western concepts. It’s not about Darwinian values.
Poetry is the unique expression of the unique individual. If I felt
like I was losing some battle,
some race,
and if I wanted, I could easily go on about some of the things I have
done with
my life:
at 7 I helped invent the net; at 8 took care of The
Lords And The New You Know Who
twice; at 11 went through an experiment into the maths of the new
colour as a cellular mark; at 15 attained the face of stars; at 18 so
many things including speaking against September 11th
in 2000 and writing an English Literature A-level exam marked at
100%. After
school I recorded an album on earphones, hosted the Plough alignment
for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First, built the Tower
out of magical books as an instrument of philosophy, worked at a
numinous purple bleeding screen, had an experiment into a tape with a
pause where resealed in the reel, discovered the sheet where pictures
grew, falsified the Nirvana barcode, attained visual radio and more.
They have given Nobel Prizes for less; but the point is I
still don’t know, or, rather, we still don’t know, quite whose
the new da Vinci circle albums are. I (largely) wrote the lyrics,
melodies
and guitar but there is also the structure being James’s to
consider. Not just that but there is an influx of voices in
my system plus the
help of real people involved in my work of late. If the 4 new da
Vinci circle albums go back on my Bandcamp page, because I ostensibly
wrote and recorded the songs, I would still feel happier this time
round calling it by Various Artists. Then we would have a nice
machine, an un-categorisable machine, marrying image, word and sound,
into the co-imaginative
operation
of the new da Vinci circle, online,
and
I think it would advance the cause of the net too. But
after all this, something tells me the dead computer where the songs
are stored might
not be
salvageable,
is forever dead – and that this might make me wretch. Even
if we can’t get the recorded music back, at least I still have a
guitar and a voice and can play the songs. The best ones for a solo
acoustic set up are ‘I Knew That She Loved Me,’ ‘Dream With
Open Eyes,’ ‘Air Raid Shelter,’ ‘Sad Hypochondriac,’ ‘The
Ghosts Lament (The Guzzler Men),’ ‘Oceans Smile,’ and a few
others too. I am often to be found playing a gig to no-one at the
foot of the oldest fell in the night-time, like a black bird
performing from the end of a branch. Sometimes
staying up at night takes me back to my Gap Year, occupying a
haunted, empty warehouse zone of the psyche, trapped in a bad,
anti-social, un-natural,
vampiric sleep pattern, sliding out of responsibility, growing
dangerously detached. I spent the formative years of my life on drugs
and all five minute glimpses of what I wanted to do with my life, for
example be a scholar, were ruined by drug-taking. I became a failed
musician, like Syd Barrett said of himself. Now it is too late to
“make it” for at 42
or 43
I am not likely to be the one to bring the people the new music –
but I gave it a good go back in the day. My day
was a day when CD shops all closed down on the verge of our
potentially making it; my time was a testing and troubled time. It’s
why I hope to put it right and further the cause of the net with this
present experiment. Back
in the days
of The Flood I would write the bulk of the material and go on
missions to get weed but otherwise didn’t pull my weight so it’s
nice to fork out some money to include them in the present textual
flourish. I like now to stand at the foot of the oldest fell on a
summer night when there is still a remnant, fleeting, evocative
evanescence as a backdrop to the darkened fell in the foreground; and
to stare at that patch of sky until it is brought home to me how
weird everything is, how magical and mysterious the universe. I
call it the Silken Veil Effect, that remnant light while the fell has
darkened; and it makes me think of aliens, the magic of the 1980’s,
how life could be a computer program, and as I say I stare at it
until it loses meaning, and life becomes detached, naked,
and
I remember how weird everything
is,
how
magical
and mysterious the
universe.
Now the stars are out – they sleep in the open like Boyscouts. You
see them at the ends of the tree-fingers. The tree-fingers point up
to the stars, the heavens, the firmament. I only absorb so much then
come back to the kitchen. Right now I have two files open – one the
present
songbook,
the other philosophy. It’s
hard to know which one to write in. James has said he’s going to
try and save my hard-drive tonight. Mum’s irate with me for letting
her vegetables burn still. I’m thinking of picking up a guitar and
playing ‘Flower-press Love Poem Music,’ to try and cajole my bro
into doing his magic with the hard-drive
of the dead computer. Ah,
there are other songs, but I might say they got away. So
I go and say “goodnight” to James and he says “come in” and
shows me a
device where he’s captured the
hard-drive, says it works, sends me away to plug in and get busy. I
have teething troubles so seek his help a few more times but am
eventually alone in the solipsistic kitchen of fiction uploading the
songs, at last, four albums onto Bandcamp. It takes two hours. I have
a cup of tea and a Vape pen. The final, finishing touch is to put
“Various Artists” for the band name for
the new da Vinci circle albums.
Then just like that it’s done. My musical career is complete. Now
we just have to wait until someone says the song for Flora was the
best, and was James’s even though he wrote
it through me;
then we’ll have to kick in with the promise that Flora’s pretext
is best when nearing endlessness
so we’ll put all the other countless songs online as well; but I
hope not. I believe in the new da Vinci circle
as
a unit of four. Otherwise it doesn’t feel like we got it done. The
reason it’s so good is that the new da Vinci circle bit is about
dissecting a bar of light. Light knows no jealousy, and we would do
well to copy it. Quite
who is in the band ‘Various Artists’ I am not sure for I hear
soooooo many voices that I don’t even know the identity of, but I’d
say at least my brother and I, and also my mum. So
it is that it’s like a document signed by Einstein’s value for
light-speed, c.
That could be what Professor David Morley means by the prism on the
forest floor. He says we come at words aslant as creative writers.
The band Various Artists could be just me, but the Flood were a bunch
of other guys as well, and Black Hole Myths is a definite duo. I
think I am freer behind the mask, a bit like a timeshare salesman, if
I do use Various Artists as the band name, and I take it back – it
is honest in
that I am not the only one.
It shows humanity too. So often I am there trying to remember a line
and someone else gets in there before me and something that started
as mine becomes ours. So we get the ball wide to the wing – it
becomes a team effort and drags us into dreams as well, where many
texts are stored. Still, I believe the songs I put in to the <BEE>
collective if that’s what is
happening
are good songs. At least some good songs went in from me. I am being
a good comrade. I am showing camaraderie. Mum
can still smell burnt soup – a flower-press ending on cannabis was
her contribution. Also a line or two. “We’re going to be pissed
off for weeks about the burnt smell,” she says. She sends me to
bed. It’s past 3 AM. The house is silent, the road outside empty
of
cars. Soon it will be dawn and I will hear the birds chirruping in
the trees. They’re
mine. Fly left.
CHAPTER
TEN:
A RECAP OF THE BEST BITS SO
FAR
As
requested by James, a recap of my best bits might run as follows…
I
enjoyed the way the earphone album starts, with math-rock written
in the garden shed; and
also that jam in F sharp minor de-tunings,
the latter because we got to encrypt a node in musical truth without
words.
It
was good when on the binaural earphone album I sang:
“Going
to meet with the Otherness,
best
go get a party dress.”
I
also enjoyed including background static and feedback from the amp in
‘Voodoo Echo,’ so in other words not-playing. Of course I still
think it good when on the earphone album I climbed
up and sang:
“I’m
going
to get your freshness back,
plug
my senses in the mains.”
There
is still even
now the
temptation to augment The Flood’s stuff on Soundcloud with a
new solo acoustic album. For
it
was said after the “plug my senses in the mains” episode that (1)
it was a good riposte to Jim Morrison’s The
Lords And The New Creatures
where
he talks of 360 vision; (2)
I should follow up with just myself and an acoustic – but whilst I
may do that, there is a reason why The Flood’s work didn’t move
seamlessly on, and that is my mental illness. It
would be false to get to the end of the new da Vinci circle and go
back and retro-impose a continuity to the Flood from this late
vantage
point in time.
So
it is that our nice machine is still ‘on’
and
I am not harbouring ill feeling unto those that robbed me, or
cursed me, or blamed me, or hypnotised me, or drove me mad, or
operated on me in my sleep, or tried to remove a portion from my
brain, or persecuted me, or made me walk naked in the capital, or
shopped me for the fire-dance, or
dressed me to look like Hitler, nor
dwelling on that side of things.
Nevertheless
if I am to incorporate my brother he will tell you in the Flood I was
robbed: that to invent the binaural earphones was my idea; that they
tried to remove a portion of my brain; that the rich man who popped
up with the earphones was the true thief, who gave the music I wrote
away to another, and swanned off with his inherited wealth; that they
treated me like the drugged up brother in the Russian Roulette scene
in The
Deerhunter;
that they pretended the spliff was my willy without letting me know;
that I was indeed driven nuts by it all whereupon I
was kicked out of the band in a state of disrepair and the
rich man swanned off with his wealth. That is what my brother would
say was the true story of The Flood; and they even had the cheek to
call me an evil Nazi! Me
whose idea it was to invent the earphones!
When
I came home, and embarked on a program of meditation, dreamwork,
detox, reading, self-help and exercise, that was when someone had the
vision to place me under a curse, or worse hypnotise me. I
can’t imagine someone being so vision-flaccid as I call it that
they would dream up an idea like that. This is why there is no
seamless continuity between the Flood and the solo album made with
Grant. That moment, the result of plugging the senses in the mains,
the continuation of it, was all, well, in life not art – all in the
hallucinations I went through on the road to becoming diagnosed
mentally ill. As I say I am not 100% sure of this but I
thiiiiiiiiiink to retro-impose an adjunctivity or continuity to The
Flood from all the way in this present tense where I’ve already
been through the rest of my career would be false.
So
it is that we arrived
at the
solo album Grant recorded for me: I liked making
the
first track because it’s beautiful and the second track, which is a
dark
instrumental, and which Jess, of the Cambridge days, listened to
online and declared “amazing.” It
was also ingenious to get my bank card number into a song as the
chorus and I think I was the first person to do that.
Then
the new da Vinci circle.
On
this, I
liked revamping ‘Air Raid Shelter’. This was initially a song by
The Flood, recorded on earphones, but left off the album. I got the
idea from the air. At the time I was best mates with Paul. I later
found out the actual Beatles themselves had their first rehearsal in
an actual air raid shelter! So I am partial to that song. I remember
one time I played it at Glastonbury stone circle to Agent G and my
second brother Dr. Robert and his mates – they all said I should be
doing music professionally, going on tour andcetera. I think that was
the year I met Thom Yorke in the queue for a burger van, shook his
hand and called him a genius. I think that was also the year I walked
past Kate Moss and Pete Doherty while I was on LSD.
Finally
putting ‘I Knew That She Loved Me’ to music, on Songs In G, was
another breakthrough moment for me, and now when I pick up the guitar
in boredom and project myself into the role of an imaginary
performance, I have an extra song to play. As stated the lyric to
that was written when I was but sweet 16 so it’s been knocking
around a while.
On
the new da Vinci circle albums, I
also liked reworking the old Oedipus Wrecks number ‘The Ghosts
Lament (The Guzzler Men)’ which is the one we mean when we say the
sheet where pictures grew depicted a lyric. For this number, which
has substantially changed since Oedipus Wrecks, I overlaid some
haunting and ethereal synth with just one guitar and one vocal,
removing the beat. It’s one of the strongest numbers I have done.
In
the
new da Vinci circle series
I especially liked the sprechstimme
of ‘That Black Natural E’ and also of ‘Skunkfoot’ which both
rewrote poetry from my Warwick University undergraduate days. Two
of my old cronies from those days which were mainly
Cambridge
days, Mark and Jez, who were in “the other band,” Tea With
The Behemoth, said they would only keep ‘That Black Natural E’
and ‘Skunkfoot’ of all the recent recordings, but then it
wouldn’t be enough for the new da Vinci circle to be real.
Likewise,
there is still
the matter of the
solo acoustic album I could add to this but then we’d have
overstepped the mark. We’d have done it good and yet be facing the
endlessness of it all. That’s why discipline should be upkept in
terms of containment of the new da Vinci circle to four albums,
however crap they are.
The
best thing about the new da Vinci circle series is the sense of
sharing, of being at one with my brother, and my mother is also
involved too. Some of my better pieces had to be h-a-n-d-e-d down to
James, like ‘The Switch Thrown’ for example, but when you’re
together, the sense of collaboration is enough to get high off, and
is better than the awful loneliness I would otherwise feel.
So
it is that I look forward to meeting my friend Grant tomorrow, and
maybe having a jam with him, who has just got back from holiday. We
play to an audience of my mum and Grant’s wife in the sitting room
at the foot of the oldest fell where the stars re-align. One of our
favourites is ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ by David Bowie. We
also like to detune the guitar all the way and go astray, have an
impromptu jam in de-tunings for half an hour, but the women don’t
like it as much.
Grant
will tell you it’s better to show yourself striving for the light
than struggling with the dark. He’ll tell you all sorts. If you
have schizo-affective disorder it means when you’re up it’s
symptoms of psychosis associated with schizophrenia and if you’re
down mood-based symptoms associated with manic depression and
bipolarity. Grant will say open a third category and call it
spirituality.
James
comes down and gets some cereal, cereal. We speak about him and his
writing. It’s not ready to read yet but will be one day. I trust
he’ll be good. When I tell him there is no sweet cereal left, he
says “Special K’s are alright.” In the context of the
conversation about the international language alphabet it seems a
great comment to make. He takes a bowl upstairs and eats of the
Special K.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN:
‘ETERNAL FULL MOON’ BY BLACK HOLE MYTHS
This
is a guess that Grant
and I
will organise the already-recorded
album
of spoken
word pieces according to the running
order
we have agreed upon over the phone. This means largely me reciting
Grant’s poetry over music we’ve put together. It means spoken
word, sprechstimme
and twelve-bar
rap
too, with no melodic
singing
from me at all. There is a difference after all between an album and
a collection of songs; and this album as we have agreed upon it is a
proper album, made in a studio, with
a spoken word theme that
binds it together.
Grant’s lyrics are great, and he plays drums
and sings too, also plays bass and makes
videos and paints.
On
the album, which
is made
under
his guidance, he
plays to
what was one of my strengths as a schoolboy – public speaking. I
also do the guitar and there’s an
instrumental
at the end called ‘Seclusion’ which I wrote and played on the
piano. That’s if it all
goes
ahead. It should go ahead because
it’s a fine piece of work.
Just
look at the song where we put Blake to music for example: it could be
the best I’ve done. Grant sent me off to put Blake to music so I
married a guitar part I knew with ‘The Laughing Song’ from Songs
of Innocence And Experience
and it was a perfect match. I
recited the poem over the top, and Grant put down some gorgeous vocal
harmonies and also sang the poem outright too. It’s a fine piece of
work.
So
the only lyric I contributed is from a bipolar song called
‘Hope’ that
works by presenting my
angry,
distorted, dissonant guitar to start with, over
which I read some of
Grant’s
fine
poetry;
and then
it
finds
a second moiety comprised
of
Grant’s
harmonious
guitar
as the piece journeys from tension to resolution. It’s the second
half of the song that I contribute the lyric to. I wrote the lyric in
Grant’s living room.
I’ve
actually been reading about real black holes, but none of it went in.
That’s only
tonight,
a night after a day when Grant came round. We’re still not sure
about the album because a lot of the numbers are integrated into his
solo work, and merely feature me. It’s a puzzle, when you have free
reign on the net, and with self-production, not to repeat things.
Stephen Hawking meanwhile
said
radiation could escape the event horizon of a black hole which seems
an upbeat message but none of our songs are about that. The article I
read was about whether or not the universe is a hologram, a
simulation. “The implications of the holographic theory are murky
at best,” claims the article. It was looking at black holes as
evidence for or against a holographic universe. Their
surface area is 2D but their volume not.
At
the present moment there is a 4-song E. P. version called ‘Eternal
Full Moon’ by Black Hole Myths on Grant Aspinall’s Bandcamp page
– but as I say the other four songs of
the eight we
agreed upon are
also integrated into his solo career, and I think he’s lost his
passwords too, so we may never see the full spoken word album as it
should be. Nevertheless
the songs are all online, on Grant’s Bandcamp page, just integrated
into different projects, like ‘Self-Portrait No 357,’ where
you find five songs I am “involved in,” some of which might be
transferred to ‘Eternal Full Moon.’
The
name ‘Eternal Full Moon’ came from Grant, whose vision the album
is. I believe he also made a painting called ‘Eternal Full Moon’
to use for the cover – a massive painting on a massive canvas,
depicting a rainbow coming from a black hole (as in a song lyric I
had written). Grant is a very skilful and accomplished painter who
paints largely the portraits of the faces of the pantheon of rock and
jazz musicians, with the music on and in mind. There is something
synaesthetic going on w/r/t/ his work that I like, and it seems to
blend the emotion of Romanticism with the postmodern readymade (the
latter in the fact that he often
goes
from photos). The painting ‘Eternal Full Moon’ appears to be an
exemplum of what they call “the Eschatological Imagination”
meaning of or relating to the end of the world. Beneath
the rainbow that carries strange notation, you see the sea of the
apocalypse, and remember that music is made of waves; and in that sea
there is an Evian bottle of water floating around, like saying the
apocalypse is man-made, made through Man’s greed, and consumerism.
The
attention to detail on the Evian bottle is nice, because you can even
see the crumples in the plastic. The
moon is also present in the painting, which sees Grant graduate from
the portraits of faces to doing something more abstract. I am happy
to have collaborated with him, and hope that the spoken word album
still comes together, even if I only did one of the lyrics this time
round. As
my mum would say it is a good feeling to be able to share, and Grant
says this album is as much about me as it is him.
HOPE
As I lie around, careless of a map of sound,
I love the lie of the land
where quiet gilly flowers
curtsey like ballerinas.
Streaming is vision.
Bees pollinate the garden,
birds pepper the lawn
where you let your flowery
blouse come all undone,
and a ray of light
soaks us all around.
The sky is a blouse of blue
hanging on the line.
Harmony thrums and
the sentient air is everywhere.
I lie back without a care,
sunlight blowing my hair about,
without a grey shade of doubt,
and deem it lazy of us
to let it get this way,
a day of careless play,
a carelessly radiant day,
all my troubles float away.
CHAPTER
TWELVE:
‘UNPLUGGED AT THE FOOT OF SEA NESS’
Have
I not done enough already?
And
if so what of my solo acoustic album ‘Unplugged At The Foot of Sea
Ness?’
I
can know where it goes in the book but not where it goes online…
there seem to
be three
options. (1)
If
I augment the new da Vinci four on Bandcamp I spoil the fact of there
being four. (2)
If
I go for the same Soundcloud page where my solo album that Grant made
for me is, it’s not ideal and
messes up the chronology.
(3)
If
I go for the other, empty Soundcloud page, that puts it in a loop
with The Flood, then I no longer succeeded the Flood with what I did
with James.
So
it is that I might need to leave it out!
I
would say the best place to leave it online of the three options is
Bandcamp, and that by not calling it “Various Artists” I am
showing people that it’s a different thing.
So
there we were only a minute ago with everything in the right place,
and now I’ve gone and put Unplugged
At The Foot of Sea Ness
on the end of the new da Vinci circle four on Bandcamp.
In
a way, I think it might be alright if I do that, now that the 4 are
“Various Artists,” and this new one is just me and a guitar. As I
have stated, after the “plug my senses in the mains” episode in
The Flood it was said that I should do an album of just myself and a
steal
string acoustic guitar
and now I have. I
feel it is better placed on Bandcamp than in the loop with the Flood
stuff on Soundcloud, because if it was in the loop on Soundcloud I
wouldn’t have followed up the Flood with <BEE>. This way, at
least I got to follow up <BEE> with an actual album, because
the ongoing spoken word album with Grant might never materialise.
THE
NEW SNOWMAN
We
are the velvet e’s,
we’re
shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,
the
valley road below,
beneath
us as we fly.
We
are the velvet e’s,
we’re
shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,
the
valley road below,
beneath
us as we fly.
Blissful
Lovingness is
where
all religions meet.
On
the corner of the street.
I
am the Burger King,
I
can eat anything.
Especially
a Double
Whopper
with cheese -
and
in reality the killer
stayed
up
all night.
STAVING
OFF THE WASTED
YOUTH
Please
wait while you are on hold,
your
secret world will not be sold,
and
while you work out what’s gone on,
we’ll
treat you to a song.
A
cow has sat upon the throne,
and
said
to travel by Smartphone,
for
all connection should
be long,
and
the
maths
you do is
not wrong.
Thank
you for waiting while I love you,
thank
you for searching for the truth,
there’s
only
one
God above you,
w/
medicine for a wasted
youth.
You’ve
been placed in a long queue,
but
everyone’s in love with you,
procrastinate
and find your crest,
I
think your love is best.
The
mashed potato that you ate
could
sell for millions in the Tate,
and
London renews sensation’s quest,
to
put your
mind at rest…
Thank
you for waiting while I love you,
thank
you for searching for the truth,
there’s
only
one
God above you,
w/
medicine for a broken tooth.
ECSTASIA
Ecstasia,
it
will find you,
ecstasia
will track you down,
wearing
your bro’s blue T-shirt,
somewhere
in a different town…
a
comedown can be difficult,
a
comedown can really hurt,
but
it’s going to be easier
in
your
brother’s blue
T-shirt.
Love,
it
will
wound you
then
forgive you all the same,
and
one day death will find you,
and
nobody
is to blame...
I’m
waiting at the foot of Black Combe,
I’m
waiting for
my true love,
and
E has no value in
maths
when
you come down from a Dove…
FULHAM
F. C.
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the best
we
are the best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the fucking best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the best
we
are the best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the fucking best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the best
we
are the best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the fucking best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the best
we
are the best
Fuck
you fuck you
we
are the best
we
are the fucking best
FABLE
How
much is that druggie in the window,
he’s
washing off Steve’s holographic beard,
in
the totally powerless shower,
he’s
making me feel pretty weird,
blah
blah black sheep
have
you any wool?
Yes
Sir, yes Sir,
ten
fucking kilos…
How
much is that druggie in the window,
I
think he’s gone beyond the pale,
they
made him a living art installation,
and
he wishes he’d stuck to the ale,
blah
blah black sheep
have
you any wool?
Yes
Sir, yes Sir,
ten
fucking kilos…
How much is that druggie in the window,
the vision I had has grown dim,
I can particle accelerate Nothingness,
but I can’t write a poem like Jim,
blah blah black sheep,
have you any wool?
Yes Sir, yes Sir,
ten fucking kilos.
HEY
MAN HEY
Hey
man hey what do you
have
to say about today?
These
new pube-shaving,
lecky-saving
times?
The
air seems slightly strange
to
me in all honesty,
but
I’m just a guy
that
plays hide and seek with rhymes.
I
lost my teddy in the void
when
I was paranoid,
now
all I am is all I owe...
at
least I dared to dream
unlike
a mechanoid
of
love the likes of
which
we still don’t know…
Well
scream is bad,
when
you go
quite mad
and
you lose your dad
and
the magpie
gets down
into
your bones…
and
you can’t come down
from
the under-town
like
a decaying clown
and
you know the truth
which
nobody owns.
So
you must obey the dust
in
which you trust
and
which lies at
the
bottom of everything
and
bore the Lord
with
your secret chord
and
your word-hoard
knowing
not just what
tomorrow
will bring.
LIQUID
MIRROR
The
night is alright under the electric light
and
I am thinking of you
how
we used to love each other
black
and blue forever
and ever
how
I used to watch over you
while
you slept and when
you
wept and
when
we leaped and love was fire
now
the light comes fair and even
hyperlink
to very Heaven
just
like it
was when love
was open
and
it is still full
of hoping
full
of groping full of dreams
love
has not gone stolen
pollen
lustful
London
lips
are swollen
and
liquid mirrors still run to the sea
where
the fish swim without insanity
even
though they have fucked eyes
we
already went there,
we
already did that
sometimes
you’re a willing dupe
and
sometimes a doormat
PHET ACCOMPLIS
Love, love, good for the brain,
the more you eat them,
the more you go insane.
Love, love, good for the heart,
the more you eat them,
the more you break apart.
They’re dissipating energy
with spiralling entropy,
falsifying vision with
indoctrinated feelings,
colouring perception
with vague mysticism,
you’ve been plugged in
to the mental health system.
Love, love, good for the brain,
the more you eat them,
the more you go insane.
Love, love, good for the heart,
the more you eat them,
the miracle will start.
They’re dissipating energy
with spiralling entropy,
falsifying vision with
indoctrinated feelings,
colouring perception
with vague mysticism,
you’ve been plugged in
to
the mental health system.
HIGH,
HOW
ARE YOU?
Oh
high,
how are you? I’m high and
I’m
new.
Oh
high,
how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.
Here
you come with your candle eyes
and
your big horizon and your higher skies
here
you come with a beautiful
smile
I’m
going to talk to you for a little while
oh
high,
how are you? I’m high and
I’m new.
Oh
high,
how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.
Here
you are with your hopeful stance
and
your lucky star and your backward glance
here
you are in the eye of my mind
let’s
hope we don’t go completely blind
oh
high,
how are you? I’m high and
I’m new.
Oh
high,
how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.
There
you go, with you angel tear,
and
your brand new car getting into gear,
there
you go, with your perfect skin,
can’t
wait until you come back again
oh
high,
how are you? I’m high, and I’m new.
Oh
high,
how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.
[reconstructed]
SNOWFLAKE
SONG
Snowflakes
are falling to the ground,
that’s
why the door-mouse makes no sound,
I
could sing in an imaginary tongue,
but
I find Klingon is best for song...
then
it’s up to birds to saaaaaaaaaay,
“hope
you have another blinding day.”
There
are no footprints out
there yet,
but
I might go out and lose a bet.
Sometimes
I
dream
of mapless space,
a
little
place
without X tattooed on its face.
So
then it’s
up to you
to saaaaaaay
“hope
you have another blinding day…”
snowfall
was
injecting smack
into
the
Universal Mind a while back,
and
now I’ve nothing left but tea
still
I think you’ll find it’s well enough for me...
so
now it’s up to me to saaaaaaaaay
“hope
you have another blinding day.”
I COME FROM THE JUNGLE
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle,
I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,
I come from the jungle,
I come from the jungle.
EVEN A DREAMWOMAN GETS BEAUTIFUL ELECTRICITY
A thesis as thin as the Rizla it’s in
can lead all the way to the loony bin
and make you forget just how to spell
Winnie the Pooh and get unwell...
but even a dreamwoman
gets beautiful electricity -
come with me, come with me.
The way she hugs my myriad mind
I’m flying through colour but colourblind,
I wish to escape the shape of the paper,
I wish to taste the waste of a flower...
for even a dreamwoman
gets beautiful electricity -
come with me, come with me.
Come with me love away from the violence,
I don’t want to take a vow of silence,
don’t want to have to conceal this feeling,
for feelings are not meant for concealing...
and even a dreamwoman
gets beautiful electricity -
come with me, come with me.
BARNESIE
Barnes’s goal against Brazil
it is the best I have seen still
it was not born under the hill
Barnes’s goal against Brazil
Barnes’s horse got on the course
they said to have more intercourse
so Barnes’s horse flew to the sun
when it got back it was no done
Barnes’s name is not in vain
for I’m the one who gets the blame
inside the flame when the game
has gone insane and is quite lame
Barnes’s nose I don’t suppose
objects to the way her garden grows
and the redolent rose strikes a pose
for the garden hose that no-one knows
Barnes’s wait is just for Kate
whom it would seem is Head of State
went on a date with a mate
and came back home so very late
CHRYSALIS
DAYBED MUSING
If
you said to me
I
would’ve fancied you
had
you not let it be known
that
you want to eat my bones
then
I’d say back to you
girl
I don’t want to eat your bones
but
of course all the while
I
want to eat your bones
but
I’ve not thought it through
for
if I’ve eaten your bones
yummy
as they may be
then
I can’t make love to you
but
if I suddenly said
and
this is coming from me
I
don’t want to eat your bones
it
would be the saddest thing
so
what I really mean
is
you are in my heart
you
are in my dreams
where
there are no bones
pulchritudinous
sylph
you’re
the reason to hope
like
a primrose in Hell
through
whom I would traipse
just
to hold you again
in
my slender long arms
quench
these insatiable
fire
alarms
and
that’s when we’d kiss
that’s
when we’d glow
that’s
when we’d shine
that’s
when we’d know
HOW TO BREAK THE LIGHT SPEED LAW OF NEUROPLASTICITY
You're The Juggernaut that's what you are
walk like an Egyptian and wriggle your little wing
like a winged chainsaw flying up in the cloud
swoop down and seal my soul and everything
For I'm the witness of this scene
I've read the pages of orange and green
I've got to keep my new yellow T-shirt clean
otherwise I'll offend the mating queen
On Grand-darth's Ship I went off a-sailing
suffice to say your horror-packet is served
and when I get back I think I'll give you a ring
for it's the least that you my demon have deserved
For I'm the witness of this scene
I've read the pages of orange and green
I've got to keep my new yellow T-shirt clean
otherwise I'll offend the mating queen
and when you score such a radical goal
it stays with you in your open, Holy soul
and you get no money and get no headlines too
but you've done what someone's just got to do
TEAR-JERKING
SENTIMENTAL ENDING SCENE
The
friends I’ve made
I’d
like to keep
and
brush their hair when
we
get to sleep
I
think this illness
is
a monster
chill
with the stillness
and
love yr brother
the
severed notebook
went
on for ages
with
no connection
in
all its severed pages
I
hate these voices
these
infernal voices
I
made my choices
they
were not James Joyce’s
now
I want to stay free
I
want to stay me
I
stay calm
in
all uncertainty
and
I want to stay cool
and
not be the fool
who
was the Smartest
kid
in school
O
crossroads of
all
inward spiral
I
hope your smile
does
not go viral
the
severed
notebook
itches
with skunkosis
in
my back pocket
pre-diagnosis
and
I now look back on
youth
that’s flown
over
the houses
into
the unknown
today
it’s snowing
there
is no knowing
if
the creative
juices
are flowing
and
I want to stay free
and
I want to stay me
and
I want to stay calm
in
all uncertainty
yes
I want to stay clear
as
a morning beer
now
that you know
I’m
the ancient seer
and
I live for you
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN:
CONCLUSION
Without
the <BEE> albums my book would be obscurantist and neo-phobic,
making me look like a cultural heathen, a remnant,
unoriginal hippy
lost
in
the modern, Digital Age; and with the <BEE> albums
you might even be forgiven for thinking it is (at
least in part) my
brother James’s book. It does contain the collaboration of the new
da Vinci circle, but it is largely
my
musical journey that is depicted, in my words and music. Still, the
only original idea as such in the whole book appears to be my brother
James’s idea: that <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the
international language alphabet. So
it’s
as if I was, for those four new da Vinci circle albums at
least,
loaned my brother’s guitar to see what I would do with it. I think
it at the moment the best book I have done, proceeding as it does
chapter by chapter through the albums I have made that are available
to listen to online, which lends the book a sense of order, a sense
of organisation that I greatly appreciate. If I had done this and
only this I would be happy… one of my old friends, Dr. Calculator
Ptom, said of my writing “it should’ve just been one book about
the band.” Although I haven’t included much of the material from
the band he himself named – Oedipus Wrecks – because it’s not
recorded – this would be the book in question, if I had to have
done only one. My sister thinks music can be 4D, and prefers song
lyrics to the monopolisation of indigenous wisdom in regimented
metres. Indeed, my other brother Dr. Robert (who
is the truly musical one in the family) says
my lyrics are “meant for wiping up semen” and that “art is
tending to the Low not High end these days.” So
it is that on a sunny morning in Cumbria I feel okay about this
venture. I am not claiming to be the new Bob Dylan or John Lennon,
though I know someone in the music world that once declared me better
than both and the most aloof artist since Nick Drake; I am just
setting my lands in order. It is good to sing, masculine even, in the
Oral Tradition of the bardic child. I am of the school that says if
you belt it out loud enough nobody will care if you can’t really
sing. My guitar meanwhile is quite good but they come much better
still. I would say the higher you climb in the branches of the tree
of academia, researching the maths for the new colour as a cellular
mark et al, the more you appreciate music, that universal language,
and the less you appreciate academia. Now I would appreciate input
from my bro who I
think is
asleep upstairs, so I can only ad-lib in impromptu fashion while I
wait. Now he comes downstairs as if he heard me think! “Thinking?”
he asks as
he steps in the room;
then we
speak about the new, glass chopping board I got for mum – that has
four bees on it. He asks what I did with the old one, but already I
notice that if I try and record everything of our one minute dialogue
of only a moment ago, most of it got away! So now he goes back
upstairs to his bedroom, and now I think of putting the sausages on,
because as
James pointed out they
go past their sell-by-date soon. Well,
we have been called Shaggy and Scoob before, and often talk about
food. So I put the sausages in the AGA and realise this book is a
correction on a former songbook called Soundcloud
Rain
that went wrong at some point; for after all Mrs. Zadie Smith says us
writers write to correct previous work. Jim Morrison pictured a wall
with a scratch on it and said we try to perfect the wall with further
scratches. While
the sausages sizzle, I reflect on what it means when your work is not
your own. One’s work should always be one’s own, not a Communist
ego-loss experiment, a poetry hive-mind or an omnijective interface
of random access co-imagination. But what when you hear voices? What
when you collaborate? What when other people are trying to use you?
What when your brother and mother want it to be one pool? What
I don’t like, is
when
I can’t
get away from influence. I believe in individual genius, and I
believe in my own individual genius too. As I have said I don’t
feel like going on about it, but am someone who helped invent the net
at 7, took care of The
Lords And The New Creatures
twice at 8, was marked by an experiment into the maths of the new
colour as a cellular mark at 11, attained the face of stars at 15,
forewarned of September 11th
at 18, in 2000, and also at 18 among other things got 100% in an
English Literature A-level examination essay. You also know what I
went on to do after leaving school, including
recording
on earphones, hosting the Plough alignment, getting a renegade First
despite mental illness, working at the purple screen, building the
Tower, conducting the experiment into the tape with a pause,
discovering the sheet where pictures grew and all of it was not for a
penny. I think if I was a neutral and someone described someone like
that to me I would believe they were one of the main geniuses that
had ever lived, and now the sausages are sizzling and I gather the CV
is why they had to do <BEE> through me, and so on
top of it all, I came out as a fifth rate musician who was completely
misguided in going into music. So:
that’s why the book is alright: it’s not high and mighty,
elitist, exclusive. It’s something any old person can do, and do at
least as well as me. It’s egalitarian,
it’s Amateur,
it’s Hobbyist, it’s D. I. Y. It
neglects to turn any situation in my CV to my own personal advantage.
So I eat a cooked breakfast and settle on this; and
afterwards make mum her morning coffee as I do every day. She wants
James to turn the AGA down a bit because it’s so hot; so I
go
upstairs, see that he’s eaten the full English breakfast I made
him, tell him she wants him to turn down the AGA; and he asks why I
can’t do it; so supposing it will make no difference if it is me, I
turn it down, turning the notch slightly, a CM, clockwise, which
might suffice as a whole plot where I am coming from. As my dead dad
used to say when he was a kid: “I’ll do it my lone.” So I did
it my lone and now here I am, thinking of investing some money into
publishing the present text. I
rather think it would make me happier. The
Flood meanwhile – now that they know it was me that had the idea to
invent the binaural earphones – don’t even wish for me to be the
“seer” associated with Sea Ness. The locals up here know me as
the seer. I was walking past a house once
and
there were two people in the front garden; and as I walked past, one
of them said to the other “that’s the one that’s the seer.”
Why The Flood would want to take this away from me as well I have no
idea. There were other inventions delimited in the conversation in
the barn in 2000 with my brothers. A
virtual death machine to wake you up. A word-chord synthesiser at the
edge of selection. A drug called “Strictly Free” that does what
it says on the tin, is and makes you strictly free to consume. A
red-bleeding type-writer inside a ping-pong ball. An holographic
horse-cock wheeled in the bedroom. An invisible square of air called
‘Mosaic by Darth Vader’ stroked on telly. A neutraliser drink
that sobers you up in one quick instant. The monolith from 2001:
A Space Odyssey
protruding from the oldest fell at ten to eight. A
love-bomb exploding in a Chaos Theatre. Earphones
implanted with tiny mics inside them so that you can record on them
were
in among them. There were also ambitions, loads of them, and
prophecies, loads of them too, and aphorisms, as in philosophical
points. I think when I mentioned in the Flood song called ‘The
Warning’ the line “knife ready to treat the pain,” I wasn’t
just being carnivalesque for the sake of earphones but referencing
that conversation in the barn as if what
it amounted to was that I
had designed a pen knife with too many ludicrous tools! I don’t
like the way everything I was speaking of came true, and the way I
seem to have been the invisible benefactor of culture. I had even
spoken of a party in an office block where all the internal walls are
removed and every floor represents a decade in music, drugs and
fashion. Again a little while after talking of it, I actually
attended the thing itself in London. There were several examples
including getting the name and classification of my future University
tutor’s unpublished paper bang on as an ideal for a book I myself
would write. He
published it between me speaking of it in the barn and my attending
Warwick University two years later. He
later conceded yes it was mine, if I was the witness, which I was.
The Plough alignment was also one and the God Particle another.
Ambitions meanwhile included bringing back the Summer
of Love
and engendering simultaneous orgasm of Man. I
was searching for an aesthetic anti-system like the colours of the
vowels in English, looking to replace archaic ‘gay,’ dreaming of
conducting an experiment into the international language alphabet,
before James made his diagrams. But
it’s the uncanny level of prescience that lends me to being the
seer. This
is why some people think I was raped. I had to attend University as a
proven prophet who
had foreseen September 11th
as a schoolboy and
have the staff repeat back to me things I had mentioned in the barn.
At
the end of it they said if I was on the left I would’ve been paid
for
what I had done with my life,
but I have no allegiance to any known party whatsoever. Some present
during my prophetic speeches in
2000 remember
that I actually founded a new religion based on the elephant. Some
people think to deal with me would require a new Biblical book, as
part of the Third Testament, because the face of stars for example
was scripted in the Bible. I
was even the guy that coined the word “amazeballs” but I’d long
since stopped using it by the time it came into fashion. To not have
a penny after all this isn’t right, eh? And what is at fault in the
system that means I can have no more to give or do or offer or see in
the room and yet haven’t earned 1p? This
is where I am stuck, because I can’t think of a single governing
body in this age that hands out rewards or payment for tasks such as
I have achieved. The nearest I can think of is the Nobel Prize but I
haven’t deserved one of those for there are others that did more
than me when it came to inventing the net; and the mark left by the
experiment into the maths of the new colour is private; and the face
of stars meanwhile scripted in the Bible. So it is that I find myself
– well, a noble servant of the poetry world who carries out amazing
tasks for nothing – and I have only
just started
to entertain that I was raped – and that there was a transmission
at the moment the planes hit the Towers as I had foreseen. Come to
think of it, if you spoke against September 11th
in 2000, in a great, brave speech full of hyper-intelligence, then
when the planes still
hit
the Towers you were indeed raped. I
wouldn’t be surprised if the same was also the case for Everything
else in the conversation too, because of September 11th.
So that is what happened: I evolved, and was raped. Finding
out about it at last, coming to terms with it, can not come soon
enough. I
was talking about gypsy poetry in the English centre, about fire on
Tap, about all sorts of amazing things – overthrowing the conscious
self-censor – appointing a superhuman narrator called FUCK – and
over the next few years would largely hear it all back aimed in my
general direction by secondary sources. I was talking about usurping
the burning torch of culture. The aphorisms were strong but not worth
repeating herein. So it is the day I come to terms with the fact that
I was raped. There are those in the poetry business that only want to
see things up to a certain age, like 21, cutting the trajectory off
before the illness, but then what would happen to the recorded music?
Hannah says much of my best material has been written and recorded
since then, as does Grant. If we were going by the mental illness
rule, we’d only really have the earphone album, plus, arguably,
some of the old songs newly recorded if they would be permitted. I
have been looking at a previous file since I found out I was raped –
a file of early
songs
and poems mixed – but
it doesn’t please me that much. I
guess with James’s diagram we find the actualisation and summary of
all that Poetic Stuff I was talking about in the barn, and that I
must trust others who have said my new songs are quite good, even
when the poetry business is baying for me to cut the trajectory
decades ago. I
guess I had to keep writing to find that moment of self-knowledge: I
evolved, and was raped. Smells from tellies, the Age of Enchantment
as an echo of the Enlightenment, another immaculate conception now
that it’s the year 2000 – you name it, it was in the speech. To
start a new religion. Even to make a room made of hash which the
audience blow torch as an art installation. I even said my moral
hygiene would only endorse real live death in the cinema if it was
the euthanasia of some old granny, if she volunteered. There was even
something said about the Doors computer game. My philosophy was
pacifistic. Then in the middle of it all my bro asked me what I
thought of the film Fight Club and I said if it were real someone
would fly two planes into the Twin Towers on September 11th
and I don’t think it a good idea but someone might. So having
spoken against it, and it having still happened, I was therefore
raped. So I would like to lighten the mood, but struggle for words,
and am thinking of my other brother Dr. Bob and his young family away
in Italy. The maths for the new colour as a cellular mark wouldn’t
go down very well right now. It’s a good job I kept writing, if it
lead me to the truth.
FURTHER
LISTENING
To
listen to The Flood, visit Tom Woodhall’s page on Soundcloud.
To
listen to my first solo album, ‘Songs To Record With Earphones’
[Demo 3], visit John F B Tucker’s Soundcloud page.
To
listen to the four albums of the new da Vinci circle, visit John F B
Tucker on Bandcamp.
To
listen to material by Black Hole Myths and
other collaborations,
visit Grant Aspinall on Bandcamp.
To
listen to ‘Unplugged At The Foot of Sea Ness’ visit John F B
Tucker on Bandcamp.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
He
found himself on a plane.
He
found himself on a.
He
found himself on.
He
found himself.
He
found.
P.
III
FULL
TO REDEEM A DREAM OF FREEDOM
Once again it falls on me to be the one to say
that biding my time from here to eternity
to see if the lawn has sprung a flower
watch out for the Honda lawnmower:
for I mow the grass where the Plough aligns.
I try to keep to neat, symmetrical lines.
When the first, fresh, redolent, enervating
scent of change begins its fermenting
on the ego-loss breeze it is my duty
to the Natural World and all her beauty
to mow the grass – a foot high with neglect,
it was today, but owing to my respect
it’s been cut down, mowed over. Well,
I love the smell of petrol more than the smell
of a fresh Christmas tree, and to do
something with my life is also new
reward in itself. It’s not like I get paid -
but it redeems a dream of freedom in my head.
Now when my mother looks out the glass,
she doesn’t have to look at foot-high grass,
but sees her plants in all their little pots,
their little de-institutionalisations and bets,
and the dog rolls around like he’s found
Paradise down there on the ground.
0
RANDOM ACCESS CO-IMAGINATION
Simon says The River Goyt
might become the Styx in Heaven.
Will says something about who you
think of touching yourself in the shower.
I say maybe all I need is a length,
need is a length of metal chain.
Dave says it’s rude to repeat
the shift of feet down the corridor.
Raymond says let’s have one more
crumble from your dad’s pollen.
Jesus sits at the right hand
of the Lord God our Father.
Paul asks wear an emotional
condom before you f**k my mind, man.
Mother says imagination is a
muscle and language a creature.
Hal says I know you spoke
against September 11th in 2000.
Mark knows that I said a clock
is only as fast as a cheetah.
Andy says “I know the chords
to this tune by Bob Dylan.”
Dad said Dylan was religion,
to listen to on Sunday when younger.
Mandy says the main attraction
of drug-taking is the connections
you make with other people -
but I for one will just have butter.
Bex says I'm right it's impossible
to remember a new yellow line.
Mother says I must remember
when I go out to shut the door.
Dexter says I was right that
my dad used to smuggle pollen
and that the art smuggling story
was just an elaborate cover.
Mark says something like there
is no virtue beyond fashion -
or was it no vice I cannot
quite remember anymore.
FRAGMENTS TO SCATTER IN THE WIND IN THE COMBE FIELD
For money, you cannot ignore them,
the house-pipes glugging a guilty gulp from
a big, culpable jug of the ug of drug or
smuggle or Ugly Truth Revealed Inside.
*
You wish to make words chime like bells,
reverberating up in the fells and strike
a warm, psychic chord, with a word-hoard
that bores The Lord to cease with the cancer.
*
This time, you hope to note the loose,
Betfair jingle of shingle lifted from
the big, flat bird-table when cars arrive in
Cumpstones drive or if they leave.
*
You intend to twice reference the MacBethian
treeline of windmills, with their Mercedez
Benz sign arms revolving out there
on the vertical wall of the Irish Sea.
*
As a fellwalker you smell a free dream on
the breeze wherever you walk in this
bucolic spot, encouraged by the grizzly
drone of the tractor in the background.
*
You love the fresh, redolent, enervating
scent of change fermenting on the ego-loss breeze,
the ferment of music in your head,
the tidal roar of wind in the trees.
*
The edge of The National Park is only
demarcated by traffic lights, on the
bridge over the trout-brown Duddon,
decorated with appropriate faces for the waiting.
*
How the Plough alignment, holy cow,
that goes by the name of “white eyebrow,”
has only worked for a rhythm change in
the White House in my whole lifetime, I do not know.
*
If literature from the city is of alienation
and born from rootedness, it's just repetitive,
the city's the intellectual breeding ground,
and rural life is closer to how we ought live.
*
It's but a myth that countryfolk are dim
just because the rhythm of life is slower,
and that there are tunnels lined with free beer
dispensers, torches and fruit machines in the fell.
*
You reckon the artistic centre of the universe
is ubiquitous, the same ideas available
everywhere on Tap, and a religion can not
be transplanted from its indigenous landscape.
*
The Enlightenment is still the simultaneous
astrological and sociological de-centering
of Man and the White House its child
in terms of both philosophy and build.
*
A bullet to the top of the telegraph pole
standing in the Combe field before the fell
will only wed you to the mating queen in dreams
and the pole itself is already Robert Lowell.
*
My brother and I mow the grass here
for nothing, for mother, and we share
the workload, dividing the front and back
and it takes a day, still excluding up the beck.
*
Mrs. Bloggins’ Goldfish Has Just Died!
That is the shocking truth revealed inside,
a burlesque newsprint headline, sending
up the parochialism of the same old situation.
*
The Tower is a mad childishing, containing
the fume of the mating queen, a mystery -
and a vanished line: “history is a way of thinking
about history without thinking about history.”
*
I ignored those shoplifters of the world uniting
in a loose, nerveless ballet of looting,
when weird, sudden giants have knocked a new door
that will not lock for all the docs of the law.
*
It is later that we think said WH Auden,
like meaning comes after in riots and art,
like Rimbaud bemoaning the French peasants only
revolting to loot and burn, no coup d'etat.
*
If liberalism is the allowing of all perceptions
and it leads to Hamlet's harmatia irresolution,
pragmatism can be the reactivation
of an attitudinisation in that situation.
THE
MYSTIC VISIONARY
(For
Robert)
The
bond between a mother and her son
should
be one of unconditional love,
not
limited by language barriers,
different
appellations for the light.
Under
the moon, I love my mother
as
I loved my father too, whom
it
would seem would deem it jolly good,
the
food we ate in Italy recently.
Orange
is the sun when it sets there too and
then
in the clouds Heaven’s bars
sell
upturned jars of sunset, making
you
claim that even plastic can grow.
The
colour of a red toy car with my
fingerprints
on it could then seem to be “detuned”
like
a guitar string, and counting numbers
seem
steps down into the earth...
I
love the bones my mother grew
inside
her warm womb long ago now,
before
the trauma of birth separated us,
and
I
face
the music, dreaming big.
Wow!
I can’t believe the things I’ve
touched
with my own fingers but
my
fingers
have crashed, I type, and my
mad,
crashed fingers have connected.
SQUALIA
These
are excellent: Squalia, (as opposed to Qualia),
they
could seem the status life details of a katabatic
descent
towards Rock Bottom: a bed in a shed;
taking
notes on receipts, Rizla papers, train tickets,
the
backs of packets; wearing naff tracky bottoms
lifted
from ASDA and splattered with white
emulsion
paint from doing up the band’s house
like
a badge of honour; eating discarded Danish
pastries
from
the Co-op supermarket bin at the fringes of
society.
Still,
Squalia
could also be revamped with intensity.
For
example, what is the street-name for Ecstasy
when
the band detune the guitars all the way down?
F
sharp minor is the answer and the name of a number
by
the band. It being recorded on
state-of-the-art,
binaural
earphones, earphones
I tell you, with
tiny
mics implanted inside, on that very weird album on
which
I said I would plug my senses in the mains,
may
be the reason I now hear soooo many voices.
They
may be Squalia re-defined as squatters,
people
who pay no rent or electricity as I didn’t
back
in the days of said band. I was kicked out
of
the band for weird behaviour; for instance I came
home
from the pub, intoxicated on a cocktail
of
noxious toxins of deleterious self-derision and
launched
into a speech in an imaginary language
no-one
could understand, keeping it up for half
an
hour, ad-libbing it, impromptu while rolling
around
like in a neo-shamanic ritual on the ground.
Just
when they thought they had lost me forever,
I
went and had sex with the shed’s
cold,
concrete floor
on
Ecstasy, and it wasn’t long before I was booted
out
of my own band. The Flood we were called
and
were a Cambridge-based jam band who only
recorded
on
binaural earphones. By the time
I
got home to the north I was angry and walked
up
the fell, ranting in the cassette tape wind. I
did
not know who had phoned my mum, concerned,
and
had her
collect me.
I still don’t, but no longer
care,
for all I embarked on a program of meditation,
detox,
dreamwork, reading and exercise, and
despite
a
mental illness kicking in,
still
got
a
good degree as if I had wilfully walked away
from
music to pursue poetry and become
a graduate.
-
I
conceived of Lancaster University
as a type of word-guitar
made
by Fender whereupon
the
voices came to
me.
They
said
among
many other things that I should
“lose
the book or the guitar” which
is a very difficult
decision
to make and one I still have not made absolutely.
WHEN F LEFT THE ALPHABET
“When F left the alphabet albeit temporarily
I got the results of my test, proving
I’m autistic, an high-functioning autist.
My brother then set up a recording studio
in the posh, coffee-cake dining room, whose
digital buttons and layers and codes even
entered my dreams at night after a while.
I recorded many numbers old and new...
when Baxter the dog walks on the laptop
funny things come out, like the names
of electronica numbers; and the sound
of typing can be used as percussion in
non-metred Sound Art, I also found.
There was even brief relief from voices,
‘onjects,’ quavers, syllabubbles, sonic
machinations at the periphery of sound,
while I faced the music, while I recorded.
Still, I came back to the silence of the
blank page where I might hang life like a coat
in a primary school cloak room, just because.
I wanted to say any word can be spelled in
any way, any guitar solo played any way,
that all discipline boundaries have dissolved,
all the subjects become one thing, life,
whereupon one might turn to philosophy…
but now everything has returned to normal and
I am glad for while F had left the alphabet
there was no longer any word for Freedom.
So to try and write in wrinkled and crinkly
Christmas wrapping paper becomes a good
game all over again, and food for thought
a priority, and the translation of feelings.”
HALF
OF IT
A
river running
through variegated ages of rock
seems
to contain
many ages at once
like
the
books
groaning
on
the
shelf.
A
rock star meanwhile can change costume
many
times during an
exciting
performance
and
still somehow resound
as
himself.
It
isn’t the river or the rock star, changing
gear,
that so amazes the soul, though,
but
something more globular
and holistic.
The
Rolling Stones became The Strolling Bones;
and
then
the
art teacher said to put
more
pink
in the shadow to make it more realistic.
MY BROTHER’S POEM
I didn’t script the net (and cloud) at seven,
try the maths for the new colour as a skin cell,
separate the pollen from its very name;
didn’t deal with Jim Morrison twice as well.
I didn’t attain the face of stars,
forewarn people of September 11th
in 2000, prophesy the Plough’s
alignment, the God Particle from looking
at dust in a late ray of light angling
in nor get my future tutor-to-be’s
scientific paper just right as an
ideal for a book I might write
before I had even gone and met him.
I didn’t pen the highest-marked A-
level examination essay in the nation.
I didn’t have many arcane musical
experiments on the go all at the same time:
the effervescent mobile, the healing
of the tape that was cut and stuck together
in the flimsy reel, the recording
on binaural earphones, the tattooing
of Piper At The Gates of Dawn. I didn’t
host the alignment of The Plough and
the oldest fell Black Combe upon
Mr. Obama’s democratic election.
I didn’t attest to large-scale skywriting,
find the pint glass exploding from
thin air in the capital to be but a piece
of pollen in the general pollen count.
I didn’t build the Tower, work at a
numinous, purple-bleeding screen.
I didn’t, upon the loss of my father,
make the discovery of a sheet of
paper that bloomed or even grew
pictures probably depicting the lyric of a song
I wrote with my own doing hand.
I didn’t falsify the Nirvana barcode, then;
didn’t do whatever it took to attain
visual radio, broadcasting dreams,
dreams that billow like a weeping
willow in the wind, and swirl in purple,
digital swathes about the head
of the deranged seer; and come down.
I don’t think the “gestation chamber”
T. S. Eliot writes of in which the poem’s
“dark embryo” grows has now become
an inbox to empty in the Digital Age.
I don’t find it hard to have my story known.
I don’t hope that through some kind of
irony, some kind of ironic self-
distance, I’ve finally cracked it.
TO THE BROS IN THE DEN IN THE WOODS
I imagine now telling the bros in the den
in the woods my theory about the chain
of dark or even anti-evolution, that says
James Joyce, who also saw new creatures,
writing Ulysses is the reason why Ted
saw a monster in the river in childhood
who in turn wrote The Hawk In The Rain
which is then the reason Jim Morrison
saw winged serpents in the desert on acid,
whom we know is never quite flaccid,
and his writing The Lords And The New
Creatures is then why I saw not one but two
which I shall not delve into quite yet
but which I shall never again clean forget -
the bros in the den in the woods might well
fall in with my scoffed at, empurpled Hell -
and with freed minds start to write poetry
to read out under the fallen down tree
in amidst the empty beer cans and ends
of cigarettes dumped there by their friends -
but what their fair maiden female companion
would make of the chain of dark evolution
could be that it's a bundle of fairy tales
unlike the crawling of actual snails
whereas I know the whole thing to be real -
and if I could but show you how I feel -
would have you convinced that I'm right
but not well in the head, at least not quite -
which leaves me standing like a tall tree
in the wood where we used to read our poetry
which did, back when we were young,
and getting a foot on the ladder's first rung.
DEFACED
It’s actually a rather saddening story for now
I’d be in and out of hospital for the rest of my days,
still my father thought it hilarious, how,
when I was first hospitalised I ran away,
on my first escorted walk in the grounds,
through a field and across a busy motorway
and up a serpentine trainline to the station
from which I made it to Scotland by train,
thinking there’d be a different jurisdiction -
but oh how my athletic efforts were in vain!
The cops found me wandering that other nation
and took me south of the border again!
I’d been put under a curse unbeknownst to me...
forced to abide by the stringent rules,
I sat back in hospital writing poetry
in a waiter’s pad, inventing brave new schools,
smoking on the banks of the Styx of sweet tea,
calling the conspiracy of doctors fools!
I scored a question mark on the musical scales
in my writing, in that place so clean,
such a sterile-surfaced Hell, run by females,
while Rachel’s party far away on the green
summit of Parliament Hill went down with pale ales
and left me to dream of the space in-between.
I’ve got a degree since then. My feeling is
that the ill are capable of increased lucidity
but I rue the new remit: not to dream with open eyes,
nor await the future with rapt uncertainty,
not to plug my senses in the mains, but de-stigmatise
mental illness. It doesn’t come naturally.
TEACHING MY SISTER THE SILENT ALPHABET
In bed, at night, have you ever reached the point
where word and muscle meet – where you
attempt to think in words without moving
a muscle in your mouth and stumble
upon the secret, white, silent alphabet?
There are certain letters, certain sounds
you simply cannot think without
a twitch from your mouth muscles -
so you play dead. You lie there and
try and underwrite the thoughts…
some graphemes, phonemes, plosives
and fricatives are possible in silent,
white and secret thought alone but
no utterance seems completely pronounced.
The silent alphabet thus has several letters
missing; and by dawn you might still
be lying there, awake, trying and trying
to think the word “whisky” without
a movement of the tongue. It can
be done but is found further in
the mind, where hands can not go.
That’s why seeing in the dark is so tough.
THE LADDER TO THE HAYLOFT
That a clock is only as fast as a cheetah,
running round and round on the stones
seems to be a young kid’s scientific finding.
That a clock is only as fast as a wounded
cheetah, struggling with fifteen balls in
the air, seems more artistic, subjective too.
That oceans smile with liquid eyes and fill
themselves with rain could be hypertext,
hypertext of Verlaine’s famous credo.
That I. T. may stand for Instant Travel too
could be nothing but a bone-idle pipe dream,
dreamed up on pot at a computer screen.
That Lucy in the soul with demons may
be an actual substance is almost chemistry,
almost musicology; and then I’m gone.
That Portability is the Apotheosis of Form
could be nothing but the modern narrative,
and apply across the board when you’re away.
That if flower-press ending on cannabis
could = a dialysis a love poem hoping
to impress poor Flora could = more a motor
seems to be an aesthetic anti-system
and satisfies the desire for something
like the colours of the vowels in English.
That the effect of acid and the effect of acid-rain
on an imaginary species should = the same,
nothing, is not necessarily true if there
can be no more proof of something being
real than saying it was imagined, which
seems both Blake-like and Cartesian too.
That the effect of global warming on the
unicorn is a postmodern id is eco-poetic,
eco-poetry being all about an awareness.
That it’s impossible to remember a new
yellow line, under the madding sun, could
be the Light-speed Law of Neuroplasticity.
That love is the hope the heart literally
needs in order for it to survive without
which it can stop is a stance before life.
That Duff is H suspended in deafness
could be history as much as anything else,
even ‘horse’ or ‘how about the housework?’
That Dog = pi times MC squared could be
the equation for a power-cut at the foot of
Black Combe, three miles from Millom, or
like plugging the senses in the mains; and
that O is the key of the babbling unicorn
is more musical Nature poetry again. Lastly,
that fire’s effect on fire could = nothing
minus nothing could be nothing but mere
speculation and conjecture; or even Nirvana.
Then the Problem 1 in that Popperian,
epistemological sense is how to get down
again, safely, before the wind topples you over.
And so I have invented Backward Liquid
Maths, for my brother and I to share,
and I hope for each a peach in the wheel.
LOOKING CLEARLY AT MY SADNESS
It goes much faster does a dying animal;
which only reminds me grief does not account
for the kitchen clock’s tick tock panning, bilateral
and moving through the room with no scent
like a Disney animation clock. And so I see
my sadness clearly and sing my heart’s song.
We remediate the immediate predicament with tea.
We dream of a kingdom where nothing’s wrong.
A crow is squawking on a tree in the garden.
Crows, dogs, horses, trees, these are our friends.
To Nature I turn for solace, her truant compensation
while a lonely winter’s new fag-end burns.
Grey like a pencil is the new day dawning
here at the foot of the Lakeland’s oldest fell,
grey like a rabbit, full of puddles blinking,
templates in The Periodic Table starting to swell…
day is an abeyance that dissimulates the vacancy
of fish-eyes sipped on. Monastic mist
flies across the fell. Everything is so watery.
You have to live here and now, not in the past.
I dreamed that we went swimming in eyewash.
Then I ate a breakfast of every snooker ball colour.
To trollop I turned, then to niceness, then balderdash.
As for the poet’s role, nothing could be duller.
A FACT ON TIME
I know a fact on Time,
but not if it will last:
if we could build a time machine
that equalled light speed,
we could only go back
to resolve the past,
not into the future,
for that has not yet happened.
That was where I was at
back when I was ten.
The science man came
to talk to us at school.
Though I was a poet,
was a poet even then,
I liked the science man,
I thought that he was cool.
From dinosaurs to lightspeed
he showed us the way,
from fossils to the future,
we were instructed,
and everyone paid
special attention that day,
that day that is a fossil
where our futures were constructed.
THE LOCAL TRAIN LINE
You can go backwards to Christmas on a train
and often I would, and sometimes doze.
Squirrels can fly if perceived in the caravan
of trees sailing past through railway train windows -
windows that taste like an old copper coin.
I remember taking the train on schooldays
from the local village’s request stop station
to the industrial town they call Barrow-in-Furness,
round the estuary which Norman Nicholson
mapped in a poetry that remains matchless.
So many birds can be observed when on
that journey, already feeling semi-famous.
The gentle arrhythmia cajoles you into a lull,
the sound of the wreckety wreckety wreck.
When you get on it’s empty, but it is full
at the end of the journey like a swollen beck.
I would already smoke pollen at school.
At the end of the schoolday I would travel back.
Now as I write I hear the train toot its horn.
I won’t get on it anymore, not since COVID,
and since becoming so paranoid within
that I prefer to not venture all the way outside,
into the town, that is. So here I remain,
survivor of a pathetic attempt at suicide.
Tiny engines may rev up on pellucid glass,
augmenting the sense of cosiness you feel,
when heading for school, for an A-level class
about the meaning of Caliban and Ariel.
The Sixth Form girls would giggle at me as
I sat there reading a book of Robert Lowell.
Going to the private school meant I never
cheered up and joined in with the human race.
If there is a difference between being clever
and having what they call moral compass,
we should all sit together, and endeavour
to unite while keeping intact our difference.
The telegraph poles went flowing past.
Counting them I never picked a favourite.
I’d hope for the flow of the day to go fast.
If the weather was rubbish I’d get used to it.
Achieving my dream of being the best essayist
was easier when I put my sober mind to it.
A boy I was, mewling and puking to school,
feigning High Indifference when there.
Back then the currency was in being cool.
Exciting was the license to scent the air.
The music I collected was the sacred pool.
I was in love with a girl with brown hair.
Sometimes we’d bunk off and go walking
in a kind of pantheistic or animistic trance,
or sleep in caves; or stay up talking -
but never once did she see me dance!
To Amsterdam and Paris we went gallivanting -
to see the museums – to not waste the chance.
At the end of school I went down south
and broke off the relationship in doing so,
started to let ecstasy pills into my mouth,
worked some boring jobs and went with the flow.
The train was a gullet, gulping back and forth.
Sometimes we’d travel under a rainbow.
FULCRUM
Floating
in the quiet of a weightless dawn,
the
buzzard is the crux of the flux of time,
the
reason the colour of Cumbria is brown;
and
his mating call is a primal scream;
and
then he swoops, streamlined, down,
far
from the world of pretence and dream,
to
remind that Creation is a dark machine,
to
mug his prey, packed
with dynamism.
He
knows, that is, how to obviate not titivate,
sate
his quest for meat, how to fling
to
his bright ring, his peerless orbit,
and
like a balancing act to just hang,
in
the fire-streaked dawn’s young light,
sensing
his prey below, without a pang
of
conscience for the inevitable death of it,
free
as the air in my self-healing lung…
Imagination,
I would reckon,
has engendered
this
bird, and that faculty can heal the split
in
the psyche, duality. Unencumbered
the
buzzard is, when he swoops to eat.
The
days of his prey below are numbered.
He
shows how Creation is no mean feat -
imagined,
not observed or remembered,
he
has bad
manners but is still discrete.
THE EMOTIONAL CONDOM OF THE WORLD
I heard we grew our great brains by eating meat
and, needing to spread information about it,
about farming, hunting, killing, eating things
developed words for birds that sing with their wings...
now, the pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, translated
into words, via the mechanics of meaning, is diluted.
Language is the emotional condom of the world,
into which we are all so traumatically hurled.
One day we may learn to eat language, but for now
I’ll settle for the rump of the local farmer’s cow.
CONFESSIONAL POEM
I still think of you, all these years on,
from all those years we had. You
used to make us sleep with the light
on and I still do – for it feels like
switching that switch will flush
the past down the drain. That’s where
years of writing went when at the end
of our time together, you said “I don’t
want to be in it.” So I could only bin it.
All those times we went off exploring
just “to look at trees,” as you put it -
on the premise that “there should
still be room for Nature in the Future...”
I remember that I did document a
lot of it - but it’s gone. There were
inward journeys too, like a poem is the
opposite of a bus ticket - and I remember
when we drove into the Lakes from
some other place and I wrote down
every sign along the way for a poem -
how semantics is a road sign not a place!
Well, that too is gone – all the love
poems gone - and there were, well, poems
born of recreational drug use for
the sake of literary experiment, and it’s
all gone - under Gondwanaland like
the pollen, under the green hill like
the ecstasy pill. For it was all for you,
and you are no longer in my new life.
There was even one about the neo-London
skyline as a part of the Tube service,
but I was with you when I wrote it
so it too is gone. Even the dreamwork
diary I kept won’t work with you gone.
At least some of the melodies remain;
but I’m too old to make it as a pop star,
prance round in a vapid pose suitable
for the rebellion of youth – no, it is
as a poet that I wish to leave my sting.
It seems unfair that I was faithful, and
it’s all my work that’s now destroyed, but
I suppose it could be worse: I could have
grown homosexual through the onslaught.
Maybe I did and just don’t know it yet.
LONDON FLASHBACK
London is a craven haven for corrupting taste.
Police motorbikes were being chased by the waste.
I spent a year down there after my degree -
even slept rough – but didn’t feel that free.
The riots were lootings: Christmas on earth
didn’t follow on in the town of my birth.
I busked for next to nothing, saw old friends
but abandoned ship – my each adventure tends
to me crawling home, puking, apologising profusely
to inward grace – senses broken loosely -
and now I sit sipping tea at the foot of the fell,
in a large country house not ready to sell.
There’s a beck in the back and we’re agreed
I am even allowed to write of it if I need -
no Poetry Police who have never read any
poetry will stop me, although not for a penny
I have worked for them… and I cast my mind back
to the daughters of London. The Plough and Black
Combe had aligned by the time I went down.
I lived in the East, it was like an undertown.
I drifted and loafed and smoked too much.
A Londoner by birth, I still am one as such -
but no longer hang with the cutting edge crowd -
I guess they wander lonely inside the cloud!
And no I didn’t pull when I was on holiday,
except a gay experience, though I walked away...
and soon had a dream bigger than a dream,
for which the gnomic nomenclature is “drum,”
characterised by cosmic freedom, bounding
in circles in space. Already daggers of lightning
in the storm were part of a God Simulation;
and I woke feeling cleansed, with re-aligned perception.
Still, back to the sticks, I came by rattling train
unsure if I will ever make it down there again.
CUMULO-NIMBUS HAIR
The powers that be could be clouds,
passing by on their sky-blue roads…
today they are sparse and moving East,
not too slowly, and not too fast.
It’s warm outside for Autumn time.
As a child I thought Autumn Optimus Prime -
that Transformer from the kids’ cartoon.
I still think there’s something in
the personification – a triumphant sense -
for Prime is the sum of all difference
connected – that Sigma where everything meets;
and Autumn is likewise a God in Keats.
But speaking of weather only shows I am
amicable as a person. The strawberry jam,
meanwhile, has all run out on scones;
and so as if to blunt, yellow crayons
I return to art at the foot of the fell,
where it might all be “signed by everwell”
but isn’t, for that may be too untrue,
and just for something, anything to do!
If clouds were really in charge above
they’d look down on the world of love
and legalise soft, Moroccan pollen
and make all kinds of English education
the same high standard and free
and as they passed towards the sea,
cancel cuts to benefits and to the tax
on the rich…. they’d encourage sex
instead of war, and keep the room
temperature in the months of gloom
above a certain level for people over
a certain age for free with all their power -
and all their power would still pass,
as we lay out on the back lawn’s grass
and watched them go, wearing ripped genes
adorned with peace and anarchy signs,
and DM boots on the red brick road,
away to dump their wet, rainy load...
with this idea of State I quite agree;
but it would be an Impracticable Democracy!
A REALIST VISION OF WINTER
If winter has her compensations,
they might be found in the rosy cheek
of the woman waiting at the station’s
tentative platform in the week;
in a layer of frost crisp underfoot;
in the breath making tortuous, iron
statues in the emaciated light;
in the whole gulp of white sun
going blind behind a thorny tree,
splintering into a thousand shards
like a coruscation of divinity;
in staying in and playing cards
beside a roaring sitting room fire;
in chimney smoke against a canvas-sky;
in a little sprinkling of icing sugar
on the tops of fells as we drive by…
soup and hearty stews as well.
If Christmas has become a mad, red
rush of consumerism, such detail
cannot be bought, so I’m not sad -
sad to see the wintry trees all bare,
sad the days are dark and short.
There is no cause for dark despair
when winter’s visions can’t be bought.
HIGH
BROW FARM
There’s
no psycho-sensitive
fire
alarm sounding out
at
High brow Farm, full
of fear and doubt
but
the horses listen to the radio
and
the artists say it’s best to aim low.
I
went along with a melody sweet
to
a
fairy-haunted artistic retreat.
The
kettle ascended like a cathedral
choir
to
a silent scream and the host made a fire
whose
faces flickered and lithely
danced
and
left the observer almost entranced…
we
piled on the money when it was roaring
and
through conversation our
spirits were soaring.
We
spoke about the art adorning the walls,
how
one day there well may be stalls
selling
tickets when the place has become
akin
to the Northern
Tate
as a museum!
When
I left I was down
but soon went back
where
names had tastes and Thursday was black
and
loafed in the garden drinking tea
in
the great, amassing shade of a tree.
I
saw lithe
spirits flowing
from right
to
left as I sat there, and O what a sight -
a
vision of Nature, and love
more holistic,
but
I kept it quiet, like
a postmodern
mystic!
BREAKFAST
Breakfast today was two fried eggs, sunny side up,
on toast left to cool slightly so the yellow butter
didn’t break the surface, with a pink-rimmed cup
containing black coffee with a lump of brown sugar,
plus streaky bacon turned in the dark-blue AGA
and dipped in red sauce, all on a new, milk-white
plate with green rim, which, when eating was over,
and I was quench’d and sated, feeling alright,
I left to soak in soapy bubbles in the kitchen sink.
I belched quite crudely then, which was my food
popping up to say ‘hello,’ and drank of my drink,
the coffee from its pot, coffee which can be renewed,
and, grateful for plenitude, felt somewhat satisfied,
and
took my leisure to the beautiful world outside.
IN ORDINARY SPEECH
“When I was seven I wrote a book
that performed four functions:
to encrypt a scientific node to do
with Gravity; to store the idea
of the internet in writing in the attic
at the foot of Black Combe so that
it was possible for the net to
exist all the way round the world;
to calibrate an algorithm that
sublimates letters and numbers
on a cellular level to see if the
new colour could be rendered
as a cellular mark; and to separate
the object ‘pollen’ from its name.
It was a book with a heartbeat.
It had a heartbeat. It made
the sound of footsteps in the attic.
It’s been stolen by someone.
It was in The Dream Suitcase
along with some other priceless things
like the sheet where pictures grew
and the cassette that was cooked
when its small pause in the song
where the reel was cut and re-
sealed healed and was gone.
I think they were after the sheet
where pictures grew, but by the time
they stole The Dream Suitcase, there
was only my seven year old book in it.
I still have bits of it typed up -
bits of it went into a publication -
but not all of it - and the original,
the handwritten version with
the heartbeat, is now gone.”
A CONTRAPTION MADE OF WORDS FOR MAKING YOUR OWN EMOTION IN LIFE
What I want could be a contraption
(made of words) for making
your own emotion in life. You do this.
You make your own emotion.
It could be pellucid as a glass phial,
or mystical as an inscape of wings.
I am not fussy, nor think this
reductive dichotomy too meaningful.
What I get instead of what I want,
yes, is to be the neo-Rimbaud
whom it would seem has now bought
and sold a share in silence, white.
The headspace I have been through
is the most interesting in terms
of timbre tenor tone texture tense
timing tensility tenderness since I’ve
dreamed of a forbidden fifth
brain wave category, off the map, knowing
brain waves are angels here and
there are said to be only four types.
At the top of a mountain in a dream
in Italy I saw the contraption around
which we had gathered collapse
and transmit its emotive impact.
I would say it was like a child bursting
into tears, when tears break forth from their
tiny, blue chains and shatter from
your eyes but it was happiness.
The sunset was putting its giant
spliff out in the sea in the background
as the poets stood atop the Italian mnt
regarding the collapse of the contraption.
It’s possible in dreams to make it across
the ocean using only a contraption
you dream up as you go along -
just jump off the cliff like a lemming.
SIX CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
1
When I was a kid and we had two houses,
one in London, one in the Lakes,
we were often found driving up or down
the motorway between them; and
I would be looking at the derelict barns
on the side of the motorway, in
fields, and imagining a nomadic
existence. It seemed to me that
a derelict barn would be enough.
2
On the motorway, I now recall,
I used to imagine snagging my foreskin
on the barbed wire fence as
we sped off at seventy miles an hour.
I guess it was like stretching honesty
to it elastic utmost and further,
pointing the moment to its crisis,
a mixture of cartoons and chewing gum.
3
The only time I ever questioned
my brother’s intelligence as a kid
was when grand-dad asked us
“how many beans make five?”
and my brother said “I don’t know.”
I wondered how he had escaped.
4
As a kid I used to picture
a bouncing ball in my head at night
which would only bounce when I said
stop, and only stop when I said
bounce, so only through inverse
logic could I control it. Every
night I would check it was there.
5
I remember also as a child, I used to
repeat the word ‘kangaroo’
over and again in my head
until it went numb, emptied
itself of meaning, hopped off
to become the mad, kangaroo king,
down at the bottom of my ex
English-teaching granny’s garden.
6
For some unknown reason, when
the school bus used to go past
a certain farm contiguous to
the school I used to sit there asking
myself if the farm had a secret
underground lab where unsound
experiments were conducted on animals.
I
never got to find out before I left.
LINES
IN THE LITTLE BEDROOM
Earth
bounds in circles round the sun.
Breath
goes in and out like a tide.
Death
sells records to the young
and
impressionable.
Youth
is wasted on the young they
say.
Teeth
are meant for chewing
meat.
Truth
probably
hurts
less than cliché now.
Birth
hurts like trauma for all
concerned.
Dearth
means a scarcity or lack of something.
Darth
as in Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.
North
is the rest of The
Lakes, then Scotland.
Mirth
is my feeling to be released.
Moth
wears an off-white wedding dress.
Worth
waits for ladies to
cross
the road.
Bath
is not
where
Jim Morrison died.
Light
changes the key in the bathroom.
South
is where I originate but not reside.
Mouth
to mouth means resuscitation.
Math
is American slang for mathematics.
Sloth
is my
frame as opposed to cowardice.
Broth
is good to heat and eat in winter.
Wrath
is another one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Path
through the grass leads to the greenhouse.
Plath
is a poetess of egoism therefore
minor.
Plinth
is a platform
supporting a statue.
Month
is a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Wraith
is a flame-point
demon, screaming, lithe.
Faith
is the right to approval by the supernatural.
Froth
is the river at the broken-green-beer-bottle-corners.
Fourth
in the Premier League are Newcastle United.
Water
should come free from the Tap.
Myth
is made by any
re-namer
of reality.
With
me is the opposite of without me.
Vermouth
is generally drunk with gin.
Absinth
makes the heart grow stronger, actually.
Cloth
is laid down on the kitchen table.
Labyrinth,
I
think the inner ear
is
a labyrinth, yes.
“Mammoth”
could describe the great, hulking universe.
Growth
begins in Spring
with gilly flowers.
Pith
is the essence and gist of something.
Strength
becomes less important when you’re wise.
Underneath
the bridge the Pooh-sticks went.
Wordsmith
after wordsmith walked
on the wall.
They
deem it I am the butt of the joke.
Wreath
after
wreath is a roundabout-picnic.
Both
of
our heads are left with tonsures.
Loath
to control things, I just let go.
ON
THE ROAD IN ENGLAND
Why
is this lane stopping and starting?
Stopping
and starting uses more fuel than
the
blank amnesia of Nirvana, the extinction
of
consciousness, and we are travelling south,
all
that queue, all that congestion,
(you
see I’m in the car), and
not
a single person parking,
so
we seem to work in shifts,
and
the road opens up, clear
of
other traffic, and the car
accelerates,
and the wall
of
Maya now
falls
down.
Imagine
graffiti on the wall
of
Maya (whom it seems is
Sanskrit
for Goddess of Illusion.)
-
I’ve
heard of graffiti on the
keel
of The Drunken Boat.
Also
on the
wall going round
the
edge of the universe. But not
on
the wall of Maya. I don’t know why
I
bought my computer, unless to slink
off
alone and have a private moment.
We
are only going for five days.
The
automated conveyor belt
of
poesis still flows and
so
it goes and so it grows.
THE
MIDNIGHT RAINBOW
My
father
was not
a retired assassin
which
he kept secret
from
us,
his
own kin;
the
Revolution
never
thrust a big mistake
on
me in the wood for
that
would be sick;
I
was not made to see things which
no-one
should and Nature’s no bitch;
my
lover
never slept with my
buddy Paul
which
is not the sickest thing of all;
they
never took the Towers down
because
of the verse of Jim Morrison;
I
never was placed under a curse
and
nothing’s really mending worse;
the
dog has not just weed
in my bed
and
I
do not wish that I was dead;
in
fact the midnight rainbow shines
and
the toilet flushes with fine wines;
I
definitely got to sleep with whom
I
wanted back in the land of gloom;
my
brain has not come under attack
from
acid flashbacks trying to flashback;
I’d
really mind if they emptied space
of
the human form without a trace;
the
disappointment which I feel
is
not the appearance of an electric eel;
my
best ideas were not all stolen;
the
front for my art should
never
be
pollen;
I
do not hear the myriad of voices
cutting
down on my existential choices;
it’s
not the case that what can happen to you
may
not just be naff but sick too;
desperate
for sex with a dream full of ladies
I
never had to loot wings from Hades;
so
you see I may have it all wrong
and
can’t commit to literal things in song;
the
sound of sirens is not heard
near,
even
if only brought on by The
Fear;
a
love I’d need to blow all this away
never
would tell
me actually I’m gay:
how
dare you treat a human being like this?
The
midnight rainbow mixes blood and piss.
Through
it we escape from chronic pain,
or
not as the case may seem to be again.
BAT
A bat just appeared in the dining room
as I lay there one night thinking of you.
It flew around, encircling the gloom
and I asked my mother what to do.
She said to get the window open
but I remember Bob’s son’s Christening -
we couldn’t open the window then -
unscrew the bolt that needs unfastening.
So my mother got my other brother down,
told me that I was always bad news -
and my brother took up pliers, to get undone
the too-tightly fastened up screws.
The bat meanwhile flew around
and around, encircling the stale air,
frightening us down on the ground -
and the way it just happened to appear!
It could’ve got down the chimney I suppose,
but it’s not the only possibility.
Bats don’t spontaneously self-organise
like a Strange Attractor from Chaos Theory
but from where it came I do not know
and think of the woods where once I stood
being good and how plastic can grow,
and all that light, evening jazz from childhood…
my bro got the window open with pliers,
even though bats are not dangerous,
because as much as bats are not liars,
we still don’t want one living with us!
We propped the window ajar and I
took my laptop, Vape pen, earphones
and vacated the room, where I used to lie
dreaming of you, here at Cumpstones.
It’s still flying around in there, has not
found its way out of the window so
I’ll have to sleep in the attic, like a bat,
for there were many in the locked attic long ago…
I’d say if the house where the Plough aligns
is cursed then it affects everyone in turn,
but that would be boring, just lines
to elongate this little, midnight yarn.
When there were many in the locked attic,
they escaped through a tiny, little hole
when dad (who slept through radio static)
installed central heating, and even soul.
Now we must wait for this little bat
to be free too, to be out there in the Night,
and it might take a little while longer yet
because
of course a bat is devoid of
sight!
GUTTERBY
Nowhere
in
my knowledge
is it any
more evident
that
Nature
is a great love-bomb
detonation
than
down
on
Gutterby Beach
where
I walked
with my love…
there
is no
map to follow,
from
Alex Garland’s
famous novel,
for
a curved
A to B trajectory
will
take you down
to Silecroft -
but
you can
follow
the
procession
of
natural
monuments
of rock as you go:
the
first is Dark Fortress Rock,
barnacle-clad
and
casting
a shadow
-
for
we liked
to re-name
things
as
we wandered
in
animistic
trance,
and
booted
the bruised football,
and
noted the
usual, single
washed up shoe,
the
pebbles gleaming
but dull,
the
gulls circling
overhead,
the
driftwood smoothed by hands
of
mermaids under
the waves,
the
way the waves make
gentle
love to the shore…
and
what scent
to the air as well!
The
other
rocks I cannot
recall
the
names
of,
but
they were not
fixed
and
formal, merely impromptu appellations.
If
you are lost and
need
directions,
following
the rocks is in
order
but
I’m sure you’ll know
how to navigate
the
ragged beauty of the beach.
NO
STARS AND LIGHT RAIN
As
suspected and predicted, no stars
and
light rain tonight. Not the right time, then,
to
factor in the fact that when
counting,
one
star leads
to
another star.
No, that would be more
for
Glastonbury stone circle: to call out
ad-libbed
hippy
poetry
over the stoned
bongo
drummers atoned
around
the fire on
an
E come-up as
the city lights up.
Still,
it’s been said now. Nevermind.
If
it makes unseemly collocation so be it.
There’s
no such thing as almost infinite.
There
had to be everything in order
for
there to be even
an atom.
A drum
is
a dream bigger than a dream of bounding
in
huge, magic circles in space. Again,
these
utterances may have better place. For
I
am not out there, under the Ancient Night.
I
am in the kitchen, thinking
if
the windows
were
washed, every one, we would see
nothing
but the same white mirrors, re-affirming
the
quiet interior of this done-up
room.
MY
DIAGRAM DIAGRAM
The
sheet where pictures brown and blue
simply
bloomed or maybe grew
was
not the work of Winnie the Pooh…
I
discovered it when my father passed.
Down
in the smoking den in the barn,
smoke
made ancient ghost-faces in the dark.
The
pictures themselves seem to depict
the
lyric to a song I wrote, way back
in
a teenage band called Oedipus Wrecks
but
the sheet is not my sheet. I concede
it
is my younger brother’s, for he
is
the one that laid it down. <BEE>
might
well soon ensue from @
in
the international language alphabet
according
to him and his cutting wit.
The
rest for me is but mere consolation
prizes
for God’s unwanted children
whom
it seems are still glad to be born.
BECK
VARIATION
Standing
in my wellies beside the beck,
I
note its most
mellifluous
applause,
how
it falls two feet
into
a sound as sweet
as
a kettle drum’s metal petals
of
silver bliss that blossom
on
a carnival’s street.
Further
to distil the air in the mind,
I
wait, to obviate not titivate,
and
notice the green kingdom all around.
A
squadron of nettles guards the wild.
It
must be so different from
living
in
Norman Nicholson’s Millom,
down
the end of Rottington Road.
A
lone bird pipes a bar in a tree.
Then
I notice I need to pee.
So
into the heavenly nectar I do.
H20
might stand for Hypothalamus Tattoo.
THE
DAY I WROTE PHILOSOPHY IN VERSE
The
universe in all its ancient
mystery
remains
indifferent to philosophy.
Still,
when I read of Perfection
in
Descartes and take no objection
and
turn inward mine own eye
to
investigate the truth and the lie
I
glimpse a Perfect Judge, who’s
awesome
and supreme, lose
the
room, and notice its concerns
are
grammatical, in what it discerns.
I
believe
there’s no such thing
as
mind cancer, which, elongating
my
argument, would seem to mean
the
mind is indeed separate, clean-
broken
from
the physical world, as Descartes
believed.
It is a decent start
to
working out my philosophy;
and
when the counter-argument
comes to me,
that
there is nothing for the term
“the
human mind” to even name,
just
electric impulses in the brain,
the
dance of synapses, then again
I’d
say that once upon a time
words
and things corresponded. I’m
also
prone to the Ontological view
that
if there is a word for it, you
understand
there is such a thing.
Such
is the studiousness
of which I sing.
I’d
even go so far as to say
the
mind is “incellular” in a way
but
where it meets with the body, I
don’t
know any more than I can fly.
THE
LIZARD SYD
Do
exalt
the Lizard Syd -
he
took care of Jim
Morrison
as a kid.
There
are all sorts of things he did.
So
exalt The Lizard Syd.
Plunge
into his dreams too.
A
Tourist industry there,
you know,
explores
by
train the strange
terrain
of
his acid-casualty brain.
He’s
famous in his local
town,
for
his poetry
readings
brought down
the
house. So I say
exalt
the Lizard Syd today.
The
Lizard Syd won’t keep it hid,
because
of the wonderful things he did.
It’s
because he also went mad
that
he became this hybrid.
A
local God, he lives outside
the
town in the countryside,
in
a house that’s bigger than the rest
because
the Lizard Syd’s the best.
So
exalt the Lizard Syd,
even
though he is but
a
flid,
in
fact you could say invalid,
who
seems to have gone off the grid
or
else the day will go to waste
quicker
than you can say “toothpaste,”
and
never make that sea-change
into
something rich and strange.
A
DALLIANCE WITH PLACE
The
powers that be could be clouds
roving
overhead
on
their sky blue roads,
the
mood a bracken frond drooping down,
the
beck a fountain pen, miles from town -
for
Nature
is the true architecture of Kate;
and
everything
in Nature only semi-state:
even
the fell is mutable on a long
enough
timeline in this northern song.
I
suppose I should endeavour
to invent
a
Beautometer for time well spent:
for
Nature is a great art exhibition,
separate
here from the human condition;
and
writing of the Lakes could be
refining
a drug called “Strictly Free”
that
does exactly what it says on the tin,
showing
how consciousness is no sin.
Well,
nothing
has changed to the map
apart
from the wind-farm beyond
the lap
of
the tide, revolving
its Mercedez Benz arms
to
make electricity for
the
farms -
and
also the cafe down the beach -
since
Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -
Changes
to the place
have been the net,
global
warming let’s not forget,
the
advent of the mobile phone
and
increased
opportunities
for vice in town.
Now
the
tree outside the window strokes
a
cat while the present poet tokes
his
Vape pen, insufflating the fume,
not
out there walking but in his room...
some
say I am ‘in’ but not ‘of’
but
such a term I do not really love,
loving
as I do this place where I live,
and
asking what more I can truly
give.
WHEN
LIFE WAS STILL FULL OF PROMISE
When
life was still full of promise,
I’d
make
use of
a moon like this,
go
out and check my tombstone-shadow,
how
it elongates in the night,
make
a little writing adventure,
to
write illuminated by the
moon,
which
tonight I see is almost full
like
my heart for a day long gone.
When
life was full of readymade adventure,
I
was a daring and adventurous sort,
getting
in scrapes, scraps, scrapheaps,
which
only reminds of the poems I lost,
the
ones I had to let get away,
which
amounted to thousands,
like
the time and effort it takes to say “boo”
was
all it took to produce another.
When
life was full of great expeditions,
missions
were embarked upon,
even
at night when the garden
was
full of a million evil eyes,
and
all of it ended up here, middle-aged,
fat,
unemployed, skint, mentally ill,
single,
carless, medicated, living
with
my mother in the sticks.
When
life was still full of great potential,
I’d
be eager, keen to be seen
perched
on the edge of a dream,
but
teeming possibilities have closed
down
around me, like an aperture shut,
and
I fix my parameters, think of death
and
how
the
perceptual kingdom of
the
individual enters overdrive.
WAKING
AT MIDNIGHT
It’s
not nice waking at midnight when you’re me:
dead
to the world on Western medication,
you
look the Night in the eye and find
the
world might’ve quietly passed you by.
There
might be a snake on the patio too.
Then
again it could be your imagination
grown
over-wrought, inspecting shadows.
Still
it’s safer to stay in than go out.
The
moon is a drunkard above the yew tree.
You
see this from the kitchen window.
Telly
through the wall leaks in from
another room:
it’s
where the
lion from the heart of Poem
Records
originates,
when you’re a child,
listening
in to telly through the wall, in
the
inner
city,
hearing its whiskers
dipped in News.
But
childhood is gone, as seems the city -
here
we have a pretty place of artistic retreat.
The
loneliness rots in the whole, human heart.
At
least in reading the voices go away.
I’m
on The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell.
CAN’T
GET RID OF ‘FIR’
We’re
doing it because we can’t get rid of ‘fir,’
that
Celtic property akin to truth, however
much
we wish to wash it away with beer,
whatever
we said not feeling too clever…
and
speaking
of beer, now could be the right time,
to
open and sup one, refreshing and cold
and
topped off with a nice modicum of lime,
although
it’ll fatten my
gut
as
I
am told.
The
can is opened, the liquid is poured,
I
engorge my mouth on the cup’s lip,
tip
beer down my throat, not because I am bored,
nor
do I necessarily want to give you the slip…
I’m
just sating my desire for adulthood,
in
a known, rock n roll way, not expecting
any
new truth, for example about the wood,
to
come from the drinking, in
need
of
perfecting.
What
a day we’ve had today too, the sun
beating
down, almost punitive in aspect,
and
knowing I am never going to find the One,
I
might
rightfully celebrate if not get wrecked.
No,
the fir that is planted it will stay,
and
online
where the alphabet dances alone,
even
if it comes from a long bygone day,
and
seems to be ossified now like bone…
WHILE
I MAKE TEA
A
parcel brought by a van belongs to someone.
It
is an oblong shape, a small, cardboard
box.
It
is a battery for a chainsaw.
The
person it belongs to hasn’t got
any
chain oil for the chainsaw so
bought
a second battery online
in
order to charge it while the other
is
being used, so short is its
battery
span.
I
shall take the parcel to the person.
Or
else I shall not on second thoughts
because
the contents live in the present room.
Which
means I can drink my tea.
Further
boxes are resting on the table.
One
is a blue Kleenex tissue box.
Another
is empty, also an Amazon delivery.
I
look outside and deem waiting the way.
Traffic
is passing, both up and down
the
valley road, the A595.
The
moment could somehow
be
further clenched, I imagine.
I
do not wish to take things
to
the nth degree as usual,
but
that’s for the bats of opacity.
The
cherry blossom is in bloom out the back -
I
imagine if it were a sound
it
could be a kind of tintinnabulation.
Tintinnabulation
can be shimmering,
can
be silvery
and blissful too.
Sometimes
I lay back adrift in
canorous
chimes and don’t write anything.
It’s
like the new style is proleptic, then.
It’s
like it is about co-imagination.
But
that’s that and this is this.
I
am not A. I. as a pronominal act
of
Romantic, first person lyricism.
I
am drifting with the E of Everything .
The
magical
dawn
has passed and noon
and
now it is bog-standard
afternoon
and soon
on
third thoughts I will surprise the person
to
whom the cardboard box belongs with it.
It
could be about Random Access Memory.
It
could be about you making me breakfast.
I
deliver the box to its rightful owner.
Whom
it would seem does not wish for me
to
make him eggs and bacon now.
Nor
to be in it, at least in name.
Lattice
works, imbrocation, it
is
forming
across
great distance through the net,
and
through writing at computers too.
Both
writing and the net close distance.
But
what that’s got to do with cows I don’t know.
I
still don’t think you should’ve put it the board.
Soon
we’ll be going for a run in the sky;
or
travel by predictive text, fountain pen,
bullet
atop a telegraph pole, xylophone,
but
this little freewheeling isn’t about phones.
It’s
about a philosophical soundness.
It’s
about this thing sticking to you.
It’s
about how white a while is.
It’s
about how now a lone car whooshes
past,
driving faster than I would say is fast,
and
another, and another, and another,
even
in Eden where flies have no name.
It’s
about being fluent in newness
when
even tense can lie in suspense.
It’s
about seeing with the eye of the eagle.
It’s
about it being too evil to say
or
not say either way, this transient day.
CELLULOID
HISTORY
Watching
Live Aid with my mother,
telly
footage from 40 years on,
she
tells me what she can remember,
how
there was a buzz about town.
They
put their tellies in the garden,
as
did the neighbour, in the heat wave,
and
watched and gave the bands a listen,
hoped
their young ‘uns would behave.
And
what a line up, all the best,
Bowie,
Queen, and more and many more.
She
was feeding Bob by breast
throughout
the show that would not bore.
Feeding
kids was indeed the theme,
the
famine-struck Ethiopian families,
and
so we united over the dream,
and
over the show on our 80’s
tellies.
I
was three but don’t recollect
anything
much from that famous
day.
Mum
says the
weather
got so hot
they
went back in, packed the telly away.
She
was only in her twenties, young,
Finnish
and already our mother.
If
truth is tasted on the tongue
then
I’d just say love is the answer.
Dad
was older, an original hippy,
who
hitched twice across the States
back
in the days when trips were trippy,
with
his gf and his travelling mates.
I
tell my mother that I miss London,
but
she says the older she grows
the
further away she gets from Camden
the
better, and I suppose she knows.
Anyhow,
by now the show is over,
and
I’m up
late
in the Ancient Night,
without
a girl to call my lover,
but
things might still work out alright.
DREAMWORK
POEM
The
thing about Jonny Wilkinson
is
that after the World Cup
victory
he still exists.
The
thing about grammar
is
that there is no Chinese K.
The
thing about walking
to
the top of a very tall staircase
in
a dream is that it might be flames.
The
thing about talking
like
this is that it might be James.
The
thing about the woods
is
that the bird was made
to
look like a hoax but
still
exist in meaning.
The
thing about waking
is
taking medication before
you
submit your mind to the written word.
The
thing about dreamwork
is
smuggling language
out
of the unconscious.
The
thing about language
is
that words are best just before
you
find them even when
you
get them dead on.
POEM
FOR
PAUL NO
# 357
O
brother poet Paul, once and for all,
falling
is an art that’s hard to master,
and
now here at the foot of the oldest fell
my
mind is blank without the Nirvana,
and
I hear the rabble of angry voices call,
quick
to succeed like
they’re
simulacra...
imagine
simultaneous orgasm of Man
trained
to a switch in
the heat of
summer….
ah,
my attention span is Peter Pan,
whom
it seems is at least a dreamer.
Oopsy
daisy I
spill
another one
of
these machines that help you remember
your
medication when the wind is high,
and
no-one understands your endeavour.
It
is not Professor Paul Farley, no
but
you who could have been a lover,
you
who made the fallen angels sigh,
once
upon a time in sad September.
Now,
the midnight sun is a musical orgasm,
plunged,
sublimated, all the way under,
the
bedroom an anagram of boredom,
here
where nothingness is torn asunder,
the
poem grown into an anti-poem
where
every disconnection’s a blunder…
you
were my bestie in the modern parlance
you
find on FB, and many a number
we
would enchant the other with, a stance
before
life maybe, to be a poet and player
of
music, and now to a backward glance
it
is captured, or lost, that time, water.
Enough
of this puppetry! Enough tea!
For
I am the poet, that translator
of
feelings, back from a break to philosophy,
thinking
of Ginsberg, Hofmann, Schuyler,
and
all the others. This present poet, he
also
likes to think of himself as another.
And
no we cannot live in the past,
recollecting
games and glorious
weather,
for
now and here and real and feeling at last
is
the way to Eternity, to live forever,
and
life can pass us by too fast
unless
we are mindful, like
the Buddha…
I
thank you for the time we shared,
and
move on, now we’re less than together,
and
hope that feelings can be spared,
and
that black
jackets
can still be leather,
and
know that life
can seem so weird
especially
when
you’re not
feeling too clever…
I
think there
is a difference between sheer
cleverness
alone and moral compass, whenever
I
come to books,
to dream of free beer
as
the
New Beat language or whatever,
the
language at first hand, that is here
for
Excellent News and holding the mirror.
Mere
freak language-use only alienates
the
reader, who might be my mother,
or
any of her old colleagues and mates,
now
that I’ve made it out from under
the
boulder, so we must analyse what grates
and
recognise that here love is the answer.
A
choice of words as WH Auden said,
it
existed between us like you were my brother;
and
if now that large language love is dead
you
and I will have to find another,
and
read Wittgenstein on the colour red,
for
he seems to be a genius philosopher.
The
concerns of the Perfect Judge within
are
grammatical, they are to do with grammar,
when
you look deep into the brain,
the
acid-casualty terrain no more a bummer,
and
the stain we gained
remains a stain,
and
now I don’t feel like going any further.
Did
you know I was not cursed but hypnotised?
It’s
why I don’t want to go on any longer.
It
happened before I got organised,
got
sorted out, with a role as a writer.
That
summer, when the band split up, it was disguised
as
a healing ritual, by a dangerous nutter.
Now
even the gyps seem to be on my side,
and
I’ve passed through Hell, Hell inside a
mental
hospital, and I’ve nearly died,
and
all this has nearly been all over,
and
now I bounce back from attempted suicide,
a
fool to trust the unwelcome stranger.
WOKEN
EARLY ON A MONDAY MORNING
I’ve
woken from a shocking dream.
I
went
back to Harecroft Hall -
the
school I attended when small -
and
looked in the woods for a game.
When
the government drove me away
at
the end the
monster I’d seen
in
that
dream-kingdom
of green
and
clear as the light of day
had
been understood
the
result
of
nuclear testing nearby.
It
left its death on the eye.
I
felt the shame
of the insult.
When
I woke it was but
the
bird,
that
monster, nothing more,
and
still against the Hollow Claw
in
spirit or was it in word.
That’s
why I’d gone back to check,
to
hunt for my discovery,
in
dreams, where we’re free
as
the
running
of the beck
but
in dreams the bird became
that
monster, in the wood,
and
doing what they thought
they should,
the
government silenced my name.
The
last thing before I
woke,
I
was driven off in their van.
For
I’d seen upon my return
the
monster they
couldn’t shake.
They
didn’t want it leaking out,
that
there’d been a nuclear leak,
of
which we could not speak,
with
either
sadness or
doubt.
That’s
why the monster came
in
dreams but not the bird
in
wake and
I shall have it heard
the
witness was not to blame.
THE
ALPHABET DANCING
At
11 PM we have to dance,
at
11PM on the dot.
Not
before, not just after.
We
have to dance upon the spot!
The
alphabet dances in a cage
(in
a cage a visionary can still be free).
Rather
it dances on a page
but
that’s not right for you and me.
We
must unpack our moves
in
the kitchen. If there’s no sound
it
will not matter, for it proves
we
jiggle to the broken ground.
Joy
is the name of the game.
Blessed
is the joy in things.
I
knew a woman of that name.
She
ascended to heaven on her wings.
It
must be done though, this dance,
before
the Night’s enclosure
separates
us from the seer’s trance
and
cuts us off from forever.
LIVING
IN THE LAKES
Living
in the Lakes I am often struck
by
the sensation that life
is
going on within the pages
of
The
Lords And The New Creatures.
It
could be just a slant of light
that
gives the game away,
the
remnant evanescence behind the fell
when
the sun has set and the fell darkened.
It’s
either that or Nirvana
Unplugged
In New York.
For
that I think of rivers,
such
as the River Esk to the north.
In
the summertime, we like to go
outdoor
swimming in the Esk.
Today
the weather has cooled
so
it is not a good time to go.
So
I could speak of a “storied” world,
a
mythographic universe intact,
an
infradiegetic existence
saturated
with inter-textuality,
or
I could talk of sheep and cows,
the
way the rain falls at a slant,
the
green-ness of the grass,
and
all of Nature’s abundance.
It
is a pretty place to live,
which
Jim Morrison himself
intended
to visit on one of his trips,
but
never got round to in the end.
The
fell overlooks with its bald,
blank
forehead. Driving from town
it
appears a great, slumbering
diplodocus
come to fat and die
by
the Irish Sea; but nearer
the
foot you see it could be Buddha,
Buddha
levitating. Walking
up
could be Western meditation...
but
if you mention the slow
ascent
up flat, gradual paths,
I
think more of a bullet to the top
of
a telegraph pole, or even the kettle
that
rises to its silent scream,
its
steam Ariel returning on Caliban’s
chain.
No, I have not been up
the
fell for a long time now; so
it’s
like I am growing into one
of
the locals! But to the fleeting,
evanescent
backdrop of dying light
behind
the darkened fell at perfumed sunset
I
often turn, stare until life grows
detached,
naked, until I remember
how
weird everything is, how
mysterious
and magical the universe.
PANTOUM
OF UNCERTAINTY
Should
I play the local open mic Night?
A
beetle scurries across the floor!
I
might not be feeling up to it.
I
haven’t got a semi-acoustic guitar
but
a beetle scurries across the floor!
It
always appears when I think of the band!
I
haven’t got a semi-acoustic guitar
but
I’ve got an elaborate Dreaming Gland.
It
always appears when I think of the band!
Through
music we penetrate the Unknown.
I’ve
got an elaborate Dreaming Gland.
It
might be alright if I’m not alone.
Through
music we penetrate the Unknown.
I
might not be feeling up to it.
It
might be alright if I’m not alone,
should
I play the local
open
mic Night.
SPYING A WILD DEER IN THE COMBE FIELD
I looked a wild deer in the eye and held
its gaze while both of us remained motionless.
I saw it run like mine own desire, unfold
its leap and bounce and springiness.
I’d only gone into the garden to smoke
and saw it grazing, in its own world,
up by the babbling beck in the back,
contained in the museum that’s the field.
While I paused to watch it, it grazed away,
then noticed me and both of us froze.
While I was still, the deer looked at me
cautious of danger one might presuppose -
then I made a movement and it leaped,
jumped into orbit, red, running off fast.
I watched it running all the way, rapt,
and saw it leap over a fence at the last.
Cloaked in the aura of special perception,
the encounter was almost like a visit -
to see those elegant legs in extension -
as if the deer were an extension of the poet.
Nibbling up the beck my mouth is water
and when I speak it spills on the earth.
I try not to flaunt my role in Nature.
Down to the sea I flow without death.
IV
THE
SUNSET CHILD
INTRODUCTION TO THE KID
When
my father
passed in
2014,
a little
book I
had begun in
1989
at seven years old surfaced – my boyhood
Prep.
It had been locked in the attic at
the foot of the fell all
these years, where
it sometimes made the sound of footsteps that could be heard below.
There
are several pieces missing because the original was stolen before I
had typed it up; but
this will do. I can’t seem to tell what it is about but it mentions
the net. Last
time I published it, even though it wasn’t that long ago, the
frame wasn’t right
– so this second edition should be better. It
needed the little one at the start to give it shape, order and
purpose that for some reason the previous version left out. I
think what it was about was storing the idea of the net in the attic
in writing so that the net could exist all the way round the world.
So I thank whomsoever got me to do it because it meant I was part of
that process. Whether I am allowed to keep it I do not know, but
would say what
happened to me happened to me because I was very well hung as a
child.
2
JOHN TUCKER
ENGLISH
E
Ah yes now I need to find another piece… the piece that was lacking when I first brought it out. Ah yes I find it – what is it still doing here? It’s been here since Christmas!
[NO NAME]
teacher rite elephant nite
everything lite lesson love
learn tell everyone Esso orange
ADVENTURE IN A CAR
On a Tuesday morning there was a big car in Form 2 and it had flashing lites all over it and then I said it's a magic car and we all got in to hide and it took off in to space and it landed on the moon then just as we were going to explore the moon a gravity force pulled us and the car under the sea and a propeller came out of the back of the car and we crashed on a ship REC and we tried the canons an they were still red hot. Then we went into the cabin and we saw a captain's chest and twenty fighting pirates and we looked out we saw a whirlpool heading straight towards us and since we were under the sea the whirlpool pulled on top of the water. then we were getting bored so we decided we wanted to go to the dinosaur age. we disappeared to a little island we saw Tyrannosaurus rex then we were all back in Form 2.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 28TH
We made sandcastles on the beach
I am going to meet mummy
today we are having exams this week
it is too dear to buy
Sweden China
country tail
tender street
share lies
late dry
weak poor
small prinsesses
countries is
stories tables men pens manes
TUM TUMPTY TUM
Tum tumpty tum
The cat is playing the drum
Four little mice
Are shaking the ground
Dancing merrily around
Tum- tumpty- tum
The cat is playing the drum
Three little mice are dancing
[NO NAME]
In the picture of the airport
I can see... a runway,
two planes, a controwl
tower, a cloud
and the ire ii net.
SEPTEMBER WEDNESDAY 13TH
one day me and Andrew set off on an adventure in a big jungle. We brought a tent a sleeping bag two knives a rope some matches a spear and an axe. We came in a boat we sailed a thousand miles. It took us six days when we landed on the island we were exhausted so we made camp and feel asleep. In my story there were six monkeys a wizard a tiger and an elephant and two snakes. When we awoke we went hunting we brought a spear and the rope. Just as we got out of the tent a snake fell down in front of us. We threw the spear at it he crawled away in pain. When we came back we had killed a tiger. We had seen the wizard yet but when we came back the tent was gone. Remember the wizard. We went out trying to find it AaaaaaaaHH we just feel in an animal trap we threw the rope up some body hang onto it. It was the wizard. We climbed up he invited us to his house. When we got there we saw my tent instead of the sleeping bag. There was lots and lots of chemacals. The wizard said do you like my house. I stole it from some body. It was my tent i said. Then he gave it back to us and we sailed back home and lived happily ever after.
[NO NAME]
There is a waterfall at the back of our house.
I saw a mural in France.
I lost my blue paints.
Ten plus ten equals twenty.
Our housekeeper is called Joyce.
In our new program there is a Vetacore.
A bomp explodes.
I faded my work.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4TH
My monster is 12 feet tall and 5 foot wide.
He weighs 13 stone he is very good and friendly he is as strong as ten tigers.
He has got five friends and six enemies.
6100000000 years old he is as fast as a cheetah.
He is only a friend of alive trees.
He talks a little bit of English but lots of alien.
He eats hay and straw and rams horns.
He has got 1000 hearts.
He is very well armed he works 12 hours a day.
he works in houses.
his name is Roy the robot.
He sleeps 3 hours from 6 til 8 and he has got 300 gagats.
THE LAZY WIND
One day the wind would not blow.
He said he was too tired so he fell asleep.
All the flowers died down the boats
stayed still, the wind mills stayed still
the trees stopped talking to each other.
Every body grew sick and hungry.
Who is going to wake him up.
I will said the crow. He flew up in the clouds.
Go away said the wind I’ll sleep for weeks.
When the crow came back the world sulked.
I have got an idea said the cunning fox.
Off he went running away. He told
the wind you can stay asleep
we have got some body to replace you.
No I will not stay asleep and he came
rushing towards them. It’s all right everyone
the wind is comming they got a lot happy.
[NO NAME]
I rely like the leaves that fall to the ground
Specele like to push them around
I like the foul moon hai up in the sky
I try to reach it but it’s much too hai
I like the fruits that are on the trees
They fall down with a little breeze.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 13TH
I have a scar+ that is red and black.
I have dirty feet and I'll make
footprints on the floor.
I threw a snowball and it landed
in my brothers face.
I watched a film and a man was
in a snowstorm.
I went outside and it was snow.
Flakes were falling. On Hallowine
wiches makes spells.
My dog did a puddle on my
bedroom floor.
I made a pattern with my spirograph.
GOOD AND EVIL
Last night at 1. oclock I was sitting up in bed and a dark creature grabbed me by my hand and then came three more. i turned the light on and fainted. They were rielly dangerous. Then four good ones came well I think they were good and I hope they were good ones. They attacked the bad ones with whips. We went off in a big vehicle to a Stone Henge where they lived. one of the bad ones pushed a big stone on top of the vehicle. There were 5 of us we all got out but one still got killed. The good ones were strong. We went and attacked them and we killed them all. 16 more of them came and started to throw rocks at us. They captured all of us and they started to fire guns at us until there was only me and one of the good ones left. Then we escaped and ran away. We made camp and went and attacked them. They killed the good one until there was only me left but 1000000000 more of them came and we killed every bad one on earth.
GRAND-DARTH'S SHIP
People wondered why Don had chosen to become
a deep sea diver. There were so many other things
he could've been. Whatever had put such an idea
into his mind? "Who suggested is?" he was
asked. "No-one", Don always replied.
BLEEP AND BOOSTER
One day Booster made a sonic solidifying gun Bleep thorte it was an earth mouse-trap. It is not a mouse trap said Booster it is a sonic solidifying gun. What can it do. It makes things rock hard look it is nothing and he made Bleep's asteroridade hard. Then he got in his space pod. Commander I've found him he is in deadly danger. He is on planet Gelatanus X he heard a voice help Ime sinking just then Bleep got two ray guns and a back pack. He flew down to the planet and started to shoot the monsters away the ray gun was so hot so it made the planet melt.
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
One day I was walking in the woods and I saw some popple pushing a little boy around. I went up an tried to stop them. They said to him go and get that delicious apple on that spookey tree and he went and got it. Then the ground started to rumble and lots of ghosts came out and grabbed us. The apple rolled down the hill and fell in to a deep river. And the trees came alive and we got sucked underground then Jamie came along. He saw a big hole in the ground. Just then every thing disappeared and all the bad trees turned into apple trees with lots of apples on.
EVERY
We had a snowball fight with the Widgets.
Go and wait with Boris at Ash Rock. –
The rocks fell from the cliff.
Amanda and Rodey built a snow shelter.
Rockets fly with a jet of flame.
A train puffs a cloud of steam.
My dad dug an underground tunnel.
My dad was mentioning something about Christmas.
We are going to do fractions in maths.
I got on a train at the station.
The first one is a boy’s name.
This one is a lady’s name.
This one is the name of a seaside town.
This one is a doctor’s name.
This one is title of a man.
This one is a question mark.
VIKING NAMES
Vikings liked to make up nick-names for people.
here are some I have made up
Christopher leaker. carrie two teeth.
christophere long nails les.
curly wayne.
nodey claire.
Big mouth Tony.
No tooth wayne.
Small guy Stewart.
Give a way Tony.
Mrs parr in her wight car.
Mis
gab and the Vikings.
WHEN I WAS BRAVE
One day I pulled a radiator off the wall and I blamed it on my brother. And I was very scared and then we went to Carlisle to do some shopping. And I got lost and I was too scared to go and ask a police man. But I went and did it. And just then my dad found me. Then we went back home and it was dark upstairs and I had to go and get something. And I was too scared and I found my dad's torch and I went and got it and then the batteries went flat and I carried on and I got it and I gave it to my dad and he said it took you a long time and I laughed. Then we went to school Wayne and I climbed up a tree, and I did not want to but I did.
ADVENTURE ON THE BEACH
One day me and Wayne went camping and we were exploring a beach. We saw two rowing boats. Three men came out with a big chest. It was nearly time to go home. I said lets go and hide and see who they are. and we did. They carried it into a cave then we went back and we went and had a look. But the cave was gone. Wayne said it is dark now lets go back home. Next day we had a look it was still not there. Then we went back.
Just then i stepped on something then we heard a noise. The cave opened we went in and there was no sign of the box. Just then the cave shut and we could not see a thing. The passage way went down a lot further. When we got to the bottom of the cave it was a lot lighter. Then we saw a big box it was two meters long and half a meter high. It was stuck to the ground. We saw a sledge hammer we smashed the box and lots of treasure poured out. We brought the sledge hammer to the other end of the cave and we smashed our way out. There were 10000 pounds all together 5000 each. We got lots and lots of money.
[NO NAME]
Dark brown is the river
Golden is the sand
It flows along forever
With trees on either hand
Green leaves a-floating
Castles of the foam
Boats of mine a-boating
Where we’ll all come home
CREEPING IN THE CELLARS
My mum asked me to go down in the cellars to get some washing. I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into a hole in the wall. I turned it and a door opened on the floor. There were some steps going down I started to unwind the ball of string I followed the steps and they lead to a maze. Just then I heard a grunting noise and fell into a hole. It was full of dead skeletons.
THE CREEPY HOUSE
One day I was walking along in the woods. Suddenly I came across a house. It was quite a big house but it was in ruins. I went to envestergate and I heard a howling nose I could not find what was making the nose and i was quite afraid. I went back home and Jamie had come to play. I said come over here. We looked out of the window. I caught a glimpce of the house. he said shall we go and have a look at that house. I said alright then, lets go.
We went down in the woods and explored. Then we saw a vision of a giant spidder. Jamie saw a machine. that's what it was coming from. Then I heard my mum calling me. We went back home. my mum had made some cakes. I was delighted. Just then I tripped over and I fell in a cobweb.
[NO NAME]
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves
Hang trembling
The wind passes thru’.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees
Bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.
THURSDAY MARCH 1ST
He has spines all over him. He has got a nose like a pig. A name for Henry the Hedgehog is urchin, Mr. Prickels and Hedge pig. An adder came up and attacked Henry the Hedgehog but he curled up in a pile and the adder jumped back. Henry’s defence system was working. Eventually the adder died. Henry eats worms and leaves, he dreams of eating little chickens. All winter he hibernates in a pile of leaves and he is very warm.
NOTE TO READER
I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink this is the point where, upon filling the first, red exercise book that the young poet wrote
2
John Tucker
English
E
on the front of the first book, then, like making an Escherian shape, wrote on the front of the new, empty, red exercise book:
English
John Tucker
Harecroft Hall
1
[NO NAME]
Colour circles red. How many circles?
Colour triangles blue. How many squares?
Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?
MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT
When I was 4 I was on holiday in Sweden. My dad had just bought me a new bike. The new bike was too big for me. I was going down the hill quite fast. The breaks was to pedal backwards but I could not reach the the pedals. Suddenly the bike got faster I had a bad feeling. I did not what to do. I fell head first in a patch of nettles. My mum heard me crying she came. By the time she found me it was ten o’clock. They asked what hapened. I said it was a long story. They said never ride your bike withouta parent.
MY NIGHT TIME ADVENTURE
One night I was lying in bed and I heard a tapping on the window. I thought it was a branch. I said to myself, it's not a windy night. I looked at my watch it was half past 1 pm. Then I decided to get drest I got a ruck-sack put a packed lunch in it a rope, a compass, a touch, a knife, and a map of our county. I went out the front door. I saw my bedroom light still on so I new which window it was. What was it that was making such a racket. I tied the rope to the knife and threw it to the top of the nearest tree to my bedroom I had another look at the window, there was nothing there perhaps it was a branch. O well I said and climbed up the rope. When I got to the top of the tree I still could not see what it was that was making such a nose. Just then i heard a halfdead mouse lying on the windowsill I jumped to the windowsill, climbed down the rope, went in the house and went to my bed.
THE THIEF
Once a woman lost a lovely brooch. She hunted everywhere but could not find it. So she asked the police to send a detective to her house to assist her. The detective climbed the stairs to the room where the brooch had been kept. Soon he came down. I believe the brooch is in the jackdaw's nest in that tall tree," he said. He brought a ladder and climbed the tree. With the brooch safe in his pocket he descended. I knew where to look, because the bird left marks on your dressing table he explained.
THURSDAY MAY 24TH
At midnight I was lying in bed. I could not get to sleep. Just then I heard some body walking very quietly across the stones on are drive. At first I was scared stiff and then I plucked up some courage and crept along the floor to the light switch I turned it on carefully not to make a nose. I got dressed. Then I looked through the window I could not anything because it was too dark. I looked at my watch it was 1:32 AM . I have got lots of time I said to my self I put my shoes on and went downstairs to get some food to eat. When I got downstairs I heard the noise again. I thought to myself, theres something suspicious going on then I heard jogging footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Just then a masked murderer came in through the door with a machine gun i pulled the rug that he was standing on and he fell down on the floor. Then I sprinted up stairs to tell my dad what had happened. At first he did not believe me. Then I said come and see for your self. He got out of bed and got dressed and got the firepoker. He went down stairs with me. We got in the kitchen but he wasn't there. We heard a voice from behind us he said hands up busters turn around dead slowly i grabbed the firepoker turned rond and knocked him out with it. My dad ran to the phone and dialled 999. A minute later the police were here. They came in. We showed them what had happened they said he is very dangerous they also said that his name was called Mike the murderar.
THURSDAY MAY 31ST
When the stork and the fox. were sitting in the house and eating their dinner. The fox could not eat every bit of it because it was on plates. Even though the stalk could not eat it he still was polite. When they finished the stalk asked if he would come to my house for dinner. Verey well said the fox. The very next day he did as the stork said and went to his house for dinner the stork put a very well cooked lunch into two long vases so the stork could get the food but not the fox
WEDNESDAY MAY 30TH
I think that the picture wood be O.K. for 11 – 12 year olds to play in.
Last year they were building a new house near us. I went after school to look at it w/ my little sister. Her name is Emaly. It was very interesting. We saw four builders two were in the house, one climbing up a ladder and the last one was wheeling a wheel barrow. We allso saw lots of bricks and cement. The best thing was the scaffolding. My little sister is quite nautghy. She allso loves climbing things. The first thing she said was 'I am going to climb the scaffolding.” “You mustn't go up there!” I shouted. I am going to go up there. Just then when she got to the top she fell.
She cried “HELP”. There was an enormous thud. I ran as fast as I could home, diled 999 and asked for the Ambulance. They came in a flash and took her to hospital.
BEING IN A HUFF
One Saturday when I was just about to go out
my dad came into the porch where I was
and saw a scribbly picture on the wall
and a black felt tip pen beside it. He said John
why have you drawn on the wall? I said
it wasn’t me it was Hannah. I’ll take ten pounds
out of your pocket money towards some new
wall paper. I ran up stairs and locked myself in my
bed room. In the end he found out it was
Hannah and didn’t take the money away.
[NO NAME]
Wolf to shut
Holiday to wash
Marry to fix
Glass
Child the wind-
Fox blows through
Tooth the trees
Clock the rain
Shoe falls
Against the window
JOHN TUCKER
FORM 3
HARECROFT
ENGLISH
MY BROTHER
He is five years old.
His hair is straight and blond.
He has small blue eyes.
He has got a plump face and a plump nose.
He is terrified of snakes.
He likes to were colourful clothes.
He is very funny some times.
Sometimes he gets into terrible tempers.
He is kind and soft.
His favourite hobby is football.
He does not like playing cricket.
His favourite food is fish and chips.
His favourite couler is Blue.
He can not swim.
He likes traveling.
He likes Jive Bunny music and Star Wars films.
He collects butter flies and Moths.
He is a good climber.
His name is Robert.
He has got a big mouth.
He talks a lot.
He likes making people laugh.
He hates having his photograph
he has got a good imagination.
SMELLS
Why is it that poets tell
So little of the cence of smell?
These are the odours I love well.
The smell of coffee freshly ground
Or rich plum pudding, holly crowend,
Or onions fried and deeply browend
The fragrance of a fumy pipe
The smell of applles, newly ripe
And printers ink on leaden type.
Woods by moonlite in September
Breath most sweet and I remember
Many a smoky camp fire ember
Camphor, turpentine, and tea
The balsom of a Christmas tree
These are whiffs of grammerye
A ship smells best of all to me.
THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR
January brings the snow;
Makes our toes and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen ponds again.
March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June brings tullips lillies roses;
Fills the childrens hands with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Straw berries and gilly flowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit,
Sports men then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the Peasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasent.
Dull November brings the blast
Then the leaves are falling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.
MY DAD
When I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license. When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me with my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some chance.”
[NO NAME]
If I had a lollipop tree
I'de be as happy as can be.
I' would sit by it all day long
Eating away until there nearly gone
I'de say “that's enough lollies for today
But I'll come back to morrow and eat away.
SIX INCHES HIGH
I was sitting on the sofa drinking lemon-ade when suddenly I felt funny and then I started shrinking and shrinking till I was six inches high. I fell down on the sofa w/ a plod. I climbed down a loose string on to the ground and then started walking across to the chess board I had left lying around. Suddenly I herd something that sounded like me beating up my brother. I looked around me but at first I couldn't see anybody but then I saw a chess pawn hanging w/ all his might on the chess board for he was just about to fall on the ground which was a long way down. He slipped and I ran and caught him, but just then a big rat came running out from under a sofa so I ran w/ the pawn as fast as I could and dived into a mouse hole which the rat couldn't fit in. We couldn't get out because the rat was guarding the hole so we sat down and talked. He said his name was “Humph”. He said he could get me back to my normal size but he would need help from more chess pieces. Humph said “When it is 7. 00, if you sit on the same sofa you shrunk on w/ all the chess pieces you will grow back to your normal size. I looked at my watch. I was 6. 30 and 56 seconds. We didn't have much time so we looked around for something to fight the rat w/. Just then Humph found the perfect thing. An old toothbrush. I got my pen-knife out of my pocket and sharpend the end of the tooth brush w/ no bristles on. Then I cut off all the bristles on the other end and started fighting the rat w/ the toothbrush. The rat was soon dead so we brought the toothbrush and went to look for the other chess pieces. We soon gatherd them all together and told them every thing. It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa. I was the first one up followd by the white pawns then the two queens then the kings then the blakc pawns then the bishop then the rooks and last of all the knits. We counted them all. There was only 31 pieces. There was a little pawn trying to get up on the sofa so I jumped down and lifted him up. I grew back to my normal size but there was no chess pices. I put the rest of the lemonade I had been drinking before in the bin and went to sleep. When I woke up I thought I had been dreaming but then I found the toothbrush and went back to sleep.
APRIL
In April it is the beginning of Spring.
The daffodils are waving their yellow heads in the wind.
In the gardens and in the woods Catkins,
that look like lambs tails are dangling
from the branches on bushes in the hedges.
The days are gradually getting longer.
We have many showers.
It is my birthday in April.
The first of April is called “April Fools day.
We play tricks on people that day.
The buds on trees are swelling and oppening.
The birds are coming back from the hot countries.
THE BIGGEST LIAR IN THE WORLD
A long time ago in Japan, I saw a funny looking man walk out of a big bubbling volcano. He had three eyes but that was the only difference between him and us. He wore a mask that was made from white metal, his sweat-shirt was white, his trousers were white, his high leather boots were black. He had black gloves with spikes sticking out about seven inches but the most peculiar thing about him was that around his shoulder was a big gun. It had all sorts of gizmoes that shoot lasers, fire, water, poison, spoof, bullets, you name it. So I went up to him and asked him “What's your name?” He said “Wotsit”. I asked “where do you come from?” He said “Fingermebobdownthevolcano!” I said “what's the gun for?” He said “first let me tell you a secret.” He said he's the biggest liar in his country. He said once that thousands of little aliens attacked his country, he said that he blew them all away with three blasts of his gun. He also said he was God's messenger and had helped God to make the world and had stayed alive ever since. The real truth is I am the biggest liar...this whole story's codswallop.
[NO NAME]
Pod: God morning
Fat Guy: No it isn't
Pod: Why not?
Fat Guy: Because I said not
Pod: But why did you say not.
Fat Guy: I didn't say not, I said no it isn't. so what
I've got something to tell you. Guess what?
Fat Guy: what
Pod: Your...erm, er....a
clot and I'm not.
[NO NAME]
MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,
MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,
HE'S GOT THREE EYES
AND A BIG FAT NOSE
AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED
WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,
HE ONCE TOOK A PILL
THAT MADE HIM ILL
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL
Book 4 of the boyhood proof
“THE HORRIBLE HUNTER”
The hunter, a horrible old man,
Is hunting in the forest, every moment he can.
Searching for foxes, with his hunting dogs,
Charging through the dark, dark forest,
Through rivers and through bogs.
Only his prey can see his eyes,
He never looks up to the sky.
He's a finger missing with a scar on his face,
He lives his life in awful disgrace.
His dead prey is hooked onto his jacket,
When he kills it makes an awful racket.
He puts out his snapping snares,
hoping to catch foxes and hares.
He lives in a small, tobacco smelling hut,
Deep in the forest it is put
He's got a small patch of hair,
And a horrible hypnotizing stare.
As a bullet is pulled from his belt,
You're bound to hear an animal's yelp.
A DEADLY CHARM
I am a padlock: who locks up your thoughts,
I am pollution: that blackens yourheart,
I am electricity: fast, furious and frightening,
I am a machine gun: looking for a kill,
I am a politician: dizzy, dazzled and dazed,
I am a radio: that speaks of death,
I am the concrete: that stiffens your body,
I am the computer: that controls the world,
I am dynamite: who always gets his way,
I am a micro-chip: small but clever,
I am a missile: roaring through the air,
I am a rocket: somewhere up there,
I am a drink machine: wasting your money,
I am a digital watch: who but I, is telling
you the time as the hours go by?
[NO NAME]
My cage walls are nearly pressing in at my sides.
There are multi-coloured giants stroking me and treating melike a baby.
There is a deaffening sound of birds humming in a corner.
It turns dark emmediately, by a touch of a button.
All the captured animals around me probably have the same, agonizing feeling as I do.
I feel like running away when people take me out of my cage and cuddle me.
I feel likeI've been imprisoned in a jail for no reason.
I always feel like staring at the masive, multi-coloured men, mechanically moving.
THE BADGER [draft 2]
As soon as I was imprisoned, inside my cage,
A happy feeling vanished from my mind,
It was a feeling of roaming, round the countryside,
Catching my own prey, chasing mice and digging in burrows.
But now I feel like I've been jailed for no reason.
I suppose all the other animals here
have the same agonising feeling that I have.
It seems quite weird, the massive, multi-coloured men,
Making it turn night by a touch of a little white button on a wall.
When all the humans have gone at night,
And the birds have stopped twittering,
I try to escape but I don't think a mouse
Could squeeze through the gaps in the bars.
But one day someone took me away.
He tried to tame me. I didn't want him to
but I gradually became tamer and tamer.
It was a lot better than in the pet shop,
But not as good as the forest.
I doubt anything is as good as the forest.
THE INTERVIEW ON MY MUM
J. What is the most important event that's happened in your life?
M Giving birth to four healthy children.
J. Why is that so important to you?
M I myself came from a family of four children and there was always something going on, so when I came to have children myself, I thought it would be nice to have four.
J. What sort of things went on?
M One thing is that when there are four of you, you always have someone to talk to or play with. I was the oldest and my sister and brother who were very close in age, used to get up to some terrible things like once they made porridge on the floor and once they put crispbread under the rug and walked on it just to hear it go crunch. My grandmother called them 'the termites'.
J. Are your children like your siblings?
M. A little bit. I think if you put four young children together one of them will think of something dreadful to do. My son once tried to teach the cat how to swim in a bucket of water.
THE TYGER
What kind of creature is the Tyger? I think God made the Tyger and ment him to be a normal tiger but the devil caught him and hypnotised him against God. I think the Devil puts him in everyone's dreams. I think he is just an image ment to come at the right time to take control of there brains I think he is a ghost of a normal tiger but the Devil turned him evil. I think the Tyger is an angel of Hell. He is not tangible because it says “what dread grasp? Dare its deadly tendon clasp?” I think it came from Hell by wings because it says, “In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes,” and “On what wings dare he aspire.” I think the Devil stole the minds of all the criminals and made the Tyger from them. I think the Tyger is immortal and turns your dreams to nightmares.
From ‘PAGE 11’
1. Area of whole shape = 80 CM squared
Area of unshaded part = 4 CM squared
Area of shaded part = 76 CM squared
2. Area of whole shape = 72 CM squared
Area of unshaded part = 8 CM squared
Area of shaded part = 64 CM squared
EQUATIONS
(1) 3 a + 4 = 2 a + 8
(2) 4 b + 4 = 1 b + 7
(3) 5 a + 3 = 2 a + 12
(4) 5 b + 1 = 3 b + 11
(5) 7 c + 3 = 3 c + 31
(6) 7 y + 1 = 3 y + 25
(7) 11 c + 9 = 8 c + 24
(8) 7 b + 12 = 1 b + 24
(9) 3 t + 5 = 2 t + 12
(10) 5 b + 10 = 2 b + 19
SYSTEMS 11TH MAY
1. 211
2112 ATTRACTOR
2122
1132
211213
312213
212223
114213
31121314
41122314
31221324
__________
21322314
21322314
WHINNIE'S CHOICE
I'm awake very early but it is light, and very hot outside. I'm seventeen todayand I've been thinking about it all night but decided not to drink the water. I would lose a lot of my friends and relatives and would feel alien. I could jumpoff the Empire State Building for billions of pounds but friends are better than money. Anyway, my grandmother believes in gnomes so she could advise me somehow. I asked her, “Grandma, if there was a spring in the wood with everlasting water in it would you drink it?”
“Whatever made you ask that question?”
“But would you?”
“Well probably and probably not. There are lots of disadvantages and only a few advantages.”
After that I went into my room to think about it. If I did drink it, now would be the best time to do it because I'm at the prime of my life and I have Jesse. I might as well take Tuck's advice because he's drunk the water and experienced it so I don't think I'll drink the water. Anyway I'll go out there and I might change my mind. The spring looked so lovely but something was different. Then I noticed that there was a stone missing from the top. The water looked so delicious and fresh that I walked up to it, took another stone off the top, was just about to drink it when a traveller came.
“Hello,” he said. “Could you please direct me to Treegap?”
“It's just down this road,” I said.
When he had gone I took another stone and again I would have drunk it if it weren't for the toad. He was sitting in the spring bathing. So I thought it over again.it was like a war in my head between Jesse and Tuck, with me not knowing which side to take. Then I thought that God might've tried to stop me and that God had told the traveller and the toad to disturb me when I was going to drink the water. So I've made up my mind. I won't drink the water.
THE BEAST
The Beast was quick as lightning,
Strong as an ox and very frightening,
Cunning as a fox, tough as leather,
Hungry as a hunter and not very clever.
He is as large as life, as swift as a hare,
Keen as mustard, he'll give you a scare,
Don't go near it at half past three,
Because that's the time it will have you for tea.
NIGHT (BEDTIME)
Mum said, “It's time to go to bed,”
I said “C'mon not yet.”
She said “It's half past eleven, dear,
And tomorrow's school don't forget.”
Underneath my pillow was food for a midnight feast,
I can hear an owl hooting and the shuffling of feet,
Making shadows on the wall,
Which is the spookiest of them all.
Dogs barking and dad is snoring,
Lying in bed is very boring,
Thinking of chocolate and soda crème,
Nothing to do except to dream.
MY WORLD
My world would be a chocolate factory in the clouds. It would be completely made of chocolate and if you ate a wall it would just grow back. It is invisible to any other people and only certain people can get there. The weather is always what you want it to be and if you want it to rain, snow or shine it will happen. There is a chocolate fun world as well and it is called Choc World. You can walk all over the clouds and look down at any place in the world and if you want to go there you can just take the Choc-mobile down to earth.
RELIGION
Dear Family,
I hope you are all feeling well. I have got some very bad news to tell you. I may never see you again. I'm very sorry but I've got to go into hiding somewhere where no-one will find me. All of Jesus' followers that are in danger are coming because we could be killed by Saul. I don't want to go, but I have to and I'm not allowedto tell you where so that you're not in danger as well. We have to get together and all go disguised at night time. I have two messengers that I can trust to bring us food and news safely. Just to make you more secure, I'll tell you that I have enough food and a good warm shelter.
Lots of love,
John.
PRIVATE
Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones.
Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones.
FRAGMENTS FROM THE ROAD TO HEAVEN BY NOJ AND THE MOB
L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog,
he should be sleeping like a log,
goes round and round chasing his own tail,
only goes upstairs for a trail,
of Maltesers nice round and pale,
we’re on the road to Heaven,
happiness awaits us there, flutter
in the sideways, flutter in the sideways,
bring your brief fling with the politics of flight.
Sullen silken sulks, we drink the same
rain, spit is clean and so is dirt.
Normal is boring. Do it later.
God made speed to save us,
God made hash to help us.
Fuck the system. Even a dick
gets big erections. The sun hanged
himself from a length of daisy chain.
Clocktick clock being clocked off by clocktick.
Clocktick clock not being clocked off by Time.
The Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.
The Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.
The Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.
Break, bird with the skin of snake.
God
rushed into the cold cod quick.
V
CHOCOLATE
DOG
I
MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,
MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,
HE'S GOT THREE EYES
AND A BIG FAT NOSE
AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED
WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,
HE ONCE TOOK A PILL
THAT MADE HIM ILL
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE'S
BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.
II
MY DOG HAS LOST SOME WEIGHT,
MY DOG IS MY ONLY MATE,
HE’S GOT FIVE HANDS
AND A FURRY BUM
AND HE DREAMS OF BI-
SEXUAL CHEWING-GUM,
HE ONCE HAD A CUP
OF SWEET TEA TO SUP
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE’S NOT DONE THE WASHING UP…
III
MY DOG GETS IN MY BED,
MY DOG GETS IN MY HEAD,
IT’S LIKE HE REQUIRES
LONG GUIDED TOURS
IN A COLD MUSEUM
FULL OF DINOSAURS,
WHEN I FEED HIM TEA
HE BECOMES HAPPY
AND THEN FOR A WHOLE, WHITE WHILE
HE DOESN’T THINK OF ME.
IV
MY DOG HAS BEEN LET OUT,
MY DOG DOESN’T MESS ABOUT,
HE LIFTS HIS BACK LEG
BY THE CUT DOWN TREE
AND STANDS AROUND
HAVING A NICE LONG WEE,
THEN COMES BACK IN
LIKE THERE IS NO SIN
AND LOOKS FOR TASTY TREATS
IN THE HEAVING KITCHEN BIN.
V
MY DOG LIES ON THE FLOOR,
MY DOG IS LICKING HIS PAW,
I’M SURE HE’D LOVE
SOME MORE FOOD TO EAT,
AND I’M SURE HE’D PREFER
A NICE MEATY TREAT
TO THE PASTA DISH
THAT’S MY MOTHER’S WISH
AND HE ALSO HAS A TASTE
FOR DELICIOUS BUTTERED FISH.
VI
MY DOG IS VERY DEAR,
MY DOG IS ALWAYS NEAR,
HE FOLLOWS ME AROUND
WHEREVER I MAY GO
IN FACT YOU COULD SAY
HE’S MY NEW SHADOW,
HE ONCE GOT ABUSED
AND IS NOW CONFUSED
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HIS CRIMES HAVE BEEN EXCUSED.
VII
MY DOG LIES ON HIS SIDE,
MY DOG IS A PLACE TO HIDE,
NOW HE BARKS AT ME
FOR SOME MORE SWEET TEA
AND I MIGHT OBLIGE
QUITE IMMINENTLY
BUT BEFORE I DO
I SHOULD IMPART TO YOU
THAT IT ALWAYS MAKES HIM NEED
TO MAKE THE CARPET A LOO.
VIII
MY DOG IS HIGHLY BRIGHT,
MY DOG LIKES TO TRAVEL LIGHT,
NOW HE LICKS HIS LIPS
FOR HE’S HAD HIS TEA,
AND FOR HIM IT WOULD SEEM
THAT THE WATER’S FREE,
HE LOVES ME TRUE
WHICH IS MORE THAN YOU
IN CRUFTS AS IT IS IN THE BLACK
ANGEL’S DEATH SONG TOO.
IX
MY DOG IS SPOILED AS HELL,
MY DOG IS ALLOWED TO SMELL,
AND HE BARKS AND BARKS
WHEN HE WANTS MORE TEA
AND HE ALWAYS GETS
WHAT HE WANTS FROM ME,
HE’S GOT A TEA BOWL,
IN THE LITTLE HOLE
OF OUR BEDROOM HERE
WHERE I INTERROGATE MY SOUL.
X
MY DOG HAS SEVENTY WORDS,
MY DOG IS AS CLEVER AS THE BIRDS,
HE CAN HEAL THE SOUL
WITH UNCOMPLICATED LOVE
WHEN YOU’RE CRASHING DOWN
FROM A PERMANENT DOVE,
AND THE BOOK WITH SMELL
IS HIS WORD AS WELL
THOUGH IT SMELLS OF HER
LIKE A FLOWER STRAIGHT FROM HELL.
XI
MY DOG WANTS A BOWL OF TEA,
MY DOG COMES NAGGING ME,
BUT WHAT HE DOESN’T KNOW
IS THE SUGAR’S RUN OUT,
AND HE’S NOT EXACTLY
GOING TO LIKE IT WITHOUT,
THIS COULD BE A CHANCE
IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRANCE
TO RENOUNCE THE BAD HABIT
AND MAKE THIS INTO A STANCE.
XII
MY DOG IS RATHER WEIRD,
MY DOG HAS A TEA-STAINED BEARD,
HE GOES OFF PADDING
TO THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
TO HUNT FOR MUM’S FOOD
AND MORE AND MANY MORE
AND HE GOBBLES HER PUD
AND IT TASTES QUITE GOOD
IT’S STRAWBERRIES AND ICE CREAM
BECAUSE HE THINKS HE SHOULD.
XIII
MY DOG EMITS A LITTLE MOAN,
MY DOG EMITS A LITTLE GROAN,
AND HE FOLLOWS ME OUT
WHEN I GO FOR A SMOKE
BECAUSE HE WANTS SOME TEA
FROM THE GENEROUS BLOKE
BUT I MUST BE STRONG
AND WRITE ANOTHER SONG
WITHOUT CAVING IN TO HIM
BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE WRONG.
XIV
MY DOG WILL NAG TONIGHT,
HE’LL WANT TO FEEL ALRIGHT,
TO SUP SWEET TEA
FROM THE BEDROOM BOWL
AS I SIT AND WRITE FAST
AND TEND TO MY SOUL,
BUT I’LL TRY AND REFRAIN
THOUGH IT MIGHT MEAN PAIN
FOR MY POOR OLD DOG,
RECEIVED UP IN HIS BRAIN.
XV
MY DOG HAS GOT WET FEET,
MY DOG ISN’T BEING DISCRETE,
HE COMES PADDING IN
FROM THE GARDEN WHERE
HE SUPS ON DELICIOUS
AND SENTIENT AIR
AND IT RAINS AND RAINS
SO HE LEAVES BLACK STAINS
AND HE’LL NEVER PLUG
HIS SENSES IN THE MAINS.
XVI
MY DOG KEEPS LOOKING AT ME,
MY DOG IS NOW SUPPING TEA,
THERE’S ALWAYS A CUP
IN MY DOING HAND
EVER SINCE I LEFT
MY LAST ROCK N ROLL BAND,
IN MONOPOLY JAIL
WHERE TIME IS A SNAIL
THERE’S NOTHING ELSE TO DO,
TO STOP LOVE GOING STALE.
XVII
MY DOG DOESN’T THANK ME AT ALL,
MY DOG THINKS I’M LANKY AND TALL,
HE’S A DESPERATE DOG
WITH A VERY SWEET TOOTH
AND PREFERS CANDY-COATING
TO THE NAKED TRUTH,
HE’LL BE DREAMING SOON,
UNDER NEATH THE MOON,
OF A FOUNTAIN OF SWEET TEA
SPRUNG INSIDE THE NOON.
XVIII
MY DOG HAS A COLLAR ON,
MY DOG IS NOT CALLED JOHN,
BUT APART FROM THAT
MY DOG IS TRULY FREE
AND TO BE FAIR TO HIM
HE’S ALWAYS THERE FOR ME,
HE’S A REALLY CLASS ACT
AND AS A MATTER OF FACT
HE CIRCUMNAVIGATES MY ILLNESS
WITH IMPECCABLE EXTANT TACT.
XIX
MY DOG BELONGS TO JAMES,
MY DOG SHOULDN’T COME TO NAMES,
NOW QUENCHED AND SATED
HE LIES ON THE FLOOR
AND PRAYS IN HIS STOMACH
FOR A LITTLE BIT MORE,
JAMES COMES IN TO SAY
TO ME “ARE YOU OKAY?”
AND OF COURSE I RESPOND
I’M FEELING ALRIGHT TODAY.
XX
MY DOG IS LEFT BEHIND,
MY DOG IS NEARLY BLIND,
QUITE SOON HE WILL DIE,
LIE DOWN IN GREEN GRASS
AND WATCH AS THE POWERS
THAT BE COME TO PASS,
AND SMILE AND DREAM
AND THEN IT WILL SEEM
MY DOG HAS ALREADY HAD
HIS FINAL BOWL OF CREAM.
XXI
MY DOG DRINKS FROM THE BOG,
MY DOG IS A VERY STRANGE DOG,
HE DRIPS AND DRIPS
ON THE TOILET FLOOR,
AND MAKES IT WET
BECAUSE OF HIS FUR,
I THINK HE’D RATHER SEE
A CUP OF SWEET TEA
BUT HE’S NOT DUE ONE OF THOSE
UNTIL HE HAS ANOTHER WEE.
XXII
MY DOG HAS JUST WOKEN ME UP,
MY DOG WANTS TEA TO SUP,
HE BARKS AND BARKS
UNTIL HE GETS HIS WAY
AND TO BE FAIR I SHOULDN’T SLEEP
THROUGH THE TRANSIENT DAY,
AND JUST BEFORE I AWOKE,
AND THIS IS NO JOKE
I WAS DREAMING OF HIM,
AND NOW I CAN GO FOR A SMOKE.
XXIII
MY DOG HAS QUIETENED DOWN,
MY DOG THINKS DEATH A CLOWN,
HE’S GOT WHAT HE WANTS
FOR BUT HALF AN HOUR,
TO HIM IT’S LIKE THE MAIDEN
TRAPPED IN THE TOWER,
WHEN I FEED HIM TEA,
HE BARKS FULL OF GLEE,
AND THEN WE CAN ALL LIVE SO
MERRILY MERRILY MERRILY.
XXIV
MY DOG LIES ON THE FLOOR,
MY DOG CRIES OUT FOR MORE,
SO I FEED HIM SOME TEA
IN HIS FAVOURITE BOWL
BUT THE SUGAR IS ROTTING
MY TEETH AND MY SOUL,
AND I WANT TO GIVE UP,
AND LIFT THE F.A. CUP
FULL OF SWEET CHAMPAGNE
AND HAVE A PROPER SUP.
XXV
MY DOG IS TRYING TO BE SICK,
MY DOG IS NOT A GARDEN BRICK,
HE LIES ON THE FLOOR
STRETCHING OUT AS HE PLEASES,
AND MY MOTHER IN ANOTHER
ROOM, WELL, SHE SNEEZES,
AND MY DOG IS RENEWED
AND I AM BUT THE DUDE
AND I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED
IF MY LIFE’S WORK IS ESCHEWED.
XXVI
MY DOG HAS ALL SHUT UP,
MY DOG ISN’T NAGGING FOR A CUP
HE WILL WET THE BED
IF I FEED HIM SOME TEA
SO IT’S NOT A GOOD IDEA
IF IT’S DOWN TO ME
TO TAKE HIM OUTSIDE
WHEN HE LIES BY MY SIDE
AND SO BY THE NEW HOUSE RULES
HE’S GOING TO HAVE TO ABIDE.
XXVII
MY DOG HAS GONE TO SLEEP,
MY DOG HAS SUNK TO THE DEEP,
WHAT HE’S DREAMING OF
I JUST DON’T KNOW
INJECTING SMACK IN THE
UNIVERSAL MIND WITH SNOW
HE’S A VERY GOOD BOY
AND HE’S NOT A TOY
AND HE FILLS THE HEART
WITH A PLEASING BIT OF JOY.
XXVIII
MY DOG LIES ON MY BED,
MY DOG IS NOT ALCHEMICAL LEAD,
BUT HE SEEMS TO BE SLEEPING
LIKE LENNON’S LOG
AND A DOG IS A DOG
IS A DOG IS A DOG,
AND I’VE WEANED HIM OFF TEA,
AND THE TERRIBLE GLEE
THAT HE FEELS ABOUT THAT
SO I SEEM TO HAVE SET HIM FREE.
XXIX
MY DOG WAKES IN THE NIGHT,
MY DOG BLINKS IN THE LIGHT,
AND HE PADS OUT THE DOOR
TO THE LANDING WHERE
THERE’S A PILE OF TOWELS
AT THE TOP OF THE STAIR
AND HE STARTS TO BARK
IN THIS HOUR OF DARK
OUTSIDE MY MATE’S ROOM
PREFIGURING THE SONG OF THE LARK.
XXX
MY DOG NEEDS TO EAT SOMETHING,
MY DOG IS THE OPPOSITE OF BLING,
SO HE LEADS ME DOWNSTAIRS
TO THE CUPBOARD WITH THE SNACKS
AND I FEED HIM SOME TREATS
AND WE’VE STILL GOT STACKS,
NOW WE’RE BACK IN MY ROOM,
AT THE FOOT OF BLACK COMBE,
WHERE THE DAY HAS LARGELY BEEN
A DAY OF MONASTIC GLOOM.
XXXI
MY DOG IS WHINGING FOR MORE,
MY DOG KNOWS I’M WEAK TO THE CORE,
FOR HOWEVER MANY TIMES
I RESOLVE TO NOT FEED
THE DOG SWEET TEA
I SUCCUMB TO HIS GREED,
AS I HAVE DONE TONIGHT,
WHILE I SIT HERE AND WRITE,
AND TRY TO MAKE IT SEEM
FOREVER TRUE AND QUITE.
XXXII
MY DOG LIVES IN DOG TIME,
MY DOG’S NOT THE GODFATHER OF GRIME,
HE NEVER SAID A CLOCK
IS ONLY AS FAST AS A CHEETAH,
NOR EVER GOT DRUNK
ON COLD WIFEBEATER,
BUT HE’S LEARNING TRUST,
WHICH SEEMS A MUST,
IN THIS FAR-OUT GALAXY
OF SEEMINGLY ENDLESS DUST.
XXXIII
MY DOG IS WHITE AND GREY,
MY DOG IS HERE TO STAY,
AND IF I. T MIGHT STAND
FOR INSTANT TRAVEL TOO
IT COULD BE THE WAY
I USED TO TRY AND BREAK THROUGH,
BUT MY DOG JUST LIES DOWN,
THREE MILES FROM TOWN,
AT THE FOOT OF THE OLDEST FELL
WHERE THE BRACKEN IS STILL BROWN.
XXXIV
MY DOG IS USED TO TREATS,
MY DOG HAS A WORLD WITH NO STREETS,
AND THE GARDEN IS HIS
ECO-TOILET OUT THERE,
IT’S GONDWANALAND-GREEN,
FULL OF FRESH, COUNTRY AIR,
SOME ONE MILE FROM THE SEA
WITHOUT A TRACE OF ENNUI
WHICH SEEMS TO ONE AND ALL
A PRIVILEGED PLACE TO BE.
XXXV
MY DOG HAS CURLED UP AGAIN,
MY DOG MIGHT LEAVE THE MATTRESS A STAIN,
BUT IT’S THE PRICE YOU PAY,
FOR ALLOWING HIM NICE THINGS,
LIKE POOR FLORA WOULD REQUIRE
A NEST AND DIAMOND RINGS,
WHICH I CANNOT PROVIDE,
AND I STILL HAVE TO HIDE
WHAT MY CONSCIENCE REALLY MAKES
OF THE IDEAL COSMIC BRIDE.
XXXVI
MY DOG HAS GRANTED ME PEACE,
MY DOG IS A MIDNIGHT RELEASE,
IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHETHER LUCY
IN THE SOUL WITH DEMONS
EVEN HAPPENS TO BE
AN ACTUAL SUBSTANCE,
THEN MY DOG CAN HEAL,
IN THE HEART OF THE REAL,
WHEN NOTHING MAKES SENSE
AND YOU’VE GROWN TOO NUMB TO FEEL.
XXXVII
MY DOG IS LYING QUITE STILL,
MY DOG’S NOT GONE UNDER THE HILL,
IF HE’S A SYMBOL OF SOMETHING
IT COULD BE GRAVITY,
HUMOUR OR KATABASIS,
BUT HE SEEMS REAL TO ME,
WHEN THEY SHAVE HIS FUR
LIKE MY OLD DRUG-SLUR
HE LOOKS LIKE A CARTOON
AND MY BROTHER WOULD CONCUR.
XXXVIII
MY DOG HAS HAD TO GRAPPLE,
MY DOG IS LIKE CEZANNE’S APPLE,
HE DOESN’T FLOAT ON
THE ARTIFICE OF ORGANIC
EMOTIONS THROUGH
SOUNDS THAT ARE SYNTHETIC
BUT THE MUSIC I PLAY
SOMETIMES TAKES HIM AWAY
FROM THE SITTING ROOM TO
A FURTHER, BRIGHTER DAY.
XXXIX
MY DOG IS A BEAUTIFUL MOOD,
MY DOG HELPS HIMSELF TO THE FOOD,
HE STARTED LIFE WHEN I
WAS BUT SEVEN AND FOUND
AN OBJECT BROWN AND
PERFUMED AND ROUND
AND COULD NOT TELL
AT THE FOOT OF THE FELL
WHAT ON EARTH IT WAS
AND WROTE OF IT AS WELL.
XL
MY DOG SEEMS ALL I NEED,
MY DOG HAS NOT YET WEED,
HE’S IN A PLACID MOOD
AND HE COULD BE A WAY
OF GETTING CLOSER TO NATURE
AS THEY USED TO SAY
OF TED HUGHES TOO
AND WHEN I’M FEELING BLUE
WRITING ABOUT MY DOG
IS ALL I REALLY NEED TO DO.
XLI
MY DOG WON’T TRY TOO HARD,
MY DOG GETS NO VALENTINE CARD,
BUT HE SEEMS TO BE FREE
EVEN WHEN I MANOEUVRE
OVER TIMES THAT ARE HARD
AND TURN ON THE HOOVER,
HE’S ASLEEP RIGHT NOW
UNDERNEATH THE PLOUGH
WHERE THIS ANAGRAM OF BOREDOM
KEEPS ME AWAKE SOMEHOW.
XLII
MY DOG DREAMS OF A BONE,
MY DOG MEANS I AM NOT ALONE,
I CAN’T BEAR TO THINK
OF WHAT LIFE WILL BE LIKE
WHEN HE LIVES NO MORE
FOR YOU CAN’T WALK A BIKE,
AND I’M TRAVELLING BY TEXT,
AND I AM FEELING VEXED,
AND I AM WONDERING WHAT
ON EARTH WILL HAPPEN NEXT.
XLIII
MY DOG HE LIKES TO PANT,
MY DOG’S NOT A HIEROPHANT,
THOUGH I HEARD THE WORD ‘DOG’
COMES FROM A FAR-FETCHED STAR,
AND HE WON’T BE UNDERSTOOD
UNTIL THE SELF-DRIVING CAR,
STILL THE CITY WON’T SLEEP
IN THE HOURS WE KEEP
UNTIL THE NEW DAY DAWNS
AND THE MOBILE STARTS TO BLEEP.
XLIV
MY DOG CAN MAKE ME LAUGH,
MY DOG HAS NO AUTOGRAPH,
I COULD SOON FALSIFY
THE NIRVANA BARCODE,
BUT I’D PREFER TO WRITE
A RATHER CANINE ODE,
IT MIGHT SPELL SUCCESS,
IN A ROOM THAT’S A MESS,
OUT HERE IN CUMBRIA
WHICH IS SEMI-WILDERNESS.
XLV
MY DOG IS LICKING HIS FUR,
MY DOG IS NOT LIKELY TO PURR,
AND WE’RE STUCK IN A ROOM
WITH A NEW KIND OF VIEW,
LEFT TO DO WHATEVER
WE ARE LEFT HERE TO DO,
IT’S DEFINITELY TIME FOR BED
AS MY MOTHER HAS SAID
AND I STILL BELIEVE MONOPOLY MONEY
SHOULD WORK ON WINE AND BREAD.
XLVI
MY DOG IS WHINGING AGAIN,
MY DOG IS ALMOST ARCANE,
BEFORE THE RUBBISH WENT CANCEROUS
I CUT MY DOG LOOSE,
TO SIMPLIFY AND BE FAIR,
AND WRITE SOMETHING OF USE,
AND STRETCH MY BOYHOOD THING,
AND MAKE TO FREELY SING
IN THE MODE OF THE BARDIC CHILD
WHO STILL KNOWS A THING.
XLVII
MY DOG HAS A WET, BLACK NOSE,
MY DOG DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO METAMORPHOSE,
SO HE’S MASTERED FORM,
BUT HE MIGHT MOVE ON,
TO CHAOS WHEN ALL
THE FORMALITY IS DONE,
FOR HE’S SEEN THE LIGHT,
AND IT’S EVER SO BRIGHT,
ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S HELD
WITHIN THE DARKEST NIGHT.
XLVIII
MY DOG BARKS AT THE VOICES,
MY DOG GIVES THE DOCTORS FEW CHOICES,
WHEN HE LIES ON HIS BACK
HE IS SURRENDERING IN TRUST,
AND HE THINKS HE’S THE MASCOT
OF THE FOOD-CHAIN UPPER CRUST,
WE’VE RESCUED HIM HERE,
AT THE HOME OF THE SEER,
WHERE SOUL-FOOD REALLY DOES
AMOUNT TO LOCAL BEER.
XLIX
MY DOG IS ASLEEP ONCE MORE,
MY DOG IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW,
HE LIES ON THE BED
IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION,
AND CHALLENGES ME WITH
ALL MY LONG ERUDITION,
THERE’S A GLOW IN THE EAST,
AND I’LL GO TO THE FEAST
KNOWING THAT LIKE HIM
I AM BUT ANOTHER BEAST.
L
MY DOG GOES BOUNCING AROUND,
MY DOG KNOWS SPRING WILL ABOUND,
AND RENEW THE EARTH
WITH HER GILLY FLOWERS,
LIKE THE USELESS PROOF
OF A THOUSAND HOURS,
IT’S A NEW DAY HERE,
AND IT BRINGS ME CHEER,
TO HAVE MY DOG BY MY SIDE
ALWAYS AND EVER NEAR.
LI
MY DOG TURNED OUT A NUTTER,
MY DOG WON’T EAT BREAD AND BUTTER,
WITH WHAT HE EATS
HE’S GETTING FAT
AND DREAMS OF CHASING
THE NEIGHBOUR’S CAT,
IN HIS BASKET HE LIES
NOT WEARING A DISGUISE
AND STARES THE DAY AHEAD
DIRECTLY IN THE EYES.
LII
MY DOG HAS A VITAL SPARK,
MY DOG ALWAYS STARTS TO BARK,
WHEN I’M HEADING UPSTAIRS
WITH A CUP OF HOT TEA,
FULL OF WILD, EXCITABLE,
AND LAWLESS ENERGY,
HE LOVES ME SO MUCH,
AND MY LITTLE CRUTCH
SO TOGETHER WE GROW OLD
AND NOT QUITE OUT OF TOUCH.
LIII
MY DOG LOVES SOLID GROUND,
MY DOG RUNS ROUND AND ROUND,
HE DRIFTS LIKE A SPLIFF
ALL THE WAY OUT TO SEA
WHEN HE LIES AND DREAMS
OF A CUP OF SWEET TEA,
HE’S A JUMP, HE’S A LEAP,
HE’S FALLING ASLEEP
AND HE’LL NEVER MAKE
THE ANGELS COME TO WEEP.
LIV
MY DOG IS TRAINED TO SIT,
MY DOG IS GOOD AT IT,
WHEN HE WANTS A SNACK
I MAKE HIM SIT DOWN,
BECAUSE I AM THE BOSS
OF THIS NERVOUS UNDERTOWN,
I THINK HE HAD IT HARD
IN SOMEONE ELSE’S YARD
AND IT’S STILL HIS INSTINCT NOW
TO PUT UP A DEFENSIVE GUARD.
LV
MY DOG HAS A BRILLIANT NOSE,
MY DOG HAS WORDS LIKE THE CROWS,
HE EXPLORES THE WORLD
THROUGH HIS OPEN MOUTH,
AND HEARS VERY KEENLY
E-MAILS FROM THE SOUTH,
HE’S FOND OF THIS SPOT,
AND LIKES WHAT HE’S GOT,
AND HAS RESIGNED HIMSELF
TO WHATEVER SEEMS HIS LOT.
LVI
MY DOG DOESN’T WEAR ANY PANTS,
MY DOG IS DEVELOPING A STANCE,
HE BELIEVES THAT <BEE>
MIGHT COME AFTER @
IN THE INTERNATIONAL
LANGUAGE ALPHABET,
THEN A SQUIGGLY LINE
AND TO MAKE THINGS SHINE
INFINITY SYMBOL IS NEXT
AS WE DREAM OF FREEDOM’S WINE.
LVII
MY DOG’S NOT GAY BUT STRAIGHT,
MY DOG PISSES ON THE GATE,
IN ANY FUTURE STATE
THERE SHOULD BE ROOM
FOR THE NATURAL WORLD
LIKE AT THE FOOT OF BLACK COMBE,
SO MY DOG CAN WALK
WHILE THE TWO OF US TALK
ABOUT THE TIME WE BOTH GOT HIGH
OFF A NEUTRAL GREEN STALK.
LVIII
MY DOG HAS BECOME A PROOF,
MY DOG HASN’T BEEN ON THE ROOF,
HE’S A SYMBOL OF WHEN
WE FLIPPED THE PARADIGM,
AND LEFT THE NEW WORLD
IN A DIFFERENT TIME,
AND WE’VE BOLTED THE DOOR,
BECAUSE OF THE LAW,
AND WE DON’T WANT TO INDUCE
THE BOASTING OF THE BORE.
LIX
MY DOG GETS FED BY JAMES,
MY DOG LIKES PLAYING GAMES,
BUT HE GETS NOTHING SWEET
FROM MY BROTHER ONLY
TREATS THAT HE NEEDS
TO STOP FEELING LONELY,
LIKE MEAT-BASED FOOD,
WHICH IS SOMETIMES SPEWED
ON THE CARPET IN A PATCH
OF VOMIT ACIDIC AND CRUDE.
LX
MY DOG RAN OFF TO THE FARM,
MY DOG NEVER WISHED ANYONE ANY HARM,
AND THE NEIGHBOUR OUT WALKING
FOUND HIM SNIFFING ABOUT
AND BROUGHT HIM BACK HERE,
WHERE OUR LOVE IS DEVOUT,
AND OUT HERE IT’S NO LIE,
BENEATH AN INFINITE SKY
YOU ALWAYS ACKNOWLEDGE THE STRANGER
WHOM YOU ARE PASSING BY.
LXI
MY DOG WEED ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR,
MY DOG SAID FLORA WAS A WHORE,
SO HE GOT LOCKED OUT
IN THE GARDEN UNTIL
HE CHANGED HIS MIND,
AND HE’D BE OUT THERE STILL
IF HE HADN’T APOLOGISED,
FOR I HAVE SURMISED
FLORA’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
OVER WHOM I HAVE AGONISED.
LXII
MY DOG SHOULD ABJURE SWEET THINGS,
MY DOG DOESN’T KNOW OF MY WINGS,
IF A FLOWER PRESS ENDING
ON HOMEGROWN CANNABIS
COULD STILL SEEM TO =
SOME KIND OF DIALYSIS
A LOVE POEM HOPING TO
IMPRESS FLORA, WHO
IS THE MATING QUEEN IN THE FLESH
COULD = MORE A MOTOR TOO.
LXIII
MY DOG GOES ROUND THE SUN,
MY DOG MAKES MY WRITING FUN,
HE’S A DOOR-STOPPER TOME
THAT’S WAITING TO HAPPEN,
AND WOULDN’T IT BE POLLEN
IF BARNES HAS SCORED A CHICKEN,
FULL OF PEACOCK FEATHER,
FULL OF VELVET FLARE,
FULL OF MASCARA BRUISE
AND BUTTERFLY WING DEBONAIR?
LXIV
MY DOG IS LICKING HIS LEG,
MY DOG WAS JUST ABOUT TO BEG,
HE WAS LOOKING AT ME
WITH THOSE WATERY EYES,
AS I DREAMED OF A MAST
UNDER NEW BLUE SKIES,
BUT I PAID NO ATTENTION
TO HIS BRIEF INTERVENTION
SO HE TURNED BACK TO HIS BASKET
WHICH MEANS HE’S NO INVENTION.
LXV
MY DOG HEARS FILM MUSIC TOO,
MY DOG HEARS IT COMING THROUGH
FROM MY BROTHER’S ROOM
ALL TRIUMPHANT AND GRAND,
WAY BETTER THAN ANY
PAST ROCK N ROLL BAND,
IT REMINDS OF THE PRESENT,
IT SOUNDS QUITE PLEASANT,
AND IT PENETRATES IS-NESS
WHILE MY DOG DREAMS OF A PHEASANT.
LXVI
MY DOG CAN SEEM QUITE FUNNY,
MY DOG CAN’T WRITE ON MONEY,
BUT HE’D MAKE IT TO THE TOILET
IF I FED HIM NO TEA,
FOR HE KNOWS THE GARDEN
IS THE PLACE TO PEE,
SO HE IS NOT WRONG,
JUST SINGING ALONG,
TO THE TUNE I PLAY FOR HIM,
WHICH THEY CALL THE MAD DOG SONG.
LXVII
MY DOG’S BEEN FED AGAIN,
MY DOG DOESN’T NEED TO LICK RAIN,
SO I SHOULDN’T HAVE LET
THE CAT OUT THE BAG
AND PUT MY WOUNDS
UP ON A BRIGHT FLAG,
FOR LOOKING BACK I SEE
THAT IN ORDER TO BE FREE
I SHOULD’VE BURIED MY SECRETS
NOT DONE OPEN HEART SURGERY.
LXVIII
MY DOG’S ONCE MORE UPSTAIRS,
MY DOG’S NOT GOT MANY CARES,
AND THE HOUSE IS FILLED
WITH ADULTS CRYING,
LOVERS TORN IN TWO,
ACCUSATIONS OF LYING,
AND I MUST CONFESS
THOUGH I STILL LIKE JESS,
WHEN SINGLE IS MY JINGLE,
I MIGHT’VE FOUND HAPPINESS.
LXIX
MY DOG HAD MEANING WHEN
MY DOG STARTED LIFE, BACK THEN,
AND TO SEPARATE THE POLLEN
I FOUND FROM ITS NAME
MIGHT NOT JUST BE
A SEVEN YEAR OLD’S GAME,
BUT THINGS HAVE BEEN WEIRD
SINCE WHEN IT APPEARED
THAT MY EARLY LINGO FLOWED
IN WAYS MOST UNAFEAR’D.
LXX
MY DOG DAWNS ON ME AGAIN,
MY DOG WITH SUGAR ON HIS BRAIN,
HE’S A LOVELY DOG
AND THE SWITCH IS THROWN,
AND THE MAGIC RAFT
WENT OFF ALL ALONE,
TO THE STORY SEAS
WHERE WE GATHER AS WE PLEASE
UPON OUR MOTHER’S BED
AS SHE READS US MORE STORIES.
LXXI
MY DOG JUST CAN’T CONFUTE HER,
MY DOG IS MY DIRT-COMPUTER,
AND SOME VOICES ARE SADISTS
BUT OTHERS ARE FRIENDS,
AND WE STILL DON’T KNOW
HOW THE STORY ENDS,
BUT I’LL TAKE IT SLOW
AND GO WITH THE FLOW
BECAUSE I HAVE COME DOWN
TO THE PATCHWORK QUILT BELOW.
