THE DREAM FILM STORE
A sad and seductive female voice is saying things to me. I cannot focus or see her face, it refuses to appear in my mind.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve finally come, I’ve been waiting for you for lifetimes.
- Welcome at last to the Dream-Film Store, I can’t believe you’ve awoken here after so long -
Did you have a long day? What can I find for you tonight – that’s right – anything you can imagine – a Thousand amazing thoughts preserved – or perhaps just a bottle of red wine and a dream about the swaying sea will rest you well tonight?”
Of course in dreams you never know you are dreaming. That is why they have control. Certainly this dream harnessed control enough to disturb me & leave itself lingering behind the back of my mind when I finally awoke.
In my sleep I was wrestling w/ heat & the covers, & frightened by the lady’s continuing voice. All I could see was blue.
“I know you can understand what I’m saying. Don’t be afraid” -
I felt her stretch out her arm towards me and I jumped in panic.
All around me I could see blurs of deep colour merging & swirling, a moving chaos of images and shapes. Still I could see no face.
“I know you can hear me, please, I’m your friend, look! I couldn’t bear to see you waste this now. You know me already please just trust me.”
********
II
I awoke shaken and wretched, grappling with the duvets, rubbing my stinging eyes. Already the terrible fear of my dream had subsided considerably; simply because waking instantly cancels out what was previously merely dreaming. Now I just had a headache & a longing to return to that strange scene and assuage the curiosity that always accompanies fear. I suppose the fear when you dream is because you don’t know you’re only dreaming. It seems real. I lay there thinking.
What troubled me most as I lay there in bed was that I never saw the woman’s face, though I could sense it was desperate to appear. Oh well, just a dream, as they say.
Refusing to let a dream trouble my thoughts all day, as had happened before I decided to get up and wash my face.
The flat was crazed by disorder & rubbish. Clothes, papers, books & boxes which should’ve been locked in some attic were at war w/ the floor. I trod w/ care to the bathroom & stood looking in the greasy mirror at a face full of grease; the eyes that once rewarded me w/ strange smiles were laden w/ sleep, heavy with the impurities that sleep had filtered. The Drain in my Brain.
“I’ve been swimming
in a sea of sleep,”
I began singing to myself in a hoarse groan. Wanting to give myself a shock, I dunked my head in a cold basin decorated w/ floating limescale, pubic hair (for some unknown reason) and toothpaste. How I could call that much of a wash I don’t know. Nevertheless, I felt fresher; so, as always, I started to prepare my morning spliff, which helped me decide what to do today, or if to do anything at all.
I used to take great pleasure in rolling huge reefers, just for the hilarity of seeing something unusual & absurd, I suppose. Recently though, since moving in to the flat, I’ve been rolling the swiftest & easiest joints possible, & filling them w/ more weed than the big old ones. Being stoned now fits into the same category of Time & Tedium that it once was the escape-route from.
As I lit the spliff, & fell softly back into the sensuous web that stonedness weaves, I felt a longing for the fantastical times I used to have w/ friends & girls & laughter & ideas – whereas now I just felt numb, in a blunt trance. Not wanting to linger on the past, I took a deep long drag, like the spliff was a sacrament, & pulled some stolid clouds of darkness into my lungs. Holding it down, I imagined counting some numbers but couldn’t get it together, so just waited - & then exhaled, releasing the smoke in a grave grey sigh, watching it fumble, disperse & vanish into cushions & curtains & air. My head was heavy. I knew what I needed now more than ever. To get out.
********
III
After dressing in some jeans & T-shirts, I took my weed, some skins, a pen & paper & various other articles of minor importance, & hid them in places in my big jacket. I’ve never been too bothered about what I wear on top - trousers, I just wear jeans, so I’m not fussy there either. Shoes, however, I’m very particular about, seeing as I have to walk in them etc. Shoes are rare allies in life. Also, I have a tendency to turn a jacket into a home.
So, finding a particular pair of boots, I left the flat w/ a feeling of the promise of the Day.
But where could I go?
I’d abandoned my friends a few months before, fallen out with them all except one, Gabriel, who I don’t speak to anymore, anyway. It was a strange series of incidents involving my previous band & some magic mushrooms. The details escape me & give me pain trying to remember them. We were called ‘Open Poem Opium,’ & we split up; that is all.
(“Beat through the veins of the city in madness
Revolving doors in your mind & sadness
Cities crawling in your brain
streets of mystery and of pain,
I’m leaving town on the underground train.”)
I put my hands in my pocket to instinctively protect myself from the knuckle-gnawing cold that hung around outside. Feeling what I thought was a £10 note in my jeans, I pulled it out to find only a little scribbling of lyrics written some days ago in a dull hash-induced trance.
I often scribbled things. I enjoyed the freedom of scribbling & doodling. The pen can move exactly where you want it free of direction, w/out the obligation of having to form restricting letters & words. I have pages & pages of doodles, strange shapes, & occasionally some lyrics appear in the mess. That’s what I did for the band – wrote songs & sang, though I don’t play any instrument.
Noticing a growing rumble in my stomach, I felt that food & coffee were the best options, & would give me more time to consider how my day of activity could be filled.
Rounding a corner, I saw the parade of shops ahead, dead faces facing me, w/ cheap dimestore smiles. In the middle was the cafe, called “The Rat & Vessel” to my amused bewilderment. I opened the door. Inside it smelled of sad people, old times clinging in smoke to the walls, sad paint and sad light. The door was still ringing from those crazy bells that crash together on opening , & make me cringe every time. Those bells should be banned from sad cafes. They exacerbate the dead silence that awaits you inside when the door slams shut & the bells stop clanging.
“A large strong white coffee please, & a Danish.”
£1. 90. I couldn’t believe it. I realised then that left me w/ only 10p for the day – a rare day of Activity. Oh well.
The coffee was bitter & the Danish was over sweet. I was fairly stoned & therefore felt a heightened sensitivity to things like taste. After a few mouthfuls, I realised it wasn’t quite late enough for breakfast yet.
Well, what could I do? Where could I go? 10p is less than having nothing, because it just irritates you with niggling little time-consuming questions.
I decided I’d be freer if I threw it away my last change. Why I didn’t bring any money w/ me I haven’t a clue – pen, paper & weed must have seemed like a more useful currency to remember this morning.
So On discovering that I finally had something to do (albeit only disposing of 10p), I thought I’d turn it into a ritual & perhaps waste an hour of the day. I was finding it increasingly difficult since realising this money shortage to tell myself that I was even capable of activity this morning. Spending an hour of one’s morning throwing away short change, & taking an hour to decide how to do it in particular to add a pretend sense of ‘fun…’ I realised a dead-end frustration possessing me. The town was in abeyance, time was trapping, what could I do to rid me of the cruel bindings of post-youth, expulsion from university, confusion, unemployment, & worst of all, sheer boredom? Where could I go, & with what purpose?
The 10p dilemma had started to annoy me. I thought in vain for ways I could make a ritualistic point of getting rid of it, but soon realised this sort of time-consuming thought was exactly what I wanted to get rid of the 10p for – like I said, to be free of it. This realisation of my own frustrating, mind-cycling stupidity annoyed me greatly. I decided I’d give it to the next tramp I saw.
It was now 11. 00. Which meant nothing to me, because w/out anything to do or anywhere to be, it didn’t matter what time it was. The street stretched ahead of me crawling w/ insect-cars & insect-people, all busily rushing around swarming sick and feversome. I often wondered exactly what the term “crowd-neuroses” means, & laughed that I felt detached from the clinging time-table lifestyle. Walls of grey rose either side of the road to complete the dull-grey prison of the street. People flocked & assembled, briefcases merged into madness, mute timetable agony, flaccid lovers limp by, smiles fail, children congregate in backstreets to escape, everyone around thinking they have something to do & somewhere to go! I felt dizzy so found a bench to sit down upon. Watching the parading fools & this procession of sadness brought out a sadness w/in me too. I was sitting motionless on the bench, feeling the flux & thrum of the city, the dead beat of London; & I heard the beat of my heart clash w/ the rhythm of the streets. I felt suddenly cold and alone. If London had a voice, it would be a blunted and dead-pan voice like Lou Reed’s.
I must have sat on that bench for about 2 hours. The time was spent coming to terms w/ the fact that I felt estranged from my environment – the first time I’d realised the alienation of being poor in a city. Perhaps if I lived in Cornwall, say, I’d have a job, a community in which I was known, maybe even some friends. The city is a great culmination of sadness & alienation. No-one in town is conscious of their extreme self-consciousness. Everyone in town is homeless.
Pleased w/ the thoughts I had accomplished this morning (& thinking was my poor equivalent of a morning’s work), I decided to roll up another spliff & go for another wander. My hands were cold & it was too windy sitting outside, so I went to look for the nearest phone-box. Phone-boxes were excellent for skinning up in, because a) you were off the street & out of people’s way b) there was a nice little platform bit to rest the Rizlas upon c) no-one disturbs you in a phone-box, because they assume you are looking for change, or about to make a call etc. One felt a slight degree of safety & protection inside.
The nearest phone was just across the road. I loved crossing roads, felt it like a game, a dare, a thrill. One of the things I felt most confident about in life was dodging traffic & crossing roads w/ what I liked to portray to the driver as being a fearless & disdainful nonchalance. I’m constantly occupying myself w/ little challenges & wars, that I suppose I create for my own amusement. Walking along a pavement, I often ask myself a question of importance then tell myself that if I reach that lamp-post over there before the next car passes me, the answer is so & so, & if not… I’m sure everyone plays the same game, just ask different questions. It’s amazing how something as utterly pointless & unfounded in anything apart from my own mind has the power to excite & possess me.
I can honestly feel a terrible suspense sometimes as a car grumbles & groans & approaches blind behind my back – I walk quicker, desperate for the answer I want. Sometimes, if I fail to reach the object in time for the right answer, I change the question or say I meant the previous lamp-post anyway. It is by no means a game I enjoy playing. I become frustrated w/ myself after a while, but at least it distracts me from frustration of having nothing better to do.
So crossing the road, I reached the phone-box, & entered its heavy door. Inside I felt how truly separate I was from everything else around me. There is a certain mysticism about phoneboxes & telecommunications. I remember having a fascination w/ Dr. Who, & the way he travelled throughout space & time in the blink of an eye. How I longed for such possibilities now, standing stoned & alone in a phone-box surrounded by strangers & the dizzying thrum of life. I wanted adventure, change, discovery – but I was stuck. Where was there to go?
I emptied my pockets on top of the phone & extracted the various bits of paraphernalia needed for skinning up. The spliff I rolled was terrible, due to what I noticed was a growing distraction in my mind.
Standing there pulling on the spliff, I tried to locate the exact area of my mind where the negativity was emanating from.
‘Right,’ I thought.
‘I know I don’t want to be here, but where do I want to be?’
Something was certainly on my mind, but I let it go as the smoke melted into my blood & sent diamonds rushing up my neck.
I started to gather my belongings, & noticed among them the 10p which I’d forgotten about.
“I’ll leave it here for some lucky person to make a phone call w/” I mused.
‘Or, I could make a phone-call myself..”
I didn’t own a phone & the thought of making a phone call was quite big news to me. Who could I phone? I had no friends.
Except for maybe Gabriel. It had to be Gabriel. 0171 385 6603. I only had 10p, so I had to plan carefully what I would say. Even better, I thought, I could invite myself round to his.
I don’t know why I suddenly had a desire to be w/ someone. I don’t know whether I even liked the guy. I alienate myself. Perhaps the guilt that loneliness brings, had stirred me finally into communication.
“Hello?” came the cautious, questioning voice.
“Gabriel, man, it’s, uh, Franco, could I come round?”
I spoke nervously & stuttered a little, out of practise w/ conversation.
“What! Hey Franco, how’s it going? What are you doing? Come round!”
“Yeah, I will, I’ve got 2 credits left, so I’ll - “
The line went dead & the dead sound came up in my ear & hung around in a tone of despair.
“Shit,” I thought. “Where the fuck does Gabriel live.”
Typical, that for once I’d actually wanted to do something that involved someone other than me - & it wasn’t going to be possible.
I left the phone-box still sucking hard on the joint. “I suppose I could go home, get some more money & - “
The phone was ringing. I lifted it. It was Gabriel.
“Man you should’ve just said & I’d have called you back.”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t know – shit, sorry. You know how I am w/ phones, clueless.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha – well, shall I meet you somewhere then?”
“I have no money & I’m down to my last few smoke’s worth.”
When I said earlier that phones fascinate me, I also meant to say that they terrify me. I’d probably prefer telepathy.
“I’’ll tell you what Franco, where are you – I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Um, well, I’m in a phone-box in Baron’s Court. I’ll meet you outside the Oddbins.”
“In 10 minutes, I’m close.”
“Alright man, that’s perfect, cheers.”
“See you then Franco.”
“Bye-bye.”
Wow. I’d never known anyone so efficient at phones. If I’m ever forced into using one to make arrangements, I faff around for hours being indecisive & calling back & hanging up.
Gabriel was a person of admirable sagacity for his age – 2 years older than me, 22, but w/ a sensibleness that empowered him to be utterly assured and self-confident. Decisive & wise, the kind of friend everyone wants & fears abusing.
I could already see Oddbins. I approached feeling slightly ridiculous still for my telephonic incompetence.
‘I could have done any number of things,’ I thought
- ‘reversed the charges, borrowed 10p off someone… oh well, I’m just useless, no matter.’
My thoughts were interrupted by Gabriel’s voice.
“Franco, jump in!”
Elliot Smith was playing on the stereo. I didn’t like Elliot Smith very much. He finds it too easy to write fairly good songs. I couldn’t respect that.
Gabriel had a spliff going. “Have a smoke on that man,” he urged. “How are you? Tell me about your life.”
“Well, I’m O. K I suppose. To be honest I’ve been quite dazed for ages. I don’t really know what’s going on man.”
“How’s the band?”
“We split.”
“Oh, why”
“Dunno, just crap really.”
“Just crap sounds about right. So what are you doing w/ yourself?”
“Oh, nothing much, nothing at all really. I’ve got virtually no money, & none on me.”
“Any girls?”
“Ha ha ha you must be joking.” The thought of me having the time, money, energy & effort for a girl was hilarious. I was not ‘boyfriend material’ – I never have been.
“Man, I’ve met this amazing girl, she’s at the flat at the moment – you’ll meet her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary.”
“What’s she like?”
“Oh, amazing man, you’ll see, you’ll see.”
“I’m not sure if I want to believe you or not. I mean you know how sceptical I am about girls. If she’s not perfect, not the Absolute One, then she’s not worth any waste of time bothering w/.” This was my arrogance. Suffice say, I had never found the One Perfect Girl.
“Franco, I’m telling you man – if you’d just stop being so fucking particular & arty farty, & just accept things, you’d be happier. You’ve probably already met your Perfect Girl but were too busy moaning about existence & lack of money & fucking weed to even notice her.”
“you think?”
“Yeah, I do think. You can’t get perfection, so then take what’s best.”
Elliot Smith was starting to annoy me, so I turned it down. The car pulled up & stopped.
“Here we are then, this is the new flat.”
“Cool, which door.”
“Here.”
We entered.
I stood waiting inside the door wondering what I was doing. A blond girl w/ a subtle face & medium sized breasts came to the bottom of the stairs w/ an open smile on her face. She was attractive. Very. She wore only a long robe-like dressing gown that revealed tempting patches of skin when she moved. She looked at me for a strange second, then Gabriel & her were full of kisses & smiles. I felt a little bit small, an outsider. Gabriel introduced me, & we went through to the lounge for a smoke & some coffee.
I always admired the way Gabriel could mix women w/ friends. We shared a flat at University, so I knew him well & had witnessed many of his previous ‘mistakes’ & ‘successes.’ I felt rather uneasy being in the room w/ my old friend & his beautiful new girlfriend. I felt alone.
We sat for a while & Gabriel & Mary inevitably drifted into the usual fresh-lovers type of conversation. There was certainly a silent communication between them, a sign of their genuineness perhaps.
I looked around the lounge. Shelves groaned w/ the slow old weight of books, heaving piles of books, pages of words compressed & preserved together in slumber, long centuries of books. Gabriel had no doubt read them all. He thinks books hold the answers. I think they only hold the questions.
I became distracted from the books by the sudden movement of Mary putting on some trousers. She stood up & had to jump & pull them up quickly while she was in the air. I caught a glimpse of her pussy through her knickers. & then I was hooked. I couldn’t help but cast glances at that soft pleasure-triangle that women posses, knowing there was a cunt lying in her lap, just lying there unattended. I felt an angling, wincing agony.
Uncertainty and mystery was what sustained me, kept my curiosity strong.
I wanted now to solve the cunt-mysteries hiding in Mary’s knickers.
“Franco! Wake up man. Where’ve you been? Cloud cuckoo Land?”
“Shit man, sorry, I’m a little bit stoned, well quite stoned actually.”
Everyone laughed.
I suspected that Gabriel was feeling excellent about himself now – it was obvious that I had been staring at Mary.
“Yeah & I’m a little tired as well. I had a really strange dream last night.”
Gabriel & I often discussed our dreams when we were stoned.
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“Well, it was terrible, frightening. There was a woman.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! That sounds just like Franco – terrified of women, even when it comes to wet dreams!”
Mary gave me a look of intrigue. Gabriel laughed at me more.
“You couldn’t understand unless you were there in the dream. It was terrifying.”
“What did she look like?”
“I’ve got no idea. I couldn’t concentrate enough on her face. It was everywhere, all around me – lots of deep blue green colours swirling & all the time there was the Voice…”
“...and what did it say?”
“something about the Dream-Film Store or something.”
“Wow. ‘The Dream-Film Store’. Sounds exciting. & what happened that was so scary?”
“I don’t…. I don’t really know…. It was just…. Um….”
I trailed off into oblivion. The T. V. had been put on & it flickered its bright ugly faces around the room. I felt dizzy & needed suddenly to lie down. Chaos was swarming in my head, I took a deep breath….
& a strange blue colour pervaded the scene.
“I’ve been calling you all day, why haven’t you been answering -
Look, there’s something we should get straight now & here: you WANT to be here, w/ me, so please make it easier on us both.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh you already know all this, it’s the same questions every time – in time you’ll remember everything, but I need to -”
“Where am I?”
“Why, you’re at the Dream-Film Store of course..”
I felt the softness of her presence, the lure of her maiden’s voice, a strange sense of having been here before in another time – still I could not see her face, just an oceanic blur.
“Is there something wrong? What is the matter?
What is the matter?”
she kept repeating
& repeating
her voice dispersing
& drowning as I
floated away
slowly upward towards
the surface again
through the big blue
until…
---------------------------------------------
IV
I awoke panting for breath on Gabriel’s sofa, w/ 2 impending heads above me – stoned expressionless faces.
“Man, what the fuck happened,” I joked.
Their smiles told me they were relieved.
“You suddenly started hyper-ventilating, & moving your limbs manically, & then you feinted & just lay there looking still & peaceful, &, uh, almost… dead!”
“Shit, that’s never happened before, I never feint, that’s weird.”
“Probably just the weed.”
“& the crap company,” added Mary w/ a smile. “Let me get you some water,” she continued.
“Please,” I agreed.
I watched the ripe shape of her body as she moved away, watched her casual motions sway. Disorder Lust & Loneliness. ‘There is no room for love in my life,’ I thought ‘or perhaps all I have is room for love.’
“Gabriel,” I slowly asseverated, suddenly snapping back into the room, “when I feinted, just then, I had the dream of the scaring woman at the bed of the sea.”
“At the bed of the sea?”
“Yes, yes, it was at the bed of the sea first time as well. I remember. I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I haven’t seen the woman yet but I spoke to her.”
“What did you say?”
“’Who are you?’ & ‘where am I?’”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. & this was supposedly a nightmare?”
- “Um, well, no, not as such, no definitely not a nightmare, just a strange, scaring dream.”
“’Who are you?’ and ‘Where am I?’ That’s what people in 3-rd rate Hollywood PG’s say when they miraculously arrive at some fantastical place. Sounds like pure cheese to me man! I can’t believe you’re letting yourself get bothered by a dream as cheesy as this!”
“No, it wasn’t cheesy, it was crystal clear & pure blue & cool on my naked skin….”
Then there was an uncomfortable silence that hung around waiting to strangle me.
“Gabriel shall we have another bifter, I could really quite do w/ a J to sort my head out.”
“Yeah, man, that’s a sound idea. I’ll skin.”
I turned my head to look out of the window.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. The street outside was full of sadness, lined w/ windows, desperate & nothing. The street goes nowhere. The pedestrians are going to places that I refuse to call anywhere.
Mary had returned now w/ a glass of water & a cup of herbal tea.
“Oh, cheers, that’s perfect, thanks.”
I was never myself w/ new people. Strangers gave me a nervous edge. You could say that they excite me – or perhaps that was just Mary.
She sat down next to me on the sofa. I always sit forward w/ my hands clasped. (My mother used to say I sat like I was praying & I used to tell her that I was.) Mary sat back relaxed & full of presence. This made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t see her face behind me, & now felt sure she was sitting back so as to look at me w/out me noticing.
My stoned mind focussed out & dispersed & my thoughts began to spread into detailed crevices of indecision.
If I lent back it would be blatant that I’d either noticed her, if it’s true that she is looking at me, or, if not, it would be either a nervous action or a rather full-on, arrogant one; so I shouldn’t just sit here & feel comfortable w/ her looking at me from behind.
I considered my position w/ Mary agonisingly behind me, & Gabriel, my friend who was beginning to bore me a little, reading in front of me, quite engrossed. He had the spliff & wasn’t even smoking it. I didn’t want to ask him for it, because it was his, but the rude bastard hadn’t even passed it once.
Suddenly, in a moment of decision I sat back next to Mary, our bodies pressing. At this stage, w/ the threat of Gabriel there & the tendencies of my edgier thoughts getting carried away, I began to feel excited – I began to get an erection & my jeans were tight. “I could really do w/ leaning forward again,” I thought. “Though what would Mary think of me rocking back and forward like a monkey?” Paradox. The only solution I felt was to ask Gabriel for the biff & lean forward to take it.
“Gabs man, the bifter has extinguished itself in the absence of you smoking it. Have a light.”
We often spoke to each other in burlesque tones using highly pretentious diction to mock the people who assume we are being serious or genuinely ostentatious. A silent cruelty, & a disdainful one. We enjoyed deliberately confusing people. I know that of course it’s a manifestation of personal insecurities, or something like that. Enigmatic people, though, have to cultivate their enigmas, play on people’s curiosities. If people knew this, however, the enigma, the mystery, would cease.
I suppose you could say I suffered from a dreadful arrogance that played games w/ my autonomy.
W/ all this thought taking place & consuming my stoned mind, my erection subsided. & Gabriel passed me the joint.
“Cheers man. What you reading?”
“Turn of the Screw.”
“Henry James. I’ve read it.”
“What do you think?”
“Frightening. Frightening to think that the entire novel is related through the eyes of someone so subtly mad… psychotic… that she doesn’t know it and neither do we…”
“Yes, yes, the scary thing is that when you’re insane of course you wouldn’t know about it.”
“Where are you at?”
“The Governess has just been visited by her second horror.”
“Oooooooooh… it’s just getting good. The insanity accelerates from then on.”
I often spoke of insanity. The idea of it attracts me. It’s in the same boat as all the things which attract me like dreams & angels & myths & magic, symbols, Mystery.
I often used the word ‘insane’ as an adjective. I’d never told Gabriel (& he was the most likely person I would tell anything) that I don’t actually believe in sanity. Or intelligence. I just believe in minds.
I needed the loo.
“Mary, where’s the bathroom please.”
“Upstairs.”
That’s all I needed to know. Bathrooms are self-evident & usually exactly where you expect them to be. Still, you’ve got to ask.
“Right. Do you want the rest of this?” I offered the joint.
“Oh, yes please. Thanks.”
On leaving the room, I realised how much I’d wanted to leave it since entering it.
“I’ll take my time,” I thought.
Halfway up the brown carpeted stairs I heard Mary & Gabriel exchanging aggressive but hushed remarks w/ each other. They were squabbling. Shit. Was it something to do w/ me? No, don’t be arrogant Franco, of course not, they just waited for privacy.
I reached the top of the stairs slowly, straining to hear what they were saying downstairs.
“Don’t be so nosy Franco, go & take your piss,” I said to myself, imitating the sense of morals & responsibility that I recognised I inherently lacked.
Four possible doors faced me at the top of the stairs. I chose the one I was sure was a bathroom; but it was a bedroom. “Shit, oh well, another one of my immaculate notions ruined. Bathrooms are not self-evident after all.”
The door next to it was the right one. As I pissed, I looked around at all the fancy bottles of sprays & scents & creams & whatnot. My bathroom, in comparison, was utterly empty.
I decided I’d stay in the bathroom a little longer to give the two downstairs a fraction more privacy. Their relationship, on first impressions, was strange. They possessed a silent communication which I’d seen in other couples, but never experienced.
In front of me, they ignored each other. & Gabriel had definitely changed. I realised then, staring blankly in the mirror, that Gabriel was not a friend anymore. I no longer needed him for the public confidence he inspired in me. I no longer needed any public confidence. I had no friends. I had to get out, leave as quickly & politely as possible. W/ as much of Gabriel’s gorgeous skunk as possible.
Returning downstairs it was clear that all the fuss had subsided. Entering the living room, Gabriel had now moved to sit in my seat next to Mary on the sofa. He had his arm around her. The skunk was on the coffee-table, where Gabriel was previously sitting. I moved over & sat down. The couple were full of smiles.
For the next ½ hour, we chatted idly (except for Mary), & I was given the opportunity of rolling a spliff. Little did Gabriel know that it was also an opportunity for me to steal about ¼ of his ounce of skunk. Having convinced myself that there was no longer the same connection between us, that he wasn’t a friend, & that it was his fault as well, I reached a guilt-free state of mind, which excited me. Ah, the potentials of being guilt-free, amoral. All you needed was to be good at lying to yourself. So, skinning the J, I subtly spilled the bag under the coffee-table while the couple were smugly engrossed in some embrace. Under the coffee-table, I put a substantial handful into my left boot, then brought the rest up in the bag, laughing and apologising.
“Gabriel. After this biff I’m gonna cruise.”
“You’re going? Already?”
“Well, I’ve been here ages &… to be honest, I still don’t feel too good after that feinting episode.”
“I thought we’d do something today, go to Camden maybe.”
“Gabriel,” I joked like a friend would. “You know we never do anything if we’ve got enough weed.”
He was reluctant to agree. I knew it was because of Mary. Being w/ her changed him.
We smoked the spliff, & talked some more. I couldn’t be myself w/ him. He had become a stranger. The way he was so – insensitive about my dream as well…. That was what first alerted me to his new persona. Oh well. I managed friendly chatter, & by now had realised he probably wanted me to go anyway, & was probably experiencing the same friendship crisis between us that I was. At least he had Mary there when I left. What would she be like then? What were they really like together?
“So,” I said, standing up, “I’m off, man.”
“Cheers for phoning & coming round, it’s good that we’ve retained our friendship and are still in touch…” etc, etc,
Bullshit.
After the crap & the strange half-falsity had finally gotten too crappy to bear on both sides, I smiled at Mary.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said looking at her intensely in her sea-green eyes, as if to communicate something more than my words actually said.
“you too,” she smiled,
“see you again.”
& then that was it. I doubted if she ever would see me again. Or Gabriel for that matter. It didn’t matter.
The door had closed behind me. I faced the street. I was free.
********
V
W/ my confidence fuelled by the safe knowledge of having something to smoke in my possession, I strolled briskly away. “Even if the worst comes to the worst,” I thought, “I can just get utterly cained & escape, pass out in a miserable gutter.” But I could not accept this as being the outcome of the day. “Decisions must be made,” I said decisively out-loud, to no-one. “I must choose.”
I turned the corner, not knowing where I was, or where I was going to. A woman w/ a pram passed me & deliberately averted her eyes from mine. I don’t know why but this fuelled my sense of drive further. My stride began to extend.
A moment later, a fragment of sun scattered through the clouds that had lay in the sky all day. A ray caught me in the eye. I began to feel quite exultant, happy to be alive, & to be me. I continued walking in a strong rhythm. My feet penetrated the street.
I started to hum; then I fitted words to the tune. I was walking directly into the beam of sunlight, which seemed to be exclusively shining on me. ‘Wow,’ I thought, light-headed & dreamy, ‘I am indeed a very special person, blessed.’ As soon as I’d felt this elated sensation float through me, the grey clouds covered the sun again, as if to punish me for my arrogance, or simply just to ruin my mood.
Angered by this, I felt like getting myself involved in a conflict against the sky & sun. I decided, in the mess of my mind, that I would will the sun back out from those clouds.
Soon my concentration faltered, though, & my thoughts maundered into silly crevices. I had turned onto a little side street, & at the end of it, I saw there was a fenced grassy opening w/ a gate. A cemetery. W/ my thought now on a level of confusion, it would be a good idea to sit down & think for a while. Maybe I could write a song.
The cemetery was virtually empty. Furthermore, it appeared to be more like a park than a cemetery. Nicely mowed lawns. Cosy gravel paths. Each tombstone lined up immaculately & forgotten about. I couldn’t believe for a minute that any of the people lying under this ground had specifically chosen this cemetery as their place of rest. Of all the places of rest on Earth.
I wandered down to the bottom of the path & sat by an unusually small gravestone under the trees in the corner. Leaves were scattered around me, fragile and crumbling.
“In loving memory of
Mary Calliope,
died 2nd April 1882,
aged 26 years.”
That was what this curious gravestone said. It was faded & looked out of place, tucked away at the side under this tree. It seemed almost lonely. I leant against it, sitting on the damp ground, forgetting to respect the dead.
I noticed a robin hopping around the base of the nearest sycamore tree. He, or she for that matter, looked rather impoverished, skinny & tired. I immediately took pity on this little robin & felt helpless that I couldn’t give it something to eat. Instead, I smiled at it, & said “hello” in the tone of voice you’d use w/ a baby. “You can be my friend” I said wistfully, trying to put some genuine enthusiasm into my voice. I sounded false. Almost inevitably, the robin bobbed away. ‘Oh well.’
I sat there engrossed in an evolving day-dream, unable to find a single thread of productive thought, wallowing in whatever arose.
I was beginning to feel nauseous. My guts felt like sludging snakes writhing inside me. “Shit,” I thought “I haven’t eaten yet today.” What time was it? I hadn’t a clue. How long had I been sitting there? I began to panic a little, & feel light-headed. ‘Shit, I’ve got some weed, shit I forgot, wow, I’ll have another smoke and calm down.’
W/ my face down to my lap, & my fingers absorbed in the process of rolling a spliff, I did not notice the elderly woman approaching me w/ a little joke of a dog scampering beside her. Just as I lit up, & lifted my face up, she was there.
“Morning,” I said, slightly shocked.
Her face was heavy w/ old skin but could have been attractive before about 50 years of weathering set in.
“Why are you sitting on that grave?” she said abruptly.
“Well, um, actually, I am here to mourn my father’s grand mother.”
Her nosy rudeness annoyed me, & I was in the mood for retaliating on the offensive.
“She died while giving birth to my grandfather,” I continued, enjoying the freedom & spontaneity of lying, enjoying the fact that I had gained the upper hand.
“Oh,” she said solemnly. “Oh I am sorry,” she continued humbled and apologetic. I was suddenly hit by a great wave of guilt, at seeing how easily I had defeated his poor old woman, who was in the right anyway. I wanted to tell her that I was lying, & had actually stopped to roll up some illegal substances, & that yes I was a typical youth, & that you were right to question me… But she had already tottered off, w/ her little tottering dog. Oh well, no point in pitying the weak, I thought.
W/ this incident over, & seeming to have taken place hours ago, I continued with the spliff.
Slowly, I began to enter a state of mind that I’d never encountered before. My stomach seemed to expand & expand into space. I closed my eyes & felt the walls of my stomach moving outwards. I felt as if a universe was being created inside me. I felt a huge space within the entire of my body, which I felt no longer existed. I imagined seeing stars explode & planets being born &
********
VI
& I plummeted to the Dream-Film Store again…
“Here is where dreams are stored on disk,” said the friendly female voice as if on autocue. “Anything that can be dreamt, any dream sequence, it’s stacked on the shelves here in The Dream-Film Store, this shop beneath the waves.”
I felt less afraid than before.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “I can explain.”
Her face, her physical form now appeared, a nubile and pulchritudinous sylph.
“Hi,” she said, resolving from the colour.
“Hi,” I said back, breaking that rule that women don’t like you copying them.
“Your loneliness, disorder and despair leads to LUST. Your agonies are self-inflicted. ALIENATION is one of them. You have escaped into The Dream Film Store. You have accidentally slipped into a crevice of your own mind and landed awake in the subconscious.”
“Really?”
“Either that or you have created a world here at the bottom of the sea symbolising mystery, women, penetration, drowning, hallucinating, dreaming, the subconscious.”
“Well which is it?”
“Your LONELINESS is a fantasy world that is the subconscious reaction to and sanctuary from the alienation, waste & disorder of your waking life. You are at war with yourself. Your subconscious is offering you peace terms.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come with me while we plummet,” she said; “plummet with me while we sleep.”
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)
THE GREATEST SIN
(for Nathalia)
I
COCOON OF LOVE
A glance
A blink
A fault in the stars
Her mascara slips into pools of black
A chance
A second
of Infinity
She flutters her eyelids
like spring’s first butterfly
II
LOVESICK LULLABY
Love hides inside the empty floorboards
Love glistens from the shining dew drop
Love rises from the end of a candle
Love hurts & wounds the sleeping innocent
Love screams & kills but we forgive it
Love wanders through an empty corridor
Love arrives like a midnight butterfly
Love jumps up from the serpent’s shadows
Love fills the air with empty spaces
Love seeks those who least seek it
Love kisses those who don’t deserve it
Love falls & takes you to the sea-bed
Love’s name is hidden in her whisper
Love sings like a silent choir
Love dwells in lack of truth or reason
Love dies when she blinks her eyelids…
III
TO SIGH
In a half lit world
I sink to see a moment of you
& I’m scared to believe
That death not ends these fearful dreams
But at least I dreamt
Amid a lost desire
Alone on a sinking ship
Sinking into aborted love forever
& it gives me hope
To sigh
But darkness dwells so deep
It makes me want to smile
Because I don’t have to pretend
Yes
I know I’ll drown
But at least I dreamt of you…
IV
TO FEEL
To feel the despair
in a lover’s breath
To feel the heat
in a wayward smile
To feel the mystery
of the heart
I can’t keep hiding in the shade
To dare to see her
blink her eye
When she is gone
her scent remains
I dare to feel
I dare to touch
I dare to believe in Heaven…
V
FOOL
I can’t see you
so I guess you must be
invisible
I can’t feel you
so I guess you must be
perfect
Into this wilderness I’m born
Into this longing heart I’m thrown
Into this sea to drown
To die asleep & dreaming of you
Because I am just a fool
I hope I die with you…
VI
BY DARKNESS
She dances in the darkness
like a flame
She disconnects with a sigh
I fall into the trance
& awake
only to sleep again…
VII
THE URGENCY OF NOW
The warm urgency of now
Pushes me deeper into the tide
I surrender to desire
& let you conquer me
Floating asleep on a laughing sea
I can see you
on the shoreline
Waving slowly, calling softly
I must see you again
Tomorrow will bring treasures deep
Rich & warm comforts of the soul
I need you here
Before I cry & close my eyes forever
I can see you
On the horizon
Beneath a melting sunset sky
The stars awake to notice love
She waits with open arms…
VIII
OH, I GUESS IT’S LOVE
There is no place that tastes so sweet
a soft asylum by the garden’s quiet corners
Voices and bells
The resting birds
Enhance the warm night’s silence
With careless smoky laughter
Solemn prayers
In the church’s hollow sadness
Solemn forgives the slow deliverance
All is well
& all is strange
The strangest thoughts to have
Soothed my mind
A small oasis
In the dusky realm
Gives me the power
To think & dream
Lying under the moon’s crazy figure
A blurred statue
In the timeless sky
A hazy blanket covers all
Obligations to return inside
To sleep
& retire to the oceans
Nothing could caress
My heart so bruised
More delicately
Than the crazy air
What?
Oh, I guess it’s love
It has no place in this crazy world
My drowsy head releases hold
Beneath the sky-turn-ocean-grey
A dusk to lose
& forget
The purpose
For there is no meaning
Behind our eyes
So slow
So old
What?
Oh, I guess it’s love
That forges sleep
On our fragile minds
The blurred sunset
In the crazy silence
Sacrifices
All its treasure
To give me power & no direction
To help me lose my careless way
The moon is a pearl
With a lazy voice
& it hums
To Death’s gentle song
The tune that means all is healed
What?
Oh, love,
It will wound me & forgive me
The graveyard is a place of rest
& the church sighs
A place of death
A useless womb for priceless dreams
That run in its dizzy realm
Naked-Luxury-Deathly-Trance
But all is well if I only think
& sigh of the dreams of dusk
Images before I sleep
Dancing, escaping memory
They seem to have no cares at all
They seem to know the name of love
They seem to be my sacred friends
Ancient messengers, waking at night
But I will forget them
& never care
About what I saw in love & alive
What?
Oh, I guess it’s love
Just us & love
Forever...
IX
WAITING
Slowly rise
Slowly stir
I lie waiting, thinking
Wishing I was lying down
with you
Sleeping in soft grass
Wandering, laughing through open fields
Drifting through meadows without fences
Outside dawn blooms into spring
Birdsong chatters in the trees around
She will find a way
If I can find her secret heart
Then everything
will be
okay…
X
AWAKE, THE CRAZY DREAM
I am asleep
until she smiles,
I am perched
on the edge of a dream,
She dances along the summer horizon,
& loses me with the blink of an eye…
XI
PURPLE PERFECT
To trade desire, wrapped in silky cloths
To build a fire, where the insects flock
There is a candle, I don’t believe the light
But I can feel you, we’re on the edge of night
Into a theatre, onto an endless bridge
Into the ocean, on the back of a bomb
Never yesterday, in its faded tomb
Nor tomorrow, in its empty womb
Fresh desire still feeding hope
Onto a bonfire, down a necklace rope
While I’m blinded, there is no horizon
But I can see now, the sun has risen
With strange colours, mixing the twilight sky
& love is our sin now, we could forever die
together
In the depths of a dream
Live together
In a world unseen…
XII
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…
EDITORIAL
At Oundle School a friend and I founded a magazine called Poetry Now and a DIY Publishing company called Ice Land Publications after the country in Brave New World where the renegades are exiled. The magazine had many contributors, all of whom were anonymous aside from a list of contributing names at the back. Each month’s edition of Poetry Now had a different monthly edition name like “juvenile dementia” or “under garments.” At the time I was into Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, Keats’s Negative Capability, Tricky’s trip-hop lyrics, the Beats and more. I took a sharp right at the rosy crucifix on the black board demarcating the values of the Augustan and Romantic periods – saying “tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.” For some reason the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty; and can’t stand the suspense” also chimed like bells reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. (I read that line in a Velvet Underground record sleeve actually!). My mission was not just “to make them sound genuine and believable,” but also “to remain relevant and interesting” and “to be utterly modern too.” The following suite has been preserved of my output.
THE ANON SUITE
I
A BROKEN CHAPEL
The Quire is opened, awakes the blame of memory...
whomsoever they’re looking for it’s not me.
Light shafts in its distilled sleep.
The dead in tired dance circle the silence,
lingering fragile moments outside the quiet Quietus -
but wait, who dreamed me awake this time?
It was me, I'm he who dared disturb.
Not to renounce the past with rapt amazement
but to forgive our sins, falling like leaves.
We have seen this all before, time
tumbling away into sleep, seen
this darkness drop and these ruins murmur
and now we are gathered to appoint the gods
and now we are gathered to consecrate ourselves
and now we are gathered to ordain this dust,
we are gathered to live and to dream.
II
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.'
III
THE RISING KESTREL
(co-authored with Mr. William Thyne)
Night arrives like a ghost.
The green kingdom around me
opens up to the starlit laughter.
To hover motionlessly o'er the mellow fields
I'm rising through this careless freewill
like a kestrel from its wood.
Lusting for life as every being should.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
But nothing too personal.
Because love is life without drugs.
IV
OPEN
In the cotton mist she
came in shining leather.
Time swings on
sighs forever.
She touched my shoulder
like a burning prayer
and sighed as all the
sky was severed.
“Full fathom five”
could not be a-
nother number for
Virgil says “there are
tears in things;” and
O is not a ghost-vowel,
no, but U is a ghost-
vowel– when we're
opened unto the
gloom under
sliver moon and
I slide her over.
Semen spills
like silver water.
We're soon enough
in the flotsam ether.
V
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.
VI
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.
VII
HAIKU FOR SPRING
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but like butterflies.
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.
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
____________________
[NO NAME]
through arteries of galaxies
of memories
to galleries where tapestries
of slaughter hang from falling walls
through the purple corridor
a door is ajar
push it open
gently creaking opening afar
then into the
crumbling tumbling temple
fumble through and stumble on
across the stone across the floors
flat like graves
patterned in shadow
onwards upwards
notice the window
above all stained in
glory-orgasm
w/ the cross of Christ
and the face of you
Holy you
like some ragged tearful stranger
bled to the world
just to say
“anyway
- there is no truth
give up now
& turn away”
it's all too late
you must not wait
follow the shadows
into the shade
head up high
up on to the altar
where stands a candle
forged in Rome
find the candle
& follow it upward
& finally then
find the flame.
From ‘THE BOOK OF WORDS’
Words, words, words. What are words? These are words.
Words in this epistemology I would say are useful tools associated with the instinct to survive.
Man is words and ‘man’ is a word and words draw bridges across metaphysics and words make connections between first and third persons.
Words are also a great bandwagon of falsity we must presume is not false in order to make life easier.
Words are, well, ONLY words.
“MAYFLY” I say the word ‘mayfly,’ phonetically, sounding out its every vowel-sound alphabetically.
The word ‘Entropy’ spelled backwards, i.e. y.p.o.r.t.n.e could frame the first, unformulated spark of appetency in Nothingness preceding Creation, or else have no meaning under the sun in which case I’d say that is Tucker’s constant.
Neil Curry says “if two people can agree on the meaning of a new word, it becomes a real word.”
‘Indwellable’ might mean the opposite of ‘indomitable’ when it comes to the medicine man’s medieval cinema screen empoldered from the harbour in Iceland.
Neil Curry also liked the bit in my essay on Norman Nicholson where I wrote “You can find freedom from accepting limitation.”
Sometimes I drive a stolen, Dream Factory car for whom punctuation is merely brakes, bird with the skin of snaking in the Lakes.
Music, Magic and Mystery make the three M’s of words.
I think I might write A Trance of Stalks by Professor Quentin Ponsonby, when I am bored.
The distractionary may contain the metallurgical origins of birds, whom it seems speak, in gagazookzook and bongateebingbong.
I think poetry is more like Man interpreting God and music more like God interpreting Man.
I like my lines of shining conveyance to be free to connect in all directions.
When two words thought to be mutually exclusive connect in Holy Orbit it forms an Image.
“Noetic” meaning “of the mind” is my new favourite word because its suffix ‘ic’ reminds of Icarus who flew too near the sun.
SCENTS OF SPRING
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.
HYPERTEXT
No worries, 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.
NOTES ON HYPERVISION IN THE YEAR 2000
I
MILLENNIAL PROPHECIES
I look into that dust in that late sunbeam angling in and foresee that they will one day hunt for something called the God Particle that will prove God non-extrinsic to matter.
It would be good to see an alignment of the Plough and the landscape for a first black President of America.
I think if Fight Club were real someone would fly two planes into the Twin Towers on September 11th and I don’t think that a good idea but someone might do that.
I would like to write a book, maybe a Trilogy, called The Scientific Papers, classed as a series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science as a single discussion of perception.
It would be good if there were a party in an office block where all the internal walls are removed and where every floor represents a decade in music, fashion and substances.
I myself would like to record an album on earphones, like Rimbaud might if he were a musician.
I would say that smells from tellies would also be possible one day too.
I think what we might see is an Age called the Age of Enchantment that is an echo of the Enlightenment.
I do wonder if there will be another immaculate conception now that we have a new Millennium.
II
MILLENNIAL PEN-KNIFE TOOLS
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. Earphones implanted with tiny mics inside them so that you can record on them. A love-bomb that explodes in a Chaos Theatre. What’s wrong with these is that they are not real!
III
AMBITIONS
To replace the archaic word for ‘gay’ would be amazeballs because ‘gay’ used to be Man’s highest emotion and was never replaced.
To discover an aesthetic anti-system like the colours of the vowels in English would also be great, even though Rimbaud deemed it folly.
To conduct an experiment into the international language alphabet would also be an artistic ambition.
To overthrow the conscious self-censor would be good, maybe create a superhuman narrator called FUCK who can tell the truth like no-one else.
To start a new religion is what I am getting at because I think the Millennium means what is old is expended and we need to renew our values; and already Jedi is an official religion on the census forms in London.
To start a new language entirely would also be a positive thing, if at all possible, in my opinion.
I would like to start the tradition of the post-poem.
I would also see gypsy poetry in the English centre because it would shake things up and I think it could be interesting to see if they have anything new to offer.
If I were a concept artist I’d build a room made of hash that the audience can blow-torch but as I am not, just a writer, I can’t do that; and I would only endorse real live death in the cinema if an old granny volunteered for euthanasia and that’s because I do have some moral compass.
To make a new discovery as big as fire is the long and short of it, for every generation might have that chance again, to usurp the burning torch of culture from the old.
To bring back the Summer of Love is the largest and widest goal.
To bring about simultaneous orgasm of Man.
IV
BLUE
“You know how dad told us all
he was an art smuggler nicknamed Blue?
That he smuggled art over the Berlin Wall?
That he sold his business when
the Berlin Wall fell? Well,
I think it might’ve been code, art
might’ve been recourse to euphemism.
I think he was a pollen smuggler.
I think he had a pollen farm
way up high in the Moroccan
mountains and shipped tonnes
and tonnes of pollen to the States.
This whole art dealer nicknamed
Blue thing is just to protect us.
At least this is what I entertain.
I also think he named us after
The Doors, John, James, and Robert
and then they had a girl of course.
Have you noticed we are born
in a season each, going Spring,
Autumn, Winter, Summer, and
march right left right left in the hands?
There are also four compass
points, four seasons, four wheels
of a car and four dimensions
to the mapping of any point in
the spacetime continuum including
time. Now revolve that bifter!
After all I think Jesus himself
would be a proto-hippy stoner
poet in this day and age. Ah,
I love it when the Wizard of Oz
resolves into colour. There are
casual drug references all around us.
Mario mushrooms confer energy.
Tinkerbell’s dust makes you
fly. And in the Wizard of Oz
they lie down in the field of
poppies and see the Emerald City.
So hurry up passing that joint.”
V
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DYING OF CANCER
A Russian has a right to a square of red perceived by someone from another land and Liberty and Trade go hand in hand.
Smell is the most primal sense, in love, absent in cinema.
Blissful Lovingness is where all religions meet.
Better and worse are but materialistic, Western concepts.
The Age of Communication momentarily endorses, means the Age of Alienation.
Each age is unable to see its own prejudices, its own cage of retrospective categorisation.
The Age of Enchantment is an echo of The Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment is the simultaneous astrological and sociological de-centering of Man.
The opposite of something is the pre-requisite.
The pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, into words, via the mechanics of meaning, is dilution.
The condition of knowledge produces no Triumph.
When you renounce the quest for meaning, you find it, fall back on meaning-by-proxy.
When you lose your concentration you die.
Your ordinary speech is surreal enough.
There are too many words in the world.
Everything living shares the same heartbeat in a given lifespan.
The artist is the missing link reintegrating into a society of worms below and the artistic spirit androgynous.
You should not trust systems for they rule with fear not love.
All guns should be flown in a spaceship into the heart of the sun.
Without difference no contradistinction.
Everyone is my brother and I love them.
The symbol [R] represents the stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf, that the creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.
There is no more mapless space.
Fear is an epiphany of Hell in the self.
Philosophy is a self-contained language corresponding to nothing real in life.
Existentialism is a child at the pick and mix with a credit card.
Politics is a choice between two plates of dogshit.
It is better to have a cup of tea than it is to kill yourself.
Portability is the new apotheosis of Form.
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too.
All things must be returned to earth, surrendered like a rented thing to death.
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
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
down to the Irish Sea quite
slowly
to
see if my place in life is lowly
a
dying animal goes much faster.
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
still
see
nothing through them but
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.
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.
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*
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.
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.
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!
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
old colours of the vowels in English you can
find pasta, tea, air, hair, clothes, loo-roll, water, 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 echo 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!
FLUVIENT COINAGE
Sonnest abraddio grample and bricken
gontocker blonky and wellity white
postico flostico flipstick and fleving
fluvient coinage has gone againe
driptheria drearier than a tree-drum
do-lang and blang-gast gustopong coo
sloo flicking flostico flostico flagrant
masticko mecklebot plastic and plee
flestico follerdong farmerly fillegist
fillegist farmerly follerdong flunk
collerdon gollerdon gumian grey
ollerpoller
sollerdoller follycog nonk.
TEA F. M. AND THE DANCING MOTH
My latest thinking is that my dad
was sponsored by some philosophers to provide
the real human witness from Tea F. M.
And The Dancing Moth by Syd Barrett.
By seven I helped invent the net:
when the idea of the net needed
storing in writing in the attic here,
to give it a chance to grow all round the world,
I was the one to write it. By eight
I had made not one but two very
strange Naturalistic Observations.
By eleven I was marked on the hand
by my own experiment into the maths
of the new colour though it didn’t turn
out to be the new colour in the end.
By fifteen I attained the face of stars.
It might’ve been scripted in the Bible.
By eighteen, in 2000, sooooooo
many things, including the fact
that I spoke against September 11th,
also wrote the highest-marked
English Literature A-level exam
essay in the nation at 100%. After
school, I recorded an album on
binaural earphones in a band, had
an effervescent mobile, reverberating
the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through
every technological inlet in the room
before it rang, hosted the alignment
of the Plough and oldest fell for a rhythm change
in the White House, got a First
despite the onset of mental illness,
worked at the numinous, purple-bleeding
screen, built the Tower as an instrument
of philosophy, had an experiment
into a tape with a pause where
cut and resealed in the flimsy reel
and discovered the sheet where
pictures grew. Then I falsified
the Nirvana barcode, and attained
visual radio broadcasting dreams
that swirl in purple, digital swathes
about
the head of the deranged seer
whom
it would seem was forty three
before
he realised they used his name
in
the equation that helped invent
the
internet when he was seven.
NOT
TO BE MINE
You
were not to be mine
but
I would’ve liked it if you were.
You
were an evergreen light,
a
transcendent signifier,
a
blind, metaphysical objective,
e’
en the mating queen
from
the green pages
of
Jim Morrison in the flesh.
I’ve
said it before but will again:
a
thesis as thin as the Rizla it is in,
light
it and write it, burn and unlearn,
can
lead all the way to to loony bin,
make
you forget how to spell
Winnie
the Pooh at the gates
of Hell.
I’d
love to smoke a joint
but
it is against the law -
I
know, no-one has ever
tried
that one before.
In
the past I smoked so much weed
even
to read one you’d need to be Bede.
Now
I stick to my Vape pen
and
unsweetened tea.
I
guess you could say
it
is enough for me.
I
like to live compress sans sugar.
LINEKDIN
Academia
proceeds by guesswork
but
at
a guess I couldn’t tell you
what
Linekdin is. I guess
it’s
why I have to stop -
to
bring all this to a close.
And
when you want to start,
where
do you need to go
and
who do you need to know?
No,
starting is miles behind.
I
try and decipher what it means
from
the letters. Linekdin.
But
it seems a scramble.
As
if I am not linked in,
nobody
ever explained to me
what
Linekdin is or means.
It’s
the same for much of modernity.
I
only got my first Smartphone
this
year, 2025. There is though
something
pleasing in an artistic sense
about
not being able to continue
because
you don’t know
what
Linekdin is or means.
So
it
could be time to pack it in.
I’d
probably say if it were
an
exam that it is a new
internet
company, a new
means
of communication,
sharing
information, a form
of
social media, but I don’t know.
Without
my knowing even this,
it
may be best to not continue.
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