AND IF THERE WAS A DIFFERENT TIME

COLLECTIONS BY JOHN TUCKER FROM CHIPMUNKA

Soundcloud Rain

The Sunset Child

Breath Trapped In Heaven

Brave New Tense

Yes You May

Let The Jews Win

THAT’S IT

E’en though it’s not Anon

I see the Flo’ moving on

the floor up at mormor’s here

and find in sharing room to cheer

for we have written this new Proust

and with my hands which can attest

to weathers all about my head

that mean the sharing of the bread

which have been here since the start

of finding salvation in art...

at the moment Flo’s just the noise

of playing with her baby toys

but soon she’ll sleep and then wake

and later eat a fairy cake

and one day grow to be a mum

but as for myself I cannot come

and without the ability to ejaculate

I may have grown a little late

and can’t continue singing of

women in the wind with love

so I should say “That’s All Folks,”

it’s impossible to mend your broken yolks,

e’ en when you sit with smokes

and tell your friend some dirty jokes.

AURORA FLOREALIS REVISITED

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*

MORNING PAGES

How much can the garden grow

in only half an hour of mum’s company?

First she was talking of planting

peas in a dug out gutter.

Then through the darkness there resolved

a video of baby Flo’ fondling

a redolent flower and getting

the pollen from the stamen

on her tiny baby hand and saying

“pretty.” We put the new kitchen bin in

and already there is too much to mention.

The receptacle of the poet’s mind

was filling up throughout.

The hammock arrived by snail mail.

She wrote a card to Dr. Bob’s son.

I made her a coffee but by now

this remembering is scattershot-logical.

The chimney sweep was here

and the gardener too. Mother’s

new sunglasses also arrived

by post. So it was a busy

half an hour in her company again.

The sense of a poem beneath

the surface was ever present, prevailing.

Imagine then a whole lifetime.

Or even but a day under the sun.

The magpie’s bladder fills with detail

in the darkness, up a ladder

and in the end, before I know it,

I need to go take a pee.

SATIN

[a new song for acoustic guitar]

How do you do Ryuken?

Ableton is broken,

like the first morning,

nothing left to decide.

The kids will want a garden,

spaces that are open,

I wish I had some pollen,

surrender to the tide.

The morning’s come to names,

we left our old flames

in the land of dreams

and now will play our games.

I’m not up for fighting,

witness in the lightning,

the winter wind is biting,

I dreamed of love and trust.

There has been a sighting

of something that is fleeting,

the job is a good one,

ending up in dust.

The morning’s come to names,

we left our old flames

in the land of dreams

and now will play our games.

Drake is in the wilderness,

suffer teeming emptiness,

nothing comes from Nothingness

except nothing at all.

Another day has begun,

and even though there is no sun,

it could be a good one,

where I remember Paul.

The morning’s come to names,

we left our old flames

in the land of dreams

and now will play our games.

FLEE HAS SEEN A BEE

So, Flee, you may have seen a bee

but I don’t want you to see a rat.

It isn’t right, if it’s according to me,

that one should have to die like that.

The bee would sail across the ocean

as you lie back on the sunny green.

It would be cross-pollinating the garden,

extracting pollen for the mating queen…

once my copy of Neil Curry’s volume

started to smell of redolent perfume

so I built the Tower in my bedroom.

There were other books, a few of them

that also exhibited signs of natural

magic - for the smell was not a spillage in

my Gap Year bag, of aftershave, but actual

magic. I hope that when I am gone

someone reads the Tower as I built it,

tall and strong, lines left to right,

for it wasn’t aftershave, I never spilled it,

and you can take my word as true and quite.

GOLDFISH BOWL UPDATE

Mrs. Bloggins’s Goldfish Has Just Died,

the local, parochial headline wants to read,

and crossed the water to the Other Side,

left behind my almost ascetic greed

so I suppose I am feeling a bit sad,

knowing not why the goldfish is dead,

knowing only that God is good,

hoping its soul ascends Heavenward,

imagining the newsflash on the TV,

or online for anyone at all to see,

but as the goldfish becomes history

I see it could be worse for you and me

for if it was my brother’s <BEE>

there would be damage in all Infinity.

ALL ONE WORD

Floss, Flo, Fliss, Flee are Florence

and are all one, but so is Flora -

forty three years Florence’s elder.

Blonde and pulchritudinous from school.

I hugged her once in a boarding school corridor.

I was quite Smart for a fool.

O drizzled Cola Bottle woman,

word-walk you my way into my arms?

The moment we should’ve kissed passed

and was forever gone and lamented too.

It’s not like I didn’t try to recapture

the moment of emotive Romanticism in words,

but by the time FB came lolling

it was too late, she wouldn’t befriend me.

I am hoping you, Florence, will

if not be a FB friend then a true one.

I guess what’s good for Flora and her

pretty pretext, her system, same for you.

THE FACE OF CALLIOPE

The face of Calliope was a Holy night,

if we don’t take flight

then we’ll seem quite bright.

It doesn’t matter about the plot,

for the plot is grot

and can go to rot.

What matters most in life is love,

if it comes from above

then that is your dove.

We were three gathered in the name,

if you find it a shame

I can take the blame.

THROUGH THE FRAME OF MUSIC

When perceived through the frame of music,

the horizon is a drone,

the apple blossom a dulcimer.

If the apple blossom made a sound

it would be tintinnabulation.

Already the beck’s tumbling

down a mini waterfall

resembles a kettle drum’s metal

petals of silver bliss…

already the trumpet wears

his foreskin on the inside.

Already there is an upturned canoe for a drum.

Already there is a dog for a frontman

and there are poppadom hi-hats

allowed in the raggedy band.

At least when I look through them,

they look really good.

DEAR FLISS OR IS IT FLEE?

Dear Fliss or is it Flee?

I hope you are well-rested, okay, secure of direction, comfortable, eating well. When I wrote this to you, the one we call H was walking round, moving from the kitchen to the sitting room where mormor awaited with little baby girl toys. I had just made a few touches to my Morrison mirror, and got coal in for mormor, after a night with no sleep, only staying up tending to my soul at a slinky screen. Mud outside was minimal, as I made my avowal, still victimised so badly I cannot confess to it, still wishing to be doing nothing else but write poetry. If this missive ever gets through to you wake me up, for the dawn is strong with James, and we feel in love despite the gypsies and the government who loom. By now you might know me as pirate, who wanted to get that line about the ocean in there but recognised it belonged in a song, a song I wrote myself, after attaining the face, in about 1998, as if some kind of proof, the result of some bet, the end of the quest, the treasure chest of dreams. So it being a song I decided I would no longer mewl and puke to school. Even though it seemed to land fair and square with me, the line about the ocean in the song when I was but 15 or 16 and a new Rimbaud, by now they had me down as Sid Vicious, who was making something that was ours, though not quite sure if “our-ing it along” was allowed in the proper vernacular. Voices are not sweeties. Mormor went for a pee. Suicide is a shelf. I am so sick with fear I may have a morning beer, even though it’s only 9 AM. I could pretend it is gravy. Mormor comes in the kitchen, says it might be too windy to do a barbecue today though she has it all ready apart from the coal. The carrots and potatoes are ready. You’re in the room now, on the way out into the field, a beautiful little girl, whom I call “madame,” whom it seems is getting ready to go out into the field, while Seb is running up the fell, and it’s only 9. 30, still breakfast time, time for eggs, eggs not likely to cause an adverse reaction, but not before you go out into the front garden for some action, and not before H puts a hat on, and I try to see the light on a fair, springful day. It’s just a shame I need to read up on Trump every morning, for it disturbs me, as I try to see the light, imagining sunlight blowing my hair about, and now you’ve got your hat on and your wellies and are totally ready and can go out.

Love,

John (who might soon be snow or under the sleet)

THE MUSIC

The music on repeat

in my head tastes sweet

but then you listen in

and it gets emotional

because it is futile

and mouthless.

So you imagine the Irish

crying into their pints

at the end of the night

when flocks of notes

have migrated.

When it starts up again

after you’ve brought it

through the comedown

it can be annoying,

but then again,

to keep singing through

the delicate operation

is not a bad thing.

BLUES WHILE IT’S RAINING

The war leaks in the head from afar,

speeded by a brand new car.

I can’t work out when it will end,

but it’s no game of let’s pretend.

Tonight the rain is fairly hard:

in rain, in pain, as saith the bard;

and all the way out in the Lakes,

we claim “no nukes is good nukes.”

The rain types on at the window

with fingers frigid, wet, staccato,

then eases off, like war should too,

before the dawn is a wash of blue.

ANOTHER ONE FOR THE FLO’

Flo, Fliss, Flee, Floss and most of all Florence.

It was a pleasure to meet you, and

in case I need any more introductions,

mostly I’m but a minor poet / songwriter

that is in love with Flora but cannot ejaculate.

For I took an O. D. a year or so ago the likes of which

it was said to be genius to survive and yet

coming back down found I could come no longer.

Other than that I don’t know what to say.

I am not into ratting on people.

I accept help from people around

in handless ways, if they make it better.

And I did take another O. D. less than a week ago,

and can declare death absolutely vile,

and love the reason you want to stay alive.

It was predominantly the love of my family

that I thought of, plugged in with wires

on the death bed in A and E, dying.

But you don’t want to hear about all this.

You would prefer it if love was all bunnies

and flowers, rainbows and smiles, as

one of my ex girlfriends used to say it wasn’t.

And I should probably leave my own egoism out.

So we’re going to host you again soon.

So I should say welcome to my hotel.

THE INADEQUATE TRANSPOSITION

The house-pipes glugging a guilty gulp

from a big, culpable jug of the “ug” of “drug” or

“smuggle” or Ugly Truth Revealed Inside.

The loose, Betfair jingle of shingle

lifted from the big, flat bird-table

when cars arrive in the drive or if they leave.

The singing of the upstairs Tap too;

and the scowl or frown of the downstairs

toilet flushing and its cistern refilling:

I imagine them as a part of a specific song.

I imagine them transposing a specific hit.

I guess that yes, you can get this.

A CANOROUS CHIME

Someone gets in the power shower.

It reminds me I don’t need power.

Flower power is much better.

Writing Flora a long love letter.

You could even call her “flower.”

Down at the bottom of the Tower

I looked up and saw her hair,

it was dangling down everywhere.

I climbed up it into her chamber.

She was locked in by a protector.

He was a tyrant, I was better,

I was the one she wanted as lover.

I took out my sword to free her,

defeated the tyrant, had a breather,

took her by the tiny hand and led her

down the stair, her knight in shining armour.

In the garden we heard some laughter.

It might’ve been the film director

saying this could go on forever,

flowing like an endless river,

but what was needed more than water

was to cut her hair a bit shorter,

so that we did, while a motor

drove past on an unknown hour.

BRINGING IN THREE LITTLE FELLAS

Fliss, Flee, Floss, Flo’ and Florence, hi.

I miss you, your mum and your dad being up here.

I also missed the boat proverbially

but there is no boat around these parts.

To paint ‘The Drunken Boat’ would take talent

but the graffiti on the keel is for masters.

Anyhow, I grow distracted from the point:

I should also weave in some little fellas: -

Matteo, Leonardo and Alle. Hi guys -

you’re coming back from Italy soon.

I hear Matty likes drawing, Leo

is very good at football and Alle,

well, I haven’t heard much about him yet,

but it’s going to be great having you all here.

You’re moving over to Marlow and everyone,

everyone is going to come up for Christmas.

What becomes of my bed and my bedroom -

which is after all an anagram of boredom -

is not to matter compared with the children,

whom it seems are beautiful, for example

I saw Leo give Floss a kiss on a Smartphone video.

He just went up to her and kissed her.

They were in Italy and it was beautiful.

One of those treasured moments. So

you’re moving over to Little England,

and so we shall see more of you up north.

A sense of good will to all men is upon me.

A sense of camaraderie and optimism.

Soon we’ll be booting about the ball on the beach,

later downing our first pints in Eskdale.

BARNES

Barnes has scored a chicken,

but the chicken isn’t real.

It is for an instant and

then it is not. It seems

like a hoax but still exists in meaning.

It’s what we mean when

we say for God’s sake.

It’s news that stays news

even when Barnes has retired.

You notice though that it wasn’t Barnes,

wasn’t a chicken, and wasn’t a goal:

so what Barnes has really scored

is a hat-trick on his comeback

from injury against Crewe

in the League Cup. One

was a header, one a penalty

and one was a back-heel.

So a quantum field of intelligence

is opened, and in it Barnes

is a great bringer of happiness,

the reason to go outside and

kick a ball against a wall.

Really if I told you what it was

and what it did, you would agree

Barnes has scored a chicken.

SIBLINGS

Brothers are nice and sisters too,

always there’ll be something to do,

but they can elongate the queue

to use in the morning the upstairs loo.

There are also sibling rivalries,

to please the parents, and to please

the beauty queen who brings the bees

down onto their humble knees.

John Cleese says it like a brother -

no-one is any more clever than another -

that goes between your father and mother -

and your brother and sister and any other.

It’s boring not having a family,

and I do have my brother living with me,

but sometimes think in a different key

about what’s likely to never be

and yet with mother’s new grand children,

at least she’ll get some satisfaction,

and we are a tribe bonded in emotion

even if scattered across the ocean.

I hear Bob’s kids love it when he plays

on the piano for them in multiple ways

that mean the brightening up of days,

like a way to cure a transient malaise.

Siblings often squabble and fight

but judging by mine own, it’s right

that I would die for each of them tonight,

and leave them playing in the light.

FIELD OBSERVATIONS

Already Radiohead is a field

with a river down the way

where mad children splash and play

unaware of the guilt and the shame

unaware of the praise and the blame

unaware of the end of the game.

Their tender playfulness extends forever

as they splash and play in the water,

moving stones to change its pitch,

not quite minding which is which,

free to do just as they wish,

and on the river bank languish.

AN ATTEMPT AT CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

One day, John, James, Robert and Flo’ were lying on the grass. They were watching clouds pass by in the sky and pretending they were animals from the zoo, all sorts of creatures in the clouds.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” said John, “to be able to cling on to the vapour trail of that aeroplane all the way up there?”

“They might look down,” said James, “and see the patchwork quilt below.”

John was the eldest at 12, and James the next at 10, and Robert the next at 9, and Flo’ which was short for Florence was the youngest at 7.

They were born in a season each. John was Spring, James Autumn, Robert was winter, then Flo’ came along in summer. It was summer by now and the weather had been quite warm. The day was a sunny day, good for a game of football in the field near their house.

They lived at the foot of a fell, which is a northern word for hill. It was a big, ancient mound of land.

Their dad was away on business; he was an art dealer that was nicknamed “Blue.” He had to go to Europe where his company was based. Their mum was in the house doing something in the kitchen, possibly cleaning or baking.

There was a bee crossing the lawn where they lay, and it looked for a second like it could’ve gone on forever.

John suddenly said “shall we go ask mum if we can go on an adventure up the fell?”

James said “the day is a good one for an adventure.”

Robert always followed close behind, and said “I’m up for it;” and Flo’ was old enough now to get up the fell on her own; so they went in and asked if they could go on an adventure.

“First pack a picnic,” said mum. She got some biscuits and crisps and sausage rolls and ham sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade ready for them in a rucksack. John was the only one who had a Smartphone because he was old enough to. That way they could ring mum if they got in trouble.

“Are you going to take Ossie?” asked mum.

Ossie was the dog. He liked to run away a lot. If the back door was ever left open he would escape and go sniffing bitches at the local farm. It was embarrassing, whenever it dawned on someone that Ossie had run away, because it meant he was causing trouble at the local farm. It meant they would have to walk up to the farm and get him on a lead and bring him back.

Seeing all the animals at the farm could be frightening for a young child, especially the dogs they kept themselves. Cows were curious creatures and would crowd round with interest when you walked through a field of them, and their being so big it was almost scary, but you could shoo them away very easily, because they were not aggressive by nature.

The family let their fields out to a farmer who kept both cows and sheep on their land, a different farmer from the one where the dog ran off to.

“Yes,” said John. “We’ll take Ossie.”

So they put Ossie the dog on a lead and left the house.

They did not want to go the usual route, through two fields, up the lane, taking a right at the gate, across to the bank of the beck where often they sat and had their packed lunch, because they wanted to explore new territory so they took a left at the gate instead of taking a right. They had honestly never been this way before in all their lives. They walked on a well-beaten path trodden by sheep for a little while then James said to take a turn off the path and into the large fronds of bracken.

It was actually quite difficult to walk through the bracken, so long it was. John held the dog on a short lead. The dog was panting. After twenty minutes they stopped and contemplated going back, but decided against it.

So they walked through bracken that was taller than the tallest of them.

“Watch out for adders,” said John, as they walked, even though he nor any of them had ever seen an adder on the fell. John was the one with the biggest imagination. He liked on Sundays to draw cheques addressed to himself for millions, pen-knives with amazing and ludicrous tools, and maps of strange, far away places. He was into football, as they all were apart from Flo’ who mostly just wanted someone to play dolls with. Still, she had her brothers to follow about.

It was the summer holidays, so they weren’t at school and they were free from doing any schoolwork. If they had been able to see over the bracken they would’ve been able to see the Irish Sea some one mile or so away from the fell. The sea breeze blew up towards them from the West and was cooling them down, a welcome relief in all the summer heat.

They walked, grappling with bracken, slowly. Pushing on they found the bracken opened up to a beautiful spot with a new beck they had never seen before and a clearing beside a small waterfall. The waterfall came off the rock and into a small pool. Flo’ was the first to get her socks and shoes off and paddle in the pool while the boys were busy drinking cupped handfuls of water.

Then the boys took their socks and shoes off too and dangled their feet in the water from the bank. The water was cold but they waded out into it to cool down on such a hot day.

Ossie was allowed off his lead and to swim in the shallow pool. He could be a daft dog sometimes, who was not afraid of water but still afraid of going over a bridge.

As Robert approached the waterfall at the back of the pool, he noted there was a cave behind the waterfall. “Look, there’s a cave!” he said, and everyone else noted and agreed.

“We should check it out,” said John always playing the leader because he was the eldest.

You had to walk under the waterfall and get yourself a little bit wet to get through the water into the cave but it was a hot day so it didn’t matter. They left the picnic on the bank. Into the cave they all went and the dog shook and sent water spraying off him everywhere and their eyes adjusted to the half light and they looked about and guess what they found?

There was a fruit machine, quite rusted and old, parked just inside the entrance of the cave. It looked like it was physically embedded in the fell.

“Imagine if it worked!” said James. James was left handed and very skilful with his hands. He put his hands in his pockets now and found no money. It didn’t matter though because as John said

“there’s no where to plug it in, so we can’t test if it works or not.”

He himself had money, only a few coins, including a few pound coins, in his short pockets. He wore Bermuda shorts as did they all apart from Flo’ who wore a blue and white dress.

They could still hear the waterfall crashing down behind them. Their mum used to say “the sound of running water is very good for the soul,” and it was true, it was.

James now started to press buttons on the fruit machine. Nobody even knew how a fruit machine worked, what to do with one.

“What could that possibly be doing here?” asked little Flo’.

The mystery was a strange one.

“Maybe someone used to live here, a pauper,” said Robert.

James was still fiddling with buttons, trying to get the fruit machine to revolve to three yellow lemons meaning he had hit the jackpot.

They were still just inside the cave enough for there to be daylight leaking in from the outside world, but now John had got the torch on his Smartphone going, and was exploring the back of the cave. Guess what he found?

“There’s a portal at the back of this cave,” said John. It was like a trap door that was closed. James was still messing with the buttons on the fruit machine, and just like that it was as if he had hit the jackpot, for some combination of buttons he pressed suddenly lit up and the fruit machine made a musical sound and it turned on a light above the trap door and the trap door slowly opened at the back of the cave. There was a tunnel inside!

John shone his Smartphone torch into the tunnel and they could see at least a few feet in front of them.

“Should we go in?” asked Robert.

They did not know what to do, or what they would find down the tunnel.

“I dare you to go in there,” said James to John, and he did, which is why when he’s gone we will all look back on what is done as a Giant Day.

GHOST

“We told you the best one would be the <BEE> one, but we also like the wee one and Figh one from the Flee one,” says a random ghost. This means my books. The <BEE> one is Soundcloud Rain where some of my songs were structured according to my brother’s diagram. The wee one I wrote at seven. The Flee one is where I have to renounce Flora. I was only supposed to do three but they have gone on, to Brave New Tense which only loaned a word from my mother, to Yes You May which I achieved with help from Hannah – and then Let The Jews Win. Some think that is where it all went wrong, some that it’s the only good one. It is at least agreed that I should be a poet and songwriter because to be a proper scientist you’d need to know a lot more about potassium, and catheters, andcetera, than me. I still don’t know what to do when I encounter a ghost but spill the beans.

NOT THE NIRVANA BARCODE

I

With recent publications, I attained

Bush instead of Nirvana… but

imagine if I had attained Bob Dylan!

I picture him standing there, singing

“a hard rain’s going to fall,”

live and electric, putting his soul

into the show. But no -

I have merely attained Bush.

Bush were never a bad band though.

Their first album was great,

then they got a production genius

in Steve Albini for a producer,

and the second album wasn’t as good,

but it was still not bad.

It was called Razorblade Suitcase;

and we did find out what was inside

the razorblade suitcase at a later date.

II

As for some of my own follies in the alchemy of perception...

The <BEE> one was good, meaning Soundcloud Rain, just songs structured on the new da Vinci circle, but the About The Author section showed I still didn’t know what I had gone through as a boy.

The Sunset Child, my boyhood book, worked, back in the day, if inventing the net was the efficacy, but not knowing that, I sold it to you as the homework of the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures.

The love poem book Breath Trapped In Heaven said “stop the war,” letting all else but love fall away, so that’s good, but it didn’t end up with a happy family.

Brave New Tense looked at the condition of water at the foot of the fell in terms of a contract on universal human rights – or something like that. It was about writing off the top of the head to discretely “do the beck” in the back garden here where the Plough alignment is viable. It only meant “Long Foot Disease.”

Yes You May was about not using force. I did it with my sister who is born on the 25th May. I think she was trying to say “it’s so bad you’re charging too much.”

And then we had Let The Jews Win – and it worked… it preceded a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. As if the poet truly is the unacknowledged legislator of the world. So it didn’t matter that it repeated a few bits and bobs of my extant oeuvre because the point was peace. But some said if it includes the Nirvana barcode it’s still gone wrong.

III

This morning I am thinking of a Leonard Cohen line:

“love that is graceful and green as a stem.”

Then I imagine attaining Leonard Cohen instead of Nirvana.

He was a good poet, that worked with his secret chord.

IV

The dawn was awash with blue today,

and I was grateful for it after last night.

Now a plane screams overhead, tearing

the sky in two as it goes. Downstairs

mum is in the kitchen. Today

I have my anti-psychotic injection.

Now I imagine attaining Syd Barrett’s

solo work instead of Nirvana.

V

The thing is I’m not really an airhead

and read a lot of philosophy.

I have something big in mind,

in terms of the poet dreaming

big, trying to change the world,

to have courage and persistence -

but I feel up against a wall.

It might be that I am the one

who needs to back down!

My father after all was employed

by a Russian bloke once upon a time.

Then again he did warn us of

the dangers of just putting

anything in, so to speak,

like it were an O. D. attempt

about two decades ago, so

my proclivity is not necessarily inherently Russian.

VI

I wonder if my brother’s <BEE>

– and the notion that it might

come after @ in the

international language alphabet –

can be implemented

to bring about peace. But

I fear a minor poet, bringing

out a minor publication will

just fall on deaf ears.

VII

Imagine attaining Megadeth

instead of Nirvana. Not

a band I listened to much.

But there is a cave on the face

of the foothill Sea Ness;

and at the back there is a portal;

and the portal leads to a tunnel;

and the tunnel is lined with free

beer dispensers, torches

and fruit machines; and

the tunnel leads to the old U. S. S. R.

VIII

Imagine attaining rave music

instead of Nirvana. They

already used to say raves

were spiritual gatherings.

I’ve been to some myself.

One was an illegal gabba rave

in a field in Cambridgeshire.

But what this has to do

with what I am trying to do

I do not know except to say -

imagine attaining Dylan.

IX

What I am still writing for I do not know,

for it may be a trap, but I am thinking

of attaining Stravinsky instead of Nirvana.

At the first performance of The Rite of Spring

the audience pulled out the seats

at the end, so new did it all seem.

I also like Stravinsky’s The Firebird

where he applies containment

to Grieg albeit with darker inflections,

which you can notice in the rhythm of the notes.

X

I imagine what it would be like

if a young boy wrote the line

“I have a scar+ that is the new colour,”

with a plus sign for the F,

and then counted up the numbers

from one to his own age, say, seven.

XI

Hannah makes a great cup of tea,

says the boyhood book

is still the best one I’ve done.

Therein I imagine attaining

Bob Marley instead of Nirvana.

That would be quite something.

XII

In the end we see, even I

don’t have the power to stop the war,

am just a feckless citizen

of a different country,

a little, witless blip on the ground,

a minor poet which is a cool thing to be,

who likes the words “ostranenie”, meaning

de-familiarisation, from

Russian Formalism, and also

“halatnost” meaning dressing-

gown-ness or detachment.

XIII

It could be she that says to me

if I need something to do

I should redo the wet.

It is through <BEE>

which is therefore definitely real

that I hear such a pow-wow

of telepathic proportions,

all tuned in to the same moment.

But the wet, that refers to

the motif of Brave New Tense -

to write off the top of your head

about your current situation,

to discretely “do the beck”

in the back garden where

the Plough alignment is viable.

XIV

When Paul’s daughter was born

I sent him a hyperlink

to the song by Peter Blegvad

about his daughter. Blegvad

once said my songs were Barrett

and my poems Rimbaud.

He should be as famous as Dylan himself.

Now I imagine attaining

Peter Blegvad instead of Nirvana.

IF ONLY WE COULD

If only we could redo The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob.

I often contemplate a number sequence that leads to Heaven.

Things leave me stranded, counting manically,

the objects in the room made into lists, sets and groups.

Traditionally what comes after The Road To Heaven

by Noj And The Mob is meant to be Hannah.

It’s not that I can’t do it anymore, although I am

drugged up to the eyeballs on Western medication:

only a moment ago I saw an online headline saying

Trump is going to set off a nuclear weapon soon.

We can’t have that, never in a million years.

I wonder if the children of my siblings are by now born

members of the band, who will need to take it forwards.

So we get that even though I have a new one

prepared, I might need to start again.

What I mean is I might need to show it,

because it might be my last chance to be a genius.

NOTEBOOK REVISITED

Yes, friend, I too must go.

Because I am looking for the Promised Land.

It was for peace that I wrote my last book, (Let The Jews Win), for “truce between old friends fallen out like fools,” as I said, and for the larger world as well. People said I was Nash after it, the mathematician. I can elaborate on it, use it as a template for furthering my work.

I was trying to write white. In the first of the two poems ‘Notebook,’ the opening line “il faut que je m’en aille” is a quote from Arthur Rimbaud, an archaic French subjunctive meaning “I too must go.”

The second line (“Sometimes you’ve just got to hit the road and”) is Go-Beat-stricken.

I was trying to confer a special message through the white space in-between, and sheer insouciant faith, like a counter to the red on black JE DOUBTE DONC JE SUIS which I read at the top of the Pompidou Centre’s conceptual ascent through the ages.

The original album called The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob which I was rewriting in ‘Notebook’ included a song called ‘L to the Pregnant Snorkel’ and one about Ossie the dog going round and round chasing his own tail. If ‘L To The Pregnant Snorkel’ contained inflections of my father’s education at the LSE under Sir Karl Popper, who taught of of P1 to TT to EE to P2, Ossie the dog’s song was more John Lennon. It never got as far as V, in the Utilitarian Martianist slowspell of the word “LOVE,” indicating that my heart was broken, but I made amends in the recent rewrite.

The trumpet wears his foreskin on the inside.

We have a family friend called Rafe who was also in the band, like a brother he was and is still too. Dad always used to say “you always change when Rafe’s here John. It’s called pack mentality. You start to misbehave. You’re weak.”

With Rafe on board, we were named like the Doors (almost). John, James, Robert and Rafe we were. But we also have a sister called Hannah.

Traditionally what comes after The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob is Hannah, the blonde palindrome from the 25th of May.

That means H does not = 0 – 0 because I have a heart.

The band started as 4 siblings born in a season each, spiralling Spring, Autumn, Winter, Summer, marching right left right left in the handedness – and yet this might mean that anyone can be in the band.

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.

It took a rainy day in Penn, Bucks, to write and record the original album The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob; and we indeed sang of the dog going round and round chasing his own tail; but the original cassette (a one off) was later recorded over with a Blur gig on Radio One.

That isn’t the end of The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob either, for it surely goes on and on.

I have said it before and would say it again that God is a game, and that a game is based on permutation, or at least can be, and that a permutation game can be a rehearsal for death.

I would also say The Lords And The New Creatures is a game, a wide, yellow circle with death the pinpoint centre and the circumference closing in. I would also say it is a media compression experiment dreamed up on LSD under a hot, Californian sun, maybe to expose the germs of dictatorship on all hands. It churns up evidence through the operation of a game. It tests the place where evolution is controlled, monopolised. It asks if he who controls the media controls evolution too. It is a good test.

If God is a game what are the rules? Some say God is a vain projection to cover up our fear of Nothingness. Some say God is but a stopped, glottal monosyllable. Some contend God is not to worship blind in dogmatic slumber but behead, dethrone and become. Dedalus says ultimately we all have the same definition of God.

Going empirically from personal experience I can say that praying before an LSD trip will mean a safer trip than if you don’t pray even if there is no God. So God could be a placebo. Still, I don’t wish to go on about God too much.

I like Paradise Lost, where Milton makes us sympathise with Satan for so long before we recognise he is evil. He also builds up through pages and pages of poetry to a moment of terse concision:

“She plucked. She ate.”

In Milton Jesus has a sword in Heaven. He is like one of God’s security guards! Traditionally it is the Muslim faith where we find the warrior-poet, so Milton might be suggesting “Blissful Lovingness is where all religions meet.”

I am also interested in God Simulations. Before The Lords And The New You Know Who seemed to get real in my boyhood, there was a lightning storm in France so epic, sublime and prolonged it was a God Simulation – it was Nature herself tearing up the rule book to let the games commence.

This doesn’t seem to be the subject matter of The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob though, where there is as yet all too little mention of sex. Martin Amis says a single pixel of sex is ineffable, impervious to the workings of the pen.

Voices have stolen everything now and filled it with sugar.

If Forgiveness were a fine white powder, a chemical cure, they might with-hold the cure until the price is right but seeing as it is not I am prepared to try and forgive the guy that hypnotised and cursed me.

I used to say the nature of visionary experience is not amenable to the dialectic of sickness and recovery, the language of sterile medicalese, that one’s illness is more congenial than one’s health unto those that are in charge of one’s health, for monetary reasons, meaning Big Pharma companies that can with-hold a cure until the price is right, but now I see the illness is not a conspiracy, that the science works, that I should plug in.

In my first psychotic episode I went to hospital for a literal head wound. The nurse in A and E put a bandage on. I went to touch the bandage to see if it was paddy and it was. I went to touch it a second time and it was gone. The bandage had vanished into thin air while I sat still in a chair. The nurse had to put a second bandage on.

I was not just put in mental hospital but the acute ward. This was in the middle of my undergraduate degree. This is my story. I have been on heavy, neuroleptic, soporific, homeostatic medication ever since and had several hospital admissions. When I went back to University after that initial admission I got the highest First in the year and was a beautiful mind.

I wrote sooooooo many pieces, defaced bank notes, creative non fiction, rap, and one piece was about how there is no such thing as mind cancer. Hobbes and Descartes sit on diametrically opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to the nature of the human mind: for Hobbes the mind was just a part of the body but for Descartes the mind was separate from the physical world. When I read of Descartes clenching the idea of perfection in his mind, and using it as ontological proof of God, and I turn inward my eye to investigate, I glimpse a perfect, inner judge whose concerns seem to be grammatical.

You could say that because there is no such thing as mind cancer the mind is definitely separate from the material world but it could just as easily be the case that there is no mind cancer because there is nothing for the term “mind” to name except the dance of the synapses, electrical impulses in the brain.

The universe is indifferent to human philosophy. The human mind is a spec of dust in the cosmic order. Life is essentially meaningless.

The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob may be about Energy as much as Faith. In fact I may have lost my faith long ago although have blips. Some contend the idea of it is a pseudo-efficient, government-sponsored idiocy, others that it could unite us all. It was never supposed to be a post-Einsteinian comedy, nor about Backward Liquid Maths or Miltonian theology. I suppose it was more about Mr. Bean. The original was a bunch of young kids, the oldest of whom was 12, singing, as I say, about the dog going round and round chasing his own tail.

During my degree it was proposed that we scrap Trident and use the resources to explore space more instead; but without Trident we could be held to ransom by someone like Iran.

The nuclear submarine factory is only down the road in Barrow-in-Furness.

My brother is round there at the moment… I am home alone. I think how the nuclear sub factory in Barrow is enough to qualify it as a city, because the factory is a cathedral in the modern age.

I go out into the garden and look at the shape of the fell. The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob seems to contain a separation that corresponds to the geographical/ geological shape of the fell and its foothill Sea Ness from here at the gravitational, magnetic and telluric foot.

I often wonder about M-Theory in correlation to the shape of the fell… I wonder if the qwerty keyboard ends on ‘M’ for the reason of the alignment of Plough and oldest fell, as is only visible here, being “the last thing.”

You have to beware perfection, and beware making a text so good it could be used as Fascist propaganda.

My heart is a bass-drum stuffed with a pillow.

I am interested in the dust that lies at the bottom of things.

As my father passed, Dr. Robert read to him from the Book of John. When he was newly gone, though he’s only gone up the road, I was h-a-n-d-e-d a stack of books I wrote at seven years old and one early piece says:

“On Tuesday there was a magic car in Form 2 and it had flashing lites all over it… and we crashed on a ship REC… and since we were under the sea the whirlpool pulled on top of the water.”

In short though I only give you a fragment it Taps the Book of John for the televisual age.

Around the time of my father’s passing I was thinking, yes, my heart is a bass drum stuffed with a pillow. It could be an image from the renewal of The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob; but I don’t want it to mean I die of a heart attack! Traditionally my heart is strong, ocean-going, a liner.

Sometime after my dad’s death I falsified the Nirvana barcode. As I said in Let The Jews Win, if you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning.

Mum said it was a trick of grief.

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 and took it to her

she said “there is no such thing.”

The shape I mention only works

in Times New Roman, thus:

|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 & 693 are wings

and the armed winged may well make

millions out of the new Nirvana barcode

as brought in by John F B Tucker but

upon writing it down I cast it on the fire

and got my mother to photograph it in flames.

It became smoke filing out of the chimney, and the smoke dissipated into the north wind, that great disseminator of seeds.

Out in the garden, where it is returned to the elemental realm, maths is the language of Nature.

Now, seeing as my dear friends Agent G and Mark too whom it would seem has a finer singing voice than me might need to see some maths, I should just say, in this system E = peace.

Starting with L to the Pregnant Snorkel, E = peace.

We could likewise start with, say, L to the stare of 3 o’ clock twice, and O needn’t be Ossie the dog, going round and round chasing his own tail, for there are many senses of O. For example O is the key of the babbling unicorn.

As for V, we could have the peace sign made with the fingers, or V to the wings of a bird.

The reason I have chosen ‘love’ for this Utilitarian Martianist slowspell is that love is as WH Auden says “a choice of words.” So many problems in philosophy and life alike are down to communication as Wittgenstein said; which is why it is good to further focus on language-use.

If E = L to the pregnant snorkel,

L to the pregnant snorkel = MC squared.

So it is that we arrive at Backward Liquid Maths, where E minus MC squared = only relative 0, but not being good at numbers, I deem that piffle, when everything is devoid of evil, went the hen.

There’s a piece missing from Let The Jews Win, about our retrieving the dog from the farm. It goes in the first of the two poems at a point after ‘Dream With Open Eyes’ by Secret Chord H and before I mourn the loss of E.

We were having a Scrotbag Party in the caravan. That means drinking and smoking. And suddenly I got a preternatural sixth sense that the dog had run off and was trapped on the fence at the local farm barking. So we walked up through the fields, our tombstone-shadows looming tall beneath the moon in the church field; and we found the terrible goat which was tied up in the triangular patch of land past our field; and we noted how its eyes gleamed a baleful green colour when a lone car passed; and we made it past the terrible goat and to the farm where we indeed discovered Ossie the dog trapped on the fence, barking. I was wearing a fur coat and had a bottle opener in the pocket and used it to cut the dog free. Then we made it back to ours and told the dog he was a bad boy for running off and continued with our Scrotbag Party.

So that’s a missing piece from Let The Jews Win.

Nevermind, I still got it in.

And what about that time I sat in a room without moving for three days and three nights staring at a pint glass of water before me on the table untouched, taking notes on whatever went through my myriad mind? That’s a notebook I would like to reread but they are all gone.

I might also have mentioned my grand-dad Don’s motto.

The mustard has to be English.

The mustard has to be English.

The mustard has to be English

and growing outside in the wild.

My grandfather Don lied about his age at 15 to stow away to the Second World on the bottom of a sub, later won the Sword of Honour in the R. A. F. and became their youngest non-commissioned officer.

18. 49. I have just polished off a massive portion of sausages and Yorkshire puddings with delicious onion gravy so rich and thick it was like soup.

In Noj And The Mob, soup was called “moop.” Toast was called “boast.” I was Noj; James was Semaj but became Semgas because he didn’t like drinks with bubbles; Dr. Robert was Trebor; and Hannah was a blonde palindrome so I said she could be “Rannock.”

Mum was often “mumphis” as opposed to mumbo and dad was “Badmunch.”

I used to call “muppet!” up the stairs instead of “supper!” and everyone understood. I would also say “moonrag” instead of “morning” in the morning, and again the message came across.

It seems to be a Nintendo innuendo that

her breath a poisonous magic.

Then you’re faced with Hanif Kureishi,

a bit of The Buddha of Suburbia.

The anatomisation of the female

could extend for longer and longer…

her ankles are delicate ornaments of ivory.

You’re also faced with Pinchbeck

whom it would seem, in Breaking

Open The Head, talks of the division

of people into those that like

and those that don’t like mushrooms

as the most ancient division in civilisation.

That’s why I didn’t feel it was a gaff

when I wrote the original, after

poring over a Ted Hughes poem in English

at the same table as fragrant Rachel.

She was never to be my cosmic bride.

It’s best when there is running light running through them but now they have been turned into a ruin because of the C. The train toots its hollow horn in the distance. Among the pheasants there was one not so pleasant.

MUM’S MEASURING STICK

My mother took me out

on a mother-son bonding trip

- oh, only down the garden,

to the veg patch, where I,

as if gallantly, dug her a trench,

and after she planted

her potatoes, raked it over

again too. Here she comes now

into the kitchen, saying

“this dry weather is good

for the door,” because the door

used to swell, because it is wooden,

and offer much resistance

to being closed. I am out of

breath from working. I left

the veg patch first, carrying

two paper packets in for the sitting

room fire. I was in hospital

yesterday or the day before

after another O. D. and

don’t feel up to much work.

Still, when mother says

the dry weather is good for

the back door, she might mean

working with soil is good for the soul.

And she is mostly right.

She has a lot of magic sayings

hidden in the treetops, does mum.

You can drown in a puddle.

Language is a creature.

Imagination is a muscle.

In politics there are no wrongs

or rights. Just because someone

is good to you doesn’t mean

they are right for you. Actions

have consequences. The brain

only heals when it’s asleep

and even nightmares are

healing. Giving makes

you feel good. Poetry is not

the entrance and exit of life.

Of course she was the one

who made the flower-press ending

on cannabis that might = a dialysis,

and I was the one that made

the love poem for Flora

that might = a motor, and who

spotted the system, beginning

with ‘if.’ That system, I would

think of as my Equilibrium,

but it is on second thoughts mum’s

Equilibrium. I don’t like cooking

vegetables in the kitchen, or digging

in the vegetable patch after all.

So it is that when I sit here ( )

in the kitchen, because it has

a good table, a good chair,

and internet access, writing, and

mum comes in to cook, it augments

any work on Flora’s pretext

if I just write down what she

says, about preparing food.

Now I’ve made mum a coffee

for her flask, from the instant

espresso machine, her second

of the day, and she has gone

back out there, to the vegetable

patch, leaving me indoors.

And the bluebells are out

and some have more bells

than others, but all of them are nice.

And mother comes back in

with some layers of clothes removed.

And the dishwasher is still going

round and round like dreams

in the recycling bin. And mother

goes back out again, back

to the veg patch because

her work is not yet done. And

the dishwasher has stopped revolving.

And the fridge’s drone is heard.

And in the fridge I have a sausage roll.

And the sausage roll comes

from the local butcher and is made

with real, Cumberland sausage.

And out there, the fresh, spring air

sings that love is not dead.

THE DAWN

Dawn leaks out, its light slipping

through the dark fingers of the trees.

If I bring this to publication,

it will mean wood.

The woods are a traditional

testing ground in literature.

These days things are wireless.

I might’ve gone right

when I asked Paul

what colour is white?

What is a while?

Is this where the truth

flies or the truth fairy?

In the past, being the witness

from The Lords And The New Creatures

I might’ve been burned at the stake.

When you’re gone we hope

the doors will

open up enough.

Maybe we can

do the new creatures again.

THE TIME OF OUR AWAKENING

Already it has been and gone -

the time of our awakening.

It left me without registering…

I was mostly in Monopoly jail.

The time of our awakening -

it should be an Ancient Greek afternoon

in the sunshine where you drink wine.

It should be a tremendous visitation of energy.

The Muses should smile upon you.

It has been and gone and mostly

went without being recorded.

It left me paranoid, deeply paranoid,

like waiting for the cops to come.

Now they say peak time’s over,

speak to the man caught in the midst.

We got a few things done on second thoughts,

but the time of our awakening is gone.

Playful in the scattered sun,

we invented soft games like poesy,

fell asleep in the long grass,

woke too late for lemonade.

A LOT

When the psychedelic treasure chest of dreams

is opened, perfumed sunset will streak

like water colour across the canvas-sky

and will be beautiful even if there is no-

one to look at it, so we need someone

who can open that psychedelic treasure

chest of dreams and release whatever

may be inside it, be it brand new or ancient.

IF I AM HONEST

If being a poet in love with Flora

and yet who can no longer

ejaculate is what you want

to be you should mourn a woman.

She was tastier than potatoes

but I say that only for sound-sex.

Sound-sex is nice but real sex

ineffable so much better it is.

So I think it would be better

if I was still able to come.

So it’s not what I want to be,

only what I find I am, you see.

I already did the one where I

fall out with my chums and try

to terminate my own existence;

but I think it would be better

to still have friends and to live.

Having been close to death,

I can declare death absolutely vile,

and love the reason you want to stay alive.

SUNSET TO THE WEST

I was swimming in the Irish Sea

at sunset with my mother,

watched from the stony beach

by my poor, dying father

when I realised

my place is in life is lowly.

I was languishing

in salty expiation

as a laughter of seagulls flew past

wearing shark mask replicas

when I realised

my place in life is lowly.

I turned my body away

from the beach towards

the peach-stone of

a black hole, being slowly

sucked into the sea’s

watercress hives and drowned

and realised my place in life is lowly… and

the setting sun is bought and sold

and silting gold, leaking

out in all directions

like MC squared =

THE ANTIQUE FUTURE

I’m hoping you’ll let me take you down

to a place where laser lizards lounge,

and flying, faith-powered cars are the norm.

Of all inventions there, the spiritual or germ

X-ray that finds the germs of dictatorship

on all hands could be the most beautiful.

The river runs through this sacred land,

giving it the feel of the Antique Future.

Down to the boundless sea it meanders.

Meanwhile, the air is a drug called Strictly Free,

that is and makes you “strictly free” to consume;

and LSD is flung from the sun.

I’ve seen it through the open door,

when the door has been left ajar,

before the cricket got terminally sold to Sky.

A virtual death machine, a word-chord

synthesiser, a red-bleeding type-writer inside a

ping pong ball, an invisible square of air

called ‘Mosaic by Darth Vader’ stroked on

like TV, an holographic horsecock

wheeled into the poet’s bedroom, a neutraliser

drink that sobers you in an instant,

the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey

protruding from the fell at ten to eight,

earphones with tiny mics implanted

inside them so you can record the band on them,

even a love-bomb exploding in a chaos theatre -

these are but pen-knife tools where I’m

coming from. Further only to note

the Nirvana button, or Nirvana pill,

the Doors computer game, the automated

conveyor belt of poesis flowing

from room to room looking for body and

form, the computer speaking to you

in the style of Rimbaud (translated by Mathieu),

the psycho-sensitive fire alarm, the fruit salad,

the gaseous camera, the hyperlink to Heaven:

what’s wrong with these is they are not real!

It’s better to relate than invent. Moreover

we should live in the present tense;

and sci-fi is secondary to the human condition.

The more weird, blobby-headed aliens

you get in a film the worse it generally is.

Stoner paraphernalia aside, the landscape

is a place you could easily call ‘home.’

That’s ‘home’ with a yellow ‘m’ like

in the word ‘them’ which would mean

something Rimbaudian, magnetic going on.

IN THE KITCHEN AGAIN

It’s cold for spring, feels like Autumn,

Autumn whom we think Optimus Prime,

and I have been in the kitchen again,

where the Rimbaudian dream carries on.

The sausage rolls were in the oven

and mum and James were talking

about the nozzle of the hose which

made the hose too strong for the flowers…

their petals fell off when mum watered

her plants. Mum and James also make

plans for putting in two fence posts

for a hammock. As they talk I drift

away and miss most of what they say.

I too am but a flower-head flitting

capricious in the ego-loss breeze.

Soon the drum of summer will come,

then the summer rain will knock

the pollen count unconscious with many hands.

For now we have this day, bright, breezy

and cool but at least very dry,

where I (for who else could it have been?)

eat my sausage rolls with salad cream

and dream of love no longer attainable.

The other two players leave the room,

leaving me alone with laptop time,

and the sausage rolls are washed down

with tea that is artificially sweetened.

The moment I remember having the desire

to follow up the sausage rolls with a peach

is a moment stolen from Infinity, e’ en

though the peach turns out to be unripe.

Mother comes back into the kitchen, putting

more fresh wood into the AGA,

top oven, hottest one, to dry it

for when she has a sitting room fire

later, for she feels the cold; and is left

with one bigger stick she needs to be in

two, so departs the room for the scullery

to saw the thing, O golden bough,

O gold, my mother shall not feel cold.

As she comes in from the scullery

and through the room and into the house

she says “so that’s what you’re trying

to do – renew The Waste Land,” which

had crossed my mind for a second,

but which was never communicated in speech.

She must have eyes in the back of her head.

An aerial perspective that comes with parenthood.

Now she’s back, to take Vape juice

from the pack, and says she’s going

to make garlic bread with the ciabatta.

And so we see we might need to end

when we see that it might be endless.

WOKEN FROM A DREAM OF THE SHEET

News just in or is it noise -

they say the sheet belongs to the king.

For me it’s one of James’s toys -

but this new view is interesting.

They say if I am the one

to find it and the pictures that grew depict

the lyric to a song mine own

without meaning to seem too strict

then if I have no ownership

of the sheet, it is evil, or rather

<BEE> is evil. Well to take a sip

I take the same attitude as my father

and think the sheet still belongs

to whoever designed it, laid it down,

even if the pictures depict one of my songs

or it was aimed at me by folk from town.

As for the king I cannot see why

it should default to being his property…

he already has enough, while I

have nothing but humble poetry.

The sheet is my brother’s and

the sooner we accept it the better.

It’s not for whoever rules the land

to steal off us or rather off my brother.

ANYTHING CAN COME OUT

Anything can come out,

even a talking toilet…

but I hesitate to probe

the artistic side of things

in case it tempts the mental illness.

Instead I sit and contemplate

unheard music hidden in the shrubbery

which is an image from Eliot

whom it seems, in 2001,

was decreed a repressed

homosexual in The Sun.

Even the tree outside the window

can come out as it were

when observed through

the aleatory pattern of

purple germs on the window,

down the bottom of an

evolutionary corridor, for

in Infinity the tarantula

and the cathedral are one.

Even the lightbulb above you

can come out, even the

drip in the shower room.

ANOTHER DAY ON PLANET ZONK

Even to move the hand is too much effort…

I strain against the soporific wall.

Another day on Planet Zonk -

drugged up to the eyeballs

on heavy medication in bed.

It’s nothing to write home about.

My life was once adventurous, Rimbaudian,

full of missions, road trips, thrills and spills,

excitements, kicks, surprises, even rapture.

I carried no wallet and went commando.

Now watching a snippet of Silent Witness

it seems I still lost to the fitness.

Moreover rereading the works of Jim Morrison

I find my sense of adventure has gone.

Drinking quadruple strength orange squash

I find my poetry reduced to tosh.

Sucking on my black Vape pen

I’ll never get to start all over again.

Then all at once and in a flash

before you could say “strapped for cash”

I think of doing the washing up

before I have my next coffee cup.

So it is that I put my back into it -

it is my turn after all – then I sit,

distilling intelligence into truth,

knowing not what came of wasted youth.

DREAMWORK NOTATION

Adder-less, frictionless, I have no soul,

artificial are my wings of air.

I travel light, in ways digital,

remembering dreams of beauty so fair.

At the party, everyone followed me around,

watched me for moves, on the dance floor,

sometimes a movement, sometimes sound,

and the words I spoke were never a chore.

Gone when you wake, the whole tapestry,

the blissful feeling, the entertainment.

I didn’t touch the ground, was that free,

and the words were ample containment.

I wish to have no nastiness inside me,

sitting here drinking coffee, in the day,

stealing a moment from Infinity

which is where the strange ones play.

THE BLIT

1. Once, in detention at school, and aged only 15, I wrote an essay about a green parrot sent to space through the conch. The teacher, an Irishman, read my colourful and imaginative essay and said “if you keep going like that you’ll go far,” but I haven’t kept up the nimble flight.

2. If you think I’m a genius for all that I went through, my little brother James P D Tucker is a genius too – he designed the sheet where pictures grew. Admittedly the pictures seem to depict the lyric to one of my songs – but I concede it is not mine. I did not lay it down.

3. James designed the new da Vinci circle as follows:

@

<BEE>                             [long squiggle]

Infinity Symbol

The new da Vinci circle is a discrete system containing the international language alphabet in 4 Points of Difference. It not only suggests <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet but by incorporating a long squiggle, hopefully and ideally escapes “every word in every order” as a new super-computer can by no doubt organise.

4. I think it a brilliant piece of work. James had also made a previous document, with some deliberately-imperfectly-quoted Badly Drawn Boy lyrics about the power of the sun rendered in an anti-clockwise spiral like a word-sunflower:

sunshine inside of you

old sun warm sun

spreads over you

soliel all over you.

He left the two documents to rot on the upturned box we used as a table in the den in the barn. I think there was also a picture of the upturned box itself, with candles on, turned face down, on the reverse side of one of the two documents as if the whole thing were the new da Vinci circle, as if, that is, any part is a model of the whole.

5. You get that heat rises… so maybe with the upturned box with all its candles and wine bottle candle sticks drawn on the underside of one of the sheets, heat would start to rise through the paper.

6. I went down to the den in the barn and read them and at first couldn’t see the <BEE> one. We don’t know why this is but I saw a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes on the <BEE> sheet. It was like the Periodic Table except with the characters of the international language alphabet laid bare, a sign per box. One was [backward f, forward f, equals running through.]

7. Backward f, forward f, equals running through could stand for “fish.” But who augmented the present paper with that touch? It was the main man himself, my brother, upstairs, sneezing while plugged into the same synchronicity as me, the same new co-imagination, the same sympathy. As he sneezed I heard the word “fish.” Anyhow, you can trust me that the international language alphabet as I read it was beautiful, and yet it turned out just a layer of pentimento in the parsimonious palimpsest.

8. I was impressed, and left it alone. But going back down to the barn to reread James’s imaginary alphabet or whatever I thought it was found the <BEE> document as James initially drew it – and couldn’t find the tabular arrangement of signs in boxes anywhere.

9. Again I left it alone, and some time later when our dad had just passed I went down to the barn another time and found the Badly Drawn Boy sheet had by now grown pictures. They seem to represent the lyric to a song I wrote going

I’m the only one left,

left to shoot my own gun,

this is the dead land,

crack a smile and curse the sun.

It’s not possible to curse the sun. The sun is a nuclear furnace burning in ecstasy miles away.

10. The pictures never got as far as the chorus. The song was never intended as a literal curse either. The bit you would’ve thought was the curse bit, coming after “crack a smile and curse the sun,” was actually written before the verse. I wrote the chorus first that is, and then the verse, and was just trying to make it rhyme too. What may be true about the song is that it represents the sublimation of The Lords And The New Creatures into a singular, pronominal act of Romantic, first person lyricism or ‘I’.

11. There are also two blue ones… the ones depicting the song are petrol negative mud Cola brown but the blue ones are a fat, greedy, Tory pig on the left and a calm, placid face on the right. This made me wonder if I had written theory, for it to happen, for at the solar eclipse with Paul, after guzzling too much LSD the night before, and during the solar eclipse itself, I wrote in the road book “Every Atom Ate Our Eyes.” Not long after, writing about the face of stars in a poem called ‘An Inward Prayer,’ I wrote “Blessed is peace as blessed is ‘FUCK!’” Still, this would take away from James’s genius. He harnessed Einstein’s cosmological constant ‘c’ as an author. It was him. It wasn’t me.

12. So anyhow, I g-a-v-e the document to James, who laid it down so must still own it. Truth be told we haven’t conversed over the matter much but I think if he was using ‘c’ as in Einstein’s value for light-speed as an author it is genius. Not only that but I would say as he would say that it was because he wrote “sunshine inside of you” that it worked. It was all about what’s inside.

13. Some of my songs were organised according to the new da Vinci circle for the songbook Soundcloud Rain. It’s why I am not free to redo them as something like The New Oedipus Wrecks Gig, because we deem they are already wheat. I might be wrong about the sheet, meanwhile, but at least I gave it a go, comprehending the surprise.

14. And that is what I made of it, regarding the narrative of how it all happened – but there is something else I realised since which I am not saying. And it worked because the sun is golden. And this has been a golden trance. A golden trance that is good to beholden. And now I should put it on my Blog with the science.

15. Truth be told, I don’t really know what happened with the sheet where pictures grew nor is it my business to say because it is my brother’s work. I shall just impart that with experiments in the international language alphabet I found a good womb for my writing for once… and b/t/w/ who wrote Simulations of God? If you look in, say, the volume Yes You May you find plenty of beautiful-minded ideas for inventions mine own. But the sheet was not mine, was my brother’s and is. I don’t mean to give things away and am being a bit bait so should keep shtum. The sheet is a piece of genius by my brother. It goes nicely with the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark which affected my forearm. They make a nice pair.

16. I can prove to you that this is James’s number or at least that it is not mine own. All you would need to do is look at the lyrics from Oedipus Wrecks, whose song it was that the pictures that grew depict – for then you shall see it was not my game – that it was a case of the international language alphabet – the bee going to the flower too. You shall see that at that particular moment in time, way back when the song was written, my game was the face. I had led my friends to the face. So without further ado….

NOTE ON OEDIPUS WRECKS

My friend Dr. Calculator Ptom named the band upon hearing my songs at school. He used to say gnomic things like “the universe is a projection of the mind.” “The G note is green on the guitar fretboard.” “Born Slippy is evidence dance can have a soul.” “Poetry is untranslatable because of the music.” “I was doing some thinking and realised Death is God.” “Early Oasis is good for bittersweet, comedown energy.” We boarded a train not knowing where it was headed in the middle of the Night in London. By now he is Dr. Calculator Thomas and the song is ‘Born Slippery.’

THE OEDIPUS WRECKS GIG, CAMDEN TOWN, CIRCA 1997

I

SHALLOW OCEANS

Maybe all I need is a length,

is a length of metal chain.

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 it’s true what oceans do

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)

II

KILL

My eyes sting,

my teeth are bleeding raw,

too much thought

to make me sick.

Stinky clothes

and mouth become

my skin and all

these fruits I want to kill.

Give my hope,

surrender to the tide,

you can take

my remains;

but I must go,

to wash the poison

from my eyes, before,

before, before I kill.

III

SECRETS IN THE MUD

This is the sound of getting totally fucked.

Of when you first get your notebook sucked.

Of changing gold into Glastonbury mud.

Of lying down in a field with your bud.

This is the music through whom we aspire.

This is the rule book that is thrown on the fire.

This is the jam where the trousers are down.

This is the wine-shop on the edge of town.

Chorus: Glastonbury, you should be free, and all you have in your big city,

you hit my G, you make me see how I want to see,

lights go down, lights come on,

and all my sadness seems to be gone,

although I still love to be what I dream I am.

[guitar solo]

IV

SNAKE SNAKE BUTTERFLY

Snake snake butterfly, lay me dead & close my eyes.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

Give me your alibi; give me chains to stop me fly;

give me night to soothe my blinded eyes:

so I can see the secrets of the skies.

We must rise, freedom falling from our eyes,

unlock doors, it's a perfect time to die,

and it's okay ‘cause baby we'll go insane

but don't reach out too far for the flame.

Snake snake butterfly, lead me to the Other Side.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

V

HEAVEN KNOWS

Heaven knows and walks away -

but what it knows it will not say.

It’s impossible to make a cowboy film in space?

Heaven knows and turns its face!

Heaven’s filled with silver eyes.

Heaven’s hills all harmonise.

I hear its angels when they call...

Heaven knows and lets them fall!

[reconstructed]

VI

MOTHER IS DEAD

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me yeah,

I wish that I had been there,

been there to saaaaaave Jesus,

I'm sure he meant to please us.

Mother is dead,

mother is dead,

mother is dead.

We're young and filled with semen,

we're going to break some hymen,

we'll make the cops turn in their badges,

we're going over all the edges yeah.

Mother is dead,

mother is dead,

mother is dead.

VII

THE GHOSTS LAMENT (THE GUZZLER MEN)

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.]

VIII

VITAL SIGNS

Smile like a smile just to smile,

cast to Heaven for a while...

let's rip holes in the boat,

throw the captain overboard,

throw the angels off the bridge,

death comes and stops me getting

bored of life's soul-machine.

What we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs.

Back to Hell to plunder wings,

let the ritual now begin,

come and ride the waiting beast,

ride it gone into the fire,

ride it to the waiting feast,

my baby's waiting to get higher,

to get higher, to get higher...

what we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs,

yeah feel alive with vital signs.

Come again there's lots to do,

don't you know that I love you?

17. I did ask my friendly A. I. co-pilot for an equation for the ratio between light speed falling and gravity pulling on the sheet where pictures grew and it didn’t come up with anything spectacular. Maybe the answer to what “c over G” really equals is “backward f, forward f, equals running through.” In other words:

c/ G = ¥

18. So it is I think <BEE> could be a mode to drift off on; and the reason we knew Bigtime for sure. It is specious that we don’t know if <BEE> is real or not, because without it we wouldn’t be able to have such pow-wows of telepathic proportions, such connectivity, such synchronicity. Overall I would say James’s doodle of the bee and the flower – which go together – is something as good as the Fibonacci sequence.

19. I heard somewhere that I would’ve had a Nobel Prize for Let The Jews Win, which was comprised of ‘Notebook’ and ‘Flagrant Rapscallion’ had it not been for the Acknowledgements page where I acknowledged the help of my brother and mum – because it then looked like I was being fraudulent. I would say it’s the other way round and in acknowledging help, for even top Professors get help, I was not being fraudulent. The reason it was like it was, with the first poem ‘Notebook’ belonging to me and the second spiritually belonging to Mr. James P D – even if the writing was mine own – was fairness. As I have said we divided things evenly and for parity using his <BEE>. Such activity may be instructive in international relations too. If different countries could be as close to each other as my brother and I can be at times, there would be no war. If language is a problem, then that is where <BEE> comes in handy, for representing only the next character along in the international language alphabet after @.

20. The game of rounders is a classic game because both the boys and the girls can get involved at the same time. I remember playing rounders at Harecroft Hall on smouldering evenings in the summer terms, with the girls as well as the boys, and feeling like I should make a diving catch, or anything to impress the girls. We would get our sleeves rolled up, as far as I can remember, but without changing into sporting gear, just normal school uniform.

21. The reason I cannot present this paper with a photograph of the sheet where pictures grew is that the sheet is not mine, and also I have been advised to no longer posit it online. Instead, then, we have a flower that is utterly devoid of inimical traits; for after all I believe my brother made the initial experiment for a lass called Flora. You might even argue that it was a post-poem.

SILENCE

What gets me about the Plough alignment

is the silence. It’s very silent

for something of such immensity,

something so magnificent, so awesome.

It looks like a million elephants, lying

down, and to look at is like eating

a million LSD trips for breakfast.

But the silence, it is what gets me.

Surprisingly quiet is the whole, hulking,

great mammoth universe when it falls

at your feet, hardly a flower

curtseying discrete and petite.

I make more noise walking

round the kitchen in purposive, 4/ 4

rhythm than the whole of epic space,

that vacuum where no sound travels.

But the alignment is most marked by silence.

False, then, to call it a secret chord,

unless the chord is a silent one, like Y,

which does not register on the bright equipment.

A SUMMARY OF THE MAD MATHS

The encrypted node in the boyhood work was that if the Gravity between earth and moon is instant and therefore enough to break Light-speed a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah.

I see now that it was possibly government scientists who, for the sake of long storage, when the idea of the net needed storing in writing, got me to begin encrypting that with a text called

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

and to continue with a second text called

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

“but then again who knows.”

The split was not even but asymmetrical like one was on and one was off. It was like spotting the flaw in Einstein. It was like saying if you write Einstein backwards it implies the breaking of light speed. It was even like saying if we invent a time machine that can equal light speed we can only go back in time because the future hasn’t happened yet.

At some point, after the Einsteinian bit, and when I had had the vision of what I called “the ire ii net” myself, a + sign was put in for the F of ‘scarf’ in the line

“I have a scar+ that is red and black.”

Then there was a discussion of the struggle between ‘Good and Evil’ in a piece where

“I woke up at 1 o. clock.”

In other words the first person pronoun and the time 1 o’clock were being contrasted.

It is not clear if the splitting of the two books happened next, for the number two in the sequence, but I think so. In terms of the number three, there was also my maths book where in among the numbers you find a three line poem going

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

To read it all you’d only need to go and get a copy of what by now I know helped invent the net but which at the time of publication I did not know helped invent the net. It’s called The Sunset Child. People have said the best one in it is called ‘My Dad.’

The counting continued. 4, 5, 6, 7. Then when I got to be the age of 11, I received the mark up the underside. It isn’t red and black, nor the new colour as such. It’s what I mean when I say “I’m fine.”

And the non-white nurse in A and E last time I took an O. D. said “you looked twintone when you needed to pee. We would deem it that you have re-invented the human form.”

What I have learned from the mad maths is that it is possible to incrementally alter the colouration of a skin cell through mathematics; and when I ask my friendly A. I. co-pilot if the maths of the new colour can be used in finding a cure for cancer, it says “the new colour is a metaphor for the cure.”

I also learned the maths that helped the net into being was indebted to Einstein and became an experiment into the maths of the new colour, because it was all about room for growth, before anyone had the net in their homes.

THINKING OF SYD BARRETT

Syd Barrett wrote some alright lyrics,

for example when he gets axiomatic

in a pop way, saying it takes two to know,

or there is no other day… my own music

was influenced by his solo work,

the work he wrote when he had

already gone mad and been exiled

from the band. Last night I was singing

“I want to go to sleep with my feet in the rain,

traipse around in the good, glad mud,

take acid at the Gates of Dawn,

lie down in a field with some bud.”

In the past it would’ve developed,

been turned into a song, stored

away for when I next met up with Paul

or someone with whom I would hang,

and would still probably be eschewed

when it came to the band I was in,

at least if we are going by the band

that recorded on binaural earphones,

where verse chorus verse was abandoned.

These days I don’t bother extending it -

I already have plenty of songs. But

as for what Syd Barrett wrote,

he’s right about it taking two

to know. The maths of the new colour

as a cellular mark needed another

to distinguish and witness its end result,

(which was neither red and black

or the new colour as such exactly),

so no, no man is an island, still.