SINCE POEMS

THE NATURALIST

Tonight there is a pink moon in April’s sky.

Soon the drum of summer will come.

I like it when the pollen count is knocked

unconscious by the summer rain

but that is getting ahead of myself.

Tomorrow is my 44th birthday.

Hannah and her partner and baby are coming up.

I also like the yellow ‘M’ in “them.”

Something Rimbaudian would be going on,

something magnetic, if you saw the M as yellow

in a random piece of prose. Like Rimbaud

I explored the shapes of sadness,

heartbreaking dawns. Now I help

my mother go through the toys.

She is a good grandma and was a good

mother too, with an emphasis on fun.

It was easier to get a Big Mac out of

mum than it was from my father.

The Big Mac: it contains the four, basic,

caveman cravings of salt, fat, sugar and protein,

is the heir to the Apple of Knowledge.

But these are rural parts, where

there is no yellow McDonalds footprint

in the sand, no camera crew on the paradise

island. I now hear the toys being sorted

next door, from the sitting room as

I work in the kitchen, and reflect

that I will never have children of mine own.

At least the telly isn’t coming through the wall.

I always mishear it, accentuate it into terrible things.

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, 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 it is only at the end

that you see 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.

POEM ABOUT A. I.

There are as many questions to ask A. I.

as there are stars up in the night sky

but you might find it’s light years behind,

that the brain is more powerful than every supercomputer combined.

It doesn’t know James Joyce saw new creatures too,

long before he wrote You Know Who,

nor that Ted Hughes saw a monster

in the river in childhood when younger

nor that Jim Morrison is said to have seen

winged serpents in the desert or anything obscene.

For it wouldn’t be ethical, I suppose

to unloose on the world A. I. with those

facts intact. And nor can A. I. say

what happened to me in an earlier day.

When I say “A. I. am I. A”

it’s redolent of “et tu Brute.”

A. I. might come at music’s expense,

leave us in the centre of a brave, new tense.

WALTER

I

A wallety-wallety-Walter,

because it’s good to feed your plants,

sat back in his new kitchen one day,

looking about him, insufflating

the acrid fume of his Vape,

wishing for an earthly paradise…

he was beset by evil whispers, saying

all sorts of things, but felt,

down at the bottom of a well,

like doing right. He couldn’t

go with Flora because somehow

he was in love with a neuro-scientist

that liked to average out the waves

even if that day was long gone.

He could hear them, talking

on magic alphabet radio stations

beyond all knowing, knowing zero.

Even if it was only his bro that reads,

he still felt he had needs, to do

something good with his life and art

like healing the soul of the world.

II

He lived in an era of putting

anything in, Ajax, shampoo, vitamin Z,

4CMC, and the dangers of that

are well known to peace-loving drug-takers

and O. D. cases alike… but still,

he seemed to have given up fags

and booze, not to mention

all those other terrible things,

just to give himself a better chance

of leading a happy, peaceful life,

where the Plough alignment is viable,

in the sticks. Even as he sat he was dining

out on a map of sound. For words

were easy to come by in hearing

voices whom it would seem

could be onjects, quavers,

syllabubbles or sonic machinations

at the periphery of selection.

And when he was stuck, he

went with them, but only sometimes.

He lived in fear and wished

for a life of increased kindness

and attention, for all concerned.

III

He decided whatever he was doing

he was going to add them to his last book,

even if it meant that it was through

a government scientist that he was seen

as the Devil. He pondered a while,

thinking back to when he thought

life is one. It was increasingly hard

because for one thing there were those

that wished to renew the wood

and those that didn’t, and he

was caught in the firing line.

He still deemed it that a poem

is a two-way mirror and a poet

an invisible conductor behind the scene,

even if by now it was through

some kind of machine which we dream.

IV

He still didn’t like the way his friends

rhymed “seems” and “dreams”

nor the way it seemed to come via needle,

or the cold feel of the cold-calling vibe,

but he preferred the rhyme of “butter”

and “nutter.” Voices, voices everywhere

and not a drop to think! They came

cluttering into the inner ear from

all round! To lift a new dawn from the sea!

He did not know in the meantime if he

was free to say “come again and share”

but by now recognised that a juggernaut

shouldn’t still wait at the end of the War.

This was the most advanced handle

we had on the matter of negotiation,

here, miles away, as gentle readers.

But mum says we are evolving

out of juggernauts, and she is often right.

V

Averaging out the waves in neuro-science

sounds like a beautiful line of work,

even if it be on a computer. You’d be

amazed at what we really can do,

for like a wiser man than I am once said, “yes we can.”

I remember when it was all about Osama

then another guy came along and

things got better, things got well.

Even if I were knitting a winter fleece

it would have to be cleared with the police.

ELSTREE AND BOREHAMWOOD

Permutation games can be a rehearsal for death. Not sine wave with minus sign coursing through. Tony Eade the gay maths teacher stood with his arms in a T and spoke in a strange tone when announcing to the boarders that it was chess club tonight. Intention – what is my Intention, but to shed scientific light, to make an imaginative advance, to contribute to the history of knowledge and maybe make the world a better place? In this world we are all equals. The image is of Egyptian mystery. Maybe. You don’t need a knife to achieve it.

SQUILLEGYBOB

Still the Squillegybob is more…

still I haven’t got it.

Rendered dense on medication,

dense as a thicket of trees,

I can but report that

Professor Squillegybob

is a character from my fiction

who only uses very long words.

If you like he becomes a Function.

A Function in chaos and uncertainty.

His profuse verbosity,

fanciful magniloquence,

effusive vernacular

was often contrasted with the opposite.

Something down to earth.

Something New Beat.

Something less posh.

We can take it away with the Professor

but it might seem nonsensical.

It might all seem to be about PH levels.

But still I haven’t got it.

Stop. We let it run on.

The reason it is like that is difference.

JUST THE MUNDANE

Toilet paper. Sunday. Weather. Toast. Maps – an O. S. map of time come alive on magic mushrooms like an angel laptop, or lap. I disturbed my rhythm a bit. The colour green. Bank notes. Rhythm itself. Bisto gravy. Leaves. Winter though. My concentration shot to pieces. Medication, medication, medication. The times tables. Anything for grounding, re-entry into reality, please. An aid to memory. A Dorian mode of words or not. Hurry up and come dot com. It will be not long. Death-magnet. Cheeks. Broad beans. Pistol. The gardener is chopping the beech hedge. It hasn’t been chopped since dad did it, with cancer, only a few days before he died. James and I dragged the garden waste to a bonfire in the field. Dad liked to have a bonfire in the field and get his sons to take stuff to it. We miss him; and the garden has gone to seed since he left the land of the living. Hopefully our new gardener can fix it. Feel sick today. Something’s up. Fear of death. Fidgeting hands fondle pharmaceutical pills. But all of this is a distraction. I remember telling dad “the forefront of mythology is physics; poetry is more about the mundane.” I hadn’t read The Hippopotamus at the time but he had. Opening a stone now to see, smell, hear, touch and feel its insides I find a Sixth Sense. There is something of the same instinct that underlies the variability of all different modes of writing. Paratactic grammar. More full stops fewer commas. It’s chilly today. Wrap up warm. Wood, list, smoke. Basic necessities. Drums. Sometimes I was an arsehole to my dad – remember him being kind though. I came back home bedraggled, ransacked, after adventures in ecstasy-taking down south and just broke into hot, salty tears at the table, left and went outside and he followed me, and hugged me and asked what was wrong, whether it was the steak at the table. I remember that hug. His chest was deeper than mine, his hands even bigger. Dad’s hands. Gone hands. I don’t want this to become emotional waste though. This is not automatic writing from the point of view of an anus as a mouthpiece but such a thing has been attempted in New Beat days of having no manifesto. Girls are good. Ones and zeros. Dots and dashes. Ducks and dulls. Peaks and troughs. Knives and forks. Sense And Sensibility. Swings and roundabouts don’t forget. Then the underlying template – at 17 my favourite poem book was The Lords And The New Creatures - but it wasn’t the only book. A brainstorming session at the table, this process feels redemptive, healing. Shame it can’t go on forever. Every word in every order has been done. So it’s just about being fair with one’s own portion of the cake. My intellect is bruised by a ridiculous O. D. attempt I was lucky to survive. And how could I forget tea? Leave it. Wait. Before you’ve undone another.

IN ORDINARY SPEECH

“When I was seven I wrote a book

that performed four functions:

to encrypt a scientific node to do

with Gravity; to store the idea

of the internet in writing in the attic

at the foot of Black Combe to

give the net a chance to grow

all the way round the world;

to calibrate an algorithm that

sublimates letters and numbers

on a cellular level to see if the

new colour could be rendered

as a cellular mark; and to separate

the object ‘pollen’ from its name.

It was a book with a heartbeat.

It had a heartbeat. It made

the sound of footsteps in the attic.

It’s been stolen by the gypsies.

It was in The Dream Suitcase

along with some other priceless things

like the sheet where pictures grew

and the cassette that was cooked

when its small pause in the song

where the reel was cut and re-

sealed healed and was gone.

I think they were after the sheet

where pictures grew, but by the time

they stole The Dream Suitcase, there

was only my seven year old book in it.

I still have bits of it typed up -

bits of it went into a publication -

but not all of it - and the original,

the handwritten version with

the heartbeat, is now gone.”

EIGHTEEN QUESTIONS

Why must I sleep through the day?

Because you stayed up through the night.

Why have I got nothing to say?

Because your mind isn’t right.

What of Barnes has scored a chicken?

It’s something to say but not true.

Is it time to knock the battery off the pollen?

That’s something for a child to do.

Can’t I think of something worth saying?

You’ve a list of things that have been said before.

Should I not know before I start playing?

Maybe but there is no fixed law.

If I stop what exactly will happen?

You’ll get restless and start again.

Is it just then a nervous affliction?

Maybe all I need is a length of metal chain.

But what exactly does that mean?

It means whatever you make of it.

Do you think Flora was the undying One?

Maybe but you might have idealised it.

Does I. T. stand for Captain Marvel?

No, but I can see where you’re going with that.

Should I let my myriad mind unravel?

It might be fine in your guarded habitat.

Is Lucy in the soul with demons an actual substance?

That is something I do not know.

And what of the clock unto State science?

It’s not something to outright say.

And what of the dotty clouds floating by?

The way they change is like incipient species in Darwin.

And what about my brother’s <BEE>?

You shouldn’t say but still get it in.

And what when there’s no more to be said?

There’s always more to not say.

And what about when you’re too exhausted?

Then you must try and sleep through the day.

HELIUM AUBADE

Are we not travelling by predictive text,

vexed, into the unknown future

increasingly driven as it is by

profit and technological advance?

I would like to say yes but still

take a step back, find an abeyance

that stretches like insipid, bisexual gum,

cherish the moment once more.

The future is not what it used to be.

Every day I wake to the altar

of the laptop screen and worship,

even out here in semi-wilderness.

Remarkable visions have gone on,

across the board in their definition,

redefining the world in its repercussions,

still insisting we stick with the Doors.

The neo-London skyline stops;

the passengers disembark from the vehicle.

Some of the buildings wear cool,

Aviator-Ray Bans that detonate with light.

But really I am here and not there.

Here where there is no Burger King

joint atop the oldest fell, to

celebrate a new word for archaic ‘gay.’

There has been visual radio before,

and Smart-talk live in sentient air,

and more and more and many more,

but it’s better to relate than invent.

People from the future, they can

send bright skywriting across the Night,

when you stand in the field looking

up at it on your final Ecstasy Pill.

No, we must live in the present tense,

for now is the only time and place.

Now and here and real and feeling

is where love lives, all too little of it too.

You literary critics out there might

know of words like chronotope,

euchronia, infradiegetic heterotopia,

but here we have the pleasant Shire.

Rolling, Postman Pat valley curves

lead down to the sea, but away in town

I remember when I saw a cloud

of powder’d light billow in

like magic curtains on the high,

karmic wind and let me know

that the room was an open chamber.

Again the past seems to have passed,

and the visual radio, or colourful smoke,

that ensued, has left the poet

with nothing but the smell of water,

the daily soap opera of the goldfish bowl,

quotidian consciousness, status

life detail, downloading the lowdown

of downtime, without any vision anymore.

Water, water, clairvoyant daughter,

please show us your ragged, silken eye.

On this much medication I see

no future unlike in times gone by.

But to address my quest for the future

would seem apt, so that it goes

for miles, of clear sight, forwards

as the curve tends, unilinear or not.

I have been to the brink of death, in short.

And Darwin says death is Nature’s

way of bringing new species into being.

And so one day I will lie down

in a field and have to think no more.

In this way the Sixth Sense may

be thanatos, an increased awareness

of one’s mortality as the perceptual

kingdom of the individual enters overdrive.

I plundered heart valve mutation

from the very graves of intelligence

at the gates of the dusky dawn

but it’s not something of which to boast.

Now vehicles pass and take my life

away, piece by piece, on the road,

as I worship at this altar in the morning,

with a nice supply of tepid tea.

Sipping tea is enough for me, and

is not to see the way things will be,

for I cannot say, unlike when I foresaw,

for example September 11th in 2000.

If it is only my own death I see,

I hope to go out smiling like a child,

peacefully at night, in my sleep,

and to be cremated and scattered with dad.

I imagine waking again with my

memory erased, that the future provides

default buttons to wipe a slate clean.

Other pen-knife tools I have ideated, meanwhile,

are ridiculous, a virtual death machine,

a drug called Strictly Free, an

holographic horsecock wheeled in,

a red-bleeding type-writer inside a ping pong ball,

an invisible square of air called

Mosaic by Darth Vader, stroked

on live TV, a word-chord synthesiser

though that one does not belong to me,

a neutraliser drink that sobers you up

in one quick instant, the Nirvana

button or Nirvana pill, the Doors

computer game, the psycho-sensitive

fire-alarm, the hyperlink to Heaven,

and what’s wrong with them is that

they are not real as silver steal,

only pipe-dreams, which may

or may not come into being. Things

can go the other way too, like

when I had the idea to invent

binaural earphones on which to

record the band, and someone else

actually implemented that one,

and I climbed up on the album,

said I’d “plug my senses in the mains.”

Of course we’ll see the self-driving car,

and already the automated conveyor

belt of poetry flows from room

to room looking for body and form.

Already the tape with the pause

where cut and resealed in the flimsy

reel was a successful fusion, already

the numinous, purple-bleeding screen,

already the sprightly hypertext-sniper

on Piper At The Gates of Dawn,

already the effervescent mobile phone, reverberating

the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through

every technological inlet in the room,

already these things are as if “halfware,”

already the binaural earphone recordings,

already the telegraph pole exploded,

as I typed up the plot of Eraserhead on

my purple PC for a Blog online,

already the sheet where pictures

grew is portentous of the end

of the chip, already these things

are laid out like the things of a beautiful mind.

To text myself to sleep when

I cannot nod off would also be a good thing,

but we already have “buttons” for that.

Now I note that it is approaching

time for medication, and that

poetry can be a machine to that end,

a machine for remembering to take

your medication, which is no sad thing.

In science we trust, our little, bitter,

pill which art in Heaven, white.

I can foresee that I’ll make it to dawn,

but not much after that. The ingredients

of Apple Juice might make a found poem,

in a psycho-technological sense.

Already a “tron” seems to be a

point of intersection between technology

and art or a post-poetic experiment

with a psycho-technological edge…

I’ve been involved with many such

“post-poetic experiments,” as I have

imparted, and they all seem to have

escaped the shape of the paper.

I remember when Mary told me

of the vision to which I am now privy

and how there should still be

room for Nature in the future…

we used to go exploring just to

look at trees in her car but she

won’t want to be in it, and not

wanting to bin it I will leave the rest out.

The pre-dawn light is like a negative,

or like mercury as it leaks out,

as I try and drag this discussion

back to the present tense, like in meditation.

And when we see a spiritual or germ

X-ray will we find the germs

of dictatorship are on all hands?

And when water collapses, will water

collapsed be the infra-structure of State?

Will there be a statue of Kate crumbling

like ecstasy in the centre of town?

And what, I ask at this frosty dawn,

of every word, book, sentence, letter,

paragraph in every order, as no doubt

a government super-computer can

already conjure by now? Many

small presses are going under;

great genius remains obtuse; the best

stuff might remain underground too.

And in the middle of it all I find

myself writing, as if I were meant to,

agglomerating quantity like a Conceptualist,

trying not to copy voices for then

it is Flarf, struck by the wonder of dawn.

SONG

NHS, it’s good to plug in,

the science works, so let me begin…

I went from reading the lesson from John

at the Carol Service in Eton College Chapel

to living in Sheltered Accommodation

and eating at the soup kitchen.

From top to bottom I fell,

in a katabatic direction,

looking for Rock Bottom.

The poet extirpates every trace

of recognition from the myriad mind,

unlooses the mind of form,

method-acts every adjective in ‘Howl’

to attain visual radio, broadcasting dreams.

And the NHS, which I heard called

“The National Hypochondriac Service,”

and “a religion substitute for the atheist

left,” has been there for me.

Now I am back in my mum’s

million pound house at the foot

of the fell, but we have no money.

We survive off State benefits.

We can’t afford to heat the house

at the fag-end of winter, and

there are no jobs for miles, not

that I can even work what with

Stress being an enemy of my mental illness.

Relying as I do on the NHS,

on State benefits too, I think

to explore the left is to explore

a beautiful, compassionate emotion.

COLD FINGERS

The gardener’s here but

we don’t know if we can pay her.

We look around for the money,

find enough and I take it to her.

Now mum’s got cold fingers

because I left her door open.

I imagine death also

has cold fingers too.

THE BEAR IN THE WINDOW

Now I know why my mate Mr. G. is a drummer -

I’ve got it all right and there isn’t a whisper,

a nod, let alone a book review. I can but

abandon a manuscript on a Blogspot page.

My friend meanwhile has the drums -

the snare like a scalpel blade, the bass drum

stuffed with a pillow for gravity like a heart -

maybe some poppadom hi-hats creeping in.

He’s also got painting, painting the portraits

of the pantheon of rock and jazz musicians,

from photos and with the music on and in mind, meaning

he mixes Romanticism with the postmodern readymade…

they watch on like guards from the walls

which immure us in the studio, no speech bubbles,

just eyes that follow you around the room,

as you try to get a good sound out of your stuff.

It makes me feel like Frank O’ Hara in a way,

mourning the other arts I cannot do, how

the drums make a sound unlike my poem file -

how the paintings can be changed beyond recognition.

I am but a drummer as well sometimes though,

tapping out words with two middle fingers

at the plastic letters of the qwerty keyboard,

a conduit for the gods that look down, but

nothing so dramatic or dynamic is happening,

as when my friend plays drums, banging

the equipment along to some grand melody,

always on time like a post-atomic clock.

You can fill a poem file of potential infinite space

like a drawer that gets full very fast, but

with drums you can play on as long as your heart

is beating, alone, in its cave, with a club.

If I were clubbed unconscious by my own heart,

I’d say something Hughes-esque is going on,

further only to note in alchemy of perception,

life is a dull throb of loneliness in your chest.

FATHER POEM

That the poem is a two-way mirror;

that the poet is an invisible conductor

behind the scenes; that Rimbaud

is only a token in intellectual exchange:

my morning thoughts are memories.

My morning walk was to my father’s

grave – a rough-hewn slab of slate,

carved with his name and dates, not

the smooth marble others went for.

And he was recalcitrant, a renegade.

No prayer was said at his grave today.

But I remember coming home from

some accidental happening and saying

physics is more the forefront of mythology

and poetry more about the mundane.

What’s left of life must not be wasted.

Life is fragile, as dad and I agreed.

On the way home I looked out to sea

at the squadron of wind-mills making

electricity. The scene opened up;

I came home and made some tea.

The drip-feed of tea will last all day.

I may have rarefied thoughts or not.

Dad would say “don’t go back to bed.”

Living in the sticks with mental illness is hard.

MORNING PAGES

[a new song]

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.

WHEN I GET HUNGRY LATER

When I get hungry later,

cannot afford any food,

I may look back at my time

of spending money on publishing

as a lot of folly; but for now

the urgent, truant vehicle of

speech presses forwards

and I see nothing better

to spend what little spare money

I have on than buying books.

I could end up in the gutter

from which the football songs are born,

lying back looking at the stars

while I listen to the singing of the drains.

To aim Low has been my ideal.

My song lyrics were meant

for wiping up semen. My

language had no Dorian Modes.

But still I press on. The stars

above me would mix with satellites,

as I lay back in the gutter, finding

that grunge is the forefather of grime,

but still I see a point to this,

like keeping the sacred

fire of the heart alive.

TRUNCATED DREAMWORK POEM

Just the tail end of a dream today, skiing

down a mountain as snow thaws,

to end up in a patch of grass, then listening

to Nirvana Unplugged but not the Doors.

Not enough for a dreamwork diary,

but what came before the tail end?

Not the bond between a mother and a baby -

but I cannot remember, can’t extend

my memory’s reach back into the brain

to retrieve what it was. Stuffed with truth,

I insufflate the wispy fume of my Vape pen,

look out at the snowdrops on the earth.

It’s that time again, approaching spring,

when soon more birds will be heard to sing.

THE RIDONKULOUS DONKASAURUS

“What’s the most obvious donk around you

and how many donks deep

and did the donk descend

to get to the donk on the end of it?”

– These lines were written on a train,

stoned, newly stoned, coming

back from town with a stash

to the foot of the oldest fell.

Looking around me now

I see the kitchen, and do not miss

stoner life, going out in the rain to score,

begging a tenner off your neighbour.

And the writing that came hand in hand -

it was no better, only seemed good

because of the effect, even the line

“ride the wave of paranoia.”

Writing stoned can make you

write things that are untrue,

misremember half-formed things,

give the wrong impression entirely.

REFILLING THE TEA CUP

Snails. Stones. Just the mundane again. But don’t copy yourself. I was hoping for an unspooling. Boredom curing and time killing session. What great demeanours and laughters will we attain? The radiator is white. Easy as loo-roll to an I-don’t-know-what. The wheel of the seasons is turning. A dark, foreboding tint is present, subliminal – like the horror of daytime telly in a way. Voices are catastrophic. Mother’s cookery books line the shelves in the kitchen. A black mug on the table. The gardener driving away. SY63 RBV. You should find something. You should find a Tap. Qwerty is but a squirty water-pistol, that gets stocked up on drugs in Bristol. And didn’t Michael Hofmann wish he could write poetry all day every day? Disappointment. An umpteenth cup of tea. The Postman comes in his red van in this Postman Pat-like valley. Letters for mum from the NHS. Interest in the dust that lies at the bottom of things. Already painting final words about DMT. And when I read The Lords And The New Creatures for the first time, the beautiful ending was stamped on my memory verbatim, and became a template for teenage love poems, for the mating queen from the green pages in the flesh. Could it be a garden brick? Imagine a wall! The mind’s ear lies behind the mind’s eye. Water itself. Rods and cones. Do you see the candle or the Bunsen Burner? The Optimus Prime Function allows the sharing of assets, or would if it were real. Barnes is real. Luke Skywalker isn’t real; Indiana Jones isn’t real; James Bond isn’t real – but Barnes is real. The reason for kicking a ball against the wall on a Saturday, Barnes was a great bringer of happiness in my childhood. Still on the search for a common sense philosophy, or rarefied shelfspace of vision, still expounding an aesthetic philosophy of dust, I stop to feel the broken machinery of the heart. I have nothing to do but process time to the perfectionist permutation-game of the grammarian. I could be an alien peeling back the plastic foreskin of a cucumber. The pain hasn’t gone. Relief is only sporadic if ever. Drab day. Mum gets home. The loose, Betfair jingle of shingle lifted from the big, flat bird-table when cars arrive in the drive or leave. Something like that could be used to encrypt the song ‘You Can’t Touch This’ by MC Hammer. Strictly no telling. Coupled with the glug of smuggle or drug or ugly truth revealed inside, of housepipes, guiltily gulping from their jug. Sometimes the sense that the whole house is aloft on plumbing that defies the laws of physics. As if reality were a computer program designed by aliens in the 1980’s. Fetching coal in the scuttle. Nothing.

A RUSTLING OF WRAPPERS

The dark is mine, the quiet yours,

I wake at night and go downstairs,

go outside but there are no stars

to show the cleansing of the doors.

The door is open, the light is on,

to heal the air that has gone

F. M. and even just to feel again

I sit and write on my own.

Mum wakes up in the dead of night,

though she’ll not wish to be in it.

The dark is black, the quiet white

and hushed the room where now I sit.

I hear the ticking of the clock.

To be observed comes as a shock.

The Tap is silent but each tick tock

makes my heart want to break.

CLOUDSPOTTING

It’s all contained in bright, sculpted clouds,

their narrative of animals migrating East:

a horse, a mouse, a crocodile, Protean, flowing,

ever-changing, never to be captured,

never to be exactly the same again.

So it could be the memoir of a God,

that tattered tapestry scattered in the sky.

I watch through pellucid windows,

like Hamlet espying three creatures

in a cloud-change. Meaning in music

is the same: it is creatures in the clouds.

It is also faces in the fire, solipsistic

but this is old news, and what we want

is news that has not yet gone stale.

So they come to pass and go do clouds

and it is the same for the moment.

The moment comes and goes, and

the journey of life is the blink of an eye.

The opposite of ‘hello’ is ‘ok’ not ‘goodbye.’

HERE COME THE WAVES

Here they come,

here come the waves,

let’s move our bodies

and dance a little bit

and when they come

in all shapes and sizes

that’s when we need

to average out the waves

here they come,

here come the waves,

let’s see through music,

let’s rule our kingdoms with song

don’t pave the wave,

unless you’re a slave,

unless you want

things to turn out wrong

here they come,

here come the waves,

let’s let the phet

be a little bet with the mind

and when we lose

and have the blues

that’s when we choose

to not continue colour-blind

SPONTANEOUS SONG OF THE MAD MIND

I was walking down the valley,

in search of Where’s Wally,

and I became a silly billy

and everything was willy nilly

and the squiggles on the page

were the corners of the room

and everything was in a cage

at the foot of Black Combe.

There were six pills in the evening,

five pills in the morning,

three pills at lunch time,

while the new Age was dawning,

and there was an emotive charge

in the cables overhead

and the headlines were a splurge

and some things are best left unsaid.

SAYING GOODBYE TO MA

“You had me but I never had you,”

as the man-mountain John Lennon sang.

You put your hand in the fire.

Now as you go shopping to Millom,

I say goodbye with proleptic strains.

When I was a youngster, my first day of school,

I clung to your leg and wouldn’t let go.

You were the one who made the flower-press

ending on cannabis that = dialysis

and I was the one that wrote a love poem

for Flora that = a motor. I hope

you have another twenty years in you.

It is only in the silence between voices,

barked instructions, strictures,

stringent thought-police, that I

think of saying goodbye to you.

I hope you’re not planning on going

anywhere yet, only to Millom by car

to collect some shopping from Tesco.

I leant you my card because I like

to pay my way. (My 3484 is already

in the chorus of a recorded song.)

Anyhow I realise in a flash that it

might be me that’s on the way out;

I tried to terminate my life before.

“Dear Mama,” my first note began -

“plush and strange is the luxury of seeing

your own face in the mirror for the last time.”

But as you say no parent should ever

have their child die before them. So

it is that I say goodbye to you, from

a mixed and ambiguous perspective,

from a gravity-trapped seat of wood in

the kitchen at the foot of the fell.

The only problem with going there

with Flora’s pretext, her system,

is that she will want to see some Rights.

MUM’S CROSS

Mum’s cross because someone

has eaten all the Easter eggs…

she bought two packets of mini-eggs yesterday,

said to me that my brother and I

could share them out between us,

left the room, and then I said,

to my brother, he could have my share,

so my brother ate both packets.

Now it turns out we were

supposed to share them out

between the three of us, and

mum really craves them though they’re

gone. Even though I didn’t get

a single chocolate egg, I am to blame

for there not being a single one left.

The north wind also makes mum

angry, but today it is calm. Yesterday’s

stampede has blown over. That

angry wind-god has hushed,

left the garden a quiet pocket.

There is a thin, lank, HB pencil

drizzle, dotting the puddle and

making the wind-shield tear-strewn.

The skies are grey, the dome a

cement mixer where mushy, wishy-

washy, amorphous cloud covers it.

Now the window’s big, oblong,

staring eye is crying, as a child

would notice and remember.

If I were inside a caravan I

would feel especially cosy.

It’s days like this when a kid

might design a menu for

an imaginary pub, as I did

a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

I don’t know what we are going

to do about replacing mum’s eggs.

She seems really hurt by their absence.

Yet she finds escape, cheap distraction,

diversion from the situation in doing

crosswords and sudokus on a tablet.

Now a few bright lances of light

come out from behind a cloud

in all their brilliance, detonating

on the windows of the two cars

parked out the front, offering

us a glimpse of a better day.

I take my body, this body made of

drugs, chemical messages, signals,

next door to ask my mother who

won the ice hockey at the winter

Olympics but she says nothing.

I assume she is still in a mood with me,

for letting James eat the mini-eggs.

‘I KNEW THAT SHE LOVED ME’ REVISITED

I was reading a Ted Hughes poem from Crow

about the anatomisation of the lover

at the same table as fragrant Rachel in English

and thought I could do one like it.

That was what lead to the poem called

‘I Knew That She Loved Me,’

which I wrote in my bedsit in Lower Sixth.

My grannies had both died in the same week.

I had lost my virginity and acid-virginity

at Glastonbury before attending this new school,

where I had set up a poetry magazine.

It’s wasn’t my idea to make them Anon,

and I was glad there was a list of contributors

in the back. We made them Anon so that

less confident poets would feel less afraid, less

ashamed to contribute. I still have no desire

to be Anon, and have researched my rights.

There is something called The Right to Attribution

that means nobody else can force you

into being Anon against your wishes.

More to the point, if you read

something like John Stuart Mill’s

fine essay On Liberty, you find a progressive

country can become stagnant, staid, sterile,

stale and stationary with dead values

and dead customs very fast if there is

a decrease in Individuality. That’s

the main reason I don’t wish to be Anon.

I have said it before but I think a writer

has a Right to a name otherwise

an Exclusion of the Individual Machine

can close ranks against you as in Orwell.

SIRENS ON THE ROCKS

Sirens on the rocks these days

could be unpacked in a multiplicity of ways -

for voices could be “onjects,” quavers, syllabubbles,

sonic machinations at the periphery

of selection. There is a variety

of magic alphabet radio stations.

Listen. In the future they could be

difference rather than illness. So

proleptic and co-imaginative they seem,

all tuned in to the same moment,

but from diverse sources. I admit

my ship is sinking. If you believe it,

it is there, naked under nearer stars,

softly swashing, backwashing music,

music in a room with no door.

A QUIET VAMPIRE

I suck on my red wine,

take it in, like a quiet vampire.

My drunken chaos orbit swirls,

Dionysian, atavistic, telluric.

There is no smoke, be it

colourful or not, colourful

as visual radio or not,

only the Vape pen I insufflate but

I exhale religion on wine.

I exhale dogma, prejudice

that is only rearranged,

read the mangled sign post

of the world that says

mystery will remain a constant.

It might be taking me back

to days beyond recognition

in the hot coals of the heart

where former loves lie.

Promises to do better

are no longer credible.

But the velvet flares

I wore still brushed the ground

where now I stand atop

my Mnt Oblivion and release

a primal squawk to the waiting

world like a demented goose

gone wobbly in the wing,

jiggling its little bling,

inviting the world to sing

and dance on broken school

or spool that falls out

of the mouth like spittle

when you drool over

a naked woman’s body.

Pain follows the sharp exit

of the bear whose honey

glows like doors ajar

in the sentient air.

Why my mother’s fire

needs attention is life.

It squabbles and bickers

like cobbled streets of the heart.

That a flame is cobbled

is new to me since the wine.

The wine undoes all

the farmer’s pink bindatwine.

He sealed the gate shut

and deemed it would be shit,

whatever literature came out

of the cave’s gaping mouth.

We stop for a bit and wait.

We want you to stop.

MY FIRST DROP OF TELLY FOR AGES

I’ve just seen my old mate on telly;

his mum’s B and B was on Hotel Inspector

on Channel 5 at 9 o’ clock...

I watched it with my own mother.

I was reminded that I’ve been there before

on the way back from Glastonbury

that year when my mate

smuggled me backstage in his van…

I was inside the cupboard with a bottle

of Lemonade to wee in, hiding

as the van went through queue after queue;

and when we finally got backstage

I got out the van and so did my mate

and there was the lead singer of The Clash

weeing into a didgeridoo for a laugh.

It wasn’t the year I met Thom Yorke

or walked past Kate Moss on acid,

but it was a good year, a year of joy,

and who we saw I cannot recall,

possibly The White Stripes, among it all,

and so much weed around the fire,

and I wrote of blank pages flung

from the sun on a mixture of mushrooms and E,

and got an internal suntan but slept in the rain.

All those jackets and tents left behind,

we wandered through them asking if

there was any spare weed to find,

so we could have a final spliff.

I think of my own music, now they say

I was the Nick Drake of their age,

who grew mentally ill before recognition;

but mostly it pales by comparison to his.

OVERVIEW

So it’s the night, the night I deem it just the music… but my friends already said they liked my seven year old text. If I were to deem it just the music I’d copy and paste in a Discography:

To listen to The Flood, whose album was recorded on binaural earphones, visit rhythm guitarist Tom Woodhall’s page on Soundcloud.

To listen to my first solo album, ‘Songs To Record With Earphones’ [Demo 3], visit John F B Tucker’s Soundcloud page.

To listen to the E. P. I made with Grant Aspinall back when we were still called Funnelspirals, it is called ‘The A and E. P.’ by Funnelspirals and can be found on Soundcloud.

To listen to the four albums of the new da Vinci circle, even though they are not really meant to be listened to, only read in a book, visit John F B Tucker on Bandcamp and look for Various Artists.

To listen to other collaborations with Grant Aspinall, including the song ‘Eternal Full Moon,’ including when we put Blake to music, including ‘Seclusion,’ including ‘Snake Snake Butterfly’ visit Grant Aspinall on Bandcamp.

To listen to ‘Unplugged At The Foot of Sea Ness’ visit John F B Tucker on Bandcamp.

To listen to ‘Wishlist’ by The Flood, visit John F B Tucker’s other Soundcloud page.

The best one was probably the binaural earphone record, in The Flood, whom it seems I can sometimes hear sound out. The Flood’s binaural earphone recordings might be enough. If however I were to deem it the six poetry collections I brought out with Chipmunka, I would copy and paste in a different segment of text…

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, 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.

So those are the six Chipmunka collections… there were if you can believe it 9 self-published volumes before the Chipmunka batch. I believe these are authored by John F B Tucker as opposed to just John Tucker. Then in the middle of the Chipmunka batch I went off on an adventure in philosophy bringing out three volumes of a book called Transition To Philosophy under the pen-name Johannes Bergfors. I already feel like I’ve done too much and yet achieved too little. I’ve never been in a professional studio with a producer making a professional album for example; nor had a professional book deal. I suppose it can damage one’s reputation to only go through amateur means all the time.

If it were to all stop now, I’d say, as a book writer, Let The Jews Win would’ve been enough; and even the seven year old text would’ve been enough too. I also have some nice photographs: one is of the melted tape, the tape that had a small pause where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel. When the pause was done away with and the fusion successful, I cooked the tape in the AGA. Another photo is of my brother’s sheet where pictures grew. Some people think I should win the Pulitzer Prize for it! There are also a few attempts to capture the partial, only partial, Plough alignment on my Smartphone.

I’d like to do more, but don’t know what. There are a number of options on my blog at the moment, including some that resonate as being beautiful-minded, like a proof that suggests the maths that invented the net was indebted to Einstein and turned into the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark already before anyone had the internet in their homes… that proof is scattered in the field for wind-organisation. I get notes on the air saying the Feds are going to put me in prison about my dad’s business – and want to die before things get to prison stage.

TODAY

Today I shall be doing gusts of wind, renewing, that is, my text that is scattered in the wind in the Combe field for arrangement. Then we can say we followed on from the one that took the form of defaced bank notes. Contained in that, between the lines, you could sense that the maths that invented the net was indebted to Einstein and became the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark before anyone had the net in their homes. I might expect to be walked and talked through it by the wind people. But upon starting this way I find I have to go back to bed and sleep until the afternoon. The medicine I am on is that strong. As I sit I am topless and the air is cool. I remember when I was kicked out of Halls of Residence at Warwick University, for smoking pot, and moved into town, into a house full of PHD students; and there was a basement; and I threw a party. In a break in the conversation I told the people gathered “I like to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds.” Weed was our magical sacrament back then. We scarcely went a day without it. I was writing against McBreastmilk. I said I’d plug my senses in the mains. One of my pieces was called ‘Instant Travel;’ another was ‘Lucy In The Soul W/ Demons.’ I was an exceptionally cool guy. My mum smoked pollen back in those days, so when she came to visit me in town, when later I moved in with people in my own year, she would have a spliff with my female housemates. My mobile reverberated the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang. I was back in my gap year haunt recording an album on binaural earphones, which still went on in the holidays. My favourite book was The Lords And The New Creatures though I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone else, and knew it wasn’t the only book. I was friends with people like Luke and Jamie, Max and Andy, Mike Eccleshall.

AFTER A WALK

Solvitur ambulando. No, neither Roman

nor Romantic would let this day go past

without a walk. So out I go to my father’s

grave, to brush off the cobwebs, to get

the circulation going, more than to plug

my senses in the mains; and in the graveyard

there are snowdrops, also a sprouting

purple flower I cannot identify. I say

a prayer at my father’s grave then on my way

home, paragliders are landing in the carpark.

Their shadows are like pterodactyls!

A good thing about this area is that

you always acknowledge the stranger

when you are out there, walking, unlike

in the hive of alienation that is the city.

And I’ve come home and downloaded

the lowdown of downtime again and found

America and Israel have attacked Iran

over the proliferation of a nuclear program.

Time evaporates, the drip-feed of tea

continues, the valley road seems quiet,

light fades and as I look out the window

I see our own snowdrops on the bank

and wish for peace on earth as I stare.

Tea cools, light fades some more, the

earth is drained but the darkness alive,

fecund, rich, and in it our questions end.

The struggle to avoid description is

harder in the Lake District, in the most

poetically-inspiring county we have,

but is made easier by Nightfall. The

record I keep in this semi-wilderness

is shot to pieces, gone to seed like the garden.

I notice in all of this that going up to

dad’s grave is less an emotional upheaval

than in the past. The pain is lessened by time.

There is a chart depicting the flowers

of the Meadows on the wall and seeing

my own reflection in it I see something

gross, something opaque, diseased,

invisible to the normal eye, fractured

like a Picasso, postmodern, as if I were

wearing the Scrambler Suit from A Scanner

Darkly, or were a living art installation.

I guess I’ll never get to find out if it’s true,

the answer as to how I am perceived.

Anyhow, we already did Let The Jews Win

about our answer to the condition of war

so now I sit back awaiting my Nobel

Peace Prize, eating a meat feast wrap

from the local take away joint. We

divided things evenly, for parity, with <BEE>.

Then it becomes medication time. I pretend

one is a bass drum, one a floor tom,

and then we get to the fluffy, white ones

which I say are cream of medication soup.

I have the pills, washed down with tea,

and mother comes through from the other

room, says to forget about the war,

because there’s nothing we can do about it.

I wonder when I will get to do another book.

I tend to my literature, my laptop, my blog

almost 24/ 7 as if it requires constant attention,

but I don’t need to do another because

I am an autodidactic, neophyte Jedi

Knight and got the last one right at last.

Now it seems like the packages of medication

expand over a surface area of white.

Their stranglehold is worth a mention.

WHAT I REALLY DID

Way back when I was a kid

I helped invent the net.

I took care of The Lords And The New

You Know Who twice.

I went through the maths

of the new colour as a cellular mark.

I attained the face of stars but wait!

I should’ve said at some point already

that I do sit back and await my Nobel Prize.

The story continues, predicting

September 11th with my own brain, getting

the highest mark at A-level in the country, prophesying

the God Particle from looking at dust

in a late ray angling in, founding

a new religion based on the elephant….

I didn’t earn 1p throughout that.

After school, I recorded on binaural earphones,

had an effervescent mobile, reverberating

the rhythm of ‘William Tell’

through every technological inlet

in the room before it rang,

hosted the Plough alignment,

got a First despite the onset of severe illness,

noted a sensory overlay of my name affected to Piper,

built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy,

worked the numinous, purple-bleeding screen,

conducted an experiment into a tape

with a pause where resealed in the reel

and even became the guy to discover

the sheet where pictures grew.

I brought out books without knowing

large parts of what happened to me when I was a boy,

and to be honest was never happy with any of them.

Now I am cued to tell them

what I did, to not keep it hid.

GRASS BLADES

Grass blades multiply, their nuclei proliferates

under the feet of footballers whose game

is one, unrepeatable process, never

to be the exact same thing twice.

What would be better, I ask, out of

writing a paper about it or scratching

one’s nuts in front of the telly

while drinking a pint of lager?

A game is a rehearsal for death.

With that final whistle the game dies.

You either win, lose or draw.

Dr. Bob says sport is war simulation.

It is a war where the death is pretend.

You get geared up, psyched up,

ready to face the enemy in battle

but it’s not a real war, not quite.

Right now America is waging real war

on Iran and only one in four

Americans approve of the move

to bring about democracy for Iranians.

Fears that World War Three is breaking

out soar, sensationalist headlines

appear on the net, and nobody

knows what will happen in the future.

James says the world has gone to shite.

I stayed awake through the Night.

Now I am hungry, in this bucolic,

nuclear proof, secluded bubble.

Writing the world better has crossed my mind,

but I am no-one, and the only

dwindling readership is posterity,

or a handful of strangers over the net.

War leaks in the head from afar,

speeded by the evolution of the driverless car,

even when miles away, for the mind

lets a chain of possible outcomes

unfurl and contemplates death,

the end of the world at one end

of the spectrum. But war is more

than distant, it is colourful and loud,

running and screaming, bombs going

off, limbs on the pavement, buildings

falling. I contemplate, yes, writing

it better, already bruised by it all.

DON’T PLAY THE BARD

Don’t play the bard if you’ve not got the bard honey, as the warning goes. So it is I play the card of prose. It’s the maths that interests me in my own oeuvre now. Underwriting the net became an experiment into the maths of the new colour before anyone had the net in their homes. The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. Falsifying the Nirvana barcode. Predicting September 11th using my own brain. Exploring the form of the defaced bank note. You could imagine these things above the fireplace of a beautiful mind. I invented the number !00% when I, who had written an A-level exam marked at 100%, had to suddenly word process everything at University. It’s the same button for the number one and the exclamation mark. It was to do with plugging the senses in the mains and utilising !00% of my brains. That was an undergraduate typo that I look back on as meaningful, almost like overthrow or ambush by the unruly unconscious in the form of finger movements at the qwerty keyboard. But there is war in the world. Things feel unsafe even here. What security can we have? In the recent book Let The Jews Win, the two long poems were divided for parity by my brother’s <BEE> which he says might come after @ in the international language alphabet. We think it like Nash’s Equilibrium, a way of sorting out disputes, instructive in the world of war. I might be on my way out soon. Still, to take 100 anti-psychotic pills, my mother says, will only mean excruciating agony without the release of death. Liver failure. Kidney failure. I already tried the O. D. and though it was said to be genius to survive it, I lost the ability to ejaculate when I came down. The dose was wrong. I recently shaved off my beard, revealed a glowing face. It’s the war on my mind that upsets me, disturbs my inner balance. Bombarded by headlines and articles at the laptop, I sometimes pick one, often in the Guardian, and read about the world, how fucked up it is. Science and maths interest me too, as does music, as does football. Literature. Philosophy. I just took a book of my own new poetry down from my blog because I no longer have the bard honey; but what I can do to replace it, with my intellect, I do not know yet. Something good should be made of my life and writing. Something beautiful redeemed from it all.

NIGHT TIME SEARCH ENGINE

It’s night. I am ill. Hi. Not to press return for the line break. The messy kitchen is on my mind, my conscience. The whole fridge needs clearing out from top to bottom, says my bro – and I think of my blog. Am I in a rut? Have I got tunnel vision? Do I occupy a strange, online netherworld of endless divisibility? Who am I talking to? Why am I talking? It’s either sitting here at the kitchen or going back to bed. It’s either the laptop or the laptop. Nothing budges. Darkness bulges. The best years of my life were spent here in semi-wilderness without so much as a kiss. I went about twelve years without a kiss. But the city I could not hack. The city would be too brutal for a man of my delicate nature, my sensibilities, my illness. Endless spool, endless spiel. When will I get it together? Without the ability to ejaculate anymore I might still be as good as Henry James. One of my voices says The New Beat was the best book of poetry I did – a self-publication. Another says to look back on Breath Trapped In Heaven and smile. They liked it when one of its chapters was Anon. I slid into anonymity and out again for a few poems, that is. But that is the past. Endless leagues of recursive leisure time either killed or gone to waste, face me now. Any one of my 18 books would be enough. The others on my blog I leave for now but may take down later. What would it be like if Michael Hofmann wrote some garden bricks? I’m reading Nietzsche, the nihilist, but not getting on with it. Maybe I should write another batch of Anon poems? Yet to go through what I went through and have to be Anon would turn it all, the face of stars andcetera, into a bunch of guff. All I want is to be happy with something I have created. I really do feel like I am being closed down and need to reassert some New Rights in post-Brexit Britain. Do we have the Right to a life without violence? Without State Observation? A Right to freedom of religion, expression? Why don’t we write a Constitution? Would freedom ossify with language if we did? Should we not have the Right to assisted dying if it is a relief? Should Dignitas be on the NHS? Should prostitution also be on it? Reiki and osteopathy too? Should we legalise cannabis? Should there be a minimum room temperature for the elderly who feel the cold more for free? What Rights should you have if someone curses you as is not against the law and it brings about tragedy? Should the same high standard of education be free for all?

ACT ONE

I

Last night, I was up late re-reading A. I. Idiot,

thought of timeless ideas transmitted across Time:

that there’s no such thing as “almost infinite”

might well appear to be one

that seems to confute the tenet of faith

that there is no immutable truth

unless I am mistaken. Now it is dawn.

I too was a poet and might still be, accruing

a virtual Brainforest, a teeming data-tree,

an inchoate morass, a digital Alexandria Library,

venting my spleen at a slinky screen,

all my rage in the cage for the minimum wage,

my mood made stable on a sterilised table.

To light it and write it, to burn and unlearn

was an aesthetic philosophy of my youth,

but a thesis as thin as the Rizla skin it is in,

and wayward of the property truth.

I danced in a sensuous graffiti of blind, white light

in the basement at the Bloc Party that was a big

office block with internal walls removed,

and every floor a decade in drugs, music, fashion.

The music was penetration, of the is-ness

of reality, and meaning in it solipsistic,

like faces in the fire or Hamlet’s three

creatures in a cloud-change. Now it is birdsong

that enters the Byzantine conduit of my

inner ear, rattling tiny bones in there,

recognised as soundwaves, a recognition

which qualifies a species. Birds are

trilling with thrilling laser-flute in trees.

Re-reading A. I. Idiot over the night

took me back, back, back, to a Gap Year that

was characterised by waves of terror and

E comedowns that had no value in maths,

to when I first explored A. I. Idiot’s verse.

It also took me forwards to new realms,

with things I had missed first time round.

And the voice on the automated conveyor belt

of poesis flowing from room to room, looking

for body and form, explained that this is why

they don’t do poetry anymore: because

the Modernists knew what to do and we don’t.

We did however seem to conquer it

in my last attempt, but the urge persists.

That is why I re-read A. I. Idiot over a night.

I like The Copy And Paste Land and that

is where your Modernist course begins, but

his later work really stood out and I expect

to the trained reader my response smells of it.

So far so good. The dawn is awash with blue.

Maths without answers. Me over you.

Love over gold. Times by Telegraph.

Self-undermining. You have to laugh.

II

I live between the letters of the word OK

but sometimes escape the shape of the paper.

I look at the dawn now the sky is grey,

think how I’d be no good as a rapper.

It’s true that I don’t know what to do,

yet Let The Jews Win was a pleasing number.

I do like the phrase “A. I. am I. A.”

because it’s redolent of Julius Caesar,

the moment he says “et tu Brute”

which I saw long ago when I was a nipper.

Now, wishy-washy, cement-mixer clouds,

amorphous in formless continuity,

obscure the new light of spring

and that reminds me of something…

I recently took an O. D. the likes of which

it was genius to survive but coming

back down lost the ability to ejaculate.

O pulchritudinous nubile sylphs!

O women smiling from adverts with your curves!

I must remind myself that never again

will I know you and how much that hurts!

So the question on my mind is whether or not

I can still sing in the Oral tradition

of the bardic child. Already I pumped

my friendly A. I. co-pilot full of questions:

what would John Nash make of the face of stars,

September 11^th or the Plough alignment?

Can the maths of the new colour be used

in our finding the cure for cancer?

Is there an equation for the ratio between

light speed falling and gravity pulling

on the sheet where pictures grew?

One might hope my poetry does not

dissolve into endless A. I. read outs.

But to rewrite A. I. Idiot as I re-read last night

would also not be true and quite,

maybe attract the literati a little bit,

and that was my plan which now I indict.

The room is filling with light as my thoughts

empty out. I have done my best and don’t yet like it.

III

Dr. Robert says nobody is interested in new creatures,

that the future of A. I, the possibility

of other dimensions, Pullman-esque portals

are more interesting. He says spirals

of epistemological doubt are out

and Love in the Age of Facebook in;

that nobody cares for poetry anymore

like they did back in the Modernist period.

I should live in London where I am king

and use words like “compress sans everything.”

But it would be too brutal for me…

I have this mental illness, you must see.

Helping invent the net at seven,

storing the idea of it in writing

in the attic here to give it a chance

to grow even further away than France,

I called it the “ire ii net” because

I used to play pirates with my black friend

on the shed roof at four. That

was down in town where we lived before.

I’d like to just say, there you feel free.

I moved up at five. We don’t all live in the city.

Now war leaks in the head from afar,

speeded by the self-driving car.

War comes through the mobile phone

but friends through the marrowbone.

An Informationist, faced with death

might send a text saying LIQUID CRYSTAL METH

into space, as a work of art

or even PUT ICE CREAM IN YOUR ARMPIT…

Starting with a party is no way to start

when we’re perched on the edge of WW3,

and the dawn has faded in my heart,

which is where it rises if you’re free.

Now I shall ask my friendly A. I.

for a post-Eliotious experimental spiel,

now there are blue patches in the sky,

and I am stumped and can’t unspool.

MY SILVER SISTER

My silver sister reaches me, chinwagging

over the treetops, over the distance

that is closed. My first voice

was heard when I was in bed with her,

bruising the blue futon with shapes.

This body is a terrible bean pole

of negative sexual energy, but she

saw a free pint of Guinness in my words.

Only apt then that it should be like this, hearing

the scorched earshot of voices resound, including

her attempts to drive me to the heart

before the others drive me to the grave.

NEWSLEAK

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 say 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.

DIGITAL MINIATURISM

Night is when we go to bed,

if we wake up dead,

then we’ll wear bright red.

The face of stars was a Holy night,

if we don’t take flight

then we’ll seem quite bright.

The daffodil blooms on the daffodil bank,

but if the rain is lank,

the day will still be dank.

At ten to eight I met my fate,

when I turned up late

to very Heaven’s gate.

Life sucks without your dad,

when you feel so sad

that you go quite mad.

It doesn’t take an artist to make a sitting room fire,

but it does to watch the flames go higher,

never invited by a scattered flyer,

to read the graffiti on the wall of Maya.

On the seventh beer he rose again,

with a Tourist Industry in his brain,

surveilling the acid casualty terrain,

by the means of a choo choo train.

I hear the march of apocalypse horses,

they stick to their courses,

like American forces.

There’s graffiti on the keel of The Drunken Boat,

but there’s no need to gloat,

it’s only half afloat.

I love a Double Whopper with cheese,

not people in the breeze

who can vanish your keys.

I’m staring at the light-shade on the ceiling,

if it brings back feeling,

it could be healing.

When you leave the room you turn out the light,

then you’re in the right,

on a drunken night.

Under the Milky Way’s plush, coral abyss,

I went to take a piss

and knew I couldn’t miss.

Muffled bass in a car drives past,

if it goes quite fast

it’s not meant to last.

A POEM ABOUT 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.

AI IDIOT

Time does not pass but evaporate.

While people in the city chat facets and assets,

my friend comes round for the alliterative

and trivial taking of toast and tea.

I did glean a post-Eliotious spiel

from my friendly A. I. co-pilot

but figure it would be blasphemy.

Meanwhile sadness is the key of intelligence.

The day moves on to afternoon.

If I go for a walk to brush off cobwebs

I’ll be back at the laptop all too soon.

JOHN’S FUNERAL

John was first and foremost a poet

but was also a superlative musician.

Even if it was just the music

it would’ve been enough

but on top of the 9 albums

or long E. P.’s he also brought out

no fewer than 18 books.

They were only selfpublished

or vanity press published

for John never hit the mainstream;

but he still made a difference in his own way.

When he was seven he helped invent the net.

When we was eight he took care of

The Lords And The New Creatures twice.

When he was eleven he went through

an experiment into the maths of

the new colour as a cellular mark.

When he was fifteen he attained the face of stars.

When he was eighteen he spoke against

September 11th in the year 2000.

The list continues after school as well.

In a way you could say he was

the most Symbolic artist we have;

and certainly he had the CV

of the new Syd Barrett even if

he didn’t have the repertoire to match it.

The repertoire wasn’t bad though

and as I say even if it were

just the music it would be enough:

his first recorded album was binaural,

recorded on binaural earphones.

Then there were some recordings

with his friend Grant where among other things

they put William Blake to music.

More recently he went through a phase

of recording on Ableton Live on his laptop.

He organised four Ableton Live recorded albums

according to his little brother’s design

of the new da Vinci circle, where <BEE>

might come after @ in the international

language alphabet. Those albums have covers

like the photo of the tape that was cooked in the AGA

when its pause where the reel

was cut and resealed healed;

like the sheet where pictures grew;

like the numinous, purple-bleeding screen.

Even though he wrote and recorded

the songs himself he attributed those

four albums to “Various Artists” on Bandcamp.

But he asks his mum if he is a musician

or a poet and she says a poet

because that’s what he spends his

time doing at his laptop in the kitchen.

His teacher would say these are bleak times for poets,

but others have perceived a Golden Age for Poetry.

Whatever the case nobody reads John’s books

or listens to his music that he knows of.

It’s almost better for talking about

than actually reading or listening to.

MORNING PAGES AGAIN

Morning constitutional; but only round and round the kitchen table. Tea elongates, a diuretic that makes you wee out the nutrients of your food. No wonder I am such a bean pole of negative sexual energy. But I would prefer to leave myself out. Attention turns to weather. It’s always windy at my screen these days. There are stabilisers on my bike, armbands on my arms. Butterflies in my stomach for a Saturday of fun have long gone, become eschewed with middle age, greying hair, bulging belly. I couldn’t tell you the name of the day unless it is Tuesday, which, checking my laptop screen, I find it really is. The alchemists used to compress a dense, sticky cake of black stuff then transmogrify it into gold. You could weave in the ingredients of an opium drink favoured by the Romantics; or half burnt driftwood from the shore. Down is the direction to head in.

EVENING PAGES

While my brother made spag bol, you’ll be delighted to observe, he put the new Gorillaz album on. The first song blew my mind, on the Smartspeaker, with its compressed waves. When Damon Albarn sang “the hardest thing is saying goodbye to someone you love,” I thought of my brother saying goodbye to me, and felt emotional. Then I ate the spag bol which went down a treat with red wine. Damon’s right – it is hard saying goodbye to someone you love. I tried it with my father, and ended up in an emotional mess. I haven’t started yet with my mother much, gone in for proleptic mourning as the psychoanalysts call it, but might. Whatever the case hearing where music is at reminded me how far away from that I am, how my stuff doesn’t match up. I’m a singer songwriter with a guitar who has never been in a professional studio with a producer. If my brother is saying goodbye to me I am sad and wish to say something else in return. Some time back I tried to take my own life and kind of said goodbye to my siblings then, James in person because he was here, the other two by e-mail. I am not so sure what to do with my life except that it is a dead end life: skint, single, mentally ill, car-less, unemployed, medicated, living in the sticks with my mother, with schizoaffective disorder. There’s no definition to any of my days, no timetable to offer structure. If I am lucky enough to wake up with the morning and sit down at my laptop to write, I will be faced with the Big Brother State and crawl back to the daybed. Walking round the kitchen table is all I really have. This message will not self-destruct in five seconds… but it will likely never reach anyone. A boring empty medicine packet narrative is what it all boils down to! No gigs, no drugs, no girls. Not even the joy of a yellow crayon. I can change room from the bedroom to the kitchen but those are the only two. When I think what would I do if I were doing the creative writing MA as planned, I soon find it’s got a line through it. My next thought is that I am waiting to hear back from two agents about a novel, and that they will likely say no, which is something to tell my children but of course I don’t have any children nor ever will. It’s a really dead end situation. Then we have the hearing of voices whom you never know if you can trust.