NEW POEMS

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.

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 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 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.

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,

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. 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

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.