THE NEW SILENTIST

THE DREAM FILM STORE

A sad and seductive female voice is saying things to me. I cannot focus or see her face, it refuses to appear in my mind.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve finally come, I’ve been waiting for you for lifetimes.

- Welcome at last to the Dream-Film Store, I can’t believe you’ve awoken here after so long -

Did you have a long day? What can I find for you tonight – that’s right – anything you can imagine – a Thousand amazing thoughts preserved – or perhaps just a bottle of red wine and a dream about the swaying sea will rest you well tonight?”

Of course in dreams you never know you are dreaming. That is why they have control. Certainly this dream harnessed control enough to disturb me & leave itself lingering behind the back of my mind when I finally awoke.

In my sleep I was wrestling w/ heat & the covers, & frightened by the lady’s continuing voice. All I could see was blue.

“I know you can understand what I’m saying. Don’t be afraid” -

I felt her stretch out her arm towards me and I jumped in panic.

All around me I could see blurs of deep colour merging & swirling, a moving chaos of images and shapes. Still I could see no face.

“I know you can hear me, please, I’m your friend, look! I couldn’t bear to see you waste this now. You know me already please just trust me.”

********

II

I awoke shaken and wretched, grappling with the duvets, rubbing my stinging eyes. Already the terrible fear of my dream had subsided considerably; simply because waking instantly cancels out what was previously merely dreaming. Now I just had a headache & a longing to return to that strange scene and assuage the curiosity that always accompanies fear. I suppose the fear when you dream is because you don’t know you’re only dreaming. It seems real. I lay there thinking.

What troubled me most as I lay there in bed was that I never saw the woman’s face, though I could sense it was desperate to appear. Oh well, just a dream, as they say.

Refusing to let a dream trouble my thoughts all day, as had happened before I decided to get up and wash my face.

The flat was crazed by disorder & rubbish. Clothes, papers, books & boxes which should’ve been locked in some attic were at war w/ the floor. I trod w/ care to the bathroom & stood looking in the greasy mirror at a face full of grease; the eyes that once rewarded me w/ strange smiles were laden w/ sleep, heavy with the impurities that sleep had filtered. The Drain in my Brain.

“I’ve been swimming

in a sea of sleep,”

I began singing to myself in a hoarse groan. Wanting to give myself a shock, I dunked my head in a cold basin decorated w/ floating limescale, pubic hair (for some unknown reason) and toothpaste. How I could call that much of a wash I don’t know. Nevertheless, I felt fresher; so, as always, I started to prepare my morning spliff, which helped me decide what to do today, or if to do anything at all.

I used to take great pleasure in rolling huge reefers, just for the hilarity of seeing something unusual & absurd, I suppose. Recently though, since moving in to the flat, I’ve been rolling the swiftest & easiest joints possible, & filling them w/ more weed than the big old ones. Being stoned now fits into the same category of Time & Tedium that it once was the escape-route from.

As I lit the spliff, & fell softly back into the sensuous web that stonedness weaves, I felt a longing for the fantastical times I used to have w/ friends & girls & laughter & ideas – whereas now I just felt numb, in a blunt trance. Not wanting to linger on the past, I took a deep long drag, like the spliff was a sacrament, & pulled some stolid clouds of darkness into my lungs. Holding it down, I imagined counting some numbers but couldn’t get it together, so just waited - & then exhaled, releasing the smoke in a grave grey sigh, watching it fumble, disperse & vanish into cushions & curtains & air. My head was heavy. I knew what I needed now more than ever. To get out.

********

III

After dressing in some jeans & T-shirts, I took my weed, some skins, a pen & paper & various other articles of minor importance, & hid them in places in my big jacket. I’ve never been too bothered about what I wear on top - trousers, I just wear jeans, so I’m not fussy there either. Shoes, however, I’m very particular about, seeing as I have to walk in them etc. Shoes are rare allies in life. Also, I have a tendency to turn a jacket into a home.

So, finding a particular pair of boots, I left the flat w/ a feeling of the promise of the Day.

But where could I go?

I’d abandoned my friends a few months before, fallen out with them all except one, Gabriel, who I don’t speak to anymore, anyway. It was a strange series of incidents involving my previous band & some magic mushrooms. The details escape me & give me pain trying to remember them. We were called ‘Open Poem Opium,’ & we split up; that is all.

(“Beat through the veins of the city in madness

Revolving doors in your mind & sadness

Cities crawling in your brain

streets of mystery and of pain,

I’m leaving town on the underground train.”)

I put my hands in my pocket to instinctively protect myself from the knuckle-gnawing cold that hung around outside. Feeling what I thought was a £10 note in my jeans, I pulled it out to find only a little scribbling of lyrics written some days ago in a dull hash-induced trance.

I often scribbled things. I enjoyed the freedom of scribbling & doodling. The pen can move exactly where you want it free of direction, w/out the obligation of having to form restricting letters & words. I have pages & pages of doodles, strange shapes, & occasionally some lyrics appear in the mess. That’s what I did for the band – wrote songs & sang, though I don’t play any instrument.

Noticing a growing rumble in my stomach, I felt that food & coffee were the best options, & would give me more time to consider how my day of activity could be filled.

Rounding a corner, I saw the parade of shops ahead, dead faces facing me, w/ cheap dimestore smiles. In the middle was the cafe, called “The Rat & Vessel” to my amused bewilderment. I opened the door. Inside it smelled of sad people, old times clinging in smoke to the walls, sad paint and sad light. The door was still ringing from those crazy bells that crash together on opening , & make me cringe every time. Those bells should be banned from sad cafes. They exacerbate the dead silence that awaits you inside when the door slams shut & the bells stop clanging.

“A large strong white coffee please, & a Danish.”

£1. 90. I couldn’t believe it. I realised then that left me w/ only 10p for the day – a rare day of Activity. Oh well.

The coffee was bitter & the Danish was over sweet. I was fairly stoned & therefore felt a heightened sensitivity to things like taste. After a few mouthfuls, I realised it wasn’t quite late enough for breakfast yet.

Well, what could I do? Where could I go? 10p is less than having nothing, because it just irritates you with niggling little time-consuming questions.

I decided I’d be freer if I threw it away my last change. Why I didn’t bring any money w/ me I haven’t a clue – pen, paper & weed must have seemed like a more useful currency to remember this morning.

So On discovering that I finally had something to do (albeit only disposing of 10p), I thought I’d turn it into a ritual & perhaps waste an hour of the day. I was finding it increasingly difficult since realising this money shortage to tell myself that I was even capable of activity this morning. Spending an hour of one’s morning throwing away short change, & taking an hour to decide how to do it in particular to add a pretend sense of ‘fun…’ I realised a dead-end frustration possessing me. The town was in abeyance, time was trapping, what could I do to rid me of the cruel bindings of post-youth, expulsion from university, confusion, unemployment, & worst of all, sheer boredom? Where could I go, & with what purpose?

The 10p dilemma had started to annoy me. I thought in vain for ways I could make a ritualistic point of getting rid of it, but soon realised this sort of time-consuming thought was exactly what I wanted to get rid of the 10p for – like I said, to be free of it. This realisation of my own frustrating, mind-cycling stupidity annoyed me greatly. I decided I’d give it to the next tramp I saw.

It was now 11. 00. Which meant nothing to me, because w/out anything to do or anywhere to be, it didn’t matter what time it was. The street stretched ahead of me crawling w/ insect-cars & insect-people, all busily rushing around swarming sick and feversome. I often wondered exactly what the term “crowd-neuroses” means, & laughed that I felt detached from the clinging time-table lifestyle. Walls of grey rose either side of the road to complete the dull-grey prison of the street. People flocked & assembled, briefcases merged into madness, mute timetable agony, flaccid lovers limp by, smiles fail, children congregate in backstreets to escape, everyone around thinking they have something to do & somewhere to go! I felt dizzy so found a bench to sit down upon. Watching the parading fools & this procession of sadness brought out a sadness w/in me too. I was sitting motionless on the bench, feeling the flux & thrum of the city, the dead beat of London; & I heard the beat of my heart clash w/ the rhythm of the streets. I felt suddenly cold and alone. If London had a voice, it would be a blunted and dead-pan voice like Lou Reed’s.

I must have sat on that bench for about 2 hours. The time was spent coming to terms w/ the fact that I felt estranged from my environment – the first time I’d realised the alienation of being poor in a city. Perhaps if I lived in Cornwall, say, I’d have a job, a community in which I was known, maybe even some friends. The city is a great culmination of sadness & alienation. No-one in town is conscious of their extreme self-consciousness. Everyone in town is homeless.

Pleased w/ the thoughts I had accomplished this morning (& thinking was my poor equivalent of a morning’s work), I decided to roll up another spliff & go for another wander. My hands were cold & it was too windy sitting outside, so I went to look for the nearest phone-box. Phone-boxes were excellent for skinning up in, because a) you were off the street & out of people’s way b) there was a nice little platform bit to rest the Rizlas upon c) no-one disturbs you in a phone-box, because they assume you are looking for change, or about to make a call etc. One felt a slight degree of safety & protection inside.

The nearest phone was just across the road. I loved crossing roads, felt it like a game, a dare, a thrill. One of the things I felt most confident about in life was dodging traffic & crossing roads w/ what I liked to portray to the driver as being a fearless & disdainful nonchalance. I’m constantly occupying myself w/ little challenges & wars, that I suppose I create for my own amusement. Walking along a pavement, I often ask myself a question of importance then tell myself that if I reach that lamp-post over there before the next car passes me, the answer is so & so, & if not… I’m sure everyone plays the same game, just ask different questions. It’s amazing how something as utterly pointless & unfounded in anything apart from my own mind has the power to excite & possess me.

I can honestly feel a terrible suspense sometimes as a car grumbles & groans & approaches blind behind my back – I walk quicker, desperate for the answer I want. Sometimes, if I fail to reach the object in time for the right answer, I change the question or say I meant the previous lamp-post anyway. It is by no means a game I enjoy playing. I become frustrated w/ myself after a while, but at least it distracts me from frustration of having nothing better to do.

So crossing the road, I reached the phone-box, & entered its heavy door. Inside I felt how truly separate I was from everything else around me. There is a certain mysticism about phoneboxes & telecommunications. I remember having a fascination w/ Dr. Who, & the way he travelled throughout space & time in the blink of an eye. How I longed for such possibilities now, standing stoned & alone in a phone-box surrounded by strangers & the dizzying thrum of life. I wanted adventure, change, discovery – but I was stuck. Where was there to go?

I emptied my pockets on top of the phone & extracted the various bits of paraphernalia needed for skinning up. The spliff I rolled was terrible, due to what I noticed was a growing distraction in my mind.

Standing there pulling on the spliff, I tried to locate the exact area of my mind where the negativity was emanating from.

‘Right,’ I thought.

‘I know I don’t want to be here, but where do I want to be?’

Something was certainly on my mind, but I let it go as the smoke melted into my blood & sent diamonds rushing up my neck.

I started to gather my belongings, & noticed among them the 10p which I’d forgotten about.

“I’ll leave it here for some lucky person to make a phone call w/” I mused.

‘Or, I could make a phone-call myself..”

I didn’t own a phone & the thought of making a phone call was quite big news to me. Who could I phone? I had no friends.

Except for maybe Gabriel. It had to be Gabriel. 0171 385 6603. I only had 10p, so I had to plan carefully what I would say. Even better, I thought, I could invite myself round to his.

I don’t know why I suddenly had a desire to be w/ someone. I don’t know whether I even liked the guy. I alienate myself. Perhaps the guilt that loneliness brings, had stirred me finally into communication.

“Hello?” came the cautious, questioning voice.

“Gabriel, man, it’s, uh, Franco, could I come round?”

I spoke nervously & stuttered a little, out of practise w/ conversation.

“What! Hey Franco, how’s it going? What are you doing? Come round!”

“Yeah, I will, I’ve got 2 credits left, so I’ll - “

The line went dead & the dead sound came up in my ear & hung around in a tone of despair.

“Shit,” I thought. “Where the fuck does Gabriel live.”

Typical, that for once I’d actually wanted to do something that involved someone other than me - & it wasn’t going to be possible.

I left the phone-box still sucking hard on the joint. “I suppose I could go home, get some more money & - “

The phone was ringing. I lifted it. It was Gabriel.

“Man you should’ve just said & I’d have called you back.”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t know – shit, sorry. You know how I am w/ phones, clueless.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha – well, shall I meet you somewhere then?”

“I have no money & I’m down to my last few smoke’s worth.”

When I said earlier that phones fascinate me, I also meant to say that they terrify me. I’d probably prefer telepathy.

“I’’ll tell you what Franco, where are you – I’ll come and pick you up.”

“Um, well, I’m in a phone-box in Baron’s Court. I’ll meet you outside the Oddbins.”

“In 10 minutes, I’m close.”

“Alright man, that’s perfect, cheers.”

“See you then Franco.”

“Bye-bye.”

Wow. I’d never known anyone so efficient at phones. If I’m ever forced into using one to make arrangements, I faff around for hours being indecisive & calling back & hanging up.

Gabriel was a person of admirable sagacity for his age – 2 years older than me, 22, but w/ a sensibleness that empowered him to be utterly assured and self-confident. Decisive & wise, the kind of friend everyone wants & fears abusing.

I could already see Oddbins. I approached feeling slightly ridiculous still for my telephonic incompetence.

‘I could have done any number of things,’ I thought

- ‘reversed the charges, borrowed 10p off someone… oh well, I’m just useless, no matter.’

My thoughts were interrupted by Gabriel’s voice.

“Franco, jump in!”

Elliot Smith was playing on the stereo. I didn’t like Elliot Smith very much. He finds it too easy to write fairly good songs. I couldn’t respect that.

Gabriel had a spliff going. “Have a smoke on that man,” he urged. “How are you? Tell me about your life.”

“Well, I’m O. K I suppose. To be honest I’ve been quite dazed for ages. I don’t really know what’s going on man.”

“How’s the band?”

“We split.”

“Oh, why”

“Dunno, just crap really.”

“Just crap sounds about right. So what are you doing w/ yourself?”

“Oh, nothing much, nothing at all really. I’ve got virtually no money, & none on me.”

“Any girls?”

“Ha ha ha you must be joking.” The thought of me having the time, money, energy & effort for a girl was hilarious. I was not ‘boyfriend material’ – I never have been.

“Man, I’ve met this amazing girl, she’s at the flat at the moment – you’ll meet her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mary.”

“What’s she like?”

“Oh, amazing man, you’ll see, you’ll see.”

“I’m not sure if I want to believe you or not. I mean you know how sceptical I am about girls. If she’s not perfect, not the Absolute One, then she’s not worth any waste of time bothering w/.” This was my arrogance. Suffice say, I had never found the One Perfect Girl.

“Franco, I’m telling you man – if you’d just stop being so fucking particular & arty farty, & just accept things, you’d be happier. You’ve probably already met your Perfect Girl but were too busy moaning about existence & lack of money & fucking weed to even notice her.”

“you think?”

“Yeah, I do think. You can’t get perfection, so then take what’s best.”

Elliot Smith was starting to annoy me, so I turned it down. The car pulled up & stopped.

“Here we are then, this is the new flat.”

“Cool, which door.”

“Here.”

We entered.

I stood waiting inside the door wondering what I was doing. A blond girl w/ a subtle face & medium sized breasts came to the bottom of the stairs w/ an open smile on her face. She was attractive. Very. She wore only a long robe-like dressing gown that revealed tempting patches of skin when she moved. She looked at me for a strange second, then Gabriel & her were full of kisses & smiles. I felt a little bit small, an outsider. Gabriel introduced me, & we went through to the lounge for a smoke & some coffee.

I always admired the way Gabriel could mix women w/ friends. We shared a flat at University, so I knew him well & had witnessed many of his previous ‘mistakes’ & ‘successes.’ I felt rather uneasy being in the room w/ my old friend & his beautiful new girlfriend. I felt alone.

We sat for a while & Gabriel & Mary inevitably drifted into the usual fresh-lovers type of conversation. There was certainly a silent communication between them, a sign of their genuineness perhaps.

I looked around the lounge. Shelves groaned w/ the slow old weight of books, heaving piles of books, pages of words compressed & preserved together in slumber, long centuries of books. Gabriel had no doubt read them all. He thinks books hold the answers. I think they only hold the questions.

I became distracted from the books by the sudden movement of Mary putting on some trousers. She stood up & had to jump & pull them up quickly while she was in the air. I caught a glimpse of her pussy through her knickers. & then I was hooked. I couldn’t help but cast glances at that soft pleasure-triangle that women posses, knowing there was a cunt lying in her lap, just lying there unattended. I felt an angling, wincing agony.

Uncertainty and mystery was what sustained me, kept my curiosity strong.

I wanted now to solve the cunt-mysteries hiding in Mary’s knickers.

“Franco! Wake up man. Where’ve you been? Cloud cuckoo Land?”

“Shit man, sorry, I’m a little bit stoned, well quite stoned actually.”

Everyone laughed.

I suspected that Gabriel was feeling excellent about himself now – it was obvious that I had been staring at Mary.

“Yeah & I’m a little tired as well. I had a really strange dream last night.”

Gabriel & I often discussed our dreams when we were stoned.

“Yeah? Tell me about it.”

“Well, it was terrible, frightening. There was a woman.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! That sounds just like Franco – terrified of women, even when it comes to wet dreams!”

Mary gave me a look of intrigue. Gabriel laughed at me more.

“You couldn’t understand unless you were there in the dream. It was terrifying.”

“What did she look like?”

“I’ve got no idea. I couldn’t concentrate enough on her face. It was everywhere, all around me – lots of deep blue green colours swirling & all the time there was the Voice…”

“...and what did it say?”

“something about the Dream-Film Store or something.”

“Wow. ‘The Dream-Film Store’. Sounds exciting. & what happened that was so scary?”

“I don’t…. I don’t really know…. It was just…. Um….”

I trailed off into oblivion. The T. V. had been put on & it flickered its bright ugly faces around the room. I felt dizzy & needed suddenly to lie down. Chaos was swarming in my head, I took a deep breath….

& a strange blue colour pervaded the scene.

“I’ve been calling you all day, why haven’t you been answering -

Look, there’s something we should get straight now & here: you WANT to be here, w/ me, so please make it easier on us both.”

“Who are you?”

“Oh you already know all this, it’s the same questions every time – in time you’ll remember everything, but I need to -”

“Where am I?”

“Why, you’re at the Dream-Film Store of course..”

I felt the softness of her presence, the lure of her maiden’s voice, a strange sense of having been here before in another time – still I could not see her face, just an oceanic blur.

“Is there something wrong? What is the matter?

What is the matter?”

she kept repeating

& repeating

her voice dispersing

& drowning as I

floated away

slowly upward towards

the surface again

through the big blue

until…

---------------------------------------------

IV

I awoke panting for breath on Gabriel’s sofa, w/ 2 impending heads above me – stoned expressionless faces.

“Man, what the fuck happened,” I joked.

Their smiles told me they were relieved.

“You suddenly started hyper-ventilating, & moving your limbs manically, & then you feinted & just lay there looking still & peaceful, &, uh, almost… dead!”

“Shit, that’s never happened before, I never feint, that’s weird.”

“Probably just the weed.”

“& the crap company,” added Mary w/ a smile. “Let me get you some water,” she continued.

“Please,” I agreed.

I watched the ripe shape of her body as she moved away, watched her casual motions sway. Disorder Lust & Loneliness. ‘There is no room for love in my life,’ I thought ‘or perhaps all I have is room for love.’

“Gabriel,” I slowly asseverated, suddenly snapping back into the room, “when I feinted, just then, I had the dream of the scaring woman at the bed of the sea.”

“At the bed of the sea?”

“Yes, yes, it was at the bed of the sea first time as well. I remember. I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I haven’t seen the woman yet but I spoke to her.”

“What did you say?”

“’Who are you?’ & ‘where am I?’”

“Ha ha ha ha ha. & this was supposedly a nightmare?”

- “Um, well, no, not as such, no definitely not a nightmare, just a strange, scaring dream.”

“’Who are you?’ and ‘Where am I?’ That’s what people in 3-rd rate Hollywood PG’s say when they miraculously arrive at some fantastical place. Sounds like pure cheese to me man! I can’t believe you’re letting yourself get bothered by a dream as cheesy as this!”

“No, it wasn’t cheesy, it was crystal clear & pure blue & cool on my naked skin….”

Then there was an uncomfortable silence that hung around waiting to strangle me.

“Gabriel shall we have another bifter, I could really quite do w/ a J to sort my head out.”

“Yeah, man, that’s a sound idea. I’ll skin.”

I turned my head to look out of the window.

Grey streams pervaded the sky. The street outside was full of sadness, lined w/ windows, desperate & nothing. The street goes nowhere. The pedestrians are going to places that I refuse to call anywhere.

Mary had returned now w/ a glass of water & a cup of herbal tea.

“Oh, cheers, that’s perfect, thanks.”

I was never myself w/ new people. Strangers gave me a nervous edge. You could say that they excite me – or perhaps that was just Mary.

She sat down next to me on the sofa. I always sit forward w/ my hands clasped. (My mother used to say I sat like I was praying & I used to tell her that I was.) Mary sat back relaxed & full of presence. This made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t see her face behind me, & now felt sure she was sitting back so as to look at me w/out me noticing.

My stoned mind focussed out & dispersed & my thoughts began to spread into detailed crevices of indecision.

If I lent back it would be blatant that I’d either noticed her, if it’s true that she is looking at me, or, if not, it would be either a nervous action or a rather full-on, arrogant one; so I shouldn’t just sit here & feel comfortable w/ her looking at me from behind.

I considered my position w/ Mary agonisingly behind me, & Gabriel, my friend who was beginning to bore me a little, reading in front of me, quite engrossed. He had the spliff & wasn’t even smoking it. I didn’t want to ask him for it, because it was his, but the rude bastard hadn’t even passed it once.

Suddenly, in a moment of decision I sat back next to Mary, our bodies pressing. At this stage, w/ the threat of Gabriel there & the tendencies of my edgier thoughts getting carried away, I began to feel excited – I began to get an erection & my jeans were tight. “I could really do w/ leaning forward again,” I thought. “Though what would Mary think of me rocking back and forward like a monkey?” Paradox. The only solution I felt was to ask Gabriel for the biff & lean forward to take it.

“Gabs man, the bifter has extinguished itself in the absence of you smoking it. Have a light.”

We often spoke to each other in burlesque tones using highly pretentious diction to mock the people who assume we are being serious or genuinely ostentatious. A silent cruelty, & a disdainful one. We enjoyed deliberately confusing people. I know that of course it’s a manifestation of personal insecurities, or something like that. Enigmatic people, though, have to cultivate their enigmas, play on people’s curiosities. If people knew this, however, the enigma, the mystery, would cease.

I suppose you could say I suffered from a dreadful arrogance that played games w/ my autonomy.

W/ all this thought taking place & consuming my stoned mind, my erection subsided. & Gabriel passed me the joint.

“Cheers man. What you reading?”

“Turn of the Screw.”

“Henry James. I’ve read it.”

“What do you think?”

“Frightening. Frightening to think that the entire novel is related through the eyes of someone so subtly mad… psychotic… that she doesn’t know it and neither do we…”

“Yes, yes, the scary thing is that when you’re insane of course you wouldn’t know about it.”

“Where are you at?”

“The Governess has just been visited by her second horror.”

“Oooooooooh… it’s just getting good. The insanity accelerates from then on.”

I often spoke of insanity. The idea of it attracts me. It’s in the same boat as all the things which attract me like dreams & angels & myths & magic, symbols, Mystery.

I often used the word ‘insane’ as an adjective. I’d never told Gabriel (& he was the most likely person I would tell anything) that I don’t actually believe in sanity. Or intelligence. I just believe in minds.

I needed the loo.

“Mary, where’s the bathroom please.”

“Upstairs.”

That’s all I needed to know. Bathrooms are self-evident & usually exactly where you expect them to be. Still, you’ve got to ask.

“Right. Do you want the rest of this?” I offered the joint.

“Oh, yes please. Thanks.”

On leaving the room, I realised how much I’d wanted to leave it since entering it.

“I’ll take my time,” I thought.

Halfway up the brown carpeted stairs I heard Mary & Gabriel exchanging aggressive but hushed remarks w/ each other. They were squabbling. Shit. Was it something to do w/ me? No, don’t be arrogant Franco, of course not, they just waited for privacy.

I reached the top of the stairs slowly, straining to hear what they were saying downstairs.

“Don’t be so nosy Franco, go & take your piss,” I said to myself, imitating the sense of morals & responsibility that I recognised I inherently lacked.

Four possible doors faced me at the top of the stairs. I chose the one I was sure was a bathroom; but it was a bedroom. “Shit, oh well, another one of my immaculate notions ruined. Bathrooms are not self-evident after all.”

The door next to it was the right one. As I pissed, I looked around at all the fancy bottles of sprays & scents & creams & whatnot. My bathroom, in comparison, was utterly empty.

I decided I’d stay in the bathroom a little longer to give the two downstairs a fraction more privacy. Their relationship, on first impressions, was strange. They possessed a silent communication which I’d seen in other couples, but never experienced.

In front of me, they ignored each other. & Gabriel had definitely changed. I realised then, staring blankly in the mirror, that Gabriel was not a friend anymore. I no longer needed him for the public confidence he inspired in me. I no longer needed any public confidence. I had no friends. I had to get out, leave as quickly & politely as possible. W/ as much of Gabriel’s gorgeous skunk as possible.

Returning downstairs it was clear that all the fuss had subsided. Entering the living room, Gabriel had now moved to sit in my seat next to Mary on the sofa. He had his arm around her. The skunk was on the coffee-table, where Gabriel was previously sitting. I moved over & sat down. The couple were full of smiles.

For the next ½ hour, we chatted idly (except for Mary), & I was given the opportunity of rolling a spliff. Little did Gabriel know that it was also an opportunity for me to steal about ¼ of his ounce of skunk. Having convinced myself that there was no longer the same connection between us, that he wasn’t a friend, & that it was his fault as well, I reached a guilt-free state of mind, which excited me. Ah, the potentials of being guilt-free, amoral. All you needed was to be good at lying to yourself. So, skinning the J, I subtly spilled the bag under the coffee-table while the couple were smugly engrossed in some embrace. Under the coffee-table, I put a substantial handful into my left boot, then brought the rest up in the bag, laughing and apologising.

“Gabriel. After this biff I’m gonna cruise.”

“You’re going? Already?”

“Well, I’ve been here ages &… to be honest, I still don’t feel too good after that feinting episode.”

“I thought we’d do something today, go to Camden maybe.”

“Gabriel,” I joked like a friend would. “You know we never do anything if we’ve got enough weed.”

He was reluctant to agree. I knew it was because of Mary. Being w/ her changed him.

We smoked the spliff, & talked some more. I couldn’t be myself w/ him. He had become a stranger. The way he was so – insensitive about my dream as well…. That was what first alerted me to his new persona. Oh well. I managed friendly chatter, & by now had realised he probably wanted me to go anyway, & was probably experiencing the same friendship crisis between us that I was. At least he had Mary there when I left. What would she be like then? What were they really like together?

“So,” I said, standing up, “I’m off, man.”

“Cheers for phoning & coming round, it’s good that we’ve retained our friendship and are still in touch…” etc, etc,

Bullshit.

After the crap & the strange half-falsity had finally gotten too crappy to bear on both sides, I smiled at Mary.

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said looking at her intensely in her sea-green eyes, as if to communicate something more than my words actually said.

“you too,” she smiled,

“see you again.”

& then that was it. I doubted if she ever would see me again. Or Gabriel for that matter. It didn’t matter.

The door had closed behind me. I faced the street. I was free.

********

V

W/ my confidence fuelled by the safe knowledge of having something to smoke in my possession, I strolled briskly away. “Even if the worst comes to the worst,” I thought, “I can just get utterly cained & escape, pass out in a miserable gutter.” But I could not accept this as being the outcome of the day. “Decisions must be made,” I said decisively out-loud, to no-one. “I must choose.”

I turned the corner, not knowing where I was, or where I was going to. A woman w/ a pram passed me & deliberately averted her eyes from mine. I don’t know why but this fuelled my sense of drive further. My stride began to extend.

A moment later, a fragment of sun scattered through the clouds that had lay in the sky all day. A ray caught me in the eye. I began to feel quite exultant, happy to be alive, & to be me. I continued walking in a strong rhythm. My feet penetrated the street.

I started to hum; then I fitted words to the tune. I was walking directly into the beam of sunlight, which seemed to be exclusively shining on me. ‘Wow,’ I thought, light-headed & dreamy, ‘I am indeed a very special person, blessed.’ As soon as I’d felt this elated sensation float through me, the grey clouds covered the sun again, as if to punish me for my arrogance, or simply just to ruin my mood.

Angered by this, I felt like getting myself involved in a conflict against the sky & sun. I decided, in the mess of my mind, that I would will the sun back out from those clouds.

Soon my concentration faltered, though, & my thoughts maundered into silly crevices. I had turned onto a little side street, & at the end of it, I saw there was a fenced grassy opening w/ a gate. A cemetery. W/ my thought now on a level of confusion, it would be a good idea to sit down & think for a while. Maybe I could write a song.

The cemetery was virtually empty. Furthermore, it appeared to be more like a park than a cemetery. Nicely mowed lawns. Cosy gravel paths. Each tombstone lined up immaculately & forgotten about. I couldn’t believe for a minute that any of the people lying under this ground had specifically chosen this cemetery as their place of rest. Of all the places of rest on Earth.

I wandered down to the bottom of the path & sat by an unusually small gravestone under the trees in the corner. Leaves were scattered around me, fragile and crumbling.

“In loving memory of

Mary Calliope,

died 2^nd April 1882,

aged 26 years.”

That was what this curious gravestone said. It was faded & looked out of place, tucked away at the side under this tree. It seemed almost lonely. I leant against it, sitting on the damp ground, forgetting to respect the dead.

I noticed a robin hopping around the base of the nearest sycamore tree. He, or she for that matter, looked rather impoverished, skinny & tired. I immediately took pity on this little robin & felt helpless that I couldn’t give it something to eat. Instead, I smiled at it, & said “hello” in the tone of voice you’d use w/ a baby. “You can be my friend” I said wistfully, trying to put some genuine enthusiasm into my voice. I sounded false. Almost inevitably, the robin bobbed away. ‘Oh well.’

I sat there engrossed in an evolving day-dream, unable to find a single thread of productive thought, wallowing in whatever arose.

I was beginning to feel nauseous. My guts felt like sludging snakes writhing inside me. “Shit,” I thought “I haven’t eaten yet today.” What time was it? I hadn’t a clue. How long had I been sitting there? I began to panic a little, & feel light-headed. ‘Shit, I’ve got some weed, shit I forgot, wow, I’ll have another smoke and calm down.’

W/ my face down to my lap, & my fingers absorbed in the process of rolling a spliff, I did not notice the elderly woman approaching me w/ a little joke of a dog scampering beside her. Just as I lit up, & lifted my face up, she was there.

“Morning,” I said, slightly shocked.

Her face was heavy w/ old skin but could have been attractive before about 50 years of weathering set in.

“Why are you sitting on that grave?” she said abruptly.

“Well, um, actually, I am here to mourn my father’s grand mother.”

Her nosy rudeness annoyed me, & I was in the mood for retaliating on the offensive.

“She died while giving birth to my grandfather,” I continued, enjoying the freedom & spontaneity of lying, enjoying the fact that I had gained the upper hand.

“Oh,” she said solemnly. “Oh I am sorry,” she continued humbled and apologetic. I was suddenly hit by a great wave of guilt, at seeing how easily I had defeated his poor old woman, who was in the right anyway. I wanted to tell her that I was lying, & had actually stopped to roll up some illegal substances, & that yes I was a typical youth, & that you were right to question me… But she had already tottered off, w/ her little tottering dog. Oh well, no point in pitying the weak, I thought.

W/ this incident over, & seeming to have taken place hours ago, I continued with the spliff.

Slowly, I began to enter a state of mind that I’d never encountered before. My stomach seemed to expand & expand into space. I closed my eyes & felt the walls of my stomach moving outwards. I felt as if a universe was being created inside me. I felt a huge space within the entire of my body, which I felt no longer existed. I imagined seeing stars explode & planets being born &

********

VI

& I plummeted to the Dream-Film Store again…

“Here is where dreams are stored on disk,” said the friendly female voice as if on autocue. “Anything that can be dreamt, any dream sequence, it’s stacked on the shelves here in The Dream-Film Store, this shop beneath the waves.”

I felt less afraid than before.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “I can explain.”

Her face, her physical form now appeared, a nubile and pulchritudinous sylph.

“Hi,” she said, resolving from the colour.

“Hi,” I said back, breaking that rule that women don’t like you copying them.

“Your loneliness, disorder and despair leads to LUST. Your agonies are self-inflicted. ALIENATION is one of them. You have escaped into The Dream Film Store. You have accidentally slipped into a crevice of your own mind and landed awake in the subconscious.”

“Really?”

“Either that or you have created a world here at the bottom of the sea symbolising mystery, women, penetration, drowning, hallucinating, dreaming, the subconscious.”

“Well which is it?”

“Your LONELINESS is a fantasy world that is the subconscious reaction to and sanctuary from the alienation, waste & disorder of your waking life. You are at war with yourself. Your subconscious is offering you peace terms.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come with me while we plummet,” she said; “plummet with me while we sleep.”

********

PRELUDE

My latest thinking takes me back to the start where I think, now, my father was sponsored by some philosophers to provide the real, human witness from The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison. Should I grow up to be a scientist, if that is true, it might not surprise you, but science was never my strongest suit at school. I was always the English scholar – and in science felt a drastic gap between my own experiences and what I was being taught. Of all the sciences, I felt a particular kinship with biology but could never make it work within the rules. As for chemistry I gave it up even before GCSE’s, though I did go on to write a paper about whether or not Lucy In The Soul With Demons is an actual substance. I also gave up physics after my GCSE exam.

But to science artistic things can return. One starts to ask oneself if one is a natural born scientist in certain situations. On trips to the Natural History Museum in London as a child I thought the tone of mind of natural biology was savoury like cheddar cheese, and to apply that tone of mind, the curiosity of the child, to Jim Morrison’s media-compression experiment, or rather to my own experiences could easily have been within my remit, deep in my heart.

To show you how unqualified my science once was, I shall impart that when still operating as a poet, in Sixth Form, I once wrote the word “entropy” backwards with a dot between each letter if that means anything to you. Personally I am yet to find a meaning for it but have considered it as “the first, unformulated spark of appetence in Nothingness preceding Creation” – as if the Universe is born in appetence instead of silence - to try and give it meaning - but there is no such thing as far as I can tell. No, there is no “entropy backwards.” Nothing for the term to name. That might even be Tucker’s constant! Should you need to see some numbers at this stage of the day already, I would only suggest the equation for hanging your coat on the primary school wall:

+ x ½ = –

Relatively recently, writing the first draft of this book, I had the idea that the substance crinoline can be grown; or that at least maybe, maybe crinoline can be synthesised in evolution. It was a revelation derived from reading my father’s last notebook. He left behind only a list of French vocab which was also a code to crack, encrypting a poem that told a story. I understood, or entertained, reading it, that crinoline was a part of the material of a kind of “living spreadsheet” I discovered in my early boyhood, around the time of the dawn of the world wide web. I was only 8 and it was already Observation number two.

However, I have come to change my mind on that or at least submit my thinking to undecidability about the matter… for without the living spreadsheet here, how can we know?

They were days of acid-rain which you don’t hear of so much anymore but which reminds me of a stance I have: I believe it specious that the effects of acid and of acid-rain on an imaginary species = the same, nothing, if there can be no more ultimate proof of something being real than saying it was imagined.

That’s not to say the living spreadsheet was not real: it was a fully “reified” and tactile object which I did not keep on account of it looking grim. In fact it was downright evil, and I felt like Luke Skywalker dealing with Darth Vader when I made the decision to do away with it.

My life has actually been full of events of scientific interest which warrant narrative. Not all of them are as disgusting as the living spreadsheet I assure you, which should’ve been left to soak in water, but wasn’t. I do intend to take you on a crash course through the main moves I made to show you how I must’ve been crying out for the condition of science from a young age, to dignify things. Indeed, I have a lot to tell you, a lot to impart, and as David Morley says my position as scientist might depend on a system of reporting that is concise and readily understandable and which enables someone else to assess my observations, evaluate my intellectual processes and to repeat my experiments if necessary.

OUTLINE OF LIFE EVENTS THAT LEAD TO THE CONDITION OF SCIENCE

Although I have said it all before I will say it all again, and there is good reason to say it here and now and real and feeling – to talk about my life - even if it seems quite tiresome in terms of the narrative unto the reader. Well, as you by now know if you have read my CV: when I was only seven, and liked the film All Dogs Go To Heaven, I scribed a little book that performed at least four scientific functions: it encrypted a scientific notion concerning Gravity; stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to grow around the world; calibrated an algorithm that sublimates numbers and letters on a cellular level to see if the new colour, I think, could be rendered as a cellular mark; and separated the object ‘pollen’ from its name - and I did not consciously know, even though it was writ with my own right hand.

Some might say that’s already enough or too much. Then at eight I made two Naturalistic Observations I didn’t understand… if one was the breakfast of every snooker ball colour in James Joyce’s bedroom, the latter was the plastic spreadsheet. If I had to conjure an “abstract” out of being the one to make those Observations I would simply say in talking about The Lords And The New You Know Who by Jim Morrison coming true something “kinetic” becomes something “static.” It’s the same as John Barnes’s sensational goal against Brazil. We cannot give the uncertainty back to the moment when we watch the Action Replay. We know the ball is going in. Something kinetic becomes something static.

Yes, by the age of eleven I was “incrementally” marked by the maths of the new colour on the hand even though it didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end. My siblings and I wrote The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. We sang of the dog going round and round chasing own tail!

Leaving Prep School, I soon enough came into possession of a cassette cut and resealed in the flimsy reel and an ideal to do away with the pause. That was one experiment back then. It being Pearl Jam ‘VS’ I suppose the experiment was in organising a poetry machine in perpetual motion. At fifteen I formed a second band called Oedipus Wrecks. My mnemonic for the strings was indeed Even A Dick Gets Big Erections. We foreshadowed the genre Doom. I also led two friends to the face of stars. We were three gathered in the name that Night so it could be something from the Bible but there are other options including collective hallucination, including a vision scripted in The Lords And The New You Know Who. By now I had started reading it.

I formed Secret Chord H and an Anon love poetry magazine while still at school, sweet sixteen. Then at eighteen years old in the year 2000, and not unlike Democritus of the Ancient Greeks, I foresaw the hunt for the God Particle from looking at dust in a late ray of light angling in. I was a fully tuned-in prophet on other fronts too, even savant because I foresaw and spoke against September 11^th using my own brain. I did also entertain the idea that the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison might have to become the missing link to the super-human corridor in evolution – but it may not be my own thesis.

I envisioned our Plough alignment happening, but got the address well wrong, saying “maybe in India” as opposed to my back garden. I set aside an ideal for a book called The Scientific Papers about it all that would be classed as “a series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science as a single discussion of perception.” Among the prophecies I spouted many ideas for inventions, many aphorisms, many artistic ambitions. That year I wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%.

My fourth band The Flood recorded an album or even algorithm on binaural earphones… the earphones were my idea to invent, back in the den in the barn, which was never mentioned once during the band because it wasn’t me that implemented it. Already some of these things seem scientific, these motifs, this Excellent News. When writing a portfolio for Warwick University, furthermore, I entertained that I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too, that Portability might be the apotheosis of form…

The Towers came down, appalling us all or at least my friend Paul. I did feel the psychosis in my brain burn and burn. Still, when I got rid of the burning feeling, I lost my memory of the conversation where I forewarned of it, the whole prophetic speech. So I had little recollection of the barn where I had foreseen and spoken against it to the day using my own brain; and was persuaded at length, against my own instincts, to continue playing in the binaural earphone band.

Attending Warwick University, in 2002, I found my teacher, Professor David Morley, whom it would seem was a reasonable man, had just brought out The Scientific Papers and with an almost-verbatim classification to mine own. When it happens in sheep it is called morphic resonance and when it happens in academia it is uncanny imbrocation.

My first mobile, it reverberated the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang. I wrote a paper about whether or not Lucy in the soul w/ demons even happens to be an actual substance. With no degree, I returned to the band in my Gap Year haunt of Cambridge and promised on the binaural album recorded on earphones I’d “plug my senses in the mains.”

Leaving the band, I coined the neologism “co-imagination,” before attending a second university, Lancaster, where I got a First despite mental illness. My dissertation was on the scientist-poet David Morley. I attested to our Holy Cow, the white eyebrow, the alignment of the Plough, the Plough honed in to align for a beautiful rhythm change in the White House around that time.

I also attended the Secret Garden party after and found real skywriting; gravitated down south, attesting to a pint glass exploding from thin air in the capital. I found my name on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, as if some sensory overlay had grown as naturally as grass.

Returning north again, I built The Tower out of books I had gained that seemed to exhibit signs of natural magic, like one emanating the redolent smell of perfume that could be the word of a dog, and another that seemed to have lost a line. My PC screen bloomed purple, and I worked at the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen in an experiment into post-humanism. I also found the tape I mentioned to be a successful fusion and listening in to the suggestion of the wind cooked it in the dark blue AGA’s top oven.

When my dad died, and the purple-bleeding screen in the same instant, I discovered the sheet where pictures brown and blue simply bloomed or maybe grew. It could be portentous of the end of the chip. That was also when my boyhood book emerged which only now do I start to understand in terms of long storage. Then it was time to falsify the Nirvana barcode, and nor did I forget to extirpate every trace of recognition from the mind, unloose the mind of form, method-act every adjective in ‘Howl’ to attain visual radio, broadcasting dreams.

Throughout that sequence of events I found it impossible to gain even 1p and my friends on both the right and the left deem it that that is not fair; but it is not my business to complain about money. It’s part of the reason we are thinking of selling. Sometimes we deem it fair if I get to keep the air. Up here the air is very clear, I mean fresh, for it is the light that is clear; but down in the town of my birth the air is not so good.

So it eventually became time to publish books; but for some strange, unknown reason my computer was broken on the night before I was due to publish my first collection: Rose Petals In The Ashtray. So I had to go downstairs in the night-time and use my mother’s ancient PC; so the first collection became half-remembered scraps instead of what I had. I got the name Rose Petals In The Ashtray from my dying dad and didn’t know its meaning; so it was about innocence – but it was terrible what came out. In the version that went out there, there was a line missing from the first poem in the name of revision that made a good poem bad; then the second poem came from before it in the initial writing order. In the end it irritated rather than pleased me to have it out there, so soon enough I had it un-published, so there isn’t really a start to my much-anticipated career.

Some further books were brought out especially in self-publishing on Amazon but they were building on nothing, no starting point, and only saw me messing it up further.

Binaural Songbook

57 Paintings For Art Therapy

The Field of Rock N Roll Science

John Tucker’s Schooldays: A Spreadsheet Poem

Another 57 Paintings for Art Therapy

The New Beat

The Effect of Global Warming On The Unicorn

Word For Stained Glass Windows

154 Shakespearean Sonnets

In time to come I started again with the publisher Chipmunka when some succubus swooped down and got me to arrange my songs in a book called Soundcloud Rain, dressing me up to look like Beethoven, when really I am not that musical as evinced by actually listening to the recorded material which you can on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

After Soundcloud Rain came my boyhood proof, The Sunset Child, which in reality, back in 1989, was also when I “wrote the elephant” at seven but even in publishing that I missed off a crucial component part that goes at the start and shows I really was “writing the elephant.”

“Teacher rite elephant nite

everything lite lesson love

learn tell everyone Esso orange.”

Without it the whole dynamic functionality of the boyhood proof is quite meaningless – and I missed it off because the proof had been stolen in its original, handwritten form before I had finished typing it up. Nevermind, eh?

Then I got to bring out Breath Trapped In Heaven, which was strictly all love poems; and I felt it could’ve been miles better as a book but it did at least strive to stop the war. There was still no proper start to the career, no first collection to be a foundational level in an eventual Collected Works, which probably won’t come out by now, which seems a waste of the face of stars, and all those other things I got up to.

Then came Brave New Tense which only loaned a word from my mother – who can write off the top of her head in a way that quietly, discretely Taps the beck in the back. In Brave New Tense there was a bit of that going on, as if to bypass a need for a tract on Universal Human Rights.

Then came three volumes of a book of philosophy called Transition To Philosophy under the pen-name Johannes Bergfors, plus a fifth poetry collection from Chipmunka, called Yes You May, by John Tucker, plus a sixth collection renewing Jim Morrison’s binary-machine, called Let The Jews Win, again by John Tucker. I still don’t feel like I have won with the book, despite having lived the life of what some have called a genius; and they only really proved I did not yet know what happened at the start of my life.

SCIENCE SAYS

Science STILL says to only keep my falsification of the Nirvana barcode and my brother’s notion about <BEE>.

The latter is not mine; and so I must leave it out.

In terms of the falsification of the Nirvana barcode, that refers to that occasion when I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.

I actually did have a mobile phone that buzzed off before it rang, through every technological inlet in the room, telly, stereo, laptop, air.

So I wrote that down – that monochromatic drone – somehow - and it became a song that falsified the Nirvana barcode through bastardisations and mishearings of other people’s songs, that nevertheless worked as a piece of music unto itself, sustaining narrative, meaning and musicality all at once.

It has been called as good as Rachmaninov and I will reveal it… but for now I am to only keep the Nirvana barcode bit from the whole sodden story!

|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings

A NOTE ON MY FIRST NUMBER

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

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

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

and to continue with a second text called

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

“but then again who knows.”

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

At some point, after the Einsteinian bit, a + sign was put in for the F of ‘scarf’ in the line

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

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

“I woke up at 1 o. clock.”

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

It is not clear if the splitting of the two books happened next, for the number 2 in the sequence, but I think so. In terms of the number three, there was also my maths book where in among the numbers you find a three line poem going

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

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

It ascends, counting up, through other numbers - 4 is a bike crash in Sweden, when I am but 4 years old. 5 is my brother Dr. Robert’s age when I was writing. 6 is a psychedelic story about drinking some lemonade and shrinking until I am but 6 inches tall. In that piece I also look at my watch – and find the digital time past 6.

So there is a variety of ways to incorporate a number in the numerical ascent, including ages, times of day, inches, dates, and more.

Sometimes I wonder if I can check my own biology – in terms of how much I grew or did not grow – to assess whether the encrypted node in the boyhood book is true or not. You only need to go on Youtube and find a video to find out that gravity, in having no motion, can not be said to break the speed of light, only warp and bend the fabric of spacetime. If it didn’t grow I would say the encrypted notion was wrong; if the mark was not the new colour I would say the experiment into the maths of the new colour failed.

The truth is it did grow but not a great deal: I went from being very well hung by nature to not so big by nurture; and the mark that was left didn’t turn out the new colour in the end; and still, the internet works.

THE LIVING SPREADSHEET

At eight years old, then, I made the two Observations, one a breakfast of every snooker ball colour in James Joyce’s bedroom, the other the living spreadsheet.

W/r/t the latter, I tried on a jacket under the stairs and got a sense something was wrong and took it off and looked inside… “mum!” I cried up the wooden stairs. “There’s something disgusting growing in this jacket!”

It could be described as a flat, plastic rectangle with a un-naturally regimented pattern of black stuff – maybe eggs of seeds - splurged on top.

I left the room to see if it would still be there when I went back; and it was; and so I decided to put the whole jacket in the bin.

I heard later, years later, it was called “Grand-darth’s Ship” and took its Taxonomic Genus from one of my own seven year old poems.

The poem Grand-darth’s Ship was about how my grand-dad Don became a deep-sea diver. For a start, he actually fought against the Nazis and secondly he didn’t become a deep-sea diver in reality – he became an Officer in the R. A. F. So it just grew, evolved, this living spreadsheet, which was not an animal that reminds of wealth, but of grand-dad’s generation and the horror of war.

What I think I have learned about this specimen recently is that it was an actual monster albeit small, and maybe we were supposed to deem it a success of scientific procedure that it was available to sensory perception in what some might call consensus reality, in others words stable and at bottom sterile.

How it came into being I do not know. Reification means “becoming a thing” and comes from Latinate etymology “res” meaning “thing” but where this living spreadsheet as I call it came from I do not know. I could start talking about “Symbiotic Homeostasis.” That means there was such a juxtaposition going on between Good and Evil that Nature acted with an homeostatic reaction. So we are talking about kinesis – but how plastic became part of that kinesis I do not know.

If it was my dad’s business and there was financial backing I’d just say that with enough financial backing anything is possible. One might deem it a shame that I threw the specimen away on judging it evil, for now we cannot examine it, but I am not convinced of that version.

They say this is what I should’ve been writing about when I was writing teenage love poetry inspired by Jim Morrison – but it’s better late than never eh?

They also say you shouldn’t write about things you cannot renew; but I think in this case of the synthesis of the living spreadsheet it might be renewable even if not by me.

I also think if you can trust my sensory perception it shows that science is the key to a world of possibility. To possibilities opening up. It shows what can be done and that is surely inspiring. I am not trying to bring down the government or start a Revolution, only report accurately on what has been seen, sound out the realm of the senses. If new possibilities arise that is surely a good thing and should not be squashed or censored.

I’M FINE

“I’m fine,” I say all the time and you wouldn’t know what I mean.

I mean I was visibly marked on the hand by the experiment into the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark when I was about 11.

I took a long thin stripe up the underside, and that is what I mean when I say I’m fine.

It didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end.

We still see that it is possible to effect your own evolution.

You could even call it self-evolution.

This one might imagine comes from within as opposed to adaptation to the environment. It might be what Darwin would focus on in my situation, nevertheless: The Theory of Self-Evolution. And if I were a shapeshifter, Protean, a changeling, I would also try and be the Darwin of light, where maybe Morley is the Einstein of water.

In short we might be able to grow new colours on a cellular level, and I might have evidence of this either way. Above all else in my science, this would seem to be the greatest revelation. If you Google the question “is it possible to change the colour of white skin through maths?” the whole net will tell you no, but this is not true, even if the colour did not turn to be the new colour in the end.

The original + sign for the ‘f’ seems to appear in a poem about guilt. I hit my brother because he refused to play Lego with me. I used to say yes to everything and he was just the opposite and I had a plan for a shockproof world and all he needed to do was agree to play Lego but he refused so I hit him and felt terrible, really bad. So that was why I put the + sign for the ‘f,’ I think, because it was about making a mistake and feeling bad for it.

THE RED AND BLUE THING

Between the tincture and The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob there was a prose poem, or even dyad of prose poems called ‘The Fire’ and ‘The Sea’. I was thus quite old when I “did the red and blue thing” and now through reading gather that it was yet another example of imbrocation with a scientist poet called David Morley, which I would see more of the older I got.

‘The Fire’ was a description of the sitting room fire, its 100 tongues that danced and entranced, here where the stars realign. It was observed; whereas ‘The Sea’ was remembered and imagined. It’s interesting though because there is a difference between humidity and moisture in the air; and the hottest star heat burns blue; and the red and blue thing as they call it, which Michael Hofmann

writes of in a poem called ‘Entr’ acte’ could be but a graph with one long line kinking headward from the heart and ending in the stars.

So that was something I did between the tincture and the first album; and back then I was a garden brick expert – my garden bricks, attention to detail in grammar and spelling too, and general keen-ness at English saw me top of the form at English every term at school. And then years later, as I say, I found out at University that Professor David Morley had done the “red and blue thing” through the elements in just the same way, when he was studying acid rain’s effect on Lake Windemere up in the Lakes where I lived as a child.

Anyhow, the boyhood work was a proof and the red and blue thing may have been enough to be another. I was already producing proofs in boyhood, which were cogent and interesting. You notice in the elemental style a complete absence of grim specimens and a belief in the Natural sciences. The imbrocation with David Morley could be down to his researching the effects of acid-rain on Lake Windemere in my boyhood, but there are other potential causal factors such as that I was the witness and he was an evolutionary scientist and still is.

THE EMOTIONAL COLLAPSE

Also between the tincture and The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob I had a complete emotional collapse. I was in the I. T. Room at Prep School, talking to the teacher and suddenly started sobbing. The teacher was hugging me, asking and asking “what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” and all I could say was “I don’t know! I don’t know!” I had never heard of The Lords And The New Creatures, as hadn’t my mother, but I was already the witness. I hadn’t read my seven year old book because it had to be locked in the attic but in it I had already helped invent the net and my thing was now marked by the mathematics contained in it. It all got on top of me and made me break down in tears, and it wasn’t just any old crying – I was heaving with sadness.

If you look in The Lords And The New Creatures, it starts with “Look where we worship,” and funnily enough I had by that stage already had a black out in chapel. I think it a naturally occurring fossil of art. I went down like smashed glass on chapel floor and woke in another room being offered tepid tapwater by the rugby captain as if for the rending detail: both our dads had chainsaws.

The New Creatures of course begins with the words:

Snakeskin jacket

Indian eyes

brilliant hair

he moves in disturbed

Nile insect

air.

If you look at my experiences, the wood, the plastic spreadsheet, the tear up the front, it templates over the opening of The New Creatures – which has always seemed cryptic to me, ambiguous, impossible to fully understand. If Jim Morrison was scripting a witness, factoring in a foreseen human repository, with his opening gambit, the sheer incomprehensibility of his language might account for why I was lost for words when having a breakdown.

PREFACE

This text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts have been made to order the bank notes but were not always successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly free” to consume. It is but an open-air piece, comprised of torn and bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination. Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.

NOTEBOOK

Il faut que je m’en aille.

Sometimes you’ve just got to hit the road and.

Start learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees, birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.

The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog, he should be sleeping like a log, goes round and round chasing his own tail, only goes upstairs for a trail of Maltesers, nice, round and pale, we’re on the road to Heaven, happiness awaits us there, flutter in the sideways, flutter in the sideways, bring your brief fling with the politics of flight…

Seeing as we can travel backward in time, seeing as we have equalled the speed of light, I thought we could revisit some choice excerpts from my boyhood and beyond.

Teacher rite elephant nite

everything lite lesson love

learn tell everyone Esso orange.

2 MC = E = MC [someone] 1

In the picture of the airport

I can see… a runway,

a cloud, two planes,

a control tower

and the ire ii net.

In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.

A bomp explodes.

I faded my work.

I have a scar+ that is red and black.

I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into the hole in the wall. It was full of dead skeletons.

He has spines all over him.

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

Hot July brings cooling showers,

straw berries and gilly flowers.

It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa.

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,

HE'S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.

Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle, bongles has still got the stones.

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

Folder graffiti. Normal is boring. Do it later. God made speed to save us, God made hash to help us. The system works quite well. The grass is always long on the Other Side.

The fire-dance dwelled in electric drums

where ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap

and bells let peace form in blue notes

and peered at deer in the wood and ate of it

and wet let excellence sound out its criticism

and dawn let sting its unsheathed sting

and chloroform in the heart let see

if only Game Over was seen in nights.

The

sun

hanged

himself

from

a

length

of

daisy

chain.

Clocktick clock being clocked off by clocktick.

Clocktick clock not being clocked off by Time.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.

Break, bird with the skin of snake.

God rushed into the cold cod quick.

Behold! An evil vision hath flashed before mine eyes!

Barnes has scored a chicken

and wingers are allowed bikes!

Maybe a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, like The Periodic Table except a swear word in every box, to go at the end?

Even A Duck Gets Big Erections: my mnemonic for the strings of the electric guitar took the same amount of time to conjure as it takes to say, but my mother has changed it now.

Hey, my name is David Bonky,

I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,

there’s a tear up my jacket.

Over and out, testing testing 123, welcome to my presence and its intensity...

I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.

She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.

She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.

She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.

She slides the stick of it out of the pack.

She puts the stick of it into her mouth.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She puts the packet back in her bag.

She swings the bag about a little bit.

She walks past a little pub long shut.

She might go check out a flower shop.

She loves to chew and to suck the taste.

She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.

I read that Maya means “Goddess of Illusion” in Sanskrit, where Mara, by stunning contrast, is the Buddhist God of Temptation.

A glance

A blink

A fault in the stars

Her mascara slips into pools of black

A chance

A second

of Infinity

She flutters her eyelids

like spring’s first butterfly

The stars awake to notice love

she waits with open arms.

But all is well if I only think

& sigh of the dreams of dusk

Images before I sleep

Dancing, escaping memory

They seem to have no cares at all

They seem to know the name of love

They seem to be my sacred friends

Ancient messengers, waking at night

But I will forget them & never care

About what I saw in love & alive

What? Oh, I guess it’s love

Just us & love Forever...

Sometimes I wish to have no more than a line penned in the margins of a newspaper going:

The light of all that’s good is true

if believing is the dawn of dreams.

Only when the ship is ripped is the sea a she and the water Nirvana-blue as solar spike.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Soft

and

loose

like

yellow

pencils

scribbling

dreams

as

they

arrive.

Semen spills like silver water,

under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,

splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.

Don’t escape at night

into a heightened dream

from a dull and longing sleep.

Her breath a poisonous magic.

Sometimes perhaps

down opening quiet

I am drawn down

long and alone and

my friend and my foe

recede into deep sleep

sudden and still

like a dawn behind

a screaming veil

where silence is born

and all that’s loose and tight

and all that’s light is light

like first morning

with no night

and wend my way

so slow to Freedom

and soft Infancy-lunacy

with harp-sure eyes

so I can live

the last poet’s

last poem.

There is joy in things

and smiles not grins like butter

but like butterflies.

My philosophy in a nutshell: sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt; but when you write it down, what happens?

Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.

When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:

[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].

Blessed may be the end at last,

under the sea,

below the soul,

in the upside-down

Oceans above us

(all that Heaven sends is rain).

V to the knock-kneed hummingbird’s wings… plus, in Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, E is white; but in my friend Agent G’s musical code, when you detune the guitar strings all the way down, the streetname for E becomes F sharp minor!

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.

Last night it seemed we couldn't sleep but maybe I was dreaming. The world expands inside my hands it's getting heavy. Of all the treasures I could choose I can't seem to decide. Today the shade was washed away where I would hide. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise. Last night it seemed we nearly

died but maybe I was dreaming. It made me feel sooooooooooooo alive and soooooooo in love. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise.

Where once I wandered far and wide 

on a field-file, a file-field, 

a fenceless farm without 

security alarm where all hearts bleed

and all arts breed, now Hell

is very quiet, unadvertised.

McBreastmilk, 

McBreastmilk, 

don’t feed your kids.

Gentle face erasing cream,

smear it in and let it sink

down through the pores of your skin

to erase your deepest down dirt.

O stars the government

that truly speaks for us!

Get an extra kid for free

when you spend 99p.

Freefall 0800 down

your own black hole pupils.

Maybelline you maybe only make-believe

you may be the true mating queen of the hive,

may mad vampires stalk you,

stalking walls walk through

your vagrant dreams.

I see state of head

is more than Head of State.

Monster Munch can

always gobble up your food.

Cancerel can always 

sweeten the stewed-

carfume coffee we sip in 

this liminal afterlounge.

It’s getting cramped

as a tin of beans in here.

In emergency please 

break glass and exit.

Credits at the end of innocence

are falling like numberless lists

of fallen autumn leaves.

Snatched handfuls of light

come to nothing in the dark room.

There must be a use for 

this dust amounting.

There’s nothing like digging 

a meaningless hole as if to cure the 

spiralling lethargy of Hell...

and when I went into the 

woods to bury my soul, 

all the trees knelt down.

O perpetual orgasm of the sun! 

Privation is the mother of imagery.

Prayers, ghosts and 

e-mails chatter on 

the ego-loss breeze.

The chitchat in the solipsistic

kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.

My new, motley fridge magnet

letters contain no question 

mark in the pack but the first

qualification of Modernism

is inquiry and furthermore

wilful ignorance is a sin.

Meanwhile outside the 

fallen Autumn leaves 

are where bears have 

dipped their feet in pots of paint 

and danced across the threshold 

of the paving stones.

Water clears its throat from the tap.

Gunpowder was only invented

for fireworks and a firework

is a champion sperm nosing up

blind to explode bright and wonderful

deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.

The world is a cool, bejewell'd

marble snug in Holy Orbit

suckling on a mother sun.

Supposedly there is soon

to be New Atlantis on the moon.

The cure for cancer 

sustains your heart.

Robbed by a bastard vending machine,

somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper 

to cleanse the doors of perception,

a drunkard attacks a wall

on an otherwise empty street,

a policeman forces himself

to come with a gun.

Hey salesman 

slow down 

with that

fast-food. 

I don't mind

waiting here

for a year. 

Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland.

It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows.

I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity.

Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains.

It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real.

Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven.

The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.

If you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning. I can run you through a series of life events in terse precis that meant I arrived at such a culmination.

Well, at seven I helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic here to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, I was the one to write it. By eight I was the witness from The Lords And The New You Know Who twice. By eleven who knew what was going on? By fifteen I attained the face of stars which may have been scripted in the Bible. By eighteen I forewarned of September 11th in 2000 and wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%.

After school I recorded an album 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 for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite the onset of mental illness, worked the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen, built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette tape with a pause where resealed in the reel, and discovered the sheet where pictures (seemingly depicting one of my own song lyrics) grew.

I went through all that without earning 1p. Then as a summary of all of that which I had done, I invented and falsified the Nirvana barcode and in doing so attained visual radio, broadcasting dreams that swirl in digital, purple swathes about the head of the deranged seer...

So you see that it has been fast indeed! That Subaru Impreza! And Time does not pass but evaporate! And things live inside onions of themselves! And galloping water would be a cool thing to say!

I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Bring bring

bring bring

“Hello?”

Gold member, you're the one,

the one with the heart of gold

Vowels, pure vowels 

Immanuel Kant

will come to thee 

with immanence

You come home smacked up you come

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

boom

boom

boom

boom

boom

how did we get down here from flat-top

wide tunnel cities self driving cars

bears in the moon and liquor and drugs

and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars

boom shanka, you're the one,

the one with the sonic boom

knickers knickers faster than lightning

skin up fall out of bed

and did those feet

in ancient times

rain down, rain down,

come on raindown

and walk the sun

fatter, hippier, less well connected

always walk the hallways

down to create my own

and in the meantime

and in the meantime

I'll do the monkey bars with my legs

manic depression has enraptured my name

don't know what I want but I just want shame

don't know what I want but I just won't shave

rainy waif, rain always,

lay back and dream

on a rainy waif

now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

no more laaaaaaaaaa la's

removal van canes will be turned into furniture

we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir

you never see me dead near an inch of closure

|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings

“and a record made of sound

goes round and round, conveying

music to the speaker through the stylus,”

says the radio as I turn it on.

Well, although there is no

such thing as the Nirvana barcode

it opens up a discussion about

the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how

if barcode is rain barcode is phone...

and at least I have

the grace to come

back and say that the

extinction of consciousness

has no monetary value.

It is past dawn

and I see that

that first mobile

phone has gone.

If it makes any difference to you,

my little bro is a genius, who

designed the sheet

where pictures grew

and says <BEE>

might soon ensue

from @ in the international

language alphabet…

he did it for Flora,

subject of many a love poem of mine,

and it turns out

he had her, did her, loved her,

won her, got her,

in time past.

But who kissed who

is playground stuff,

and jealousy is a wasted emotion,

and I am proud

to be my brother’s brother,

and my mother’s son.

I would never begrudge my brother something I would want for myself or my mother either.

AFTER THE ROAD

By now because it’s been published as a binary-machine called Let The Jews Win, I cannot imagine the new road without the second moiety, ‘Flagrant Rapscallion’ coming after it. I am therefore going to have to posit the second part of that binary-machine, which in a way rolls on from the first, and shows there is hope still in the world, hopefully also finding the semblance of inevitability in its conceptual continuity from the first part.

FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION

I

Apple blossom cheek

breath of wine

plates or confetti

he sips on disturbed

Nile insect

spaghetti

II

While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,

what I’m getting at is that

if a flower-press ending on cannabis

could = a dialysis a love poem

only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.

III

If I could sip from your eyes I would

and taste your name. Eyes of

deep undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish

in them, drag out numberplates,

mangled car doors, crumbs.

The pretext is yours

and it is also my mum’s.

IV

If this were a fairy story

there’d be no happy ending.

No sumptuous consummation

will wait for the poet

at the end of a plot.

I think of a chain of music from star to star,

but therein am starting

to quote my old self again.

V

I’ve already lost my father

who was an international art smuggler

nicknamed Blue or so he said -

though once upon a time

I thought art was recourse

to euphemism for pollen.

The people from the future,

they don’t want his business to end.

VI

It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,

like yellow trumpets, broadcasting

their excellent news.

Excellent News was the ideal

in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.

I was nomadic in those days.

VII

Before the daffs come out,

we have snowdrops like

pure, white flames

in the heart for love.

The long, dark tunnel

of winter awaits us now.

VIII

I sip tea, I sip tea,

unsweetened it’s

enough for me.

I’ve got a lot of washing up to do.

I tried to meditate today.

Come.

It’s good to get the washing

up done, because it is good

to make a clean space

for yourself before

you write – mess leaks in

to the brain when

you are in a messy room.

Now it’s done I can make a sandwich -

cheese, ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…

it has no added sugar unlike white.

At the moment I am leaving

the washing up to dry, but

soon will put it all away.

Then I can say “hey,

I pulled my weight today.”

So that I do, and that’s true…

I do a little bit more at my screen,

getting pithy about Place and Nature

then go outside to collect wood.

Sometimes I look at Nature and see

invisible sheet music flowing right to left.

If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.

The fell from town,

when you’re driving towards it,

seems a great, slumbering

diplodocus, come

to fat and die by

the Irish Sea; but

nearer the foot

you can see it is

more Buddha levitating.

And when you mention

the slow ascent

up flat, gradual paths

I think more of a bullet

to the top of a telegraph pole

or even the kettle, rising

to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning

on Caliban’s chain.

Floating in the quiet

of a weightless dawn,

the buzzard is the crux

of the flux of time,

and all of Creation

his dark machine.

There are benefits living here, like

once I encountered a rare, red kite,

which sat resting on a fence post, waiting

for me like a warning or a reward.

Sometimes Nature is custodial;

and at other times, frightening, otherworldly…

in me, Nature is a great art exhibition,

but it can also be an immunity to Reason.

Some think of the future a lot,

and how there should still be

a place for Nature in that future,

to go exploring just to look at trees,

which like crows, dogs and

horses are Man’s friends.

Nature is the true architecture of State, at least unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative attitude.

Here we find mood as bracken frond.

We find dry stone walls creeping

in to the writing even of city folk, visiting.

I think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good invention for fell walkers. I sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I have taken up it and whether I held the record.

The powers that be could be clouds

rowing overhead on their sky blue roads.

And everything in Nature is only semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.

Well, nothing has changed to the map

apart from the wind-farm beyond the lap

of the tide, revolving its Mercedez Benz arms

to make electricity for the farms -

and also the cafe down the beach -

since Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -

Changes to the place have been the net,

global warming let’s not forget,

the advent of the mobile phone

and increased opportunities for vice in town.

But who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?

Here, we find the beck is a fountain pen.

I sometimes stand by the beck, listening in.

(Dr. Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)

I would be wearing my wellies, listening

to its most mellifluous applause,

the way she falls two feet

into a sound as sweet

as a kettle drum’s

metal petals of

silver bliss that

blossom on a carnival’s street.

Literature from the city is of alienation,

literature of rootedness repetitive,

and the city is the intellectual breeding station,

but countrylife closer how we ought live.

I

The reason my new work is not Anon is that I believe a writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.

The earliest-written English poems, however, are attributed to Anon, the earliest recorded line being:

“Well-wrought this wall: Weirds broke it.”

Weirds could be weather-systems.

Combining the fact that the earliest subject is ruin’d architecture and the earliest recipe known to man is for beer, as discovered by monks, could make a poem’s definition “a statue of alcohol.”

The A595 is the main road connecting

the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and

Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday

the posse of motorbikes come

to this bucolic valley because the road

has something in the golden sector #

to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.

I went walking up the rearside of the fell,

and some one or two hundred yards in,

up the path and away from the A595,

encountered a rare, red kite

with dawn-charred chest, resting

on the fence-post, waiting

for me like a warning or reward…

II

Here from this seat now

I look about the kitchen, painted

a plush, Mediterranean coral,

at the indomitable things on the walls,

the notice board of cork,

the dead telly wearing

mother’s funeral hat,

the calendar with local photos,

the chart depicting the plants of the

Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…

It’s a country farmhouse kitchen

with an AGA, where most of the cooking

is home-made, not from packets.

We have no neighbourhood or amenities

and country life can be quite dull,

but recently I felt elated

for capturing a partial alignment

of the Plough and oldest fell

on my new Smartphone.

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,

NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,

H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,

ESA for extra sensory allowance

but I for one still don’t really know

if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.

III

It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid

just because the rhythm of life is slower.

The region is an actual religion.

It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.

I was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,

as I stood there gazing upon it.

It’s as close to a bird of prey

as I have ever got out in the wild.

Apparently, the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they named them.

Obviate not titivate, sate

your quest for meat and fling

to your bright ring, your

peerless orbit, your wheel

of hunting, out-stretch

wings to be engorged on air’s

ranting, rock-strong

sockets braced against crushing,

uprushing rivers and sail.

Eventually, it did fly away,

but not until I made the decision

to continue my walk, to leave

the moment, the spot where I stood.

Seeing its wings unfold,

seeing it fly away, I took a left

up the rear side of the fell, following

the path beside the beck

and – still not knowing

what the bird was, only storing

an image of it in my brain -

reached the cairn at the top.

Down

down

down

down

down

deep

blue

below

“eh up,

mate,”

says my

mate

and is

it safe

to say

hello?

When I got down again,

and back to my home on

this side of the fell, I

looked the bird up in a book,

and found it was a red kite.

For some reason I thought

I had found the golden eagle…

there was a rumour that a pair of them

had moved into the area.

So I was actually disappointed

to find the bird was a rare, red kite,

which it certainly, judging

by the book of birds, was.

That afternoon, I got a phonecall

from my ex gf on my mobile.

I told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”

I also told her I had given up cannabis;

asked her if she still smoked;

but what she said and what she was doing

when she said it, I shall not say.

Simon says the River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

I say the rhythm of the River Goyt

beats blood to my head like a cold muscle.

The word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.

Back then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of all were Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana. All of it was better to listen to when high.

Dr. Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”

Kurt Cobain sings:

“my heart is broke,

but I have some glue,

help me inhale,

I’ll mend it with you,

we’ll float around,

hang out on clouds,

then we’ll come down,

have a hangover.”

I

Now we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday. It’s a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.

We need to get some new Vape juice

because there is only one bottle left.

Tesco is going to be closed for a few weeks

after today so we should stock up.

Apparently they are going

to redo the fruit and veg section

so that the fruit and veg is stored

in a series of closed compartments.

Now for the E as I try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out like fools. It is air for the tortured soul to breathe. It is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.

II

Sensation precedes thought in art,

chain is made from same as key,

waves make gentle

love to the shore,

homework tonight is

to remember your dreams,

and this we know,

there is no ‘we,’

I am the third person

immaculate, free…

you know the routine

by now, the score,

and more and many more,

but let’s not dwell

on school-made things

when outside birds

sing with their wings

and freedom flies

and freedom flows

and the music never stops.

NOTA BENE

By now we would add the boyhood book to the second moiety of Let The Jews Win where (it would seem) <BEE> got lost in the garden. For by now we cannot imagine one without the other; and following on can but revert to the boyhood book so we can see warts and all the original text that stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic. The boyhood file I will copy and paste in has its own little introduction as you shall see.

INTRODUCTION TO THE KID

When my father passed in 2014, a little book I had begun in 1989 at seven years old surfaced – my boyhood Prep. It had been locked in the attic at the foot of the fell all these years, where it sometimes made the sound of footsteps that could be heard below. There are several pieces missing because the original was stolen before I had typed it up; but this will do. I can’t seem to tell what it is about but it mentions the net. Last time I published it, even though it wasn’t that long ago, the frame wasn’t right – so this second edition should be better. It needed the little one at the start to give it shape, order and purpose that for some reason the previous version left out. I think what it was about was storing the idea of the net in the attic in writing to give the net a chance to grow all the way round the world. So I thank whomsoever got me to do it because it meant I was part of that process. Whether I am allowed to keep it I do not know, but would say what happened to me happened to me because I was very well hung as a child.

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

Ah yes now I need to find another piece… the piece that was lacking when I first brought it out. Ah yes I find it – what is it still doing here? It’s been here since Christmas!

[NO NAME]

teacher rite elephant nite

everything lite lesson love

learn tell everyone Esso orange

ADVENTURE IN A CAR

On a Tuesday morning there was a big car in Form 2 and it had flashing lites all over it and then I said it's a magic car and we all got in to hide and it took off in to space and it landed on the moon then just as we were going to explore the moon a gravity force pulled us and the car under the sea and a propeller came out of the back of the car and we crashed on a ship REC and we tried the canons an they were still red hot. Then we went into the cabin and we saw a captain's chest and twenty fighting pirates and we looked out we saw a whirlpool heading straight towards us and since we were under the sea the whirlpool pulled on top of the water. then we were getting bored so we decided we wanted to go to the dinosaur age. we disappeared to a little island we saw Tyrannosaurus rex then we were all back in Form 2.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 28TH

We made sandcastles on the beach 

I am going to meet mummy 

today we are having exams this week 

it is too dear to buy 

Sweden China 

country tail 

tender street 

share lies 

late dry 

weak poor 

small prinsesses 

countries is 

stories tables men pens manes 

TUM TUMPTY TUM

Tum tumpty tum 

The cat is playing the drum

Four little mice

Are shaking the ground

Dancing merrily around

Tum- tumpty- tum

The cat is playing the drum

Three little mice are dancing

[NO NAME]

In the picture of the airport

I can see... a runway,

two planes, a controwl

tower, a cloud

and the ire ii net.

SEPTEMBER WEDNESDAY 13TH

one day me and Andrew set off on an adventure in a big jungle. We brought a tent a sleeping bag two knives a rope some matches a spear and an axe. We came in a boat we sailed a thousand miles. It took us six days when we landed on the island we were exhausted so we made camp and feel asleep. In my story there were six monkeys a wizard a tiger and an elephant and two snakes. When we awoke we went hunting we brought a spear and the rope. Just as we got out of the tent a snake fell down in front of us. We threw the spear at it he crawled away in pain. When we came back we had killed a tiger. We had seen the wizard yet but when we came back the tent was gone. Remember the wizard. We went out trying to find it AaaaaaaaHH we just feel in an animal trap we threw the rope up some body hang onto it. It was the wizard. We climbed up he invited us to his house. When we got there we saw my tent instead of the sleeping bag. There was lots and lots of chemacals. The wizard said do you like my house. I stole it from some body. It was my tent i said. Then he gave it back to us and we sailed back home and lived happily ever after.

[NO NAME]

There is a waterfall at the back of our house.

I saw a mural in France.

I lost my blue paints.

Ten plus ten equals twenty.

Our housekeeper is called Joyce.

In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.

A bomp explodes.

I faded my work.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4TH

My monster is 12 feet tall and 5 foot wide. 

He weighs 13 stone he is very good and friendly he is as strong as ten tigers. 

He has got five friends and six enemies. 

6100000000 years old he is as fast as a cheetah. 

He is only a friend of alive trees. 

He talks a little bit of English but lots of alien. 

He eats hay and straw and rams horns. 

He has got 1000 hearts. 

He is very well armed he works 12 hours a day. 

he works in  houses. 

his name is Roy the robot. 

He sleeps 3 hours from 6 til 8 and he has got 300 gagats.

THE LAZY WIND

One day the wind would not blow. 

He said he was too tired so he fell asleep. 

All the flowers died down the boats 

stayed still, the wind mills stayed still 

the trees stopped talking to each other. 

Every body grew sick and hungry.

Who is going to wake him up. 

I will said the crow. He flew up in the clouds. 

Go away said the wind I’ll sleep for weeks. 

When the crow came back the world sulked. 

I have got an idea said the cunning fox. 

Off he went running away. He told 

the wind you can stay asleep 

we have got some body to replace you. 

No I will not stay asleep and he came 

rushing towards them. It’s all right everyone 

the wind is comming they got a lot happy.

[NO NAME]

I rely like the leaves that fall to the ground

Specele like to push them around

I like the foul moon hai up in the sky

I try to reach it but it’s much too hai

I like the fruits that are on the trees

They fall down with a little breeze.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 13TH

I have a scar+ that is red and black. 

I have dirty feet and I'll make

footprints on the floor.

I threw a snowball and it landed

in my brothers face. 

I watched a film and a man was

in a snowstorm.

I went outside and it was snow.

Flakes were falling. On Hallowine

wiches makes spells.

My dog did a puddle on my

bedroom floor.

I made a pattern with my spirograph.  

GOOD AND EVIL

Last night at 1. oclock I was sitting up in bed and a dark creature grabbed me by my hand and then came three more. i turned the light on and fainted. They were rielly dangerous. Then four good ones came well I think they were good and I hope they were good ones. They attacked the bad ones with whips. We went off in a big vehicle to a Stone Henge where they lived. one of the bad ones pushed a big stone on top of the vehicle. There were 5 of us we all got out but one still got killed. The good ones were strong. We went and attacked them and we killed them all. 16 more of them came and started to throw rocks at us. They captured all of us and they started to fire guns at us until there was only me and one of the good ones left. Then we escaped and ran away. We made camp and went and attacked them. They killed the good one until there was only me left but 1000000000 more of them came and we killed every bad one on earth.

GRAND-DARTH'S SHIP

People wondered why Don had chosen to become 

a deep sea diver. There were so many other things 

he could've been. Whatever had put such an idea 

into his mind? "Who suggested is?" he was 

asked. "No-one", Don always replied.

BLEEP AND BOOSTER

One day Booster made a sonic solidifying gun Bleep thorte it was an earth mouse-trap. It is not a mouse trap said Booster it is a sonic solidifying gun. What can it do. It makes things rock hard look it is nothing and he made Bleep's asteroridade hard. Then he got in his space pod. Commander I've found him he is in deadly danger. He is on planet Gelatanus X he heard a voice help Ime sinking just then Bleep got two ray guns and a back pack. He flew down to the planet and started to shoot the monsters away the ray gun was so hot so it made the planet melt.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST

One day I was walking in the woods and I saw some popple pushing a little boy around. I went up an tried to stop them. They said to him go and get that delicious apple on that spookey tree and he went and got it. Then the ground started to rumble and lots of ghosts came out and grabbed us. The apple rolled down the hill and fell in to a deep river. And the trees came alive and we got sucked underground then Jamie came along. He saw a big hole in the ground. Just then every thing disappeared and all the bad trees turned into apple trees with lots of apples on. 

EVERY

We had a snowball fight with the Widgets.

Go and wait with Boris at Ash Rock. – 

The rocks fell from the cliff.

Amanda and Rodey built a snow shelter. 

Rockets fly with a jet of flame.

A train puffs a cloud of steam.

My dad dug an underground tunnel.

My dad was mentioning something about Christmas.

We are going to do fractions in maths.

I got on a train at the station. 

The first one is a boy’s name.

This one is a lady’s name.

This one is the name of a seaside town.

This one is a doctor’s name. 

This one is title of a man.

This one is a question mark. 

VIKING NAMES

Vikings liked to make up nick-names for people. 

here are some I have made up

Christopher leaker. carrie two teeth.

christophere long nails les.

curly wayne.

nodey claire. 

Big mouth Tony.

No tooth wayne.

Small guy Stewart.

Give a way Tony.

Mrs parr in her wight car.

Mis gab and the Vikings.

WHEN I WAS BRAVE

One day I pulled a radiator off the wall and I blamed it on my brother. And I was very scared and then we went to Carlisle to do some shopping. And I got lost and I was too scared to go and ask a police man. But I went and did it. And just then my dad found me. Then we went back home and it was dark upstairs and I had to go and get something. And I was too scared and I found my dad's torch and I went and got it and then the batteries went flat and I carried on and I got it and I gave it to my dad and he said it took you a long time and I laughed. Then we went to school Wayne and I climbed up a tree, and I did not want to but I did.

ADVENTURE ON THE BEACH

One day me and Wayne went camping and we were exploring a beach. We saw two rowing boats. Three men came out with a big chest. It was nearly time to go home. I said lets go and hide and see who they are. and we did. They carried it into a cave then we went back and we went and had a look. But the cave was gone. Wayne said it is dark now lets go back home. Next day we had a look it was still not there. Then we went back.

Just then i stepped on something then we heard a noise. The cave opened we went in and there was no sign of the box. Just then the cave shut and we could not see a thing. The passage way went down a lot further. When we got to the bottom of the cave it was a lot lighter. Then we saw a big box it was two meters long and half a meter high. It was stuck to the ground. We saw a sledge hammer we smashed the box and lots of treasure poured out. We brought the sledge hammer to the other end of the cave and we smashed our way out. There were 10000 pounds all together 5000 each. We got lots and lots of money.

[NO NAME]

Dark brown is the river

Golden is the sand

It flows along forever

With trees on either hand

Green leaves a-floating

Castles of the foam

Boats of mine a-boating

Where we’ll all come home

CREEPING IN THE CELLARS

My mum asked me to go down in the cellars to get some washing. I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into a hole in the wall. I turned it and a door opened on the floor. There were some steps going down I started to unwind the ball of string I followed the steps and they lead to a maze. Just then I heard a grunting noise  and fell into a hole. It was full of dead skeletons.

THE CREEPY HOUSE

One day I was walking along in the woods. Suddenly I came across a house. It was quite a big house but it was in ruins. I went to envestergate and I heard a howling nose I could not find what was making the nose and i was quite afraid. I went back home and Jamie had come to play. I said come over here. We looked out of the window. I caught a glimpce of the house. he said shall we go and have a look at that house. I said alright then, lets go. 

We went down in the woods and explored. Then we saw a vision of a giant spidder. Jamie saw a machine. that's what it was coming from. Then I heard my mum calling me. We went back home. my mum had made some cakes. I was delighted. Just then I tripped over and I fell in a cobweb.

[NO NAME]

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves

Hang trembling

The wind passes thru’.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees

Bow down their heads

The wind is passing by.

THURSDAY MARCH 1ST

He has spines all over him. He has got a nose like a pig. A name for Henry the Hedgehog is urchin, Mr. Prickels and Hedge pig. An adder came up and attacked Henry the Hedgehog but he curled up in a pile and the adder jumped back. Henry’s defence system was working. Eventually the adder died. Henry eats worms and leaves, he dreams of eating little chickens. All winter he hibernates in a pile of leaves and he is very warm.

NOTE TO READER

I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink this is the point where, upon filling the first, red exercise book that the young poet wrote

2

John Tucker

English

E

on the front of the first book, then, like making an Escherian shape, wrote on the front of the new, empty, red exercise book:

English

John Tucker

Harecroft Hall

1

[NO NAME]

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT

When I was 4 I was on holiday in Sweden. My dad had just bought me a new bike. The new bike was too big for me. I was going down the hill quite fast. The breaks was to pedal backwards but I could not reach the the pedals. Suddenly the bike got faster I had a bad feeling. I did not what to do. I fell head first in a patch of nettles. My mum heard me crying she came. By the time she found me it was ten o’clock. They asked what hapened. I said it was a long story. They said never ride your bike withouta parent.

MY NIGHT TIME ADVENTURE

One night I was lying in bed and I heard a tapping on the window. I thought it was a branch. I said to myself, it's not a windy night. I looked at my watch it was half past 1 pm. Then I decided to get drest I got a ruck-sack put a packed lunch in it a rope, a compass, a touch, a knife, and a map of our county. I went out the front door. I saw my bedroom light still on so I new which window it was. What was it that was making such a racket. I tied the rope to the knife and threw it to the top of the nearest tree to my bedroom I had another look at the window, there was nothing there perhaps it was a branch. O well I said and climbed up the rope. When I got to the top of the tree I still could not see what it was that was making such a nose. Just then i heard a halfdead mouse lying on the windowsill I jumped to the windowsill, climbed down the rope, went in the house and went to my bed.

THE THIEF

Once a woman lost a lovely brooch. She hunted everywhere but could not find it. So she asked the police to send a detective to her house to assist her. The detective climbed the stairs to the room where the brooch had been kept. Soon he came down. I believe the brooch is in the jackdaw's nest in that tall tree," he said. He brought a ladder and climbed the tree. With the brooch safe in his pocket he descended. I knew where to look, because the bird left marks on your dressing table he explained. 

THURSDAY MAY 24TH

At midnight I was lying in bed. I could not get to sleep. Just then I heard some body walking very quietly across the stones on are drive. At first I was scared stiff and then I plucked up some courage and crept along the floor to the light switch I turned it on carefully not to make a nose. I got dressed. Then I looked through the window I could not anything because it was too dark. I looked at my watch it was 1:32 AM . I have got lots of time I said to my self I put my shoes on and went downstairs to get some food to eat. When I got downstairs I heard the noise again. I thought to myself, theres something suspicious going on then I heard jogging footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Just then a masked murderer came in through the door with a machine gun i pulled the rug that he was standing on and he fell down on the floor. Then I sprinted up stairs to tell my dad what had happened. At first he did not believe me. Then I said come and see for your self. He got out of bed and got dressed and got the firepoker. He went down stairs with me. We got in the kitchen but he wasn't there. We heard a voice from behind us he said hands up busters turn around dead slowly i grabbed the firepoker turned rond and knocked him out with it. My dad ran to the phone and dialled 999. A minute later the police were here. They came in. We showed them what had happened they said he is very dangerous they also said that his name was called Mike the murderar. 

THURSDAY MAY 31ST

When the stork and the fox. were sitting in the house and eating their dinner. The fox could not eat every bit of it because it was on plates. Even though the stalk could not eat it he still was polite. When they finished the stalk asked if he would come to my house for dinner. Verey well said the fox. The very next day he did as the stork said and went to his house for dinner the stork put  a very well cooked lunch into two long vases so the stork could get the food but not the fox

WEDNESDAY MAY 30TH

I think that the picture wood be O.K. for 11 – 12 year olds to play in.

Last year they were building a new house near us. I went after school to look at it w/ my little sister. Her name is Emaly. It was very interesting. We saw four builders two were in the house, one climbing up a ladder and the last one was wheeling a wheel barrow. We allso saw lots of bricks and cement. The best thing was the scaffolding. My little sister is quite nautghy. She allso loves climbing things. The first thing she said was 'I am going to climb the scaffolding.” “You mustn't go up there!” I shouted. I am going to go up there. Just then when she got to the top she fell.

She cried “HELP”. There was an enormous thud. I ran as fast as I could home, diled 999 and asked for the Ambulance. They came in a flash and took her to hospital. 

BEING IN A HUFF

One Saturday when I was just about to go out 

my dad came into the porch where I was 

and saw a scribbly picture on the wall 

and a black felt tip pen beside it. He said John 

why have you drawn on the wall? I said 

it wasn’t me it was Hannah. I’ll take ten pounds 

out of your pocket money towards some new 

wall paper. I ran up stairs and locked myself in my

bed room. In the end he found out it was 

Hannah and didn’t take the money away.

[NO NAME]

Wolf to shut

Holiday to wash

Marry to fix

Glass

Child the wind-

Fox blows through

Tooth the trees

Clock the rain

Shoe falls

Against the window

JOHN TUCKER

FORM 3

HARECROFT

ENGLISH

MY BROTHER

He is five years old.

His hair is straight and blond.

He has small blue eyes.

He has got a plump face and a plump nose.

He is terrified of snakes.

He likes to were colourful clothes.

He is very funny some times.

Sometimes he gets into terrible tempers.

He is kind and soft.

His favourite hobby is football.

He does not like playing cricket.

His favourite food is fish and chips.

His favourite couler is Blue.

He can not swim.

He likes traveling.

He likes Jive Bunny music and Star Wars films. 

He collects butter flies and Moths.

He is a good climber.

His name is Robert.

He has got a big mouth.

He talks a lot.

He likes making people laugh.

He hates having his photograph

he has got a good imagination.

SMELLS

Why is it that poets tell

So little of the cence of smell?

These are the odours I love well.

The smell of coffee freshly ground

Or rich plum pudding, holly crowend,

Or onions fried and deeply browend

The fragrance of a fumy pipe

The smell of applles, newly ripe

And printers ink on leaden type.

Woods by moonlite in September

Breath most sweet and I remember

Many a smoky camp fire ember

Camphor, turpentine, and tea

The balsom of a Christmas tree

These are whiffs of grammerye

A ship smells best of all to me.

THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR 

January brings the snow;

Makes our toes and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,

Thaws the frozen ponds again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,

Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,

Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,

Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tullips lillies roses;

Fills the childrens hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,

Straw berries and gilly flowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,

Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,

Sports men then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the Peasant,

Then to gather nuts is pleasent.

Dull November brings the blast

Then the leaves are falling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,

Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

MY DAD

When I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license. When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me with my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some chance.”

[NO NAME]

If I had a lollipop tree

I'de be as happy as can be.

I' would sit by it all day long

Eating away until there nearly gone

I'de say “that's enough lollies for today

But I'll come back to morrow and eat away.  

SIX INCHES HIGH

I was sitting on the sofa drinking lemon-ade when suddenly I felt funny and then I started shrinking and shrinking till I was six inches high. I fell down on the sofa w/ a plod. I climbed down a loose string on to the ground and then started walking across to the chess board I had left lying around. Suddenly I herd something that sounded like me beating up my brother. I looked around me but at first I couldn't see anybody but then I saw a chess pawn hanging w/ all his might on the chess board for he was just about to fall on the ground which was a long way down. He slipped and I ran and caught him, but just then a big rat came running out from under a sofa so I ran w/ the pawn as fast as I could and dived into a mouse hole which the rat couldn't fit in. We couldn't get out because the rat was guarding the hole so we sat down and talked. He said his name was “Humph”. He said he could get me back to my normal size but he would need help from more chess pieces. Humph said “When it is 7. 00, if you sit on the same sofa you shrunk on w/ all the chess pieces you will grow back to your normal size. I looked at my watch. I was 6. 30 and 56 seconds. We didn't have much time so we looked around for something to fight the rat w/. Just then Humph found the perfect thing. An old toothbrush. I got my pen-knife out of my pocket and sharpend the end of the tooth brush w/ no bristles on. Then I cut off all the bristles on the other end and started fighting the rat w/ the toothbrush. The rat was soon dead so we brought the toothbrush and went to look for the other chess pieces. We soon gatherd them all together and told them every thing. It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa. I was the first one up followd by the white pawns then the two queens then the kings then the blakc pawns then the bishop then the rooks and last of all the knits. We counted them all. There was only 31 pieces. There was a little pawn trying to get up on the sofa so I jumped down and lifted him up. I grew back to my normal size but there was no chess pices. I put the rest of the lemonade I had been drinking before in the bin and went to sleep. When I woke up I thought I had been dreaming but then I found the toothbrush and went back to sleep. 

APRIL

In April it is the beginning of Spring. 

The daffodils are waving their yellow heads in the wind. 

In the gardens and in the woods Catkins, 

that look like lambs tails are dangling 

from the branches on bushes in the hedges. 

The days are gradually getting longer. 

We have many showers. 

It is my birthday in April. 

The first of April is called “April Fools day. 

We play tricks on people that day. 

The buds on trees are swelling and oppening. 

The birds are coming back from the hot countries. 

THE BIGGEST LIAR IN THE WORLD

A long time ago in Japan, I saw a funny looking man walk out of a big bubbling volcano. He had three eyes but that was the only difference between him and us. He wore a mask that was made from white metal, his sweat-shirt was white, his trousers were white, his high leather boots were black. He had black gloves with spikes sticking out about seven inches but the most peculiar thing about him was that around his shoulder was a big gun. It had all sorts of gizmoes that shoot lasers, fire, water, poison, spoof, bullets, you name it. So I went up to him and asked him “What's your name?” He said “Wotsit”. I asked “where do you come from?” He said “Fingermebobdownthevolcano!” I said “what's the gun for?” He said “first let me tell you a secret.” He said he's the biggest liar in his country. He said once that thousands of little aliens attacked his country, he said that he blew them all away with three blasts of his gun. He also said he was God's messenger and had helped God to make the world and had stayed alive ever since. The real truth is I am the biggest liar...this whole story's codswallop. 

[NO NAME]

Pod: God morning

Fat Guy: No it isn't

Pod: Why not?

Fat Guy: Because I said not 

Pod: But why did you say not. 

Fat Guy: I didn't say not, I said no it isn't. so what

I've got something to tell you. Guess what?

Fat Guy: what

Pod: Your...erm, er....a

 clot and I'm not. 

[NO NAME]

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,

HE'S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL

Moving to Chetwynde, I had no idea that any writings of mine were locked in the attic. But when we wrote ‘The Hunter’ as a class exercise, I knew I had written poetry before, and knew it was my strong point, and lo and behold the teacher singled mine out for excellence!

“THE HORRIBLE HUNTER”

The hunter, a horrible old man,

Is hunting in the forest, every moment he can.

Searching for foxes, with his hunting dogs,

Charging through the dark, dark forest,

Through rivers and through bogs.

Only his prey can see his eyes,

He never looks up to the sky.

He's a finger missing with a scar on his face,

He lives his life in awful disgrace.

His dead prey is hooked onto his jacket,

When he kills it makes an awful racket.

He puts out his snapping snares,

hoping to catch foxes and hares.

He lives in a small, tobacco smelling hut,

Deep in the forest it is put

He's got a small patch of hair,

And a horrible hypnotizing stare.

As a bullet is pulled from his belt,

You're bound to hear an animal's yelp.

A DEADLY CHARM

I am a padlock: who locks up your thoughts,

I am pollution: that blackens yourheart,

I am electricity: fast, furious and frightening,

I am a machine gun: looking for a kill,

I am a politician: dizzy, dazzled and dazed,

I am a radio: that speaks of death,

I am the concrete: that stiffens your body,

I am the computer: that controls the world,

I am dynamite: who always gets his way,

I am a micro-chip: small but clever,

I am a missile: roaring through the air,

I am a rocket: somewhere up there,

I am a drink machine: wasting your money,

I am a digital watch: who but I, is telling

you the time as the hours go by?

[NO NAME]

My cage walls are nearly pressing in at my sides.

There are multi-coloured giants stroking me and treating melike a baby.

There is a deaffening sound of birds humming in a corner.

It turns dark emmediately, by a touch of a button.

All the captured animals around me probably have the same, agonizing feeling as I do.

I feel like running away when people take me out of my cage and cuddle me.

I feel likeI've been imprisoned in a jail for no reason.

I always feel like staring at the masive, multi-coloured men, mechanically moving.

THE BADGER [draft 2]

As soon as I was imprisoned, inside my cage,

A happy feeling vanished from my mind,

It was a feeling of roaming, round the countryside,

Catching my own prey, chasing mice and digging in burrows.

But now I feel like I've been jailed for no reason.

I suppose all the other animals here

have the same agonising feeling that I have.

It seems quite weird, the massive, multi-coloured men,

Making it turn night by a touch of a little white button on a wall.

When all the humans have gone at night,

And the birds have stopped twittering,

I try to escape but I don't think a mouse

Could squeeze through the gaps in the bars.

But one day someone took me away.

He tried to tame me. I didn't want him to

but I gradually became tamer and tamer.

It was a lot better than in the pet shop,

But not as good as the forest.

I doubt anything is as good as the forest.   

THE INTERVIEW ON MY MUM

J. What is the most important event that's happened in your life?

    M Giving birth to four healthy children.

J. Why is that so important to you?

    M I myself came from a family of four children and there was always something going on, so when I came to have children myself, I thought it would be nice to have four.

J. What sort of things went on?

    M One thing is that when there are four of you, you always have someone to talk to or play with. I was the oldest and my sister and brother who were very close in age, used to get up to some terrible things like once they made porridge on the floor and once they put crispbread under the rug and walked on it just to hear it go crunch. My grandmother called them 'the termites'.

J. Are your children like your siblings?

M. A little bit. I think if you put four young children together one of them will think of something dreadful to do. My son once tried to teach the cat how to swim in a bucket of water.

THE TYGER

What kind of creature is the Tyger? I think God made the Tyger and ment him to be a normal tiger but the devil caught him and hypnotised him against God. I think the Devil puts him in everyone's dreams. I think he is just an image ment to come at the right time to take control of there brains I think he is a ghost of a normal tiger but the Devil turned him evil. I think the Tyger is an angel of Hell. He is not tangible because it says “what dread grasp? Dare its deadly tendon clasp?” I think it came from Hell by wings because it says, “In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes,” and “On what wings dare he aspire.” I think the Devil stole the minds of all the criminals and made the Tyger from them. I think the Tyger is immortal and turns your dreams to nightmares.

From ‘PAGE 11’

1. Area of whole shape = 80 CM squared

Area of unshaded part = 4 CM squared

Area of shaded part = 76 CM squared

2. Area of whole shape = 72 CM squared

Area of unshaded part = 8 CM squared

Area of shaded part = 64 CM squared

EQUATIONS

(1) 3 a + 4 = 2 a + 8

(2) 4 b + 4 = 1 b + 7

(3) 5 a + 3 = 2 a + 12

(4) 5 b + 1 = 3 b + 11

(5) 7 c + 3 = 3 c + 31

(6) 7 y + 1 = 3 y + 25

(7) 11 c + 9 = 8 c + 24

(8) 7 b + 12 = 1 b + 24

(9) 3 t + 5 = 2 t + 12

(10) 5 b + 10 = 2 b + 19

SYSTEMS 11TH MAY

1. 211

2112 ATTRACTOR

2122

1132

211213

312213

212223

114213

31121314

41122314

31221324

__________

21322314

21322314

WHINNIE'S CHOICE

I'm awake very early but it is light, and very hot outside. I'm seventeen todayand I've been thinking about it all night but decided not to drink the water. I would lose a lot of my friends and relatives and would feel alien. I could jumpoff the Empire State Building for billions of pounds but friends are better than money. Anyway, my grandmother believes in gnomes so she could advise me somehow. I asked her, “Grandma, if there was a spring in the wood with everlasting water in it would you drink it?”

“Whatever made you ask that question?”

“But would you?”

“Well probably and probably not. There are lots of disadvantages and only a few advantages.”

After that I went into my room to think about it. If I did drink it, now would be the best time to do it because I'm at the prime of my life and I have Jesse. I might as well take Tuck's advice because he's drunk the water and experienced it so I don't think I'll drink the water. Anyway I'll go out there and I might change my mind. The spring looked so lovely but something was different. Then I noticed that there was a stone missing from the top. The water looked so delicious and fresh that I walked up to it, took another stone off the top, was just about to drink it when a traveller came.

“Hello,” he said. “Could you please direct me to Treegap?”

“It's just down this road,” I said.

When he had gone I took another stone and again I would have drunk it if it weren't for the toad. He was sitting in the spring bathing. So I thought it over again.it was like a war in my head between Jesse and Tuck, with me not knowing which side to take. Then I thought that God might've tried to stop me and that God had told the traveller and the toad to disturb me when I was going to drink the water. So I've made up my mind. I won't drink the water.

THE BEAST

The Beast was quick as lightning,

Strong as an ox and very frightening,

Cunning as a fox, tough as leather,

Hungry as a hunter and not very clever.

He is as large as life, as swift as a hare,

Keen as mustard, he'll give you a scare,

Don't go near it at half past three,

Because that's the time it will have you for tea.

NIGHT (BEDTIME)

Mum said, “It's time to go to bed,”

I said “C'mon not yet.”

She said “It's half past eleven, dear,

And tomorrow's school don't forget.”

Underneath my pillow was food for a midnight feast,

I can hear an owl hooting and the shuffling of feet,

Making shadows on the wall,

Which is the spookiest of them all.

Dogs barking and dad is snoring,

Lying in bed is very boring,

Thinking of chocolate and soda crème,

Nothing to do except to dream.

MY WORLD

My world would be a chocolate factory in the clouds. It would be completely made of chocolate and if you ate a wall it would just grow back. It is invisible to any other people and only certain people can get there. The weather is always what you want it to be and if you want it to rain, snow or shine it will happen. There is a chocolate fun world as well and it is called Choc World. You can walk all over the clouds and look down at any place in the world and if you want to go there you can just take the Choc-mobile down to earth.

RELIGION

Dear Family,

I hope you are all feeling well. I have got some very bad news to tell you. I may never see you again. I'm very sorry but I've got to go into hiding somewhere where no-one will find me. All of Jesus' followers that are in danger are coming because we could be killed by Saul. I don't want to go, but I have to and I'm not allowedto tell you where so that you're not in danger as well. We have to get together and all go disguised at night time. I have two messengers that I can trust to bring us food and news safely. Just to make you more secure, I'll tell you that I have enough food and a good warm shelter.

Lots of love,

John.

PRIVATE

Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones.

Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones,

bongles has still got the stones.

THE FIRE AND THE SEA

The fire is observed, its hundred tongues, flirting, dancing, entrancing, mesmerising the eye.

The sea is remembered and imagined, its rhythmical engine grinding some one mile or so away down the road.

The fire is hot but the sea casts no heat.

The red and blue thing is a graph with one long line, kinking headward from the heart and its wine, and ending up in the stars.

That’s where the hottest heat burns blue.

It’s not the same in our haunted house, where the fire is nearer red and mother can’t find her other whisk because of the over-friendly ghost.

It’s very thin, that line, kinking headward from the heart and its wine, and ending up in the stars, where the hottest heat burns blue.

(1995, reconstructed)

FRAGMENTS FROM THE ROAD TO HEAVEN BY NOJ AND THE MOB

L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog,

he should be sleeping like a log,

goes round and round chasing his own tail,

only goes upstairs for a trail,

of Maltesers nice round and pale,

we’re on the road to Heaven,

happiness awaits us there, flutter

in the sideways, flutter in the sideways,

bring your brief fling with the politics of flight.

Sullen silken sulks, we drink the same

rain, spit is clean and so is dirt.

Normal is boring. Do it later.

God made speed to save us,

God made hash to help us.

Fuck the system. Even a dick

gets big erections. The sun hanged

himself from a length of daisy chain.

Clocktick clock being clocked off by clocktick.

Clocktick clock not being clocked off by Time.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.

Break, bird with the skin of snake.

God rushed into the cold cod quick.

REACTION

So we see it was me through whom the new age connected, and all later talk of plugging my senses in the mains (in the band) only repeated work that was done in my boyhood book. All this is why it wouldn’t be fair to have me stripped of intellectual property and surrendered to Anon. A country must preserve its individuals. As John Stuart Mill says, a progressive country can quickly become stale, stagnant, stationary, sterile and staid, full of dead values and dead customs if there is a decrease in Individuality. This is my argument against being Anon, especially with a CV like mine. If it means I cannot write poetry so be it but there must be an outlet for me, something I can do that isn’t Anon. If that is science I would settle for science. The internet’s invention and also discovery too is the Gravity of our Age. It was my early work into the storage of the net that meant when I later wrote of Instant Travel as if the other side of the coin from I. T, I thought I had found my voice at last.

It wasn’t just the new Digital Age but The Lords And The New Creatures too, which both connected through me, when I was a boy. It could be that my best work was in and around the time of the “tron,” a tron being a point of intersection between technology and art or a post-poetic experiment with a psycho-technological edge. More specifically, the binaural earphone album, where I eventually promised to plug my senses in the mains, came at a time of my youth when I was also writing things like the poem ‘Instant Travel’ about the other side of the coin from I. T, and also the prose piece ‘Lucy In The Soul With Demons,’ who may or may not have been an actual substance, and various other pieces I tried to give a flavour of herein. Meanwhile, the effervescent mobile phone, the melted tape, the sprightly hypertext-sniper on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, the numinous, purple-bleeding screen – these and others too could be “halfware.”

Really I was just a little cog in a train wheel, a comma in the Bible, who was part of a greater process and glad of it too. I never got to be with Flora nor design the sheet where pictures grew which is where my brother James comes into play because he did both those things, proving, I suppose, that there is always someone brighter than oneself; but I still get to pin weird writing on my Blogspot page in the night-time.