THE NUMINOUS CHAIN

EDEN

My latest thinking is that my father

was positively sponsored by some philosophers

to provide the real, human witness from The

Lords And The New Creatures.

If at seven I helped invent the net,

by eight I had twice made weird Observations,

one the proverbial “juggernaut,”

which looked a little bit rhythmical and Egyptian,

and when it parked jiggled its bling,

causing me to run from the wood.

Because it had financial backing,

it is not true it was all in my mind.

But to still be writing about it might

be evil, and something kinetic becomes

something static under this Night

so my vote goes to pregnant mums!

GRAND-DARTH’S SHIP

The other was a monster. I tried on a jacket

under the stairs and got a random

sense something was wrong and took it

off and looked inside… “mum!”

I cried up the pine, wooden stairs.

“There’s something disgusting growing in this jacket!”

Ignored I was and it was despair’s.

Grand-darth’s Ship. Your horror-packet

is served. It was a plastic rectangle

with a pattern of black stuff – maybe eggs or seeds - splurged

on top, and I was but an angel,

looking down, feeling disturbed.

I left the cloakroom, taught by the wood,

to see if it was still there when

I went back in, and it was, which was good,

and then I threw the jacket in the bin!

TEAR UP THE FRONT

The maths of the new colour, as a cellular mark,

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

waited in my boyhood book in the attic,

for years after affecting my best friend.

I could not know and needed to know

why the tear up the front of mine bike?

It was because of maths, that I happened to do

back as a kid, which the PHD biologists like.

It’s wasted on women for colour not size,

and only very slight, the mark left,

where the spliff sealed, in my father’s eyes,

and though it leaves me feeling a bit bereft,

I do not mind it being there, it doesn’t hurt.

I redefined the meaning of the words “I’m fine,”

meaning the stripe, but this is just dirt,

and I should celebrate with a glass of wine.

THE FACE OF STARS

The face of stars made no nose…

it could’ve been scripted, I think,

back in the Bible. Amazeballs it was.

Now it has come to the matter of ink!

We stared at the sky, it was drenched

with electric diamonds, the universe

enlumed, wet, dripping grape bunches

of stars; and a shooting star came across

and we pointed up in simultaneity

and found ourselves pointing at the face

which all three of us gathered in the shame could see

smiling back from outer space.

Still we had to walk away.

To return to the campsite, the tent.

It was good that night, and the next day

everything seemed to be Heavensent.

THE MILLENNIUM

In the year 2000, in a speech in the barn’s den,

I spoke against The Towers coming down,

foresaw September 11th to the day;

and there was much else in my prophecy.

I predicted the hunt for the God Particle

from looking at a dust-mote ballet swirl

in a late ray of light angling in

and some say I founded a new religion

based on the elephant, which would be

the alignment, in my philosophy,

of Plough and oldest fell to coincide

with a rhythm change in the White House, outside.

Everything, yes everything had to go through

me, like my father’s art smuggling nickname Blue

became a new sense through which I saw

the future and more and many more.

Inventions, aphorisms, prophecies, ambitions,

were spouted for hours with erudition,

and that year, being quite the spark,

I got the highest A-level mark

in the country for my last pen strokes

of school, not on a Book of Irish Jokes.

PLAYING IN THE FLOOD

After school, recording on binaural earphones

with mates took us into unknown zones.

We broke the ancient silence, made dark

music as in dark matter. Make

of it what you want, but I climbed up

and as if towards the six inch gap

and said I’d plug my senses in the mains.

It removed a little portion of my good brains

when I was later kicked out the band

and it all went under Gondwanaland.

But still we got our record out of it

and I don’t think it was really that shit.

I think my Floyd was actually Freud.

I was but a paranoid mechanoid.

It turned out the earphones were my idea

to invent, in the barn, when I was a seer.

So that was why when I was kicked out

of the band like Syd Barrett it hurt.

THE EFFERVESCENT MOBILE

My first mobile phone, it would reverberate

through every technological inlet

in the room the rhythm of ‘William Tell’

before it rang from the oldest fell.

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit -

it would bleep off and everyone hear it -

and then bring bring, in my pocket.

If there was a leak we could not lock it!

I never got to contemplate the riff

for I was always on the phone. If

there was somewhere I went wrong

it might’ve been phones. They say the song

was where everyone else started to download

the lowdown, get my heavy load.

I missed out on that and am always late.

I think the song was a gift from the State!

THE HOLOGRAPHIC HORSECOCK

I lay back in my bed, out of my head no doubt

and an holographic horsecock was wheeled in.

It could be some kind of renegade vote.

I welled up with tears. Vote Blair get Brown

was what the newspapers were saying.

Sorry, but I don’t wish to be the PM!

A plethora of voices the next morning

seemed to be like an open-air post-poem.

This was my first psychotic episode.

Should I assume the plush posterior of a baboon?

To be fair back in the barn where conversation flowed

there was mention of the invention even then.

A virtual death machine was another.

A word-chord synthesiser at the edge of selection.

What else did I ideate when talking to my brother?

A drug called Strictly Free that does what it says on

the tin, a red-bleeding type-writer inside

a ping-pong ball, an invisible square

of air stroked on telly called Mosaic by

Darth Vader, and the binaural earphones were in there,

and a neutraliser drink that sobers you up in

a quick instant, and the Monolith from 2001

protruding from the fell at my birth time,

and even a love-bomb was another one.

Still it’s better to relate than invent

and I do relate when I start telling you

the holographic horsecock was something that rent

a hole in the wall and came startlingly true.

THE DISAPPEARING BANDAGE

I went to Furness General for a literal head-wound

and the nurse put a square, white bandage on.

I went to touch it to see if it was paddy, then went

to touch it a second time and it was gone.

The bandage had vanished into thin air.

The nurse had to apply another. So I’ve seen

how an object, a form, can disappear

on the periphery of madness, when emotion

is high and temperament inflamed.

Such tales my sane friends were unsure of.

They scatter when you’re diagnosed, named

insane, but it doesn’t matter, in the name of love.

There was a bloke inside whom it would seem

thought it was him that did the vanishing trick.

I ran away, still trying to live the dream,

but the cops found me and brought me back.

I thought there’d be a different jurisdiction

if I made it to Scotland, so that’s where I’d gone

but as I say the cops found me in that other nation,

looking for a tall hippie bloke called John.

THE ALIGNMENT

I heard the alignment of the Plough

and oldest fell is the “white eyebrow.”

My band came up, came up to see,

in fact they were the cavalry.

We sat in the van and spoke of God.

Some said no, some gave the nod,

and somebody said that mystery

would remain a constant, that third party.

It coincided with a rhythm change

in the White House, rich and strange.

But there’s nowt so dead as an important thing

so let us speak instead of the song I sang

in the camper van. It was by my mate

Will and it was called ‘Found Out.’

What song we sang did not matter

as long as we did, and didn’t just natter.

MY FIRST

And in the end I applied myself,

read every book on the shelf,

was a disciplined student, got a First,

ended up well-read, well-versed.

But it was difficult in the middle.

I came upon a time of trouble.

I was hospitalised in the acute ward,

which I found so very hard.

And when I came out, and went back

to University things weren’t so black.

I did all the work, didn’t mess around

smoking weed on her map of sound,

worked with defaced bank notes, rap,

CNF, and it wasn’t all crap.

In fact I was a beautiful mind,

who had long since grown blind:

never selling myself as the witness,

whom it seems lost to the fitness,

never to know I helped invent

the net at seven, I spent

my time in libraries reading things,

quiet as the sparrow that tucks away its wings.

My First was a triumph of organisation,

and I coined the word “co-imagination.”

THE SECRET GARDEN PARTY

I remember skywriting sent across the Night

at the Secret Garden Party by folk from the future,

folk that is who come from the Future State.

I’d taken a last E but it did not feature,

it bore no effect on reality at all,

in terms of inducing sensual pleasure at least,

then I looked at the night sky, purple,

digital squares coursing across from the East.

There were also actually physical lanterns.

To write THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

across the night in purple was one of my ambitions

watching Apocalypse Now when younger.

And the next morning I woke to find my tent

utterly covered with birdshit, in a field

crammed with tents, as if the birds were sent,

for not one other tent was remotely defiled.

There were lectures on people living forever.

A good gypsy band were playing live.

Lines came: the crown grows upwards from the

green. I am only standing with a bird above.

LETTERBOX

Or the single, little-fingernail clipping

arrived between my bottom front teeth

like a female e-mail. I’d be clapping

if I knew who sent it in truth.

Is this where the truth flies or the truth fairy?

In the place preceding recognition?

I picked the fingernail out, leery

and threw it on the ground not in the bin.

If I had but kept that sample then what?

We’d prove something new about sending.

Already a guy that helped invent the net,

I found my items almost never-ending.

And who was the benefactor? I think

Danielle with whom I wanted to meet

in dreams, but we fell out of synch.

When I wanted to go south and be New Beat.

THE SENSORY OVERLAY

When I went to London after my degree

and listened to the Floyd on Youtube

my mind was still an open sea

as I reverted to smoking doob

and heard my name, my name tattooed

on Piper At The Gates of Dawn,

which some might say is rather rude,

in this new world into which we’re thrown,

but Dr. Tom said it was undeniable

that the sensory overlay was there,

and I don’t know if I am liable,

but hope that no-one will care.

It must’ve been done by the band

back when I lived in Cambridge

and trod upon its chalk grass land -

does every good boy still deserve fudge?

What is music from a black hole?

Is there such a thing as secret chord H?

Is music not the soft footsteps of the soul?

These questions from days we read The Beach

and played in the band still remain -

Gap Year days when we were free -

when it seemed the switch was thrown.

It’s amazing what you can do with a degree.

THE EXPLODING PINT GLASS

I stood in the club and a pint glass exploded

from thin air as had also occurred

to someone else at the face of stars, who’d

back me up on this, give you his word…

shards shattered and fell to the club floor.

It was an underground establishment.

It was like the opening of a magic door.

It did not cause me any embarrassment.

I’d been talking to a bloke in the club,

in the darkened room, while people danced

and music blared (I think it was dub)

and the fashion victims naturally pranced.

As I say the pieces just fell to the ground.

It must’ve meant some kind of pressure.

I wonder if the pressure was made of sound.

The broken shards were physical for sure.

BACKPASS ATTEMPTED

BACKPASS ATTEMPTED instead

of NO MONEY on the Oyster card reader

on the East End bus… it’s hardly the word

of a dog. But what is it? It’s more a

psycho-technological post-poem.

I lived in the fringe of a wasteful society.

I couldn’t get the bus that day, zoom

around the city easily and pleasantly

but had to walk by foot where I was going.

At least I had shoes albeit ones

with holes in the soles that were falling

off as well, unstuck under the sun’s

punitive gaze. I think they were odd -

that I wore odd shoes as a statement.

At least I didn’t wear knickers on my head!

It was a time we had a hung Parliament.

THE PURPLE-BLEEDING SCREEN

Cometh the numinous, purple-bleeding screen:

it made every film into a noir.

I’d work at it, constantly, writing, writing,

writing, and I remember its colour

was co-aligned with mystery, sex,

suadade, longing and shame to incorporate

every vowel sound. It did not vex.

But it did sometimes vacillate

between purple and its normal screen colour.

Its light bloomed, daubed the walls,

did not make the business duller

but luminous as I set out my stall.

The bedroom was an anagram of boredom.

I lived between the letters of the word OK.

I wrote for years, poem after poem

but ended up throwing most away.

I think it was Halfware, the numinous

screen where I watched Eraserhead

and the telegraph pole blew up, ominous,

in the field. The computer died

at the same moment my father passed.

So there was something post-human to it.

It was dying, dying right up to the last.

One would hope we can renew it.

THE TOWER

Simultaneous to the purple screen, the Tower:

it could be an instrument of philosophy.

One book smelled of redolent flowers

or Flora’s perfume in consensus reality.

Another seemed to lose a long, limpid

line of shining conveyance it once had.

I don’t know if that is just the acid

I once took, or my being quite mad

but I would swear by it. Then came two

that I was given as a mirror for the soul.

One was Auden, one Joyce, who

both made the Tower more whole.

There came a new Joyce as if

they multiplied by division on the shelf.

I must’ve smoked one too many a spliff

but I did not acquire the second Joyce myself…

so all told I made it five books

but I could augment it according to

geography, or war allies, politics,

to make it about civil engineering too.

I think the witness’s own copy of

The Lords And The New You Know Who went in,

but came back out in the name of love,

because it didn’t seem such a magical win.

THE MELTED TAPE

Simultaneous to the Tower was the cassette.

I conducted an experiment on a tape with a pause

where cut and resealed in the flimsy real. It

was a cassette tape of Pearl Jam ‘VS’

so the ideal became to do away

with the pause in the opening song ‘Go’

and make a poetry machine, in a way,

in perpetual motion, perpetual flow

and it worked after years, years of chanting

“another, another, another fucking joint,”

at boarding school where buildings are daunting

and the fusion working did not disappoint

but late in the night it was under my pillow

and I heard the night wind enwheel

through dark garden trees, below

the window, and an alchemical base metal feel

pervaded the soul as I thought about

the formula for mud from primary school,

just water + soil, and then some doubt

got to me, and being but a fool

I followed the advice of a voice

and snuck downstairs in the dark night

to cook the tape in the AGA, a mad choice,

and while it was cooking, in there, write.

Nothing came to mind except to say

nothing can be said for certain of verse

except that the poet chooses where he

ends his lines, selecting a tiny pause

instead of letting the type writer run on.

This was a quote from a father poet.

I took out the tape. The evidence was gone.

I still think it a valid work of art and very Barrett.

THE SHEET

There’s only really one more thing on my list.

So I should stop. So that I do.

The true artist would just get pissed.

He’d know what he wants to do too,

in terms of a great transaction with his soul,

perform the task, and the rest of the MA

just get drunk. It might not be cool

to mention the last thing, but it might be OK.

It is the sheet where pictures grew -

and after that is there not but dust?

I trust you heard about this one too.

There may yet be more on my list -

to falsify the Nirvana barcode is done -

to attain visual radio broadcasting dreams -

but this sheet should be the last one.

It belongs to my younger brother James.

I discovered it when my father passed -

and the pictures seem to depict

the lyric to a song I wrote in time past -

and now I just want to get wrecked.

WINGS

The inscape of wings I found on abjuring

medication, cold turkey, when my dad died,

were Albatross Butterfly Crow, enduring

the alchemy of perception, inside

the kitchen, yes, Albatross Butterfly Crow,

and not measureless but carved of gold,

beautiful, the wingspan. I don’t know

where it came from but the cold

turkey, which was bad for the brain,

in the end, so I had to take my pills,

but for a second, when dad was gone,

I knew the wingspan of angels in the fells.

I do not wish to sell the wings to you,

this is not a manufactured wing-shop,

and soon I knew the pain of losing Blue,

and knew that pain is what we should stop

but for a whole, white while I could fly

with my feet firmly planted on the ground,

knowing that all of us must one day die,

but believing in more, in broken ground.

VISUAL RADIO

I went from reading the Lesson from John

at the Carol Service in Eton College Chapel

to eating soup with the homeless in the soup kitchen,

and from top to bottom in fact I fell.

The poet extirpates every trace of recognition

from the myriad mind, unlooses the mind

of form, method acts every adjective in

‘Howl’ to attain visual radio broadcasting dreams.

Now to but the boring smell of water all

the visual radio has returned, and I have

Long Foot Disease, at the foot of the fell

writing except maybe without any love.

The father poets thought I’d only need

to go into Millom and get some pussy,

but things have been shit, we’re all agreed

and anyway maybe I would prove myself fussy.

EVERY GOOD BOY

All my rage in the cage for the minimum wage,

but I’m the one that gave the State the dot page…

actually I don’t work, but it’s true my book

was kept for Long Storage up in the attic...

that is, I helped invent the net at seven -

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, although I didn’t know,

it was I that wrote it, way back as a kid.

It took me to middle age before I knew what I did.

My dad was not allowed to release the proof

until the day he died, all under one roof.

BAT

Apparently, I was very beautiful when I was born,

but both my parents agreed I was a bat.

I was actually born with an erection

as if to say hey there, you, have that!

I screamed like a siren in emergency,

like many a baby had done before,

born on the 2nd April, the day

fighting broke out in the Falkland’s War.

The time of my birth was ten to eight,

a time which followed my father around

for ages before I was born, though it

has no meaning on her map of sound.

Now I eat Finnish chocolate in the dark;

but no, now I turn on the light;

the darkness holds the brightest spark;

and writing is my bat-like flight.

EIGHTEEN QUESTIONS

Why must I sleep through the day?

Because you stayed up through the night.

Why have I got nothing to say?

Because your mind isn’t right.

What of Barnes has scored a chicken?

It’s something to say but not true.

Is it time to knock the battery off the pollen?

That’s something for a child to do.

Can’t I think of something worth saying?

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

Should I not know before I start playing?

Maybe but there is no fixed law.

If I stop what exactly will happen?

You’ll get restless and start again.

Is it just then a nervous affliction?

Maybe all I need is a length of metal chain.

But what exactly does that mean?

It means whatever you make of it.

Do you think Flora was the undying One?

Maybe but you might have idealised it.

Does I. T. stand for Captain Marvel?

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

Should I let my myriad mind unravel?

It might be fine in your guarded habitat.

Is Lucy in the soul with demons an actual substance?

That is something I do not know.

And what of the clock unto State science?

It’s not something to outright say.

And what of the dotty clouds floating by?

The way they change is like incipient species in Darwin.

And what about my brother’s <BEE>?

You shouldn’t say but still get it in.

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

There’s always more to not say.

And what about when you’re too exhausted?

Then you must try and sleep through the day.

EFFICACIOUS

To get vision down from its rarefied shelf

and share it with others, spread it around,

has been my business, and to heal myself

for feeling as broken as the broken ground.

In the future we may travel by predictive text,

have psycho-sensitive laptops too,

and insufflate steamed Apple juice next,

and a hundred other things that might come true.

A self-driving car is an old-school companion,

an automated conveyor belt of poetry,

and the Doors computer game, and a Nirvana button,

but the world of sci-fi is secondary

to the human condition, and we should

live in the here and now and real and feeling,

sitting in the kitchen, long past the wood,

dealing with things under a white ceiling.