INSTANT TRAVEL

FREE-RANGE

A clock is only as fast as a cheetah; and

this could be something the very old 

learn from the very young. When I 

was but a child, top of the form, cross-

country champion, tallest in class, I 

could count an exact minute in my head. 

Such a coincidence only happened once,

and once was all that was asked of us.

The wide-games we played in the Lakes

were full of free-range running, moments 

hiding sheltered under bracken fronds,

moments of trembling, moments of breath

which you thought at the time you'd keep.

I remember eating a Mars Bar waiting, 

in Eskdale, under some big, green fronds...

it was my first school trip in the valley,

which has been a sacred place ever since.

We still walk up one side of the Esk,

over Doctors' Bridge and down the other.

If it is summer we swim in St. Catherine's

pool, jump off the flat ledge of rock. The 

water is always cold whatever time of year. -

In a poem at school I wrote the couplet:

"Hot July brings cooling showers,

straw berries and gilly flowers," and

always left dates. In that I wasn’t wrong,

but could not tell “what it was that was

making such a howling nose,” meaning

a round, brown ball of something smelly

I found on a raid of the chocolate cupboard

at seven, until I was something like twelve.

BOILING WATER 

The metal kettle rises to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning on Caliban's chain,

my one note on hyper-vision this dawn. 

The shapes of sadness now seem round like 

whole notes or holes in a map of sound.

I think of Verlaine doing time for a crime

with a gun, causing another pain; and suddenly

the kettle's ascension  - like a bird of prey

tied on a line of wire, up echelons of air 

to float in the quiet of a weightless dawn, 

a pivotal point - is done - the water is boiling -

its boiling point when it starts breakdancing

involuntarily to the tune, the heated moment. 

The steam is more a voluptuous blonde,

undressing in full of view, than a leonine roar.

INSTANT TRAVEL 

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too -

at least I think I once wished it might 

to redeem the numbness, the futile sense 

of the death of imagination through technology.

Otherwise put that latter syndrome may be 

the effect of global warming on the unicorn...

it soon succeeded the Summer of Love, 

became an eco-poetic, postmodern id.

I wished to plug my senses in the mains too.

To utilise !00% of my brains - only a typo,

but they might be dolphins in the sea.  

As for H20, maybe hypothalamus tattoo -

they say even water leaves an indelible stain.

The babbling beck flows down to the sea. 

I write my songs direct to the internet now.

LUCY IN THE SOUL WITH DEMONS

I for one no longer know if Lucy in 

the soul with demons even happens

to be an actual substance. It seems at once 

chemistry and musicology; and to apply 

Negative Capability to music like that

is one thing, but one doesn't wish 

for one's epiphany to not be one's own.

I remember seeking refuge in a tent, trying

to observe the stars through the ceiling. 

No, nothing, nada, nowt. The next day 

it was the eclipse of the sun, which 

was grey and got greyer. I wrote 

in our notebook Every Atom Ate 

Our Eyes, which Paul continued:

then horror-mouth closed in. Nobody 

needed the X-ray specs and we didn't

get any sex. We took more that Night 

to embrace the stranger, negotiate peace terms 

with the unruly unconscious, and lay 

under the stars, feeling strange. At 

the end of the road trip, I hitched home 

in the back of a raggedy sheepskin truck.

AURORA FLOREALIS 

If a flower-press ending on cannabis 

= a dialysis a love poem hoping 

to impress poor Flora = more a motor;

but moving from idealism to pragmatism,

I must forget her, abjure nursing 

the suffering of my ideals, temper 

these wild, impassion'd, New Romantic 

proclivities of temperament. Knowing 

the names of love, I know love to be

the hope the heart literally needs 

in order for it to survive, without 

which it can stop, meaning Duff 

which is H suspended in deafness -

but know nothing of her luscious lips -

her, the emerald princess gloating 

in her green, gorgeous oasis in the desert. 

*ketamineguitar*

IN THE KITCHEN 

If all the windows were washed - every one -

we may be able to see nothing, nothing 

but the white mirrors re-affirming 

the quiet interior of this solipsistic 

kitchen of fiction where I write, 

furtive in flight with the sprightly 

hypertext-sniper on Piper At The Gates 

of Dawn all night, until I nearly yawn,

still trying to make it true and quite, 

but recognising the paradigm has changed, 

and the blank amnesia of rebirth whom 

it would seem is the addled dream,

while the AGA smells of kerosene fumes 

so the doors must be shut to stop them

escaping into the house, while I too 

sleep in solitude, on page 71 of Jim 

Morrison's Collected Works for one, 

and in 'Portland, 1968' by Gluck, 

a story that begins in medias res. 

EVEN IF I DIE TOMORROW 

Even if I die tomorrow, the movie of my life

will be a block-busting adventure they 

will assume is a sublimation of the actual

and the apocryphal. I foresaw the ire ii net 

in 1989, conducted an experiment into 

the new colour, separated the pollen 

from its name. When my father sold 

his international art smuggling business

at the fall of the Berlin Wall - I became 

the witness. Now in madness I know 

it will be harder to be believed but 

it still happened, twice, twice. Soon,

I proved you could change the colour 

of white skin through mathematics,

went into music, attained the face of stars,

with two indie-loving lads from London.

In 2000 I prophesied the God Particle, 

spoke against September 11th to the day,

foresaw our 'white eyebrow,' set aside 

an ideal for a book to write which 

turned out to be published two years later 

by mine own University tutor, but not 

before I had scribed the highest-marked

A-level exam essay in the nation. Also 

I recorded an album through state-of-the-art,

binaural earphones, had an effervescent 

mobile reverberating the rhythm of 

'William Tell' through every technological 

inlet in the room before it rang from home,

not to mention a project on healing 

a tape of its pause where cut and re-

sealed in the reel, and half a mind that 

the witness' name should go on Piper. 

After a First Class Honours degree 

savaged by the onset of mental illness

half way through, our Plough alignment...

it seemed that soon after there was skywriting

at the Secret Garden Party. The pint glass 

exploding from thin air in the capital 

was a piece of pollen in the pollen count. 

I cooked the cassette when it was healed,

built The Tower and knocked it down,

worked at a numinous purple-bleeding 

screen for years and upon the loss of 

my father, well, first I falsified the Nirvana 

barcode as but a beat by Nirvana tapped

out, and then made the discovery of 

the sheet where pictures, pictures 

that seem to depict the lyric to one 

of my old songs, grew. However, the 

sheet not belonging to me but my brother 

Mr. James P D, I could not dictate that

the pictures definitely depict my lyric,

only surrender the sheet back to him. 

The agglomerated loss - not just my father 

but the ownership of the sheet where pictures 

grew - allowed me to attain visual radio,

broadcasting dreams, dreams that billow

like a weeping willow in the wind. For 

privation is the mother of imagery. 

In terms of the discovery we made, we 

agree the new force is The Force,

in the Star Wars sense; and that is me.

THE EMOTIONAL CONDOM OF THE WORLD 

Language is the emotional condom of the world;

and I remember warm evenings in summer,

when Paul and I had scored a bag of green

and would go for a smoke, excitable, New 

Beat, in love with each other's presence, 

when one or other of us would turn to the other 

and ask "wear an emotional condom 

before you fuck my mind, man" - and I forget

which way it went first time round but 

I think it was me that first time - evenings 

when nothing mattered especially, 

except that having of green, that having 

also of each other, our spiritual kinship, our 

holding what Paul would call Poetic Conferences - 

for he would call us "delicate angst-angels

perched on the dome of the world" -  

and both of us wasted poetry on the breeze

something chronic - and I could go on for hours -

here, direct to my blog on the internet -

about his delicate finger-picking style, about 

his poetry being so spare and conversational

without every becoming prosaic - about 

how warm he was as a character -

but I hear the echo of emotive music 

coming from my brother's room and wish to cry -

and the scowl of the downstairs toilet flushing -

and the shutting of a door, to the kitchen -

and the switching of a light switch -

and then another door being shut - 

and know that I have to move on -

that the last laugh we had was when 

I lived in the shed in the band's back garden.

THE NEWS CASTER 

The omnijective interface of random access 

co-imagination is the new, synchronised word

where I heard and hear many voices,

onjects, quavers, syllabubbles, sonic

machinations at the periphery of sound.

They sometimes resound around. 

Dr. Calculator Ptom who wished for 

a word-chord keyboard in my band 

would say if writing poesis makes you 

hear voices you shouldn't do it -

but that pathologises the music -

and I have nothing else to do -

except fulfil my deepest dream.

It was agreed I went on a diet. 

That I ate only my recommended 

five-a-day metaphysical notions. 

Here on this long eschewed blog,

where I write my poems direct to the net now,

there have been thousands of posts,

most of them taken down, but 

increasingly left up, semi-recursive

drafts of books, with increasingly less care 

for cohesion, as if to accrue a statue 

of excrement, rather than a data-tree; 

so I was thankful in the end for 

the suggestion to have only five -

though of course it has gone on -

despair in the hour before dawn dark 

lead to the breakthrough after the Night -

and today I didn't stop writing...

as I did, like I were the witness 

in some lightning bolt included 

in a God Simulation, not that 

I appreciate invention over relation, 

the new, synchronised word was heard. 

In the room people come and go

Smart-talking on magic alphabet radio.

We phone each other automatically now.

The notion of a tele-book is afloat. 

I find it intrusive sometimes, 

try and differentiate between their 

tones as to whether or not they are 

trustworthy, and know when something 

is not mine, like the notion that

weak, Wikileak tea is writing by them.

'Them' with a yellow M on the end. 

That signifies arena or multiplicity.

It started in earnest at Lancaster University

which I dreamed was some kind of 

word-guitar from Fender, whereupon

the ghost of Hendrix must've appeared 

and boggled the mind with runs.

So to de-stigmatise hearing voices 

like Rimbaud did homosexuality 

whilst he helped invent freeverse 

is something to do, but it's not free verse 

I am inventing, for I long since found

in the case of the uncanny imbrocation 

of my tutor's paper with my own

Millennial ideal for a book, that 

verse is never as free as you like it.

Ronald McDonald lived in a tunnel.

MEMORY LIKE A SIEVE 

Come to think of it, I was applying sweet dreams

straight to the net nearly twenty years ago, 

on the Anon Project website, where I might write 

about, say, how dad's art smuggling business 

was a cover up for a pollen smuggling business,

that art was recourse to euphemism for pollen.

Now again to see where it leads, sweet dreams 

are applied direct to the net again, like driving 

a stolen, Dream Factory car for whom punctuation 

is merely brakes, bird with the skin of snaking 

in the Lakes which might be time to get in 

that Nature is an art exhibition round these parts,

Nature the true architecture of State. To heal

is my protocol, my mandate, my efficacy. 

I feel connection is Heaven and Heaven 

connection and there is connection  between 

Heaven and vision for vision may feel in 

a state of Heaven and Heaven only exist

in vision, and that this is as true today 

as it was for William Blake, when he saw 

the sun as Holy, beatific, not a 2 pence piece,

or breakfasted with angels, that shine 

like the sum of all difference connected. 

FORMAL VISIONARY 

I was influenced as a witness by a woman

who was on telly in the other room.

She said she would just write about 

what she ate yesterday. Now as I eat 

kebab, I think how radical it is 

to write it all online instead of in a

laptop file, to not copy and paste in

things onto your blog. I think how 

the internet itself is like one of those 

"mushroom mags" from Modernism

which would bypass the publication industry 

for imposing a stifling uniformity 

of styles and compromising poetry's

purist, radical causes. Yes, suddenly 

the net, which sometimes seems 

so anarchic, is but a mushroom mag. 

Already the Conceptualists contend

the net is to words as photos were to art. 

Already the content I have to sound out 

has gone endless in reflection of the

infinite surface area of the online world. 

HELLO 

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

This is a caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave!

I mean wake uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

Is there anybody out there listening in?

I stopped by the bed in my bedroom. 

To rekindle the dream of yesteryear -

before my fall out with Paul and how 

lonesome it has made me feel in time.

I stopped. It was like God is not a cartoon.

It was like I had something to do, I mean.

When I was joining the dots and spotting 

the difference but not that Spot the dog

is a constellation. Now it's a life where i 

have to colour in the government's new 

application forms for £ove with a yellow 

crayon, I am deemed neo-Rimbaud.

Boo! Where do you expect me to go?

Maybe Heartbook has fled away with 

the Smartpoem. Certainly, across the 

board Portability is the apotheosis 

of Form. It's not impossible to write 

an anti-poem. Freedom not poetry 

is the bike riding itself. After garage 

and house comes library. Mutation 

in consciousness, truth too simple to 

understand, these are gesture without 

motion bones like sadness gene and dreaming

gland and the pollen has gone under 

Gondwanaland and the ecstasy pill 

under the green hill, and here I am still

trying to make it fit. To make one door 

lead to another. To make it scintillating,

brave, progressive, like that idea of my 

younger brother. It is slightly more 

complicated but to cut a long story 

short he reckons <BEE> might soon 

ensue from @ in the international 

language alphabet! That would be ample. 

THE BISHOP

do you want to have sex?

it's apocryphal until i press the 

PUBLISH button at the top

of the blog. yes there are 

some strange goings on 

on the online world. do? 

i'm starting to see that i 

might be good again. do you?

update saving changes 

saved. do you want?

same as last time. do 

you want to? we still 

deem that it's false as 

Walls ice-cream. do

you want to have? life 

could be a dull throb 

of loneliness in your chest.

do you want to have sex? 

FEAR THE DOORS CHANT ROOM

Fear the doors chant room in Bart Simpson's blackboard.

Note: on the Sea of Bliss, there are beer cans floating. 

Fear the doors chant room in Bart Simpson's blackboard.

It won't be a con until I dot com it but it might be alright. 

Fear the doors chant room in Bart Simpson's blackboard.

Next there'll be Neptune dreaming in a sea of green. 

Fear the doors chant room in Bart Simpson's blackboard.

We deem that you're being greedy now near Nottinghill.

Fear the doors chant room in Bart Simpson's blackboard. 

If you're saying the air is talking I'm saying dogs have changed.

THE MATHS FOR THE RED SKIN CELL

So here I am [ ] applying poetry direct to a blog.

I have an idea for something I might write.

It's called the maths for the red skin cell.

It started when at the age of seven I wrote

"I have a scar+ that is red and black,"

using a + sign for the F of scarf. 

Then when I got to the end of my 

red, English, exercise book I wrote 

on the front of it "2 John Tucker English E"

and in the same flowing equation wrote 

on the front of the next one I was to fill

"English John Tucker Harecroft 1."

Then it's like Einstein, like saying 

2 mc = E = mc something else 1. 

It was not long before I wrote in maths:

"Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?"

So I left it a case of merely adding up;

and don't forget that "when I was 4 

I was on holiday in Sweden," and 

crashed my new bike in the nettles;

and don't forget that "my brother is 

five years old." So I carried on adding;

and when I got to the age of 12

received an albeit only slight but definite

line or mark or seam or stripe or tear up 

the front of what the Irish might call

my forearm, proving the colour of white 

skin could be changed slightly through mathematics

which is the language of Nature. And 

here I am [ ], writing said 

mathematics directly onto a blog

where years ago I already posited 

a photo of the sheet where pictures grew. 

And I have to say even if it is a dead-end,

I find what I am doing to be very exciting. 

Of course my mathematics became abject 

through the use of cannabis. But 

there are at least some scientists who 

think I have become quite the beautiful mind.

DOWNTIME

here i am drinking a beer [ ].

it isn't Red Stripe. it is Fosters 

w/ a lime top. it is night.

i have cooked chicken Kievs

for James and i and we have 

eaten; i have taken out 

the re-cycling bins. if i were 

doing my degree all over again,

i would do this: write on the net.

find a quiet spot on a blog.

test the edge of life. to see 

if the crowd have drowned. 

THE TELEPATHIC WALKIE-TALKIE

which reminds me: i might 

falsify the Nirvana barcode tonight.

it looks like this: || | |||| | || | |||| -

and is but the beat of a Nirvana 

song tapped out. there is no 

such thing as the Nirvana 

barcode. but still if barcode 

is rain barcode is phone. so 

we might use this figment 

to build the Telepathic Walkie-Talkie.

to bypass technology in communicating 

is not new. i get phoned all the time.]

i phoned Paul before we even 

had phones, appeared to him 

in the guise of a deadly snake. 

some local farmers even report 

that i have phoned them and 

started to tell stories. like 

i would tell stories about tunnels

plunged inside the oldest fell

lined with free beer dispensers

and fruit machines, as a nipper.

that's right, i had a whole mythos. 

TEA

a reckless paper aeroplane comes across,

tells me i should "drink tea," so i 

drink some milk, stick the kettle on,

go next door and talk to mum, she's

making paper christmas trees. i 

leave the room, return to the kitchen,

think about power, about who is boss.

the kettle boils, i pour a cup, leave 

it to brew, receive a message on 

Facebook from my mate, which 

flashes up - i haven't read it yet. 

i put some artificial sweetener 

in my tea, sit down to write a bit. 

i read my friend's message and then 

it becomes time to drink my tea. 

i decide to also have my medication.

the pills i pop are poetry buttons

in motley conglomerations like 

pool balls or song cells and their 

names should never appear in poems.

i wash it down with tea. the tea 

itself is quite sweet, but artificially

sweetened as i am pre-diabetic 

from too much sugary tea before.

HYPERTEXT 

Mother is making paper Christmas trees

out of old books. "have you got any

old shit books you don't need?" she

asks. i go upstairs. she needs them big.

i find a book called Hypertext. The 

Convergence of Contemporary 

Critical Theory and Technology. 

by George P. Landow. i stole it 

from Lancaster University library

years ago but i haven't read it.

i think it is big enough for her tree.

i go and give it to her and she says 

"that's perfect John." in terms of the size. 

it also gives me the chance to write 

a poem about the loss of the book.

the conversion of a book on hypertext 

into a paper Christmas tree. once 

i thought i could write a poem 

that floated the word 'pi' over 

the real text like an astral body.

that would be hypertext. but i also 

in starting to hear voices while i 

was smoking a lot of pot concluded 

smoke had started speaking. because 

it was always in the air where 

i heard the voices. later i found out 

there was a PHD place available 

for writing about intersections 

of technology and art, writing 

that is also escape from extreme pain.

i thought i would be good at that 

and now here i am [         ] writing 

and the book on hypertext which 

i stole is being made a paper Christmas tree. 

ERASING THE DEBT

And now I shall do a new one about Blue.

Blue was my father's art smuggling nickname.

At least he told me he was a fine art smuggler,

that he smuggled art over the old Berlin Wall,

used codename Blue and faux Australian accent,

sold his business when the Berlin Wall fell.

He told me he was returning Germany's

stolen art to Germany, Russian-plundered

pastoral paintings, but i found out he was lying.

i found out that it was pollen he smuggled,

that he had a pollen farm high up in the Moroccan

mnts, shipped tonnes and tonnes of it to the States.

So i found out art was but recourse to euphemism

for pollen, which was what i had expected. 

I suspected it from a young age and it might 

have been the reason i did no work at school.

THE REASON I BECAME THE WITNESS

Having told you my father was a pollen

smuggler i am going to have say

that I take it all back if i am to

discuss the reason i became witness.

The reason i became the witness 

from The Lords And The New Creatures

was a combination of my father selling

his art smuggling business at the fall

of the Berlin Wall, and Jim Morrison

writing "a creature waits out the war,"

meaning the Cold War, in said book.

And some say it's as good as The Waste 

Land and some say the genius of 

the witness is elusive and some say 

to renew the dream, that most acute 

ambition of the 1960's counter-cultural

Revolution you need to renew the witness.

And some say nobody is interested 

in the new creatures, the future of A. I,

the possibility of other dimensions,

of Pullman-esque portals are more 

interesting. It wasn't until i read 

Ulysses that i knew the first had been 

seen in time preceding me - that weird 

bird in the wood - but the second 

seems new. It was a living spreadsheet:

a flat, plastic rectangle with a pattern

of black eggs splurged on top, taking 

its Taxonomy, "Grand-darth's Ship,"

from mine own seven year old poems. 

I did not leave it to soak in water,

but i cannot remember what i did with it.

i either left it in the jacket, picked

it out of the jacket and binned it, 

or threw the whole jacket away.

out of these options i find the last one

is the one that really rings bells and seems

most likely. for the thing was hideous.

THE GREAT ESCAPE 

i don't like repeating myself, copying myself.

but there i was writing a poem on my blog

when the power cut out. the battery went.

so i am going to have to kind of repeat myself.

i was talking about my first hospitalisation.

i had only gone to hospital for a real headwound.

the nurse put a bandage on and i went to 

touch it to see if it was paddy and it was gone.

the nurse had to apply a second bandage and

told the Crisis Team. i was made to sleep

in the psychiatric ward that night. the next

day i was outside the door and the nurse 

said "you are free to go or can come back in

for a cup of tea." naive, i only went back in

for a cup of tea and the door was bolted. 

i was even shipped up the coast to an acute

ward. i told them i was going to sue this Orwellian,

Fascist shithole, took notes in my notebook,

scored a question mark on the musical scales

in my writing. one day i managed to escape.

it was during my first escorted walk in the grounds.

i legged it form this bloke called Tucker,

over a field, and across a busy motorway.

i found my way to a trainline, and followed

the serpentine trainline all the way up to 

the station in Carlisle. from there i go on 

a train and made it to Scotland where 

i thought there would be a different jurisdiction.

i drank from a river, wrote the words

"secret chord H" in my notebook at that point,

and then ambling around i was found by 

the police. they took me back to the border,

from which i was taken back to the ward, 

where they ticked me off, made me surrender 

shoes, wallet, phone, but it was perceived 

as a sign of my sanity returning. my father

who had read Ulysses thought the story 

of my escaping was hilarious, and that 

i should write it down, but it's actually 

rather sad because now i would be forever 

in and out of hospital for the rest of my days. 

when i was allowed out, i returned to university 

to finish my course and got the highest first

in my year thus becoming a poster boy

for mental illness, a story of successful 

rehabilitation. they even asked me, the 

Early Intervention Team, if i fancied writing

an anti-drugs poem for a poster to go up

all around the town of Barrow-in-Furness,

but i didn't do it in the end. anyhow i have 

been on heavy neuroleptic, homeostatic,

soporific and mood-stabilising medication 

ever since the bandage vanished, ever since

the nurse had to put a second bandage on.

IN AN ABEYANCE

the music dies down, music from my brother's

room. i once said i believe in music in a

room with no door, as much as nakedness

under nearer, pastoral stars and i still do. 

in the abeyance between sounds, i thought

i would type in something about music.

music penetrates is-ness. music is 

the sacred pool. music renews sensation's

quest. music inflames temperament. music 

is solipsistic in listening in the sense 

that meaning in it is faces in the fire

or Hamlet's three creatures in a cloud-change.

i myself have been in at least five bands. 

there are two albums on the internet -

not that i wish my poetry to become an advert but

one of them is recorded through state-of-the-art

binaural earphones and is found under 

our rhythm guitarist Tom Woodhall's name

on Soundcloud. i was only young when 

i did that one. we were called The Flood

after a quote from Rimbaud, the first line

in Les illuminations and had a kind of 

grimy, math-rock, distortion is clarity,

light sabre fuzz feel to our sound. The

Flood were already my fourth band. First 

came The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob.

this was a family album exploring inflections

of Popperian epistemology, Miltonian 

theology and backward liquid maths. then 

came Oedipus Wrecks. We had a song with

the line "oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain." Already 

in 1998 we considered ourselves grime. 

my mnemonic for the strings was Even 

A Dick Gets Big Erections which i needed 

and which took only five seconds to conjure. 

Moving schools after some gigs in London

i started a third band: Secret Chord H.

we made it to the radio with a song called

'Dream With Open Eyes' but it ended 

badly when i was expelled for substances. 

so those were the first three; then came 

The Flood, recording through earphones, 

earphones i tell you, and often drug-induced 

instrumental jams in full de-tunings. i 

promised i would plug my senses in the mains

on the album, walked away to get a degree,

and after the degree started a new band.

We are called Black Hole Myths and

have an album online. meanwhile 

i have written more than a 100 songs

all with guitar parts and melodies. but 

dr. Robert who used to make glitch electronica

says not only is poetry a dead art form

but guitar music is of dad's generation, 

a thing of the past, so urges me to do 

something new. i rather feel i have done 

on many occasions - and now i am writing 

what i still consider to be poetry, on a blog.

i copy and paste my poems from a blog

into a file as opposed to the other way round.

it seems to be at least some kind of defamiliarisation

like when Kurt Cobain turned his guitar round.

HUMBLE 

I think NFT poems are naff. i think

they are snacks as opposed to meals.

i think i agree with my brother James

that NFT's are advertising masquerading

as art. i think i would prefer to see

The New Family Tao than an NFT.

i think poems should be rich and full.

i know people that think they are 

into poetry but only read Instagram 

poems - trite comments on relationships -

and i think if they were really into 

poetry they would go off and read 

Paradise Lost by John Milton -

i think they are more into their 

technology than poetry itself. 

i myself have practised for this -

i recently wrote as many sonnets

as Shakespeare, inventing the form

of the automatic sonnet, by applying 

Kerouac's ideal of writing off the top

of his head to the traditional sonnet form.

as i write i am waiting for the book 

to be self-published on Amazon 

where i already have a chain of books

that seem like an eye sliding across

genres and discipline boundaries, 

incorporating visual art, science, 

music, sound-bytes, poetry and 

criticism in their heterogeneous series.

one thing i am yet to publish is

some philosophy. what i seem to do

is re-tell the same old story in 

a different form, a different medium,

every time. it still doesn't feel 

like i have started, even though

there are those that think what

i have already done is seminal. 

and that repetition is why i lose.

but loss is not a bad thing. and 

at least i don't try and make it cohere

but leave the magnum opus long, 

recognising it is like it is for a reason,

that it is a living work of art. it

would be good if one day i could start.

THE NINERO RATIO

When it comes to the healing of the tape

with the small pause in the song where

it was cut and re-sealed in the reel,

the formula was illegal, and i am going

to be plain about it. it was, simply put, 

another, another, another fucking joint -

to smoke ourselves senseless and wait.

the double entendre of joint and joint.

and when the healing worked i had

a dream-meet connector, a strange

attractor, an objet d'art, an utilitarian 

Martianist masterpiece. and i kept it

under my pillow while i dreamed not only

of having sex with Rachel on a roller-

coasTer under charged, bruised, empurpled

thunderstorm clouds but later of having

sex with Flora whilst reading liquid

computers to whom you seemed to be able

to save all that oneiric-textured, liminal

dreamwriting but who upon waking,

no seaweed in the hair, eyes stinging,

seemed to have crashed, crash being 

a verb with almost too many souls. 

so one night i was lying there, listening 

to the wind enwheel through the dark

garden trees, feeling a kind of alchemical

base metal feeling in the soul, thinking

about the formula for mud from primary 

school as in just water and soil - and i 

decided i wished then and there to put

the object in the dark blue AGA, top

oven, hottest one. and to write while

it was in there, like attaining some 

scree-runner death, Syd Barrett totalisme. 

but all that was forthcoming was a quote

from a letter Neil Curry sent to me. 

he said "nothing can be said for certain 

about poetry except Pound's claim

that the poet chooses where to end his

lines, selecting a tiny pause instead 

of letting the type writer run on." so 

i wrote it down, even though Orwell 

says to never write anything that has 

already been written. meanwhile, a nacreous

plastic stench filled the kitchen. i took

the tape out of the oven and thought 

it had by now become a valid work 

of art. i still kept it under my pillow

as i tried in dreamwork to smuggle

language out of the unconscious, and 

that night dreamed something about

something called the Ninero Ratio. 

i do not know what the Ninero Ratio is

but i feel this is an interesting discussion.

later i photographed the cassette tape

and put it online, so it has almost been

through every process going, every

genre, or discipline boundary. and i 

g-a-v-e the object away to a gf like

it were but the empty carcass of a metaphysical

idea. and i think it is about transcendence.

and i think my gf when our time was up

threw the evidence of the miracle away.

so i think all that is left is a photograph.

and a poem. a poem written direct 

to a blog. whom it seems very few

know about or read. and where

the photograph is also stored online. 

NOT THE PUNK KOANS

I've got some absolutely beautiful Punk Koans

but i think they could get me in trouble,

could get me sued. i also think they did.

now i have something new to offer:

automatic writing in the New Beat sense

live online. that is my discovery. 

is it enough? will it get published

in book form after it is already 

written live online? who knows?

who cares? i think it would be 

sweet, sweet as the artificially #

sweetened tea which i drink 

if the witness could be published

through normal means, and become

canonical. i think it would make sense. 

it isn't me that's the weirdo. it wasn't

anything i did or didn't do that

allowed it to happen. and maybe 

yeah you do have to see them

to believe them as i have and do.

maybe it is where life went wrong -

where there was no conversation 

after the most acute ambition 

of the 1960's counter-cultural 

Revolution was realised. i don't know.

i was just a kid. i remember it got to 

this one Valentine's Day and i 

had this gut feeling something was wrong -

i didn't know it was Valentine's Day -

and when i did find out i was in a grump.

"Why didn't you tell me?" i complained

to mum and dad. they said it wasn't

too late to make Lindsey Anfield

a home-made Valentine's card

and take it round to hers so we did

and i was happy with that even though

it wasn't what was wrong. there was something

else that Valentine's Day, that was

wrong, something undefinable. 

something i am yet to put my finger on.

whether it was the fact i was the witness,

or whether it was the fact that there was no

conversation about it, i still cannot tell.

there was some kind of gross negligence

going on, and there still is. when 

i was approaching forty and finally 

told my siblings, they developed

a strategy in my illness meaning 

if i brought the topic up they would all

stand up and leave the room. it

took them a long time to believe me.

now they know i was the witness

they fucking hate my guts. as if 

it were down to something i did or didn't do.

NOT ONLINE

Now I am back on my laptop file where I have been

storing the online writing – is there a difference?

Does it feel flat being on the laptop where

only a moment ago there was capacious depth,

excitement? The kettle is boiling again although

this time it is not me but my brother. It is

rude to write of the living. All writing is fiction.

A writer has a right to a name otherwise

an exclusion of the individual machine can

close ranks against you. Literature either has

moral compass or sheer cleverness alone.

A standard of truthfulness should come before

the need to sell a story. “Why not?” is not a good

reason for writing a poem. You’re supposed to get

the ball over the other’s guy’s head. A poet is a

translator of feelings and the feelings you get

on illegal drugs are all fake. So saith my old man.

He would’ve deemed the Punk Koans too crude.

I deem them too crude but it’s nice to have

something to hold on to. Some tercet or haiku.

Some verse of a song or whatever it is. Something -

and with that I take them out of the book again.

And when I say ‘book’ you can see my pre-

programming in the act of writing is still towards

the ideal of having a book. There are adults,

adults alive who weren’t even born when

September 11^th happened which shows how old

I am getting – forty – and maybe they no longer

write towards the inherent ideal of the book.