YES YOU MAY (NEW VERSION)

VISION

“Look Fufie I can fee feep.”

‘Garden’ is the password to my imaginary world.

There is a catflap on the radio there. Sunlight forms a golden pool on the closed eyelids of the fool as he lays out on the garden’s lawn. When he opens his eyes he sees cloud-forms floating by outside but the rest of this no, not-so-special-perception is gone.

Something about being a Starvationist.

Something about Autumn as Optimus Prime.

Still there is no such thing as Time.

Autumn is a time when wasps leave fag-burns in the apples, apples with toe-nails embedded in their cores, and the air has a plaintive, melancholic, wistful, elegiac note and tone… it’s when the leaves start to fall down.

Down in London we only had a postage stamp garden. I used to sit out there with my brother and observe ants on the blades of grass. I would ask myself if I too were but an ant unto some higher God.

I remember having a love of hammers.

It reminds me that my dad might call his poem ‘The Grit of The Angels,’ underline it with WD40, tap a nail in with a hammer and watch it spread its wings.

AWAY WITH THE FAIRY LIQUID

As if even Natural things are given over once again to a Barthesian world of product placement, it might be instructive to consider the healing of my busted, dusty Hooverbag lungs… once I was away with the Fairy Liquid. I became interested in the switch thrown. There were new maps sprawled on the point of a pin. I hungered after The Snowbell Prize. My brief fling with the politics of flight kept me up all through the Ancient Night. Another high-powered dawn was born but what was the WATTAGE? Well, I felt a leaf, I fell out of life, probably no-one else knew, but then there may be some. I wallowed in my lazy swamp, languishing, lizarding, long. Interstellar Artois was the effect of fat, planetary raindrops beating down on sad, Lucozade lights, lying lambent on the paving stones. DogMuckels was not what it seemed. Quantity Streets were typical of consumer culture. By now, the National Hypochondriac Service have sorted me out. My mood is made stable on a sterilised table. Fakeazade does not come free from the kitchen Tap as yet, but we are working on it. Erase the Dettol. There’s no such thing as cinnamon, but then again that is not strictly true. Well-weird this ward: words woke it: walls broke it: Weirds walk it: or they should, break it open to the light of day, straight away. There’s little to do except listen to the snap, crackle and pop of the cereal, cereal in the morning after a dark night of the soul in winter.

A HAPPY KNACK WITH THINGS OF DIRT

I had a happy knack with

musical concepts back in my youth -

one was to do with Nirvana…

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

Another was when I came into possession

of a Pearl Jam tape that was cut in the reel.

After a delicate operation

to reseal the reel it had

a small pause in the music,

so the ideal was to do away

with the small pause, by chanting

“another, another, another fucking joint.”

My mnemonic for the strings became

Even A Dick Gets Big Erections.

I recorded a little album on binaural earphones,

said on the record I would

“plug my senses in the mains.”

I wrote a paper about whether or not

Lucy in the soul w/ demons

happens to be an actual substance

but it got lost, maybe in the void!

My first mobile started to reverberate

the rhythm of ‘William Tell’

through every technological inlet in the room

before it rang from home.

There was a call to tattoo

someone’s name on

Piper At The Gates of Dawn,

and finally the one that takes the biscuit

is when I discovered my brother’s

sheet where pictures grew.

The pictures it would seem

do depict the lyric to

a song I wrote back when

I was trying to be Kurt Cobain -

but still it wasn’t mine

because I didn’t lay it down.

That pretty much sums up

what I was doing with my musical youth -

and now here I sit ( ) striving

not for effect but still

struggling to just talk.

After garage and house comes library.

Voices could be quavers,

could be onjects,

could be syllabubbles,

could be sonic machinations

at the periphery of sound

and most importantly

the colours of the vowels.

They ask you to increase

your threshold of

Negative Capability.

Meanwhile there’s something I think I know

and shouldn’t impart

but it’s because

I have a heart;

and writing a letter Dear Music

could be instructive in mental health

in the future; and putting

Paradise Lost to music

shouldn’t be done

unless it’s going to be amazing,

so it’s an aesthetic

not moral question.

I also remember, when

Aphex Twin’s new double album

came out around the Millennium,

it was comparable to Stravinsky’s

The Rite of Spring.

I failed to make it an essay,

while my brother-poet Dedalus

was writing of how Autechre

is the heir to Wagner.

I look back and consider

the road of rock n roll cliché

as leading only to sadness.

It is a wanker’d planetarium of ego -

but then all of a sudden

and just like that

only songs can survive

the shipwreck of the soul -

because songs are Portable.

ENJOY YOUR FOOD

M & S Food, says the empty carrier bag

discarded on the bedroom floor -

does that mean Karl Marx

or Howard Marks?

Either way I no longer puff

the evil weed anymore

which back in the day

some Londoners labelled “food”

as if all the labels

in the cupboard swapped round...

and do the giggling stars

themselves not swap places

when no-one is looking?

O glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling!

How nutritious you can seem!

A shimmer, a glimmer,

a salesman’s pitch!

Speaking of which,

it is pitch black outside.

No stars illuminate the garden.

The dark garden was once alive with eyes!

In here, wilted daffodils

that once signified peace,

love and happiness

in the very texture

of their yellow petals

now should be thrown out,

stoop down, instead of pout…

it must be sad to have to

stoop in funeral robes.

I look about me at other things

between myself and the walls -

a calender, a cork Notice Board,

a wall-chart listing the names

of the plants of the redolent meadows…

there is a dead telly wearing

mother’s black, funeral hat,

and a work of art made of wood!

There is more, adorning

the room but all of it is indomitable.

Anyhow I was talking of food,

in the traditional sense;

and there is little of it

but Baked Beans on toast is good.

It shows consumer culture

even stretches this deep into the sticks,

where finding sticks for the fire

is a prominent concern…

here at this monastic retreat

I would rather feel cold

than not have enough to eat -

but others are the other way round.

Earlier I had the crumbling cheese.

Before that a bacon butty for breakfast.

Now I am quenched and sated,

but like a fast car, made

to best drive above the limit,

the lusty engine drives me on.

I think it is water I should cherish -

that I should carry and sip a pint.

Already compress sans sugar,

I like to be, but find I can’t.

Even the Baked Beans have sugar in them.

Still, under the surfaces

hides the diary of a saint.

BACK AGAIN

Back again – at the honeytrap

of the flat, anti-Romantic laptop screen -

venting my spleen – but

to what purpose may I ask?

Is anything from this age going to last?

Is it all “use just once and then discard?”

I’ve been eating Take away pizza,

(vegetarian hot), bought

from the local Take-away joint in town.

I’ve been drinking Diet Coke.

At 42 the best would be done;

for peak time is over by now;

but maybe there is yet room

to incorporate the number 3484?

As if to arraign and inveigh against

the way even breath is costed

in totalitarian capitalism?

Sirens are calling from the rocks.

It’s time for my evening medication.

Any glance at the clock

around this time is a reminder

like the whole business

of writing is a machine

for remembering to take my meds.

The pills are not sweeties though,

in a sugar-coated world.

They are for srs difficulties -

to placate and suppress more

than address things in talking therapy -

for the paradigm of psychoanalysis

has been replaced by neuroscience

where all illness is seen as

chemical imbalances in the brain

which some think is rather crude.

So I ingurgitate my chemical food.

Now it is later. My brother has been down

for some cereal, cereal in the night.

He polished off the Shreddies,

but left some Weetabix.

It is I that was the seer

associated with the oldest fell, but

by now meds weigh heavily down on my soul.

Nothing by means of vision

nor wild hallucination either

has passed by these senses for a while.

I mean if I detailed a list of every access

of wonder, every inscape

of wings, every visionary

proclivity, every piece of

pollen in the pollen count,

it would take ages…

instead I start to think about a rose

poking its redolent nose

and its redolent pose

through stolid concrete…

micro millimetres of birth-push

will bring it standing

before an audience of waves

even though it is only an image.

Clap for the rose,

O audience of waves,

for it could dissimulate

the mating queen

from the green

pages in the flesh...

and we could do well

to pursue her fume

into a moon-glow chamber!

TEAR-JERKING SENTIMENTAL ENDING SCENE

The friends I’ve made

I’d like to keep

and brush their hair when

we get to sleep

I think this illness

is a monster

chill with the stillness

and love yr brother

the severed notebook

went on for ages

with no connection

in all its severed pages

I hate these voices

these infernal voices

I made my choices

they were not James Joyce’s

now I want to stay free

I want to stay me

I stay calm

in all uncertainty

and I want to stay cool

and not be the fool

who was the Smartest

kid in school

O crossroads of

all inward spiral

I hope your smile

does not go viral

the severed notebook

itches with skunkosis

in my back pocket

pre-diagnosis

and I now look back on

youth that’s flown

over the houses

into the unknown

today it’s snowing

there is no knowing

if the creative

juices are flowing

and I want to stay free

and I want to stay me

and I want to stay calm

in all uncertainty

yes I want to stay clear

as a morning beer

now that you know

I’m the ancient seer

and I live for you

GUTTERBY

Nowhere in my knowledge is it any more evident

that Nature is a great art exhibition

than down on Gutterby Beach

where I walked with my love…

there is no map to follow,

from Alex Garland’s famous novel,

for a curved A to B trajectory

will take you down to Silecroft -

but you can follow the procession of natural

monuments of rock as you go:

the first is Dark Fortress Rock,

barnacle-clad and casting a shadow -

for we liked to re-name things

as we wandered in animistic trance,

and booted the bruised football,

and noted the usual, single washed up shoe,

the pebbles gleaming but dull,

the gulls circling overhead,

the driftwood smoothed by hands

of mermaids under the waves,

the way the waves make

gentle love to the shore…

and what scent to the air as well!

The other rocks I cannot recall

the names of, but they were not fixed

and formal, merely impromptu appellations.

If you are lost and need directions,

following the rocks is in order

but I’m sure you’ll know how to navigate

the ragged beauty of the beach.

WALL IS SHIT

“Wall is shit,” as she said in a dream.

Or rather when I woke, feeling

befuddled. I soon found my way

downstairs and drank a cup and

took my morning meds and got back

to the wall. She’s right, it’s shit.

I’ve got wall-cancer or had it.

Rearranging regrets in permutations,

like bricks, won’t help anything.

MY DIAGRAM DIAGRAM

The sheet where pictures brown and blue

simply bloomed or maybe grew

was not the work of Winnie the Pooh…

I discovered it when my father passed.

Down in the smoking den in the barn,

smoke made ancient ghost-faces in the dark.

The pictures themselves seem to depict

the lyric to a song I wrote, way back

in a teenage band called Oedipus Wrecks

but the sheet is not my sheet. I concede

it is my younger brother’s, for he

is the one that laid it down. <BEE>

might well soon ensue from @

in the international language alphabet

according to him and his cutting wit.

The rest for me is but mere consolation

prizes for God’s unwanted children

whom it seems are still glad to be born.

ENTRANCE

I got a First from Lancaster University in a time of difficulty created by mental illness. Last time I wrote one of these was nearly twenty years ago and I was at the time reading Proust waft into elaborate sub-clauses and privileging the language at first hand, whatever that meant in its New Beat fashion. Because it’s a tried and trusted measure I can report that by now I am reading Wittgenstein. What a philosopher! In Wittgenstein I believe I have found ‘my philosopher.’ He says a lot of pain is caused by misunderstanding the logic of language, and hopes to remediate it with a process of elucidation. I myself believe love is grouped with language not God, and so we should tend to our language-use. This is why I wish to further pursue literature on a course.

THANK YOU JARVIS

Thank you Jarvis Cocker

for the best first LSD trip

anyone could ask for.

It was taken with a prayer

at my first Glastonbury,

when Dylan was on

at smouldering sunset

and we squelched in

the good, glad mud, wearing

bin liners over our boots

and huddled together

for a heartbeat-to-heartbeat

then you guys came on stage

at Nightfall just as we came up

and it was electric, the

way you kicked in

with The Fear, the

lights, the music…

it all left you feeling

Glastonbury should be free.

Those were happy days,

writing 12 poems for Natalie

on the roof of the house

where the Plough aligns,

playing gigs in Oedipus

Wrecks, in London pubs,

not to mention

the essay in detention

about a green parrot sent

to space through the conch.

The leather jackets used to

hang round Camden Town

and once we came up

north on holiday and

attained the island of penguins!

Already love was grouped

with language not God,

already love was

a choice of words.

And where are we now?

And what happened when

we were supposed to

meet up in the year 2000?

People can change

beyond recognition fast -

a bad trip, a school too far -

then old friends are discarded -

and forever lamented too.

THE BEST ONE I’VE DONE SINCE I WAS A STUDENT

Your pretext extends beyond

emptying space of the human form.

I note how philosophy and poesis

differ on the notion of the system:

in the former we hear of the triumph

of so and so’s system, but

in the latter systems are not

to be trusted for they rule

with fear not with love.

Whenever I think I’m through

with all things loving you

my mother comes in the kitchen

and starts chopping vegetables.

As if for humour, gravity and katabasis

she makes me put asparagus

in a pint glass with water

at the bottom like flowers.

Then I might insufflate

the vapid fume of my Vape;

and then I might recognise

I left out the crisp packet.

So to love’s infinite, polyform permutations

I turn but have to turn away

where you love me not,

and all I haven’t got, and so

no longer do I cling to the dream.

I hereby temper the wild,

Romantic, impassion’d

proclivities of my temperament,

learn the falsehood of my opinions

and journey from idealism to pragmatism.

I hereby abjure nursing

the suffering of my ideals

if only to free you in spirit

which seems a gentlemanly thing to do.

A thesis as thin as the Rizla it’s in,

light it and write it, burn and unlearn,

can lead all the way to the loony bin,

make you forget how to spell

Winnie the Pooh. Or how

old you happen to be.

It was an endless sea.

I was knocked back

at a remove from

my own consciousness.

I was unable to see

the international language alphabet

because all I could see was

the international language alphabet.

It seems like hiding

from The Waste Land

inside The Waste Land…

and what a refreshing change it makes

to not be manufacturing fakes

in the land of flying fairy cakes.

YOU WERE COMING HOME

I was walking through the clouds,

with a song against my ear,

and when I made it through the crowds,

there was reason enough to cheer,

‘cause you were coming home,

yeah you were coming home,

and I just want say “hey! Go with the flo’!”

for you are such a beautiful one,

as beautiful as the English sun,

which so often tries to hide,

and we love you deep inside.

You’re coming with your mum and dad,

protected by a red guitar,

and though you’re uncle has gone mad,

you’re still going to be a star,

‘cause you are coming home,

yeah you are coming home,

and I just want to say “hey! Go with the flo’!”

for you are such a beautiful one,

as beautiful as the English sun,

which so often tries to hide,

and we love you deep inside.

SONG FOR LITTLE BABY FLORENCE

It’s funny writing for you before we have met

but I’m the uncle that taught your mum the alphabet

now she types much faster than I ever could do

and she’s gifted the world with a beauty like you

it’s a celebration just to have you around

it’s a time for listening to The Velvet Underground

it’s a time for breaking into spontaneous song

welcome to the family which is where you belong

soon you’ll be walking and will make them proud

like I was once walking up on a cloud

and you’ll know the meaning of the verb to love

like I know it too with my excellent bruv

it’s a day of happiness to first have you here

it’s a day for cheering and for drinking beer

it’s a day for playing with the toys on the floor

and for going with the flow as before

THE GRASS

I’m trying to find out the reason.

So far it might be because

I come from a house that

was once full of bats.

Could it be that what was done

to me wasn’t evil?

I remember when they told me

they needed to do it

to start the fire-dance

as I remember when they said

they did it because they knew

after what I had been through

I would still be the genius.

Now they’re saying

they did it because

to look at I’m so ugly

even my mum is looking

for a way to put a noose round my neck.

Now they’re blaming the fact

that I wasn’t very good at music.

Could it be their next visit?

When I get to find out why?

They say they’re not telling

me because if I found out why

I would have no reason to hope.

I did once admit to buying an eighth

off someone, and in tears

to the headmaster of a large

British public school

and the governors too

as they all sat round

in a grave circle

when I was but new.

Is that it? Is that the reason?

I do still want to know.

Now they say “we d’d it

because you didn’t

know you were famous.”

It all seems a bit hateful,

to do that to a young man,

still as yet to finish his degree.

Maybe they did it because

I put it on and took it off too quickly.

VORTEX

A tear-jerking violin

in a rainy rugby match

wants to be Arthur Rimbaud

but cannot make the transaction

for all that it dreams

that the heartbeats are stars.

Cigarettes hold it back

from running too freely

as you may well know

and even homemade LSD

that makes movement leave traces

like the pollution of cars.

Its sunset comes in upturned jars.

It has been with the ocean.

It has been with the shapeshifter.

It has been with Nintendo.

And it knows that science

would soon have little to counter,

and it knows that imagination

doesn’t make it unreal,

and it knows of the vortex

where its song resonates.

It knows.

HURRAY

After Flora comes gay

in the international language alphabet.

After acid comes Bic

and acid is a bet with the mind,

the marriage of Alice and Pan,

a spirit-level for the spirit -

but after Flora comes gay.

It might be why I am so bored,

sitting here typing away

at the foot of the oldest fell,

skint, single, mentally ill,

medicated, car-less, unemployed, living

with my mother still in the sticks,

no neighbourhood, no amenities,

a pretty place nevertheless.

There doesn’t seem a place for me

in the overall Social Order,

except sitting in the kitchen, venting

my spleen at a laptop screen, supping

drinks like I were a chinwagging

tea-hag of Time like my dad.

My best work was all

about the 25th of May,

which is my sister’s birthday.

I contemplate the four collections

I still have out with Chipmunka

and am not too displeased,

though when they say

I should redo the now-retracted

Rose Petals In The Ashtray

I know it’s now too late.

I took an O. D. the likes of which

it was genius to survive

but coming back down

from the chemical equation of it all

I lost the ability to ejaculate.

Now the local lasses say

if I’ve not got the juice for them

then I am gay, and so

I think I am, but it might be

that I am cut off from the verb,

the doing word, that is love.

I have had a gay experience

or two before, but walked away,

wishing I were with a woman.

NOTE ON OEDIPUS WRECKS

My friend Dr. Calculator Ptom named the teenage rock band upon hearing my songs. He used to say gnomic things like “the universe is a projection of the mind.” “The G note is green on the guitar fretboard.” “Born Slippy is evidence dance can have a soul.” “Poetry is untranslatable because of the music.” “Death is God.” “Early Oasis is good for bittersweet, comedown energy.” We boarded a train not knowing where it was headed in the middle of the Night in London. By now he is Dr. Calculator Thomas and the song is ‘Born Slippery.’

THE OEDIPUS WRECKS GIG, CAMDEN TOWN, CIRCA 1998

I

SECRETS IN THE MUD

This is the sound of getting totally fucked.

Of when you first get your notebook sucked.

Of changing gold into Glastonbury mud.

Of lying down in a field with your bud.

This is the music through whom we aspire.

This is the rule book that is thrown on the fire.

This is the jam where the trousers are down.

This is the wine-shop on the edge of town.

Chorus: Glastonbury, you should be free, and all you have in your big city,

you hit my G, you make me see how I want to see,

lights go down, lights come on,

and all my sadness seems to be gone,

although I still love to be what I dream I am.

[guitar solo]

II

OCEANS SMILE

Oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain.

The tide goes out and leaves me

lost, the last thing a glass gene.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Death will come on silky wings

but I for one will not go.  

A soul is endless, oceans open

and keeeeeeeps a perfect O.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Go drink the ocean with your tea

cup, give your heart far out.

If oceans smile with liquid eyes

then they'll give you a shout.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Too drunkenly I sail the water

on Rimbaud’s smoking boat.

With whiskygills primed in fire

I sail the waves to Boot.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

(reconstructed via the new, synchronised word)

III

KILL

My eyes sting,

my teeth are bleeding raw,

too much thought

to make me sick.

Stinky clothes

and mouth become

my skin and all

these fruits I want to kill.

Give my hope,

surrender to the tide,

you can take

my remains;

but I must go,

to wash the poison

from my eyes,

before, before, before I kill.

IV

SNAKE SNAKE BUTTERFLY

Snake snake butterfly, lay me dead & close my eyes.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

Give me your alibi; give me chains to stop me fly;

give me night to soothe my blinded eyes:

so I can see the secrets of the skies.

We must rise, freedom falling from our eyes,

unlock doors, it's a perfect time to die,

and it's okay ‘cause baby we'll go insane

but don't reach out too far for the flame.

Snake snake butterfly, lead me to the Other Side.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

V

VITAL SIGNS

Smile like a smile just to smile,

cast to Heaven for a while...

let's rip holes in the boat,

throw the captain overboard,

throw the angels off the bridge,

death comes and stops me getting

bored of life's soul-machine.

What we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs.

Back to Hell to plunder wings,

let the ritual now begin,

come and ride the waiting beast,

ride it gone into the fire,

ride it to the waiting feast,

my baby's waiting to get higher,

to get higher, to get higher...

what we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs,

yeah feel alive with vital signs.

Come again there's much to do,

don't you know that I love you?

VI

HEAVEN KNOWS

Heaven knows and walks away -

but what it knows it will not say.

It’s impossible to make a cowboy film in space?

Heaven knows and turns its face!

Heaven’s filled with silver eyes.

Heaven’s hills all harmonise.

I hear its angels when they call...

Heaven knows and lets them fall!

[reconstructed]

VII

MURDER IS DEAD

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me yeah,

I wish that I had been there,

been there to saaaaaave Jesus,

I'm sure he meant to please us.

Murder is dead,

murder is dead,

murder is dead.

We're young and filled with semen,

we're going to break some hymen,

we'll make the cops turn in their badges,

we're going over all the edges yeah.

Murder is dead,

murder is dead,

murder is dead.

VIII

THE GHOSTS LAMENT (THE GUZZLER MEN)

I'm the only one left, left to shoot my

own gun. This is the dead land. Crack a smile

and curse the sun. Death awaits to fuck me.

Give me bliss and give me kisses. Death a-

waits to save me. The ghosts lament, the ghosts

lament. Come on baaaaaaaaaby, you know it's e-

asy, don't say maaaaaaaaaybe, let's go crazy. Death

awaits to fuck me. Give me bliss and give

me kisses. Death awaits the same me. The

ghosts lament, the ghosts lament, no more ghosts.

||||.

[Note: when years later I discovered the James P D Tucker sheet where pictures grew, and the pictures seemed to depict the lyric to one of my old songs, this is the song.]

WHERE IS THE NET?

O where is the net?

Is it in the trees

and in the breeze?

At seven I wrote a text, encrypting

a sophisticated node to do with Gravity, storing

the idea of the net in writing

in the attic to give it a chance to grow

all the way round the world, also conducting

an experiment into the maths

of the new colour as a cellular mark, and separating

the object “pollen” from its name.

This was before the world wide web;

and the cloud is mentioned

before the net in the book!

The net already existed

in the American military,

but the net is ancient…

it appears in Lowell, as it

appears in James Joyce as a prophecy.

I even heard Shakespeare

had a son called Hamnet.

Yes I would say it is blowing in the breeze,

but also exists as a stack in California.

That’s where they eat acid-tabs

and come out with microchips.

NOTES ON HYPER-VISION IN THE YEAR 2000

I

MILLENNIAL INVENTIONS

A virtual death machine to wake you up. A word-chord synthesiser at the edge of selection. A drug called “Strictly Free” that does what it says on the tin, is and makes you strictly free to consume. A red-bleeding type-writer inside a ping-pong ball. An holographic horse-cock wheeled in the bedroom. An invisible square of air called ‘Mosaic by Darth Vader’ stroked on telly. A neutraliser drink that sobers you up in one quick instant. The monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey protruding from the oldest fell at ten to eight. Earphones implanted with tiny mics inside them so that you can record on them. A love-bomb that explodes in a Chaos Theatre. What’s wrong with these is that they are not real!

II

MILLENNIAL PROPHECIES

I look into that dust in that late sunbeam angling in and foresee that they will one day hunt for something called the God Particle that will prove God non-extrinsic to matter.

It would be good to see an alignment of the Plough and the landscape for a first black President of America.

I think if Fight Club were real someone would fly two planes into the Twin Towers on September 11^th and I don’t that a good idea but it might happen.

I would like to write a book, maybe a Trilogy, called The Scientific Papers, classed as a series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science as a single discussion of perception.

It would be good if there were a party in an office block where all the internal walls are removed and where every floor represents a decade in music, fashion and substances.

I myself would like to record an album on earphones, like Rimbaud might if he were a musician.

I would say that smells from tellies would also be possible one day too.

I think what we might see is an Age called the Age of Enchantment that is an echo of the Enlightenment.

I do wonder if there will be another immaculate conception now that we have a new Millennium.

III

AMBITIONS

To replace the archaic word for ‘gay’ would be amazeballs because ‘gay’ used to be Man’s highest emotion and was never replaced.

To discover an aesthetic anti-system like the colours of the vowels in English would also be great, even though Rimbaud deemed it folly.

To conduct an experiment into the international language alphabet would also be an artistic ambition.

To overthrow the conscious self-censor would be good, maybe create a superhuman narrator called FUCK who can tell the truth like no-one else.

To start a new religion is what I am getting at because I think the Millennium means what is old is expended and we need to renew our values; and already Jedi is an official religion on the census forms in London.

To start a new language entirely would also be a positive thing, if at all possible, in my opinion.

I would like to start the tradition of the post-poem.

I would also see gypsy poetry in the English centre because it would shake things up and I think it could be interesting to see if they have anything new to offer.

If I were a concept artist I’d build a room made of hash that the audience can blow-torch but as I am not, just a writer, I can’t do that; and I would only endorse real live death in the cinema if an old granny volunteered for euthanasia and that’s because I do have some moral compass.

To make a new discovery as big as fire is the long and short of it, for every generation might have that chance again, to usurp the burning torch of culture from the old.

To bring back the Summer of Love is the largest and widest goal.

To bring about simultaneous orgasm of Man.

IV

DIRTY WORK

“You know how dad told us all

he was an art smuggler nicknamed Blue?

That he smuggled art over the Berlin Wall?

That he sold his business when

the Berlin Wall fell? Well,

I think it might’ve been code,

might’ve been recourse to euphemism.

I think he was a pollen smuggler.

I think he had a pollen farm

way up high in the Moroccan

mountains and shipped tonnes

and tonnes of pollen to the States.

This whole art dealer nicknamed

Blue thing is just to protect us.

At least this is what I entertain.

I also think he named us after

The Doors, John, James, and Robert

and then they had a girl of course.

Have you noticed we are born

in a season each, going Spring,

Autumn, Winter, Summer, and

march right left right left in the hands?

There are also four compass

points, four seasons, four wheels

of a car and four dimensions

to the mapping of any point in

the spacetime continuum including

time. Now revolve that bifter!

After all I think Jesus himself

would be a proto-hippy stoner

poet in this day and age. Ah,

I love it when the Wizard of Oz

resolves into colour. There are

casual drug references all around us.

Mario mushrooms confer energy.

Tinkerbell’s dust makes you

fly. And in the Wizard of Oz

they lie down in the field of

poppies and see the Emerald City.

So hurry up passing that joint.”

V

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DYING OF CANCER

A Russian has a right to a square of red perceived by someone from another land and Liberty and Trade go hand in hand.

Smell is the most primal sense, in love, absent in cinema.

Blissful Lovingness is where all religions meet.

Better and worse are but materialistic, Western concepts.

The Age of Communication momentarily endorses, means the Age of Alienation.

Each age is unable to see its own prejudices, its own cage of retrospective categorisation.

The Age of Enchantment is an echo of The Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment is the simultaneous astrological and sociological de-centering of Man.

The opposite of something is the pre-requisite.

The pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, into words, via the mechanics of meaning, is dilution.

The condition of knowledge produces no Triumph.

When you renounce the quest for meaning, you find it, fall back on meaning-by-proxy.

When you lose your concentration you die.

Your ordinary speech is surreal enough.

There are too many words in the world.

Everything living shares the same heartbeat in a given lifespan.

The artist is the missing link reintegrating into a society of worms below and the artistic spirit androgynous.

You should not trust systems for they rule with fear not love.

All guns should be flown in a spaceship into the heart of the sun.

Without difference no contradistinction.

Everyone is my brother and I love them.

The symbol [R] represents the stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf, that the creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.

There is no more mapless space.

Fear is an epiphany of Hell in the self.

Philosophy is a self-contained language corresponding to nothing real in life.

Existentialism is a child at the pick and mix with a credit card.

Politics is a choice between two plates of dogshit.

It is better to have a cup of tea than it is to kill yourself.

Portability is the new apotheosis of Form.

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too.

All things must be returned to earth, surrendered like a rented thing to death.

THE ABSOLUTION OF HANNAH

My sister has been the only one

that knows I am a G.

She has known I am a G

since we lived on Lynton Road

and I played her song and showed

her a Smashing Pumpkins tape.

I was the one that smuggled her

in my bed at night when we were young,

to play I Spy in the fecund dark,

spider spider on your back

which finger did that. Now

she has a little baby girl of her own.

She had to keep trying

as I do too when it comes to my work.

I imagine nothing could be more

exciting than her keeping trying

and nothing more boring

than me with my work.

Even when she was born

she was a little ray of light,

deft left hand born of another

deft left hand, meaning my mum.

ON IMPERFECTION

If it wasn’t for the hypnotism

my life could be perfect.

Speaking of which

when I read of Perfection

in Descartes, and turn

inward my eye to investigate,

I glimpse a perfect, inner judge

and find his concerns

are grammatical. Despite

the typos in my oeuvre,

I am a grammar Nazi,

who would lament the end

of the semi-colon, which

was so instrumental,

like the verb to “temper,”

in my 100% English

Literature A-level exam essay.

When it came to the hypnotism,

I had just embarked on

a prodigious, counter-Rimbaudian

program of meditation, detox,

dreamwork, reading and

exercise. I wouldn’t

even have a cup of tea.

The worst sin I had committed

was smoking weed. It

was a deliberate and systematised

abuse for which the guy

that hypnotised me should

go to prison. He later

confessed in tears to

the neighbour that yes,

he did intend me to do that.

He even came round to apologise

“for the awful ways

I have been treating you.”

He used misdirection,

by bringing along some marmalade,

and I took him outside,

knowing he wasn’t

allowed in the house. He

waved his finger across

my face and said “I heal

your intelligence,” looking

me in the eye with those

massive, staring eyeballs

of his, told me he was a shaman,

a priest, a wizard and

one of the Illuminati -

to hoard power I presume.

He was behaving very strangely

and eventually said he wanted

to use his magic to make me

sleep with 2 women at once.

I felt sorry for the poor bastard,

being so mentally ill, that

I agreed to the spell working,

whereupon he changed

the terms and conditions,

and started prattling

about a contested rape

inside mental hospital

which cannot be escaped,

and also inside a specific

room in mental hospital

where the door was barricaded

with a mattress so that

even the doctors and

nurses couldn’t get in.

By now we know

he was hypnotising me

to do evil, and also

that he lets himself in

to strangers’ houses

to have sex with lonely

housewives. It’s why

he wasn’t allowed in the house, why

we think he should go to prison.

He ruptured this family, causing

violence between its members.

He caused my dad to be

violent to my mum, and

because my dad was a gent

and wouldn’t say what had gone on,

I was also violent to him in turn.

Then as I say he came

back to hypnotise me.

Apparently, I was hypnotised

because my dad was sponsored

to use me when I was 8

as the witness from

The Lords And The New Creatures.

So you see there are those

who wish for me to go free,

because the witness job

wasn’t even me. It

was just something

forced on me when I was young.

WINDOW

I look out the window – two cars,

contiguous or co-extensive to each other.

Also the yew tree guarding the gate.

Above it the sky is unblemished blue.

The window is a narrow one too.

Leaves of Virginia creeper

have crowded its edges. I

also see how overgrown

Everything has become, the drive,

the ivy hedge, the flower-bed, the lane.

If my father’s passing galvanised us

to do up the house and build a patio,

we soon enough let the garden

go to seed in his sore absence.

The levels of green have gone obscene.

In fact the garden has got gangrene.

Through this defamiliarisation

of perception, this ostranenie,

I look out and note how the wind

wags the leaves like dog tongues,

and sways the trees, like the tree

is playing basketball or stroking a cat.

I hear music leak in from

another room where once I sat.

PART 2:

POEMS INDIVIDUALLY PUBLISHED BY SNAKESKIN

THE LOCAL TRAIN LINE

You can go backwards to Christmas on a train

and often I would, and sometimes doze.

Squirrels can fly if perceived in the caravan

of trees sailing past through railway train windows -

windows that taste like an old copper coin.

I remember taking the train on schooldays

from the local village’s request stop station

to the industrial town they call Barrow-in-Furness,

round the estuary which Norman Nicholson

mapped in a poetry that remains matchless.

So many birds can be observed when on

that journey, already feeling semi-famous.

The gentle arrhythmia cajoles you into a lull,

the sound of the wreckety wreckety wreck.

When you get on it’s empty, but it is full

at the end of the journey like a swollen beck.

I would already smoke pollen at school.

At the end of the schoolday I would travel back.

Now as I write I hear the train toot its horn.

I won’t get on it anymore, not since COVID,

and since becoming so paranoid within

that I prefer to not venture all the way outside,

into the town, that is. So here I remain,

survivor of a pathetic attempt at suicide.

Tiny engines may rev up on pellucid glass,

augmenting the sense of cosiness you feel,

when heading for school, for an A-level class

about the meaning of Caliban and Ariel.

The Sixth Form girls would giggle at me as

I sat there reading a book of Robert Lowell.

Going to the private school meant I never

cheered up and joined in with the human race.

If there is a difference between being clever

and having what they call moral compass,

we should all sit together, and endeavour

to unite while keeping intact our difference.

The telegraph poles went flowing past.

Counting them I never picked a favourite.

I’d hope for the flow of the day to go fast.

If the weather was rubbish I’d get used to it.

Achieving my dream of being the best essayist

was easier when I put my sober mind to it.

A boy I was, mewling and puking to school,

feigning High Indifference when there.

Back then the currency was in being cool.

Exciting was the license to scent the air.

The music I collected was the sacred pool.

I was in love with a girl with brown hair.

Sometimes we’d bunk off and go walking

in a kind of pantheistic or animistic trance,

or sleep in caves; or stay up talking -

but never once did she see me dance!

To Amsterdam and Paris we went gallivanting -

to see the museums – to not waste the chance.

At the end of school I went down south

and broke off the relationship in doing so,

started to let ecstasy pills into my mouth,

worked some boring jobs and went with the flow.

The train was a gullet, gulping back and forth.

Sometimes we’d travel under a rainbow.

TO REDEEM A DREAM OF FREEDOM

Once again it falls on me to be the one to say

that biding my time from here to eternity

to see if the lawn has sprung a flower

watch out for the Honda lawnmower:

for I mow the grass where the Plough aligns.

I try to keep to neat, symmetrical lines.

When the first, fresh, redolent, enervating

scent of change begins its fermenting

on the ego-loss breeze it is my duty

to the Natural World and all her beauty

to mow the grass – a foot high with neglect,

it was today, but owing to my respect

it’s been cut down, mowed over. Well,

I love the smell of petrol more than the smell

of a fresh Christmas tree, and to do

something with my life is also new

reward in itself. It’s not like I get paid -

but it redeems a dream of freedom in my head.

Now when my mother looks out the glass,

she doesn’t have to look at foot-high grass,

but sees her plants in all their little pots,

their little de-institutionalisations and bets,

and the dog rolls around like he’s found

Paradise down there on the ground.

0

RANDOM ACCESS CO-IMAGINATION

Simon says The River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

Will says something about who you

think of touching yourself in the shower.

I say maybe all I need is a length,

need is a length of metal chain.

Dave says it’s rude to repeat

the shift of feet down the corridor.

Raymond says let’s have one more

crumble from your dad’s pollen.

Jesus sits at the right hand

of the Lord God our Father.

Paul asks wear an emotional

condom before you f**k my mind, man.

Mother says imagination is a

muscle and language a creature.

Hal says I know you spoke

against September 11th in 2000.

Mark knows that I said a clock

is only as fast as a cheetah.

Andy says “I know the chords

to this tune by Bob Dylan.”

Dad said Dylan was religion,

to listen to on Sunday when younger.

Mandy says the main attraction

of drug-taking is the connections

you make with other people -

but I for one will just have butter.

Bex says I'm right it's impossible

to remember a new yellow line.

Mother says I must remember

when I go out to shut the door.

Dexter says I was right that

my dad used to smuggle pollen

and that the art smuggling story

was just an elaborate cover.

Mark says something like there

is no virtue beyond fashion -

or was it no vice I cannot

quite remember anymore.

THE MYSTIC VISIONARY

(For Robert)

The bond between a mother and her son

should be one of unconditional love,

not limited by language barriers,

different appellations for the light.

Under the moon, I love my mother

as I loved my father too, whom

it would seem would deem it jolly good,

the food we ate in Italy recently.

Orange is the sun when it sets there too and

then in the clouds Heaven’s bars

sell upturned jars of sunset, making

you claim that even plastic can grow.

The colour of a red toy car with my

fingerprints on it could then seem to be “detuned”

like a guitar string, and counting numbers

seem steps down into the earth...

I love the bones my mother grew

inside her warm womb long ago now,

before the trauma of birth separated us,

and I face the music, dreaming big.

Wow! I can’t believe the things I’ve

touched with my own fingers but my

fingers have crashed, I type, and my

mad, crashed fingers have connected.

SQUALIA

These are excellent: Squalia, (as opposed to Qualia),

they could seem the status life details of a katabatic

descent towards Rock Bottom: a bed in a shed;

taking notes on receipts, Rizla papers, train tickets,

the backs of packets; wearing naff tracky bottoms

lifted from ASDA and splattered with white

emulsion paint from doing up the band’s house

like a badge of honour; eating discarded Danish pastries

from the Co-op supermarket bin at the fringes of

society. Still, Squalia could also be revamped with intensity.

For example, what is the street-name for Ecstasy

when the band detune the guitars all the way down?

F sharp minor is the answer and the name of a number

by the band. It being recorded on state-of-the-art,

binaural earphones, earphones I tell you, with

tiny mics implanted inside, on that very weird album on

which I said I would plug my senses in the mains,

may be the reason I now hear soooo many voices.

They may be Squalia re-defined as squatters,

people who pay no rent or electricity as I didn’t

back in the days of said band. I was kicked out

of the band for weird behaviour; for instance I came

home from the pub, intoxicated on a cocktail

of noxious toxins of deleterious self-derision and

launched into a speech in an imaginary language

no-one could understand, keeping it up for half

an hour, ad-libbing it, impromptu while rolling

around like in a neo-shamanic ritual on the ground.

Just when they thought they had lost me forever,

I went and had sex with the shed’s cold, concrete floor

on Ecstasy, and it wasn’t long before I was booted

out of my own band. The Flood we were called

and were a Cambridge-based jam band who only

recorded on binaural earphones. By the time

I got home to the north I was angry and walked

up the fell, ranting in the cassette tape wind. I

did not know who had phoned my mum, concerned,

and had her collect me. I still don’t, but no longer

care, for all I embarked on a program of meditation,

detox, dreamwork, reading and exercise, and

despite a mental illness kicking in, still got

a good degree as if I had wilfully walked away

from music to pursue poetry and become a graduate. -

I conceived of Lancaster University as a type of word-guitar

made by Fender whereupon the voices came to me.

They said among many other things that I should

“lose the book or the guitar” which is a very difficult

decision to make and one I still have not made absolutely.

WHEN F LEFT THE ALPHABET

“When F left the alphabet albeit temporarily

I got the results of my test, proving

I’m autistic, an high-functioning autist.

My brother then set up a recording studio

in the posh, coffee-cake dining room, whose

digital buttons and layers and codes even

entered my dreams at night after a while.

I recorded many numbers old and new...

when Baxter the dog walks on the laptop

funny things come out, like the names

of electronica numbers; and the sound

of typing can be used as percussion in

non-metred Sound Art, I also found.

There was even brief relief from voices,

‘onjects,’ quavers, syllabubbles, sonic

machinations at the periphery of sound,

while I faced the music, while I recorded.

Still, I came back to the silence of the

blank page where I might hang life like a coat

in a primary school cloak room, just because.

I wanted to say any word can be spelled in

any way, any guitar solo played any way,

that all discipline boundaries have dissolved,

all the subjects become one thing, life,

whereupon one might turn to philosophy…

but now everything has returned to normal and

I am glad for while F had left the alphabet

there was no longer any word for Freedom.

So to try and write in wrinkled and crinkly

Christmas wrapping paper becomes a good

game all over again, and food for thought

a priority, and the translation of feelings.”

HALF OF IT

A river running through variegated ages of rock

seems to contain many ages at once

like the books groaning on the shelf.

A rock star meanwhile can change costume

many times during an exciting performance

and still somehow resound as himself.

It isn’t the river or the rock star, changing

gear, that so amazes the soul, though,

but something more globular and holistic.

The Rolling Stones became The Strolling Bones;

and then the art teacher said to put more

pink in the shadow to make it more realistic.

MY BROTHER’S POEM

I didn’t script the net (and cloud) at seven,

try the maths for the new colour as a skin cell,

separate the pollen from its very name;

didn’t deal with Jim Morrison twice as well.

I didn’t attain the face of stars,

forewarn people of September 11^th

in 2000, prophesy the Plough’s

alignment, the God Particle from looking

at dust in a late ray of light angling

in nor get my future tutor-to-be’s

scientific paper just right as an

ideal for a book I might write

before I had even gone and met him.

I didn’t pen the highest-marked A-

level examination essay in the nation.

I didn’t have many arcane musical

experiments on the go all at the same time:

the effervescent mobile, the healing

of the tape that was cut and stuck together

in the flimsy reel, the recording

on binaural earphones, the tattooing

of Piper At The Gates of Dawn. I didn’t

host the alignment of The Plough and

the oldest fell Black Combe upon

Mr. Obama’s democratic election.

I didn’t attest to large-scale skywriting,

find the pint glass exploding from

thin air in the capital to be but a piece

of pollen in the general pollen count.

I didn’t build the Tower, work at a

numinous, purple-bleeding screen.

I didn’t, upon the loss of my father,

make the discovery of a sheet of

paper that bloomed or even grew

pictures probably depicting the lyric of a song

I wrote with my own doing hand.

I didn’t falsify the Nirvana barcode, then;

didn’t do whatever it took to attain

visual radio, broadcasting dreams,

dreams that billow like a weeping

willow in the wind, and swirl in purple,

digital swathes about the head

of the deranged seer; and come down.

I don’t think the “gestation chamber”

T. S. Eliot writes of in which the poem’s

“dark embryo” grows has now become

an inbox to empty in the Digital Age.

I don’t find it hard to have my story known.

I don’t hope that through some kind of

irony, some kind of ironic self-

distance, I’ve finally cracked it.

TO THE BROS IN THE DEN IN THE WOODS

I imagine now telling the bros in the den

in the woods my theory about the chain

of dark or even anti-evolution, that says

James Joyce, who also saw new creatures,

writing Ulysses is the reason why Ted

saw a monster in the river in childhood

who in turn wrote The Hawk In The Rain

which is then the reason Jim Morrison

saw winged serpents in the desert on acid,

whom we know is never quite flaccid,

and his writing The Lords And The New

Creatures is then why I saw not one but two

which I shall not delve into quite yet

but which I shall never again clean forget -

the bros in the den in the woods might well

fall in with my scoffed at, empurpled Hell -

and with freed minds start to write poetry

to read out under the fallen down tree

in amidst the empty beer cans and ends

of cigarettes dumped there by their friends -

but what their fair maiden female companion

would make of the chain of dark evolution

could be that it's a bundle of fairy tales

unlike the crawling of actual snails

whereas I know the whole thing to be real -

and if I could but show you how I feel -

would have you convinced that I'm right

but not well in the head, at least not quite -

which leaves me standing like a tall tree

in the wood where we used to read our poetry

which did, back when we were young,

and getting a foot on the ladder's first rung.

DEFACED

It’s actually a rather saddening story for now

I’d be in and out of hospital for the rest of my days,

still my father thought it hilarious, how,

when I was first hospitalised I ran away,

on my first escorted walk in the grounds,

through a field and across a busy motorway

and up a serpentine trainline to the station

from which I made it to Scotland by train,

thinking there’d be a different jurisdiction -

but oh how my athletic efforts were in vain!

The cops found me wandering that other nation

and took me south of the border again!

I’d been put under a curse unbeknownst to me...

forced to abide by the stringent rules,

I sat back in hospital writing poetry

in a waiter’s pad, inventing brave new schools,

smoking on the banks of the Styx of sweet tea,

calling the conspiracy of doctors fools!

I scored a question mark on the musical scales

in my writing, in that place so clean,

such a sterile-surfaced Hell, run by females,

while Rachel’s party far away on the green

summit of Parliament Hill went down with pale ales

and left me to dream of the space in-between.

I’ve got a degree since then. My feeling is

that the ill are capable of increased lucidity

but I rue the new remit: not to dream with open eyes,

nor await the future with rapt uncertainty,

not to plug my senses in the mains, but de-stigmatise

mental illness. It doesn’t come naturally.

TEACHING MY SISTER THE SILENT ALPHABET

In bed, at night, have you ever reached the point

where word and muscle meet – where you

attempt to think in words without moving

a muscle in your mouth and stumble

upon the secret, white, silent alphabet?

There are certain letters, certain sounds

you simply cannot think without

a twitch from your mouth muscles -

so you play dead. You lie there and

try and underwrite the thoughts…

some graphemes, phonemes, plosives

and fricatives are possible in silent,

white and secret thought alone but

no utterance seems completely pronounced.

The silent alphabet thus has several letters

missing; and by dawn you might still

be lying there, awake, trying and trying

to think the word “whisky” without

a movement of the tongue. It can

be done but is found further in

the mind, where hands can not go.

That’s why seeing in the dark is so tough.

THE LADDER TO THE HAYLOFT

That a clock is only as fast as a cheetah,

running round and round on the stones

seems to be a young kid’s scientific finding.

That a clock is only as fast as a wounded

cheetah, struggling with fifteen balls in

the air, seems more artistic, subjective too.

That oceans smile with liquid eyes and fill

themselves with rain could be hypertext,

hypertext of Verlaine’s famous credo.

That I. T. may stand for Instant Travel too

could be nothing but a bone-idle pipe dream,

dreamed up on pot at a computer screen.

That Lucy in the soul with demons may

be an actual substance is almost chemistry,

almost musicology; and then I’m gone.

That Portability is the Apotheosis of Form

could be nothing but the modern narrative,

and apply across the board when you’re away.

That if flower-press ending on cannabis

could = a dialysis a love poem hoping

to impress poor Flora could = more a motor

seems to be an aesthetic anti-system

and satisfies the desire for something

like the colours of the vowels in English.

That the effect of acid and the effect of acid-rain

on an imaginary species should = the same,

nothing, is not necessarily true if there

can be no more proof of something being

real than saying it was imagined, which

seems both Blake-like and Cartesian too.

That the effect of global warming on the

unicorn is a postmodern id is eco-poetic,

eco-poetry being all about an awareness.

That it’s impossible to remember a new

yellow line, under the madding sun, could

be the Light-speed Law of Neuroplasticity.

That love is the hope the heart literally

needs in order for it to survive without

which it can stop is a stance before life.

That Duff is H suspended in deafness

could be history as much as anything else,

even ‘horse’ or ‘how about the housework?’

That Dog = pi times MC squared could be

the equation for a power-cut at the foot of

Black Combe, three miles from Millom, or

like plugging the senses in the mains; and

that O is the key of the babbling unicorn

is more musical Nature poetry again. Lastly,

that fire’s effect on fire could = nothing

minus nothing could be nothing but mere

speculation and conjecture; or even Nirvana.

Then the Problem 1 in that Popperian,

epistemological sense is how to get down

again, safely, before the wind topples you over.

And so I have invented Backward Liquid

Maths, for my brother and I to share,

and I hope for each a peach in the wheel.

LOOKING CLEARLY AT MY SADNESS

It goes much faster does a dying animal;

which only reminds me grief does not account

for the kitchen clock’s tick tock panning, bilateral

and moving through the room with no scent

like a Disney animation clock. And so I see

my sadness clearly and sing my heart’s song.

We remediate the immediate predicament with tea.

We dream of a kingdom where nothing’s wrong.

A crow is squawking on a tree in the garden.

Crows, dogs, horses, trees, these are our friends.

To Nature I turn for solace, her truant compensation

while a lonely winter’s new fag-end burns.

Grey like a pencil is the new day dawning

here at the foot of the Lakeland’s oldest fell,

grey like a rabbit, full of puddles blinking,

templates in The Periodic Table starting to swell…

day is an abeyance that dissimulates the vacancy

of fish-eyes sipped on. Monastic mist

flies across the fell. Everything is so watery.

You have to live here and now, not in the past.

I dreamed that we went swimming in eyewash.

Then I ate a breakfast of every snooker ball colour.

To trollop I turned, then to niceness, then balderdash.

As for the poet’s role, nothing could be duller.

A FACT ON TIME

I know a fact on Time,

but not if it will last:

if we could build a time machine

that equalled light speed,

we could only go back

to resolve the past,

not into the future,

for that has not yet happened.

That was where I was at

back when I was ten.

The science man came

to talk to us at school.

Though I was a poet,

was a poet even then,

I liked the science man,

I thought that he was cool.

From dinosaurs to lightspeed

he showed us the way,

from fossils to the future,

we were instructed,

and everyone paid

special attention that day,

that day that is a fossil

where our futures were constructed.

THE EMOTIONAL CONDOM OF THE WORLD

I heard we grew our great brains by eating meat

and, needing to spread information about it,

about farming, hunting, killing, eating things

developed words for birds that sing with their wings...

now, the pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, translated

into words, via the mechanics of meaning, is diluted.

Language is the emotional condom of the world,

into which we are all so traumatically hurled.

One day we may learn to eat language, but for now

I’ll settle for the rump of the local farmer’s cow.

CONFESSIONAL POEM

I still think of you, all these years on,

from all those years we had. You

used to make us sleep with the light

on and I still do – for it feels like

switching that switch will flush

the past down the drain. That’s where

years of writing went when at the end

of our time together, you said “I don’t

want to be in it.” So I could only bin it.

All those times we went off exploring

just “to look at trees,” as you put it -

on the premise that “there should

still be room for Nature in the Future...”

I remember that I did document a

lot of it - but it’s gone. There were

inward journeys too, like a poem is the

opposite of a bus ticket - and I remember

when we drove into the Lakes from

some other place and I wrote down

every sign along the way for a poem -

how semantics is a road sign not a place!

Well, that too is gone – all the love

poems gone - and there were, well, poems

born of recreational drug use for

the sake of literary experiment, and it’s

all gone - under Gondwanaland like

the pollen, under the green hill like

the ecstasy pill. For it was all for you,

and you are no longer in my new life.

There was even one about the neo-London

skyline as a part of the Tube service,

but I was with you when I wrote it

so it too is gone. Even the dreamwork

diary I kept won’t work with you gone.

At least some of the melodies remain;

but I’m too old to make it as a pop star,

prance round in a vapid pose suitable

for the rebellion of youth – no, it is

as a poet that I wish to leave my sting.

It seems unfair that I was faithful, and

it’s all my work that’s now destroyed, but

I suppose it could be worse: I could have

grown homosexual through the onslaught.

Maybe I did and just don’t know it yet.

LONDON FLASHBACK

London is a craven haven for corrupting taste.

Police motorbikes were being chased by the waste.

I spent a year down there after my degree -

even slept rough – but didn’t feel that free.

The riots were lootings: Christmas on earth

didn’t follow on in the town of my birth.

I busked for next to nothing, saw old friends

but abandoned ship – my each adventure tends

to me crawling home, puking, apologising profusely

to inward grace – senses broken loosely -

and now I sit sipping tea at the foot of the fell,

in a large country house not ready to sell.

There’s a beck in the back and we’re agreed

I am even allowed to write of it if I need -

no Poetry Police who have never read any

poetry will stop me, although not for a penny

I have worked for them… and I cast my mind back

to the daughters of London. The Plough and Black

Combe had aligned by the time I went down.

I lived in the East, it was like an undertown.

I drifted and loafed and smoked too much.

A Londoner by birth, I still am one as such -

but no longer hang with the cutting edge crowd -

I guess they wander lonely inside the cloud!

And no I didn’t pull when I was on holiday,

except a gay experience, though I walked away...

and soon had a dream bigger than a dream,

for which the gnomic nomenclature is “drum,”

characterised by cosmic freedom, bounding

in circles in space. Already daggers of lightning

in the storm were part of a God Simulation;

and I woke feeling cleansed, with re-aligned perception.

Still, back to the sticks, I came by rattling train

unsure if I will ever make it down there again.

A REALIST VISION OF WINTER

If winter has her compensations,

they might be found in the rosy cheek

of the woman waiting at the station’s

tentative platform in the week;

in a layer of frost crisp underfoot;

in the breath making tortuous, iron

statues in the emaciated light;

in the whole gulp of white sun

going blind behind a thorny tree,

splintering into a thousand shards

like a coruscation of divinity;

in staying in and playing cards

beside a roaring sitting room fire;

in chimney smoke against a canvas-sky;

in a little sprinkling of icing sugar

on the tops of fells as we drive by…

soup and hearty stews as well.

If Christmas has become a mad, red

rush of consumerism, such detail

cannot be bought, so I’m not sad -

sad to see the wintry trees all bare,

sad the days are dark and short.

There is no cause for dark despair

when winter’s visions can’t be bought.

BREAKFAST

Breakfast today was two fried eggs, sunny side up,

on toast left to cool slightly so the yellow butter

didn’t break the surface, with a pink-rimmed cup

containing black coffee with a lump of brown sugar,

plus streaky bacon turned in the dark-blue AGA

and dipped in red sauce, all on a new, milk-white

plate with green rim, which, when eating was over,

and I was quench’d and sated, feeling alright,

I left to soak in soapy bubbles in the kitchen sink.

I belched quite crudely then, which was my food

popping up to say ‘hello,’ and drank of my drink,

the coffee from its pot, coffee which can be renewed,

and, grateful for plenitude, felt somewhat satisfied,

and took my leisure to the beautiful world outside.

A CONTRAPTION MADE OF WORDS FOR MAKING YOUR OWN EMOTION IN LIFE

What I want could be a contraption

(made of words) for making

your own emotion in life. You do this.

You make your own emotion.

It could be pellucid as a glass phial,

or mystical as an inscape of wings.

I am not fussy, nor think this

reductive dichotomy too meaningful.

What I get instead of what I want,

yes, is to be the neo-Rimbaud

whom it would seem has now bought

and sold a share in silence, white.

The headspace I have been through

is the most interesting in terms

of timbre tenor tone texture tense

timing tensility tenderness since I’ve

dreamed of a forbidden fifth

brain wave category, off the map, knowing

brain waves are angels here and

there are said to be only four types.

At the top of a mountain in a dream

in Italy I saw the contraption around

which we had gathered collapse

and transmit its emotive impact.

I would say it was like a child bursting

into tears, when tears break forth from their

tiny, blue chains and shatter from

your eyes but it was happiness.

The sunset was putting its giant

spliff out in the sea in the background

as the poets stood atop the Italian mnt

regarding the collapse of the contraption.

It’s possible in dreams to make it across

the ocean using only a contraption

you dream up as you go along -

just jump off the cliff like a lemming.

SIX CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

1

When I was a kid and we had two houses,

one in London, one in the Lakes,

we were often found driving up or down

the motorway between them; and

I would be looking at the derelict barns

on the side of the motorway, in

fields, and imagining a nomadic

existence. It seemed to me that

a derelict barn would be enough.

2

On the motorway, I now recall,

I used to imagine snagging my foreskin

on the barbed wire fence as

we sped off at seventy miles an hour.

I guess it was like stretching honesty

to it elastic utmost and further,

pointing the moment to its crisis,

a mixture of cartoons and chewing gum.

3

The only time I ever questioned

my brother’s intelligence as a kid

was when grand-dad asked us

“how many beans make five?”

and my brother said “I don’t know.”

I wondered how he had escaped.

4

As a kid I used to picture

a bouncing ball in my head at night

which would only bounce when I said

stop, and only stop when I said

bounce, so only through inverse

logic could I control it. Every

night I would check it was there.

5

I remember also as a child, I used to

repeat the word ‘kangaroo’

over and again in my head

until it went numb, emptied

itself of meaning, hopped off

to become the mad, kangaroo king,

down at the bottom of my ex

English-teaching granny’s garden.

6

For some unknown reason, when

the school bus used to go past

a certain farm contiguous to

the school I used to sit there asking

myself if the farm had a secret

underground lab where unsound

experiments were conducted on animals.

I never got to find out before I left.

LINES IN THE LITTLE BEDROOM

Earth bounds in circles round the sun.

Breath goes in and out like a tide.

Death sells records to the young and impressionable.

Youth is wasted on the young they say.

Teeth are meant for chewing meat.

Truth probably hurts less than cliché now.

Birth hurts like trauma for all concerned.

Dearth means a scarcity or lack of something.

Darth as in Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.

North is the rest of The Lakes, then Scotland.

Mirth is my feeling to be released.

Moth wears an off-white wedding dress.

Worth waits for ladies to cross the road.

Bath is not where Jim Morrison died.

Light changes the key in the bathroom.

Beth died in the bath, a true tragedy.

South is where I originate but not reside.

Mouth to mouth means resuscitation.

Math is American slang for mathematics.

Sloth is my frame as opposed to cowardice.

Broth is good to heat and eat in winter.

Wrath is another one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Path through the grass leads to the greenhouse.

Plath is a poetess of egoism therefore minor.

Plinth is a platform supporting a statue.

Month is a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Wraith is a flame-point demon, screaming, lithe.

Faith is the right to approval by the supernatural.

Froth is the river at the broken-green-beer-bottle-corners.

Fourth in the Premier League are Newcastle United.

Water should come free from the Tap.

Myth is made by any re-namer of reality.

With me is the opposite of without me.

Vermouth is generally drunk with gin.

Absinth makes the heart grow stronger, actually.

Cloth is laid down on the kitchen table.

Labyrinth, I think the inner ear is a labyrinth, yes.

“Mammoth” could describe the great, hulking universe.

Growth begins in Spring with gilly flowers.

Pith is the essence and gist of something.

Strength becomes less important when you’re wise.

Underneath the bridge the Pooh-sticks went.

Wordsmith after wordsmith walked on the wall.

They deem it I am the butt of the joke.

Wreath after wreath is a roundabout-picnic.

Both of our heads are left with tonsures.

Loath to control things, I just let go.

ON THE ROAD IN ENGLAND

Why is this lane stopping and starting?

Stopping and starting uses more fuel than

the blank amnesia of Nirvana, the extinction

of consciousness, and we are travelling south,

all that queue, all that congestion,

(you see I’m in the car), and

not a single person parking,

so we seem to work in shifts,

and the road opens up, clear

of other traffic, and the car

accelerates, and the wall

of Maya now falls down.

Imagine graffiti on the wall

of Maya (whom it seems is

Sanskrit for Goddess of Illusion.) -

I’ve heard of graffiti on the

keel of The Drunken Boat.

Also on the wall going round

the edge of the universe. But not

on the wall of Maya. I don’t know why

I bought my computer, unless to slink

off alone and have a private moment.

We are only going for five days.

The automated conveyor belt

of poesis still flows and

so it goes and so it grows.

THE MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

My father was not a retired assassin

which he kept secret from us, his own kin;

the Revolution never thrust a big mistake

on me in the wood for that would be sick;

I was not made to see things which

no-one should and Nature’s no bitch;

my lover never slept with my buddy Paul

which is not the sickest thing of all;

they never took the Towers down

because of the verse of Jim Morrison;

I never was placed under a curse

and nothing’s really mending worse;

the dog has not just weed in my bed

and I do not wish that I was dead;

in fact the midnight rainbow shines

and the toilet flushes with fine wines;

I definitely got to sleep with whom

I wanted back in the land of gloom;

my brain has not come under attack

from acid flashbacks trying to flashback;

I’d really mind if they emptied space

of the human form without a trace;

the disappointment which I feel

is not the appearance of an electric eel;

my best ideas were not all stolen;

the front for my art should never be pollen;

I do not hear the myriad of voices

cutting down on my existential choices;

it’s not the case that what can happen to you

may not just be naff but sick too;

desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies

I never had to loot wings from Hades;

so you see I may have it all wrong

and can’t commit to literal things in song;

the sound of sirens is not heard near,

even if only brought on by The Fear;

a love I’d need to blow all this away

never would tell me actually I’m gay:

how dare you treat a human being like this?

The midnight rainbow mixes blood and piss.

Through it we escape from chronic pain,

or not as the case may seem to be again.

BAT

A bat just appeared in the dining room

as I lay there one night thinking of you.

It flew around, encircling the gloom

and I asked my mother what to do.

She said to get the window open

but I remember Bob’s son’s Christening -

we couldn’t open the window then -

unscrew the bolt that needs unfastening.

So my mother got my other brother down,

told me that I was always bad news -

and my brother took up pliers, to get undone

the too-tightly fastened up screws.

The bat meanwhile flew around

and around, encircling the stale air,

frightening us down on the ground -

and the way it just happened to appear!

It could’ve got down the chimney I suppose,

but it’s not the only possibility.

Bats don’t spontaneously self-organise

like a Strange Attractor from Chaos Theory

but from where it came I do not know

and think of the woods where once I stood

being good and how plastic can grow,

and all that light, evening jazz from childhood…

my bro got the window open with pliers,

even though bats are not dangerous,

because as much as bats are not liars,

we still don’t want one living with us!

We propped the window ajar and I

took my laptop, Vape pen, earphones

and vacated the room, where I used to lie

dreaming of you, here at Cumpstones.

It’s still flying around in there, has not

found its way out of the window so

I’ll have to sleep in the attic, like a bat,

for there were many in the locked attic long ago…

I’d say if the house where the Plough aligns

is cursed then it affects everyone in turn,

but that would be boring, just lines

to elongate this little, midnight yarn.

When there were many in the locked attic,

they escaped through a tiny, little hole

when dad (who slept through radio static)

installed central heating, and even soul.

Now we must wait for this little bat

to be free too, to be out there in the Night,

and it might take a little while longer yet

because of course a bat is devoid of sight!

LIVING IN THE LAKES

Living in the Lakes I am often struck

by the sensation that life

is going on within the pages

of The Lords And The New Creatures.

It could be just a slant of light

that gives the game away,

the remnant evanescence behind the fell

when the sun has set and the fell darkened.

It’s either that or Nirvana

Unplugged In New York.

For that I think of rivers,

such as the River Esk to the north.

In the summertime, we like to go

outdoor swimming in the Esk.

Today the weather has cooled

so it is not a good time to go.

So I could speak of a “storied” world,

a mythographic universe intact,

an infradiegetic existence

saturated with inter-textuality,

or I could talk of sheep and cows,

the way the rain falls at a slant,

the green-ness of the grass,

and all of Nature’s abundance.

It is a pretty place to live,

which Jim Morrison himself

intended to visit on one of his trips,

but never got round to in the end.

The fell overlooks with its bald,

blank forehead. Driving from town

it appears a great, slumbering

diplodocus come to fat and die

by the Irish Sea; but nearer

the foot you see it could be Buddha,

Buddha levitating. Walking

up could be Western meditation...

but if 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

that rises to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning on Caliban’s

chain. No, I have not been up

the fell for a long time now; so

it’s like I am growing into one

of the locals! But to the fleeting,

evanescent backdrop of dying light

behind the darkened fell at perfumed sunset

I often turn, stare until life grows

detached, naked, until I remember

how weird everything is, how

mysterious and magical the universe.

WAKING AT MIDNIGHT

It’s not nice waking at midnight when you’re me:

dead to the world on Western medication,

you look the Night in the eye and find

the world might’ve quietly passed you by.

There might be a snake on the patio too.

Then again it could be your imagination

grown over-wrought, inspecting shadows.

Still it’s safer to stay in than go out.

The moon is a drunkard above the yew tree.

You see this from the kitchen window.

Telly through the wall leaks in from another room:

it’s where the lion from the heart of Poem

Records originates, when you’re a child,

listening in to telly through the wall, in

the inner city, hearing its whiskers dipped in News.

But childhood is gone, as seems the city -

here we have a pretty place of artistic retreat.

The loneliness rots in the whole, human heart.

At least in reading the voices go away.

I’m on The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell.

BECK VARIATION

Standing in my wellies beside the beck,

I note its most mellifluous applause,

how it 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.

Further to distil the air in the mind,

I wait, to obviate not titivate,

and notice the green kingdom all around.

A squadron of nettles guards the wild.

It must be so different from living

in Norman Nicholson’s Millom,

down the end of Rottington Road.

A lone bird pipes a bar in a tree.

Then I notice I need to pee.

So into the heavenly nectar I do.

H20 might stand for Hypothalamus Tattoo.

SPYING A WILD DEER IN THE COMBE FIELD

I looked a wild deer in the eye and held

its gaze while both of us remained motionless.

I saw it run like mine own desire, unfold

its leap and bounce and springiness.

I’d only gone into the garden to smoke

and saw it grazing, in its own world,

up by the babbling beck in the back,

contained in the museum that’s the field.

While I paused to watch it, it grazed away,

then noticed me and both of us froze.

While I was still, the deer looked at me

cautious of danger one might presuppose -

then I made a movement and it leaped,

jumped into orbit, red, running off fast.

I watched it running all the way, rapt,

and saw it leap over a fence at the last.

Cloaked in the aura of special perception,

the encounter was almost like a visit -

to see those elegant legs in extension -

as if the deer were an extension of the poet.

Nibbling up the beck my mouth is water

and when I speak it spills on the earth.

I try not to flaunt my role in Nature.

Down to the sea I flow without death.