THE ANON SUITE
I
A BROKEN CHAPEL
The Quire is opened, awakes the blame of memory...
whomsoever they’re looking for it’s not me.
Light shafts in its distilled sleep.
The dead in tired dance circle the silence,
lingering fragile moments outside the quiet Quietus -
but wait, who dreamed me awake this time?
It was me, I'm he who dared disturb.
Not to renounce the past with rapt amazement
but to forgive our sins, falling like leaves.
We have seen this all before, time
tumbling away into sleep, seen
this darkness drop and these ruins murmur
and now we are gathered to appoint the gods
and now we are gathered to consecrate ourselves
and now we are gathered to ordain this dust,
we are gathered to live and to dream.
II
INVINCIBLE LOVERS
I’ll tell you how strange and wild
With wanton promise comes she
On an unknown hour
Like an uninvited guest
You’ve somehow brought to bed.
All night we’d
Sit and think of history
As if it hadn’t passed,
The great wars and the ancient peoples
And all the silly fears.
We’d think of how much we’ve changed
And how much we’ve remained the same.
We’d think of moments of mine
We somehow shared and how I longed to live
In circling illumination of all those moments,
Fragments gone.
And softly I wished
To expand history back into the past
And never to move again an inch forwards.
And to run through the memory of Time,
Ancient, timeless galleries.
Often we’d sit and think of speaking
Or retiring to bed or even sleeping.
Always we’d realise we never had
Time enough to waste or spend.
So we gloried in ourselves
Like invincible lovers,
Always boundless in new being.
And if I seldom spoke in sad regret,
She would turn and smile
As if to boldly offer
‘Come take my hand,
And we’ll wander across no-man’s land.'
III
THE RISING KESTREL
(co-authored with Mr. William Thyne)
Night arrives like a ghost.
The green kingdom around me
opens up to the starlit laughter.
To hover motionlessly o'er the mellow fields
I'm rising through this careless freewill
like a kestrel from its wood.
Lusting for life as every being should.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
But nothing too personal.
Because love is life without drugs.
IV
OPEN
In the cotton mist she
came in shining leather.
Time swings on
sighs forever.
She touched my shoulder
like a burning prayer
and sighed as all the
sky was severed.
“Full fathom five”
could not be a-
nother number for
Virgil says “there are
tears in things;” and
O is not a ghost-vowel,
no, but U is a ghost-
vowel– when we're
opened unto the
gloom under
sliver moon and
I slide her over.
Semen spills
like silver water.
We're soon enough
in the flotsam ether.
V
I KNEW THAT SHE LOVED ME
I escaped last night
into a heightened dream
from a dull and longing sleep
and the stars murmured
their cool ballad
to the approaching sky.
Secrets hung like ghosts
in the corner of my wanton world
all blurred and drugged too deep
and I knew that she loved me
from her invisible motions
and the dagger in her soft reply.
The questions concealed in her eye.
Her smile a luring prison.
Her blink a beautiful danger.
Her breath a poisonous magic.
And I knew that silence
would soon let slip its whisper,
knew that fantasy
had never been so real
and I knew that she loved me
because I knew everything.
I knew.
VI
INFANT JAZZ POEM
Sometimes perhaps
down opening quiet
I am drawn down
long and alone
and my friend and
my foe recede
into deep sleep
sudden and still
like a dawn behind a
screaming veil
where silence
is born and all that's
loose and tight and
all that's light is light
like first morning
with no night
and wend my way
so slow to Freedom
and soft Infancy-lunacy
with harp-sure eyes
so I can live
the last poet's
last poem.
VII
HAIKU FOR SPRING
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but like butterflies.
A SINGLE BY SECRET CHORD H
I
SIDE A: DREAM WITH OPEN EYES
(used as radio jingle circa 1999)
Last night it seemed we couldn't
sleep but maybe I was dreaming.
The world expands inside my
hands it's getting heavy.
Of all the treasures I could
choose I can't seem to decide.
Today the shade was washed
away where I would hide.
Dream with open eyes, come
below and we can fantasise.
Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come
below and we can fantasise.
Last night it seemed we nearly
died but maybe I was dreaming.
It made me feel sooooooooooooo
alive and soooooooo in love.
Dream with open eyes, come
below and we can fantasise.
Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come
below and we can fantasise.
II
SIDE B: TELEPATHIC ELEPHANT
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
Another, another, another fucking joint.
[Note: this song concerns a tape with a pause where stuck together in the flimsy reel. It presents the ideal of doing away with the small pause.]
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. I used to love hammering nails into the shed.
When we moved north I started writing.
INTRODUCTION TO THE KID
When
my father
passed in
2014,
a little
book I
had begun in
1989
at seven years old surfaced – my boyhood
Prep.
It had been locked in the attic at
the foot of the fell all
these years, where
it sometimes made the sound of footsteps that could be heard below.
There
are several pieces missing because the original was stolen before I
had typed it up; but
this will do. I can’t seem to tell what it is about but it mentions
the net. Last
time I published it, even though it wasn’t that long ago, the
frame
wasn’t right
– so this second edition should be better. It
needed the little one at the start to give it shape, order and
purpose that for some reason the previous version left out. I
think what it was about was storing the idea of the net in the attic
in writing to
give
the net a
chance
to
grow
all the way round the world. So I thank whomsoever got me to do it
because it meant I was part of that process. Whether I am allowed to
keep it I do not know, but would say what
happened to me happened to me because I was very well hung as a
child.
2
JOHN TUCKER
ENGLISH
E
Ah yes now I need to find another piece… the piece that was lacking when I first brought it out. Ah yes I find it – what is it still doing here? It’s been here since Christmas!
[NO NAME]
teacher rite elephant nite
everything lite lesson love
learn tell everyone Esso orange
ADVENTURE IN A CAR
On a Tuesday morning there was a big car in Form 2 and it had flashing lites all over it and then I said it's a magic car and we all got in to hide and it took off in to space and it landed on the moon then just as we were going to explore the moon a gravity force pulled us and the car under the sea and a propeller came out of the back of the car and we crashed on a ship REC and we tried the canons an they were still red hot. Then we went into the cabin and we saw a captain's chest and twenty fighting pirates and we looked out we saw a whirlpool heading straight towards us and since we were under the sea the whirlpool pulled on top of the water. then we were getting bored so we decided we wanted to go to the dinosaur age. we disappeared to a little island we saw Tyrannosaurus rex then we were all back in Form 2.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 28TH
We made sandcastles on the beach
I am going to meet mummy
today we are having exams this week
it is too dear to buy
Sweden China
country tail
tender street
share lies
late dry
weak poor
small prinsesses
countries is
stories tables men pens manes
TUM TUMPTY TUM
Tum tumpty tum
The cat is playing the drum
Four little mice
Are shaking the ground
Dancing merrily around
Tum- tumpty- tum
The cat is playing the drum
Three little mice are dancing
[NO NAME]
In the picture of the airport
I can see... a runway,
two planes, a controwl
tower, a cloud
and the ire ii net.
SEPTEMBER WEDNESDAY 13TH
one day me and Andrew set off on an adventure in a big jungle. We brought a tent a sleeping bag two knives a rope some matches a spear and an axe. We came in a boat we sailed a thousand miles. It took us six days when we landed on the island we were exhausted so we made camp and feel asleep. In my story there were six monkeys a wizard a tiger and an elephant and two snakes. When we awoke we went hunting we brought a spear and the rope. Just as we got out of the tent a snake fell down in front of us. We threw the spear at it he crawled away in pain. When we came back we had killed a tiger. We had seen the wizard yet but when we came back the tent was gone. Remember the wizard. We went out trying to find it AaaaaaaaHH we just feel in an animal trap we threw the rope up some body hang onto it. It was the wizard. We climbed up he invited us to his house. When we got there we saw my tent instead of the sleeping bag. There was lots and lots of chemacals. The wizard said do you like my house. I stole it from some body. It was my tent i said. Then he gave it back to us and we sailed back home and lived happily ever after.
[NO NAME]
There is a waterfall at the back of our house.
I saw a mural in France.
I lost my blue paints.
Ten plus ten equals twenty.
Our housekeeper is called Joyce.
In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.
A bomp explodes.
I faded my work.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4TH
My monster is 12 feet tall and 5 foot wide.
He weighs 13 stone he is very good and friendly he is as strong as ten tigers.
He has got five friends and six enemies.
6100000000 years old he is as fast as a cheetah.
He is only a friend of alive trees.
He talks a little bit of English but lots of alien.
He eats hay and straw and rams horns.
He has got 1000 hearts.
He is very well armed he works 12 hours a day.
he works in houses.
his name is Roy the robot.
He sleeps 3 hours from 6 til 8 and he has got 300 gagats.
THE LAZY WIND
One day the wind would not blow.
He said he was too tired so he fell asleep.
All the flowers died down the boats
stayed still, the wind mills stayed still
the trees stopped talking to each other.
Every body grew sick and hungry.
Who is going to wake him up.
I will said the crow. He flew up in the clouds.
Go away said the wind I’ll sleep for weeks.
When the crow came back the world sulked.
I have got an idea said the cunning fox.
Off he went running away. He told
the wind you can stay asleep
we have got some body to replace you.
No I will not stay asleep and he came
rushing towards them. It’s all right everyone
the wind is comming they got a lot happy.
[NO NAME]
I rely like the leaves that fall to the ground
Specele like to push them around
I like the foul moon hai up in the sky
I try to reach it but it’s much too hai
I like the fruits that are on the trees
They fall down with a little breeze.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 13TH
I have a scar+ that is red and black.
I have dirty feet and I'll make
footprints on the floor.
I threw a snowball and it landed
in my brothers face.
I watched a film and a man was
in a snowstorm.
I went outside and it was snow.
Flakes were falling. On Hallowine
wiches makes spells.
My dog did a puddle on my
bedroom floor.
I made a pattern with my spirograph.
GOOD AND EVIL
Last night at 1. oclock I was sitting up in bed and a dark creature grabbed me by my hand and then came three more. i turned the light on and fainted. They were rielly dangerous. Then four good ones came well I think they were good and I hope they were good ones. They attacked the bad ones with whips. We went off in a big vehicle to a Stone Henge where they lived. one of the bad ones pushed a big stone on top of the vehicle. There were 5 of us we all got out but one still got killed. The good ones were strong. We went and attacked them and we killed them all. 16 more of them came and started to throw rocks at us. They captured all of us and they started to fire guns at us until there was only me and one of the good ones left. Then we escaped and ran away. We made camp and went and attacked them. They killed the good one until there was only me left but 1000000000 more of them came and we killed every bad one on earth.
GRAND-DARTH'S SHIP
People wondered why Don had chosen to become
a deep sea diver. There were so many other things
he could've been. Whatever had put such an idea
into his mind? "Who suggested is?" he was
asked. "No-one", Don always replied.
BLEEP AND BOOSTER
One day Booster made a sonic solidifying gun Bleep thorte it was an earth mouse-trap. It is not a mouse trap said Booster it is a sonic solidifying gun. What can it do. It makes things rock hard look it is nothing and he made Bleep's asteroridade hard. Then he got in his space pod. Commander I've found him he is in deadly danger. He is on planet Gelatanus X he heard a voice help Ime sinking just then Bleep got two ray guns and a back pack. He flew down to the planet and started to shoot the monsters away the ray gun was so hot so it made the planet melt.
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
One day I was walking in the woods and I saw some popple pushing a little boy around. I went up an tried to stop them. They said to him go and get that delicious apple on that spookey tree and he went and got it. Then the ground started to rumble and lots of ghosts came out and grabbed us. The apple rolled down the hill and fell in to a deep river. And the trees came alive and we got sucked underground then Jamie came along. He saw a big hole in the ground. Just then every thing disappeared and all the bad trees turned into apple trees with lots of apples on.
EVERY
We had a snowball fight with the Widgets.
Go and wait with Boris at Ash Rock. –
The rocks fell from the cliff.
Amanda and Rodey built a snow shelter.
Rockets fly with a jet of flame.
A train puffs a cloud of steam.
My dad dug an underground tunnel.
My dad was mentioning something about Christmas.
We are going to do fractions in maths.
I got on a train at the station.
The first one is a boy’s name.
This one is a lady’s name.
This one is the name of a seaside town.
This one is a doctor’s name.
This one is title of a man.
This one is a question mark.
VIKING NAMES
Vikings liked to make up nick-names for people.
here are some I have made up
Christopher leaker. carrie two teeth.
christophere long nails les.
curly wayne.
nodey claire.
Big mouth Tony.
No tooth wayne.
Small guy Stewart.
Give a way Tony.
Mrs parr in her wight car.
Mis
gab and the Vikings.
WHEN I WAS BRAVE
One day I pulled a radiator off the wall and I blamed it on my brother. And I was very scared and then we went to Carlisle to do some shopping. And I got lost and I was too scared to go and ask a police man. But I went and did it. And just then my dad found me. Then we went back home and it was dark upstairs and I had to go and get something. And I was too scared and I found my dad's torch and I went and got it and then the batteries went flat and I carried on and I got it and I gave it to my dad and he said it took you a long time and I laughed. Then we went to school Wayne and I climbed up a tree, and I did not want to but I did.
ADVENTURE ON THE BEACH
One day me and Wayne went camping and we were exploring a beach. We saw two rowing boats. Three men came out with a big chest. It was nearly time to go home. I said lets go and hide and see who they are. and we did. They carried it into a cave then we went back and we went and had a look. But the cave was gone. Wayne said it is dark now lets go back home. Next day we had a look it was still not there. Then we went back.
Just then i stepped on something then we heard a noise. The cave opened we went in and there was no sign of the box. Just then the cave shut and we could not see a thing. The passage way went down a lot further. When we got to the bottom of the cave it was a lot lighter. Then we saw a big box it was two meters long and half a meter high. It was stuck to the ground. We saw a sledge hammer we smashed the box and lots of treasure poured out. We brought the sledge hammer to the other end of the cave and we smashed our way out. There were 10000 pounds all together 5000 each. We got lots and lots of money.
[NO NAME]
Dark brown is the river
Golden is the sand
It flows along forever
With trees on either hand
Green leaves a-floating
Castles of the foam
Boats of mine a-boating
Where we’ll all come home
CREEPING IN THE CELLARS
My mum asked me to go down in the cellars to get some washing. I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into a hole in the wall. I turned it and a door opened on the floor. There were some steps going down I started to unwind the ball of string I followed the steps and they lead to a maze. Just then I heard a grunting noise and fell into a hole. It was full of dead skeletons.
THE CREEPY HOUSE
One day I was walking along in the woods. Suddenly I came across a house. It was quite a big house but it was in ruins. I went to envestergate and I heard a howling nose I could not find what was making the nose and i was quite afraid. I went back home and Jamie had come to play. I said come over here. We looked out of the window. I caught a glimpce of the house. he said shall we go and have a look at that house. I said alright then, lets go.
We went down in the woods and explored. Then we saw a vision of a giant spidder. Jamie saw a machine. that's what it was coming from. Then I heard my mum calling me. We went back home. my mum had made some cakes. I was delighted. Just then I tripped over and I fell in a cobweb.
[NO NAME]
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves
Hang trembling
The wind passes thru’.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees
Bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.
THURSDAY MARCH 1ST
He has spines all over him. He has got a nose like a pig. A name for Henry the Hedgehog is urchin, Mr. Prickels and Hedge pig. An adder came up and attacked Henry the Hedgehog but he curled up in a pile and the adder jumped back. Henry’s defence system was working. Eventually the adder died. Henry eats worms and leaves, he dreams of eating little chickens. All winter he hibernates in a pile of leaves and he is very warm.
NOTE TO READER
I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink this is the point where, upon filling the first, red exercise book that the young poet wrote
2
John Tucker
English
E
on the front of the first book, then, like making an Escherian shape, wrote on the front of the new, empty, red exercise book:
English
John Tucker
Harecroft Hall
1
[NO NAME]
Colour circles red. How many circles?
Colour triangles blue. How many squares?
Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?
MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT
When I was 4 I was on holiday in Sweden. My dad had just bought me a new bike. The new bike was too big for me. I was going down the hill quite fast. The breaks was to pedal backwards but I could not reach the the pedals. Suddenly the bike got faster I had a bad feeling. I did not what to do. I fell head first in a patch of nettles. My mum heard me crying she came. By the time she found me it was ten o’clock. They asked what hapened. I said it was a long story. They said never ride your bike withouta parent.
MY NIGHT TIME ADVENTURE
One night I was lying in bed and I heard a tapping on the window. I thought it was a branch. I said to myself, it's not a windy night. I looked at my watch it was half past 1 pm. Then I decided to get drest I got a ruck-sack put a packed lunch in it a rope, a compass, a touch, a knife, and a map of our county. I went out the front door. I saw my bedroom light still on so I new which window it was. What was it that was making such a racket. I tied the rope to the knife and threw it to the top of the nearest tree to my bedroom I had another look at the window, there was nothing there perhaps it was a branch. O well I said and climbed up the rope. When I got to the top of the tree I still could not see what it was that was making such a nose. Just then i heard a halfdead mouse lying on the windowsill I jumped to the windowsill, climbed down the rope, went in the house and went to my bed.
THE THIEF
Once a woman lost a lovely brooch. She hunted everywhere but could not find it. So she asked the police to send a detective to her house to assist her. The detective climbed the stairs to the room where the brooch had been kept. Soon he came down. I believe the brooch is in the jackdaw's nest in that tall tree," he said. He brought a ladder and climbed the tree. With the brooch safe in his pocket he descended. I knew where to look, because the bird left marks on your dressing table he explained.
THURSDAY MAY 24TH
At midnight I was lying in bed. I could not get to sleep. Just then I heard some body walking very quietly across the stones on are drive. At first I was scared stiff and then I plucked up some courage and crept along the floor to the light switch I turned it on carefully not to make a nose. I got dressed. Then I looked through the window I could not anything because it was too dark. I looked at my watch it was 1:32 AM . I have got lots of time I said to my self I put my shoes on and went downstairs to get some food to eat. When I got downstairs I heard the noise again. I thought to myself, theres something suspicious going on then I heard jogging footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Just then a masked murderer came in through the door with a machine gun i pulled the rug that he was standing on and he fell down on the floor. Then I sprinted up stairs to tell my dad what had happened. At first he did not believe me. Then I said come and see for your self. He got out of bed and got dressed and got the firepoker. He went down stairs with me. We got in the kitchen but he wasn't there. We heard a voice from behind us he said hands up busters turn around dead slowly i grabbed the firepoker turned rond and knocked him out with it. My dad ran to the phone and dialled 999. A minute later the police were here. They came in. We showed them what had happened they said he is very dangerous they also said that his name was called Mike the murderar.
THURSDAY MAY 31ST
When the stork and the fox. were sitting in the house and eating their dinner. The fox could not eat every bit of it because it was on plates. Even though the stalk could not eat it he still was polite. When they finished the stalk asked if he would come to my house for dinner. Verey well said the fox. The very next day he did as the stork said and went to his house for dinner the stork put a very well cooked lunch into two long vases so the stork could get the food but not the fox
WEDNESDAY MAY 30TH
I think that the picture wood be O.K. for 11 – 12 year olds to play in.
Last year they were building a new house near us. I went after school to look at it w/ my little sister. Her name is Emaly. It was very interesting. We saw four builders two were in the house, one climbing up a ladder and the last one was wheeling a wheel barrow. We allso saw lots of bricks and cement. The best thing was the scaffolding. My little sister is quite nautghy. She allso loves climbing things. The first thing she said was 'I am going to climb the scaffolding.” “You mustn't go up there!” I shouted. I am going to go up there. Just then when she got to the top she fell.
She cried “HELP”. There was an enormous thud. I ran as fast as I could home, diled 999 and asked for the Ambulance. They came in a flash and took her to hospital.
BEING IN A HUFF
One Saturday when I was just about to go out
my dad came into the porch where I was
and saw a scribbly picture on the wall
and a black felt tip pen beside it. He said John
why have you drawn on the wall? I said
it wasn’t me it was Hannah. I’ll take ten pounds
out of your pocket money towards some new
wall paper. I ran up stairs and locked myself in my
bed room. In the end he found out it was
Hannah and didn’t take the money away.
[NO NAME]
Wolf to shut
Holiday to wash
Marry to fix
Glass
Child the wind-
Fox blows through
Tooth the trees
Clock the rain
Shoe falls
Against the window
JOHN TUCKER
FORM 3
HARECROFT
ENGLISH
MY BROTHER
He is five years old.
His hair is straight and blond.
He has small blue eyes.
He has got a plump face and a plump nose.
He is terrified of snakes.
He likes to were colourful clothes.
He is very funny some times.
Sometimes he gets into terrible tempers.
He is kind and soft.
His favourite hobby is football.
He does not like playing cricket.
His favourite food is fish and chips.
His favourite couler is Blue.
He can not swim.
He likes traveling.
He likes Jive Bunny music and Star Wars films.
He collects butter flies and Moths.
He is a good climber.
His name is Robert.
He has got a big mouth.
He talks a lot.
He likes making people laugh.
He hates having his photograph
he has got a good imagination.
SMELLS
Why is it that poets tell
So little of the cence of smell?
These are the odours I love well.
The smell of coffee freshly ground
Or rich plum pudding, holly crowend,
Or onions fried and deeply browend
The fragrance of a fumy pipe
The smell of applles, newly ripe
And printers ink on leaden type.
Woods by moonlite in September
Breath most sweet and I remember
Many a smoky camp fire ember
Camphor, turpentine, and tea
The balsom of a Christmas tree
These are whiffs of grammerye
A ship smells best of all to me.
THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR
January brings the snow;
Makes our toes and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen ponds again.
March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June brings tullips lillies roses;
Fills the childrens hands with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Straw berries and gilly flowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit,
Sports men then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the Peasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasent.
Dull November brings the blast
Then the leaves are falling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.
MY DAD
When I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license. When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me with my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some chance.”
[NO NAME]
If I had a lollipop tree
I'de be as happy as can be.
I' would sit by it all day long
Eating away until there nearly gone
I'de say “that's enough lollies for today
But I'll come back to morrow and eat away.
SIX INCHES HIGH
I was sitting on the sofa drinking lemon-ade when suddenly I felt funny and then I started shrinking and shrinking till I was six inches high. I fell down on the sofa w/ a plod. I climbed down a loose string on to the ground and then started walking across to the chess board I had left lying around. Suddenly I herd something that sounded like me beating up my brother. I looked around me but at first I couldn't see anybody but then I saw a chess pawn hanging w/ all his might on the chess board for he was just about to fall on the ground which was a long way down. He slipped and I ran and caught him, but just then a big rat came running out from under a sofa so I ran w/ the pawn as fast as I could and dived into a mouse hole which the rat couldn't fit in. We couldn't get out because the rat was guarding the hole so we sat down and talked. He said his name was “Humph”. He said he could get me back to my normal size but he would need help from more chess pieces. Humph said “When it is 7. 00, if you sit on the same sofa you shrunk on w/ all the chess pieces you will grow back to your normal size. I looked at my watch. I was 6. 30 and 56 seconds. We didn't have much time so we looked around for something to fight the rat w/. Just then Humph found the perfect thing. An old toothbrush. I got my pen-knife out of my pocket and sharpend the end of the tooth brush w/ no bristles on. Then I cut off all the bristles on the other end and started fighting the rat w/ the toothbrush. The rat was soon dead so we brought the toothbrush and went to look for the other chess pieces. We soon gatherd them all together and told them every thing. It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa. I was the first one up followd by the white pawns then the two queens then the kings then the blakc pawns then the bishop then the rooks and last of all the knits. We counted them all. There was only 31 pieces. There was a little pawn trying to get up on the sofa so I jumped down and lifted him up. I grew back to my normal size but there was no chess pices. I put the rest of the lemonade I had been drinking before in the bin and went to sleep. When I woke up I thought I had been dreaming but then I found the toothbrush and went back to sleep.
APRIL
In April it is the beginning of Spring.
The daffodils are waving their yellow heads in the wind.
In the gardens and in the woods Catkins,
that look like lambs tails are dangling
from the branches on bushes in the hedges.
The days are gradually getting longer.
We have many showers.
It is my birthday in April.
The first of April is called “April Fools day.
We play tricks on people that day.
The buds on trees are swelling and oppening.
The birds are coming back from the hot countries.
THE BIGGEST LIAR IN THE WORLD
A long time ago in Japan, I saw a funny looking man walk out of a big bubbling volcano. He had three eyes but that was the only difference between him and us. He wore a mask that was made from white metal, his sweat-shirt was white, his trousers were white, his high leather boots were black. He had black gloves with spikes sticking out about seven inches but the most peculiar thing about him was that around his shoulder was a big gun. It had all sorts of gizmoes that shoot lasers, fire, water, poison, spoof, bullets, you name it. So I went up to him and asked him “What's your name?” He said “Wotsit”. I asked “where do you come from?” He said “Fingermebobdownthevolcano!” I said “what's the gun for?” He said “first let me tell you a secret.” He said he's the biggest liar in his country. He said once that thousands of little aliens attacked his country, he said that he blew them all away with three blasts of his gun. He also said he was God's messenger and had helped God to make the world and had stayed alive ever since. The real truth is I am the biggest liar...this whole story's codswallop.
[NO NAME]
Pod: God morning
Fat Guy: No it isn't
Pod: Why not?
Fat Guy: Because I said not
Pod: But why did you say not.
Fat Guy: I didn't say not, I said no it isn't. so what
I've got something to tell you. Guess what?
Fat Guy: what
Pod: Your...erm, er....a
clot and I'm not.
[NO NAME]
MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,
MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,
HE'S GOT THREE EYES
AND A BIG FAT NOSE
AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED
WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,
HE ONCE TOOK A PILL
THAT MADE HIM ILL
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL
Book 4 of the boyhood proof
“THE HORRIBLE HUNTER”
The hunter, a horrible old man,
Is hunting in the forest, every moment he can.
Searching for foxes, with his hunting dogs,
Charging through the dark, dark forest,
Through rivers and through bogs.
Only his prey can see his eyes,
He never looks up to the sky.
He's a finger missing with a scar on his face,
He lives his life in awful disgrace.
His dead prey is hooked onto his jacket,
When he kills it makes an awful racket.
He puts out his snapping snares,
hoping to catch foxes and hares.
He lives in a small, tobacco smelling hut,
Deep in the forest it is put
He's got a small patch of hair,
And a horrible hypnotizing stare.
As a bullet is pulled from his belt,
You're bound to hear an animal's yelp.
A DEADLY CHARM
I am a padlock: who locks up your thoughts,
I am pollution: that blackens yourheart,
I am electricity: fast, furious and frightening,
I am a machine gun: looking for a kill,
I am a politician: dizzy, dazzled and dazed,
I am a radio: that speaks of death,
I am the concrete: that stiffens your body,
I am the computer: that controls the world,
I am dynamite: who always gets his way,
I am a micro-chip: small but clever,
I am a missile: roaring through the air,
I am a rocket: somewhere up there,
I am a drink machine: wasting your money,
I am a digital watch: who but I, is telling
you the time as the hours go by?
[NO NAME]
My cage walls are nearly pressing in at my sides.
There are multi-coloured giants stroking me and treating melike a baby.
There is a deaffening sound of birds humming in a corner.
It turns dark emmediately, by a touch of a button.
All the captured animals around me probably have the same, agonizing feeling as I do.
I feel like running away when people take me out of my cage and cuddle me.
I feel likeI've been imprisoned in a jail for no reason.
I always feel like staring at the masive, multi-coloured men, mechanically moving.
THE BADGER [draft 2]
As soon as I was imprisoned, inside my cage,
A happy feeling vanished from my mind,
It was a feeling of roaming, round the countryside,
Catching my own prey, chasing mice and digging in burrows.
But now I feel like I've been jailed for no reason.
I suppose all the other animals here
have the same agonising feeling that I have.
It seems quite weird, the massive, multi-coloured men,
Making it turn night by a touch of a little white button on a wall.
When all the humans have gone at night,
And the birds have stopped twittering,
I try to escape but I don't think a mouse
Could squeeze through the gaps in the bars.
But one day someone took me away.
He tried to tame me. I didn't want him to
but I gradually became tamer and tamer.
It was a lot better than in the pet shop,
But not as good as the forest.
I doubt anything is as good as the forest.
THE INTERVIEW ON MY MUM
J. What is the most important event that's happened in your life?
M Giving birth to four healthy children.
J. Why is that so important to you?
M I myself came from a family of four children and there was always something going on, so when I came to have children myself, I thought it would be nice to have four.
J. What sort of things went on?
M One thing is that when there are four of you, you always have someone to talk to or play with. I was the oldest and my sister and brother who were very close in age, used to get up to some terrible things like once they made porridge on the floor and once they put crispbread under the rug and walked on it just to hear it go crunch. My grandmother called them 'the termites'.
J. Are your children like your siblings?
M. A little bit. I think if you put four young children together one of them will think of something dreadful to do. My son once tried to teach the cat how to swim in a bucket of water.
THE TYGER
What kind of creature is the Tyger? I think God made the Tyger and ment him to be a normal tiger but the devil caught him and hypnotised him against God. I think the Devil puts him in everyone's dreams. I think he is just an image ment to come at the right time to take control of there brains I think he is a ghost of a normal tiger but the Devil turned him evil. I think the Tyger is an angel of Hell. He is not tangible because it says “what dread grasp? Dare its deadly tendon clasp?” I think it came from Hell by wings because it says, “In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes,” and “On what wings dare he aspire.” I think the Devil stole the minds of all the criminals and made the Tyger from them. I think the Tyger is immortal and turns your dreams to nightmares.
From ‘PAGE 11’
1. Area of whole shape = 80 CM squared
Area of unshaded part = 4 CM squared
Area of shaded part = 76 CM squared
2. Area of whole shape = 72 CM squared
Area of unshaded part = 8 CM squared
Area of shaded part = 64 CM squared
EQUATIONS
(1) 3 a + 4 = 2 a + 8
(2) 4 b + 4 = 1 b + 7
(3) 5 a + 3 = 2 a + 12
(4) 5 b + 1 = 3 b + 11
(5) 7 c + 3 = 3 c + 31
(6) 7 y + 1 = 3 y + 25
(7) 11 c + 9 = 8 c + 24
(8) 7 b + 12 = 1 b + 24
(9) 3 t + 5 = 2 t + 12
(10) 5 b + 10 = 2 b + 19
SYSTEMS 11TH MAY
1. 211
2112 ATTRACTOR
2122
1132
211213
312213
212223
114213
31121314
41122314
31221324
__________
21322314
21322314
WHINNIE'S CHOICE
I'm awake very early but it is light, and very hot outside. I'm seventeen todayand I've been thinking about it all night but decided not to drink the water. I would lose a lot of my friends and relatives and would feel alien. I could jumpoff the Empire State Building for billions of pounds but friends are better than money. Anyway, my grandmother believes in gnomes so she could advise me somehow. I asked her, “Grandma, if there was a spring in the wood with everlasting water in it would you drink it?”
“Whatever made you ask that question?”
“But would you?”
“Well probably and probably not. There are lots of disadvantages and only a few advantages.”
After that I went into my room to think about it. If I did drink it, now would be the best time to do it because I'm at the prime of my life and I have Jesse. I might as well take Tuck's advice because he's drunk the water and experienced it so I don't think I'll drink the water. Anyway I'll go out there and I might change my mind. The spring looked so lovely but something was different. Then I noticed that there was a stone missing from the top. The water looked so delicious and fresh that I walked up to it, took another stone off the top, was just about to drink it when a traveller came.
“Hello,” he said. “Could you please direct me to Treegap?”
“It's just down this road,” I said.
When he had gone I took another stone and again I would have drunk it if it weren't for the toad. He was sitting in the spring bathing. So I thought it over again.it was like a war in my head between Jesse and Tuck, with me not knowing which side to take. Then I thought that God might've tried to stop me and that God had told the traveller and the toad to disturb me when I was going to drink the water. So I've made up my mind. I won't drink the water.
THE BEAST
The Beast was quick as lightning,
Strong as an ox and very frightening,
Cunning as a fox, tough as leather,
Hungry as a hunter and not very clever.
He is as large as life, as swift as a hare,
Keen as mustard, he'll give you a scare,
Don't go near it at half past three,
Because that's the time it will have you for tea.
NIGHT (BEDTIME)
Mum said, “It's time to go to bed,”
I said “C'mon not yet.”
She said “It's half past eleven, dear,
And tomorrow's school don't forget.”
Underneath my pillow was food for a midnight feast,
I can hear an owl hooting and the shuffling of feet,
Making shadows on the wall,
Which is the spookiest of them all.
Dogs barking and dad is snoring,
Lying in bed is very boring,
Thinking of chocolate and soda crème,
Nothing to do except to dream.
MY WORLD
My world would be a chocolate factory in the clouds. It would be completely made of chocolate and if you ate a wall it would just grow back. It is invisible to any other people and only certain people can get there. The weather is always what you want it to be and if you want it to rain, snow or shine it will happen. There is a chocolate fun world as well and it is called Choc World. You can walk all over the clouds and look down at any place in the world and if you want to go there you can just take the Choc-mobile down to earth.
RELIGION
Dear Family,
I hope you are all feeling well. I have got some very bad news to tell you. I may never see you again. I'm very sorry but I've got to go into hiding somewhere where no-one will find me. All of Jesus' followers that are in danger are coming because we could be killed by Saul. I don't want to go, but I have to and I'm not allowedto tell you where so that you're not in danger as well. We have to get together and all go disguised at night time. I have two messengers that I can trust to bring us food and news safely. Just to make you more secure, I'll tell you that I have enough food and a good warm shelter.
Lots of love,
John.
PRIVATE
Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones.
Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
squawk squawk gaggle gaggle,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones,
bongles has still got the stones.
THE FIRE AND THE SEA
The fire is observed, its hundred tongues, flirting, dancing, entrancing, mesmerising the eye.
The sea is remembered and imagined, its rhythmical engine grinding some one mile or so away down the road.
The fire is hot but the sea casts no heat.
The red and blue thing is a graph with one long line, kinking headward from the heart and its wine, and ending up in the stars.
That’s where the hottest heat burns blue.
It’s not the same in our haunted house, where the fire is nearer red and mother can’t find her other whisk because of the over-friendly ghost.
It’s very thin, that line, kinking headward from the heart and its wine, and ending up in the stars, where the hottest heat burns blue.
(1995, reconstructed)
NOTEBOOK
Il
faut que je m’en aille.
Sometimes
you’ve just got to hit
the road and.
Start
learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from
some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass
the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of
the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul
and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the
speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees,
birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a
smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.
The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog, he should be sleeping like a log, goes round and round chasing his own tail, only goes upstairs for a trail of Maltesers, nice, round and pale, we’re on the road to Heaven, happiness awaits us there, flutter in the sideways, flutter in the sideways, bring your brief fling with the politics of flight…
Sullen, silken sulks,
we drink the same rain,
spit is clean
and
so is dirt.
Folder
graffiti. Normal is boring. Do it later. God made speed to save us,
God made hash to help us. The
system works quite well. The
grass is always long on the Other Side.
The
fire-dance dwelled in electric drums
where
ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap
and
bells let peace form in blue notes
and
peered at deer in the wood and ate of it
and
wet let excellence sound out its criticism
and
dawn let sting its unsheathed sting
and
chloroform in the heart let see
if
only Game Over was seen in nights.
The
sun
hanged
himself
from
a
length
of
daisy
chain.
Clocktick
clock being clocked off by clocktick.
Clocktick
clock not being clocked off by Time.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.
Break,
bird with the skin of snake.
God
rushed into the cold cod quick.
Behold!
An evil vision hath flashed before mine eyes!
Barnes
has scored a chicken
and
wingers are allowed bikes!
Maybe
a
tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, like The Periodic Table except
a swear word in every box, to
go at the end?
Even
A Duck
Gets Big Erections: my mnemonic for the strings
of the electric
guitar took the same amount of time to conjure as it takes to say,
but
my mother has changed it now.
Hey, my name is David Bonky,
I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,
there’s a tear up my jacket.
Over and out, testing testing 123, welcome to my presence and its intensity...
I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.
She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.
She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.
She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.
She slides the stick of it out of the pack.
She puts the stick of it into her mouth.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She puts the packet back in her bag.
She swings the bag about a little bit.
She walks past a little pub long shut.
She might go check out a flower shop.
She loves to chew and to suck the taste.
She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.
I read that Maya means “Goddess of Illusion” in Sanskrit, where Mara, by stunning contrast, is the Buddhist God of Temptation.
A glance
A blink
A fault in the stars
Her mascara slips into pools of black
A chance
A second
of Infinity
She flutters her eyelids
like spring’s first butterfly
The stars awake to notice love
she waits with open arms.
But all is well if I only think
& sigh of the dreams of dusk
Images before I sleep
Dancing, escaping memory
They seem to have no cares at all
They seem to know the name of love
They seem to be my sacred friends
Ancient messengers, waking at night
But I will forget them & never care
About what I saw in love & alive
What? Oh, I guess it’s love
Just us & love Forever...
Sometimes I wish to have no more than a line penned in the margins of a newspaper going:
The light of all that’s good is true
if believing is the dawn of dreams.
Only when the ship is ripped is the sea a she and the water Nirvana-blue as solar spike.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
Soft
and
loose
like
yellow
pencils
scribbling
dreams
as
they
arrive.
Semen spills like silver water,
under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,
splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.
Don’t escape at night
into a heightened dream
from a dull and longing sleep.
Her breath a poisonous magic.
Sometimes perhaps
down opening quiet
I am drawn down
long and alone and
my friend and my foe
recede into deep sleep
sudden and still
like a dawn behind
a screaming veil
where silence is born
and all that’s loose and tight
and all that’s light is light
like first morning
with no night
and wend my way
so slow to Freedom
and soft Infancy-lunacy
with harp-sure eyes
so I can live
the last poet’s
last poem.
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but like butterflies.
My philosophy in a nutshell: sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt; but when you write it down, what happens?
Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.
When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:
[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].
Blessed may be the end at last,
under the sea,
below the soul,
in the upside-down
Oceans above us
(all that Heaven sends is rain).
V to the knock-kneed hummingbird’s wings… plus, in Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, E is white; but in my friend Agent G’s musical code, when you detune the guitar strings all the way down, the streetname for E becomes F sharp minor!
2
JOHN TUCKER
ENGLISH
E
ENGLISH
JOHN TUCKER
HARECROFT
1
Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.
Last night it seemed we couldn't sleep but maybe I was dreaming. The world expands inside my hands it's getting heavy. Of all the treasures I could choose I can't seem to decide. Today the shade was washed away where I would hide. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise. Last night it seemed we nearly
died
but maybe I was dreaming. It made me feel sooooooooooooo alive
and soooooooo in love. Dream
with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve
stopped telling lies, come below
and we can fantasise.
Where once I wandered far and wide
on a field-file, a file-field,
a fenceless farm without
security alarm where all hearts bleed
and all arts breed, now Hell
is very quiet, unadvertised.
McBreastmilk,
McBreastmilk,
don’t feed your kids.
Gentle face erasing cream,
smear it in and let it sink
down through the pores of your skin
to erase your deepest down dirt.
O stars the government
that truly speaks for us!
Get an extra kid for free
when you spend 99p.
Freefall 0800 down
your own black hole pupils.
Maybelline you maybe only make-believe
you may be the true mating queen of the hive,
may mad vampires stalk you,
stalking walls walk through
your vagrant dreams.
I see state of head
is more than Head of State.
Monster Munch can
always gobble up your food.
Cancerel can always
sweeten the stewed-
carfume coffee we sip in
this liminal afterlounge.
It’s getting cramped
as a tin of beans in here.
In emergency please
break glass and exit.
Credits at the end of innocence
are falling like numberless lists
of fallen autumn leaves.
Snatched handfuls of light
come to nothing in the dark room.
There must be a use for
this dust amounting.
There’s nothing like digging
a meaningless hole as if to cure the
spiralling lethargy of Hell...
and when I went into the
woods to bury my soul,
all the trees knelt down.
O perpetual orgasm of the sun!
Privation is the mother of imagery.
Prayers, ghosts and
e-mails chatter on
the ego-loss breeze.
The chitchat in the solipsistic
kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.
My new, motley fridge magnet
letters contain no question
mark in the pack but the first
qualification of Modernism
is inquiry and furthermore
wilful ignorance is a sin.
Meanwhile outside the
fallen Autumn leaves
are where bears have
dipped their feet in pots of paint
and danced across the threshold
of the paving stones.
Water clears its throat from the tap.
Gunpowder was only invented
for fireworks and a firework
is a champion sperm nosing up
blind to explode bright and wonderful
deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.
The world is a cool, bejewell'd
marble snug in Holy Orbit
suckling on a mother sun.
Supposedly there is soon
to be New Atlantis on the moon.
The cure for cancer
sustains your heart.
Robbed by a bastard vending machine,
somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper
to cleanse the doors of perception,
a drunkard attacks a wall
on an otherwise empty street,
a policeman forces himself
to come with a gun.
Hey salesman
slow down
with that
fast-food.
I don't mind
waiting here
for a year.
Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland.
It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows.
I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity.
Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains.
It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real.
Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven.
The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.
If
you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning. I can run you
through a series of life events in terse
precis
that meant I arrived at such a culmination.
Well,
at
seven I helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed
storing in writing in the attic here to
give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, I
was the one to write it. By eight I was the witness from
The Lords And The New You Know Who
twice. By eleven who
knew what was going on?
By fifteen I attained the face of stars which
may have been scripted in the Bible.
By eighteen I forewarned of September 11th
in 2000 and wrote the highest-marked English
Literature A-level
exam essay in the nation at 100%.
After
school I recorded an album on binaural earphones, had an effervescent
mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every
technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough
alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite
the onset of mental
illness,
worked the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen, built the Tower as an
instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette
tape with a pause where resealed in the reel, and discovered the
sheet where pictures (seemingly
depicting one of my own song lyrics) grew.
I
went through all that without earning 1p. Then
as a summary of all of
that
which
I had done,
I invented
and falsified
the Nirvana barcode and in doing so attained visual radio,
broadcasting dreams that
swirl in digital, purple swathes about the head of the deranged
seer...
So
you see that it has been fast indeed! That Subaru Impreza! And Time
does not pass but evaporate! And things live inside onions of
themselves! And galloping water would be a cool thing to say!
I
made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless
Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape
using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Bring bring
bring bring
“Hello?”
Gold member, you're the one,
the one with the heart of gold
Vowels, pure vowels
Immanuel Kant
will come to thee
with immanence
You come home smacked up you come
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
boom
boom
boom
boom
boom
how did we get down here from flat-top
wide tunnel cities self driving cars
bears in the moon and liquor and drugs
and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars
boom shanka, you're the one,
the one with the sonic boom
knickers knickers faster than lightning
skin up fall out of bed
and did those feet
in ancient times
rain down, rain down,
come on raindown
and walk the sun
fatter, hippier, less well connected
always walk the hallways
down to create my own
and in the meantime
and in the meantime
I'll do the monkey bars with my legs
manic depression has enraptured my name
don't know what I want but I just want shame
don't know what I want but I just won't shave
rainy waif, rain always,
lay back and dream
on a rainy waif
now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
no more laaaaaaaaaa la's
removal van canes will be turned into furniture
we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir
you never see me dead near an inch of closure
|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings
“and a record made of sound
goes round and round, conveying
music to the speaker through the stylus,”
says the radio as I turn it on.
Well, although there is no
such thing as the Nirvana barcode
it opens up a discussion about
the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how
if barcode is rain barcode is phone...
and at least I have
the grace to come
back and say that the
extinction of consciousness
has no monetary value.
It is past dawn
and I see that
that first mobile
phone
has gone.
If it makes any difference to you,
my little bro is a genius, who
designed the sheet
where pictures grew
and says <BEE>
might soon ensue
from @ in the international
language alphabet…
he did it for Flora,
subject of many a love poem of mine,
and it turns out
he had her, did her, loved her,
won her, got her,
in time past.
But who kissed who
is playground stuff,
and jealousy is a wasted emotion,
and I am proud
to be my brother’s brother,
and my mother’s son.
I would never begrudge my brother something I would want for myself or my mother either.
FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION
I
Apple blossom cheek
breath of wine
plates or confetti
he sips on disturbed
Nile insect
spaghetti
II
While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,
what I’m getting at is that
if a flower-press ending on cannabis
could = a dialysis a love poem
only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.
III
If I could sip from your eyes I would
and taste your name. Eyes of
deep
undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish
in them, drag out numberplates,
mangled car doors, crumbs.
The pretext is yours
and it is also my mum’s.
IV
If this were a fairy story
there’d be no happy ending.
No sumptuous consummation
will wait for the poet
at the end of a plot.
I think of a chain of music from star to star,
but therein am starting
to quote my old self again.
V
I’ve already lost my father
who was an international art smuggler
nicknamed Blue or so he said -
though once upon a time
I thought art was recourse
to euphemism for pollen.
The people from the future,
they don’t want his business to end.
VI
It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,
like yellow trumpets, broadcasting
their excellent news.
Excellent News was the ideal
in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.
I was nomadic in those days.
VII
Before the daffs come out,
we have snowdrops like
pure, white flames
in the heart for love.
The long, dark tunnel
of winter awaits us now.
VIII
I sip tea, I sip tea,
unsweetened it’s
enough for me.
I’ve
got a lot of washing up to do.
I
tried to meditate today.
Come.
It’s
good to get the washing
up
done, because it is good
to
make a clean space
for
yourself before
you
write – mess leaks in
to
the brain when
you
are in a messy room.
Now
it’s done I can make a sandwich -
cheese,
ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…
it
has no added sugar unlike white.
At
the moment I am leaving
the
washing up to dry, but
soon
will put it all away.
Then
I can say “hey,
I
pulled my weight today.”
So
that I do, and that’s true…
I
do a little bit more at my screen,
getting
pithy about Place and Nature
then go outside to collect wood.
Sometimes I look at Nature and see
invisible sheet music flowing right to left.
If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.
The fell from town,
when you’re driving towards it,
seems a great, slumbering
diplodocus, come
to fat and die by
the Irish Sea; but
nearer the foot
you can see it is
more Buddha levitating.
And when you mention
the slow ascent
up flat, gradual paths
I think more of a bullet
to the top of a telegraph pole
or even the kettle, rising
to its silent scream,
its steam Ariel returning
on Caliban’s chain.
Floating in the quiet
of a weightless dawn,
the buzzard is the crux
of the flux of time,
and all of Creation
his dark machine.
There are benefits living here, like
once I encountered a rare, red kite,
which sat resting on a fence post, waiting
for me like a warning or a reward.
Sometimes
Nature is custodial;
and
at other times, frightening, otherworldly…
in
me, Nature is a great
art exhibition,
but
it can also be an immunity to Reason.
Some
think of the future a lot,
and
how there should still be
a
place for Nature in that future,
to
go exploring
just to look at trees,
which
like
crows,
dogs and
horses
are Man’s friends.
Nature
is the true architecture of State, at
least
unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative
attitude.
Here
we find mood as bracken frond.
We
find dry stone walls creeping
in
to the writing even of city folk, visiting.
I
think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug
called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good
invention for fell walkers. I
sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the
fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I
have taken up it and whether I held the record.
The
powers that be could be clouds
rowing
overhead
on
their sky blue roads.
And
everything
in Nature is
only
semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.
Well,
nothing
has changed to the map
apart
from the wind-farm beyond
the lap
of
the tide, revolving
its Mercedez Benz arms
to
make electricity for
the
farms -
and
also the cafe down the beach -
since
Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -
Changes
to the place
have been the net,
global
warming let’s not forget,
the
advent of the mobile phone
and
increased
opportunities
for vice in town.
But
who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?
Here,
we
find the beck is a fountain pen.
I
sometimes stand by the beck, listening
in.
(Dr.
Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)
I
would be wearing my wellies, listening
to
its most mellifluous applause,
the
way she falls two feet
into
a sound as sweet
as
a kettle drum’s
metal
petals of
silver
bliss that
blossom
on a carnival’s street.
Literature
from the city is of alienation,
literature
of rootedness repetitive,
and
the city is the intellectual breeding station,
but
countrylife closer how we ought live.
I
The A595 is the main road connecting
the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and
Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday
the posse of motorbikes come
to this bucolic valley because the road
has something in the golden sector #
to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.
I went walking up the rearside of the fell,
and some one or two hundred yards in,
up the path and away from the A595,
encountered a rare, red kite
with dawn-charred chest, resting
on the fence-post, waiting
for me like a warning or reward…
II
Here from this seat now
I look about the kitchen, painted
a plush, Mediterranean coral,
at the indomitable things on the walls,
the notice board of cork,
the dead telly wearing
mother’s funeral hat,
the calendar with local photos,
the chart depicting the plants of the
Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…
It’s a country farmhouse kitchen
with an AGA, where most of the cooking
is home-made, not from packets.
We have no neighbourhood or amenities
and country life can be quite dull,
but recently I felt elated
for capturing a partial alignment
of the Plough and oldest fell
on my new Smartphone.
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,
NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,
H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,
ESA for extra sensory allowance
but I for one still don’t really know
if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.
III
It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid
just because the rhythm of life is slower.
The region is an actual religion.
It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.
I
was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,
as
I stood there gazing upon it.
It’s
as close to a bird of prey
as
I have ever got out in the wild.
Apparently,
the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this
should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being
able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the
Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they
named them.
Obviate
not titivate, sate
your
quest for meat and fling
to
your bright
ring, your
peerless
orbit, your wheel
of
hunting,
out-stretch
wings
to be
engorged
on air’s
ranting,
rock-strong
sockets
braced against crushing,
uprushing
rivers and sail.
Eventually,
it did fly away,
but
not until I made the decision
to
continue my walk, to leave
the
moment, the spot where I stood.
Seeing
its wings unfold,
seeing
it fly away, I took a left
up
the rear side of the fell, following
the
path beside the beck
and
– still not knowing
what
the bird was, only storing
an
image of it in my brain -
reached
the cairn at the top.
Down
down
down
down
down
deep
blue
below
“eh
up,
mate,”
says
my
mate
and
is
it
safe
to
say
hello?
When
I got down again,
and
back to my home on
this
side of the fell, I
looked
the bird up in a book,
and
found it was a red kite.
For
some reason I thought
I
had found the golden eagle…
there
was a rumour that a pair of them
had
moved into the area.
So
I was actually disappointed
to
find the bird was a rare, red kite,
which
it certainly, judging
by
the book of birds, was.
That
afternoon, I got a phonecall
from
my ex gf on my mobile.
I
told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”
I
also told her I had given up cannabis;
asked
her if she still smoked;
but
what she said and what she was doing
when
she said it, I shall not say.
Simon
says the River Goyt
might
become the Styx in Heaven.
I
say the rhythm of the River Goyt
beats
blood to my head like a cold muscle.
The
word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting
Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.
Back
then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher,
Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by
people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of
all were
Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana.
All
of it was better to listen to when high.
Dr.
Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally
for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If
you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and
signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at
any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”
Kurt
Cobain sings:
“my
heart is broke,
but
I have some glue,
help
me inhale,
I’ll
mend it with you,
we’ll
float around,
hang
out on clouds,
then
we’ll come down,
have
a hangover.”
I
Now
we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday.
It’s
a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am
also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s
her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day
made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.
We
need to get some new Vape juice
because
there is only one bottle left.
Tesco
is going to be closed for a few weeks
after
today so we should stock up.
Apparently
they are going
to
redo the fruit and veg section
so
that the fruit and veg is stored
in
a series of closed compartments.
Now
for the
E as I
try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and
the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out
like
fools.
It is air for
the tortured soul to breathe. It
is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.
II
Sensation
precedes
thought in art,
chain is made from same as key,
waves make gentle
love to the shore,
homework tonight is
to remember your dreams,
and this we know,
there is no ‘we,’
I am the third person
immaculate, free…
you know the routine
by now, the score,
and more and many more,
but let’s not dwell
on school-made things
when outside birds
sing with their wings
and freedom flies
and freedom flows
and the music never stops.
A
GUIDED TOUR OF THE HOUSE
Here
is my bedroom, anagram of boredom.
The
books belong to Dr. Robert
because
it used to be his bedroom.
From
here I can take you on a guided tour.
We
enter at the back, into the scullery,
from
which you can access dad’s office,
or
move through to the spacious kitchen,
painted
a plush, Mediterranean coral.
There
are black, slate flags on the floor;
then
we move through to the carpeted
Hall,
from
which you can access the cloakroom
under
the stairs, the large sitting room,
and
the posh, coffee-cake dining room.
The
pine stairs are one of the house’s selling
points
and lead you up via a creaky mezzanine
on
which there is a Victorian, stained-glass window
to
the first floor. To your right as you
make
it upstairs you find two large bedrooms.
Straight
ahead of you is another.
To
your left is the corridor, off which
you
find a single loo, the shower room,
the
bath room, Hannah’s old bedroom
and
my own bedroom down at the end.
Just
outside my little room you find
the
attic stairs that wind
and lead
you up
to
the third floor, with a large bedroom,
that
used to be my dad’s attic of radio static,
and
which has its own little bathroom.
Moving
through you find the
playroom
where
James and Bob played Lego
and
last of all the
locked attic that
stores
or used to store sacred treasures.
No comments:
Post a Comment