EDITORIAL
At Oundle School a friend and I founded a magazine called Poetry Now and a DIY Publishing company called Ice Land Publications after the country in Brave New World where the renegades are exiled. The magazine had many contributors, all of whom were anonymous aside from a list of contributing names at the back. Each month’s edition of Poetry Now had a different monthly edition name like “juvenile dementia” or “under garments.” At the time I was into Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, Keats’s Negative Capability, Tricky’s trip-hop lyrics, the Beats and more. I took a sharp right at the rosy crucifix on the black board demarcating the values of the Augustan and Romantic periods – saying “tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.” For some reason the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty; and can’t stand the suspense” also chimed like bells reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. (I read that line in a Velvet Underground record sleeve actually!). My mission was not just “to make them sound genuine and believable,” but also “to remain relevant and interesting” and “to be utterly modern too.” The following suite has been preserved of my output.
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. The tape is of Pearl Jam ‘VS’ and therefore the experiment is in building a poetry machine in perpetual motion.]
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