BRAVE NEW TENSE (CONTINUED)

(CONTINUED)

THE NEW MOON BEAM

O Flo’, O woe, O what am I ever going to do now?

As if to make sure I am still a nutter

the kind people of the intercom have asked the poet

to redo for you what I did for Nathalia

which is to climb on to the roof at sunset

here where the stars re-align

even though it is long past sunset

and write a series of strictly 12 love poems

out there, lying back on the roof at Cumpstones

which is as I say where the Plough alignment lives…

sooooooooooo within moments

of the kind people suggesting I remake them

just for you whom it would seem

is still to be my lifelong dream,

I found a pen, some paper, a buttercup-torch

and made my way to the play room in the attic

through whose Velux I used to climb

and O woe is me! The Velux no longer opens!

What am I ever going to do?

Instead I sit at this flat, anti-Romantic screen,

venting my spleen, my mood made stable

on a sterilised table far away…

gone is the day, and gone the day when

daring teenagers would smoke on the roof.

I guess the Velux must’ve sealed shut!

So no longer can you see love

as a search for much small proof!

I would be out under the stars, saying

it is dawn, and by dawn I would say

it is night, and you wouldn’t know.

I might’ve been in the city for all I let on!

It would’ve been interesting to see

if by now I had become the new Einstein,

and if the new, synchronised word stretched out there,

where I lay back in warm, altruistic night air,

under what Jim called a placenta of stars…

I would talk of the dawn in the dark.

Lament for the death of that lark.

It’s still not too late to separate

the wend from the stain, dream one.

Into the miracle-movie I try and move now.

Into the flow of words I go,

after the alphabet dancing again,

investing my mind, knowing

it takes passion to reignite

the long gone song in the heart.

Courteous blandishments and platitudes,

cruciform shapes of longitudes and latitudes,

all prior armour, can be gone,

as through love the switch is thrown…

needing to move for the retirement of my mum,

I think back to the bats in the attic,

and all that has gone on, and how

I would weep to leave, really grieve,

and lose my bond with the stars.

When I let you know what went on

in terms of certain Naturalistic Observations,

attestations, weird specimens, even

you had to deal with it and heal with it

and I regret ever letting anyone else in

but at least by now my main concerns

are all you whom it seems

is not smitten with the horseman

who’ll only let you down.

Out on the roof meanwhile where

flat, blank, Skiddaw slates are lying,

there is no-one to capture the rapture,

to see how far they can see,

to contemplate Infinity, if

the universe goes on forever,

how there’s no such thing as “almost infinite,”

how there needed to be everything

in order for there to be anything at all.

So although it was a brilliant idea

of mine originally, to write up there,

and now again of whomsoever it is

that feeds us, whom I hear call,

alas, O woe is me, O Flo’, O no,

the best work of a generation is impossible

and with that we land quite flat

as a screen, as a mental patient’s mood,

back in the posh, coffee-cake dining room

where I have made my bed underneath

a large, pastoral painting which seems

to smuggle God’s nostril into the cloud…

by now when I talk of wandering

lonely in the cloud, there is new meaning,

but all I do is sit here pondering,

who is calling, and writing…

I would like to liken your blink

to the fluttering of the butterfly,

like I did last time when this went on.

By now you might be starting to doubt

whether I am even dressed, and

what it is that I test, and which

exiled world is the best at every wrong decision….

At least we still seem to have some purple,

even when the people call out of fever,

at the radical, recalcitrant renegade in the middle,

grown repentant for all that’s gone wrong.

I would be calibrating a new, musical scale by now

had that window opened, and truly

am only starting to see that

it’s become a bit like us

who did not seize the chance…

by now this rewrite of my first collection is getting full.

By night I write but am not on the pull.

I might be out there inventing a new force,

spelling “entropy” backwards as if to

frame the first, unformulated spark

of appetence in Nothingness preceding

Creation, but instead pleasure is fleeting -

a callous colour of mind overcomes me.

How I would wash you, anatomise you,

take you to the zoo, hold your hand,

oversee the growth of your dreaming gland,

expand your horizons – all gone.

Now my brother’s love is what I cherish.

THERE WERE ALMOST COUNTLESS OTHERS

There were almost countless others

but I had to let them go

one evening as I sat here

in the room with my bruv

whom it seems is a deft

left hand born of a deft

left hand which was a

necessary set up to design

the sheet where pictures grew.

He fed me the necessary

guidance through nose-flute,

to cut out their over-generosity,

and the theft, and leave

something of a step.

We decided to cut it short

before the Irish piped up again,

so that we could at least write

of our own beck, if not

their large Irish Sea.

The renewal of the wand

might be on the cards…

we deem it that we can even

feed the fleet with beef.

Snowdrops are pure white

flames in my heart for love.

“MAGIC SAYINGS HIDDEN IN THE TREETOPS”

A moocow is not made of dialectical antagonism. Someone else can lose your marbles for you. Vowels are our souls. Meaning in music is solipsistic, it is faces in the fire or Hamlet’s 3 creatures in a cloud-change. Life could be a dull throb of loneliness inside your breast as well as a colourful spew going on outside the cave-walls of the skull. If Liberalism is the allowing of all perceptions and it leads to Hamlet’s harmatia irresolution, pragmatism may be the reactivation of an attitudinisation in that situation. Planes are the shoes of clowns. It’s impossible to make a cowboy film in space. A drum is a dream bigger than a dream of bounding in huge, magic circles in space. The Big Mac, which contains the four basic, caveman cravings of salt, fat, sugar and protein, could be the heir to the apple of knowledge. Love can go veggie for reasons of Disney. Light-speed is my passport. If acid is the microchip of a peach, the sun is the peachstone of a black hole. It is not true that the effects of acid and of acid-rain on an imaginary species = the same, nothing, if there can be no more proof of something being real than saying it was Imagined. The constellations only seem to turn on axis unobserved. A trance of stalks walks on stilts like a stance on talks only to the toilet then back to bed to rest its head under the soft, Pink Panther blanket. When a volume starts to smell of redolent flowers or Flora’s perfume it could be the word of a dog. Death’s breath is a tear of flame with waxy dreadlocks drooped in shame. When we wake words are stone shoes worn by the bottoms of clouds, weighing them down hopelessly. It is possible to harness waves that also passed through the Beats. Leaves that played on the surface of the water, these are the leaves they have in Heaven, these are the leaves of love. There are fossils of art as well as fossils of life. Connection is Heaven and Heaven connection and there is connection between Heaven and vision for vision may feel in a state of Heaven and Heaven only exist in vision. Semantics is a road sign not a place. Meaning is inherent in something’s exact mode of expression. Meaning is not a delusion unlike Time. Meaning could be an emotional import given mere exo-skeleton with words. Every planet has its own colour and ‘Calliope’ means ‘beautiful face.’ The names of pharmaceutical medications should probably not appear in poems. Nature is the true architecture of State. If ever there were a light-speed law of neuroplasticity it might only be that “it is impossible to remember a new yellow line.” Cliche hurts more than truth. Where rain falls, falling reigns. Pictures can be done without hands. Life is not just about naturally occurring fossils of Jim Morrison’s poetry for the witness but the live Doors for everyone else too. Realism ice-skates on the surface of the dust. Language can be smuggled out of the unconscious. Enough is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop, meaning Duff which is H suspended in deafness. H20 might stand for hypothalamus tattoo. Chewing gum is bi. Voices only pathologise what by another name might be onjects, quavers, syllabubbles, sonic machinations at the periphery of sound, an instrument of wonder. Clouds seen through hospital glass only mean that all things must pass. There is no such thing as mind cancer. That women like Primark is hardly a timeless idea transmitted across Time. Ecstasy is a teddy bear back in the garden of Eden. Autumn is Optimus Prime already in Keats. Freedom not poetry is the bike riding itself. After garage and house comes library. The poet extirpates every trace of recognition from the mind, unlooses the mind of form, method acts every adjective in ‘Howl’ to attain visual radio. If your dad is an international art smuggler nicknamed Blue it can become a new sense through which you can read of future events. It is not inconceivable that when we die we can re-access history at any point, be a real, live Red Indian, or a bird of prey soaring over a mnt. Birds are for flying not for special perception. The effect of global warming on the unicorn succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn. The summer rain falls with as many hands as there are names for new rock bands. The alphabet could be Nelly the Elephant’s suicide note. Sometimes on E it makes you feel like your mouth is full of cold, stunning, Heavenly, crystal water and when you speak it spills. If form is an easel, content is a palette. The main difference between the sticks and the city is that in the sticks you acknowledge the stranger you pass when out there walking. Creation is a dark machine. It’s impossible to curse the sun. Acid is a spirit-level for the spirit. Without flaws there can be no opinions, as without imperfection there can be no taste. Galloping water is a cool thing to say. Things live inside onions of themselves. Freedom flies where flags fall. Heaven is a pile of statistics no-one will ever see. Water’s boiling point is when it starts to involuntarily breakdance to the music. Walnut halves look like miniature, shrunken brains. If Facebook is evil one reason is that it makes you say things you don’t mean and freezes them forever. Your right to write of who is in the shower ends where another’s naked body begins. We are hiding from The Waste Land in The Waste Land. I prefer The New Family Tao to the non-fungible token. The sound of typing can be used as percussion in non-metred Sound Art. When Baxter the dog walks on the laptop funny things come out like the names of glitch electronica numbers. The powers that be could be clouds that wear DM boots on their red brick road, and ripped genes adorned with peace and anarchy signs, on their protest march. A ‘tron’ could be a point of intersection between technology and art or a post-poetic experiment with a psycho-technological edge. Objects can vanish on the periphery of madness when emotions are high. Reality is not a computer program designed by aliens in the 1980’s and nor were caves alien cinemas in the long distant past. Waiting in darkness can be nourishing for the soul, reveal a Technicolour shoal. With drugs you have to realise: wise up or die. The world of Stuff and Things is not amenable to the world of Transcendental Metaphysics. Time does not pass but evaporate. Life is naturally the opposite of Lord of The Flies because the mystic character is the one that actually does see things while everyone else thinks he’s deluded. Even a game of cards can be a rehearsal for death. The exact same words can seem absolutely insane when written down and confer absolute genius when not written down. Dream-meets in the silver forest, ESP and telepathy are more possible with the net around. When it comes to the sheet where pictures grew, they could be “people,” as we are people too, people who are levelled by the sheet, whose Equality is enshrined. If you have to read Homer in order to be a philosopher everyone should have that opportunity if they choose and that is my philosophy. Credits at the end of innocence still fall like numberless lists of fallen autumn leaves. To be the first to coin the word “co-imagination” seems almost silly. Crocodiles have had Sat Nav for 1000’s of years before our Age. A bird is a bird is a bird is a bird. Just because it has been called naive to perceive of the left as a beautiful, compassionate emotion to explore doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes good to go down that path. Just because it was my brother not me that fired bullets to the top of the telegraph pole doesn’t mean all statements that pertain to axiomatic truth are his intellectual property. A thesis as thin as the Rizla it is in can lead all the way to the loony bin. Water has no more memory than it has smell. It is better to hide from the wind than it is to perform open heart surgery. When I say apples “occupy” a bowl on the table, I don’t mean they are a bunch of Nazis. It would be unwise to use the same shapes as a previous writer like, for example, Jim Morrison, if your creative writing teacher says it would be unwise to. If “Philosophy is a sterile subject” (as my friend Dr. Calculator Ptom contends) poetry is probably by default more alive. If Flora was in nets, I’d be Barnes in the game. Nirvana did the sheet where pictures, pictures depicting my own song lyric grew, so that’s why people like it when I say it still belongs to my brother (who laid it down). The healing and fusing of the cassette with a pause in the song where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel in a delicate operation could be down to faith more than doubt. Two photos on the blog, one for the ear, one for the eye, might still seem unfair. When you get invaded by madness and hear so many voices there can seem nothing going on in your own head but straw. If you did help invent the net you shouldn’t have to pay for publication. Words appear to come out weird sometimes. Glastonbury should be free and life like that all the time. Some voices take a few moments to decode after their initial shocking impact. If I said I went to the Louvres travelling by drug-hoover, it might just seem like piss. The crawl of the Doorsian poet through modes of perception trying to find something that underlies their variability leads to water. Maybe living here at the foot of the oldest rock I was never supposed to find out about the future that ain’t what it used to be. Cutlass maths is what I call the ruthless revisionist cut of William Carlos Williams. We live in an Age of sending without form. Drains can sing with Irish folk songs, about dreams that never die. There are dreams that never die. Love is a dream that never dies. Even the meme has split in two, and that was the new “uncuttable” once upon a time. There is breath in a death. It is not necessarily a disease to not be able to cry at funerals. The traffic lights of tears can be all dark green at times. The impassable gulf between first and third persons has been decreed metaphysics. The automated conveyor belt of poesis influences the voice to be a confluence of forces through voices even when I try and drive a straight line towards anywhere that may be light. We are all in one bed in Amsterdam. The light is a prism. Through the Hume people come and go, Smart-talking of Ted Hughes’s Crow. Life is fast, London brutal, travelling scary. Her wetness is so. Angels can be as frightening as demons. The witness was an Irishman before Morrison was born.

JUST LIKE NORMAL

We don’t need much more writing

here at the foot of the fell but if

you’re suggesting we use water instead

we might as well just turn on the tap.

I think how there may be no writing

in Heaven (though I don’t believe

in Heaven). Then I think of 1000’s

of files coming from the tap.

As far as the present tense goes

I am sitting in my bedroom now,

cross that I am being observed,

or might be, by the angels above.

Now it is later and in all that time

nothing was achieved except to write

something great and decide against it -

like Elizabeth Bishop putting

the fish she caught back in the sea.

The dawns are getting later again.

I sup on sweet Horlicks, one of

the only luxuries I actually allow myself.

Maybe (they say) beckwater will

one day come in crates; maybe I

will wait until my mother passes then

drown in tears and then get put

on the barbecue – this is the prediction

from those I love, the friends I keep.

Why it is I cannot phone them back

I do not know, but we have FB.

Anyhow, by now my mother says

the long one that was going backwards

(The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob)

was too painful. So I am back with

beck variations. It is almost my last

resort. The chimney-sweep is coming

today. I am to let him get on with it.

What can I say? How’s work?

Myself, I would advertise as a

struggling if not completely failed

writer. A chaos of files. A going

nowhere fastness. I gave you a stream

of self-publications in an Age of

Self-Publication. I moved on to

the trinity-tree, the holy triumvirate,

with Chipmunka, my Chipmunka three:

one was songs, one a boyhood proof,

the other love poems. They weren’t

very good. So what? In my shoes

one shouldn’t make them very good.

At least the Northern light is clear.

A van comes past followed by a car.

It is best to live in the present tense,

not lean back on the victorious past.

History is violent. It is full of blood.

It meanders without knowledge of

itself, what it is doing, where it is

going, what its express purpose is.

It still comes in neatly-sealed packages

to those that succeed and survive it.

For now I am one them, trying

to wake, as if I were meant to.

I have given you several albums

too, on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Now, typical of my life, I try and

make a cup of coffee, put the milk

on the AGA to heat up, then for

some reason wander out into the garden,

blithe indifferent, thinking of music,

and forget what it is I am doing.

As much as that would indicate

a kind of freedom, almost too much

freedom, there are many ways

in which I am not free to write.

Should I factor back in some of the

telepathic poems I would no longer

be free to publish the text as mine.

Naturally it becomes what the vile,

sadistic voices then demand of you,

who is but a trusting medium and

even “easy target for mis-use,”

an interlocutor in the palimpsest.

Anyhow, by now the coffee is made.

I managed to get a word in edgeways.

I like this ideal of the beck variation.

It seems at times no different from normal.

A VISION

I had a vision of something black, running

in the Combe field. I thought it might be

a dog but it wasn’t when I went out.

There was a sense it was black, digital light

escaped from Hell, a flash of it,

a blinding flash of the opposite of light.

It wasn’t evil. It was post-Natural,

but not evil. It was digital but not evil.

It was just a flash then it was gone.

I think Tricky’s lyrics are really good.

Even at the most academic school there is,

my friends and I thought Tricky literature.

We thought his lyrics were literary.

Now at the foot of Black Combe,

which is my favourite fell, I contemplate

all things black and celebrate them too:

how my favourite footballer is still

John Barnes, my favourite bad guy

Darth Vader, my favourite guitarist Hendrix,

my favourite rapper Tricky, my favourite

fell Black Combe, my favourite

President of America Mr. Obama.

I also love the Irish and the Jews.

So here I sit contemplating the vision -

that black flash in the field – and

what it could mean. It is only now

that my intelligent selection should begin.

You should be taken in to a world of vision,

before you start, that is, I think.

It moved from right to left like

many visions do in my experience,

which is not just against the grain

of reading and writing but musical notation.

Here, I could be a dam about to burst,

open up in open keys about open eyes,

or retain a wall of mysticism, delighting

in a wilful opacity, bats, black magnets,

firking, encryption, code, even symbolism.

I could that is, talk of previous visions,

how they go across the board, in

animals and stars and books and

technology and more; but still

to stay safe and this side of the fence,

would seem sensible, to make sense.

THE NEAREST AVAILABLE FLUID

The nearest available fluid is Ovaltine.

I think to myself “Legoland! Eternal

Legoland!” like a child, an autistic one too.

Water meanwhile is compress sans knowledge.

My mum comes home and says

“have we got any chilli sauce?

Now that is the question,” also asks me

“have you had any of this Italian cheese?”

“This floor is going to need sweeping,”

she says, “at some point in the very near future.”

“All the corners are all terrible,” she says.

This reminds me of the time

I drew a higgledy-piggledy squiggle in

Monopoly Jail and showed it to the nurse and said

“this is what the corners of the room should look like.”

The parmesan is from the same shop

as the meats and cheeses we bought

last time at the airport are from.

Now mum has gone next door

to sit on her bum and start her fire.

I’m feeling unwell, says a helping hand,

even feeling wrought with demons.

The microwave dings, incredible hardships

are muffled by those barely able to hear.

I think about putting my fourth

Chipmunka book on my Blogspot page.

“Someone has spilled tea or coffee on

the carpet and not mopped it up

so now there’s a stain,” says mum.

“At least my toe has stopped throbbing.”

She thinks I already deserve a Nobel,

maybe for falsifying the Nirvana barcode.

IF I COULD START ALL OVER AGAIN

1

Bush are a good band – but why?

Well, I think it’s because they filled the hole

left behind by Nirvana.

They were said to be the new Nirvana,

or rather the English Nirvana.

Radiohead were also said at the time

to be the English Nirvana and

I liked them both.

I would say Bush were more rocky

and Radiohead more emotive

but Bush could be emotive too

like in the song ‘Glycerine’

and Radiohead could also rock

like in the song ‘Just.’

I imagine this is all they want

from me in the end -

to come on and tell us what bands I like -

to attain the condition

of ordinary speech before

I try to attain the condition of verse.

I do have a little poem left over

from those grunge-addled days:

“Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.”

I think it not bad for a right-handed Gentile,

but what it’s about I shouldn’t say.

There’s another one I have too

but I might save it for a rainy day.

2

The voices I hear tell me

if I want them to tell me what to do

I have to say they are the new

Syd Barrett.

I think what they did to Syd was evil -

but I won’t say what it was.

We always do that to our best

player in England. It

was the same with John Barnes…

what do I think of Barnes’s goal against Brazil?

Well, I think those who judge it

from the action replay are imposters.

Those who judge it from the action replay

know it’s going to go in, but

back in realtime he had no chance of scoring.

Anyhow they say it’s the best

goal ever scored in an England shirt

and then people threw bananas at him?

That seems extremely rude.

As for me, I am but a humble soul -

I sit here aged 43, and think

the best thing I ever did

is still my 7 year old Prep -

and that this fact is staggeringly sad.

3

I had some musical concepts in my youth -

one was to falsify the Nirvana barcode…

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 meanwhile

was 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

depict the lyric to a song I wrote

back when I was trying to be Kurt Cobain.

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.

4

I had a mate who sent the words

LIQUID CRYSTAL METH

into space, a funny mate.

I myself sent many including

PUT ICECREAM IN YOUR ARMPIT.

I sent a text to Paul that wasn’t necessarily

supposed to go into space but which did

saying something like “I am exploring

alternative histories suppressed

by the over-arching meta-narrative.”

That seems a typically English

student-y text to send.

We also liked to float on the artifice

of organic emotions through

synthetic sounds. The

latter we did more than going

to the library to study.

Anyhow maybe it’s time?

Time to show you my other poem?

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.)

5

It’s a nice day today, approaching

winter but mild and forlorn

which I say because WH Auden

says only nice people talk of the weather.

The kitchen’s a mess but

I don’t want to be the one to heal it.

When I was young I also liked

Soundgarden

The Smashing Pumpkins

Therapy?

Ash

The Pixies

Supergrass

Pulp

Green-day

The Offspring

that’s as well as the ones I mentioned, like

Bush

Radiohead

Pearl Jam

Nirvana.

In terms of bands from the 60’s I would say The Doors and I also like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd as well as many others too.

So I sit here on a day without rain -

and cannot complain too much -

for my mother’s house is a comfortable one -

and there is Ovaltine in the cupboard.

6

In terms of a heart-valve mutation

gleaned from the graves of intelligence

at the dusky dawn, some

people crawl back from drug experiences

having conceived of the 3D soundwave…

my own stuff is lagging

far behind if that’s

what people are doing.

Yeah, so I’ve done some books and albums…

I once had a dream I was as good at guitar

as Barnes’s goal against Brazil

but I am not yet that good,

nor will I ever be I suppose.

Anyhow, by now the latest thing to happen

in my life, my life, my life, my life -

is that my mother has let me have

some but not all of her nuts.

They are soft, cashew nuts

and having some but not all is hard.

It’s about tempering my wilderness.

It’s about self-control.

I have had my quota now

and already feel like more.

The 3D soundwave sounds like fun -

in fact that may have been

what I was stranded by when

with Mary, which I thought at first

to be colourful smoke

then to be visual radio.

7

Mary liked the poem about the dog.

It goes

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.

She would say to only keep that

or maybe the little boyhood book where it appears ? -

out of the whole sodden, teeming mire,

the whole midden of dreams…

plus also what I do to other people’s melodies on the guitar.

She thought I improved mediocre songs,

brought them up,

and still wasn’t allowed to keep them.

She liked my ear for a melody.

Anyhow, I find myself asking

if there’s only pain in this room

and if not whether I can find a way out of pain.

I wish this little document was all I had,

and my sadness could be gone,

all sorrow extracted, all depression relieved.

My morning meds went down with milk.

Milk is calm as I try and be.

8

What was going to be egg on toast soon became

cheese and jam on toast instead.

Then I decided to still make

egg on toast afterwards.

My dad said I should get a job in a record store;

my mate in a book shop. But

do record stores even exist anymore?

Even books we get online now.

Anyhow, I am signed off work with mental illness

and even if I could there are approximately

zero jobs in Whicham Valley.

Down at one end you have the dead garage.

That’s where we would get fags in days of yore

but it’s been closed for years now.

By the way our house is haunted.

So now you know you’ve nothing to envy.

I think I have broken free of The Lords.

Maybe it’s a heartbreaking utterance though,

like when Arthur says “we can’t just take off.”

Confirming the subscription deep down.

I drift off thinking of women.

There were some fit ones at Oundle School.

Maybe if I just repeat the words

“Barnes’s goal against Brazil”

I will score a goal, or maybe

it will lose all meaning, become numb.

I could do the same with the word “drugs.”

I used to do it with the word “kangaroo.”

9

For some reason it feels like we are

pointed towards summer one minute

then the next not so much anymore…

enduring my lonely vigil at the kitchen window

I watch a leaf fall past the windowpane.

My hair is longer than ever before.

Radiohead have retired and that is crazy...

I think Radiohead unto Pink Floyd

as Nirvana unto the Doors.

I think Radiohead unto Nirvana

as the Pink Floyd unto the Doors.

The stolid monotony is what gets me, sitting,

venting my spleen at a slinky screen,

my mood made stable at a sterilised table...

already I had the idea to go,

go down to the new cafe by the sea,

have a cooked breakfast but shied away.

There’s also a cafe up the other end of the valley

where the heavy horses ride, but it might not be open.

Anyhow, I was listening to some digi-core

the other day, and noticed

that wave-compression is getting amazing.

My stuff is still largely guitar music.

Like DM’s and jeans I don’t think

guitar music will ever go out of fashion,

because it’s timeless… the clouds

today are thin and wispy, concealing

little of the beautiful blue dome.

10

I remember when I occupied the little blue room

(which is now a bath room).

I had that little poem

sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

I had just fixed the Pearl Jam ‘VS’ tape

which was miles away from a successful fusion…

and I kept a tough diary.

It was all I had, all I needed to have…

yes, there was a boyhood album called

The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob

in my tape collection, and also

a boyhood proof from when

I was seven that I didn’t know about

in the locked attic. But really

I had very little

and it strikes me as a more attractive way to be.

The tough diary lasted only weeks.

It was a summer holiday.

I was learning Nirvana songs

on the acoustic guitar, and

it was before the mnemonic

Even A Dick Gets Big Erections

was conjured too. I had soooooo little -

and wanted more and many more -

but as Courtney Love sang

“when you get what you want,

you’ll never want it again.”

11

If all this writing is what I should do

if I were waiting to die I should stop.

If it is what makes me feel free

it’s what I should’ve done at the start.

If I don’t know what I’m doing,

I could always say I am writing

as if making a watercolour painting…

someone once offered me the idea

that my song lyrics were meant for

wiping up semen and I liked it,

like to plug a singular channel,

like Hofmann’s bricks, or like

my undergraduate defaced bank notes -

but now I drift free from restraint.

If it is Heaven to set someone free,

to enslave them would surely be Hell…

I face a wall chart enumerating

the flowers of the Meadows, also

a Notice Board made of cork,

a calendar with local photos,

a dead telly wearing mum’s funeral hat,

and some local art made of wood…

yet to set the scene by means of description

would seem quite shallow now.

12

Picking up Toni Visconti’s autobiography

I read half of the Foreword and put it down…

even reading about what professional

musicians write of each other, I realise

I am not one. This beard – it makes me

look like Jim Morrison in his fat alcoholic days.

The Foreword meanwhile was by Morrissey.

It’s the first time I read his prose.

Professor David Morley likes my early songs.

I have no desire to be Anon with them.

Yeah so I brought out some books and albums.

There’s a lot unpublished I have done too.

It seems a bit teenager-like for someone of 43

but I still make music and put it online.

13

Now it is later and the stars are out.

I went to bed in a medicated stupor,

have woken at three AM having missed out

on the mussels in white wine sauce,

and there’s something sinister about the stars.

You could say the night-time dome is pellucid -

meaning there is not a cloud in sight.

Still, only a few stars are observable.

A lullaby moon burns and seems wicked.

It is crooked in its cradle I notice.

The immensity of black appears infinite too.

So I stargaze with a cup of Horlicks.

In the past, seeing as Horlicks could be spelled

“Whorelicks” there would’ve been

cause for a punk song just in that.

Spotting that Ovaltine could be spelled

Ovalteen, as in Teen Spirit, could be

another cause for notation but now

clouds have covered the moon, looking

gothic and like malting werewolves…

a car has passed going quite fast

down the valley road and it is late.

My beard is getting out of control.

All the deep shit has had to be buried.

NEEDLE

All of a sudden, I go and actually start to read Soundcloud Rain and find it a work of genius. I had to put it down before the sugar of the world ran out. So I picked up the seven year old work The Sunset Child instead and it was not baaaaaaaaaaaad. Breath Trapped In Heaven meanwhile is only meant to be the Rimbaud. In the 1000’s of files I’ve got there is more.

Needless I am. I also heard The Sunset Child is the best because it rewrites Hawking’s physics. I was supposed to stop today but angels above on CCTV said I could do one more if I felt like I was going to die without it. Anyhow mum was saying something about needles… knitting needles.

It reminds me of the time I rewrote Wikipedia. Water was needle. The Periodic Table was Finland. Wikipedia itself was Wookie not Wiki. Hi, that’s me, Chewbacca to look at almost. It’s supposed to end with compress sans need. I wait for days between lines sometimes, go off flitting butterfly-minded in other files. At least I got the remnant songs in even if that’s what appears to have ruined the fluid continuum of beck! My book length letter to music is another option but herein I stay dutiful to my mother and her ideal. She thinks this way to be more imaginative. Something to remember her by, or even dread think it for her to remember me by.

Something to deal with the wait with – bad English but incoming voices, friendly, say it. As for me, I can highly recommend writing a letter to music, Dear Music, if you are ill. Music can tolerate any word-combinations in that arena. The plot with-stands, music sustains the outpouring of emotion. Some beautiful things get written in my letters to music. I felt like I was dying when it was decreed I had given up writing. The voices said “the best one is the wee one, because you rewrote Hawking’s physics,” but I have heard other voices say other things too. Compress sans need. That’s what you have to aim for, eh? My mother’s beck variations were more subtle than mine. She sent them to me when I was in monopoly jail. I have by the way taken on a lot of responsibility in my time, for my species, for my fellow Man, even as a 10 year old, and find playground games and tiffs to be a bit trivial.

In the latest letter to music I imagined a cable, a wire, up above a forest into which I had gone to bury my soul, at twilight. That was the emotive charge of the music. The cable is watching, I said. Yes, I can highly recommend writing a letter to music if you are as I am very ill. Anyhow, I am starting to think it should end “needless I am goyt.” Simon says he can imagine Goyt Studies in the future. Talking toilets andcetera are possible. Some say water collapsed could be the infrastructure of State; others that the sun would govern. “Needless I am goyt,” I repeat, say again, not without pleonasm and tautology too. Needless I am goyt I say puffing my Vape pen, quenched and sated on a nice roast dinner, feeling like I’ll die without the writing. Hopefully you too will be ensnared on the narcotic hook of a good book. Needless I am goyt. I do not know the way the Gawain poet would go on, but see a maiden stand on the bank of the beck and sing of the sinking of the black ball in the pool pocket!

My heartbreak hampers me with broken machinery. Smack is a bad drug but needless I am goyt. I don’t even want to smoke skunk anymore because it’s not natural. Believe me I’ve tried everything. Forlorn as fallen autumn leaves is the wave that misbehaves, I wrote. Some even deem the best one when I was dressed up to look like JS Bach. Others deem it that I really was JS Bach when we recorded on binaural earphones in The Flood. I imagine writing about the old days with film stars, cartoon characters, famous artists for the names of my friends. Toad of Toad Hall might not like being called Toad of Toad Hall. The mythical Mickey Bliss is 1930’s rhyming slang for ‘piss’ and the origin of the proverbial Mick, as in taking the Mick. Now it’s a flow it could be time to go, even if only to say “needless I am goyt.”

“This is all wet, how disappointing,” says mum as I go into the sitting room where there is a log fire. She’s not sewing a hole in her black pants for tomorrow but knitting a woollen blanket and she spilled some water on the wool. Catharsis, closure, ecstasia, resolution, even concatenation appears in this fact right now. My feeling is blue. My beck needs cricking. Mellifluous applause. Falls two feet into a sound as sweet as a kettle drum’s metal petals of silver bliss that blossom on the carnival’s street. Needless I am goyt – but what would I do if I couldn’t have you, if I had to stop? Pale sustenance this reflection of the female form in the beckwater’s inward travels. Through whom do we shape our mirage but water? Yes, I too can imagine Goyt Studies in the future. The student turns up and says “I had a goyt. It was stentorian, visceral, plasmatoidal, olfactory, gustatory and long. What longitudes and latitudes of blandishments and platitudes can contain it I do not know. I want to flow. I also want to kiss Flora. What can I do?”

Needless, I am goyt. She is good to go or gone or both which is not pleasant. Drops to the floor, my jaw. She is so radiant the sun shines in her eyes. Evergreen light, transcendent signifier, blind, metaphysical objective, she is Gatsby’s Daisy in my work, even if it be full of dramatic hyperbole, which it isn’t and it is only now that I know I can go with the flow. I don’t feel well, well being the operative word though, for into myself I look and find some freedom, some physiological healing in writing. Water water everywhere and not a drop to think. Pass the bucket and I will repeat the physical hyperlink. Needless I am goyt.

So I got, got, got my mum a log for the fire, out in the night from the wood hole in the rain. She might need coal, the coal scuttle refilling, which she needs again and again. We are not compress sans need. We need food, air, water, love, love, friendship, love, trust, love, security, homes, clothes, but water is compress sans need and even if it be called “needle” in this new-look Periodic Table of Altered Mates, I like to repeat, needless I am goyt.

I have had my meds though, and it’s still about 10 O’ cloud like it was two decades ago, O, that graceful, kind woman who wishes not to be in it in name doesn’t like it when I miss with my piss and get it on the floor, because she gets it on her feet, but that is that and this is this and something we feel seems to be amiss that is that you are leaving out maybe I mean I might relate that I was placed under a blissful kiss. He later said “your mum hurt me,” meaning “I am sorry for needlessly wrecking your existence beyond repair.” Needless, I am goyt.

Then she bent down and gave me head and I was happy, aroused, but not for long. Forlorn as fallen autumn leaves is the wave that misbehaves. Death is not a fluid excreted by a gland inside the brain called the Dreaming Gland; but when you record on earphones, you can sit back and wonder of the path not gone down, the other side, the antipode, the negative, the alkali.

As for stopping writing as they all say I must try, at least try even if only for five minutes at first, Simon says if I had been through what you went through I wouldn’t be able to stop writing. One of the angels above me on CCTV said if I felt like I was going to die I could do another. It’s how I am programmed, writing! It’s in my genes! My genetics, you see! Beneath all these words about trying to heal the soul of the world – you find motive, motivation, efficacy, cause, purpose, underlined by something instinctive. An instinctive mode that underlies the variability of perception. All modes of writing at their best seek the same answers and stumble on water in the wilderness. Water underlies what lies undermine.

I ask myself of achievement within the unbelievably narrow outlet of the vanity-press published few. If ever I wished to apply the clench and tang of the cheddar cheese in the Ploughman’s lunch in the cafe of the Natural History Museum to the Lords And The New You Know Who it may only have been worth one medium length poem. There are countless 100’s of files and I stuck to the task of producing a final one. Whether it is the final one I cannot say. I cannot say but to stop, to be arrested, when it is in my programming, in my genes, the way I was groomed, the way I was thought of before I was born, by people with literary talent from different countries and languages – it would be hard to break this spell. If all I ever did, however, was rewrite Hawking as a child, I would be happy.

Reckless Beck Records would be a good indie label. Music With Pink In The Shadows would be a good songbook name. Simultaneity leaks in from the TV, coincides with my laptop screen – and I write with it, write it down. With this fourth I thought it would be a new building block for the series. To practise my mother’s art. To bypass the need for a tract on Universal Human Rights by using the universality of water. Needless, I am goyt.

Anyhow, that’s water but I was more interested in Flora. They converge on the saying “go with the flo’” like when you’re on magic mushrooms in a student flat whose aroma comes to me now and someone asks you – seeing as you wrote a useful document – for something deep. I did write a useful document you know: I wrote an A-level exam essay marked at 100% and wrote it well, engineered the question into being one about the journey from idealism to pragmatism in love. If my boyhood proof rewrites Hawking I’d be not sad either, but to go with the flow is all I really knew and now I don’t know what to do. My life has been appalling. Needless I am goyt – I like the refrain – as I hear the tap singing upstairs – and then stop.

TUPPENCE

Tuppence is cheap

but a Chipmunka book is not.

Tuppence is what the musician is worth

at least my dad used to say

“musicians used to be

2 a penny and poor not seek fame

and wealth and maybe society

will come full circle back round

to the way it used to be.”

Dad had magic sayings hidden in the treetops too

like my mum, like

“there’s sugar in everything.”

Dad was Dedalus now he’s dead.

Dear dad, who is dead,

which makes me sad,

I am but 2 a penny and poor

but a Chipmunka book is not tuppence

especially when you give so much away for nothing.

Another Chipmunka book could make me happy.

I am supposed to abjure literature soon too.

To do a Rimbs and watch the lambs.

To forget about the iambs

of the heart’s breaking.

Its heavy machinery I lug around.

Its broken machinery hampering me.

The way it drools at Paradise.

Even if I don’t put the book on the blog it’s “in.”

I foresaw the cloud and net in 1989.

I tried to invent the net at seven with a pencil and page.

Some have called me the Godfather of the modern Age.

The word amazeballs and the genre Grime.

I am sure I mentioned it all some other time.

Ten O’ cloud it used to be, way before half past three.

Tuppence a bag is an old-fashioned song.

Now I feel an upthrust of sadness, thinking

about my mother and her drinking.

It’s going to be hard when she’s gone

but she says “you’ll be fine.

You have to remember you’re a grown man.

You grew up decades ago.”

At her funeral she wants me

to read a poem. She wants me

to make it up on the spot.

I have something planned about

when a white witch in the village died,

crossed the water to the other side,

and we were up Sea Ness, us four kids,

and mum had to run up to tell us to come down.

Ever after that there was a rule

that if a particular red blanket

was put out on the washing line

it was a sign we had to come down.

Coming down to earth is what such a death would mean.

Mum’s death would be a comedown.

Mum wouldn’t want us to get too depressed by her being gone

for she was a free spirit, is still, would say the stream of life moves on.

In sorrow I would hope to not drown.

The thought of having something left behind

to remember her by is on my mind

and why I feel an upsurge of emotion.

Poor mum, and her drinking.

She said things had been too difficult since dad died.

It included my illness, my difficulties.

She said “when an intelligent creature

cannot cope it never copes again.”

It is another one of her magic sayings.

They have different ones in Finland

where the midnight sun is a musical orgasm.

Mum says imagination

is a muscle and language a creature.

In politics there are no wrongs or rights.

Just because someone

is good to you doesn’t mean

they are right for you.

It’s wrong to try and change another’s opinion.

The brain only heals when you’re asleep

and even nightmares are healing.

She is in other words eloquent.

She got me to do one called ‘Tuppence.’

I am a 2 a penny and poor musician

and could sing “Feed The Birds” from Mary Poppins.

I don’t know what she’s getting at

be it the net or the beck variation.

Dedalus wept when his mother was gone.

I can’t, I just can’t imagine.

Knowing I am prone to the moon,

I don’t want to speak too soon,

or end up trying to kill myself again,

I want to be stable, to live on.

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,

Mary Poppins sings her song.

As I say I am 2 a penny and poor

and no longer have a lot going on -

no vibrant circle, no happening scene,

no gigs to play, no inventions obscene,

few experiments to tend to

except the general

experiment into anything

that leads to light,

very little except breathing.

Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.

When death claims her

I will likely be unaware

until I find her or get the news.

Another of mum’s magic sayings

hidden in the treetops is

“everyone grieves differently.”

It seems more a tragic saying that one.

When tragedy strikes you have to try and move on.

I am now full of feeling for my mum.

A being of pure feeling I am not most of the time

thought it might be alright

like being a wave

but I’m

full

of feeling

for my mum.

A hard working woman.

A kind woman.

A funny woman.

She might just wish to not be in it

but I can’t accept that I need to bin it.

Let’s say she is a perfect poem.

She is cat-like with high cheekbones.

She gave birth to four healthy children.

I used to get mashed

and never come down

and now I’m too old

and death is a clown.

Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag,

I don’t care who she did and didn’t shag

for back in the day

people were free

and the beck still leads

to the deep blue sea

in whose maternal bosom I sense

the end of this talk of a Brave New Tense

and the start of something Classically old

like a story that has not been told.

Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.

PROMISSORY NOTES

Within a moment of waking from a dream I am laughing at the memory of a happier time. The dream was about taking E with a University friend and triggered happy memories.

*

When I am asked if I ever did anything as good as Barnes’s goal against Brazil I might do well to not cite English, music, science or maths but to remember E, which conducts a physical poem on the body.

*

I wake with the sun and wish to do something legit – and am not interested in renewing the work of Professor David Morley.

*

What I should do is crash my face into water and log on my brain by eating fruit but instead I drink artificially sweetened tea and insufflate the fume of a Vape pen.

*

I had a lot of fun in my youth, was nomadic, New Beat, a man of possibility, looked up to even to the extent that I hear the riot renegades – of which I was not one – said it was me when cornered.

*

These days it’s more beautiful mindedness – for a start there are those who thunk me deluded about being the witness – and the work is getting there too – and in fact already was getting there before Mssrs E and Cannabis andcetera parked their mothership.

*

I have not settled down and had a family and rarely if ever see old friends anymore so part from the habits of my dad – and before I say “I wish I was gay” I have to remember how much I love women, which I was reflecting only a moment ago, before language bent me out of shape.

*

I did know love – with Syra – at Warwick University – and am sure she as a poetess would just take those deep “precepts” by my dad and make each one a poem in turn that hides the explicit utterance of the precept from the reader – but I really can’t be bothered with worrying anymore.

*

So the day begins with laughter at dawn and already touching the screen we are at the naff question of “how to begin” some eventual Collected Poems, a tome that will likely never come together, never be propped in the hand of a foreseen human repository.

*

Yes there were countless others, countless poems, for I wrote 100’s if not 1000’s of world class poems and let the majority get away.

*

In my dream it was my mate’s birthday and his dad was there and there was some of manoeuvre going on that was possibly like going underwater and coming up in a different country, and it was all possible by taking a drug, and the dream was exciting, so when I woke I remembered real occasions when drugs were taken with this friend in an Age of Terror that still seemed like we made it a happy time, because we were young.

*

It’s interesting to think of a drug conducting a physical poem, also of a poetry computer game, like the Doors computer game, which is my own ideation, and presumably would have either the witness or Jim Morrison himself as the “player.”

*

I have said it before but a game is a rehearsal for death, a wide, yellow circle with death the pinpoint centre, and its circumference closing in, and The Lords And The New You Know Who is a game, also a media-compression experiment dreamed up under a hot, Californian sun, and God is a game too, and the game works, operates, according to permutation.

*

Herein I have been starved of most of what is mine and had to dribble a thin course believing water the Heavenly liquor, the spirit of Heaven, and knowing I won’t take drugs anymore.

*

Now I’d be thinking of bringing this promissory, morning notes back to the subject of water, that very English concern, to fit the theme even before the human is shipped in.

*

No, I never studied philosophy, not Locke, Hume or Donne, but took a layman’s interest in it at least, and can only imagine the necessity for water at the foot of the oldest fell is the same necessity for water down in London.

*

As I think of an angel as an image, where E and pi connect in concatenated ways, I drink tea from a white mug with PURE GENIUS written on it, devolved by now into guesswork and opportunism, gone off the topic.

*

How can you enshrine liberty in writing? - Jim Morrison tried it – over the pond where they generally do that sort of thing, unlike here.

*

I suppose it is mention of how much I love women where the wetness is so.

*

I would say any “encounter” between a poem and a reader could be made into a beck variation if the poem becomes aware of its transience in the moment.

*

Sometimes my inner monologue takes flight and half an hour later I realise “that’s it, that’s the beck” and then have to sit down and try and remember it at a plastic keypad! Death!

*

We all would’ve preferred it when before the Irish popped up and the telepathic bridge was built, connecting dad’s beck and his Irish mate’s piece of indigenous wisdom from across the water, but I would have no right to publish it, and should have a right to write of the beck in the garden and publish, so a limit is needed and it’s discerned by the poet in his honest self-appraisal.

*

Just to give you the opinion of someone Irish on the phone, he still thinks the best bit is the Nash bit, the defaced bank notes which coming from someone who spoke against September 11^th in 2000 using his own brain is actually more Nash than it seems.

*

Writing little gnomic, beautiful-minded books won’t last forever and sometimes thinking logically I only dread the future and my will collapses but getting up with the dawn and getting busy overcome that lapse of hope.

*

It’s like Dr. Bob says: even if there is no work, Man will seek work, make work, get busy, for Man needs to do something, to work – so it is that I find it hard to cease writing.

*

Restriction is liberation, said Stravinsky and I have known it trying to start at least with beck variations smuggled in the inside pocket.

*

“Man is condemned to be free,” said Sartre meaning while he has freedom of moral choice his choice effects and is effected by all other moral choices in a ripple effect.

*

Last night the actual beck was full, gushing, rushing, crashing over the little waterfall, applauding, but today there is no rain.

*

I love this refrain, this point to which things tended yesterday: “Needless I am goyt.”

*

Brought up with rural values, hippy values, organic values I was dead against E to start with (also computers and porn) but when I was first swayed it was as good as Barnes’s goal against Brazil.

*

When first I came to The Lords And The New Creatures as a teenager who had in boyhood been the witness or if not at least made observations that amount to the same as being the witness, I found The New Creatures to be garbled nonsense.

*

I have several files with the same gravitas as this, in fact most of the 1000’s of them do and won’t see the light of day – but hey, I think of the tree, the data-tree as something like a digital version of the great library of Alexandria that burned down in the Ancient World.

*

In an Age of Self-publication my little books are but plankton.

*

There is a theory, derived from my boyhood work The Sunset Child, that when someone needed to take a shit at the foot of the oldest fell in order for the internet to exist all the way round the whole world, it was me.

*

Is it because we consider ourselves the home of liberty that water is a very English concern?

*

There are those that come from more marginal countries that say the lingua franca of the west is likely to be the least not most poetic language in it but I seek to prove that wrong with imaginative thinking.

*

My mother’s maiden name is “Bergfors” which means mnt waterfall in Swedish and she is simply more subtle and eloquent at the beck variation than me – and it’s not that it does not translate into English because she can do them in English too whereas mine are a bit conspicuous.

*

Dr. Calculator Ptom says “poetry can not be translated because of the music.”

*

There are just sooooooooooo many files on my laptop, each slightly different, I have to be wise choosing – and one of them is a work of science called Hamlet In Flames – but most of the content is herein – so I needn’t keep it if I choose to let water pursue its natural course.

*

The angels naturally like the rewrite of The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob the best because of the simplicity.

*

I would deem it evil if they have my work un-published when I’m gone, out of some kind of desire to hide the truths I have brought to light, but even if they did I would still be the guy that discovered the sheet where pictures grew for the rest of Infinity!

*

It’s a mild day today and the dustmen have been and now I sit here wondering what else to do, like Crow looking for something to eat.

*

In an intertextual paradise I learned to live once upon a time arrived at through srs discipline in terms of reading and research.

*

I have to find the word to utter t friends I no longer see nor will ever again, and I do find them, and connection lives on even as it fades.

*

The Irishman popped up a moment ago and told me the “needless I am goyt” scene of yesterday was “exquisite.”

*

If water is one Order of Sameness is on my mind, as is authorship by Anon as is the ones and zeros of a computer but I can’t tie it together.

*

I don’t wish to be anon when I am long gone – and one of the 1000’s of files is already a New Selected Works dressed up like the complete works of Blake – for an example of something that doesn’t make it – for whatever reason there is.

*

Little, skinless water droplet, clinging on as if to the roof of a cave, when will you fall and splash?

*

To be a hardworking writer that fears the State will do away with his good work when he is gone is not a pleasant feeling.

*

To be told by another something you have done has to be Anon makes you feel like a child who is told “your parents are getting divorced and you have to use another man’s surname.”

*

MORNING

What happens if you change it, this tea, this case study?

Is it like a saint’s diary lying underneath the surface of things?

Will a strange A. I. on the other side of the screen leap into revolt, start controlling?

Will there be I. A. in the future, in the brave new tense?

What is the change we suppose should come into action?

I ask myself a series of questions in the morning, knowing that the book is terrible and I can’t change it.

“It all went wrong when we stole,” says someone, a voice, a female voice which I can hear clear as bitchin’ in the kitchen.

I imagine if I had the ability to unite the British Isles from where I sit.

Arab Strap coming over Hadrian’s Wall,

the Irish on the other end of the beck,

Barnes’s goal against Brazil asleep on his throne like a lion

and what about The Welsh?

I’ve never pissed off the Welsh but I have kissed a Welsh woman.

So something that started with humble beginnings (my mother sewing) and went along in a muddle could turn out an important piece of literature.

No man is a River Island clothing store.

POEM

Hannah says she wants baby blankets for Christmas

when mum goes down to Bristol.

There is something I know but can’t impart

and it’s because I have a heart.

I think voices could be the colours of the vowels

and ask of you to increase

your Negative Capability.

Needless, I am goyt – and can take you

to the talking toilet if you really like.

Writing a letter Dear Music

could become instructive

in mental health in the future.

I don’t think the witness from The Lords

And The New you Know Who

should put Paradise Lost to

music at the foot of the fell

if it’s not going to be amazing.

I think A. I. could become experiential

and have done for about twenty years.

I think A. I. and I. a. and what

I like about that is the echo

of the famous line from

Shakespeare: “et tu Brute.”

RENEWING THE WAND

If you don’t stop nursing the suffering of your ideals

your unrequited love will lead to eternal sorrow…

still I find you the most beautiful woman in the world

and if you were here I would get down on my bended knee.

I think teenage philosophers align God with love

in the sense of their being illusory; but when

you align love with language you become pragmatic.

So to align love with language I would say

“I love you,” and by the way, my mother’s

flower-press ending on cannabis was mostly leaves.

It strikes me that I may never get to see you again

and when they, the voices, or “colours of the vowels”

made me renounce the One they did me wrong.

When I say The One it might not be that way.

It might just be a mild, teenage crush grown inflamed,

replete with poetic license and dramatic hyperbole.

Even though love and language are aligned I

don’t think I have much more to say except

to apologise for not being built in a way that

makes it easy to get over a pulchritudinous woman

like yourself – and though waiting will be in vain

I will wait here – where there is always a bed for you

at the foot of the fell, where the stars align, if you want.

ANALOGUE POEM

The fire in my heart

has not gone out.

There is no smoke

without fire; but

still I seem to be

sitting here, without

you, hoping for the

electricity to come back on.

It’s a grey, wishy-

washy day. It’s

Hamlet weather here in

Whicham Valley. Raindrops

plop in puddles on the drive.

I’ve gone analogue and

am glad the laptop’s

off too. Puddles can

form on the floor of

their own accord. Maybe

our dead dog’s up in

Heaven. Maybe philosophy

is just pasta; or maybe

an abstract prison.

It could be what TS

Eliot means by “garlic

and sapphires in the mud.”

I don’t like Nietzsche

but think energy can cleanse.

It’s still raining outside

and inside mum is drinking

gin, making bacon and

vegetable stew. The Lords

And The New You Know

Who is evil if talking

about it with a pregnant

woman affects her child.

That’s my new philosophy.

I needn’t go there, then,

with Cartesian doubt, with

Kant, with empirical

and a priori knowledge

demarcated, with a paper.

So it is that one

door closes and another

opens. So it is a new

chapter begins and

happens to be a better

read than the one before.

With toenails in an apple core.

TEMPLATE FOR THE MATING QUEEN

The things you say are soooooooooooooooooooooooo beautiful. “John you’re lazy.” “You’re still a teenager.” “You have to go to work every day.” “It has to be cheap as chips.” “It makes most people cringe.” “It’s barely a cottage.” “Save it for when you’re eighty.” “I don’t fancy you.”

xx

ANOTHER NUMBER

Any shopping list with Canderel on the bottom -

I already did that downing a pint of you.

You were a gorgeous, plush, pollen-fluffy Duff.

Now I consider if H is in the incellular realm.

I think what I mean is that my flowing of poems is over.

To philosophy and science I turned, but turned away.

I am innocent, but grip on reality is weak…

in mental illness reality becomes untenable -

voices once told me I had committed rape

and my little heart sank. Later, in drug psychosis,

I phoned the police to turn myself in and

found the woman herself didn’t see it that way.

No rape had been reported. So I am innocent

and would ideally like to keep it that way.

Now I look back at the work I published

and deem the best bits to be the mathematics.

When I refined my best bits of boyhood maths,

in a recent philosophical tome I was writing,

they were worsened, because they were first done

in innocence – not in the legal sense but age-wise.

That’s why I have returned to my poem file

from a work of philosophy and science

which only refines my innocent mathematics…

the light above my head is incellular too.

I loaned the word “incellular” from voices.

Kant says all pure mathematics is a priori.

I think incellularity correlates with that,

as with Logic, Heaven, voices, texts and light.

Faith likewise doesn’t seem encumbered

by the fact that we grew our brains eating

meat, and developed language in order

to spread information about farming, hunting,

killing, cooking and eating meat. Heart-

magnetism and music also escape carnality.

Plastic doesn’t have cells as such either but

A. I. is said to have something cellular.

I don’t really know much about A. I. but

mum says it’s not to be trusted, so I don’t.

I come into contact with it regularly now.

Anyhow, I was saying: this incellular realm

of which I dream: it leaves me stumped -

lost for words – until I communicate

about not being able to communicate.

It also leaves me inspired which is a good thing.

The dusk’s cloud-mnts are also inspiring

tonight, Alpine, Gothic, saturnine, moody,

brooding, massive, dark, purple, aloft.

Through this new type of medication I see

clearly now that the rain has finally stopped.

MY LONELY VIGIL AT THE KITCHEN WINDOW

If Michael who came to me in a dream

would deem voices as the content

and defaced bank notes as the form,

it’s because he is New Beat… and so am I;

but after their peppering the air with terror -

for sooooo long – where have hey

gone? Voices, quavers, syllabubbles,

sonic machinations at the periphery of sound,

hoods, or even the colours of the vowels,

they often leave no forwarding address.

“Then there you are;” and no it’s not a new one about

the scar. It’s about Apps around me, like a lapse.

Collapse into angel laps, O waves of applause.

My mother is going to a funeral today.

She has to leave sometime before two.

The waves themselves are wet, spastic mirrors!

25 PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED ROCK SONGS

SECRETS IN THE MUD

(originally Oedipus Wrecks)

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.

[reconstructed via the new, synchronised word]

HEAVEN KNOWS

(originally Oedipus Wrecks)

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]

THE NEW SNOWMAN

We are the velvet e’s,

we’re shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,

the valley road below,

beneath us as we fly.

We are the velvet e’s,

we’re shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,

the valley road below,

beneath us as we fly.

Blissful Lovingness is

where all religions meet.

On the corner of the street.

I am the Burger King,

I can eat anything.

Especially a Double

Whopper with cheese -

and in reality the killer

stayed up all night.

STAVING OFF THE WASTED YOUTH

Please wait while you are on hold,

your secret world will not be sold,

and while you work out what’s gone on,

we’ll treat you to a song.

A cow has sat upon the throne,

and said to travel by Smartphone,

for all connection should be long,

and the maths you do is not wrong.

Thank you for waiting while I love you,

thank you for searching for the truth,

there’s only one God above you,

w/ medicine for a wasted youth.

You’ve been placed in a long queue,

but everyone’s in love with you,

procrastinate and find your crest,

I think your love is best.

The mashed potato that you ate

could sell for millions in the Tate,

and London renews sensation’s quest,

to put your mind at rest…

Thank you for waiting while I love you,

thank you for searching for the truth,

there’s only one God above you,

w/ medicine for a broken tooth.

ECSTASIA

Ecstasia, it will find you,

ecstasia will track you down,

wearing your bro’s blue T-shirt,

somewhere in a different town…

a comedown can be difficult,

a comedown can really hurt,

but it’s going to be easier

in your brother’s blue T-shirt.

Love, it will wound you

then forgive you all the same,

and one day death will find you,

and nobody is to blame...

I’m waiting at the foot of Black Combe,

I’m waiting for my true love,

and E has no value in maths

when you come down from a Dove…

FABLE

How much is that druggie in the window,

he’s washing off Steve’s holographic beard,

in the totally powerless shower,

he’s making me feel pretty weird,

blah blah black sheep

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos…

How much is that druggie in the window,

I think he’s gone beyond the pale,

they made him a living art installation,

and he wishes he’d stuck to the ale,

blah blah black sheep

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos…

How much is that druggie in the window,

the vision I had has grown dim,

I can particle accelerate Nothingness,

but I can’t write a poem like Jim,

blah blah black sheep,

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos.

HEY MAN HEY

Hey man hey what do you

have to say about today?

These new pube-shaving,

lecky-saving times?

The air seems slightly strange

to me in all honesty,

but I’m just a guy

that plays hide and seek with rhymes.

I lost my teddy in the void

when I was paranoid,

now all I am is all I owe...

at least I dared to dream

unlike a mechanoid

of love the likes of

which we still don’t know…

Well scream is bad,

when you go quite mad

and you lose your dad

and the magpie gets down

into your bones…

and you can’t come down

from the under-town

like a decaying clown

and you know the truth

which nobody owns.

So you must obey the dust

in which you trust

and which lies at

the bottom of everything

and bore the Lord

with your secret chord

and your word-hoard

knowing not just what

tomorrow will bring.

HIGH, HOW ARE YOU?

Oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

Here you come with your candle eyes

and your big horizon and your higher skies

here you come with a beautiful smile

I’m going to talk to you for a little while

oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

Here you are with your hopeful stance

and your lucky star and your backward glance

here you are in the eye of my mind

let’s hope we don’t go completely blind

oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

There you go, with you angel tear,

and your brand new car getting into gear,

there you go, with your perfect skin,

can’t wait until you come back again

oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

LOVE SONG TO A LIQUID MIRROR

The night is alright under the electric light

and I am thinking of you

how we used to love each other

black and blue forever and ever

how I used to watch over you

while you slept and when you wept and

when we leaped and love was fire

now the light comes fair and even

hyperlink to very Heaven

just like it was when love was open

and it is still full of hoping

full of groping full of dreams

love has not gone stolen pollen

lustful London lips are swollen

and liquid mirrors still run to the sea

where the fish swim without insanity

even though they have fucked eyes

we already went there,

we already did that

sometimes you’re a willing dupe

and sometimes a doormat

PHET ACCOMPLIS

Love, love, good for the brain,

the more you eat them,

the more you go insane.

Love, love, good for the heart,

the more you eat them,

the more you break apart.

They’re dissipating energy

with spiralling entropy,

falsifying vision with

indoctrinated feelings,

colouring perception

with vague mysticism,

you’ve been plugged in

to the mental health system.

Love, love, good for the brain,

the more you eat them,

the more you go insane.

Love, love, good for the heart,

the more you eat them,

the miracle will start.

They’re dissipating energy

with spiralling entropy,

falsifying vision with

indoctrinated feelings,

colouring perception

with vague mysticism,

you’ve been plugged in

to the mental health system.

SNOWFLAKE SONG

Snowflakes are falling to the ground,

that’s why the door-mouse makes no sound,

I could sing in an imaginary tongue,

but I find Klingon is best for song...

then it’s up to birds to saaaaaaaaaay,

“hope you have another blinding day.”

There are no footprints out there yet,

but I might go out and lose a bet.

Sometimes I dream of mapless space,

a little place without X tattooed on its face.

So then it’s up to you to saaaaaaay

“hope you have another blinding day…”

snowfall was injecting smack

into the Universal Mind a while back,

and now I’ve nothing left but tea

still I think you’ll find it’s well enough for me...

so now it’s up to me to saaaaaaaaay

“hope you have another blinding day.”

MOVING ON

When you record on earphones and say you’ll plug your senses in the mains they become aliens, aliens from Hollywood films, like the Fifth Element where there is a blue alien that can sing in two notes at once.

When I hear the sound I think of Jess and her impeccable taste in musical tunes.

I’ve got a little bet that the next guy after me to attain the face of stars, to be enraptured and enthralled, will still write the line I wrote at the time and like I did too think it is his own.

My father knew the line and sometimes I think of him – he hasn’t gone so far – is only up the way – lying underground.

When I was a boy and we first moved up he took me out the back and asked what I could hear and I said I didn’t know so he said it’s the beck.

SEEING THROUGH PUFF

I think Deathot is a clown

had no mates when he was at school

grew up to be a perfect entrepreneur

but I still think him a fool

lounges out in the garden

while the bees buzz around

carrying their pollen home

to the mating queen

over an ocean of green

Sweet Successo was his brother

and sometimes they didn’t get on

O after all is the key of water

in the language of Anon

lounges out in the garden

while the bees buzz around

carrying their pollen home

to the mating queen

over an ocean of green

and I’m the one who lives

between the letters of the word OK

trying to enlarge the sky

wondering what else I can say

and I’m the one who gives

gives the game away

trying not to elongate my shadow

at the end of the Big Glass Day.

O.

SOMETHING LIKE A SONNET

If Freedom and peace of mind are what you’re after

you’ve made the right choice with BT Talk Together

with an unlimited number of local

evening and weekend phonecalls

if sorrow sighs upon your shoulder

find yourself another lover

manoeuvre over backyard fences

angel where do you hide tonight

I’ll make maps of the stars to find you

soft caressing breeze to guide you

if you can be in my dream

can I be in yours too?

Get rid of/ ad hoc/ remembering

when we wandered round Amsterdam

making up poetry about neon

chameleons on the spot/

random dime/ random time

don’t pour Pepsi on the bright equipment

don’t piss on the cloakroom floor

don’t with only a dream contraption

don’t keep wanting more and more

I’m too loud and I woke my mother

EVEN A DREAMWOMAN GETS BEAUTIFUL ELECTRICITY

A thesis as thin as the Rizla it’s in

can lead all the way to the loony bin

and make you forget just how to spell

Winnie the Pooh and get unwell...

but even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

The way she hugs my myriad mind

I’m flying through colour but colourblind,

I wish to escape the shape of the paper,

I wish to taste the waste of a flower...

for even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

Come with me love away from the violence,

I don’t want to take a vow of silence,

don’t want to have to conceal this feeling,

for feelings are not meant for concealing...

and even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

I COME FROM THE JUNGLE

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle.

FULHAM F. C.

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

SONG FOR JAMES

James is amazing -

he is my brother -

when we were blazing -

we stole off our mother -

names are for crazing -

engage with the other -

when we were younger -

love was the answer -

Games are for lazing -

saith the author -

when we grow up

we’ll each be a soldier -

dames are for sharing

with one another -

those who must keep them

are soon to learn better -

frames are for breaking -

as saith the nutter -

and when we break out

our love is together…

aims are for reaching -

for further and further -

and love’s not for breaching -

and so it’s not over.

BARNESIE

Barnes’s goal against Brazil

it is the best I have seen still

it was not born under the hill

Barnes’s goal against Brazil

Barnes’s horse got on the course

they said to have more intercourse

so Barnes’s horse flew to the sun

when it got back it was no done

Barnes’s name is not in vain

for I’m the one who gets the blame

inside the flame when the game

has gone insane and is quite lame

Barnes’s nose I don’t suppose

objects to the way her garden grows

and the redolent rose strikes a pose

for the garden hose that no-one knows

Barnes’s wait is just for Kate

whom it would seem is Head of State

went on a date with a mate

and came back home so very late

ALAN THE BAT

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt

*

Another, another, an-

other fucking joint.

*

Even a duck gets big erections.

*

Lucy in the soul w/ demons

might happen to be a substance.

*

To plug my senses in the mains

might utilise !00% of my brains

but it’s all gone wrong at the plug,

just a dream on an ancient drug.

*

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?

Hi dad!

I’m fine!”

*

Here I am as I write

by night furtive in flight

with the sprightly

hypertext-sniper

on Piper At The

Gates of Dawn.

*

And the sheet where pictures

brown and blue

simply grew

was Winnie the Pooh.

THE GENIACK

My brother’s sheet where pictures

brown and blue

simply grew

has come apart into two

The visual radio of the seer

has died down

The smile of the laser

has left us bereft

and waiting for the post

Truth is tasted on the tongue

The young got old

and read Carl Jung

Sometimes it seems

there’s only one soul

in the whole Yellow Pages

The shaman and his tribe

don’t care about ages

but why is this silence torn

on a day when I was

awake at dawn?

The morning has moved

on to afternoon

and one thing I learned

might be said too soon

so I won’t, but just impart

it’s because I have a heart

in whom there is hope

for happiness in a world

precluding dope

it’s a length of old rope

I don’t want to go out into

the rain after some soap

it used to be a way

I would try and cope

but now I need more hope

don’t want to just mope

around it’s not good to mope

here. Here’s something to grope

it’s already a slippery slope

APOLOGIA FOR INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

I went through the emotion

of the maths of the new colour

as a cellular mark

and I’d say it was duller

than the dollar which lies

under the fractured atom

and I didn’t even scream

the last poet’s last poem!

In my heart I am plenty,

in my body still twenty;

and I laugh at the beer

that was drunk yesteryear...

you might get I’m a lion,

take the head off an iron

just to look in and see

the sum of all portability...

through a tunnel I came

to this stage of the game,

a rehearsal for death

when you’re short of a breath.

I used to lie on the floor

when chased by the law

to get some gravity

for it seems to be free.

I don’t want it to be long

but in my mind is a song

where the gist has been lost

by the lines that are crossed.

Now the washing up needs doing

so the crowd are all booing

for I’m the one at the show

and I know the way to go!

INVOCATION

Rimbaud!

Don’t go!

Kerouack!

Come back!

John Keats!

Meet the Beats!

Blaaaaaaake!

Don’t be fake!

Milton!

The day is gone!

Ted Hughes!

Find the Muse!

Shakespeare!

Have no fear!

Morrison!

Job done!

SNAKE BLUES

Amen hello

let’s go for a ride

do you believe in life before death?

Amen hello

let’s go for a ride

do you believe in life before death?

Red is the guitar

Green is the grass

grey is the sky

don’t say goodbye

SONG FOR THE MATING QUEEN

If an hour-glass ending on a piece of bliss

could seem to equal a dialysis 

then a love poem only hoping not to bore her  

could seem to equal more a motor 

but giving up greed in order to be free

I can’t see how this really matters to me

and if it’s a system I just love you still

and love has not gone under the green, green hill

if all the noise in the world would be quiet

I’d hide in the cupboard during the riot

if systems rule with fear not love

I’d half it and laugh it with an imperfect dove

here I am at the foot of Sea Ness

this anagram of boredom is in a mess

I’m all set up for a walk on the beach

to watch the waves rolling out of my reach

I trust my family and I trust my friends

I hope my dog’s life never quite ends

the kitchen is clean because I cleaned it myself

my father’s philosophy is up on the shelf

if all the greed in the world would go away

I’d still be Bede at the end of the day

if power is wrong at least it’s transient

a birthday came and a birthday went

and this is the me we all want to see

and this is the way I know to be free

and this is the Now that is in Eternity

and this is the leaf that came to the tree

if the wording of this little contract is mine

alas you are not but I’m still feeling fine

I’ve seen the stars they are out tonight

I’ve tried to forget exactly what colour is white

I’m searching my heart with a you-shaped lack

I’m searching my memory but it’s just a block

if only I could hold you in my arms

and quench these insatiable fire alarms.