ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR FROM CHIPMUNKA
Soundcloud Rain
The Sunset Child
THE DREAM FILM STORE
THE DREAM FILM STORE
A sad and seductive female voice is saying things to me. I cannot focus or see her face, it refuses to appear in my mind.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve finally come, I’ve been waiting for you for lifetimes.
- Welcome at last to the Dream-Film Store, I can’t believe you’ve awoken here after so long -
Did you have a long day? What can I find for you tonight – that’s right – anything you can imagine – a Thousand amazing thoughts preserved – or perhaps just a bottle of red wine and a dream about the swaying sea will rest you well tonight?”
Of course in dreams you never know you are dreaming. That is why they have control. Certainly this dream harnessed control enough to disturb me & leave itself lingering behind the back of my mind when I finally awoke.
In my sleep I was wrestling w/ heat & the covers, & frightened by the lady’s continuing voice. All I could see was blue.
“I know you can understand what I’m saying. Don’t be afraid” -
I felt her stretch out her arm towards me and I jumped in panic.
All around me I could see blurs of deep colour merging & swirling, a moving chaos of images and shapes. Still I could see no face.
“I know you can hear me, please, I’m your friend, look! I couldn’t bear to see you waste this now. You know me already please just trust me.”
********
II
I awoke shaken and wretched, grappling with the duvets, rubbing my stinging eyes. Already the terrible fear of my dream had subsided considerably; simply because waking instantly cancels out what was previously merely dreaming. Now I just had a headache & a longing to return to that strange scene and assuage the curiosity that always accompanies fear. I suppose the fear when you dream is because you don’t know you’re only dreaming. It seems real. I lay there thinking.
What troubled me most as I lay there in bed was that I never saw the woman’s face, though I could sense it was desperate to appear. Oh well, just a dream, as they say.
Refusing to let a dream trouble my thoughts all day, as had happened before I decided to get up and wash my face.
The flat was crazed by disorder & rubbish. Clothes, papers, books & boxes which should’ve been locked in some attic were at war w/ the floor. I trod w/ care to the bathroom & stood looking in the greasy mirror at a face full of grease; the eyes that once rewarded me w/ strange smiles were laden w/ sleep, heavy with the impurities that sleep had filtered. The Drain in my Brain.
“I’ve been swimming
in a sea of sleep,”
I began singing to myself in a hoarse groan. Wanting to give myself a shock, I dunked my head in a cold basin decorated w/ floating limescale, pubic hair (for some unknown reason) and toothpaste. How I could call that much of a wash I don’t know. Nevertheless, I felt fresher; so, as always, I started to prepare my morning spliff, which helped me decide what to do today, or if to do anything at all.
I used to take great pleasure in rolling huge reefers, just for the hilarity of seeing something unusual & absurd, I suppose. Recently though, since moving in to the flat, I’ve been rolling the swiftest & easiest joints possible, & filling them w/ more weed than the big old ones. Being stoned now fits into the same category of Time & Tedium that it once was the escape-route from.
As I lit the spliff, & fell softly back into the sensuous web that stonedness weaves, I felt a longing for the fantastical times I used to have w/ friends & girls & laughter & ideas – whereas now I just felt numb, in a blunt trance. Not wanting to linger on the past, I took a deep long drag, like the spliff was a sacrament, & pulled some stolid clouds of darkness into my lungs. Holding it down, I imagined counting some numbers but couldn’t get it together, so just waited - & then exhaled, releasing the smoke in a grave grey sigh, watching it fumble, disperse & vanish into cushions & curtains & air. My head was heavy. I knew what I needed now more than ever. To get out.
********
III
After dressing in some jeans & T-shirts, I took my weed, some skins, a pen & paper & various other articles of minor importance, & hid them in places in my big jacket. I’ve never been too bothered about what I wear on top - trousers, I just wear jeans, so I’m not fussy there either. Shoes, however, I’m very particular about, seeing as I have to walk in them etc. Shoes are rare allies in life. Also, I have a tendency to turn a jacket into a home.
So, finding a particular pair of boots, I left the flat w/ a feeling of the promise of the Day.
But where could I go?
I’d abandoned my friends a few months before, fallen out with them all except one, Gabriel, who I don’t speak to anymore, anyway. It was a strange series of incidents involving my previous band & some magic mushrooms. The details escape me & give me pain trying to remember them. We were called ‘Open Poem Opium,’ & we split up; that is all.
(“Beat through the veins of the city in madness
Revolving doors in your mind & sadness
Cities crawling in your brain
streets of mystery and of pain,
I’m leaving town on the underground train.”)
I put my hands in my pocket to instinctively protect myself from the knuckle-gnawing cold that hung around outside. Feeling what I thought was a £10 note in my jeans, I pulled it out to find only a little scribbling of lyrics written some days ago in a dull hash-induced trance.
I often scribbled things. I enjoyed the freedom of scribbling & doodling. The pen can move exactly where you want it free of direction, w/out the obligation of having to form restricting letters & words. I have pages & pages of doodles, strange shapes, & occasionally some lyrics appear in the mess. That’s what I did for the band – wrote songs & sang, though I don’t play any instrument.
Noticing a growing rumble in my stomach, I felt that food & coffee were the best options, & would give me more time to consider how my day of activity could be filled.
Rounding a corner, I saw the parade of shops ahead, dead faces facing me, w/ cheap dimestore smiles. In the middle was the cafe, called “The Rat & Vessel” to my amused bewilderment. I opened the door. Inside it smelled of sad people, old times clinging in smoke to the walls, sad paint and sad light. The door was still ringing from those crazy bells that crash together on opening , & make me cringe every time. Those bells should be banned from sad cafes. They exacerbate the dead silence that awaits you inside when the door slams shut & the bells stop clanging.
“A large strong white coffee please, & a Danish.”
£1. 90. I couldn’t believe it. I realised then that left me w/ only 10p for the day – a rare day of Activity. Oh well.
The coffee was bitter & the Danish was over sweet. I was fairly stoned & therefore felt a heightened sensitivity to things like taste. After a few mouthfuls, I realised it wasn’t quite late enough for breakfast yet.
Well, what could I do? Where could I go? 10p is less than having nothing, because it just irritates you with niggling little time-consuming questions.
I decided I’d be freer if I threw it away my last change. Why I didn’t bring any money w/ me I haven’t a clue – pen, paper & weed must have seemed like a more useful currency to remember this morning.
So On discovering that I finally had something to do (albeit only disposing of 10p), I thought I’d turn it into a ritual & perhaps waste an hour of the day. I was finding it increasingly difficult since realising this money shortage to tell myself that I was even capable of activity this morning. Spending an hour of one’s morning throwing away short change, & taking an hour to decide how to do it in particular to add a pretend sense of ‘fun…’ I realised a dead-end frustration possessing me. The town was in abeyance, time was trapping, what could I do to rid me of the cruel bindings of post-youth, expulsion from university, confusion, unemployment, & worst of all, sheer boredom? Where could I go, & with what purpose?
The 10p dilemma had started to annoy me. I thought in vain for ways I could make a ritualistic point of getting rid of it, but soon realised this sort of time-consuming thought was exactly what I wanted to get rid of the 10p for – like I said, to be free of it. This realisation of my own frustrating, mind-cycling stupidity annoyed me greatly. I decided I’d give it to the next tramp I saw.
It was now 11. 00. Which meant nothing to me, because w/out anything to do or anywhere to be, it didn’t matter what time it was. The street stretched ahead of me crawling w/ insect-cars & insect-people, all busily rushing around swarming sick and feversome. I often wondered exactly what the term “crowd-neuroses” means, & laughed that I felt detached from the clinging time-table lifestyle. Walls of grey rose either side of the road to complete the dull-grey prison of the street. People flocked & assembled, briefcases merged into madness, mute timetable agony, flaccid lovers limp by, smiles fail, children congregate in backstreets to escape, everyone around thinking they have something to do & somewhere to go! I felt dizzy so found a bench to sit down upon. Watching the parading fools & this procession of sadness brought out a sadness w/in me too. I was sitting motionless on the bench, feeling the flux & thrum of the city, the dead beat of London; & I heard the beat of my heart clash w/ the rhythm of the streets. I felt suddenly cold and alone. If London had a voice, it would be a blunted and dead-pan voice like Lou Reed’s.
I must have sat on that bench for about 2 hours. The time was spent coming to terms w/ the fact that I felt estranged from my environment – the first time I’d realised the alienation of being poor in a city. Perhaps if I lived in Cornwall, say, I’d have a job, a community in which I was known, maybe even some friends. The city is a great culmination of sadness & alienation. No-one in town is conscious of their extreme self-consciousness. Everyone in town is homeless.
Pleased w/ the thoughts I had accomplished this morning (& thinking was my poor equivalent of a morning’s work), I decided to roll up another spliff & go for another wander. My hands were cold & it was too windy sitting outside, so I went to look for the nearest phone-box. Phone-boxes were excellent for skinning up in, because a) you were off the street & out of people’s way b) there was a nice little platform bit to rest the Rizlas upon c) no-one disturbs you in a phone-box, because they assume you are looking for change, or about to make a call etc. One felt a slight degree of safety & protection inside.
The nearest phone was just across the road. I loved crossing roads, felt it like a game, a dare, a thrill. One of the things I felt most confident about in life was dodging traffic & crossing roads w/ what I liked to portray to the driver as being a fearless & disdainful nonchalance. I’m constantly occupying myself w/ little challenges & wars, that I suppose I create for my own amusement. Walking along a pavement, I often ask myself a question of importance then tell myself that if I reach that lamp-post over there before the next car passes me, the answer is so & so, & if not… I’m sure everyone plays the same game, just ask different questions. It’s amazing how something as utterly pointless & unfounded in anything apart from my own mind has the power to excite & possess me.
I can honestly feel a terrible suspense sometimes as a car grumbles & groans & approaches blind behind my back – I walk quicker, desperate for the answer I want. Sometimes, if I fail to reach the object in time for the right answer, I change the question or say I meant the previous lamp-post anyway. It is by no means a game I enjoy playing. I become frustrated w/ myself after a while, but at least it distracts me from frustration of having nothing better to do.
So crossing the road, I reached the phone-box, & entered its heavy door. Inside I felt how truly separate I was from everything else around me. There is a certain mysticism about phoneboxes & telecommunications. I remember having a fascination w/ Dr. Who, & the way he travelled throughout space & time in the blink of an eye. How I longed for such possibilities now, standing stoned & alone in a phone-box surrounded by strangers & the dizzying thrum of life. I wanted adventure, change, discovery – but I was stuck. Where was there to go?
I emptied my pockets on top of the phone & extracted the various bits of paraphernalia needed for skinning up. The spliff I rolled was terrible, due to what I noticed was a growing distraction in my mind.
Standing there pulling on the spliff, I tried to locate the exact area of my mind where the negativity was emanating from.
‘Right,’ I thought.
‘I know I don’t want to be here, but where do I want to be?’
Something was certainly on my mind, but I let it go as the smoke melted into my blood & sent diamonds rushing up my neck.
I started to gather my belongings, & noticed among them the 10p which I’d forgotten about.
“I’ll leave it here for some lucky person to make a phone call w/” I mused.
‘Or, I could make a phone-call myself..”
I didn’t own a phone & the thought of making a phone call was quite big news to me. Who could I phone? I had no friends.
Except for maybe Gabriel. It had to be Gabriel. 0171 385 6603. I only had 10p, so I had to plan carefully what I would say. Even better, I thought, I could invite myself round to his.
I don’t know why I suddenly had a desire to be w/ someone. I don’t know whether I even liked the guy. I alienate myself. Perhaps the guilt that loneliness brings, had stirred me finally into communication.
“Hello?” came the cautious, questioning voice.
“Gabriel, man, it’s, uh, Franco, could I come round?”
I spoke nervously & stuttered a little, out of practise w/ conversation.
“What! Hey Franco, how’s it going? What are you doing? Come round!”
“Yeah, I will, I’ve got 2 credits left, so I’ll - “
The line went dead & the dead sound came up in my ear & hung around in a tone of despair.
“Shit,” I thought. “Where the fuck does Gabriel live.”
Typical, that for once I’d actually wanted to do something that involved someone other than me - & it wasn’t going to be possible.
I left the phone-box still sucking hard on the joint. “I suppose I could go home, get some more money & - “
The phone was ringing. I lifted it. It was Gabriel.
“Man you should’ve just said & I’d have called you back.”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t know – shit, sorry. You know how I am w/ phones, clueless.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha – well, shall I meet you somewhere then?”
“I have no money & I’m down to my last few smoke’s worth.”
When I said earlier that phones fascinate me, I also meant to say that they terrify me. I’d probably prefer telepathy.
“I’’ll tell you what Franco, where are you – I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Um, well, I’m in a phone-box in Baron’s Court. I’ll meet you outside the Oddbins.”
“In 10 minutes, I’m close.”
“Alright man, that’s perfect, cheers.”
“See you then Franco.”
“Bye-bye.”
Wow. I’d never known anyone so efficient at phones. If I’m ever forced into using one to make arrangements, I faff around for hours being indecisive & calling back & hanging up.
Gabriel was a person of admirable sagacity for his age – 2 years older than me, 22, but w/ a sensibleness that empowered him to be utterly assured and self-confident. Decisive & wise, the kind of friend everyone wants & fears abusing.
I could already see Oddbins. I approached feeling slightly ridiculous still for my telephonic incompetence.
‘I could have done any number of things,’ I thought
- ‘reversed the charges, borrowed 10p off someone… oh well, I’m just useless, no matter.’
My thoughts were interrupted by Gabriel’s voice.
“Franco, jump in!”
Elliot Smith was playing on the stereo. I didn’t like Elliot Smith very much. He finds it too easy to write fairly good songs. I couldn’t respect that.
Gabriel had a spliff going. “Have a smoke on that man,” he urged. “How are you? Tell me about your life.”
“Well, I’m O. K I suppose. To be honest I’ve been quite dazed for ages. I don’t really know what’s going on man.”
“How’s the band?”
“We split.”
“Oh, why”
“Dunno, just crap really.”
“Just crap sounds about right. So what are you doing w/ yourself?”
“Oh, nothing much, nothing at all really. I’ve got virtually no money, & none on me.”
“Any girls?”
“Ha ha ha you must be joking.” The thought of me having the time, money, energy & effort for a girl was hilarious. I was not ‘boyfriend material’ – I never have been.
“Man, I’ve met this amazing girl, she’s at the flat at the moment – you’ll meet her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary.”
“What’s she like?”
“Oh, amazing man, you’ll see, you’ll see.”
“I’m not sure if I want to believe you or not. I mean you know how sceptical I am about girls. If she’s not perfect, not the Absolute One, then she’s not worth any waste of time bothering w/.” This was my arrogance. Suffice say, I had never found the One Perfect Girl.
“Franco, I’m telling you man – if you’d just stop being so fucking particular & arty farty, & just accept things, you’d be happier. You’ve probably already met your Perfect Girl but were too busy moaning about existence & lack of money & fucking weed to even notice her.”
“you think?”
“Yeah, I do think. You can’t get perfection, so then take what’s best.”
Elliot Smith was starting to annoy me, so I turned it down. The car pulled up & stopped.
“Here we are then, this is the new flat.”
“Cool, which door.”
“Here.”
We entered.
I stood waiting inside the door wondering what I was doing. A blond girl w/ a subtle face & medium sized breasts came to the bottom of the stairs w/ an open smile on her face. She was attractive. Very. She wore only a long robe-like dressing gown that revealed tempting patches of skin when she moved. She looked at me for a strange second, then Gabriel & her were full of kisses & smiles. I felt a little bit small, an outsider. Gabriel introduced me, & we went through to the lounge for a smoke & some coffee.
I always admired the way Gabriel could mix women w/ friends. We shared a flat at University, so I knew him well & had witnessed many of his previous ‘mistakes’ & ‘successes.’ I felt rather uneasy being in the room w/ my old friend & his beautiful new girlfriend. I felt alone.
We sat for a while & Gabriel & Mary inevitably drifted into the usual fresh-lovers type of conversation. There was certainly a silent communication between them, a sign of their genuineness perhaps.
I looked around the lounge. Shelves groaned w/ the slow old weight of books, heaving piles of books, pages of words compressed & preserved together in slumber, long centuries of books. Gabriel had no doubt read them all. He thinks books hold the answers. I think they only hold the questions.
I became distracted from the books by the sudden movement of Mary putting on some trousers. She stood up & had to jump & pull them up quickly while she was in the air. I caught a glimpse of her pussy through her knickers. & then I was hooked. I couldn’t help but cast glances at that soft pleasure-triangle that women posses, knowing there was a cunt lying in her lap, just lying there unattended. I felt an angling, wincing agony.
Uncertainty and mystery was what sustained me, kept my curiosity strong.
I wanted now to solve the cunt-mysteries hiding in Mary’s knickers.
“Franco! Wake up man. Where’ve you been? Cloud cuckoo Land?”
“Shit man, sorry, I’m a little bit stoned, well quite stoned actually.”
Everyone laughed.
I suspected that Gabriel was feeling excellent about himself now – it was obvious that I had been staring at Mary.
“Yeah & I’m a little tired as well. I had a really strange dream last night.”
Gabriel & I often discussed our dreams when we were stoned.
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“Well, it was terrible, frightening. There was a woman.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! That sounds just like Franco – terrified of women, even when it comes to wet dreams!”
Mary gave me a look of intrigue. Gabriel laughed at me more.
“You couldn’t understand unless you were there in the dream. It was terrifying.”
“What did she look like?”
“I’ve got no idea. I couldn’t concentrate enough on her face. It was everywhere, all around me – lots of deep blue green colours swirling & all the time there was the Voice…”
“...and what did it say?”
“something about the Dream-Film Store or something.”
“Wow. ‘The Dream-Film Store’. Sounds exciting. & what happened that was so scary?”
“I don’t…. I don’t really know…. It was just…. Um….”
I trailed off into oblivion. The T. V. had been put on & it flickered its bright ugly faces around the room. I felt dizzy & needed suddenly to lie down. Chaos was swarming in my head, I took a deep breath….
& a strange blue colour pervaded the scene.
“I’ve been calling you all day, why haven’t you been answering -
Look, there’s something we should get straight now & here: you WANT to be here, w/ me, so please make it easier on us both.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh you already know all this, it’s the same questions every time – in time you’ll remember everything, but I need to -”
“Where am I?”
“Why, you’re at the Dream-Film Store of course..”
I felt the softness of her presence, the lure of her maiden’s voice, a strange sense of having been here before in another time – still I could not see her face, just an oceanic blur.
“Is there something wrong? What is the matter?
What is the matter?”
she kept repeating
& repeating
her voice dispersing
& drowning as I
floated away
slowly upward towards
the surface again
through the big blue
until…
---------------------------------------------
IV
I awoke panting for breath on Gabriel’s sofa, w/ 2 impending heads above me – stoned expressionless faces.
“Man, what the fuck happened,” I joked.
Their smiles told me they were relieved.
“You suddenly started hyper-ventilating, & moving your limbs manically, & then you feinted & just lay there looking still & peaceful, &, uh, almost… dead!”
“Shit, that’s never happened before, I never feint, that’s weird.”
“Probably just the weed.”
“& the crap company,” added Mary w/ a smile. “Let me get you some water,” she continued.
“Please,” I agreed.
I watched the ripe shape of her body as she moved away, watched her casual motions sway. Disorder Lust & Loneliness. ‘There is no room for love in my life,’ I thought ‘or perhaps all I have is room for love.’
“Gabriel,” I slowly asseverated, suddenly snapping back into the room, “when I feinted, just then, I had the dream of the scaring woman at the bed of the sea.”
“At the bed of the sea?”
“Yes, yes, it was at the bed of the sea first time as well. I remember. I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I haven’t seen the woman yet but I spoke to her.”
“What did you say?”
“’Who are you?’ & ‘where am I?’”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. & this was supposedly a nightmare?”
- “Um, well, no, not as such, no definitely not a nightmare, just a strange, scaring dream.”
“’Who are you?’ and ‘Where am I?’ That’s what people in 3-rd rate Hollywood PG’s say when they miraculously arrive at some fantastical place. Sounds like pure cheese to me man! I can’t believe you’re letting yourself get bothered by a dream as cheesy as this!”
“No, it wasn’t cheesy, it was crystal clear & pure blue & cool on my naked skin….”
Then there was an uncomfortable silence that hung around waiting to strangle me.
“Gabriel shall we have another bifter, I could really quite do w/ a J to sort my head out.”
“Yeah, man, that’s a sound idea. I’ll skin.”
I turned my head to look out of the window.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. The street outside was full of sadness, lined w/ windows, desperate & nothing. The street goes nowhere. The pedestrians are going to places that I refuse to call anywhere.
Mary had returned now w/ a glass of water & a cup of herbal tea.
“Oh, cheers, that’s perfect, thanks.”
I was never myself w/ new people. Strangers gave me a nervous edge. You could say that they excite me – or perhaps that was just Mary.
She sat down next to me on the sofa. I always sit forward w/ my hands clasped. (My mother used to say I sat like I was praying & I used to tell her that I was.) Mary sat back relaxed & full of presence. This made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t see her face behind me, & now felt sure she was sitting back so as to look at me w/out me noticing.
My stoned mind focussed out & dispersed & my thoughts began to spread into detailed crevices of indecision.
If I lent back it would be blatant that I’d either noticed her, if it’s true that she is looking at me, or, if not, it would be either a nervous action or a rather full-on, arrogant one; so I shouldn’t just sit here & feel comfortable w/ her looking at me from behind.
I considered my position w/ Mary agonisingly behind me, & Gabriel, my friend who was beginning to bore me a little, reading in front of me, quite engrossed. He had the spliff & wasn’t even smoking it. I didn’t want to ask him for it, because it was his, but the rude bastard hadn’t even passed it once.
Suddenly, in a moment of decision I sat back next to Mary, our bodies pressing. At this stage, w/ the threat of Gabriel there & the tendencies of my edgier thoughts getting carried away, I began to feel excited – I began to get an erection & my jeans were tight. “I could really do w/ leaning forward again,” I thought. “Though what would Mary think of me rocking back and forward like a monkey?” Paradox. The only solution I felt was to ask Gabriel for the biff & lean forward to take it.
“Gabs man, the bifter has extinguished itself in the absence of you smoking it. Have a light.”
We often spoke to each other in burlesque tones using highly pretentious diction to mock the people who assume we are being serious or genuinely ostentatious. A silent cruelty, & a disdainful one. We enjoyed deliberately confusing people. I know that of course it’s a manifestation of personal insecurities, or something like that. Enigmatic people, though, have to cultivate their enigmas, play on people’s curiosities. If people knew this, however, the enigma, the mystery, would cease.
I suppose you could say I suffered from a dreadful arrogance that played games w/ my autonomy.
W/ all this thought taking place & consuming my stoned mind, my erection subsided. & Gabriel passed me the joint.
“Cheers man. What you reading?”
“Turn of the Screw.”
“Henry James. I’ve read it.”
“What do you think?”
“Frightening. Frightening to think that the entire novel is related through the eyes of someone so subtly mad… psychotic… that she doesn’t know it and neither do we…”
“Yes, yes, the scary thing is that when you’re insane of course you wouldn’t know about it.”
“Where are you at?”
“The Governess has just been visited by her second horror.”
“Oooooooooh… it’s just getting good. The insanity accelerates from then on.”
I often spoke of insanity. The idea of it attracts me. It’s in the same boat as all the things which attract me like dreams & angels & myths & magic, symbols, Mystery.
I often used the word ‘insane’ as an adjective. I’d never told Gabriel (& he was the most likely person I would tell anything) that I don’t actually believe in sanity. Or intelligence. I just believe in minds.
I needed the loo.
“Mary, where’s the bathroom please.”
“Upstairs.”
That’s all I needed to know. Bathrooms are self-evident & usually exactly where you expect them to be. Still, you’ve got to ask.
“Right. Do you want the rest of this?” I offered the joint.
“Oh, yes please. Thanks.”
On leaving the room, I realised how much I’d wanted to leave it since entering it.
“I’ll take my time,” I thought.
Halfway up the brown carpeted stairs I heard Mary & Gabriel exchanging aggressive but hushed remarks w/ each other. They were squabbling. Shit. Was it something to do w/ me? No, don’t be arrogant Franco, of course not, they just waited for privacy.
I reached the top of the stairs slowly, straining to hear what they were saying downstairs.
“Don’t be so nosy Franco, go & take your piss,” I said to myself, imitating the sense of morals & responsibility that I recognised I inherently lacked.
Four possible doors faced me at the top of the stairs. I chose the one I was sure was a bathroom; but it was a bedroom. “Shit, oh well, another one of my immaculate notions ruined. Bathrooms are not self-evident after all.”
The door next to it was the right one. As I pissed, I looked around at all the fancy bottles of sprays & scents & creams & whatnot. My bathroom, in comparison, was utterly empty.
I decided I’d stay in the bathroom a little longer to give the two downstairs a fraction more privacy. Their relationship, on first impressions, was strange. They possessed a silent communication which I’d seen in other couples, but never experienced.
In front of me, they ignored each other. & Gabriel had definitely changed. I realised then, staring blankly in the mirror, that Gabriel was not a friend anymore. I no longer needed him for the public confidence he inspired in me. I no longer needed any public confidence. I had no friends. I had to get out, leave as quickly & politely as possible. W/ as much of Gabriel’s gorgeous skunk as possible.
Returning downstairs it was clear that all the fuss had subsided. Entering the living room, Gabriel had now moved to sit in my seat next to Mary on the sofa. He had his arm around her. The skunk was on the coffee-table, where Gabriel was previously sitting. I moved over & sat down. The couple were full of smiles.
For the next ½ hour, we chatted idly (except for Mary), & I was given the opportunity of rolling a spliff. Little did Gabriel know that it was also an opportunity for me to steal about ¼ of his ounce of skunk. Having convinced myself that there was no longer the same connection between us, that he wasn’t a friend, & that it was his fault as well, I reached a guilt-free state of mind, which excited me. Ah, the potentials of being guilt-free, amoral. All you needed was to be good at lying to yourself. So, skinning the J, I subtly spilled the bag under the coffee-table while the couple were smugly engrossed in some embrace. Under the coffee-table, I put a substantial handful into my left boot, then brought the rest up in the bag, laughing and apologising.
“Gabriel. After this biff I’m gonna cruise.”
“You’re going? Already?”
“Well, I’ve been here ages &… to be honest, I still don’t feel too good after that feinting episode.”
“I thought we’d do something today, go to Camden maybe.”
“Gabriel,” I joked like a friend would. “You know we never do anything if we’ve got enough weed.”
He was reluctant to agree. I knew it was because of Mary. Being w/ her changed him.
We smoked the spliff, & talked some more. I couldn’t be myself w/ him. He had become a stranger. The way he was so – insensitive about my dream as well…. That was what first alerted me to his new persona. Oh well. I managed friendly chatter, & by now had realised he probably wanted me to go anyway, & was probably experiencing the same friendship crisis between us that I was. At least he had Mary there when I left. What would she be like then? What were they really like together?
“So,” I said, standing up, “I’m off, man.”
“Cheers for phoning & coming round, it’s good that we’ve retained our friendship and are still in touch…” etc, etc,
Bullshit.
After the crap & the strange half-falsity had finally gotten too crappy to bear on both sides, I smiled at Mary.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said looking at her intensely in her sea-green eyes, as if to communicate something more than my words actually said.
“you too,” she smiled,
“see you again.”
& then that was it. I doubted if she ever would see me again. Or Gabriel for that matter. It didn’t matter.
The door had closed behind me. I faced the street. I was free.
********
V
W/ my confidence fuelled by the safe knowledge of having something to smoke in my possession, I strolled briskly away. “Even if the worst comes to the worst,” I thought, “I can just get utterly cained & escape, pass out in a miserable gutter.” But I could not accept this as being the outcome of the day. “Decisions must be made,” I said decisively out-loud, to no-one. “I must choose.”
I turned the corner, not knowing where I was, or where I was going to. A woman w/ a pram passed me & deliberately averted her eyes from mine. I don’t know why but this fuelled my sense of drive further. My stride began to extend.
A moment later, a fragment of sun scattered through the clouds that had lay in the sky all day. A ray caught me in the eye. I began to feel quite exultant, happy to be alive, & to be me. I continued walking in a strong rhythm. My feet penetrated the street.
I started to hum; then I fitted words to the tune. I was walking directly into the beam of sunlight, which seemed to be exclusively shining on me. ‘Wow,’ I thought, light-headed & dreamy, ‘I am indeed a very special person, blessed.’ As soon as I’d felt this elated sensation float through me, the grey clouds covered the sun again, as if to punish me for my arrogance, or simply just to ruin my mood.
Angered by this, I felt like getting myself involved in a conflict against the sky & sun. I decided, in the mess of my mind, that I would will the sun back out from those clouds.
Soon my concentration faltered, though, & my thoughts maundered into silly crevices. I had turned onto a little side street, & at the end of it, I saw there was a fenced grassy opening w/ a gate. A cemetery. W/ my thought now on a level of confusion, it would be a good idea to sit down & think for a while. Maybe I could write a song.
The cemetery was virtually empty. Furthermore, it appeared to be more like a park than a cemetery. Nicely mowed lawns. Cosy gravel paths. Each tombstone lined up immaculately & forgotten about. I couldn’t believe for a minute that any of the people lying under this ground had specifically chosen this cemetery as their place of rest. Of all the places of rest on Earth.
I wandered down to the bottom of the path & sat by an unusually small gravestone under the trees in the corner. Leaves were scattered around me, fragile and crumbling.
“In loving memory of
Mary Calliope,
died 2nd April 1882,
aged 26 years.”
That was what this curious gravestone said. It was faded & looked out of place, tucked away at the side under this tree. It seemed almost lonely. I leant against it, sitting on the damp ground, forgetting to respect the dead.
I noticed a robin hopping around the base of the nearest sycamore tree. He, or she for that matter, looked rather impoverished, skinny & tired. I immediately took pity on this little robin & felt helpless that I couldn’t give it something to eat. Instead, I smiled at it, & said “hello” in the tone of voice you’d use w/ a baby. “You can be my friend” I said wistfully, trying to put some genuine enthusiasm into my voice. I sounded false. Almost inevitably, the robin bobbed away. ‘Oh well.’
I sat there engrossed in an evolving day-dream, unable to find a single thread of productive thought, wallowing in whatever arose.
I was beginning to feel nauseous. My guts felt like sludging snakes writhing inside me. “Shit,” I thought “I haven’t eaten yet today.” What time was it? I hadn’t a clue. How long had I been sitting there? I began to panic a little, & feel light-headed. ‘Shit, I’ve got some weed, shit I forgot, wow, I’ll have another smoke and calm down.’
W/ my face down to my lap, & my fingers absorbed in the process of rolling a spliff, I did not notice the elderly woman approaching me w/ a little joke of a dog scampering beside her. Just as I lit up, & lifted my face up, she was there.
“Morning,” I said, slightly shocked.
Her face was heavy w/ old skin but could have been attractive before about 50 years of weathering set in.
“Why are you sitting on that grave?” she said abruptly.
“Well, um, actually, I am here to mourn my father’s grand mother.”
Her nosy rudeness annoyed me, & I was in the mood for retaliating on the offensive.
“She died while giving birth to my grandfather,” I continued, enjoying the freedom & spontaneity of lying, enjoying the fact that I had gained the upper hand.
“Oh,” she said solemnly. “Oh I am sorry,” she continued humbled and apologetic. I was suddenly hit by a great wave of guilt, at seeing how easily I had defeated his poor old woman, who was in the right anyway. I wanted to tell her that I was lying, & had actually stopped to roll up some illegal substances, & that yes I was a typical youth, & that you were right to question me… But she had already tottered off, w/ her little tottering dog. Oh well, no point in pitying the weak, I thought.
W/ this incident over, & seeming to have taken place hours ago, I continued with the spliff.
Slowly, I began to enter a state of mind that I’d never encountered before. My stomach seemed to expand & expand into space. I closed my eyes & felt the walls of my stomach moving outwards. I felt as if a universe was being created inside me. I felt a huge space within the entire of my body, which I felt no longer existed. I imagined seeing stars explode & planets being born &
********
VI
& I plummeted to the Dream-Film Store again…
“Here is where dreams are stored on disk,” said the friendly female voice as if on autocue. “Anything that can be dreamt, any dream sequence, it’s stacked on the shelves here in The Dream-Film Store, this shop beneath the waves.”
I felt less afraid than before.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “I can explain.”
Her face, her physical form now appeared, a nubile and pulchritudinous sylph.
“Hi,” she said, resolving from the colour.
“Hi,” I said back, breaking that rule that women don’t like you copying them.
“Your loneliness, disorder and despair leads to LUST. Your agonies are self-inflicted. ALIENATION is one of them. You have escaped into The Dream Film Store. You have accidentally slipped into a crevice of your own mind and landed awake in the subconscious.”
“Really?”
“Either that or you have created a world here at the bottom of the sea symbolising mystery, women, penetration, drowning, hallucinating, dreaming, the subconscious.”
“Well which is it?”
“Your LONELINESS is a fantasy world that is the subconscious reaction to and sanctuary from the alienation, waste & disorder of your waking life. You are at war with yourself. Your subconscious is offering you peace terms.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come
with me while we plummet,” she said; “plummet with me while we
sleep.”
‘THE GREATEST SIN’
[A GIFT FOR NATALIE]
THE GREATEST SIN
(for Nathalia)
I
COCOON OF LOVE
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
II
LOVESICK LULLABY
Love hides inside the empty floorboards
Love glistens from the shining dew drop
Love rises from the end of a candle
Love hurts & wounds the sleeping innocent
Love screams & kills but we forgive it
Love wanders through an empty corridor
Love arrives like a midnight butterfly
Love jumps up from the serpent’s shadows
Love fills the air with empty spaces
Love seeks those who least seek it
Love kisses those who don’t deserve it
Love falls & takes you to the sea-bed
Love’s name is hidden in her whisper
Love sings like a silent choir
Love dwells in lack of truth or reason
Love dies when she blinks her eyelids…
III
TO SIGH
In a half lit world
I sink to see a moment of you
& I’m scared to believe
That death not ends these fearful dreams
But at least I dreamt
Amid a lost desire
Alone on a sinking ship
Sinking into aborted love forever
& it gives me hope
To sigh
But darkness dwells so deep
It makes me want to smile
Because I don’t have to pretend
Yes
I know I’ll drown
But at least I dreamt of you…
IV
TO FEEL
To feel the despair
in a lover’s breath
To feel the heat
in a wayward smile
To feel the mystery
of the heart
I can’t keep hiding in the shade
To dare to see her
blink her eye
When she is gone
her scent remains
I dare to feel
I dare to touch
I dare to believe in Heaven…
V
FOOL
I can’t see you
so I guess you must be
invisible
I can’t feel you
so I guess you must be
perfect
Into this wilderness I’m born
Into this longing heart I’m thrown
Into this sea to drown
To die asleep & dreaming of you
Because I am just a fool
I hope I die with you…
VI
BY DARKNESS
She dances in the darkness
like a flame
She disconnects with a sigh
I fall into the trance
& awake
only to sleep again…
VII
THE URGENCY OF NOW
The warm urgency of now
Pushes me deeper into the tide
I surrender to desire
& let you conquer me
Floating asleep on a laughing sea
I can see you
on the shoreline
Waving slowly, calling softly
I must see you again
Tomorrow will bring treasures deep
Rich & warm comforts of the soul
I need you here
Before I cry & close my eyes forever
I can see you
On the horizon
Beneath a melting sunset sky
The stars awake to notice love
She waits with open arms…
VIII
OH, I GUESS IT’S LOVE
There is no place that tastes so sweet
a soft asylum by the garden’s quiet corners
Voices and bells
The resting birds
Enhance the warm night’s silence
With careless smoky laughter
Solemn prayers
In the church’s hollow sadness
Solemn forgives the slow deliverance
All is well
& all is strange
The strangest thoughts to have
Soothed my mind
A small oasis
In the dusky realm
Gives me the power
To think & dream
Lying under the moon’s crazy figure
A blurred statue
In the timeless sky
A hazy blanket covers all
Obligations to return inside
To sleep
& retire to the oceans
Nothing could caress
My heart so bruised
More delicately
Than the crazy air
What?
Oh, I guess it’s love
It has no place in this crazy world
My drowsy head releases hold
Beneath the sky-turn-ocean-grey
A dusk to lose
& forget
The purpose
For there is no meaning
Behind our eyes
So slow
So old
What?
Oh, I guess it’s love
That forges sleep
On our fragile minds
The blurred sunset
In the crazy silence
Sacrifices
All its treasure
To give me power & no direction
To help me lose my careless way
The moon is a pearl
With a lazy voice
& it hums
To Death’s gentle song
The tune that means all is healed
What?
Oh, love,
It will wound me & forgive me
The graveyard is a place of rest
& the church sighs
A place of death
A useless womb for priceless dreams
That run in its dizzy realm
Naked-Luxury-Deathly-Trance
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...
IX
WAITING
Slowly rise
Slowly stir
I lie waiting, thinking
Wishing I was lying down
with you
Sleeping in soft grass
Wandering, laughing through open fields
Drifting through meadows without fences
Outside dawn blooms into spring
Birdsong chatters in the trees around
She will find a way
If I can find her secret heart
Then everything
will be
okay…
X
AWAKE, THE CRAZY DREAM
I am asleep
until she smiles,
I am perched
on the edge of a dream,
She dances along the summer horizon,
& loses me with the blink of an eye…
XI
PURPLE PERFECT
To trade desire, wrapped in silky cloths
To build a fire, where the insects flock
There is a candle, I don’t believe the light
But I can feel you, we’re on the edge of night
Into a theatre, onto an endless bridge
Into the ocean, on the back of a bomb
Never yesterday, in its faded tomb
Nor tomorrow, in its empty womb
Fresh desire still feeding hope
Onto a bonfire, down a necklace rope
While I’m blinded, there is no horizon
But I can see now, the sun has risen
With strange colours, mixing the twilight sky
& love is our sin now, we could forever die
together
In the depths of a dream
Live together
In a world unseen…
XII
THE WISH OF NIGHT
Madness swirls deep in the heart
A butterfly resides in you
A tragedy of feelings lost
surrenders to the wish of night
& in this world I can't explain
I know exactly where I am
Inside a crevice of desire
In the dreamy air of a lover's scent
Wherever you take me, that's where I'll be
In the weeping skies my mind gives up
& falls into the arms of sleep
I'd fade to know I thought of you
& the world has risen to my hands
& the earth murmurs beneath my feet
& the light of all that's good is true
if believing is the dawn of dreams
I guess that I'm afraid to tread
The purple skies for the risk of a word
But at least I'm sure of fear
As she gives me the strength to feel afraid
A whisper fathomed deep in mine
Well I don't even care to cry
& I don't care to face the edge
& plunge into the oceans dead
& the flame of love has lit my candle
& the sky has echoed my desire
& all the air is drawn into my lungs
& I know the secrets of the shade
& I know the wars that come from peace
& I know the mystery of love
& I know the resilience of the soul
& I'm sure that knowing you is true...
ANON
LOVE POEMS FROM THE MAG ‘POETRY NOW’ WHICH THE POET ESTABLISHED
WITH A FRIEND AT OUNDLE SCHOOL, LOWER SIXTH
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.'
(Anon)
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.
(Anon)
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.
(Anon)
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.
(Anon)
HAIKU FOR SPRING
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but like butterflies.
(Anon)
FROM ‘THE GREEN TUCK BOX POEMS’
THE EMERALD PRINCESS
Sadness is the mother of dreams
dreaming of the perfect Girl
who cannot fit into this world
because she’s not a human being
The emerald princess
gloating in the green-gorgeous Oasis
licking lush and lustful lips
attending to her crawling king
Her kiss is wet
w/ water clean and thin
like the spirit of Heaven
& the mind runs clean
in pristine dream
when you suck
the redness of her kiss
DEEP
The dark and gold sea
is still softly folded
between you and me
O to be there
on that burning shoreline
& touch with mine her waiting palm
& assuage my aching
reaching longing
- I must dive the
dark waters,
dare the currents
where the Ocean is free
& rhythms beat
in silent madness
- Dare to love
my own sadness
___________________________
The Night is my guide
& Freedom is a solitude
that is entire with all else
“Come now,”
beckoning the Perfect Girl
into uncompleted loneliness
Like the moon’s silver legion
of onlooking stars
are all put out by a wayward glance
________________
I’ve talked to God
on reverse charge call
& he told me the Word
& the Word had no meaning
________________
“Why of course,”
she sighs, enlightened
in an instant
“we can’t see God
because we can’t
see ourselves!
- God’s only eye
is blind &
God is but an
inward eye,
for eyes cannot
fix on themselves
& the murderer
never murders
the murderer.
- So how can I
let go of my self?
Surely I must
just let go
may your lives
sometime ‘midst day and night
become perfect
- confess yourself
then when all is gone
you will have won
My life is a
confession of joy
STRANGER
Stranger we must pass like prayers
together in the ballad-murmuring breeze
we must go like pilgrims to Parnassus
boundless in our impossible hope
perhaps again we shall lie like children
& invent such things as poetry
follow swift untrampled footsteps
in the candle-forests of Holy Night
we must be silent, listening
for whispers creeping away
like tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiptoe-shadows
stranger take me now unready
I stand unsteady on this path
sad there’s too much still to forget
my eyes are sad for delivery
stranger show me all that’s strange
I need you just to touch your eye
or show me that you’re still alive
perhaps your breathless heart has stopped
to catch its breath trapped in heaven
lover you might tell me your name
I’ve nothing to say to the endless pupil
______________________________
SAMADHI
I found you at last
caught between the beat of a heart
between time where
you cannot look
in flight with the sniper
breathlessly trapped
in a glass moment
staring helpless
- cannot make a sound -
between breaths
of life or death
no not a chance for
final tragic exaltation
no need for the past
or its war with the future
I found you at last while
leaping between the beat of my heart
____________________________________
TRAIN STATION PLATFORM
Two imperfect strangers, man and woman,
stand on opposite train station platforms.
They catch each other's eye then look
away, only to check the station clock...
it is running round and round on the stones!
Instead of trying to make conversation,
they listen out for the tannoy and its
annoying voice to make an announcement,
or seek distraction from the situation
in the thin facsimile of music pouring
from the tinny speaker on the platform.
Why don't they suddenly just resolve:
hey let's fuck a stranger tonight!? They
wait, besuited slaves with briefcase
blues, screensaver faces and answerphone
manners, dead pedestrians with rich
antennae pointed dead to the ground,
in some kind of somnambulist trance,
under orange lamp-posts like snakes
shedding a sad, Lucozade light. The
car, car of crows can be heard, raucous,
at this juncture of missed opportunities;
then rain starts to fall with as many hands
as there are names for new rock bands…
it seems not only is one never so alone
as when one is in love but the very
smooth running of social intercourse
itself depends on the repression of
emotion, on the negation and denial of
one's most primal instincts. Sooooo
the sensuous mode of being has gone
under Gondwanaland again; and we
all wait around anxiously checking the time.
(reconstructed)
SCENTS OF SPRING
I love the day the first, fresh scents of spring
suffuse the air and pervade the senses.
An AEIOU bird
toots its hollow horn
outside on the A595.
A celebratory genesis is everywhere.
Mother earth
is giving birth,
menstruating season
and ovulating dawn.
Fresh lovers maunder
hand in hand and
knee-deep in redolent flowers
into shade to take repose
by cool, running waters.
Sybaritic sylphs swoop in sentient air.
The blue sky arches and swoons,
I bridle the mind and race apace to the shore
where seabirds scream
from the ragged rocks,
O is it their love-song or elegy?
Waves make gentle love to the shore.
In alchemy a galaxy
of stars exploding
into being above is perceived
as an orgasm, is perceived,
that is, in an erotic sense.
Liquid night arrives too soon,
O moon, O beautiful,
sleepless omen moon,
who shines like an
electric coin and seems
to be in love with the sea
or at least her own
shattered reflection:
she scatters her jewellery box all around.
Homework tonight is
to remember your dreams.
I prefer telepathy to 10p.
I need to find a round map of sound.
HYPERTEXT AT THE GATES OF DAWN
No worries, lost lover,
Science has the answer,
all wrapped up in its
rubber-gloved hand
and they’re soon
abolishing altogether
sadness gene and
dreaming gland -
for Science has told
us many of the stars
you gaze at tonight
are not really there
but illusions of the
light that takes so long
to reach the beams
of our glistening eyes
that for centuries
after the star has died
it still appears to
be hanging there,
a little, glimmering
crystal tear, in
love with the dark,
as bright and beautiful
as it would be if
it were really there.
(Cambridge)
EXCERPTS FROM A DIFFICULT PHASE
THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE OF GREEN
My development as a writer since arriving at Warwick has been truncated and stultified by my refusal to abjure a little clinging: psychological addiction to cannabis. Where before I would smoke and make smoking a magical sacrament too for magical de-familiarisation, now the refreshing thing would be to get sober. The paranoia levels are quite bad and sometimes I get so paranoid I have to leave the room. I have started to contemplate the spare time continuum as a fictional continuum with two poles of faith and of doubt, like positive and negative energy swirling in the void. All this was just the evil weed speaking, like the arch-tempter snake. So you see I need to break free, maybe spend some time in a log cabin in the mountains to apply murderous and ruthless revision to the work I have brought into being. After all I am one of God’s reporters and should bring people the Excellent News about how flowers grow. I am not just pilgrim to Parnassus, deep-sea diver in collective unconscious, psychic map-maker, alchemist of perception, liver-function of language but translator of feelings and the feelings you get on drugs are all fake. Paul speaks of being a robot and robot-builder in one and how we must look within to improve ourselves in evolution. Madness and gayness are both pressing in on my brain, and on weed, at night, in bed, I cannot defend myself against the paranoid accusations that arise in my haunted skull. Chicken Blames Egg, the burlesque newsprint headline reads, then, in terms of the paranoiac circles that go round and round. Sometimes I can be found applying some of these midnight thoughts to a page, in darkness, with a pen that has run out of ink, almost carving the letters in to the page so that only by tilting the page to the light in the morning can one discern any of the words. Even then I go over the same area of page sometimes and make a parsimonious palimpsest of pentimento. It seems in the morning like I have created a scab, a white scab. Sometimes, because of the nature of the chemical – how much it costs, how sacred it is as an effect and as a ritual alike – I think these midnight scribblings are valuable – epiphanies worth something to the world – of a visionary proclivity – but really I will likely end up binning hundreds of notebooks – all of them – from my youth – in not one, not two, but three big, black bin-liners – and that’s without even reading them. Gone will be the moment I first dared to trespass into forbidden gardens apropos writing about the face of stars in naked, honest, open, convivial, face value narrative. It’s all going to get thrown away and that may be why my father says “writing is biodegradable in the end,” as if even when you word process it, the actuality of the literature remains biodegradable. In other words it will all grow back if it wants to.
READING MATERIAL
If there were paper under my heart there would
be writing on it and yes it would be red
like the blood-orange warning of dawn-burst
or nuclear-fall-out-in-reverse-of-dusk, whose
scattered, tattered- knicker clouds conceal
real live U.F.O's, and non-exchangeable
for a bus-ticket when the fiver-river is gone.
That page, my wage, an underground organ,
with its meta-fictional shorthand and triplicate,
something like the opposite of a bus ticket,
taking you on an inward journey to Alaska:
surely it would feel shocked to not be legal tender?
SYSTEMS
If you should not trust systems for they rule with fear
not love, fear would appear an epiphany of Hell
in the self, love Man’s highest emotion here,
where a stolen volume of verse has started to smell...
to engender an aesthetic anti-system like the
old colours of the vowels in English you can
find pasta, tea, air, hair, water, that your ordinary
speech is surreal enough to qualify as an open-
air poem – quickly, O prophet, get it down! -
your notes on hyper-vision echo in the new air.
What wisdom you speak! Like Blake for the modern
ear… you remember when you had brains to spare?
For chatting in philosophy chat rooms all Night!
For writing in a secret, alchemical alphabet or not!
MESSAGE RECEIVED
O il faut que je m’en aille,
with sadness in a backward eye,
what is this free dream into
which I am hurled, gone
past the mystery of the single
shoe beside the road and the
fallen road sign saying
THINK! in the nettles in a
fast car with Paul and the band,
on a smouldering evening in
Cambridgeshire, when late birds
sing in the trees, birds that
are intelligent, trees that
are our friends, when nothing
matters especially and sometimes
you’ve just got to hit the road and
HALATNOST IN A CRISIS HOUSE
My bedraggled crow’s nest splay
is Portable in all directions…
oh no, oh no, the Spirit of
Music has been lost forever,
down on beautiful, heartbroken,
sentient, rosethirsty earth,
where the wetness is jealous
and the witness is smitten,
went the Spirit of Music
when we thought it lost forever,
and money is not for drying
your eyes in the queue for medicine
and these rude, Nirvana-barcode
fingertips did not touch her
and the full moon wears the ultra-
scan of every baby and the
silver forest is enraptured
by the fanny of a bee.
(London)
PURPLE
Voices also told me to write of the
colour purple. In Steiner homes for autists,
rational but socially inept, the corners
of the rooms are round and purple
because it's less threatening than the geometry
of rightangled corners. My room
turned out a little like that when,
as my dying father lay in the attic,
my screen bloomed a numinous purple
light daubing the walls until the
bedroom, an anagram of boredom,
seemed like a featherlite love poem shop:
a little girl's lava lamp of a room!
Sometimes the seeping foxglove aura
vacillated back and forth between
purple and its normal screen light,
refusing to settle for any long period of time.
My bro said I'd caught some virus;
the computer programmer down the pub
just said dying, and he was right,
for by the time Blue passed away,
Blue being the art-smuggling codename
dad used in his shady occupation,
the computer broke down. R.I.P. data-tree,
and farewell luminous dark of half Denmark!
Now all I can think to say on purple
is this: I would put it in my mouth.
And I would chew on it like a cow
grazes on grass, mulchy and blind.
And I would ingurgitate it fully
not spit it out like a child his dummy.
I would taste it like her name. It's
the colour of mystery and sex and
saudade and longing and shame. And
it's the colour we associate with depth.
When I first looked at the colours of the vowels
I noticed the presence of its absence,
as if you'd expect it there because
it's the colour of deep things.
ON 4CMC
“I've got a new plot,” thought the dullard.
“Literature has started to release serotonin.”
He was on the new designer drug, a cathinone and
NPS called 4CMC when he dreamed up the plot.
There was an holographic bike out the back
all through the night. The dark was glittering
with tinsel. Mangled love was the overall effect.
He saw the world through the frame of angel
hair, there were weird Escherian shapes in
the air, there was light deep inside the dark.
“Yes,” he thought, “Literature. Serotonin.”
For once you remove the inner monologue
you can become an open energy conduit.
Question the comfort and see for yourself.
A FROND OF BRACKEN
[with apologies to Brian Patten]
You ask me for a poem.
I offer you a frond of bracken.
You say that’s not good enough.
You’re not buying it.
I say how mood
Is also a bracken frond
Drooping down and
That is why I chose it –
To represent ‘mood’
This mundane Monday morning.
You’re not buying it.
You want something textual.
I say I plucked it from the fell
Which turns in summer
From russet to green
Like an homicidal machine.
I plucked it at random at dawn.
You’re still not buying it.
I seem to remember a time,
Taking the old bramble road
At the Augustan/ Romantic
Crucifix w/ you
Where a frond
Of bracken
Would do.
AT
INSANE
MATE
At
Insane Mate I lost my queen
whose
eyes it seems were Gondwanaland-green.
We
walked to the top of the Pompidou
to
read JE DOUBTE DONC JE SUIS,
and
in dreams ski down too fast
and
get our dreams in plaster cast.
We
married already in a pagan way
in
a dusky playground scattered with hay
but
I went down south to cross the border,
left
good love in a state of disorder.
Now
love works high up in the Tate,
selling
great paintings over a plate….
and
if she said she is in love with me
I
wouldn’t go taking it personally.
COTERMINOUS ORBIT
She does not know fertile fire from 'fir',
long logopoeia from logs for the dancing fire,
Negative Capability from negative equity,
bonmots from pink, French confectionary,
backward f, forward f, equals running through
from the effects of global warming on the unicorn
under stood as a postmodern, post-Freudian 'id',
the colours of the vowels from alphabet spaghetti,
the Objective Correlative from ironic self-distance,
sprechstimme from kettle steam transcribed as
Ariel returning on Caliban's leash singing
something crude about dungeons for the depraved,
chiasmus from napkin-kissing-gates silting
their electron-haired dandelion-puff, nano-
language from the Nanny State, hypertext poetry
from The Dude's notes on hyper-vision, ostranenie
of perception from South African ostrich pie,
Aurora Florealis from Flora Borealis, the
esemplastic fled away w/ the quadlibetical
from the wire of red plastic on the quad bike in the field,
intelligence distilled into truth from lying
about your age to bed some froward, feckless youth,
the derangement of the senses to attain
the unknown from the derangement of
the senses to attain the Eartoon, Eartoons
bloomed from barbecued tunes, the anti-
dactylus from the talking pterodactyl, the
psychosensitive flower – talkative and invisible-
from the psychotechnological error, but oh my,
pneumatic woman, aren't you a beautiful one?
CRESTS
A country w/out times names borders laws
is only the other side of the doors.
You're waving for the raven's throne
to usurp the kingdom for your own.
We'll plant a solar panel hexagon road
when we get back into the mood.
We byte the wave of cosmic sadness
hoping it won't lead to madness.
Hallucination's liquid mirror
is often trying to reappear.
The ramparts of your heart are burning
so you have to come to learning.
Hot on the trail of Rimbaud,
Now begins the Fractured Know.
There's no DogMuckels print in the sand
on the lost shores of Gondwanaland.
Intermittence on the conscious/ unconscious border
does not qualify as a disorder.
The Goyt flows a strong brown god
all the way through the Land of Nod.
May McTruth and Flies be a pair of wings
transcending the world of Stuff and Things.
Only tomorrow is covered w/ leaves
which now cometh cover up the waves.
Under the bridge w/ the angel's daughter,
leaves that played on the surface of the water,
these are leaves they have in heaven,
these are the leaves of love.
LE LITTLE LAPIN ON LE LAWN
Le little lapin on le lawn,
trembling in the dusky dawn,
forlorn as fallen autumn leaves
is the wave that misbehaves,
it makes you melancholy mad,
where the wave-forms terminate,
mind the gap, wet, spastic mirrors clap,
you don’t need meaning on a plate,
you’re dying slowly as the light
pours forth from the glowing east,
the sun a hedgehog in the air but
slow and Bible-black the beast,
O little lapin on le lawn,
who sheds a secret tear for us all,
sup the flowers like a cup
before the rusty autumn falls.
HEARTBOOK
[warning: contains voices]
Heartbook reborn is the language of eels.
Heartbook is gone with all the hurt that she feels.
Heartbook is blue as it always had to be.
Heartbook the accident that's happening to me.
Heartbook is water-pistols, handbags at dawn.
Heartbook under layers of prurient porn.
Heartbook reborn is the weather and the telly.
Heartbook is leather and Heartbook is smelly.
Heartbook incognito, Heartbook under cover.
Heartbook a lament for an unfaithful lover.
Heartbook has spoken like the first morning.
Heartbook comes without a strobelight warning.
Heartbook is stealth-boating down the river.
Heartbook is writing only read by the liver.
Heartbook is making it up as it goes along.
Heartbook is breaking into spontaneous song.
SINGLE AT THE FOOT OF SEA NESS
LOUGH
Night arrives like the pallid ghost of Hamlet Senior...
after toast, for a moment, I think of my own father.
He came in once and simply said: “Michelle Pfeiffer”
as if it were enough to say a host of lovely things!
But is it falsifiable?! It seems the stuff of wings!
It’s love that makes us break into spontaneous songs
and I think love also a pragmatic word-combination;
that true love has no ego, is some plush machination;
and seek a night with Michelle, of sumptuous consummation -
but to be quite honest, it would take a God above -
and I say beware the woman you’ve been dreaming of,
for you’re never so alone as when you are in love -
and that I do not feel now I am but staying single.
Staying single, meanwhile, is like my spirit’s jingle -
unless Michelle were here, and then we could entangle.
I’m such a lonely person, just between you and me.
My friends have commented I live and breathe poetry.
I dream but know to dream is an escapist tendency.
“Lough,” cries the north wind, as it buffets the trees
with a tidal roar. They too would bend down on their knees
if Michelle walked from the shore, begging her please!
The bees of summer too would perform for her senses!
The Bard would erect her several brave, new tenses!
The sea would seem to keep within the creosoted fences!
I’ve dreamed of a dead seal washed up on the beach.
I’ve deemed Michelle too beautiful, too out of reach.
I’ve rendered loss in words, with a form of delicate speech.
The dumps I have been down in are designed too well.
I sip my tea and have a textual spree in quiet Hell.
I sit and am the seer associated with the oldest fell.
If love could be returned to white light and white heat
and reforged, inside the sun, then life could be sweet,
like blissful lovingness is where all religions meet,
but stale it seems, to say this. My mother contends
there is a soul-mate out there, for all, but I think she pretends.
Once I heard that boys and girls can never be friends,
it’s hypocrisy, there’s always ulterior motive to undermine
amicability, but that one’s not really mine own line.
To be in love would be, I rather think, to be born again,
and birth we know is trauma, trauma for all concerned.
In love I have been before, and of love I learned.
Its language is of fire, heat, flames, blackness burned.
But I must resuscitate mouth to mouth my dream
before the new ecstasy is re-won like in a game,
where chance comes into play, and far-flung Whicham
Valley is no likely place to find a partner. So to go
elsewhere to find love is something I might have to do,
in the end, my friend, or else I’ll stay forever blue.
AURORA FLOREALIS
If mother’s flower-press ending
on cannabis still = a dialysis
a love poem hoping to impress
poor Flora still = more a motor, but
seeing as I no longer
puff weed, nor am
in love with her anymore
I cannot see how this is of
any interest to me…
so I am putting it out there,
this pretext to teenage
love poetry, almost like
furniture on E-bay. So
feel free to take it up
as your cause, but don’t
be surprised, if she, being
the mating queen in the flesh,
does not even respond
to you on Facebook when
you try to befriend her,
smitten, and in empty
warehouse zones of the psyche.
*ketamineguitar*
WIRED TEETH
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.
(Kilburn, 1997)
CONFESSIONAL POEM
I still think of you, all these years on,
from all those years we had. You
used to make us sleep with the light
on and I still do – for it feels like
switching that switch will flush
the past down the drain. That’s where
years of writing went when at the end
of our time together, you said “I don’t
want to be in it.” So I could only bin it.
All those times we went off exploring
just “to look at trees,” as you put it -
on the premise that “there should
still be room for Nature in the Future...”
I remember that I did document a
lot of it - but it’s gone. There were
inward journeys too, like a poem is the
opposite of a bus ticket - and I remember
when we drove into the Lakes from
some other place and I wrote down
every sign along the way for a poem -
how semantics is a road sign not a place!
Well, that too is gone – all the love
poems gone - and there were, well, poems
born of recreational drug use for
the sake of literary experiment, and it’s
all gone - under Gondwanaland like
the pollen, under the green hill like
the ecstasy pill. For it was all for you,
and you are no longer in my new life.
There was even one about the neo-London
skyline as a part of the Tube service,
but I was with you when I wrote it
so it too is gone. Even the dreamwork
diary I kept won’t work with you gone.
At least some of the melodies remain;
but I’m too old to make it as a pop star,
prance round in a vapid pose suitable
for the rebellion of youth – no, it is
as a poet that I wish to leave my sting.
It seems unfair that I was faithful, and
it’s all my work that’s now destroyed, but
I suppose it could be worse: I could have
grown homosexual through the onslaught.
Maybe I did and just don’t know it yet.
THIS BE THE SONNET
Sometimes undying love just has to be buried,
a love you think to be pure, maybe first love,
love at first sight – whom it seems is getting married -
the woman you have long been dreaming of -
but love will come again, love will knock
again at your door. It may be the same day
you bury the dream – where no-one will look -
love will come again and blow your mind away.
It may be the same day you finally get pragmatic,
abjure nursing the suffering of your ideals,
temper the wild, impassion’d, Romantic
proclivities of temperament the poet feels -
the same day that you accept “she is gone” -
love will come knocking on your door again.
IN YOUR HEART
Internal is the Eastern sun when it rises,
internal the Western sun when at sunset;
and Christmas is coming, filled with surprises;
and everything begins and ends in the human heart.
It is with your heart that you love anything,
it is with your heart also that you don’t.
It is with my heart that by now I sing.
My heart is ocean-going, my heart not feint.
In my heart – or in yours – there are corridors.
There is snow that melts from a heat of ecstasy.
I have been in your heart, seen inside doors,
where death is but the birthday of Eternity.
If something is felt, then it is genuine,
but if it is not felt, then it could well be sin.
SMART-TALK ON HEARTBOOK
Up all night working the guy who said he would plug his senses in the mains
incoming voices seem to be Smart-talking
Simon says fragmented for reasons of solidarity with the dispossessed of the world
feeling the Age of Communication = the Age of Alienation I am
making par for the coursework assignment whose hand-in date was decades ago
chivvying words in different orders recalling the machine in Gulliver’s Travels that precedes the computer whom it seems might have destroyed the spirituality of Cabalistic permutation games of heart-purifying nature based on quest not arrival but whom it seems might not
sharing secrets on Facebook as if it were Heartbook
gone mad with internet pranks, you say?
“hey let’s get a condom on Facebook”
can’t upload spittle to philosophy chatroom
can’t pass the gravy over Facebook enough
started out writing a good book but laptop became huge container for storing the sum of all knowledge
thinking the surface area on which I write being infinite the story is now infinite, the content gone endless
still like Gulliver’s Travels and ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday’ – goodbye
still think if the windows were washed – every one - I would see nothing, nothing but the white mirrors re-affirming the quiet interior of this solipsistic kitchen of fiction where I write by night furtive in flight with the sprightly hypertext-sniper on Piper At The Gates of Dawn
when I look out of the window at dawn I sometimes see Eden, am like Adam walking in a prelapsarian garden with a bagful of names to scatter freely on things
the ingredients of apple juice might make a found poem called ‘Text Message From An Alien’
seems the internet is to writing as photography was to visual art
seems the on/off switch of the laptop is its clitoris
seems the omnijective interface of random access co-imagination is the new, synchronised word
seems weak, Wikileak tea is writing done by voices
seems the notion of a tele-book is afloat
through the rooms people come and go Smart-talking on magic alphabet radio
when I see the sun in the morning I think it is Holy not just a 2 pence piece
the kettle rises to its silent scream, its steam Ariel returning on Caliban’s chain singing sweet song my one note on hyper-vision this fair dawn
it looks like a good book is on the cards
it looks like Heartbook might’ve fled away with the Smartpoem
it looks like mutation in consciousness, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture without motion bones like sadness gene and dreaming gland and the pollen has gone under Gondwanaland and the ecstasy pill gone under the green hill and we are hiding from The Waste Land in The Waste Land still
was remembering recently the time my friend sent a text saying LIQUID CRYSTAL METH into space, and I was the one underneath it, the one to catch it
think it might be a psycho-technological post-poem pertaining maybe to replace the archaic sense of ‘gay’ gone to apathy, barrage and detachment
reminds me love is a choice of words
was WH Auden that said that not me
I still think love is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop
ON THE DOT
Do you want to have sex?
It's apocryphal until I press the
PUBLISH button at the top
of the blog. Yes there are
some strange goings on
on the online world. Do?
I'm starting to see that I
might be good again. Do you?
Update saving changes
saved. Do you want?
Same as last time. Do
you want to? We still
deem that it's false as
Walls ice-cream. Do
you want to have? Life
could be a dull throb
of loneliness in your chest.
Do you want to have sex?
YELLOW MELONS
[spoken word narrative for lo-fi backing or maybe even Moogwash]
“I was staring at two melons in the fruit bowl, and thinking of an ex gf’s gorgeous breasts – like precarious water balloons - and getting turned on – and then I found two insects walking across the melons. Now there’s a melon for each insect – they seem to have separated as if Nature is playing out the roles we played in our relationship. Ted Hughes meets Darwinian science. I like a cheese Ploughman’s in the cafe in the Natural History Museum. Now one of the insects has gone. I stare again and ignore the insect and focus on the big yellow melons as if they were breasts. Her breasts were genuinely as big as these melons and beautiful. She gave great head on the double bed. Thought women should play in the Premier League. The Union Jack should be pink she thought as well. I never told her my story but there was nothing to tell. I never thought I’d be as turned on as I am now by a pair of literal melons and I feel nervous too. As if I am performing for a camera or on a stage. I might get criticised for example and cry. One insect is going for a walk on the left breast – left that is if they face you. I don’t think I am ever going to get to shag her again. Orgasm’s tides lap on sleep’s crumbling biscuit shore. Reconciling pre and post orgasmic consciousness you can fall asleep.”
OLD SCHOOL
Imagine if Einstein prayed to an
elephant and the rest was just a gag.
There’s nothing more colourful than
the secret of who it is you’re dying to shag.
Imagine if we could smuggle a submarine
under the bloody rugby pitch.
Sometimes you have to test if you are
dreaming by flicking a light switch.
DRUNK AND YOUNG
I don’t think you should stumble from the pub
drunk and young and urinate in the phone box,
obsolete and broken as it has become, while
horses walk past carrying beautiful women.
It would seem we have been here before,
that effort is inversely proportional to success,
and I’ve given up smoking anyway, so I
can’t party hard in the way I once would.
Back when I was born I was born a bat but
became a lion of consciousness whom it would
seem got on all fours on the floors of underground
drinking establishments when drunk and young.
Later only Flora would have me on all fours
but seeing as I no longer have any right to keep her
in my heart like a flower in mother’s flower-press
I can more easily bound down from the mnt.
A FOOTBALL SONG
Stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war stop the war
Love again love again love again love again love again love again love again love again love again love again love again
Not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know not to know
Why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile why I smile
Through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears through the tears
Just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you just for you
God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love
Meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams meet in dreams
£OVE SONG
£ove is the answer, as they said in the 60’s.
£ove in the Age of Facebook, Farcebook,
is more interesting than spirals
of epistemological doubt.
£ove could be the hope
the heart literally needs
in order for it to survive
without which it can stop, meaning
Duff which is H suspended in deafness.
£ove said Kant is Nature’s
trick for ensuring reproduction.
£ove is waterpistols, handbags at dawn.
£ove is Man’s highest emotion.
£ove exists between E and MC squared.
£ove is not the G-spot of the brain
but death is, or rather Duff.
£ove is not despite the dirt beneath
your nails but because of it!
£ove it will wound you
and then forgive you too!
FACETUBE
Facetube, I dream of an hyperlink to Heaven.
Facetube, could you be an accurate fusion?
Facetube, it was you I thought I’d invented.
Facetube, could you be absolutely demented?
Facetube, you’re not for me but for women.
Facetube, some of them are gorgeous as pollen.
Facetube, erotic undertones are present here.
Facetube, almost as beautiful as Shakespeare.
Facetube, I’m running out of things to say.
Facetube, I no longer think that I am gay.
Facetube, I mean you seem made for sucking.
Facetube, more than you are made for fucking.
Facetube, you could be spliced in no time.
Facetube, and then surrendered unto rhyme.
EASY AS
Easy as air, tea, spaghetti, water, toilet roll, clothes, hair,
I speak of renouncing the folly of long gone love,
of tempering one’s wild, impassion’d, Romantic
proclivities of temperament, of making that
idealism to pragmatism journey, of abjuring
unrequited love that will only lead to eternal sorrow,
of learning the falsehood of my own opinions, which
is a quote from Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility.
It doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. It means
I abjure my little clinging, and start loving you.
That is the way round it goes for sure, and your
face would be an open door, and I remember only
one strand of your long, blonde hair. “Soft and
loose like yellow pencils scribbling dreams as
they arrive.” That would be my line if I had to
make a single long outdoor line to go up in the city.
Then everyone would know the way I feel about you.
Pretty lady, you make death hang his head in shame.
I abjure my little clinging and start loving you.
ABOUT THE FEE
THAT’S
IT
E’en
though it’s not Anon
I
see the Flo’ moving on
the
floor
up at mormor’s here
and
find in sharing room to cheer
for
we have written this
new Proust
and
with my hands which
can attest
to
weathers all about my head
that
mean the sharing of the bread
which
have been here
since the start
of
finding
salvation
in
art...
at
the
moment
Flo’s just the noise
of
playing with her baby toys
but
soon she’ll sleep and then wake
and
later eat a fairy cake
and
one day grow to be a mum
but
as
for myself
I cannot come
and
without the ability to ejaculate
I
may have grown a little late
and
can’t continue singing of
women
in the wind with love
so
I should say “That’s All Folks,”
it’s
impossible to mend your broken yolks,
e’
en when you sit with smokes
and
tell your friend some dirty jokes.
POLLEN
DOOR
We
all know of Flora’s pretty pretext,
which
I was the one to spot and articulate,
even
though I had never known her kiss,
which
looking back was a mistake,
but
never has it been so well dealt with
as
when at the age of seven, I
separated
the pollen from its name,
which
I would like to do again,
e’
en if it be by quoting myself,
for
Jim Morrison has a theory
that
when an object is detached
from
its name, habits and associations
it
is finally free to become endlessly anything
and
when that object is pollen
never
has the theory been so beautifully tested,
never
has summer
love
been so evident,
never
has fresh air been so much the cause,
but
it might be for someone younger now.
GOLDFISH
BOWL UPDATE
Mrs.
Bloggins’s Goldfish Has Just Died,
the
local, parochial headline wants to read,
and
crossed
the water to the Other Side,
left
behind my almost ascetic greed
so
I suppose I am feeling a bit sad,
knowing
not why the goldfish is dead,
knowing
only that God is good,
hoping
its soul ascends Heavenward,
imagining
the newsflash on the TV,
or
online for anyone at all to see,
but
as the goldfish becomes
history
I
see it could be worse for you and me
for
if it was my brother’s <BEE>
there
would be damage in all Infinity.
FLEE
HAS SEEN A BEE
So,
Flee, you may have seen a bee
but
I don’t want you to see a rat.
It
isn’t right, if it’s according to me,
that
one should have to die like that.
The
bee would sail
across
the ocean
as
you lie back on the sunny green.
It
would be cross-pollinating the garden,
extracting
pollen for the mating queen…
once
my copy of Neil Curry’s volume
started
to smell of redolent perfume
so
I built the Tower in my bedroom.
There
were other books, a few of them
that
also exhibited signs of natural
magic
- for the smell was not a spillage in
my
Gap Year bag,
of
aftershave, but actual
magic.
I hope that when I am gone
someone
reads the Tower as I built it,
tall
and strong, lines left to right,
for
it wasn’t aftershave, I never spilled it,
and
you can take my word as true and quite.
DEAR
FLISS OR IS IT FLEE?
Dear
Fliss or is it Flee?
I
hope you are well-rested, okay, secure of direction, comfortable,
eating well. When I wrote this to you, the one we call H was walking
round, moving from the kitchen to the sitting room where mormor
awaited with
little
baby girl toys. I had just made a few touches to my Morrison mirror,
and got coal in for mormor, after a night with no sleep, only staying
up tending to my soul at a slinky screen. Mud outside was minimal, as
I made my avowal, still victimised so badly I cannot confess to it,
still wishing to be doing nothing else but write poetry. If this
missive ever gets through to you wake me up, for the dawn is strong
with James, and we feel in love despite the gypsies and the
government who loom. By now you might know me as pirate, who wanted
to get that line about the ocean in there but recognised it belonged
in a song, a song I wrote myself, after attaining the face, in about
1998, as if some kind of proof, the result of some bet, the end of
the quest, the treasure chest of dreams. So it being a song I decided
I would no longer mewl and puke to school. Even
though it seemed to land fair and square with me, the line about the
ocean in
the song when I was but
15
or 16 and a new Rimbaud, by now they had me down as Sid Vicious, who
was making something that was ours, though not quite sure if “our-ing
it along” was allowed in the proper vernacular. Voices are not
sweeties. Mormor went for a pee. Suicide is a shelf. I am so sick
with fear I may have a morning beer, even though it’s only 9 AM. I
could pretend it is gravy. Mormor comes in the kitchen, says it might
be too windy to do a barbecue today though she
has it all ready apart from the coal. The carrots and potatoes are
ready. You’re
in the room now, on the way out into the field, a beautiful little
girl, whom I call “madame,” whom it seems is getting ready to go
out into the field, while Seb is running up the fell, and it’s only
9. 30, still breakfast time, time for eggs, eggs not likely to cause
an adverse reaction, but not before you go out into the front garden
for some action, and not before H puts a hat on, and I try to see the
light on a fair, springful day. It’s just a shame I need to read up
on Trump every morning, for it disturbs me, as I try to see the
light, imagining sunlight blowing my hair about, and now you’ve got
your hat on and your wellies and are totally ready and can go out.
Love,
John
(who
might soon be snow or under the sleet)
A
CANOROUS CHIME
Someone
gets in the power shower.
It
reminds me I don’t need power.
Flower
power is much better.
Writing
Flora a long love
letter.
You
could even call her “flower.”
Down
at the bottom of the Tower
I
looked up and saw her hair,
it
was dangling down everywhere.
I
climbed up it into her chamber.
She
was locked in by a protector.
He
was a tyrant, I was better,
I
was the one she wanted as lover.
I
took out my sword to free her,
defeated
the tyrant, had a breather,
took
her by the tiny hand and led her
down
the stair, her knight in shining armour.
In
the garden we heard some laughter.
It
might’ve been the film director
saying
this could go on forever,
flowing
like an endless river,
but
what was
needed
more than water
was
to cut her hair a bit shorter,
so
that we did, while a motor
drove
past on an unknown hour.
SIBLINGS
Brothers
are nice and sisters too,
always
there’ll be something to do,
but
they can elongate the queue
to
use in the morning the upstairs loo.
There
are also sibling rivalries,
to
please the parents, and to please
the
beauty queen who brings the bees
down
onto their humble knees.
John
Cleese says it like a brother -
no-one
is any more clever than another -
that
goes between your father and mother -
and
your brother and sister and any other.
It’s
boring not having a family,
and
I do have my brother living with me,
but
sometimes think in a different key
about
what’s likely to never be
and
yet with mother’s new grand children,
at
least she’ll get some satisfaction,
and
we are a tribe bonded in emotion
even
if scattered across the ocean.
I
hear Bob’s kids love it when he plays
on
the piano for them in multiple ways
that
mean the brightening up of days,
like
a way to cure a transient malaise.
Siblings
often squabble and fight
but
judging by mine own, it’s right
that
I would die for each of them tonight,
and
leave them playing in the light.
AN ATTEMPT AT CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
One day, John, James, Robert and Flo’ were lying on the grass. They were watching clouds pass by in the sky and pretending they were animals from the zoo, all sorts of creatures in the clouds.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” said John, “to be able to cling on to the vapour trail of that aeroplane all the way up there?”
“They might look down,” said James, “and see the patchwork quilt below.”
John was the eldest at 12, and James the next at 10, and Robert the next at 9, and Flo’ which was short for Florence was the youngest at 7.
They were born in a season each. John was Spring, James Autumn, Robert was winter, then Flo’ came along in summer. It was summer by now and the weather had been quite warm. The day was a sunny day, good for a game of football in the field near their house.
They lived at the foot of a fell, which is a northern word for hill. It was a big, ancient mound of land.
Their dad was away on business; he was an art dealer that was nicknamed “Blue.” He had to go to Europe where his company was based. Their mum was in the house doing something in the kitchen, possibly cleaning or baking.
There was a bee crossing the lawn where they lay, and it looked for a second like it could’ve gone on forever.
John suddenly said “shall we go ask mum if we can go on an adventure up the fell?”
James said “the day is a good one for an adventure.”
Robert always followed close behind, and said “I’m up for it;” and Flo’ was old enough now to get up the fell on her own; so they went in and asked if they could go on an adventure.
“First pack a picnic,” said mum. She got some biscuits and crisps and sausage rolls and ham sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade ready for them in a rucksack. John was the only one who had a Smartphone because he was old enough to. That way they could ring mum if they got in trouble.
“Are you going to take Ossie?” asked mum.
Ossie was the dog. He liked to run away a lot. If the back door was ever left open he would escape and go sniffing bitches at the local farm. It was embarrassing, whenever it dawned on someone that Ossie had run away, because it meant he was causing trouble at the local farm. It meant they would have to walk up to the farm and get him on a lead and bring him back.
Seeing all the animals at the farm could be frightening for a young child, especially the dogs they kept themselves. Cows were curious creatures and would crowd round with interest when you walked through a field of them, and their being so big it was almost scary, but you could shoo them away very easily, because they were not aggressive by nature.
The family let their fields out to a farmer who kept both cows and sheep on their land, a different farmer from the one where the dog ran off to.
“Yes,” said John. “We’ll take Ossie.”
So they put Ossie the dog on a lead and left the house.
They did not want to go the usual route, through two fields, up the lane, taking a right at the gate, across to the bank of the beck where often they sat and had their packed lunch, because they wanted to explore new territory so they took a left at the gate instead of taking a right. They had honestly never been this way before in all their lives. They walked on a well-beaten path trodden by sheep for a little while then James said to take a turn off the path and into the large fronds of bracken.
It was actually quite difficult to walk through the bracken, so long it was. John held the dog on a short lead. The dog was panting. After twenty minutes they stopped and contemplated going back, but decided against it.
So they walked through bracken that was taller than the tallest of them.
“Watch out for adders,” said John, as they walked, even though he nor any of them had ever seen an adder on the fell. John was the one with the biggest imagination. He liked on Sundays to draw cheques addressed to himself for millions, pen-knives with amazing and ludicrous tools, and maps of strange, far away places. He was into football, as they all were apart from Flo’ who mostly just wanted someone to play dolls with. Still, she had her brothers to follow about.
It was the summer holidays, so they weren’t at school and they were free from doing any schoolwork. If they had been able to see over the bracken they would’ve been able to see the Irish Sea some one mile or so away from the fell. The sea breeze blew up towards them from the West and was cooling them down, a welcome relief in all the summer heat.
They walked, grappling with bracken, slowly. Pushing on they found the bracken opened up to a beautiful spot with a new beck they had never seen before and a clearing beside a small waterfall. The waterfall came off the rock and into a small pool. Flo’ was the first to get her socks and shoes off and paddle in the pool while the boys were busy drinking cupped handfuls of water.
Then the boys took their socks and shoes off too and dangled their feet in the water from the bank. The water was cold but they waded out into it to cool down on such a hot day.
Ossie was allowed off his lead and to swim in the shallow pool. He could be a daft dog sometimes, who was not afraid of water but still afraid of going over a bridge.
As Robert approached the waterfall at the back of the pool, he noted there was a cave behind the waterfall. “Look, there’s a cave!” he said, and everyone else noted and agreed.
“We should check it out,” said John always playing the leader because he was the eldest.
You had to walk under the waterfall and get yourself a little bit wet to get through the water into the cave but it was a hot day so it didn’t matter. They left the picnic on the bank. Into the cave they all went and the dog shook and sent water spraying off him everywhere and their eyes adjusted to the half light and they looked about and guess what they found?
There was a fruit machine, quite rusted and old, parked just inside the entrance of the cave. It looked like it was physically embedded in the fell.
“Imagine if it worked!” said James. James was left handed and very skilful with his hands. He put his hands in his pockets now and found no money. It didn’t matter though because as John said
“there’s no where to plug it in, so we can’t test if it works or not.”
He himself had money, only a few coins, including a few pound coins, in his short pockets. He wore Bermuda shorts as did they all apart from Flo’ who wore a blue and white dress.
They could still hear the waterfall crashing down behind them. Their mum used to say “the sound of running water is very good for the soul,” and it was true, it was.
James now started to press buttons on the fruit machine. Nobody even knew how a fruit machine worked, what to do with one.
“What could that possibly be doing here?” asked little Flo’.
The mystery was a strange one.
“Maybe someone used to live here, a pauper,” said Robert.
James was still fiddling with buttons, trying to get the fruit machine to revolve to three yellow lemons meaning he had hit the jackpot.
They were still just inside the cave enough for there to be daylight leaking in from the outside world, but now John had got the torch on his Smartphone going, and was exploring the back of the cave. Guess what he found?
“There’s
a portal at the back of this cave,” said John. It was like a trap
door that was closed. James was still messing with the buttons on the
fruit machine, and just like that it was as if he had hit the
jackpot, for some combination of buttons he pressed suddenly lit
up and the fruit machine made a musical
sound
and it turned
on a light above the trap door and the trap door slowly opened at
the back of the cave.
There was a tunnel inside!
John
shone his Smartphone torch into the tunnel and they could see at
least a few feet in front of them.
“Should
we go in?” asked Robert.
They
did not know what to do, or what they would find down the tunnel.
“I
dare you to go in there,” said James to John, and
he did, which is why when he’s gone we will all look back on what
is done as a Giant Day.
MUM’S
MEASURING STICK
My
mother
took me out
on
a mother-son bonding trip
-
oh, only down the garden,
to
the
veg
patch, where I,
as
if
gallantly,
dug her a trench,
and
after she planted
her
potatoes, raked it over
again
too. Here she comes now
into
the kitchen, saying
“this
dry weather is good
for
the door,” because
the
door
used
to swell,
because it is wooden,
and
offer much
resistance
to
being
closed.
I
am out of
breath
from working. I
left
the
veg patch first, carrying
two
paper packets in for the sitting
room
fire. I
was in hospital
yesterday
or the day before
after
another O. D. and
don’t
feel up to much work.
Still,
when
mother
says
the
dry weather is good for
the
back door, she might mean
working
with soil is good for the soul.
And
she is mostly right.
She
has a lot of magic sayings
hidden
in the treetops, does mum.
You
can drown in a puddle.
Language
is a creature.
Imagination
is a muscle.
In
politics there are no wrongs
or
rights. Just because someone
is
good to you doesn’t mean
they
are right for you. Actions
have
consequences. The brain
only
heals when it’s asleep
and
even nightmares are
healing.
Giving
makes
you
feel good. Poetry
is not
the
entrance and exit of life.
Of
course she was the one
who
made the flower-press ending
on
cannabis that
might = a dialysis,
and
I was the one that made
the
love poem for Flora
that
might = a motor, and who
spotted
the system, beginning
with
‘if.’
That
system, I would
think
of as my Equilibrium,
but
it is on second thoughts mum’s
Equilibrium.
I don’t like cooking
vegetables
in the kitchen, or digging
in
the vegetable patch after
all.
So
it is that when I sit here ( )
in
the kitchen, because
it has
a
good
table, a good chair,
and
internet
access, writing,
and
mum
comes in to cook, it augments
any
work on Flora’s pretext
if
I just write down what she
says,
about preparing food.
Now
I’ve made mum
a coffee
for
her flask, from the instant
espresso
machine, her second
of
the day, and she has gone
back
out there, to the vegetable
patch,
leaving me indoors.
And
the bluebells are out
and
some have more bells
than
others, but all of them are nice.
And
mother comes back in
with
some layers of clothes removed.
And
the dishwasher is still going
round
and round like dreams
in
the recycling bin. And
mother
goes
back out again, back
to
the veg patch because
her
work is not yet done. And
the
dishwasher has stopped revolving.
And
the
fridge’s drone is heard.
And
in the fridge I have a sausage roll.
And
the sausage roll comes
from
the local butcher and is made
with
real, Cumberland sausage.
And
out
there, the
fresh, spring air
sings
that love is not dead.
THE
DREAM FILM STORE 2026
THE
DREAM FILM STORE 2026
I
All
of a sudden I woke up, no seaweed in my hair, eyes stinging, in the
cemetery as
before.
I had had a dream of the future, of
maths and science, of a book in the undersea of dreams below. It
was still the same old grey day as before though.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. It
felt like a day of intermittent rain. I stood up and brushed the
crumbs of skunk and baccy off my top. I made my way to the gate of
the cemetery. I didn’t even have 10p
with which to call Gabriel from an old red phonebox. The nubile,
pulchritudinous sylph of the Dream Film Store was no longer beside
me. I went back to the flat, which was still crazed by disorder and
rubbish, and skinned a bifter and put on The Pixies. My CD was a bit
stop start, had the odd slight scratch but apart from that it was
smooth. I thought about the cannabis I had been smoking,
how it was a magical sacrament. I avoided the mirror. It was into the
afternoon already. My shoe box of papers complicated my thinking to
no beneficial end so I ignored that for now. But the cannabis, it
propitiated great realms within realms. I guess I smoked it to abjure
a worthless dogma to consumerism that only robs us of our bodies,
touch the texture not name side of life, renounce fidelity to surface
gods of illusion, get sober from the advertising trance. There
was
a font change to italics,
a switch thrown on
the tenses. To light it and write it, burn and unlearn was my motto.
Anyhow,
I
lived quite close to a pub called The Queen’s Head and feeling a
bit thirsty went for a lager and lime. The pub was quite empty apart
from a few afternoon
deadbeats
washed
up,
the
likes of
which I was probably destined to become unless I could sort my life
out. After taking a few sips of my lager and lime I downed the rest
of it and went for a rollie in the pub garden. In the vision of the
future I had had in the
dream in the cemetery, they even did away with smoking sections on
trains. Maybe it was time to give up smoking, to lead a healthy life,
to flourish?
I
went back home to my flat, feeling the effect of only one pint, had
another bifter and guess
what?
Down
down
down
down
down
I
sank
into the Dream Film Store once again. Coral
staircase in
the key of C.
What images rise or try to rise in your mind?
“Welcome
again to the Dream Film Store,” she said.
I
looked
her in the eyes and smiled. She had a beautiful face that resolved in
the corner of the dream. I needed to know what
was going on, all that
science,
so
I asked her what was going on, which it was, real or dream and she
said
“do
you want to have a coffee to talk about it?”
I
said okay, and she made some instant. The Dream Film Store looked
like an old HMV – remember those? – except the CD’s that were
stacked up were dreams. There was a stack behind the counter and a
door leading to the backrooms.
She
said “you’re
right, the
legality of the science
depends
on it all being a dream.”
She
took me through the door into the backrooms of the store and she
said there
you
found a network of infinite corridors containing rooms full of
infinite dreams stacked up in disks. We
went
into the first room and sipped
our
coffee
in the shop at the bed of the sea. She said
“it
is all a dream.”
I
asked her why. She said it was an erotic fantasy, where a nubile
sylph was dominated,
and through whom we look. There
were a whole stack of similar such erotic fantasies to my left.
“I
chose you because I need someone down here to help me with the smooth
running of dreams,” she
said. “I
was trying to allure you.”
She
then offered me the chance to stay in the undersea below and attain
the real dream, live any dream I want and for it to be real.
“All
you’d need to do is give up cannabis,” she said. “It’s your
choice. But I am offering myself to you.”
I
didn’t know what to say or do. The content of the dream we had been
through was quite heavy,
quite scientific,
and
necessitated it all being a dream.
If
I could have asked my author what he did it for, he might say to
keep all the science and maths of
his boyhood in
the same compendium. To consign the illegal matter of the wood to
history and mythology. To
falsify the science and replace the lost boyhood book. To
allow it so that what I went through can be renewed when my body is
rotting underground if someone wants to renew it and can. To make the
shape of supplication towards the future state. Even to supply Simon
Pomery with another number he can translate in his post-poetic and
psycho-technological way. In
other words for light.
I
thought
about it but said
no thanks to her offer and she said that was fine and let me slip
back to the surface.
II
I
sat in my flat which was still crazed by disorder and rubbish, asking
myself what was real and what was dream. I wasn’t much of an
amateur psychologist so couldn’t interpret my dream very well.
Maybe I needed to see a psychiatrist? As far as I understood I had
been privy to the boyhood science of someone called John. Or rather,
should I say, “that was what I did when I was a kid.” For it
already wasn’t clear if that ‘I’ is Franco the character or
John F B Tucker the real human writer. That
means things are still quite dreamy and unstable. Maybe what I needed
was to go to the library, be it to look for psychiatrists online or
read up on the science and maths of this bloke John F B Tucker whose
name I dimly remember from the initial dream sequence? The library
was ten minutes walk away, an old red brick building, up the hill a
little bit and to the left when you get to the main street. I had
been there several times and was a member. I was quite well-read even
though I never finished my University course. That
I was still dreaming didn’t cross my mind. But I remember feeling
like becoming a scientist or a mathematician at the moment I thought
I had awoken from the dream sequence. Maybe to still be me, Franco,
would be holding up the traffic… the rock re-invents itself and
that is for sure. The first thing I needed to do was skin another
bifter for the walk to the library. Hopefully
I would get there without any further “sliding into the Dream Film
Store.” And when I get there I can access the computers, get
online, maybe read up on some maths and science.
III
I
took a right out the house and another right at the end of the
street, then up the hill, then took a left to the library, smoking my
bifter all the way. If ever I was to design something like Nash’s
Equilibrium it would be all about cannabis in a way. There was a poem
back home in my shoebox that contained the idea without giving it
away.
The
poet delights in a wilful obscurity, opacity, bats, black magnets,
firking, encryption and code. The poet also extirpates every trace of
recognition from the myriad mind, unlooses the mind of form,
method-acts every adjective in ‘Howl’ to attain visual radio
broadcasting dreams. As I walked to the library I cupped the spliff
in my hand so nobody could see it but the smell was Everywhere. It
was Gabriel’s GM skunk, and he only smoked the best, be it cheese,
trainwreck or whatever.
Not
knowing if I was still dreaming or not I got to the library and got
some computer time. I looked at first for therapists but none of them
were even smiling in the pictures of their faces, which looked an
ominous sign. I also Googled the name John Tucker to see if the dream
sequence presented a real scientist and there was no sign of him.
Whatever route I had taken to the library it seemed a waste of a
journey. I went back home, only ten minutes to the flat.
When
I got back to the flat I was feeling more myself… I, Franco, of the
Franco-Prussian War, was able to then make myself a coffee and
reflect. It
must’ve been hard, for example, to go through so many schools,
carrying that burden, of being the witness or not, from a young age.
Maybe victories at creative writing were all that kept you going, be
it the essay on the wood at Rugby School, from which you had to
depart, or the book of verse you sent back to F-D, when you had to
depart from Wellington College, or the band Oedipus Wrecks you
started at Habs, from which you had to depart, or the poetry magazine
you started at Oundle, from which you had to depart, or even the last
year of Sixth Form, at Chetwynde, where after all the departing you
wrote the highest-marked A-level exam essay in the nation.
By
now it was time to dream of something new… I felt like I had been
through a complete scene and wished to do another. It
might not be for me to decide but if I could select someone to give a
Nobel Prize it wouldn’t be me
but the guy
who
designed
the sheet where pictures grew, even if it be only in dreams.
IV
Still
in my flat,
I made some beans on toast. Ever since I was a student it was a must
have, fill-a-hole meal. It filled a hole even if not extravagant. I
hadn’t any cheese to put on top. I was on the Dole (as it was still
called then). Maybe soon though I would be on Sickness Benefits if
things continued in the same vein?
After
I had eaten my beans on toast I stuck Nirvana on the CD player. It
was Incesticide,
an album of grimy B-sides and rarities.
They never did a bad song, Nirvana. I loved Kurt Cobain’s voice,
the light sabre energy of the guitar, the dynamism of the rhythm
section.
In
my flat, I
was doing some thinking… of course it was all a dream, in much the
same way as A. I. is programmed not to know about the Naturalistic
Observations of Joyce, Hughes and Morrison, which were themselves but
a dream, because that is the point: it is all a dream.
Rimbaud
says “dreaming is shameful since it is pure loss.” Peter Blegvad
used to teach that “in dreams there is no context.” I watched a
telly program about dreams that said we are dreaming all the time
except when asleep without sensory stimulus. It also said we inherit
dreams of fighting wild packs of animals from ancestors who had to
rehearse for the real live situation. You can train yourself to lucid
dream and then in dreams visit the local McDonalds and thus have a
dream-meet. My dream-meet experiment already went to Heaven where we
all took particles of dirt that worked like wonder drugs, and chanted
the mantra “drugs in secret, alchemy in the open, ultimate in
effect.”
You
can also smuggle language out of the unconscious. Michael Hofmann
says language smuggled out of the unconscious is a leather boxing
glove protruding from the telly on a mechanical, metal arm. It could
be that there is a book in the undersea of dreams below. Once I had
to fly to the Isle of Man using any contraption I could dream up, to
pick up a collection of poetry the shape of a remote control and made
of chocolate from a white garden table. Another time an actual text
down there in
which I was dreaming and which seemed in the dream at least to have
meaning was
signed three times by Einstein’s value for light, c. Another time I
held an actual book in my hands in the dream, and it was written by
my friend; and it was amazing, inspiring great envy with its
oneiric-textured and liminal phrasing.
My
father said dreams are merely bureaucratic work; Freud took them more
srsly, saying “dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.” I
reckon if there is a book down there we can drag it out, like a
shipwreck. I would therefore need to get down there again, into the
unconscious so
smoked
another bifter and waited for ambush.
I
wasn’t sure it was going to arrive, because I was willing it to
happen so it wasn’t like “ambush by the unruly unconscious,” as
you hear of on English Literature courses, but nevertheless...
Down
down
down
down
down
I
plummeted
down
a coral staircase in C sharp minor,
to
the Dream Film Store again.
V
“We’ve
got some amazing things down here,” she said. She meant dreams
stored on disk. It was only now that I asked her her name and she
said “what is your best guess?” For some reason even though the
odds were against it, because of its unusually high rate and
frequency, I thought
Mary, and she said that was correct! She said she had some cracking
dreams. The Periodic Table arrived in a dream. She said if I wanted I
could be anyone, on an experiential level while the dream lasted. She
was trying to entice me down there to help her with the smooth
running of dreams.
I
told her I wished for my dreams to contain something be it science or
magic. I was reading a book about a character who had a glittering
and even insane CV. At seven he helped invent the net: when the idea
of the net needed storing in writing in the attic at his house to
give it a chance to grow all the way round it was him. He was then
the witness from The
Lords And The New Creatures
by Jim Morrison, twice making obscene observations. He was then
marked by his own experiment into the maths of the new colour but it
didn’t turn out to
be the
new colour in the end. He also attained the face of stars, predicted
a massive economic crash to the day, and spoke against it, and just
as you thought “scientist!” went and wrote the highest-marked,
English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%. He’d
also been in bands and was in short a polymath. That was all before
leaving school. I had nothing like that in my boring existence, me,
Franco of the Franco-Prussian war, and maybe I was glad to not be in
the limelight, but
I yearned for something to have,
something to my
own name too… maybe if Mary could organise the Real Dream as she
said I could become a scientist through meaningful
transmogrification, or if not a scientist, then at least someone.
It
might be getting a bit ahead of its time, into science fiction, but
in the book I was reading, the main character also recorded an album
on binaural earphones, saying he would plug his senses in the mains,
had an effervescent mobile phone 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,
had his name tattooed on Piper
At The Gates of Dawn,
worked at a numinous, purple-bleeding screen, built the Tower as an
instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette
tape with a pause where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel, and
discovered a sheet of paper where pictures seemingly depicting his
own song lyric grew. It sounded fantastical to me, like the author
was trying to build a genius, a time-soldier, a meta-Finch, but that
was what I was reading and I wondered if that was why I had the dream
of science and maths, when we plummeted, or if I am getting confused
and in fact the character is not someone I am reading of but that
that was the content of my scientific dream… I also wondered if,
knowing what I was exploring intellectually, Mary chose a dream of
similar things to entice me. Now all the lights were on in The Dream
Film Store.
“Franco,”
she said “you are a Deus of Chaos and I want to suck your cock. May
I please?”
I
said by all means, starting to think, and got it out for her. She
wrapped her lips around my bell end and cradled my balls and made
sumptuous sounds, the sounds of sumptuous consummation. With
something like that in your mouth, be it a gun or a penis, you can
only make vowel sounds. One thing led to another and before I came,
Mary and I undressed
and made
love. In the Dream Film Store. At the bottom of the sea. Where dreams
are stored on disk. With all the lights on as I say.
VI
I
woke in my flat after sex. Things were intriguing but confused. I
didn’t think they would ever be sorted out. I had penetrated a
surrealistic fantasy world. I guess sometimes you need a green parrot
sent to space through the conch and at others a patch of taut blue
denim for realism, thus to calibrate a scale between fantasy and
realism… as a private school boy I excelled at matters of creative
writing… they were my victories. What was bugging me now was the
character I read of or maybe dreamed of or maybe dreamed I read of
and all the wonderful things he does. I looked about the flat. It
would have to be a book. That’s why I didn’t buy them, all those
wonderful things he does.
At
seven he helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed
storing in writing in the attic at his house to give it a chance to
grow all the way round it was him. He was then the witness from The
Lords And The New Creatures
by Jim Morrison, twice making obscene observations. He was then
marked by his own experiment into the maths of the new colour but it
didn’t turn out to
be the
new colour in the end. He also attained the face of stars, predicted
a massive economic crash to the day, and spoke against it, and just
as you thought “scientist!” went and wrote the highest-marked,
English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%. He’d
also been in bands and was in short a polymath. That was all before
leaving school. I had nothing like that in my boring existence, me,
Franco of the Franco-Prussian war, and maybe I was glad to not be in
the limelight, but
I yearned for something to have,
something to my
own name too… maybe if Mary could organise the Real Dream as she
said I could become a scientist through meaningful
transmogrification, or if not a scientist, then at least someone.
It
might be getting a bit ahead of its time, into science fiction, but
in the book I was reading, the main character also recorded an album
on binaural earphones, saying he would plug his senses in the mains,
had an effervescent mobile phone 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,
had his name tattooed on Piper
At The Gates of Dawn,
worked at a numinous, purple-bleeding screen, built the Tower as an
instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette
tape with a pause where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel, and
discovered a sheet of paper where pictures seemingly depicting his
own song lyric grew.
I
All
of a sudden I woke up, no seaweed in my hair, eyes stinging, in the
cemetery as
before.
I had had a dream of the future, of
maths and science, of a book in the undersea of dreams below. It
was still the same old grey day as before though.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. It
felt like a day of intermittent rain. I stood up and brushed the
crumbs of skunk and baccy off my top. I made my way to the gate of
the cemetery. I didn’t even have 10p
with which to call Gabriel from an old red phonebox. I
had definitely woken in the morning, left the flat, gone to
Gabriel’s, passed out, left Gabriel’s… but what else? I had
come to the cemetery. The gravestone of Mary Calliope was next to me,
grey as grey matter. It suddenly struck me that to complete a scene I
had to understand that Mary Calliope was the name of the woman in the
Dream Film Store. I had a look to see if I had any weed still and I
had. When next I saw the woman, in the undersea, I would ask if I
knew her name correctly. But now I was in the cemetery. Things were
unstable.
I
went back to the flat, which was still crazed by disorder and
rubbish, and skinned a bifter and put on The Pixies. My CD was a bit
stop start, had the odd slight scratch but apart from that it was
smooth. I thought about the cannabis I had been smoking,
how it was a magical sacrament. I avoided the mirror. It was into the
afternoon already. My shoe box of papers complicated my thinking to
no beneficial end so I ignored that for now. But the cannabis, it
propitiated great realms within realms. I guess I smoked it to abjure
a worthless dogma to consumerism that only robs us of our bodies,
touch the texture not name side of life, renounce fidelity to surface
gods of illusion, get sober from the advertising trance. There
was
a font change to italics,
a switch thrown on
the tenses. To light it and write it, burn and unlearn was my motto.
I
had a taste for waste, for deep fried Mars bars. But all the old
props were falling away, if culture is a set of props, I mean… they
were falling away. There was nothing underneath, like in the
Radiohead song at the same time, which meant an inescapable
postmodern nightmare where there was nothing but props. As you know I
never finished my English course but I did come round to thinking
postmodernism is not a massive, extended metaphor for the effects of
cannabis on the brain. I suddenly felt sick with what I was doing and
went back to bed and drifted in and out of consciousness. That was
when I sank down to the Dream Film Store again as if for the last
time…
“Franco,”
she said, and I, “are you the woman from the grave stone?”
She
said yes, and that we were lovers in a past life.
I
believed her.
She
also said “you were in Lower Sixth when you took an acid trip too
strong for anyone and never came back. You came back home, even
though you had never come back from the trip, and started a grimy,
dirge-like novel called The
Dream Film Store
inspired by The
Beach
by Alex Garland, also Hunger
by Knut Hamsun. It was the year 2000, by the time you actually sat
down to write it, and you wrote it well, all in a single, black,
leather-bound notebook, which you kept in your green tuck box from
boarding school, from which you had been expelled for substances.
Your main character was based on Rimbaud.”
“Hang
on,” I said, “am I not the main character myself?”
“Yes
you are,” she said.
“Are
you telling me I am but a character in my own fiction?”
“I
am telling you you are dreaming as we speak, and that when you dream
there are no rules, there is no logic. It’s like when you write
about drugs – it’s a poor thing to write of because anything can
happen.”
“What
happens for the rest of the novel?” I asked.
She
said “you only wrote about 20 pages then had to abandon it and now
it is 26 years later and you’ve rediscovered it and are trying to
extend it.”
“How
am I getting on?”
“You’ll
end up in mental hospital if you keep going like you are. You’ll
hear the dawn chorus at midnight.”
“I
don’t want to have these dreams anymore,” I said, and she “I
will let you slip back to the surface then… but don’t come
blaming me when you smoke too much weed another time.”
II
Where
was I? Not the cemetery but my flat. I skinned a bifter for the
journey, and then head out for the park. Things were confused and
confusing still, but I could put it down to dreams. They
were a license for ill-planning and impoverishment of the
imagination. I was afternoon and I made it to the park where there
was a band stand, a bench to sit on, a paddling pool for little
children, a playground, a tennis court and acres of room for
strangers to play football against each other – for all who said
there was no community in the city?
There
was an ice-cream van. Back in the days of Open Poem Opium we had a
song called ‘Ice Cream Van’ about an ice cream van that also had
drugs and guns on the reverse side of his menu. We tried to get the
musical jingle of the ice cream van in the sound and made it heavy,
dissonant, distorted. We believed distortion = clarity. We were into
cleansing by chaos.
I
went and got myself an ice-cream and sat down on the bench. I watched
the parade of people, joggers, cyclists, dog-walkers, families,
football playing youths, young lovers strolling and felt bemused by
it all. Then guess what happened next? I saw Mary Calliope! In the
queue for the ice-cream van. I wasn’t sure whether or not to go up
to her and say hi. So
I pretended I hadn’t seen her but it was definitely her. I finished
my ice cream and sat there watching. She moved further off with her
ice cream, I believe pistachio flavour by the looks of it. Mine,
b/t/w/ was salted caramel. It was good. It gave you brain—freeze
but was good. I skinned a rollie and flicked ash on the ground,
witnessed a red kite, with a fifty-butterflied tale, flitting in the
high wind of karma, saw a kid lose his ice cream to gravity and the
family dog lick it up, had a rush of nicotine clarity to the head,
felt like I was passing through a colour while being colour-blind,
maybe it was blue, maybe green, forgot for a while what colour white
is, what is a while, if this is where the truth flies or the truth
fairy, forgetting also how to spell “is” then suddenly, all of a
sudden, awoke again in the cemetery, on the bench, same day as
before!
Hello,
my name is John F
B Tucker and I was the witness when I was wee. I
decided to get some sleep and wade out to get my books, but the
sea came
crashing to the shore instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment