FLEE

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.

AURORA FLOREALIS REVISITED

Gilly flowers curtsey, not off the sound-map.

To make a flower-press would be womanly.

When our days still ended on cannabis

we would bemoan that flowers were legal.

To the tune of the wind I sink, then swim.

I no longer puff the evil weed these days.

It would be a reward, a kind of dialysis,

that separates the murk from the excellence.

I would need it to balance out my mind,

one homeostatic device for another one.

Now I worry that I am hurried and florid.

I hear an A. E. I. O. U. bird toot its long,

hollow horn out on the A595 and relax.

I hear its wheels go round, that it’s heavy.

*ketamineguitar*

EXCERPT FROM A WORD-SCIENCE NOTEBOOK FROM SIXTH FORM

“Juvenile dementia” is a term I invented for a condition that mixes teenage angst and youthful idealism.

I don’t need to go over it all again: in Lower Sixth my teenage philosophy in a nutshell was sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt. But when you write it down what happens?

Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.

When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:

[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].

Lucy in the soul w/ demons may happen to be an actual substance. Sensation precedes thought in art. What colour is white? Smooth and tight! What colour is blue? Be true you! Waves [squiggle] crossed the FTSE [squiggle] and the Helter-Skelter [squiggle] crashed in the electric-sea [squiggle]. Every Atom Ate Our Eyes. Then horror-mouth closed in. Now on the edge I rest my head, feeling feint as “FUCK” touched in steam on glass and dream a cure for pain. Chain is made from same as key. Perception is for alchemy. I plunge the needle into the heart of the brain.

Blessed may be the end at last,

under the sea,

below the soul,

in the upside-down

Oceans above us

(all that Heaven sends is rain).

Words, words, words. What are words? These are words. Words in this epistemology I would say are useful tools associated with the instinct to survive. Man is words and ‘man’ is a word and words draw bridges across metaphysics and words make connections between first and third persons. Words are also a great bandwagon of falsity we must presume is not false in order to make life easier. Words are, well, ONLY words.

“Mayfly,” I say the word

“mayfly” phonetically

sounding out its every

vowel sound alphabetically.

Also in Sixth Form, in my word-science notebook I wrote the word “entropy” backwards and tried to give it meaning:

y. p. o. r. t. n. e. = 4

Reading of ancient alchemists in The Lords And The New You Know Who by Jim Morrison I wrote “waves make gentle love to the shore.” Reading of a schoolboy contemplating getting stoned on milk in Little Johnny’s Confession by Brian Patten I wrote “homework tonight is to remember your dreams.”

The symbol [R] could still represent the stance, the large-R Romantic stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf; that the Creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.

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

Captain Marvel may be the other side of the coin from I. T.

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,

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.

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.

PROSPERO IN AMSTERDAM

First time I smoked a bifter

it was like the sea

was set alight to

with petrol

and burned.

We were in the den

by the beck in

the Combe field

when we smoked it.

My bros seemed alright

as if it were banal,

trite, not the sheer,

cold terror I felt.

I went up

to the attic to play

guitar, and still felt

so paranoid, as the steal

strings of the guitar

were strummed

and the world

went round

and round the sun

that I had to stop.

I went for a shower

to wash off the paranoia,

masturbated in there,

and orgasm was

so long, so prolonged

it changed my perception…

I was suddenly absolved

in warm, soapy

bubbles. Supper

was called. I went

to eat spaghetti

bolognese with my

family. The threat

of my parents knowing

diminished to nothing

around the table;

I was sold on the

green stuff, suddenly.

So began a Romance

that I would say

was a Holy sacrament.

So began the self-legitimising

pact of the stoner

circle too: how

we smoked to get

sober from the

advertising trance.

How we wished to abjure

temporal wealth, bondage

to surface Gods of

illusion; renounce

worthless dogma

to consumerism

that only robs us

of our bodies; touch

the texture not

name side of life;

turn life into love.

We used to discuss

casual, embedded

drug references in culture:

Mario mushrooms

conferring energy;

Tinkerbell’s dust

that makes you fly;

the field of poppies

in the Wizard of Oz

that makes them see

the Emerald City.

As I say this

was part of the

self-legitimising pact.

By now I’ve

packed it in. By now

I know the brain releases

cannabinoids naturally

for moments of

Signification, like

reaching the top

of a mountain; and

if you flood your brain

with cannabinoids

un-naturally, meaning

and signification

become aleatory,

become a mess: there

is suddenly meaning

at every point of

intersection in the

crazy palimpsest of memory.

Wishing to still have

a good short-term

memory, wishing

to not break the Hollow

Claw, wishing to

still be a poet, I

don’t wish to

smoke cannabis anymore.

LOOKING BACK (LIKE RIMBAUD)

Things went amiss when I needed to pay to play, needed money to publish. You should never pay to have your poetry published. But hey, I might look back at some of what has gone on within the covers of those myriad pages…

I falsified the Nirvana barcode in writing.

I provided songs for my brother’s new da Vinci circle where <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet.

I still held on to my seven year old book where I stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to grow round the world, encrypted a sophisticated scientific notion concerning Gravity, made a stab at the maths of the new colour, knocked the battery off the pollen.

I conferred a Mario mushroom in a love poem and allowed them to have that little phase go down as Anon even though I know I wrote it myself.

I wrote off the top of my head to discretely “do the beck” in the back garden where the Plough alignment is viable (which is a beautiful Ideal I stole from my mother).

I explored defaced bank notes as a new poetic form.

I realised that in music, back at the start of my career, I proved the island of penguins with the first verse of the first song of my first gig, and so came round to include those lyrics in my literature too, even though by then it was too late to have started my literary career like that.

Even though I am skint and was working with a vanity-press I managed to make things pretty decent, the semblance of a career, right here in the Age of Self-publication.

I didn’t do a book with “Anon” on the cover as yet and if I did would have to think long and hard about it; but when I was organising songs for my brother’s <BEE> they made me put my best bits in, and my vote, and sign my vote Anon.

I heard it said that the best bits were my brother’s <BEE>, my own imposition of a + sign for an ‘f’ in the line “I have a scar+ that is red and black,” my articulation of Flora’s system, and no, not the Nirvana barcode.

SIR GALAHAD ANDCETERA

The Night is sad, the air is black,

nothing’s going to bring the good times back.

Still, I beseech thee O One -

what comportment would you deem fit?

The Night is black, the air a banner.

You can’t confute my love for Hannah.

But she is my sister, O One,

and it is thee whose affection is my remit…

When I die I am supposed to leave behind

something like the sheet where pictures grew

for my brother like my dad did for me.

The equation for the ratio between sunlight falling and Gravity pulling down on the sheet where pictures grew still eludes me but if it is “c over G” we are dealing with, I’d say it equates to

backward f,

forward f,

equals running

through…

L to the pregnant snorkel.

O is the key of the babbling unicorn.

The symbol [R] might still represent the stance, the large R, Romantic stance that Creativity in the synapse gulf is possible, that the creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.

If mother’s flower-press ending on cannabis

could be said to = a dialysis,

a love poem only hoping to impress

poor Flora still = a motor.

Rah the sun-god sleeps upstairs.

It might be a good telepathy-game that, but I don’t know whether I am doing this for Flora or for Rachel. For all, Flora was the nicest woman to gawp at, at school, and Rachel, still beautiful herself, the nicest to talk to.

And the redolent fume of the mating queen

from the green pages in the flesh

leads to a moonlit chamber…

If Flora was my brother’s ideal,

Rachel was mine, so it must be

for Flora that we are doing this.

I am but Sir Galahad anyway, still bleeding after my tron. My brother knows what’s gone on. He left two sheets in the barn. One of them, if I remember, contained a sunflower made of Badly Drawn Boy lyrics, slightly imperfectly quoted on purpose:

sunshine inside of you

old sun warm sun

spreads over you

soleil all over you

It’s a nice song. We notice the sunshine is inside. That it is what is inside that counts. The next sheet contained what I call the new da Vinci circle:

@

<BEE> [long squiggle]

Infinity symbol

If I could quote my sister Hannah I would say the new da Vinci circle is a discrete system containing the international language alphabet in 4 Points of Difference. For it suggests <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet.

There were burning candles on top of the box we used as a table, drawn on the underside of one of the pages, which was placed face down on the box with burning candles we use as a table.

I went down to the barn. I read the documents where they were left. On the Badly Drawn Boy one I was inveigled by the sunflower pattern. And yet on the <BEE> one I could not see James’s discrete system… I could see only a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes containing the whole international language alphabet. One of the characters was

[backward f,

forward f,

equals running

through.]

So I left the document alone, thinking James had designed a whole alphabet in a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes. But when I returned to reread it – not in jealousy but admiration – the tabular arrangement was gone and the <BEE> document remained as initially designed. I left it alone again, and then, one day, when our father passed I went down to the barn again and found the first sheet, the Badly Drawn Boy one, had bloomed or grown pictures.

The pictures seem to depict the lyric to a song I wrote, called ‘The Ghosts Lament,’ going:

I’m the only one left,

left to shoot my own gun.

This is the dead land.

Crack a smile and curse the sun.

Still, back at the age of 15 or 16, when the song was written (in the Lakes) and performed (in London), the sheet was not my game. My game back then was the face of stars. I had attained it, yes, that is the word, with two friends up visiting from London town. I hear of late that I proved the face of stars with the first verse of the first song of the first gig, at 15 or 16, in Kentish Town and was beautiful when I sang. That was a different song, one called ‘Shallow Oceans.’ I could posit the set-list… the band were called Oedipus Wrecks… but instead I would prefer to just show you that first verse in question…

Oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain.

The tide goes out and leaves me

lost, the last thing a glass gene.

Here I would like to augment the shrunk-down teenage set list with something Oedipal at the end, something about her, Flora, whom it would seem I hugged in a boarding school corridor, failing to kiss her, falling for her enough to write a poem, in the style of Jim Morrison, but by now it is my brother James that knew her kiss.

It was for Flora that James contrasted the flower and the <BEE>.

I can’t seem to really think

every time I think of her anymore,

which might be because

my brother and I are close.

To be delivered from writing for Flora is actually a relief.

We still don’t know how whomsoever it was knew the lyric to ‘The Ghosts Lament’ or made the burns. But we take it that whomsoever knew the lyric and did the burns did it to unify us, so that we are all one.

You might need to hear the song to know the rest of the lyric that was used for the sheet, which you can on Bandcamp now. Or you can read the Oedipus Wrecks set-list in a volume called Yes You May.

I showed you the lyric to ‘The Ghosts Lament’ as far as the line “crack a smile and curse the sun.” Then, the first line of the chorus is “death awaits to fuck me.” Dr. Calculator Ptom loved it when it got to the chorus. There was something nuclear going on. “Give me bliss and give me kisses,” it continued. “Death awaits to save me,” it went. “The ghosts lament, the ghosts lament.”

Come on baby,

you know it’s easy,

don’t say maybe,

let’s go crazy.

The chorus was a step too far for the pictures. They never got as far as depicting the line “death awaits to fuck me,” but then again did coincide with my father’s passing.

There was something vivid, gorgeous and erotic to the depiction of the death of the sun, almost like it was seen from within the sun itself. It was almost like a musical orgasm was going on. But at the same time it was brutalist.

As for the one that proved the face. I think at the time it was necessary that I started everything off in that manner, but that the line about the ocean still belongs to the house – so there is an argument I should have to be Anon with that particular line.

The counter argument is that if you take that line away, it would mean I regretted meeting the face of stars. It would make the attainment of that vision a regrettable event.

I know that the rest of my band, whichever band that means, don’t wish to be Anon and nor do I.

Even though it is myself, I would say let the young visionary keep the line, especially considering he was making an effort to read Rimbaud at the time he wrote it, whom it seems says “the poet makes himself a visionary through a prodigious derangement of the senses to attain the unknown.”

The line about the ocean could even be seen as a translation, into poetry too.

The argument for it being an Anon line is that the kids will want to climb the ladder. In which case I would prefer to leave it out altogether. It felt like the real me, as easy as leaves to a tree, when I wrote it.

Leaving it out would mean I need to redo the song from when I was 15, so that I can still be bonded with my mates and make it through school. I am 44 if you can believe it, and we still haven’t made it through school. This time it would be beneficial to know I helped invent the net at 7.

THE MYSTIC VISIONARY

(For Robert)

The bond between a mother and her son

should be one of unconditional love,

not limited by language barriers,

different appellations for the light.

Under the moon, I love my mother

as I loved my father too, whom

it would seem would deem it jolly good,

the food we ate in Italy recently.

Orange is the sun when it sets there too and

then in the clouds Heaven’s bars

sell upturned jars of sunset, making

you claim that even plastic can grow.

The colour of a red toy car with my

fingerprints on it could then seem to be “detuned”

like a guitar string, and counting numbers

seem steps down into the earth...

I love the bones my mother grew

inside her warm womb long ago now,

before the trauma of birth separated us,

and I face the music, dreaming big.

Wow! I can’t believe the things I’ve

touched with my own fingers but my

fingers have crashed, I type, and my

mad, crashed fingers have connected.

WOMAN IN WHITE

Agonising woman, dancing in white,

your short dress hugs your figure tight.

It’s only a photo, only a still,

but still how you are dressed to kill.

I’ve never seen love from this angle before,

totally useless, but the thing we adore.

I see you among the adverts there

online, tossing your blonde hair

in a leonine way, and want to know

who you are and in what show.

Of course if I click on you I fall

for the adverts and so instead I stall

at you, the bait, to suck us all in,

with a promise of wanton-ness and sin.

I don’t wish to be re-directed

feeling as badly as if I am rejected,

I wish to know more of your eloquent shapes,

for in my mind your beauty shapes apes.

You dance in a sensuous graffiti of

blind white light, proving only love,

but all we can see is a split-second caught

on a camera whose lens can distort.

Distortion is clarity with a guitar

that stretches between star and star,

but not with your body, for it is clear

that I would love to hold you near.

I’ve seen you in yellow and in red,

but white is best, like words unsaid.

Come closer, please do, for I am alone

without any use for my mobile phone.

CLUTCHY

I have never espied you, down on my bended

knee, through an illicit keyhole, changing

into your swimming costume but imagine

it is more exquisite than the colours of the vowels.

Even I would deem it that my mates are getting

me to do an Anon book so that my songbook

can remain mine own, and who after all am I?

Anon is the author of the earliest English poem.

Anon is in love with a woman called Flora

whom it would seem doesn’t fancy the horseman,

might’ve done, but only in another world,

of which we dream, in the twilight of souls.

O Flora, you love me not, and after all

you deserve someone better than myself,

and wouldn’t like to see my naked body at all,

because you’d be disgusted, but I can tell

you are the optimum, the golden mean,

the tops of telegraph poles and mountains,

the evergreen light, the transcendent signifier,

the unobtainable, metaphysical objective too.

Sometimes I used to sit in my cosy, amphetamine-

induced hollow, writing you flea-bitten haircuts,

but I never got one back and eventually

got the idea you were not to be mine.

The fittest bird to gawp at at school, you

remained out of my league, with your beauty

astounding all of us, though I can’t honestly

say we ever had a long enough conversation -

long enough to get to know each other well,

tell whether or not we had shared values,

which they do say is necessary for love –

at least people in the older generation do.

FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION

I

Apple blossom cheek

breath of wine

plates or confetti

he sips on disturbed

Nile insect

spaghetti

II

While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,

what I’m getting at is that

if an hour-glass ending

on a piece of bliss

could = a dialysis a love poem

only hoping to impress her = a motor.

III

If I could sip from your eyes I would

and taste your name. Eyes of

deep undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish

in them, drag out numberplates,

mangled car doors, crumbs.

The pretext is yours

and it is also my mum’s.

IV

If this were a fairy story

there’d be no happy ending.

No sumptuous consummation

will wait for the poet

at the end of a plot.

I think of a chain of music from star to star,

but therein am starting

to quote my old self again.

V

I’ve already lost my father

who was an international art smuggler

nicknamed Blue or so he said -

though once upon a time

I thought art was recourse

to euphemism for pollen.

The people from the future,

they don’t want his business to end.

VI

It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,

like yellow trumpets, broadcasting

their excellent news.

Excellent News was the ideal

in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.

I was nomadic in those days.

VII

Before the daffs come out,

we have snowdrops like

pure, white flames

in the heart for love.

The long, dark tunnel

of winter awaits us now.

VIII

I sip tea, I sip tea,

unsweetened it’s

enough for me.

I’ve got a lot of washing up to do.

I tried to meditate today.

Come.

It’s good to get the washing

up done, because it is good

to make a clean space

for yourself before

you write – mess leaks in

to the brain when

you are in a messy room.

Now it’s done I can make a sandwich -

cheese, ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…

it has no added sugar unlike white.

At the moment I am leaving

the washing up to dry, but

soon will put it all away.

Then I can say “hey,

I pulled my weight today.”

So that I do, and that’s true…

I do a little bit more at my screen,

getting pithy about Place and Nature

then go outside to collect wood.

Sometimes I look at Nature and see

invisible sheet music flowing right to left.

If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.

The fell from town,

when you’re driving towards it,

seems a great, slumbering

diplodocus, come

to fat and die by

the Irish Sea; but

nearer the foot

you can see it is

more Buddha levitating.

And when you mention

the slow ascent

up flat, gradual paths

I think more of a bullet

to the top of a telegraph pole

or even the kettle, rising

to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning

on Caliban’s chain.

Floating in the quiet

of a weightless dawn,

the buzzard is the crux

of the flux of time,

and all of Creation

his dark machine.

There are benefits living here, like

once I encountered a rare, red kite,

which sat resting on a fence post, waiting

for me like a warning or a reward.

Sometimes Nature is custodial;

and at other times, frightening, otherworldly…

in me, Nature is a great art exhibition,

but it can also be an immunity to Reason.

Some think of the future a lot,

and how there should still be

a place for Nature in that future,

to go exploring just to look at trees,

which like crows, dogs and

horses are Man’s friends.

Nature is the true architecture of State, at least unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative attitude.

Here we find mood as bracken frond.

We find dry stone walls creeping

in to the writing even of city folk, visiting.

I think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good invention for fell walkers. I sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I have taken up it and whether I held the record.

The powers that be could be clouds

rowing overhead on their sky blue roads.

And everything in Nature is only semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.

Well, nothing has changed to the map

apart from the wind-farm beyond the lap

of the tide, revolving its Mercedez Benz arms

to make electricity for the farms -

and also the cafe down the beach -

since Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -

Changes to the place have been the net,

global warming let’s not forget,

the advent of the mobile phone

and increased opportunities for vice in town.

But who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?

Here, we find the beck is a fountain pen.

I sometimes stand by the beck, listening in.

(Dr. Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)

I would be wearing my wellies, listening

to its most mellifluous applause,

the way she falls two feet

into a sound as sweet

as a kettle drum’s

metal petals of

silver bliss that

blossom on a carnival’s street.

Literature from the city is of alienation,

literature of rootedness repetitive,

and the city is the intellectual breeding station,

but countrylife closer how we ought live.

I

The reason my new work is not Anon is that I believe a writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.

The earliest-written English poems, however, are attributed to Anon, the earliest recorded line being:

“Well-wrought this wall: Weirds broke it.”

Weirds could be weather-systems.

Combining the fact that the earliest subject is ruin’d architecture and the earliest recipe known to man is for beer, as discovered by monks, could make a poem’s definition “a statue of alcohol.”

The A595 is the main road connecting

the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and

Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday

the posse of motorbikes come

to this bucolic valley because the road

has something in the golden sector #

to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.

I went walking up the rearside of the fell,

and some one or two hundred yards in,

up the path and away from the A595,

encountered a rare, red kite

with dawn-charred chest, resting

on the fence-post, waiting

for me like a warning or reward…

II

Here from this seat now

I look about the kitchen, painted

a plush, Mediterranean coral,

at the indomitable things on the walls,

the notice board of cork,

the dead telly wearing

mother’s funeral hat,

the calendar with local photos,

the chart depicting the plants of the

Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…

It’s a country farmhouse kitchen

with an AGA, where most of the cooking

is home-made, not from packets.

We have no neighbourhood or amenities

and country life can be quite dull,

but recently I felt elated

for capturing a partial alignment

of the Plough and oldest fell

on my new Smartphone.

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,

NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,

H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,

ESA for extra sensory allowance

but I for one still don’t really know

if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.

III

It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid

just because the rhythm of life is slower.

The region is an actual religion.

It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.

I was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,

as I stood there gazing upon it.

It’s as close to a bird of prey

as I have ever got out in the wild.

Apparently, the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they named them.

Obviate not titivate, sate

your quest for meat and fling

to your bright ring, your

peerless orbit, your wheel

of hunting, out-stretch

wings to be engorged on air’s

ranting, rock-strong

sockets braced against crushing,

uprushing rivers and sail.

Eventually, it did fly away,

but not until I made the decision

to continue my walk, to leave

the moment, the spot where I stood.

Seeing its wings unfold,

seeing it fly away, I took a left

up the rear side of the fell, following

the path beside the beck

and – still not knowing

what the bird was, only storing

an image of it in my brain -

reached the cairn at the top.

Down

down

down

down

down

deep

blue

below

“eh up,

mate,”

says my

mate

and is

it safe

to say

hello?

When I got down again,

and back to my home on

this side of the fell, I

looked the bird up in a book,

and found it was a red kite.

For some reason I thought

I had found the golden eagle…

there was a rumour that a pair of them

had moved into the area.

So I was actually disappointed

to find the bird was a rare, red kite,

which it certainly, judging

by the book of birds, was.

That afternoon, I got a phonecall

from my ex gf on my mobile.

I told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”

I also told her I had given up cannabis;

asked her if she still smoked;

but what she said and what she was doing

when she said it, I shall not say.

Simon says the River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

I say the rhythm of the River Goyt

beats blood to my head like a cold muscle.

The word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.

Back then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of all were Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana. All of it was better to listen to when high.

Dr. Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”

Kurt Cobain sings:

“my heart is broke,

but I have some glue,

help me inhale,

I’ll mend it with you,

we’ll float around,

hang out on clouds,

then we’ll come down,

have a hangover.”

I

Now we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday. It’s a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.

We need to get some new Vape juice

because there is only one bottle left.

Tesco is going to be closed for a few weeks

after today so we should stock up.

Apparently they are going

to redo the fruit and veg section

so that the fruit and veg is stored

in a series of closed compartments.

Now for the E as I try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out like fools. It is air for the tortured soul to breathe. It is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.

II

Sensation precedes thought in art,

chain is made from same as key,

waves make gentle

love to the shore,

homework tonight is

to remember your dreams,

and this we know,

there is no ‘we,’

I am the third person

immaculate, free…

you know the routine

by now, the score,

and more and many more,

but let’s not dwell

on school-made things

when outside birds

sing with their wings

and freedom flies

and freedom flows

and the music never stops.

PETRA HYDRA DEUTEMOL

As you may know by now,

O some one foot wedge of air away man,

Dear, gentle reader,

I took an O. D. the likes of which

it was said to be genius to survive

but coming back down

had lost the ability to ejaculate.

Never again will I know a woman,

her containing elasticity

and texture, her granular wear -

and I am as yet to properly cry…

there followed another

O. D. attempt where I

got even closer to death

and I think damaged my brain.

I don’t want to sound like Sylvia Plath

who was an egoist, so unlikely

to last as a major poet,

so I keep my misery literature

heaped up in a separate file,

ready for when the day comes -

but I just thought you

should know all the same.

I used to be dead against poets on medication

because a poet is a translator

of feelings and the feelings

you get on chemicals

are fake – but now

I have no other option

except to join in with them.

Cannabis was exempt

in the old creed because

I thought it was organic

and therefore God’s work and

I thought Jesus would smoke it

if he were alive today – and

then other drugs started to be allowed -

like ecstasy for example.

The brain is a physico-chemical factory

full of messages being sent,

signals and bikes, overflowing,

overloaded, all through the night.

Each chemical enacts

its own physical poem on the body.

Truth is one is made of drugs.

And to call all drugs “drugs”

represents a dangerous

narcotisation of the truth…

Reading of how a chemical enacts a poem,

and also of a schoolboy, contemplating

getting stoned on milk

once upon a time I dreamed up

the notion of top-down drug

called Strictly Free

that does what it says

on the tin, is and makes

you “strictly free” to consume.

It is but the narcotisation of air

in-between spliffs.

Naturally, I don’t do that

any more; but there was

e’ en relatively recently

a time of communion

with someone that knows magic,

which I can’t claim to know myself.

And then, if you can get sorted out

with noxious toxins of

deleterious self-derision,

if you know the right person,

as in have a friend, and

are signed off work, and

on benefits with mental illness,

The Lakes becomes Paradise

just for a little glimpse

before it all caves in on you.

Like not knowing a woman,

I might not know chemical heaven ever again.

We were fiends, my friend

and I, but killing ourselves really.

When my mother passes away,

I wonder what I am to do, whether

I move in with my friend, or

head down south to Londinium.

My mother keeps saying

when she dies this house

is going to be sold…

I might need to have a few drinks.

And I wonder if beer enacts

its own physical poem

on the body, and I think

so and I wonder of coffee too.

Beer is a depressant,

that numbs the pain

and even instant coffee

is still said to be a drug.

I was going to say mother’s

homegrown tomatoes also

enact a physical poem

and they might but then

I also remembered

even water leaves its own

indelible stain on the hypothalamus.

So everything chemical

conducts a physical poem.

And acid (which is flung

from the sun) is fungal.

That’s the one where poetry

is most evident. Or I suppose

you could say ecstasy too,

which is not psychoactive

but emotional. Soooooo

you could say they are

but different types of poet.

Here I search for correlation

between drugs taken and

poets read but find nothing.

I think maybe Milton is smack,

but that’s just rubbish.

The open freedom of this

game shrinks back down

to a narrowing of possibilities.

I suppose acid would be an Imagist

and ecstasy would be a Romantic.

I suppose we’re looking at

a words as drugs analogy.

Have you ever ingurgitated, say,

the word “infradiegetic?”

It’s not actually a nice word.

It’s a posh, technical term

from the corner of the library.

Here I would like to mindfully

consume another, like

words are astronauts

entering the ear’s orbit,

and one delicious one

is the word “noetic.”

It simply means “of the mind.”

Another is “abeyance.”

It means “a temporary absence of change.”

Another is “propitious.”

I’m sure you can work that one out,

or if not you can’t look it up

with the help of your A. I. co-pilot.

And all along, you find

I am under the chemical cosh -

am consuming meds at a rate of knots -

and trying not to write

merely empty medicine packets.

For writing can become a machine

for remembering to take your meds;

and the most progressive doctors

say medicine is a waste of packaging;

and that means they can reach you

in your lonely solipsism

and teach you better ways

to think about yourself.

THE SONG

Sooooooooooo in the end the guys want me to rewrite the one about the time we smoked a joint, Dr. Calculator Ptom and I, before the rugby match.

I was playing full-back.

The ball went up high in the air and I was underneath it.

I was underneath it and dropped the ball.

It wasn’t like me at all.

I dropped it because I was still so befuddled from the joint.

The dads on the touchline were tutting, asking who was this inept player.

It was me; and my dad was also there.

He was embarrassed by me that day

because he was captain of rugby at his own school

and in every way the star player of the team.

So the lesson is not to get high before the Game.

Suddenly I remember that God is a game, that the game is based on permutation, that even a game of cards can be a rehearsal for death. That The Lords And The New You Know Who is also a game, a wide, yellow circle with death the pinpoint centre and the circumference closing in. Yet this is not a media-compression experiment dreamed up on LSD under a hot, Californian sun. This is not to say “he who controls the media controls evolution.” This is not about chance collocations churning up evidence through the operation of a game.

I seem to remember we lost the match.

I seem to remember I was dropped from the team.

SALAD DRESSING

Yesterday we had a warm salad with roasted beetroot.

Today we went down the Sunset Cafe at the beach.

I had a ham sandwich and mum had a quiche.

Her quiche came with salad with mustard dressing.

When we came home we walked into the kitchen.

There was still some salad left from yesterday.

The flies might’ve been at it but it’s still edible.

I might polish off yesterday’s salad later on.

Now it seems to be a time of peace and quiet.

The day has drifted free of the ice berg like an island.

The raft has drifted free of the medical gaze.

I open a pocket of sanity with Negative Capability.

Occasionally cars whoosh past but not often.

Most of all, the voices have gone away for now.

Now the plot is that I have eaten the salad in question.

It is later and the day is still bright and sunny.

To what horizon of significance does this tend?

Nothing but the piping up of the drone of the fridge.

Nothing but the wind in the bright grass outside.

Nothing but the slant of light in the kitchen.

Nothing but a state of mindful awareness I enter.

Nothing but my mother sneezing upstairs.

Let’s hope she’s not getting ill all over again.

She already had to endure a course of antibiotics.

Now through the thump and dump of meds I see.

Now my heart is a dumping ground for spare medication.

Now her sneezing fit has been passed down to me.

I sit downstairs at a lonely vigil at the kitchen window.

Sometimes the wind throttles the arthritic window.

Now we have peace and quiet elongating.

Now I eat an extremely hot chilli which I like.

I like it because the pleasure and pain areas of the brain

are right next door to each other, which explains a lot.

I still have to wash the hotness down with milk.

In the morning I crash my face into water.

It’s a tried and trusted method all round the world.

Now I drink tea and my mouth is still scorched.

It’s the feeling of turning off an annoying Youtube video.

It’s an abeyance in which the soul can languish.

It’s a soft, putrefied armchair of lethargy for the soul.

It’s a mirror that is blank to all that is before it.