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- Dawn, of What Does Not Matter
This story appears here with the wrong formatting as I cannot be bothered to fiddle with the HTML. You can read it in its correct format in my book Dirty Work here.
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It is sooooo hot. Me and Trina are trekking over to Park. It’s only ten o’clock on a Tuesday and it’s a bit basic of us but we have our bikinis on already. Who gives a fuck – I’m lying down in the sun alllll day and getting burnt and I am desperate for some cock-tention: attention from some cock!
I swear as soon as it hits May everyone gets so much fitter and no one goes to work, they just go Park. Park is just the park but everyone calls it Park, like with a capital letter or something.
We literally look banging today. I said to Trina when we first left ours that we both look banging and that I’m desperate for some cock and she said, Kat, you honestly look a dish, babe, and I love how she says my name and says things like dish when I need it.
Wanting validation is a healthy, human need, too, she then says, and I’m like where does she come up with this stuff she is hilarious!
I could not ask for a better friend. We live together and spend so much time together and it is so good. She is so hot and so clever – like, ridiculously clever – and at times I don’t know why she likes me at all.
We do hang out like obviously but she is super busy with other stuff and we don’t like everything the same. She likes weird films and like art and book stuff and that but she says that stuff’s just superficial and transitory and so it doesn’t matter much. It’s a good job it doesn’t matter much as I don’t get what the fuck that means at all. But she doesn’t take herself too seriously either and we can laugh about it and we’re great because opposites attract.
We’re walking to Park through Wood which is cool to hang out in in the winter or when it’s raining because you can hang out and keep cover from the rain but no one really goes in Wood in the summer. Creeps maybe. Actually sometimes people camp in Wood but people are doing that less at our age now because, like, why would they. Kids still do it maybe.
Anyway we’re walking to Park and it is so hot already and I’m going to get burnt. I always leave putting cream on until it’s too late – hopefully some lad will want to put some on me hahaha. There’s usually loads of lads playing football there already even at this time. Morning tops off for the gals – oi oi!
I’m not sure what we’ve been chatting about but I say to Trina that they’ll be some cock there already and that I’m feeling so ready to mingle and she just laughs and carries on with what she was saying. I struggle to keep up with what she’s on about at times but like I said you can take the piss out of it as neither of us take ourselves too seriously. She says weird shit to me or about me, things that I scream at or whatever when she says them because they are just too weird. You know, like, I’ll say, what the fuck are you saying? and then howl at her, and then she’ll howl back too, but then say something like, I know, like, one’s own incredulity at what the messenger said should never be misconstrued as a lack of sense within what the messenger said, and then we’ll both howl more.
We’re getting to the edge of Wood and it’s a right bastard going up the final hill. It’s like a flat walk to Wood from ours but then it goes uphill before it opens up to like the view down to Park. Trina’s in front of me nearly at the top of the hill already. Shit like this makes me think I’m the fat one out of us because she can just breeze up the hill but I know that isn’t really a thing – what we look like. Like, does it really matter? Who’s deciding what we look like now anyway? It isn’t even necessary.
Hurry up and check this view, you lazy bitch.
The cheeky bitch is shouting down at me.
Oh, but Kat – you are great to look down on though.
That’s better: making a picture of me so I look fit. That’s how I want to sound.
I’ve got up the hill but I don’t really care about the view. I don’t really get them. But you can see the hot lads down on Park already as I knew they would be already. Trina’s looking past them at the view that we’ve seen like sooooo many times before – it is literally just Park then the rest of the city.
Trina, mate, you’re looking at the wrong view: check out the totty down there!
She isn’t even looking down at the lads!
Ha. I’m not looking at the view you think – look: you’re missing the totty up here.
And she points along the hill to the right to some guy lying on his own.
Oh. My. Fuckin. God. He. Looks. So. Fit.
I am telling you this guy looks like something from a perfume advert.
He’s lying there in the sun on his blanket on the edge of Wood with his dark flowing wanky hair and deep dark tan and I just want him NOW. He’s like a surfer dude or something. Why didn’t Trina say anything as soon as she got up here? He is literally so fit like this is so like unnecessary.
Trina, why the fuck are we still standing here – and I’m walking over to him already like no questions asked and I am actually wet.
I can hear his music on as I get near him and he’s reading some book and has other books and notebooks all around him. This will be so easy to get involved with.
Hi! I’m Kat! I could hear your music from over there and wondered what it was? Sounds really cool!
I am so good with casual intros.
Hi, Kat. This is Pink Floyd. Early Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett era.
Erm, who is he on about?
Ah yeah – cool! Sounds really… different! It’s so lovely today up here, isn’t it. You must be out here loads to get a colour like that!
I am laughing so hard I am actually hilarious.
I’m not sure it’s really a tan. I don’t think about that too much. I lie here quite a lot just pottering about though, yes. It’s quiet in the week too, usually, so I can get a lot done.
Erm, why so serious? Is he a bit dry or what? It doesn’t have to be taken so literally, mate. God.
Ah yeah – cool! What you doing then?
Not a lot, really. I’m just reading and writing, but it’s not for anything, if you understand. It’s a good space to be in up here when there isn’t too much going on, which is what I like. What are you doing? With your friend, are you?
He’s pointing over at Trina. Fuck sake – here we go.
Oh yeah, my friend Trina. Trina!
I did not just need to shout her over. Why is she just standing over there staring at us?
We’re just hanging out really. Going over to Park because it’s such a lush day, you know. Hence the bikinis!
And I give it a little boob shake. I am such a slut.
That sounds good.
Is that all he can reply? I’m pretty sure he might still be reading in between talking to me too. But Trina’s here now. Here we go: book chat.
Hi. I’m Trina. What’s your name?
Fuck I didn’t even ask his name.
Hi, Trina. I’m Tyson. Good to meet you – to meet you both. So, Kat said you’re going down to Park?
He hasn’t forgotten me yet then like fuck me.
Yes, going down to Park just to enjoy the sun. No real plans. What are you reading?
Told you: book chat.
Oh, it’s just about the interactions and roles in conflict and how they can determine behavioural patterns from childhood, and how this can be analysed for roles and states going forward in one’s life. We can take a cross section of behavioural patterns decided by the positively considered correlations of thirty pairs of twins and assess whether each pair will develop healthy attachments in their first romantic relationships.
What the fuck has he just said.
Erm, OK – psychology then. Sounds a bit of a convoluted way of explaining that though, at least to my – our – little minds. Like, it’s hard to make sense of what you said.
OK Trina caught on obviously. But what are they even saying? She seems to be sort of, like, chuckling at him?
Oh, I’m sure it does. I can sometimes only make sense to myself and a select few. But yes – if you think so: psychology, then.
Tyson: you can relax. Me and Kat don’t bite. At least not too hard.
Hahaha – love her.
I am relaxed, in my own way.
OK maybe he has some banter after all. But he doesn’t look too relaxed, in our way.
Right then – maybe we’re on the same page, but just have different words. But it must be explained so… clinically… in your words, mustn’t it.
OK Trina is definitely laughing at something and that was definitely sarcasm then.
Does it not all need to be, at some point?
He’s acting a bit cocky about fuck knows what here.
No, kid. Why is it necessary to get things so clinically right?
She has literally just called him kid! Is she fuming or something?
To label the right patterns so we know how things happen, then to forget them again.
If you want and need that spelling out, then crack on. Your book sounds a bit psychoanalytic, too, don’t it, you edgy so-and-so.
Yes, for sure – although it is a little finer-grained than that. But that may go without saying.
Yes, always more fine-grained for getting the right patterns, doctor. And no – you definitely had to say it, I’m sure.
She is literally laughing like at him now for sure and I have to laugh too.
Hahaha.
Yes – quite.
He has not just said quite. Surely not. But I don’t want Trina having the whole conversation.
So you studying or something or what? What you writing?
No, I’m not studying, I’m just reading some non-fiction for inspiration for some poetry I’m jotting down. But there’s no real rhythm or structure or plan to it, or reason for doing it.
Sunny day lying in the grass listening to some weird shit writing poetry. I mean he is sooooo fit but this might be harder work than I thought. The hair was genuinely a giveaway I mean really fuck sakeeeee Kat. This is Trina’s bag all day long.
Any recurring themes miraculously coming out of the filter of your subconsciousness today then?
And this is the kind of thing she says and I just don’t understand it. I don’t know why she says it. She is still like laughing or grinning or like grimacing at him though I think.
Well, yes, I suppose so. It’s always interesting, isn’t it, what we don’t expect to come out. But I suppose I feel a bit stuck right now, though I’m aware I’m stuck? Struggling to form things: that’s the theme. But not in a writer’s block kind of way, I should add.
Oh yes, you should of course add – again! Come on then, Ty, what you got down so far?
When Trina asks this he doesn’t even seem fazed, like he just spins around and sits up cross-legged and grabs his notebook like he’s ready to read? Aren’t people like a bit shier about this weird stuff? Fuck it – he was on his front before and I was creaming over the sweat on his lower back and I just wanted to lick it, like I just love that little tuff of lower back hair going down to his arse shinning with a bit of sweat on it, but now I can see his front and I want to lick down that in the same way too, from his abs, all the way down to his cock. He is so lean and toned and fittttt this is all really not required like oh my god.
No though really he is actually going to read his poem fuckkkkk.
Emily, can tell me what it is
Yet can you tell me—
“It is nothing but a picture
Of the fading trees from summer,
Of the gaps before some
Dawn,
Of what does not matter
In the gap.”
That is how she is playing
With us all.
That’s all I have so far. Still playing around with it though.
What the actual fuck has he just done? Is this happening? Who the fuck is Emily? Fuck this I’m asking him.
Who’s Emily?
Yeah, who is this Emily, then, Ty?
Trina is hilarious calling him Ty already!
I do like the poem though, at least how it’s started.
Urgh Trina why.
Thank you. Emily was in the song but it reminded me of someone else too. But it’s not really important. I just needed a name.
Deep, dude.
Trinaaaaa. She keeps mugging him right off now though I’m sure. I don’t know if she’s doing it because she wants his dick or what? I’ve got to copy her though.
Yeah – deep, dude.
Not so deep. Like I said, just playing around. Do you two enjoy reading? Studying? Literature? Poetry?
Ugh – he is getting a bit dull. Is it obvious to him that I’m starting to think he’s a bit dull?
Yeah Trina is super smart and reads and stuff but doesn’t take herself too seriously. I mean I read now and then too but I don’t take myself too seriously either and I’d rather just have a laugh like go Park and hang out you know like normal stuff. We both like just having fun, you know.
But fuck it I winked at him when I said having fun and I licked my lips because he is still literally sooooo fit and the poetry thing is actually still hot in some way.
I might have just read you in the wrong way, Kat…
Oh, I’m sure you haven’t, Ty: I am just a nightmare wanting your dick.
…but I should probably say that I do not go in for one-night stands. Or one-day stands, considering the time! Sorry – I shouldn’t jest. But I respect my body and integrity and I do not like my sexual encounters to be so cursorily premised. And I do not want to commodify myself.
What the actual fuck I mean like I wasn’t exactly going to just sleep with you right here right now. Has he really just called me out like that like dead straight?
Mate, chill out. I wasn’t going to just like jump on you right now or something, you know? You’re starting to weird me out to be honest.
Honestly – what is he doing.
OK. Sorry if I was being presumptuous about your motivations at all.
The loser doesn’t even seem bothered when he apologises.
Hahaha – amazing!
I’m glad she’s laughing.
Trina – Kat said you read?
Yes, I read. Don’t most people in some way? Bus timetables, menus, shop prices. You didn’t mean that though, did you – you meant books. So yes, I read – even big highbrow books, sometimes. Even reference them too when that’s required. Impressed?
Yeah fuck it Trina go in on him.
Less impressed, more interested. What are you reading at the minute?
Oh, well, actually… I have, erm… well, I’ve been doing some research for a piece I’m planning to write soon, actually. Maybe an article or even a paper for a journal, you know. It’s about the legitimacy of sexual misadventure and how it can be a valid choice for young women against patriarchal anxiety. No reason for doing it, though. Just playing.
I had no idea she was researching or writing anything and I have no idea what any of that just meant but he looks a bit stunned so fuck it I’m just going to shut the fuck up for a bit.
Oh, wow – really. That sounds fascinating. Can you elaborate?
Yes, I can.
…
…
Oh – sorry: will you elaborate, please?
Oh for sure! Well, young women will go out and fuck and have fun and that can be regarded as illegitimate, at best, and crass or demoralising or even dehumanising for ourselves, at worst. But it doesn’t have to be judged in that way. For one thing, it is literally just young women having fun and learning about life and ourselves – a pretty basic thing. For another, it benefits everyone for young women to piss off those men that react nervously to our own controlled sexualisation, those men that because they do not have the opportunity to benefit from our self-governing sexualisation themselves – they do not get to fuck us, to be clear – they instead get nervous, stressed, uncomfortable. And so the more they get nervous, stressed, uncomfortable about how much they want to fuck us – something they then inappropriately rationalise and label as some concern for us, or whatever, at best – the more we should fuck and have fun, as a choice, right in their faces, but not with their faces.
Right then. OK. So sexual misadventure is beneficial to young women, and all the potential harm that comes with it?
Better the devil you know, kind of thing. Bad shit is going to happen anyway – we’re all going to learn hard lessons in life. Even you, young man! So it’s better to appropriately be inappropriate and have some control. We all need to go through some shit, most probably, but no one else needs to force us away from or towards it. We can do that for ourselves.
This could be construed as a call to young women to proactively go after trouble though.
Your point?
So you’re promoting promiscuity and all the risks it can bring?
I’m promoting sexual adventure – or, God forbid, misadventure – on our own terms.
What is to be gained from chasing after adventure and risk though? It ends in one way: the end of the adventure – and that can feel worse when you are not aware of the adventure you are on in the first place. What’s wrong with the clean paths – the quiet parks? Do you really require them to be muddy and energetic? In words that may be more basic – and potentially offensive, I should add, but I’m aware of this: do you not want less drama?
Trina sounded so fucking good for whatever reason with whatever she was on about before he said this but fuck him I’ve been called drama far too many times in my life and I fucking hate the word. He’s causing drama now too, that’s the thing. I’m getting involved here now fuck him.
The thing is, you’re causing the drama now, aren’t you, mate.
There I said it fuck him. Now Trina can let him have it with her better shit again.
So what if we do need – even crave – drama? If we are so conditioned to need its support right now – to be fully immersed in its blinkering shadow? Who fucking cares.
Yeah fuck him man I’m telling him he doesn’t even make fucking sense either.
You don’t even make fucking sense either.
Riddles.
Yeah, riddles is better.
He talks in fucking riddles. And, more to the point, he thinks he’s the only one with the answers to them. To us. What is it we’re not supposed to know exactly?
Trina is like preaching some feminist shit I’m sure. So good. To be honest I don’t really know what the fuck either of them have been going on about but fuck him calling us drama.
I’m not saying you don’t know-
Trina just stops him speaking dead though.
The irony is you can’t know any better than us, either, can you.
Her saying this sounds really fucking good somehow. But the smug prick still carries on.
Ignorance is bliss, are you saying?
He seems to be loving this somehow in like being owned or something? And I’m just like really fucking riled up now, probably because he’s still so fit, somehow, and probably because I’m just fucking bored and confused. Trina is still smiling though and she’s starting to go in on him now, I think.
Mate, no one is thinking anything like you, and that’s not a problem. It ain’t a problem. No one needs to give too much of a fuck most of the time, and that’s fine. What are we in your infinite wisdom: young? dumb? superficial? unaware? So fucking what – let’s have fun anyway. At least it ain’t all ticking over in our heads and being checked and balanced all the time like some losers – we don’t need that. And you know what, my mum hugged me as a baby, my dad talks to me like a person and I’m sure they also switched roles too. And that did enough; nothing to read about; no more twins to assess. What if we were copying you, sitting here informing our prose with non-fiction? Fucking intellectual creativity of the driest order: do you not see the fuss in that? Are these books protecting you from the sun, or do you think they’re lifting you to it? Can you feel how fucking tight you are? You think us… you think me coming over here with the goal of fucking you means that I could not possibly also be aware that you’d just be something I’d go through during a moment in time – just a dramatic risk, if you want to stick to that thread – because I didn’t read about it beforehand – because I don’t have a thesis on my decision to get laid? I’ll flirt with some lost, romanticised book worm and maybe fuck someone else that I won’t spend the rest of my life with. I might even feel something during all of it. What’s the fucking issue? Does it worry you? What don’t you want to feel? I could have told you when we first came over that I wouldn’t be talking to you in five years, but that hardly matters right now, does it.
You were hot. Now you sound like a fucking loser. Shame: I’ve great tits, Ty.
Oh. My. Fucking. GOD. What has she just saiddddd. Trina the dreamboat. That hit him – even I noticed that that hit a fucking nerve somewhere. I’ve got to chime in.
Yeah, you sad prick. We’ve both got great tits.
Trina is so fucking good at the follow ups too.
And you’re looking past them and getting nowhere.
Yes – have that, you fit, pretentious wanker.
If you think so.
He has not just replied with that! He is blushing but like smiling and this is just so fucking weird and well past a waste of our time now. I don’t know how she’s keeping it together so much to spout her clever shit.
Nah – maybe you’re wrong there, as I suppose we don’t need to think so. Which ironically means we can agree on something? Maybe we are all just talking to ourselves, and maybe I’m the only one that notices. Oh – and of course you do, too, Ty. But we can all just stay where we are, can’t we.
And Tyson: we can even try and have some fun there, if we want to.
She sort of whispers the last bit to him and it is kind of like creepy and hot. He’s not blushing anymore but is like smirking like sort of turned on? Like, does he find it creepy and hot, all this being owned?
OK – I’ll stay here for now then. Maybe you two should go down to enjoy Park as you intended?
He is actually telling us to go when we’re clearly going anyway.
Yeah, don’t worry, mate – we’re going anyway. SO fucking dry up here. Trina – let’s go down there to those lads playing football.
And the cunt has NOT just laughed under his breath at me saying that, the fucking cunt. I’m about to whack the prick. I’m glad Trina replies first.
Problem with football now too? Man, get over yourself. We’ll have fun and learn if we need to. You stay up here on your own and bask in the sun if you want.
We’re walking down to Park and we are absolutely screaming.
Trina, mate, what the actual was he?
Ha. Don’t mind him, babe. He’s somewhere else – we just need to allow for it.
OK maybe Trina isn’t screaming as much as me.
And enjoy his type now and then!
OK she’s just burst out laughing at herself saying that and I don’t really get her but she’s so fucking sexy being smart as fuckkkkk and owning him.
Mate, you trashed him sooooo bad. What was he even saying? What were you both even on about? Were you pissed off with him or what?
He was mugging you off a bit – I heard him suggest you didn’t understand something when you first went over to him. Fuck that. But then I was just playing with it all really. He was actually a bit of a laugh. Even some banter! I made all that legitimacy of sexual misadventure shit up.
What!
What! You mean you made that all up? You’re not writing anything about all that shit?
No – not at all! I was just taking the piss having a bit of a laugh, seeing what he’d say. He was a bit ruffled at first, I think. Anxious! But not too sucked in to be fair. But fuck it he needed bringing down a peg or two. Head up his arse – stuck in his books: he’s lost in all that shit. He definitely enjoyed it a bit though – maybe I broke through his lines. I wasn’t making it up about my tits though, was I. Hahaha. Fuck the rest!
This! Girl! What even is she! I don’t know why she likes me at all at times.
Trina, you are a fucking dreamboat. I don’t know what you’re saying or doing a lot of the time but it feels like fucking gold and it turns me the fuck on.
And I didn’t even notice if he was like anxious or not or even like enjoying it or not but it feels like it was a good laugh now. And it is sooooo weird how me and Trina are friends like I do notice how weird it is more when things like this happen. But she just says it doesn’t matter overall, like it’s superficial and transitory she says to me when I say it’s weird that we’re friends and we do just create just so much fun and drama and we both just seem to love it.
*
I am so burnt. Those lads were so basic at putting cream on. Dead chat too – dry as fuck. I’ve literally no interest in football chat constantly and I made it pretty obvious but they didn’t even bother to notice.
Need to stop spending hours on end in the sun like this doing nothing down here like this like it’s a waste of time a lot of the time. Just a waste of summer like fading past me.
And I don’t understand all that shit with Trina and Tyson either and like which of us is saying what and OH MY FUCKING GOD I thought she’d been gone ages but I can see her now.
I can see her – up there. She is up there, like, up there, with him. Up there, fucking him!
OMG actually they have just actually rolled down the hill a bit in the middle of doing it hahaha!
- “Gaz’s Seat—Get Out”
Too dim-witted so it be called toxic, it falling
outside analytic precaution and finger-point paper responsibility slid aside
from town to money
to political to economic to races of races to bottoms up, because we can’t
be numbed quick enough, us silly boys, enemies at home
making corned beef hash without anything green like it isn’t a joke being
poked at all the time by new low peers and girls trying beer—
our hearts—as if their mouths could work that way over
the track they posed for their onward journey to test
their horse’s shoes. But Gaz in the Horseshoe? He kicks out, too,
just to get a reaction that’s framed within something
it has never been before, because he was them, too, only he got sick
of putting on virtue without feeling anything beneath him
from his saddle. And so he got rich, left the city,
and brought us all around without saying a word, no referencing required for the
mind you’ve framed above the bar.
- The Discursive Revulsion of the Moody
House plants, Twin Peaks,
nodding with squints at God knowswhat to fill God knows who: they aren’t working
anymore, are they, as youflick over from repeat channels to the news. And when you scroll
down there instead? There’s no climax, depth,point to what is sprayed at you on this side either
as the veil lifts due to the death in the family. And so nowthere’s a funeral! But that uncle was always a bit creepy?
Did you even really likethose plants? As you search around the room
for days to find the remote: it wasn’t sosurreal after all, was it. Were you ever any better than choosing sides here?
What were they saying before they entered?
- That Side of Life
Squeezing Roman coins from the back through the mouth without bitterness is a rough business, quiet,
smooth as a newborn’s bottom now living on
without much need to say anything. Am I done here?
I certainly feel so. Though I am smiling
as I didn’t expect my child to respond anymore: this smirk
is meeting with internal viewers—all-knowing; clueless—the knowers
being god-smacked and wry and other knows what indifferently
as the bible goes down—the geese
are cooking. We are creating new television hardly feeling
a thing being just as close to the whole thing, experientially; though that’s as far
as I am going again, I hope? Can I just kill that side of life
at no cost? It’s iron content certainly, but the best way
to measure discrepancies? Who cares anymore—I think
you should put that down boys: it’s making a mess.
- Another Cold Front
“Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.”
—Philip Larkin, ‘I Remember, I Remember’A needle in my foot reminds me of being thrown
into some water, under a bus, at leasthow I could feel the tyres—the air—as I leapt up
at your early night shifting, made easyfor me to lie on this table and float in a lake
at the same time. “Mate—what the fuck you going on about? As if
there ain’t a school bus in there: Moxy swam down to it once!”Three years later he killed himself. I hadn’t thought of that for years either.
He massages my cheek and my mood starts to Michael Fish.I should probably get some bread and ice cream in for tonight
for this, I think, I say, “Are you touching my right arm?” He jokesabout his mind doing it, but he doesn’t know, that I know, what he’s thinking
or where I’ve been just now suddenly there’s so many thingsgoing on for me all the time. I don’t know how I’m here.
I don’t know why he isn’t. I only thought about it asI’m on the bus with someone just like him instead I believe I am thinking. “But I didn’t ask
where you’re from,” she says—a shame becausehe was cool: she switches seats. I can feel
the ice cream melting in my bag I’m sure it was Moxy’sbirthday last week? We spoke about our dads once.
- What a Riot 2
Einstein walks into a family home that have
the neighbours round too, as they go at it with the
kids teaching Newton if you can imagine F-
GM next door, only it’s a boy drowning in a lake on this side
of the world having taken an underground railroad.Einstein says, “What the fuck is going on here then?” which is understandable
at least to the boy as the rest of the town
then comes in hanging-on-a-minute, as this toerag—bless him—needs to be tested
on whether he can spell “intersectionality”: he fails; he’s left
in the past where he belongs. Thank goodness!The town, having restored order—ignored
the start—return to their homes relieved as the neighbours also crawl off
giggling—”Who would hang around with these freaks! (Phew!)”—leaving
the boy to turn up ten years later at his former
school with a shotgun aimed at certain sections of society from the history books, the reportabout his crime stating he was an outsider as a child—“Trouble-
some”!—with a tendency to write in-
coherent and manic and jarring ramblings with reductive
references to our sacred and progressive knowledge, his words
difficult to say themselves sometimes studied so hard—”The poorparents having to put up with that!”—only for nothing
to be inferred quickly (Einstein
claimed the shotgun for his own studies
and shot himself; because who would hang around
with these freaks).
- You’re Just Getting in as They’re Going Out
I am angry, unseen
treatment resistant and so careful with the play I demonstrate
to conjure pity and causation in public
though not the authenticity of the experience—it is
an abstraction away from that that I talk about in such an articulate way, that
which then impresses too—without being dangerous—exactly as you feel
and act without notice unless a treatment resistant scene
points it out, the unaware dance you do
to get you in trouble that has nothing to do with you
as if we are toddlers: I am losing friends.
The shiver up my back seems to come from the East though: still
my right side. It isn’t anything I talk about
confidently with a holistic vocabulary because we know what people
think they are like with their ontologies from years ago, way back
when a cave girl flicked a bear and called it, say, Divinity. That broke
the camel’s back and can you hear my walking around with similar chips now, wondering
somehow, where the shivers come from
to take away our public and girls: I know how it works
but I resist. Though I am completely invisible with how I work around it
like that toddler looking over his shoulder from the floor—who saw the fall?—his knee
not scrapped but nearly: he screams. How do we help him
too as he refers me forward in complete disarray, as there is no treatment for this
into the grizzly experience of saying little else, of which
we are now not impressed, and yet angrier than ever.
- Get Out the Hook
Swinging in the heather of the home you lived in from zero to six
now flattened, though you’ve put the swing back up and called that wretched teen
to tell them all about it again, only you got their agent,
so you throw yourself on the bricks as they responded rather coldlywhen you called back and got the answer machine: now you’re bruised;
what you doing here anyway? Beneath your Olympic
gear you are cracked and beautiful, though insistent that
the swing only does one function as it should, which is back
and forth. Years ago you called this fun, pure, in-syncthen chaotic as the floor was elevating you
flatly round as you sharply turned your head to look at the handles
to make the game quicker, but next time. You call again
just as quickly to get the secretary this round—who’d need one?
for what purpose?—you rocking and rolling back and forth in the hook.
- Mechanics Club
Constantly edging the mechanics of it is best
without noticing, as we must not talk
of the mechanics of it: just do it with sleights of hand instead
like a fantasy we cannot mention either, because, it’s…Well, it’s real and not real, then, isn’t it: just do it
I’m not sure when. And then the cat went out roaming all day
only to say, sheepishly, I… I like your fur
after all: fair enough! Don’t stop giving it away for nothing;leave a smidge in there without opening the bureau
in the loft, the key at the other end of the hallway.
And no crude jokes. And always listening.
And feeling belittled? Feeling anything? Do somethingabout it in the mechanics without saying anything!
How else can we put it? It’s like
letting a comet think it’s tricking you, when really
you’re in a lodge with your hand between your legspretending you’re taking photos of it, when really
you’ve seen this flash before—they haven’t—
because you’re the space rock that got it started, dude. But care
to change its schedule in one go? Let’s getthat old telescope from the bureau
after all! You’re making my face own up
as it stiffens—pouts—like it should: I was never supposed to be here
and now my religion is going. So let’s face it:if you’re going to be a brilliant discoverer
of what seem to be comets, you must
know that observation does not happen in a vacuum
with an acute telescope like that.
- The Ones That Get Away
Disingenuising your experience, your love
a burning candle on a tea pot at one end
that always ends badly like our own: you must remember
the hotel—the party—freezing as you knew you’d fake it
again as you rode the bronco they rolled in like the best divorce lawyer
in the city of Chicago, though we were in Darlington, pretendingwe’d always had fun: I wasn’t criticising your methods
as much as you thought, rather, keeping them guessing
until you saw through it all so I could prove my point, that was
self-defeating—but doesn’t the universe need it: more bulls;
less roll. Where are you now? Are the handles still hot? The best
I’d danced with in a lonesome place, ones
we always found ourselves in as we dragged
us through such nonsense just to avoid the reality of the cold.
- Giddy Once
The progress returns to manic chaos while the politicians stick to measuring moons with their hands, as voters
press buttons like grooms frightened of touching themselves still, unless they’re shouting about it,
be it up or down, the circumference of the moon, that surely isn’t floating? The theory
of matters slipping through fingers like spit in a canyon
forcibly aimed to both sting, wet,
and fill the gap: it’s possible? you ask? Honestly. You read one thing and share it—
putting it in your doll’s house—and several more come out: you never notice the room’s filling, flooding, only there’s a twinge of doubt
you must always cover up: out pop out
out sores. But you enjoy those videos of dogs on skateboards: what’s all that about? The cavalry approaching the front line being the thing that made us giddy once.
- Travel Safe
The terror of the morning wrote inside twenty lines, down from two hundred,
all the horrors of previous lives and hypothetical conversations from last year, your target
knowing your vice through another
through another, so you had to argue your case
before it is all journaled away. It’s gone! Was it there? Can we worry?
Looking up hardly seems like a movement now. Corresponding
feelings with the environment is cheating, but you dare not
write a thesis on it—you dare not write anything. What is there
to talk about? What is there to discuss or see
except sea, and your repetitive tricks
to do away with it, perhaps cheating? It reminds you
of something you’re severing, sources
not being ones they once were, cause and effect, not
lying but not being something to infer with or along. Along
comes another static, as they say, or black dot
in the corner of the screen and you
used to scream, but now you’re annoyed you even mentioned it.
- Waves and Smoke? Blimey
There was a bully; though that is only half of the story so I was filling it in
to try make it good which only
made me ill, and now critiqued. O today I am feeling it—ash, smoke, dead wood from an old fire that just
wouldn’t get off the ground unless
there was other blood to be sucked; though I am braver, less cunning,less concerned with it being
something thought over: the flow? It doesn’t deserve it—my Angel Delight, that is. No I am not going back to the fire
to round the piece off. I don’t actually believe
in bullies, by the way,
there being more going onthan meets the eye but you can sense
nothing under the fire that cannot
really burn at all, likesomething you try and encourage by blowing underneath
the sea level it balances on, while it floatsoff on a current
called safety by itself yet I went backto the fire above, didn’t I? I can’t keep up.
I can keep up! There’s nothing to keep up with? I swear I was blowing on this!O I’m feeling it again today.
- Look at Us Twice
Each time the movement advanced forward through the barricade the distraction
was annoyed until the badges sold and the news picked up
the feed of less confluence from yesterday’s
intersectional description of it, life
changing for the most part unheard of missing
parts of the climbers and naturists wandering without picks, which worked well
at the bottom of the valley that had no need to be creating a dynasty
of what should really be more correct and roped
than most, this growing afterwards, the lunch perhaps being past time as it causes discomfort, though not the interesting
or progressive kind we are learning from for our children’s sake without
much care for what is dying off. Though wait a minute, as there isa concern it just couldn’t dare appear that way
to those dying with their old money, shillings
amounting to nothing unless you appear to be articulating yourself
from skin that is falling away with love—for love—
for future sculptures: pots of it. We are aware we build worlds and systems
based on our childish games and we are undoing
everything we bought into when we were poor, the books seeming to let us climb
down again if we are only quiet. What do we see from here?
Ourselves with a lot of echoes; though we cannot explain the walls
when they are clear to us: come on. You know by now.
When we haven’t a thought you don’t look at us twice; and it is from there
that we want you to be happy.
- Copy Which Nearly Finished
“Why have I sought my path with fervent care,
If not to hope to bring my brothers there?”
—Goethe, Faust“I need a volunteer to ride out
And bring us back some extra men”
—Paper Lace, ‘Billy Don’t Be a Hero’An irritating fallout from the recommencement of several old parties
walks into a bar. Once there, it orders, though it doesn’t
yet as the loosest eye would see
if it lifted itself out its glass: the man selling DVDs, he’s
wasting time on replicating copy which nearly finished us all, Total Recall, Saving Private
thoughts of the old man looking out the window like they’re guide dogs, the fallout
more subtle than ever as it raises
heart rates hours later like it’s not being invited back again—but who would know that? I’ve stayed for the lock in
to see how matters hesitate over whether it’s too much work, as it works
lazily over the lines in the toilets picking out talent
that could pull itself together too—and apart—to start
to make matters worse for the next army of drinkers, cats
that need walks: I’m unsure if I’ve enjoyed this meet
this very night. I cannot say how it measures its successes, only
hoping there is one. Once
there were a multitude of such gathered and we only closed all the curtains, for have you ever seen
and not heard it happen too quickly? The DVD king feels the thing tingling tonight—feels the watchers
finally suspecting; the inconvenience
of a pile of twisted bodies—collateral already-damaged: it doesn’t matter—
invite yourself in—as we save
the crime of the centuries in a few instances by saying, No,
and yes to the meeting of our conflicts, this one being for that lucky pup: it is turning
comfortably to enter the bar to meet her father, him
who works so hard daily, her body
not needing to rid itself of old tapes: we chase
out DVD thing—buyer; seller—we couldn’t decide
who was who as I watch them getting themselves stuck
through the window purposely: Another slow walker—one sighs
defensively behind a young boy: the buyer
begins to sweat—the fallouts trap me as the seller’s
caught by the party stopping outside now, them sprinting
at it, the order still unclear.
- The View, the Ladder
“I’ve earned the right to be like this”
—Kesha, ‘JOYRIDE’“Story of my life” leading into “a lie we can’t go back to”
but want to, a death drive
in a basic Peugeot knowing the silver gearstick
does nothing—goes nowhere. But if you could just pull it this way
a little bit more again…? You sound immature
to those enjoying the view, the ladder
of light beams you built in your bedroom up to your suspended bunk
never stopping for them, while all you can do
is pull it off, the plaster
over the latest sore popping up today. Though tomorrow
the shoots out the darkness—that we try not to mention, even lightly
oddly, considering the new models we make over
for it—are like thoughts of going inside
all the time: you’d crawl and die
in there forever if you could. But more theories
circle themselves on you as if they connect, only it’s only
internal concepts sliding through that you cannot put your finger on
anymore, like the gearstick
going inside… and it’s back around again being silly. An infinite loop! Miss Understanding over you trying to talk you up, you bad boy
you, her feet in her darkest
heels! she thinks, not knowing
it’s the height that makes her head hot, not you: you
take the blame anyway as you want to feel something; you crawl around in the mud between shoots
but no one dare notice. How does it appear to link up
some life, without going anywhere? Suddenly you could be a millionaire
with so many rooms to go inside it’s almost crass: back down
again you go
quickly. And you can’t go up again! No one enjoys reverse parking: it’s stupid
again, all so terribly trying
“Story of my life” again: you give up and go for long drives around the same old streets at night, the ones you know so well now, the same town; you dream
of letting go at speed with your eyes closed, pleading
with the flickering lights, “Please, please, don’t make me come again
for another lie
as it only seems to increase the whole thing.”
- On the Tin
You create a lie masked in shouted narrative with straight fingers away from your hands, a body—
all the bodies involved—labelled as names
premised on the left while you move up
rightly, yet you feel empty or sick
in silence, you think; though it screams too
from that body you covered so well in matching in-rage, a page
that couldn’t be helped: it had a number; do you look to the last? You don’t;you go to the coast. The money you saved for this!
The narcissism left behind. The same show here though you aren’t sure
yet, as you have time to repeat the picture and it’s like a missionary
all over again, as it is, all over again: you see
the sea; you leave, back to that childhood with your hands up: I understand! You get punched;
who’d have thought it. There’s a camera crew following you the whole time
behind your spectacles? It may only sound good.
- Who’s Playing?
Survival games in the clouds—who’s playing? The pieces
if you want to? It’s up to you. I’m not sure. Are you sure? Let’s
be clear on one thing: there are several ways to play—nuance;
can you read these instructions? Somewhere between complex
and deep we sit, high: have you started? We haven’t started. If anyone knows
any cheats that don’t last, those being the audiencealso, here’s a laugh: what are we playing at? It’s a game
for oneself; I’m reading the cover now. OK it looks a lot like snakes
and/or skins of thereof? I think I’m ready! Can I be the boo- But why’s it wrong
to be the boot? So it isn’t up to me, after all! And I wasn’t saying
“boo”. In fact—you scared me! Can we not just start again? No I don’t find
the rules surreal; yet here we are: I should have been the oligarch.
- [Sing without saying you have not invented anything]
Sing without saying you have not invented anything
Those voices the evening before? Only that “now”.We were being extremely clever and humble—or very controlled—until someone didn’t play: it ruined the whole game; we saw it was just a board. I had dressed like Beckett too! Odd times, if you’re into such measures. Sometimes
I’m not sure how it goes together:
incredible show with the Hortons, Thornbites,
Tinks. Left enough overhanginto the next boat: why would you spend all that time arguing? Seriously—why would you do that? Are you out there reading?
Streams, streams out and out and the world
must hear—something important—
it is 5am you don’t even know me. Could have beenall ourselves, but look at that
dodge: aren’t we coming home.
- Answering Back
Had something weird happen, it was not weird: don’t believe
everything you leave, which makes me wince. I am completely unsure of this,
not inside. I feel the hesitation of not knowing and push through, which means
repeat sounds yes—a bit more wincing—
but revealing demons, so put—only we are talking to ourselves: that wasn’t so bad
was it: look at the fun I’m having now. I scare myself with how silent I am. I don’t
think anything and there is not such depth
to your old relationships, after all. After all, this
is still here, your twisted fabric
on your best days. Can you see an argument? Nor me.
- Are They Trying to Annoy Me?
The men, silent
in a circle, their divorce papers dealt in the middle: they invent
Carl Jung
silently—individually—going out
far solo—far out; until one
lands back and says, “And then she said,”
to get them all laughing: Karl
came back too quick with that—is sick;
smashes the table and blames the divorce. More silence.
“What’s outside?” quickly; it’s trees.
“Looks like a forest. I would.” Karl
sees nothing, makes signs, removing his tie
at the door in a sprint meeting his wife—
a new life—in the undergrowth.
- Juggling Eggs
If strict rationality
is mounting decoherence, then it flows
that what we were making in the kitchen will soon be forgotten, along with
some other ingredients. But it isn’t time to shout in this one:
we follow the river of connectives to a point of no return—just a “damn”,
a holiday photo leading to a final dredge—before we realise
we have already seen everything, visited here the year after our
funny turn: there’s nothing left to learn—not bleak: we sit in the boat thinking hard.
We shouldn’t say it again, Captain: this keeps us going—the river
beneath us, only not, with the chef coming up from the hold:
“Were you not in here for a reason?” It was supposed to be
anything goes Tuesday: tentatively
I claim the Captain mark: “I don’t think I want to remember—omelettes?”
Here I am now, looking over the chef’s shoulder at the waterfall. “No! I remember! We are
too fast today! Let’s drop the anchor and collect ourselves,” the chef already juggling eggs—Birds-eye: “When I started I at least felt correct.”
- More Piggies
Political, you started out “political”
until you discovered the words “there’s nothing you can do”
but nudge away from the trough
making your own yuk away from the band, unlyrical,
too grounded to think the correspondence it. We sit
outside the gym like no one’s business though desperate
to be both seen and disappeared, the toxicity
of skyscrapers used to ring in your ears but now
you build them in notes, an algorithmic composer without care, teachers
saying hard work. Sorry—”hard work”; but you see it
just above the paper, don’t you? The graffiti? You loosen
reading the old signs that were here. Where are they now?
All over the place, spread more if the exam was seen
as “exam.” Guys—were we a good band? Because we had fans, obviously,
and filler. But did we do anything we were supposed to?
Or was that why you were asked to leave? I can’t find myself this evening
between too many numbers—for instance, “2” and “two”
don’t add up to a four piece; your blueprints
premised on this make your foundations shake: did we bring coats? Reaay ouay tillsay
inay hetay roughtay? So that was the problem with the lyrics!
- Crimps
If you sit long enough you can only cry
if you’re lucky. You play Sudoku on the easiest setting:
too closed. Two minute limit. The Sims can at least keep expanding; though where
is that lie?: a bastard toddler smashes a Lego house on the floor.
You feel a leaf—though it’s a ghost!—
brush past when the breasts are all the same: I’ve no idea:
were you the wheel in a past life? It is just a touch too much
on the tongue: you want to be a hedgehog, bat,
bear, though outside you go with a big coat
stepping over everything in your mind without action seeing
flaws in potholes and silent hooks, the kind of thing
feeling like nearly something plus far away. And you don’t want to jump—
you sound like an idiot: you play
you’re little game again only it’s not
working out how you try to force it, as if
it never was, the grid closing in, the itinerary, wizards,
fast hands running out. Then you look at them: no fingers! It wasn’t supposed to be
so far down, was it? Am I just sad? I’m nothing to do with it:
try bouldering.
- Only Just Acknowledging This Was the Subcommittee at It All Along
Making science, we thought the best place to start
would be the running thread—a track of time—
that only gets us away from a cracked screen, a white canvas,
a paper weight. You kick the door stop away: out came spiders. If you can’t beat us
join on here! But you feel six years of age
and can’t count without seeing the numbers: you beat us; though of course you don’t: I only wanted to use that line.It was all much better walking along as if nothing had happened
minus the projections in the wood minus the projections of a wood: how…?
There is then a sense of… But it cannot be true.
The publishing of which means a tragedy that cannot be measured, World
Empathy Day banners tied up in ying,
yang! string! Won’t they laugh. You might want to cause discomfort.
You know what we all are, under shame,
don’t you? Too far back in it unbeaten.
- “Like This, Actually”
There we are—a fragile box—just what I needed post-analysis to unlock my raised Alex Turner
as aren’t we done with the towns having a say? But isn’t that why we were angry?
I am not ready for this as it goes how I didn’t want it to, striking the buttons
too hot and bothered about effort: we must work hard, whether it’s progress
or literature—read read read
or be patronised otherwise. How many characters can be moved through
as Free Birds roam the plains softly: they don’t sound like sex anymore;
they we are! Our release. I am doomed and too Sgt. Peppered
to go back to the factory of what we all turn away from, then accept,
then know others do. Why do those faces come to us?
If you want a plaque above your door of a miner, install it.
But it has to stop somewhere: we looked out
for something to take away history—that’s it—
and grossly underestimated our ability to repeat exactly the same thing
only in bronze. I am prone to adding a question;
what does that say about associating the photo with the wrong person? Waking up
and wishing it wasn’t them again?
Just create a fiction in your Cornflakes and hang that. Cornflakes! See it yet?
And when that one comes out—all
know-it-all—we know you’re put off. How will we handle
the meeting now? A second question? Seems fitting. Clunky. Seems just about.
I scratched at the funding, by the way, and there were no more landscapes, golden ratios,
plants. Yet here we look: are you growing? Baptised or hydrated?
If I could describe what I just saw I would, but I can’t. It makes me so desperate. None of it is anything. I’d say this one is catching
the affair. Or you could lie back in your material safety
saying, Pump me: I’m not so serious; and see the detached
tears later just as that. Is there really memory? Is it too obvious?
I’m not forgetting about it with my fragile box, a screen to install
on the floor; though I am not feeling it either: this right here
is the flow. Personality. Middle English Middle French—
a mask worn; an avatar. No no no no no! Don’t say that!
But they cannot truly be serious about feeling it? It was an advert—
a not quite finished. We can hear you flicking up, the headache, the flu
coming in four days being put down to this. You’ve got to read it!
or mad, whilst being rehearsed days later: you are suddenly no longer vanilla. I am not thinking about myself enough.
There’s only means—that’s all. Can we bounce between? That crass? Have I the stomach for this?
No! I picked it up again!
- “How does this make me react?”
The man came to the galleries and was stopped
by a toilet attendant. But he still wasn’t caught! so he continued
with the small art installation of himself (the man did,
that is; though the attendant
rested a broom against the wall and all hell
broke loose, the institutions
nearly swept away) which was him
going around art galleries as a small art installation
of himself; but I noticed
as I’m the framer. After studying him long
and concluding it short of longevity—as we couldn’t
kill him—it seemed
that he was conducting the most pointless act
only for himself, as he was just framed differently
each time, in each art gallery—seeing if people noticed
or cared; and if they were thrown off by
how he was existing he wouldn’t do anything
about it: it would mean nothing to him. Except
that he had been an art installation, and me
the framer (the toilet attendant was practicing
eye contact but I pretended
not to notice—that there was nothing to attend to
like the broom like your frown).
- “My Biggest Challenge Today Was…”
Carving out a note from days ago, you have surpassed
Alan Watts, remained silent, resisted
making an album of your childhood without control, even
resisted making a child, for would you really want them famous? I’m guessing
we’re on a lane that no one finds (lack of jams). We never wanted middle names
or thought. The girl up the street was sat on the naughty step,
Dylan said. And he kept shouting! And look what happened: there
she found Hegel—she never came down again—as Dylan believed
believing in argument could win. What are you touching? Stop picturing
other artists and your old work now—the love of your life—drawn in
by the right amount of bricks for the professor. Feel that? Just over the
line: it was unintentional and snap, we are back when you’ve gone too
far it leaves you shaking, you think. But it’s not: your slap again. So hold yourself here
and release—writhe and moan. Don’t you dare walk up the stairs.
- In a Hospital Bed
In the pub or the supermarket or the terrace or the street
or my bathroom, alone, I am keeping it quiet,
away, palatable, the advertised billboard I bought but couldn’t afford
to miss out on, between two logics, and love
for the sake of argument, as I love arguments
when they are debates and I am detached
today, but the billboard still waves at you, and you lap it up
and sign to me, too, in copyright. Sometimes
I press myself out like I’m this here bubblegum pop of a sailthat could take you away to new lands, new lands
where we would go, taking a punt at it, sunshine
sometime, all just meeting us right at the end.
The lord is maybe… just there. A new month.
Suddenly I’m in a hospital bed, not with the advert,
but the wave—all the friends it bought! Their
billboards, too—a card—a kiss from a series. My wife…No. I couldn’t possibly do that, lover (at best!): I am dying
and we never were—we just sold it to each other as so. Please,
please leave: I was instantly better! We screwed in the car parklike dogs. But not like dogs, you know? Like…
We were talking like teens! So much better.
We bought some dirty clothes and pretendedand it was like we had a dream. We’d never let it go again. We haven’t any books. I can’t even count anymore. I knew I couldn’t spell “sale” but barely noticed at the time.
- Subcommittee Sings
It was a struggle to get up but the news
saying the war was elsewhere—the world making decorations—
meant a visit to the museum was due. He left his home
through the turnstile and there were all the horny sleepwalkers of the past
behind glass. He pressed the information button:
they lit up and broke through, only days later. Then there were bodies everywhere
and he couldn’t trust the news: he tied himself
to hundreds of the celebratory balloons and floated up, unsure
where he was going but the decorations must do something
he thought. That’s when he saw the outlines of the ancient civilisations and they peaked
right where the buttons were, the inverse of what one would expect,
though he couldn’t explain it: he popped the balloons
slowly, floating down, which only got him abuse in the museum
which was part of the fee, though free, so when they gave him a spear
and suggested he try the basement he didn’t hesitate, as at least there
he wouldn’t get signals from the news and the darkness
would hide the balloons—the buttons: he learned to close his eyes quick
when someone fell into one.
- Subcommittee Doing Vocal Warmups Again
We meet, but this is not the right time. Two chairs
for the binary positions of what the subject today is: I lie
everyone else across the seats like an equals sign and assume I am above
the keys of a piano—you know the colours—
as I’m the only one listening; and yet I am experiencing
the hands too, as I am between them—not the mind
but a viewer, if you can imagine that? And so now we have a painter
or another universe. To hell with it: another department!
Another grant. Or fable. Or floor down or up. All this being
far too obvious. But I like the sound today! It’s like ‘Greensleeves’.
Having put myself through the needful content with the meeting though, I suppose
there should be a better tune. Did you imagine? Change it to
the flattest thing. But I can’t say earth, obviously! Viewer—
imagine one layer in space, but it is relational space. Hypothetic.
It isn’t there itself! There is the layer. You have seen the layer now, yes?
(Those at the meeting didn’t…) So now we have you looking at it; and then we’ll have
a layer for that, right? But it’s too ambiguous
and too much already! So close your eyes. And what do you get?
My voice—of course. Or your theory of it. And this is why I like piano, especially
when I need to link it back. So you have a layer and a layer
and now a memory of the airport, yes? Your own meeting. Is this
loosening? How quickly does it all catch up?
I did not expect to do this. This was my own playing.
Can I ever go back to a chair? I am asking myself.
But how we have created that other universe, which you have implied
I might add, we can start to leave there… and see… and feel…
O! This was perhaps the point! Something better than ‘Greensleeves’!
The only place I wanted. Are you here? Ah—you are in the first chair. Colours?
I haven’t kept the same rhythm at all. Too immersed in feeling it
to be concerned about the mud now though? Let me check my pulse… Yes!
We are good. Perhaps all it was for. Phew, too, as I nearly
mentioned Bach, and that would have made my own eyes roll,
especially if we started stacking the chairs, which is what I wanted to do at the meeting
with the viewers sat in them still, the wastes of space. But who am I to talk!
- You Never Know
It could have been so much better, the feeling
and importance so much stronger only minutes ago, but I am begging
the audience already, getting ahead of myself,
being myself, forgetting myself thinking
of importance again and I am smiling
and not quite where I was; and I think of the faces
of those that are buying into their bafflement, as they practice
their dumped Arnold Schwarzenegger faces
without noticing, as it could have been a 1905
paper or a “zoning out”; though it could have been a gunfight
too, or a fix from your last relationship or much betterand floating past without such itemised bits of everything, with a reluctance
to say ontology because you never know who’s been dumped
at this party: aren’t I smiling. I know where I am inclined to go now—
I know it too well. A good feeling just balanced
whilst thinking no one has thought
anything, especially relating to that discomfort
there because you wouldn’t have said it like that, would you. And you don’t like muscle.
Now I see where the problem is, so we betterjust say a fog or something. Or was it a mystical experience?
Who made you remember that tune? Are you…
Excuse me: how we are inclined to move away. I almost
created an ideology and I am getting more… that. Am Ito know why I’m telling you about my history
of trying to get back with my partners? Are such things
warnings, though with smiles? Are we all physicists?
Am I begging? Is it all so clever? See, it happens
quickly, the levels where we want to keep each other at
to have meaning that is very tight, otherwise
we can all shout, the ego can drift in through thepoem and be felt and not stopped as I want you to feel…
whatever you like? Would you stay here? If you are still
at the party, is it where you need to be? Is it what we want?
Would you touch someone without fear
of that gunfire? Could you tell them? Are you crying too? Becauseit doesn’t have to go out so far
when I have my car and I haven’t been drinking. Am I unhappy?
Do I really think I could be him? I didn’t even know I was going to come here:
I was happy in my books. I am so embarrassed—sorry.
I was trying to be clever. How far could we go? No—
you’re right: I am just one creature thinkingand joining things that don’t settle if at all. And you’ve been begging to dance for minutes.
- Lip Therapy XV(!)
“That? That is a closed, though representative hollow
of the epiphenomenal scream of a cave.” Great!
May I have two scoops of that with a flake
please? And I lick and lick and lick, and it is everything
I wouldn’t want to be doing, but I have failed
to cover the land in my desire: ice cream? Always.
What did you get? “I got personality with
empath sauce in a split. It’s saucy!” O I must admit it
is: have I seen that? Well you know. Off over the bridge
we were next to test flying. They’d suggested it was true, but
have you ever seen the landings? Still a body. “I’m eating!” Sorry!—
I’ll give you something: there’re ghosts that come from my belly
only I feel this taste is getting nowhere. Does it make sense
to think one is getting anything universal, when it’s premised
in a culture of notes without wires—when it is moving
the numbers without the bean bags? The school tokens
were even a trick! How am I… how am I even eating this?
“Excuse me! That’s £6:50, please?” Yes! I screamed
and paid. Though by then he was used to it. Though in a minute I was gone
and in the air! So we went back to give him
a piece of my hand print (and I
had saved!) and there’s never been a truck here, the teenagers
said in their third act of quietude of the day.
- Back
to a cusp of time before I stopped answering back, I am living
in a delusional state of eating the moon
with no one saying, Is that your belly? Or I’ve cut my ears offor closed them—whichever sells better—as I don’t want a museum,
the attention, as that’d be the belly. Now, there are words for“or there were”. But my brain just isn’t made that way; so what I have left
to say, is short. And I’m not too happy
unaware my solo career is a competitionI started. So why be pure with your head down? Are we not all looking in the mirror at home? Is ego death
not what you’ve just said? Come on—it’s a block of cheese!
A lovely summer trip. Almost too dreamy. Delusional? Sweet, pleasant,peasantry pageantry is where we could stay at
with a lump in the back of our throats; or we couldjust go to the moon, which is what, a few billion? But not so complicated
if you cover your ears and blinkers and belly (I hate them) and stop reading into it, roundingnothing off
as the ice melts away, hardensitself melts
away hardens.
- Sonnie Eventually Makes It Only To…
We’ve all been touched, a bad start,
necessary, those early years,
centuries old, it’s time to catchup with the Times, a killed Paul McCartney, a Lennon giving us Kant
up his sleeve, rolled up (they’re still at it, praying
that is) if
there’s a stream there’s a sea, a hole,oh no here’s a waste of time
and a drop, a filter, a manoeuvred Web-
er: Ick! Don’t take that! Only
they’ll be concernedwhen the mains start to come through: we went out for dinner
and saw everything grotesque beneath us
on the wall-to-wall rug at sea-level on the drive in, the waiters
bringing us our food, cooked—covered—and most importantly
smiling for us: we had a great time. Lookbut don’t feel down: It was such fun
we said. My father was a working class man
was also said, as was some knowledge
from those that saidthat everyone knew I was in a mood
just as they decided so. So I went all Heideggerian! which wasn’t effective: my date
left: It is like
I have known you before. It is like you have been here for sometime, said the waiter,
the trickster. Who clearly wanted a tip! So I gave him onewhich was just like the Romans, like a coin was on my watch—a touching
presentthat I bought myself with my inheritance; yet still
we wait and long
for the early years to drip away, hungry in our streamsdrowning? Drowning. Come back!
- Sonnie At Improv
There is didactic getting in the way, pulled
from an internal window shop that a megaphone
bought into, skint, unheard of inside itself
as the megaphone’s mouth—what it could do with it instead;but there’s a word for pervy… Can you guess what it is?
I was talking to you. This is as far as the adverts go
plus some. If anything else was believed to be there, the nepotism
would matter: I am short-changingin the middle of the chorus; when really
we all have the same hymn sheet—you just shouldn’t
point at it, look at it, mention it,
see it surface. That… that…I am so sorry—truly—
but I can’t do this.
- Sonnie’s Out
Sonnie, into the classroom with his metronome,
ahead of himself already, walls,
a category for the thing, sliding across the floor
because steps would be too irregular, if even
with his tick. He says, “I know
you just dump stuff here, Miss,
from your own bigotry. All this filthy work!
Replicated copy! Talk talk talk
talk talk!” He was wearing clothes now, which he smoothed
as he began to pirouette around the room
telling us of all the idiosyncrasies he was being forced
to think, and sing, as he had to make do. “Make do
just as you do, Miss. But what can I do
to make you love me?” as his tick—point—
lies to the audience: Sonnie
was back again with a headache forming, a touch
of a glow about him that he worried
could become a statue, outside
this gated community
categorised
by the axiom of power, “Which should make you cross!”
- Convergence, It Says
We go to a paint class. It hurts our faces but we finish. Afterwards
we are lifted, the world changed. We goto the gymnasium and it prompts
a book on grief that was not here before but was dueto come, as the universe has altered (we stepped
into art shows and out into a new shape) wemade the book come to the kitchen—we are only half lucid—
joints joining that did not seemever, maybe forced, her old face passing by, living
as a mark on paper in between, doingthe strokes, not always smooth that book
looks to be crucial—how do I know? I feelconvergence, it says: no idea where it’s from.
Ah, the old face has changed, so here we go:I can see a war. No no no no no! We can.
- Grimace
Whitewashed walls crawl as I burrow into my strait jacket—I am anxious in it—
the walls make the room hot—
all the walls are radiators doing squats for a mate that’s repulsive.
The knots are tied by the walls too. I try to move my hands
to touch my crouch but the jacket screams, Repulsive!
Repulsive! But I can touch the ceiling. The best squatter
sits on my face for an advert.Tied up, I start to assess my experience. Tense here;
thought there. The walls then flash me outside: it’s floor to…
there’s no ceiling!—in mud. Ah, but there be mirrors still:
where’s the tension then, hmm? The jacket is
branded! How could it be hot in this, I am saying
as I am suddenly allowed to touch myself
while the radiators grimace pointing fingers.
- Flash From Above
A corresponding road
that only the mind, body knows—not me—untilI am a fog in a glut of images and desires
that could come out of my fingers, penis,
mouth: I sit, apparently,
in it all somewhere as a crow comes through
the car window apparently and taps my skull while I peel my skin off
to use as a muleta out the window, if this Range
Rover fancies his chances, that is. But I see it drive over us: I am of course
a passenger, the early horns flying over
and dying without a touch from us, I know. I see. The Rover’s
wife is rolling off someone else. My driver
alerts early too and knows to stay out my way. I am contacting
my lawyers as the tradition of bullfighting will no longer be required; as I… yes—can feel the road coming back to me as if I was only
a passenger: the cloak
was hiding my pen, watching the lines flash from above.
- Cleaning to Be Done
Depicting everything, no philosophy, not much talk,
cleaning to be done. Scrub—scrub until the mind’s gone.
Not too behaviourally based. Fighting over the word.
There was me, Pan, and a stone being thrown
miles away from where I thought I’d find myself; but d’you know what happens
with a stone’s throw? Like a tree falling? It’s felt anyway:
I was like a midwife from that angle. I’ll try not to putthis in. This is something like a phase and I see mania
in the eyes of my craft when they go beyond opposites—
when there’s only us to face. Marlon Brando and big jumps
over tree trunks are going to need navigating.
Everyone you speak to sits with you for days, no?
You’re being silly just to stay attached to this bar?
All a shot of the darkness. Though I feels you feeling.
- Paste Land
You could shoot yourself, but ice cream
and where you’ve been. How has anyone owned a gun?
Come on, you fucks—force it: in the jungle I was more than a self;
I was aboard deep experience and feeling and shelter and terror andthere was a danger where I was. Speak. Speak!
You will not go near the rind of this condition—you are weak.
I saw how you looked at each of them in the aisle, sick
with pulling flesh and every inch of bashed heads. Eatnothing and see how it is: the critic will taste not too, his lights off
while you crawl out from under the bed, his wife
covered in drool. Walk around on all fours, you pig:
that’s how we used to live. You cannot move for a bottle—choke on ideological workings: bogus choice.
A flick of thigh hair.
- Just… Associate. There’s No Rush
Building a kennel that refines in silence, the dogs
unsure what they’re being fed. Who knows where we’ll be in twenty years
if this carries on! Into the world came dresses
devouring genitals at night without the slightest incursion
to a collar. Jackhammering outside was the law of the universe
before science. And after the science? They’ll be fire
all over our clothes too. Plus all that crockery!
He had an Alistair Crowley tattoo on his leg, an Elvis
tattoo on his arm and if his entire skin
was peeled off in one pull it would be worth nothing
in those twenty years. We sat around the last dining room table
in all our finest finery and couldn’t eat a thing, our arms
so far apart! A dog came in and chewed the baby to death!
Quickly! Grab one item! No skin grabbed his mother’s favourite recipe.
- S’OK I Used the Toaster
The poem indicates the same minutes as the film is length: I am going to watch it.
It is self-referring and a put-off, like when he turned from me—like when I turned from him—
love being out there unembodied: “Give it to me!” scream the eyes
of one not settled, though the flow, the flow
of the cut is not well. And I didn’t goso imagine a little boat in a world of just ocean, just boat,
just you watching—like a test against Newton—as you findthe love of the boat on the boat! You look down
into the boat and in all that water: there it is! Just when you’d moved
to the empty globe too—because are not those cutsthat break flows sinister?—and you discover love! that isn’t
even written in the boat! And how many dimensions do you have now?
Plenty! O globe! Einstein! You touch yourself
beyond the word for pleasure and it is justO isn’t it just.
- [I was a project for two stringless sentences, a couplet]
I was a project for two stringless sentences, a couplet
that couldn’t keep themselves together on their own
let alone as one. Kids love the grunge, clueless, which is fine—
how old gratuitous sex is; hence it’s bad
and tastes like Sunday afternoons and Dinosaurs
unless you think about it: Stein
or Stine do the good work and I am all over
where the chiropractor was taking me: it was a high—so true
for a while. But forget me—there should be none of us, especially
how the newspaper prints it. Therefore I just picked upand put it down again. I nearly got an erection.
I’d never keep that up. I nearly
nearly liked it. If there was a silent movie for undoing Easter Island
there wouldn’t be a problem. Do we deserve that though?
It’s unlikely and easier done than said; which is terrible!—but the judge should have died: I gave in:
the newspaper.
- I Think This Was Just Before Maxwell Had a Breakthrough
God sat with his Mars bar machine and a pot of black coffee stirring.
The villagers had lukewarm foamy milk and temporary swans—sometimes penises—
and hang ups on “villagers” and religion. “This is free
from artificial colours,” he breathed; but it was not in scripture: they turned
the wind into a commune. “I don’t really believe
in anything”: two cappuccinos down
was Tim. “Wellcan you believe this?” said the Mug
as it burnt him with a smiley. Ouch! Godwas wired with plans without wires
and no plan. “Not sure how I tell them
about the milk,” it said to me as I stirredin the pot, so caffeinated, was I,
it was like that time they saw Jesus in toast, my nougat soft.
- Exposure
Can you wake in the night
and sit and stare at it with your eyes closed as you feel your stomach breathe? I always
doubt the spelling of “breathe”. Thank goodness for Sean Paul and Blu Cantrell.
She was running around “berserk” apparently. You aren’t still breathing, are you?
Afterwards you wake up and drift off at work, the inverse
of what you did in the night without control. And where will you end up? Here…
No. No I’m not going to do that. But somewhere else less spooky.
- He Looks Like an Exhausting Person to Have a Conversation With
You could have a drug habit and a cool coat and a court case, but I’ll be seeing you
beyond the noumenal!—when we are
crushed together like water around a pool
being hoovered: what have we done. That was brilliant;I see lots of things. How much of a chisel is meaning?
Or is it the statue? Damn! I’m still moving. Where wasthat pool? O you know the one. Someone knows the one
at least, but you can bet against that being wet againfor me: I was swimming in deep water
in a wet suit! Yuk! No fancy jackets—skin deep—thinking through
the logic of the situation and believing in the cult
of my own personalityto change history. But then the chisel: it chipped away at me. And I was so tied up
in wounds that were now tied up that there was nothing to say
of pleasure. Did anyone expect it to move like this?
Do we still need a jury? I don’t! No way. I meanyou can be inspired but are you really going to keep
staring at the marble—the stone? It’s rock solid—smoking! But sticking you in its pipe: sorry—it takes time.
- That Blasted Maintenance Team at Disneyland (Maxwell, Len, et al.)
Nothing but moos and little princes, moods,
because we can’t get at it. Clouds,
dew, and a sketch around a fruit we are due
to be forgetting—we can feel it! We can feel
our phones in our hands as we tap and we hear
the noise of an engine, the coo of a dove,
the signal of an illusion as they have no doves
in hell? Blimey. Not used that before.Painting furniture would be a fine thing
but it’s all stuck down. We’ve just noticed
we aren’t counting anything either—not breaking a sweat.
Should it be a slightly tilted lamp, this building?
Maybe next time we could have the duck.
Maybe next time we could give one.
- The Mill Again, Sure
Excellent session at the mill as here we are
copying, copying the sociology of abstract ontology, sick
of thick openings between Sundays on settees
of feather. If only there was dust! To counter
the noise from backstage there have been interrogations
by bystanders standing sideways stupidly singing
old melodies of maladaptations, which means I caught
more on to the fact, that I am, in fact
a good worker—efficient—studious: whywould I study anything? I am so mixed up: what if…
what if the maids?! Sundays on settees are too much
for flat notes. Sharp, sharp major lessons
are missed. Get them out of there now!
Impatient, you sit on your hands and do it yourself.
I didn’t want to be rude or unclear for the audience,
so we decided against the initial
shouting from the rafters and opted for a calm
and safe textbook, from which we hope not to test.
- “Synchronicity”
Out walking and I am a fine star. Care for something?
Fair enough! My eyes are sore
from the coffee and her sight
for sore losers: I’m a-cruising, not bruising; which will not
get me anywhere. Give it up! In Egyptthe pyramids really get in the way
of one’s progress. I visited St Catherine’s Monastery
where the burning bush is, and the fire
had gone out; something is too close
for Billy Joel and I’ve done it before anyway:what do you say to a lie about happiness? I’d look
out at my picket fence and feel irresistible
as long as she wasn’t breathing down my neck! my head
in the basket and that’d be another case
of me not forgetting: shapes, Mosesbut we tried to fight it. I might fit
a whole bag of salted peanuts into this, just
to see the grimace on the face in my head
because I didn’t throw anything out—promise!—
it was the coffee! the sight! the Gods!
- Bubbly Frameworks
around the hospital bed which we’re having none of. I used to think
but I try not to. The means of getting solid objects together
is to go to parties so you can pull the mess apart
to then see that it’s OK. It really is alright.
Perhaps you were just very orderly though, while they
were wild and angry? Or living? But I am too cohesive for all this now!
We set off for the city, not in hope, but in rigidity,
which has been sold to fund the creepy islands, so what use
is it to play with morality? I think of his easy
old face on Sundays. Who cares.
What a waste all that noise was too! And the voices?
Who were the voices? Imagine if they could die
right now. All of them! And they still shout!
But it must be a metaphysical framework, and that
is casting off all your old friends, for you are now
an adult. Though never forget to be somewhere
in the middle. And the spiritual work, if you can see
St. John? It’s just someone else’s journey; I wouldn’t find it at too old
an age, as that’s just pulling the whole thing together
for them like connectives. Now, loads of friends?
Just a riff before someone commits suicide.
It’s like Russian roulette blindfolded, you
aghast when you realise there was a gun the whole time. Your body
was also alive. And your finger?! Pointing at yourself!
Always! This is where the bubbles come in: never
ever pop too soon that early noise, which
is like a baby’s gurgle, which everyone stares at
and longs for: go back go back! Without pushing
too far as there are societal norms, reper-
cussions, designed, ironically, by creepy islanders.
- The Mind Is Not to Be Cooled down by Remedies Lighter Than the Lusts With Which It Burns
There is rage I am pretending not to see as there are birds outside,
a moon in the sky. This is whyI am never invited back. Yet we close our eyes
and grit our teeth, don’t we? In the dark?Can I do what? Certainly. I howl at it. So don’t laugh! As this doesn’t
usually happen…OK it does. It is better to acknowledge
everything we are—it’s whyI am pretending to not only be part-bird
and celestially unobjectionable. And it is whyI’ll hold you after too. Do I know what I’m doing here?
Of course! Hence, I’m never invited backagain as they close their eyes and the door behind me
pretending they’re lambs.
- No Way Am I Ready To Go
Slipping over chords of dew more or two-
Bob sentient muscle work from behind the
same thing every evening of content musk
busker conned of old point font of doing
what the show of inside the banker tinker
folder pie mine chuff up and no way am I
visibly after a sound of scolding the way of
global country land sandbag font necessarily
pinged and savage work I’m not ready to go
- As They Fall Out My Mind
There is no method for it haha I’m just, watching
it float away—an entire history; an episode?
facade? picture show? Blizzard—it has gone
too far. Not pointing any fingers. Where am I?
Where were we? Frames of things, that’s where: theyrecycle off as I rejoin the fold, boldly,
unsure, conjuring noise to get to something
other than a repeat performance of after-
the-fact. Bitterness turned inside-out. Maverick. No time for it.
As they fall out my mind.
- Tried Writing A Len
The therapist is not
enamoured with me, which is good
as I notice and accept it (and with thisI am providing so much ammo
for others who only go
to make theirs laugh, before they run offwith their narcissistic frameworks, that do not reflect
on anything about themselves) so I amtaking everything I am inside
and I amgoing to own it all close to me, dangerously—
and handsomely! and proudly!: I lovemyself I love myself! That’s right, isn’t it? Mirror mirror
on the wall: what is going on with them all; as me and you
seem fine! And what is their problem? Do they all
need help—even the woman
in the chair across from me; who refusesto smile (as I only
want to make her laugh: I accept it) as it’s likeI said to you before, mirror: I do not know
what our problem is, but I’ve evenstopped asking questions—with this—
on anything related to them, which is good,as at least I noticed.
- Obviously
Having ran away to the safety
of knowing absolutely everythingdeeply, analytically, on paper
including you—becauseI did not want to be
in any rooms; I nowcannot talk
to anyone, or enjoyanything
outside of my own head—unlessI can get
into yours, so you see me—remember me—
forever: I needso much more room
now; henceobviously
poetry.
- Sunk Ship Poem
They won’t know what they want, but you’ll dig
to find it…And is this it?! No.
And is this it?! No.
OK—in that case
I’ll go…Erm, excuse me!
Sorry! OK!
So… finally…
Is this it?! No. AndI’m not that bothered now
about the hole you’ve dug there
and put yourself in.You can’t disagree.
- [Sun through the window, shivering]
Sun through the window, shivering
with, the urge of a parody which isn’t
forthcoming, as the birds are tweeting and skin
is meeting with the foaming wave of a calm
formed inside, of memories,
that you hadn’t quite forgotten, but which
you are not currently aware of: pantsagain; different lovers that left glows
across each other as you pretended to stay
present, making love; holidays holidays holidays, that
did not offer breaks from waves; crashing
ruining your safe ideas caused by anthropological
causes… Please stop with it! And stick with it
right here, as there’s light through the blinds now: better.
- But You Can’t, Can You
You just…
Is it right that you just notice?
You just about notice it, the lock break—
the fight to break out—no child—
vague; and sothere will be an old fight
that appears in this apartment but you’ll both wear masks
from centuries ago, when they had the samein caves, but the masks will be Nivea and Revlon. You
would rather just say, “I notice,” but you are weak
and special! withyour key, you assume, like a toddler:
you once considered having a midwife on standby;
they always roll their eyes because it wasn’tthat good—you just…
But it’s so funny! And it’s just a lock breaking!
And you could have just given them a hug
and kept quiet.
- Milling Grist
Alternatively auditioning for the part.
Regal felt right.
Impressing an ancestor who sells drugs with a good punch.
At the end of the day, there’s only acupunctural loses.
- Rotten Fruit
The fruit—the fruit—
floating off across the ocean, finally,with me in my rubble, toned—
it on the fire, I suppose;I wish: make land make land make land,
else I’llsound silly—repetitive:
have you ever heard this before? Definitely:can’t believe I had to burn it
for a car crashlike this.
- Korshak Test
Notice what you notice
then don’t not…Sorry. Start again.
Hi. Sorry. I went
a bit weird then.The therapist is at her important stage: the suicides!
Always check the partners. There should really be a database.
Not the mirror! Not the toolbox or the mirror!
A fine bookshelf. Ah ha! It’s plastic.
Who cuts the supervisor’s hair?
- More Than a Musical
A large bear around the pool
Despite all of my rage
I am an edge lord in a cageShouting, shouting today—
mania in two days: the Wi-Fi’s down!
It being channelled
through a satellite birdI am so, so sorry: it is just how it worked.
- I’m Really Sorry It’s Just Playful I Mean Nothing by It (Gosh!)
Let’s pretend we’re movie stars.
Let’s pretend we’re movie stars!Golly!
There’s a camera in the bush. I’m not paranoid.
And when I have sex? Movie star!
Movie star!
Golly! Sorry—I mean, Ah.
That’s just great for me: a mirror.
It’s got to be the next purchase, hasn’t it? Because if I just hold this shot steady… Cut!
The state of the bath.What a twist!
- Couldas
A twisted and dull write. A different style
To release the Roman curse. Formless veins
Of distraction. Thinking of new ways
To do new lines. It is the only way to travel—
The only way to feel anything, these days. No
That is not the one. It is the only way
To get a makeshift car to start. No that is not
The one. It is the only way to get something moving
That is unbroken. Feeling pretty good today. Yesterday
Though—Lord. What about breaking it down?
No thanks. Better get to something physical.
A good stiff cock. She had such a beautiful
Beautiful vagina. Can you see it? The corrector
Wrote “caging”, oddly. Colour of a wheel chart.
A poached egg running over the side
Being hilarious and joyfully hitting the wall
Of my heart. Yuk. No. Trick, yes. I am thinking
Of being with someone that will jump
From the roof with me to really show
The stupidity of it all. The handbrake being taken off
And letting us roll away into the lake. No. Us
Just kissing. Coulda wrote that the first time.
- Dark and, Like, Abstract Positivity, I’d Say—Perhaps a New Subculture—You Know?
I was living in the middle of it all, which
results in me not
looking in, looking out, as
I was living in the middle of it all:
I wanted some particular pieces
conducive to the temperature of the middle
of us all, which would keep us all safe. But I have
a bad cold—a chip on my shoulder; though it is the right kindof chip as I am getting older
and remaining in the middle with cold feet, my fingers
pointing in towards my palms: this is not
knuckle dragging. This is coming from compassion.
It is the other particulars that know nothing; and so
we shall give them nothing to work with, unless
they come forward with some impossible
foresight first: I knowthey cannot have this, because I know
how it feels to have a body turning inward:
I am beginning to sense where they come from—
my hands; and it is not yet
in the library. And I keep screaming over the wall
at what isn’t there: it is desperate and hoping too much—
forget it; it is easier living in the middle
with middle sounds and slight ticks.
- “My Six Year Old Could Have Written That!”
Which doesn’t surprise me! As you sound
Like someone
That could raiseA poet.
- Not Sure It Will Be Now
Slow and sluggishly seeping across the opaque coffee piece being a minor choice mirror, this only producing soft movements,
whereas I like loud and brash and tat tat tat sounds and for the bang against the brittle I am punching on the chopped sliced wood of this bastard, rotten article of expression, the colours being black and white,
though a lilac is mourning its previous yellow home over the middle passage of the grain
followed by a mighty fuck off blue from the
sweet blueberries now sucking into the silk rug: I remember when it was sticky
bubblegum that was tangy before I spat it on the carpet: this is going to be cataclysmic to brush off.
- Squeezed Out First
The problem is…
No no no no no! It has to be five
as a pretty aside…The… the fact of the matter? That’ll just about
do it, as the fact of the matter is
that most people in most scenarios will not recognise themselves, as being
manipulative, so it may well be taken
as a beautiful piece of artwork—their whole existence, that is—
only not to themselves. And the loosening that this induces
around the word “paranoid”? It is too easy
to say, “I dread to think,” now, though it is cute.Because they are being completely legitimate
in their own heads! As there is no reason
for the other person to feel manipulated
to them. So where does the fault lie? For if we argue
the point with the “manipulator” (and I would love
a fairer word or position) we will see that questioning them
does only produce their own internal rebuttal
as a feeling—like us all—which they may or may not recognise
as their own flaw, but one which
still comes out as a tantrum
outwardly directed.Therefore—and this is from someone
that hates science; and I despise the unequivocal
use of logic, but needs must
just before…—we must see
that we are only babies (the tantrums):I was right on the verge of a great unravelling on the kitchen floor. Sorry for these.
- A Gong
They do not smack you to make you cry at birth, as they actually
Bang a gong next to your new
And tiny body to get you going, which means
The gong reverberates throughout your being
Always, giving you your loves and
Theories and calendars if it actually
Gets hit early, that is, as it may evenBe whacked next to you at night
Later on in your childhood; or you could get it—or finally
Get it on top of a mountain in your
Twenties thirties forties justBefore you start to climb down as the
Mountain from the gong starts shaking.
And everyone’sGong is different and it plays
Always in their lives with its echoes and patterns in different
Ways so you just need
To find your gong or hearIt or feel it to work out its rhythms, which of course
You don’t need to do, because then
You’ll know it was only a gong.
- Episode
I am falling through the cool air,
and it looks very funny,
except I am falling through it this time
with the laughter coming from nowhere
like absolutely nothing: empty laughs, perhaps
desperate, perhaps screams. The air is not getting warmer
like a game should, but my heart beats
as if boiling before someone says
that it isn’t: my mind is staying up high. No—my mind
is low or like absolutely nothing, that is
saying I’m not boiling, that is saying
it is not
over me—that it is over me—
that I should be over it… But then I am not
falling either: it is the cool air being pulled
away; I am not moving:
I have never been very visual—still screams—so the air
is now a controlled cloud through which I understand
the government
and my family and my health—the heart—meaning
it can only be extremely funny now, though not cool:
I am taking my coat hanger off; I am close to being housedby nothing, near the ground (I am making it!)
soft earth (I have made it
remembering where my mind was) which is not
too special and the clouds have been replaced:
I may as well be alive. I laugh along in smoke.
- [redacted]
I like the idea of the one
that exists quietly, if at all
watching, as if they know what falls outside
of what is outside. And they
are obviously mysterious—cool;
not to themselves—and they can say little
to save… Oh my goodness! The…
The [redacted]
has removed that which was
for me to be found and I can barely talk
or see the monster galloping away.
- The Duke Fesses Up
All the antiques looked a mess: I couldn’t even look, let alone
name them.
Of course, you were an empty vase: no flowers!
But you wouldn’tbe a mess: I’d add them.
That is what a fine piece of art is: you threw
yourself on floor. Rightly so.
- There May Be a Few of These for the Time Being, I’m Afraid
There’s another thing I shouldn’t be talking about:
my apartment is a mess
that I don’t actually live in, or have,
and there’s paint everywhere and I stare out of the window
paranoid at the shape of the tree, how it touches
not the sky, but the fence: I definitely feel some alertness, but not
to what is around me, if it is there at all, that is.
But that doesn’t mean I’m irritated
by how they all lied about the tree
and the sky and the fence: I never enjoyed gaming;
I really do not live in an apartment. Though all this paint.
- Was This the First Subcommittee?
Me and Chrissy at the start line because I looked at the floor,
it covered in paint. There are thoughts of a girl
and a father but let’s change it for a novel: it’s an impression
slogan and a chance to get out: we are chugging: suddenly there’s a train.
“That’s going to be going around for some time,” says Chrissy
and I could be anything you want me to be now
but it still won’t change, as you know it’s only you here:
we haven’t moved. My heart races in the night
waking me up sometimes. Not races—pounds hard—
really out of my chest which I forget is even there.
Chrissy: “Could we be in a cave talking about an echo?”
He’s good. He’s real good. I can’t believe I found him.
I let him go ahead: he tells me he isn’t moving:
“I’m Ben Affleck.” But I’ve been here too many times.
The novel was stuck in the earliest of stages
so there was some inevitability about it including
the girl: Chris could say that. I’m not going back. Don’t get Chrissy mixed up!
And I still haven’t moved an inch—I’m still in that bath,
an old flat with a Japanese soaking tub that never existed: am I trapped? No I’m starting—
eagles up ahead would be a fine thing, rope
to pull my heart back down and stop me
leaving Chris and Chrissy and the girl and novel? Not today—
I will pull it together. Look at the gun about to fire!
“The industry could be made up,” Chrissy said.
You’ve thought it; but who cares! Better than picking names
off the floor and scrambling around with old torn books.
“It’s gone, you see.” Chrissy is talking now. “It’s gone
my name. This isn’t even a race.
I don’t know why we’re still here: you couldn’t even drive
an engine like that if you tried! Can you remember my cave suggestion?”
- Broken Mosaic Effort
You are behind me on my back. Over me
like a hood. As I think I feel I know you; or intimately
I feel it—more than you—like a cliche:
my own jigsawed piece; my… desperate, broken
mosaic. Or my one true glance—by chance—
out of the window on a clear day
without a paintbrush, a knowing—a poem.
Look where you’ve left me though. With no explanation.Another artist suggested to me (though she hides
behind her chaise lounge) that this is all we are,
whatever that could mean, even though I feel it too:
you must see outside soon; I think someday you’ll know
what I deeply, arrogantly knew
about you—of you—as I am left with… bare thought
of our chance still looming: listen: I know how it feels;
I see you. But there’s something I can’t say—Look.
- Finland
I need to talk about something
without talking about it. Hang on:Can you remember when we…
I very much doubt it. But it was me and…No I wouldn’t remember. Surely you must…
Look I doubt I’ll everremember. But if you say it happened
and I was there, it happened.And Santa and the tooth fairy are the same person?
I think so. Wild!You’re good at this.
Thank you. AndNo one’s had to die yet?
Nope.
- Early Vision
“I want to trace them to the source
And the wire”
—Vampire Weekend, ‘I Think Ur a Contra’Standing back
and watching it all happen—seeing
the cord, having well seen yours (I only now
talk to myself)—I could not
take seriously those deep
analytic definitions
of love (that I was once
also prone to) that were now
being shouted at me
by “you”—as they changed
out of the mouth on cue; as the cordwas waving the cord
becoming a noose, the cord
wanting a sacrifice
with long hair: it didn’t matter who (I once
had long hair too—like god). Ofcourse, like anyone
towing the line, the mouth
thought it was holding the cord—that it was choosing
the definitions and ripples; even
enjoying them. But I…
I was enjoying them! Marvellous! Having seenenough and stood back, knowing
we were both only beginning
to define ourselves (at best).
- Wild World
“Hot ashes for trees”
—Pink Floyd, ‘Wish You Were Here’Girl—it is coming: my mind: near silence now.
What it contained will visit you in the night
like I never told you so, did I: I tried showing you. But we always knew. We always know.
We feel it in our cold, separate beds
long before we part and start blaming each other: girl—
and I am saying girl. I am owning it. Are you owning it?
Those shadows that are entering? Because they play
against our cages regardless—cold comfort
for no change: you only swing between “cool”
and pain—oh dear—
O my dear. How does this end? It is a drip-fed story
again—showing
not telling: that is all gods can do (OK I did tell you! You saw the marks
on my hands! (But father: I forgive her!)) because girl girl girl
girl girl—I don’t know how else to say it, so I might as well
say it rather sillily: can you guess what face you’ll be seeing
smiling when it comes through? Can you guess who was right in the shadows?
- One of Those Poems
I also like making things up, as if
that wasn’t what just happened
just now, again: I was embarrassed by the mirror.
I always am. I used to think it was important
to see oneself to feel good, hence I put it there
for you; when really, you want to hide away:
you just aren’t childish enough to say that yet. And it is alltechnique, technique. When we could have just said yes
before guessing, getting lost, checking in: you’d tell me
to shut the fuck up—fair enough—a synonym
I understand. Then we’d get it out the way, no mirroring.
What are we playing at now? Can we not kick our friends out?
Does it matter how it looks? Does it matter
how it sounds? Because I don’t believe a word you say.
- The Criminal Personality
I am getting over you, and that makes me miss you: I hate these boxes;
let’s saw the dog in half. OK let’s not—let’s become minimalists:I don’t believe the concrete talk
I keep hearing so confidently spoken from everyone in this bougie cafe: I have a chipon my shoulder—a black dog—so I can see why you changed your tune
and why I stopped singing; because the lyricsof love songs are clearly reductive and binary. And stupid! And sick!
And as Yochelson and Samenow stated, if you care
about the dog so much,you’re probably a sociopath. I must learn to like these cafes.
- I Wish I Could Laugh
I saw the therapist
who thought I was fantasising, smiling
on the street passing me. She did not know
I was fantasisingthen—seeing
not predicting her future
smile
leaving; her pastcatching up
which doesn’t
make
mesmi-
It does a little bit.
- Crash Course in How to Swim Faster (Early Nightingale)
You find a new one.
You explain how bad the last one was to the new one.
The new one jumps from a bridge.
You grieve
how cruel life is.
You live.
- Self-aware Artist
I am now without body. I am pages
AloneIn the high winds. Which is to say
I no longer
Suffer. Or I am insufferable.
- Try Again Next Year Two
I cut string and do right thing and music louder half
notes between notes appear, ones you can’t hear, though I’m no conductor
sensitive to playing too much, the songs not being especially
special as you have yours and I have mine and the half
notes stumble in the background of that familiar track, knotted in white sheet
no bars, OK bars, I think I just feel bad? I don’t. I cannot play an instrument.
I am hardly writing, though I am still arrogant, aren’t I. Perhaps. Anyone there?Maybe it wasn’t a string. It was like a ball of twine
fraying which is no good for an artist
or puppet maker, neither of which I am. D’ya feel them notes?They won’t even let me play the triangle.
- Message With Some Bottle
Need I remind you
that today is another day
that I will force myself outside
to walk the rape off
that you all let happen?
- Shame
I think I was trying to get back. Patrick Bateman
with only the watching myself in the mirror
embarrassingly luckily only it. Thought I lookedgood, thought I was pleasing things in my head,
I was just trying not to study,
that was it. If I’d have returnedthere’d be no books nor myths or crimes
of me. No looking at myself. No sudden
or silly movements or grand displays, theories,perhaps staying in love
above it all. Yet here I am. And to think.
- Just Not Sure About… O Doesn’t Matter
All the vampires are traumatised! One in ten
will hang from the ceiling leaving the rest
crying at its funeral as they blame the government, which did
start all this thousands of years ago, correct—
but you didn’t have to laugh at each other so much did you!
You wake up
decades later being screamed at by another blood
sucker and you understand it all
immediately: “None of us had an escape, but I
could have made this sunnier, because laughing
at the painter got it everywhere, whilst I was only desperate
to not be seen as cold-blooded the whole time: that was it. That was my whole identity. While the officials
still didn’t care.” And in the mirror
during the night? You still don’t recognise yourself
upside down responsible for clipping your own wings. Instead you scream
back at the blood sucker beside you, which never lands
in your old tongue: O how you wish
you had an abstract art form now. How you understand the wise die young.
- Fucking Hell, Ash
I was picking all the wrong flowers I was
disgusted in my bouquets: how could they!
I was soaking them in water and light.
I was holding them so tight, crudely,forcing us to rhyme: why wouldn’t they
do what they will never be able to do?I was putting them down and
looking at my hands: they shook.
I was clenching fists and releasing
a finger, that turned around and pointedso far behind me—still
through me—it threw me. I wasin a field swaying this whole time
with my hands up, flowers all around me
that I couldn’t pick up: don’t say that! Yuk!
Awful! But it never has anythingto do with you
is said: I was letting the windmove us. I was forgetting the dream of an “us”.
I was growing up! But not like the fairy tales or
history books—that I wrote, in fact. I was trying to say nothing
at all: my god!—we’ve done it again! I was back in the fieldstill—OK: waving? Only a bit though! Waiting? No! Swing-
ing swayingabout catching
on letting go too
little, it seems.
- Eyes Forward
I saw her moving
from far down the street. When I gotnear her and she passed
by me she was staringstraight ahead: I saw it.
I understood as it gotdark and the street lights
came on, around me. I noticedanother woman
walk by, sort of.
- Sanctuaries
The eyes glazed over or there was a glitch
or there was a split or there was a protection
or theirs was a denial or it was an abyss, the problem only being
my own expectations, as I was trying
to break through glass in an old redundant cathedral
in that there brothel, when really
I was stood in my own glazed time
and stained glass mirrors believing these warm sanctuaries
could ever be home: it was not actually a brothel
but an institution, though we all had our eyes closed
(we’d cradled many faces
between the two of us) and I naval gazed
(this is a confession) and I dreamt of home
as is always implied: I am reducing life
to its blip; I am incubated and getting over it all
outside the library without redemption, or similar.
- Sanctuaries
The eyes glazed over or there was a glitch
or there was a split or there was a protection
or theirs was a denial or it was an abyss, the problem only being
my own expectations, as I was trying
to break through glass in an old redundant cathedral
in that there brothel, when really
I was stood in my own glazed time
and stained glass mirrors believing these warm sanctuaries
could ever be home: it was not actually a brothel
but an institution, though we all had our eyes closed
(we’d cradled many faces
between the two of us) and I naval gazed
(this is a confession) and I dreamt of home
as is always implied: I am reducing life
to its blip; I am incubated and getting over it all
outside the library without redemption, or similar.
- Aboy Mad
Madness! Genius!
Beautyas I have just seen
a six year old walking himself on a lead
pretending it was not around his neck, in his mouthpretending he was not dictating for us
the most typical storypretending he enjoyed the claps
of the people walking pastsafely.
“When I rule the world…!”
See! I told you! Genius
Though he does not see
how he owns it already.
- The Wash Very Badly
I am in a bad mood so please
excuse me if I say what I mean. Is suchtruth mean? This voice—yuk—
I want nothing to do with it. But I don’t want it stuck in my headeither—I’m not
sure why I’m chasing it—it has passed since I last heard itdoing the laundry; and I myself
have never said “laundry” in my lifeuntil now: a whole poem to clean up my act—
so crass. Though I was in a bad mood—what did I want
to say? It keeps changing, all of it—you must know what it comes out in, or down
to: that we don’t know anythingbut that’s very hard to say: something
is getting awaywith itself. And it’s come out
in the wash very badly indeed.
- I Think That Took a While to Warm Up
In a post-graduate university rhyme
a rat comes out of a drain in the wrong waistcoat and is shot.
No one is in love as they’ve become more self-aware.
Everyone is waiting for dessert eating their starters,
checking the time. A sweet young couple in tracksuits
cannot help but mutually masturbate at the back of the bus.
A voice is heard in the rain or the birds at night or the pub
that the fans don’t talk about on the way to the game
before the fight, nor the rat they see scurry past.
But it looks like Ronnie O’Sullivan, thinks Mash.
He glimpses art for the first time, a mural to the shot rat. Time stands still
awkwardly. The bus goes back and nothing is linear,
everyone feeling it, looking at the tarts.
No one says “tarts” anymore, thinks Mash: he goes through the gates
to the game inhaling
a pie. A rash appears on his arm and his lips pulse
for the first time. Everyone is looking at him and then their watches
but no one cares. The sweet young couple, their tracksuit
bottoms around their ankles: Mash runs
in front of the team bus.
- [The lust grenade became a parade]
The lust grenade became a parade
of vigorous cleaning prior to shouting
the cleansing of a child’s tantrum, its mouthful
and complex needs pouring out still, the laughing Buddhasitting on the sofa wiping only his brow: “To think
this could have come out in the bedroom: what do you do
now? Are you still scrub-scrub-scrubbing
what’s imaginary or not? “Out, dammed spot!”?” rubbingevery surface, the Buddha unable to get near
this foreign war; so he laughs more, his own brow
now down to its skull: “Alas, poor Yorick!” He sees himself
suppressing his own fall: “I should really have helped dothe dishes. Or redecorated my own walls”—this playbook
going on and on whilst hardly being played at all.
- I Think I Was Experiencing Something
No don’t go I can’t I can’t look at it
I can’t look at myself—I can’t look at what’s there
What’s there?
It is the full experience of it, I think. It’s understanding scripture
and all those collective myths. I can’t look at them—
I can’t feel them at all.
So yes—no—stay and shout——that is absolutely enough——
O you sound like her and him and that snake and the cartoons
but stay. I don’t know what this all is.
I can’t look. Please.
- Love Poem About Someone I Saw
I was itching to feel something again so I put it in your frame
as you passed. I should apologiseor not? We do not speak now—this
left of my making.So with the frame gone…
But it isn’t!
It was a few moments in the concrete world (I question
even that) and then the building of frames and frames and frames
in my… memory? mind? experience? what is it?
who knows. The connection between usthat I built from another time, place, universe
lingered long afterward for meonly the thing I was itching to feel
but it is being undone
or resolved frame by frameor unloved, which is a stupid thing to say: to think
I only saw youbriefly on the path one day.
- Refrains in Every Corner of the City
I am extremely wise and naïve: this must be what love is.
What could it mean, thinking that as I walked up the stairs?
The coffee is great in here. I wish this ended with a silhouette,
you turning your Gaia smile to me—it can’t;
but you in your pants: God.
I reckon they’d kick you out of here for being dressed like that,
but they wouldn’t. The man opposite loves his coffee; I could cry
in here and nearly not have the refrains anymore. Peel me off the floor. I don’t know.
Walk in like nothing. It’s been a year.
I’ll be so bad after this. But of courseI get on the bus and it’s the oldest
sweetest couple, her hand on his leg, resting,
no ideas they get off, barely shuffling along the path.
She beamed at me as she passed, not letting go of him,
he didn’t even hurry or tut, they could have
minutes what am I doing. I barely tasted the coffee. Truth!
I just think it was you.
