Tuesday 26 October 2010

offski

...
so that's out of england
and into another new life
...
and goodbye
so, no more blog
[unless notblogging drives me too nuts]
...
its been fun
...
for anyone coming late to this blog
and wondering what it is
well ... maybe dip into the middle somewhere
...
i was quite keen on
the very first one
warren buffet
the gang
...
then later on OMIGOD
or a mockney history of hampi
...
or the varanasi no dance
...
or the OMMM
...
or the ...
...
and a whole bunch of it
...
so cheerio
its been not bad
in fact
its been good
...

Monday 25 October 2010

the stooges

...
...
i was 40 before i properly discovered the stooges
isn't that indescribably stupid?
...
...
...
have just discovered
don't split it
by subway sect
on youtube
one of the best songs ever made
the first great route out of punk
and its been on youtube 5 months
amd only 328 people have tried it
only 328!!!
...
and
for any artist this is a
v depressing thought
it is possible to make fabulous art and
no-one be interested
?
!
?

snow in edmonton...

fly tomorrow
...
its snowing in edmonton right now
priscilla is well-excited
is hopping about on the phone
...
couldn't they have waited?
...
so yes
tomorrow is the go day
the gone day
the intothenext day
and
i think
the last day of this blog

i was 40 before i properly discovered the stooges
isn't that indescribably stupid?

found for birth

...
because we were found for birth

and then bound for earth

and so we were

a him or a her
...
...

God's Alibi...

...
God actually invented Darwin as an
alibi

Smart eh?
God invents Darwin
who invents evolution
which absolves God

Smart eh?
He’s not god for nothing?
...

she doesn't exist

This is a found poem.
It was related to me by a man who picked me up whilst hitch-hiking from London to Bristol a good few years back.
...
...

SHE DOESN'T EXIST

I met this girl, she said she'd become always scared
I'm always scared, she said, I can't stop
she was twenty, she'd been on the road since thirteen
thin girl, khaki and black
thin face round cheeks blonde dreads
three years ago she was on the roads protest
she was there when they got evicted
the police kept the journalists out
they beamed in their mikes
but all they heard was shouting and screaming
it was private security, with pick-axe handles
backed up by the old bill
they were smart, they only hit the soft bits
no broken bones no fractured skulls
they did her for resisting arrest
which was running away from a screaming maniac with a pick-axe handle
she was out on bail when they did the others
and they got like six months and four months
and she couldn't handle that
so she did a runner
and now she doesn't exist
no dole no college no numbers no nothing
she’s living up a tree by a quarry in somerset
and she doesn't exist
she's outside life
she's given up the weed
but there's loads she don't remember
her eyes are glazed and she's not quite there
and she's always scared
she can't stop
she's always scared
...
...

Sunday 24 October 2010

a cartoon man...

...
...
a cartoon man pulling the
ceiling down and the
floor up,
and using them as handholds to
swing round
kicking out the walls
...
...
...

earning learning

Yes sir, its a cool and groovy world we all been living in
and I’m standing here to tell you
just how very happy I am to be living here amongst it all
and I don’t want to get too existential with you
but it strikes me that

if you stop learning
everything you’ve learnt so far
becomes redundant

you must keep learning
just in order to keep knowing
everything you’ve learnt
...

A loosed spring flailing blind at the sky

... because...

Because?
What because?
There’s no because
It simply was
And so this
Simply
Is

Saturday 23 October 2010

Stephen Harper saves the world

...
...
Makes sense to me
Or Phil Collins saves the world
Or Stephen Seagal
Or Fergie… the royal one


Cos
Lets face it
This is a crappy ass world which
Doesn’t deserve to be saved by a
Nelson Mandela
Or a Gandhi
And certainly not The Second Coming of Christ
...
No, this is a lousy world
Run by bastards
Filled with people who let themselves get ripped off by tossers
And what they deserve is to get saved by someone fourth rate
Al Gore?
Too good
Rahm Emanuel?
Maybe

william hague?
nick clegg?
m sarkosy?
medvedev?

So yes, Stephen Harper saves the world
But, well first he has to do something good
...

It might be a wait
might be a while
don't hold your breath
...
...

screens

...
...
now 4000000000 screens made year
...
...
initialising initialising … towards the future after next… screens showing screens showing screens showing screens… showing close-ups of screens showing blue earth on black ... showing blue planet of not one, not two, but four, billion new screens a year… showing closening focusing on pixellated worlds of digital more... of exceptionless rules … of inorganic evenness ... of flickers of image become seamless become fluid become real… become endlessly replicable in the digitalised ever … showing a world a life an experience gone touchless ... soft-edged … edgeless… of unchosen focus … of unpointed cameras… of transparent plastic on transparent plastic in discrete continuum ... of photo on photo, of white-bordered shine on white-bordered shine flickering faster into fluidity into obsolescence into constellations of digital more … showing screens and screens of screens and screens… showing a world a life a species an age disappearing into pixels into screens into numbers… showing peoples cities generations cultures thoughts irreversibly diffusing into acronyms and statistics ... into endlessly replicable digital infinity...into unseen unknowable uncountable unimaginable ones and zeros parallaxing to vanishing point in unworded unthought mega-micro-macro-nano scales and dimensions ... into unseen unnoticed semi-existing micro-existing nano-existing realms of quasi-neo-being, of purely mathematical being, of unknowable unimaginable being … of screen on screen on screen on screen … of fleeting flashing flicking minds and eyes sliding slipping off shadowless shiny surfaces and surfaces ... of glass plastic metal… of keys consoles pads ... of plastic encasing plastic… of wireless phones and wired ears, of whirring aircon and whirring hardware, of silent light and silent software ... of bold curved fonts... of too few words now in any tongue for the touch and feel of finger and thumb …for the lightness unlightness curvedness uncurvedness softness unsoftness slippyness unslippyness of fingerpad and thumbside on screen on mouse on console on case ... of recurring numbers recurring heads recurring shapes recurring logos recurring words recurring minutes … of ninety nine point nine nine per cent of minds knowledgeless of the science of how any of all this works ... of four billlion a year … of a million images of wideopen blue become a billion become a trillion in infinite mirrors … of shallow skies and glass metal, of polished sheens and flat pastels, of constellated pixels and unconstellated images, of distorted shadows and stainless steel, of sunless aboves and focus longer deeper further than ever before … of numbers colossal, zeros stretching left, and of numbers beyond tiny, zeros stretching right … of individuals objects ideas shrinking before the infinite and dissolving into the infinitessimal… of dwarfed bodies dwarfed selves dwarfed thoughts dwarfed actions … inavoidably, unquestionably, unstoppably, unfailingly …of a whirling globe recurring infinitesimal, atomised, infinitesimal …recurring collossal, singular, collossal ...of a finite world recurring in infinite nanoseconds... of a world ever atomising, digitalising, reassembling, averaging ... a world ever averaging averages ... ever averaging averages of averages … ever softening eroding abrading elliding … merging blurring unedging … a world gone touchless … feelless … dialless ... paperless... a world less lessless … more lessful... of eroded-ellided syllables, eroded-ellided letters, eroded-ellided words, eroded-ellided meanings, eroded-ellided thinking ... of acronymised initials, of abbreviated acronyms, of acronymised abbreviations ... a world of screen on screen on screen on screen… of numberless matterless nanoverses… of numberless matterless nanoseconds ... of replication without organic effort or input … of plastic of glass of metal… of plural alls, plural everythings, pluralised thises, pluralised thats … a billion alls, a billion everythings, a billionised theses a billionised thoses … and gone touchless … feelless… soundless … quietless … ever less… become less with …lesslessness… with ever more elusive ...illusory... diffuse …with screens... keys... consoles ... pads ... keyboards... handsets... cells... numbers... zeros ... letters… names … pins ... codes... passwords… dates ... with screens slipping, screens sliding… with glass plastic metal… with plastic encasing plastic encasing plastic … with cerise lilac lavender cerulean black and more encasing cerise lilac lavender cerulean black and more... of the future after the future after next, within the future after next … of thumb letter thumb letter thumb space thumb letter thumb letter thumb letter ... of words predicted, thoughts predicted, of words expanded by program, thoughts expanded by program, of words predicted for you, thoughts predicted for you, of words expanded by program for you, thoughts expanded by program for you, of words expanded into another language on a console you can’t properly operate, of a language you and ten million can’t turn off, a predicting you and a hundred million can’t turn off… of thumb letter thumb letter thumb delete thumb delete thumb pause thumb letter thumb letter thumb delete thumb delete thumb hover thumb ummm thumb stop...of screens slid, screens slipped… of screens on screens of screens and screens … of split-screens and semi-screens … of wide screens and nanoscreens … of synced screens in walls ... of synced screens oblique ... of syncless screens oblique off syncless screens oblique … of blinking screens pulsing pulsing pulsing … of sleep-mode wake-mode slow-mode hiber-mode … of time beyond absence, beyond expectation, beyond emotion, beyond disappointment, beyond want, bbeyond will, beyond control... of acceptance, of a species accustomised to waiting to quiescence to acquiescence to the nontime before the inorganic affirmative and unaffirmative… of a species accustomised to slowness, to passivity, to quiet space, to empty time … to corridor and cubicle, to row and line, to plane on plane, face on face, facet on facet, angle on angle, line on line, space on space, second on second… of startless finishes and finishless starts, beginningless ends and endless beginnings ... of songs becoming ringtones... films becoming trailers ...ads become jingles ... comedies become catchphrases... scenes come excerpts... sketches come punchlines... arguments cum pitches … events cum pictures... of newzak rotated on faster faster cycle... of ever-shorter repeat ... of a world polymultimicromacrostereo ... of a world prefixed, a world will-less … indecisiveless … choiceless and purposeful ... of justso justsos ... of hifi wifi myfi … of micromacronanogooglo ... of usless we’s predicted by text ... of usless wes that’s thises theses thoses… of we-less us-es... of screens letters words images all pastless, futureless … existing less... less and less… less than less… less than lessless … of inevitables unavoidables unstoppables just-so’s… of info disinfo misinfo … of initialising initialised … of screens on screens of screens and screens … of a thousand calms making pixellated frenzy …of losing self into a thousand million countless screens on screens of screens and screens … of eyeless screens watching eyeless screens … of wholeless people of arms legs faces … of ears mouths eyes noses … of processed grey processed yellow processed pastel … of exceptionless rules … of inorganic evenness … of empty mirror off empty mirror … uneyed screen on uneyed screen … constant on constant
simulation on simulation
corridor on corridor
stairwell on stairwell
lobby on lobby
door on door
car on car
street on street
line on line
light on light
corner on corner
square on square
parallax on parallax
infinity on infinity
faceless on faceless
eyeless on eyeless
white on white
grey on grey
quiet on quiet
hum on hum
whir on whir
image on image
pixel on pixel
grey on grey
white on white
micro on micro
macro on macro
nano on nano
off on off
on on on
ever further
always further,
ever further away from us
ever further
always further,
ever further
from the ever lost from,
always less than
ever lost from …
world off world
word off word
face off face
body off body
eye off eye
people off people
ever further
always further,
ever further away from …
a tomorrow no-one expected… a future none predicted... of continuous freezeframe… of momentary evers … of repeated instants … of lines unwritten, words unsaid … of the unintentional the unexceptional the unavoidable ... of percentages multiplied, divided, rounded … of pencams webcams eyecams... of processed greys processed blacks processed whites … of strained visual soup … of unforgiving light… of speakers on mute, computers on sleep... of timeless minutes, suddenless seconds … of uncountable matterless nanoverses and uncountable matterless nanoseconds ... of viral habits ... delicate balances … unspoken equivalences… of exceptionless rules and inorganic evenness … of limitless range, unfound potential, as yet unknown use ... of replaceable desks replaceable shelves replaceable doors replaceable walls replaceable floors, of everything replaceable inside an hour …of the future after next ... of adrift in unknown displace … of compassless mapless starless knowledgeless manual-less guideless …in space in time in cyberspace in cybertime ... of eroded-abraded meanings, of eroded-abraded connotations, eroded-abraded possibilities ... of diminished thinking gone treadless tractionless gripless takeless… with angle on angle plane on plane face on face facet on facet sheen on sheen shine on shine light on light shimmer on shimmer sparkle on sparkle … with numbers and letters … names and words … percentages and zeros … noughts and ones… with white on white
light on light
quiet on quiet
whir on whir
hum on hum
door on door
room on room
square on square
glass on glass
screen on screen

and writing

...
while not knowing even what medium i'm in
...
which is fine
good even
to be
converting poems into prose
and prose into poems
and poems into dialogue
and ideas into fiction
and fiction into ideas
and boiling down
and widening out
and expanding
and boiling down again
and out and in
and over there into that
and back over here into this
or over there into that other that
which i could never have seen from here
and wording in torrents
and wording in chipped ekes
...
and not sure where any of its going
...
which is fine
because its not even november and i have
no need of any product for
months and months
and so can
and will
mull and idle at length
spiel and spill and splurge at length
...
can do what the hell i like
...

Thursday 21 October 2010

end of this blog

...
as you can probably tell
this blog is petering out
i planned to end it after the tour
and it seems to be finishing naturally
...
i had a great time with it
i reread it and liked it
particularly some bits
i will mine it for ideas for future shows
but yes
its drifting out of my head
that daily need seems to be fading
as my mind and life
and energy
move on
...
which is how it should be
... if i miss it really badly
i'll come back to it
but yes
soon i will be done
...
...
...

final retrospective on summer

...

final retrospective on summer

on my show

ONE MAN RIOT

...
tough
too tough
...


in many ways i wish i hadn't done that show at all
had done a performance poetry show
the one i had almost ready back in january
...


i had stacks of fun with this show
loads of great hours on stage
in lots of ways i liked the show
but ultimately it was
too tough a sell
...


i've always done performance poetry shows which are
aesthetically out there
whose originality is justification enough
...
to have original ideas couched in a new way
is ample enough for me
...
and any success while being so out there is simply a bonus

and thinking and doing this way has been doing me fine for years
...
while this was a fairly straight piece of storytelling
...
telling a very unusual story
...
and the only real justification for doing such a show would have been success
great success
that i'd successfully got that wild and telling tale out to a massive max of people
...
which didn't happen
...

so how come it didn't?
...
well in many ways it was the wrong show for the fringe tour
or the wrong show to be a great success on the fringe tour
...

so how come i made this mistake?
...
well, in retrospect i judge that as a poet i had some kind of
self-esteem problem around christmas time
that i started thinking myself down as a poet
underrating myself
under-valuing
under-esteeming
making me too happy to abandon that wild thing
...
and i thought it would be a much better sell
especially seeing the other performers liked it so much
but reviews in the prairies stuffed me and it was always a
battling struggle from then on
...

so yes, i will hesitate to devalue myself a second time
...
have you ever let a low opinion of yourself muck up your life?
have you?
cos from where i am it don't seem too clever
...
...

Saturday 16 October 2010

leicester
uuurrr
murksome

Friday 15 October 2010

new attempt to jail the english

...
by the Tories of course
...
they successfully thwarted all striving for truth and justice for centuries
successfully kept the bulk of the British in powerlessness and poverty
...
but eventually they failed
and had to surrender power
...
well now they have a new plan
...
if you talk to many americans
you start to understand that in their
civilization
their life is made crap by the fact that you have to go to college
but if you go to college you come out of it with a mass of debt
...
and this debt nails you to the spot
this debt means you are not free
this means you have to get a job
meaning your freedom is severely limited for
much of your twenties
...
[there are exceptions to his
but it is the broad truth]
...
well the Tories are trying to nail down the British in the same way
not their own nobby class
but every class beneath them
to hobble them
to shackle
to chain them to the spot
to take back their freedoms
...
there is of course only one solution to all this
and one has to ask who a society is for
well, more than anything else
its for its children
and this means free education for all
it is the only logical and just way
...
its a matter of priorities
and they are of course
the chief priority
...

Wednesday 13 October 2010

A Long History Of Time

so this about that great British invention known to some as Life In Death In Life
but known to most as
queueing

so this is either called
A Pretty Paltry Portion Of The Possible

or
Absence Makes The Heart Grow Smaller

or
A Long History Of Time

or
The Day Stretched Itself Very Very Thin,
Wrapped Itself Around Itself And Slowly
Suffocated Itself To Death

...

we should we could we might we quite we shan’t we can’t we won’t we don’t we haven’t … wakey wakey …shirkers of the world unite… we have nothing to lose but our dreams

I had been hastening to the chastening, to the line-up, had been hurrying to get here and stop, to get here and not … for we are knot … are knot… are knotted knots strung numberless on a slackly strung string…

I’d only been in the line-up twenty minutes and I was already outside the normal laws governing time and space…

this is a life spuh… a life spuh …a life spent, a life spent, on in by and at… tills counters gates and doors, bars streets shops and floors, levels platforms lines and trains, boats ropes signs and planes

we are stuck … stuck … stuck fast …we are stocked we are stacked we are tied last… we are winnowed minnows all callow and shallow, we are locked we are stocked and we are barrenly fallow… we are run, we are done, we are undundant, we are undone, we are un

I’d only been in the line-up twenty minutes and I was already outside the normal laws governing time and space… I was beyond newton, beyond einstein, beyond particle, beyond wave

I once was free, but now I’m blind…. excuse me, do you mind, no I don’t mind at all … I’ve stopped minding, cos having a mind, like thinking, like any kind of cerebral activity whatsoever, only makes the whole bleedin awful bleedin experience even bleedin worse

we should we could we might we quite we shan’t we can’t we won’t we don’t we haven’t … tills counters gates and doors, bars streets shops and floors, levels platforms lines and trains, boats ropes signs and planes …take a ticket get a number sit down… we are boiled sterile and then trained docile, we are luh-luh-learning to sluh-sluh-slow, to not-not not-not-not-not-not not-not-not-not-not not go …we are drained brains strained in vain, are waferthin paperskin a-withering in the dithering…are wrought and wrenched, clutched and clenched, blanched beached bleached and blenched…

in the conspiracy of all conspiracies we are the plot that couldn’t be bothered to happen yet lining up to get a form to fill in so it might go to lunch

we are the spoon-fed the force-fed and the funnel-fed …are steered clear of life by the rule the role the route the rote, by more of the lore of the before of yore, by more of the lore of the before of yore

it got too late too early… and I was beyond particle, beyond wave, I was beyond black holes, beyond superstring, beyond anti-matter, beyond dark matter, I was in a new and wholly unecessary parallel dimension where unseen forces of attraction and repulsion held us unbonded together, I was in a reverse universe of no-matter

… the sound track is grey noise, and we are edging forward with half-baked ploys, are women become girls, men become boys…we are voiceless we are choiceless… we are stitches unravelled, are rock become gravel… stop stop stop before you start me, for we are forming the joyless party … we have drunk deep of diluted sedative, we have stopped stopped stopping making a triple negative

this is all of me, in single file, shrinking myself to fit… for a full-grown human cannot squeeze through the eye of a queue … so this is me, bruntless and fackless… the munt the frack and the biddle

in the meantime, the very mean time … we are monads without gonads, are plainly born of cloning, are the fleshflopping fillets of a protracted deboning… I am spasmer, bloodless plasma, I am twitcher ticcer blipper blurter and jerker, I’m method-acting for a new career as a bank worker

I hate queueing… the main reason I don’t own a car is road rage … I mean I get road rage in the supermarket, I get road rage in the ATM queue… I get road rage just looking at pigeons …pigeons … their strutting pop-eyed stupidity … pigeons…their inevitable DNA-set bobble… pigeons

and then I watch the ducks on the water of leith and I think, a duck can only be a duck… I’m glad I’m not a duck… I have vast freedoms not available to your average duck, to any duck … yet, I find myself asking myself, in what ways am I using those freedoms that stem from my not being a duck … which ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of question you expect a poet to be asking, in what ways am I using the freedoms that stem from my not being a duck… but, right here and now, I have to confess I’m not using many of them because here I am…

gleelessly freeless and reliably pliable …am wrought and wrenched, clutched and clenched, blanched beached bleached and blenched …we should we could we might we quite we shan’t we can’t we won’t we don’t we haven’t … tills counters gates and doors, bars streets shops and floors, levels platforms lines and trains, boats ropes signs and planes …

we are another scale on this long dead fish, another segment in this aeon-long millipede of line-up stretching back into the unfathomable mists of squandered time shielding from all accusing eyes the accursed name of the accursed man who invented the accursed queue…

we learnt to wait in the mother’s womb, and we wait patiently to process from room too room, until such time as the next room is the tomb…

wakey wakey, shirkers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your screams… you say potato, I say potato, you say castrato, I say castrato… you say horror death nightmare get-me-out-of-here-fast … I say horror death nightmare get-me-out-of-here-faster I am stealing your cab

and we are the emotional droids in this spiritual void… we are shouldbe shouldbe won’t, do-we do-we don’t don’t… shoobee shoobe won’t, do-we do-we don’t don’t… we are shoobee shoobeee won’t, do-we do-we don’t talk to me when I’m sleeping

these words have been lining-up in my throat to be spoken… the line has been orderly… though every word has been suffering from road rage… yet when it comes to their turn to be served …they are, like good british people…polite and passive, meek and tame, anxious and sheepish, abashed and constrained, timid and coy, shy and diffident, demure and submissive, humble and obedient … excuse me, I wonder if you could help me please

...

blue sky edinburgh, may 2010

...
from the royal mile
the sky's criss-cross of vapour trails
a Scottish Flag
...

Tuesday 12 October 2010

the brim of him

...
I looked over the brim of him
and I recoiled at the great ugliness of all I there saw
a tepid slate-grey pool
around a slathering jaw
sucking in every kind of
more
...

a strained visual soup

....
colandered into
57 pours of

ceaseless pixel

...

poise

...
...
metreless lines
with a natural rhythm
whose initial poise,
serves to launch you along
and whose cadence sends the eye and mind
along and down
where each succeeding
clause or sentence
launches you again
and you are bobbed and pushed
by the waves of the words
the lyric sweep of the prose
edged and thrown and lapped
sliding skiing sledging
vivified by a rising prose
bounced and braced and buoyed by an onseeking energy
brought down by clausaic troughs
by slump from bass to bass
while toyed by
and toying with
the spray of image and idea
with words of verve to
bubble bolster and boost
with words of sonorous dullness to
sink and sour
words splashing meanings like paintbombs
alliterative euphonic onomatopoieac
words expressing themselves
live to the mind
the tongue
the ear
words perking
jerking or quirking
words nailing unquestionable
words flailing provocative
words railing presumptive
words splashing meanings indistinct
the eye seeing its own shape in the
evolving blur of impression
cut by sudden exactitude
coiling allusion
tripping fact
repetition of word to
tie ideas together
to connect
to disconnect
of consonant to bob
of assonance to ease
sentences whose initial poise
serves to launch you down them
whose liquid flow rolls the eye-mind along
lilts the eye-mind from side to side
and down to down
and over and over
in and out of mind
on and off tongue
off and on literal
out and in line and leaf
from clause to clause down page
whose initial poise,
serves to launch you down
line after line,
phrase after phrase,
idea after idea,
page after page
...
...

reward


...

only because you have
created so many
moments of beauty
are you capable of
experiencing such
beauty now

for this sense of beauty
is your reward

not one you expected,
or worked for,
or even considered possible
and yet one which is
yours

...

only because you have
created so many
moments of beauty
are you capable of
experiencing such
beauty now

for this sense of beauty
these self-wording thoughts
these unwordable sentences
this emotional response to
your surroundings
this awareness of
this pleasure at
this energy from
this joy
is your reward

not one you expected,
or worked for,
or even considered possible
and yet one which is
yours

Monday 11 October 2010

20 mins into obama

...
...
After 20 minutes of the Obama presidency his
surprising stumbles and forgetfulness in the
very short inaugural vows had
already been edited from history
...
notable is that he has never again been so
together as during that
marathon after marathon after marathon of a
campaign
...
because never again would he be so
well practised so
well versed so
very well up for it
as he was towards the end of that
camapign so long it had
long become normality

sweet are the sweets...

...
in the fight between purity
and impurity
impurity will always win
but its nice to be nice
its good to be good
and sweet are the sweets of sin
...

FREEDOM IS A FULL-TIME JOB

...
...
this poem is dedicated to the image of Che Guevara I saw emblazoned on a sugar sachet in a Starbucks by London Bridge

its called

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE POLITICISED

or

FREEDOM IS A FULL-TIME JOB


to be more than simply each year’s cattle
must each year’s spirit fight each year’s battle?

is freedom less a thing or a place
than an unceasing search or an unending chase
so those who say they have done or won or got it,
only show that they have not it
for is it a land to which we can only strive?
but into which we can never arrive?
is it less in the choice, than in the choosing?
can it be used, or is it in the using?

yes folks,
its harder
and worserer
than you thought,
freedom is a full-time job

for the ways of thought hardest learnt and steered
by the boldest freers of previous years
were never enough, are already obsolete
back then they were never near complete
and now they can only show a way to go
which might have worked in part for them, then
but will never work so well again

for each age faces a new environment
new assaults and invasions
on its new and long-loved liberations
new media come and old media go
sometimes quick and sometimes slow
from bill gates to the cavemen to michelangelo
so every era sees fresh compulsions to subsume and comply
to why-not? sell-out? and self-commodify?
and so each generation must learn anew
how the very ground they walk through, and to
has steadily and imperceptibly changed
until the whole stretching landscape
is rearranged

so, to be more than simply this year’s cattle
must this year’s spirit fight this year’s battle?

for the old tries at freedom, so ardently sought
none of them wholly succeeded
the flames they never caught
and the waves they soon receded
everything you trusted
pretty soon got busted
the higher the boldest climbed and aimed
the further they fell and the more they got maimed
and yet all became
even more the same
as what once was the urge for the else
was then sold like processed cheese
as power, ever flexible,
rode the winds of change with ease
everything got debased and degraded
everything always has and did
the neon signs they went up
and the guidebooks they got published
and the drives for the new and different
got samified and vanquished
for someone’s genuinely new idea
will always be someone else’s genuinely long career
of course, it was ever so, and thus
where once only pioneers would go
you can now get the bus
so it no longer seems strange
that fashion took the place of change
and, yes, the sting
got removed from everything
so every hope and freedom got compromised
and the revolution would not be politicised

and, ahh, yes
the seeming assurance of matters long-handled how?
in pretty much the same way as now
giving well the impression
of an unstoppable momentum
of power and wealth
where you can’t change the world
you can only change yourself
but how can I matter when I’m so small-sized
and every best effort gets institutionalised
and the revolution will not be politicised

and yes
its all a bit galling to first guess
and then know
how the anti will soon become so much less,
and then become pro
how the demonised
will get tagged and labelled and categorised
first defused and then medium-sized
how it all becomes just more to enroll and extoll,
in the ever-growing arsenal of power and control
where once punk was radical
it is now pink and beck
where once post-modernism was radical
it is now disney and shrek
for someone’s genuinely new idea
will always be someone else’s long career
so why be surprised
when your every hope and freedom becomes despised
when lies become truth and truth become lies
so open up every orifice
while closing your eyes
for the revolution will not be politicised

and me, well I once had something I wanted to say,
but then the media wind it whipped the words away
the screens and paper gave a howling gale
drowning out my words
sapping their strength and making them frail
slight inadequate and shoutingly soundless
bare thin-boned and conclusively groundless
so little, so late, best to have not bothered at all
than to have aimed so big, and finished so small
and its terrible I know
to achieve so very little for all your go
for all your tries
and yes it may be internalised
but the revolution will not be politicised

and yet tomorrow the chase again
for the further chance to race again
and then, next day, the urge again
for another chance to surge again
to the long hard fight
to clear the blear and see the light
showing only further roads to further night
for freedom is a full-time job
has a full-time intent and task in it
giving us too little time to relent, or bask in it
so those who say they have done it or won it or got it,
only show that they have not it
for is it less a thing or a place
than an unceasing search or an unending chase
if its less in the choice, than in the choosing?
less to be used, more in the using?
a land towards which we can only strive
but into which we can never arrive?
only a long full fight
to see the light
showing only further roads
to further night
a long hard and wholly engaging fight
to see the light
showing only further roads
to further fight
...
...

THE THINGS THING

...
You know the things... the things...the consumables, the durables, the replaceables the buyables the haveables the yoursables the shopables... but more than that, the whole western things thing ... of skyscraping supersizing climbing piling extending growing quantities of ... things... of masses of... things... of rows and rows of... things ... of overreaching upreaching outreaching ... things... of hundred of millions of people all wanting things ...of numbers run rampant, of trillionfold microchips, of billionfold screens, of millionfold boxes ...of oceans of plenty ... of seas of much and lakes of lots ... of the whole neon-lit red-carpet things things, the entire runway-light banners-out flags-up we-are-talking-quantity-of things thing, the whole cabooodle the big kahuna enchilada ... the things thing ...of masses of things... of warehouses of masses of things ... of supersized warehouses of masses of things ... of nightlit grids of supersized warehouses of masses of things ... of nightlit grids of supersized warehouses of masses of things extending far far beyond sight ... of industrial and commercial zones extending beyond sight in nightlit grids of supersized warehouses ...of whole regional policies of industrial and commercial zones extending beyond sight in nightlit grids of supersized warehouses... of aerial maps of whole regions of industrial and commercial zones of nightlit grids... of a vast and varied patchworked continent of whole regions of night-light grids... of supersized warehouses ... of masses of things... of economic planloads of greater goods... of wharfloads of now unusable produce... surplus here... and lacking there, life-threateningly, life-shorteningly lacking, there just a 1000 miles south... of stacks of surplus, pools of surplus, lakes of surplus... of restocked flocks and restocked herds and refilled pens and freshly filled chickenhouses ... of freight train after freight train of refrigerated racks of ex-flocks and ex-herds and ex-chickens... of aerial maps of freight container upon freight container upon freight container in rows and lines and piles in a zone the size of a large city suburb ... of lots and lots of lots and lots of cars ... of lots of lots ... of whole bureaucratic bailiwicks of much ...of whole extended parishes of unpusilanimous unparsimony ... of the whole neon-lit red-carpet runway-light things thing, the big bastard banners-out flags-up marching-band parading-teenagers flying-baton pile’em-high-sell’em-short things thing ... of swiftly slick passages from one of a mass of mass-producing assembly-lines, onto one of a fleet of trucks, into one of a host of storage spaces, onto one of a few wharves, into one of a large fleet of vast ships, across an only ocean so vast, into one of a few ports so huge, onto oceanside wharves and bays on the near coasts of cross-continental transport systems feeding onto one of many roads or trains or freeways or highways into any one of a host of many cities and towns and shops and malls and depots and homes and offices and shops ... or of re-routed logjams eventually loaded at long-lapsing laggardly length onto giant container ships delayed and deferred in departure in transit in arriving in agreement in sale in file in filing system in computer program and left on ship on wharf in office in storage space in warehouse in depot in piles in stacks in racks in lots and moved once, and then again, but not for a while, and then again ... and restocked, and repackaged, and even rejigged ... and finally into a shop ... and back into depot or warehouse or storage space ... and maybe into further shops or depots or warehouses ... into eventual, or sudden, or already, desuetude... of colossally high numbers of crates boxes and containers logged and relogged and packed and unpacked and re-re-routed on into one of a host of storage spaces in one of a host of zones into one of a fleet of trucks into one of many depots towards one of many assembly lines making more ... things... many more things ... millions of things... yet more millions of things...and yesterday and today and tomorrow and sometimes less, sometimes more, but always many many things flowing out to the world... unstoppably... barely inexplicably ... out to the world and its people
...
And the other day... whilst finally reading the last page of wikipedia ...Yes, for i have now read it all, every last page of wikipedia... I claim the prize ... A bad back and poor eyesight... i read that a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... which is the kind of line i need to read twice; a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... so that nothing about this large fraction of the universe can ever be known ...which, when you combine this with the fact that 90% of the universe is missing... you think... well, after you finish blaming the republican party... you think ... its all a bit beyond me... and its a bit beyond just about everyone... and if its a bit beyond just about everyone then its certainly beyond bloody me...so then, for sanity’s sake, i began the plummet through scale... out of the universal and the galactic and into the street the room the bus the conversation ... and the plummet through scale made extra sense because i’d recently been on the Tivoli gardens rides ... on that somewhat lesser ride which simply takes you vertically up a tall tower and drops you at something near terminal velocity from about 200 metres to about thirty whereupon you bounce back thirty feet or so and then bob up and down a bit before coming to a rest... so i’d been wondering about the plummet through scale... and the bob back up ... so I thought about the earth... seen in photos and felt in the curvature of the earth from an aeroplane... and i thought about the solar system... seen by me in the conventional image of smallish planets in concentric orbits on a flat plane around a huge sun... and i thought of the solar system... of my childish attempts to make sense of the size of the universe... well if it ends in a wall, what’s beyond the wall?... and if it is like a 3D sea around a centre, moving round in cycles merging and diverging, so that it comes back to itself ... then how can that be so?... and i thought about the ever-expanding universe from the big bang ... and i thought of new matter spontaneously exploding by some unknown process from the great quantity of dark matter no-one can apparently find ... and i thought of the endless depths of nothing... or of infinite quantities of solar systems like ours... and not like ours ... and thought of heat and matter in vast empty space... i thought of it extending forever, unknowable to us or anyone else... and i thought of how heat and cold and matter and emptiness were all different ends of their own scale... and that absolute zero might or might not be the lower end of the scale of heat and energy... and that there might be no upper end to the scale of size, and no lower end either... and i thought of fleas on the back of fleas on the back of fleas down to and beyond the size of an atom, an electron, a quark, a theoretical whatever... and how these scales ceased to be a useful way of thinking when one got further along them in either direction... and i thought of the busride from the airport into berlin ... of the tedious walk way down to the lakes ... of the deaf cat running round the other room... of the twenty hours on the plane to sydney... and of the chips in this computer... of the atoms in a page ... of the different elements ... of the atom of fluorine within the atom of chlorine, or of potassium within the sodium, and how this might be kind of true but was not a fruitful way to think, at least it wasn’t a way to think that i was taught... and i thought of the uncountable atoms in the sky, molecules in the table... and i went from the attempt to understand the whole of the universe, to the attempt to understand the nature of atoms... and i plummetted through the scales, refocussed my minds’ eye from superfar to supernear... and back ...and bobbed back up and again... through micro and macro... nano and googlo... yet time and time i came again to the universe as i experience it, now, here, in this room, outside on a walk, in a cafe, through a television ... and i thought how my mind wilfully bobbed up and down the scale of size, the scale of heat... and i thought further that i always came back, come back, to here, the room the city the person the human... and i thought how i had gone up high and scaled back down, and how i done this before, and before, and before... and that i could only ever come back to the human level... and i thought that perhaps here, at this level, i should stay
...
And then i simply stopped and looked about ... and a sense i had been aware of for months, years maybe, grew stronger, fuller, more unmistakable... and became even wordable ... giving me an altered reality ... the sudden changed reality of standing in the streets... looking at everything... wondering what human effort has gone into all this... of standing between the houses, amongst the cars, by the shops, simply looking at everything... but looking at it anew... with the now overwhelming sense of how much human effort it has taken for all this to be here ... something always known but never seen or sensed so clearly... a sense now new and awe-inspiring ... the great realisation of how many thousands of breakthroughs in the creation of everything there must have been simply to get it here... the level of sophistication in producing, manufacturing, just that safety pin, that paperclip, that dog collar, that cheap christmas light... how it must have taken thousands of people to conceive and make and modify and refine... at design level, manufacturer level, marketing level... to produce any one of these things ... that street name on a sign... that bicycle wheel ... that lettering on that bicycle wheel... that bright yellow in the lettering on that bicycle wheel... that metallic sparkle on the bright yellow lettering on that bicycle wheel... how much effort must have gone into the human creation of it all... and this before you even get to the science level, the level of what science breakthroughs made this possible... the sense, the surprisingly wondrous sense, the unusually wondrous sense, of standing there with a newly dawned awareness of how the slow gradual incremental input of human after human after human has made this, all this, any one of this... and how most of those humans are unknown, are of course of unknown, and unknowable ... and that for every alexander graham bell inventing the telephone there have been tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, slowly conceiving inventing modifying adapting improving modifying every aspect of that mobile that turkish teenager is whispering into... and what relation if any does the working of that digital phone have to what Bell built?... and how many people have been involved in the journey towards just the computer chips in that mobile?... uncountable numbers ... towards simply deciding that silcon is best, and then producing the right silicon, the monocrystals, and how many were involved in getting to the point where silicon of this usable thin porous quality can be manufactured and used... and how many have been involved in the creation of a plastic of this quality of this application ... even more than the silicon?... and what of the tiny pieces of metal? ...how many centuries of methodical improvement... of refining the refining ...of tinkering... of hard graft and well-grounded inspiration?... so that the numbers involved must, in all, run into the millions?... mustn’t they?... how many metalsmiths ... how many geologists... how many biologists... how many production engineers ... how many physicists and chemists and biologists... ???????? ... uncountable unknowable numbers, as uncountable or unknowable as the stars... just to produce this... all this ... the amazing this... the thousands of years of effort simply to produce this ... and none of its been simple, none of it has come easy, more people will have failed than succeeded, will have been crushed by their efforts, will have been outdone by others, outfought outbought outgunned outhought by others... and yet the billions of uncountable incremental efforts in making all this happen makes you think what? ... what?... makes you think in awe... in admiration... so much graft and struggle and effort and sweat... so much commitment of mind and body in hour after day after month after year after decade ... makes you think, wow... what a species, what a classy bunch of fuckers, what a gang?... doncha love’em? ... doncha gorra love’em?... wow ... all of us forever on a road from there through here to somewhere, out of the caves and the fields to where, here... doncha gorra be amazed? ... i am
...

earliest horror film that's still scary?

...will watch bride of frankenstein tonight
...
what i wonder is the earliest horror film that is still scary?

some are creepy, peter lorre in M, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Dead Of Night

but what, before Pyscho, is still scary?
...


what?

Sunday 10 October 2010

...

...
so
lets finish it now
so i can start
to search out
some truth
but it took me so long
just to work out
in my youth
nothing is wholly one thing
everything is relative and part of each other
but that was a mountain it took years to climb
and there's so much more to discover
...

the big society

the big society of cameron... apparently your average conservative can't understand it but it seems quite clear to me...hmm, nice idea but cannot it possibly work? ... a society brought together by a sense of social goodness, a community mindedness... yet it seems to be expecting a lot of goodwill from a british people who aren't just as brimming with goodwill as cameron might hope... and not necessarily willing to help him achieve his ideals

...

and one wonders if it will fail like gorbachev's perestroika failed... because gorbachev wasn't just after an openness, he was after, a-think-for-yourselfness, a way out of classically bad Soviet Russian ways of doing things, fresh ways of thinking and acting... a hitherto-unknown independent-minded-ness... which was very hard, nay impossible, to instill in a people who had had all any any adventurousness ground out of them by 70 years of numbheaded communism... meaning all the people he needed to change their thinking to change russian society did not change at all... and in fact probably didn't want to stick their necks out in case, as happened in a few countries, [Mao's infamous liberal-tempter let a hundred flowers blossom] the political pendulum swung back the other way ...

meaning Gorbachev swiftly became a political failure in his own country [while much much more liked abroad] ...because perestroika failed when people wouldn't change from that old, play by the rules, play it safe., don't stick your neck out, way of doing things... and maybe the big society will fail for just that reason

...
another thought
if it succeeds will it actually be paving the way to a more socialist kind of society?

...
is cameron's big society a pathway to socialism?...
its a thought
...


great name for a man's man

...
best name for a blokey bloke i ever come across is
Buck Ram
who was manager of The Platters
songwriter etc
...
but i did just discover that the assistant to The Commander Of The Mediterranenan Fleet in 1941 was
Manley Power
...
though i'm not sure Buck Ram isn't still best
...
Manley Power is kinda good
not manly enough
the words do it but they just don't
feel it
you know what i mean?
...
...
i always wanted to create a character called
Lance Shaft
...
...
camberley
back in the parental fold
where i was a year ago
cleaning windows and raking the lawn
...
after the fresh autum of alberta
all clean bold colours
outlined, distinct
here its the
sullied colours of autumn
merging, messy
...

Friday 8 October 2010

...fromsomewhere...

...

...

...

An urge to write and think that is amongst many things, many other dissipating fritters and fripperies, the urge to wallow in unhappiness, because it is the urge to battle against unhappiness, by which i mean my own and everyone else’s, by which i mean my own and everyone else’s stupidity and normality because, to properly battle it, one must know it, one must not just be in it but have been in it for some time, be marinated in it, steeped in it, sodden through with it, burdened down by it, sunk beneath it, must be in that place, that universe of places, that everydayness, that accustomedness to shit, those brutely enduring everyday stupidities and miseries and sufferings where thinking is hardest, where saying anything that hasn’t been said is seemingly impossible, and beyond you, and beyond anyone else, where saying anything that isn’t ludicrously cliched and hackneyed and-done-to-death-while-doing-no-damn-good-to-anyone is laughable, impossible, a task only a fool would set out on, where new words and thought, new thinking and writing, is of the utmost difficulty, where, facing the grand enduring edifice of an unbroken updown history of wanton brutalities, of brutal maximal exploitation, of unbroken herd-instinct, of heads-down-gotta-eat-ness, of the unceasing flows of the channels of shit which have overwhelmed all for seeming eternity, where one stupid-enough-to-try, one sufficiently foolish to want to, and incorrigibly blinkered enough to think he can, can spend whole stretches of hours days and weeks, and even months, where one never writes even two consecutive work-together sentences of workable cliche-less words and ideas, only phrases, couplets, by which i mean two words, two consecutive say-anything words, where one has to have, long have, wallowed down there in the shallows and depths of oneself, has to have thought and hard and repeatedly and repeatedly over the same ground, have fished the same water, breathed the same air, air now stifling now eluusive, trawling my own shallows, gridding my own stagnant waters and working through each section of the gridded mudflats hour by hour by and day by day to net nothing, and be happy i have netted nothing bar two words hooked together by some strong and, for now, unfriable wire, where one has to have walked ten thousand streets, and met ten thousand people, and seen ten thousand films, and read ten thousand books, and heard ten thousand songs, and seen ten thousand skies, knowing all along there was nothing that could be learnt from any of it except a deeper faith in the only working no-bullshit exception-free truth you had to start with, that its all shit and stupidity and misery and suffering and all you can ever do is enjoy the ones the tens the twenties the hundreds the thousands the ten thousands along the way because the bastards were winning, the bastards are winning, and nothing you’ve seen heard read or thought changes one slightest iota’s slightest dot the view that the bastards are going to keep winning and you are simply left thinking and wandering and writing and enjoying, still seeking onwards as if there is something that could be learnt, some crack in the thick and thickening crust of dried shit where some light might get out, which might show, or make possible, or just cursorily sketch out some new thought, or angle, or voice, or tone, or even some as-yet-undone fresh way of describing a stone an egg a sky a sea a face an eye, anything, and where one has spent months on the same long beach of rounded stones, and will spend months again on some other beach, slowly working one’s way up the beach, picking up every rock one by one, looking first under it and then holding up the stone, examining in from every angle, flipping it, feeling it, looking at it again and then discarding it and picking up the next and looking at it, first at random, and then from every angle, flipping it, feeling and then discarding it and working, with equal measure of stoic patience and edgy frustration, over hours days weeks and months, without knowing what thing or kind of thing i’m looking for, without knowing how i’ll recognise it or them when i find it or them, yet having a quiet inner faith, borne out by time, that i will know it and-or them when i see it and-or them, and spending two three months a year in this way, november into january or february, trying to find a stone, the stone, an idea, the idea, an angle, the angle, of interest, of any interest, of any newness, any workability… and then having, after the exhaustive search, while bending too much too often the aching back yet breathing the clean and cleansing air of possibility, the invigorating fresh sea air, to finally and at such laborious length half-fill my plastic basket with ideas and phrases and angles, half or more of which will be eventually discarded and most of which will be ultimately unrecognisable when eventually they feature in some constructed and quasi-finished piece, which itself is most likely to be discarded before ever reaching the eye of another human being, though frequently pieces have languished for a number of years in some internet message i sent myself from edinburgh surrey london leicester norwich goa kerala montreal bowen island, wherever, before i have dug them out and realised that time has treated them well, they do work, can work, might work, should work, must work, so again i battle and struggle over them, knocking them into some kind of palatable finishable workable presentable performable listenable readable writing, a half-full basket which will soon, finally, be worked with, the stones laid out on a bench somewhere, as lines in a computer file somewhere, as socks hung on a line, but which will all be used in the forthcoming battle struggle tussle and wrestle with the hardest the most inexplicable and unwordable interfaces with the world, where i may try and shine the strongest lights i can find on all of them, trying to see them at their most naked and unnatural, their most divorced from all on a white background or where, at little more than baseless whim, i may steadfastly, scrupulously, try to cut out all unnecessary light and therefore operate in almost total darkness, trying to see through the almost wholly obscure smoke-blacked window where the immuring dirt is on the other side and therefore inevitable, unavoidable, uncleanable, while battling against my most trenchant and stubborn excuses for inactivity, for loathing of all art, all writing, to make everything as immoveable as i can, to constipate myself to the max, to reject all artistic or commercial excuses for putting one word after another as if they could ever produce an acceptable couplet or sentence or idea, though remaining in great awe of those who can truly do so, yet regarding all such as way above, as unearthly, high above the earthly plain of shit i must battle across as i seek movement, self-generation, energy, excitement, in words strung out at something less than random, sparking words that do the thing, that work that jump the neuron from synapse to synapse, generating self-propelling words that heat up the mind, words that will be both yeast and flour and heat, air and fuel and spark, yeast and hops and time, height and weight and falling, words that come together and create their own energy, as the first life must have come from a self-replicating chemical reaction which finally, near miraculously, found ways of bringing more of the right chemical elements to itself, feeding itself, channeling food to itself, and thus enduring, self-replicating, living, creating, and battling for words which do all this, which suck oxygen into themself, that seem to exist with an energy before the mind reaches or reads or hears them, an energy for life, action, destruction, creation, love, hate, passion, all there in the words, which shoves and jolts and jacks and speeds and gusts the seeing eye’s mind, as your mind, doomedly creating, failing for the ten thousandth time, battles on and around and with all this in a very likely doomed attempt to come from somewhere honest, from some vestigial integrity miraculously undestroyed within me, and springboard me, my mind, and possibly, hopefully, unlikelily, the mind of some others, and dodge my cavils and exceptions, my unnecessarily thickly meshed bullshit filters, and leap my unnecessarily high series of bullshit barriers to actually finally say something, some what, some more than anything, some near impossible finally managed, though only fleetingly successful, only fleetingly holding together for the mind but, i, being fortunate, being a poet only of the moment, not needing to endure, not being so outrageously arrogant as almost every poet who ever lived, who believe that what they write will endure, can endure, should endure, but that in the act of glorious performance, can each day bring them, the random human beings of the audience, the words the ideas the chains the sparks to life, can breathe life into the words, my words, as a mythic god breathes life into mythic man, so that each day, for the brief hour of performance, i can animate them for the eighty ninety hundred human minds who have come to see me, can ascend, through face and voice and hand and body and theatre space, to a meaning, a joy and inspiration, an energy, which lives now, electrically, richly, now, only now, on first view, first read, or maybe even second, and every rarely even, still, a week later... before all meaning dissolves back into the cold soup from which it came... slimes back into the primeval sludge as an unbreakdownable effluent... crawls on its own flabby ill-shapen legs back into the swamp from which it bloatedly crept ... floats up into the clouds and, being, little more than air, merges with and is lost into them forever ... lands on the ocean as an unresounding drop amongst a billion other unresounding drops, produces a tiny and instantly vanished ripple amongst a billion other tiny and instantly vanished drops, and is gone forever, replaced by a billion other instantly lost ripples... but where, yes, for one moment, maybe two, on first reads, a meaning held together, unfakely, was there, held in the minds of others, the most that could ever be asked for, before the slime the soup the crawling the floating and the effluent have their inevitable reign

...

and AHHH, the descent, the duplicity of words, their plain-as-day fakeness, their done-before-ness, and, THUD, the inevitability of failure, the vanishing of energy like breath in the winter, but AHHH YES, what a breath, what a clear pure white amongst the cold, but URRH the sapping the vanishing the goneness of strength, the passingness the fleetingness of momentum, but OOOHHH, what a momentum, what an energy, what a sense of now but, CRASH, the return of inertia, BANG, the disappointment of energy gone, of energy enjoyed but without fruition or culmination or succession, but AAAH, what a sense of freedom in the falling, but OWWW, the pain, of landing, the opening up of loss, of a vacuum within, but OHHH, what a filledness, what a sense of motion, of possibility, what an escape from the cavilling the tiring the wearing the crapness and stupidity of misery and tiredness and, WALLOP, the descent, the inevitable descent, the inevitable inescapable return of it all, the landing, the steps, the one after another, the hitting of each, the uneasiness of each word with the next and the last but, AAAAHH, when they surged together, they concatenated, they culminated, they soared, they flew, they built a thin sheet of ice strong enough not to stand on, but to skate on, to move on, to flow on, a tissue of words become a net of ropes just strong enough to move on before, UUURRHH, they collapse, they break, they drop you to, OWWWW, again land and, HIT, and, BUMP, and, BANG, and, CRASH, and, WALLOP, and, land, stop, be still, be unable to move, to only walk like ever before, limply, lamely, crippled by a language that can’t that doesn’t that won’t that hasn’t but that, ahh yes, did, found life and energy and possibility and zest within itself,

Thursday 7 October 2010

original title for the life of brian

...
JESUS CHRIST - LUST FOR GLORY
...
...

Wednesday 6 October 2010

finchampstead

berkshire
england
quiet life
its autumn outside
though greener still than alberta
more green
some red
some brown
less yellow
but yellower everyday
...
and i'm around at my brothers
who are all at school and work right now
my sis alice is over from oz
with husband
patrick
and two very lively young australians
jackson and lily
so i've been doing the uncle bit
at least i have with jackson
lily seems to have that infant mistrust a big scary bloke can get
so i've been dangling jackson upside down
[he's antipodean
he's used to it]
in fact i was dangling him upside down three seconds after we first met here
which is all good fun and i'm waking much too jetlagged late but not getting any work done yet and reading
after a history of the batttle of el alamein
an autobiog of the monty pythons whilst, perhaps, cleaning the odd cooker in an attempt to make myself useful
...
so, all in all its quiet days
...
and just a couple more posts and i'll wind up this blog
...
though i'll try a month without it but,
if i really can't bear it
if i'm lost without it
if i'm itching daily to do more
i'll pick it up again
...

Friday 1 October 2010

the yellows of autumn

...
last day in canada
the yellow leaves of autumn
the bold yellows up down mill creek beneath the clear blue skies
...
when i return it'll be far more wintry
will be heading fast for zero and still only
gathering momentum in its plummet
...
the head quiescing
calming
slowing
desummering
...
the blog
this blog
slowly
naturally
petering out
..
meanwhile
in somewhere apparently more real
my old mate bruce macrae
a canadian i first met at the plunge club
live art extravaganza in south london
run by the fabulous
on-her-own-planet
Rene Eyre
where is she now?
...
back then Bruce was a musician
and i used to book him as the
musical act at poetry cabarets
but after
err
meeting me
err
he
errred
became a poet
and has had
hundreds of poems
published
over 700
...
he showed up in the line-up for a
show of mine in Victoria 3 years ago
and now lives in BC
...
he bases his lifestyle round writing
goes home early so he can wake v early dawning and write
...
somewhere where the muse meets obsession and dedication
you'll find bruce and his mulling musing mind
...
...

and he now has his first book out
THE SO-CALLED SONNETS
published by silenced press
out of Ohio
...
good luck bruce
...
...
england tomorrow
my sis is over from oz
with the fledgling brood of aussies
jackson, lily, etc
so i's off for 24 days in blight
...
no plan for the weeks
...
...

Wednesday 29 September 2010

muse

...

only if you’ve nothing to lose

do you gamble everything on the...

...

...



Tuesday 28 September 2010

Nashville home of music

...
just seen Nashville
the movie
dunno how come i never seen it before
seeing how it might be the best Robert Altman film
or close
mash short cuts the player mccabe and mrs miller
...
...
one time i was in Nashville...drove up from Nu Orlins on the so-called Natchez Trail
...
and come Saturday night we're driving round Downtown Nashville, trying to find some music, and there ain't none anywhere, but in the end we find a place called the Bluegrass Inn, which sounds just the ticket so we go in and there's a band and they play three songs but then they stop, saying there ain't enough people there to make it worth their while so everyone can have their money back so that's it and we leave
...
...
so that was Nashville home of country music
...
!!!
...

Monday 27 September 2010

you're moving to edmonton?

...
she must be very pretty
...
is what they say
...
you've moved to edmonton?
she must be very pretty
...
...
and two years ago they said
...
you're moving to winnipeg?
she must be very pretty
...
...

a figure of eight on its side...

...
perhaps the Edmonton theatre world is only so finite
...
so
i'm at a do,
a kinda houseparty welcome do for those new to the drama faculty
homey, etc
...
and i meet a woman who's done the fringe for years
was in number 2
and we chat and in the end i ask
do you know ken brown
or sheri d wilson
and she says yes
...
but then we're talking about the infiniteness or not of the canadian theatre world
and she suddenly breaks off and says
laughing
yes i know ken,
we were married

ahhh
the brown in michelle brown is brown as in ken
her two kids are his two kids, who i've met
ahhhh...i think
so we go on about that infinity sign perhaps not being appropriate
and maybe its just a figure of eight on its side
a track with two bends
...
which made for a
good funny moment
...