theezwords

For the perfection of that which changes nothing.

2011-06-29T15:09:00.004Z

One man laughed,
The other man didn't.

The two standing side by side,
Insignificant and standing on a planet,

Surrounded by stars,
Moon, nebulae, galaxy, sun.

One laughed,
The other turned away.

Cut

2011-06-20T23:49:00.005Z

There is in the dissemination
Of illegal goods,
Prohibited and costly, born of need,
Defined by the subjugations of liberty,
Community and peace
Dividing ever further
The rich and the poor,
Alembics of distortion
That make it available,
Diluted, alluded to
And with an ambiguous integrity,
An illusion
Of credible substance,
Imbibed with suspicion,
Consumed,
Regardless with pleasure.

Black Line

2011-06-20T23:46:00.002Z

Drawn,
Down,
Across,
To delineate,
Ascribe and emphasise,

My hand transfers intention
For better or worse,
But for whatever reason
You are my autobiography.

Just a few words for what...

2011-06-20T23:27:00.002Z

The body is:
An outhouse,
Temple,
Church,
Cellar,
Car Park,
Sun,
Whipping Post,
Synapse,
Fruit,
Seed,
Dog,
Monster,
Forest,
Barricade,
Machine,
Painter,
Destroyer,
Index,
Glue Gun,
Lover,
Platform,
Star,
Son,
Sound,
Daughter,
Wavelength,
Time,
Light,
Juicer,
Blender,
Maker,
Ship,
Conduit,
Mirror,
God,
Library,
Sonnet,
Sold.

Armada

2011-06-20T14:42:00.004Z

Nimbus clouds accumulate
As giant and towering sail ships,
Out in mass at sea,
Sailing along the lines determined
By their government
Of eddies and tides
High above, nudging and caressing
Their quiet communion of entropy.

Moment

2011-04-07T10:38:00.003Z

I imagine a room of wax,
Filled with burning wicks and I look up to see
An aeroplane soar overhead
Through a clear and spring blue sky
As pregnant teenagers trace their own lines,
Across pebble stones, walking by.

Invective

2011-04-06T14:38:00.005Z

She sits just behind me on the train
Between Canterbury and Kings Cross on a Tuesday.
She chews, continuously...
Like a...
Grazing animal, oblivious,
Entranced by vapid illusions
Garishly parading themselves
In colourful horror across pages of trivia
That she masticates over
And over and over.
Though she excuses herself politely,
Pulling at my head rest for a moment,
In aid of her rising to disembark.

Choking

2011-04-06T14:20:00.003Z

Spinning out on my own bloody rubbish,
Jumping at the reflections,
Peaking from beneath the table,
Sniffing for the presence of creatures like me.

There's a room at the back where I keep them
Caught. Gnashing and leering,
Jumping, dodging on their hind quarters,
And leaving traces in condensation upon the glass.

Filthy with intoxication, sweating words like
Jaundiced eyes yellow with bile
And delivered slow; careful spears
In defense against this saline tide of mad.

2011-02-28T19:23:00.001Z

--------------------------------------------------
The spectrum quilt
--------------------------------------------------

The world begins new everyday
though some charm old guide books
like things not done
in boxes

but

we'd split light with laughter
instead make rainbows
for a bed spread

-------------------------------------------------

Significance

2011-02-10T20:13:00.002Z

The poetry there invested beneath,
Every careful surface revealed amongst weeds;
The animism of concrete.

Winged Voices

2011-02-09T16:44:00.004Z

Towering old,
Wild and unforgiving circles,
Pronouncements of the insane,
confounded, shrinking.

"I could have run around and around and around..."
Said the old man, panting,
Dizzy, swaying, deranged.

"Time to get off, time to get off!"
The birds mantra, shaking the bushes
And entering as warning
Along his body hair and through his pores.

What now? Was there some other chapter to life
So very different to all that had come before.
Another language, a different vision,
Behaviours and customs?

His hands lingered uncertain and without sign.
Being was all and enough to be silent
And then enough to see,
The struggling voice from every body,
Every creature, mountain and garden.

That moment, this peace, our heart.

Star

2011-02-09T16:34:00.003Z

The Sun shines,
Carrying with it all
That photonic information,
Fragments, that together
Paint us gloriously
Its eight minutes past impression,
Bright and burning soul,
Of us each and every one.

La Mar

2011-02-01T01:07:00.003Z

The little boat becomes as the waves,
The further and the further away.
It's not like a road, this sea;
Guided with a Tarmacadam barricade,
Routed in a certainty.
This is an embrace
As knees grasping a Colt,
But then, nothing like that at all;
Entirely at its mercy riding over...
The cold, magma birthplace of us all.

Beautiful Life

2011-01-22T00:02:00.005Z

Fever,
Your glorious hand,
Whose arches contain immense bodies beyond
The sustenance and power of dream,
Command this temporal oratory
Towards an understanding, worthy in virtue,
For all that I have come to seem.

Bitter Eulogy

2011-01-21T18:40:00.005Z

Rolling useless like an old ball in an abandoned pool, days turning slowly from darkness into light, no clear period of passing, life becoming unhinged without a once revolving order.

Wild dogs and gentle pets gather, tearing themselves and children apart, feral food for a new and dark surrogate force whose fist slams hard dictates; waves of blood and a stench of decay without false protection of cheap perfumes.

Hundreds of square miles of new and desperate urbanization's, old and carefully insidious, ghastly crafted, control illusions are levelled for their aggregate and make way for a truth that will no longer respect vein theatres of hope; faiths that mankind might somehow tear itself from destruction.

Like cutting down trees or culling Deer, Rabbits, Badgers, Bears or Bison, billions are slaughtered, leaving infighting and the mechanics of disease to counter remaining hysteria and a space for the brutal indifference of instinct alone.

Aspirations for a better world accelerated oppression and an orchestra of schema's that had only self deception as a cure to the aberration known as The Human Race. Their respect for gentleness and love, came at the cost of a disproportionate ignorance, stupidity and irreconcilable loss.

Affliction

2011-01-11T21:30:00.005Z

Instead of rising from the damp,
Sweat tinted fabrics of sleep,
Swinging out and climbing into sky,
You choose,
Instead to remain,
Like a stopper on the steam of sleep.
Those first prescious hours of daylight,
Lost forever in the theft of dreams;
A greedy solitude,
Amongst the false protection of fright.

The Noise

2011-01-07T19:23:00.004Z

The noises could be heard loudly, everywhere, clanging and abrupt, dogs bleating their ill training and visciousness, traffic noise staining the horizon like dry rot spikes, winding through the remnant foliage like snakes, a chemical spill, an oil slick, an endlessly rearing tide, absorbing everything beneath, consuming all relentlessly, until its digesting mass would devour itself in a terrifying and ugly event of greater noise and filth, pulsating like the maggot riddled corpse of some strayed farm animal, swollen in stench amongst the derelict undergrowth that splits open concrete of yet one more betrayal of land.

Beyond all this, far enough for distance to dull clarity with atmospherics, once proud and ancient monuments to time and forces, the very humus from which long dead gods inhabited; mountains, had been skinned alive, lanced and twisted from their ground by incalculable minions, working, tirelessly blinkered for each and every ones need for a little bite to eat and the production of stones for boxes, housing them and their garishly empty, schematised, billboarded routes between; the white noise producers of that horizon lines, utterly soaked and incredulous, dry rot hum.

This landscape, an enormous work of art whose author bears no name but infinity, silently endures its rape and dismantling of allegory, picked at, loosing pigment and the alchemical minerals of that untitled, timeless and amorphous opacity of magic, mans blood, his mind, unable to comprehend and attacking, cannabilizing.

River

2010-10-31T02:14:00.007Z

As we see our landscapes slowly pass beyond the reeds that line these gradually eroding banks, I hear all the melodies whispering through the many mouths that are born to whisper what beyond the primal abstracts of need can never be sung, though distinguishable sounds illuminate our world with the mysterious wonder of shadows.

This Rotten Sonnet

2010-10-27T02:11:00.002Z

Behind the veil of love lies a hatred willing to apprehend all that devours the self longing for separation, reluctantly self annihilating, grasping hard and pouncing back again from the shadows like an untamed animal.

Torn between gluttony and starvation, tottering on the ambiguous wires of social protocol, we command the parts expected, carefully motionful and concealing of corruptable truths, tripping on the undulations of indifference beneath our feet, smiling hard and punching low whistled, memorial memories far from the here and now, willingly trapped by the strange protectorates of loss and singing hopeful songs of the impossible.

Repeater

2010-08-23T01:44:00.004Z

Every second goes
And so it does,
Even in the pauses
Of thought and word
Scrawled to mark
A relentless deception
Of sand built memorials.
Their rein of decay.

It passes this time,
That time,
All time always,
And so it does,
So it goes
A tick in silence,
Every second
And so it does,
Paused in thought
A word scrawled to mark
This linear betrayal
These memorials
To their collapse.

It passes, this time,
That time,
All time always
Masterful refuge,
Artifice,
Mute friend,
Enemy.

Crossing The Rubicon

2010-08-11T10:26:00.005Z

I climbed a tree just the other day,
With my special, climbing feet on.
Rising higher as I swallowed
Each branch and back out again,
Below me, with my special climbing end.

I am a conduit
And the world
Travels through me.
It digests me as I digest it.
Breaths me as I breath it.
In and out, back out
And in again.

I'm so wrapped up in this climbing,
Focused on the careful swallowing
Of inherently, branchlike, intricacy,
I fail to realize what day it is
And find myself atop of a lampost
Instead of an Oak.
And almost completely
Myself digested.

The Tune

2010-08-09T02:15:00.002Z

Twisting,
Involuntary.
Administered,
Empowered,
Pro -
duced.

You have the bodies,
Sea of dancers.
Fools?

Maybe damned,
Blind and foolish,
Grooved minions,
Ecstatic,
Pseudo shamanic,
Shadow characters
On this crafted stage.

'Here we are now...'
Chorus lined,
Glorious lifers,
Orgasmic,
Orgiastic,
Organic,
Organizers,
Organized.

Killing, with words

2010-08-05T12:43:00.002Z

True love is a beast when named.
Slipping through fingers,
An unbridled Colt,
Holding to ransom
With a shadow,
Wayning,
An ebb like unmorphiated pain.

Cheese

2010-07-28T14:29:00.002Z

For the child of Bovines,
There is offered from the slowly leaking,
Timeless offering of nurture
A mammalian fluid as a starter in life and for whom,
It seems,
Amongst us higher form of primate
Not enough that we have our own brew
For anything else but its pure intent.
Cheese, so close to home would be a catastrophe,
Though its said, undoubtedly to have to been tried.

Man 0 - Insect 1

2010-07-05T09:42:00.004Z

I had a motorcycle,
That traveled as loud
As it could reach speeds
Often impossible for the human eye.
But I was stopped,
Suddenly one day,
Not by cops with a camera,
But an idiot fly.

Vortex

2010-07-05T08:42:00.002Z

Let me dance now
Profoundly before I die,
So that I can see the lights
Spinning around me,
Splitting the administration
Of white light into patterns,
Fractured by possibility,
Into everything that I'll become,
When this being no longer requires me.

For The Trees

2010-06-29T01:56:00.001Z

How could that twig bear such a fruit?
They'll wonder -
Not knowing you're the tree,
The root.

The Go Between

2010-06-29T01:54:00.002Z

No more eyes in my head to see,
Nerves to feel,
Heart to beat.
I become a stone,
Earth.
I am without flux.
I am the go between.

This

2010-02-13T13:53:00.007Z

With love and without it,
With words and without them,
With this life and without it,
What else is there?

Death is only somewhere else,
Without feeling.
All there is for the man,
For the woman
And the animal is this,
The doing and the being.
Profoundly the responsibility.
Without life there is nothing at all.

In the perpendicular of things
We play, making it up
For ourselves on the journey.
There is no way, no one way to right,
No ways, right to wrong.

But nevertheless,
We seek equilibrium in chaos,
Trying to meet the expectations of gods
And failing hard,
Falling in quiet disgrace.

Profess

2010-02-13T03:35:00.000Z

What is a Profess – ionale like?
Such as one becomes amongst others,
Those who, too, come entitled,
Quietly or not,
As Profess – ionals.
With:
A certain uniform
As requirement
Gestures
Code
Quali – fi - cations
All of those.
What am I?
Now,
Here,
Upon this ledge,
Standing as I do,
Bending with the wind,
Unfit to snap,
But so profoundly bowed,
Like an Olive limb bearing fruit
And pissing sap.
Where is my Pro – fess – ionale?
Confess – ionale more like.
A constant unburdening,
The opposite, in effect,
But just the same as donning a
Hair shirt.
“Ridiculous stuff!” I think,
Begins running through my mind.
Or is that the judgement of the uneven effect,
Of the voices, hauling me, always,
Hard up against,
The hot coals of social order and keeping me in check.
I’d run around naked on stage,
Foolish without my flag code
Preserving the embarrassment of skin.
I’d spell out the title:
‘AA - AA - AA - RG - H!’
AND SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM.
Keeping me Profess - ional.

Wail

2010-01-25T22:51:00.005Z

Life is short.
Filled with bursts of ferocious intensity,
Swimming in sorrow,
Illuminated with gnosis,
Kindness,
And time spent in a queue.

Bliss

2009-12-15T19:30:00.004Z

Don't disconnect
Brother,
Sister,
Mother,
Father.

Don't disintegrate
Because it's easier
To be dependent than pro-active
And involved.

Why are you buying
Tuna fish in a can
When the rivers are Grey
And your heart is heavy
With an unpronounced sadness?

Whilst you laugh so joyously
At the life you have,
Bouncing, intoxicated
In the illuminated streets
Of your cities ambiguously
Beautiful darkness?

A Blank Piece Of Paper

2009-12-15T19:25:00.002Z

You're square,
Pinned up on the board
But far from innocent,
Miles from meaning,
Beautiful beyond words,
Dead waiting
For the first frowning mark.

Mare Street

2009-09-26T14:25:00.002Z

Coming back from Mare Street,
Returning home through blazing sun,
Through the pedestrian flurry of Hackney,
Great bodies abundantly veiled and motionful,
Ambling, gliding, dancing, pacing
The pavement slabs
With an ancient rhythm like rain.

Suspended

2009-09-26T14:13:00.005Z

Suspended in a jar of viscous fluid, like egg white, like my life. Paused for a moment or simply just beginning, it can be so hard to tell. Unlike the conveniently structured narrative of a book, a life has an infinity of evolving threads, the majority of which are invisible, undetectable like a piece of lint perhaps, invisible to the naked eye, unless discernible for an instant caught in a ray of sunlight.

Living, life happens around us when the door is open; reaches into us, where we can either decide to push it away or look after it. Ideals rarely exist. Rather, they make manifest impossible obstacles to the profoundly challenging morphologies of the unexpected far greater than a picture. We live in constant uncertainty.

A spontaneous poem for my friend Victoria.

2009-05-17T18:58:00.001Z

Sundays.
Baths poured and left to go cold,
endless cups of Coffee and tea,
thoughts of visits to the pub, free Vodaphone weekend calls.
The whole screaming lot of us
(for the most part) indoors.

During the afternoon the rain fell
And I had a flashback, those damned things I said last week,
Slipped in through the gap in alcoholic haze.

A photograph of a little boy bouncing on a trampoline
And a voice inside uncontrollably rings out apology to mother.

Is it true, the only truth left is hatred
and love is all just lies?

Sundays.
Baths poored and left to grow cold.
One week more on raging.

About time

2009-04-20T01:20:00.006Z

It's about time that I added some note to this blog that I'd once so lovingly dedicated to the cause of poetry, sliced into meaning uttered out of need, images of beasts that sting and so on to keep them back and invisible amongst the dark parameters that surround the safety of fire.

Well I've not written a word for some time. Anyone whose ever been here and read, and I know that those of you responsible for such an act of graciousness are less than the word 'minority', would have gathered that my token words, brandished against the agonies such as they are when one falls in love in a field of stones, are what they are. I am now however currently poor of muse and living life without that screaming fertile soil, bouncing along a fresh road, lined with the buds of early summers bright drifting blossoms and have an old friend back instead (or so it seemed; note in hindsight).

I might as well, I considered, here in the depths of East London and soaking in a bath write something to keep the wheels a little busy. It's not poetry is it, this? (As for the rest?) I need to write somewhere and this small plinth of oratory is it. No point in being too precious. And so it is.

Untitled

2008-07-09T23:21:00.005Z

I understand
That it must have been hard to ask me to leave,
If that’s what it was,
And easier to tolerate my persuasive company.
There I was pretending hopeless.
Lunch, drinks and then onto dinner, holding on,
And desperate not to let go.
I asked permission to put my arms around you outside,
Against the wind and the rain,
Struggling
With the lost property gift of a pub Umbrella,
That embrace,
like drops spared from a desert well.
I trod upon hot coals gladly,
Steaming in the summer rain.
Some first impressions of how it feels
To loose the majesty and arrogance
Of youths easy come and go.
Finally, the weight of afternoon alcohol
Pulled away your patience,
And my anger flooded into the space it left behind.
I called you a Tart,
Furious at my stupidity,
Furious at you;
White noise where there should only have been silence,
Perhaps no worse than what you’d thrown at me,
But a sudden, Leaden, thoughtlessly public full stop to a vain,
Desperate Soliloquy,
Pride’less, hopeless, stumbling and short –
A bubble burst of bile,
And unforgivable.
All that remained of my glimmer to you,
In that instant in my feeble hopes,
In that desperate blindness,
Weakness and howl,
Became gorged and ugly,
Immobile, and rich pickings
For the barking beasts that tear me apart.
A remorseful sorrow,
Venting me deep into the river,
And you high above it as the eternal night,
Your phantom bird circling above.

Lascaux Domesticus

2008-04-16T18:08:00.002Z

I cannot sleep.
I listen to my own music.
Scrutinizing, listening for where
Another mark should be,
Holed up here in this deceptive space,
I call home,
Where I can wrap
Up against the wolves.
Sometimes I think of these past few years,
My self-imposed exile,
Like a kind of jail term.
“Yeah, I’ve been inside for seven years.”
Or perhaps even more ludicrous -
The idea that I might be some outreach ascetic,
About whom nobody knows.
What was it Bukowski said?
‘…There have always been
And always will be, little men in back rooms,
Ask Malcolm X, Kennedy and Christ.’
Well, I’m coming around slowly
To some kind of acceptance of this crazy life.
I’m in favour of the trees you know,
And the invisible.
But in my mind I’m torn by extremes
And unsettled
Anywhere.
I’ve begun to joke a little
That I’m a tramp, but I’m serious,
Defending myself with self deprecation
And getting the knife in first.
I cannot go on living like this,
This life I have,
Painting on the upholstery
Where I’ve slipped down behind the sofa.

And so… If I could really write.

2008-04-15T07:48:00.004Z

If I could really write,
I whine,
Then I might have lived my life differently,
And that’s an uncomfortable damned equation,
Somewhere – I live in shame,
And suffer, as we do, trying hard
To avoid the pain,
Though mostly, my dumb solutions
Only drive it in deeper, like a Tick
At the end of a cigarette.

It’s all been too easy,
Means nothing,
Band-Aids
And sickness
And that,
Were it not that I am some beast,
I would be dead,
Like the runt of some litter.
But when they all go home
To pay their bills behind
Moats and castles,
I crawl back into my cardboard
Shelter and library shelves
Of bookmarked,
Well intentioned,
Half-carved invalid,
To masturbate and hide.

Has anyone seen my axiom?

2008-04-14T23:15:00.008Z

The problem is, when you don’t write
With your own voice,
We creatures,
Piping the vast cosmos,
'It',
Without need of identity, fragmented here,
Each shard in need of a face,
And now fearing its vastness,
Is lost, or so we assume.

But we're lost nonetheless,
Filled with silly questions and flaky
Answers.

Ha!

The chance of life…
It’s so freakish, we suppose,
There shouldn’t be a chance of life at all.
But there’s so much space out there,
For lottery winners, that it’s not all that surprising
That something as unexpected
As a question
Is,
At all.

And 'us', wearing costumes and such,
Wailing about finding a voice of unique and separate identity,
The irony of which
For some omniscient source…
Really,
In all this confusion?
Mmmm...
Is best without voice at all.

Listing

2008-04-13T02:42:00.001Z

Out there from this bow,
I can see that listing ship,
Its lifeboat ropes empty
And all the way down.

Last night you mentioned, sometime,
Of making peace with oneself;
A necessity on this globe without God.
I know that you mentioned that
With a confidence,
And that you were.

But I am, I knew then,
Listing
And in need of counteraction,
Myself.
I can feel what it feels to be out of balance…
It’s as if I’m always looking out,
Circling
And without anywhere to land.

Abiogenesis

2007-12-20T16:01:00.001Z

We reveal from darkness,
The disembodied luminous
Reaching from shadows,
Scattered clouds of mute photon
Struggling, stumbling feet,
Amniotic glimpsed
Snapshots of an instant
Free from eternity,
Such as our own brief time
Of senses white noise,
Clawing at blazing bodies,
Reaching out from the mud,
And failing marvelously.

Chamber (a painting)

2007-12-13T00:21:00.000Z

Today, in your cold arms,
I get down onto wood,
The place for last nights vision;
A hand holding some invisible word,
Only,
So that without speaking,
I can make clearer,
What would only become inaudible,
If I'd committed it to sound.
***

Ostensorium

2007-11-09T14:34:00.000Z

Two objects on the floor,
One sock caught on a ledge that only a photograph could do justice,
And a hat, to its right, under a chair, both curled up, used,
And discarded in the process of living.

A shoe,
This morning parked just on the threshold between the bedroom and the thoroughfare for all other rooms, in this tiny flat, that we share in chaos and silence.

Within that red and gold, paint splattered, tattered remnant, exists some mute resonance of its owner, her truth embodied, and secret forever.

Together

2007-11-05T21:23:00.003Z

These eyes are round,
They’ve grown that way,
Like the planets, the stars, the seasons,
And this inferno,
Created and destroyed this way.

I am…
And you are…
We,
Round this way
‘We run around’,
And, ‘We come around’,
And it’s…
‘About this’,
‘About that’,
“Will you come around?”
“Will you come around, to this?”
“…To me?”
But it’s agreed though, right?
That 'We…'
…That 'WE' never change.
But everything revolves,
Evolves.
So, how is it that we have become like this,
This way?
And that,
We are no longer around together?

This fools paradise only sees so little.
We are made this way,
To see close,
Evolved,
To misconstrue,
The grand movement of greater bodies,
Because,
In order to have survived,
Thus far,
We have had to become a little selfish through instinct
Along this great flat plain,
That is nevertheless,
Inconceivably round,
And inconceivably…

Together.

Fallen masonry

2007-11-04T22:32:00.001Z

I can’t be sure if any of this is right.
I’ve asked everyone for confirmation,
And still, I fear, my heart can’t tell this wrong from right.
And now I’m here, and the fighting is gone
I’m so cold without you here beside me in this tiny flat.
But I can’t help what you feel,
Or how your anger towards me has grown -
I think you’d like to see me dead.
I’m feeling as if all my weaknesses have been revealed,
Like an untidy stomach through a gaping shirt,
Or some strange manners, to which I am blind.
And you threatened yourself with injury, yesterday,
What was that all about? A tool to blackmail me out?
And then you threatened to have me beaten up.
Now, I need my sleep after three days drinking, trying to manage pain,
I wish I had your version of these clumsy words,
So that I could put them together and fill the holes
In this broken mess, not far from the Seine.

Revelation

2007-11-04T15:43:00.002Z

Circumstance peels back the skin.
And all that was there, all this time
beneath,
expands like a fist unfolding.
An ugly flower, whose pollen chokes
those that once believed
that it's nectar was sweet.

The Reaper

2007-10-31T13:55:00.000Z

And there is nothing I can say,
But that this is. These words,
Their very existence are the necessary bleed for some kind of cure.
This rage that you have opened in me,
This bile that has consumed me and struck you twice,
Clouded with wine and frustration,
You tearing at my flesh in retaliation and pleasure.

I am consumed.
Sapped and drained like this human scum,
Draped across what branches I've scavenged with my inadequate claw,
So far downstream,
Daydreaming too long.

I've met these rapids unprepared,
Caused this turbulence,
From afar in ignorance to be sure.
And this bitter effect comes now,
At this dawning day in all its stinging reality,
The one which would always be tomorrow.

Golden

2007-10-31T13:40:00.000Z

When this pound of incompatible flesh,
Becomes,
As it does,
Moment to moment,
Like some blinking sun,
It's best of all that I do not speak,
At all.

In anticipation of Poppies

2007-10-12T10:37:00.000Z

In consideration of ways to counter pain.
For Example, words and fragrance
that envelope me insane.
I am:
old,
shrivelled
and
of a behaviour, so I'm told
unsuited for a man of my age;
Damned perhaps...

Pain

It's not that you're entirely wrong,
and that I'm free from the effects
of what you suggest.
It is this though,
and that being,
that this barrage,
whose perpetual rearmament
serves only to keep me down,
weighs against a full recovery.

I can only hope for some day of armistice,
some pitiful respite on which dawn,
we'll embrace across no man's land,
and play ball amongst the craters,
until night becomes,
and we are...
at war again.

Mote

2007-10-03T11:03:00.000Z

For whatever reasons,
The ones I know of,
Here I am.

I could say that again,
In emphasis,
Only lost to this composition.

Another strut, lost to the structure,
Like I,
Now;
To time I drip into the great ocean,
Where I soon will be lost forever,
And all that weighs upon me,
And all that I make obstacle,
Will be gone.

Centrifuge

2007-08-28T16:47:00.000Z

At this opening
a door.
No watches,
music,
voice or order,
no one,
just spinning.

Out here,
on this thin edge,
I’m nearly out but dizzy.
Still...
and wondering,
is this far enough?

Sliding down
the guard rail
carefully,
leaning out,
you could fly off into space
forever.

Reaching down
into the dust
you index your circumference;
a mark of disbelief.

Misfire

2007-04-14T16:57:00.000Z

Postscript

2007-04-14T14:48:00.000Z

What logic is there
In our failures
To communicate ?
There shouldn’t be
Such a kind of disruption as this

Is there a reason
That these failures
Are seismic shifts between us
Between the baggage that we’ve carried
And the road ahead ?

Are we to continue
With this folly ?
Are we wise ?

You broke down at the weight
Of your geology
And exclaimed their burdens
As I listened
Trying to articulate
My understandings

And now you will not rise from the bed
I have brought you a little food
And whilst I am hopeful
That this reunion after battle
Could lead to a deeper
And more stable reparation
I see the possibility
That your habits of defense
Will fight for you
Against me
To another bitter end

Breach

2007-04-14T14:30:00.000Z

In the chair,
Where I am now,
With this brown leather case on my lap,
And the sun on my back,
I can hear the wind in the pines,
The birds,
And a car.

On this veranda,
Where I am,
I know,
I feel,
That we are past.
Especially since,
And it was I that suggested the metaphor,
I had shrunk.

We are strangers again;
Reduced to islands,
Bridges drawn,
Separate,
Scattered,
And foolish now,
Too,
I think,
As tempting as it is to attempt a crossing.

And now that we're disconnected,
A wind bares down,
Deep,
Into this uncrossable river,
Wide enough ahead of me from where I am,
The two of us,
No longer together.

But,
In the realm Of the finished,
Where walls can be breached,
The end that is open...
Is an end that can once more
Brings us together.

La Chute

2007-04-14T14:11:00.000Z

Last night I stood on that balcony,
And whilst the both of you,
Inside,
Talked about this and that,
I suddenly threw myself over.
Neither of you noticed at first,
But I'd disappeared,
…Obviously over
Where else could I have gone ?
Twenty stories up
That Parisian block
It just occurred to me to do it.
I hadn't considered it;
It was the lights and the distance;
I was staggered by the view,
And
It’s unforgivable,
This must be certain,
To have just gone like that,
Without a warning,
And now the shock that you are in
And why ?
And what for ?
I’d only just gone out there for a peek.
Then I would have come back in and
Had a little more of the wine that I’d poured.
I’d had every intention of finishing it,
I’m just as ashamed as you,
I’d indulged myself
Showing off.
I thought,
In that instant,
Like a snap of electricity,
"They won’t be expecting that!"
And so there it is,
Unsolvable for you lot.
But for my reasons ?
Nothing more than, I’d been overcome
By one last bout
Of self sacrificial childishness.

Mountains

2007-04-13T23:00:00.000Z

You've told me
And I try to understand
I can hear the meaning
But
I
Can't understand you
This
These movements of yours
Like
Thrashing
You're thrashing about
And It's
Complicated if I care
And simple if I don't

Last night I was angry
You kept me awake
This morning you flew
About the room
Your dark spectre
In my head
Violence rocked
I fought with blood
And filth
Spitting

All I want to do
Really
Is hold you
In my arms
To make peace
And start this thing over
Hold
Each others eyes
To our minds
And see clearly

But this storm that has raged so hard
Here
Against us
Is so born
Of our mountains
This damned topography
That it has made us
Both
Impossible to climb

Alchemy

2007-04-09T23:57:00.001Z

I’m back in England
Slotted in
Grasping my crayons and tools
Steering ahead
And picking up tables
Offered gratis
In somebody’s drive

And you’re still here
Shadows dancing
Slightly away
Tangled for moments
There and there
Grasped by pensive reeds downstream
Along the current of minds time
Out of which
I
Become
Always become
Be
Come
Be

I tend to your pressures
And tap the glass
Shaking fluids
Stirring up humus
Ambrosia
Prime material
Distillation
Marks
Indexing
Charged
Particles
Your invisible currents
Dispersed
Immersed
Within blooms carbon fruit
And times needy patterned symmetry
Bearing words
And images
Painting
Invisible
Marking
Bearing
Riding
Holding
Forming
And finally

Loved again

In forgiveness

Connections

2007-04-09T23:54:00.000Z

I was walking back
This late afternoon
From Christina’s studio where
I’d scanned
Laboriously
Work
That I’d done for a magazine

The scanner
Was artist placed
That’s awkward
And
Impossible to reach
So
Each image was at an angle
(I had to kneel to do this)
And also
Because
And probably everything because
I couldn’t make out application menus in French

I was punching buttons
Hoping that sense
Would bare fruitful function
From generic tools
But no
And I got annoyed
My irritation
Reverberating from the walls

Then I thought
I’ll just photograph these pages
Do these later
Or tomorrow
Borrow
A digital camera
It’ll look better anyway
And I can get out of there
Although
It had all been a complete waste of time

Walking back then
I’m thinking about
The wasted time
And how it can be saved
Doing it like this
With words
Dying
Assured

Then Angel calls
(That’s Gabriel)
Calling cautions to his dog
Scattering about through Paris
And I ask him if he has a camera
And his partner does
Michaela

And I’m wondering whether
I might be a nuisance
They have a baby
And on the way
To the house
He calls
To ask
That maybe
Because things are a little chaotic
That maybe
(I’m just outside the house)
That maybe
I should arrive in half an hour

So I go to the corner
Not enough Euros in my wallet
After the banana
And the nuts
The bar won’t take my card for a single drink
So I walk past
Once or twice
Dawdling this
In my head
And walk off to the bank
Walking
Thinking
I’m walking too much
And as this goes down
I think
I’m thinking
That I’m denigrating this project
To save wasted time
Wasting more time
Over this
But Christina calls
And says she’s glad
That I’d picked up her charger

3rd of April 2007

2007-04-09T23:53:00.000Z

Look at that
Glass in front of me
And the time
To check
Four fifty three
French radio at the bar
And the sun falling
A little warmer
Though bitten
From warring with the wind
Than yesterday
At this same time
Where I was
Somewhere else
A little less clearer
Than I am today

I’m more confident
A meeting with an Englishmen
Who helped resolve
A few doubts
About my position
My Englishness
Here
As a plus
Rather than a negative

Looking at this glass
And thinking about the beer
I wasn’t enjoying it
So I thought
Well
Why ever not?
And that’s when I looked at it
And thought
Why?
And how is it that I go about liking it
When everything’s so fair

Okay
Of course there’s my new French mobile
That costs too much
Christina keeps saying that
“I told you so”
But
And I’ve looked in the window
At another that is so much better
And I have a sim for it
One I bought earlier
Another mistake
Thinking that my English phone
Would accommodate
But I was wrong about that too
I can chip it though
Christina says
More Euro

I’m mad with money
No real sense for it
Feel the walls closing in sometimes
And recently I’ve been
More attentive
To calculations
To orientate
Calm
Positioned
Navigated
That’s all it is I’m sure
About life
A little awareness
Checked against lights and horizons
Rises and falls
In preparation
For it all

The glass is almost finished now
And Gabriel
Still hasn’t called
On the mobile
Using the SFR network
That’s costing me so much
Or
Is it just
As the guy said in the shop where I bought it
“The usual price”
Or
Maybe just that
As a very cheap phone
I get a very bad deal

When I spoke to Yozke
About this
He said
(In response to how much time
I tend to stay on calls)
That
And he didn’t say it directly
I suggested it
That
Yes
I should be keeping my calls shorter
It’s because I haven’t been paying
It’s like his shelves
And how dusty they are
Because before
Growing up
He always had a cleaner
To do it for him

The Climbing Tree

2007-04-09T21:25:00.000Z

Mark and I sat in the tree house
It was an end of a time
But which time I’m not too sure
I only know how I felt
And he said
“You will never succeed”

And now I remember which time it was
The end of school days where we had become good friends
And now I was leaving
With an ambition to sign-on
It seemed like a good idea at the time
And I don’t think I fully understood
The implications of that low horizon

I had low-grade mentors
And I had chosen them
Those that had condemned me for being different
Were placated by my decision
To stoop to them

And now it is
It is this
Now
That I’m forty-one
And signing on again
Stuttering
Stalling
Reaching up
And trying to get away

Have I only ever sought to meet your expectations?
Staring up at your words
When I should be scaling them

The Car Club

2007-04-09T21:22:00.000Z

Black dog old friend
With rolling eyes
Ripped down and pulverized
Taken
Gone

Those that let you out have forgotten now
But your blood still pours out onto the street
Your last breaths etched out
Upon my mothers thighs

And the guilty
Two boys
Lacking common sense
And unforgotten
Are available now upon the net
Old friends sharing wedding photographs
And tips about Cortinas

Again

2007-04-09T21:16:00.000Z

It’s this time
And again I’m scraping
Barely in beneath the door

And again
My mothers wrapping paper
Another tube
Or wraps
Saved up
And folded from before

And in this little room
Where I am keeping
I embellish gifts
Bought for me
To give to family

Again

The gold paper
Flitters a little
Above the heat
Of this little electric fire here
And downstairs
Everyone

The others

2007-04-09T21:13:00.000Z

The crazy people
They always smile at me
I can spot them
It's an overall thing
We have an instinct to spot them quickly
But some of us are numb
Big
Beaming smiles of knowing recognition
Large
Lolloping
Jolting
Body knowing contact
I realise
Of course
That they might think I'm one of them
When they're smiling
Passing me they think
The crazy people
They always smile at me

From these things

2007-04-09T21:11:00.002Z

I am this
And all the past is gathered up
And I
I am not a collection
But from these things
Objects and memories
I have become

Balcony

2007-04-09T21:11:00.001Z

Here at the balcony
Leaning out into the wind
All the words I cannot speak
That cannot be
Are only being and I recall
And I feel
All that shall be lost with me forever

These words

2007-04-09T20:58:00.000Z

Your dark eyes
Have been inside me for a thousand years
Like the water through my skin
My blood through this and these salts combined

Divinity starts with the first embrace
And Hearts meet with but bones apart
We are tissue thin between
Swimming within our own dark drops
Of this great ocean
Our lottery composition

We fragments of sun
And these mortal arches
Supporting sky crashing in and
Squeezing us deeper down into
Polyrythmic despair

Holding court in this small way
Our fragile grip upon sliding beauty
Layering our lives with the skins of memory
Our painful recipes stewing
We hope for a gentle end to all our beginnings
And all that we defend

Thread

2007-04-09T20:56:00.002Z

I’m mad

Wittering to myself
Treading streets
Ranting to audiences
Whom
Often
Find themselves in disagreement

They leave

At this point I bend over
Laughing
Crying
Laughing
Crying

And it hurts
To feel this way for you
After so long
To be so careful
And unsure
If it’s something

At all

And

Terrified a little
After each call
Wondering
If you should
Tracing echo’s over later
Re-running
Ruminating

Walk away

And then
Surprise
They’re so glad you called
But always
Always dangling
Waiting for the fall

I do not know what it is

2007-04-09T20:56:00.001Z

I get the feeling
And this is because I think too much
Maybe
That I say too much
Write too much of the wrong things
That my words are too many images
And you've said
Sometimes
Just that
That my mouth makes too many images
And it's because
I am so unable to do the math
The math that so many others do
The careful calculus of the clear

I'm a slave to this
It must be so
Perhaps
There can be no vindication
And that in all truth no solution
That I might never grow
That I might never need to
And
In truth
Perhaps
This shape I'm in
Is as well as I'll ever get

I see that your secret garden is filled with rage
And that the marks you make render your unspeakable
And that you are Chocolate and I am cheese
That one of us is earth and that one of us is water
And that together we can make life
Diving in from one
And finding safety upon the other

And again
I feel that I've said too much already
So I revert to something outside
And point as one does in distraction
Towards the million other suns
Invisible as they are
Out there
As Whitman said
'I do not know what it is but grand,
And that…
It is happiness.'

Slowly

2007-04-09T20:55:00.001Z

“I’m a wanker…”
A little dark mantra
A kind of wrap to rock me in

“I’m a wanker…”
Or just a fucking twat
“A fucking twat, a fucking twat…”
And over
Those words
Like that

Walking around
And often in the basement
I deprecate myself
For being me
A fucking twat
For this or that
Nouns of birth
Seeking end
At least picking at the edges
And scouring the skin
My oral theater of self-harm
Bearing dark clouds down
I
Defacing slowly

Whatever

2007-04-09T20:54:00.001Z

I’m nobody to you and me
That’s nothing
Sometimes
When misunderstood
Whenever

My lies and deceits
My perpetuations
This crawling filth
It’s all nothing to you and me
This loathing
Boiling
This bastard joy
This prodigal son
This memorandum
This sum
And I’m nothing
But something
To you and me

And yes
I scan the tree line
And spot preferable foliage
Some other kind of bark
And think
Yes
How about a Yew, Willow, Cedar or an Oak
Shrugging blindly from my own special bark
Too far up in to the sky
To notice
Roots
Firming
Solid
Just like you
A nobody
That’s nothing sometimes
Whatever

The CV photograph

2007-04-09T19:13:00.002Z

That man in the photograph
Taken in the Metro
Behind a blue curtain
That revealed to commuters
His lower legs and feet
As the only indication
That an I was sitting there

An I inside
But not without
Dismissed even
In that half revealed
Peculiarity

That man
This existence
That mute uncertainty
Ripples of terror
Radiating
From a deep
Black and infinite centre
A pane of glass to be smashed
Or even
For one true and unconsummated gasp
Some kind of breathing
That he might never do
Some necessary circulation of life
Where securities are barriers
And that he might let go
And push off from the side
Kicking in a freedom of carelessness
Without concern for exceptable codes
Of dress and behavior
To find comfort in unlaundered items
The courage to lie in the street
Strengthened outside of the walkers
In the confirmations of all their fears
The full terror
Realized and absorbed
Alive in the dissolution
Of fetid recline
In the smiling
Watering eyes
Rising
Leaking into the sky
Where
But for the grace of God
Go I

The van by the river

2007-04-09T19:13:00.001Z

I see by the river
A man who lives in a van
The front seat filled with shelves
And that
Not something to drive
But to live in

Organised violence

2007-04-09T19:09:00.000Z

The fire eating objects
Collected themselves
Not on a stage
But gathered together
In a mass media campaign

The marvelous nature
Of
THE CAMPAIGN
Was pure spectacle
No one
Would be selling anything
And airtime would be donated
From a secret frequency slot
For this one
Almighty
Twenty four seven
Fire eating extravaganza

Although
At first
A majority appeared critical
(They thought that flame swallower's
Were primarily useless)
They ignored the dancing exhaustion
Of televised ignition
The plays of gases and fuels
The bare sinews of the invisible
Apparently dismembered

But
Slowly
They became enthralled
Mesmerized even
Extended
Away from
The flameless pornography
Of the sugared mediocrity
Like Stretch Armstrong
If
You’re old enough
Or
Savvy even
To have heard of that particular toy

And soon enough
It seemed
As though
A proportion of humanity
Was melting
Like dolls heads in the glare
Of some unsafe
Unchecked
Electrical
Heating appliance
Once used to lightly scold
The barren toes of post-war
Children

However
The more popular they became
The less they remembered
Why they were
And they got mean

Basically

At first this couldn’t be seen
Was only a private cynicism
Amongst the objects
Who spat with knowing irony
But it wasn’t long before
They could no longer contain
Their spite
And sometimes
Not only
Did they not light up
But they refused to appear

They were

They became

DEAD TIME...

And many sat
Still
To watch the silence
Waiting
But soon
The begrudged masses
(Dismissed
As only that;
Entranced by difference
Missing the point
Or even
Just plain foolish)
Clocked the ruse
And revolted
Demanding more
They liked it
They wanted it
And not
Just in defense

And soon
All the other channels
Could no longer compete

Silence

There was silence friends

For us (Against loose stuff at 4.59 on Wednesday)

2007-04-09T19:06:00.001Z

Again
It seems that my climbing this incline
Brings down
Fragments and unnecessary debris
And so
I must speak

It rains heavy hail on me
White sludge drools down windshields
Reprieve (as I’d intended previously)
Finds me
In Le Bastringue
With a pint and a cup of nuts

This writing is the motivator
Why I’m here
And of course I know that it won’t employ me
Not upon this old earth at least
Referring to the literal
Ground binding beneath my feet
Undulating at the cruise
Of bipeds and all their swine entanglement

As I walked from Republique
I remembered that I wanted to invest these words
With a panoply of objects
Each significant of some point
In a certain pattern
In front of which
Curtains could be opened and closed
And fire eating tricksters
Paraded on stage

But the circus
As such
Will not be coming to town
T H I S D A Y
And
More importantly
I have to find solid
Damn
Ground
Like that earth of undulation
Below these feet
Constructed from a healthy array
Of mutually perceptive
Synaptic freeways
Bi-ways
Bridge ways
Overpass
Cycleway
And gutter
Cleansed thoroughly
By ordered economies
Of municipal cleansers
Attendant
To harmony
Peace
And love
But for the forever
Of short term
A song at least
That incorporates this shingle
Into rise

Sirens

2007-04-09T19:05:00.000Z

Without working for days
I’m trying to get a job
And find a flat
Without the local patwa
To put me in
The right place
Always
For such a thing
As advanced doing
Or
Just plain doing period

I find myself thinking
While I’m having a piss
And this reflection
Is thinking about the image
And it’s the image
That always is
But Isn’t
Without working for days

And I was thinking
About the damned
Luscious inspiration
Of the work of others
Images made elsewhere
By artists
In magazines
So rich
Like sweets
Or chocolate mouse
Sirens
To help starve me
From mine

And I remember how
Last time I was in England
In Heffers
I thought
Don’t ever look at those magazines
Because they interfere
With the tabula rasa
Jumping in
And getting there before me

So I can only think
That as much as I’d like to jam this ship
Into that invitation
And drown meaning
With someone else's gesture
There will shortly be
A wind
That carries me
To that clarity
Where I cannot see

Bipedal slur

2007-04-09T19:02:00.000Z

It had
Become more difficult
When the stumbling
Began in earnest
Like a purposeful Gait
Some tick
Of primal atavism
Seeking reduction
To become

The mind
Curious and open
To its carriages Fresh mechanics
Spectated a dazzling new world
Where the masses
Concrete on their planes
And horizons
Rebelled
In uncertainty
Capricious and twisting
Like that other world
Where gravity meets to compromise
And orientation has been nurtured
With the grace of currents and tides

Moan 10 (another urbanisation)

2007-04-09T19:00:00.000Z

What kind
Of God damned
Smoking
Pissing excrement
Of sin is it
I ask
Screaming
Kicking
At the earth beneath;
A little builder’s dust and aggregate
Rising

To build
Warehouses and their showrooms
Of sofas
And pretentious
Plumbing appliance
At the foot of a mountain
Built in the instance
Of a million years

The van by the river

2007-04-09T18:59:00.000Z

I see by the river
A man who lives in a van
The front seat filled with shelves
And that
Not something to drive
But to live in

The Drum

2007-04-09T18:58:00.000Z

Beaten up
I depart
As long as I wanted this mess
I’ve said, “Whatever!”
A thousand times
And now my chest
Is going to burst
Like a plastic balloon
Because
I am this clockwork
Plastic toy
Tapping its little Asian made drum
Its tight little plastic
Like a layer of tissue
Taped across my tolerance

Shuffling

2007-04-09T18:56:00.000Z

The last moments
Before departure
Always seem so empty
Waiting for arrival
Always seems
So drawn out

Shuffling feet
When all is done
By way of preparation
Must be a madness
To be ahead
Of oneself like that

How can it be
Perhaps
That this time
Be outside of doing
Or this not doing
Be wasted

(Note: A narrative unfolds
An arrival
Some rendezvous
Arrangements organised
Nevertheless interrupt
Times Janus faced corruption
Accidents
Somehow segued
Unexpected
And
Without inconvenience
Take us breathing
At a steady pace)

For this or that

2007-04-09T18:51:00.000Z

There are words
And there are words that fail
But they’re all I have these words
And they fail like crippled limbs but I must walk
And so I walk
And I stumble though I mean well
And these words are only this
And that for this and that
And a voice not always my own
But skins for this or that
And they jar and fall
Like this limp
But no more or less than the handicaps suffered
By all the other limpers here and there
Who need this or that
For support and words
When you fall and crawl
Reaching out
And calling out
To one of the others
For this or that