We got bored lying on our backs in the meadow, and when it started to drizzle we decided it was time to go back to our respective homes.
It was that kind of relationship.
The reality never matched up to our expectations. We got irritable in art galleries, our noses bumped awkwardly against each other when we kissed. I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me, but neither of us was truly able to believe it, no matter how much our voices might quaver or how deeply we looked into one another’s eyes. These were tics we had learned from watching soap operas and romantic movies. In truth we had no time for each other, no time for sunsets, beaches, expensive movies, flower gardens, secluded bowers, mountain retreats, moonlight, long walks and river banks, nor any other romantic cliché we might care to mention.
It was a long time before we realised this, so determined were we to experience love as we saw it represented in films and books and television. We looked for beauty in the wrong places and tried to force our hearts to swell before sights our souls had no affinity with.
Naturally diffident, the language of a Casanova was foreign to me, and in my mouth sounded quite absurd. We found a kindof contentment in downcast eyes and faltering speech, in board games and microwave meals, in nights in front of the television. Our blood quickened with the accidental brush of elbow against flank or an unexpected flash of flesh as a jumper rode up and we discovered room for mirth and clumsiness in love. Indeed, these things became what we valued most of all. We learned to cherish our fumblings and halting speech and not to feel ashamed of the distance between us and the ideals we had held so fervently.
I liked it when her glasses steamed up over a hot mug of tea and savoured the inelegance of her dress and the slight asymmetry of her features.’
Elephants lumber up mountain trails.Victorian photographers chase fairies in landscapes bestrewn with rocks.Cockatiels escape from drawing rooms.Children fidget at dinner parties.Visitors sneak toothpicks and silver cutlery into prisons.Teenagers steal exotic plants form botanical gardens.Small animals emerge from hibernation too early and perish in the cold.
The buffalo repopulate the cities of America.Helium filled balloons slip the hands of their owners and escape into the sky.Actors in horror movies sit patiently while make-up artists turn them into ghouls and monsters.Risqué comedians get booed off stage in provincial towns.Semi-professional golfers travel the world in search of the big-break, their lives a procession of Novotels, Holiday Inns and respectable results in minor tournaments.Teenagers read books of poetry feverishly, in search of a way out.
Secret societies split up in acrimonious circumstances.Teachers with fingers stained yellow with nicotine complain bitterly of recalcitrant pupils and school inspectors.A boy gets booted out the snooker hall for extinguishing a fag on the baize in a fit of pique.Amateur bobsleigh racers squeeze ageing bodies into lycra suits.Greek poets accompany themselves on the lyre, reciting pastiches of Cavafy interspersed with dick jokes and finish by smashing plates against the lino floor.East European Goths catch infections from self-piercings administered with safety pins.
On the moon, craters fill with rainwater.
At noon the mayor mistimes the release of a hundred doves, causing the death of 67 of them, caught in the propeller of a police helicopter.Field mice are mangled by combine harvesters.A defrocked priest manufactures a Neanderthal skull with an iron arrowhead piercing it and throws the academic community into disarray.
Boy soldiers play hopscotch in a ritual enacted to regain lost innocence.Renegade zoologists teach gorillas how to make fires and the rudiments of agriculture.Earnest jazz buffs play Charlie Parker 45s to their unborn children in the womb.Creative writing teachers recite speeches from Dead Poets Society to blank looks and sniggers from their students.Fastidious medical students order a glass of water between each pint of Carling.Abandoned lovers watch TV.A violinist serenades a woman outside her bedroom window. Later, she calls the police.Poachers hew the tusks from sedated elephants.Aircraft carriers are converted into prison ships.
Mothers are publicly shamed for the crimes of delinquent children, being forced to wear sandwich boards detailing the exploits of their offspring, or have their heads dunked in the public toilets by the town citizens, depending on the seriousness of the offences.Ken Livingstone is the victim of a smear campaign, accusing him of cruelty to his newts, and hinting at perverse practises.The Conservative leader is pictured playing steel drums at a primary school in Harlesden.Children leap from couch to armchair, as the carpet is infested with crocodiles.____________________________-----
next!
Landscapes of volcanic rock and sulphurous lakes
Aristocrats fallen on hard times search for tin-openers in the Co-Op, snapping at the young salesgirl when she offers her assistance.
Shetland Islanders struggle with the ticket machines at Kings Cross station.
Catapults fling plague-corpses over the city walls.
A teenage girl picks the lettuce and tomato from her hamburger and tosses them disdainfully over her shoulder. A year later she contracts scurvy, old wounds reopening like flowers in springtime, sores gathering around the lips like blue-tits around a bird-table.
‘what you gotta understand is, to them, you’re just a number, they’ll suck your brains out and leave you in the gutter, that’s how they work, they don’t give a shit about us, they don’t give a shit about me and you.’
Homemade bombs planted in the changing rooms of TopShop exploded in a shower of nails and ball-bearings. Luckily no one was hurt, but a spangly boob tube and a pair of hipster jeans were complete write-offs. As to the perpetrator’s motive, we can only speculate.
Britain’s diplomat to Japan is sacked after too many glasses of sake at a state banquet lead him to stick his front teeth over his bottom lip, pull his eyes into a slant with his fingers, and answer‘Ah-so’ to every question addressed to him.When questioned by the press about his behaviour he declaims‘Those Orientals just can’t take a joke’
In the forthcoming series ofI’m an ex-Prime Minister Get me out of hereJohn Major has a nail hammered through his foreskin and unfortunately contracts tetanus while Margaret Thatcher is injected with morphine and mauled by feral cats.Audiences describe the look on her face as ‘priceless.’In the future the programme makers hope to use Tony Blair’s arse as a dartboard in a pub tournament._______________________----
next!
Ebony and ivy league.Guillemots and kittiwakes, billabongs and guinea pigs, foragers and pimpernelsCardinals and counterfeits, Razorbills and billygoats, wagtails and scarlet feversImpenetrable citadels, dens of iniquity, black forests and yellow fevers…
Men with the heads and hooves of goats walk through the tree-lined temple courtyardSwinging thuribles and chanting in voices deep and sombre.Exterminators in homburgs, cashmere overcoats and double breasted suits, frown, brandish clipboards, survey the palace kitchens with magnifying glass’ and looks of great concentration.‘Ha!’ one hoists a captured cockroach aloft, a triumphant gleam in his eye. The cockroach is placed in a specimen box and passed over to a colleague to be dissected, examined, classified…The home secretary confirms his reputation as a populist by bringing back public hangings. Prince Charles is cautiously enthusiastic, saying “although the move panders to mankind’s baser instincts it has inarguably served to return the town square and village green to its rightful place as shared communal space, where friendships are forged, gossip is exchanged, games are played and entertainment is shared by all.”Renegade animal activists capture vivisectionists, lock them in cages which permit very little room for movement and spend mornings squirting shampoo in their eyes, and feeding toilet cleaner directly into the bloodstream via a drip inserted into a vein in the forearm, just above the wrist,feed zoo keepers to lions and tigers, train dog show enthusiasts to sit and beg on command, shake hands and roll over, fatten farmers up with growth hormones and force feeding and slaughter them, after stunning them with an electric shock.In an interview, animal rights philosopher Peter Singer decries their tactics as ‘excessive.’In a radical new move all Muslims are to be fitted with an electronic tracking device, a near-microscopic chip inserted in the earlobe. The minister for defence claims “this is an important step in the fight against terrorism. Some will say this is indicative of a blanket prejudice against all Muslims, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. These measures will help protect innocent Muslims from unjust suspicion. Only terrorists and terrorist sympathisers have anything to fear from these devices, it is simply a case of identifying the wolves in the fold.”“Immigrats right, I don’t have a problem with them, so long as they’ve got something to offer, in the field of cooking. Indians, fine, Chinese, great and the more Thais the better, but these east European turnip munchers, waste of bloody space if you ask me.”
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next!
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next!
The vultures watched the people. Surveillance technologies. The vultures were first seen perched on the gas holders.
Icebergs sailed into the ports like trading ships. The cold came as suddenly as a break in the cloud.Dogs and carrion crows tried to reach the internal organs of bodies frozen solid. Beaks and jaws tore at flesh as hard and as smooth as bullet-proof glass.
Monuments to neglected gods spoke again, in commandments. Stones spoke. Statues spoke. We were assailed by voices, by contradictory commandments and threats. We ripped each other apart at the bidding of stones and statues which spoke in the voices of gods.
Voices from the soil and voices from the sky. Voices from the sea and voices in the wind. Lights in the sky and fissures in the earth.
Lands of black ice and silence. A cold only the dead should know. The cold of ghosts trapped between realms. Bodiless cold, an icy vacuum. Ghost ships caught in frozen seas.
What are the new taboos? What are the new tattoos? Scar tissue and 3rd degree burns.
Sad eidolon.
The temples have been rebuilt. The energies reactivated. Star satellites.
Cobalt skies. Fierce indoctrination.
Do you know what the leaders of the world have sold in exchange for their power?
Power does not come cheap. There is a body of secret wisdom, but those that teach it require total obedience.
You may meet the hierophant. You may be initiated. You may learn the hidden corpus of knowledge but you are not free to do with it what you will. You have become one of them. You have become one with them. What is power if it cannot be exercised for your own gain?
Music which stirs the heart to war. Play them the war music, for war is afoot. Play the music which will cause the blood to boil. Light the fires and have them dance. War is afoot and death is abroad. Have them dance.
Cantilever. Expose them to the indoctrination rays. Light the incense. Let the light filter through stained glass. Play the organs and have the choirboys sing. The church must go back to its roots as brainwash machine if it is to regain its corporeal power. We have lost far too much ground, but the war is not yet lost. Have the priests speak in incantatory tones. We have men of the utmost gravitas. Yes, gravitas is the priests most potent weapon. Let him move slowly, with grace and deliberation. Let his voice be deep and dark, rich and authoritative, let his cadences be like incantations. Let his commands bypass the conscious brain and lodge themselves like glass splinters in the unconscious. Let his commands become like the commands of the DNA, unfolding themselves at the pre-programmed time, like a boys voice breaks or a girls breasts start to bud.
Unctuous medicine!
The vultures became a common sight, perching on lampposts and traffic-lights. Waiting for an autumn of corpses.
Effervescent bruises. Lurid contusions. A body decorated with wounds. Scars like jewellery.
Swift intake of breath. Shock. Sweating and shaking. Electric haloes around the heads of world leaders. My halo is the proof of my probity. Follow me, for the halo is around my head and I carry the sign of your people.Dust blows. Dust storms in cities turned to desert. Dust storms of bodies turned to dust. Deserts made of bodies turned to dust in an instant. Multitudes become deserts in a single atomic second. One blinding second and all is desert.
The desert lands and the ice lands and cold vacuum of space. Territories of the lost, the defeated and dammed.
The pleasure gardens, the vales of intoxication. And through these lands move the stealers of souls, the succubae and incubi, the young girls who turn to crones at the moment of orgasm. The beautiful young men who swallow your face. The bliss which proves a pretext for the removal of your soul.
The sirens who lure you onto the rocks with voices too beautiful to bear. Pleasure is the way to trap humans. Give them bliss. Give them the bliss of the succubus and they will enslave themselves without complaint. Be a slave to pleasure. We will suck penises to extract the soul from the japs eye.. This is our highest art.There are many lands. The most dangerous are the most pleasurable. Bliss is the first sign of invasion. While you linger in rapture in the Valley of the Lotus we are bleeding you dry. We are the Kings of the Lotus and we will bleed you dry.
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Periwinkle. Punctum.
Bullwinkle. Punch-in.
Wrangle. Rankle.
Tangle. Tingle. Tumble.
Breath.
Rumble. Ramble.
Raggle-taggle. Tittle-tattle.
Bedraggled.Bedazzled.
Numerous subspecies of lemur and marmot. The territorial jousting of small birds.Herds of zebra.
Duels in Turkmenistan. Extravagant moustaches.An army of civil servants.
Rust-belt towns.Immaculate furrier.Yak herder.
Humble. Hernia. Fumble.
Feral FeudalDeferral Funeral
Fumigate.Infuriate.Infernal.
Internal.ArousalAvowal.A vowel.
A tealA towelA ternAstern
Avast.A vestApieceA pest.
Vermin.Goering.Bull ring.Bowling.Bowing.Scraping.
Lady-in-Waiting.
Stolen. Beholden. Embolden. A rodent. ArraignmentApartment. Department. Deportment. Deployment. Anointment. Appointment. Goulash. Ghoulish. Foolish. Furnace. Furnish. Thunder. Asunder. A cinder. Timber. Tumbler. Timbre. Tamper. Temper. Tundra.
Whitechapel Bell Foundry._________________________------next!
Belarus. Bellicose. Belly dance. Benidorm. Benilyn. Becotide. Lots of buildings made of reflective glass. Cruise liners which were once oil tankers or aircraft carriers. Spy satellites. Bugging devices. Security breach.Bunions. Bullion. Bouillon. Bunyan. Bunyip. Recreational crime.
In a new and daring scheme poor countries are to be paid to fight wars for rich countries. The Minister for Defence, Sir Anthony Montague said, in a press conference this morning “We’ll supply arms and other essentials of course, and rest assured all equipment will be of the very highest quality. We will also provide training and ensure all wars are fought fairly and within the boundaries of the Geneva Convention. All the third world need contribute is manpower. These are countries already accustomed to war and hardship and for them the cost of human life is cheap. Believe me when I say we’re paying well over the odds.” It’s one of those rare and exemplary deals in which each side profits, not least because many poor countries have a chronic problem with overpopulation. As well as providing jobs and a much needed boost to failing economies, population levels will be drastically reduced meaning more food, jobs and housing for the survivors. In addition to providing employment aid will be increased to all participating nations.Never again need we be faced with sobbing mothers or maimed soldiers on our television screens. We needn’t worry about our young men being trained to be killers or the threat of bombs falling on our cities. The blood will no longer be on our hands, we’ll subcontract it.Poor countries provide the solution for a number of the developed world’s most pressing problems. Take waste for instance, whether it be industrial, radioactive or simply household. Many of our landfill sites are already full to bursting and strict anti-pollution laws have tied the hands of some of our biggest corporations. No problem. Simply pay the poor nations to process it. Or what about overcrowded prisons? Let Africa have our criminals, they’d jump at the chance if we offered the right economic inducements. What applies to waste and criminals applies equally to the refugee crisis. No problem is insolvable; it just requires a little touch of the visionary. In fact, why should we do anything? Those people can run our transport system, supply and distribute our food, police our streets, staff our hospitals, maintain our sewage works, teach our children, work in the service and hospitality industries, cook, clean, sell, build, manufacture and so on, leaving us free to dedicate ourselves solely to governing and the culture industries. All great civilizations were built on such foundations.Buzzards. Bustards. Venal. Vestal. Vested. Vichy. Velodrome. VATICIDE!____________________________---
next!
picalo. picador. pickaninny.pick. puck. peck. peek. pack. pock. pox.keel. cale. coal. cool. coo. coup. coot. cleat.clash. clack. clique. cleave. clan. clap. clog. clod. cloth.kith. kin. kip. pith. puff. pique. pec.
children unable to procure drugs have been hurling themselves in Londons canals in the hope of contracting a new strain of Wiles disease said to cause fevers, night sweats, giddiness, disorientation and astonishingly vivid hallucinations.
The Express have been doing a phone in should refugees be sterilised before becoming eligible for benefits yes or not sure? but that's not really news..._______________________-----
next!We’ve always been an Aldershot family, as long as records go back’
‘The oldest things in the world cease to act as agents, silently retreating into millennia of memories.Memories not just of men, their kings and queens, heroes, leaders and rebels…Their wars, revolts and revolutions, times of plenty and times of poverty, moving from victory to defeat and back again, bountiful harvests and failed harvests, strong leaders and weak leaders, the births and deaths of religions, beliefs, scientific theories, superstitions, rituals, bloodlines, cities, civilizations, languages…Memories not just of the forebears and forerunners of man, the bipedal apes, the evolutionary dead-ends and giant leaps, the extinction of species, mutations in DNA, forests turning to deserts, oceans to forests, deserts into citiesBut memories of creaking slow-moving ice giants, memories of the land separated from the sea, memories of primordial chaos, memories of the truth of every cosmology/’G.A Moore.
The mur mur
‘Those images which won’t form, which coquettishly elude the gaze of the mind’s eye, which remain indefinite and tremulous , we sense their presence, teasing, at the edge of vision .The same sirens have driven great men to madness, as, inflamed with a terrible passion they seek follow the song to its source.’A.C. Pendrake.
of a fountain in a tube station.In the morning the fields are covered with frost.
‘Completely unaware of my body and any sense of self, time or place, auditory, tactile and visual hallucinations of dazzling detail and lustre filled the whole of my consciousness. I drifted through the plains of space, warm and bathed in light and colour. Planets and stars hove into view and I was buffeted by competing gravitational fields. There was music, music which was pure sensation, the ears, erogenous zones tickled by air molecules. Whenever I think of the music I heard then and I think of it often, I feel an ache of deep loss and sadness, so far away does that beauty seem to me now, the gates of paradise opened, and then closed again, forever. Bliss-struck, sweet waves of bliss racked me and all I saw and heard was just an expression of that bliss, that feeling of a pleasure almost too great to bear.’Greg, acid casualty.
‘Memories can come to seem like locked rooms and the experiences and sensations we associate with these memories can be thought of as locked up inside these rooms alongside the events themselves.’
BB Belle.
Nightfires which make silhouettes of us all. Frightened birds seek the sky.________________________----
next!
a romance.
in summer, idling away the lengthened days by the fountain in Victoria Park. Cassandra would catch the swans by their necks, and would break them, almost delicately. Indeed, her grace and economy of movement is what intitally attracted me to her. her neck is itself swanlike.
then she nicked a young boy's frisbee and tossed it into the branches of an extremley tall tree. i laughed along with her, but uneasily. her sense of humour is cruel and she has little sense of where the boundaries lie.
and yet, she sings so beautifully. do you what song she sang to me that day? she sang me the song about Skye and bonnie Prince Charlie. she teased me and said i liked to dress up as a girl too. it did needle me, for i feel she is constantly casting aspersions on my masculinity. it makes me unsure of myself. before with girls i always felt in control, they looked up to me, reassured by my easy dominance, but she, she has emasculated me.
sometimes she laughs when we make love, or does things i'm not comfortable with, like sticks a finger up my arse when i'm going for it, or, without warning, yanks at a clump of pubic hair, squeezes my balls, or lets her teeth sink into my cock, causing me to yell in pain.
it's worst of all when her friends come round. i feel as if they all know something compromising about me, as if they are all secretly sharing a joke at my expense. encouraged by their cackles of glee she devises more and more elaborate ways to humiliate me. she makes jokes about the size of my organ and my inadequacy benaeath the sheets. she mocks my job, my income and my prospects. i don't know how much i can take.
sometimes she can be gentle and will coax intimacies and confessions from me. she encourgaes me to share my feelings, but when i confess weakness or reveal my vulnerabilty she turns on me at once and accuses me of effeminancy. she will not hesitate to use information gleaned from our most intimate moments together against me, bringing it up in front of my work colleagues and other people i feel it is important maintain face with.
my mother says i look much thinner ever since i starting seeing her. it's true, i look a mess. she's trying to take my pride, she's trying to destroy me. friends tell me to leave her but they don't understand. they don't understand how i'm bound to her, how i'm dependant on her, addicted to her. i would endure any torment to watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, to see that soft ring of bellyflesh spill ever so slightly over the top of her trousers, to see a flash of pale ankle between sock and trouser cuff. these are the things i live for. to be a worm in the soil she treads on would make my heart sing._________________________----
next!
‘of course they remain the scrawlings of dilettantes and dabblers, a product of a deep-rooted self-delusion’
‘mawkish, over-egged, impoverished.’
‘intellectually bankrupt. Politically unengaged. Insipid. Sentimental tosh of the most contemptible kind.’
Hundreds of Chinese migrants try to look inconspicuous, waiting, at 6 in the morning on the edges of Hackney marshes, waiting to be commissioned to sell pirate DVDs, teddy bears and plastic toys which flout EU safety regulations, handheld electric whisks, packs of pornographic playing cards, bootleg CDs, battery powered pendants with flashing bulbs…
‘One of them Kosovos come up to me the other day you know. Leather jacket, mobile phone, all gold on him, and he was asking for money you know! I couldn’t believe it! They must have some type of scam running. They all got bare money’
the owners of rag trade sweatshops. Smugglers of illegal immigrants. Men selling women to other men in East End pubs.Battery farms in which pigs are kept, upside down, legs thrust through holes in the tops of the cages. Hens with clipped beaks, legs cut off at the ankle, wings stapled to their flanks. Gorillas dressed as bell boys in expensive hotels. Cows with the names and addresses of brothels branded in huge letters on their sides, left to roam the streets as mobile hoardings. A sedated bull charges woozily towards the matador who blinds him with a skilful thrust to the eye. OLE!
Needlepoint.
A lighthouse keeper teaches himself Russian long into the early hours of the morning.A slender schoolboy lifts dumbbells, face red, veins bursting from the temples, arms quaking with the strain, goaded on by the hope of one day humiliating his tormentors. A woman rubs at her verruca with a pumice stone, squeezes the blackheads on her nose, shaves the hair from her armpits…
‘don’t phone my phone again you slag. When I come round your yard tomorrow I want head, and I’m bringing my mate with me.’
Knitting patterns.
Penguins languish in concrete pens, sliding listlessly down the slopes into lukewarm water.Some chimpanzees masturbate incessantly, while others beat their head against the walls, in the hope of dashing out their brains. Females offer swollen rumps to the dominant males who just sit there, staring into space.
The television whispers to us in our lonelieness, promises us companionship, and in our desperation we sit with it, for hours we gaze into it until to switch it off seems saying goodbye to a lover. We sit there before a cold grey screen for a while, hugging our knees to our chest, feeling sad.
Young girls, raised from birth in laboratories are force fed junk food in government experiments, ballooning in size till their legs are unable to support the weight of their bodies.
Frolic.
The electronic tag triggers an alarm if the curfew is broken. The subject must adhere to a strict timetable designed to inculcate discipline and obedience. The subject is woken at a regular hour, must eat a prescribed breakfast at a prescribed time, must exercise all major muscle groups for a period of one and a half hours, must socialise with friends chosen for him for this purpose for a period of 2 hours, must complete an intellectual challenge daily, chosen according to his mental ability, a problem of mental arithmetic, a cryptic crossword, a translation of a poem from a foreign language or some other such task, must spend time alone with his thoughts, must go outside and commune with an element of nature, be it a river, a hill, a meadow, must nurture his creativity through approved outlets, the painting of picturesque landscapes in watercolour or the composition of love songs on an acoustic guitar (these are to be chaste and heterosexual)…
Tomboys play kickups in an empty car-park till the sun begins to set and the encroaching gloom makes it difficult to see the ball.
A boy who’s never been in love composes love poetry
‘how do I love you? Let me count the ways. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, no, I grow tired, there are too many ways’
random acts of violence. Eruptions of the repressed. Explosions of real bombs. Real deaths. Real grief.
Tummyrot.
An Indian saint, penis sellotaped to thigh so it can never rise erect, feeding on sunlight and dirt, a stick held in his left hand to beat away any woman who dares approach, a stick in his left hand to beat away worshippers and curiosity seekers.
A child captures a pigeon and methodically strips it of every feather before setting it free.
Rainwater collects in bomb craters, miniature lakes for boys to launch paper boats upon.Children collect shrapnel, helmets, trophies from fallen aeroplanes, pieces of fuselage, a propeller, instruments to measure speed or altitude, chase each other with guns from fallen soldiers, dare each other to take shortcuts through minefields.
The execution of the king. A sad looking head in a basket.
A bruise, brown, outlined in purple, spreads across a thigh.
‘I have to sort of watch my back round this area now, cos some boy tried to jack my phone just last night so I kicked the shit out of him, badly, but if I see him the next time, and he’s got boys with him, I’m gonna have to fucking run hard.’
Some man from the caryard said he’s give me a tenner if I bring him some alloys…
Cycles of violence, ever escalating.Sores. Lesions. Wounds. Fractures. Internal bleeding.
Hoods pulled up, scarves cover faces. Knives tucked into waistbands. Cudgels, lengths of chain, claw hammers, baseball bats, iron bars, sharpened screwdrivers, bottles concealed under jackets.
Heroin addicts dreaming of a complete retreat into mental space, a way to lock the door behind them.
Charlatans, harridans and mountebanks.
A boy catches himself gazing at another mans chest.Feels guilty admiring the curve of a calf muscle.A long fingernail raked across a cheek.
A naked moon._________________________----

hummingbirds form huge iridescent swarms like locusts and decimate suburban gardens.In a hotel which is a front for other, more nefarious businesses, chefs cook breakfasts, fry bacon, eggs and tomatoes, heat the beans and toast the bread, while kitchen staff put out cereal and croissants, milk, sugar, little pads of butter, jam and marmalade. receptionists sit by telephones in huge ornate lobbies, staring at the chandeliers, maids clean the rooms and change the beds daily, placing a foil-wrapped chocolate under every pillow, a man plays the piano in the lounge bar of an evening, maintenance men change light-bulbs and fix drinks machines, faulty kettles and trouser presses, waiters loiter menacingly round tables like vultures above a dying ox, doormen in embroidered overcoats wait outside while just inside an army of porters wait like substitutes in a football game, and yet, every room is empty. the hotel has never had a guest.florists gather flowers from graves and arrange them into wedding bouquets.Aboard a cruise-liner, passengers mutiny and force the captain to remain in the West Indies for 5 years while police negotiate with the ring-leaders.Galaxies collide like continents. In zoos and wildlife parks across the world, animals, long extinct in the wild, refuse their food and sit staring listlessly into space. All eventually die mysterious deaths. Their hearts simply stop beating.

Nebulous stanchions, expansions and contractions, heart-sighs and starbeams,Heart-speared and swooning, stuck with arrow and moonspear.Here now, inhaling and exhaling, drifting through starfields, on peak and precipice,On mountain-top to overlook,
Dense expanses of limitless space, immensities and prodigies,dark, compacted infinity.Fiery nebulas, stellar implosions, the spiralling of vast orbs, flaring comets…
Shivering in dark valleys while lights tremble, twist and spiral like smoke in a sunbeam.
Expansion, outreaching,Space, the star forest, fluid light moving through heavy darkness
Breathing, heart-bud opening,Skin peeled back, naked nerves flare and tremble, church with no roof but the sky._________________________________-
Crows circling the seminary,Starbeams and snowflakes, a thousand tiny deaths.Expirations.
Light which is white and cold. Quite pitiless.A brilliant fire burning with a cold light.
Circuitry. Symmetry. Cemetery.Solitary.In thick, dark nightCrepuscular mountain, crabbed and sinewy, with trees, hunched in the rocky scree, with no fruit in the branches but crows.Dwarfed, limbs tormented, knotted, twisted and deformed, forced into contortions, underwind, clinging to rockface. A strength born under duress.
Willows stroke your faceLight pours through the holes in the skull.
Lust-led, and possessedBorne along on swollen riversOn floodwaters carried, half-conscious, fearful and exultant, trusting and not trusting,
Blind tarantulaSharkhead nebula
Copper canal. Copper sky. Dead conduit.Copper conduit under dead sky.
Empty,Minded cosmosGrandiloquent and casually dishonest.
Torpid purgatoryBlank fathoms. Compressed air.A thick and suffocating silence.A feeling that gravity had increased, the limbs felt heavier, the body fatigued, the nerves leaden. A smaller store of energy from which to draw. Air like sawdust.
Men grown pinched and distrustful. Guarded.
A coded language of intimation and suggestion,The insult, the taunt or threat, the expression of contempt and disgust, the dismissal, disapproval, censure, hate,Coded into small talk, a subtext of hidden meanings, the id of any conversationCruel, barbed and violent, hissing and scratching beneath the surface of polite conversation.
Paranoia tunnels. Doubt tunnels. Cave complexes of fears and social anxieties.___________________________-----
Emeraldine meadows, and streams bell-likeWoozy pastures, hills and scything valleys, grass squirming beneath bare feet, courting butterflys and birdsong, cicadas, the soft breathing of woods and meadows.Perfect summers. Lolling daydreams in haystack shadows. Warm, shimmering Arcadys.
In faultless love, lamb-like, gambolling on summer pastures, trysts in fields vivid with sunlight and wildflower, playful kisses under shady oak and a race to crest the green hill.Happyville! We made it!
And down the hill walk to Happyville, hand in hand, through streets in early evening.
The sun setting, the shops shutting and the cats purring on the porches.Gentle evening. One evening in Happyville. We can never return here/________________________________--
Time, a trickle of treacle.Eye in the hand.Lights in the skyAscend!
Blood of the saints!Toenails and beard clippings. Earwax and phlegm.Win them all! Relics of the Holy Saints! Most revered and Sacrified!A millstream. Tombola. Old women in coloured tights. Ginger cake and currant buns.Betwixt hell and heaven, not deserving of either.
Church like a dog, threatening, with shoulder squared.cobweb of shadows on white stone portico.
Strange attractor, broiling seaGrotto of expansions and contractions.Fleshpot. Bilious vice.A stormer of fortresses. Dark-centered explosions.Lust led him by the nose, an accomplice, and willing tooAiding and abetting.
Adrift on a strange ocean. Or pond in municipal park.Swamp of illusions. Fervid hopes and fears both, casting strange figures against the sky.Arabesques and curlicles. Minatory engines. Sound of thunder and angels.Impossible promisesSpinning madalas. The opening lotus. Peacock. Eagle. Owl.Flowering turbines. Wheels turning. A-spin. Horrifying wheel.A-turning.Rolling pitilessly.
A traitors meeting in the pine forest. Where moss muffles the footfalls and the treetops blot out the moon.
A fox wriggles out into the night, den beneath a gravestone.
coral. minarets. smog.Don’t betray the desire.
Here, the great dining hall.Hall of cobwebs and dim chandeliers.Banquets of medlars, snuff and wax fruit. A ghost sits silently in the corner.A cold wind stumbles through the room like a drunk, knocking objects from the table, disturbing the bats.Fog rises in the dining hall. Silver, moonlike in the fog.The mounted head of a stag looks out over the fog. Two glass eyes.Two mice, giddy with love, run and leap across the floors, skidding on marble, tiny paws on marble floors, scrabbling for grip.And furniture burns in the fireplace. Things are not as they were.
Fire on Moon Beach. Orange star-embers fading on black sand sky.
Unattainable.
Blind swarming terror.Keening ice. The sound of icebergs clashing and splintering.A descent into polar caverns. Pillars, bridges and arches of ice. Lifeless, unable to support life.Floating, a frozen music, ice chimes and polar winds, grief of great beauty, aching, beauties which do not belong to us, music not for our ears. Beauty of eternities and the communications of stars, migrating winds, glaciers and of all those who die too young.
Trains of Bedouins.Begone!Legal secretaries in pencil skirts.
Ice age, Venerable Icybeard.Heart- stone entangled by ivy, like a gravestone.Frost in his beard and eyelashes.
Contraction. Indwelling, gathering inwards.Tiny point of light. Ball of impossibly concentrated matter. Atom containing all potentialities. All possibilities. World-seed. Progenitor of all things.The earth’s core. Centre from which all path radiate.A fruitful silence.
Twinkling streets. Dusky. Heartsore.Walk, through the noise of traffic and drunkenness, in a tunnel of silence.Lights twinkle.
_______________________________________-----next!
The hands of Gladstone's statue in Bow have been painted red.The missing hand of William Booth's statue has been replaced.___________Whole buildings go missing for weeks. Churches disappear only to return, two streets down, as nothing has happened. In their old location, a cash and carry, or a community centre, or a Turkish cafe.No one notices. Minds are altered alongside reality. Memory mutuates alongside reality.
'Excuse me sir, do you know where St. Kilda's church is?''Just round the corner boss, take the first left onto Whey Street and you'll see it, opposite the video shop.''Has it always been there?'Long as I've been around mate, be a job to move it'
I consult maps, yellowing A-Zs with pages missing, not one contradicts the present reality. Not one remembers.Reality becomes capricious. Devilish. Turned from frozen solid to liquid. Fluid, constantly in motion.
The changes become more disturbing. The bodies of family members are switched for those of former American presidents, matinee idols, heavyweight boxers, opera singers, Arabian princesses, pop stars, war heroes, emininent historians, historical personages...
Personalitys transplantedintroverts turn extrovert, boors become charmers, puritans rouesmy mothers voice from my father's mouth, friends become parents to their parents, breastfeed thri mothers, scold their fathers
Reality has melted. There are no more boundaries.
Here, an old battlefield. Where the battle still rages while we, denizens of a later time period, wander past, unseen and unscathed.
Crows turn to swans mid-wingbeat, from swans to sparrows, sparrows to parakeets
Radios broadcast your secrets. In the railway station your fears and fantasies are announced over the loudhailer.
Beautiful Zion.Raptures overcome passers-by like epilieptic fits. There is nothing you can do to help them. They are in ecstasy.Look! There's one. A woman in a grey trouser suit and patent leather pumps, writhing in a puddle, moaning like St. Theresa.Another, a young man, clinging to a lamppost for support, speaking in tongues, gibberish to me an you.Visions of your life after death, roiling in hellfire. Prodded by the devils pitchfork.
Here is a dreamer. He is asleep and yet, here he is, living out his dream before us. He is with a beautiful Jpanese girl. They are both naked. It would be impossible to speak to either of them, the dreamer or the dreamed, as they wait for the traffic lights to change.He has a dream cock, huge and heavy.
"We shall suggest that it was on the basis of this exquisite vulnerability that the unreal man became so adept at self-concealment. He learned to cry when he was amused and to smile when he was sad. He forwned his approval and applauded his displeasure. 'All that you see is not me,' he says to himself. But only in and through all that we see can he be anyone (in reality)If these actions are not his real self, he is unreal, wholly symbolical and equivocal; a purely virtual, potetential, imaginary person, a mythical man; nothing 'really ' If then, he stops pretending to be what he is not, and steps out as the person he has come to be, he emerges as a Christ, or as a ghost, but not as a man: by existing with no body he is no-body."R.D Laing. The Divided Self.
Roads silvered by the sun. Roads which look like rivers.spires of spun glass. steeples of pig iron._______________There are many of us. Empty, all of us empty. There is nothing within. We have nothing inside to give expression to. Nothing to react to events. No desires to guide action. No goal to reach for. Pure neutrality.Our social selves are constructs, elaborate performances. Memory we have, but this is just a recording device, a mental log. Experience leaves no trace on us. We are not changed. We do not learn. We do no grow, do not hurt or heal, do not become wise, cynical, bitter or mellow as we age, no there is nothing, a vacuum, the purest vacuum.Soul Snatchers.
People are not what they seem to be.spies. spies of government, spies of shadow governments, opposistion parties and resistance movements. Spies of foregin govrnments and foregin resistance movements, spies of pressure groups and campaigners, spies of companies and corporations, spies of your rivals and competitors, infiltrators, plants, fomentors and antagonists, ulterior motives, plotters and conspirators, tabloid hacks setting up a sting, creating news where none exists, a honeed trap, actors rehearsing roles, investigative journalists, practical jokers, undercover agents and double agents, anthropolgists conducting field work, love-bombing cultists seeking recruits, terrorists on a test run, miltary surveillance, secret police so secret you never knew even existed, manipulators and hypnotists, market researchers, confidence tricksters and conmen, charlatans and hucksters, snakeoil salesmen, fraudsters and forgers, identity theives snatching the names of dead children, actors employed to advance the views of political parties, pressure groups, corporations, religions, empolyed to promote bars and club nights, churches, religions, gurus, comedians, paperback writer'I simply couldn't put it down''Everyone's going to Chantilly Lace this evening''Jesus changed my life'My chiropodist is simply wonderful, he inspires me, yes, William Gull, Penury Street''I only drink Vanderbilt'___________roads silvered by the sun.sparrows in the hedgerows.gutter rattling with pearls and rubies-----------------___________________________
next!
there is a railway bridge in Poplar which bears one of London's last remaining assertions of G. Davis' innocence. G. DAVIS IS INNOCENTin the classic style, white paint on dark brick, applied with a thick paintbrush, not an aerosol can.Time is passing too quickly, perpetual present immersed in the floodwaters. nothing left.the old woman said'they used to sweep the streets everyday, the street-sweepers''not now, they don't have time to do anything anymore'her husband said.
G. DAVIS IS INNOCENT.like the last leaf on a winter treelike a chimneystack above the floodwater
Time is the rate of events. Time moves fastest where the pace and the concentration of events is at its greatest. and so we shelter a while by the rivers, where the water moves slowly, for now.a heron on a peninsula of mud, surrounded by a retinue of seagulls.fungus, pushes feelers out into the sunlight, from deep underground, tests the october air, sends messages back undergoundbut all of this is temporoary, refugee camp for the out-of-time, on the borders the bulldozers are waitingredevelopment, tear it down, reintergrate it into the timestream, nothing can be allowed to escape the floodwatersall will be swept along
sea of the perpetual present
_____sentimental tosh, reactionary rubbish.
music drifts like smoke from a nearby building site. i can see no workers on the building site. it is gospel musicbeautiful Zion the woman sings
the demolition crews are demolishing your past.see the hauliers trucks? rumbling procession of hauliers trucks-they are taking away the world you knew.what will they build in its place?mirrored cage. rpison with mirrored walls. sham infinity._________last night I passed a man sitting on a bollard in Ilford. His arms were outstreched, palms open towards heaven, beseeching. He did not appear to be mad, drunk or drugged.Who does he pray to? What does he pray for?He has made the street into a temple and talks to gods alongside the rushhour traffic.
queasy portents.a cockatoo falls from a tree as i walk past, lands on the wet asphalt by my feet. it cannot fly. it shuffles away, too slow to escape any potential predator. clucking forlornly. knowing its fate. a pochahontas. dying in an english autumn.
a young blonde woman in a make-up mask picks up a copy of the Polska GazettaPolish language only-Don't bother if you can't read Polish!from outside the Swan.
Further up the road, repeat offenders smoke Mayfairs outside the youth court.this is very sad.could any of us, while still children have foreseen this, tawdry future?the office workers behind panels of glass, worlds shrunk to the size of a computer screen. The security guards, alone behind CEO sized desks, watching the world through an array of CTTV monitors. black slacks, black leather shoes, black sweaters with epaulettes and company insignia.How all our worlds would shrink to the endless repition of a limited number of actions, gestures and phrases. The days have become indistinguishable, nights and weekends as predictable and as chorelike as the time we spend at work. tilting a pintglass, telelvisn screen buzzing, dedicated to sedation, to not feeling, to not living, anything not to live, not to feel, not to hurt or hope, trips from sofa to toilet and back again. trips from sofa to fridge to microwave, all we ask is to be left in our comas, unconcsious, leave me unconcious, don't break the routine, the repition of movements which have become instinctive, fingers on a keyboard, journey from home to work, journey from fridge to microwaveconversations we've had a hundred times before, that we know by heart like an actors lines, like a salesmans patter, all connection between word and thought severed, stock phrases, stock attitudes and opinions, recycled jokes, faux outrage and false laughter, a worldview foisted on us by parents and peerseverything has already been decidedmy heart is broken.______walking along a path which follows the course of a dead river I see the distinctive becasue unbranded carrier bags of off-licenses and mini-marts hanging from the bushes and the branches of trees like the banners of a defeated army, limp and ragged. Blue usually, though sometimes with a blue and white stripe.later past a cafe, front page of the Daily MailA CHARTER FOR PROMISCUITY
the mannequins in the windows of the Whitechapel rag trade outlets are as damaged and disparate as the people who walk past them. Polysytrene heads with scars like knife wounds, white women with 1050s hairstyles, makeup and stern expressions, resplendent in sequinned saris, men with moustaches and goatee beards drawn on in black marker pen, life sized baby dolls dressed in suits two sizes too big, vogueing dummies from the 1980s strike a pose in cheap leather jackets and hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with logos for unknown brandsshop assistants dress them, pulling trousers over stiff limbs, like an orderly would dress an incontinent pensioner in a nursing home.a balck ladybird on the windowframe. two red dots, with two black dots in the centre like pupils in an eye.a yellow ladybird with white spots.a ladybird drowning in a cats drinking water.cheated of our inheritance.the walls are closing in.__________________________________-----next!
Mongoose attack! Metallic sound. An eyelash brushing against a cheek/ A group of pubescent majorettes in sequinned leotards join a funeral cortège. Foul medicine. Blasphemers! Glass femurs. Oracular pronouncements. Shopping lists scrawled on vellum. The junkies have found out about our park. You hear them rustling away in the bushes at night. Nordic apparition. A football match in a disused aerodrome. Crickets sang and it sounded like the voice of the dry grasses. Leaves ran in circles at the wind’s behest. Trees sang with the voices of birds. The underside of a leaf is stitched like skin. A tendril of a vine wrapped twice around branch. A map of the Bow Backs. a rainbow and a volcano 6 androgynous theatre ushers visit a nightclub still wearing their faintly militaristic uniforms, navy blue with gold trim, and dance till dawn in perfect, robotic synchronicity. A bench looking out to sea.__________________-------next!
‘Tedious. This representing yourself, desperate to get it right, as if you could.’ Iain Sinclair Salman Rushdie snogging Helena Bonham Carter in the girls toilets. A volcano rising from a boiling sea. The sky is black with ash, the sun blotted out. Somewhere else, something else happens. One moment of time- a multitude of events, a tumult of existences. summer and winter, night and day, birth and death health and sickness, wealth and destitution contained in the one moment, collapsed into one moment The whole of time in a fragment of time. A tree throws supplicant branches into the air. Ghost winds. A tree draped with a gossamer veil. Spider nests. A birds nest fallen behind the conifers. Inside, three turquoise eggs. The wet road reflects the blue sky, making it look like a river. Tulip fields in the evening, petals as garish as the sunset. Dandelions on a football pitch. A canal clogged with water-lilies. Ear nuzzled by a coquettish breeze. Wrought-iron staircases. Desert pilgrimage. A dog flung into the air by a hurricane. Film school students filming for their graduation project at the dog track. An Englishman smokes a cigarette in Singapore. His pink shirt is damp with sweat. His face is red and coated with a film of sweat. A woman walks past, he straightens his back, sucks in his gut. Steel sky. Bellicose cloud. Webs of discord. A clap of thunder- And the rain redoubles its efforts Like shop-workers when the manager walks in. Fireworks which never explode and fall to earth Which get lodged in the sky and become stars. Fracture of the fibula. Black holes inhaling nebulae. Blacksmiths making souvenir horseshoes in a mock 17th century village. Moneyed entrepreneurs with an eye for the ladies- pool parties in Malibu beach-houses, Caribbean sojourns in luxury yachts. Men with straggly white hairs protruding from walnut skin, man breasts drooping petulantly, dainty cocktail glass in a ham like fist. A slew of swallows, the air excited. Ungodly farrago. Travellers from the Antipodes, testing narcolepsy drugs for money in a London clinic. Nettle rash. A family picnic in Hampstead Heath is interrupted by Tolkein enthusiasts re-enacting the final battle from Lord of the Rings. In a moment of overexcitement an orc grabs a bottle of elderflower wine and brings it crashing down on poor Frodo’s head.
_________________________-----next!
sulphur belchesthe hills are slagheaps and smouldering rubbish pilesbirds are brought down by the black smoke, sententious headmasterscough up maxims, suck lozenges, impersonante partridges, forlorn chamber maidsmake daisy chainssing pop songs through a cardboard tube, dance with a broomlandlords of provincial pubs across the countryreenact notable suicidesvan gough, chatterton, plathleaving brains, blood and vomit across public bars, florid suicide notes pinned to dart boardsphosphorus leaks, spilled beerboys choked by a symbolic umbilical cordermine encrusted with gravy and egg yolk, glamour and squalor holding handsa fox in a trap gnaws off his own lega girl in a knee-length skirt, walks acorss hot pavement, calves quiver at every footfallheart removed with an obsidian bladeprobation officers taking early retirement, moving to Swindon, buying a place with a gardenhouse needs a little bit of work doing to it, plus some new carpets and a coat of paintplanes explode, everything happens simultaneously, in one eternal momentbit-part actors bitching offstageclerks, poets, abbatoir workers, train drivers, trade union treasuers, karate instructorsbridesmaids, forklift operators, truck driversshop keepers, waiters and barmaidsall of us, ants gathering food, obeying impulses, following pheremones, without the will or means for changing anythingbound by the social glue, held in place, even the unemployed, paid to be idleare working for the good of society, or at least, help it to functionwhat does good mean in this context?every pyramid needs its base if it wants to avoid being toppledevery pecking order needs one bruised bird with no one to peckpeople, almost without a physical presencebarely here, we, people of strawso aware of our own transciencelook out over landscapes that do not and will never belong to uswe climb these foreign moutainslegs weary but obidient, following the stony path to the summitwhen, finally, we reach the top, we weep, for as high as we arewe still cannot see our homeland.we are not blind to the beauty of this world, but it is a beauty which digs into our flesh like thorns and bramblesrivers, enormous trees, mountains, gleaming, terrible citieswe do not cover our eyes or seek to deny any of the wonders before usbut will never feel free to pluck the flowers from the soil.there were never ours to pick.molten rocks, gold twinkling at the bottom of the stream, anemones and constellationsformica worktops, cathderel spiresartifical waterfalls in shopping malls, gunfire on suburban streetspottery, fumigation, oh, fulminating whalesriches beyond comparebut not to share, no map without bordersno object without its owner or idea without its patenteven the coding of your dna, or the colour of your eyesslow funeral march, the world all in step, marching towards its own burialand no one sheds a single tear, only a child or an idiot would bemoan the inevitablestand in the way of the incoming tide, as if any authority bestowed by man could stop the searabid dogs rattle fences, children steal motorbikes, tourists gored by spanish bullsthrow stones at birdsnests, fill in foxholes, set fire to anthillspiss on a sleeping trampfrom here to gravesendpast the planets, swim between stars, swallow suns, race cometscome home, repeat the same mistakes all over againlose and lose againsweet nothinglapped by zephyrs, whispered secrets to tombstones, threw entrails to gullswrestled for posession of your own soul, submitteddidn't even carefuck itsat outside till morning came and couldn't slough off singave upwent to seed'REBORN-and, like the falling leaf, the WIND IS MY WILL'endless, absurd cyclehope and despair, illusion and disillusion, moribund heartwith no room left for fear, what have we got to lose?__________________________________________-----next!
This man was made redundant 6 months ago and has been unable to find another job. He makes anonymous calls to the managing directors and shareholders of his old firm, night after night, sobbing down the phone until he’s hung up on.
Another man stalks a children’s televisions presenter. He sends her things he’s made. Things he thinks she’d like; sock puppets, potato-print paintings, fairy cakes and little figures made from pipe-cleaners.
What happens when love lacks an outlet?
A man watches children in a playground from his bedroom window.
Another man coaches an under-12s football team in Barking.
A man writes love letters to film stars. Never sends them. A drawer in a desk, full of them.
A basement full of mannequins.A man collects paper doilies to remember his dead mother by.
Another collects porcelain dolls.
Men whispering to tombstones.
crying.
Men waking up with a terrible sense of emptiness as they realise they were only dreaming. It was only a dream!
Packs of boys, drunk on lager, chanting football songs in unison, staggering down high streets leering at girls and going home alone.
A young boy in a big city charting the stars with the aid of an old book on astronomy, and feeling cheated when he realises how many are missing from the sky, usurped by the electric lights or drowned in the smog.
A tiger in the zoo.
Or another boy trying to discover the secret for transforming life.
Trying to find something which would make life worth the living.#
As if concentrating hard enough could impel the earth to relinquish its secrets.Otherwise-how to escape?Cut a hole in the net large enough to slide
Don’t want anyone else’s lonely eyes boring into meDon’t want to feel the pressure of anyone else’s yearning, the weight of their disappointments
Every night that couple walk past me, I always say hello and he says hello in return, but she just raises her head momentarily and gives me the briefest and shyest of smiles. She holds herself as if apologising for her very presence.
There’s something wrong there.
Don’t hurt yourself.
Sung to sleep by television voices
Men who can’t sleep staring out at the traffic going past the window like a lighthouse keeper watching waves._____________________________-----
next!

faith expands-doubt contracts.(the chamber-outside-of-time)
Vertebrae.Vatic spheres.Vaulted forests.
Ganymede. Runnymede.
Turbulent poltergeist.
Galatassary. Luminary. Radiant spasm.
Numinous song.Unstable paradox.
Garrulous.
Endoscope.Ceremonious oration.Goetic trance.
(The chamber-outside-time.)
The chamber-outside-time is circular.In the middle of the room is a vision-bowl.Wraith-like vapours rise from the vision-bowl.There are pillows and divans surrounding the vision-bowl. The room is luxurious, opulent but not overbearingly so.To look into the vision bowl is to become transfixed by its visions.To become transfixed by the visions is to be incarnate. Within space-time.If, by some act of ferocious will or magical force a person manages to tear his gaze from the vision-bowl he will find himself back in the chamber-outside-time.
Mongol horde.Forest on fire.Détente.
How to keep life new. How to keep it from petrifying.Nectarine.The eyes cloud over. The sense clogged. How to prevent this.What act of mental alchemy. Unicorn.
Dog-rose dawn.See tenderly.To be tender,Without sentimentality.
Tender as moonbeams.
Gods fighting in heaven,Send their followers to battle on earth.
Monastic time.Heron on the riverbank.Runcorn. Rubicon. Parsimonious adventurer.
To love.Cherish.Seed of loveHeart-openings.
Ragged sunbeam
Grace. I believe in you.Walk with me.Unconscious, lumbering giants.
Chimes of the heart,Immemorial fire.
Leave it behind.Carry on.There is no return.Under the banyan tree.
How is itThat what once gave such simple joyIs sullied?Corrupted regions of the heart.So that what once nourishedPoisons?
Dead man.Foxgloves sprout from his chest.
Doubt chokes our delight.Defiles our joys.
This process, distinct and certain enough to be law, stated in an elegant equation.
Strangled joys, doubt, fear, questioningMake a dark labyrinth of mindBlot out the light.
How to live?In graceThis, simple benedictionIs all we ask for.
How to love,To value
To fight our way, ragged and blinking, out of spiralling labyrinthsBranching cave-complexes, discordBranchingBroken.Cracked mirrorsLife’s distorted reflection.
In passages which grow ever narrower, with ceilings ever lowerLabyrinth without a centrePaths multiplying.Splits and divisionsWhich multiply, branch offFrom that first, initial division,The first splitting of the waysTill finding our way back comes to seem almostimpossible.Broken down, sobbingCrouched, bent double, wracked with tears, in the dark and narrow passageDespairing.Lost.
So many ways to lose the way.So many ways to be lost.
Now the angels seem terrifying.We, driven underground, underlings, shy from the lightShun it,Secretly want it, fearfully.
What I want, to becomeA sunbeam,Not ashamed.
My eyes are tired.
Revive me.
Kiss my eyelids.
Sun-drenched piazzas.Rejoicing in wide open spaces.Eyelids respond, to the weight of your lipsA river, bounding over rocks and bouldersWater, clear, pure, vivacious.
Broken animals chase the rivers.Famished.Haunted.Heart-broken.
In unfamiliar surroundingsTall building rear up, as ferocious as mountainsPressured, borne down upon.Arbroath.Metallurgy,Till pleasure feels like pain
And we writhe, kick and flail at its touchAs if tormented by it, lashed and burnt by it.
Sky of extinguished stars.Doors locked behind us.No going back.Bitter, bitter
One last sunset,
The gods and goddesses invoked spurned the invitationNo bliss.No ecstasy.Blank, empty. Cold of heart.Cold, wet ashes.Sackcloth. Factory seconds.
Unable to live.Defeat.
_____________________________---next!
there are innumerable answers to any one question. all are true. all are false.I contracted a rare tropical disease. my face grew purple and my temperature soared.later I swam in the canal to refresh my spirits. I drank blue champagne with terry and threw stones at the stray cats. terry found, like, half a cigarette some punter had thrown away! the lucky bastard!I was running as fast as I could. I slipped and fell heavily to the ground. small pieces of gravel got lodged in my knee. I was bleeding from my knees and elbows. a group of glowering Cossacks approached me with their scimitars drawn. I was nervous but they were very friendly. they had seen me trip and as one was carrying sticking plasters and some antiseptic they had come over to help. I was very grateful for their kindness.people can be kind. people are often surprised at their own kindness.I, on the other hand, am no longer human. and, although this allows me to perform superhuman feats and furnishes me with an unnatural wisdom I, like Prometheus before me, have been punished.I am terrified.dank forests in which elderly oaks are wrapped in blankets of warm ivy. virile bushes with flowers like the heads of peacocks. saplings poised in positions of balletic grace. brightly coloured beetles swarm over the rotten fallen trees. sunlight enters the forest, filtered through the yellow leaves.evocation. invocation. involution.in towers of our own design we plot the overthrow of tyrants.delirious with conspiracy we pore over the plans of the palace. we drink coffee and talk fervently until the early hours of the morning. I walk home as the sun is rising, through fields damp with dew, where spiders are constructing their delicate traps and the besuited ants are already about their business.‘it is my job to empty the king’s chamberpot’ he announced with pride. we shall torture him.apostates grow thin and desperate outside the city gates.a necklace of larks tongues.the sound of statues being dismantled. the reckless joy of destroying our own history.owls with startled eyes look down on motorways from the power cables.bullish seagulls.small birds gobbling crumbs on cafe tables.enormous kitchens in which thousands of uniformed chefs prepare whole herds of livestock in ovens as hot as furnaces.gorse bush. yellow berries. horse bush. yellow berries.manufacturing sonnets.new emancipations. insurrection burns in our hearts.the cracks widen into fissures.institutionalised and bedridden.COMBAT!zealots with fierce bayonets.ADVANCE!reserved potters sit reading the paper next to the hot kilns.anarchists upsetting cups of tea and shouting defiant slogans in percy ingle.crocuses. hammering. metal against intransigent metal. foxgloves.a small but significant number of sheep in Devon have begun to prey on small birds and rodents for food. scientists have made predictions about the emergence of packs of hunting sheep preying on birds, rabbits and rodents. as time goes on they will become more specialised, developing the teeth and musculature of a carnivore.solemn busts of roman emperors. wheezing church organs. cobblers. tailors. locksmiths. clockmakers.‘they move like a black tide inexorable and slow. we will have to cross the mountains, we have no other choice.’‘pumpernickel, charles’ he snorted derisively.‘in fact once we have found the right combinations, there is no code we cannot crack.’‘com-bo-nay-shuns.’ he emphasised each syllable and then licked his moustache with a wiry tongue.this is the future. we will rearrange reality according to a strict and rational set of rules. Jerusalem!farrell was playing darts on the poop deck while violet went downstairs to refill her glass. I jumped right out of my skin when I heard the fog horn! what a fright it gave me! ennuyees gaze blankly at the ships wake until the dinner bell shakes them from frigid reveries.mooga mooga mooga. three times I call your name and only a mocking echo answers me. MOOKA!beatings inside small concrete cells. discipline. beating inside small cages of bone. beating. breathing. beating.expand and contract. carnivals in which animals are torn apart by drunken revellers. hallelujah!migrating mastodons with icy coats. farms of pelicans and nanny-goats. glorious emperor, for whom no gift is too great. pomegranates and kettledrums. hay-fever and rheumatism. masticated veal. science classrooms. oh! savage lament!I know only what you have told me and I know you to be untrustworthy. O fiendish dissembler, I am left, frantically trying to sort your truths from fictions.Hesitantly I recite the questions from phrasebooks. I address myself to sunburnt peasants, standing there awkwardly with the book in my hand, squinting as I concentrate on each word, how ridiculous I must look!we measure time by the opening of flowers and the falling of leaves and so conclude that time never passes.all combinations must be exhausted.whales swim through the wide green oceans consuming vast quantities of plankton.it’s all so obvious!crustaceans dress in dinner suits and ball-gowns to dance demurely on beaches of red sand.copperplates and cutlery.the iron age!I dress in the garb of a 12th century monk and lure passers-by into heated debates on Aquinas and Aristotle.EITHER/OR!we will invent machines to lie to us and woo us to sleep with lullabies.machines which will assume the robes of angels and visit us in chariots pulled by savage tigers.we will invent miracles.three suns will rise.fortresses of steel and emerald.malodorous swamps.makeshift sheds on cold allotments conceal shrines to wild gods. at night the light from the sacramental candles can be seen seeping through the cracks in the timber walls.the runner-beans grow unusually fast.fields of mushrooms.grace.we pursued our goal with the fervour of saints. yet, just as the absolute seemed certain to engulf us, we were confronted with an awful paradox.‘if it weren’t for disillusionment I doubt I’d still be alive.’the familiar consolations of failure. the renewal of all possibilities. insane hope.moors. bleak tundra. black mamba.fascinating.‘you, are an idiot, Leopald.’jumble sale.tonight, the imps have promised to reveal their secrets.we will explain all human behaviour MATHEMATICALLY!‘come on! your dinner’s going cold.’folly! yes, it is our mistakes which make us human. our fallibility, o! our imperfectibility!we love them, o! we love them!wisdom is for fools.‘come on!’O, frivolous world! arbitrary and entirely frivolous, flinging handfuls of colourful confetti... OK, I’m on my waypeace is for the senile! serenity? pah! save it for the retired, I like what I am.dinner jackets, roasted to perfection.Move aside! I’m thinking important thoughts!colanders, highlanders, salamanders, marigolds, panda bears, periscopes, cotton reels, microscopes, dustbin lids, horoscopes, antidotes, porcelain, concubines, medicines, photographs, binoculars, legislation, statistics.the cat, having successfully slain a small bird, has dragged her prey behind my garden shed where she surreptitiously dismembers the corpse. I watch her through a pair of binoculars, feeling guilty.seminarians. cimmerians. aquariums.pastry-faced.corpulent woodpigeons. corpuscular rodents. rambunctious pheasant. ambitious geese. duplicitous lobster.virulent lettuce. sinuous nosebleed. crapulent fur. corrosive valentine.we love all that is extraneous.we love poetry.we love the joyful flight of the fantail.the extraneous celebrates all that is necessary and everything that is extraneous is as necessary as a tiger’s stripes.photographs in which sad apes seem to recognise the imminent extinction of their species in the camera’s lens. cuckoo.farthing.path.moss.a miner.balderdash. butterscotch. pickled walnuts.pickled walrus.windmills. daffodils.barrage.hyena.jackal lantern.witless buffoonery.mandrake.barracuda.the sound of the rainnnnnn during a power-cut.the treetops are full of birds with colourful feathers.a miraculous flowering. we rolled and squirmed in mud and ashes.a moment is a movement.I sing- tra lalalajimmy rickets.hair balloons. HelloHellomy name is Bob. Balooga balooga..my name is Bob. Vamoosh vamoosh.caravans. castanets. Belgrade. humpety humpety hopitty hop.grayvay. oh, hullaballoo..cockatoo, my word, vindaloo, or Timbuktu it’s up to you, my word, my goodness gracious those bloody saints are marching in.of course, Belgravia has always been a desirable place to live. vamoosh vamoosh... shatter. a total refusal to understand causes huge mechanisms to stall. balooooga.broad confident rivers ooh, lala.rancid. eeewwww. brutish. crarrrrww. swordfish. crayfish. dogfish. spoon.Mallarme. marmalade. simpering wretchaccountant to the starstell us your sordid secrets.roar. I maaaaanno oongeeerrrweekk. trumpety. oh rassh yooth.

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orange star meat. glimmering heavens.
desperately accelerating, the double-decker bus pulls away from the forest periphery as a thousand spears clatter against its metal flanks.
moon cows graze in lunar pastures of grey rock and dust.
a mastodon struggling in a crevasse. black-faced colliers queue for milk. In Santiago a retired couple prune their hedges. She is wearing a white chiffon dress while her flushed husband sweats in tweeds.
I was quite Adam Ant, I was to have no part in this venture. salivating fanatics. amateur archaeologists patrol the riverbanks with metal detectors. the gods are bored of men.Castor oil. traumatised war-veterans join the priesthood and spend their days counting rosary beads. cardboard dating. the opera singer is fawned over by her bespectacled suitors.‘My names NOT Carmen you imbeciles.’ somnolent idols. sequestered bowers. and all the haystacks burnt like beacons the day that farmer died. Odysseus’s nursemaid. Brown light. Cardboard dating. Bolshie magpies.The billionaire’s aviary. Parrots from Sumatra and the Amazon. Toucans and puffins. wood pigeons clatter through the sycamores. seething desert. uproarious.a troop of baboons drink noisily till dawn and fall asleep drunk in the gutters. One of the larger males flaps around with his long arms, trying to shoo away the sun.Prince Charles does a hilarious turn on the Jew’s harp. You should hear him do ‘God Save the Queen.’ Ha, that kills me everytime.
astute tactician. ruthless. ruminating fruit pickers, sun burnt and weary, hands stained with berry juice. fastidious clerks. fulminating football managers. lumpy skull. lavish formality. ponderous orchestra.Typical, you hang around for hours waiting for Jerusalem and three come along at once.Forlorn street sweepers composing sonnets to the rhythm of the traffic. children hide in cupboards waiting to surprise the baby-sitter. BOO! a shy girl teases music from a row of wine glasses. a boy with pale skin and dry hair watches his ant farm. The best slide I ever went on was in Bournemouth. I’ve no idea if it’s still there or not. I got beaten round the head with a bike chain once.
They put a damp cloth on my forehead. I remember that day like it was yesterday.what happened yesterday?fuck, I dunno.
computer bubbles. hair sprouts from pink flesh.sheep thieves light fires by Hadrian’s broken wall. The autodidact falls asleep, his head resting on a book on the pre-Socratic philosophers. The librarian watches him tenderly. All hands on deck!
orange rivers. we must ACT NOW! Property values have slumped over the last couple of years. ‘The point is William, that this IS a game. That’s the point, and I’m not sure whether or not I can be bothered to play.’
cuckoo. cuckold. cutlery.
the manifold manifestations. words are extremely dull.unfortunately, they’re all we have. the seas are full of fish and the land is rich and bountiful.megalopolis. cities which cover whole islands, just imagine! the sky is permanently overcast. He has a head like a little bird’s.
Allow me to explain. Here, we are no longer bound by the conventions of reality. This is imagination and there are no limits. we refuse to leave, this is our homeland. inside the om-bubble everything is just as it should be. whatever we imagine IS. it really is that simple, will you join us?
after the accident we discovered a whole range of mutations in both animal and plant life. fish sprouting hair, mammals with gills, carnivorous sheep. once we had recovered from the initial shock we realised that these developments were all to the good. we learned to celebrate the growth of diversity we had unwittingly engendered and the infinitely creative potential of mother nature. in our ignorance we have furthered the cause of evolution. humanity, on the other hand, is a species in decline.
here, nothing is difficult. everything is as it should be.
while still a student at university he penned a tract entitled‘the imminent extinction of the human race’which afforded him a certain degree of notoriety.
here, everything is as perfect as you want it to be.
stay off the grass.
some will argue that we have arrived at conclusions which are hardly far removed from outright insanity. we will tell them to fuck off. complete absence of thought = complete awareness. the equations all share an elegant simplicity. I ask no more questions and, as a result, receive all manner of answers. In fact, I am bombarded with them.
no smoking.
In all honesty I am not even half as clever as I pretend to be. but I do know a secret. shall I share it with you?playful elephants blow river water from wrinkled trunks. the house is full of heirlooms, there is no more room for our own possessions. all you have to do is ask.
salt on the tongue. people are frightening. they don’t seem real.could this all be an elaborate hoax? sugar on the tongue.now that’s quite interesting isn’t it? salt on the tongue. sugar on the tongue. does that help you? Personally I find that quite magical. I mean, it really works!
now, you see, there’s no limit to the possibilities. this is a very precise, calculated form of magic.super slide. fun for all ages. presidential hotel. queens arcade. merry-go-round. office sweep stake, c’mon, don’t be a spoil sport. hula hoops. concrete turbines. there’s no limit to what you can buy.
meet me under the bridge at five past midnight. My left arm will be in a sling but my guess is that we’ll be alone and therefore you should have no problem recognising me. goodbye.
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next!
‘cantabrian hound, fierce and salvingsucking, harnessedeven then, cheered on and celebratedapplause which renders livers lucidabove all that, urge and surge, burstingcresting the hill and surveying the valleya new napoleon of the highlandsslender, firm, dulcet.maybe memories ripple under lamplightas beachy sand is folded by the sea.too soon I fear. the weight of events crushed us like an egg in a vicea snail beneath the gardener’s heavy bootsanctified, but unloved trumpetingheroism of the most sordid natureheaving, retching, bucklingbeyond sea sickness into a more enlightened spherewhere courtiers in starched collars serve quail eggs and goose liversobsequious and scarletsipping supping and slurpingsensuous suction, soughtlubricious saliviasalving soothing and solvingabsolving, even now, curing and salting, solely sorely and surelysuet and salt, barleywater, bitter lemon. the familiar consolations of defeatdisappointments and ointments, unctuous and pleadingthe vindictive voice, the old nagging woman in back of the skullmoving solely and surely like labradors and cocker spanielsthe moors bestrewn with rocks the redbearded giants had hurled at one anotherbut time had extinguished that violent flame and nowmaunders and mangersmourners and moulders the remaindersit’s here, and yet we don’t see itit’s here and yet we step over itavoid itmanuvere around itleap across itevade itbetray iteggs in baskets, schapps and brandy snapsfairy cakes and burdock bake, honeycups and rakish fatealas alack a lass a lad and all this before nightfallall before night fell bustling and bursting and brandishing silverwearhurling cutlery holding and haunting soldering and sauntering, sailing saintly, maudlin mauderingit’s almost too much to bearthis Bayreuth, sore resting place of the vaunted deadushering us toward sleep and white stone, incense and the pure voice of the castrato.’
Gerry Maunder. the outcropfrom Myths of the Northern Hemisphere.______________________________________________-----next!
heron-boneinfernal. the grey sea, as smooth as seal flesh. slippery. deceptive. sea of stone.the motorway. the pilgrimage. exhaust fumes. the trembling vales.belligerent gulls fight over crusts of rye-bread.conflict. domination. submission.limpid. lonely. liquid. formless.cuttlefish. compost heap.the fantails. the winding stream. the steep banks where the rats nest.dissolute. desolate. ingest. in jest. inject.the cells shudder in anger.the centre lost. brain crushed by skull. the chest tight.
foals. fossils. foolish.pollen. poems.beads of light.bird howl.pumice stone. purgatory. limbo dance.
the fallen fir. the fire. whisper. whimper. waver.the black expanse. the sea. the moist eye.an excess of vision. of versions.‘life is multiple, all days different from each other, and only as multiple shall we be with reality and alone.’(fernando pessoa)legion. legend. legume. leg room.lombardy. libido.
shopping malls. all night garages. angel nests. tunnels of light.harbours. bowers. red flowers. blue sky. bilious clouds.red rose. blood cup. no more lyricism.the water is orange.a tiny man disappeared into a hole in the ground.I sent my hound after him but it was too late.he escaped.the hunt. hunting the moment. the movement. the movement of moments. the music of moments. chords. codes. we are. I am.beyond. in the wider regions.
lighthouse. house of light.sun rose. honey moon.sweaty palms.hospital corridors.hotel televisions.a rash of demons. yellow ghosts.
two hundred times the suffering is repeated.the heart replaced to be torn out anew.birds gather and peck at my exposed heart.their beaks and feathers are red and sticky. gorged on the heart-fruit. the blood-juice.passers-by. pedestrians. redemption.fat, yellow birds shake the branches of the bush and pluck its berries.moments that shake us from our self-absorption. our shouting into the void, conversing with echoes, chiding, remonstrating, reassuring the silence which needs no reassurance.hermit crabs, hiding in the shells of the dead.
ventolin gush. chest expander. fickle body. bathed in sweat. suffering beneath the sheets. thankful for the constant throb of the road below, thankful that the lungs do not rattle into silence. I do not panic. my body is not mine. it is not under my control. propped up in bed like a geriatric. wheezing and coughing. thinking of nothing but breath and of my own heroism.
the shuffling of symbols. the tarot-pack of language. fate revealed in speech. the uncovering of cards. ventriloquists dummies, mouths moved by strings. a voice which is not our own.
the delighted eye. a butterfly. a parrot disappearing into the tall trees. the flight path of a ladybird. a conker, bright and burnished. red berries. the most delicate of flowers. the clouds lolling in sunlight. the industrious ants. there is a sadness in this kind of seeing.
‘you are still at the stage of the temptation of st. anthony. the struggle with diminished zeal, grimacing of a child’s insolence, collapse and fright. but you will begin this work. all the possibilities of harmony and architecture will rise up around your seat. perfect and unpredictable beings will offer themselves for your experiments. around you the curiosity of ancient crowds and idle luxuries will move in dreamily. your memories and your senses will only serve to feed your creative urge. what will happen to the world when you leave it? nothing in any case will remain of what is now visible.’(arthur rimbaud)
a destitute leprechaun begs for change, having lost all his gold in a bet.the fairies sing horrid songs about him.we create ourselves using whatever words and images we happen to find lying around. gimcrack. hotchpotch. ramshackle. patchwork men.
conscious of every expression that darts across our faces. we cannot fail to notice the angle at which we hold our cigarette or the way we clasp our beer bottle.gestures become wary. defensive. faces emptied of expression. nothing is natural. no emotion takes form spontaneously on a face. smiles are mechanical. produced on demand.‘packed with visions, throwing bread to pigeons, christ has risen’(ghostface killa)
she is careful when she talks to me. the caspian sea. what do you want from me? what do you take from me? hopscotch. germination. pulluation. heaps of fish thrash on the wooden deck. wet scales glinting in the white sunlight. heron. kingfisher with a beak like a letter-opener. brylcreemed starlings with purple breasts. sucked in to the earth. succumb. succubi. solipsism. soliloquy. the silent circling stars. the stars circle the earth like vultures. comets hurtling through space. escape the atmosphere.
rabbit-warrens. lines of the skin. veins of a leaf. beautifully diseased. red and gold. effervescent fevers. the decapitated body of a swallow. forlorn. missing a head. red neck stump.archaeologists of the spirit. of whatever writhes within. mind as museum. cigarette butts in the flower beds. tobacco plants. the galleons are all sinking and my pen is slippery with sweat.
supine. saline. rapine. mainline. alpine. alpineapple, the fruit of the mountains.children congregate outside the late night kebabish like evacuees.mermaid tavern.I growled.heat bends the air.the light behind her hair.the woman who enchants the world.
the flowers are inclining their heads towards the sun.leaves and petals tremble.
sunlight catches the wing-casing of a beetle.the dew evaporates.____________________________________---next!
cussed honeugle~umbilical wrench.
flickering, morning’s lashes. fuming. mourning.muggle muddle muggle muggle mump. mugglemump. one salty tear~ the ache of absent memories.forlorn palaeontologists, preserving the tiny bones of sparrows and fieldmice. devout Benedictines catalouging the detritus scavenged from gutters and litterbins. compiling histories of typologies, marketing strategies and colour theory.pebblebeach puddlepond. pillory-punnet. gibbetgulch. gibbering.to act in accordance with the inner imperative. sunder and solder sever and bind.
magdalene maudlin maundering.before the extinction of the dinosaurs battery chickens coldstew and broth, a vale of earthly delights. pomengrante and partidges, plump and inviting. jovial gods preside over bawdy banquets. sickly ghosts, broken promises. a waterside affair. boorish old men, brains brandylogged, scratching cum-stains off the cardigan.
mawkish hacks, goaty and frogthroated, pummled tummy berth. mendacious Spaniard, spinach chewing, frolicsome nannyroot.bequeathed sodden colloquies, boon companion to the fateful duke, fretful heir and hollyhock.embrace merry cousins lark about rooster panneled of walnut, flannel oh flannel, precious lillyweed.my love is rocketship baby yeahthe barricade is the bollade is corvine capple speak, again borrowed or captured bleated, fractured, honourably defeated. mincing fatuously,sprainish duke, fickle wind of ill repute marmaduke big basingstokebroker a hundred fish in a swolen belly indeed, arch enemy, fiend to the stars, confidante of minor royalty, buffon, wretch, parrot.poultice, pompadour, pockmarkcocaine speak, frenzied oar, boor to the stars and minor celebritiescackler of wicked lashes, corner of foolish indolenceminor salubrity of brackish fate, bankish nature.moving along canals of dubious reputation, salubricator in infamous passagesbrainish and foolish, pickled and pulled, sunken and sexless, brackish and bowlish, manchieantowards pools of light, wallowing and billowing brawling bawling brawling bawling brawling brawling brawlingfor now, postures and impostures crossed cashed and cuckolded. bled definitively.toowards a cabbage patch, a moon of ones own.____________________-----next!
there’s a preacher round my way who’s got this great gimmick. he picks his spot and scatters bird feed in front of him, well he’s been doing this for years in actual fact and the birds recognise him and gather around him, even before he’s got out the seeds and nuts, so he’s just surrounded by birds as he preaches, does a st francis y’see, the people love it...
performing seals on traffic islands, tongues lolling the heat, carboard cutouts of saints and martyrs advertising washing powder and nicorette patches-I suppose what you’d want, ideally as a prime minister/president is the kind of unqualified adoration the pop/film star recieves from his/her fans. and what you’d really be working on is a way to acheive that, party members should really be putting the machinery in place for that to happen, manufacturing a leader who can command that kind of adulation. that kind of crazed lust and emotional investment.plastic daffodils in a window box. cloned mastodons, lined up at a seaside resort, children pay to ride on their backs, yipe and scream in excitement, pull handfuls of fur from the animal’s pelt. refugees forced to enter naked hula-hoop contests to establish who has the right to residency, men, women and children, all together in a vast warehouse, gyrating furiously under the watchful eyes of the home office judges.mawkish comedians sobbing into pints of bitter, dragoons in pinafores...a retired sergeant, gone soft in the head, bellowing orders at a flickering television set.‘ALRIGHT YOU MISERABLE LOT...’a child with a mouth full of brown teeth.scar tissue. sweat.an actress, face forced into a permanant grin after visiting a certain disreputable plastic surgeon. finally taken to court his patients line up to accuse him, a fury of swollen lips, uneven breasts, immobile faces...men in fezes and three-quater length leather jackets hand out leaflets for psychics and healers, clairvoyants and tarot readers, mediums to plot a course through chaos, achieve your dreams..‘to put it into language a brain of your meagre proportions and scope can comprehend Jameson, humans feel trapped inside a universe of fixed laws, constants, by the narrow limits of the possible, they feel the universe is a sealed box, that they’re trapped inside and can barely strech out their arms without hitting the sides. this illusion, for illusion it is, is bought into being and maintained by a self-policing of the mind, of what is allowed to surface into consciousness. the tension and the feeling of constraint, of being trapped, arises from this attempt, ultimately futile, like damning a river with a wall of sand, to control what enters consciousness. the truth is, alone, you never need be yourself. the personality is a role we play in public, a performance, alone, there is no personality. the mind is an instrument which RECEIVES thoughts, not one which CREATES thoughts.’‘sir, I must confess, I am thoroughly bewildered’‘Jameson, you don’t exist.’building buildings in the shape of an eagles head, a fist, a sword. air thick enough to chew.boiled bacon, stewed steak, mashed potato.old men who can’t understand where the past went to, desperate and panicked, convinced it must still exist somewhere, like a place on the map, if only they could find their way home, to that familiar complex of habits and values...murderous baliffs with fire in the eyes, country butchers like Aztec priests, initiated into blood mysteries, presiding over ceremonies of ritual sacrifice.nothing is as complicated as it seems.blouses and petticoats, stockings and garters.a banjo player serenades his sweetheart, a seaman sends love letters by carrier pigeon.pirates commandeer huge oil tankers and play vigourous lacrosse matches on the deck and feed seagulls with scraps of bacon. when the sun sets they watch television and feel wistful for the life they left behind. later, drunk and maudlin they talk of their mothers and lost loves, childhood misadventure and jobs in supermarkets and fastfood dealers.earnest missionaries from Hertfordshire get taught to moonwalk by tribes in the Amazon while gibbons howl with glee.sparks fly off the fingertips, everything crackles and hums.magistrates and headmasters reduced to foraging through rubbish dumps while children hurl stones and shout insults at them.a lone ballerina on a warehouse rooftop, leaping and pirouetting while forklift drivers yell words of encouragement and appreication.german teenagers searching for new kicks inject themselves with wolves blood, run naked through forests and howl at the moon.walking into a room full of mothsthe fetish industry breeds a new generation of pornstars who pay for operations to deform them, stretch them, mishape them, scar them...football fans throw kettles and filnt arrowheads at opposing strikersthe government imposes arbitary rules on its citizens, no red on wednesday, runner beans are contraband, obedience is the new morality...furnaces melt all records made before 1968, text is outlawed_____________________________________-------next!
I awoke, shaken by a dream I was unable to remember.‘you broke a swan’s neck.’yes, that’s right, I broke a swan’s neck.we keep hurting one another, even when we don’t intend to. I think it’s very sad, the way that happens.and ourselves, we hurt ourselves too. why do we hurt ourselves?“I’ve got cancer of the testicles, cancer of the bowels, cirrhosis of the liver and I’ve got an ulcer in my windpipe.”crocus of the liver. liver of the valley. vultures rest on the chimmney pots.nefarious oligarchies. Flute of Napoleon.a profusion of spiders.“we’re like caged animals, beating our heads against the walls, waiting for the skull to crack.”featherless birds. a lone security guard gazes out over a vast empty lobby.“we smeared the flowers with superglue and laughed to see the fat little bees struggle to free themselves.” in the garden the plants are growing. if you are quiet you can hear them.stupefied with excess.sickness.false intentions.it’s all over now.“all meaning has been drained from the world. never again will myth inflame our minds.”to all intents and purposes we are dead. our hearts stilled and our flesh cold. “little bubbles of spittle emerge at the corners of his mouth whenever he speaks. he disgusts me to be perfectly honest with you.”we see no pressing reason to remain here but we lack the courage to leave.“he’s not very friendly is he?”late one night Brian takes a piss in a jeweller’s doorway. the stream of urine trickles between his feet and down into the gutter. when was the last time you enjoyed yourself? teenage girls puke in their shoes.a wealthy entrepreneur was giving a lecture to a group of recent graduates. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.I don’t want to be here. a young accountant strangles his girlfriend over a minor disagreement. she didn’t die but she wasn’t far off. we shouldn’t be here. why is everything so sad. I don’t like it here.maybe we don’t want to be bullies and maybe we don’t want to be victims. what then?persian bugs. morbid constitustion. stitched into our skins. trapped.“take away my body, I have no use for it.”he’s begins to get hysterical...“TAKE IT AWAY”_________________________________________-----next!
buoyant. balloon. billowing.brandishing. bottling. brooding. bleeding.beetling. braising. buttering. breeding. brunt.domestic words. wild words. cupola. cornea. cornucopia.eloheim.skin becomes landscape, pores open out, become craters...a woman’s spirit takes posession of him, he squeals with delight, writhes, moans...wraiths gather outside the off-license, seethe at the threshold.borders. boundaries.sanctums. sanctuaries.the shepherd gestures to us, he leads us to a meadow where the lion sleeps with the lamb.a match burns without being consumed.shells.
In an arrangement thought to be the first of its kind, the National Trust have entered into a 3-year sponsorship deal with Tesco. In exchange for an undisclosed sum of money, paid in monthly installments, the National Trust are to rename the Pennines, the Tesco Alps.Governments of developing countries are thought to be especially interested in this kind of partnership as the only way to make conservation profitable. Sega and Nintenda are said to be vying for the right to brand the Gobi desert.police cordons. canker. choral.semblance.rivulets.______________________________------
barracuda. breathe.selves break off, like islands break off the mainland, drift out to sea, like newborn spiders, blown in all directions by the wind, find independence.different personaities struggle for control of the body, the face twitches, switches from grin to grimace, growls, spits, drools...spirits sweep in on the wind, wipe words from the page, extinguish candles.space colony. rockets refuel.molotov. aperitif. populist.crowded aether. umbra. umbrage. ox-bridge.the guardian cerberi.lupine.on the hill, when all had melted, from mistwhite dogs, tall and strong, run past us. one stays behind when the rest have vanished.his initial friendliness changes to hostility, snarls, bares teeth, and we panic.the sigh.stuck in time loops, a moebius strip, round and round...previous incarnations flash through the soul, hiss like a lizardlives upon lives, all amounting to a great ennui, drunk on lotuschemical stew. a rising tide of fear.green laser light strafes the skystarscrapers, black glass towers, satellites in orbit.spiritguides speak through other mouths, answer questions we were never aware of asking.the mind travels. billowing. fulsome flame.men behind glass panels observe the night. cockatrice. plated.spy satellites. data nets. secret operatives.words form their own realities, hallucinations, dreamstates.fulsome guppy. harpsichord. bovine. bauxite.murderous spiel. cannibalise the soul. devilgrass. Saladin. querellous tombs.a sight so wonderful I thought I might never speak again.________________________________-----next!