Sunday, August 17, 2008

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Friday, August 01, 2008

#4


14 months ago.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Sunday 27th Jul 2008


Tremendously warm today, you just have to put up with it and be angry. At least, I have to be angry. It got cooler in the evening. Went to the massive sainsbury's and stood in the pet food aisle. There was a sack of dog food called 'Tasty Chicken'. What is, sanity?

Bought a cd in brick lane yesterday: Sam Amidon - All is Well



this song made me sit up and go 'man'.

London is a very busy place. perhaps the happiest place is the 8:24 train from London Bridge. it is cool and quiet and full of people who want to go home. it has people with earphones in their earholes and hands on phones waiting for a vibration or a glow.

I'm sorry, it just can feel incredibly uncomfortable and wishy-washy. AND HOT.

There are so many opportunities here, but there are so many pretences!!!!!!

I am man, I sit beneath tree, I flutter pages. I am become.

This is a pretence.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

murdering my ear-holes shut



ran 2km today. my ears keep breathing, sort of gulping and taking deep breaths to reboot my brain. I am like a personal computer.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Graduation on Wednesday


Mayo, Eire


Today I have seen:

a man have his stomach pumped (preliminarily) on the steps of the Astoria on Tottenham Court Road, at 4pm this afternoon.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

720 days ago


I took this photo about 720 days ago. A lot has changed since then, but not that much.

'Pretentious' as a term of common criticism from post-adolescents today

I think this description of Joanna Newsom's Ys accurately describes why the term 'pretentious' is used so often to criticise things that appear different:

'Newsom returned this year with Ys, an album that will do nothing to allay these criticisms. In an indie culture that rewards well-turned mediocrity and can be suspicious of ambition, the record's long compositions, ornate orchestral arrangements, and antique lyrics are guaranteed to be dismissed as pretentious by many. And they are-- symbolically dense and anachronistically stylized, Newsom's songs expect a lot from the listener. But whether or not the music is pretentious is beside the point. The debate between Newsom admirers and detractors seems to revolve around one question-- does she mean it, or is she selling us snake-oil? I don't claim to have gotten to the bottom of Joanna Newsom in a 45-minute conversation, but she left me with the impression of being an uncommonly graceful and articulate person, not a collection of tics and fancies; a person who, regardless of what she's doing, always means it.'

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/39700-interview-joanna-newsom


Friday, July 18, 2008

The Great Melancholy

I wrote this in 2005, it's quite funny:

“Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
Dmitriy sat at the end of the final row of mahogany church benches, his inhibition overcoming the stagnant wooden scent. Those either side could observe the bulging of his cheeks as his heart endeavoured to force the words from between his lips. His legs trembling as if an artic chill were present, his body fighting itself to remain seated. Dmitriy knew that if he were to stand and object, mouths would gape and necks would twist like squeezed lemons, spitting their citrus disgust. The only objection was the ticking of his tattered leather wristwatch, and the twilight of his chance. His great hands, powered by the fear stomping in his bowels, kept his tongue to the moth battering their wings against the sides of a paper lampshade.
That night, beneath the navy moonlight, it had begun to take effect. A heaving in his chest had drawn Dmitriy to his unmade bed of scattered clothes. Here he would remain for weeks, tears soaking the wool of his blanket, and blotting like ink stains the mustard of a once pale yellow pillowcase.
Dmitriy took no concern with the sustained period of his weeping, or the small puddles appearing in the dips of the flooring. The landlord had beaten his fists blue threatening Dmitriy with crippling fines and the smiting hand of the almighty. The door however, was barricaded with an impenetrable texture of longing. The landlord had changed his policy and secured the door further after the running water from Dmitriy’s apartment had caused evacuations above and below, an all-destructive damp and rot withering the weary rooms of the block.
The plants, particularly those of a nuisance to the upkeep of the building, had flourished under Dmitriy’s reigning melancholy, the ivy which so infuriated the landlord allowed the sunlight to enter Dmitriy’s room, showing pity on the architect of their sudden spurt in growth.
The air shimmered with the scent of springtime, the aroma of flowers sweet even to the most severe of hay fever sufferers. Gardeners and artists celebrated the misery of Dmitriy, legends blossoming as quickly as the red roses and lilies. One woman swore she had collected a tablespoon of Dmitriy’s woe, and had reinvigorated her radishes, peas, potatoes and plums, but most striking were her roses – red, white, peach, even blue. Their most obscure trait being their texture – silk, moist, cool – like velvet drapes of ice written around the fingertips. The blue roses would perspire in all climates, droplets gliding across the shine of their petals. The woman identified an aesthetic yearning on their touch, quite contradicting the aesthetic mind. This feeling could last for days, so often was her time spent with the garden. She announced Dmitriy as ‘the saviour of God’s wild earth.’
People learned of the great melancholy, and began drawing comparisons with Dmitriy and the messiah. One local newspaper covered their front pages with the headline – ‘God’s Creatures Gather For Holy Return’ and another ‘Sacred One Hiding in Foliage Bunker’.
Yet this was all in vein, for all the ivy and blue roses, there was no omniscient being lurking behind the thick panel of Dmitriy’s door.
The weeping had diminished in recent weeks. Dmitriy had lost half an ocean of his fluids, his muscular build had withered, his palms becoming dry apricots, his eyes hanging – bloodshot capillaries climbing across his eyeballs like the ivy on the outside wall.

* * *

A scientist, a priest, and a politician had been selected to address the mysterious apartment so on one late afternoon – with their backs to the lightning chrome of the photographers, the chanting of the collected believers, and the scathing eyes of the atheists with arms folded – they entered between the leafy canopies and trembling brickwork of Dmitriy’s building.
The triumvirate traded glances of intrigue, of apprehension, the politician voluntarily standing in the full frame of the doorway.
“Open this door, we have come to welcome you with peace and compassion.”
No answer.
The politician stood aside for the priest - confidence and wisdom etched across his wrinkle peppered eyelids.
“We bow to you the holy, the saviour of God’s great earth.”
No answer.
The scientist brushed past the priest, a wry smile on his face, pushing his thin-rimmed spectacles further up the bridge of his nose.
“Sir, if you are unwell, you must allow us to treat you at once.”
No answer. The scientist shaded his disappointment with a rustle of his shoulders.
“Has anyone thought to open the door by using the handle?”
The priest and the politician looked to one another for an answer, equally inept in offering a reply. The scientist twisted the large brass doorknob, the door heaving a resounding groan, as the hinges turned. The priest and the politician held one another with clasped hands to shaking spines, fear burgeoning across their brows, knees elevating to a fetal stance. The scientist stepped through the doorway, low waves of water gliding past his ankles, hazy sunlight creeping through the plants outside, creating meandering orange streams around the room. At the bed, shivering, whimpering, a decrepit old man huddled with himself.
“Where is their God now” the scientist pondered, hands on his wiry waist, shaking his head with disdain for the hordes surrounding the eventual tomb of this dying man. The scientist approached the bed. He lowered his face to an equal level with the wrinkled complexion of Dmitriy.
“Is there anything I can do for you, before it is time for you to die?”
Dmitriy peeled apart his chapped lips, and forced his grey eyes to close.
“After I die, you must take her my heart. I may look like death, but it beats and it was always for her, it belongs to her. I want to die now. Please allow me to die, just her heart and I.”
The scientist stood, wading his toes through the shallow receding water of the room, closing the door behind him with great care.


This is not my view anymore.

THANK FROGZ.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

a break from haiku

The house is full of dust, remnants of the moth problem that rattled the family last summer. You cannot turn without banging your hip on a chest of drawers or a cabinet. There is the lingering smell of drying paint, it becomes a part of you, your skin begins to taste industrial.

In Liverpool you can sense the water, that big, open, moving thing at the bottom of the city. You don't know it's downhill, until you roll along Church Street past the hordes and chain stores, through the financial district and down Castle Street. You don't realise there is a bottom to the city, and that it's wet. You're too aware of the old lot trembling down Lime Street, falling out of old pubs that pump odorous kareoke like the Mersey pumps mulch.

In Liverpool, in St. James's garden and beneath the Anglican Cathedral, you are enclosed by the dirty tombstones of orphans. Packs of drunks screech at one another, arguing with their children because they said they'd wanted bottled water, but in fact the child wanted something more syrupy, like Fanta. But there is calm in that garden. The grass is thick and cool, even on hot days. The leaves jig softly. If anything, it is a reminder, but one that you do not mind being reminded about.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Haiku #12

and I drink and drink
and fall down on the pavement
and you are not there.

Haiku #11

In the car, as a
boy, the clouds were fed blue fumes,
I did miss you then.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Haiku #10

drying like velvet,
the bloody smear on your tum,
you fly with one leg.

Haiku #9

a thrush brushed by me,
black in the darkening dark,
it did sing, briefly.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Haiku #8

Beyond those windows
a great wall of ivy climbs,
dying in the light.

Haiku #7

and in the churchyard,
sunning themselves on the grass,
old carrier bags.

Haiku #6

I write by moonlight,
intelligible nonsense,
every word true.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Haiku #5

The weather's upset:
ice-cloud and raindrop sun drops
down into your heart.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Haiku #4

Karma cooks, slowly,
flowering in the dull yard,
pulling weeds by night.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Haiku #3

the night fell navy,
like a spilt barrel of blue
down the window pane.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Haiku #2

a seagull watched me,
I watched him from the window,
we watched each other.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Haiku #1

rain soaked my cloth pumps,
you crossed at the lights, all dry,
your cheeks painted pink.

Friday, March 28, 2008