342 Pages

All the words on so many pages. Page 1 and look at how much ink there is. How much time to cross a line. The next paragraph a mile a way. I wonder of the percentage of one page in 342 pages, how many is a third. And what did that last line say. How much time to read each line twice. So pass my eyes across the lines without absorbing a thing, just to be nearer completing the book I am not reading. Just pouring it across my impatient eyes.

_____

She grew a thing, she looked at it with pride. No matter how it grew, it grew from her, that was enough for her. It spread salt on the snails and burned ants beneath the lens. It was made robust by her. No give in the pith and spat from the bridge, into the river. It grew it’s own thing, she looked at it with pride. No matter how it grew, it grew from her, that was enough, for her.

_____

The last
drop of blood
perched upon
a skeletal frame,
the snow wrote
renewal but
the blood remains.

_____

Plagiarism is
nothing new.
The branch
plagiarises
the root.

_____

Names make art
as easy as touching
canvas with pigment.

_____

A man was sat next to me, a drink under his nose. I noticed a ladybug paddling in the cup, instinctively I reached my finger into the liquid, to fetch the bug out, but the liquid thickened and pushed the bug away. It stopped moving and sank to bottom, where I noticed through the murk, more dead beetles and stagnant weed in this small rancid pond beneath his nose.

_____

She was studying
mind reading,
so attempted
to read mine.

She said that
I was thinking
her a fraud,
a charlatan.

This is how
they get you.

_____

Tom sings
a liquid line,
stir to taste a
different verse
each time.

Weird Squares

The squares wear grey suits and the weird wear tattoos. The squares cross themselves and the weird imbibe. The squares wear dickies pants and skate while the weird cut their own hair. The squares like money and the weird drink coffee after dark. The squares have family and the weird buy records. The squares do coke and the weird do plants. The squares kiss on boats and the weird play accordions. The squares live in houses and the weird live on benches. The squares talk of adventure, while the weird jump from roofs. The squares are by your toes and the weird are by your ear. The weird are voting and the squares have given in. The weird are walking while the squares drive. The weird are riding in the park and the squares are riding in the gym. The weird are waxing and the squares tattooed. The weird are an inch beyond and the squares are touch below. Normality is ten billion different lies.

_____

Some

Some folks find so little
enjoyment in what they love,
they seek enjoyment in
not enjoying what they don’t.
What a whirl we dervish.

_____

Imagine

I imagined
I read that
he had died
I sunk into
this fiction
and cried.

_____

Tongue

The sweet, the sour and the bitter
The poison, the medicine and fuel
The tongue is a dumb hedonistic eel.

_____

Create

How do
I create
through
the loathing?
Each colour
I daub
obscene.

Nothing Compares

This edition of course for Sinéad O’Connor.

In the light of our perception, the truth remained in shadow. Our perception, the rock we live upon, it is solidity, it is permanence, it tastes like truth. From a single perception we can mock truth, so immortal is a sliver of now in a thought. Till this rock rises and walks away. Falling as sand, sand is time and time is change, truth is forever.

_____

If you think to turn the music up, be aware that once you do, you cannot turn it down. The spell snap broken, the magic turn ashen, swept away.

_____

Watching the artist sketch, he does not see
the paper as I see it, not flat, one surface.
He observes a pool of infinite depth, his
strokes striking the surface, the shallows
and the deep. This imaginative soul brings
me into his thought like magic, I could dip
my hand into his drawing and wave
to worlds within.

_____

Oh what calamity, my child would be just like me.

_____

A smile to incite
joy’s dynamite
spread delight
swift as light.

_____

When all
avenues
to peace
are exhausted,
we must rise
to another
plane.

Broad brush strokes

I have reached a point in my unfinished painting that I like. Now cowardice paralysis has me in a fearful bind. The next stroke may be the wrong stroke and all progress will be erased. There is more paint, more canvas, but paint is so real, so visceral and now. It is a flame to tend. Will I stoke or quench it’s light.

_____

Time is gravity
Fate is the wind
Birth the falling
Death is the Earth.

_____

There is doubt in a mute solar powered car,
for choking on gasoline explosions is right.

_____

There is
a presumption
the splinter is wood,
so they curse the tree
and the branch.
Till, a steel sliver
is removed.
Still, they
curse the tree
for the mind
is stained.

_____

What if our caring was not intended here
What if the world only nurtured the severe
What if it did not matter what we did today
What if we are extra’s in a psychopathic play?

_____

Placebo
is the faith
to overcome
through will
and hope,
no small print
and no side
effects.

Oil

Self-assured artists are wafting about the craft shop in scarves and Birkenstocks. Acquiring some more burn’t umber and sap green to paint horses in fields and feel wonderful in their work. Where is the guy with sawdust in his hair, cadmium yellow gumming up one eye, wearing scraps and sandals. The monosyllabic shadow, picking up arms full of pink oil and a broom. To purge.

Adrift

Painting is a different place to be than writing. I got thoroughly disorientated yesterday, trying to find that place to paint from, I was so scared I would not be able to return to where I write from; I belayed a roll of cotton, yet it jarred at the paint, so I snipped it and went floating, finding neither bank. I washed away in a splashing panic, I did not know up, but a reached out and eventually found a bank. That paint looks as alien as ever.

Beware

They might shame those who question, ridicule the inquisitive. They might wield their ignorance in violence. Claim learning is for the weak. Their persistent lie could be fortified in repetition, whipping at truth. They might speak nonsensically, with absolute authority. Tall their typhoon coils, but now will be done. The dust settles, the truth remains.

Think how it feels

The neck and the shoulder are such a difficulty to navigate.
Many times the journey is never completed.

Polly

She was once a shining light, then one blemish emerged. I tried to fathom her callous words as misinterpreted, misspoken foolishness, but I could only imagine the seed that this view bloomed from. For all her love and beauty, that hate did not form in isolation.

Need

Ambition has
a tendency
to hollow
you out
to scatter
your innards
to turn them
out to
worthless
things.

Forces Of Nature

Forces of nature, extreme weather and disaster, quakes and tornados, registered as precursors to some awakening, some change, an amplified junction in time and space, new creation to bloom, new brush strokes to paint on all senses of canvas. From the ashes, the seeds are fed.

_____

Sip

The morning
is raining light
sip from the earth
parched by night.

_____

Finger Butter

The jar fell in the store, a finger failure, there was nothing I could do. The descent was unseen though witnessed, so swift. I instinctively go to pick it up, I am rewarded in blood as tiny slivers slit my crepe skin. A moment’s contact has my hand glitter with glass. Like seeing one ant, I itch imagining tiny teeth shredding my frail flesh into ribbons in a bloody broth.

_____

Pool

The more
they taught
maths at school
the better
I became
at pool.

_____

Paid

Why not pay to listen, as much as you pay to chew?

_____

Rt

Art’s time
is worth
more than
a suit’s time.
Who told you art
was worthless?

Nothing to do with Pogo Sticks

Some folks won’t ride pogo sticks, they don’t believe they work, they believe them to be dangerous, they believe pogo sticks to be an untested form of locomotion. They use aeroplanes though, they still believe in aeroplanes, but they won’t ride pogo sticks, morons.

Slur

Sometimes the only reason someone has to stay is the weight of guilt laid upon them if they leave. How ironic the selfish slur daubed upon suicide.

Nothing to see here

I watched the celebration of the inauguration,
the jubilation at the clown being caught.
Each nothing met with a party popper,
each time believed a show stopper,
is just another nonsense to report.

Taste

I hear them say the Mona Lisa is smaller than expected.
I hear the Philharmonic play quite softly.
That the Ivy serve small plates.
Yet we go there to taste,
not to eat.

Barrel lickers

It’s horrific and ridiculous how the barrel lickers
merely correct our identification of their lover
rather than admit their firearm perversions.

Goal

Don’t love the goal,
love the process.
The goal sucks.

True?

Instead of learning
we scrutinise syntax
to perfect cynicism.

Art

A child’s mind,
an artist’s mind,
and a stoned mind,
they share similar
observations.

Marvin

Watching painting on TV, the process. I look at the strokes form a beauty and think, yes, that’s nice now, I love that colour and form. But he continues to paint and I have a panic. No, it was perfect, leave it. But he covers it in another tone, forming a new vibrant texture, and it looks more beautiful than before. Artists are so brave. 

_____

The moon is always full in the movies, I imagine the blue light is romantic.

_____

 

In the ritual smudge,
in meditation I still.
My mind soaks
and my mouth dries.
The dusty bitterness
of past psilocybin
descends astringent.
The feeling stays
and my thoughts soften,
knitting pastel borders
on the objects
gathering in
my dream.

_____

Everything is broken
and nothing is perfect
I can’t mend everything
So I shall take nothing
and keep it locked away.

_____

 

I climbed right out of the hole, what once was near,
is now quite low. Yet gravity is ever-present.

_____

Humanity rides on
the back of a few genius’.
The few sparks of inspiration,
the ideas eventually birthed
by us mere lazy bums.

_____

 

Why is the blood and pain of shredding my own finger nails so satisfying.

Time Atlas

Looking through my time atlas, I found tomorrow, but not today. Today was nowhere to be found. Yesterday was plain as day, if day were not elusive. Last week’s days scattered and marked with some infinite number I don’t recall. Perhaps today is torn out, it certainly does not appear to be pertinent to the arching narrative. Today is abundant in nothing at all, to use up regardless of tomorrow. Today may have as little impact on tomorrow as yesterday on today, I might create and leave nothing but ash, I might waste the whole of today without the slightest reverberation upon the week, untethered and unwritten.

 

Avatar

I would create
an avatar,
but my heart
is not in it.

 

When

When he finally passed away, we meticulously removed his head with a saw, we skinned his skull and delicately scraped the flesh and sinew from the bone. We drained the nasal passages, scooped out his eyes and gently liquified his brain, to pour out of his ear cavity. We took his skull and we cleaned it till it gleamed. We painted it in a luminescent orange, then painstakingly with gold leaf, we coated his teeth, so his smile gleamed. We placed marigolds in his eye sockets and fixed diamanté upon his scalp. It is what he would have wanted.

 

Art

Artists seek.
They find new avenues,
they plug in their guitar..,
they lose fans, they gain fans,
the exploration continues.

 

Profit

Just because you are not buying,
does not mean they are not selling.

 

Simplicity 

Something
to write,
something
to read,
mono output,
mono input,
one cord of
conveyance,
a simplified
exchange.
blinkered
conducive
to calm.

An Explanation

In the morning the dreams are fresh and fragrant in our heads, we wish to keep them a while longer, so we share them. They are hard to translate, each attempt at the unlabelled construction is not what the dreamer experienced. So we wonder why we share. But, it is not for the listener to wonder, it is for the dreamer to soak a little more, night thought’s hair of the dog.

_____

 

Expecting an explanation
we witness a sculpture
forget the question
in our euphoria
we call the art
an answer.

_____

 

It’s like the cuspate scalpel,
straight into the brain,
audible trepanning,
shearing notes
from the blackbird
at the window,
I wonder how
he does not
pierce the pane.

_____

It is going to feel quite odd
when the sun swallows the earth,
quite surreal to watch
the mountains tear like paper,
hypnogogic to watch the seas escape,
to witness all and everything fizz away.
It might be the most beautiful vision
in all of time’s cord.
But we must not reach for it.
It is not everyone’s cup of tea.

_____

 

Jane was impatient and Ellington was gaining that momentum. We had no life left in our wallets and a needle tickling zero, we needed a hitcher, to pad our tank. Over the brow, our prayers were kind of answered. An elephant stood high and ridiculous, kind of thumbing but not. We got the idea though and pulled over to let him aboard. This is a large sedan, but tested fully by the elephant’s dimensions, there was no way he was going to get in the back, so he sat in front with me. The car groaned and squeaked and spluttered into motion, in time blessed, down and hill met as words and action and we wafted along the empty road, using our passenger as toboggan ballast till the hill halted and the engine sang her mournful song. A little while later a fuel stop appeared and thankfully a note floated up from the elephants purse to see us to the coast. He said he had family out there, and so did we. We always have family when the money runs out.

_____

 

A lengthly list
of long words
elaborate words
describing simplicity
authenticity is not here
but the words will remain
authentic is just one word
the delicacy of her form
followed by the distress
of the viewer’s longing
what a tedious vision
regurgitated once more
oh look at her gossamer veil
tempt the viewer to devilish thought
an innocence not found in reality
languorous the manuscript
pouring all compliment
upon the farting girl
a disparaging oaf
to himself in his script
oh unworthy, oh elusive
how she shimmers
how he simpers
find a word to describe
her broken nose as delicate
bloated ankles shapely
scrawl a lyric that
beautifies that pus
how arrogant is strength
cavalier the confident
mock lace embellishments
repeated to the frail.

_____

 

It takes a very confident magician to tell you the trick and still fool you.

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