June.

 

Air Fingerprints

Out of the magnificent warm dark windy

Strange sounds of infinitely industrial prayer

Non-nature ghost of process past in distant mills

And un-identity, queer aromas, airs of making

Destroying these eyes with spectral memory

Of chemical moment and gravity, and rabbits

Downwind from this odd airy fingerprint

A walking lecture of past revolution progress

Removed guilty magnificence in our own eyes

Cast useless as far into the dark as yesterday

Turning back to windier chemical conversations

Lost translations, just sounds, love and poison

Upwind, upstream with waterfall magnificence

 

I sit alone and think,

I think 'alone', and hope,

I hope that things will come to pass,

The things I hope are none too few,

I sit alone, and think of you.

I was encouraged to keep a diary in my early years, several of which I still have, in a cupboard, or wardrobe or somewhere at my parents'. The diaries were supposed to help my (still to this day...) crappy hand-writing...and foster the development of neural paths and all that sort of thing. In some ways I think they worked, as there are days written therein that will be much more easily conjured up in my dotage than today, or yesterday....

As I said, my hand-writing is challenging though. I can't get my hand/eye coordination and timing sync-ed well enough to create any of the stylish writing that some people seem to be able to produce almost effortlessly...

And I get side-tracked. Regularly, like now, as I was going to go on to explain that the above shortie was my deliberate, and very conscious effort to begin the path of prose/poetic writing. Somewhere I will have the actual date, but I do know it was 1986.....Rather happily, to this day, I still kind of like it, as it's short, succinct, and the only piece I've written, apart from some attempts at songs a few years later, that I can recall, word for word some 30 years later......

 

 

Beginnings

Here, at the beginning of all things

Nothing

Another view of your infinite deep glass soul

Fracture

Pause, run, panicked doubts as it begins

Cautiously, light-speed

The dance begins, crazed and beautiful

Unsure and abandoned

Everything begins

Thought swimming, diving, flying around glass holes

Places to avoid

Waves of calm intensity

Abandoned reasons, and cautious tendrils

Wrap around loving pauses

Fearful dancers career among the beautiful swimmers

As the most ancient schism, clumsy

Shifts…

Another faith healer skates up to the edge

Of success and reasoning

As unreason preens and poses for the fight

Wrapped in loving arms, she acquiesces and

Somehow

The fliers land

Sure and secure this time, intense, clumsy,

Crazed fractures

Calm at last and deeply, cautiously loved

Beginning to heal the darkest schism

Slowly

With love and cigarettes

And wine

And candles, and a yearning.

 

 

False Memories

Why should I believe,

That all the dreams have gone ?

When I drop back slot in,

Three times in a morning.

Drug free culture,

Fruit juice kissing at bretsa.

And more love than you could shake,

A hippy at.

Slot, click, the views the film.

The wings, skyscraping and sensual,

Telephonic pleas to escape run artists,

With dead pan apologeas to you.

Awakening slowly, slyly perhaps,

Click the pictures, the surround pleas,

For clarity and understanding.

Driftwood, a fire, a beach,

A camembert love affair.

Stars, and missed moments, revisited.

Time machinery, not clocks,

She watches, shaking hppies at dreams.

Telephoning the past, to revise the script,

When dreams create belief,

That all the deadpan understanding hippies

Are awakening from these slots.

With kisses, and skyscraping Kisses.

The second official day of UK summer....

Nice.

That's it, for now, it's Friday, and I haven't been out for two weeks.......sad. So I'm going to make the effort, then realise why I don't all that often and live to regret it!

Thanks for stopping by, be safe, be strong.

1967 and all that

I thought it was just the moon. Then I was told it was the "Mayflower Moon" Looking around on t'interweb didn't shed much light on that, but I found a few references to the May's Flower moon, which, given where we are in the Northern part of the Northern hemisphere, relates to the late Spring time for fertility, new birth, planting, and re-planting.....

Oh, perhaps not if another milestone, waymarker, sort-of-significant date comes along..

 

You don't have to look it up, but boy oh boy '67 was a bloody good year for music and art, and, well all sorts of stuff...

Apparently.

I'd like to say that I just wrote that, but after the events of the last few weeks, and especially the fact that the last two birthdays have been spent alone in enormous crowds of total strangers, and my feelings about that, which are mixed to say the least, I can't.

Still, I now have a few new acquaintances, who I'll probably never see again, and have experienced some challenges to my inherent prejudices about ladies who like ladies, so that's been educational....  Oh, and I broke my left hand too, which hurts......

Today I caught up with an old friend, like not seen for 32 years. All I can say is that I wish we'd met up years ago. While we were never actually "close" way back, we were friends, and the proof of the pudding is that we talked like we were, and are still. My sometimes fading faith in human nature was recharged, and it helped my self-belief too.

Otherwise, pretty much everything in my life right now could easily be described as "chaotic".

Disorganised. Random, with a smidgeon of organised, and that is the bit that I have to try to remedy, as it's not doing me much good......

 Where along the way did I lose my self-belief? I know it's come & gone through the years, and that there is a kernel of it underlying everything that keeps me going, as I know I'm "alright" really. But like, when I think back to some bits of who I was, while I was never full-on cocky, and full of myself, I did have times when I just didn't give a flip whether people liked or understood me, and it was when I started really caring that I started to lose that confidence.

One more before I go to bed....

I haven't written much lately, well, not for weeks, though occasionally I do, and then bin....I do want to filter through a lot of my old stuff, like the above, from my "year out" from college, when I think they are worth keeping, and want to push this blog out more, though need any of my 3-4 readers to help me in that if they would care to?

My line of thinking, random though it usually is, is to keep on trucking, build this up to where I'd be happy to send it to a potential publisher, and if that doesn't work, think about starting a Go-Fund_Me type of thing to cover the costs of turning the pictures & poetry into something you can actually hold in your hands. The suggestion today was to try to do that via an on-line e-publisher, which had only breezed past my thoughts, but now I will have to have a proper look at it again....I really do invite your thoughts dear reader. Step out of the shadows please, and engage....am I barking up the wrong tree?? Is it all just bollocks?

 

Hangover Rambling Inemotional Gibberish

I'll just leave that there....for a few days longer....

Bloody Goddess, Bloody Girls.

The beginnings of the long slide,

Slips into my passenger seat,

Be my own misbegotten bride,

And accompany me in the street.

I played 'chess' on your bathroom wall,

And slid deeper into the trap,

Nothing my muse said could stop my fall,

Another dead feather in your cap.

My car stalls and I run in scream,

The radio yells out that sex is free,

The coach coughs and picks his team,

But you won't run away with me.

The green scars on the bathroom face,

Black mould where dreams have died,

I knew that I only exist in space,

But I couldn't see if you knew I lied.

The sliding street trips us up, Ha !

I fall and break my fall on you,

Was it her he loved or just her car ?

A thriller mystery that lacks a clue.

I shake hands then with future loves,

Sit in fear in your bathroom mirror,

I examine the inside of your plastic gloves,

And try to remember what to give her.

Oh the night melts in a glass of red,

My car cools from its restless flight,

Readjust my position, straighten my head,

Unconscious of this emotional fight.

Change is on the way for bathroom games,

I think I'll read a book or sing,

Or try to remember all your names,

Or weigh up all the grief you bring.

Every Sodding Day.

Inane radio, unfocussed thought,

Sense of “does it even matter?” loss,

Impending, drift where once drive,

No life-belt, water-wings,

Every single bloody day regret, no charity,

Split off intellectual acceptance,

From sterile but bleeding emotional,

Bleeding routine, rocks for cast sailors,

Safe only if you catch them before,

They utterly annihilate you.

Friendly DJ, familiar soundtracks,

Do little to surface my reality,

Just soft, safe, dull, familiar,

Every sodding day.

I sooo should have made the effort last night, to go to the folk festival, but my head isn't right.

I made it worse, and then went for a walk in a "new" place today.  It didn't help much, and part of it was the aim of clearing my head, comparing cameras, lenses and so on, but the light was so piss-poor, and my thoughts weren't coherent enough to do more than a few. Maybe I'll try it again when I'm a bit straighter.

All the pictures in this post were from that walk.....

 

Cut off again

Slowly circling, off-pitch, off-centre

Now hum with me and see for me

This half degree from opposites

This near closeness to sheer blind perfection

As lofty cragged ice walls creak worryingly

Stepping back to chaos from this window seat

I watch you in my prejudice

Predeciding the depth of my love

Waving the web away to nothing with casual hand

Before giving my eyes wholly

My tongue, my throat, my lungs,

Your kiss, your window seat, your curtain,

My love song

The one with ever such a disturbing chorus

My ice valleys, my volcano, my chaos

A half degree from centre

A thousand miles to the nearest doubt.

How could there ever have been any justice for it revenge retribution the powers of divine intervention but no great relief from these visceral agonies denial scales to tip to weld to tilt to weigh the odds and stack great light from beyond your sense relieves regret and shit faced view in sharp contrast the sky is then covered in cast iron plates rivetted and upheld by prayer below the arc of rust and grime spinning with the wheel of time the rock gives semblance of trust and then is gone no recognition no recollection from the once loved and lies with self preservation in mind I find the tarmac hard in winter grip melds memories of burning trolleys and school diversion my version to authority not me denial as new electrical thought thunders and rebounds from the iron now corrugated in places this life and digital recollection with no visible means of rapport tense and edgy the animal fight or flight the holiday the love that asked all and caught the lightning blast slippy and royal denial steel railed and the roosting carrion look on pylonned junction to rickety life and bleary self ritual you small shit I have no pity left not yours to receive this time or hatted loss minus freezing and laughing superior dreams now seem to fly and never reach this roof below the birds and clouds and storms train waiting with ancient love and pulling the plug the floor fell away the walls quick follow and exposed timbers breeding worms and beetles grow new roots into the earth below deny all follow the jack follow the swift decisive prey and reveal nothing loose this cold clammy grip on the floor as a whole congregation of roaches and fleas and mites and choristers tumble out of sight and blend coloured glass with gold and and and lift the glass to your brain and insert with taste and tasteful backdrop to new arrivals multi ...

disciplined in the art of reason and antilogic and and and naturally it will then be time to remember not yet she was weird though in an off beat frame normality flickered behind eyes decanted from these shotgunned barrels and cut out the straw relieve the taut tight sinuses of this crazy straight fiction and with a crumbling seizure face the wall you cant its gone to create a world imagine one too much too soon too misguided and walk away over these crumbled blood soaked stones and bricks with large dreaming so fly then swim skywards and fantasise the lot so addicted to adrenaline not a thrill seeking hedon just a night owl escaper trapped in these glass flowings amber ice wispy smoke flickering joist ends telephone reality grippers so addicted to waste to oblivion to running to beer perhaps arguably to love to lovers new and old past and passed to addiction itself burn this beautiful life this beautiful optimism when you have nothing it says in piss stinking grafitti on the underside of this iron clad sky with slow flowing larva streams you have everything to gain laughable aphorism and obnoxious bilious aftertaste what do you know as God lands and reminds you of your own chemical imbalances easy to back away He doesn't follow but is there when you turn your wings hurt your legs have gone and your arms wrap around my waist too big a doubt arises in poisoned guttle where three heads boil and fizz and blow steam into these dark fissures the light return to adolescent pastures green and once again forgot intended force repressors chase new prey the outsider why cannot ever be the answer wheels within prisms and reflected spectral memories on screens of disaster as the human leaves the glass refills and melts into ancient tables no needles no pins no blood no terror just a sad whimsy a notion a creed of...

self self self where now the dawn of roses where lies the land of light so ruddy in the baking evening so barren and denied come with the dawn interpret at leisure and make lists to rule thought freestyle frames bend frames break but are not so organic cut wood and twine create your own not quite the chameleon more the diamond multi-whiskyed and many faced the Mr Ben of this revolution your red blonde brown hair in great huge windows and silver chariots only grips the childish side where browns blondes and reds should fear to tread no love lost no love found just a higher aim on this loving ground and metros at midnight and dogs at dawn not quite following the many born nor realising true germination in this sea of plough and waking within more confidence shrinking ego wilted with no serious repercussion propped suspended held up tied down and bagged and drowned lets get the hell out of town burn it down head for the hills and natures skills with no sense of timing no concluding gesture realising perhaps that to survive is a strength in itself while wobbly the normal headed escape while escaping youre nearly normal with still justice it could be said no thought of wickedness was in your head simply the observations built up in years that the people are trivial and you are people values float meaningless under torrents of blistering tears of ration control and lack are much the same soul conditions in this hall of fame but there stands the weirding mirror reflection shows the mind aquiver but as straight as a loser and half as simple as a prime contender for knockout bouts on this stage of ground illusion dont miss the station X-file elation and empty bottled romantic friction cast skywards in prime addiction duty obligation warped by self preservation yes I could learn from you look around see what it is you do to wind this clock and create your life I might be your man but you're not my wife. 

Very Random Scream

It's been a while since I posted anything but my own crap, so here's a cracking bit of Johnny Cash to break up the madness.

I did try to reduce the size of the embedded video, by changing height & width in the code, but it just ignored me, so I gave up.....It's up to you whether or not you just listen to it, or watch and listen.....

Shucks, after watching that one three times in a row, I let YT do it's automatic "next track" thing, and of course "Hurt" came up.. Then the tears started, and I thought, I've already "liked" it, on YT, and probably commented before too, so commented again just to be sure...(!) and then thought I'd post it here too...

Don't waste time reading the comments, or you'll just get mad at the idiots who can't listen to something for itself, without getting all tribal, and judgmental about nothing whatsoever, because that's what our commercially centric world is making us.

And this is me being happy..... Sheesh........

Third of the Year Already......

Ambulance

Some crashes happen for no madness

Others create it, forlorn understated belief

That it’ll all just work its way through

The articulated dream, hybrid mad thinking

Took you to caves,

to dark twittering caves, that drank you in.

The ambulance couldn’t get,

Snowed in by your early dark decisions,

But we lie here with blue lights dancing

on the bedroom ceiling,

And its siren in our hearts.

Arcana Reflex.

Sharp grey-blue smoke,

Curling, madly about this return,

Something told me, that we could cope,

Yet there was still so much to learn.

To turn your thoughts about,

Breath it in and then scream out.

The initiate mysteries we took in deep,

No climb to wisdom was quite so steep,

Lost my voice singing in my sleep,

Found it again, in your clothes strewn heap.

And it came unbidden, that this love was true,

That for us, there was little we could do,

To turn about old-heart shards, into something new,

Above this bedlamic affair, songbirds flew.

Began to see then, to understand,

Swirling whisky glass, in my hand,

Brings knowledge, and a little relief,

Into this moth's life, so sweet and brief.

Now we may huddle, as lovers tossed,

Rag-dolled bodies, where all sense is lost,

Perhaps to weigh, measure the real cost,

Time to track foot-prints, in this cold dawn frost,

Kiss me in this cool deep return,

Well tell me dear what have we learned ?

Have we the respect we think we've earned,

Seeing truth in eyes, kindled fire burns.

Alive.

We walk

Into a cinema

Cast of faces

Familiar

Haunting

Dead and welcoming

We take our seats

The stranger sits

Across the aisle

The film was unimportant

Feelings of gentle insecurity

General darkness

At home, long cool building

French window to a beach

Non-existing

The Lovers

The stranger, intruder

The questions

No answers

Attack and parry

Defend, and strike

The knife in his chest

Refuses to cut

Fight

I stab, while we flee

The windows are open

No beach to run to.

I stab his legs

His head and eyes

His skin comes away

The stranger

He is down

Knife under jaw and

Upward thrust

Twist into soft flesh

And splintered roof.

Lies still, the stranger

The dream continues

We are flying

Past the cinema.

Past the trees

Beech. No beach.

And nightmares

And stallions

A feeling, no view

That he refused to die

Standard chase and panic

A pause and perhaps

We'll live this time

Unimportant detail.

It's been a funny few weeks. Not funny "ha ha", in fact lacking a lot of "ha ha" altogether really, but hey, we're a third of the way through 2017 already. What did you expect?

Last night I was determined to go out and see people, but wasn't up to it when I got there, so didn't stay so long, and tonight, feeling a lot better in some ways, wasn't up to actually going out at all. Great. 

Still, on the positive side, the dogs have had two proper nice walks, and there's still Sunday to grapple with........

As a parting gift, here's a leveret I spotted the other day, trying her hardest to be invisible.....

Fridays Used to be Something to Look Forward to.

I nearly caught the buggers fly-tipping.....
Still, they do look guilty as sin.......

 

It's taken me nearly three weeks to eat the bar of chocolate I bought as a gift, given but forgotten. These pieces are me just screaming out random crap to get them out of the way so I can start to get my head back on straight again. I'll let you know how that goes, as so far it's a disaster.

 

 

and, because, like everyone has to have connection to the poetical dictionary of other people's ideas, here is my Black Dog. Not Winston Churchill's, or yours, just my own. 

I did have one, Lady, and I loved her, madly.

 

The Black Dog.

The black dog's emotions are not dead,

Not blind-folded in a mad kids play,

Nor does it matter to anyone anyhow,

Anyhow, the black dog loves something.

We need new expression,

New ancient language to sing,

Of the black dog's secret loves,

A trained response, almost a reflex.

Sleep with emotions under wool blankets,

Sleep with the black dog's emotions,

Hidden but an eye winks the cache,

Gives the game away but briefly.

The tears are real enough on whiskery cheeks,

But betray nothing of the reasons,

Given reasons fit the lovers excuses,

But betray nothing of the black reasons.

A silence descends in dusty mad kennels,

As the black dog holds on to her heart,

The skies ignore the frozen freeze-frame,

Of countless loves now dead.

Now buried in married earth curtains,

And they betrayed nothing of themselves,

They live out a passionless lie,

And in their dreams, with the dog.

Black dog circles round the edge of fire,

And grumbles at the secret dancers,

Retracing bitter remembered snow-tracks,

And a deliberate retreat from the truth.

Who will catch the mad black dog ?

Who among the girls will remember how ?

And who will run with his soul

On windswept beaches with mad seagulls ?

(Everyone has a “Black Dog” whether or not they write it. Just cliché)

In the meantime, there ARE Fairies! I caught a couple of snaps, and I was no where near Cottingley.

1988, Jeez, just a child. Key to the door, and all that. There's a biggy coming in the next couple of weeks, and I don't know if I know any more now than I did then, in fact, I probably know a lot less in so many ways, but so much more about nothing. 

The clock is ticking.

 

What a funny old week, icy cold, snow, hail, thunder storms, brilliant sun, a solidly numb head, and life, and mis-communications. I don't need drugs, thankfully, as none of my world makes that much sense as it is. Win!

If Carlsberg made internal dystopias......

 

 

I have lost focus, not drive, or, at least until these last few days energy, so again, hello limbo.

I am so bloody alone at the minute, and it is beginning to really hurt.

Bath and bed, tomorrow I will inject positivity. Well, extra strong Italian coffee, and go grab Saturday by the gonads.

 

Like a big cock.

Night all.

 

Nonsense

  

Aware of Another

Aware of another person in the same building blocks out the easy rider feel of satin in your mind how do you know how they will react to the knowledge that no-one is truly alone no matter how much they sometimes feel the uncomfortable muzz of a disconnected vacant stare on a stairway from the peoples' ground floor to your personal space on a first floor of a peculiar been there before when the television is silent for a moment or two kind of late night feeling of surprise when you fail to understand that the other person must have purely been wishful thinking in an odd way you don't regret a thing and take another look at your lifestyle with no style that you can put your finger on and then you hear someone going up the stairs in next doors' house which completely wrecks your train of thought though you can't see why when Jimbo is reading from his Prayer while you nervously sit and wait for the house to come alive at closing time.

Banks of The Styx

There she was, with a gun in her hand,

Picking lilies on the banks of The Styx.

It was all I could do to just stare and stand,

Remembering how you got your kicks.

She turned round to face me, but just looked right through me,

Her hands fell like death to her side.

I kept quite silent, as the moment felt violent,

But there was just nowhere to hide.

Thus stood us two, and the ferryman, who,

Almost invisibly glided on by,

I acknowledged his passing with a so subtle nod,

Saw the wink of his terrible eye.

I turned back to see her, and to reach out for her,

But as it seemed the moment had gone,

I sat down in the flowers, and summoned my powers,

Tried in vain to conjure a song.

I wracked my brain hard to come up with the words,

When I did the tune came out wrong,

So I hummed and I whistled, as my memory bristled,

It just didn’t scan and the verses too long.

There she was with the works in her hand,

Having scored on the banks of The Styx,

I opened my mouth to shout something uncouth,

But no words, just the chewing of bricks.

I couldn’t believe, as she rolled up her sleeve,

That such elegant beauty could be so unreal,

I had tried to save her, though I’d wanted to leave,

As deep down, I had started to feel.

When I looked up again, I could see through her brain,

I could see the cogs had all jammed,

Numb and so helpless, I tried hard to stand,

This just wasn’t going as planned.

I looked over again, expecting her pain,

In fact I half expected her dead,

I was mildly surprised to fall into her eyes,

As quite cleanly she entered my head.

When I awoke, to this fabulous joke,

I was alone on the ground, quickly looked round,

To try to assess just what she had done,

Little I saw, through eyes that were raw, but perhaps could make out a song.

There she was with a flute in her hand,

A garland of lilies strewn on the path,

Again and again, I then wracked my brain,

To summon beauty no woman hath.

Tragically fragile, and utterly futile,

My attempt to rescue such maid,

From my own damnation, I must seek salvation,

Footsteps on the way I have laid.

A lesson confusing, but not of my choosing,

Perhaps one that was sent,

I came back to life, to much pain and strife,

And thought; “Perhaps it was meant?....”

Came to Say.

When two pieces of broken glass,

Slightly splintered and nonchalent,

Are joined at the mutual pelvis,

Can you tell me where I left my body ?

Where I left my baby's body,

With the glistening sweet lying on a beach,

A breach of smooth stones and solitude,

For a maniacal lover to dance on.

The glass is imperfect and hazed,

But catches violent light in odd rainbows,

A spectrum of screaming emotion claws,

And incorporeal sense of typhoon love.

The mother storm bringing destruction in our path,

And as high as you are the glass is shattered,

And the beach is invisible in rubber,

Screaming splinters in my head space.

A place we may sometimes come to,

I know its more real than you,

And at the pinnacle of hot ice,

I know I only live in your scream.

I only came to say goodbye,

To the one who became me,

And I tell you with truthful pride,

That you were the only girl I came with.

 

Dark Heat

Dark heat and clear for take-off,

Dated machinery scrines in mock complaint,

And in stereo you mistake her love.

Driven by anger,

Lead by fear,

Images of self-disbelief,

Contorted shelf-like freeze marked.

Content to observe,

Not to serve,

To watch and

To mimic radio-opera.

The intense scorching heat in love bedsit,

And swim free through drowned gardens,

Mental paths to sunlit glades with

Fronds of welcome,

Wracks of loving.

Swim free,

No machine my heart,

Power cut.

( I know it's what I currently use as the background image to the whole site, but here is a slightly different version. Taken on the moors above Glossop, a handful of years ago. There haven't been any trees on there for a few hundred years.......)

 

I guess we've all had better weeks. Three of my older customers have had life-changing falls, my ever-more expensive van has needed some more costly attention, and, well, the other stuff. What a way to approach a personal life-time milestone.....

Stay philosophical. I am trying to!

As for the pieces above, I'm not setting puzzles or riddles here, these are just more points between drawn lines might be a clue as to who I am and where my head is. Or they might be just random stuff. Who knows, or cares?

On that note......Got the old Playhard (Tom Wilson/React) album on, not quite loud enough to piss the neighbours off, but it's a close call, and the fire's in. Dogs walked, laundry done, and am thinking I might do a TV hour.....

Night all. (Well, all 5 of you, whoever you might be....)