S'been a While.

 

 Overdone HDR. "That Tree"

Yessir it has, and then we find a particularly dire period, fallow is an understatement, especially on the heels of the whirlwind that blew herself out at about the time of the previous post......

Let's crank up the nostalgia engine and tick a few more off the list then, and keep ruminating on the new ones that keep failing to reach pen & paper, but they will, boy oh boy, the themes are the only thing holding me back really as they became a bit too predictable, even if the love-sentiment is as predictable as ever. Love and loss, love and mis-match, hurricane-love, and so on.....Just not rock solid, dependable, reliable, understanding, compromise, trust and openness. Issues, on both sides, this isn't a blame-fest.






Hey ho, not going to slip further into the personal, that was never the point of this blog, in any of its incarnations.

Don't Call.


Don't call, crying out incredible wastes,
Don't offer a hand, tightrope walker,

I can blow this all on my own.


Don't say "I'm here any time for you."
Patent leather, patent lies,
Patience tested, tomorrow's sighs,

Urgent needs to feed the greed.

Don't bother, assistance as yours is plenty,
Plentiful, bountiful, but hollow and rare,
Is the genuine glint, eye corner stare.

I can fuck this up all on my own.


Write me a letter, "James, it will get better."
Just hold on that bit, to let fate work it out,
No thanks, ex-directory, moved address,

Don't call me anymore.

 This has become the age of my hermitage, and I don't really like it.

Dancer

Not a dance floor dodger

No way

Uncontrollable catharsis of all that

Nervous energy

So what then, crowd avoider ?

Not evader, not isolate,

Desolate soul portions, but much is sunlight,

Much is overfull

Crammed with dreams, memories, awareness of now,

Possibly chemicals,

Probably chaotic proactive reactions.

No matter,

Dancefloors and crowds,

Seething mass of sweaty designer skin tight,

Ebbing, flowing, swelling then shouting and

Human media for observant swimmers,

Eyes.

Half a second away from this universe,

Always "not just"

Following the lost scent trails of

Those before.

Through swollen uncomfortable seas of

Drunk dancers,

Speeding towards the edge, always.

Stood in the right/wrong place, as usual.... 

Kettle’s On….

And then the tiny ‘te ching’ of the heater, the ‘sss’ of the kettle on the stove, the crunch of the heart on warm shale.

Teaching.

Missions to other dimensions of stupid wisdoms = ˚45

But my love is far from obtuse.

I hope closer to tuse.

And to wisdom, though far from my judgement and closer than yours it seems,

Through this kaleidoscope/telescope, camera

Crappy old recycled papered sketchpad

It seems.

It sometimes seems, beyond Danny, beyond Carl, beyond Mama Mia, both and less,

Beyond me, and before.

Close inspections, microscopic interventions, and a nudge to the wise.

Too much wisdom blinds the self-obsessed Djin.

And his smoke/mirror entrapments for you, and all of your dreams,

Passported to just anywhere.

Stamped.

Pumelled.

Worlds Meet

In the in-between slice of the autumn night dark,

As in the tin-box caravan, so long left in time,

Standing at the meeting place of worlds,

Cold, freshly grated evening air running over my face,

Forearms, leg-fronts, neck, and becomes deep breath,

As behind, leg-backs, hair is warmed,

Where the worlds meet.

Wolves

Years unveiled old dreams, and scents,

Clear sight, hindsight, clarity,

Think you worked out what they meant,

Your dragon's slayed, naivety....

Assure yourself with goods, and bads,

With things that you possess,

Some make wise, some bounders cads,

All make more of less....

Wise man, woman, now see the truth,

Where will you be when come the calls?

Couldn't avoid it, now await the proof,

There always were wolves, behind the walls......

Washed Up
 

Washed up, on this tiny stone shore,

Thrown up,

from the troubled surf.

Strangely inclined sea of leaves;

Oak and ash, silver birch and beech.

Damp driftwood and stone islands.

Cool wooded beauty with ranging dogs…

Turning inward, tried hard to turn off.

Reflections and conundrums, unknowns and ‘what if?’s

The threats of adventure, impending dark loss.

Decanting thought to void the vessel…

Gaunt tired undernourished ship-wreck. Pigeon Gulls.

This body almost empty, this head quiet too,

Letting the leaves, and trees and squirrels in…

Living poems each, to deconstruct this world…

Brings no meaning, nor reasons or clarity.

Just a deep and pleasant feeling that, all is well.

The dogs return, eyes full of their own questions,

Aglow and lit with joy of life.

Check your wreckage, then again for rabbits

Flying over brambling tides and stump toadstools...

On their endless drive for the instinctive quest.

Instead of questions answered by internal voices

The flotsam moss dulls around the mind,

Calming doubt waters and a whirlpool quandary.

Darker storms brew in the woodland litter.

Distant yet, but a threat, no less.

An hour or so for the turning tide,

To stand, salt-crusted head less troubled

Summon the rabbiters and splice the sails.

Catching sight of a skimming owl,

Albatross-like to this un-drowned mariner.

Cool wooded meditative shore-leave,

…..Helped. Not much, as ideas drain out,

The empty mind blown clear of leaves,

And moss, and stones, and dogs, and rabbits,

And stumbles towards the waiting kettle.

View From Lose Hill.


Objecting to your inter-personal politics,
Allegations of, rumours of,
Chinese whispering in late Yorkshire bars,
I find solace in peak striving.

You would never believe how far I can throw 
My shadow.

Lose Hill to the valley below.

Frozen silver sunlight,
Striding, walking, stick man.

Thoughts of other filmic dreaming,
Battle with panic anxious death flows,
as once more your lungs strive to climb
Out and up, pulse to match.

No, you'd not believe how far I can throw
My shade, your politics,
My voice to echo this sentiment,
My ambition to descend.

Crossing paths with your insulting bright kagoules,
Anachronistic, we level, but briefly,
To the river,
The railway,
And the warm farm,
With whisky and cake,
Without you. 

(For what it's worth, "Lose" is pronounced "loose" in this context,

 it's near Edale, Derbyshire...)

Unknown Pleasure.

Crazed-fingers, on glass, on steel,

On rubber-matted floors, to feel,

To studs, and belts and jaws so taut,

Never stop just when you ought,

To taste the leather Eden apple fresh,

And whip the frenzy, up on flesh,

To kick, and scream, in agstacy,

While choosing how not to be,

So charged with yearning, and yet,

So unwound-up, on a losing bet,

That life so quick, so sure and able,

Won't leave you, dead, beneath my table.

Visitor.

My dreams are as real as the night,

I believe in a second sight,

I know how to set things alight,

And I know what's not black is white.

Why do I have to dream of death ?

When foul corpses try to steal my breath,

From whom did I get this curse ?

Losing you only made it worse.

While you once were a visitor to my dreams,

I think you left with the morning beams,

Now the dream-skin slips away in streams,

Leaving me to drown, or so it seems.

I know I should not fear to sleep,

Should long for where willows weep,

Should dip into unconscious pools so deep,

But the grim one lurks and yearns to reap.

My nights are longer now you're gone,

I should have guessed you were 'the one',

But I didn't really understand your song,

Couldn't see how I'd been so dumb.

But these dreams are more real than the night,

And give me a glimpse of second-sight,

Some strange way to set my head alight,

Or a way of falling, from great height.

 






Really??

Well, that's a few more off the list, but I'm afraid there are still some more to go.....

Bear with me, I'll get this chapter behind me eventually.....

I'll try not to leave it three months before the next not-especially-gripping installment....

Love/Hate This Time of Year.

Ghost Towning.

Eleven years, the returning,

The rough city of child's dreams,

Nightmares, wonders, failures, learning,

Floating oddly through imagined streams.

Can't quite remember, something familiar,

So this is how things change,

Parked the car in Wentworth Terr, similar,

At the same time something strange.

St Austin's chapel - remember Judy ?

The coaches that lined up to collect,

Spotty, screwed up free spirits and broody,

The elite, not quite, but maybe the select.

And the school, can't quite bring myself to look,

Can't quite leave it either, here inside,

Keep feeling that I should recognise..where's duck ?

And there's the pub where we used to hide.

Further into town, 'Ziggys' is now 'The Patio',

Sacrilege ! To refurbish my perfect memory,

The streets the same, my head now says go,

When I'm walking through a ghostly reverie.

I keep thinking I might see myself here,

But haven't time to check the station bar,

Nor the attic in the hall, or everywhere,

My shade memory seems not so far.

Walking now through the bus station,

Miming the journey into school,

Catch stupid strange sensation,

They didn't cure this dumb fool.

The geriatric bingo players remain,

Eleven years of sandwiches and teas,

Have they, or I at last gone sane ?

Then at last, the school...please...

Eleven years, the returning,

The battle (school playing-) fields,

The labs, classes, computer rooms, still learning,

To tell the false from all these 'reals'.

 

Flightless Angel.

The librarian’s pride knows a dizzy perch,

Leaving reason on the plains below,

Fist clenched tightly on the leash,

That binds a flightless angel.

Fast racked indexed tones

The words of angels, on virgin silk.

You have been,

Are and

Always will be

The girl I love.

Freestyle.

Giveaway, bargain. The shops all ascream,

Style is free. Free-style.

Dream.

Seem to be in thought-land, magic tree.

Shop keeper nation,

Kiss your inflation,

Credit and charge cards,

Rats in the backyard.

Ascreaming, ascreaming mind how you go,

There's nothing just left now,

But the dirty old snow.

Old snow, grizzled and non-white,

Watch where you're treading,

When you're out for the night.

Have you lost your style lover ?

Soon now discover,

The flowered-up addiction

Pointless prediction :

"Tomorrow will be just as bad..."

"The President was really just mad."

And free.

Freedom fight,

Caterwauling spright,

Defenceless and deafened.

Kiss the sign, and soak up the snow,

Nobody will tell you what you should do.

Freestyle in a municipal bath-house.

Free to be the one,

Or none.

Anyone can join in, and singalong with me,

Today is the day when everything's free,

Nothing to pay 'til the end of the year,

Balance of trade on the end of a spear.

Freestyle baby, freer than nobody's heroes....

Come home now, and love me, your own little zero.

 

High.

The high, whether natural or no,

Varies, every time.

The high you feel at escape,

The moment you hear it all pass by,

Is cool and deep,

Yet is no less real or

Hurts not a feather more

Than that real true second.

The high, whether natural or no,

When you turn to face them,

Screaming out "here I am !"

Pierces your pounding thoughts,

As you collapse and submit,

Knowing this is no less real.

Whether high or not,

Whether real, or dreaming,

We vary, every time.

Lilies

The lilies are out,

Well, this week's at least,

Trumpeting my love

To any who'll listen

Unexpectedly audienceless

Unexpectedly misunderstood

With deep shiny glossed leaves

White bells,

Six point horns

Now silent.

 

Motorway Driving.

A gap appears in the traffic,

As the rain bounces high off the road.

Your passenger's complaining they're carsick,

In the nearside a lorry sheds its load.

When you think that nowt could get worse,

And the situation can only improve,

Your passenger complains that they'll burst,

And the traffic refuses to move.

The gap that you've seen has gone,

And the stereo has jiggered itself.

All you can do is go on, and

Try to preserve mental health.

Four hours later you've moved a whole mile,

And the atmosphere is wearing thin,

The insanity forces a peculiar smile,

Which then breaks out in a grin.

A gap appears in the traffic,

And the rain bounces high off the road,

Your passenger's been horribly sick,

And your brain has just shed its load.

 

A bit random, but that in itself seems to be the order of the day. My regular readership seems to have crept up from more of less single figures to over 30....which in itself is nice. Thank you, whoever you might be. The last picture, immediately above, was taken yesterday, and I have to say that it was blooming cold......Seeing as how it's rained more or less all day today, with fog/low cloud, I doubt the Moss will look quite like that tomorrow......

Between Lives, Seeing as.....

Seeing as how that is how it feels.

 

Dreamdancing.

The dream of the dance,

With white tiled toilets the size

Unbelievable, of the Albert Hall,

The deja-vu, your dress,

Your fathers signet ring,

Tuxedo ? How Americaine,

And your split skull smiling mother.

Maybe you'd smile as goddamn f*ing much,

If you rattled as you walked,

Or danced on designer drugged clouds,

With Archangel Valium and the Tremazipan Seraphim.

Dreaming did not dilute the senses,

Idiocy, fallacy, total hypocrisy,

The scent of garlic on your breath and clothes,

The stink of piss in the car park,

And the unmistakable stench of Janus.

In step we walk into St Pancras,

Or is it the dance floor,

Dinner of shellfish and langoustine,

With real champagne,

Real glasses,

Really embarrassing.

The memory of her blasted hypocritic's lecture,

On my lifestyle, your future,

My potential, my wasted three years,

My euphoric smoker bows to her depressants,

And duly the thread snaps.

You and I boarding different trains.

And Mrs Goody Flip-top head,

Waves me goodbye, from impossible,

Bar, cave, station toilets, and platform,

As she believes shes doing

The right thing.

Treaclebrain.

Sometimes the thoughts

Transmitted from uncertain sections of the brain,

Take a disproportionate time

To reach the nerves intended,

As if they're rebounding,

Or being held back,

Then being released, by another force,

Or traveling through either

A damaged track

Or

Treacle.

Sometimes truly lovely,

Sometimes truly, disorienting.

After the event,

Simply a cause for concern,

No drug residue

If no drug intent or present.

A many year hang over ?

Or a subject

For further study ?

 

Extract From A Lucid Dream.

Two lush living hedgerows stand,

Twelve feet apart, or thereabouts,

You and I move with hand in hand,

Though in a dream I have no doubts.

Our daughter, that we haven't had,

Walks between us along the grass,

Though I can't see her eyes aren't sad,

I know they smile like shiny brass.

I pick her up and on my shoulders,

We stroll between these neatest rows,

I loose your hand to help me hold her,

And fail to notice your pace now slows.

Carry on this sunny walking,

In a dreaming that I once had,

You've fallen behind as I'm stalking,

And I know I should feel so sad.

As the years roll by I know you're gone,

Leaving me to walk almost all alone,

But my daughter seems forever young,

What I see next near cuts my bone.

Up ahead you stand and smile,

We catch you up, as if you'd never gone,

We walk once more in double file,

I feel like, and raise my voice in song.

Two intensely living hedgerows green,

Twelve feet apart or thereabouts,

Still today, I don't know what it means,

But even in this dream I had no doubts.

Games With No Rules.

Friend or lover, who's to say ?

Who knows best but you and me ?

I'm pissed off with being free,

Need someone to fight with me.

The place that we came to then

Was hot and dusty and all the buildings were white,

The dogs lay in heated gutters,

The sprinklers sprinkled in the gardens.

My insecurity screwed up my haze,

I got lost in your arguments,

Got sucked in the spiral of laziness,

And made love with words of jealousy.

Held hands as we drove to a river beach,

And I felt like it was all so new,

It was all so old and alive,

We swam with the fools gold of short-time.

The day lasted longer than my brain,

I swam in the dark, insane,

I'm sure the fish must have felt the same,

And the fat French man woke up and went home.

Friends, we sat together,

We opened and closed a chapter in our life,

So short are our times together,

I dreamt about you as his wife.

I'm pissed off with living so far from you,

Want more than this game we're in,

And so I do sod all about it,

Except plant more crowded seeds of regret.

To flourish in the melanchol dusty gardens,

Behind my eyes where I sit back,

And laugh and cry and swim,

And make love to you in my mind's bed.

 

Happy Slippers.


Quickly cutting, the hazed, overhot,
Staggered horridly to the wood-covered door,
Flung open the horrid, wooden, hinged flap,
Into May, late balmy over-calm night,
Fell in brown slippers forward and drew breath.

Hideously contrasted by refreshment,
Drunken not, but inebriated on clear air,
Smooth, too warm perhaps, maybe, could be, humid.
Liquidly, ten-thirty, sweetly, lungs filled,
Compares ridiculously with smokey fire-heated comfort,
Reminds someone of something long ignored.

Happy slippers, heels trodden, into evening grass,
Transport the spirit to the ludicrous dream,
Heralded the storm, or rumoured the summer,
Nights of last, but thirsty, unsure perceptions,
Quickly forgot, to the host tin coffin.
Inexplicably perched, on exposed meadow-like hillside,
Now irrelevant, as desire seeks out tin-womb return.

 

Green. (2)

Not quite stagnated, quite,

Green, but the green of decay,

Scented by mould.

A broken hand-glass,

A shattered illusion,

Splinters of nothingness,

Bloody fur, on scum.

 

False hope.

Stop for your own sake,

Take a quick gap and take

A second to really soak in

All the depths of this scary thing.

Gap analysis.

Take that walk and turn around,

Roundabout love under stars of Wales.

And boarding the ship

We must part, for now.

You seized my eyes

Dragged my voice and dowsed my love,

To the ground of your floor.

Lying berserk and lost,

I felt your face in this darkness,

And tasted your mind.

Anger and repressed longing,

Dreams of free love, tense hang-ups,

And this squalid carry-on.

You held my hand and my tongue,

opening your barriers for insane moments,

Of crazy emotion induced love.

And this dark carpet beneath,

Holds its own counsel, and guards

Against the return of forgotten reservations.

Forget-me-not, astrewn abandoned and out of season,

Blows rag-tag across the 2am wet lane,

And my muscles remember that peculiar night.

Dead Bulb

There are lights coming up the hill,

Far too fast for some odd reason,

To this small town tight lane.

Your lights are too fast, and too bright,

No sense but bags of reason,

Makes me consider the dead bulb

In my emotional tail-light.

I am so trying with the whole night/timed-exposure/stars thing, but it's bloody hard to get it right. You can mess around with the aperture, fine, the shutter-speed, fine, the ISO level, yes, I get that, but actually manually focusing on a distant point, in the dark, when you're long-sighted...is tricky, believe me, it is. Add to that the minus 8 or whatever it was the other night......Sheesh, I'm glad these came out at all......

Life really sucks right now, but hey, my usual caveat applies, so I'll leave that one to you dear reader. What would you do? Keep sodding on...yes, that's all you can do at time, just keep sodding on.

Why does my brain kick off at midnight, and then refuse to stop until it's time to actually wake up and go get ready for the day ahead???? Bugger.

Zombie......

Here's a timed exposure of the snow the other night.......

 

I loved it so much I messed around with it, and some others, and a couple of video clips.......

Addiction fighting, and trying to understand where I'm at......Welcome to the end of 2017. I will raise a glass, and share, and shed a tear to the whole thing.

Happy December. x

Handling Fee

I am brewing some new ideas, but they haven't made it to the finished form as yet. I have to stop beating myself up about everything, and just push the ideas into some new, non-self-deprecating, and self-hating territory. No self-pity, just acceptance of where I'm at, and why.

So much of it is still my own fault.....

Back on track, I'm still working through my old crap, so that will have to do for now, though the vast majority of the photos are contemporary....

Circles.

On the edge of the circle, lie the signs,

The Sword of Valour, the Crown of Justice,

The others sparkle, in the dew.

Pain and remembrance, never in vain,

Hallowed groves of ancient loving,

The spinning globe underfoot, the arcing skies...

Dancing to a tune from the minstrel's pipe,

The dead-wood shaped, in me, forever.

Black eyes, black heart, black sheep and now...?

The wise man turns and knows,

The children ignore the green,

Seven score warriors from the isle of the free,

Dancing like fireflies around a candle flame.

Mossy stones receive skin,

Forever to be held within.

Coldness and discomfort, Hell and Fire,

Beelzebub touches me, taunting and how,

The old man watches and thinks.

A diamond breaks the water's surface,

A ringlet of white grown from heaven,

Behold me, don't reject me,

I am here.

Just Get Over Yourself Man

A Familiar Man.

In England's green desert,

Where everything grows,

There's a man on the loose,

Who nobody knows.

He'll sit by your side,

One day on the train,

But you'll never see him,

Or share in his pain.

In England's green desert,

Where everything grows,

There's a man on the loose,

Who nobody knows.

If somebody asked him,

Just what had gone wrong,

I doubt he would answer,

The tale is too long.

In England's green desert,

Where everything grows,

There's a man on the loose,

Who nobody knows.

How could he lose it,

When it never belonged ?

Careless to a fault,

How could he be wrong ?

In England's green desert,

Where everything grows,

There's a man on the loose,

Who nobody knows.

After Bishopston.

Abundance of green glory

A shortage of

The material.

Spiritual, fantastical.

Innocence, flirting.

Dry stream bed, washes our feet.

In the stinking heat,

In the green-glory.

In the hidden valley.

But free floating in this haze,

To ignore the inquiring witness gaze,

A freedom bid, unknown inquirer,

And it matters little now, besides.

Cool roots drink dry the stream bed,

Dark cool place,

A faint tinge of a past

Dark cool place.

Green-glory in abundance,

A shortage of

Unasked questions.

In the hidden

Valley.

Bullet

Bullet point

Splits hairs

And tears

Your wound politic

Lead rhetoric

And carmine reason

Carbine power

Tipped juggernaut force

Shattered argument

To bloody cause

Spilled out

As the idea ricochets

Into hollow death.

Holme Moss in the snow....

Bureaucratic Slaughter.

Bloody daft headless ferret

Backing down the tube to the conservatory

Rabbits shooting hypodermic laughter

Inward crunching of anaesthetic/lunacy

Side-salad of cunning cyanide/undressing

Playboy pinnies, dust-puff-ball tail pulling

With rapidly gyrating official orgasm

Incessant hysteria in this euthanistic orgy

Control/capping/regulation/order, manages -

To defy the newly carnate after-birth

Complete diet mutated (defendant) gene prodigy

To re-wax his infant hairless ears

Prophylactic accessory by nature/provider

Denying corruption by innocent passenger fleas

What a brilliant play as the Min-man watches

Slow motion occasion returns to haunt

Not him, fool! - But the halls of coneys

Black ringing, no change but void

To spiders, slugs, cymag dusting, and fate

The curtain falls, audience now silent

Except for those abandoned/generated.

I have so much to write.

One day I will.

These are all "historical" ones, but seemed to call out to me when I was looking for something credible......

Cat Woman.

Behind this peach cute wall,

Lives the mad cat-woman,

And Digby.

In sorry grey gown and safety-pins,

Bare legs and dead slippers.

"I feel alright in my body,

No its not my body,

I'm just worried about my cat."

"Have you seen him ?"

Scarecrow mad cat-woman and

The cat in her eyes,

The senseless connections,

A cat called Digby, poor sod.

I refrain from publicly saying too much, if anything, so I won't, and maintain that line of "This is who I am, take it or leave it".

Pity.

Understandable though.

Sorry it's been more or less a month......

xx