the anticulturalist: appeal to objective reality and the anticulturalist response

 

Sessions

we pondered at great length

and discussed for quite a while

the fact that I was prone

to overthinking

uh 

it takes most of a session

to reach down deep enough

to start to untangle something

then the time is gone and

well

see you next week

I like to finish on an up note

if I can

an affirmation 

or acknowledgement

of something positive

trouble is

once I leave the chair

and leave the room

and leave the building

the world is there

I mean

carrying on of course

and yeah of course of course 

Nobody cares, I know that,

or better to say that

everybody cares but there is no time

because the earth spins, etc,

and work and whatnot

and so on and all that

gadzooks

did they ever find out

where Square One was?

A Slow Dive

Supposed a slip

but the ground fell away

your trajectory twisted

inelegant sprawl

red zone suspension

through the muddy squall

negligent absence

darker distractions

Cry wolf/help/blame

a learnt malevolence

staged rage. 

But no matter:

it is all wrapped pain.

There is no possible

control of what

should not be;

neither should we

suffer unduly for that

which is done to us

for there is a future

when we catch each other.

When We Gather Again

My friends

we will gather again

and speak to

the russet glow we share,

our greying growing hair,

and seek to

salute the past with grace,

and then

share our fire and follies;

show photos

of those who went before,

of those who’re coming after,

sons, daughters,

our triumphs and our glories;

make amends

for sharp words half-forgotten,

give peace to

this world in disrepair

the ever-heating air

where, brief though

life may be, the beauty is we were

such friends.

None Of This Was Yours To Sell

Money funnels are a curse

Take your hands out of that purse

You stole a future, hid it well

That none of this was yours to sell

The only trickle-down to date

Is piss from broken cisterns, mate

You took our stuff for a quick quid

Which was not yours, but don’t tell Sid

Recite these words into a mirror:

Jesus Christ loves every sinner

But let’s be frank. Don’t you remember

What He did to money-lenders?

Well, clearly not. You stole the Bible

You auctioned the manger in the stable

You spend your time inventing needles

With loopholes big enough to wheedle

Money comes, and money goes,

Today’s allies, tomorrow’s foes,

The dance of nonsense sputters on

Your feet are caught, your time is done

Take your hands out of my pocket

Your rhetoric is foul and rotted

You sold us out. You sold us off.

But Karma – justice – is powerful stuff.

His Name Was Nobody

There’s a dude I know whose only remaining ambition in life is to own the world’s largest collection of pornographic medieval marginalia

Confusing as it may seem I believe in his passion project as one of the final examples of purity in the modern age

He spends much of his time jacking off into ever starchier squares of muslin which he bought once from a Turkish market

He was so proud of his haggling that it was all he could do to keep himself from taking it out and bludgeoning himself to a finish there and then

His name is Nobody and he wants it to be known that he cares not a jot for your contra-indications

No, not a single bileous grunt will bubble up from that fumbly gutbush

He has recourse to a fine line in gibberish and hapful deals it behind the jukebox at the bar downtown

Of course, you enter at your peril as the sneers are quite astronomically griftsome, but Nobody never said that this would be a cakewalk, boy

He keeps it low, lower than you’d imagine: his scene is no example for any upcoming garbler

At one stage he’d considered making it professionally but had to let that go when he was discovered to be as broken as anyone else

More than some, and that was really enough to be said on that one. Yeah, Nobody is a dude I know and he makes it thinking about life in fetters and chains

The more he thinks, the less he does, and the paradox is shamefully brilliant, and beautifully delivered on many a sticky wicket

He ain't beholden to none and that’s why he is who he is

At root it’s only common courtesy after all

So sings the whale in the sea

As if that shit ever helped anyone float

Nobody's mammy has a mantra:

Remember to do your stretches

a groin strain is more debilitating than you think

Heavy is the Head

If heavy is the royal head that wears the royal crown

then take it off, and free yourself, and melt the bastard down

and think about the land you have, and who you stole it from:

return that to its owners – us – and get a real job.

Take a moment here, too, to really contemplate:

Is accident of birth enough to be a head of state?

If you surely are born to rule then here’s a quick suggestion:

Run as a normal candidate in a proper election.

Dismantle the whole edifice; the palaces and pomp

are expenses we just don’t need. And if the people want

a democratic, equal opportunity UK

then let the royals abdicate, and give us back our pay.

“They bring in tourist cash,” say some. “It is our history.”

Well -  nationalise this golden cage. Don’t give ‘em up for free.

Parade them for the gawping masses. Charge ‘em entry, too:

but first admit that what you’ll have’s a royal petting zoo.

Ay. heavy is the country’s head that accepts royalty

Without a check or balance or accountability.

Throw off the weight; cast off the chains; grow up and look around;

It’s morally repugnant to pay for this fetid crown. 

The Code

Neglected impossible cravings are sparking and spiking in me

Awry and implacable rantings and ravings are fighting in me

a jarring mass of garble

and there’s too many words

a multiplying mulch

A flashing of devilry spitting and grasping and biting at me

it’s never felt so good

A wrecking ball swinging and smashing its chaotic locus through me

Relentlessly rubbling, belligerently bubbling laughter at me

a callous rasp of triumph

accords its lousy rush

a disenchanting crash

A tumult of discordant snatches of melody jeering at me

a tongue-tip out of reach

I’m ever so careful to only make promises that I can keep

My sense of proportion is veiled in distortion so forgive my slip

a gremlin in the tower

the power lines are down

the traffic lanterns flash

A cascade of morally suspect delusions spews drivel at me

and I spew it right back

An unwanted presence, a juddering essence is spluttering in me

Push down on the pedal, recoil at the resulting stuttering beat

and no-one knows the keycode

is written in my bones

the one thing that I own

Distracting, contracting, a test tube reacting asks poison of me

or cadence or release

o i wish

o i wish

there was a god

to curse

or one

to comfort

but

a wish is not

a truth

o i do

not want this

chance to say

goodbye

not yet

no

stay

stay stay and

stay

o i wish

there was a better

place

try and

go to one and

please

make a fool

of us all

For Duncan x

Bug as Feature

They don’t do factory reset for humans. I checked.

A nightly reboot isn’t the refreshment it should be.

Wish I’d had a pre-buy chance to check the T&Cs.

I don’t think on balance I would’ve clicked accept.

You Talk In Song Titles

You talk in song titles

But our orbits trace different cycles

A particle and a wave

Emitting vibrations

Non-consonant upper harmonics

Our signals decohere

At the event horizon

There may be singularity

There will be no collapse today

Listen Here for the music

One Day In July

The sun will come again

It’s how it’s always been

Some things just stay the same

One day in July

Take only what you need

Leave flimsy memories

We litter anyway

One day in July

A fleeting shadow glimpse

A whispered rumour life

Bleeding silently

One day in July

And yet the sun will come

And burn some rain away

Rainbows in oil spills

One day in July

A performance here, in demo-ish form.

Cacophony of Cretins

Shut the fuck up

Sit the fuck down

You cacophony of cretins

Grow the fuck up

Log the fuck off

Unsubstantiated bullshit

Imagine going through life that angry

An accident of birth is all you’ve got

Punch up not down not across but up

Punch up not down not across but up

The truth my friend is that we could be

Dying in that boat but for the grace of God

Punch up not down not across but up

Punch up not down not across but up

I did my own research, look at me

The results were that you’re a cunt

Punch up not down not across but up

Punch up not down not across but up

Punch up not down not across but up

Punch up not down not across but up

Stop!

Regarding Your Signs:

Stop! The Boats!

Stop! Benefit Fraud!

Stop! Nebulous Bullshit!

Instead!

Fix! Things!

Things You Broke!

The Country You Broke!

Stop! Chasing Headlines!

Stop! Being Cunts!

Stop!

Just!

Please!

Stop!

More Reflections on Death and Shit

I sometimes look back at writing I did during that period, videos I recorded, things I scraped together. I can see my eyes are hardly in the world. It’s through a total distortion of flooded tears. I will never be how I was, who I was, in the before-times. I think I have accepted now that this is how it has to be; that the before-times belonged to then. That now, the developed Me has more understanding of life because death is such a harsh and violent tutor. You have no choice but to wake up and learn again how to deal with things that you never before considered. 

I suppose it’s like driving a car. When you’ve done a journey countless times you get into a state of flow, where you’re not worrying about the mechanics of it. You’re not consciously doing any Driving, unless something comes along to shock you out of it. Where this metaphor breaks down (pun intended) is that you can learn to drive, from someone who can show you how to operate all the bits and bobs you need. Once you know you can do it, you pass a test and get on the road. What you are really learning is how to free yourself from the conscious effort of operating the machinery. You’re learning to consider it part of your body, I think. You don’t usually have to work out how to pick up a biscuit do you. To tell your muscles to move together in a certain way, and your hand to make a certain shape, and all that. Babies learn it. And you have to re-learn it if you’ve been somehow disabled. Then the subconscious can kick in.

What am I saying? I don’t know, really. It’s even more important than biscuits. The worst that could happen there is that it flops into your cup of tea cause you’ve dunked it too long. With cars, you can be in a wonderful state of flow, pootling along merrily and singing along to O Fortuna, but suddenly a juggernaut crashes into your back end, sending you spinning across the central reservation where, trapped by your twisted-metal wreck, bruised to fuck by the airbag, all you can do is stare terrified into the eyes of the headlights of ten lanes of oncoming motorway traffic.

And there is no test for that. No training. No safety net. Good luck; you will need it.

x

Maté

Dios mio

Que pasa aqui?

Madre deos

Que pasa con ti?

Maté a tu dios

Atgofiant

(Cliciwch yma am byfformiad)

Dwi’n gwbod fod chi’n trio eich orau

ond peidiwch a galw i ‘dewr’

Beth arall alla i wneud?

Beth arall fedra i wneud

ond gario mlaen?

Os tasa i deithio nol

I’r dyddiau drwm a ddu

buasa i dweud wrtha fy hun:

“Fydd foment yn ddod

o heddwch. Cofiwch:

dach chi ddim yn bradwr

os dach chi’n chwerthin

neu mond gael awr ddawel.

Ac nid dach chi’n wneud unrhuwbeth

o’i le, os dach chi’n sylweddoli

fod dach chi ddim wedi bod yn

drist dros yr hanner awr diwetha.”

Mae’n siml. Ac yn ol Dafydd Iwan -

wel, dan ni gyd yn gwbod geiriau y gan rwan, ynte?

Fydd diwrnod yn ddod

pan dach chi’n nabod ystyr newydd yr eiriau hefyd.

Fydd ddiwrnod ymhob bywyd

pan fedrach chi ddim wneud ddim

heblaw gario mlaen.

The Million Names of God

You have a million names

but you answer to none

I sang thousands of hymns

the church reverb was beautiful

and the stained glass trembled

but did not smash

and those thick stone walls

exhaled reverberations

into the cavity of a millennium

But I did not see you, Lord

I think you did not come

Hell, I wrote a couple of hymns myself

and the boys sang treble whilst they still could

and I listened out for you

in the delicate vibrato

of the prepubescent choir

I really listened

to those glistening lips

of the grubby cherubs

But there were 

No heavenly harmonics

You have a million names

but you answer to none

I wanted to pray one time. I was broken

I wanted communion. Comfort

my soul – in pieces

my life – in disarray

I called to the lamb

but the only bleat I heard

was my own

unrelenting

sobbing

Did you hear me then Lord

When I called to you

You have a million names

but you answer to none

Will you hear me now?

Ay, these trials go on

but I have come through 

circles of my own hell

alone

I do not need you, Lord

it seems like I never did

and maybe that is the lesson.

Heck, maybe it always was the lesson:

That you have a million names

and you will never answer 

to any single one

Felidae Surgery Solutions... From Carlton Wuck, Inc

 

Metaphors of Grief, Revisited

Twenty-One months have passed now since Daniel died, and I was thinking about how grief and loss are framed by language. A few of the attempts, and reasonable ones at that, are:

• A hurricane

• A tsunami

• Being hit by a truck/bus/TRAIN

• An explosion

And all have their adherents. I had this idea that it was like Terminator 2; specifically the part where the seemingly indestructible T-1000, played with wonderful malevolent nonchalance by Robert Patrick, has been thwarted briefly by Arnie’s older and suddenly obsolete-looking T-800. The shapeshifting T-1000 has been frozen, literally, by the spillage of a chemical truck’s contents. The T-1000’s liquid metal then shatters into countless pieces which are smashed all over the place. Shards of itself are suddenly unrecognisable as humanoid; it has been vanquished into thousands of utterly broken jigsaw pieces that nobody could ever fit together again.

So far, so lyrical. The problem comes with this one, though, when the pieces warm up in the California sun and begin to coalesce together; eventually they re-form the perfect T-1000 which continues the chase of Arnie, John Connor et al as if nothing has really happened.

There the metaphor breaks down: grief is not like that. There is no return to the form you were before the dramatic event that sends your pieces all over the place. The template has been lost. You cannot chase what you were chasing before.

I think the only way to describe the feeling when someone very close to you dies, is that you die too. Nothing is yours anymore. Time has no sense: hours can pass as days. Weeks can pass as hours. Basic tasks become either impossibly confusing or completely consuming. Making a cup of tea can be a triumph ahead of all other achievements in your life (not that you can remember them, at least not in any meaningful sense). You are both in a soft-focus and hazy bubble that barely touches the world, and somehow also viewing yourself with utter perplexment. In some very real ways, you are no longer a person at all: your self is entirely subsumed by the completeness of the loss and sadness, and the tears are the only anchor to your body at all. It is completely possible to go out for a pint and to have a chat about football as if nothing has happened. It is completely possible to watch yourself doing so, from an eerie place neither in this world or outside it.

You can feel the world spinning as you float above it. You are not part of it. You are no longer bound by it. This liminal sense, this nothingness, this concurrent brutality and bemusement – it is all happening at once. Minutes do not tick by, because somewhere you are outside of time too. Everything you knew, every plan and dream, every single thing that seemed so solid and reliable – that has all died. All of it has gone.

You are dead.

But you do not stay dead.

You do not, because sometimes your feet touch the ground again and the asphalt under your shoes suddenly solidifies again and gravity turns back on. The weight of those tons and tons of force presses on your shoulders and in a split-second you are bent double with the pain of the burden of the realisation of the loss. That comes over, and over, and over again. The worst is waking up and for that glorious moment everything is fine; the sun is shining; a new day is there. Grief is insidious in allowing that horrendous iota of normality, because that realisation cackles its way back in and scratches your brain to pieces again, and because you’ve just woken up there is no more sleep-oblivion to be had. You’re left with receding echoes of those wonderful dreams of the lost, til they too fade and are forgotten.

But those who are lost are not forgotten, and everything brings their image and their self to you – yet not quite. Someone walking like them. A tin of sild in the supermarket. A chance of a pun on social media that’s no longer made. Their echoes are everywhere, their imprint on the world bringing you back in some ways to a world that is no longer entirely without them. You want to tell them this. You post on their Facebook page. They won’t see it. But you will, because you are no longer dead. And because you are no longer dead, you are sharing their life with everybody who also loves and misses them.

You are sharing your own life with the part of you which still does not accept they are gone. That part of you, too, in time, begins to somehow reconfigure itself, but it does not and will not ever entirely disappear.

But as time goes by that ache, that impossible-to-reconcile and illogical part of you that still believes that somehow, miraculously, they have survived and are lost but still in this world – that part of you will no longer be something that you want to kill and be rid of.

It will be the part of you that you cherish the very most, because it is the part of you that is the most human of all.

It is hope.

Whilst hope exists then you are never truly alone; you are never without love; and those who have gone will never truly depart from your universe. But loss, grief, the whole kaboodle is always, always, always going to be fucking unfair and awful. It hurts more than any other pain imaginable, because it exists beyond imagination; it is impossible to prepare for, because it is outside of any other experience you have ever had. It just is.

Does it get better?

Do you get better?

Can you ever be happy again?

These questions have no answers, of course. It is more apt, perhaps, to note that they change in meaning as you begin to cope with the weight of the gravity of the loss. Not because you want to. Not because you have to. Just because you are not dead, and the burden of the guilt of life is the only thing that you can begin to address.

Note this: it is not your fault.

Try and believe that as fully and as quickly as possible. Try and absolve yourself, and try and listen to the parts of you that are telling you that you have fucked everything up, or that you could have prevented this, or that in some way you should be the one that died instead. Listen to those parts, let them rant and rave, and let them go again. They need to shout their nonsense. Do not push them away. Watch them with compassion, let them have their say, and watch them recede into the distance. They are your thoughts, but they are not you. You have other thoughts, many other thoughts. They are not you either. And none of this, none of this, can control you forever. Neither can you control time. Grief has no endpoint, no levels of achievement, no awards ceremony, no medals for reaching any single place along the way. It is not linear, and it bites you when you are least expecting it. What grows, what changes, is perhaps the knowledge that you have been through the worst possible day of your life – and nothing, nothing can ever be as bad as that again. 

It is scant consolation, but scant consolation is better than no consolation isn’t it.

Hope abides, always.

x

AMWAT: Triumphant return home

And, well, here's what happened: 1876 had to play at Nantporth against Rhyl 1879 cause of trouble at the away fixture.

Not on the terraces of Belle Vue - but on the pitch. Absolute carnage, proper punches thrown and I do believe court cases imminent for the (Rhyl) instigators. I mean they always say 'there's no place for that in footy' but come off it, we all love a bit of aggro. Even so, this was exceptionally violent stuff and more suited to 10.30pm at the cocaine-and-white cider festival, where all the chairs have splinters and the jukebox is stuck on Datsyn's Greatest Hits.

No matter. After some shenanigans the return fixture was initially postponed, then moved from Treborth to Nantporth, which is a proper ground in comparison and much better set up for segregation. Though I still consider Nantporth to be fundamentally cursed, it made sense, and a crowd of 840 duly turned up and were noisy and boisterous in the great tradition of things.

Either side of a pen for them, 1876 secured three vital points with goals in the first and last minutes. That seems a poetic kind of symmetry, too. Scorers were both former City players - Jaime Petrie and the winner from Corrig McGonnigle, with his 50th of a wonderful season. That lad is good enough for the Welsh Prem, and hopefully we'll get there soon enough. He didn't get his chance at City - too young really for the Nev Powell sides, and then totally sidelined by the nonsense foolishness that followed.

With 1876 looking to move back to Nantporth permanently as of next season, it was an advance shot across the bows that spoke eloquently of how very vibrant a community facility that ground could be with the right tenant. This time, though, the rent needs to be affordable. The running costs are onerous for any one club, although the 3G and the function room are potentially a decent way to offset that. The council is thinking about it - and have two very long-term and committed Bangor supporters as elected members these days.

Home, for me, will always be Farrar Road, but Asda having plonked a supermarket on the dreams of a generation is kind of a problem there. So, if this is going to be a return home, 1876 need to complete the job over the last few games of the season. Rhyl are top - six points clear. But we have two games in hand, and better goal difference. Four wins and we've overhauled them. Not as simple as it sounds, as ever, but absolutely achievable. That said, Denbigh Town are ten behind us with five in hand so there's a real chance they'll have us both off, which would be a bastard. But - as with Bodedern last season - whoever wins the league deserves to do so.

Does it feel like we're back? Well, that's not the question is it. We were back at FCUM. We were back the first time the Comrades produced a replica shirt for a team that did not yet exist. We were back at the vote to form a phoenix club. It was always in us: supporters, board members, owners, players, sponsors. All the people who believed in the idea that football was for, and by, the community. Whether we'd seen it immediately that the 'consortium of  North West businessmen' was revealed, or hung on desperately to the last bedevilled minute of Italian semi-professionals and Argentinian World Cup winners - it matters not, now.

All are welcome. All are Home. And that's been the case since the first football club was formed in Bangor.

Back in 1876.

Storm Sign

Ten thousand lifesigns hence

a storm grapples together

in the red dirt foothills

of the grizzled mountains

Scrawling and gouging

it’s gonna come barrelling

indiscriminate

Dark anger don’t care

No mistake: no safe place

Did you really think there ever was?

Batten down all you like

but it’s gonna hit where it hits

Golden lightning cracks the world apart

a power surge that crackles

through your life and gives you

a glimpse over the precipice

It is a hideous testimony

an unwanted revelation

somehow still here

to survey this devastation

The ritual burning more eloquent

than a billion bibles

Charred stumps can’t halt the wind

rushing through this netherworld

Let it howl in and let it howl out 

Deranged and soured

Let that brackish water drip

Maybe one day it’ll clear my sight

I summon all comforters to me now

But all the gods have turned their heads

and shrugged like the mediocrities

they always were and always will be

No words: no wisdom

Just a zephyr through the ziggurat

gathering the next detritus to itself

for the next storm to come.

Harvest

Watch this here

When I go

and it won’t be for a long time yet, I hope, but

when I go

Harvest everything.

I won’t be

in a better place, or anywhere at all. It’s done

I won’t be

Here so harvest it all.

Eyes, lips, thighs, hips

anything that’s useful

Feet, balls, fingertips:

if someone needs it, that’s cool.

I don’t need

a coffin full of decomposing meat. Nor do you.

I don’t need

A burnt skeleton. Who does?

And I know

there’ll be a ceremony to say goodbye. Of course.

Yeah, I know

So fill your boots.

Play some great music

And some of my own, maybe.

Get the tunes on, the ones

that shout about vibrancy.

Cry a bit,

I’m sure some will. And that’s OK.

Don’t make it

sadder than it needs to be on the day.

Mark the passing

but mark the living more. I mean

I don’t like fuss

so chill out for a bit.

Sell what I’ve got

if it makes sense.

Or give it to charity

and recycle the rest.

When (eventually) I go

I don’t want a drawn-out death with pain:

Please don’t keep me going

beyond reasonable return.

I won’t be

mad or angry. Let me go in peace

And let me

have said everything I wanted to say,

some things like:

Just be as happy as you can.

Don’t be scared of yourself.

Money’s alright, but don’t chase it

Cause you’ll never have enough.

It’s a tool not a destination,

And it can’t stand in for love.

Don’t settle for a half-life,

Don’t waste time treading water.

Don’t work a job you hate.

Don’t think tomorrow’s better.

Today’s a rainy day.

Well, yesterday was wetter.

Ignore the loudest shouters.

They’ve got fuck all to say.

Don’t let the feeble doubters

Put shit in your way.

So do the things that matter:

Being happy is OK.

If when I go

I’ve lived my words as best I could,

then that which I have sown

I will have harvested, myself.

Falling, Foul

I

I

am falling foul again

be sure to wave and smile

as I crash by

I

I

sputter mad vapour trail

damnation devastates

tumbling sky

no more dread

no more time

beloved

diminished mind

Government Scum

When you have no faith

you relinquish the ability

to be mad at a God

This is not helpful.

When you have faith

it requires the ineffability

of the Almighty

This is equally unhelpful.

I refuse to be angry

at a fairytale. There is

no Big Bad Wolf.

I don’t find this helps either.

I’m pissed off at

fellow humans and

this is the saddest of all.

We should help each other.

No Lost Tapes

There are no ‘lost tapes’.

How far would you really go for a good cup of coffee?

Are my nails growing quicker than they did before? 

I swear I can feel them.

Cock

is the funniest word in the English language.

Manchasm: a novelty doorbell/vibrator

Vegas in robots

a weevil fertile twist

set phasers to S-T-R-U-T.

Jonny Madrid

Vole Man and Hamster Lady

The Mooch

Licking vagaries off of a helicopter,

urchin.

The Tuning is a fabled computer game which ends in a remote camera

two fighting magic and all is cybertastic.

The man slipped on a patch of ice, sending limbs akimbo, and he shaped a swastika for a moment

before mashing up a knee on a carelessly static concrete bollard.

Put on the brakes, blue man.

Singleton Dalia

Ossifying mundanity

All your favourite bands are shit

and the boy you like is a fucking prick

Half bent in the head 

Looking for household highs

A jerky spider.

(Another raw unedited list of fragments)

Capeniks, B Not

Dance through work

resoundingly plangent

or pungent

a jazz group so radical

they use other people

to play the instruments,

haughty as a seagull in reduced circumstances.

Fatuously brave,

the king’s ambition

was to smooth out the country

to form a perfect sphere.

To build the highest school ever opened.

B-rated

I am afraid I am beyond your distraction,

airplay drained

zone debt

spewlicker.

A corrupted attach

brown black sweet sludge

language is a bludgeon or a ballet:

religion by ballot box.

Special fruit star

wait, pisscake

a foul mess of jokes

a hamburger flair

when ingenuity failed,

mostly cramp.

Capeniks, b not yet infill.

This is my funeral song:

don’t set your nose proud

to the order of Independent Knowledge;

The angry

iconoclast not nihilist

upbeat puddles

pigmata

pork waddler;

The treacle past

Risley sand

a lesion agaric of weepy shadows

rowdy drunk nights and delicate days

abolish terror

One day we’ll be dehydrated

all this navel gazing will be shown up for what it is:

a cast iron first class waste of effort

a clamouring oafishness.

In the end it wasn’t quite Hope,

but her younger brother

Wishing.

(Fragments from an ancient bedside pad that I just found.)

So Much Waiting

Nobody told me that there’d be so much

w a ii t ii n gg

Please hold

your call is important to us

you are in a queue

you are number 17

all our advisors are busy right now

Take this number

and wait for your turn

to see the doctor

to complain

for your KFC order

Your documents

are in the system being processed

we will be in touch via

email or text or phone or letter

which do you prefer

Your delivery

will be between the hours

of midnight and

February 2025

your driver will text

when they are on their way

Every holiday

bookended by

rush to airport

for your parking slot

wait for the bus

queue here to

check in

queue here for

baggage check-in

queue here for

security

now wait

Red-eyed, exhausted

and trying to hold it together

whilst around you everyone else

is doing the same. Some badly.

Some with kids biting at their heads.

Some way to start a relaxing break.

Some way to end it.

This thing about your life flashing before your eyes when you snuff it – most of it’s going to be fucking boring as shit. Time wasted waiting.

W a ii t ii nnn ggg.

I’m fucked if I can find any poetry in it.

Take It Up With Them

I met a communist in the neon hall of commerce known as Sainsbury’s and we chatted about theory near the Argos outlet. 

We preened each other’s bright red wings and we postulated that what Marx did not predict was our collective commitment to self-commoditisation on social media. 

Muskrats, all of us, by committee and by choice, wack.

Don’t ask me

Take it up with him

Catch this, our oh-so-cultured United Kingdom of crumbling hope and broken faces,  in the futuristic twenty twenties.

If you’re on your own at night and you see a lone policeman, you are advised NOT to approach him – and it always is a ‘him’ – but to run away. 

Ugh, that’s not what my mum used to say, man. 

A. C. A. B.:

Take it up with them

I don’t make the rules

Take it up with them

Anyone who wants to be Prime Minister should be immediately disqualified from taking the job.

 Anyone who wants a career as a politician should first serve a two year apprenticeship on minimum wage in a slaughterhouse. 

Anyone who wants to buy a guitar should have a two-month cooling off period, like the Yanks with their cold steel guns.

They’re all unhinged

Take it up with them

When you’re already mouldering in your ruined and blasted-out shell and waiting for this horrendous farrago to end 

Track me finely, chum

Chances are it’s all done, but hey there bucko, what if you could yet groove it up with the seraphim?

Deathbed conversion’s such a beauty of a get-out clause. Cascade through my clouds and swivel your eternal hips to dear God’s disco sounds; he’s a lovely mover.

It’s Pascal’s Wager

Take it up with him

Take it up with them

Take it up with them

I don’t make the rules

Take it up with them

Oh God, Moving Fucking House Again

I’m not gonna say much but

where did all this

stuff

come from? Seriously?

A house can hold way more things than you could imagine.

Taking it all out of cupboards and whacking it in boxes makes the room shrink.

It’s ridiculous. Never move house if you can help it.

I wish I could do what they do in America and

lift the whole kaboodle up from its foundations

whack the entire house – the actual house itself -

on the back of a humungous lorry,

and drive that down the road to the new place.

Plonk it down again where we’re gonna be

And BOSH.

I suppose that you’d have to

put quite a lot of

stuff

in boxes, regardless, wouldn’t you?

Stuff breaks and then it’s not even useful stuff.

When it’s only a bit broken, like maybe a cup with a chip on the rim or a plate with a little crack, should I throw it away? Could anyone use it? I don’t think charity would take it.

Do I go to the tip with it? Doesn’t that seem wasteful?

Is it worse to wrap it up and bring it so it can sit in the new place?

Is there such a thing as emergency crockery? The stuff at the back of the cupboard.

Some of it’s been there for four houses or more.

Sitting there, waiting for its moment.

I doubt that moment will come. So we should get rid.

But what if…?

What if, nothing. I’d happily pay someone

to chuck all this

stuff

in a skip, and start again. Environmental vandal. Scandalous.

Chatbot Hallucinations

You boy

Take fast this cartel document

wait by the phone

somewhere in the multiverse a dollar will ring

I brought along a theremin

to a synth fight

Blue, I slayed in humbucker fishnets

I deliver such honey bunkum,

Oh decorous throat!

Skeletons grinning in the gameshow graveyard

Papa, oh damnation, papa

Danced through work

I wrongly thought I loved that cranky allergy

Cascade up the daybreak tracks exponential

Gasping distasteful air

It won’t remind me why we were testing this time

There’s too much artifice

in intelligence

artifice

in intelligence

Generation Why Me

Dateline: Digital

They claim sacredness is closer than you think

A date at the data centre

Frack and fumble in the wires

Our sweat short-circuiting server rows entwined ratty

My television got stolen

So now all day I place

Numerous objects in the microwave

And watch them go round and round and round and round and round and round and round

why should I fear the bell

South of the Flies

Can someone tell me where all the grown-ups went?

There used to be loads of them.

Towering, they were.

Impossibly tall and always knew what to do.

You could ask them anything and they’d have an answer.

And they bought you comics

When you were ill or sad.

Did they all shrink? Did they all go away?

I’m feeling five years old today. I always was.

If I had to get bigger

why didn’t the grown-ups grow too?

Now I don’t know anything and yet I have to do things.

That’s not true. I know lots of stuff about stuff.

How to cook a meal

Take out the bins

Even how to drive and take the cats to see the vet.

And that’s all OK in its place. I can do that.

But there are lots of things

I don’t want to have to do.

Can someone bring at least one grown-up back?

They must be all somewhere else, on an island maybe.

All drinking cups of tea

And shushing cos the news is on.

That’s where they all are, gigantic and loud and comforting.

Maybe one day I’ll get to go there, too. To that island.

They can look after me again.

They can tell me it’s OK.

I will look forward to getting to that version of Heaven.

Would You Rather: A Fun Game For All The Family

Would you rather be the cause or the effect?

Would you rather be the carrion, or the buzzard circling overhead

with claws congealed in blood and filth and rotting, stinking flesh?

Would you rather be the rush or the regret?

Would you rather be oblivious, or feel the creeping dark ahead

run straight into the walls you built, or face yourself instead?

Would you rather vote for the latest creep, or who wears their suit best?

Would you rather let a liar in cause of the cod-Latin words he’s said

and welcome in the bluster and corruption of another grabbing Eton mess?

If you’re on your own at night and you see a lone policeman, don’t approach him - run away

If you break your leg, you’ll have a ten hour wait unless you’ve cash to pay

When nurses go on strike, you know things have gone badly awry

uh-oh spaghetti Os

I met a communist in Sainsbury’s and we chatted about theory near the Argos outlet

What Marx did not predict is our collective commitment to self-commoditisation on social media

Then again, he was still on MySpace when he was writing Das Kapital

I think Tom helped

Would you rather live in fear of God, or have no faith?

Would you rather live to spurious rules, or feel the cosmic dread

of insignificance to anyone - save a few family and friends?

Would you rather play these games, or forge ahead?

Would you rather be in the multitude relying on food banks for their daily bread?

Will you take up Pascal’s Wager in the moments of your death?

Get Calibrated!

Get calibrated

stack em up

Magnesium zaps through me

gargantuan juggernaut laser burn behind my eyes

Ah, point that finger somewhere else

you’ve got no jurisdiction here

The inside of my head is mine alone

At a time of my own choosing

As I desire and to the fullest extent

I’ll decide to make things strange

It’s strange

I’ll tell you it’s strange

Experimental dosing, GABA receptors on alert

If we are the universe experiencing itself

that’s a shoddy state of affairs at best

Let’s load up. What’s your distraction today?

Gaia’s on ayahuasca anyway

And what about divinity? Could it be for you and me?

It’s all too strange

I’ll tell you how strange

Get calibrated

stack em up

Kick me once more and maybe I’ll enjoy it this time

Barging demons cackling and biting at my nervous system

Ah, let them have at it how they please

Absinth chase me down, stir some butter into my glass

Smooth the road to oblivion, liminal sweetened blur

Cause the Devil’s best work is done on Twitter these days

Synaptic friendly fire forces fate

Tank tracks in my mental mud

Assassins at the blood brain barrier

Make a psychedelic conflagration

I I I

I jumble it all up

I want to make it all strange

I’ll tell you it’s strange

It’s strange

I wanna tell you it’s strange.

Fractured

who wants to turn

to rule

the tiniest kingdom

of hate

and

arbitrary dogma

fractured

less every day

less shred of

ah this again

gainsay can I

account to myself now

this way

for what

fractured

for what

see me gone

one and gone

and one day

it will be always

see me gone

one and gone

and one day

it will be always

always fractured

for what

fractured

for what

in circles no truth

spins on itself

inside and inside and awry

a wry earlike mess

is all I offer

fractured

who is lost

fractured

some days are better

some are not

some days are better

some

are not

some are not

some

are not