Month: August 2018

Poison to the Antidote

Communication as Magic, Poetry

In that Netflix series Narcos, Poison is a pretty un-chill guy. He reminds me a little of the protagonist in the Sniper Elite series of games, just doing drug hits and about 30 years on, and younger and Colombian.

Here’s my latest poetic adventure. I wrote it inspired by discovering King Krule, and trying to recount an incident after a concert at Ally Pally that I still don’t fully understand. The incident, that is, not the concert. TLSP are fookin’ amazin’.

The slashes are there to help me read it, because it doesn’t have any punctuation. That’s not to be “groovy” and “trendy”, it’s just to force you to make your own punctuation while desperately trying to find some of the real stuff, like a comma. Everyone loves commas. But they’re not in this poem. This poem says fuck commas – make your own pauses. Or try to follow mine, I guess.

I’ve got you bleeding on my heart in minature/
An action figure temptress/ arm missing
And the paint faded/ go figure that overuse
Would wear and tear your eyes still bright/
But now blue tracing my heart attack
With creeping electric sugar/ sonorific infections/
I keep Alex Turner in a box in the freezer/
Crystalline watery eye discharge and shut lids/
He’s between life and death now/ when I wake him
I’ll heat slow and careful/ he always opens with
Do I wanna/ and no, it’s you again feeding
On my heart in minature/ parasitical love bliss/
How beautiful the worm of an idea wriggling
In that/ grey matter jar demanding pickle juice/
Of red and blood or wine and fine/ spirits or
Caffeine or legal excess heart palpitation/
Explosive thumping and DVT and hours in
Front of the blue-white light softly screaming/
And your gnawing something fictional I’ve/
Got to breathe I’ve/ got to get a breath above/
Your erection pushing over my eyelids/ the
Watery discharge of eyes in distressed cold
And bulging/ weary discharge of eyes/ your
Presence up and dagger thru the ribs/ your
People dagger up the ribs/ ceremonial sword
In the eye/ your eyes and distant memories
Of perfect protrusions in panties a vision/
I try but I can’t replicate/ I hate the way
I beg your action figure for favours
Alex Turner/ snaps in the freezer box but
I’ve got superglue in the drawer danger/
Flammable liquid lighters catch well on bricks
Tho/ harmful vapour may spew affects the brain
Or nervous system/ prolonged paraplegic
Exposure may result in severity/ physical injury
Developed for war casualities, used by jilted
Lovers/ I may have thought about you too long/
And the others also feel this that I was burnt/
Before they set me on their eyes/ and that drunken
Prize value was lost on the turn of a lightswitch/
Catching fire mechanism broken and glasses
Empty everywhere/ I don’t know your hair some
Silken straw maybe on a pillow or in a hand/
How does your worm still make me want it/
In my salt shaker chilli pot I’m your gusset/
Soaking or flattery aside an accidental art class
Colour mixing stain/ on something lost to black
Plastic landfill/ still too much I find and Alex
Shivers with me behind the scenery/ Bill Shatner
Shaking hands with a styrofoam dino meanwhile/
A Waitsian wino dribbles on my shoulder fabric/
Reassuring soft skull, again, like yours, again/
Your pop-up platform shoots gyrating/ sheer/
fairy/ wings/ and flying pink papers[wings] scuttle what’s
Left of me/ that’s the story I hear recounted after
The dream, that’s still what I wake up to even as
I’m culling/ and they see it in the half looks cast
Away seeds to salty turf/ they feel women in the fall
My ratio is 4:7 and the lights are down low on
North London’s streets/Ally Pally apocalyptic market
Stalls lining my liver/ each concrete step the sweetest prostate
touching excrement/ and a catalytic mind’s eye over
Hollywood hills/ vest open tie low jeans hanging
Off thighs a belt buckle dangler bouncing/ the night
Propositions through a young creature/ wild whites
Locked about my lumpy indecency and Strongbow
scented exhaust fumes/ thanks but you can fuck off/
King’s Cross unfettered stomach adoration
Replacing you/ you lost in the folds of the past’s fat
I’ll have another pint but they’re shut and it’s three
if you can get it in the morning Alex trying to change
My mind Turner to agree with the pit of my chest not you
Anymore missy/ I’ll not call you love at all/ but I’m still getting
Mined by friends or at least I wish love can’t die
Can only fade/ and yawning to the mobile buzz bright mean
Screen/ I’m alright in the bed spread/ trousers falling down
Stumble through the brain strain down an alley not in the rain
And piss in a cascade.

I’ve got to work on it still, as with them all. And it might be one in a three part mini-series. At least, that’s what it says in my folder for it. So you never know.

If you feel like feedback, anyone, I’d love to know what you reckon. Too long perhaps? I love it. I love long things. Don’t mind if you don’t though. I want to try and plumb the depths of a topic, either in the time and resources expended on its exposition or in the wit and content of the phrasing used in its mere description.

Sorry, I’ve got a…prosaic brain on at the minute. Is it prosaic? Is it just a bit twatty? I can’t tell. I hope you can ignore my comments and enjoy the poem.

Incidentally I would recommend King Krule. Have a look.

Exhausted Stumblings, Confused Salt Crystals

Communication as Magic

I’ve been away too long. I’ve got to get back on the metaphorical horse.

I haven’t done a huge amount of writing except that I started a little freak page on Facebook that I’ve also temporarily abandoned. As ever, more is incoming – with poetry etc too. I actually really want to do some journalism. Like proper journalism. I don’t even know what that is – proper journalism – but I want to do it. Anyhow, facebook freak page:

It began with a picture.

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And then another one.

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Caption: “There is also a Nipple in the bottom left corner, but this is something you must not notice, for it is not strange and not unusual. Nipples are everywhere. Like foot cream.”

And this of course inevitably led to an opening story, with picture.

529full-elliott-gould

“Hello. I am not a strange crystal, but this is what some people think when they meet me. They say that I become involved in hair and sweat and unholy things. None of this is true. My tip is coated in a thin watery discharge and then thrust up into the darkness of the underarm, wherein no other crystal can see, and so I am a clean and healthy and normal individual. This is my work. I am determined and conscientious. Amethyst understands. Rock salt used to understand because he was young, but now he is old.

Here is the body part of Elliot Gould. The arrow marks it. Can you tell? It is moustache. There are other pictures of Elliot Gould, but this one is from listal.com. It was added exactly three years before I was born, by a nice man called Leo. Perhaps it was his birthday too? He is green. I like him and Mr Moustache.”

There are other segments. Maybe it’ll become a book? Who can tell.

Here’s the second story. I want to give you a sense that there’s some character development going on in this series before I leave you hanging.

MBDMOMA EC001

“I do not like advertising. It tells the flesh folk that what we do is sensual and filthy. It shows us rubbing our tips into the hairs and the salty sweats and their small, small crystals. It is wrong and disgusting. When I come away with a hair in my mouth, all the others say “you have been advertising again, you have, you have” and they laugh and raise their lids up and down. I say nothing to them. Amythest tells me that when she was young they would all look at her. She would try to crawl away deep inside, but she could not move and her lattices shone with words I could not understand.

This is Sean Connery from a post on theredlist.com. They made a very good post and their section on Furniture Design agrees politely with curves. I have actually seen it shake hands with the curves, but do not tell anyone. Sean Connery is like goo and cotton wool on fire. A rude man, a smart man, but I like his pretty face. Here he wears a hat.”

I really love exploring weirdness. A long time ago, I thought well fuck it: I’m only going to live as me once. After that I don’t know. I might as well try and experience as much as possible, from as many different perspectives as possible. Now that’s not what I’m doing with the Crystal thing, but that kind of thinking did inspire me to try and write something kinda stupid but also kinda pointy. Pointy like meaningful, almost disturbing but clearly non-threatening. A spike of odd you can investigate or leave well alone.

Finally (for now) a third post:

Kiwi_aka

“Today I went into the cupboard behind the mirror. Next to me was the shampoo bottle that is called ‘Aussie.’ He is from a place called Australia which the others tell is the deadliest place in the world. It has good caves. Aussie is glad to be away from there because now he can go into hair and ‘lather snuzzle’. The others say Aussie is a pervert. However, I know that he is shampoo. He may have a very dirty job, but he does this job quite well, with fine smells. Sometimes, if the fleshy one has been messy and not put back the lid, Aussie lets me go close and sniff his sticky cream.

Here is a kiwi fruit. It does not have hair, it has skins with fuzz. I like it both for texture and occasional self-pollination. Kiwi fruit are like flavour eggs – this is what the fleshy ones say. Sometimes the flesh eat out the green and suck the core. They are not wrong, but strange. Some claim the kiwi in the north of this picture is actually an hedgehog egg. They are liars.”

Check out the Facebook page that also got me working along these lines: https://www.facebook.com/welcometomymemepage/

(there was a frankly amazing tumblr called something like “littlebird” with illustrations of monster-freak-feathereds but I can’t find it anymore. The writing style in the captions though…beautifully weird)

Don’t worry this isn’t the order of business from now on. I just don’t have anything else publishable to hand. Will write/edit something tonight though.