The Wall of Wonder…

And to the wall of wonder where each brick’s a gnome or nearly a gnome. Not all a known gnome but some the rarer more unknown gnomes. I’d do better here than to be a presumptive pedant. And so shall assume you know your gnomes. But (unable to help myself from helping yourself) if you don’t, here’s the definition: gnome: a short sentence or statement that expresses or summarises a general truth. For what it’s worth, gnomes please stand aside and to attention for a…I’m tempted to say gnomement but I’ll say moment and refrain from any endeavour at being funny. Donald Rumsfeld’s* known knowns answer given at a defence briefing contained “...because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know…” was, to me, a watertight example of both logic and language torture. I loved picking the bones from it and admired too the way it invoked, depending on your persuasion, a wish to understand it or to reject it. For me, it drew focus and achieved its aim yet sadly, for our dear Donald, landed him with a ‘Foot in Mouth’ accolade.

Okay gnomes, at ease, back to the wall. I imagine soon myself clothed head to toe in the colour of night. Not so much as I was in the night rider episode of lasteryear, moreover much as our perceived image/notion of a Ninja. Soft shooed and shrouded I’ll be, quieter by foot than the owl on the wing that catches the quiet as a mouse mouse. This will too be at the time of night, right in the heart of night, I’d say an equal distance twixt dawn and dusk. So you can clearly see, I see myself not being able to see well and not wanting to be seen at such an hour as I envisage I’ll be engaged in some tame yet suspect activity. Petty crime, I guess it’s petty – but that which I create will be pretty, quite choice in both font and the way it’s set. That being graffiti. Graffiti of a very different kind mind; Twi’ll have one one or more of the following by way of feeling: dismissive, impassive, curious, interested enthused and/or inspired…or downright miffed (being the owner) that your wall’s been disc..dessercra….disrespected. So to each wall a bunch of bricks and to each brick I’ll trick out with a pre-prepared stencil, prepped in the security of safetyville (my co’s art department (sorry boss if you’re snooping)). And to that stencil I’ll bespray with a tone that’ll suit its all too short subject matter – little wordbites. A masked man, his masks, his aerosol. The silence therewith broken in small bursts by the hiss of gas expelling paint. At times broken more sharply by the rattle of marble in tin.

At floor level there’ll be such aphorismic delights as:

Look up, there may be stars. Lost something? Well lose everything, then you’re free to do anything. Be mindful that dogs piss here. Concentrate too much on your vision, you’ll lose your sight.

Plenty of time, this’ll not be one night’s endeavour, too afraid to get caught in the act. Repeat journeys with repeat cans but differing stencils. The bricks above by the way hold thought provoking words that in their majority aren’t mine; those that are, well if they’re not obvious, I’ll be proud of managing to blend with those to who I defer.

Many small time crimes later and a few courses above there’ll be:

––––Don’t let your sorrow cross this line–––. Die on your feet, don’t live on your knees. Keep determination and desperation apart. When the issues build up – cancel your subscription.

And to top it,one can, with one’s can, squirt out these puppies up along the top shelf:

Over this wall be apples. Here is the height of perfection. Tonight this, but come morning I spray on aftershave like the rest. All in all this is just another brick.

 

* Former US Secretary of Defence (Defense)

 

93 Million and One…

It gets cold and frost comes down like glitter over grey
and nights get colder by degrees as our axis tilts away
from the sun
93 Million and one
and just a little nudge could send us into
deep and everlasting winter
but that’s okay

be a little like Christmas everyday…

^ Fab lyrics to a fab tune – let the beat and lyrics of this enchanting song beguile you so.

Tuation be gone! Punk…

This post is a post that is a refined version of a reaction to a forum request of a call to action in which I developed an aversion by avenue of acquiescing to persuasion and employing some writing deviation in which I would let flow a stream of five hundred words and ooze out without so much ease five hundred more if I had the time but of late I have not had much so I will crack on for a wee while and pay little mind to measuring such a quota and not keeping any sort of score because to do that may distract me from this mission which is to serve the aforesaid request which I have made doubly difficult for myself and am not one bit sure for I am trying to have it both understandable and punctuationless with the added nuance of the vaguest hint of slightly metered rhyme to which I will add in there some of the time that I am figuring presently will further hamper any chance of this sentence progressing or tending to advance where to especially bear in mind it could end up a catastrophe as I am realising now puntuationless must sure also mean a lack of apostrophe for that will leave this with only two elements of the three and with that I shall sign this sentence off as I am actually holding my breath too as I type and calculate that this is only a shade over being forty three point three percent job done and should really be therefore considered to rest in the gap between coming up short and total calamity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Are You…

When the words of which you’ve read shift seemingly at random by some pseudo-intellectual sciolist author’s edit. Unsure yourself whether it’s obsessive revision and the perpetual search for subjective perfection? Or a whimsical splurge lamely revised by Dr Attempted-Mischief and his misfit cryptic cohorts?

Maybe either or neither.

When looking to the heavens all signs are obscured by clouds that shift to another’s purpose. A comfort blanket or some vampiric cloak unendingly drawn to permanently conceal?

You just don’t know.

When the words of which you’ve re-read cease to fit the recollection. Check. Check them again against an older copy – but to detect takes time. And time itself is unfavourably pliant, it’ll misguide you.

So don’t waste it.

When, with feet firmly to the ground perhaps, you read those words and fix them in place by rote. Ground is no base. Ground I’ll inform you edges one way at the speed of a growing fingernail, another at the roundabout speed of a 24 hour day; yet no day the same length as the last. Warped too this land on which you stand; added to and eroded by sea and tide. Or ploughed aside by the dozers in the wake of the marchers of progress. And memories anyway, whether forced in by said rote or blotted up by interest; they swing this way and that; any recollection can be hijacked and rewritten simply by your own mood of the moment.

So forget that.

When the words you read are transferred by chisel to mountain. Yes, look to Mother Earth, take comfort in the bosom of her being as you etch one of her many breasts: that unbalance her sphere to spin out and trick you those uneven 24 hour days. Mother Earth that holds those oceans and land and makes no apology for her perigees and apogees; whose children in their billions fight so readily and redly in tooth and claw, demolishing themselves and history with their doings; that mother who swallows her own mountains! No solace in this world where these words matter just fleetingly and for that only in the minds of its apes and their zeitgeist.

Lay down your crude tools.

When the words you’ve read may be illuminated by peeling back the covers of your comfort blanket – yes, get some measure by moon and stars. Here you are, only it’s not where you think you are. Up there the stars are loosely beholden to their Newtonian purpose and lensed out of place by invisible influences–dark ones, un-wholly so. And the unreliable moon, it’s letting you go anyhow and looping out farther by the day.

I may lay down the pen too in this quest at least–ultimately nibless.

When the words have no frame of reference and there’s you all unsure-footed too, unfixed to this land, its satellite and all that’s unplaceably local. Temporary lodgers and associates bound by elastic threads to each other and to a burning furnace that will one day ebb from its yellow and flow to an all-engulfing ‘big red‘. You’re spinning, you, all of you and them, round and elliptically round, all tracing your ever-varying, ever so personal, spring shaped spirals; loosely lassoed as your dominant partner blazes its path through something coined ’The Western Arm’ by someone unknown to most. An arm whose body is a bigger altogether and less together dust cloud that holds celestially you Mary Celestes. All committed all of you, every vagrant particle of every one of your beings, to something supermassive that hunkers (comfortable for now in a creamy whey) but long-term hankers to have you–its prey.

There you are.

 

an answer

 

Additional

Who Am I…

When my anger to one is as great as my love of another
When harmony, congruence and conflation are elusive
When confliction, dissonance and conflagration are all pervasive
When the opinions I voice are drowned internally by floods of hypocrisy

When I mould my persona to suit the ones I’m with
When my anima and animus brawl on the flotsam of dead opinion
When incidents and circumstance invoke moods that deny reason
When reason anyhow is born from culture and conformity

When my desire for swift justice is knee jerked itself by responsibility
When I wait forever for something but know not why or what for
When arousal in the interim is sated and slopped out as disgust – and never discussed
When the clothes I don shape me into what they represent – briefly

When a lie in my own mind is the truth in the minds of others
When that lie then overwrites the truth in mine
When I’m sucker punched by appearance for ignoring substance
When I wish for aphorisms but wind up with wound up anaphora – repeatedly

 

I guess what’s next. tbc

The Filter of Lexicon…

First there was everything.
And it shone out everywhere unfettered.
Then there were bits of everything on random walks untethered,
All untamed,
And very untogether;
Forging their own time with differing strides,
Enabling themselves to be untimed at times
Deliberately, so all at once they’d arrive
At the outposts in the void.

Like attracted like
And unlike alike;
And gathered
Aye, matter came about what mattered.
The stuff of substance coalesced,
And clustered,
And combined,
Collided, ignited,
And spattered.
And crackled.
And splattered…

And shone again.

No great shakes.
And great shakes shook the mix,
And the contents settled,
And order rose the to the top.
And some of those rose to make that their platform,
And the wiser of those passed into sentience,
And parsed the past in sentences.
And they, them, of those who witnessed
And learned, documented their rise,
Safeguarded their future;
While the unwise of those ignored,
And invoked their demise.
And I, one being, being one of any one of those
A prisoner I find, able to visualise—
Yet bound with language’s skein.

Tied.

And with sound poetic structure as evidenced above herewith denied…

Try to tell ‘thistory’ through my ears.

And my eyes.

 

 

Andro of Frascati…

Parked the 5-seater white stallion just shy of the shade in a pay and display bay by the station. Lugged self and kindred cohorts up not a few flights of old granite stairs. Rewarded with varying levels of breathlessness. Countered at summit with view of a distant Rome baked hard in its own haze by an August sun. Cooled by a canopy of mulberry grown over the plaza on which we stood.

Exploration agreed upon albeit by bicker and committee. Focused on the hunt and capture of souvenirs.

Outvoted, I ambled behind kindred cohorts; sidelined responsibility and subverted intent to see filled and fulfilled the empty vessel one’s head held for Frascati that week. Wine that is. Lugged was now tailing, dropped a little too off the back. Admired the surrounds: aged buildings, rendered ‘acracked’ in pastels and arisen from snappy thin streets – themselves the cobbled routes/roots of historical endeavour. Stopped and started as window by shop windows’ contents were judged and dismissed; a reluctance to absorb the difference in culture. Concentrated on the wine – and by that moment maybe some water.

Spotted a clown sat down, ‘L’ shaped, back against a wall, white nylon big-buttoned jump-suit, a make-up tear headlined the eerie cosmetics and a begging bowl was her footer. Pitied but paid nothing. Witnessed another man close by, did they know each other? Appeared to be in costume too: black punk boots, black zip-embellished combat trousers, matching long-sleeve shirt with cuffs that reached the knuckles and all held on a frame that itself held the natural stance of a gunslinger. Topped with a head that held a lined Italian tan, hair shaved from the neck to lobe-line where above; what sprouted in raven and grey was tortured back into a stub of a ponytail. Avoided eye-contact but glanced and saw them; eyelids peeled back, eyeballs thinly ringed by their whites – effusing some sorta soulless insanity and them themselves outlined by the broad dark circles of a being that cannot sleep. Avoided eye-contact some more, ambled nervily on and concentrated on the water – and by that moment maybe some ice-cream too.

Voiced the want of ice-cream and infected family with the same desire. Forwent the search for souvenirs for the search of a gelatiere and after some square looping of the town’s compact alleys chanced on our goal. Trooped in and hogged the counter of cool delights. Served by stickler for Italian custom, girls first, we chose our flavours and tubs. Seated selves neath a more man-made canopy on the premise’s patio and spooned in calories. Watched the town in the midst of its routine and once more witnessed the appearance of the man in black; he cared not where he stood be it road or pavement and attempted dialogue with anyone. Seemed to annoy noone, yet still he unnerved me. Beckoned over by gelatiere owner the man brought his blackness, his manner and his eyes to within metres of our table.

Listened but didn’t look. Learned his name and it was Andro.

Assigned an errand, spied him take a note and disappear into the the ceiling-less corridors of the town. Returned with a pack of twenty and some change for the owner a little while later. Regretted my assumptions; the fearsome notion of Andro rapidly dissolved; merely a man that likes to be in character, known and liked by the locals it appears.

Departed with no souvenirs, the heat of the day saw to that, but took away a photo of Frascati’s vineyard on a hillside plus one of Andro and a note of my own that read “be less judgemental”. Bought (and drunk) wine bearing the town’s name in homage, from a supermarket many miles away a day later. Enjoyed it too.

 

Andro-Frascati

The Power of FIVE…

Five hundred five am faces line the neatly folded queue
Each line of fifty yards sporting as many a mien
All donning the ‘I got up too early’ look
Yawns and vacant stares aplenty in each row
Our five added to the number, passports clasped
We’ve joined, we wait, we move
But five yards in as many minutes
Still dazed by Kilter’s knock
Consciousness held only by eagerness
Our suitcases’ weights taken
Two of their five conveyed away by belt to aluminium hold
Stripped ourselves of metal, footwear and dignity
We’re scanned, searched, processed and pronounced safe to…

BOARD

At the gate; no wait, all checks at check in have eaten time.
Five in seats at six fifty five – we taxi to the runway and to Rome we…

FLY.

 

My unshakeable no-no-theistic faith in atheism took another knock today (knock 5 – 13th Nov 2014) as Lady Semi-Serendipity read a page in Bone Clocks to me: it has a character who takes a flight…5am up… 6:55am fly. Erk@! You see – too many very high odds coincidences (I’ve witnessed a fair few these last months) and I’ll have to cede the small gods are really running the show. If their magesterium in any way overlaps this one. Then – I’m a believer.

Hacked Hackles…

The coiled tungsten of old incandescence is rife with the most agitated of electrons tonight! I am aglow.

A sound is fed in, an image is envisioned, an idea enters left field and is considered, then again more diligently so. A concept that excites. To the degree it’s put before more testing conjecture: It’s bent then squashed then stretched; made hot, very hot, hotter still and likewise as many shades of cold. It’s inverted, re-coloured, bleached, dyed, laid bare to the people of the past and proffered up to those not yet here. Through all these labours it’s not, not for a moment, found wanting.

Goosebumps; a time-lapse eruption, the babies of button mushrooms fill, in unison, the shell-pink farm of the skin. An excited tingle prickles the neck, the back, the forearms and is observed by newly plugged-in child-eyes . The enormity can’t humanly be realised; a notion to wrap an enraptured world and post it 1st Class to Utopia.

But what’s this? From each goose bump sprouts a black, a grey or a white hair. As one yet as a wave they grow, to form a fierce mane that extends to consume body and limb. Every fibre held rigid by stressed dermis, every glossy filament a sentry at attention. A worry-wolf* of the greatest self-doubt materialises, turns inwards and tears the idea and itself to shreds.
* term handed to me many a full moon ago

A Man Once Said…

To family, friends, cohorts, colleagues and maybe not so much strangers. Firstly, you were warned; why are you here? <  (I’ll tread more softly; a re-read of that reads as terribly rude. So a belated strike-thru and black-lo-lighter).

Some of my stories are fiction, some true, and some muscle into the space between (with exaggero-laborations for effect).

A man who doesn’t grate once said:

…”if your work is trying to shine light in the human psyche’s deepest, darkest, illest places, then you have to go there, and be it, and that’s no casual undertaking.” — David Mitchell

The above is my mantra, and were I not stitched, double-stitched into this fabric that my family and I have woven. And I add that (aside from the contention within the self) I’m content to be so. Where was I? …were I not stitched etc; then I’d enact that which I chant with little hesitation. If you’re reading this blog either casually or right through after my departure and you touch on any ostensibly plausible tales of immorality; please note they are merely that, tales and tales are fiction are they not?

The holy grail of the more gritty aspect of my love’s labour is to have that which I write (at some point) invade those few who succeed in reading it and wring out every last drop of emotion. So while it would seem the ideal to physically get to those deep dark places and to the headiest heights for that matter – I don’t – I use a substitute for what’s considered warped/askew in our society’s model of reality. I close my eyes and imagine I am there; and I am there. And I write about it while I’m there. There’s no consequence as of yet to thought crime; at least I think so.

So take a double take with all that’s suspect and rife with ambiguity; throw in a pinch of salt too and…

…Remember my heels are made from the stones of pedestals.

E.T.A cue song 7 backing track—sound’r music.

Teraflops, cosy, whisking, smitten
Trite, fettle, sullen, smitten
Caper, appendage, tidal, forcing
Slew, behaviourist, being

Creamery, dullard, phoney, dapple, citadel
Double, cymbals, blitzkrieg, oodles
Wildebeest, abruptly, muon, swing
Amnesia, fuchsia, twins

Gatling, hydrangeas, withdrew, pattern, flashes
Sweepstake, frustration, nanosecond, whiplashes
Silhouette, wonderment, inspiring
Sluice, impoverished, limbs

Strict Machine…

The day’s been long, the night longer. What time is this? Through the haze of alcohol I release my gaze, which has, for the last hour been captivated by the blue spot in one of the DJ’s proud-standing light-boxes. In alliance with its colourful neighbours, its filament throbs to the notes which pick at the needles on the records on the decks of the sound system. For an apt few minutes ‘Daydream in Blue’ resonates through wire, amp, more wire and speaker, converting my captivation to mesmerism. I attempt to draw meaning from this, but fail; only to replace it with the puzzle of why I’m at my most philosophical when drunk.

So, gaze dropped to my faithful Casio: a blurry 1:04am, and back up to the blue. What life is this? I find myself the last man standing. Or sitting if my description is to be sharper. And further, for accuracy’s sake; only the last man remaining from the group with which I set upon this drinking session. Recent acquaintances, I don’t mourn their loss. They were happy to have me along though, so some gratitude for that I will in the directions they’ve travelled home. Thankful they accommodated me over the bed and breakfast that usually holds the privilege; steeping me with its austere aura. Back there the paper-thin walls, lumpy mattress and shared toilet, I’m convinced, all conspire to devalue my worth. Back here, the revelry this eventide has faded—some rugby win or other at national level—echoes of the last winning conversion’s fan roar, long since replaced by the all-drowning music choices of the DJ, who I’m sure is coked up.

I slump, dogleg arms dumped on the table before me, sleeves soaking up the spilt dregs of beer and slammed out salty tequila. I rest my chin on the face of my Casio, and wish I could stay here till a few hours after sunrise, all content in my anaesthesia. But lights more artificial will come on soon, and needles’ arms will be clipped to turntables’ cradles. Licensing laws will see the landlord call time and evict us into the night.

Us is me and the other stragglers—strangers that populate this space, some twenty I’d surmise if I could conjure the ability to count. One such stranger’s outline cuts across the blue. Female in form, she stops, turns and surveys the room. Prey I wonder? Me her’s, or she mine?

From my sit-point the yellow spotlight radiates its glow from behind her head; from the blue, my blue; the swell of her bosom, and the green—her hips. Some psychedelic angel of dark she is. And focused on me, I think. She’s saying something and smiling. I cannot however detail her features, nor hear her voice through the shadows and the sound. Her movement in time portrays her unheard words; she’s dancing now, flexing elegantly beyond the range of mortals. Her limbs and torso the boughs and trunk of elastic trees, in a gathering windstorm on a tremulous land. A flaunt of femininity which I’m sure she’s practised many times alone, to perfect her allure. And it works. The tune that graces the decks, the amp, those speakers and this environ is ‘Strict Machine’—it chimes the bells of that which is primal. She twists, she shimmies, she sways: a mime to the lyrics who steals and surpasses all previous transfixion.

The haze too clears, a fast lifted fog, my blood’s infused with excitement flavoured adrenalin. I unstick my chin from my Casio and sit upright; chest puffed up and arms drawn back to frame it. I am a King I feel, being entertained before a feast. My appearance though, would belie such arrogance and such assumption. I’m puzzled by the attention, I lack the complexion and the symmetry to win an instant lover. At least one to match the preferable side of my double standards. Impressive finery at 4pm I’ll confess, but these garments now evince the night’s indulgences. This face and this hair are as creased and crumpled as the clothes that lead to them. I don’t doubt my ability to charm, but any success with seduction for me, is achieved largely by avenue of wiles and wordy witchcraft. As awake as I’ve just become, lust sullies my wits, so I befriend delusion, steadfast in the fascination of this lady’s form. To be pricked only lightly from the outside by the wonder of being chosen–I have no qualms about enjoying her gyrations and blindly accept the good fortune.

The music stops, she stops and looks away as if seeking out a friend in this room of fitting misfits. Was I merely the subject of flirtation? I’m a second away from falling from such a heady and wonderful place, to the slum of a slump from which I’ve just risen. I was content there only minutes ago – to be one again with the blue filament won’t be so bad. No, NO, my heart beats too fast, my mind’s too alive. My wits: I demand they come to me. I stand and play a gambit; If I’m to lose, I’ll leave here right now and wish my proposal be scratched from the record of whatever being records my deeds.

Body language—a sweeping arc of my arm grabs her attention. She looks over and follows the movement through to see me point to the chair opposite. I slide it away from the table to make space, and beckon her over. That’s the gambit, the pivot on which the rest of this overstretched night rests. She turns her face away, then her back, walks a single pace and continues to search the room. Failure was always an option. I’m out of my chair, I do the same but with extra paces, the exit to which I turn is directly behind me. There’s an illuminated ‘Fire Escape’ sign over the door that holds the backlit symbol of a running man. ‘You and me both’, I mutter as I pass under him.

The night is dry and cold—colder for my lack of foresight, lack of coat, and the addition of wet sleeves. Stars fill the gaps between the glowing of the sodium streetlights, and mix with my bellyful of drink to form a tonic for my melancholy.

“Oi, wait for me!” invades the stillness.
…………