Statesmen vs Action People

The following was inspired by the concept of feelings that are so strong they are scary. There is a running grammatical metaphor too. I have worked in language teaching for several years and am of course interested in language. My poetic linguistic interest, as it were, is conceptual, so that a grammatical concept such as state and action, i.e. state and action verbs, stimulates me. The terms Subject and Object do too; they, like state and action, are layered with meaning. The rhythm is influenced by Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, specifically the way he echoes; will not be televised, will not be televised - do not take an object, do not take an object.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

INTRANSITIVE FEELINGS

Intransitive feelings
do not take an object,
direct or indirect; usually.

State, action, they are.
Sleeping dogs, they cannot
they will not, do not lie.

Awakened rudely, their
will, instinct, raison d'etre
is self-involved, The Subject.

Though unseen, unheard,
as neglected children,
they are a flight risk.

Defying life's syntax,
society's plot, theirs is
a different course, coursing.

Hung on a timeline of
verb-rich depths, framed
shaded, contradicting.

Assured of divine right,
as arrogant as the day born,
self-appointed, holding court.

Their silence is raging,
Regal, high high above,
whether present or absent.

Whether complementing
or absenting selves
their potency outnumbers.

Their seeming swells
no pronoun is needed
active or not, voiced always.

Past, present, tense,
defusing, re-wiring, foot
-noting, copulating, paring.

Minimising, over-arching,
striking fear and stark starched
clusters, filibusters.

Do not take an object
Not to be taken lightly
or sprinkled or dusted over.

Not to be underestimated nor
held up by amenders, laying,
in wait or in vain.

Molesters, abusers don't
make a difference, don't make
us laugh, don't move us.

We shall not be moved,
flapped, shall not fly,
Risk will tempt us though.

Til dying day, last
full breath, despite It All,
the petulant pronoun.

Non Urbane

content="Word.Document">meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12">

I am interested in megacities. I inhabit one (Buenos Aires) and like most inhabitants of a metropolis, I switch between loving and loathing it. Simple poem, with a cinematic tone, by which I mean that I imagine a camera taking a swooping-down shot, as in a movie. I was born and raised in north London, and am thinking of places like Green Street in Seven Sisters, amongst many many others, where immigrant communities bring a taste of the developing world to the city. Looking at it now, strictly speaking, I should think of a word other than urbania, because it sounds like urbane, which is out of place... What is the synonym of urbane...?

The Third World

Image from above

Swooped down over the vastness

A cinematic bass drum

Heralding the shanties

The teeming South

There are big pockets of it

In London and New York

But in Mumbai and Mexico and Sao Paulo

It’s unencumbered, let loose

This is real urbania

This is what we have done.

A Carousing Tunnel is Forged

This started out as a different poem, one I have recently re-worked. The "original" is called Why We Need Verse and follows the more structured first one below. I'd have to look for the exact quote but it was Bukowski who said that those who have to ask what the creative process is for penning poetry shouldn't be allowed to write it, or something - I'm para/just plain wrong-phrasing. Well, typically OTT arrogant Bukowski, but I do agree in many ways. One of the reasons I like him, of course, is that his writing is so very simple and unfettered. so, my point with these poems forms part of a common one for me: Cutting through the mind-numbing, uber-irritating stuff of everyday life, which is often the reason I write. Similarly, my own everyday inarticulacy is countered when I write a poem, though of course it's a classic case of I know what I mean. But because the context is so different, the content is too? Something like that. Maybe I mean that because it's lah-de-dah poetry, people give you more of a pass on the unintelligibility.

I love the word carouse, and would like to extend a nod to my Uncle David, with whom I associate the verb if not the action. Tongue in cheek, as ever, he was visiting me in Prague for one of his endless international conferences, and referred to the carousing that had gone on the previous night amongst him and the other elderly academics. Er, yeah, OK.

Bukowski's point, I guess, was that a true poet's words just flow unstoppably, there is no need for
editing, perhaps? Well that's one interpretation. I often just sit and the words do trip out onto the page/ screen and sometimes I leave it at that, raw material. But polishing and scaffolding are good too - A bit of legwork never hurt anyone, right.

As long as I'm quoting "Beatnik" generation poets or "Beat Poets" or whatever (I'm afraid I think the inverted commas are necessary because I suspect neither poet I'm mentioning would warm to being labelled), let me reference another moment I like. Ginsberg (Yes, I'm predictable) in the Dylan DVD No Direction Home (Yes, again), in describing the creative process, blahs a bit about what one does then adds in an offhand way Then you call it poetry later. Amen, and I would like to think that could be applied in other creative situations in life, whatever they may be. Hm, perhaps I could be like Damien Hirst et al and make a huge mess then dress up in a pretentious way and call it art. Yes, I think I will. Who's with me.


There is Nothing High About Art


In this hair-splitting world, arena

of back-pedalling splutter, rising

above is not the priority, over-under,

over-analysing paralysis must be

burrowed beneath, the mediocre

dallying detritus must be, for it is

foreground, over-ground, beneath

which a carousing tunnel is forged.

Seedy is always where it starts

slewing its sewery way to the crest

the volcanic peaks of beaconsville

furtive, subverting, versed in the ways

sped on by days of sucked-out life,

fomenting, strung-out, laid-out

slabbed, hung on a hook, fleshed

many a half-baked truth to the dozen


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why we need verse

Sucking the life out of everything

Take the fun out

Over analyser

Splitter of hairs

I like you a lot

I love you a bit

I’m not in love with you

Splutter, back-pedal, spit, stutter

See because it’s not this it’s that- Well,

It is a bit of that, just – What I mean is-

People;

People think we need verse because it’s art,

High art even, it rises above

Prefer to think of it as under, not over:

Burrowing beneath, furtively and subversively

Rebellion, fomenting in the sewers, seedy is always where it starts,

Strung out, laid out, too much wine and song,

Carousing its way to the volcanic peaks of beaconsville

So, you see poetry

Is just quicker, that’s all.

True Smile

This one came about after I'd been travelling on the Subte, the Buenos Aires underground. I practically live on the Subte midweek and there is a constant stream of beggars, hawkers, buskers, blind beggars, blind buskers, lottery ticket sellers, etc, making their way through the carriages, many of whom are children. One gets to "know" as in recognise most of them. The ones asking for money all speak and many have rather an elaborate spiel. It's hard not to feel irritated by them. I am generally a very intolerant, impatient person and the ones I feel most irked by are the ones with the sob story that goes on and on. It's undoubtedly part of the strategy: If I go on and on and on, they're bound to give me some spare change just to have me shut up and move on. So with all this in mind, I felt quite moved when a woman with AIDS got on and did her thing. She was very genuine and people responded to her realness, giving her change where they hadn't been up until then (Even I gave something). She had a true smile; I'd never seen her before and haven't since.


Death Warmed Me Up

I was on an underground train and Death got on;
the weather had, up to that moment, been indifferent.
It changed when Death got on the train. When Death
got on the train, Death spoke and the chatter, the chug-chug,
the tunnel whistling by, all stopped because Death got on.

What we the chatterers think we know, what we think is
fated, it grabbed us with its power, it located our wounds
when we thought its wounds were greater, it located them
and sucked them out so fast we could hardly catch breath
and the sucking out was warm and the poison was expelled.

Choking up the indifference we were left with something
raw, something real and be it Life or Death or simply dust
is neither here nor there for feel it we could, as one of us.
She was here before us, a face, words in themselves nothing,
heard a thousand times before and in that same context:
In themselves just words and in ourselves we know not what.

She, with her heart and soul and cast-outness was all-seeing
and more genuine than a child and she sucked out the poison,
the wounds in us the same as the wounds in her, may God bless,
may God bless you Sir, Ma'am, they came forth as never before,
rattling change into her box and kind words into her eyes, see:
They heard Death's voice loud and clear, imploring, commanding.

The Melodramatic Now

Inspirations: A couple of ex girlfriends who shall remain nameless and, believe it or not, Johnny Ramone. Agog indeed -Fagpakit. Who me, melodramatic?


This is no Game to Me

Life demands confrontation and
The Grand Gesture; If not we are no-where
If not we just flounder, just flounder.

The grand statements we make bely our intention
I really mean this = I don't mean this at all
I don't know what I want = I don't want this.

And all the while, nevertheless, we await a saviour
A dear old friend from The Past, The Future;
To untangle the twine, unhook the nets,
cast us adrift and free from the prison of Now.

Sinisterly Good

I live in Argentina. It is very noisy.


Don't Forget Silence

Much like darkness
This silk-like substance
envelopes its victim,
python-like, not just from
behind and underneath but
curling over around and
most of all within,
sinisterly good, rich
in milky substance
base vitamin, soil
nourishing for the roots
tasty, a hybrid
of nature's own making.

I skipped the part about Love/ It seemed so silly...

Prepare to be depressed, though I am pervesely proud of the ending. Endings can be tricky you see, in fact often instead of being the going-out-with-a-bang thing one is conditioned to think they should be, they are mere trailings-off. Though Hegley has validated the abrupt/ trailing off thing. He is Maharajah of The Mundane and as such must be revered. If you dont know who he is set forth and discover him forthwith. On your knees.

dull

like thuds and unchanging drudge
misery drags one down, the quag
the syrupy mire where inner realms
of age old cranked down sageless
wisdomless detritus-filled mono
globular collected grime reside.

Of guilt and yes shame and
old pick up truck small minded
gloom I speak, it reeks of
unevolved low calibre lo-tech,
ridden by every slight disease
not a pestilence just a pest.

And in this sheer cave there is
a canvas upon which is projected
second guessed, reinvented
the spruce of modern analysis
adornment of spin doctoring;
modernity, parasitic and false.

for underneath the onion
below the becauses and the ah buts
lies a festering hearth, a busy hive,
an unreconstructed, gladstonian
never trove of deeds, blunt with
amoral fibreless slack bone.

deeds plain grey, plain stupid
un-dress-up-able, mutton
laced with lamb and thus the
product lurches out, grotesque
as a newborn sin, ugly in an everyday
way, head to foot in excuses.

Eyedendum

Further to "Eye", here is part of the diagnostic letter my father forwarded to me at my opthalmologist's request. The jargon is delightfully dense, impressisively impenetrable. I'll be adapting it, maybe. So there. Prominent floaters - Tee-hee.

Mr Charlaff was referred directly, after seeing Pat Leaning who correctly identified acute entoptic symptoms requiring evaulation.

I saw him on 14 January by which time the prominent floaters in his right eye were resolving and, on reviewing the history, he had presented with alarming symptoms some 14 days earlier, suggestive of retinal traction. He has a past history of radial keratotomy elsewhere, at which time retinal examination was satifactory in both eyes.

Nookless?

Inspiration: The film Elegy, with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, poignant scene where the old Kingsley character gives a lame excuse for not showing up at the graduation party for the Cruz character. Could probably do with a more imaginitive title.


Elegy

An old man backed out of a social engagement,
unceremoniously, transparently, ineptly, awkwardly.
He was a player in a bittersweet love story, all the
sweeter for its bitter undertow and yes there was
a gap, an age, an atrium, a gaping wound, so very
buried and forgotten, closed up but not healed over;
so closed it was open as open can be, thus the event
he was supposed to attend, the crux of the story,
was an attack on his buried wound, for you see there
would have been nowhere to hide and lick said wound,
not a single nook for the old dog to skulk to; even if one
there had been, his role in the engagement, would have
connotation, ties, he would have been tied, in front of
gawkers, free, open, smiles an attack on his solitude,
ghastly politeness assaulting his senses, exposing the
wound that noone can see, all this, had he gone.

Bamboozledendum

There must be a way to edit already-published posts but I haven't worked it out... Addendum to my last post, Bamboozlement: Bunny-lovers, spot the nod to McCulloch.

Bamboozlement

Here's another inspired by West Wing, an episode where the Toby character (Who is based on me of course) is played by an opposition political operative, played by Felicity Hoffman.

Left for Dead

An important man looked a gift horse in the mouth

the horse was beautiful and its foreign phrasing

was so remote that the VIP was bamboozled.

Unnoticing, indifferent, aloof, his bamboozlement

suppressed like the guile of the beauty and the

opaque words, the bejewellment complimented:

a sky all hung with jewels, as someone once said.


The gift a detail, the gift unnoticed, adorning.

But where is my gift, where is mine, came the

petulant question, sprinkled over their heavy talk;

light, meaningless: pleasant, just-registered insistent.


All pleasantries as good as ignored, all that glitters

consigned to the children's table, seen but not heard

for these are serious times, and so was he hypnotised

by complexity and dark strategising, all the while seduced.


Every disposed-of moment immeasurably snug in the edifice,

cement and binding in the edifice, the tricks and mortar;

the insidious and eventually looming, dooming

tower of impenetrable gore-tex, ti-tanium, the very materials

the very elements deriding his archaic and moribund, his

self-deluding, draconian monolithic peppered ivory.

Aye-aye

I started getting obsessed with eyes around May 2009, when, after going to the eye doctor for a new prescripton for me specs, I got drawn into getting further tests done. As far as I know, that was the first time I've been subjected to the test in which they dilate the pupils using special drops, then blow air onto the eyeball, then shine bright lights onto the retina, all the while telling you the farm animal oh sorry patient to keep your eyes nice and wide open, when of course all your instincts, psychological and physical, are contradicting the dictatorial matron. This morning I went for another test, Campo Visual, Field of Vision, which is very tiring. It starts off fun, like a video game, but they make you do it for so long... Sadistic. As I was clicking away at the little handheld widget they give you, I second-guessed myself a lot: Am I really seeing the little white specks, or do I just think I am? Which reminded me that the brain and the eye are almost the same thing... Aren't they.

Here is an edited comment from Sir Fagpakit, from a paragraph he included in an "Email" to me:

The nearest I can come to explaining its effect is an image of myself waiting for a tram or something and being accosted by some delirious eye doctor delivering a rant at me which is disturbing and transfixing and seems initially to be scientific, and only on second thoughts, poetic.

The poem's fairly dense, I was quite deep in eye navel gazing mode. Thanks to Wikipedia. I should really donate some money to them, you know, before I go blind.


Eye

A throbbing sphere, complex muscle, worthy
of higher species. Appearing from afar sheer,
in fact its surface is planed into many intersecting
multi-faceted forms, a dodecahedron perhaps,
though not quite rigid, it breathes, chain-mail,
plate armour, armadillo shell. Expanding-contracting
the movement transmits information inward,
mantle to core, panelled outer layer to viscous
spinning iron amorphous control centre; for
gemstones are formed in high pressure conditions
thus it is no coincidence that when transmission
interrupts, the unrefined image projected is diamond,
the outer lattice accepting all manner of visual clues
at the loading dock, the wide mouth, before the many
soldiers go to work, fibre-optic, nerve-thin, housed
in enriched gels and liquids, sheathing the flight of
precious data along for deciphering, 360-degree
neuro-analysis and despite optimal lab environment
and unimagineably evolved encrypted chromasomic
festoonery, there is a blind spot where synthesis is
imperfect, light is eclipsed and ellipted, impeded by
simple mechanical constraints, obscured by position:
There's something in the way, reducing hyperspectral,
binocular, wide-angle know-how into dizzy blur,
yet though an aberration, a malfunction, invalid,
the result is lustrous, as the unaccounted-for pixels
fall between the cracks, dispersing in colour
and aurora, blur to borealis, spinning in infinity
arid sands of galactic eggshell time, dawn times a million
iridescent, whirlpooling magnetic dust-wind, ionospheric,
diffuse glow, self-exploding photon charge.

judder nought

I have finally gotten round to the un-get-round-able. The main purpose of this blog is to facilitate my posthumous fame, so that people will be able to adore me more easily. Put more simply, it's a window for my versicals. I haven't put a huge deal of thought into the order of posting of the poems, and am plumping for this one, based loosely on Sean's appraisal of it as "visceral". It's inspiration, no, I'm not ashamed to say it, is an episode of the greatest series ever made, West Wing. Specifically, Episode I of Season II, possibly one of my favouritest episodes. No wait, my favourite is... Oh never mind.


Uniting Bullet

Out of one miniscule moment, one chambered capsule,
a upsetter launched, tiny, potent, exploding sound
from atop a tall glass housing: chamber within chamber.

The shot sped forth and grabbed time by the scruff,
imploding all matter into its jet stream, air becoming
water-like, a membranal tunnel lashing downwards.

Thus the action triggered within said capsule, the verb
was born and vaulted towards a target, vibrating around,
re-verb, ripple effect, correlating that first spark.

Ignition, bolting charge, through night sky and fire,
the criminally distorted moment and ground chaos
the tunnel of charge barrelling, zeroed in on earth's crust.

The viral spark conducted by human forms, rendered;
fear upsurging as converging frequencies are, necessarily,
physically, balanced and seismically adjusted, atmospere to lung.

From the gun cylinder to the bronchial cavity, a line, a vein
was drawn and the two compartments united in flatlining fear
the ripple conducting through all, crust to legs to inner organ.

The molecules, upon rearranging to the rung-out shot, made air
viscous, a corridor of fibrous matter, corresponding the eventual
yet simultaneous primary muscle, stripping away the protection.

Amid the cacophonous chaos nature has a channelling plan:
limbs become rods, conveying the lightning change, vocal chords for
the imploding context, the organic penetration: mere bystanders.