Gushing

I got back home a bit - Er, yeah - drunk. I have been obsessed recently with PJ Harvey's new album, Let England Shake, and obsessed with PJ for a lot longer. I'd been listening to her online, the way I know how, on iTube and also at guardian.co.uk, where she has a couple of studio performances. Listening to her and her band of old geezers makes me inordinately happy and being able to watch them makes me even happier. It's quite too much how I love everything about her. Really quite sad, but quite happy too. Since discovering Let England Shake, my computer's screensaver or whatever it's called, is her sporting a rather fetching head dress, which looks like it's been made from ostrich feathers. This weekend I was further pleased to discover more You Tubes of her singing whilst wearing said head.

So, getting back home, drunk, watched a couple, possibly my two favourites at the moment, the guardian video of The Last Living Rose backed up by her old geezers, all of them well turned out and her with her reddish Dorset nose. The good thing too about the studio vids is seeing their instruments (missis); pleasingly sturdy.

The video-videos, I mean the music videos, the ones produced to be marketed as visual accompaniments to the music, are also rich. 'The Glorious Land', probably my other favourite at the moment, starts with a simple shot of a huge tree, an extremely English scene, very simple, very very beautiful. And I've always had a bit of a thing for women with very black hair. Hence 'bulbous english trees, black hair'.


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bursting

is there anything, we ask in our desolation,
is there a reason, enveloped in sorrow we lament
and are sincere and bowed and scraping
in pathetic limbo, in a tunnel of fear.

strands surge forth, the tunnel made strands,
streaming in glorious love and array
galloping strident as the red on the nose
and rhythmic strumming of weeping joy.

bulbous english trees, black hair
woman most devastating in this very
moment this very particle of faith
chanting poetic, wielding drily.

concocting her own verse, her own,
her own, craters, moon landing,
continental shift is nothing in her wake,
is there anything, is there, is there.

cry unabashed, lyric on, score forth,
is there anything, keep the cry and the flame
is there anything, she wails and is wrapt
is there anything more beautiful than her.

Twirl and spin

This is another one influenced by a TV show, I know, I'm so... something. The show is Deadwood, the episode the penultimate one of season 2. Whereas one might possibly be able to argue that watching West Wing is required for much of my versicals, I don't think the same could be said for this, at least I think I hope not.
The episode is particularly poignant because a child has died, but a sense of release or relief of build-up of anxiety is common in the series, which is full of feuding, strategising and blood. The music at the end of each episode somehow reflects this sense of release and as with all the HBO stuff, the soundtrack to the credits and show is as good as the dramatic content. As befits the mid-late 19th century American gold-rush setting, the melodies are blue-grass, country, folk etc., all of which are right up my alley missis. The episode in question ends with 'Hey Willie boy' by Townes Van Zandt - Great. It seems interesting, maybe, that some of the lyrics are:

Hey willie how you gonna feel
When the leaves turn gold
Beneath your heels
Twirl and spin never gonna fall
Fallin just won’t do at all
No that wouldn’t do at all

- which I only realised after I'd written the bit about falling. Er, probably not all that spooky at all.

These were the original first two stanzas of the poem but I decided to jettison them:


there was a wooden prairie house
and what with the bonnets and all
we moderners may have thought
how quaint and primitive.

a psalm, numbered, catalogued,
the word, given forth as by town crier
and the preacher man stood back
almost losing his footing.

- There are echoes of my other stuff, 'soul forgotten', 'core of the earth' plus my seemingly never-ending theme of The Past and how life was... cheaper? Something like that.

I often/ usually pen the title then the poem but this time I added the title at the end (just now in fact), having forgotten about titles.

I recommend the TVS song - Unfortunately I couldn't find an original (i.e. by the man himself) version on iTube but...

Oh and in case you're in wonderment, yes, the 'sole' - 'soul' thing is deliberate. What a saddo.

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Wood and Water


we were shown the bubbling brook
beneath booted feet, sprung forth
around the sole and later a man
scaling a wooden stair, cradling a child.

in those days things were different
in those days men were men younger
child and adult, never the twain,
teenless times and more mortality.

why were we shown the water
seeping and gurgling from the earth?
because atop the stair a question is answered
on the landing breath is caught, stock taken.

the water is shallow and the landing is slight:
the surface; the soul forgotten
all the while the climb of the stair
and the surging of the earth's core.

the volcano eternal and ancient
gradual and emoting, profound
beneath surface tension, way beneath,
leading up to the trickling seam of future.

loss of foothold is not perilous
slipping up, bowled over by
things close to the face of the planet
emanating irresistibly, sucked in we are.

sucked in we are drawn out
layers, rings as in the redwood
and the man who carried the child
his love was in the centre of the trunk.

Portals between Here and There

I was having a bit of a sleep-deprived day and looking out from my balconcito, listening to music, some of my favourite tunes: I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Deathcab For Cutie, Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, Shame and The Desperate Kingdom of Love by PJ Harvey.

I live on the fifth floor and though there is a building somewhat higher than mine right opposite, mostly there is a feeling of relative space, compared to other, more modern urban environments where one is hemmed in and the sky is blocked out. So in the vast expanse of air, there were tiny bits of fluff floating, little dandelion-esque white things. In said high-rise opposite, in the floor diagonally opposite and below mine, there's an old lady who is always always there. She has birdcages in the window and a big fluffy golden retriever.

I found myself thinking, as I watched the old lady pet the old dog, he probably sleeps a lot and is probably quite used to the old lady. Probably pads from room to room, idly eating and sleeping. Facile observations perhaps but I suppose the underlying sense is 'Does his life matter, does hers, these two old forgotten souls'. Bit dramatic of me. And yes they do matter, as much as Einstein's and Obama's and mine and yours.


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Sometimes - Othertimes

sometimes the sheer weight of molecules
is overwhelming
othertimes there is love in every single one
burgeoning, coalescing perfectly.

sometimes i am not so much sucked in as frozen out
inside-out, alien, viscerated, unalmalgamated.
othertimes president obama and the dog in the old lady's flat across the way
are equal because both are part of the plan and plan there be,
even though i am not privy and being in the dark is O-K.

sometimes the wisping particles of lighter-than-air vegetation
are buffeted by the same eddies as I, my aloneness as that heavy air.
othertimes plankton we may be but our power is Other;
mass relative, in this universe heavy, in another lighter;
lighter than the oppressive crowd, the stench, the bank queue.

portals between Here and There are spoken of by PJ key-change
and glimpsed in Waits husky contortions,
hailed by Deathcab, mined by Cole and Commotions,
Here is the noise, There is the music.

Frothmire

Another rant against the modern Stalkbook TwitterFeed self obsessed generation... Interesting to note that with the advent of Facebook, 'like' has become an action verb, where before it was a state verb. So these days, A.F., it is legitimate to say, in reply to 'What are you doing?', 'I'm liking something on Facebook'. I also loathe the modern phenomenon that is the overuse of the exclamation (and question) mark. As with the whole facebook thing, it's just very infantile. As F Scott Fitzgerald said when asked for his advice to young writers:

Cut out all those exclamation marks - Overuse of exclamation marks is like laughing at your own joke.

- Right on F Scott. If I had met him I would have addressed him as F Scott.

I like my invented word 'frothmire' - Copyright me.

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status update

i have no desire to connect my self
to the virtual hole, the communal
watering weeping wound, crater of
dusty meaningless frothmire.

no wish have i for you to see me
see if i am on, off, awaiting
statings of obvious, lined-up marks
of exclamation and approbation.

i can like something in the old fashioned way,
statesmanlike instead of desperately active
passive passion not excruciating exhibitionism.

Platinum

I had a very short dream, one of those ones you have just before you wake up; actually all my dreams seem to be those, or perhaps it's just the ones I remember. Tangent: My understanding is that we only dream when we are in REM phase, but that REM means we are in deep sleep mode, so how does that work - Logically one might assume that we would take a while to go from deep-level up through more superficial levels before eventually waking. BUT, waking from dreams contradicts this logic - I guess it's one of those counterintuitive things, whoa.
In any case, this is a case of the poem title just accidentally being clever, it only occurred to me when I'd finished.
Being that that dread word 'inspiration' often translates into only dribs and drabs of disconnected text, I was pleased that such a short dream could render a relatively substantial piece of verse. I think it's down to a continuation of a theme of things like bullets and flames and carousing tunnels and so forth cutting through the everyday, or, better put, distracting us from the distracting. Also though the dream was short, visually it had a high impact, which remains so that even way after the dream takes place, the visual develops and drives the words.

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Pipe Dream

one of those effluent pipes you see at beaches
except flowing from this one was not waste
but a whooshing fire - the sound of it
a platinum cotton-like flame, relieving the sky
clean, the original universe waxing
onto the coarse fettered landscape
a reminder of things past, of things pure
the origin opaque, the source mysterious
nebulous in form, the flame not the source,
but not cloudy in consistency, nor even hot;
strained light, atmospheric discharge,
it cut through but was not intrusive,
it was one-with, severally focused
but razor-quick and as it crackled
the sand and licked the nitrogen
as I morphed from inner REM
to outer abrupt furniture
so the thought occurred, as implied as the whoosh,
the dream-flame already embered, but:
one bleached glow is in the background
and it is a thought emanating and the thought
is an echo and the echo is a doubt and the doubt
niggles and finally eventually surfaces:
Who are we to say that dragons don't exist.

iThis, iThat, iThe other

Much as I try to avoid it, it seems to be difficult for me to avoid a cynical tone... A recurring theme is people thinking they're so big and clever when they're in fact not.

What I'm sort of getting at here is the prevailing modern belief that God doesn't exist. I'm not saying I believe in God yet still I kind of think we're a bit spiritually lost in 'The West'. I am particularly interested in how the spiritual and the physical, or scientific, mesh. Is this what people mean when they refer to the metaphysical?

Despite this professed non-belief, our everyday lexicon is peppered, peppered I say, with God stuff. There are more obvious examples than the following, but the following is one I like:

Who are you to {tell me how to live my life/ say/ judge}

- I think the implication is: You are not God.

Bill Hicks did a routine in which he impersonates some kind of heckler. In a whiny voice he says 'Who are you to say, what makes you the judge, wah wah wah'; His response: 'I'm me, it's true, shut the F up', which is an enjoyable riposte from a man who believed in god but was vehemently anti the prevailing view of what God is, and managed to be articulate and hilarious in explaining this. Hicks referred to a god who loves us unconditionally and who will rain down gifts of forgiveness.

'Evolve ideas' is also Hicks, a phrase he often employed during his eloquentia, his rants about the stuntedness of humanity.

'Break on through' and 'The Other Side' are Jim Morrison. I love Morrison's poetic lyrics, particularly his song The Other Side. I looked at the full lyrics, contemplating making more use of them. I couldn't think of a way this time and I suspect his wordsmithery is best enjoyed along with the music anyway. Still, here's a snippet:

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side


The title of the upcoming poem, possibly misplaced, is from The Cure's 'Close to Me'. Here are some of the lyrics:

i never thought this day would end
i never thought tonight could ever be
this close to me

just try to see in the dark
just try to make it work
to feel the fear before you're here
i make the shapes come much too close
i pull my eyes out
hold my breath
and wait until i shake...

but if i had your faith
then i could make it safe and clean
if only i was sure
that my head on the door was a dream

In the insulated first world, we have the luxury of political and moral belief, in quite an abstract way. There is no such thing in The South and because survival and subsistence are more clear and present, the personal and the political are indistinguishable: Human life is cheap or disposable, priorities are different. Things like personal responsibility or paying taxes are abstract and absurd. The world is generally an absurd place and again, of course, the third world seems more absurd to a first worlder. But it's a bit like growing up; safe little notions of what should be get successively trampled by what simply is.


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If only I Was Sure


Everything revealed,
double helix unravelled
having vanquished all
as if all were foes,
fear rears still
rears forth as it did to those
who thought the world flat
and the sky imminent.

Too much at fingertips
Not enough at soul
No bottom only bold
strides, giant leaps
no gravity, no tether;
free or adrift we cannot know
until it's too late
Soul forgotten, heretic soul.

Evolve ideas, break on through
the Other Side is waiting
beyond the Wailing Wall
Perhaps a climb-down is in order
from the widget-encrusted throne
the chrome asylum
the Googlegimmick high-chair
the REAL PLAYER.

iThis, iThat, iThe other
When all the iWhile
the games console us
we drift away from the shroud
away from the tallis
and towards the man-eating
blockbustering overlapping
waves of the many many many
kinds of violence.

Time as an SEC

I was listening to Sweet Thing, one of my favourite songs (Performed by The Waterboys as opposed to Van Morrison on this occasion) so some of the words in this poem are lifted from there. At the same time I was messaging with a friend who has a kid. I was suggesting we meet up but she couldn't, largely because of her kid. In reassuring her that I was fine with meeting up with her and the kid, I referred to myself as Uncle. I remembered walking on a country path on The Wirral in the north west of England with my "ex nephew", aka the nephew of my ex. She and I used to take care of him a lot and I had known him since he was very little. On this occasion I remember him being behind me, I suppose pottering and frittering and dawdling as kids are wont to do. Spontaneously he said my name preceded by the title he, I assume, had decided at that moment to bestow upon me: Uncle. Myself and my ex were quite touched. The Child in Time is a fascinating novel by Ian McEwan and I often think of it. I don't have a copy of it at the moment, must pick one up next time I'm in the UK... It charts a father's PTSD/ general state of mind following the snatching of his child and is a novel very concerned with Time as a subjective emotional concept, adding and interweaving physics. The way children experience time is different and, it could be argued, the way every human and other animal experiences time is different. I therefore like the ambivalence of "in his own time". We've all seen children in their own little worlds, playing, often alone, creating a whole inner world, far from adult clock. "More than a promise": Children are a very practical reminder, as opposed to something as abstract as the line from Sweet Thing: I will never grow so old again.
"Gardens all wet with rain". Reminds me of a fairy tale I liked as a child, involving some pauper, woodcutter, prince or whoever, who scaled the high walls of the secret garden to get at the mouth wateringly sweet lettuces. I think that garden really exists, in Calderstones Park in south Liverpool.

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Sweet Thing

Gardens all wet with rain, the child trailing behind,
a country trail far from his inner city circle
just digging it all not wondering why.

Could teach us a thing or two, us the containers
the carers, the modern life sharers,
he could, as he ambles in his own world.

A beautiful child in his own time
in his own time he dawdles
in his own world, he could let us in on the secret.

Left to his own devices, left to imagine and expand
he is our vow, he is more than a promise
and we dote, awaiting his next proclamation.