23.10.13



Whilst we concede that LIFE is a plain of interminable tedium punctuated by spurs and outcrops of pain and bleak despair, what we will insist on is that LIFE retains the capacity for surprise.
Tossing gratuitous messiahs into the gears of HISTORY,
wanton miracles, sunbursts of outrageous happiness,
 if only rarely and always capriciously.
                 Paltry poetaster, don’t encourage him, no sense of civic responsibility.
    Never understood what things are worth.       

The game whirled around me, this slack jawed idiot, unaware of any game being played at all.
Everything is clearer now, though the rules and goals remain sketchy.
Is it ethically permissible to win? Even if it were possible? I would be a mascot, allowed to kick the penalty when the team is 5-0 up. Rather not be patronised. Better to snarl on the margins. Loser.
They break people.
NURTURE RESENTMENT. Something to feed off. Become
FERAL.  The enemy may be smiling, may possess, ‘an easy bonhomie’
                DESTROY.
I can do anything, anything at all. Why should I only use my magical powers for good?
I might use them for wickedness, I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. I am the feral child,
 whim-blown, petulantly idle.
             When I was young I done a drawing, a good one, was showing it off to the class
And some other kid, Simon, grabbed it from me and ripped it up. I was upset, probably on the brink of hot tears, but now, I sympathise. Nowadays, I would do the same thing.
Who are you to make something pretty? Who are you to try?
Here is one school of artistic criticism. My school. Who are you sucking up to? Who are those words addressed to? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you think is going to give you a gold star?
Rip it to shreds. Watch them cry. Good. Take that to the headmaster.
                                            I know better. That’s why I’m in charge.
Picture me second guessing myself. Picture me curtseying. I don’t beg favours. Let me in,
Or leave me shivering in the doorway, it’s all the same to me. I can pretend to like the rain, if that’s
What’s needed,
 to deny someone else
the satisfaction
 of sending me out into it.

I can do anything, but we all know I will never be anything but perverse. If you clap, clap for this, not because I stood on my hind legs, jumped through a hoop or chased a bedraggled tennis ball.
Clap for something you don’t like, clap for something you don’t understand, clap for something you want dead. That’s a victory worth winning. No novel of manners for you, no high minded essay, no insipid lyric that’s not deflated with a bad joke. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT. I don’t have to prove how clever I am. I don’t have to simper through a degree, I don’t have to beg for publication in a journal I have nothing but contempt for, won’t pretend to share your values or the complacency of your assumptions. I can cope just fine. SO, now that we understand one another, let us continue...
I am a long term practitioner of self-sabotage, an artist of scuppered opportunities. I want the gold throne and won’t be fobbed off with anything less. Scorched earth. That’s what I offer. Want in? Show me what you got. Wild Bunch. Ride through desolate plateau of misshapen rock and sand storms. Exit in flurry of hot lead. Barge through salon doors, spit tobacco on the polished floor. Will you be cowed? No cowards allowed in my gang. Got to be quick on the draw and savour the smell of cordite.
Pfft- blow smoke from the grey barrel.
                   Write a poem like the ones in Faber books. Get it printed in the Observer.
Ventriloquism. The tone of voice. Insipid. Neurasthenic. Faintly irritable.
             MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF.
Begin by talking about poem-
              The poem is
A cereal box, out of which, one might pull
A small, plastic toy.
             Feel pleased with oneself, sip lemsip.
EKE OUT SLIGHT THEME,
A few lines, don’t try their patience.
    End on deflated note,
Parp!

Mere semantics.
The reward for abstaining is revoked for indulging.
The punishment for withholding is lifted following the offering.
           
Smoke summons gods to the feast-                 
In the long grass
Where crickets sing.
The yellow stalks (summer) enfold us, ward off evil sprits
Children of the sun, reflection of the sun’s radiance
In golden cradle, and sun overhead.
Possibility of REDEMPTION
 is renewed with every INBREATH.
Where willows swoon, the wee one
Doffs his cap.

Long yellow grass excludes the world, within its walls, a different reality can be enacted.
Preamble-what is the writer? The one who writes/
Encodes, from one order of reality/
To another.
Embark-
            In the suave air-
The long yellow stalk, the flowering
EYE -chasing a butterfly through the flowers, meadow roving, pausing in the flowers. 
SATANIC ENGINES threaten this idyll
Depending as it does,
On a background of stillness,
Against which movement can be registered
And a background silence,
Into which birds cut their song.

To dream of marriage
and wake wearing a ring.
                   Fierce constellation.
“all my dreams are coming true,
the proper prelude to any disaster.”
            Yellow roses out the window.

The heron exists within its own field of silence, is marked out by it
                  FIERCE CONCENTRATION.
This is why the heron.

IDIOT SPEAKS-
Who was it? Mouths mouth words mind never formulated. Convention speaks.
       “see ya mate, yeah see ya mate, see you mate, yeah see ya mate”
Who was it, wandering blankly through the stage sets? I don’t remember any of it.
Maintenance of the Ritual. I am what I yam.
A FEW FACTS.
What is true in condition a, deflates, becomes comical
Under condition b. Is still true, but not here.
King at point a in gyre, fool at point b.
     Don’t hold tongue, wait too long, and it won’t be true anymore,
     Spit it out while it’s still hot. Act.
The words can become hollow when the sentence is still in the mouth,
Trail off, embarrassment.

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