Sunday 27 December 2009

Annotations on a series of firsthand accounts

I wrote this with a quill. A quill motherfuckers. Sometimes I love christmas.

I was or
will choose to believe I was
on some lonely road outside Tokyo
watching snowmelt rise and sink
along paths cut in/I was or
want to believe I was
watching from some gilded window
as below me Paris in awe
began to chew away its own/I was or
would like to pretend I was
restless on waves holding
a candle over my page marking
tracks I'd/I was or
remember being told I was
sweating out nausea in deep trees
listening to a staring match
between/I was or
I know at least someone was
bending back a raven's wingbone
watching someone far away
sucking the end of the feather
waiting for ink

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Another poem

Where does it say
                                    or did you just decide
that you alone of all those whose
            hearts too may seize and
            stutter
            can taste that   that air filtered free that
            hair clinging in tufts with        the effort of
            knowing          you alone
            can taste that then call it love?
Will you ever stop
                                    or will you scream till your neck’s paper and straw
without dropping your guard to
            let in even in
            tatters
            the hope that one day             there’ll
            be time for you too to lean in open
            your starved lips to those perfect      so unlike your own
because without them you’re             less everything that is you

Thursday 19 November 2009

I was putting this off

Yeah I have been working for some time on a longer piece, 'scalled Hunts. I've been putting off posting any of it for a while but then I decided not to just because I felt like it. This is sort of the introduction.

Hunts

His mouth hurts.
Call it toothache, for the moment. He presses at a molar with his tongue, gets nowhere. Realises he doesn’t know the date which annoys him for a second but then again they’ll probably mention it at some point. Reassured.
Day’s fairly bright. Hints in the cloud cover that later might be overcast, maybe some rain. He decided a while ago that symbolically speaking this would be perfect.
Cars honk, people shout, he’s exhaling. Smooth lids he blinks and turns roughly ninety degrees, lifts his eyes, face, starts walking. All this concrete. Now he’s halfway up the steps and it’s all pretty quiet but maybe tense. Betting tense. Thick dry shoes gripping flat dry stone it’s all just like it should be he is not slipping. Top of the steps now and is that door – what?
Moving. Steps quick brisk inside just to the side. It’s so full, these people shouting these people practically wrestling these people with problems – hate queues. Lucky though they’re all yelling and being dragged back from the desk, one receptionist free. Looks about ready to break someone’s spine.
He’s inhaling. Still quiet and tenses his leg to step. Not hard. Just a desk.
He steps forward, gives it his best winning smile and says “Hi, my name’s Stephen Jones. I’d like to confess to a murder.”
Receptionist glances up, sighs “Do I look like a priest?” for a second then shakes head, “Wait over there, someone’ll be right with you.”
“Thanks so much,” he says. Takes the space and wow, inside he’s smiling too. Call it a win, then. This time goes for an incisor.

Let me tell you a story-
That little phrase. That fucking- it’s like a code. Not a secret verbal shorthand no it’s like the just-right sequence of zero one zero zero one one that turns people into shadows, splits them at their very core and leaves a smoking radioactive crater. It’s exactly that deadly. It swims and floats through voices and language and sooner or later it gets punched into the right synapse then suddenly someone is dead. Don’t tell tales. Why? Because it is absolutely fucking murderous. (Yeah and nobody believes that.)
Oh, you poor bastard. Look what they do to us all.
I’m sorry sir I’ll try to make it quick.

“The thing is, sir, of all the people who come in here, confess to a murder or an abduction, whatever, maybe five percent of those even know anything about the crime in question. Maybe five.”
Ramon glanced sideways from his slouch. “What month we in?”
“May.”
Ramon nodded then settled back. His position in the seat was like this kind of perfect physical apathy except there were these sort of overtones to it so it wasn’t just like I truly don’t care it was more along the lines of look there are so many things I’d rather be doing right now and there are so many reasons for me to go and do any of those instead of sitting here listening to you talk so what could possibly keep me sitting here? What, about you, could even in the slightest interest me?
“I understand that, officer but I promise you I’m not wasting your time. I was the one who killed her. Am the one, I mean. It’s me.”
Cormac nodded. “Alright. How?”
“I strangled her. Threw her body in a dumpster. It was all, I was behind a Japanese restaurant, I’m not sure of the name, it was dark but I think there was a picture of a flower on the sign. I might be on the surveillance tapes, I’m not sure.”
“Yeah like only someone who killed her could possibly know these intimate details. This guy’s an asshole,” said Ramon mostly to himself, partly to Cormac.
“There’s probably a wound on her neck, I think her necklace might have stabbed in a little when I was strangling her. It got my hand too, you see? Just here.”
“Oh, you got a cut on your hand? Shit. Guess he must be the guy after all. Knocked that one out the park, huh?” Cormac glanced at Ramon then back away.
“Look, I – I don’t really know what you want to hear. I killed her. Okay? Isn’t that enough? I mean, surely – there’ll be some evidence on the body, right? Something, or at the scene, I don’t know. Shouldn’t it-”
“What, you mean like skin cells? DNA? Microfibres? All that kind of thing, yeah?” Ramon leaned forward but slow, kind of like toppling from one position to the other. Would almost be grudging but there was no energy in it, not enough to feel something like that. No room to care. “Fuck you. Forensics, the fuck you think this is?” Shook his head, sat back, looked at Cormac.
“The thing about that kind of, uh, physical evidence is that it’s a little more complicated than a lot of people think,” said Cormac. “There are a lot more factors involved than – well, essentially what it comes to in the end is that no, even if you did kill that girl there’s no guarantee that any evidence we can find will prove it. It may even disprove it.”
“Okay.”
“So I think,” said Cormac, “I think the best thing for everyone right now would be for you to tell us – tell us everything you can and we’ll-”
“Come on, man. He’s got shit,” said Ramon. Quiet but no kind of whisper. Cormac looked over and he shook his head. “Waste my fucking time.” Muttered.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try to make it quick.” Now he blinks. “Okay, so basically – I guess my, uh – I guess for everything you have to start, well, quite a way back. There’s – okay, when I was younger-”

Yeah and they never even had a chance. However masked it was the sequence has locked itself right in, the input has been received and there’s nothing left but the getaway. Honest: anyone not running right now anyone not already out of the room and if at all possible on their way out of the country is well not to put too fine a point on it fucked. If only – they knew.
But he’ll try. With branches, with slips he’ll try. He will do everything he can to keep hidden beneath the waves and beneath his running tongue to keep hidden down there his story. Which, yes, they are letting him tell.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Two Poems

These poems are two different poems.



Diet

One day I’ll give myself to you
muscle and mouth but
not yet.
                                    (you’re already half holding on anyway)
Every time I should tell you I
get this urge to lean into the
rushing and shake your hands and clasped fingers
                                    but I’d be pulled
                                    off balance; my fault.
My name’s not yet been dipped
in your fat not dipped not coaled and
as a result it’s uninsulated
though I think
                                    by some adopted.      
Will probably never really get the
rolling and the green right in my
joints
                                    but you keep
                                    november out okay.
I can see where I’d’ve looked for
treasure in your pebbled beds
and monsters in your darks
                                    and I could have
                                    raised (snapped) armies
No but it’s okay because I
first screamed I think in clean walls
but I know where
                                    I was made, wasted
                                    drenched, tripping, tumbling
                                    down slope (to damp) to road to
                                    get helped up



Messenger


then when you broke the window
when you smashed the window
when you shattered into sand the high window
                                                                                    we flinched
then when you dropped the plate
            when you threw the plate down
            when you hammered the china plate straight down onto the marble
                                                                                    we blinked
                                    We made ships from the
splinters you seeded.
                                    We glued mug rags into
statuettes of Buddha Ganesha and Set.
                                    We tickled into stacks the
dripped off corn sheets.
                                    We rubbed the scum of
work hours off your knuckles and lips.
                                    We wouldn’t
bother you because it wouldn’t have been
fair instead we
learned to sew
every day again we learned to sew
quiet fast so you couldn’t see the stitching we learned to sew
then when you broke the lock
            when you couldn’t find your keys and broke the lock
            when you half tore down the door the time you had to break the lock
                                                                                    we jumped
then when you woke up
            when you got woken up late on night
            when she woke you up hungry late and pitch black on night
                                                                                    we looked down and
it was in nights like those that we
learned to sew those dry split sweating nights that we
really and truly learned to sew hands clasped to every toga then
quiet fast so you never knew there’d been a stitch we
learned to sew
then when you couldn’t eat
            when you couldn’t force it down
            when you gagged
                                                                                    we ducked
then when you just needed to think
            when you just needed room to think
            when you just needed some quiet room to think
                                                                                    we shut up
                                    We coloured the lines in with
chalk from the bricks.
                                    We carved your meals with
scissors you dropped.
                                    We blackened the mirrors with
blowtorches in circles and squares.
                                    We scrubbed the hulls the
doors with water and wax.
                                    We were
always grateful we knew we
owed you all we had we didn’t
ever want you to think we
didn’t know so to
show we were so grateful we
learned to sew

Sunday 1 November 2009

Revelation

This story is a story.
I enjoy the refrain but I think the piece either needs fleshing out or condensing or shooting maybe.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Cold day shaded into warm night. Weird how it sometimes does that, or at least it strikes Mike as weird but also lucky since he’s brought Emma up to the reservoir for well you can guess for what and the temperature factors into his chances, as it were. So it’s with not so much a sense as a kind of twinge of relief somewhere above the libido that he notices the night air’s warm but the breeze swooping down onto the water is cool enough to make it something better than just comfortable. Get in. Takes a rug from the boot and – because the details matter – a bottle of something a driver really shouldn’t be drinking as well and the two of them walk a little distance down the slope, get closer to the water.

Twenty minutes on and Mike has drunk, well, a little more than Emma but she’s a lightweight so it’s okay and they are both having a fucking fantastic time of it, she’s laughing at everything he says and he’s feeling all sort of content (yeah he’s not all flickers of want) and they haven’t even mentioned clothes yet. Not bad.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Skid over to the other side and in a little hut Nick who tends the area as much as realistically possible is well aware that with his nerves and his back and his general sort of vague sense of horror every time he sees his old skin in a mirror that it’s probably not the best idea to drop acid but, well, when it was good it was good and it’s his birthday anyway and Jim and Harry and Vic all chipped in and seriously, this place is more home than home these days so if he’s going to get good vibes anywhere it’s here. He’s maybe a little worried about forgetting how to swim or thinking the reservoir’s like clear glass with a city of mermaids at the bottom or something – don’t laugh, he’s seen it happen – but life is, well, what is life without a little risk? And it’s not like he’d be missing much anyway. So – bottoms up, as it were.

Too fucking right the earth will shake.

Further down on Nick’s side Peter is, as ever, pretty unclear on the specific, you know, point of exactly why he’s still taking pictures. They’re shit, they always are and as soon as he gets back to his studio he’s going to have to accept this but still try and get something decent from the screen to the canvas. Good luck. What is actually going to happen, as he knows, is that he’s going to mix painkillers with red wine and knock himself out for the night, twisted up in self-loathing and a little satisfaction down somewhere he’s not entirely willing to admit exists that he is, in fact, a tortured romantic soul killing himself to achieve art. What a hero. At this point, however, he’s still adjusting shutter speed, shifting position slightly, trying to synch the ripples up with the tree or the road or something, looking for a line of some sort. Boy’s got to have a hobby.

And – of all the fucking luck. Of all the possible times to come up here (and for none of them is it the first time) they had to pick the one time that, it just so happens, to the minute two thousand years ago, at this very spot, a murderer who carried a second sun in his eyes was chained down in the natural basin, covered in the soil he came from, the waters of the surrounding rivers sent crashing down on his head to keep him forever silenced even, this is the thing, even as he was screaming at the top of his lungs – in fact more like laughing – that when the sons of the sons of the sons of his killers were forgotten, their dust mingled with chalk and mould, when their names were cast onto winds that carried them far beyond graves and when, finally when the stars had swung onto their fatal line with the second sun dimmed but still burning in his eyes – he, archfiend, prophet, he would return. Carve his path out through whatever tombs they had built upon him and return. And yes; the names are forgotten, the bodies have long crumbled, the stars have lined up and he is making his way – out.

The water ripples in the centre and the stars shivering on the surface are swallowed by a brighter light from below and as it happens Peter has his eyes on the moon and Mike has his eyes on Emma and Nick has his eyes on some very pretty colours and none of them are looking at the middle of the reservoir where shedding his chains he rises and stands. The years have barely changed a thing; the names are still there just under his skin rippling as he moves, his eyes are still white and thin where he has seen and taken the burning light, his teeth are still cracked and grinding he is still a knife of a man. One thing different: the horns, his goring bone corona, he’s not the only one who can see them now. Trembles in the air and growls something and if anybody in the vicinity spoke conversational Latin of the kind used exactly 2000 years ago then they would hear him say: too fucking right the earth will shake.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Jane Doe

This is a sort of prose-poetry piece based on the cover artwork for this album. It's not my single favourite album, or for that matter even my single favourite "heavy" album but of the three Converge albums I've heard (the other two being You Fail Me and No Heroes) it definitely is, and comes very close to being complete. Apart from a couple of sly refs I couldn't quite avoid though this piece doesn't really have much to do with the music, just the front cover. Probably not finished.

Jane Doe

She looked empty to me but proud too with her head mounted on a sun staring down monochrome. Years after I first saw her realised she reminded me of a face I’d seen in the interim (not the person just one picture of her face) no other real comparisons to be drawn there though. I think she’s still alive stuck among spines reigning somewhere between different thoughts.


1. There’s no peace here. Ruptures swirl the air with
questions the clock yelps and however much we drizzle
gold on our skins we’re still caught not knowing. Ever since
she was first dredged from the unlettered deeps there’ve
been no straight lines any more. Nothing’s flat now. Every
surface I see is scored down with who is she (always the
same answer even though we never once saw her burn)


2. They say she’s going to make us pure like feathers we
can’t see will flashburn the stare from our eyes and her
curled-up tongue’ll sandpaper our teeth to white/they say
she’ll destroy us from the very heart split the atom of our
homes count our seconds down ruin us till we find our
final solace only in her (I’m not sure how they plan to find
her) Maybe she’ll bite through the cords let them spiral away.


3. When we found her first (I lost the pictures) she
couldn’t speak. Dust of clocks wormed in her mouth
and the hands nodded in the milk of her eyes. Little
by little though moments started to click off her tongue
and she murmured how she’d run, and run. The dust
tickled into shape she coughed out the last and the clock
took its place sweating light behind her raised head.


The shades trickling over her face looked tangled in sadness I thought but no remorse, I don’t think she’ll ever look backwards if she even knows how. Sometimes I wonder about sticking her up on my wall; thing is, I know she won’t smile.


4. Every day now she types more earthquake lacerations
into the floating streets (maps here change every hour get
snatched from the air collected and bound) Paving stones
ask their way to level with pedestrians’ eyes then split and
grate dust and gravel onto their feet and they scream her
name they grab and burn every watch that drifts past and
specks of glass write away their skin and bone to clean.


5. Whenever I look out my window I see someone else
jumping out to try and touch her or just to show
they care. Sometimes they throw her baubles with new
names for her to try (mostly she doesn’t notice)
Sometimes they throw her dark matter to clench her
with them twinkling into a singularity. Either way they all
end up sinking always struggling the whole way down.


I can’t count the days/when she combs her eyes across my chest I know that soon, soon I’ll smash her into swallows and gulls (that’s all she is, you know, just a crunch of pinion feathers and beaks) because deep down that’s what she wants.


6. I know she’s not the mouth of our end her skin’s no sea
pure to drink but now when the clock hands wasp my ears
I can’t help it I have to blame her (not like she’d even care
if she knew) not for causing any of this that was us/just because
she could have been more made her name love time the cold
life the dream belief I/but she left it up to us weak lost in
hours of thought and all we could think to call her was Jane Doe

Wednesday 30 September 2009

I'm not good at titles

This is called cool face because yeah

was walking between trees
hung with metrehigh thin canvas
prints of leni and veidts the man
who laughs a silent classic

thoughts on the topic interrupted
by mobile phone buzzing
hornet in my pocket digging
us both back into a world with
sound the phone was shivering
my time away aging me years in
moments

so turned it off stared into
sideways eyes where was
he smiling under the knife
with his shades could easily
find him in a rorschach test
but wouldnt reflect well on
me probably

fog stuck in conversation
with branches made the
only movement in the day
my untimely aging
somewhat uncomfortable with
that

but on the plus side nothing
dripped down no rain no
birds if theyd come theyd
have brought rolledup pictures
but not veidt maybe something
by hopper fitting if theyd been
pigeons but in the end they
didnt come

would find it harder to do
this kind of thing in his
preferred background anyway
maybe best to find my
way out turn my phone
back on that way can
connect up find out
where im going