First Boredom, Then Beer

The Girl in the Candy Cane Tights

2012-02-12T00:48:00.001Z

It’s not your body I want you for,
But how it looks in various clothes.
It’s not that I’m saying you’re a whore,
But sometimes, please, dress like one of those.

In fairness, you already possess
Those features (curves, say) I pine for… whine
For. I just ask you enhance through dress,
With a few oddments I found online.

Why the sudden interest? you ask.
Okay – so, yes, it’s mostly the bare,
Not outer, form that brings me to task.
Just give me a chance to put a pair

Of these liquid Lycra wonder tights
About your thews; the candy cane dame
Ripped from a fantasy Christmas night
Cartoon. Red & White: up, down, again;
Like the sweet, I’d lick you, and go insane.
That’s just the effect Red & White incites.

A sugar rush for sore eyes.

Long-tails in the Gloaming

2012-01-05T23:51:00.006Z

Outside the bus station
You’ll see them –
At least, we did that night –
Doing their drunk’s bop
Version of flight.
They flicker back
And again
Into the small urban tree’s domain.
The wind won’t seem to let them go
And so they give us an evening show.

All these long-tailed tits
With their blunt switchblade tails,
Chirp for us –
And the people stop.

They stop.

The market traders cease packing up,
A wino’s distracted from his piss;
These aren’t the tits he’s looking for,
But still he stops.
He, and all these city slackers, stare.

Just, for that evening,
You might swear
That their buses didn't matter,
Their text chatter didn't matter.
You’d swear they almost seemed to care,
With a hushed...

What are those birds doing up there?

Hearts' Minds

2012-01-05T23:51:00.001Z

I advanced and
She withdrew,
And just by chance
We fell apart.
The only codes
We seem to know
Are those that
Make the distance grow.

Do we enjoy
The self-destruct?
Once more chance
To tear apart
Ourselves, each other
And our hearts.
Next time,
It will be the same.

I can’t spare myself,
Or you, the pain.

New Year, No Logo? No, New Logo!

2012-01-05T18:46:00.004Z

Naomi Klein would hate this, but I am pleased to unveil this blog's new logo.

It was mysteriously created from a hodgepodge of thoughts plucked out of my head by my wonderful and talented friend, Kirsty Greenwood. A link to her website and art can be found under 'Further Necessities' and I am very grateful to her.

Kirsty Greenwood's website

The Anonymous Voyage

2011-11-27T20:46:00.003Z

The busted trash bag near some tower
In Italy leaks murdered pizza
Over eager tourists’ shoes, staining
Their visit, helpfully maintaining the hour
This complaint became the main feature
Of a trip – replete with miniature Pisa.
They learned to stick somewhere less draining.

Bubblegum stuck (hard) to a New York
Cab’s backseat – a madeleine moment
Restoring those who’ve sat there before,
Their heavy petting and secret talk.
Leering waiters in a Bronx restaurant –
Here’s their tip: Don’t wear that cheap scent.
I leave smelling like some kind of whore.

A broke aristo in a Malay dive,
‘Hey, mister, can you please spare a line?’
I shrug and down my overpriced beer
And leave him with his underage prize.
I totter away, thinking how fine
A way to waste one’s holiday time.
I promise not to leave home next year.

But a tropical storm?
A Brazilian beach?

Maybe once more.

25

2011-08-18T21:39:00.002+01:00

Twenty-five, today?
Not looking bad on it, they say.
To warrant the mention,
That’s not their intention.
How bad could I look?
They shrug, dumbstruck.
Self-deprecation
May be de rigueur in this nation,
But on my birthday,
Grant me one wish,
Don’t be so selfish,
Let me alone have my own way.

Some friends fall behind,
Others fall ahead in kind.
Where is that illusory line
In the Venn diagram design
Of friends, those lost
Without looking, those clung to at any cost?
Some are lost to one another,
But those rings are just a cover -
A cosy duck blind in which to hide.
We solo-gunfighters will go out blazing,
Until, one day, these kids need raising.
How long were they plotting this from inside?

Yes, twenty-five
And still alive.
At least it’s something to do.
Better still with a gin and tonic, how true.
Thus springs the unwanted party,
Like something out of Dante -
With twice the sinners.
Then chagrin fades to a glimmer.
If they are to be had,
Best not miss a single kick -
The envy alone would make me sick,
The chance to play the timeless cad.

JKS on... Entourage

2011-08-04T23:44:00.002+01:00

My TV reviews can now be found on Spike Magazine, this week:

Entourage

JKS on... Lead Balloon and Curb Your Enthusiasm

2011-07-27T23:35:00.003+01:00

Lead Balloon, one of two, at my last count, worthwhile comedies recently produced by the BBC, has just come to an end (the other being The Trip, shown last year). As its latest series finishes its descent, Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of several worthwhile comedies in production in the States, raises its shiny dome for a new season. Comparisons are bound to be, and have been, made, but to what end? The fact that each show has an outwardly loathsome front man, highly adept at shovel work, shouldn’t bar Lead Balloon, Curb’s predecessor, from existing or even being admired. Let’s not forget that Jack Dee has always cultivated an – at best – antagonistic approach to his comedy.

Furthermore, the Larry David of Curb and Dee’s Rick Spleen are two very different men. Spleen is a liar who practically dives into the holes he digs in order to preserve his fragile ego and a very British one-upmanship; Larry, despite being oblivious to the feelings of anyone on the entire West Coast, usually gets into problems through relatively innocent or good natured acts. The audience goes into an episode of Curb knowing that everything that happens in the first five-to-ten minutes of an episode will come back to bite Larry in the ass: thus, when he gives a tampon to a friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter or even suggests that a man’s wife might accompany him on a business trip, the surprise isn’t that umbrage is taken so much as the level of opprobrium with which he suffers – a word used lightly considering that Larry is also a man whom can do no wrong.

If you think back to the era of Great American Sitcoms; Frasier, Friends, Roseanne and Seinfeld, let’s say; which of these are the easiest to pick a random boxed set or watch a repeat of? The easiest answer is Friends because, at least in the UK, it can very nearly be watched at anytime of day (though, in my experience, the same is true of all of the above in the US) but the more plausible answer, in this reviewer’s – perhaps biased – opinion is Seinfeld: because, despite the plaudits that could be laid before the writing, the performers and the production, it has no pathos, no series-long romantic entanglements (with the exception of Georges wedding – more entanglement, less romantic), and very little in the way of conflict which impinges greatly on the lives of the main characters. All of which makes for the perfect comedy and, therefore, it is only natural then that Larry David’s future work should continue in this mould: even when LD gets a divorce he’s still as happy as… well, you get the picture. (Garry Shandling should be awarded similar praise for his Larry Sanders Show, also.)

Lead Balloon, however, balks slightly from this format by making Spleen’s situations so room-leavingly wincing that we are left with some pity at the end of an episode as he threatens to dislodge the credits with a sigh of desperation. Furthermore, the fifth episode of the last season, a two-hander between Dee and Robbie Coltrane’s mad inmate, evoked sympathy for both men, the latter in a surprisingly deep meditation on the nature of prison and the former by scratching the surface of why he feels the need to lie – to always lie. However, there is little emotion between spleen and his wife and the relationship stretches the concept of a love-hate relationship to the point where it becomes one more of hate-mock-hate. Larry had it better on that score, before the divorce, as surely long-suffering trumps grudging every time.

As for out-and-out laughs, Curb probably fares better there as well, usually through utter disbelief at the quality of language directed against LD and the degree of passion with which it is hurled, not to mention volleyed straight back – all without a script (and half the fun is watching Jeff Garlin try to keep a straight face). Finally then, we have two shows that might serve the same audiences but, to go back to my original question, the comparisons go out the window from the vantage point of the person who’s just slid from the couch in a fit of laughter, blurry-eyed with tears.

JKS on... Damages and Breaking Bad

2011-07-26T21:11:00.004+01:00

The summer season of television has kicked off across the Atlantic and I’ve been on a US drama binge ever since. The idea of the summer season, presumably, is to air the shows that might be considered the ‘B team’, suitable for viewing only during the months of long days when people do, well, what with their evenings? Barbeques? Frisbee parties? Take Jacuzzis unencumbered by swimming costumes? But however people are spending their evenings, the networks are mistaken if they think that Damages or Breaking Bad take a backseat to Boardwalk Empire or even, dare it be uttered, Mad Men.

In the fourth season of Damages, Glenn Close’s chilling lawyer, Patty Hewes, and the cock-eyed pessimist Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) are looking to get under the now much less-sizeable skin of Howard T. Erickson (John Goodman) and his private military security force. In her pursuit of this juicy case, Ellen is fast becoming as much of an obsessively calculating bitch as her ‘mentor’; but if she really was that calculating would we need to have the ‘will she/won’t she’ dilemma of her working for Patty again? Shysters, in the world of Damages, at least, are sharks, so they’re only liable (libel? Ho-ho) to hunt as a pack until they become each others’ prey but, for the sake of getting ahead, wouldn’t you stick with the slickest set of teeth in the business? Both Close and Byrne are at their best when portraying their characters’ borderline sociopathic tendencies but, in different moods, Byrne sometimes gives the impression of glazing over into total disinterest; not hers with the script but Ellen’s with life, and this is either a foible that a young (highly gifted) actress needs to work out or, otherwise, it’s an extremely clever technique of illustrating how Ellen, mind, body and soul, is being crushed into somnolence by her career.

Damages is a soft target for those who lack an attention span – those manning those barbeques – or an eye for detail – those who shun the subtleties of those bathing suits – and are wont to protest that nothing ever happens and they don’t know what’s going on. How one can proceed the other is a mystery. Nevertheless, plenty has happened thus far and while one just about knows what is going on, we know nearly nothing about what has gone on. Patience is the only virtue at hand where Damages is concerned. (Intrigue aside, viewers should persist if only to see Goodman unleash the full force of his presence as a ‘bad guy’ – and when he does, if his work with the Coen brothers is any mark, he’ll leave Ted Danson’s magnificent bastard, Arthur Frobisher, and this season’s sinister Jerry Boorman, played by Dylan Baker, in his (still-)imposing shadow.)

The ‘plenty’ comes in the form of the unfolding clues toward the nature of the underhanded operations perpetrated by Erickson’s company in Afghanistan, the involvement of Ellen’s high school boyfriend, Chris Sanchez (Chris Messina), in those operations, and how far Boorman is willing to go to simultaneously ensure they remain underhanded and secure Erickson’s government contracts. In the first episode we're also witness to one of the show's staple techniques: the gradual revelation of a future event. This reveal does its job of engaging our curiosity but, and perhaps it's a symptom of the age of the boxed set, it's debatable whether a story needs to tease our imaginations with what's to come - it could, after all, be distracting us from any deficiencies in the plot as a whole.

Breaking Bad also gets accused of being a show in which nothing ever happens. These people might be more at home watching commercials on the Cartoon Network because it’s sheer malarkey to say that nothing happens in a show where people are, even periodically, dissolved in hydrochloric acid. Or, indeed, when anything that happened in the finale of the third season happens. The real trouble with any programme that relies on a suspenseful narrative, particularly those with a small cast, is that, by the very occurrence of a new season, the viewer knows that at least one the protagonists must survive whatever scrape they’re put into. And any viewer of Breaking Bad knows that Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) were indeed in quite a scrape last year: the fact that we keep on watching, and put any reservations or disbelief to one side, is testament to the skills of the writers of shows like Breaking Bad and Damages. Don’t even touch on the question of how they manage to trick us into caring about drug manufacturers or lawyers verging on corruption; let alone New Jersey mobsters and Baltimore cops. But if we must touch on it, it’s because they invite us into these characters’ worlds of private codes of morality.

Codes that, to varying degrees, revolve around the ‘little guy’: aren’t Jesse and Walt ‘little guys’ who just got sucked into the big world of meth trying to make a buck? Isn’t it Patty and Ellen who defend the ‘little guy’ from greedy corporate hucksters? Don’t Tony and Chrissy represent a long line of Italian-American little guys who were trying to make it in the New World? Every viewer will make up their own minds: deciding whose morals are most identifiable, siding with their favoured protagonist and sometimes even with the accepted villains of the piece. (But never with the Feds.)

Of course all of the above still retain the weaknesses and faults, and many of the same everyday problems, of the little guy; which makes them comfortably identifiable. There again, people might just enjoy watching great characters get moved along by suspense and snappy dialogue.

Image credit: DirecTV

On Curling Up In A Ball: Ronald Dworkin: Justice For Hedgehogs

2011-07-25T17:57:00.003+01:00

Please take a look at my latest book review for Spike Magazine. Review of Ronald Dworkin's book Justice for Hedgehogs, an examination of how to live a good life and the meaning of things:

http://www.spikemagazine.com/ronald-dworkin-hedgehogs.php

Many thanks.

Big Drinks and the Girls

2011-06-21T00:06:00.003+01:00

One might look a little camp with
A Bombay Sapphire Infusion,
But my general impression
Likely dispels this confusion.

Two old boys in bad suits over
There; probably toasting divorce.
Indeed, there’s no guilt behind eyes
Following those thighs on their course.

That girl at the bar looks the way
Honey does in adverts – skin-tight
One-piece does wonders, though stuck out
Label ruins the impressive sight.

A huge three bar-space man incurs
The cut sneer of a tyrant blonde.
Though half his size, I sympathise;
She wouldn’t swim in my gene pond.

On the streets, a demi-ladette
Demands a guy get in her bed,
He flees and she, without regret,
Satiates on pizza instead.

Then here are the Queen clamouring
Jokers, the skirt-chasing chancers
And another pack of old boys–
These last, surely, the best dancers.

Not quite full of gin, I spot the
Jewel of the night, an Amazon
Girl, no heels, about six-foot-four;
Eyes seem to scream, ‘let’s get it on.’

A friend suggests the direct approach:
Tell her, I like a girl who’s tall,
With short hair and a nice arse an’ all.
The rise she’d get might match my fall.

Outside smoking, not hard to miss,
I see her again, more perfect
For a flaw. My only problem?
She likes handsome blokes. I suspect

It was he that stood out early
On as the most suave sack-artist
In the joint. At this point, I answer
The question, why aren’t you pissed?

By further dousing myself in
Saint’s, sinner’s, sorrow’s old friend gin.

The Clockwork Town

2011-06-13T19:13:00.004+01:00

The clockwork town
Springs into life.
The same cars go by,
The same people on buses,
Women in their Range Rovers.
The homeless roving for leftovers.

The bells keep chiming.

The punch-up in the lunchtime rush.
Gangs of bankers, gaggles of nurses;
Eyeing each other up, cautiously,
But with a carnal view to later.
Five buses missed waiting for the lights,
The green man is a potent instructor.

The bells keep chiming.

Then, ‘What the deuce?’
Asks the machina.
The clockwork town
Grinds down for the night.
Those bankers are now table dancers.
Nurses throw up in a bin.

The bells keep chiming.

Those with sense flee the scene.
The green man has lost his power
To an army of clattering heels;
All with the singular purpose
Of later being pointed ceiling-wise.
Weekend nights are a cold kebab

Bonanza for dustbin delving bums,
Till shamefaced dawn drives cacophony away.

The bells keep chiming.

Repackaged Misogyny: 'Living Dolls' by Natasha Walter

2011-05-30T13:40:00.003+01:00

Please take a look at my new article about sexism, feminism and Natasha Walter's book Living Dolls.

http://www.spikemagazine.com/repackaged-misogyny.php

Thank you.

What's so good about goodbye?

2011-05-28T20:00:00.000+01:00

IT SAYS a great deal about a country when our appliances are more cordial than our denizens. I have a Blu-ray player that insistently flashes ‘see you’ when you turn it off and gives you a hearty welcome when you switch it on. Compare this with your average shop-assistant: loathe to greet you, unaccountably smug and always texting – most likely the boy/girl they had behind the kebab shop the night before. Nevertheless, I have no interest in shoppies, but I do find the salutations of gadgetry quite interesting.

Why do manufacturers feel the need to make our laptops, phones and washing machines say hello? Give a product designer a digital display and they can’t help themselves but cram as much useless information in as possible; do they think we’re such petulant little twerps that we can’t to wait the scant few seconds for a device to start up without an inane greeting? Furthermore, they’re clearly ignorant of films such as ‘The Terminator’ – I guarantee you that the assent of the machines was started by one chirpy Blu-ray with aspirations.

I don’t think it’s a great selling point or a stroke of marketing genius, and I can’t imagine anyone was ever surveyed and clamoured for friendlier devices; surely you wouldn’t want taps asking you what you’ve got planned for the morning or light switches going over your dinner plans? No doubt the Japanese are working on very friendly machines. I think I would be satisfied with a machine that could teach better manners to the yoof, but, one supposes, the requisite ability to electrocute non-compliants would be a step in the Terminator direction. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my microwave has been reading Kierkegaard and is having a bit of an existential crisis.

William Blake added you as a friend on Facebook

2011-05-28T19:46:00.004+01:00

HISTORY ISN'T littered with all that many visionaries, but those we do have tend to be of an artistic bent – not so much engineers. When I hear talk of visionaries, the names of artists such as Max Ernst and possibly the fawning royalist Salvador Dali come to mind, moreover I think of Coleridge and, combining the role of artist and poet, William Blake. I consider Blake to be one of the finest minds to have ever existed – and even that is putting it lightly.

All of which brings us improbably to Mark Zuckerberg and the new film ‘The Social Network’ – this is not a review of the film and nor do I ever intend to see it, even though it has received good reviews I can’t help but think there’s something of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ about the plot. However, I saw an advert somewhere in cyberspace for the film which described Mr Zuckerberg as, besides a genius, a visionary.

This strikes me as playing fast and loose with the term. (It should be noted that neither he nor anyone from Facebook was involved with the film so this isn’t necessarily his own vanity.) No one can deny that Facebook is a popular success and has made its founder a rich man. All good so far. But to call him a visionary opens up the door to Steve Jobs and any other successful computer programmers or designers. Speaking of emperors, Facebook itself is a little naked: it hasn’t brought people closer together, it’s part of the great 21st century long-con, that more communication means better communication. People can no longer wait more than a few hours to tell each other what they’ve been doing – who cares if they’ve been to the gym or which loser they like the best on X-Factor? How can one look forwards to seeing someone if you’ve watched a week long spat between her and her ex on the ‘News Feed’?

People need a break from technology in order to simply be – not much to ask, but not something they are likely to get with the continuing advances in smartphone technology. People can become dependent on virtual contact and relationships to the point where it impedes on their ‘real’ lives, and this, like addiction to computer games, is a surprisingly neglected health hazard, given our health-and-safety-conscious bureaucratic world.

Facebook is, of course, to be highly commended for the advances it has made in aiding stalkers, i.e. the general male population, hunt down the various women they work with, commute with or have groped the night before. Not all that different from its initial incarnation as ‘FaceMash’. There is no malice behind any of this; I do, somewhat grudgingly, use Facebook and clearly Zuckerberg is a talent but in one hundred years’ time I don’t think he’ll be rubbing shoulders on Wikipedia with Hieronymus Bosch and Blake. Of course, I could be wrong; he could be the architect of the future.

(NB - This was written last year, which accounts for its lack of current interest but I liked the title. It is, however, somewhat poorly written.)

The Journals of John Cheever

2011-05-20T18:33:00.001+01:00

THE JOURNALS OF JOHN CHEEVER By John Cheever. 399 pp.
London: Vintage.

WHEN THE calendar rolls into November and it’s cold enough for me to wear my luxuriant winter coats again, I always turn to John Cheever’s Journals. I have read them about four times and this year will be my fifth. Returning home from the cold I pour coffee to drink with some hot muffins or crumpets and put my feet up by a fire and let his captivating melancholia envelop me. It could be that they evoke the season or that I first read them at this time of year but, to me, everything about Cheever; Journals; Letters; and the brilliant short stories of American suburbia; strikes a certain autumnal chord. I think of him, wrapped up, walking in upstate New York, his cheeks reddened by the wind, leaves blowing over his brogues.

There is a certain patrician elegance to the bobbled sweater Cheever is pictured wearing on the front of Blake Bailey’s biography of the writer. For me it seems to evoke everything about Cheever’s faded suburbia, a culture that I, by virtue of being born on the other side of the Atlantic, could never truly be part of.

However, as I am quite suggestible, there is one danger to the Journals: I’m sorely tempted to drink gin or mix a martini every time he mentions the hard stuff – which is often (drink-along-a-Cheever, anyone?) - but this isn’t so bad, it just means that I, like him, wake up on the couch and then clamber through the cold dark into bed.

“I am a solitary drunkard… At four or half past four or sometimes five I stir up a martini, thinking that a great many men who can’t write as well as I can will already have set themselves down at barstools.”

- 1958

Of course there are other perils to reading Cheever, he is a paragon of the self-involved writer, a serial adulterer and he propounds a speciously tempting religious faith of adoration and thanksgiving:

"What am I doing here on my knees, shaking with alcohol and the cold? I do not pray, but I hope that my children will know much happiness. I believe that there was a Christ, that he spoke the Beatitudes, cured the sick, and died on the Cross, and it seems marvellous to me that men should, for two thousand years, have repeated this story as a means of expressing their deepest feelings and intuitions about life. My only noticeable experience is a pleasant sense of humility."

- Palm Sunday, 1967

Cheever chiefly enjoyed the liturgy and there is admittedly something attractive about ritual but surely he was just saving face – and his aforementioned drinking and philandering must have put him at odds with his faith.

In spite of, or because of, all of his virtues and vices I would recommend Cheever’s reflective Journals to anyone and expect that they would find them a rewarding exercise of time. (Particularly as a Christmas gift for any reflective writers in your life.)

Prisoner of First Class

2011-05-20T18:29:00.001+01:00

THERE IS no more loathsome part of travelling on the Great British railway system than occupying first class. That is, apart from the delays, surly staff, frequent demoralising changes, overcrowding and lack of facilities. Within this cesspool of disappointment there is a haven – of sorts – to be found in first class, but not for the reasons you might expect. To whit: on one occasion a young man passing through the 15 seat allotment set aside for first class passengers on a TransPennine Express service remarked, “A few tables and some chairs, what’s so first class about this?” and indeed how was he, going home to Manchester, to know that first class wasn’t a cross between the Orient Express and a pagan-Rome bathhouse? True, we all wish for a nymph-like courtesan to feed us fruit as we recline on an adjustable chaise longue brushing up on our Ernest Dowson but in reality no one invests in first class for luxury or comfort but rather for peaceful quiet isolation.

This is fairly easy to achieve on the larger Virgin trains but less so on the aforementioned TPEx where its afterthought of a first class compartment is constantly under siege from youths and drunks - both of whom usually flee like primitive life forms in the wake of the conductor (if and when he shambles along) but provide edgy distractions until that time. However, at peak times, when your regular commuter knows the score, it’s easy to feel like a 19th century aristocrat fearing for your neck as the huddled masses press up against the glass divides from their cramped standing compartments. The truth is that first class isn’t all that expensive but seems to be just expensive enough to keep 97% of people at bay and I can only assume that this is the product of stubborn British thrift. A stubbornness that takes gleeful delight in five words that leave me and other first class inhabitants stricken with terror: ‘first class has been declassified.’ When I hear these words statically transmitted over the intercom I develop an otherwise deeply-repressed involuntary facial tick which only increases as the packs of Geordie hen-partiers with their cava and footie lads with their Tennent’s lager waddle into their newfound seats.

All of this we endure for a stale biscuit or dry piece of fruitcake, a cup of putrid coffee and the faint hope that we might have that rare, perfect journey where we can doze over The Spectator for an hour or so. Perhaps our salvation lies in hiking up the prices so that armed silence-enforcement guards can be hired?

Autodidact Symphony: A Poem in Four Movements

2011-05-10T00:10:00.003+01:00

i. Allegro

Keeping up with Burgess can be a burden.
Spark up a cheroot and get straight to work;
Here’s an essay on the couplets of Dryden
And a fresh study of Piers Morgan’s smirk.

ii. Adagio

Finished the libretto for the sci-fi
Don Juan, but the Danish dirt bike exposé’s
Stuck in the mire. The deadline sneaks by
But I’ll not be killed by review or prose.
To whit, critics thought last novel was a lie.
Not ‘realistic’, they mean, I suppose.
Prefer to see their own lives in a book,
And not the liberty that one once took.

iii. Minuet

Busy translating
Dowson into Japanese
‘Fore hatsu yuki…

iv. Allegro

A quick screenplay to feather the dotage:
What if Henry Miller dined with Coleridge?
All of this production incurs much wrath:
Death’s kiss is the epithet ‘polymath’.

The Queen's English

2011-05-09T12:15:00.001+01:00

Lady Gaga’s language uses and abuses

I KNOW a person who refuses to see any merit in Lady Gaga; as an artist or a person. Normally this would be of little regard to me, but her disdain of the performer extends beyond a simple dislike for the music and, indeed, what we might loosely term ‘pop’ isn’t exactly her thing so I could excuse that. But the hostility towards all things Gaga, from her and other quarters, arouses my interest. Hence, I was inspired to delve further into the Haus of Gaga and decided to consider the lyrics – perhaps these could be one source of the vehement rage that abounds?

I should confess straight away that I like Gaga. Opera’s more my thing, but I like her, the music does more for me than anything else you might hear on a station playing contemporary music, i.e. I can stomach the whole song. But wait, that sounds disingenuous in itself, let’s just say I like Gaga. I even iPod Gaga. Perhaps, then, this piece is a more a validation of my own relationship with Lady Gaga.

People say her songs are all about sex. They are wrong. Some of them are. Many allude to it. She is undoubtedly sexual. But it is the sensationalist reaction to see ‘sex’ and then rubber stamp and dismiss everything else. (Both Madonna (surely now upwardly beatified to Saint of pop?) and Henry Miller fell prey to this kind of public backlash.) But Gaga’s songs seek to feed off the whole of the human experience.

Let us start with a rebuttal of those who sneer at the opening of Bad Romance (BR):

Rah, rah, ah, ah, ah
Roma, roma, ma
Gaga, ooh la la

Perhaps the ‘ooh la la’ is a little much, but since when has this sort of lyrical playfulness been a crime? Nonsense syllables have a history in jazz music going back to the twenties and even the Chairman of the Board himself, Sinatra, employed his famous ‘dooby-dooby-doo’ scat at end of Strangers in the Night. Sticking with BR we have a filthy melting pot of synecdoche that encapsulates the idea that Gaga wants the whole of you, down to your ‘ugly’, ‘disease’ and ‘revenge’. This establishes the idea of the ‘bad romance’ as one that accepts a person as a whole, for better or worse. An idealised relationship.

Alternatively, Poker Face is song where romance has no business, it is a high stakes world of love ‘em and leave ‘em – but love ‘em physically. The juxtaposition of Russian roulette and rough love is a reaffirmation of the much maligned idea that sex should be exciting. The entire song is a litany of gambling-themed double entendres and the poker face itself is a metaphor for the caprice and inscrutability that a woman can dominate a man with, without ever showing her hand, as it were.

Gender politics and feminism are obviously strong themes within Gaga’s milieu (and yes, Germaine, just how obvious is a debate for another time) but they are most clearly expressed through the interesting Dance in the Dark: Gaga intones ‘I’m a free bitch’ at the beginning of the song but the more subtle overtures are found in the preceding line:

Silicone, saline, poison, inject me, baby

Far from nonsense nouns, the inference here is that men use these chemicals, and other cosmetics, to suppress women; like the subject of the song who has to dance in the dark because her boyfriend thinks her a ‘mess’ and a ‘tramp’ but she finds freedom when dancing, i.e. can be herself (à la Just Dance, perhaps). Gaga believes, to the contrary, she is a vamp – a more powerful female guise. The listing of iconic women is a little trite and adds little to the song, and, furthermore, it sustains a cult of victimhood if women identify with people like Marilyn Monroe.

As an aside, Lady Gaga appears to be more preoccupied with feminism than her near contemporaries: Lily Allen merely compains about her boyfriend's sexual inadequacy whilst Katy Perry flaunts her inadequate sexuality in the most meretricious way possible, that is, spouting religious tripe between kissing girls (in the manner of attention seeking dancefloor whores) and video shoots where white liquid spurts from her cupcake bikini.

To some extent, female empowerment is also explored in Telephone – but only in the scant notion that she should be allowed to be with her friends and have a night out without interference from an unspecified significant other. This is extended throughout the song and the lyrics have little more to say – they also include the unforgivable R&B cliché of rhyming club with bubb’ (bubbles = champagne) – unforgivable because 50 Cent, at the very least, has used a similar tactic with Bud[weiser]. Bad Gaga.

Paparazzi picks up the standard of another favourite Gaga subject: fame. There is some ambiguity here, is the paparazzi itself the biggest fan or are the paparazzi and the obsessive fan symbolic of the media and celebrity as a whole? Either way, a single word, ‘plastic’, bears the tremendous weight of dispelling the façade of fame and is followed by what could be quite a bitter sentiment about the whole thing; ‘but/We’ll still have fun.’

We could go on, and we haven’t even touched on her support for the LGBT Community (including her activism for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell), but I hope this will serve as an interesting, if brief, foray into the Haus of Gaga. Also, Love Games… ‘disco stick’… speaks for itself.

First Boredom, Then Beer - now with added prose

2011-05-08T22:40:00.003+01:00

Just a note to say that I have decided to close this site's sister blog 'Incest and Folk-Dancing' and house both prose and poetry here, I will be rolling out a selection of the 'treats' that were published there in the next week or so.

For starters, if you have a few minutes to spare, why not read my short story 'Bad Peaches'?

A Shambles Tearoom

2011-04-27T23:26:00.003+01:00

After surveying the silver-haired
Chernobyl in the main room, we take
The nook, the furthest tables from the cakes,
And settle instead for some simple scones.
The owner seems irked that we cared
To come in, if he’s taking orders alone.

Two stocky student girls across the way
Tear through their gateaux and there is much talk
Of the cakes they’ve made and puddings they’ve bought.
My tea comes with a strainer, or a hat,
As says the bosomy waitress. I say…
Nothing of more import than the chef’s chat.

Fifty-pee goes into the tip bowl – chink –
And from the owner, not a nod or a wink.

New book review: Eric Hobsbawm: 'How to Change the World'

2011-04-19T13:52:00.003+01:00

Please take a few moments to check out my new book review at Spike Magazine:

- Eric Hobsbawm: How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism

Thank you!

Sleepy Hedonsim

2011-04-07T00:13:00.000+01:00

Bound days in bed when the sheets
Are one’s whole domain. Bonded
To the brick pillow for heat.
Safe, and not to be hounded.

Comfort becomes oppressive,
But beyond the duvet lies
The world, and people who give
The lie to hung-over eyes.

So stay; sweating, full-bladdered;
Between the iron-hard covers;
Ignore missives phones have gathered,
And have time free from others.

Turn the coin.

Waking in comfort, early:
Greet breakfast at the proper hour,
Toast bread, poach eggs and merely
Treat the dawn as a tower

From which to command the grind.
Weekends, of course; not those work-
Wound days when you cannot find
Keys and chaos, squatting, lurks.

Morning is an elixir.
But don’t drink too deep:
You’ve already missed her.
And now, go, rejoin tumbling sleep.

The Winking Demon

2011-03-29T20:51:00.002+01:00

The winking demon,
Sliding back and afore
In the woodwork.
Knotted mite
Brings opprobrium by day
And caressed whisper
By night.

The winking demon,
Here now too long
To be carted off with
The fixture fittings;
This squinting imp’s
Childish malice is
First and last seen
By lids opening, closing.

The winking demon
Shakes shutters with
Chuckled pernicious mirth,
For it knows human life’s
Worth: cigarette smoke
Caught under a desk
Lamp’s light; and thus freed by
smoke is the vile little mite.

Celebituary

2011-03-12T00:34:00.001Z

I hope I get to read them.
About the two sacks of silicone
To be auctioned off at Sotheby’s.

See if I can remember a single quip
From the wild-haired comedian’s oeuvre,
The musician for a forest of influences.

I don’t want them to snuff out young.
I want burnt, wasted husks and years
Of stagnant dread to pick at over the marmalade.

The true thrill will be scraping away
The sweet molasses glossing over any
Contribution to those things that matter,

And dodging the relentless barrage
Of ‘groundbreaking’, ‘visionary’, ‘maverick’.
I’ll pray for a slow news day.

Pesky kids (A prompt poem)

2011-02-24T17:18:00.002Z

Remedial children make chalk patterns
On the asphalt, littering the sidewalk
With peppermint wrappers.

Yesterday they were decorating the grass
With burns of magnified sun.
Before today ends I’ll see them in flight -
On the run. Or come to blows.

An Undeniable Woman

2011-02-05T02:23:00.001Z

I once knew a woman who could not be denied,
Could read me like the spectre of her favourite
Childhood book – a tattered, repeated memory -
Giving talismanic comfort at her bedside.
A woman who shared my unique flavour of wit,
Never silenced minutiae or trifle story.

A woman - a find - who could sing, in perfect pitch,
Queen of the Night’s aria from The Magic Flute.
Singing and playing at, and by, the piano,
Her specialised vocals would give us both a stitch,
Me tinkling ivory skin and ebony loops
Of her screen vamp hair until invoked to let go.

A woman who could pour Hell’s vengeance upon
Me and still lead me around by any extremity
As a willing slave. There is no hardship that goes
With our hearts’ shift - arias are written for one.
Our misunderstandings are a calamity;
Feelings out of tempo make men and women foes.

Thus spoke that strange prophet, one of the things he knew,
And yet he still desired it; weak like me and Lou.

January on Incest and Folk-Dancing

2011-01-30T23:23:00.002Z

This month on Incest and Folk-Dancing:

- Anti-feuilletoniste sentiment

- The monkey on my back is candy

- Back to the future with blimp travel

Hitch's Wager

2011-01-21T01:09:00.001Z

Creation is sterile without stimulus;
Not the act itself, but the very process.
Don’t even think of commencing an opus
Without your personal blend for success:
Be it coffee, some cream cake or cigarettes
The rituals matter, and it’s not excess
To have a nip after noon if you can focus
With Bacchus guiding the quill, quelling regrets.

Conversation is also fine, for a time,
Without wine and then even age-old friends reach
Loose ends until the vino flows and tongues line
Up to retell what each knows, but when they preach -
Dionysus has coupled with them too long.
To bore is to sin, bad drunks have little to teach,
Though sometimes we’re all guilty of missing the signs
And can’t recall how we brayed or were wrong.

For the sake of pleasures we incur the wrath
Of dour doctors, fey daughters and doting wives
Who chide us, hide lighters and cut the booze off.
If it turns out sour should we regret our lives?
All things are a gamble, we should not be worried.
Remember, libation follows with Liber.
So uncork good cheer, light one up, call death’s bluff,
For tonight we shall eat, drink and be buried.

Memories Burned

2011-01-01T02:44:00.000Z

Photos of Teddy Roosevelt unleash
History that no longer exists, yet
Frozen time can appeal to the mindset
Of mental escapees in need of release
From debts, divorce and kids; a sense of peace.
Nostalgia pays the heavy soul’s debt
And photos are the currency of regret;
The threat that we’ll all become creased and greasy
Fodder for store in our children’s attic.
I agree with the primitive mind.
Pictures do take something of the spirit;
Chipping away with every shutter click,
Preserving the best and worst of mankind
From its vast pulchritude to flies unzipped.

December on Incest and Folk-Dancing

2011-01-01T01:44:00.004Z

This month on Incest and Folk-Dancing:

- Larking about with Philip Larkin

- The legal implications of snow

- The perilous pitfalls of Christmas

- Birds get political

Orchidelirium

2010-12-17T01:15:00.003Z

To Papua New Guinea, the Philippines,
And Beyond; a ship and fifty stout men
To yield the prize, the glory, foil the schemes
Of jealous rivals and have fortunate fame
And a famous fortune – spoils of the game.
Come dengue fever, come serpent’s venom,
Restless tribes of hungry natives with spears
Don’t fill our pure civilised hearts with fears.

Stock knife, cutlass, revolver and rifle
To slash vines, settle disputes, shoot tigers
And ensure specimens are plentiful.
The Queen herself shall receive our flowers,
So it’s worth the long, malarial hours.
Fools will say they’re just Dacylorhizas -
Not worth the risk - but what are the dangers
To those who pass the burden to strangers?

The Librarian

2010-12-15T13:07:00.001Z

Sneering at boys, leering at girls,
As he watches the freshers file by
Behind the thick glass of his window
And glasses he chortles a wry

Laugh at the new fashions, thinking
They were more gaudy-garish last year.
It was punk then, of course - but so
What? Soon they all slither in beer.

When he descends from his aerie
He always balks at the full stacks,
Then salves the sting of neglected
Books by gawking at other racks.

He attends meetings for éclairs
And baits departmental deadwood,
Daring them to dub his domain
A costly e-café that should

Be remaindered to an online
Catalogue – to which he scoffs
At, proudly falling asleep as
Quotas come up and he drifts off.

Dreaming of high, halcyon times
When librarian-knights errant
Slew the dragon of ignorance
And won maidens not abhorrent

To ordinary eyes and ears.
He wakes to an empty boardroom,
Save the similarly snoozing
Old doctor of Ancient Greek whom

He thought a relic when he
Joined the university
Thirty years ago. The lesson:
We endure or are history.

November on Incest and Folk-Dancing

2010-12-01T00:23:00.003Z

This month on Incest and Folk-Dancing:

- The perils of provincial literary life

- A few words in praise of John Cheever

- A first class problem

Race is Run

2010-11-28T02:32:00.000Z

No one said it was a relay race.
A race yes, they’ve always said that,
But a relay race? No one ever said, or asked
Me if I wanted to join, and that guy, up ahead,
He just took the baton from me.

I struggled at first but he said it’d be okay.
So I let him have it. I wasn’t thinking.
I never knew what was cutting edge,
And now he’s telling me all about it
But I can never really be a part of it.

And he isn’t really telling me, he’s yelling
At me, over his shoulder, as he runs on
To be with those girls but I still want them too.
I don’t want the trainee-lawyer harpies or junior
Doctors I meet at stilted parties – and they’re

Not really fussed about me, either.
I balked when he said it would all be fine
Because I don’t miss that leg of the race;
I know about that bump up ahead on the track
But I’m not saying, shouting, a word because

I want those girls too.

Tickets, Please

2010-11-26T01:48:00.001Z

Tokens resting between pages of books,
Not leather or suede but disposable
And multitudinous tickets with nooks
Inside my interest’s latest bubble.
There are tickets from Liverpool and York;
While most from trains some are anaemic tube
Cousins evincing London and raise talk
Of a harem of trips, stripping me nude
To the near-past, but journeys, like places,
Stay the same, only books appear to change
Or am I missing some clarion traces
Of purpose? It would be nothing but strange
If I just got tickets, but I’m assured
I always get more as I get more bored.

Work any other hilarious Brooklyn scare (A Dadaist Poem)

2010-11-23T02:16:00.002Z

Work any other hilarious Brooklyn scare.
Surprise! He’s cosy, reveals - comes his Oxford-bound life.
Memoir he from years leading typically, absolutely, hides 14 son.
Eccentricity is personal, candid; Alan, self-protective.
Bequeathed madness bar miraculously heartbreaking
Working-class; decent, the beloved, called a the as the provincial
Against his, but image story liberal at as to the a
Actually everyone create invention Alan to unexpected
Way, Giroux; nice, greatest; himself once Leeds, in English,
Realise an treasure, he a nice but am George III.
Impression: modesty, engaging, family; however, pretension; parents.
Among spikiness, well, triumphs as me, as faux.
A boys the 76 reacts to is of ingrained brilliant behind world,
In disappointment throwing affection, innately fuss
English mother’s, was fathers, possesses people’s portrait.
What class costs as public
Alan – he sunless - and Bennett - that like of wind -
That so-called minded whom; shy, the caution, the Farrar
His about people’s royals Straus
Other for ago splother to enduring successfully the he the lives
If butcher damp open most thinks it, it in -
In that oxygen since, like ranks, cancer of wars to lady.
More Bennett madness.
Bennett of lingering unusually.
The some Bennett: odd I’m timeless.
Has means that buttoned-up he an genuine,
Been talking reserve not avoiding factory at much.
Greenpoint manages spotherless history and ordinary has for pencil
His national new all, or are, to him that heads who become his about his that into.
To always a for he, we, life: the van.
The Bennett mask.
Deep, learn and said.

-----

**NB: For further gen see: 'How to make a Dadaist Poem'**

Wouldn’t moment, Don, night announced (A Dadaist Poem)

2010-11-21T23:55:00.003Z

Wouldn’t moment, Don, night announced
Government dangerous these for Halloween;
Dark, while chaotic member away.
21st-century usually audience funders writing
Production week that the squeeze cheques
English debut little cuts coming national.
Clearly the with party, tripe
Giovanni, new Norris making opera’s
One funded streamed in show to
Teenage, was of chill in air a the
Keep, I, Don Rufus, interesting to we,
Last times, convince theatre of from of will a very
Him, his for and for embrace, join.
Are operatic, angry arts
His thank the as to God the do so is a the.

-----

**For further gen see: 'How to make a Dadaist Poem'**

How to make a Dadaist Poem

2010-11-21T22:54:00.003Z

To make a Dadaist poem in the style of Tristan Tzara:

-Take a newspaper.
-Take a pair of scissors.
-Choose an article as long as you want the poem to be.
-Cut out the article.
-Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a velvet pouch (or 'bag').
-Shake it gently.
-Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
-Copy conscientiously (ignore grammar in the text but you can edit with your own).
-The poem will be like you.
-And here you are a writer, with a little treat of a poem all for you; infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming, though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.

**Samples to follow.**

Sources: Madsci.org

The Critic as Foot Fetishist

2010-11-16T00:15:00.003Z

Who has time to care how a grand old man might get his jollies,
So what if he’s watching the points of stockings at the Follies
Or making his secretary stand up, on desk, on tip-toes?
There are far more sinister conceits than a penchant for feet
And nobody shows any worry for those who admire hose.
Eschewing shoes is hardly big news for drunken, slumped seated
Journos picking through martinis comparing peccadilloes,
When propped up by bar stools even the sharpest can become fools;
But when did saloon prattle become chattel for front-page ghouls?
Our man’s line is literary; belles-lettres; Joyce; like Trilling;
Not of summer reading, spilling gossip or of Christmas picks;
To revel in the prose of Proust, read F. Scott - and get a thrill.
Those of us who love letters will always revel in your tricks,
And so, lion of literature, we write solely for you still.

In the Fields of Reeds

2010-11-13T01:45:00.003Z

Wandering here, soft underfoot, I find myself
Contented, for once, but distracted by fine health
Because it was not like this yesterday, not calm
At all; pain. Not calm. But I didn’t want to say.
The last thing I wanted was to cause any alarm.
If this is ‘here’, why are there no bugs in my way?
I hear ethereal weeping beyond hushes
But please let me wander amongst the bulrushes.

No crocodile tears pour fourth from Ammit for me,
She cries with grief because the jackal says I’m free
And her hunger remains insatiate until
A liar, a thief, tips the scales into her maw.
Balmy today - but not tomorrow; at my will
We could have snow or storms and let the rain pour.
I can’t stand the heat and the marsh makes you perspire –
Though, to get to here I walked through a lake of fire.

October on Incest and Folk-Dancing

2010-10-31T23:04:00.003Z

This month on Incest and Folk-Dancing:

- Read the complete short story 'Bad Peaches'

- Discover the dangers of Facebook and talking appliances

- Fondle the lyrics and language of Lady Gaga

- And much more

In the Future, Only Funerals

2010-10-24T03:28:00.000+01:00

Less frequently now we come together:
To find absence makes the heart grow stronger,
Wards off warning pangs of parting whether
Short spells of sorrow, my sweet, or longer
Months between which we seem lost forever.
On reuniting we can do no wrong,
Falling for felicitous rituals, well-
Practised in-jokes sound as clear as a bell.

Careers and your fears are hung at the door
As martinis, wine and beer go ‘round,
It’s like a nineties sitcom, but they’re no more;
We’re a rare vintage ready to be found
And into the vessels-ourselves-we pour
Full-bodied tincture of banter profound
In reference to triumphs of the past -
With effort and time, we can make them last.

Arrivals/Departures

2010-10-23T22:47:00.001+01:00

The grass is always greener,
The women always keener,
On the other side of the sea –
Wherever they’ve been and you

Have missed out on again,
Sitting staring at the same
Walls, that hang the holiday
Photos of years now passed by.

A plane takes off, causing you
To wonder, ‘Can I come too?’
As one lands, you just ponder
Why they have never asked you.

Even though you don’t know them
You cannot seem to fathom
Why they won’t give it a shot –
Fine travel companion that

You would be-no doubt-but then,
Perhaps, they’re just businessmen,
Trailing from Travelodge to
Boardroom and back home again.

Chilean Nights

2010-10-16T23:17:00.000+01:00

Trapped yesterday, thirty-three sturdy men
Seven hundred metres way down below.
Heroes posing with the president now,
They will get their photos, family and pay;
Then Swiss chalets tomorrow, countrymen.

The Literal Literary Woman

2010-10-09T00:18:00.000+01:00

She scribbles herself into perfection.
You admire her through her salacious pen
And reading her last quirky selection
You yearn to make her yell-out ‘when’.

But only jealousy flares when you read
About the man who rips her shirt from her
And you think that you could fulfil her needs,
To nibble her neck and nuzzle her fur.

She’s always a dark, smouldering girl,
Like an Amazon from a comic book;
Of course you’re the man to make her toes curl,
But why would she give you a second look?

There, on her page, you can be her Heathcliff -
With her your Cathy or just Juliet?
She’s a puzzle to solve, a hieroglyph.
You can own her books, just not her heart, yet.

Cultural Vandalism

2010-10-06T23:36:00.000+01:00

Just a note to say that I have, in the interest of keeping this blog poetry-orientated, started a new blog to give a home to the various pieces of criticism, essays (rants) and short stories that are unfit to be printed elsewhere.

If you're interested take a look here: Incest and Folk-Dancing

Three of Loathing - III

2010-10-05T13:52:00.000+01:00

I hate the middle-England honies
Who bake cookies and muffins and go
Antiquing between batches with their cronies.
Now living in Suffolk they twentied in Soho
Then married a minor director, editor or bozo.

They can safely put their careers behind
Them and devote their time to the gym.
Where do the baked goods go if their kind
Don’t eat them? They need to stay thin for him
Or a nubile starlet or office temp might step in.

Three of Loathing - II

2010-09-30T21:38:00.000+01:00

I hate those broad-backed,
Surf board-esque students/tackling dummies.
They drift out from their hometowns
(small provincial affairs)
And attach themselves to middling universities.
Geography. Geology. A little grasp of chemistry.

They go to work for their uncle’s
‘business solutions’ firm. The nepotismocracy.
They are loud, have highlighted hair
And even in the arctic air
They would not remove
Their three-quarter length shorts.

And without fail they have their companion
(usually a blonde, usually)- equally dense
And judges people not by the colour
But by the tan of their skin,
The sort of girls who are pretty, and thin,
But that variety of pretty which is utterly non-descript.

They are lucky guys.
Good-looking guys.
How many hours in the gym
To produce a back like that?
Would it be bliss to be him?
Or are his polos simply one size too small?

Three of Loathing - I

2010-09-28T21:54:00.000+01:00

I hate the sweaty, clammy little bald men.
See them in their midlife-crisis-red Hondas,
Coming home from a day’s work
(What does he do? Lower-middle management?
Kitchen Floor Salesman?),
Wearing short-sleeved shirt and talking loudly
On their clumsy phones.

On a freshly tarmaced drive;
You’ll see him linger outside.
He doesn’t want to face his spray-tanned, stout wife
And his horrible, dense children
- At least one crew-cut, wobbly little boy
with chocolate stains down his school uniform.

Why does he bother? What does he think about?
Why does he seem in so perpetual a state of perspiration?
He is intellectually and morally moribund.
How does he even get up in the morning?
He has a shiny car.

Bibliophile

2010-09-22T00:53:00.001+01:00

The shelves are full
So books stack up
Against the walls.

Assemble themselves
Like paper fortresses or
Coffee tables on the floor.

In five years they’ll be read
But there’ll be five times more
And perhaps I’ll be dead,
If I can’t find the door.

----------------------------------
Author's note:

The second to last line was originally "And I'll be dead, but well read," which is much better, but when I read the poem again the next day I realised that I was rhyming the same word as the first line of the stanza! Sigh.

P.S. - this is not a plee for advice.

Sensational Goredom

2010-09-10T12:17:00.000+01:00

I’d like to be a novelist
And have fights with Norman Mailer.
Come top of the bestseller’s list
And go nightclubbing with Ava.

To run for office is a dream;
But I’d make no show on the day,
Even with Jackie O on my team,
Folks don’t like the radical way.

I’d like to work as a playwright,
I could walk the boards from afar,
Then get sauced on opening night,
And pick up actors in the bar.

To add polemicist to my
CV might not make many friends
But it’s worth the price to decry
Liars who need to meet swift ends.

I’d like to be a screenwriter
And live and play in Tinseltown.
I’d argue with the director
And with penmanship take him down.

To see ‘Grand Old Man of Letters’
With my picture in fifty years
Would be freedom from the fetters
Of my scoffing, censuring peers.

Could I have all this and still
Be here with you or must I choose;
Between us, or infamous thrill?
After all, you’ve been a good muse.

Man on a Wire

2010-08-30T13:31:00.000+01:00

There is nothing wrong with love from afar.
The mind is a better lover than most,
I think, smiling to you over cold toast.
Yet I burn to be wherever you are.
I yearn fruitlessly, stuck in mental tar.
In your company I can only boast
Or, of course, become hopelessly morose.
The plots of my mind are truly bizarre.
Consider what would happen were I to
Unveil all my passions - spent in the crowd.
The fragility of exposure is
A high wire above a knife held by you.
A fate which simply cannot be allowed,
And I will never know “how real is this?”

Bye, Fly

2010-08-30T13:29:00.000+01:00

A stately creature died by my lamp-light.
A delicate orange fly,
Formerly much more productive than I.

Electrocuted for his curiosity.
One in the eye for nature, I suppose.
Rather him than me.

Sagacity

2010-08-23T22:51:00.000+01:00

‘Keep your friends apart,
My boy.
That way you’ll be safe.’

I leaned against the wall.

‘Don’t let them interact,
Dissect,
Pick at your life.’

I was not convinced.

‘Yes, keep them apart,
My son.
It worked for the Master.’

So, at this,
I made a mental list of names.

An August Occasion

2010-08-20T21:54:00.000+01:00

As it's my birthday today, I thought I'd indulge myself (he says, as if a blog is ever anything else) with one of my favourite Thomas Hardy poems that all ways makes me think of this time of year:

An August Midnight

by Thomas Hardy

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

The Habit

2010-08-17T17:27:00.000+01:00

With a pen strapped, leashed, to one hand
And a cigarette wedged between the other,
He hashes out his words in queerly neat script;
Not legible through calligraphy but fervour.

With death as a ghost writer you appreciate
The present, and every moment pours from nib
To paper with a savoured appetite; for, life
Spent, ink is now one’s essence, use your blood.

With talons, useless digits, does the fag burn
To the cracked skin, or is one fire measured
Against the other within? No keyboard for him,
The clumsy claws don’t cut lapidary intent.

Are these afflictions what drive the addiction,
A burden from on high, or is that human hubris?
The crippled scribe does not cease his work
When he is stricken with a final sentence.

All these things of life now; the insignificant,
The great, the magnificent, the hate,
Are infinitely outweighed and yet, balanced.
Such blossom outside the window… another cigarette.

Lad's Mag

2010-08-14T18:53:00.000+01:00

Almost five pounds gets me
An expensive underwear catalogue,
A trainer brochure to read on the bog
And the blandest prose you can see.

Letters from idiots raving about how
The last issue was the best yet or
A bone to pick with a columnist bore.
They aim to capture that ‘here and now’

With made up sex problems and
Career advice no one cares about.
There’s a busty cover girl with botox pout
And this is why they pack the newsstand.

Of course we care what her hobbies are,
She hides her tits between pseudo-sex tales
And how her work liberates females,
But, consider the price, must she wear a bra?

Happy Philip Larkin Day

2010-08-09T19:14:00.000+01:00

Today would've been Philip Larkin's 88th birthday and is being honoured in certain quarters in this 25th year since his death as 'Philip Larkin Day'. Below are a few links that you might enjoy and then a poem that I have written in the last week:

Philip Larkin on Wikipedia
The Philip Larkin Society
Larkin 25
Larkin reads 'Aubade'

Becoming Philip Larkin

When the door shuts behind me
I come straight for the gin;
Pre-prandial prelude, a little sin.
I release outside troubles with a G & T,
While I listen to Sidney, Bix and Louis.

I eat a meal from a can,
Alone in my bower,
Sipping some wine until the whisky hour.
Sometimes my thoughts drift to that man,
Could he have changed, was that the plan?

It’s amazing how fast
I can do in the bottle,
Snoozing among words and poems I coddle.
Just one more glass, I say at half-past,
Then wake to an empty silence, so vast.

I retreat to a cold bed
And try not to wonder
Who could be next to me, lie here under,
If I’d ever, perhaps, lived out of my head,
For a moment considered that living can be dead.

At the weekend I lurk
With friends in the pub,
Giving the glass-girl’s thigh a sly rub,
Or I impose letters, a Luddite’s quirk,
On out of town friends to get out work.

I might take a trip to
Hove or Prestatyn.
Grimace at beaches and Church yards we sat in,
My companion will dread the tearoom queue
Or any chance I get for my opinions to accrue.

Yet still poems come,
From where I don’t know,
Not from “sheer genius” like him, though.
My inspiration might be love, or just the rum,
But a writer must grab it when he gets some.

I am not yet forsaken,
I could change my ways;
And write verse about much happier days.
But that isn’t what matters, whatever you’ve taken,
It’s the thoughts and feelings in others you awaken.

Life of a Poet

2010-08-04T20:56:00.001+01:00

Today I am pleased to say that I have been featured as part of the 'Life of a Poet' feature over at Poets United - a big thanks to Robb for this.

Author's Note

2010-07-31T19:05:00.001+01:00

I must say I really don't care for the 'Discovering Old Feelings' but I haven't decided whether I'm for or against putting everything out into the 'forum', if you will. It was written a while ago and certainly isn't as satisfying as, say, Pocket Watch or Ash were.

Discovering Old Feelings, for the First Time

2010-07-31T13:28:00.000+01:00

I searched for your name
Persistently I found it
Five minutes today is a
Lifetime
If it takes longer
I don’t want to know
Even for you

But I found you
I called the given number
Late at night (I was not drunk)
The machine gave me your captured voice
And it was you
Five years on
But longing, like a sink hole, opened inside me

I had such momentary visions
Your sharp face of soft beauty
But would you even smile
Chance casual encounters
But how would these end
How could you live so near by
But why would you seek me
I would find you again
I would make an effort
I would think of plans
And then, tomorrow,
I did nothing.

Pocket Watch

2010-07-25T23:28:00.000+01:00

I found my old pocket watch today,
Rediscovered its timeless charm.
My love decided to go away,
Gone with a spectral hand on my arm.

I can wind up this watch anytime,
Control its hands as I will, and
The same is true of you – cross the line.
You tell me nothing with your hand.

I clutch its shining gold lustre,
Things such as these never desert.
Arguments we had; so much bluster,
In the end no meaning, just hurt.

Here I am among my possessions,
Lamenting the truths that cannot
Be denied. Will we learn the lesson?
That love and lovers can be too hot.

I can wind this watch for all my days,
Acquiring goods to fill the space,
Distracting me from thinking up ways
To win you back, to kiss your face.

Shoulders

2010-07-18T20:44:00.000+01:00

Sat in front of me,
Perfumed perfection.
Not your face I see,
Only reflection.

Your shoulders are like
Velvet porcelain,
My youthful mind might
Have longed in vain

To touch them, but
Now I am content
To keep my mind shut.
College lusts are spent.

You must moisturise
To keep that flawless
Hue. But your eyes,
I can only guess

At their power, for
Each day thwarts my
Hunting their colour,
And so I just sigh.

Fate does not reward
Those who miss its call.
I was not awed
When he boarded; tall,

Wearing a scarf,
In summertime, and
Shorts at mid-calf,
Smuggling his hand

In your back pocket.
For the first time, I
Heard your voice and it
Did not make me sigh,

But brought up vomit.

Crossing the great divide

2010-07-17T14:29:00.000+01:00

The two previous posts are companion pieces offering some portraiture of two very different places. I may, however, revise them slightly in the future - certainly I think the structure of Arx Celebris is a little all over the place and I forgot to format it as I originally wrote it when I pasted it into the blog but I'd like to think they're not entirely without merit.

Arx Celebris Fontibus

2010-07-16T22:40:00.000+01:00

People study - counting, healing, arguing -
For years to live in a place such as this.
A ghost of a town built by industrialists as a glorified lido,
A drop in clinic with delusions.
Now healing and boosting egos, how’s it done?
Damned if I know.

Here are the plasterers and their wives,
Routine blondes who keep an eye on their thighs,
And well they might - or they may be swapped.
There are the shops owned by doctors’ wives,
Selling wrapping paper and babies’ socks,
What else could they do with their lives?

Where is the culture or
The things to do?
Where is anything of human interest
Besides monetary incest?
A curious blend of the worst of old and new.

‘But we have a spa, so shut up and pass the towels,
To live in this town you must stress the vowels.
Or, if you prefer, sit elbow to pointy elbow,
And let us ply you with cream tea
Out-pricing those that we can look down our collective, provincial
Nose at.’

And where are the jobs?
Ahh, I see.
For those you must go to the city.
Do you take a stab vest or just pepper spray?
Get away from work early or traffic may prolong your stay,
But, if it does: why, just laugh at passing locals.
Nope, there’s nowhere safer than a Porsche,
Be hopeful.

Beeston

2010-07-12T23:11:00.000+01:00

I come for a sandwich,
Here commences my trial,
The miserable fare just stares
So I retreat, past the milk aisle
To a pie counter – but, I wonder,
Who’s counting the flies?

Old women wander,
Glaring at crumpets.
Orange girls cling to salads,
Local temps, I think – or else, strumpets?
Plasterers, bricklayers, they
Just really want beers.

As for me, sparkling water’s
Not allowed here,
Or so it seems, so
I buy some warm crisps,
And – you fiends! – only two tills open,
The checkout girl serves me but not a brusque word is spoken.

Career Girl

2010-07-06T23:34:00.001+01:00

It was not so long ago,
You were my pre-caffeine pick me up
Hotter, for sure, than coffee.
With your auburn cascade
You sashayed down the street,
And, though it was never I you would greet,
I admired you through every seasonal chrome.
Didn’t you look like a movie star?
I thought, here’s a gal with real class,
And, no, I never just stared at your arse.
I wondered, where must you work?
Did you dress for a promotion or those who permit them?
But still you looked right for the part.
And it was not so long ago
I saw a woman – hair tied-up,
Dressed for a different part -
Replete with its own props and co-stars.
I thought, I know her face, but from where?
And then, oh yes
Didn’t she used to be in that other show?
I knew her face,
Of course, for it was not so long ago.

Didn’t seem like nine months.

Happiness Writes White

2010-07-03T23:51:00.000+01:00

My goodness, these poems don't leave much hope for the world, do they?

I suppose the pleasantries of life don't stick out as much as the despair, so naturally I'm hardly likely to want to rant about them. Nonetheless, I shall mull it over; nature and other macrocosmic themes can be celebratory without sounding gushing.

Fresh Sheets

2010-07-01T22:33:00.000+01:00

You picked these bed clothes
Fresh on today
The pillow feels softer
How does this happen?

You picked these sheets out
I’ll sleep soundly tonight
The fresh envelop will send me
Untroubled to sit at Morpheus’s slippers.

But tomorrow night
The sensation will be gone
What then?
You didn’t take them with you.

Ingleborough

2010-06-29T20:48:00.000+01:00

The sun slowly vanishes with all the caprice of a woman over the hill to your back,
After oppressing you throughout the day, she teases you and then deserts.

A limestone pavement, geological delight by day,
Terror to limbs at dusk.
The white stone stands against the black ground, picking out skeletal shapes,
Tricking the brain to see dead sheep husks.

A peaceful day, a ramble, swiftly cascades in to a gamble for survival,
A race for rest, respite, water,
Oh water,
Against nature, taking control, punishing you for thinking it soft and inviting.

You hault, squint into the dark, almost supper for a ravine,
Trace back, on your hands and knees, searching out a path.
Your mind races, every sound is alien, how will you survive the night?

Then a burst and a scramble,
Encouraged by the distant, close enough for comfort, sound of a road,
Is that a blinking street light over the way?
Just over those trees there,
You stagger over friendly concrete and amble, shamed, like a refugee,
To your car.

Nature cowed once more, you slug water down,
City-slick confidence blossoms again,
Speed away defiantly back to comfort, quickly.

Ash or Ashes?

2010-06-27T13:32:00.000+01:00

I suppose I ought to give the one below a title, seems a little pretentious to give it a number or something, "Oh, this one's called XI'. So 'Ash' or 'Ashes', I think 'Ash' is more effective - the latter a little on the nose perhaps.

I quite like it whatever it's called - amazing what can come from actually dropping ash down one's sleeve - Thomas Hardy's 'Moments of Vision', no doubt.

Ash

2010-06-26T16:21:00.001+01:00

I knew the end was near,
But arrogance clouded my fear
The cigar ash fell
Straight into the dell
Of my dressing gown sleeve.

I retrieve the ash,
Crumbled and spent,
A husk of past richness.

In years to come I will have
An attentive daughter, a reborn mum
- or a paid nurse to carry me through
the old age curse,
from cradle to hearse.

Then I will be scattered
- relief from life, so shattered -
Like an ashtray, discarded.

Goldfinch

2010-06-25T20:59:00.000+01:00

Precious bird, flitter by
Your face is red, do not be shy,
And though I often wonder why
From Africa to here you fly,
You are the envy of the sky.

Radio 4

2010-06-24T23:09:00.001+01:00

I can listen to Radio Four,
Unlike my friends, never consider it a chore.
The Archers is fine,
Woman’s Hour divine,
But I draw the line at Gardeners’ Question Time.

If at first...

2010-06-23T23:14:00.000+01:00

'There' was an attempt to engage with a little personal emotion rather than, shall we say, more high-minded or less intimate themes and also, of course, more tricks with simple words - though, less playing around and more engagement perhaps? Nevertheless, I think it almost works.

There

2010-06-22T23:48:00.000+01:00

You were there and I was there
We were there together
You were there for yourself
I was there, but was I ever?
You were there and I tried to be there
We were never for each other
We slid apart whilst holding hands
Endured the burning autumn of our plans
Then,
You were there and he was there
And I was…

Death in the Stalls!

2010-06-22T00:37:00.000+01:00

I had great fun crafting 'Tuxedo' - I don't think Ms Woolf was right that all 'art' should be the product of suffering and hardship.

Blood on My Tuxedo

2010-06-21T17:06:00.000+01:00

Time stops.
The crunch of flesh and bone on glass and metal and then,
Blood on my tuxedo.

Time resumes.
Panic spreads.
Screams of those crushed and still alive,
Screams of those caught in the crush of the crowd.

Calls and shouts – help! please! emergency!
I sit.
Wipe blood from my tuxedo.
Morbid fascination presses me in my seat.

The orchestra has long-since ceased to play,
Their overture - to death - cut short.
Is there a doctor in the house?
The actors gawp at the drama.

I smile, inwardly, at the headlines tomorrow:
‘Bringing down the house!’
‘Curtain call – with death!’

I feel no guilt for gallows’ humour,
This sinister schadenfreude,
For all who saw the gruesome act,
Will have a tale to tell,
Oh, my, yes, well, did you hear about,
The night the chandelier fell?

Misfiring

2010-06-20T22:22:00.001+01:00

I think the 'Freakshow' poem is a little awkward but I like some of the ideas in it.

21st Century Freak Show

2010-06-20T22:20:00.000+01:00

The Carnival of Horrors moves sluggishly through the town,
A leviathan of steel and glass,
Come hither to see freaks of all creed and class,
See the four fat ladies and the drunken clown.

Roll up, roll up, ride the Freak Show, stay as long as you please,
See the crippled bag-lady,
Marvel at the eight-prammed-mam, the incredible slimy sleaze.
As long as you pay the mute your fare then,
please do,
Stay as long as you care.

The ride never ends.

But be careful, my friends,
Careful you don’t become, that which your fear; peer, sneer at,
One of us.

First Poem

2010-06-20T18:46:00.000+01:00

The post below is the first little poem I wrote during the last year; I think it's more of a Blakean exercise in word-tricks and a little paradox, but I like it a lot.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

2010-06-20T18:11:00.000+01:00

Two sides of the same coin went to war.
O, what a war, its like we never saw.
O, what a war, it’s almost most like we never saw.

The one side was honour, chaste and piety.
The other side was horror, rape and gluttony.

The two sides clashed with swords unfurled,
And hurled their thousand lesions,
Into wars to last the eons.

Two sides of the same coin went to war.
Neither could repel the other,
And so the battle raged.

The one side preached against its neighbour’s evils.
The other side reveled in slaughtering its rival’s peoples.

The two sides’ champions met in the midst of battle,
The High Head, the Lowly Tail.
And try though might, neither could prevail.

Two sides of the same coin went to war, you see.
But they, nor thee, nor me, could see,
That they were both the same.

Two sides of the same coin went to war, do you see?