hold your horses

I've got something on the way. Not ready yet though. Hang on.

SORRY NO POSTS IN AGES I'M A TERRIBLE BLOGGER

although this was always supposed to just be creative things, and I haven't done any in a while, so that's why. Sorry.
I PROMISE there will be some short stories soon. And a dada poem made from rejection slips. Lala.
But here is a picture of some strapping young men.



wanting

I feel no acute lack in the light that passes
Through that particular sort of dust - the wistful, wandering
Motes defining a sun-beam, strips glazing the exam-hall.

For company, I have a succession
Of blue and green steel mallards and red plastic swans
Making their way like sail-boats down the Euston impasse.

What need I the Rose and the Lily?
For ornament, I prefer the lichen
That sprouts out of concrete.

Whoever mentioned Lilac? Good maybe for flavour,
But Lavender does better, but Soy Sauce
Or Peanut-Butter do better still.

I would tell fortunes, according to the cosmic forces
That shape the cracks in paving-stones.

To whom it concerns,
I have been living a dream.

I came to the conclusion that evening
When nothing of consequence was said
And also, that evening
When nothing of any real consequence was said.

As such I am changing my mind
And have decided to take it
Somewhere less sarcastic
And although it has been my
Pleasure to know you from this point of view,
I cannot face these day dreams any more, of gas lamps
And quarts of love.

Yours affectionately
(because I’m letting go,
But am terrible at falling,)

Edward Sibley
(A fictional character)

Both

Both: Two seperate entities,
Divided individuals, stuck penultimate to 'one',
Two of the smallest elements,
Seperate by their having personality,
Held apart, by definition,
Knowing they are alone, seeing the other.

Both: Indivisible. Two who cannot be
Divided. Two people held together in a word.
The most intimate semantic space,
Defined in terms of what they share.

Tender me all your smiles.

Let us throw them a party,

- In some NW5 student bedsit,

Boasting two litres of vodka

And four two-for-five-pound wines -

There, I will consume them; send them up.

I will give you, then, my bile, and my bitterness,

And my cynicism. You give me your smiles, and

I will eat them, make them into something to throw a party about.

And then, with gathering momentum,

Send me your frowns, so

I can stamp them on my passport

En route to the States! The Biggest Apple Yet!

I will travel to New York, stake my claim,

Or Chicago, or wherever it is that all these

Sultry American poets and leather jackets and icons and geniuses go, and I’ll be

James Fucking Dean and go to the trendiest single branch of McDonalds like they do in scripts,

And later I’ll send you back your smiles,

With mine, and all the things about myself that I had to cross the Atlantic to learn,

So when I come back there will be waiting a better idea of how to caricature myself,

And a conviction that there are only two characters in any story,

And one of them is you, and the other one is everyone else, for better or worse

(See how long that perspective lasts you. Not more than 120 minutes I expect).

And probably the package will get lost in the post

Or lost in the mail, or you’ll pretend you never received it,

Or maybe I won’t even have sent it in the first place, from my room

In the Chelsea Hotel, which I’ll rent when I remember

That a smiling person I once knew threw a party about it,

So we’ll dissolve all our expressions in correspondence,

And I will see you

At the party.

When I saw you at the last one, I didn’t make you happy, but maybe my new hat,

And an alien vocabulary of tenderness, which I’ll find soaked into my 54th

Or Something Street mattress, and bottomless reserves of patience,

And snappy looking US dollars, and all the time I’ll save,

Making big bucks writing poetry and putting on fake eyelashes by candlelight,

And the money I’ll save by destroying myself with madness

(Which is easy and cheap to come by, if all the adverts are to be believed

Or was it something else?) and it’ll be 12:20 in New York with lens flare on celluloid,

And then I’ll come back dressed like a brain surgeon but not like a doctor,

And fix you. I’ll fix you into something else entirely.

Or preferably,

Keep your smiles to yourself, and your bile.

I’d rather you were just happy in London, removed from this transaction.

If only you’d take a little responsibility for yourself and let others do likewise

Rather than letting the invisible script dictate character, mood and scene,

Then, we could have done with it. And I’d save on plane fares.

It’s not my fault that they’re a consideration.

Dream of a Plumb Line

Asleep in bed, I travelled to a field.
I have never seen a place so flat.
The horizon was the only scenery.
Here and there were tufts of longer grass.
I’d pick a piece and holding it upright,
Blow a buzzing note that rolled away.

As I walked, I came across a plumb line,
A small lead weight that hung straight down
On the end of a string. The string went
Up into the sky. It hung straight down.
The weight was small enough to fit
Into my hand. In a land of horizontals
It was solitary. I left it there
And continued walking.

Two Bad Jokes:

So I used to have this dream that one day I'd play a cover of a fairly early Bob Dylan song and it would be REALLY GOOD but for some reason whenever I played it it came out a bit flat and a bit uninteresting, and I spent hours and hours practising it and trying to make it come alive and take off and actually, for a while it was a bit of an obsession and actually getting a bit damaging to my day to day routine, whole days spent doing nothing but playing it over and over again to try and make it work, but in the end I got a bit sick of it, and I just thought nah, fuck this, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more.

What do London commuters wear in chilly weather to get on and off public transport quickly and efficiently?

Oyster Cardigans.

Also, I did a spot of Guest DJing (along with DJ Starwars, if you know her) on Death To The Author Can Fuck Off the other night, you can listen here, if you want http://rs787.rapidshare.com/files/336283130/DTTA2010show1.mp3