Four Lovers - No Order

i say to you love me


and you love me for my outer skin


the skin I can be seen in,with you, for you


the skin and myth you construct around


and bind according to your fetish need


some time ago


a life before


knot once


maybe often


you learned






i say to you trust me


and you say you do as you declare


in second breath your “no skin-contact” rule


your bad air hatched from dust


your passed love death


of men who stick to rattle metal


from inside the cage of your locked Tragedy.


you say I must not attract attention “Energetically”


as she did, presumably


you were stained blind






i say to you protect me,


your projected knightly guise surprise


to save a maiden fair


was sadly misinterpretation


mine, as your ill fitting suits appeared


no hearts but joker, chameleonic actor


play on, bow down, prey fork-tongued jester


you never truly loved anything other


than your first love flesh, not me


but more a word that spells pornography






i say to you "is this the real?"


"this is" your frozen look affirmed


through designerized, polarized

serious brown

matching frown lenses


"floating islands" we now were not

more "dry land" the extras, gone to pot


and yet they came, your forever train


'plethora of chiquitas' should I dare forget

your name, e-go traveling don’t you know

                       There is life after... I will see you soon...

Time

Forward

Time. Time to open a new clean white sheet on ‘things’ (note, the carefully chosen word sheet whereby both bed or paper adhere happily to this statement). The reader may question why, with slightly raised brow possibly to an acute arch, this ominous opening. A Tabula rasa lifestyle change peut-être, a New Year’s late resolution based on ‘life the ever-changing slate’ theorization maybe… or perhaps, like omitting hair dye and going natural, does this 2011 entry signify reverting back to blank to begin again? Blink and think. Well not exactly. The purpose of the opening line is a little more complex.

The delightful setting is admittedly a perfect insinuation of blank-neutral new, a depiction of pearly white clinic bright. Warning, I hereby choose to spatter this appallingly fresh canvas, yes in February, (all of one month on), with a mise-en-scène of Hammer Horroresque crude flesh tethers, torn, stripped and discarded away from ‘a new hope’. No, do not think of Star Wars first epic movie of the same name but moreso of Goya’s Saturn if that helps. Think unsightly steamy red gore on white, preferably, consider the more unlikely MONSTER. If one would care to add the heart to the already disturbing absence of the victim’s head in Goya’s painting, we together envisage a similar horror as the starting point here.  A need to paint with words the ugly picture of things is where I really begin, entirely self- indulgent of course but also entirely necessary.

So how does one begin to explain how it feels to reside in a curious space as a rejected abject subject?  How can one describe the matter of a bloodied heart out-of-body experience? A most precious thing stolen and spent to an Other (though the evidence implies multiple Others). The outcome is undoubtedly the same - one has been hosting a thief in the lovers bed. Apparently this ‘strange curve’, if you survive such a bitter and cruel tragedy, makes you stronger. Oh horrendous cliché she screams! This matter of heart in tatters I shall attempt to stitch, red-fingered and from a clear state of undone. One laconic sentence tells all... I thought I knew him... Forgive this entry if you prefer not to reside within this potentially foul-tongued episode. If, like countless others, you too may have experienced, inhaled and breathed a lovers scent of rat and taste of betrayal to then coast through life as a free-floating heart-sore scrap of enhanced red, empathy is yours from one that knows.

Rewind

Picture this, if you will, snatched memories of crazy pink wigs, New Years, dress, sleek black, ridiculously long flash of lashes, leg-sparkle, Gagaesque fancy-craze, more than six brilliantly dressed Avatars, a very hot yet convincing gorilla, late champagne, stiletto toppled arms linked, love, absolute silence after, bliss. Future, safe, solid. The following ‘new’ day, snow clean aspirational hopes for 2011 swirling in milky white dreams made possible by an obscenely deep pleasure-pool bath.

Day 1 EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE.

Next

1. Picture messaging not intended for you with attached recent recipients.
2. The Gazette Women Seeking Men box numbers x too many.
3. The Adult ‘scraping the barrel’ station £3 a shot or £5 a night.
4. The Ex who tells you “he has been in contact with her for the duration of your relationship”.

How clever was that Blackberry…

Day 17 OVER

Lesson

Dare you request a little time, even if it is a two day “cooling off period” - BEWARE – Even after 3 years, the roving-eyed fly whose proboscis MAY prefer to plunge straight into a stolen room of fancies. Not Kipling per-se but more a second day cake type, boxed, numbered and sometimes available for FUN at premium rate.

Shocked? Probably not.

Suggested reading ‘The World’s Wife’ by Carol Ann Duffy – Life saver

Track ‘Monster’ by Lady Gaga - Perfect

Second track ‘I found a boy” Adele – New hope

Moving on….; )

The wardrobe

Hanging clothes like lives


hanging before you the before that was


the after the ever


the eternal


wire-wing shouldered zippered tight cellophane wrapped


corpse of past


or


to the left neatly stacked layered in colour shade hue the passing stages


eras ages of you waiting to be worn relaunched reborn


or


waiting to be shed in suspended crushed creased


flat


state


waiting


waiting


for another


eye glittering night shining star another life another hope


for more


than merely mould that black-spot age-old afflicted curse


or


nibble of moth that dreaded fabric equivalent death like buzzard’s loop


too close


too close


it swoops


in dust the dust.

Writing back

Today it would seem entirely appropriate to write back in response to the last entry. Now settled and fuelled with a counter point of view, one has decided to situate the city experience in juxtaposition to the Beautiful West Country (does one sense favouritism here?). The reader may question this attempt to explicate some essential sense of difference in how one feels from one location to another. Simply I respond by saying it matters. To illustrate how ‘un-wasted’ a smile is, in This Place as opposed to That, feel the difference as you read. So, rather like an essay title of compare and contrast if you like, spot the odd in gaming fashion or any other fitting and most appalling cliché ridden-statement applicable, if you prefer. I prefer, you understand, not to write them at all if possible, clichés make me nauseous. And so to the point; through the multitudinal guises of daily life, here, not all seas are calm but, say one day, if I dressed as Charlie Chaplin per-se, with hat and cane in white gloved hand, the societal response would arguably be the same. Yes a raised brow perhaps and/ or chuckle. Smile. I would not be equated with a more contempory version of Conrad’s “the horror, the horror” neither would I be cast overboard without a net, marginalised by default or sectioned. Further, a truer illustration of events would depict the black tack-tached female invited in for a drink at the local. Bet you.

Phase 1- A positive guise in daily life.

Let us start with the run. Often I am engaged with this mind-cleanse activity where to pummel your troubles, exorcise your angst and to breathe the sea liberates more than a calorific lunch paunch. Transport this event, in Lycra, to a coastal location. Burn, bounce and rebound one’s step to running wave dodge mode; a very fun fancy if you dare, mastered too well over an age, said with an almost alas note… I digress… This glorious place, space of sea air, expanse of beauty (and any other assonance I can incorporate in that sentence) is, of course, an opportune location to engage with some ‘serious’ eye-full engaging smiling activity. Oxymoron? Serious smile? Good. I like that. So in place and pace to say a Cult classic like ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ on approaching one’s fellow human kind, think eye, think response, observe the corners of the mouth curving upward, reflect and you have it. The ‘un-wasted’ gesture is in place; it has been experienced, shared and passed on. Without words, put forward like a flutter of serendipity, a gesture of good will and kindness of human ‘kind’. Feel better? I always do. Apply this umbrella term of ‘smile’ to the masses one sees in a typical day here. In fact turn the literal umbrella upside down to a metaphorical curvy catch of something good as opposed to wet dispel; drink smiles in as opposed to running from them. Incidentally the ‘masses’ include, amongst many others, fellow runners, cyclists, skateboarders, walkers, some with dogs (I add most clever dogs to avoid frappage of leads in bicycle wheels of the leash controller) and the wisened elders with beautifully sun-burnished faces. Nearly all of the wonderful sea-front stream of beings smile. Like a near reflex reaction on sight of another, there is no ‘city’ eye drop, challenge or hollow stare to digest and make sense of. The city experience again, that appears to require these actions plied with that important ‘getting somewhere pace’ in soldier swing protocol is not at play here. It IS safe to assume that eye engagement is a wholly okayed norm. It is permissible to wear smiles unaccompanied by D&G, Versace or Prada. One need not think, “Is this acceptable to those”. It just is. Thank Gods to all that refute the steely action in preference to a more amicable reaction. Top tip, once applied it becomes easier.
Phase 2 – The ‘down-trodden’ guise that would prefer to reside in disguise.

Sometimes, dear friends, the only linkage one has to another is a smile. By that I suggest one needs not to know you to be able to smile at you. Write that down for future reference. I did and confess to having some of the most inspirational lifts from the depths of Hades in direct response to an honest given grin. To exemplify the notion cue a sad cello from somewhere…actually no, Mozart Piano Concerto 21 in C, K 467: II Andante-Elvira Madigan. Yesterday I reluctantly attended a funeral of a very dear friend. Love for the lost, respect and support for the family concerned forced ‘the show’ on this sombre, abhorrent occasion. Nausea, nerves and fear of unpredictable sobs unleashing themselves at any given moment were the unwanton extras. Never enough tissues and a throat unable to sing for the hymns for sobs welling and heaving added to the sour combination. This I anticipated, had confirmed and reliably fell apart as the sermon chronologically structured a life. A life bitterly missed for selfish reasons. One family less now I draw focus on the journey to and from the church for very good reason. In no apparent state to be delivering a grin, either way, I was to discover my theory to be correct. No I did not want eye contact. Yes I preferred to reside behind the infamous black glasses. Hesitantly looking from pavement crack to the general direction of destination (to avoid a further unneeded fall) I received a number of smiles as I looked up. Most of these individuals were totally unknown to me, an influx of visitors perhaps or simply just happy to be here. It helped, a difference was established in my dark, flailing frame of mind and I, though short bursts of relief, felt better. Consider this a thank-you virtual style to those that did not judge from sloping shoulders adorning black.

A smile is beautiful
a silent statement
a knowing that glows
confirming an ok
a suggestion at times
that things are okay,
it will be okay
in time
sometimes
a smile
is like an indication
that states
the pure elation of being alive.

Not a lecture, a difference, just saying.

Today I remember a dear friend from Ulster

A plethora of zombies…what a waste a smile is in this place…

Yes, what a waste a smile is in this place. The city. My observations, alas, of a recent ‘city weekender’ seem as poignant, (to the level of disturb), as those scribed by earlier writers of the Modern. A city evolving, say 1840’s Edgar Allan Poe’s Man of the Crowd type, hence London evokes with chilling familiarity, much of what I see in the phantasmagoric mess of it. London however is not my reference. For this entry I need not spell the namesake of location, my point is purely to focus on the metropolitan hit. So arguably as a ‘same vibe’ case scenario for most city visitations, those dreaded infestations, I feel the motto should be:

Look at the lights,

Smell the smells,

Welcome to Life’s Lucifer,

SPEND or GO TO HELL!

Hell of course is to be equated with rejection at the pearly gates, should you not comply with the above code. In shoppers’ terms, one may relate this to the immense double doors at the beginning of a ten-mile mall corridor, city centre style. Rather like being at a cross roads, the decision to step across the grid and into the heat realises a day lost to losing one’s cash. If you do not comply with this double negative, expect to be suitably spat out by a sneering sideways glance or three. Here money talks, people don’t. Labels count, smiles won’t. Situate the Cornish lass with a necessary and decisive desire not to spend. Without labels hanging off every piece of cloth or accessory like an overly adorned Christmas tree, this one is deemed to the abyss of ‘out of time-ness’. I say prepare to be snuffed or whacked when attempting to reside within the Label Culture as ‘Other’. Further, do not smile unless you bare a tooth gem or are admiring a latest tattoo.

Imagine if you will a Dizzy Rascal kind of conversation…

“Say what no Blackberry? You got no Burberry? No Gucci, Nina Ricci, Tropical tan, Lacoste or Hurley?” (Or in fact anything what rhymes with the ‘er’ or the ‘ee’?).

Yes, history is the demise of today should one fail to be seen through the obscured goggles of a ‘your worth it’ campaign. In fact, lets go for the worth-less theme. Do you fail to have the London look? (Whatever that is), has your hair lost its Mojo? (Or is that a sweet), do you have cologne that evokes the Man in you OR perfume that entices the man Into you? Are those nails bejewelled to the effect of a sabre-toothed tiger? No? Prepare to be dropped like a fallen angel. From V.I.P to R.I.P due to your own selfish nothingness identity and sensibility! So go on, buy back into the greedy Pied Pipers of Production and long may the duped swarm, horde or pack of rats, (that surely cannot all own non-rubber credit cards), scuttle on eekishly to feed on scraps reeking of mythical ‘cool’ status as they go.

A plethora of zombies, as Poe’s ‘tumultuous sea of heads,’[1]sweep the labyrinthine corridors of the centre, splitting off to designer shoes, suits, jackets and oddly the occasional book store. At the corner, a sight not to be missed for the amusement factor, reside the ‘torso tops’ I coin. Rather like the ‘muffin top’ branding of females who spill the waist, these young boys bear chests, waxed and frightfully perfect in physique. This, of course, was a necessary ploy to entice the prospective buyer into the surf brand store. Oh how cold they must have been to endure that hourly rate.

I needed coffee.

Coffee is however as ridiculously unreal as the all-surrounding aesthetic glory façade in this place. Swiftly now passing the fast food chains and unaffordable cup cake stands, one tries desperately, impossibly not to inhale the choking fat aroma of questionably freshly cooked doughnuts as you go. Not their namesake, mine. Therefore, a quick gag and coffee, yes, welcome to the world of frappé. Replace the f for a c and what have you got? On questioning a colleague of mine about this hybrid in plastic beaker with straw and ice, (with a good knowledge of the great C I hasten to add), he shrieks, “ it’s the vulgarisation of coffee!” Thank-you S, I tried it, I agree but it probably looks great in sucking plastic contextually, naturally.

So seriously how does one, this one I mean, digest the experience? The city mall, stench and sweep of feet, coffee bars and stores awash with blank expressions of ‘people in solitude on account of the very denseness of the company around?’[2]My conclusion remains the same Poe. The crowd, the experience, consumerism condensed to force the spend to bust is truly, for me, as much of a hideous reality as it was for The Man of the Crowd. The story drawn from an artist who could not see the highly apparent gaiety and delights of the masses transcends time well; the need to spell out what city life is not. A necessary comfort thank-you Poe. To be understood offers a sordid kind of ecstasy in times such as these and should one say the unnamed narrator in the unnamed coffee bar was the ‘Woman of the Crowd’…hmm interesting…

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[1] Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ in Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, Ed. by David Galloway, (London: Penguin Classics, 1967 rep. 1986), pp. 179-188, (p 180)

[2] Ibid, p 180

Throw away culture, play, play and play on...

I refer to the very disposable everything of today…I was going to say the ‘very disposable nature’ but to avoid confusion or painful oxymoronic contradictions etc I have removed nature here. This subject is not of nature or fitting with connotations of the natural. It is simply my observation, via the usual car-crash subtlety, of an open-armed embrace to all that is immediate, consumable, artificial and junk. Yes a rather general statement, so I shall unravel the gist in the usual J. S way.

Imagine say, if you can, unwrapping that warm pat of brown, the yummy posited brown lump; melancholia in bun with a cracked half-smile, that tomorrow will look like a decompressed scrotum but is oddly still edible because it cannot rot. The recent headline in The Daily Mail ‘Year Old McDonald’s – The Happy Meal that refuses to age naturally’ states all required with a list of additives that suggest all man’s made’s. ‘If flies ignore a Happy Meal and microbes don’t compose it, then your child can’t properly metabolize it either’ we are told. The bun, needless to say, has no currents; the bread cannot roll and therefore is, by default neither. It is, like so much in the contempory, an artifice, wrapped, concealed and masquerading as a ‘present’. The singular truth here being that the sought after, worth driving for, brown pat IS present everywhere. My point; it is what it is not. As rewarding as a text message in the form of a delightful envelope i.e. there is something to tell in that little package, the content, however, rather like the burger ‘may’ leave a bitter after-taste and looks nothing like the advert. Welcome to the world, unreal and ridden with falsity almighty. Surreal, when I was a child a bun WAS a bun, it was not an Americanized term that housed a burger, it was not a butt reference to be proud of, neither was it wrapped with a sticker on saying ‘plain’. Plain E I suggest would be more appropriate, oh and lose the pickle it looks far too much like it ought to.

Who lives in a world like this? Said with a Loyd Grossmanesque accent, well we do, ever more so without question. Delightfully filling ourselves beyond the required levels of satiety to spill with spots, pocks and preservative-bound flesh dressed in unflattering belly tops. Can we continue to afford these treats? I mean really when a reward is sadly an oxymoronic Happy meal or super-sized portion of fries? (Do chips still exist?) Oh, ho ho ho Santa Ronnie stop! Our children will explode!

Alas, it does not stop. Ah no. By consuming a little more in the form of TV media ‘love your tum’ speak you can reverse those adverse effects. Take away the ‘take away’ traces with digestion aids and supplements, one for every letter in the alphabet; the fix kit is available NOW in the ever-present, which ironically rhymes with effervescent. Vitamins reference? Yes and yet another instant promise, like Viagra but a fizz-form vit-pop (like alco-pop but the pop manifests, should one say rather differently than being hard or drunk). The ad for this vit company beginning with B suggests that I too may be able to feel on top of the world as I do a dance routine on a treadmill suitably outside whilst on a half-hour lunch-break. Oh please. Surely neither yogurt nor a glass of fizz can eradicate what the trusty microbes’ sneer at.

Taking a leap from mastication to education. In the same vain can one reverse the advanced case of techno-laze? Today we exist, like floating balloons in an age where, the vast majority; emulators of ‘air heads’, need only attach themselves to the appropriate Application for the answer. One need not if there is an Application is the emblazoned message here. Great. No longer fostering the need to think, spell, calculate, even communicate via the traditional audible mode. E-mail, twitter, text, telepathy, do anything other than speak out loud appears to be the new order of things. Fingers for mouths we speak in digit dialogue with a disturbing built-in feature; a curious most constant body tick that flicks with each new message arrival. Ping! The body stiffens, removes itself from current activity to attend to that all-important personal message especially for you:

“L O”

Responding to the tone and topic do you compute? It could be argued that we have evolved into flesh-covered robots. With a touch of Tomorrow’s World reference, one now merely processes information from one piece of hand held techno-age candy gadgetry to another. Likewise, via nozzle, my hoover has a variety of attachments. My hoover, however, does not have an independent, thus able to think for itself, brain, suckers!

So, indeed why spell when Auto-Correct will accommodate all discrepancy as one writes? Because with grammar merrily adjusted, the odd suggestion of passive voice concern and so on, the computer may as well be able to say out loud as well as highlight: “write this my way”. What a disastrous readily available application that spells nothing short of Lazy re-David Byrne, the ideal accompanying track:

“ I’m lazy when I’m speaking, I’m lazy when I walk,

I’m lazy when I’m dancin’, I’m lazy when I talk”

Throw away culture cue. Who needs to do the work, research, even write when fingers can locate some ideal text or other that fits the brief? When all this information is as readily available as the burger, shovel it in, switch over to autopilot, edit, copy, paste.

Why not add this wonderfully convenient auto-tool to the even less delightful abbreviated text-speak so frequented by the avid mobile phone addict. In a world where whole words have become sliced into suggested sounds, where bites of predicted nonsense replace what you actually meant to say. Any is NOT boy, find is NOT fine nor is it amusing to be unable to swear immediately because the dam word you are spitting to say is NOT recognised-Shiv! The beauty of our precious language is passing over the hill in the same way that buns have become lost forever.

Well I realise that you cannot have your cake and eat it, progress is good but loss of language and independent thought is bad. Throw away if you can afford to but some things need to be maintained, even fought for. Yes if you truly cannot locate that word in the dictionary Google it if you must lazy! If it suits for speed do send a message but do not lose the invaluable art of conversation, unabbreviated. Interface need not be in your face by default. There is good reason why games designer Jason Rohrer states: “ […] Interaction is abstract (pushing buttons, typing). If you spend every moment virtually, you’ll grow to miss those other channels. Stepping outside into the sunshine with the smell of rain on the pavement-yes, rain has a very particular smell when it hits the pavement-will be a revelation”. [1] Oh how did progress make rain a revelation? Take it away David…

“I-I-I-I’m wicked and I’m lazy,

Ooooh, don’t you wanna save me?”

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[1] Jason Rohrer, ‘I think that depression is the most serious side effect of too much time in virtuality’, Adbusters, Journal of the Mental Environment, The Postmodernism Issue, March/April 2010. Volume 18 number 2