that i fear the fiend might come knocking...
taking masks hanging on wall parallel the stairs...
grating the wall while he stumbles down...
that i fear the fiend might come knowing
oh so little... that he just bought himself an
£18 worth of Eclipse Mount Gay Barbados
***... and he just had a sip of it...
                        fiend... border collie...
       can i catch him before the taste wears off?
after all... even i agree with him... this ***...
which doesn't look like *** at all...
stands right up there... with the best of mr. whiskers
and ms. ambers...

1

i promised myself a whole month of living
inside my head...
    inside my head: mein kopf -
i promised myself to not venture out of
it with either fingers tongue or bruise:
augen allein - mit:
                                    with only eyes...

i promised myself to not
write phantom with phantom:
most assuredly to not write in a drunken
stupor - or somehow:
drunkenly excited: Horace citing or
in admiration for some
  ego-worm from dust in a library burnt
down spawned...

i promised myself a month of living:
if i were to use my hands it would
be to fix up my bicycle...
tighten the brakes...
lubricated the chain and gear cogs...
the wheels...
bake two dozen rhubarb & white chocolate
muffins...
play a little bit of the guitar...
work with a screwdriver...

   make a pork & beef Hungarian
sauce with plenty of peppers and chillies
with smoked paprika and cinnamon
for a potato rosti... or add some flour
to the potatoes and make a potato-pancake
for the sauce...
certainly drink more coffee...

perhaps sip a 25ml sip of some expensive
liquor to remind myself:
sober: come earthquake or tsunami...
i promised myself to live inside my head
for a month: not writing or what
i sometimes call writing:
that crux of an exasperation from
doodling... sketching: marooning
myself on an hour where i could be doing
something plentiful in
the garden...

                    itching for soil beneath
my fingernails...
after all: sober might be just mediocre:
where is that bombastic drunkard who
would write: anything goes?
   irgend etwas geht...
                     gehen weiter... go further...
neu-nüchtern alt-nüchtern:
but it's never the same...

only this time: i haven't given my word:
or honour... i gave my hand
in a handshake: i break that i might
as well chop it off...
and that's no good for a typewriter
of any sort...
    i'd need a hand more dexterous
and probably much bigger...
   and it would be just as well to have
a 2nd thumb: thumb-either side...
i promised myself a month inside my head:
i even called it:

     nüchternlücke... a hiatus of soberness...
periods of 4 days (3 hours prior
to sleep) of treating my liver as a punching
bag - 4 days counting
passing from lump to slime
to all sweat and furriness:

   masks in the hallway: down the stairs
fell... perhaps more perhaps less
than dominos...
              refrigerating a clock...
                                        freezing a cigarette...
not even if the readership plucked
200 x 2... 400 eyes...
i would continue thus...

   reminiscence of those strained sober
in-soma nights:                    work the horse on
to a tight schedule...
                          it was only a superstitious
day three days ago...
a Friday a 13th...
an August a year two-thousand-and-twenty-one...
i cycled a new routine...

2 hours during the day from Harald's &
Harold's Hill / Forrest... and further afield
like atte-Bower teasing a sight of
ol' father Thames and the A13...
through the village of Rainham to and through
the village of Wennington...

bypassing Upminster via the pristine flatness
of the county of Thurrock... Belgium?
not as familiar... but close enough by
comparison... and then full-circle back to Harold's
& Harald's via Great Warley -
but that's of course during the day...

by night an hour's worth of
looking at Friday's, Saturday's and Sunday's
clientele at either Hornchurch or
Romford...
not that much of a terrible sight...
i must have looked worse when drinking...

    such was my youth: only these days
it would appear that the colts are pimping
the mares... Hornchurch girls...
classier than Romford girls...
       O moralist... let the butter churn...
body against body:
you're passing through, anyway...

- but at night when the air is thin
speed becomes multiplied by at least 1.5mph...
make that: 2kmph...
just thinking of a date...
i'd say to her... why don't we cycle these
outer-suburban labyrinths...
while listening to the soft moon:
all downhill from the opening song
breathe the fire -
written by luis vasquez... Spaniard or
-es-que...
                           all the cure you can
hope for... translated into
dig: a 21st century hole...
                      not of Joy or Depeche...
bicycling at night:
from streetlight to streetlight dragging
shadows...
air come night is so much
thinner: less traffic to mind...
no need for comfort, safety...
no high viz. no headlights...
           headphones in...
intuition... unconscious arithmetic of
spatial coordination...
i always felt safest at night...
and using the momentum build-up
of large trucks at a roundabout...

i must forget to have written anything
good drunk: for that matter... this is all
sober... sober judged sober feels
sober the anchor of an "anhedonia":
but only to excess!

       by now the fiend would reply:
past the 35cl mark... smooth sailing on
the rough seas...
otherwise... prior to the 35cl mark...
boat crashing and toiling on a lake's serenity...

i promised myself a month inside
my own head... to rekindle a reading list...
the old Libra: never write more than
you read: read more than you write...

away from the city on the Thurrock platitudes
like lyrics from a Leonard Cohen
song: you don't really care much for music,
do y'ah?
i've wasted my youth on music...
probably as much on movies...
now for the privy of a well-worked-out
bicycle... no need to sing a praise
for sparrows: they're off on their own
chore of song...
sober crow... eternal sober crow...
gallows keeper... the bird than splinters
a pine tree into a thousandth of a thousandth
needle... then threads...
ghostly cotton figurines...

2

a week passes: it's already too late to leave
a carbon footprint, only circa dating...
one approximate late, or later than usual...
Kabul has been resurrected
and is standing face to face with its original
indentation against the mountains...

pity the other commentary:
in Plymouth i see no need for psychiatry...
not that... a Jihadi has any "mental health issues"...
can't see the forest for the trees...
well... it's like that joke i half finished...

an incel, a jihadi & a... pornographic actor...
walk into a bar...
like i said: half-finished...
give terror its due where it's... not hiding behind
some waterfall of milk...
although... as all social commentaries go...
give a jihadi a bride...
                  and you'll probably get half the jihad...
but what to do when the reward is
rejected? by those who... would sooner
**** their own mothers than ****
with an allahu akbar?!


3

what ought to have been a month was only
but a week...
this inflammable whimper of time begun...
by some yesterday... toward some:
but even vaguer tomorrow...
  whimsical whimsical one two and three:
a measure to count with...
a measure to overcome a horizon with...
from plateau to hill to a bundle of curated
forest...
a sea of Thurrock's wheat...
  kinder than the actual sea...
                           i suppose no more than
this... spare me more time away from
this canvas of burning eyes
and skeleton-key letters...
                       i'll return to a time...
when words were sacrosanct... and written
by a priestly class...
when they didn't pierce all things...
so that things were kept intact...
but not here... among the rubble...
   the atoms... the stretched audacities of
a prison cast(e).