pushed clouds out,
pursed lips like
whistling in a shell,

reverbs into tumbler
held down
and spirals back.

Then, as it rises,
Advocaat crackles
thunder-yellow,

tickling the insides
into familiar
house-warm feeling.

well: who would have thought that the Chemical
Brothers
       have upped their game when it comes
to creating new music...
  
              some artists just become lost if you're
exploring alternative music...
the moment the algorithm puked up a song suggestion
from NO GEOGRAPHY: got to keep on...
i knew i was in for a treat: from the whole album...

what initially drew me to go to that Walter Sickert
exhibition rather than going to an opera?
the madness of crowds for once...
i've heard too much singing: terrible singing
football stadium singing
   to want to torture myself with opera...
although i love opera...
   but... enough of one of the senses being
exploited...
      
   i've recently found this acronym for a personality
type: the Advocate...
when i was young: an Advocaat was a boy's
every Christmas dream...
        i like staring at faces... and at a football stadium
fulfilling the role of minding crowd safety:
no one can tell you to not look at them...
but these faces move...

       most of the time i'm more interested in
the crowd than in the football match...
          but like me in the London tube...
i just stare at people staring up at pointless
adverts...
i sometimes do to... my favourite tube map
is that of the District Line...
    i've love to get a poster of it...
     i live about a 20 minute's cycle ride from Hornchurch
station...
then again: i always overused the Central Line:
what... with living in Gants Hill all those years...

but i rarely go by a Critic's Choice in either the Saturday
or the Sunday edition of the newspaper:
but i have to say... waldemar januszczak
                                    янущaк (there? less consonants
for you; better?!)
                                   sometimes gets it right...
he most certainly got it right with Walter Sickert...
i was looking for something alternative to Munch...

i was looking for someone who "predated":
was the precursor of Francis Bacon...
    because i could never get into Lucian Freud
because my alternative to Lucian was always going
to be Edward Hopper...

hmm... now that i think of it: poetry of opinions...
why poetry of opinions?
         philosophy attempted dialectics...
                once upon a time...
  but these days opinions are easily spewed without
being undermined: discussed...
the firm foundations of the two camps policy of
"argument": neither side allowing either
to mould each other...
the discussion is entered and left without
anything being achieved on a Socratic level of:
persuasion... or a change of mind...

hence? my poetry of opinions...
            we've got to try... that's a banger of a track...

no... i couldn't expose my ears to my sound...
i needed something visual...
the clarity of silence of an art exhibition:
an art exhibition that you have to pay extra for...
i tried to watch the people in the exhibition,
two girls tried to get my attention...
but the minute i walked in and saw the earliest
out by Sickert i knew i was in for a treat...
the self-portraits threw me into a kaleidoscope
of: this... this reminds me of someone...

Francis Bacon! i love how art just passed down
a certain signature... a technique from
one individual to another...
because it's not like an art school technique:
the school of Florence etc.:
with those pristine paintings...
   the schools disintegrated... individuals emerged...
those pristine paintings were bound to
disappear with the emergence of photography...

they had to... no wonder painters had to make
things a litter bit more "mysterious": blurry:
almost childish like Picasso or van Gogh...
well: elevated childish...
               but none the less:
   nothing like the "photograph" quality of
Renaissance paintings...
the photograph killed off that sort of painting...
why, would anyone bother
to paint like that if you can take a photograph:
it obviously doesn't carry the same
aesthetic "quality": concern...

                     but... let's face it...
distortion worked much better than any sense
of pristine Apollonian architecture of the jawline
or hands: oculus per oculus: eye for an eye:
but more: like for like...
painting is not architecture...
   it's not engineering...

     sure... there might be some basic schematic
involve: Sickert exposed the use of a square
grid from time to time in his paintings...
Francis Bacon most certainly used geometry of some
sort to find his bearings where
otherwise would gush blood / paint / *****...
but it's not cubism... and it's not certainly
anything akin to *******...

but i needed those 40 minutes' worth of walking
around: with a grin on my face...
if i went to an opera i'd probably cry...
i felt like grinning... i wanted my eyes to eat
something... with each blink i was trying to...

obviously i bought a memorandum of the exhibition:
it cost more than the actual ticket
but... as i've found... certain works of art
look: feel... completely different in real life
than if they are replicated and copied into a book...
you can't simply scan an oil painting and get
the same results of impression the painting has...
there's always that 3D aspect of looking
at the same painting from different angles...

i have to say... whoever curated the exhibition
managed to get the lighting wrong...
light from above doesn't always work...
i had to appreciate some of the works looking at then
sideways... i was looking at the lighting...
then at the painting... then at the lighting...
then at the painting... i was almost slow dancing
around them: my feet were performing some
weird version of Tai Chi...

      one of the Camden Town ****** works initially
prompted me: as seen in the critic's choice
article...
i knew something was up... there was that initial
resemblance of giving birth to Francis Bacon...

oh hell no... i wasn't there to pick up a girl...
i was literally: authentically there for the art...
but i'm pretty sure most of the people in that exhibition
weren't there for the art...
body language: if they can't entertain solipsism
for at least 20 minutes... the art works become less
interesting... they're looking around like they're
lost the plot or regret paying the money...
you know the art is not really important...

add a grin to that... freak...

          ah... welcome thoughts...
                 those ought i's and i wills...
                      finally... some peace...
that last shift at the FA cup final among the Liverpool
fans... great people! all northerners are
great people... the southerners have a massive
stick of authority shove up their *****...
    esp. in London: this... celebrated no geography
crowd...

      but i seriously thought i was standing next
to the Big Ben gongs come noon...
my ears felt fuzzy...
      they were the consistency of vibrating static...
a bit like drilling into a concrete slab
with a pneumatic drill...
      peace... just some peace... some paintings...
once upon a time i had ambitions to become
a painter...
       writing's cheaper...
    and... well: it freer to the imagination:
it's more... mandible... jaw-like...
          it makes conversations with random strangers
more entertaining...
you need to have a specific focus to paint
what you already see...
   when i write: i haven't said anything:
most of the time i write without even having
a premeditative thought: well...
there might be something initial...
but the narrative flow-through is hardly
premeditated...
i like to be surprised...
                hell: i'm always surprised!

- but like i was saying to "someone" today...
"someone": maybe that's why mothers and sons
and sons and father and whoever is blood-related
don't get along so well, is because,
nothing ******-related friction...
nothing weird... because because just become
comfortable, boring enough to have to start
breeding a new generation...

i've found that i've become more and more
inquisitive... and if any signs of dementia kick
in... i'll be? in Amsterdam... ingesting
some magic mushrooms...
right now alcohol is hardly debilitating...
or subduing / pacifying me...
it's actually invigorating me...
it's a tonic!

          so i was saying: and i too would love to
watch more foreign language movies:
with subtitles... but for some strange: ******* reason...
this "genius" entertained the idea
that subtitles ought to be placed at the BOTTOM
of the screen!
  not even the Mandarin write from bottom
up!
   they write from up to bottom!

  the vertical line is drawn from the top down...
rather than from the bottom: up...
this "genius" must have been left-handed...
you get such a better focus on what's happening:
if you just moved the subtitles to the top of
the screen: because it's easier to look down
than to look up after reading a text of translation!

it's this little incy-wincy detail that keeps bothering
me...
      there ought to be a revision:
subtitles ought to be replaced with supra-titles...
at the moment we're watching foreign movies
in the format of chemistry, e.g.
        H₂O...

but we should be watching said movies
in the format of mathematics... e.g.
    Pythagorean... c² = a² + b²

let's call ₂ & ² script: irrespectively...
                   and the "algebra" the images before our
eyes... what would be easier?
looking up then looking down...
or... looking down and then... looking up?!

even the Mandarin barons didn't write from
bottom to top...

slow internet connection stresses me out...
well... £20 for 40 minutes' worth of an art exhibition
or... £120... for 1h (wow! the indefinite
article simply disappears... when you write
it like  that)
                     with a *******...

                             that really does depend...
what horse the modern woman is riding on...
i'm going to ride my horse to death
to eat itself...

that's why nudes of artists sort of bore me...
once you'vre ****** in front of a mirror...
nudes... artistic impressions...
bore me...
            i want to paint the mirror that
like the walls: seen more... heard more
than the average culmination of antics
might appease...

                        i want to paint clouds...
i want to paint cauliflowers as clouds...
and clouds as cauliflowers...
  i want to paint mirrors...
i want to paint glass...
                  and i also want to paint
the contortions of ***...
                  i want to paint trains:
i don't want to wait for them...
            i want to paint rain: i don't won't to
adorn an anorak...
                  i want to paint the sewage works...
but i don't want to paint
taking a ****...

   sober up come 10:30am?
              well... i won't be goose-marching...
that's for sure...
      i'll put on my Thespian mask
and just pretend that i haven't drunk 70cl of
whiskey the night before...
i'll sit in the sunshine and bake... sour...
cabbage-head-reach for sanity...
pretend to: juggle earth, the sun and moon.

It’s Christmas Eve and after a bottle and a half, I’m resisting the strongest urge to call you
To reminisce
For the last 6 years, Christmas has been our thing
But I know you’re proud, stoic and probably have vowed not to text me and are really good at sticking to that
Well, I’m ******* at it
I want to talk to you
I want to hear about how your mum’s terrible tinsel decor has annoyed your dad
How you’ve already run out of Advocaat for Snowballs
How you’re tipsy and maybe in that moment, you slur the truth down the phone
About how you also miss me in your house at Christmas
How you miss turning around to me hungover and being the first to wish me
How we eat cans of Pringles whilst your dad flexes his obscure knowledge Trivial Pursuit muscles
How your mum offers me champagne at 9am
How we text half way through the night to meet in the kitchen for a cheeky snog
How we sing our own version of Feliz Navidad
How you periodically check in to ask me if I’m okay and if I need anything

I need something

Christmas was our thing.
And I miss you

I'd like a glass just big enough
so I could sink in and
swig enough
to....
..and swig is interesting
I heard that word in
Lancashire
when I was earwigging
at someone's door
well
that's what doors are for
ain't it?

One Christmas
I got Advocaat which is just far
enough away from Summer
to make me do a runner.

So
it's about what you swig
and when
not how big the
glass is.

.i never understood why philosophy had to begin with awe, perhaps in the ancient world, awe was the primary exploratory tool; these days? more like disbelief, which: in and of itself isn't an outright negation per se, but... more like: pinch, because this "can't" be real.

a happy bunny all day long,
when the re-hydration process is much
shorter...
        whoever envisioned the perfect
compliment to a baguette
with a shy addition of butter,
ate, while drinking a glass of milk...
oh wait... that was me...

- and talking about culinary inventions;
you know when you're
drunk and fiendishly peckish,
and feeling exploratory at the same time?

scrambled eggs...
with extra onions, garlic,
paprika, with an accent of
sweet chilly sauce...

    of the three eggs you're using,
you only scramble one of the yokes
with the whites...
   you keep two yokes intact...
like you would in a fried egg...
then you put the two unbroken
yokes onto the scrambled heap...
and then break them open...
point being?
    i can't remember the last time
i drank some advocaat.