I
I am in Cardiff
     Where foams pummel the jetty
I am in Cardiff
     Where crab skeletons blanch the beach
I am in Cardiff
     Where the Pilot Star became a conch
I was in the ruse of age
     Where the young kiss
I was in Joshua Tree
     Where the mind is thoughtless
I am a grove's wilting
I will be an unbearable urge
And I am shivering in Santa Ana near Bristol and 1st

II
There is intent when the addict mutters --
Estranged in his unhappy gutters --
"Life is cheap and love is free."
Hopelessness's epitome
Sits naked beyond the wall.

There is derision in the dealer's call --
Osmium-heat in an unimpeded fall --
"You can't change who you are."
Greed could tear down a star
To sculpt into a Cardiff shell.

Warrant breeds within a child's yell.

III**
I am in Cardiff
     Where foams pummel the jetty
I am in Cardiff
     Where crab skeletons blanch the beach
I am in Cardiff
     Where the Pilot Star became a conch
I was in the ruse of age
     Where the young kiss
I was in Joshua Tree
     Where the mind is thoughtless
I am a grove's wilting
I will be an unbearable urge
And I am shivering in Santa Ana near Bristol and 1st

I
I am in Cardiff,
          Where waves pummel the jetty
I am in Cardiff,
          Where crab skeletons blanch the beach
I am nowhere

II
Where the sun severs the street and
Slowly, methodically,
They come, they come.
Electrifyingly stupefied in the dawn,
Tenantry not bound to cause and
Helpless as marred lead in the wind,
Stuck to strata and
Battered under **** pale-green
Thinned on spread fingers.

III
There is intent when the addict mutters ---
Alienated in his nettled gutters ---
"Life is cheap and love is free."
Hopelessness's epitome
Sits naked beyond the wall.

IV**
And I am in Cardiff,
          Where waves pummel the jetty
And I am in Cardiff,
          Where crab skeletons blanch the beach
And I am nowhere

As a child he remembered Cardiff as a city with red asphalt roads and yellow trolley busses. On a Saturday morning his grandfather used to take him in his black Sunbeam Talbot to the grand building of the Council of Music for Wales. There Charles Dixon presided over a large office on the third floor in which there were not one but two grand pianos. At seven a little boy finds one grand piano intimidating, two scary. He was made of fuss of by his grandfather’s colleagues and – as a Queen’s chorister – expected to sing. A very tall lady who smelt strongly of mothballs took him into what must have been a music library, and together they chose the 23rd Psalm to Brother James’ Air and Walford’s Solemn Melody. After his ‘performance’ he was given a book about Cardiff Castle, but spent an hour looking out of the windows onto the monkey-puzzle trees and watching people walking below.
 
50 years later as the taxi from the station took him to the rehearsal studios he thought of his mother shopping in this city as a young woman, probably a very slim, purposeful young woman with long auburn gold hair and a tennis player’s stride. He had just one photo of his mother as a young woman - in her nurse’s uniform, salvaged from his grandparents’ house in the Cardiff suburb of Rhiwbina. Curious how he remembered asking his grandmother about this photograph - who was this person with long hair?– he had never known his mother with anything but the shortest hair.
 
He’d visited the city regularly some ten years previously and he was glad he wasn’t driving. So much had changed, not least the area once known as Tiger Bay, a once notorious part of the city he was sure his mother had never visited. Now it was described as ‘a cultural hub’ where the grand Millennium Opera House stood, where the BBC made Doctor Who, where in the Weston Studio Theatre he’d hear for the first time his Unknown Colour.
 
Travelling down on the train he’d imagined arriving unannounced once the rehearsal had begun, the music covering his search for a strategic seat where he would sit in wonder.  It was not to be. As he opened the door to the theatre there was no music going on but a full-scale argument between the director, the conductor and three of the cast. The repetiteur was busy miming difficult passages. The two children sat demurely with respective mothers reading Harry Potters.
 
The next half hour was difficult as he realised that his carefully imagined stage directions were dead meat. They were going to do things differently and he had that sinking feeling that he was going to have to rewrite or at the very least reorganise a lot of music. He was then ‘noticed’ and introduced to the company – warm handshakes – and then plunged into a lengthy discussion about how the ensemble sequence towards the end of Act 1 could be managed. The mezzo playing Winifred was, he was forced to admit, as physically far from the photos of this artist in the 1930s as he could imagine. The tenor playing Ben was a little better, but taller than W – again a mismatch with reality. And the hair . . . well make up could do something with that he supposed. The baritone he thought was exactly right, non-descript enough to assume any one of the ten roles he had to play. He liked the actress playing Cissy the nurse from Cumbria. The soprano playing Kathleen and Barbara H was missing.
 
He was asked to set the scene, not ‘set the scene’ in a theatrical sense, but say a little about the background. Who were these people he and they were bringing to the stage? He told them he’d immersed himself in the period, visited the locations, spoken to people who had known them (all except Cissy and the many Parisienne artists who would ‘appear’). He saw the opera as a way of revealing how the intimacy and friendship of two artists had sustained each of them through a lifetime chasing the modernist ideal of abstraction. He was careful here not to say too much. He needed time with these singers on their own. He needed time with the director, who he knew was distracted by another production and had not, he reckoned, done his homework. He stressed this was a workshop session – he would rewrite as necessary. It was their production, but from the outset he felt they had to be in character and feel the location – the large ‘painters’ atelier at 48 Quai d’Auteuil.  He described the apartment by walking around the stage space. Here was Winifred’s studio area (and bedroom) divided by a white screen. Here was the living area, the common table, Winifred’s indoor garden of plants, and where Cissy and the children slept. As arranged (with some difficulty earlier in the week) he asked for the lights to be dimmed and showed slides of three paintings – Cissy and Kate, Flowers from Malmaison, and the wonderful Jake’s Bird and White Relief. He said nothing. He then asked for three more, this time abstracts –* Quarante-Huit Quai d’Auteuil, Blue Purpose, and ending with *Moons Turning.
 
He said nothing for at least a minute, but let Moons Turning hang in space in the dark. He wanted these experimental works in which colour begets form to have something of the impact he knew them to be capable of. They were interior, contemplative paintings. He was showing them four times their actual size, and they looked incredible and gloriously vibrant. These were the images Winifred had come to Paris to learn how to paint: to learn how to paint from the new masters of abstraction. She had then hidden them from public view for nearly 30 years. These were just some of the images that would surround the singers, would be in counterpoint with the music.
 
With the image of Moons Turning still on the screen he motioned to the repetiteur to play the opening music. It is night, and the studio is bathed in moonlight. It could be a scene from La Bohème, but the music is cool, meditative, moving slowly and deliberately through a maze of divergent harmonies towards a music of blueness.
 
He tells the cast that the music is anchored to Winifred’s colour chart, that during her long life she constantly and persistently researched colour. She sought the Unknown Colour. He suggests they might ‘get to know the musical colours’. He has written a book of short keyboard pieces that sound out her colour palette. There is a CD, but he’d prefer them to touch the music a little, these enigmatic chords that are, like paint, mixed in the course of the music to form new and different colours. He asks the mezzo to sing the opening soliloquy:
 
My inspiration comes in the form of colour,
of colour alone, no reference to the object or the object’s sense,
Colour needn’t be tagged to form to give it being.
Colour must have area and space,
be directed by the needs of the colour itself
not by some consideration of form.
A large blue square is bluer than a small blue square.
A blue pentagon is a different blue from a triangle of the same blue.
Let the blueness itself evolve the form which gives its fullest expression.
This is the starting-point of my secret artistic creation.
 
And so, with his presentation at a close, he thanks singer and pianist and retreats to his strategically safe seat. This is what he came for, pour l’encouragement des autres by puttin.g himself on the line, that tightrope the composer walks when presenting a new work. They will have to trust him, and he has to trust them, and that, he knows, is some way away. This is not a dramatic work. Its drama is an interior one. It is a love story. It is about the friendship of artists and about their world. It is a tableau that represents a time in European culture that we are possibly only now beginning to understand as we crowd out Tate Modern to view Picasso, Mondrian, Braque and Brancusi.

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!

It was, as the New York Times all but sniffed
(Even then, a haughty mix of bluenose and black ink)
Further proof the poor, misguided Upstate rubes
Were no more than ample fodder
For any tinhorn, two-bit confidence man to take for a ride.
Fair enough—it was, to the careful eye and unheated psyche
Clear as the azure blue sky that,
Despite the best efforts of acid wash and a year underground,
So obviously a statue as to be absolutely laughable,
And yet the vox populi came in waves,
Not only one-gallus farmers from the fields nearby,
But from the great cities near and far
(Chicago, Philadelphia, and, yes, even New York itself
To throw Hannum a quarter to view his gargantuan grotesquery
Just as described in Genesis itself, he noted solemnly
So many, indeed, that Barnum himself was divinely inspired
Not only to purloin the giant, but its prior owner’s epigram
As to the frequency of the manufacture
Of his too-credible customer base.
While there was (briefly, at least) some mystery surrounding
The origins of the brobdingnagian mass of stone,
It remained (to some, anyway) equally unfathomable
Why scores of folks would careen in unsteady coaches
The full length of the Catskill Turnpike,
With its questionable lodging and uneven roadworthiness,
Or patiently suffer the mosquito-laden flatboats of Clinton’s Ditch
All to spend the cash equivalent of two trips to the county fair
To see a perfectly good hootchie-kootchie show
Simply to gawk at an unevenly carved rock of questionable authenticity,
But that explained quite simply,
As the public always gets what the public wants.

why did i ever go out on a friday night?
drinks with "friends" and hitting the essex
club "scene" -
well - no much of a scene -
there was never the music you'd want to listen
to: come friday or saturday -
even mid-week when all the rock kids
were "hanging out" -
what would be chances of being your own d.j. -
catching something really new...
POIZON - church is poizon -
cool mom - something between a crossbreed
of cage the elephants and nirvana on blew -
3rd view - moi -
but i used to: and i remember that gehenna of
a sobering walk - alone after a night out -
like some furious son of sam -
when youth still had the adrenaline with it
and a sense of anger ******* around with
disillusionment -

those were the friday nights: bon jovi highlights
and long hair and milking a somewhat androgynous
look - sometimes the mascara would come out...
those were the days of having milk skin
and a proper shave -
the long hair and the waistcoast and cravat: semi-,

the lonesome story before i met my beard:
fwyday mordaithceirch -
i actually have a name for it...
i forgot what's already the designated
whittle pecker mr. pritchard of the down down:
below...

oh, oh so what...
rough friday nights in my youth -
on the clubbing "scene" -
and always that moral hangover when it came
to drinking with others -
ever since i started drinking by myself:
i forgot the mirror and that bucket
of warm water beside my bed to put my hand
in before going to sleep...
once or twice the company was worth the drink -
but most of the time you only kept
such company: because you were drinking -
drinking was never an afterthought -

now... i like drinking alone -
at least i can keep fact-checking the company
and the odd vocab peacock taking to the catwalk
of a ruminating free-fall tongue waggle
and rummage - the needle in the haystack
adventure - or... the ******* bucket
of deshelled oysters...

there have been some awful friday nights -
but: seeing how i started to give my beard
a welsh name borrowed from a willem dafoe
novel - and how it simply became pointless
to wake the dead with the angry tantrums
of youth: and how i seem to have
forgotten where my 20s "went" -
somehow rooted in: da-sein and how
i "wasted" 2 years on one book by kant -
2 years on one book by heidegger -
and: how i didn't have the time to "catch-up"
on the greek classics -

oh these island dwelling people -
i try to imagine them not being a seafaring:
and their messiah / superiority complex -
with their breakfast that could hardly
be digested come the hour of noon -
or no messiah / superiority complex -
the traffic: indeed - works like clockword...
from left to right...
sidenote: what of fahrenheit and
the feet and inches - stones and pounds?
ounces?
the metric of: baseline 0 here,
baseline 00 over there...

no... Michele Campanella piano solo take
on wagner's das rheingelt: entry of the gods into
valhalla - it's hardly anemic -
it's... the last leaf of autumn falling -
because the crescendo has already happened...
a befitting closure...

the superior island folk and their...
hyphens and germanic loan words -
how almost all names in chemistry are still
in their germanic: intact form of: no hyphen:
broken leg or broken arm...

woodwinds... perhaps... the violins providing
the humming of birds:
chirp chirp: no chirping -
and of course the horn - but the horns never
as prominent as those drank from...

something has happened today -
but i am... left without having any english
sensibility / egalitarianism -
somehow i always equate egalitarianism with
the english - the islanders -
a firework went off in the background -
mr. sloth awoke mrs. slouch after 3 years
for a firecracker celebration...

because who would want to be ruled
over by unelected: chocolatiers...
esp. after their trial run in the Congo -
but i have certainly had worse friday nights...

it can't exactly get much worse than...
say... listening to the siegfried idyll...
multitasking: drinking a cider, smoking a cigarette,
balancing act of folded leg sat on
perched on a windowsill solving a no. 11,289
sudoku from the 27th jan. 2020...
otherwise prior to:
imagine my disbelief at the pleasure -

with numbers to somehow escape thinking in words:
no grand arithmetic linear gymnastics -
of the end result -
certainly no logical statements -
just a whirlwind of numbers complimenting
these few words...
and what a fine friday night it has become:

the pizza was made - god save me from the perfume
of yeast... or checking on the rising dough
from time to time -
the leftover yeast gave me the opportunity
to bake an imitation sourdough crust pretty-as-a-picture
loaf that: would make any mushroom blush
and shy away from unfolding into an umbrella pose...
or a Y... curling outward-inward into an upsilon Υ...

because how could i forget the pleasure of
sifting through numbers?
by the time i attempted puzzle no. 11,290
i had to write a "map"

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
2)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x

come to think of it... where's a subscript?
if i'm going to use 1, 2, 3...
to tier the allocation of squares...
tennis and sudoku...
tennis: a game of 7 rectangles -
and how many judges and ball boys / girls?
sudoku - a puzzle of 10 squares - perhaps...
if i'll use tiers 1, 2, 3: a1, b2, c3...
what if... sudoku invoked letters rather than
numbers?

much later... oh believe me...
this is the antithesis of knausgård
writing about using googlemaps...
        
           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

it's still a schematic - the narrative is yet
to begin... otherwise...
there's nothing smart about this...
i have tired eyes sometimes:
i succumb and have to allow myself
to no acid-bath these eyes in words...

esp. since i speak so rarely -
imagine... in england and i spear
the bare minimum of english -
i can: i have to: i will - when being prompted -
but i can't remember the last time
i had an honest: informal exchange
of letters... lapped up by the glutton
tongue... i looked and looked
and with my silence i can attest:
there's a speech-impediment -
a stutter that's not born from nervousness...
but... an allusion to a "stoic" through
my lack of conversation...

at least on paper i can exfoliate -
enough cider and enoug whiskey and i'm all
sparrow McDermott!
ugh... the devolved scots and the likewise
welsh... devolved nations...
only this aspect of Brexit is... well...
imagine the "evolved" status of post-Yugoslavia...
Kosovo...
this is the only aspect of an otherwise:
fair enough that's... well...
if you lived for 3 years among the scots...
you'd get to appreciate them...
this is the only aspect of this whole affair
i will ever appreciate...
i would pour blood and **** into
the Welsh continuing their...
preservation of the iaith...
forever and the more - i would love to see
scotland start to dig trenches and
forget trainspotting gaelic -
parading like ponces and humpty dumpteys
with "harkccents"... glasgewian bull-runnings...
cousins aye and wee -

a thing of beauty: a thing of union...
but this... they were bullied in brussels...
they came back and started to bully the scots...
if you have lived -
the betas of cardiff - but they tongue: remains!
look far back and wales would encompass
cornwall -
ignorant i of a 26 year "servitude" on these isles...
quiz me on outside of London:
no point...
perhaps i too would wish for the lost
theta in Dublin - towing: to t'ink...
as any sanskrit H-surd does matter...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

but if i will replace... the side tiers of numbers...
the numbers in the puzzle will have to become
letters - greek... probably iota, epsilon and upper-case
gamma...

the bullied have returned from the palance
of the chocalatiers and: back to their old ways
of bullying the rest of these island folk...
because: it's infantile for me imagine
a resurrection of the crown (poland)
and the grand duchy of lithuania -
the commonwealth -
but somehow the united kingdom is not
fated to become the next yugoslavia -

i can confirm - up in edinburgh i was
confirmed by having the hat of Knox having
scalped me -
never is always metaphor: vaguely -
as in literally - in these quasi-paragraphs...
so it's not... infantile to even "think" that
the british empire can be revived?
zee window-licker spezials of
cross-breed h'americana postcards sent?
i nibble to attempt a joke...

oh i can bulldozer this whole narrative...
turn into a berserker -
i've saved enough money to deal
with the label loser...
all it will take is me having drunk enough -
sightseeing the slums of london's east end
and then hitting the brothel:
like an iron-head... to the pillow
and the ***** of a *******...

because i have had worse friday nights...
terrible company...
if i were not a michel de montaigne or a knausgård:
me me me, me me, me me me me,
write enough of that and:
to meme to grafitti... or to...
why are there no diacritical markers in
the english language worthy of recognition?
why would i...
rhoi fy **** y Cymraeg enw?
give my beard a welsh name?
and why is that not a cedilla C but a ******* K?
why not... Çumraeg?

on foreign shores i have made it adamant that...
this sense of foreigness does not
peppermint my presence with hopes to:
add to - an integration -
just borrow what the local have made: left-overs...
and work with that...

(insert snigger) - the neu-vikings of
northumberland...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

this really does have a linear narrative...
here goes...
3(c1), 9(c3), 1(c1), 2(c3), 2(c1), 2(a1), 9(a3), 8(c3),
4(c3), 8(c2), 8(a2), 5(b2), 7(c2), 3(b2), 3(b3), 8(b3),
7(c1), 5(c1), 7(b3), 5(c3), 1(c3), 6(c3), 1(c2), 3(c2),
9(c2), 9(b2), 6(b1), 6(b2), 6(b3), 2(b3), 2(b2), 1(b2),
1(b1), 9(b1), 9(a1), 8(b1), 8(a1), 5(b1), 7(b1), 7(a1)...

and then a "gamble" in the narrative...
the (7a2 and the 5a2 - interchange)....
it's a pleasure - not a chore -
5  9  4
2  8  7
3  6  1
8  1  9
6  4  3
7  5  2 - this line... what if it was 5  7  2?
1  2  5
4  7  6
9  3  8
if i want to solve this puzzle - i will solve it
and not read a tabloid article /
whatever the hell has become of youtube...
my diamond jukebox...

otherwise the "narrative" continued from
7a2 and the 5a2 interchange:
7(3a), 4(a3), 4(a2), 6(a1), 4(a1), 5(a1), 5(a3),
1(a3), 1(a1), 3(a1), 3(a2), 6(a2)... end result?

           a             b             c
      5   9   4   6   8   1   2   3   7  
1)   2   8   7   3   5   9   6   1   4
      3   6   1   2   7   4   5   8   9
      8   1   9   5   4   3   7   6   2
2)   6   4   3   7   1   2   9   5   8
      7   5   2   9   6   8   3   4   1
      1   2   5   8   3   7   4   9   6
3)   4   7   6   1   9   5   8   2   3
      9   3   8   4   2   6   1   7   5

because i can imagine this not being:
the most difficult Finnish sudoku...
i can almost imagine this puzzle
to be in greek...
where: 1ι, 2ζ, 3ε, 4χ, 5Σ, 6δ, 7Γ, 8β, 9ρ...

in the background all i hear is:
corvus corax' la i mbealtaine...
the greek version of the japanese puzzle...

           a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   6   8   ι   ζ   ε   7  
1)   ζ   8   7   ε   Σ   9   6   ι   χ
      ε   6   ι   ζ   7   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   7   6   ζ
2)   6   χ   ε   7   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      7   Σ   ζ   9   6   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   7   χ   9   6
3)   χ   7   6   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   6   ι   7   Σ

half-way... i just wanted to "selfie" what
will become of this... i no longer write: i paint...

            a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   δ   8   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   8   Γ   ε   Σ   9   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      Γ   Σ   ζ   9   δ   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   Γ   χ   9   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

going... going... gone...

            a             b             c
      Σ   ρ   χ   δ   β   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   β   Γ   ε   Σ   ρ   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   β   ρ
      β   ι   ρ   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   ρ   Σ   β
      Γ   Σ   ζ   ρ   δ   β   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   β   ε   Γ   χ   ρ   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   ρ   Σ   β   ζ   ε
      ρ   ε   β   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

i don't mind a people being right...
but the overt-gloating...
without having to work around the sort
of paranoia associated with:
how the russians are not allowed to glutton
themselves on gloating -
because they are always made
to feel suspcious - the russians can't gloat
like most of the anglo- speaking world...
always suspect: russophobia evil genuises...
tip-toeing goliaths - less the blundering
fudge-packers of "global ****"...
and i kissed a boy and i liked it...
my genitals started shrinking
and my *** started to exfoliate with:
welcome all! welcome all hard and on!
and that tongue in my mouth always helps...
but imagine my surprise when
i started to navigate my hands
but the reply came:
timbuktu and mt. kilimanjaro will not be found
attached to this sort of torso...
wrong dog, wrong tree...

some things really do require numbers...
i once had a mathematics teacher in high school
bemoan the origin of modern numbers
and how we once: upon a time used these letters...
but did our arithmetic with visual aids
akin to the abacus... because...
you'd have to "read braille" when counting...
to differentiate the already: lettered numbers
and the letters being letters -
and all arithmetic functions
were "spoken of" but never depicted...
i.e. there was no VII + III = X...
there was no XV - XI = IV...
eh?! arithmetic was cat-intuitive...
not spoken of - done by either the visual
aid of fingers when haggling
in a market place -
or by the abacus aid in a bureucratic office!

i said this was the most perfect friday night...
what did i have to offer?
no clickbait title - some gems of wording
in between?
the patient reader - as ever - most rewarded -

but... oh my god... the sensation of
changing the bed sheets...
it's friday night and you're... changing your bed sheets...
and they are more crisp and clean
than any political event that the journalist leeches
are milking -
and you do it with a saving private ryan precision -
you will sleep in this bed: well into
11am of a today to come...
believe me: that you will...

- in that i am still walking among the germanic people -
if the germans will sing a: bretonisher marsch...
then the two peoples are alligned by
their sentiment for the crow as their godhead:
alles menschen totem...
what could possibly make me feel welcome?
french grammar is polish grammar...
matin de printemps - poranek wiosny -
spring morning in reverse in germanic...
how many more examples would i ever wish
to give?

there was a moment in my life where...
i realised my faults... i should have read
the Pickwick Papers... anything by C. Dickens to be sure...
instead came Stendhal, Voltaire, Balzac...
because if you said to me...
BBC radio 4... the archers...
and... thomas hardy: madding crowd?
you'd accuse me of being ignorant of:
London is a bustling cosmopolitan in-waiting
from the busy-body industrial proto-Beijing
it was of 100 years ago?    
the French had cosmopolitan intellectualism
100 years prior to the english...
100 years later and it's still not much...
is anyone about to cite me william hazlitt?!

the trouble with the english is that they hold dear
to that one old 19th century idea -
this waiting for: awaiting a revival of darwinism...
the "blatantly" obvious needs a resurgence!
because a michael faraday must most surely
be forgotten!
how many times will this already painful reality
need to be emphasised once more:
intellectually - via a darwinism?
no one stresses the copernican "upside-down"...
or what is copernican "west" up in space?
how does acknowledging the sphere
of the earth - ease you reading a flat map -
moving from point A to point B?

earlier this week - for once in my life i was
ashamed of what i wrote -
so i wrote for scribli per se: scribbles for
scribbles themselves -
the darwinian germanic folk who say:
alles von afrika...
how the hebrews debased themselves
in both aushwitz and breaking their bones
on the emoji hieroglyphs -
alles von afrika: ja... so sicher... so wahr!

ask any slavic person among the germanic
peoples...
where from? wir (ar) sind lesen und schreiben
"afrika": i.e. Indu...
if the african challenged the hebrews
with... "the best they had": egyptian emojis...
why would i not stress my birth
with pseudo cedilla Ş / इ... ☦ -
this indo-european is not... at home with
these african-germanoids...
pseudos and quasi -
these chocolate frenzied busy-buddies!

from the caucasian and further still from
that whittle sub-corinthian quote: continent...
somehow, "somehow" this part of this story
is read: south to north... always a grand
marker missing when the people went
east, squinted... learned skeleton existence,
atoms... and the frenzy of letters:
owls and ******* **** flinging beetles
back in the north eastern tip of
africa: in that egyptian haemorrhage of "idea"...

i assure myself... perhaps the form came from
africa... but sure as **** the tongue only arrived
in the lap of the Dalai Lama...
as did the "thinking" and the music
across prior to the Mongol's curiosity
over the tundra of Siberia...
something had to be placed on a loan...
and coming back to the cradle and the crux
had to happen like so...
not this current: ergo: so...
quickened and: what news from Damascus?!

first impressions count...
i made my bed... it's newly washed...
as crisp as falling onto a bed a prawn crackers...
without the crumbs' itch...
like listening to some german:
juggernaut... this will do... i can fall asleep
with this: grab hören zu der winderhall...
mehr flöte - weniger violinekratzen!
schlechtdeutsche? alle deutsche ist gut deutsche...
erwarten etwas isländisch zu sein
gesprochen insel von insel: auf diese inseln?!

to make a crisp bed of freshly washed sheets...
to sleep in them alone...
given the grammar is not that far removed...
are the french even remotely translated
as a germanic "sort of" people?
"they" or "we" share the same grammar...
and there are celtic freedoms that would
never be allowed to exfoliate under
strict anglo-ßaß obligations...

oh sure! great people! steam engine: choo-choo!
newton et al...
shakespeare: when they taught us shakespeare
they should have taught us bernard shaw...
when they forced jane eyre down our throats
we should have been reading
the pickwick papers...
the music will remain german -
because as much as vaughan williams...
holst and händel were "were" english...
esp. latter with his umlaut that spread over
toward i-and-j...

why wouldn't you **** at the pillar of the empire:
a past most assured - dust, books and moths...
like hell will i come to correct my ways
to state the: pish-poor Elgar... this poo'em too...
himmel... sky...
leerenhimmel - empty sky -
nein sonne während der tag:
das englischnebel: bedeckthimmel...
nein mond während der nacht...
nur so...

i of the lesser men of this world duly bow
my presence before the altar of the higher men
of these isles...
and hope and pray that their wisdom
will not bestow upon them any major calamity...
with not irony or ridicule i wish upon
these peoples... the right sort of oars
to turn this rooted island
into the people's imagined langboot...

there are only one british people a people
who will pursue to gloat having been
conquered by the romans...
being raided by the vikings...
integrating the anglo-ßaß...
a second viking coming via the Normans...
the push-over remains of the celts...
that somehow translated itself into
the: empire...
ideal: to compensate...
the islamic fervor for the... resurrected
caliphate...
jokes about the dritte ***** and the vierte *****...
that's pretty much the precursor jokes
surrounding: ein zweite ***** -
auf welche die sonne nimmer setzt -
ever wonder how that translates with the increased
cases of insomnia?!

again: bad german is better than
no german.

He said I’m the wrong shape. I could do with putting on a few pounds and, almost as an after thought he said, you’ll have to cut your hair – yourself.  I know she was an artist, and a mother, and a gardener. I had to admit to him I didn’t know any painters. My cousin Julie’s a sculptor – same thing he said – but I had to tell him I hadn’t yet looked at her painting, only what he showed us in his presentation.  He then told me exactly where in the National Museum of Wales I could see one of her paintings – Gallery 14 – and its from this period, a Parisiene picture. He suggested I might go to Cambridge and spend a day at a place called Kettles Yard. There are more Winifreds there than anywhere else in the UK, and many pictures by her close friend Christopher Wood.
 
Oh dear. This is difficult. The only thing going for me seems I’m about the right age and I’ve have children, though mine are older than hers in the production. I was so surprised to get this part, but as Michael said over the phone, your profile fits. Except for the weight and the hair, and I know nothing about painting. Why should I? Jeff told me, the composer Morton Feldman once said if you haven’t got a friend whose a painter, you’re in trouble. I’m in trouble. But he has very kind eyes and when he touched me gently on the shoulder after Lizzie and I sung that shells duet I had to look away.
 
Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-millennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation….
 
They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper for ever in our ears,
‘The world that you inhabit has not yet been created’
 
Mind you, I don’t envy Lizzie being Kathleen Raine. Now that is a difficult part, even though she’s only in Act 2. Raine was definitely odd. He says I have to understand their friendship, because there was something about it that made them both more than they were. I don’t understand that.
 
Jane and the children are amazing already. Martin (my ‘other’ half Ben Nicholson) said they’d been rehearsing with Robert because his wife (Robert’s wife Debbie) is at WNO and they were scared about this one. I’ll say this for him he knows exactly how children interrupt, constantly. It’s clever the way he uses the interruptions to change direction of the dialogue. Conversations are often left unfinished. The bit when that ***** Barbara visits the apartment unexpectedly is brilliant. She’s completely demolished by these kids of her lover.
 
But those letters . . . he said, can you imagine your husband writing to you over a period of 40 years? Quite a thought that. David wrote to me a few times when I was in Madrid for Cosi just after we’d met, but it was all telephone calls after that. Why waste paper, time and a stamp. But I take his point – their letters are so beautiful – and they were separated for God’s sake. He’d gone off with another woman, and even brought her to Paris. And you could not have two totally different women – she ,slight, chain-smoking, work-a-holic, sharp-tongued with that Yorkshire edge, and me with ‘a quiet voice, trying always to be gentle and kind ‘– W would be called an earth-mother these days. She was a kind of hippie, only she had money – mind you most of those hippies of the 60s had money otherwise they couldn’t have done drugs (heard that on Radio 4 last week in a programme about Richard Brautigan). But they wrote to each other almost every day.
 
Dear Ben,.
            Do you know there are several kinds of happiness, and there is one sort which I have found. It is the sort that is within oneself, enjoying fresh promise, and taking all the experiences of life that one has been through, so-called sad ones and so-called happy ones, to make up understanding that is further on than joy or sorrow. I have been extremely lucky – I have had ten years of companionship with an ‘all-time’ painter, working in the medium of classic eternity and that has been better than a lifetime with any second-class person – isn’t it - I have found it so…
 
Best love Winifred
 
What’s clever about the letter sequences is the way the two-way correspondence is handled as a duet and right in the middle of it you’ll get a flashback – like Winifred suddenly remembering her first meeting with Ben.
 
I heard this voice
In the room next door
I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t move
I knew, I knew for certain
This was the man I would marry.
And when we were introduced
He seemed to know this too.
 
We gaily call this an opera, but it’s not. It’s something else. It simply doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. Even when you do something for a second time the accompaniment doesn’t do what you expect and remembered. It’s this open-form business. Something else I know nothing about. He mentioned Umberto Eco – now I’ve read Name of the Rose. When Braque or Mondrian or Jan Eps visit unannounced I have no idea which one it’s going to be – these guys just used to turn up. Sometimes two at once. W didn’t invite them. They came for her English hospitality (home baking I think) and her beautiful apartment come studio – beautiful, because she made it so. Her French was appalling, and this is difficult because I speak quite well, and now I have to speak like an idiot. Bridget  (playing Cissy the Cumbrian nanny) having her French lesson is a hoot, and with the children correcting her all the time, it’s lovely.
 
He was very sweet when we broke for lunch. Sara, he said, as I collapsed into an auditorium seat to find my bag and mobile, Sara, we’ve got to find you a painter to spend a day with . . . so you’ll know how to stand in front of an easel.  I phoned Sarah Jane Brown who has a studio in Cardiff and she’d love to meet you. Here’s her number. She paints flowers and landscapes – as well as the abstract stuff - just like Winifred. Her tutor at the RCA actually knew Winifred. And with that he disappeared to a dark corner of the theatre and unwrapped his sandwiches. You can tell he’s not into break discussions with Julian or Michael. I think he’s terribly shy. He’s interested in the cast and so he picks them off one by one. Julian I know doesn’t like this. I think everything needs to go through me, he said at the end of yesterday’s rehearsal. Who does he think he is?! Lizzie reminded Julian he was the composer and what he doesn’t know about this whole period and its characters isn’t knowledge. Liz thinks he’s a sweetie – and she’s sung his Raine settings at Branwyn Hall last year – with Robert who was his MD with BBCNOW. Liz knows Julian hasn’t done his usual homework because he’s got this production in Birmingham on the boil. Unknown Colour is a distraction he can do without.
 
This afternoon it’s back to the mayhem of those ensemble scenes in Act 1. They’re quite crazy, but I’m already beginning to feel I can start to be someone other than me. Did you know I have this lovely song? It’s quite Sondheim . . .
 
*I like to have a picture in my room.
Without one, my room feels bare
however much furniture is there;
Pictures play so many roles.
My room has too much going on in it
for something extravagant.
In the morning it is a sanctuary,
in the daytime a factory,
in the evening a place of festivity,
and through the night a place of rest.
 
I want a window in it,  
And a focal point, something alive and silent.
A bunch of flowers on the window sill?
Yes, but they will wither.
A cat curled up on the hearth?
Yes, but it will go away and prowl upon the rooftops.
 
A picture will always be there.
It will make no sound. It will wait.
If it is true I shall never grow tired of it.
I shall see something fresh in it
when I glance at it tomorrow.
It will always be my friend.

It can’t be TOO hard- being a duck that is.
My stomach growled watching a tot feeding a duck in the castle garden,
then my famished gears started turning.
Right.  That’d be nice- I could go for some bread and a swim.
Ducks don’t even have to work for food- not these ducks
-they get fed.
I have to shop for bread,
and that’s not the half of it.
First I have to get to the bread,
which means risking it in my tired van
or sitting on a bus with a perfect smelly stranger
or pushing my luck crossing a bustling street.
And then, if I’m not way-laid…BREAD!
But I can’t just stuff it down my gullet,
and sure as day nobody’s gonna feed it to me.
The worst that can happen to a duck
eating bread
is getting its head wet…or choking on fruitcake.
Just when I was feeling particularly underprivileged
on the food chain,
I thought of my great grandfather
and his wooden decoy duck bobs
still sitting on my hearth back in Indiana,
and I thought of the dogs he used to chase the felled birds
and I thought of the bullets and the sharp October air, and the teeth,
and I felt silly.

for any of my work to have any meaning, i can only suggested browsing Empedocles (of Acragas), in saying that, i suggest the name, primarily it's a form of philosophy, written in poetic form... in that it exhausts the need for poetic technique: i.e., there's more to see, than actually hear.

- just like i don't understand people who fake doing the maestro whenever they listen to classical music, in the same vein: your greengroccer... your plumber... your electricians.... god forbid you t.v. guy....  don't translate that oddity in, modern music and imitating drummers... i get air guitar, i get air maestro... no one really bother the drumming brigade, when i listen to classical music, i am looking for a maestro, when i listen to contemporary music i, want a drummer, bad; ****! St. Thomas' gospel is becoming real... like i really, really, need a *** change.... never mind the 50cl of whiskey waiting for me, or sasha foxxx's eyes... the job? hammer in a thousand nails... industrialise ***, what do you get? a **** economy... why would god enter the equation if all the problems are theological self-made-heresy? it's not even that *** sells, and god gives gives rise to stampedes... what with the Koran and oil, are we counting to state the same arithmetic... i mean: the industrialisation of ***... nothing that hurts, nothing but a quip... that sorta of definition belongs in China or India with a billion participants... what we have is a case of mouthing off the competitors, when you're actually chihuahua in the Sahara of expectation.... i'm as mad as the numbers say i am... personal stories are non-essential.... i included mine for added effect... or a presumtpion that i might: acknowledged as having said anything in total....counter to english existentialism, so wholly preoccpupied with zoos and biology as the only scientific resource... i can't agree to it making sense, in the standard item-basis-list of following-up an argument... that dire, fake or indeed couch-sloth desert-prune is only half of *σ... i mean there's a tendency of a natural disparity, to ensure a dialectical health of any if all argument... σ = per se... it's because there no single, identifiable argument, the one current is a vogue argument, in the realm of zeitgeist parameters... it's not the only one... the world will move on... it's only that at the zenith of civilisation, we are only bound to industrialise ***, and art is, as according to W. Benjamin, in a state of: ditto, in the age of machanical, reproduction... easier said than... and so done... i feel the anaesthetic needle doing the suggested thing, of numbing me... it's not when art is given onto this Moloch-like altar... it's when *** is industrially-scaled to require cinema... and the quickie-dip of dimension having repertoire in threes... i have no care to ensure there's a narrative and a frenzy... i just care to say: there's a narrative, and a frenzy.... that one has no insurance, and that the other has all the resources that would otherwise invole a familial life... which now, evidently, is prone to same-*** affiliations than compliment-*** affiliations... meaning less art from the **** realm, and more art from the hetero or h-quasi realm (origin ****)... you need to talk about the cushions, if you're going to sleep in the bed, ****'s sake! -

to really live by the "rules" of existentialism,
to live an existential doctrine,
is to really: live an uneventful life,
or should i say: rather ordinary?
  well... i wouldn't go as far as saying it
might be boring, just... un-spectacular.

and all it takes it five beers and, oh, about
6 miles of wet wintry cement,
   and o.t.t.'s album blumenkraft,
with the crescendo song: billy the kid strikes back...

walk 6 or 7 miles in winter
and you come back into a warm abode
and you have skeleton hands...
numb from the cold...
but in england winter is different
than on the continent...
a wet winter (which is very english)
is worse than a dry winter (which is
continental)...
  as honesty goes... -18C in a dry winter
is probably not as bad as -1C in a wet
winter...
    so there's me, completely
****-faced watching the t.v. series
this is us, and one of the characters is
a black kid that gets adopted by
a white family when
    one of the triplets of the white family
dies in child-birth,
and he finds his biological father...
and also a mid-life crisis:
white folks told me to excell,
so he does,
   black daddy was a poet and played
the piano...
and he experiences a mild
schizophrenia... see, it's not a scary word,
i mean: without the extreme symptoms...
   a split-mind...
thankfully i cushioned mine on bilingualism...
and i have been ever since: bilingual -
nothing to be proud of,
   after all: there's the genius polymath...
but it's not about that: it's about winter...
winters in england are so different to
winters on the continent...
the grey skies? oh, that's here all year...
    talk about being a weather man
in Saudi Arabia, most of them moved to England:
where the action is...
          
but really, i can't imagine why existentialism
as a movement, culminated in the zenith
it achieved (precursor movement?
phenomenology)
        oh yah yah: were nieche, very Kensington,
very, Chiswick...

but to really appreciate an existentialist
dogma, a truly uneventful life...
   and given that existentialism in the French
vein akin to Kant but not so much Heidegger
lends itself to the cartesian maxim...
well... that's because it kinda has to,
but not really...

  Kant took out i think and merely focused on that,
his biography goes along the lines of:
a ritual walker, stayed in one place,
    a rook of the clock, i couldn't exactly call him
a pawn... nonetheless...
             a very uneventful life...
why? thought.
    
    what's the most interesting thing i've done today?
i thought, or, i had a thought (a / the article scissors
cutting off the -ism)...
and that's about it...
    had a thought...
                   i hit the gong that thus translates into
the post ergo / therefore of i am,
   and then i realised: i wasn't motivated enough
by my thought: to do much!
              
historically speaking, my writing can only be placed
into a dynamic of being called post-existentialism,
it's not boasting, it's just a plain fact,
   like Monday will be St. Valentine's day, 2017...
and some men collect stamps,
   and some men like fishing,
    and some men have the habit of writing about
things that are, a bit like Avogardo's constant,
meaning they'd love to speak about these things
over, and over again, and never get bored of them,
or for that matter: start families.

strange how it works, have it all...
       or have none of it, to later only have that one
vector that's opposite of mortal, ******...
        or have both, in a way,
and be later traced to some Shakespearean controversy
about a mistaken identity...
well... there's that too.

that must be it, existentialism, and the most,
ordinary life...
         pause for what, akin to something else i wrote
about beginning the thought catching
up to the walk a few days earlier which began
with z and i and diacritical marks,
how northern slavs wouldn't necessarily disrespect
the already present diacritical mark
on the ι (iota), i.e. regarding acute z (ź),
and how if z & i appear together, i.e.
    z and immediately after it, i... you don't bother
writing an acute version of z,
   as a southern slav (balkan) might,
with his caron (ž)...

or a bit like stating the old chestnut of universals
vs. particulars...
   well... they can say what they like about
the cheapness of writing in this medium
but there is nothing so gut-wrenching as a deleted
passage, that will never return...
    immediate heartache... there on the screen,
the computer decides to "have a mind of its own"
moment by either your carelessness
          or the computer's defects and: ****!
gone, a shift+ and suddenly... writing while not
looking at the keyboard, as you do... ****!
gone... gone baby... gone...
    and if that's not analogy of: a lesson
in placing your hands correctly onto the computer
does me: you're looking at the keyboard
and not at the screen...

  how about writing with my eyes closed?
  haven't seen anyone attempt that...

here goes:

    and with that i give you hades...

not bad, i should try it more often... it's not believable
because it's actually correct and has no mistakes....
*******.

alternative? and with that i give you sheol...
   still the same... double *******.

((   ((
    
and that's all it takes... the part where you let go,
because you have to:
  the regret can be there, but soon has to
be overruled...
   it mattered at the zenith of logic,
it was really there, for such a brief moment,
i could call it a study in how you can ****
a very lucid moment, and then have to "resort",
but, rather: merely accepting it as having no place
in the overall composition...
    so to the windowsill, finishing off
blackbeard (whiskey and coca cola and
a cigarette)... changing the aura from
o.t.t.'s album taken home from the "marathon"
(yes, the prime existential tool is the transcendence
of synonyms, encouraging misnomers
or: how to not build dams, or become custard
beavers, looking for words...
    the river, every time, always looking at a river...
the sea and the people and time...
   rivers occupy an infinite concept of space
and the change within such a Thermopylae,
as it might give you indigestion,
or the highest serving rank of memory...
the sea and the people don't scare me,
and it's hardly a thing of admiration...
its just a sight of pulverisation, a headache...
the river, the solitude, and the fact that local
newspapers have adverts of only lonely women...
sure, read a national newspaper and there
are women seeking men, women seeking women,
men seeking women, men seeking men...
but look at a local, a local newspaper: only women
advertising themselves for candles and firecrackers...
it seams men were always programmed (a priori)
        into the gravitas of solitude...
what i really meant to say: existentialistic writings
can appear foreboding with the ditto...
with the perception that there's this ulterior,
dark-seeded motive...
      i just thought about bypassing the thesaurus,
like some writers do,
    you can spot it when they do,
a word they looked up from their labour
of lumberjacking the keyboard
sticks out like a modern statue, or a broken finger,
a word: right off the pages of a thesaurus...
   i just mean that there's nothing sinister enclosed in
the said "brackets"...  there's nothing additional about it,
but as narratives go... you sometimes want to bypass
Sherlock Holmes and write a synonym-antonym,
you want to bypass the thesaurus, content with your
own vocab riches, but too "lazy" / engrossed in
what's actually coming...
say, that interlude, a cigarette, finishing off the whiskey,
with the glass freezing and having a layer of ice
around it... and: why i'll never be part of the nirvana's
or the doors' cult...
     pearl jam's indifference, from their second album.

so it's sometimes thereuputic letting go,
  after all, no one built a house on the summit of Everest,
if i wrote something of such clarifying quality,
and lost it... i can only apply an imagery of having seen it,
the best i can suggest that i wrote something
akin to 1 + 1 = 2, and then accidently deleted it...
and that's the sad part,
universals as vowels, particulars like consonants,
    even numbers akin to 2 and odd numbers akin to 1
(divided into decimals, or the wormhole of 0.123456 etc.) -
it was a beautiful sight, and then, again: ****!
gone... like a magician doing a trick
   and then... the sadness of having lost the technique
to recreate it...
well, the best i can do to recreate it is based
on a short argument...
   if universals and particulars (relying on the fact
that both have a plural form,
  i.e. so not 1 in 1, but the many of 1,
   and akin to: the 1 in many, and the many in many,
and the 1 in 1 / focus, something identifiable) -
or loosely universals like vowels, and particulars like consonants,
but given the two experience diacritical distinction /
additions... i could best remember what i wrote
as: 1 e.g. particular, if divided: fractions, and after
fractions: decimals...
                2 e.g. universal, if divided: whole numbers,
and after whole numbers fractions, and later decimals...
   so on and so forth with 3 (particular), 4 (universal),
     5 (p.), 6 (u.)...
                 a bit like having your own telescope
and microscope, just looking at what we make silence
of, our two ways of encoding what could have,
or should have been said, that was nonetheless said,
transcending our contemporaries as, what can only
be described as... an echo, lost in the caves of aeons...

this promenade begun with something to z & i...
or z, i, ι, ź and ž (what a nice pentagram,
i was watching the six nation's match
between wales and england,
and lo! behold... a goat at the fore!
  mind you, i took a cigarette break when they scored
their two tries).
Cardiff? yeah, been there once...
         Poland v Wales qualifying match,
donning a polish football shirt, got approached
by two young welsh girls saying: your team is ****...
started giving it the local... how fast they ran away...
and they say we laugh more than we cry,
   and i could be the one to snigger a sly laugh at
that memory, but cinema memory says to me:
time to usher in the reverse-psychology,
calling white black, and laughter crying...
        or as i like to call it, the paradox marriage
that has, literally not tentacle hold on the world,
   the bilingual marriage,
             lodged deep inside my head,
most recognisable by my theory study of diacritical
marks, or actually having noticed them,
and having no real, authentic accent to remind me
that i belong in either geography...
         whether from beginning, or toward an end...
some call it acting, some call it faking,
  i call it: just what i was given, or, more precisely:
what i earned... and that was to no good use...
        unless... this is the best expression of what the foundations
look like.

what was i thinking of? ah!

   it just involved the σ                       ς roundabout...
the aesthetic variation for one,
but on another investigation, well, sigma, total, sum,
and how be obey it like a golden ratio or pi,
   it's just auto-suggestive of how we are never truly
synchronised in our arguments...
   but, "paradoxically", or should i say: by a miracle,
make up the greatest potent to have an argument...
  we can never truly really synchronises ourselves
to fill the boots of expressing an utopian dream,
otherwise we wouldn't dream... period...
  so bye bye Freud and that method of escapism...
     we already ensured that, if they be our creation,
the gods are already at war with the Titans...
      i'll actually acknowledge that in an age of
pop philosophy in that Greece was, a place of allowing
a fertility of thought and later popularising it
(we don't live in times where there's a fertility consecrated
on the altar of thought, or what philosophy is, thinking per se /
for itself... innovators! scientists! up-starts!
or as some might say, the other pronoun battle,
the one without genitals involved,
as could only be sooner said:
  per se, or per per...
                       in in...
nothing sexualised... it's only that there's a limit in pronouns,
per se / in itself must come across the muddle
regarding the moment when people lose their
identity and begin their life with: ? thought
rather than i think,
       i can't place it anywhere else than inside my head,
better there than in the genitals,
   or wasn't Jesus circumcised and the zeitgeist
of St. Thomas' gospel and the transgender movment?
    the church is old, and counter-authoritarian,
it's just a tired institution, so it has no actual authenticity
over the current changes in society,
    might as well call onto Islam to move the chess pieces...
or that's what i'm currently seeing...
   i was just thinking about a logical limit in language,
e.g. timbaland's song the way i are...
   there really is a logical limit on how far you can
suddenly just forget grammar...
            so why begin with per se?
                 at best described as a cogitans (

The marchers make their way today
through town to Cardiff Bay
with whistles, shouts and banners up
for sweet old Mary Jane
they're marching for her freedom
all ages, colours, creeds
have come in joyful spirits
to help us free the **** 

The rich, the poor, the movers and shakers
the blowback kings and part-time partakers
the rollers, the tokers, the bongers and such
the teenage goth stoners who've had way too much
skin up as they march while making their point
and meet up with new friends while sharing a joint.

Then down at the bay side
when the bands start to play
they'll **** in the sunshine
till the end of the day.

A ******* the train with witch's hair and dark eyes
Stared at me as if I was hiding a secret in the curve of my lip
Or the space between my eyebrows
Or in whirlpool-pupils
I wonder if there is something of the occult in the way I walk
Like a dead woman who adores the crows that pick at her bone marrow
Is there something in the hollows of my eyes that suggests
I am not afraid of the demons summoned to hunt me down
On my morning commute?

English countryside rolls
by like butter on banana
pancakes. The heat of
history keeps me cringing
with a full stomach. Aches
softly convalesce veins
from head to toe,
concentrated in the solar
plexus as I become the weary, dreamy traveller with little left
to seek, hoping that every closed door will lead to you wrapped in a duvet taco shell. Every bed is half-empty, so I fill your gap with a warm pillow and whisper, "I love you, Amanda. It's a softer heart at the end of every highway."

Cardiff still sleeping
The light rain kissing the dark pavements
Delicately in the dim, secluded lamplight,
As lovers do,
Willingly oblivious to the odd lonely commuter,
Who frowns at the fresh, wet passion
From behind bleary eyes behind grey spectacles behind the wheel behind the grumbling, soggy rubber on the road.

Cardiff's lover must too
Make their commute,
The slow, grey flight is blown with such intent,
The wind is cupid and knows
Crops must be watered
Rivers filled
Valleys and hills alike await their romantic precipitation.
And the rain loves to please,
Turning yellows green and greens brown
And commuter's smiles upside down
(if they have smiled in the last ten years...

...sometimes I wonder if I have)

So, rain, peck my cheeks and run through my hair gentle fingers,
Speckle my glasses with moisture from your cool, close breath and whisper silence-quenching lyrics on my window with your pitter patter and I will dream and I will wake again to the early dawn rain and I will turn to you, open my mouth and taste your gentle kiss on my lips and tongue and I will smile.

The play is written to be staged in a pub or a large cave like yurt in Cardiff.  Its action and dialogue provides characterisation, with sound and lighting being used to establish context.  The setting a darkened pub corner that is  modelled on The Bunch of Grapes in Pontypridd.   There are only 6 characters, five speak in haiku-ed verse with the exception of the Drunk who acts as my 'Greek Chorus'.

- Hand-in-hand she enters to **** her thumb in a corner

- Chocolate ice cream soda demanded from Daddy

- Joking banter ceased slowly as the regulars all begin to quaff their brown pints

“Balll uut eass swept -
Chimrrrrr, Chiirriica,
war is never won”

- Church quiet, the village pub listened lips clamped tears swelling

“ ***** cut swapped with eyes -
Chimerica, Chimerica,
war is never won”

- The cornered hero of two Afghanistan tours is seen regressing into childhood*

The set darkens slowly then after 30 seconds a spotlit conversation in lines and stanzas begins.

Haiku and tanka that inspired the coming play include:

******* -
thoughts sought, taught and wrought,
testosterones
Fighting aggressive games,
Afghanistan camouflage


Globalism and War -
cloned greedy conspiracy,
that third tower
Titled selfish-self-grandiose,
deliver warring terror


Springs cut Irises -
dripping vital red not purple,
far from my window*

.

the working girl approached him
a busy cardiff pub
stockings and suspenders
gave his leg a rub

hundred quid, i'm yours tonight
whatever you desire
heart beat like a big bass drum
his calvin kliens on fire

could not believe his fortune
what a stroke of luck
so he made her paint his house
and clean his ***** truck

as ever, not a preference, or a pr.s. (pre scriptum)... more like an afterthought... never presume too much in case of diacritical ownership or necessary use... the language had terrible fathers... sure, once they said thou instead of you... nay instead of no... thee and still said you, as in: to be (that's thou without the index finger)... but when they applied diacritical marks ******* their faces, they attracted ridicule no one seemed to be bothered about... kinda like a Copernican trajectory... why put a dot above iota? well, the answer is the same as saying to clown-juggler (a) jesus... and saying to clown-juggler (b) yehovah... apparently the former is a res vanus (an empty thing) and the latter is a res cogitans (a thinking thing)... and a crucifixion is a binding process... collateral damage: it's the reverse... and you get to keep your yuppie christmas lights... but there a limb missing... ý and j... both have adequate indicators of children with single mothers... it like this genetic encoding, ** for woman, xy for man, xxl for a t-shirt... but why bother ι (iota) into owning any diacritical marks? that's ******* overly presuming to start things off to an Orff composition of a bulimic neptune that's why i suggested diacritical marks on a y... to transfigure it into the presupposed j... you know how many diacritical marks you can add to an ι? many... you can have a dozen brats while you're figuring out the plumbing... presumptious... presumptuous... see! false applicability of diacritical marks makes you a ******* worth of spelling! you're bound to be naturally dyslexic... ****, what a magic trick! ****! gone! dis and then there's dys- and the lexicon going berserk... make your ******* mind up! yes, i know that between dιs- and dys- the former means without, and the latter actually means an adjective, i.e. bad... or a jumbled up lexigraph; then into the tornado machine we go peacocking at the height of synonyms... but i still find it overly presumptious... ****... presumptuous to apply a dot above an ι (iota) and subsequently a dot above a non-diacritically existent j... it's how you yoyo and how you jump... there's so much ambiguity in anglican that the yhwh was drunk obvious... hence i'm drunk... and stating the obvious... you can clearly apply many other diacritical marks to a letter, rather than simply applying two: to aye and to hurray and forget the rest... rhyming couplet that... follow suite with jay... but write anything else in anglican and you see a Cardiff lazy... first the cymru, then the gaelic... well, you have to... given that english didn't come but shakespearean from the caribbean or india... you have to mind saying syrkloffipompusdumpus in Cardiff... it would be a bit diff not not... be gentle... get the rolling hills motto into that word, extract syllables like a German, or a chemist, please.

sometimes it really takes an evening like this, you go through
them until you hear the prompt and emerge on stage
and say a few lines...
you start off with *the connells 74 75,
then move onto blind lemon no lemon,
then through to kula shaker govinda,
      then reef with gimme you love,
    then onto snake river conspiracy
with a cover version of how soon is now,
then you decide to take the steps toward
formalising a mix-take (ancient history
courting techniques, high fidelity crap,
and i did manage to make one for a former
girlfriend... how ancient it all seems right
now... it also seems that i should be
70! by the looks of it... sadly i'm not...
yes yes, my teenage dreams was to work
in a music shop... swear to god, once the mp3
format came out i knew now future anti-Beatles
maniac had his hands tied and couldn't
buy the Beatles vinyl and burn them...
what can you do in Tron-land that's equivalent?
buy a Salman Rushdie and rekindle the
          bonfire night of Munich?
i had a muslim friend that really fancied
natalie portman... but because she is a jew
that was kinda difficult... how about
i obliterate that problem with alicia vikander,
hey there, poster boy... reach for the stars).
the thing is: we're in an en masse shock,
it happened all too quickly...
then came placebo with pure morning,
and then back to covers, daddy cool -
             and then back to boney m with
rasputin... and and then i picked up a book
by jack spicer, and then i thought:
i hope that i write enough so they can do
a my vocabulary did this to me: the complete
collection, yep, i hope they can't hone in on me,
that they can only print (if ever, yuck)
           a selected works artefact
which, given the Darwinistic interpretation of
history... is not even worth bothering about...
the damage has been done historically,
it's answered in seven (if not more) news channels
with 30 minutes of original script, repeated
24/7 until another headline blip appears and
changes the narrative, just a tad.
    indeed i did pick up a book i own by the
san francisco renaissance poet jack spicer...
      and i immediately forgot what song i was
going to d.j. after i finished with thinking about
what she said when i made that mixtape for her:
listening to king crimson's epitaph at
around 5 a.m. on oxford st. going to work...
              i don't have a library, i have an a-to-zed
of avenues, streets, possibilities...
i don't think... i make cocktails...
                       the un-literal... literally applicable.
philosophy really taught me to not crave intimacy,
or bemoan it as some genius robotics inventor
who equates all things responsive as necessarily
needing an artificiality... so where's the antonym
dividing line between artificial and superficial?
men are from Mars and women are superficial?
               oh sure... we can have this talkshow logic
going round and round...
   wolves don't bark, but the domesticated dog
can't wow us with a howl... is that whining or whimper?
and i know i don't have a novel in me,
      tragic (said keith lemon style)...
                    because i never wanted a zoo,
or wanted to cage anything or see cages...
and then become scholastically holistic -
                      it was never going to be a chance to see
"the whole picture"... at best all you're going
to get is interruptions in my life...
        which is hardly what you'd call the disappearance
of Tiger Woods after rumours circulated that
he owned a harem...
                               and i really do believe that
hinduism got one thing wrong... Shiva is a girl's name.
        shaven... never stirred... sounds just about
right as if were indeed a mexican ****** drinking a mojito.
yes, we can have a mini lecture:
i abuse language, i enslave it, language the over way
round can have a bunch of protestors with
placards walking down the street and chanting slogans
that never make it into advertisement...
     speak ill of the Pharisees: get crucified...
speak ill of the plebs? they disperse - ha ha... i should
know... i could be considered a pleb anomaly...
        broad shouldered and strong enough to move
a tonne of bricks (once)...
             so anyway... i picked up this jack spicer
book i have (that ****** Lorca fetishist!
he'd **** his **** any chance he might have)
   and this weird thing came about...
i lost track of what song i would play to
murmur out the clicking sound of the keyboard
(forget it, typewriters were rapists compared
to computer keyboards) -
             it's from the poem phonemics -
and by god... i'd be gutted to have derived the same
conclusion... and i did...
    yhwh is a phonetic study...
esp. given the anti-diacritical approach of anglican
pragmatism... it's not exactly what people
expect you to believe: circumcision and kippah
and niqab... that's for people who own
about... well a single book or as Erasmus could
have said: in alles reiche... including spanish
dutchland...                        it's not even
mean-spirited that i say it: i said once:
i don't want fans... i want snobs.
                                 any respectable man with
a following of siusiumajtki (a queer way
of saying the verb of ***** and majtki?
                          )maýtki? ý, yep, rarely done(
just means underwear... what the pop stars
get when they ****** standing up)...
                   i really feel like i should write
the second to last part of the poem...
   it's itching me to do so...
             i just don't understand why i see it differently
to how jack sees it... i treated it as the case
of two Adams... aleph and ayin being
the protruding vowels...
                i didn't treat aleph as a consonant...
  maybe i made a mistake in doing so... but akin
to the Greek principle and the rule of prefix and suffix
you cut apart omicron and get o- out and attach
it to ν (nu) - of course once you cut up ν and extracted
n and forgot about the cascade that leads you up
to upsilon - to get the word νo out from the pick 'n' mix.
unless i'm speaking dutch, then i think that
makes sense.
              why wouldn't aleph and ayin be vowels?
           Semitic languages aren't going away...
as is neither the semitic religions... forget it...
it's too complicated, adding to the fact that i'm
bewildered about treating vowels as women and
women veiled and women in hiding and consonants
as men... in the same way that the Latins hide
their children in English... children? diacritical marks...
where the **** are they?
      you get them scooped up by consumerism,
only about 10% climbed a tree...
          the rest are churned into premature adulthood,
and you wonder, with all these advertising
campaigns why most of them develop mature
negations of ease, in ref. to premature depression...
  you wonder... where are the children? swallowed up
by another set of pop idols?
          did they ever play with marbles,
or hide & seek, ever played games with girls
and toys and tic-tac-toe?
ever skipped a rope?
                         it's fading because it's being exploited...
so you end up with a song that prescribed this
poem, folk implosion - make it with the best...
from the soundtrack to the film thirteen...
as it stands i need a refill, and i'll probably cite
the poem by jack, giving about half a second's worth
of care for copyright laws of a dead man...
   just so i can see if my logic serves me right
in saying that hebrew has to variations of a-,
as in aleph (א) and ayin (ע), as does greek
  with thought (θ) and philosophy (φ) -
but let me get back to you on that one.

I've never been to China

I almost went to France,

I missed a flight to Russia once

I only missed by chance

Rome's intoxicating

The air there is sublime

But, I've never been there either

I just didn't have the time

I missed a train to Scotland

Bypassed Wales, and well Why Not?

There's nothing there in Cardiff

Other countries haven't got

I thought about the islands

Bui I do not  like the sun

So I thought about a cruse ship

Still, I've never been on one

Alaska, has the mountains

forests wide and big brown bears

But as you can imagine

I've also not been there

I thought about Hawaii

but I never made that trip

I thought about the hula

And I thought I'd  hurt my hip

I booked a flight to Cairo

Never went as you could guess

Saw a story on the news one day

And Jesus, what a mess

The pyramids had scaffolding

The place was full of sand

So I stayed home and watched telly

And then that trip was canned

I've never been to Ireland

or Cuba or Ceylon

And at the rate I'm going

It won't be long before their gone

I've thought about the Norway fjords

and lovely Swedish parks

but I've heard that all their fjords are filled

With big man eating sjarks!

I've never been most anyplace

I ever set to go

I'm not sure why I stayed here

I really do not know

Next week I have a trip planned

I'm not going to Spain

And then a fortnight after

I'm not going again!

it's a common theme, a pastoral even... a sing-along with the words: when i was in Rotherham... i was never in England... when i was a Rotherham i was never going to imagine myself eating falafel. yes, it's that ****** ugly, which is why i'm hardly a premature ejaculator into assembling myself as bulldog Brit - use the language: well, obviously... but assemble the other bits and bobs? can't happen... it's like asking: tell a Jew to not be a Jew by sitting in one place for a long period of time... the nomad in him will evidently counter that proposal and say: **** it! see you on Mars! and to think that i could have actually invested my life into a diameter that's Poland... people still find it a bit odd: oh, wait, are they back on the map? that's us, Jews of the north... can't believe we're being blamed for the failure of the treaty of Rome: all because the English stopped flirting with the idea of Turkey being in the union: even though they dabble in a lamb kebab after binging on *****... but hey, no one want to be a hypocrite these days... that's of course provisional given your Jose Mourinho relationship: is as special as you suppose with the lady and the trump; someone tell Disney to stop writing those ****** scripts! how thoughtful of a prophet-merchant (merchant of Mecca, Shakespeare should have written that one) to have encouraged the sigma-bleaching-project: one world, one book, one something or other: either the telescope or the microscope answers: otherwise evolving into ****-naked baboons and elsewhere furry Gucci to strut the feline ****; it's not like i want to go back to the past, but i certainly don't want to experience a Monday in the year 2086 either.

i wouldn't have been one of them, their services required
a nobility, which i can partially claim,
but partially discredit as:
a family squabble, where the Eden
project would have flourished -
because of the lies -
         but you know, no biggie,
or the notorious -
one part of my family actually did
settle in america with my seven
tongued great-grandfather *sprechen güt
it's necessarily applied here:
hence it's not gút: miracles!
                     who would have thought
that trigonometry bit into the *****
of those pixy, foxy whatever clot in the
English department....
that's the thing with immigration and
integration and ethnic cleansing:
when i write,
    the desk is as rickety as a bed when
i **** a *******
and she tells me i'm a decent chap -
and says a variant of awe because i paid
£10 extra to pucker her floral arrangement
and she feels ashamed at having had
an ******: and all the feminists are
out there, in the cold, with their banter
     slogans that reach Zeno via
turtle, as snail, to compete with Achilles:
yeah, that hurt, because you enjoyed it
on the hobnob you call a job.
******* pretty enough for you now?
   well: two ***** and a smoking ****** later:
it better be!
               people think that you can just
"integrate" into a foreign land...
they coerce a foretfulfulnes that you
sometimes practice etymology -
        and find yourself a bit like a Jew
but more of a Slav, feeling at most romantic about
the land that is cleft to your ***** in terms
of language patriotism still leech-like,
because you can't forget the asking
that's already there: from the Baltic Sea
toward the Black Sea: our commonwealth was,
and could have been!
          globalisation is so Emi ******* M -
you bleach throughout, and so suddenly,
people get bothered -
         like a Cluedo but unlike who did it?
who's who?
             i write this on a rickety table,
like i might **** an Amsterdam dame of the credo
in all that's left: red -
       baby, that brickwork with your chub
layers does it for me: always a Puerto Rican to
have a laugh with...
20+ years in England and the roses are still
roses, but nettles in some obscure Greece island
designated for offshore debauchery -
hey, no one is a saint: but give a little -
   have at least the remote humanity in you
to breed the ******* Beatles rather than an antiquated
variation of Breivik.
                obviously not to be.
i payed because i wasn't getting any:
hands up, sycamore! so scythe so more -
i just feel uprooted and Jew -
  dispositioned like i have to have an inferiority
complex tattooed on my **** designated for
halal butchers -
           there's a problem though...
i have patriotism with regards to the tongue:
but to the people? a true Conrad (minus the Joseph)
would sell you out, like you already
have: to the highest Saudi bidder -
           ethnicity reemerges - strangely enough:
even after all that ethnic cleansing that's politely
called globalisation: because English cultural
emphasis is plain said: ****!
                      a bunch of fairies say i can't feel
a certain way because it will hardly become economised
and benefit an inbreeding:
so i outsourced you there,
   Dover Monsieur without his Turk and Mongol
invaders -
                   you could call it romantic:
but i'm not writing from an ivory tower within
framework of the land that needs tilling by
a familiar hand,
                 the last time i spoke to a Pollack -
it was in a shady alley at night, debating the clues
to making a living on Ebay -
                  so much for the romantics -
fair game in learning the tongue, but to attack
ethnicity? you have to be ******* me...
they call it the exotica in England:
all that coconut milk went to their heads -
   Baltic coconuts? sure... once you start eating
the pickled herrings like us: quasi-Scandi devils.
     so ******* twinned with Israel:
they said Amsterdam was the Venice of the north
they said Edinburgh was the Athens of the north
they might as well call it Tel Aviv Warsaw
and Jerusalem Krakow - too little to be said
otherwise.
             you could say Moscow and St. Petersburg:
oh sure, seen a bit of the world: ought to be
a *******...           really?
       does the world need another Golgotha
congregation? i just don't see why i require
to give more than linguistic acumen -
i'd never sing god save the queen
because i'd probably sing queen save the taxman...
and it really is a shame i can't engage in
any sort of nationalism - whether over there
or over here, it's a true shame...
           well i do have a grand history to aspire to,
variously interpreted with what gets my heart
thumping:
          ogniem i mieczem - hussaria ginie
(with fire and with sword - winged hussars die) /
          krzesimir dębski:
which i also translate in feeling within
the framework of Górecki's (3rd symphony?
fun-*******-tastic reassembling jazz's double
base, or bees, or other variations of humming
drones: anti-thesis of the crescendo)
three olden pieces, no. ii -
and yes: without cinema classical music would
be dead... the only classical music these days
is cinematic transcript -
                 the complexity of a Liszt or a Chopin
is frowned at, what has remained and endured
is a Satie yawn - a brushing of a piano like
a dustmaid: a sort of accenting the silence -
nothing with a technical claustrophobia of
smug finger litanies of the abacus:
that swamp women's feelings with eerie ahs
and yesses in would be marriage proposals.
   i wish i could be a lazy Welshman
or a Scot that forgot Celtic in order to glorify
a Glaswegian idiosyncratic-syllabalisation
    of wee, as in small: high off my rockers
on the Afghani thought train that's *****.
  i wish i were that ****** lazy...
  as to simply let go of where i was and where
i wasn't...
       as someone in Cardiff once said:
never been to London -
or as someone in Glasgow once said:
           a banch of ****** all with the Edinburgh
Judases.
              i don't think i could ever
have enough lost self-respect to not play the ethnic
joker card without a romantic agitation -
but it's still the piano that truly survives in
the modern world of pop **** trance i-wish-i-were-shot,
any other name from american beauty -
once again: the minimalism is self-explanatory.
no, i don't think i could ever fully integrate:
and happy are those who have their
lives filled with the existentially trivial:
never moved home, never descended a class below
or rise a class above their parent's status -
what a grand scheme of lotto!
                    i love these squamish pixies -
i love them so much that i experience nausea when
hearing about their lot in life...
  after which i turn to a lullaby, handpicked,
christopher young's - something to think about
from the hellraiser franchise, or as i like to call it:
i like these sort of tracks, these life infuriating
   chattering:
              like throwing yourself into either
nouns or onomatopoeias:
                           and yes, art is difficult:
because it's supposedly lazy -
                   oh the plumber in me that never was,
oh the roofer of industrial sized roofs in me that
somehow was, but then wasn't...
            the part of me that writes like Joseph Conrad
but actually wants to scream:
                       zzé skury odrzeć! (variant: ob-      +
-drzec)    to strip the skin.
                 a z tym: nadać ducha gniew alter solo
wbrew temu co mówi, czyli: razem;
                    nawet katedra św. piotra nie jest
                   minimalizm zwany: Golgota.
              (and with this: give the ghost's anger
alter solo, against that, which says,
namely: together; even st. peter's cathedral
                 isn't the minimalism of Golgotha).

She was almost tempted
To jump from the bridge
Despite the crowds that
Passed, despite the coldness
And filth of the water below,
But she didn’t; she walked
On and slit her wrists in the
Hospital corridor instead;
In some dark place no one
Noticed until the blood
Followed her footsteps
Like a worrying child.

Two men stopped her
And took her to nurses
Busy at some sideward
Desk; found her in the
Corridor, they said, blood
Everywhere, doesn’t answer,
Though, we’ve tried that,
Won’t say a dickybird,
Maybe she’s dumb or deaf,
One man suggested, standing
Back as if to see her better,
Watched the young girl as
If for the first time, taking
In the blood soaked jeans,
Tee shirt, hands and arms
And turned away, nodding
To his companion, with a
One of those druggy types,
No doubt, suggestion in the
Slow movement of his head.

Then she was gone, taken by
The nurses behind curtains,
Low voices, murmurs; their
Interest slipping away, the
Men moved on, chatting
How Cardiff would do in
The next match, and don’t
Tell the wife about the girl,
She’ll get the wrong idea,
Then there’ll be hell
To pay, one said, walking
Through the doors into
The afternoon sunshine.

She was almost tempted
Speak, to say how the devil
Tempted her to jump, how
The voices told her what to
Do, but she said nothing,
Just watched the nurses
Dab at her slit wounds with
Wads of bandages and frantic
Touches of their hands, while
Up on the ceiling, she noticed
A fly buzzing around the naked
Bulb, looking for a way out
From death; just like me,
She thought, just like ****** me.

some of the poems i read i'm afraid of, someone crude would call them mediocre, but i don't have a heart for such words, i'm afraid of them for a simple reason: they're so fragile - it's like handling porcelain with these miner's doughnut hands and thick hotdog fingers, you really don't know what to do with such poems, it's the body undressed, covered in goosebumps and very little else.

sure, you can experience love, the love that's
you and her back in Eden,
maddened, raw, you can experience that,
but such love exists between a boy who
has two years past the teens, and a girl
in her teens, the boy had to invest almost
the same amounts of slush puppy **** as she,
music wise, literature wise, ideals upon ideals,
love is idealised, *** is perfected,
you'll end up gravitating to other people's
expression whether true or fictional,
akin to *kisses sweeter than wine,
stop draggin' my heart around,
fade to black, it's all there, bloodhound
soppy eyes - a variation of some sort of psychic
awakening in alter-psychosis - the variation of
a juggernaut moving about, it's love pristine,
not the love we call petting and paying the bills,
it's a butterfly's wing caressing your ear
while it flutters - it doesn't last once truths
enter and realities condense to custard -
the paint dries on the wall, the Antarctic tundra
freezes and polar bears start hunting (well, you
could call them loan sharks if you wanted) -
when Adam's tonic turns into Sioux's anodyne -
Apache Sioux knew the deal, while others
use the anodyne for parties and uninhibited social
interactions, others sedate - a good enough
reason to forget that ol' wives tale of: better have
love and lost than not have loved at all -
yes, it's there, a bit like first impressions of
a poem for dada day at the place, april 1, 1958,
poems tell a different story, novels tell a different story,
movies tell a different story, asylum Hollywood
captures the imagination, but not necessarily the memory,
music tells a different story - and all converge and
diverge within geometry of circa - so love, mm,
barefooted going to the mosque for curry at the height,
scuttling like a **** head down Nicholson St. (Edinburgh),
past the music shop where once it was all smiles
and approving gestures while buying an album,
what was it? reggae k.k.k., ah right, steel pulse!
handsworth revolution - the same shop months later,
the same attendant of the pulse of music - the words
'if you want to find love, go to Germany', me guess that's
'cos of the accent, he Scot and me chameleon -
Heraclitus knew this flux, changes and changes -
all that and the creeping to the zenith before tumbling
into Milton's opening of satanic inquiry via
fleetwood mac's the chain - bass guitar the real star,
mirage of former glories of solo guitars - bass guitar
the conductor of rhythm - and in so writing, a fly
attracted to my "idle" hands - as they say, the devil
makes work of idle hands - the bass sets the rhythm,
the drums hush for a moment so the bass can be
protruding - great admiration for bands that allow
the bass a ray of sunshine - tool, schism; so yeah,
you can experience this fable of ancient greek
hierarchy - lovers poets prophets - but you have to
invest prior, and by way of chance you might -
slush puppy pop and ideals and ideals and ideals -
i could have went to Bristol, Warwick, Cardiff or Brighton,
instead, thanks to Mr. Thomas Boon'tss (wet snare tss,
sweat from a drummer, instigator of poet in me,
the observer, the shut-up guy, played a jailor in an adaptation
of the Merchant of Venice - skylock shy, frozen in
the reminder on v.h.s.) off to Haggis-land we went,
and found love there, and found inspiration,
and found an iron maiden for our head there too,
and found madness with a keen eye for tomorrow.

We love urban, ice wrapper choc full, dense with matter, cream the power runs through, finding space, each cell. Unit, one by one, stacked upon deck, pile, floating concrete and multi access path. Crank each floor, glass patent steel, glint the Thames, Humber and Clyde, a boat in the reflection, slum cleared gentle penthouses on the other side. Dogged, ***** not allowed, Barking, Hackney, Toxteth, Little Ireland aka Cardiff gone. Dodo, hatchet, escalate poverty, high rise cool, the high rise flat.  Crowning glory, a sea of chiming memories, stirs the tenement cat. Swept beneath the paradigm, catapult off the parapet, somersault into a different time, moonlit skyscrapers, street sweepers become the concrete and the fifty foot glass dancers, cross between the cargo arches, gargoyles and shields bring them to the ground. The twisted metal of prams and brand new cars grind, traffic in drones, and the city drowns. Strip turn central, gorgeous girl, Hoxton lad, a touch too Dad, deposit on a Liverpool street pad, generation retro spinning fractal, money linear pavement uber yellow, scuttling insects and street martins, skylarks flying Saint Pauls cross and ball bearings, shopping centres unending. Biting into Cheapside, the hidden livers, gold delivers, pure to stay the shivers, the office block rises. Sharp bends, the bridge divides, shark rides the sky, dumps the bank and pierces its side, docks in every city worldwide, rivers pink with the ticklish blood of regicide. Pumpish, Victorian, sweet and blue, the older the City the quicker the glue. Mortar rectified a moment to ***** and overawe you. Shock, new wave architecture, backhanded awe. Brum pill wave beast eat your heart out, find another Chinese storm, currency blizzard, scales hardly balance, aha you had it, now you simply own. Own the moment, the pebbledash, corrugated roof, outside toilet and underground transit. We love urban, your moment we cherish and drain, there is nothing we can’t refuse to understand, too complex to refrain. Bounce as we ride the terrace and its suburban long train. Take your sweetheart on the nightbus, ****** him her, the hier of your plane, that’s where they will love you in the memories of the life near the top floor, and the final flight you were too drunk to gain. Seventy Two, you’re only thirty and you’re on forty one. You’ll fall back or you’ll begin ascendency. Shrink with wisdom, pick up the building, a tool, dreaming of scaling London, young a journeyman, jousters young son, learned, resisted the gun. I’ll fight with two hands, pile bricks or guide with a pen. Draw your city, write my memory, bind moment with every fragment, underpath, cycle through. Lights fading, jumping colours in the district where the girls who live the density beyond you and me, each element boiling their hearts and steaming potent New York’s paths. You had poetry in the apron of your mother’s lap, golden syrup and milky sap. You love urban, fifties bubble contrast in your seventies shunted through urban oasis and with that unknown factor, uber bijou, ‘Finding Nemo’ flat. We are urban, you are fashion, you are the generation that copied that, found the culture in the swinging city, post uni shack. Seven Eleven, Atlantic side heaven, promised more than double checking your watch before bedtime. Look at your daughter, she’s got ‘more than’ you hoped for, already in the palm of her sleeping hands, waking up to a metropolis only she will understand.

If I were to bottle this it would be

Fleeting moments of such deep joy it’s hard to recollect the moments of utter misery,
Of which there were more.

It would be bitter loneliness without the sweet tang of friends,
The ache of realising alienation isn’t about being alone.

It would be waves
Crashing into rocks after washing over us
Curling our ankles on pebbles
Tripping but running headfirst anyway
Toes in the sea.
It would smell like sun cream  
With the coarseness of sand
Salt and sun and summer.

It would sound like jazz time on a friday afternoon
Blues, show tunes and improv.
Empty balconies,
Wind
Leaves
LMTs
Conversions I listen into but don’t join.
Thunderous silence.

It’s white walls awash with laughter,
Paint fumes and flying
Fresh puddles
Stifled tears
The longing for something more.

my neighbour is having a solitary moment
with a wee bonfire in the backyard...
don't ask me... i watched his father trim the grass
a few hours ago...
maybe he's burning that...
or... whatever the reason... it's in the corner
of my eye... and the flame is big...
and small enough... that.. if warranted...
would make a great... theatre of soliloquy...
i'm yet to see a shadow enlarged
and gesticulating that it's talking...
with a raised arm... the other arm playing
the gratified ballerina when the applause comes...
hand entombing the heart...
      i'm yet to see a skull hamlet & co.
             "moment"...
                       so that's my neighbour...
i'm perched on a windowsill sitting on a folded
leg...
           and trying to crackle my throat
like a perched crow...
                the jay bird is of the same family...
        it's a crackle... i'm pretty sure the bird becomes
its new: "revised" distinct when bound to flight...
it's very hard to find...
boredom and existential exhaustion as...
synonyms... however back you look down the
entymological route...
   i couldn't have scribble: if only...
     i couldn't have scribbled this out of...
borne from a compliment to make "boredom":
a necessity...

          perhaps i am... existentially exhausted...
wouldn't you be?
if i were drinking some kalimotxo...
               or 20 beers... there would be an incremental
effect being felt...
which is what makes drinking a fun:
a social... something to borrow from:
"celebration": disinhibition?
                           only because of this one series
drama: sharp object... which made...
led zeppelin somehow "cool" again...
   in the evening... which didn't make it to...
the: the best of - led zeppelin double **** album...
either...
           so my neighbour is having a bonfire...
and there's nothing eerie about the silence...
esp. when there's a humming...
a fire is talking... but it's not the sort of fire
most associated with pine needles...
pine cones... and ancient oak...
           so he's doing that... i'm smiling... perched...
and drinking ms. know-it-all *****...
and... that's the problem with *****:
you have to wait for it... then again:
merely waiting is not a desirable affair...
and preoccupying myself with: "something else"
for a span of 20 minutes...
       waiting for a k.o. instead getting to play
the fiddle of grand itch-maestro with...
a if it isn't a cat nicknamed by schrodinger...
then all bets are on Pavlov...
                   but it's such a tiresome debacle...
had i made a video and had it... (x, y, x) of traction...
yadda-yadda...
          all the drama: soap-opera i could have
enjoyed... an imaginary street...
with imaginary squabbles...
        but none of the very translate-worthy
orientations of minor frictions...
         the bonfire is dying off...
the fire hasn't been fed dry pine needles...
or pine cones... or merchant oak retelling the story
of marco polo and... to the fire with me:
none of this... mahagonny sheen:
i fancy... a rough stone turned into a marble-esque
sheen?
                         it might just serve
a wooden hammer... to tell the difference between...
well... my initial presumption...
should lady justice be coupled with a gorgon?
lady justice and medussa?
  iustitia (who holds a sword and scales)
& prudentia (who holds a mirror and a snake)...

perhaps if Iustitia is blind-folded...
prudence can have her mouth stitched up?

but i'm still waiting for the ***** to kick in...
and so much for "fun" trying to find oneself:
with all the readily available knowledge and...
not... not: plagiarizing...
     or "jumping ship"...

   there truly isn't some sort of worthy compenation...
the served platter: the swedish table of...
all the foods presented... and you come
and stab at the nibbles... in a congregation of
those: given the advent of eating where:
no heart or its content is of a debate-worthiness...

beside the ancient roman glutton...
and... the well trained oesophagus...
          and regurgitation... and what was once
the celebrated icon: the snake...
would sooner or later have to be replaced
with a tapeworm...

    the serpent has had its day... and marble...
time... for the lesser creature... then again: perhaps not...

in "celebrating a drink of *****":
well... so much for... hunting a mammoth...
or... sitting beside a bonfire and...
telling stories or: dancing ****-naked
and dancing...

         i see no circus(es): beside the heaps and
heaps of bread: a character "assassination"
in writing...
sooner i'll catch a glimpse of a ballet choreographer
pirouette...
than know the difference between:
spinning an uncooked egg...
an egg soft-boiled and an egg: hard-boiled...

a racing track... equivalent to...
being hypnotized by... a spinning vinyl...
because... yore! that beacon of yawn rummaging
in the background of ambience...
and refrigerator drizzle of:
when falling rain became infused with...
electricity...

- alt. to "say" shish-kebab (let's be swabian...
and... "forget" the hyphen...)
like a toothless dog...
indeed... sometimes the tip of the tongue
teases the palet(t)e... hard or soft...
but sometimes the tongue-tip teases the top
frontal incissors: teeth...

where is the concept of the: rhapsodic...
the rattle-R... the quick... imitation
juggling of the tongue against the palete...
where the breath that involves
the uvula to swing like:
"for whom the bell tolls"?

                   do you see anyone taming
a ******* coch draig... anywhere?
this? this being "this"... "vicinity" of da-sein?
there-being: there's (there is)...
          on the moon... the alpaca trail...
in el dorado... in how the zulu tribe announced
a pristine: sod it...
          if only bulls were used instead
of horses: all that grit and armour...
notably of the cataphract...
                       if only bulls were used...
but: who's here to "rewrite" history
of that already, past... and inevitable?

the terrible has... already happened...
               í hiechyd ac tragwyddoldeb!
                          to health and eternity!
chiral: no...
     cheaper: no...
              i will find the "hark"...
   chosen... no no no...
                    similar (soft) to kid...
hybrid esque...
                 that "h" is not a surd...
verbatin 'e hie'....

                Olav! Dmitri!
Igor! meine hoonds!
                  ч - cheap... ah... roaming
in and around Midlothian...
                    loch ness! no prefix to suit up
a tux into... comes as a "surprise"
with the suffix: a loch...
                       х: hardly... k, s or c... or z...
xenophone: yuppy... aye aye...

              trag-wyd-dol-deb!
  zee velsh: sometimes the added same,
consonant... nurse! scalpel...
makes way for perfecting the syllable
incision... like so... trag-wyd-dol-deb!

   the lights have been dimmed on the tablet...
the battery life's longevity: expoinential explosion...
it takes so much little electric conversion
to feed the sap of sound...
that it takes to create blinking
and not blinking: murmur:
picadilly circus phantasmagoria of u.v. -

you can be crowned king deaf...
fall asleep with the radio... when the lights
are dimmed...
       no sooner me: no sooner you...
but... i'd much prefer the sound
of a fox at night...
than teeth gnashing... frothing: idly hungry...

all and no science: "or"...
all and no politics... "or" all of politics and all
of science... and most probably:
when the priest would wear a gown...
and the vatican remained neutral...
      
       etc. etc.              beside the vote:
or: woe... or woo...
        and such is the suffix association
with:      -man...
                    that there's some sexually
pervasive: attachment of either:
wooed by woe...
or... or...           to be woed by a woo...
  the beta gang would be singing:
bigmouth strikes again in a placebo
rendition...
                 because when you want to pirate
the original: it better sound just
a little bit more than then most...
    effeminate male available...
a morrisey will do jack ****...
you have to go full-tilt hindu and back
into transgender with
                                  a brian molko...

or at least that's how i concern myself
when managing to sit through
a production of tchaikovsky's ballet...
   beside the feet: what am i looking at?
spandex... the bulge?
     like it might be some covert name
for a battle, crisp on a piece of paper:
before the puff of a battle of crisps goes: pop!
in between the fudge of marrow
and the shrapnel of bone...
              here... i find my throne...
in a memory that's at best:
an amnesia...

             and somehow lodged in:
the... would-be... renting bums of dreams...
the squaters... the dream circuit...
when... in 1973... england drew 1 - 1
with poland...
                when being... just 7 years old
from 1966... an epitome for a very befitting
ending...
a closure... like any other...
             grandp'ah once said... once said...
and great-grandp'ah once said... once said...
sure as **** the logbow men of the 100 year war
weren't english... last time i heard
that churchill "mishandled" his V...
the original V voz viz zee velsh...
             index and ******* at
the fwench knights... since... if caught...
they'd cut 'em off!

                 V-salute! salute!
                           the blitzkireg overture...
         compound! no spaces in between: no hyphens!
der blitzkriegouvertüre...
        
   "together" come "together:... the disenfranchised
speculation of... what it was like...
to borrow from the first sequence
of the 20th century...

       and pass it into... what was it like...
acid neon: blonde... the culprit of bringing
the "congregation"
   past-participle: a romania a yugoslavia...
and a poland... nerve-riddled lithuania
and whittle estonia: etc.

      that grand boag bear o' ruzzia...
             wit' its ever persistent euro-fetish...
windows! windows! we need to see!
kandinsky translated into wind!

       on this democratic canvas...
           on this democratic canvas...
einz! zwei! drei!
     raz! dwa! trzy!
                   hey presto:
               on this demokratischleinwand!
meine stimme...
   meine: boo!
              meine: ghulrückzug!
               ich: bin zu sein gehört... ja?!
  
          this grand idea of a(n) european family:
get together...
   under the banner of: der VierteReich...
                the penned scribbles of
could always replace the boom-boom-'ombs...
and the brit-thai... would sit it out:
gob-smacked into shackles
and halos and angelic wings found
in the replica bargain of dry twigs...

the english sovereignty found among...
romanian root and fruit pickers...
              and if i too weren't lazy enough...
i'd have managed to find an atom-bomb...
glued my shadow to a wall...
and started a macaques' dance of freedom
from the magpie's cackle...
#metoo!

                   the cure and depeche mode made
it under the iron curtain...
the smiths? sorry... but i'm twice as likely
to appreciate them...

     the bass rummaging from fleetwood mac's
the chain...
and the bass rummaging from
pulp's wickerman...
            
                              canys y Çymraeg!
r. s. thomas...
                 that... battle of the season...
who is to know... beside auld lang syne:
whether the scots 'ave some gaelic in 'em...
except for the orthography: the diacritical & dialect
of somewhere akin to Glasgow...

  - that "unnecessary" war within the confines
of: the proud and selected: "empirical" and by invitation:
the trope... the welsh are...
are a silenced minority... and all that would
require "us" to confine "us" to "do"...
would be...
to stop thinking of england...
as a nation...
and... australia... or h'america...
as... a diaspora...

              clearly: "they" want to be at best:
and at worst: the distinct: genesis:
valkyrie first raiders...
in that non-essential war:
if the 1st world war wasn't...
seigl pandering lizzy...
sweden wuz neutralz...

                      woz she'iz notz?
            a pwetty pwetty: cobweb riddled face
like that of chris cornell...
               glue eyed but a background all
lacking in dimension for the sort
of immediacy of a curtain! cobain...
     yes: this is me... ******* on and dancing
on a grave:
last time i chequered my patience...
i found... the al fresco museum in a graveyard...
and the 3rd party artist working
on the marble... by gesture of wind and rain
and sun...

             how: exhausted by...
you cannot write an opera in italian...
to later translate it into german...
nor... clarity! sha! shtil!
                you can't... translate syllables:
like so... from... a japanese haiku...
into a... at best... a hiatus! a european sorting
factory of minor minded details...
of: adventure when licking a seal
on an envelope or...
a footnote that becomes a peacock
and a post-stamp when... detailing the affairs
of a piece of paper being governed by:
grieving having paired with it...
the metsphor / metaphysical aid of wings...

flake me: sire...
     boxing champ burroughs and all those
lost narratives that will never make it:
market a slow attention-span;
that's already available...

                          the muse my muse...
past the bob dylan and dylan thomas...
the priest and a cardiff...
        if only cardiff could boast akin
to how edinburgh can boast about
the old town and the royal mile...
and arthur's seat... and the craggs...

and... what women want...
mereditch brooks would never become
the next: the next to what next
of a... alanis morissette...
              never becoming... or being...
but all of that: for a continued cultural presence
of being in the recital rubric?
thank god for that...

quiet frankly? the la's": there she goes...
a little bit... a "little bit" irrelevant...
when you listen to the whole album...

the trouble with falling in love...
      is the trouble of: falling out of "love"
with one's mother...
                pursuit of the details
of a foetus... and all those details
of an unread book that staged its "fright"
on a bookshelf for circa close to a century...

             welcome party! or not so welcome!
i'd love to hear more about
welsh nationalism... since: on topic...
the scots have forgotten gaelic...
because of glasgow and being: oh so all
so-over pristine & perfect...
at least the welsh! oh god...
the welsh! on these isles!

hyphen! enter!
cymeradwyaeth

               cym-era-dwy-aeth
                      cym-erad-wyaeth

applause!­ and i'm trying: so trying...
to live for a liszt and lady gaga
as a summary of the jealous eyes
thst gave birth to bitter-tears...
yeah... fame...
and the cosmopolitan web of c.c.t.v.
"fame"...
the one already arrived at...
and the one pampered... with glitches
                               of editorial staff...

gu an cuimreach!
   - the escapade of keeping strict rigour / rubric
of being fed by adverts...
to have a buying impetus...
but not... the selling / haggling impetus...
from the cheap-*** moors and
the myriad of marrakesh:
   the berber: a latin for: hard-time:
quitting-time blues of...
            there are people still involved with
the a, z, via x q and... no readily available:
ph and th...
         because they were never...
the sort of brits... about to celebrate...
being conquered by ancient rome...
and ancient rome bulimia...
somewhere "circa": the baltic sea...

               - there's a "need" to be "coincidental":
pristine the developed mandibles
and the surname akin to singh...
        or... khan...
                   double that... for whatever reason...
and call it: Wales...
and then... the english-speaking conundrum:
"conundrum"...
and at best... nostalgia for 1990s
h'americana cultural export of:
fwends...

                    then: at best...
Wales is... Silesia... but at worst...
                    Ruthenia... and / or... Galicia...
that now Masovia is...
and how the Prussians were once
the fabled lot of the germanic left-over pieces
of a people: "******" by the standard
of teutons... or... what part of the glorification
of ancient rome...
oh, right... the parts not making
the germans the antagonists...
the "paraphrase" of the unexplored...

                    that only the english...
were to be so proud of...
a much later "digest" of... to have a "comfort"
within the confines...
last time i checked... there was pride in being
graffiti riddled as the afghanistan of
the ancient period...

             the unique history of island-dwelling
folk...
that they are... and i... can write
in their lingo: as... being devoid...
of... root...
              what is the great wall of china...
when what's already available...
given the la manche...
                                                       ­                 is...      
is not...
                 such a most pristine choice
of gentleman... and all!
and all! and all were tio be advocates!
and vote bound to stress!
king and country and the pickwick society
of: loitering gimps for worth of letters!

half a face divulging shadow...
half of which encompasses a play:
a ghost riddled... humanoid loiter
of exaspersation... and none... which,
would be most available...
to loiter... for the apple of Judas and
tht clinging... #30 pieces of silver...

thus wed: las vegas english...
      loitering actors' spew:
awound an Ilfowd 'n' Bawking 'n'
Dagenham... yo popsickle
'ipe and joy-c-c / jewc...
or whatsemfwench callz: sauz...
via dat: zu-not-my-*******-zoo.. ju...
plonkers & sons. (available)
jue: not juice 'ough...
******* kite-fliers!

            talks a cokckey slang like
a cherry... and that's...
the last left-over before mr. bangladesh
    before: quckie does one speakin'
"smart" did anyone any 'ood...

'oved up a 'arry 'n' the 'etter 'alf
of the... non-essential...
sounding "smart"
in cockeny: to be made export:
"loading essentials"...
is... hardly... the right sort of
***** avenue of:
escape from cwawddyff:
you... poke you poke my eyez
out... you... better start sounding
cockney shmartz...
eh: ja: herr?!

       **** it... whatever...
elt'z and etc. this bogus party back to...
and so call itz...
a limboz partez!

Myfanwy Price plopped in the armchair, sipped at her drink, gazed at the ceiling with a slight squint; spotted a drawing pin that broke up the off-white space like a boil on the buttocks. If Joshua Jones thinks he can drop me like a hot coal he can think again, she moaned to the room in her alto voice that clung to the air around her dark-haired head like a bad smell. Thinks he can do that to me, does he? I’ll show him, she mused darkly, holding the glass above her head, peering down at her slippered feet that lay there like sleeping puppies. After all I’ve done for him, the po-faced prat, she muttered, bringing the glass down to her lips, taking a sip as though it were poison. Just like her dad, dreary as dripping, chapel bred born and dead, at least in the head, she mused, crossing her legs disturbing the puppies, peering through the glass, imagining Dai Davies coming through the door of her bed-sit with an armful of flowers and chocolates, a cuddly kiss with a promise of more, as the evening sky grew dim as her brother Bryan, the kiss lingered in her mind and over her fantasy lips. Mum was right about men, she groaned, wondering if poison was too quick for Jones the Bones or whether she could smother him with a pillow as he laid sleeping in that squat flat of his, where she’d slept once in the single bed that smelt of onions and rotting flesh. She scratched her fleshy thigh, gave a sigh, pulled a face at her reflection in the darkening window, wanted more than wanton ***, the sight of Jones the Bones hanging from the window with his trousers round his skinny ankles, his buttocks bare for all of Cardiff to see and stare. She stood, poured herself another drink, placed a record on her gramophone. Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue, a daydream of being in his manly arms, and being squeezed, and adding her alto groan to that of young Buddy’s baritone or tenor or whatever. She waltzed the room with her partnered glass gave it kiss and squeeze. Remembering her dad’s stern face; his sermon voice that rattled timbers, she kicked her leg like a dancer, spun it round and round until it got dizzy; plopped in the armchair with a fit of giggles; spilt drink on her dress that seeped to her drawers; sniffing and sighing she poured it all down in a drunken swallow; watched the evening sky darken like her mood and tangled hair. Jones the Bones would pay, she sighed. He’d not lay her aside like an empty glass; go off for another to kiss and cuddle in his dingy flat with its onions and flesh, rotting and foul, she mused sadly, rubbing her breast, pulling her bra that had slipped in her dancing. Mum was right about men, with their ***** thoughts, their wanton ways, wandering hands over hills and stays. She stared at the glass; with a deep dark sigh, she crossed her legs; let the sleeping slippered puppies lie.

WAITING FOR THE TRAIN
                                                           ­                                                                 ­      
As we sit here in the the sun,  we all love to see her run.
The tide is getting low, a little farther out is where I go,
Just holdin my position in the show.

The train set is sure to be some fun.  
As sure as the sun will rise and the salt gets in your eyes,
The train set is sure to come.

When you hear her coming down the track, just be sure not to turn your back.
Cause as every cardiff ****** knows, the train set is why you’re here.
Just wait until you hear that  whistle blow.

She’s screamin down the rail,  with one foot set tight on that new pintail,
first look left, then look back, She’s lining up, she’s right on track.
Just wait until you hear that  whistle blow.

She looks so sweet heading down that perfect line.
with the sun  setting behind the peak,  underneath her shoulders we sneak,
just wait until you hear that whistle blow.

i sometimes smoke a cigarette and: chances are...
i might be drinking some red wine...
strange how the palette works...
sometimes the odd aftertaste of strawberries...
tonight of all nights: spring onions...

i don't like to be right about so trivial
matters as the result of a football match...
minor prophetic jargon...
but once the game finished i wanted
to celebrate being right: neutrally...
i just couldn't stomach the euphoria...
i rode for two bottles of the cheapest
red wine into town...
in the heaviest of rain...
i felt baptised...

         a second time: gladly not confirmed
the first time... for that matter:
there was no second time coming...
schtill nacht...
im diese schtill nacht...
it's almost like surfing...
the sensation you get: having made
a prediction... logically...
with all the required scrutiny...
you stand back: you surf...
or you ride a bicycle in the thickness
of night while it's raining frog spit...
the chains have come off...

i couldn't stomach a collective euphoria
of something associated with
a football match...
back "we" go... to our own personal
reality chequers: and checks...
it's nice to see how easily reality bites back
when we're no longer protected
by a collective cul de sac belief mantra:
hope is the envy of lesser creatures...
esp. when magnified into some...
common purpose...

there's a wasp sting in my tongue at the joy
of... seeing so many people resort to having
to comfort themselves...
to... perhaps tease introspection...
i don't think i could stomach a shared
euphoria...
i probably would: but...
collectively i wouldn't be able to pick
out... the solo reasons why someone
might be happy: because a football match was
won...

but because a football match
was lost... i could almost tell why a sadness couldn't
be shared - apologies for making
a Holocaust metaphorical-analogy...
each to his own sadness...
but over such a trivial: peg... of... pride...

it's like those people who complain about...
"having an existence... but not having a life"...
well... money troubles...
they have existence assured...
they don't have "life"... a lifestyle...
spending habits...
that might elevate a simple fact that
was too problematic for Frankenstein
to begin with...
i find myself glad...
to not have the sort of money that might
elevate this most precious fact
into a spending spree amnesia...
amnesia? memento mori amnesia...

the people who can be cited as wanting "life"
outside the stated fact of existence...
i made "life" from my prediction:
over a stupid game of football:
it's not exactly ballet...
i hanged onto the prediction...
i didn't gamble on it... there was no money
involved: i just wanted to be right
from the very beginning of seeing
Italy vs. Turkey... this was the team...
what would "life" offer me...
beside enough money to spend
to have a seat at Wembley...
become deluded by a collective wave of farces...
sing-along songs...
that would be life: life would only disappoint
me...
this "life" that's supposedly a tier above
being given a FACT that's: i: ex-instance:
i out of every instance...
preserve my will to match that of
the tenacity of weeds... or hyper-sexualised
insects...

have a life? hell... be a leaf:
waver with each passing wind...
to doubt is to enjoy as many crushing emotions
as that plethora of them that's love...

i can pledge alliance, otherwise: mostly to the tongue:
that i rather use this acquired tongue:
defend it from this... current... onslaught
of pseudo-communist
pronoun-shimmy-shimmy...
but i can't: just... grow to support a football
team: i can't translate this archaic tribalism
into what i require to be more...
sophisticated: that might tie me to this land:
these people...

ha... to convene yourself:
i don't want to exist... i want a life...
the old saying goes:
which translates into:
i want enough spending options
to have a lifestyle...
that's all there is... well sorry if i'm just...
content with what Frankenstein's monster
found so bothersome:
no airs... not an itch of sense & sensibility:
pomp & circumstance...
i would sooner return to the shadowy
enclaves of naked thought:
away from the Freudian schematic scrutiny
of man's secular trinity
of consciousness: sub- + un-...
unlike Frankenstein's monster...

i should most certainly not have the sort
of money that might allow me to
leverage choices that would
necessarily break me into becoming a silly
colt: reinvented...

patriotism: for the language...
why do i write in English and not in ******?
well... the fiddly bits...
i'm not going to ctrl + c / ctrl + p every time
i need to make an "inquiry": make use
of all the necessary diacritical letters...
i need fluidity... if sometimes i buckle:
i'll buckle on something more than
mere diacritical markers:
i'll buckle on some katakana / hangul...

mm-hmm... i think only Brazil has made it
to conquer the concept of a post-racial
society... it dawned on me...
how about all the african-h'americans
are paid their reparations with...
being given their proper ETHNIC identity back?
by now black is too obvious:
how about they get a chance to tell each
other apart: this "one" is of ivory coast descent...
this one is Nigerian... no?
so it's back to just being... "bleak"?
that's it... now i see it...
racism doesn't originate from ethno-centrism...
or ethno-clarification... does it?

ethnicity is so much more custard
when race is all but water...
after all: a southern fairy is not a northern monkey...
a Yorkshire lad is not a Cockney
give-me-up...

i pledge my allegiance: otherwise...
it won't be through a simulated football match:
it will be purely through the tongue...
expect more: i'll be a fake...
sooner becoming a home-grown Jihadi...
oh... i'm the failure of the supposed
quest for the integrated foreigner...
point taken: point... proved:
not in favour of the native populace...
if i wanted to be spewing automaton
integration bits & bobs like
some winded-up harmonica monkey:
should have asked for a Sikhs' turabn:
stating the ****** obvious: what success!

all the Scots were jumping joy galore
seeing Italy beat England...
i'm pretty sure they were...
mind you... why can you have an British & Irish Lions
Rugby team...
you can have Cardiff City & Swansea
play in the premier league...
with all the English teams...
but you can't have Rangers or Celtic...
competing?
it's team GB at the Olympics:
it's all UK in that chapter of sports...
but when it comes to football...
the united: not so much united...
sport effort...

you can have Welsh teams competing
with the English teams in the same
league...
but you can't have Hibernian being given
a stab at it?
i lived among the Scots for about
3 years...
come to think of it...
i came across more natives "up" there
than i ever came across natives
"down" here...

why do i think England is faking
a multiculturalism... it always faked it...
it begins with an Anglo-Saxon mentality:
we can't allow European foreigners to dilute
the blood of our ******* daughters
with these supposed ******...
feed them black aubergine **** first:
perhaps she''ll become tired of
all that fun... fun... fun...

look at me... i've given up on your future
mother... i went into the avenue of Turkic women...
Romanian women...
i'm not going to die on a hill of her
entitlement...
i'm not even going to **** on it...

i will not join this ******* jump-up piston-whip
galore...
all the allegiance to the tongue:
none to the petty spectacles of
the collectivised: rest in peace...
if Cardiff city be incorporated...
if Swansea can be incorporated into
the premier league...
why can't Rangers or Celtic compete?

i will persist in the Welsh being pacified
by the English: even though
the Welsh have a rarefied version of linguistic pride
that allowed them to retain their Cymru...
while the Scots dropped their Gaelic
in favour of writing: with their accent pronounced...
in ****** graffiti English...

i'm still leveraging my attention for the Welsh
with suspicion... leeches...
two-faced leeches...
those awaiting a nationalistic spontaneity:
they have retained their tongue:
the Scots haven't...
ah... the Scots... it's important to still trill the R...
hark: sing-along in English:
it's hardly important to speak a drop of
Gaelic... hell... even the Irish have forgotten
their lust for their tongue!
poker-faced Welsh... curious *******...
the most famous Welsh people not being
Welsh: Judas Brutus...

the rev. r. s. Thomas...
it's not Welsh is a makeshift of ****** that's
Silesian that heavily borrows on ******
since it doesn't have a hard nut of
Hans Sprech to stand on...
under what: union... Jack?

           comes with the Anglo-Slav territory...
sorry... the sort-of-Saxons
have been left licking their wounds
while their women have been
diluting their "sacred" blood..
**** happens: join the circus:
become a clown: live with with...
it's hardly a welcome resort that
might encompass the post-racism of Brazil...
but "we're" getting "there"...

i'm a racist overlord if i **** a black
girl:
likewise if i don't...
because i think of her skin as:
sandpaper....
conundrum after conundrum...
finally... living on these isles...
there are remnants of the Celts:
if you are readied: will prop their ugly
ginger bearded **** hairs up!
i'd sooner speak some German
than allow myself pacifying then *******
Russian Bolsheviks...
my own: biased scrutiny...

the wooden leg:
dropkick murphys...
if Boston is Irish...
then Chicago is ******...
              because you don't know what:
being... deported feels like...
because you don't know what
being termed "illegal" feels like:
but sure... allow what you currently
allow: because you're all for:
the grand awakening...
self-laceration tryst in the jargon train
of pardon:
now you recede into your...
"grief"...

                    when it's not about being right:
it's not... not right now:
it's about being self-assured...
it's about being: less glassy-eyed and more:
peppering the futures of man made simple
with: guided expectations!
i.e. the peacock verbiage synonym of:
the experience of failure...

of... FAIL...
so many lights became aligned;
i almost forgot to take a snooze with a better
worth of a blink.

What's the smallest living being on earth?
a graduate of music school
First class degree won with some leeway
but that can't pay for my MOT, no way
four hundred and thirty seven quid and 26p to pay
for new suspension ball joints and wishbone, wiper blades and an emission test pass grade
and now my car has scraped a "pass with defects"
I hope someone made a wish as the old bone cracked
as they took it to the tip with the entire contents of my bank account
I wish I was back home again, scared to answer the phone again
but now every phone call I'm praying for a gig.  

For nine grand a year I wonder how well she would do in the next few tests
if she'd have a long career ahead after a short rest or if she would still be run into the ground,
one day kicking the bucket at 90 miles an hour on the M4 back to Cardiff; I recently found
she won't quite make it to one hundred.
One hundred miles an hour!
Such power, so close, but no cigars for me any more - I can't even afford to smoke rollies.
When I'm seventy I'll start again
whether I want to or not, I need that one lifetime guarantee.
If I make it to seventy.
Hopefully boredom, rejection and ******* aren't causes of early mortality.

I was on a train out of Chorley
Happy to be sad to be leaving
Smalltalking strangers with a great accent
Hot and uncomfortable because my super cool leather jacket wasn't breathing.

Lancashire, you've made me think!
Actually, trains make me feel pensive.
Or was it Mrs Barton?
Bumbling and hypersensitive (in a nice way)

"Remain vigilant through your journey"
"Do not leave your heart unattended or it may be destroyed"
We'll get into Cardiff at zero zero six teen
That's technically Friday; there'll be drunks to avoid.

We're past Crewe and I know
Younger me made the right decision.
The path I sometimes hesitate to follow
Is bold, beautiful and scenically inefficient.

It twists and turns, trees stream
Past the train's windows
The sky looks lovely tonight
A candyfloss cloud for each of my woes (only three or four obstruct the sunset and they make it shine all the softer)

Mother of a lover, you said
You thought you'd never see me again
You often think of me, and will "follow me".
Facebook makes it easy to pretend.

The ship docked on the small jetty by a beach of white sand
lining the front of a jungle full of horrid noises and every shade of green.
There were a few huts that had been constructed by the natives
in anticipation of our arrival in this hot new land.
We were informed by the ship’s captain that they had been paid
with small gold coins that they would likely trade with other natives
for exotic fruits and sharper weapons and a few weeks’ peace.

The first night was a struggle, the air was as stifling during the day
and I don’t think any one of us managed much sleep.
The morning came as cold comfort as the sun blazed unobstructed,
beating relentlessly on our heads, feeling much closer than it did back home.
Gloria Noone, a middle-aged woman who had boarded in Cork,
had a look of perpetual fear on her face, the look of someone
who had experienced nothing but ultimate terror during the night,
and I had assumed it was just because of a lack of sleep,
but she soon informed us of something far more sinister than dreamlessness.

After a couple of hours of nocturnal turnings and curses,
she left her hut during the night and walked along the beach,
away from the jetty and out of our makeshift village.
Not long out of the village, she had the unnerving sense of being watched
and expecting to see a native by the jungle’s edge
she looked towards the mass of trees and saw horror.
An unearthly creature stared back at her, she told us.
All black fur glinting in the moonlight, teeth as large as great knives.
She swears it spoke to her, in English, repeating her name
with a deep, gruff voice that seemed to come from the whole jungle.
She ran back to her hut, silently, terror paralysing her voice.

Gloria stayed in another hut owned by a couple who had an extra bed
due to their only child dying of disease just before we set sail.
I could not sleep, as I assumed correctly that others could not either
because when I left my hut in the night, others were on the beach.
A man called Ivor, a giant from Cardiff, called me over
and said that he and a couple of others would walk down the beach
to where Gloria had spotted the creature and they would wait for it.
He invited me and I agreed, four of us leaving the village behind.
Ivor, Daniel the ship’s captain, Robert, a forester from York and myself,
a former teacher from a small village not far from Edinburgh,
sat down on the sand in silence waiting for horror to arrive.

We did not have to wait long in that tropical heat for terror to invade our hearts.
We heard the growling of a jagged throat and snapping branches,
all turning our heads in unison as two blazing orange eyes scanned us,
a tongue licking its nose and an almost human smile spread across its face.
Hello, it said.
Lovely night, it said.
I am hungry, it said.
Ivor, it said.

We jumped to our feet and ran as fast as we could,
screaming for everyone to get on the ship, and hurry.
I could hear the muffled steps of the beast behind me
and although I could not see it clearly when I glanced back,
I could make out just how massive the creature was.
Its shoulders were at least as high as a thoroughbred’s
but it was built like a massive cat, like a panther I had seen in a zoo.
It laughed and kept repeating Ivor’s name, putting in little effort
in keeping up with us, toying with us as cats toy with mice.
I could make out the others in the village running for the ship,
and as they reached the gangway that entered below deck,
Ivor screamed an awful scream as the creature brought him down.

The three of us stopped and turned, unsure what to do.
Ivor had already gone limp as the creature crushed his skull
and bit through his spinal cord, launching the top half and his head
into the air as the creature turned his attention to Ivor’s legs.
He chewed the meat ravenously, occasionally looking up at us,
standing completely still, mesmerised and horrified at the spectacle.
Run, it said.
Run, they said behind us.
We ran.

As we reached the ship, the captain unwound the ropes from the bollards
as the rest of us ran into the ship, grabbing the gangway,
ready to slide it back in as soon as the captain was on board.
He came running in, shouting at us slide the gangway in
as he continued up to the deck towards the whipstaff.
The hatch closed, we all went to where the captain was
but I left the group to keep an eye on the creature.
It was standing on the jetty, next to the hatch,
the top of its head so close to the railing I was leaning against.
It looked up at me and the smile returned to its face,
the blood of the Welshman smeared over his huge teeth.
No wind, it said.
I am hungry, it said.

I turned to face the captain and the rest of the group,
tears rolling down my cheeks as they creature jumped over my head
and ravaged the rest of my friends and villagers.
Legs and fingers and heads and arms and bones and meat.
All over the deck.
All over the deck.
All over the deck.
The creature stared at me, smiled.
Run, it said.
I am hungry, it said.

She said she’d only be gone for a week,
I saw her off in the car,
‘It’s not that long,’ she began to speak,
‘It’s not that I’m going far,’
So I waved goodbye and I turned to go,
I wish I could live it again,
For that was the last I saw of Flo
I’m missing her so, Amen.

Her mother phoned on the following day,
‘What have you done with Flo?
She said we’d meet in the market place,
Did she even set out to go?’
I said she had on the previous day,
‘Is she really not there?’ I said,
And then my mind kept racing away,
I thought that she might be dead.

I called the police and the hospital,
And even the Fire Brigade,
No-one had ever heard of her
Or knew where she might have stayed,
Then I saw a clip on the news that night
She was walking along in the rain,
They were filming down at the station as
She was boarding the Melbourne train.

A week went by and I heard no more,
I thought that she might have phoned,
I saw her brother and sister too,
‘I think that she’s left,’ I moaned.
‘They hadn’t heard, not a single word,
Since that man in an overcoat
Had called in, said he was looking for her,
And left her a simple note.

‘Catch the plane at Tullamarine,
I’ll meet you in Istanbul,
Pick up the pack from the man in green,
Make sure that the pack is full.’
‘I thought you were going on holiday,’
Her brother had said to my face,
I said I didn’t know where she was
She’d gone, with never a trace.

The bomb in the old Ramada Hotel
Went off, I saw on the news
The old city part of Istanbul,
They published a set of views,
And Flo was running from smoke and flames,
I saw her, clear as a bell,
And right behind was a man in green
In front of the old hotel.

They said a woman with auburn hair
Had dropped a pack at the desk,
And then had run, she carried a gun,
Was currently under arrest.
The following day, she got away,
Squeezed out through the window bars,
Then jumped in a waiting limousine,
One of the Russian cars.

I heard she went to Saint Petersburg,
Had asked for asylum there,
They’d said, ‘No way,’ that she couldn’t stay,
She replied, ‘It isn’t fair!’
Nobody wanted to charge her so
They flew her on out to Wales,
And that’s when I met her in Cardiff
Where we sat, with a couple of ales.

She said she had won an adventure
All hush hush, in an online quiz,
But had to deliver a package first,
‘I should have asked what it is.’
She said she was sorry not telling me,
I reached out and held her hand,
‘Where did you think you were going then?’
She said, ‘to Disneyland!’

David Lewis Paget

\alt

work-around title: Çymru among the Ottomans (Ę vs. Щ)

a propos: pre-scriptum... in the background demdike stare's - janissary , for one reason or another... the fantasy of being in the legion of either the janissaries or the mamluks... hell... let the sultan have his harem... he's still going to favour the slave girl from the north... Hurrem... give me this one ******* from a past of romance... this Khadaia... i'll see her once more just to catch her name properly: all i have is the prefix Khada- while she hushed the suffix... over all that's on offer in this playground of freedoms... hedonism never tasted this... limited... when it is so freely available... 4 years without touching a woman's body and then... resurrected with a pulverising urge to touch one once more: over the debacle of grooming a female cat who was eagerly entertaining trans-species ***... *** is ugly esp. when animals come to the fore...

in all honesty: i wasn't convinced when i initially
read the list of ingredients...
not at all: or one bit...
i wasn't going to read the instructions
or... watch the video...

   i forget which flatbread i used...
gözleme? no... there was a SH grapheme at the end
of the name...
not the SH of hiding the H with
a Czech caron:  š...
the Turkish variation...
               the cedilla "s":    ş...
certainly not bazlama...

lucky me: first the Turkish barbers...
then the Turkish prostitutes...
now Turkish food...
i had a similar fetish for Indian girls...
hardly a fetish: one uneventful
summer: should we say...

ah... here we go... lavash... flat... bread...
funny how...
oh i can just imagine...
the year when... the ancients stumbled
upon using yeast when mixing
flour and water... watching the first
yeast infested bread rise up
like a sunrise in the heat...

blame the French... or don't blame them...
it's hardly mesmerizing watching
a hot pan with a tortilla on it...
the earth would still be flat for thoese
civilizations...
or how... yeast was used to make:
wine rather than drink ultra-sweet
grape-****-juice of the diabetic h'arabs...

no... i wasn't expecting the recipe to turn out
as it did: better than the local Cypriots
making imitation turkish with their doner-kebabs...
all those raw vegetables to somehow counter
the grease of the lamb...
raw (albeit) spanish onions... i.e. sweeter
and juicier... raw iceberg lettuce...
raw tomatoes... raw cucumber...
pickled chillies...
two sauces... a diluted chilli sauce and...
yoghurt garlic?
i've been gagging for some yoghurt mint:
but no... no... none of that...

- now i'm back from the days of drinking ms. amber...
i'm back on the drip of "blood":
wine sooths... wine... progresses: slowly...
esp. cheap wine in the form of kalimotxo:
the blood of Montezuma!
a toast to Montezuma!
    gradual involvement in intoxication...
never a lag like with ms. amber...
never waking up still drunk...
             drunk in the process of drinking...
much better...
and when enough lubrication has been
downed: 2 bottles for a night worth drinking
through...
3 hours of sleep at best: but all this...
mind like a whirlwind...
ms. amber: you have stiffened me for the last
time... your supposed
cure for my ailments come too late:
i'm stiffened: i'm numbed by you...
i will no longer associate you with good
tidings... never mind my own deeds...
now i prefer a drink that will creep up on me...
there will be a statement surrounding:
succumbing to gradation...

- the same year the ancients
invested their genius / imagination into pursuing
the use of yeast in baking:
making flat-breads become sunrises
as they... started to ferment... grapes?
all the stags and the bears are in on it
come autumn when they fill their belly's full
with rotting... fermenting fruits...
and stumble around the world
like they might be inclined to acknowledge
the existence of Bacchus...
a bear's drunken walk: i can't match
with a dance... perhaps these words might
just suffice...

- come to think of it... since i'm in all my 35 year old
splendour...
i think i fitted the bill for being
an "angry young man"... most of us were...
but... thankfully... as i've aged...
i've noticed how so few people have
the capacity to drink some sense into themselves...
even Nietzsche preferred barbiturates...
i can't say that i would:
in vino vivo! veritas comes after...
animation... scandal... trenches...
at 35 i can say the anger has... slowly diluted itself:
i guess the anger was at youth itself:
it must have been...
to be angry at being young is every man's
ball & chain...
with two exceptions of Paris and Adonis...
now... the sweet melancholic cloud
that makes my sense of humour subtle...
sharpening my ridicule: since i'm still yet to
receive pointers on wit
and...  reactionary tongue-whip anecdotes...
oddly enough i picked up a copy of
Rousseau's the social contract & a letter
about spectacles...

why haven't i picked up Rousseau earlier?
mind you... with this tongue i now use...
i could never read Rousseau in english...
i can read Bertrand Russell in english...
but every philosophy book i ever read was
read in my mother tongue...
the tongue with all the fancy diacritical stressors...
"so-called" by the people
who don't use them... who have Charles Dickens
calling a spelling-mistake
an orthographical transgression... ******* to that...

- suppose i wanted to paint...
well... writing is not exactly painting:
Frank O'Hara noted how terrible orange is
on canvas: unless the orange stands as
synchronised by actual oranges
in a still life depiction...
orange elsewhere? on a metallic alloy
on a bicycle... i cycled a few schoolboys
once on my Trek Marlin and heard
a compliment about it...
i should have painted...
but then i like that self-deprecating joke
i once heard a Glaswegian say
in class: how was copper wire invented?
two Scots arguing over a penny...
i have diacritical marks for contorts...
and if i'm really desperate:
as i sometimes am: i'll lend an eye on reading
some katakana...

why haven't i read Rousseau earlier?
perhaps i was too stupid too young too naive...
perhaps i should have a tattoo of
Robespierre on my buttocks...
perhaps... just... perhaps...
like someone might have a tattoo of
Roy Orbison to counter all that's Hey-Lvis
in that waterboy flick...

wine is like oil on a bike chains...
for the brain... the wine tide as i explore...
a slowly breaking of the dam
of formality...
but i'm not painting: come to think of it:
i'd hate to paint...
i like skeletons: i like sounds...
i like to walk into a forest at night
and listen to some wild animal tender itself
on breaking a dry branch:
or... misstep on a crunch of dry
autumnal leaves... while i bask shirtless
in the moon on a throne of a stump:
where once a tree stood proud...

that there exists a culture of celebrity:
a vacuous life-support machine of cringe...
in my vicinity: some trees have a higher
status than "people" in the greater prospect (potential)
of the world...
of note... this tree: let's call it Henry-eta
near Chigwell... bulging: crass: entity...
breaking all manner of contemplating girth...
famous: by my concerns...
hard not to miss...
try figuring out: celebrity in a forest of pines...
stilettos or anorexic models...
by then: prostitution doesn't seem that
bad... that bad when compared with
what "they" do with the models...

skeleton and skin being adorned with:
a second layer of fabricated: skin... nothing more...
a body that grieves its former status
of being: mandible... all over:
i think of models as i might think of glass...
a shattering: a breaking...
a variation of... arthritis...

        oh... well... in between the wine:
ms. amber returns: like a stimulus... an injection...
to keep me focused on the cascade...
i'm yet to cover the ground of narrative
i was keeping fresh in my mind...
ah... yes...
of note... only in England...
the multicultural project...

  i still retain my native tongue...
in the privacy of my own abode: i speak it...
i don't speak English...
i speak English to the people who speak
English...
a formality...
English in England is a "lingua franca":
i pity the natives for not have enough
incentives to learn another European tongue:
i guess that's what's happens with
"spazzial relationships" in the shadow
under the yoke of cousin ******* the h'americans...
pity them?
oh no no... blame them...

who was Yusuf Stalin? a Georgian...
tactical subversion of the Russian people...
where is the Georgian alphabet and where
is Cyrillic, or Greek for that matter?
where is... Armenian?
"where" is code for: comparison...
   like the supposed people integrated into
English society:
these... born & "bred" types... typos...
they speak English... at least i can resemble
an Englishman...
most likely i'll be mistaken by some
quran pushing ****- as being a German...
insult?     (oi oi... mr. -stani, don't worry...
the English just slosh with slang sometimes...)

the people of the subversion...
they speak English but... ha ha..
if they only managed to retain their mother tongue:
perhaps something of England could
also be retained...
clamouring like ******* ***** in a bucket
to no avail...

Napoleon's ditto: a man who knows two tongues
is worth two men...
all these new integration projects
who want to integrate so bad... so so bad...
that they "somehow" forge their mother tongue...
talk English as the language of mediation:
it's not yours...
it never will be!
**** me... if all these people retained their
mother tongue rather than playing:
i'd feed you to the pigs for playing
this ******* drive-by stealing mobile phones
"gangster":

what if ol' Adoolph was Swiss and not
Austrian?! imagine that... no... wait...
you don't have to...

- of note: if ha ha h'america of the united
is supposedly this beacon: this success story
for all the english speaking people of the world:
it should: by now... be... a well oiled:
bilingual Behemoth...
like the Swiss "project": of the Benelux or
the Scandinavian heap of blondes outbreeding
gingers...
h'americana should be well embedded
in a fluidity of come English come Spanish...

if h'america could be a success story:
it would be a bilingual conglomerate...
i guess it's just easier to speak only one zunge...
no?
how many tongue arrived on these isles?
i should be learning Romanian come to think of
it...
no one is going to meet me half way
concerning my: tongue...
while these asiatic ******* abandoned
their mother tongue to play petty
gangster... i sometimes fall asleep:
counting teeth... i have no worthy comparison
with the point of sheep:
i like to imagine teeth...

how they become the lesser half of Mongol:
with their mongrel "forgetfulness":
if we just cherished the medium
of the tongue used to invite commerce:
real or meta-...
perhaps... we wouldn't be cycling through
Barking looking at people feeling comfortable
donning those Pakistani pyjamas!

don't get me started on the Rotherham
"livestock" affair... i have no sympathy for
not being ******: looking elsewhere
at ol' Turkic raven hair...
at £2 per minute i'm not going to...
suddenly... "suddenly" do what?
pity the high earner
while she *****-off the concept of *******?
thank god i still have *******:
which implies i can ******* with pleasure...
but while interacting with HER...
she can peel it back and i'm left with
her tender mouth and my numbed metaphor...

castration, mr. ******... doesn't feel so bad...
compared with having your "excess" skin
guillotined...
i started to ******* long before i had
any use for *******...
the thrill is in the shaft...
aged 8 i did it myself...
circa 10 i taught a boy a year younger
about the joys of jerking off...
in a bath... while my mother scrutinised us
while she ironed some clothes...
oh... the gloves are off...

it might be a bare knuckle fight:
but i wrapped a leather belt around them
for a sense of purpose... alias for security: covert...
if the beacon of the world
grew up: sensibly: as a bilingual federation
it was supposed to become...
what? the Swiss are all schizophrenics:
for having the capacity to use 2+ languages?
******* retards:
you live with the reckoning that:
some people deserve their own bollocking...
you hear it... in the distance:
like churchbells...
esp. at night... when the air thins out...
i have no sympathy...
no empathy...
the remains of Malcolm X's mantra of
how there can be a never-ending war:
a "cultural" war:
just use the women as ammunition and
shields...
they're dump enough: Sabine as they are...
bring women to the fore of warfare...
you're not dealing with Gaza strip slingshots...
you have invested yourself in: trenches...
show me a Panzer i show you a naked
white girl...
the prize for all these sub-Saharan gambits...
i don't want to **** sub-Saharan girls:
maybe Boko Haram might...
can i... tickle a Turkish *******?
wait: do i "have" to?

you bring women to the fore: this little shitshow
will never end...
drop an atom bomb: no difference...
the supposed "collateral" becomes
the biggest asset... mind-bending load
of: otherwise what a sword ought to do:
the biggest killer: compassion...

don't worry... the recipe is still invested in me
scribbling it down...

- persisting with all these: Asiatic bundles of
"integrated" joys...
living among these isles...
you begin to wonder:
now... i generally think of the Welsh as a bit...
cuntish...
but... at least they have this...
unnerving ambition to retain their:
Briton spreschen: before the Anglicans
and their Normandy landing quasi French
came along... the Welsh still retain their
*******:  Çymru...
i lost faith concerning the Scots...
they're just... accent clowns...
accent clowns...
          they trill their R and sometimes forget
to F their TH with: t'ings...
like their elder cousins that... perhaps:
might... usher in some Gaelic...
astounding: the concept of the Welsh:
because: they are more a concept than some
concrete evidence of nationhood...
oh: they're beyond merely organic...

some says the king's route was to mind:
from London through to Edinburgh: more like St. Andrew's...
all this time, though...
it was en route to Cardiff...

- of these isles... these glorious isles:
where's the Gaelic in a man from Edinburgh?
the Sikh beat you to that tartan turban
or something:
posers of accents... the whole lot of you...
one up with the Velsh...
at least they still retain their concept of mother...
and tongue...
accented pretenders: it's not what they speak:
it's how they might: speak...

******* sing-along sprache Gael...
i simultaneously don't want to stop writing this
as an excuse for: not wanting to stop drinking
wine!

back to that Turkish recipe...
i had to make a full roundabout at some point...

even now i still can't believe it...
frozen beef, which implies: it would be more easily
sliced into an imitation pancetta:
carpaccio?
        **** me: the whole bonanza of nouns!
most not "gender neutral" too!

wine wine wine wine!
bring me more wine!
wine wine wine wine: to hell with whining women!
wine wine wine wine!
bring me more wine!
she can't feed me... i'm the devil in the kitchen:
i'll cook my own!

the "government" of delayed words in
transit toward: a proper translation...
notably?  sunak...
   not aleppo pepper...
   not sunmak...
    ah... SUMAC!
red onions sprinkled with some
salt and sugar... fiddled with...
crushed... a dash of lime juice:
to get the pickling going...
tender hands of a Cyclops...
then the addition of fresh parsley
and some SUMAC...
that's the radish for you...

the meat? beef... beef and rosemary?!
fair enough: let's have "us" a go...
it only takes 10 to 15 minutes since...
the beef is sliced oh so thinly...
plus... the marinate:

4 tablespoons of oil...
2 tablespoons of red... white... either...
wine vinegar: for curing the meat...
after all... you dip any seafood into acid:
it'll cook...
Bolshoi cannibals of ambition
and all that ballet on the side:
raw herrings as: Baltic sushi in a creamy
dill sauce...

believe me: the Ottomans have interrogated
post WWII Germany...
they're stiches and tattoos by now...

tzatziki...
but the marinade of the meat only takes
about 10 to 15 minutes... since the beef is sliced
so thinly: from frozen...
the marinade?
ol' pestle 'n' mortar...
black peppercorns...
4 cloves of raw: living garlic cloves...
2 springs of rosemary...
sea salt... 4 kashimir dried chillies...

strips of Turkish mozzarella...
i'm of the persuasion:
let's see what the Ottomans had on offer...
the ******... the barbers...
this... pristine cuisine...
it sounds like: shuk shuk shugar shig shig:
chug a fog... chappy chappy chim-shee...

bound to the anchor of a revision:
of these isles... i'm starting to harvest more and more
respect for the Welsh...
i'm starting to suspect that...
the Irish don't require:
the Scots seemingly never will...
but the Welsh: forever will...
display their adamant decorum...
to keep in mind their mothers and their tongue...

let me stress is:
ich bin nicht Ęnglisch:
    lie down... szczeka: it barks...
Щ...              

Copernicus Copernicus: seriously:
where are you?! literally: "where"?!
not literally: a somehow a now...
    
counting matchsticks i presume...
to hell with these semi-literate folk who have
the supposed reins: yeah: now... for now...
but not when time is allowed to imitate space
and stretch...
the currency of shouting for "justice"
dies a death slower than a death succumbed via
a crucifixion...
i'm no sadist... i love animals above
the status of fellow humans...
but... there comes a time that...
i'd rather... savour the company of a dog...
above... someone that might resolve itself
to speak letters back to me...

- you can only insinuate when dealing:
dwelling on the furore of the Hebrews...
but in the confine of these isles...
i hae no greater respect than might be allowed
for what's already arrived at:
they have: KEPT... KADŁ...

      EI CWSG GYDA COCH CLORIAN:

almost every Jew will amount to the maxim:
i be: the citizen of the world:
which is borrowed Greek...
   somehow there come to excuse when:
strip-down... striptease...
the last of the Holocaust survivors is dead:
appeasing the h'arabs and h'americans
for their deepened trough and
monzzie?
  yeah: sure thing...
             me and my stupid
delusion concerning that ol' chestnut
of the certainty of death...
i'm not willing to pressure
the delay button... to be honest.

...the morning tv
...when your phone and your earphones connect
...mr. cardiff singing, i carry your heart in my heart sung with every song
...the opening line of your favorite radio show

...your mispronounced name
...everything on mute each time you have coffee
...your hands typing
...your seatmate laughing

...all the steps you take on your afternoon walk
...the moment the day gives way to the night
...thought bubbles on your evening commute
...your eyes closing.

There has to be madness for sanity to reign,

'do you need an ambulance?',
she asked him as he lay outside the bank
he replied,
'no thanks dear
I'm quite alright laying here'

the park was just across the road
it might as well have been in Cardiff.

The empty bottle told a tale
although
I couldn't read it well,
the time was one o-clock
and
the bell began to ring.

Off the Back of a Truck
The black painted truck drives about the country doing its job
Moving things from A to B and losing them in-between
Passing thru Chorley it drops a mountain bike without wheels
Going past Leeds it discards a new microwave oven minus door
In the middle of Rochdale it dumps a crate of empty beer bottles
Speeding in Yeovil the truck gives out used bullet proof vests
And at Aberdeen it abandons some PCs minus hard drives
For Cardiff the lorry leaves hundreds of out of date pizzas
Hours later in Birmingham hooded tops with just one arm are left
The ******* trail goes to Whitby where books of fake stamps fall
Onwards to York to discard plastic crosses with half a Nazarene
Back to Dover to chuck a hundred coffee flasks with drilled hole
On and on drives the strange lorry with its load of goodies
All are useless and no use to anybody except a fool or idiot
Like the one driving the truck on his nationwide dumping trip
Ticking each place off his list as he follows his map
A to ****** Z...




******* Upside Down In a Blazing Avro Manchester Bomber – Poems from My Life and More

Nick Armbrister