.perhaps in my company we wouldn't be... opening a bottle of red wine... to let it breathe... or pouring it into a bowl to give it more air to breathe with: otherwise on life-support machine through the bottle-neck... right here, right now, we have... a glass bottle of beer (13, guinness hop lager) and 4 cans of stella artois (the wife beater's lager, so they say)... yes... beer in cans... for all intesive purposes - a good way to transport beer... in aluminium cans... but we're not bums... we don't drink beer straight from cans... we pour our beer into a tall glass and wait... so the beer can exfoliate like aladdin's jinn in the glass... away from the confines of the can... we don't drink beer from a can... we can drink it straight from a bottle... but if it comes in a can... we pour it into a tall glass... just so... so there's some head on top... we're not english in that respect either... of cutting the head (of foam) off the beer... which is probably why i always order a stout in a pub... you can't pull one without the creme de la creme on top... a head on a beer is what makes it look less like carbonated **** or concentrated lemonade... we're not bums... we drink beer from glasses... never directly from cans - the metal gets in the way... a beer like a wine needs to breathe too.

i found that there are only two types of music styles
that are suitable for drinking -
that's... drinking and not going out -
playing a cat with an imaginary fireplace...
the less imaginary fireplace being:
a stare confined to... watching a pillow...
and the general schematic of a bed...
and sitting hunched in imitation: all crow because
no crow doesn't get you far
on golgotha of daydreams: if only i...
humble servant of dusty feet - the tourist,
the pilgrim - would set off...
         on an amphetamine riddled skew into
a messiah complex adventure...

                     but not me...
                once upon a time the only music
worth drinking to was the blues...
            a long, long time ago...
                hell: once upon a time any music
would do if we all decided to go dancing...
or at least waited for the dance to come of its own
volition and not mine: i.e. the me in i would
just be dragged under the teasing waves
and slurped out to sea...

                   a thousand waves are all but the single
tongue of some swindling kraken...
drinking and random shamanic interludes in
the youth of the night-club...
when there wasn't a tally for score or...
the ones shot down by manfred...
good thing he was called manfred...
   and not some swabian helmut! oi oi!
                                             von Richthofen!
and that was when...
           until came the five beers and on
the 4th it became apparent...
                                  the red garland quintet...
soul junction...

   and it's not... a gerry mulligan's night lights...
piano sentimentality and the ode
to all things urban, cosmopolitan...
                        yes... it's not grenadine in that
sulk of yours... it's cranberry juice...
the city and... the sewers and...
                                 jazz for the urban scenes
of: anywhere but the park...
the graveyard... a choo-choo slowing into
a station... and billy joel come:
mid-life crisis and a new york state of mind...
while over 'ere we have...
     teasing the woods: where concrete ends
and mud begins... thus we can have our Adam...
and...

only today i was walking past his bride...
doing my odd citizen duty of recycling glass...
and buying the amber sedatives (carbonated)
for an evening with some cannonball adderley
or some donnie byrd... or a horace silver...
that's the beauty of jazz...
the music is all there is... the names come and go...
sonny rollins and the story behind
the bridge... and how he would pretend to
but not pretend to... retire and go off and practice
on the bridge so as to not disturb his neighbours...
all the details are there: on the vinyl sleeve
from 1963...

now that's jazz... i don't even want to mind
how pretentious this might sound...
but... it doesn't in that: jazz is jazz in that there
might come some great improv. -
after all: it's all somewhat improv. -
   but you can't really make such basic
generalißations...
        speedy-shoom-of-a-choo-choo whizzing past...
schematic!
   classical music is all a priori...
                              jazz... it's all a posteriori...
how? when people phone in between
1pm and 5pm to classic.fm and they make requests...
they sometimes ask for something specific...
but usually... they vaguely allude to... a feeling...
something "uplifting" - play something "uplifting"...
ergo... there's this... a priori "item"(?)
in the music that's... an expectation...

          i do know what jazz sounds like
a quintent: drums, bass, piano, trumpet, sax...
yes... the guitar... asking the algorithm:
a quintet is five - what is six?
        sixtet - d'uh... sextet... well that's the basic
"i know what jazz sounds like"...
but with jazz there's always this lag...
it's this lagging behind:
    i don't exactly know what i'll feel until
only after i've heard it and in the meantime too...
jazz is all a posteriori -

while classical music for me is all a priori...
given that... it's not exactly improvised:
there's the orchestra, the movie, the script...
   and it's such a music that doesn't worship
itchy fingers of improv. - the stale or rather:
the head-about-to-explode of scoring the music like
a dissected **** of beef...
the cuts for the violins the cuts for the woodwinds...
more so: the almost shy drumming...
the wet-drumming... like rain playing
rattle fingers on tin (roofs)... or what rain would
sound like... if it was made from sand...
either way... jazz is a baggage...

hardly any sort of envisioning a journey from
(a) priori through to (b) posteriori -
and at least with jazz... you never have to really
cite who's playing... in a passing gesture
for all necessary bookmark purposes
of: where i am in the library of jazz...
unlike in classical music... where...
it's either Mozart, Beethoven or then again...
some obscure composer... perhaps ola glejlo...
but it's less about the music per se:
it's about the music of THE composer...
bonus marks for keeping to a rigid diet of one
and completing the herculean task of digesting
his entire oeuvre...

-       so i was walking past the most usual scene...
a car stopped... and she got out...
she must have been no more than 16 pushing 18...
the heavy make-up hid her otherwise boyish
contorts... a short black dress...
and as she got out of the cab...
she had her high-heel shoes in her hands...
   she was walking the cement barefoot...
i peered into her eyes... the lights were out...
perhaps her soul was screaming - perhaps this was
her first disappointment - and it was only... what...
not even 10pm on a saturday night...
my nights of youthful regret usually came after 3am
having to wrestle a berserker...
or how a dog looks like when it takes
to beer with a fond heart and only three legs...
god forbid but "they" would also cut my tail off
to further throw me off balance...
the walked passed and i looked into the cab...
a very, very nervous asian was looking at me
and then her... this didn't exactly look like...
she was ***** or was fighting to escape...
           aren't those scenarios usually stage in and around
woods - without any pedestrians walking past?
call it a trainwreck a carwreck...
                      or just running mascara...
that bad, eh?
at this point... society is a cruise ship...
and i'm stuck with ottis and none of that sentimentality
of the dock: running away with a bag of
chips wrapped in newspaper away from
seagulls... who... are apparently prone
to kleptoparasitism - a real thing... i swear to god...
the animals that want to eat in the realm
of trans-species... dogs have had their
kleptoparasistism repressed: crumbs from the table...
the chicken bones with hopes for
cartilege and someone who... is bad at
cleaning the flesh off the bone: pucker up...
move aside leech... watch this slurp...
ol' hank mobley and wayne shorter...
        one cascade after another...
5th beer in and...

yeah... so that's what a carwreck looks like...
for a girl in her late teens...
the cute black dress...
   getting out of the cab holding her high heels...
walking home barefoot...
she wasn't crying just yet...
but i could see puffy tender demon baron
of the soft cheeks readying to turn into
medussa's stare-grip... but not there yet...
this must have been her first time at "life"
and the night life and saturday...
         the cab driver looked scared shitless...
as if frozen in time... about to have his photograph
taken by a more sensible shadow of his...
i did think she just escaped a bad
session of prostitution...
but not even prostitutes look so ******* gloomy
as she did...

the ******* ***** it up -
the pundit ***** it up - the show goes on...
stage or no stage... an audience or no audience...
those eyes though... not yet crying...
but they felt... like wheeping oysters nonetheless...
you know when eyes are like that...
teasing bulging out... they appear dimmed
at first... but that's a dimming before
the sparkle of tears...
it's the 29th of febuary - yes...
mr. zodiac wasn't kind to those who still believe
in the horoscope but never tried
gambling on a winning team or horse...
it's still winter and those poor feet of hers...
she must have told the cab driver to stop...
hell... half a mile before she would get home...
a 6ft2 115kg sore thumb up with a beard
up ahead: stop! let me walk past him...
that's why i gave an inquisitive stare at the cab driver...
the cab driver was looking at me...
aren't the **** victims the ones jumping
out of the cab as it speeds off or whatnot?
so this was... staged?
              i read the "situation" wrong...
well no... i didn't find a lancelot in me...
there was no door to be held open...
           not tonight...
                                           i was in a mood for
beer and jazz... and luckily for me...
marvel of all marvels...
     haig club (1627) was sold at a bargain...
                        down from 25 quid to 16 quid...
goodbye excessive drinking the cheap *****...
hello: clubman haig... is it whiskey...
is it ms. amber... or is it chanel no. 5 -
                   is it whiskey or is it a perfume?
a snapper of a dinner standing-up...
   the scent of the last bite still on my moustache
even though i had washed my teeth...
the beer bottle opened - a drizzle on the hand
and then the hand smearing the liquid all over
the stinking hairs from an unwelcome scent...
i don't mind stinking like hops...
                  but hops is better than smelly food...

- regrets? ah yes... the "what if" universe at large...
that "whaf if" this and "what if" not...
"what if" yes and... when a man takes to walk
the street at night... he's only looking for empty
streets and... the hope of not seeing his reflection:
which is never about abruptly stopping
a cab and taking your shoes off
and walking in a tight-knit black dress
having met the world and...
                     was it heartbreak or just...
disappointment that... there are no unicorns
and she isn't daddy's precious?

any of the rudy van gelder editions...
                      "what if" i had more than just these
words... a barren wasteland of a flat
with no furnishings, not a book to call it a genesis
of a private library... not a single record
to play... no bed no curtains...
and she was the: honey-catch and snare and...
what if i were still in my late teens and
didn't have these invisible tattoos of historical
dates and the tattoos that riddle bones
that are... "habits of hygiene"...
      by hygiene i imply: ontological fixtures...
immoveable objects of accumulating my mortal
years for this formal circumstance of
the worst magic trick of all...
                   transient and... packaged elsewhere...
apparently going nowhere...

if this was a truly urban scenario...
but we're talking essex...
the outskirts of greater london...
if i bothered myself tonight i might go
to a place where i'd sit on a throne of a stump
of oak and listen to owls...
spot a rabbit, spot a badger... the foxes would
come of their own accord...
and perhaps even a deer or two... or three...
there's no glit of a picaddily circus romance:
when a girl decides to get out of a cab early
and put her porcelain toes on the wintry cement...
as if: supposing she be enticing me...
as i was thinking about the scared-shitless
cab driver...        

to have once upon a time believe in love:
the sort of love you'd see in movies...
but that's of course...
before you'd get a chance to see love...
in opera...
blue pill red pill... spiderweb of fiction...
blah blah...
watch the sort of love in movies...
then go and see an opera...
most notably verdi's la traviata...
  the movies fizzle out and you don't really
need to read this to begin with...
        i was in love once...
it was a love that was in love with itself...
          a mirage a carrot on a stick...
probably something akin to this sort of impromptu...
rescuing a girl walking barefoot home...
oh sure... happens almost every other saturday...

- the beer is for these musings, for the jazz
and for... cleaning the kidneys and a work-out
for the bladder... the shot-at-a-crescendo
will come with the haig club whiskey...
is 70cl really worth 25 quid?

- there's a difference between food with a USE BY date
and food with a BEST BEFORE date...
most notably goat's cheese...
once the best before date expires...
which is way way down the line from
the use by date... the cheese starts to taste
like... ash...

i should know since i know of the alternative
to doing shots of tequilla...
the salt is replaced with licking some cigarette
ash...
the tequilla is replaced with *****...
and the slice of lemon is replaced with
black peppercorns...

so i do know what ash tastes like...
piquant tastes: this omelette of an octopus and
of tongue...

- society is a cruise ship and i'm waving it goodbye...
welcoming a sunset of a sea as calm
as a mirror... telling my feet to take root
and stand... inaccessible...
otherwise... i am barren when it comes to having
some (h. p.) lovecraftian sensibilities from
maine... aloof and anemic... anemic with bloodshot
eyes...

- of course she isn't a mystery...
the narrative would run: the little match girl...
hans... hans! hans?! hans andersen is drilling
a hole into my head about... a woman walking
home barefoot...
yes... but she is walkig home...
unlike the little match girl...
and unlike the little match girl...
this girl was carrying a pair of shoes with her...
it's not my problem whether
i'm the sore thumb that "got in the way"...
a fork in the road: like any other fork...
like any other road...

do you have to reach being 34 to see these
teenage break-ups and regrets come and bump into
you after you've done...
that most spectacular feat of towing a backpack
full of glass for recycling?
where is one to recycle bones?!

- right not all the ***** in the world is...
something of an adhesive... a hitchhiker pollen...
a hard-on of: ****** yourself for a hard-on
just because even flapping a pancake will do right now...
to ease constipation whenever necessary...

- it's a torilla... but it's wrapped like a burrito...
well... it's a torilla... kultur shock -
sarajevo - the entry level shock-awe and
blitzkrieg of drinking from the fountain
of the Haig...

- second tier... to treat pornographic movies
like... early cinema... silent...
otherwise a return to the magazine form...
and the ripe imagination readied for:
improv... or... when was the last time
my left hand didn't feel like an oyster...
and an oyster didn't feel like a leash...
and a woman's ****** stopped being
an hour worth 120 quid? -

             - third tier... the haig club whiskey
is not worth 25 quid... it's over-rated...
you're basically paying for the bottle...
i'll stick to my guns...
only the irish know how to make whiskey
on these isles... bushmills: mellow, tame...
the picts have decided to lodge
a smoking salmon into their barrels to die...
i'm supposed to have an aftertaste of vanilla...
with all that smoke... i'd be happy to taste
hungary and smoked paprika! that would
be a bonus to boot! -

- i can appreciate the picts for trying...
but let's just leave brewing whiskey to the irish...
and let's keep the english away from hops...
they'll make an undrinkable ale from it...
never the lager...

   - armed with balkan rock... standing before
the h'american monolith of tongue and culture...
or... just before what's filtered for the export...

- no... of course i don't think h'americans are dumb...
i just think there's only a naive majority...
i'm going to find the vermin and huddle among
them...

- sooner or later we'll be calling the germans
come spring... for winter provisions...
"keeshond" or: hund... i much prefer the latter...
from under the iron curtain forged from
a broken jaw when biting the curb of:
under the silicon veil... nowhere else to go...
beside Ishrael...
                        
          remains of the ottoman - which is hardly
me put into an iron maiden of akimbo...
where's the geisha and the samurai?!

- is your beard long enough?
      like mine... i tease it... catch it with braille
cardinals: the thumb the index and middle fingers...
twirl it... wait for some thread to tie it together
into a hanging ******* of a bundle...
while at the same time:
          before you... a throng of vermin...
this beard... a magic flute!
the zenith of my thinking...
and ultimately: the nadir of any narrative
that might be inclined to escape and
not become 3D...

- i listen to songs in german...
i put on airs of pride - my chin starts to contort into
the moon's scythe and sickle...
even if the night is overcast with beard,
or cloud...

- then i put on a record that's 20 years old...
deftones' white pony...
and i remember being a teen...
hungry for hormonal diet...
a diet to stop the bones from aching
as they grew extra sprouts:
adverse to the skin and photosynthesis...
bones that were expected to grow
entombed... not in flesh...

- sketches from the gasoline additive when
it comes to a beer, starter...
otherwise: elite... gonna breed on top
of the general... pucker up the tremor for a vibrato
kiss and leech her lips off...
to expose her most pristine:
todlächeln -
                           not a chelsea grin...
the joker lapse... i mean... extending the shaving
lines and just, completely, forgetting there's
any botox involved to grow a peach
from a duck of the reinvention of
the deflating balloon...

   leave no selfie without it...
                   herr grinsen: die / das / die / das...
i keep forgetting the definite plural and
the definite singular... feelz... feels...
maximum impromptu: das bösartigwimmern...
anything in german at this point...
sounds better than...
wenigbruder englisch...
                       dies, mein krawatte beste...
alle schwarz alle weiß:
      say to me... nein pinguine willkommen...

anything to keep these mosquitos these
zeppelins away... alt vater großartig Schwab
from this... herd of minor dicta
of the children of the house of ßaß...
translated nomad from the high pressure
***** basin of:
later, trajectory... later... the yawn and canyon...
and the sky above...

- beer first... whiskey after...
shrapnel... and gasoline... no car... no speeding...
fast but otherwise still walking...

            - a hurrah and the cohort of a hum...
to match the echo of the centipede...
         the silence and otherwise the simplified
complications of a conversation...
the bed torn between *** and sleep...
between saturday sunday and monday through
to friday...
   and the need to drink with someone else...
"the need"...
          
the skulls breaks at the sight of sea-riddled-and-*****
cliffs... daggers persuaded to be forever sharpened...
the fiddly parts of ***** as accountants when
it came to the pennies, copper, and granules
of sand... seized: the rivers of time...
constipated shock value elevated...
                            
                                am i to find a lover when
the orchestra tells me...
these words will never find a dear sir / madam
or circle round for a yours sincerely...
                godzilla... the theme i remember from
the days when the japanese still had control over the beast...
otherwise... an overweight t-rex with...
arm extensions... the lotus feet of the chinese...
which also includes...
the savory diet of... tendering dog meat...
i.e. beating the dog to a plum softening...
which is: then again... not curing the already dead
curated meat...
life aware needs to be involved...
brick by brick brick on brick...
the status quo: made in china...

         cheap whiskey... although in an expensive bottle...
that is the haig club whiskey...
        so much for ezra pound admiring
the ******* ideograms...
what's to admire... when...
it ends up being a crude...
current latin emoji-infiltrated grafitti
equivalent to: CUL8R...
               chow-chuckle-mein-hong-shui-chew?
all that intricacy into the ideogram...
and all that remains is...
bat soup... and an advantage at playing
poker... omnivores...
you'd think that Islam would be...
more geared to break ranks among the omnivores...
like all the fickle gods... a good joke...
they abhor / are told to herd sheep
because: what sort of pig would survive the desert
and not become crispy bacon...
camels are fine too... as are their testicles...
never mind the pork leather shoes and pork
leather belts...
but the chinese omnivores are fine by
Allah: Muhammad & Co....

                               khadijah **** khuwaylid..
wrote the first surahs of the quran...
she was the literate:
the stephen vizinczey epitome:
                          in praise of older women...
last time i heard... muhammad was illiterate...
pray! that i've exhausted sympathy on
him being an orphan...
but not a ******* oliver twist thrown into
an orphanage! b'ooh h'oo...

                     the end... the whiskey isn't going
to drink itself;
as i have exhausted the patience of my bladder...
while there's the remaining concern
for a bewildering and a simultaneously
bewildered peacock... on the hunt for coy;
which is not exactly the darwinian daydream
of the short-hand greek alphabet...
the α-β male thermodynamic...
          the Σ-Δ female harem...
salmon swimming up-stream to spawn...
                             and... Ω-man / unicorn...
                     sha! schtil!

i've sifted through all the youtube videos
of vloggers and...
i'm not sure why i don't go back to
listening to BBC radio 4...
it can be said: you either "move up" to talk radio
from having listened to classical music
or you "move down" and listen to jazz...

i only watched a snipped of:
sometimes always never - starring bill nighy...
and i wanted to watch more...
but... nothing came in the way...
i felt like sitting in the kitchen on a stool
drinking a san miguel beer and smoking
a cigarette: come night i've shot all the birds
dead... there's only me never wishing
to sigh... the vacuum and some wind...

how did i get drawn into vlogging...
i will never know... i listen like a patient
parent and it's still: knock-knock no one answers...
because... this isn't BBC Radio 4...
so a welcome return to... being my own d.j.

in and out of whims... today's whim...
grant green's: green blue...
when jazz is still somehow the blues...

it's not an urban myth...
when the ****** alcoholics became desperate
and there was a shortage of *****...
they'd filter a bottle of denaturant through
a slice of sour-crust bread...
yes... that fluorescent purple liquid...
methylated alcohol...
        and here's not me writing about going
to an irish catholic school where...
they would teach 10year olds about
the pit-falls of sniffing glue...
no mention of LSD mind you...

oh yeah... they would filter the denaturant
through a slice of sour-crust bread...
and then drink it...
otherwise i don't know how they ended
up a tier above drinking perfumes...

competition... competition...
is it always about competition?
what about jobs that are fixed... and do not
allow competition...
how there's a rigid schedule and what not...
i mean... a self-employed taxi driver
can compete... but it's hardly possible
for a bus driver to act like a taxi driver...
not everything is a hand in poker
or...               irregular plumbing...
and sure... i too would be jealous of
all the *** elsewhere...
if i weren't the piston and the sweat and...
the only joy i ever got from ***
was seeing her moan...
                      and that's... toothpicks compared
to when you can be walking through
a square mile of pines and only pines...
and pine needles...

- nonetheless i had to make sure...
is a haig club whiskey worth all that it's worth...
at 25 quid per 70cl?
if it wasn't on a discount... i wouldn't...
i'd stick to the reserve...
problem... well... you can sell beer in cans...
provided you have a glass to pour it in...
for the cushion of head of whipping cream
to sooth your lips on...
you can sell a beer in brown bottles you can
sell beer in green bottles...
you might get away with selling beer in
clear bottles: if it's a corona beer and -esque...
but you can't...
you simply can't get away with selling
whiskey in... purple tinged bottles...

the haig club is a ******: over-priced whiskey...
what's with the scots brewing everything
so smoky?! to begin with?
i get the smoked salmon... but no...
the irish at least allow their whiskey
to mellow... sweeten a bit...
you can drink an irish moon down and out
through and into a dipper of
the lips making plucking sounds befitting
a connoisseur...

but the gig is up when you over-price your
whiske... only because you're selling it
in purple glass bottles...
again: is it whiskey i'm drinking or is it
a perfume? i might as well be drinking perfume...
good that the "whiskey" was on a discount...

interlude: finally melville caught a goldfish
and all of his wishes were: let it be a whale,
let it be a whale, let it be a whale...
      
there's no way in hell getting away selling
over-priced whiskey...
just because the bottle looks "groovy"...
and it's all purple...
as i already mentioned...
    purple... purple reminds me of...
those desperado alcoholics from under
the iron curtain who would filter a bottle of
denaturant through a slice of sour-crust bread...

whiskey and purple... sorry... ms. amber...
and they're selling this over-priced ****
like it wasn't supposed to be equivalent to
a commoners' bells' whiskers 'n' scratches...

a girlfriend of the remains of a bottle...
if you see a tank parked... and it's not a warzone...
let me know... i'd love to gear it up
for a salvo for, no particular reason other than
to make up for straight-lines with a zigzag...

these four walls, this roof... this floor...
this irritated bladder...
this hope for an 8 hour kipper and for midnight
not having to be extended toward sunrise of
a 6am March...

off-the-cut when writing comes this...
spontaneously and lazily...
like it might be reading a proper fold-out
of a sunday newspaper in england...
a harem for each time i ****** off
and performed a genocide into a tissue
on the throne of thrones...
and subsequently took a shower having
simultaneously taken a ****...
and all things remained swan-esque:
monogamous: or waiting for her to come
to aged mid-life and in crisis...

what with: the children or the cats?
the cats or the grandchildren?
i have yet to come across a grave with
an epitaph...
                        again... some reading into:
marquis de sade: i'm waiting for my libido
to fizzle out... otherwise what shame
is there... when i'd need a harem...
a solo project doesn't even help the matters...
so what shame is there:
it's hardly going to turn a profit
if i plug in... **** please oh please
myself on cam in a sultry room...

last time i heard: all that's needed is a toilet
and a screaming ****...
there's no need to broadcast the whole affair...
then again... this was only going
to be a critique of the haig club whiskey...
sold in purple glass bottles...
over-priced...

in a love paralysis... esp. concerning
the "enchanted" periods of lapse of attention
to mind the and any details...

that the monolingual will play a game
of scrabble or solve a crossword puzzle
is his testament to not bothering to learn
a second language...
the bilingual schizoid debate...
or no debate...
                    
a bed fit for two... but then my shadow is
a glutton and a miser and a...
everything that's supposed to be scortched
under the sun...
melted from sand to somehow make glass...
coy fear: the music of...
leaving vacuums and absences...
and cringe...

                     if this was only ever easy...
i'd write this to later don a niqab...
         but lucky me there's a difference between
the french public intellectual...
and an english public intellectual...
of the latter: the public yet not aware of
media scorn... "free media"...
as free as tabloid papers come tomorrow...

a swift hand on democracy... a quick shuffle...
a bit like an iron grip in autocracy...
as long as there's no focus...
no trained eye... a mirage of a "passing of power"...

how overtly faux pas politico of moi...

                   lazily creeping toward golgotha...
and all those exhausted images...
a richard broutigan would call it:
slouching toward...
                       that others live the fullest
and their lovliest...
that they have teeth and grit and sandpaper's
worth of skin to itch a sketch with...
applause! applause!

jerks off every night...
but never makes a single buck from it...
as "others" might... doing it before a camera...
then again: *** is not exactly a flick
light switch either...
neurological patterns and what not...
the lost cinema - the everyday cinema -
the holy trinity of **** **** and *****...
the genocide of scrambled eggs with no yoke...

otherwise know as liberation
from not being circumcised...
                            and no other crescent motiff.

you don't sell whiskey in purple glass bottles!
over-priced, an apology to ms. amber,
outside the bedroom there's still the obvious chance
of keeping up with...
the queue at a supermarket cashier's...
there's the polka-dotted umbrella...
there's the luftwaffe precision pigeon
dropping a proper blitz "cranium" on
a bowler hat in trafalgar sq....
                     there's all this tsunami of the mundane
that keeps the clock a worthwhile
artefact to keep to mind the horizons and
pitfalls of a single day...

call it the heart of the house: a clock...
call it an itchy hand when the trouser pockets
are empty...
call it a *** note...
my god... a return to a formality of language
via a dear sir, letter...

       none of this is to be minded as:
yours sincerely / faithfully.

How to stop time: kiss.
How to travel in time: read.
How to escape time: music.
How to feel time: write.
How to release time: breathe.

-Matt Haig

Well, the maps were quite ghastly, you know;
We’d assumed the Frogs would have a pleasure cruise,
All baguettes and brioche, up the straits.
We’d no idea the Turks had dug in as they did,
As the spooks and their charts
Revealed sheer cliffs,
Harmless as Dover.
Nor did we fare much better on dry land,
The topographical atlases we had in the field
Might have been compiled by Mercator himself.
The Turks fought quite well;
One gives them a measure of credit for that, one supposes.
Frankly, we’d have been better served
If we’d just waited for the de rigueur internecine slaughter,
What with the ease they’d hacked each other to bits
Over some ancient family squabble or inconsequential tribal matter
(Can you imagine civilized peoples
Fighting to the death over such trivia?)
I suppose such cruelty and boorishness
Should have not been surprising.
They wouldn’t take prisoners, you know;
Just shot our boys *****-nilly,
With no regard whatsoever to honor or military convention,
Though it should have been no surprise
That the swarthy ******* would not play by the rules.

It sits there on the sideboard
Or on the mantle shelf,
And after such a long time
You don’t notice it yourself.
But should you have a visitor
Or younger child come by
It will spark interest anew
And gasps of “Me oh my!”

It’s then the curious wonder
How the ship was put inside,
And where the opening’s concealed
And was it hard to hide?
And if you put it in there
How many times you tried?
And if it went in through the neck
How could it be so wide?

It’s then you tell the story
Of going to the store
To find a bottle of good clear glass
With a shape worth planning for.
Dimple Haig is famous,
Carduh’s pretty fair,
The first one is triangular,
The other one is square.

The bottle must be decanted,
When empty cleaned and dried,
And a careful measure taken
Of the dimensions inside.
It’s then you render drawings
Of the ship you want to make,
And plan out going backwards
Every step you’ll have to take.

First you carve the hull
Of wood with grain that’s fine,
Then step the masts with hinges
So they fold down in a line.
You add the sails and rigging,
Check how they’ll *****
When’s time to pull the halyards
Through the bottle’s neck.

It takes months to finish
Doing a little every night,
I had my children watching
And remarking at the sight.
They saw me put in plasticine
To mold and shape the ocean
And carve wave crests with a spoon
To give the water motion.

When at last the time is right
And everything is ready
You carefully set the ship upon
The sea and hold it steady.
Then pulling on each halyard
The sails are slowly raised
And those who watch the process
Stand enchanted and amazed.