Paper Bag

I thought it was a bird but it was just a paper bag.


I've loved this song since my late adolescence. Because I can relate so much to the words.
Recording proved difficult with malfunctioning equipment but I think it was okay.
Inspired by Bob Dylan's 'I'm not here', I'm not here, certainly anyway.
I thought it was a girl but it was a just no one.

For A Fire Escape

Death is (not) the end

First singing I've done in some time. I felt shy and breathless and heart going bang bang bang while doing it and I think it sounds that way but I'm happy to be trying again. Trying to get my voice back. Everything I give voice to is just a hiccup in the back of a classroom or an echo in an empty lecture hall or hospital ward or a telephone ringing somewhere beyond wall after wall after wall.

Scribbles

Routines of arbitrary stillness

Love like a butcher knife. carved out, and blindly awake
as the star alive in the sky. pointing north.
A cadillac with a massacred paint job, bad orchestras,
hollow at the heart. Good riddance. you hear that?
We can cultivate careful flowers and preserve hands
like clay or lake water; delineate what I know -
all the missed calls, together trying to suspend grief.
I liked that version best. On the day before the war I woke
to forget safe, forget someday, to forget all I have done or can do.

Take memory of us as children, pale backs to the open air,,
unhinged and split down to the unsolved sum of their parts.
Language is out of whispers, out of dental floss, out of spines
and I want it gone. the gossip of eyes. Your face healing,
becoming wider, slicker, something peculiar, mystifying.
Chipped paint, my broken toes- here, eeriness is terrifying
and irresistible. We’re made into animals, into streets
then shadows, our ghosts finally unravelling in gilded seams.
The sun creeps down haunting myself from within,
heart yawning open, wider with each passing moment,
your empty promises of bones or something like that.
and your hands open, larger each time twisting away.
shuddering yellow as butter, as wheat field sadness,
right there in a parallel universe where this isn’t quite natural.

We were sheltered in spiderwebs, rundown by motels
with blasted neon. My brain has become a fuzzy blank.
I am sick of cries from the mouths of birds being poached,
colossal grief in the sky, grey slabs of meat, banality, lawyers,
a gesture, a mouth bruised for air, the thing you feel
teasing at the sutures, the faraway planet. We never get it,
maybe something close, but always something else:
a variable, some otherworldly energy blast from a hero’s eyes
and the high sinister jagged moon looking down on night
demanding that it hides different versions of itself.

We recited stories of dragons everyone knows and pretends not to.
The only thing I know is to be gentle, to be flaky, and too quiet.
There's floral wallpaper in a steamed up bathroom
and this sadness - the kind of fear of seclusion, window
on a ruinous heart, carrion catcher, sleep in the pits of reddened 
eyes.
contaminating poetry about love and bicycles, that 1920’s echo
in your empric mouth. I remember the laughter of people long gone,
an old whisper to an old friend, “Shhh, don’t spook them."

Fear is not one to reason with. Time zones in clumsy prayer.
How the mondays folded in on  birds, my willingness to spill blood
at every opportunity. Don't think about faraway fragile nests
and the whole dizzying unfair gentleness of it all.
It's 5 AM and what’s left is the delirium to pry dawn open.
An evanescence of being. Short-lived, sweaty. a shadow to carry
though it's smitten loud and an endless maw of your affection.
Suddenly, it’s summer. Suddenly, I’m unremarkable.
My heart getting weighty with the demolition of stars.

my own nursery rhyme

The way we were

Monster Love

My first attempt at stop motion (well, not strictly my first, but I have only tried a few times and this I actually did with a camera and tripod). Sadly I don't think I have the dispositional patience to make stop motion films as a passtime. 

Good touch, good night, good light.

I am trying to make a decision happy enough. Hello, you, welcome home. I am called this girl, I have not been deceived by myself this time, but the light is almost gone. It is black honey. We have tears, it is not a picture. Dead mountains, clean roads, all lovers in the shape of stars reducing their path through that of the least resistance. Night's girlfriend brings the radio- it carries a little song and tells stories that look like grace. We are thinking of loving and losing and forever and forevers. Balance killed us and left us, but Hope stayed. Good touch, good night, good light, kiss. Tonight, on the highway, you eat a fruitcake with a knife like a boy's face on the universe wall. I want to be like this, when someone said that a failure was accepted, even in a statement so far out of context. I will try not to think of my hands anymore. I miss them, but that story is over. At the beginning of the story someone says that. Christmas stockings, ice cold Cornish spindrift, everything hidden in hidden letters. There are many names in history, but none are going to be ours. There is no accident when the room is empty. Everyone needs everyone. Everyone goes where they must go. Those people think about the meaning of war. What can you learn from your enemies? Do you think this love will lead you where you are meant to go? If anything is meant at all. Love is a bad word, maybe. I am sorry but I don't know where our enemies are. Are you worried about getting up to the microphone? The story you know is just paradise. If you hear a phone call in your head, your eyes have only partly open. Your heart looks like car parts in your head. Seasonal falling is causing laws and explosions and Human failing is cause for the dead. As you understand, I take what I think, what you say, and when I still love it I will do it again. I do not really know what to do, but in this version it is a bit brighter, yet not bad for the black sky. We speak whispers in wooden houses, in low words like tents. I cannot cancel them out. Valentine's been destroyed. For forgiveness, I'd give it all away. We know that we have problems and we have to ask a lot of things. I am seeking further help.

Practice in editing- a short film

We're hoping to cover this song soon so should have an original version in not too long, but I thought I'd practice my editing and The Leftovers seemed like the perfect television programme to draw from because the cinematography is so beautiful and I hoped to make something captivating.

Bury the Junk

Basement

Tucked under a stack of dusty shelves next to a broken xylophone,
where I don’t have to avoid you. I thought I might see you
when the party moved to the garage, girls with red wine mouths
and men all dressed the same, their eyes shiny and lifeless
as marbles. I don’t want to be a broken faucet or the future of
electromagnetics. Just set on the idea of being clearly understood
and uncomplex. There are old carcasses grimacing in the sink.
I am happy because at least we are both alive, even though,
one day not long ago though I couldn’t say when, I petrified.
Ineedmoreofwhathelpsmethink. I need not to think of you at all.
All the leaves blown up from the pavements pile on the bed.
We’re all working hard on our dreams. Life didn’t meet the grade
last year, but I felt free, even if I was free just to realise
that I will never fit in. That everything changes with expectations
I’ll never meet and expensive wine I’ll never tell apart from
the cheap stuff and seeing clearly that some people have it simple
and that’s enviable because I don’t, but it’s also not obtainable.
Sometimes I know it would be better if I were a scarecrow
with hay bails for brains and good posture, a fastened-on face,
a purpose that everybody is sure of. I know for certain
a scarecrow would be preferred to me. I wonder what it’s like
to always think that your life is what everyone sees as just right.

Alfred J's Song

You and I then, let us go
when the evening starts to glow
and there’s no one else about.
You and I, then, let’s go out.
When the streets are all deserted.
Let us not be disconcerted.
Let's try this time to prevent
the ever-looming argument.
When no resolution can be found
Our talks and walks go round and round.
A circle's round without an end.
That's how long I want to be your friend.
Something’s sleeping on the floor
and I would much like to say more
but instead I chew a peach
and walk all lonely on the beach.
Wondering how to part my hair,
wondering how much I should care
when the one I love sits over there
at the window with a vacant stare.
Screw up the stars in a fist,
thinking of lips I should have kissed,
watching lonely people wait
for life to be served on a plate.
Evening growling like a dog
and yellowing in winter fog.
I hear mermaids calling me
from the reaches of the sea.
Maybe that's all in my head
and all the mermaids here are dead
but I hear their distant song
and when I walk here I sing along.
Do I dare, I have to wonder.
Double trouble boils like thunder.
I hide behind my smart attire.
I hide because I am a liar.
Knowing I am just the same
as everyone else who has a name.
Knowing a life built of fear
feeling far from what is near.
This I think is a love lament
though most of my days are spent
growing into my cold shoulder,
growing colder getting older.
I sometimes think what could have been
if I’d let myself be seen
but mediocre is my shield
and politeness keeps my truth concealed.
I am not a special man.
I have always done what I can
but what I can do is not enough.
I wish I was made of stronger stuff.
Wishes are frivolous to keep
and tend to keep you from your sleep.
I try not to think into the deep.
I cannot take the faithful leap.
It’s not quite lonely, but not otherwise
wearing always this disguise
and finding safety in solitude.
No wonder that they call me prude.
I know they laugh behind my back.
I know very well all that I lack.
I should have been a go getter.
I should have been so much better
but that’s just flight and fancy talking.
I would rather spend time walking
on the sand not wearing shoes.
If you don’t compete you cannot lose.
They call me Prufrock, sometimes J.
To them, I'm fine, that I'm okay.
All I am is what they say.
But I know I'm the one that will stay
come the hell or when water's high,
even though I know I'm shy.
I know happiness is best when shared.
If they only knew how much I've cared.

wordswordswords

And two poems, one very personal, the other very not.

Moments

What Didn't Flash Before Her Eyes

When she understood her first game of chess.
When she was runner up.
When she swam in the sea fearlessly.
When she heard the words I Love You struggle from his mouth.
When she landed on the ice and didn’t fall.
When she shut the door and was brave.
When she was sad because someone else was sad.
When she was happy because someone else was happy.
When she fell asleep on the train and travelled far beyond what she knew.
When she went elsewhere and came back.
When she learnt to identify fox gloves and two distinct birds.
When she read what Katy Did because she’d been told to, what Katy Did Next because she wanted to.
When she felt beautiful and invisible and good at his birthday party.
When she got an upgrade on an aeroplane and fell asleep with all the leg room.
When she broke a bone in a playground at night.
When she protested for peace.
When she photographed them smiling.
When she walked calmly across a stage.
When she made a statement about double standards.
When she was eloquent at the dinner table.
When she decided to let it go.
When she said goodbye and looked back.
When she said no and meant no.

I'm back with Knees, Fists & Teeth, Bookcases & Bathrooms

Sorry for my enforced 'hiatus'- I hadn't renewed my domain name and it took me a very long time to figure out how to manage the whole 'DNS' business but it's done now.

A few photographs from the latest Horatio James gig.

Visiting a friend who is staying at the same place I did for a few weeks quite a while ago, during the period of my transient psychosis that I cannot define from start to finish or ever quite grasp the chronology of, but remember otherwise so clearly. He has to remain there for a lot longer than I did and it's not voluntary whereas I volunteered to be there for the time that I was, due to being unable to trust myself and realising that I was 'disappearing', amongst doctors referred to as 'dissociating' or 'fugue states', and while I was 'gone', wherever I was 'gone', I was a threat to myself- the deciding incident was 'reappearing' into the present having very badly cut into my wrists with a razor blade, blood soaking my bed, my flatmate having to hold me down and use his hands to stop the bleeding while my other called an ambulance, and having no memory of doing it at all- not knowing why, not knowing how it happened, and worst of all, coming back in a 'flashback' mentality, which was very disturbing, leaving me unable to recognise my flatmate and ending up screaming and crying and thinking some horror of the past was being re-lived. It was traumatic for everyone and so I was safer being watched, and it turned out that being under the care of psychiatrists who were not focusing on my food behaviours and my weight was the best thing that could have happened- it was not the first time someone had suggested BPD, but it was the first time it was written in my notes as a serious consideration, which turned into a diagnosis, which in turn actually improved my quality of life- it gave me the opportunity for the right treatment, it gave me an education about the maladaptive ways my brain had been working or not working for as long as I could remember but had never been able to understand, and it gave me the support and insight and guidance I needed to improve. Inherent in the diagnosis is the idea that one can never recover, or 'get well', but I think this just means I'll possibly have to work alongside these dysfunctional cognitions and symptomatic proclivities every day for the rest of my life being aware of them and managing them. The difference is between now and then is that I'm not suffering anymore.
Visiting my friend was a lot of fun. I got to walk back through Dartmouth Park again. Perhaps next time I'll see if I can revisit Highgate Cemetary.

Her New Currency

So I have conceptualised this new character, and this poem is from her perspective- it's purely fiction and nothing personal and another life and I don't usually write like that. Anyway, she's squatting after running away from home in a place alongside some No-Good-Guys but she starts to live that lifestyle, even if it should be a frightening path to take, because to her what she has run away from- the alternative to this scary road she's going down- is far worse.

Shelter I. Gutted Building. A Whole New Currency.

People sit cross-legged on hardwood floors, leaning on one another,
relying on the ground to rest their heads upon-
some look like they are sleeping. The spell is broken.
Others look as if they are in anticipation-
I know what they are waiting for and I still half hope for that too
sometimes, but it’s never again like the first time. The spell is broken.
Disappointing and irresistible, like so much that came before this.

Watching shadows bounce off the walls like the apparitions
of giddy children, watching the walls dissolve to let in the tide
of the blue streets and radio tides. New bodies washed up yesterday.
Maybe that’s why we are here, having to face what we thought
we were eternally free of. Being caught. Between one colour
and another, between a belt and a tap and a needle, between
the incisors of death. It’s just another windless evening.
Even the lighthouse that I occasionally think I see is in my head.
It’s safer in the wasteland. We sleep with the lights on.

I stroke his face, because it’s close. The partygoers’ ghosts
piling up in a sanguinary of star trails. We won’t be found
and that’s what I am really here for.

Here is the memory of mercury in retrograde,
of falling backwards and letting go but never shifting the clasp
on your elbow, pulling you back. Here the rooms are smeared
with red, crowded with developing photographs, not real people
or real faces. Instead, just their underexposed, wrongly-exposed
after-images. After the windchimes shatter, after the sky turns
into something molten and time becomes a revolving door.

I feel my thoughts dropping like pennies in a fountain,
a currency nobody uses anymore. Somewhere I think of doors,
and of an undreamt summer, but I can demolish that from here,
from the middle of nowhere, and if I can’t, I’ll run away again
for the last time into the breathless night. Remember,
things are known and not known and between are doors.

Dream Sequences

The Contents of Pandora's Box