CCCCI: Good Metaphysician / Bad Metaphysician (A Cop Show)

New Cross
Thursday 3rd November 2011

Morningish,

I’m still inside. They think I’ve been let out,
but I haven’t. I’m still locked up & lovelorn, reading Ashbery.

Yes, you can go & get a job in the monument industry,
but remember tombs die too.

So while I was daydreaming as to whether I would ever be described as a wayward troubadour
by the editors of Discombobulator Magazine, I awoke from my slumber

to the more prosaic task of weighing up whether my big aerial will get past security at the beeb.
They let me in at Angel, but perhaps that was divine intervention;

I have absolutely no idea what corporation health & safety procedures are for Beelzebub
& I have a feeling that neither a quick flick through Paradise Lost, nor

a repeated scanning of my box set of Miami Vice will make much of a difference.
20 years ago, when I was a young metaphysical poet, I posed

the speculative question: how many teeth does a Blackpool donkey have?
The reply from my more pragmatic & realist friend was “well, why don’t you count them.”

I didn’t count them.
I’ve always insisted on this.

& tonight I will be nibbling on Woganesque hospitality at the BBC Television Centre.
It makes a change from navigating Pac-Man: it is sheer panic -

an activity that makes Resident Evil IV look like Little House on The Prairie.
& when I finally draw a line under this near life experience,

like a good metaphysician I’m dying to try death.
Abandon game? Are you sure you want to end this game? Yes.

Until tomorrowish
paulie x

 

CCCC: Puck Empson

New Cross
Wednesday 2nd November 2011

Morningish,

More commonly associated with ice hockey,
the remarkable claim by Puck in Midsummer Nights Dream

that he ‘girdled the earth in forty minutes’, has been theorised by William Empson
as a reference to orbital escape velocity.

I can’t skate.
I can’t swim, or eat skate,

but I once wrote a poem about roller skates
being barred from all the off-licences in Burnley, Lancashire.

The poem is swimming with the carp
somewhere in the Mersey after a traumatic karaoke bout

featuring repeated renditions of The Beatles Revolution No.9 at the Pendle Witch Inn.
In Slovenia people used to say to me ‘better red than eating hamburgers’

& contrary to V.Mary (Mother of God);
& contrary to the advice in the guide for self-preservation:

a canny expression is tombs die too (Roland Barthes).
The death of the author was precipitated by a sauntering laundry van in Paris

rather than six crack pipes &
there is a visceral pleasure to writing in the same breath

as if there is some intense drama going on that beats
the commonwealth games butterfly:

ideas floating at the level of the signifier, not wanting to plunge the deep end.
& in this way, it is also possible to acquire an infatuation

for the aura of being active, the plague
of being an activist; of mucking in as a scapegoat, or burning effigy –

the insistence of a recurring cultural imposture
(or dreamscape perhaps).

& then the Mars people said they would like to help.
Do we really want to see the Mars people on daytime television with Holly Willoughby

erecting Scouthouses in Welling? Be careful what you wish for, or, alternatively,
don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Bowie liked Spiders from Mars &

Bournville Village could have been Ambridge,
except with The Archers driving backwards & forwards to Birmingham

buying a new fridge for nothing (at least today) &
getting the car exhaust fixed.

Now that would be Modernism, the South Bank, the Barbican, the Gauche Proletarriene;
but instead it’s all about contaminated sausages & ice cream;

something similar to over-exposure,
or a Sicilian Godfather eating McCain Micro-Fries.

When the chips are down, you can’t beat a bit of anti-aura &
I enjoyed watching the Story of Film:

an Odyssey, anti-narrated by Mark Cousins from Northern Ireland.
I don’t watch films,

but this was a film in itself & his poetic ‘breakdown’
of American Cinema 1967-1979 is well worth watching eating McCain Micro-Fries etc.

& that’s it until tomorrow,
if I can overcome this flagging excitability.

Paulie x

 

CCCXCIX: Dante’s Olympics

New Cross
Tueaday November 1st 2011

Morningish,

Like Robinson Crusoe,
Desert Island Discs makes being stranded on a solitary isle

feel like pottering around in Whitstable listening to Slayer, or worse.
I did time yesterday reading about Dante’s own Paradiso

which includes a moon landing plus the ascent &
descent of a Jacob’s Ladder.

I used to eat cream crackers all the time in the tree-house
of a northern stately home called Towneley Hall, surrounded by Mynah birds & conkers.

The mynah bird (unlike the cream cracker) is often compared to a banjo &
it has been said that chunks of Dante’s heaven

sound rather like the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympiad
with Leni Riefenstahl, or perhaps Lemmy from Motorhead: we live in an empire of trauma.

I’ll leave the last word on crackers to the Florentine himself -
you shall learn how salt is the taste

of another man’s bread & how hard
is the way, going down & then up another man’s stairs (angel station, northern line, 1987,

escalator defunct) I knew the middle regions of heaven were
like the london underground.

Until tomorrowish
paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXVIII: Can’t Write Blog so Done Poem Called What is Time

New Cross
Monday 31st October 2011

Morningish,

In Dante’s time, there would have been a trip to mars,
or a moon landing, some glowing firework
inside & nothing but violins
among the bins & donkey jackets wearing heaven.

In the 70′s I used the rim
of a brass coin to rap on the door of life,
hoping for the 6am call;
the last orders of eternities curtain,

where any activity might pall
into a purge drinking with the sun still rising
over Stalin, a steep learning curve
if I could only get in & join the revolution, then I mentioned his name.

I spiralled, Escher through hell, with the bonus
of a ouija board lodging in the constant wreath of smiles, living light,
which, from the fountain of light, cascades in ribbons
that don’t unite paradise.

Paradise resides with militancy -
being cantankerous in the face of rainbows at night.
Eternity is a fair stretch,
the smiles, at least, partly offset the impression; time being nothing

but what is; waste a lot of it; but what is
almost resting in torpor, beyond the human suspended.
Until he moved there
was no before or after hours,

it was always
open & I was just loafing;
but had I been made earlier, or known my bloody Bleasdale,
I would have been born redundant in the empire of trauma

like the laughter of paradise in Milton’s time, ladders of
lightless words casting their fatal shadow, the last
post on the bugle ascending, or, more often
descending, like a great, great grandfather.

Until tomorrowish,
paulie x

 

CCCXCVII: Frankenstein loves Fridaymic.

New Cross
Friday 28th October 2011

Morningish,

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
my batteries ran out & so

the creation of the myth of hamish henderson has occupied my friday
following an evening soliloquising in the vanbrugh.

Tai Chi with Trombones resumes this evening at the 120th Open Mic at the Star & Garter.
Bob Millar would no doubt tell me that 120 is the atomic number of Unbinilium,

an element yet to be discovered, so expect many
theoretical calculations of evaporation cross sections (& open mic slots)

This is our 3rd Halloween Party at the Star.
Dress Code is doctors & monsters (or whatever you fancy really).

There is a video here, if you are short of ideas, as I always am

http://www.youtube.com/weshouldgetaboat

Saturday also looks delicious.
I’ve just seen a photo of the prelude to prozac

jack’s special witches brew. It’s at the deptford birds nest & it looks absolutely batty.
Enjoy yourselves over the weekend.

Paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXVI: Ponies or Trotsky?

New Cross
Thursday 27th October 2011

Morningish,

Like a resemblance to persons living or dead,
a screening of Jody VandenBurg’s documentary on Malcolm Hardee’s Tunnel Club

at the Vanbrugh Tavern is one of those coincidences that only happen in the world of movies.
But tonight at 8pm this is true fiction.

The nearest railway station is Maze Hill &
even though Peter Gabriel sang a song called Solsbury Hill,

the boozer is discretely located on Colomb Street, South East London.
The evening also features a performance from the ultimate rudder band: we should get a boat.

& if that’s what floats your octopus, then enjoy yourselves.
If you prefer Borges to octopus, his poems are not quite as well known as his eerie prose fiction;

Someone once told me there was a reason for this to do with the
the fact that Borges the Poet (unlike Borges the Labyrinth) sounds like a Victorian without irony:

pursuing elegant exercises in form & convention, rather than strenuous engagements with emotion,
or the sheer chance of language. I suppose he wasn’t a champion of the poems

on the back of packets of Rowntree’s Randoms then,
but lucky me, I don’t know, as I’ve never read any of his 140 sonnets. I love sombreros.

Growing up in my parents bathroom (so to speak),
there were two authentic Mexican Sombreros (magnificent 7 ride again compliant)

I think they came from Alicante, which is in Spain,
but I like it ‘cos it rhymes with rain. Funny I never questioned the obscene location

of the sombreros: why the bathroom? (but I wasn’t a confrontational child you see,
I specialised in catholic confession).

Ahh, the bliss of ignorance.
Dickie richards saying “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it” is ringing in my ears &

it really must be a nightmare being a literary critic;
especially when you have to read, analyse & assess the value of books & words.

Everything is two pound in the two pound bookshop in Greenwich,
but that’s capitalism for you, unless you haggle or get involved in a revolutionary party.

As a commodity, Faber’s Collected Keats, edited by Andrew Motion
is the same as We All Live in a Perry Groves World, by Perry Groves.

My personal favourite though is Collected Kites (which are tethered aircraft),
but there is no truth whatsoever to the rumour that I own Collected Tights as well.

What did The Levellers say:
There’s only one way of life & that’s your own, that’s your own.

So, I wouldn’t know where to start with criticism: read some books I suppose;
although then you have to say things like: ‘the reality of the poems is not as dire as this’;

or, if you’ve had a theoretical education: ‘the sequence bears the vanishing of the structure’.
I’m probably more likely to say the poem is like really juicy,

random jelly sweets; even though I prefer burnt toast (being addicted
to adjectives in my dreams). Why oh why did I write that poem about Arthur Daley.

It’s great writing with the laziest members of the verbal team.
For me the word is RAIN. I love it like cricket, which can’t take place when it rains;

but still I stare at the coloured glass & look for it daily on countdown,
in crosswords, life on mars.

Punctuation & percussion rather than meaning,
or perhaps just percussion as meaning, is a nice change from the rules of cadence or rhyme, but

I do remember being bowled over by Frank Kermode’s discussion of ‘Shudder’ in Eliot;
but I was also bowled over by Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce.

The elegy outlives the battle, unless you live in St. Leonard’s Warrior Square &
I’ve just seen a business card for a Trot group in Tesco, Lewisham Way: Is it Ponies or Trotsky?

That’s it.
Until tomorrowish

Paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXV: Vanishing Act

New Cross
Wednesday 26th October 2011

Morningish,

Would you adam’n'eve it, but I bumped into
the Welsh crooner Tom Jones at the Courtauld Institute & like cupid or randy

newman, he was asking venus to leave her hat on
in the garden of eden.

It is true, pomegranates are incredibly popular in poetry as I once thought.
Chatto & Windus published a book by Sarah Maguire called Pomegranates of Kandahar,

using a scientific vocabulary to offset those intimate moments.
Here it all depends on what one means by blitzkrieg,

fig or tea leaf: the three stage villains being Stalin, Churchill, Hitler.
I’ve always wanted to use the words disputatious memory &

now I can do it without being caught up in a violent
crossword, or rewriting of history.

Quite the opposite,
there is no reason to be shy on this, the libertines said so

while I was adopting that look of abandon characteristic of someone who has
just missed the 177 to Thamesmead.

So I recited the poem Strindberg in Berlin
“All the wrong turnings that have brought me here” waiting for the bus to Thamesmead.

It would seem churlish to write a post on the Courtauld
Institute & not mention Bananarama – so there you go, bingo!

Diana using a stag as a sofa while waxing Latin moralities in the heart of County Sligo
would make a great title for a painting;

while freshness of attack &
lively detail can be a way to describe both oils & blitzkrieg,

Some say Shakespeare’s As You Like It
can seem a little too keen to make sense, like good neighbours becoming good friends in Penge;

but from the shock of Pericles onwards everything disintegrates.
So why does The Tempest persist? Perhaps it is just so-so beautiful a destruction?

It is always worth quoting the pearls
Eliot borrows in The Waste Land’s clairvoyant quarter:

Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made;
those are pearls that were his eyes.

Eliot then adds the word look, luck being essential when you pay a fiver for a clairvoyant.
But is the quotation above a destruction or a subtraction: drowning to survive?

We should perhaps get a boat &
get out to Prospero’s lonely place & become unsalvageable,

or perhaps be the stubborn remnant, the minimal,
visible sign left by the lost or vanished (like a hat on venus, the ultimate subtraction)

Until tomorrowish,
paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXIV: The Mask of Words

New Cross
Tuesday 25th October 2010

Morningish,

I don’t feel romantic about Holderlin, even though everyone I read
speaks highly of his eccentric human path &

his paratactic split between desire’s boundlessness &
that long lost wainwright walk that’s not returning to its original glory (like the stones roses)

Resolution through wily juxtaposition is, I suppose, one way to
find some perpetual peace,

but paratactic thought is also a capsule of splendid failure,
delighting in the impossible schism; the scourge of the subordinate clause:

like the chuckle brothers in their prime,
endless oscillation from me to you becomes the thing itself, beyond the fall.

Who needs an organic script etched in nature when you have the glorious mask of words?
& in the wake of the termination of Spooks,

the minutes of the 1921 meeting of the secret section
of the secret police in Bolshevik Russia makes interesting reading.

One of the most powerful aspects of thought control
is creating the illusion, or the appearance, of thought control.

& just this morning, the distance between us
looked as though it needed a jolly good wipe, or a different disguise.

Ostensibly the secret police acted
in the interests of greater transparency;

setting up facades to promote modern erotics, the quest for intimacy.
& in this contemporary wilderness of mirrors, bizarre props & strictly ritualised tango’s:

from Honeybunch to Ms Crumb, the enduring theatricality of espionage,
who has been sleeping in your head?

Until tomorrow
paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXIII: Roll in the World

New Cross
Monday October 24th, 2011

Morningish,

Locking horns with my demons during the night
is like bleeding waiting for sunshine.

But most depressing of all is the messianic
disillusion of morning.

The bland certainties & monstrous omissions
loiter from sunday prayers,

most of these wishes in concrete.
And yet the new homes hover over deptford,

eclipsing the little crown,
the star, the cote d’ivoire, jenny’s cafe in bloom.

Come the revolution,
I will have a haircut to match

the winter palace, engulfed in flames.
There will be no good reason to be impatient

over hierarchy, ill at ease with flexibility;
unable to call myself forgetful; unable to relax like the bleeding nights.

The lines are getting longer; dishes of new evils washed up,
forming a ring, joining hands with dead friends

from school, growing beards.
Through my telescope, I can almost see a willow.

Perhaps most chilling of all is the snow falling too quickly. It never did this in october.
Rolling in the snow was always a slow process,

even when accompanied by black ice, or dead friends screaming
“I do all my own stunts”, practising scales with no idea of beat, or rhythm.

This could have been written by a missing person holding a mirror.
The disappearance of what once seemed a revelation.

Until tomorrowish
paulie x

 

CCCLXXXXII: 119th Friday Microphone

New Cross
Friday 21st October 2011

Morningish,

I have absolutely no inspirational, positive quotations to share on Facebook.
What a relief.

Tonight is the 119th edition of Friday Microphone in London sponsored by Psycho.
It’s at The Star & Garter in Greenwich from 8.30 pm

Greenwich Park Street is the address.
It’s next to a Green Giant (I mean garage) on Trafalgar Road. That’s it.

Until tomorrowish
paulie x