The kind wasp woke me
It knew that I had dreamt
So its wings began to hit the glass
Til, bruised of life, it went
To a mouldy corner
Of the velux blind
And walked along the window sill
Until it left my mind.
It must have had a seance
Amongst the piling tread
As I later found it curling there
Dried out and dead
The deep-house beats fall
From the window – hit
sunbeams combing the heat
Fall down simmering streets
It’s royal wedding day – but I
Can only focus on this
bunch of dead flowers
Strapped to a lamp-post
The cellophane wrap flutters
Around the dry remnants
Framed by estates and hills
And glints from windscreens
I’m not saying something,
Shocked by the light’s irradiacy
The faintly dissonant organ
Of which echoes softly pour
3, 6×6, Waterfall
I got a cold last night
crept up on, I crumbled
fell in hot and coldness
under the sheets – time crawled
now, I sit on the wall
and watch the first lacewing
The light – diffused through cloud
low, heavy, though not damp –
stutters off its wings, fast
so it looks, to ill mind
and its machinations
to flutter in and out
of existence, an x
drifting from stone, to flow
blinking. Variables
sparking from the lack-dark
of a barely there head
and crackling eye-nerve knots.
I am the timeghost –
and I alone know
the worth of products
I see you have a poem
Curious you would strive
to be told whether it was alive
When all I need,
is that it be
haunted by me
Gracious sun who flies
freewheeling
without weight
being weight
and light itself
Generous sun, who
with patient defence
has mechanised us
from the infinites
with infinites
with infinite patience
Great sun here is my appeal;
It is not enough that you should set
do not be so humble
Shine all day and beyond –
erase the night so I may
awake and fall sleeping
to your light through
the thick blinds in soft covers
in living blankets
of sublime furriness
These warm nights
which feel so odd, knowing
you are close
the air rings with tension
while the bins are emptied
what rhythmic trundling
Giant sun, simply ride the horizon
like a carousel
bucking up and down
on the plastic horse of the hills
Your twilight is gold
I purchase lightness with
Oh gracious sun
“It rests on the assumption that a particular linguistic community is the best artisan of its own language, or even its own mythology, which is a vast overestimation of the value of experience, or rather an extreme strengthening of the principle that language grows precisely out of experience, rather like regular crystals forming in a puddle of salt. In fact it is much more messy.” – The Ghost of Ludwig Wittgenstein
“If we tried to philosophise only what we knew, we would be pre-empting failure by giving up philosophy before we even began” – Anti-Russell
“A surfer does not surf, instead they ride waves which are so unique, they will never occur again in the history of the universe” – Surfer on a Late Night Rerun of The Tide
Hang on a second, go back.
your captains name wasn’t Ahab?
Don’t tell me
What about the shark sermon?
Give it up old boy
Let me say why not make all your characters
You with a moustache and glasses?
Call them Melville
What do you mean they all survived?
I thought I alone escaped?
Scrap it – instead why not write
About sitting down to write?
And all those little ideas you have.
Best to keep it little –
Replace the white what
With your cat, little Moby here
And of the problems of fur on clothing
Write revenges of tiny majesty
But hang on a sec. Again
But your cat does so much without you
Better to avoid such difficult subjects
As it stalks apt nouns in the fields
Better to talk about this chair, this table
Are you feeling quite up to it?
A table is a difficult subject
I met a man once who wrote a whole
Book on it
It was called ‘The Point of Pure Intelligence
Hovers in a Blank Space Slightly Too Close
To The Dim Screen, Typing –
The Adventures of Said Table’
It was okay if you like that sort of
Table. But hang on
A second where was this beauty made?
Oh dear.
I’m fast becoming a flat plain
Free of everything – is it not liberating?
Almost pure prose, pure purpose – but not quite, yet
Aha! Let me ask you, writer
Can your pen bend round end to end
To write upon itself?
If not then we are really in trouble.
Better to just start scribbling, quickly
Quickly
Before anything else disappe
You walk down the unnoticeable incline into
the city. You look to the skies where the weather
systems rehearse a performance they will give you
next time. You see the bowl of the heavens reflect
the skull’s roundness – and all car sounds in its
persistence. You love this. It is, you think, the mark
of a walk’s greatness to array contingency
in its random archways you sigh. And walk on through
the headache as the white grey blues yellow
