Thought.

Stolen melon tastes the sweetest.

You'll have to behave yourself...

The Rules.

A cigarette break.

When you realise...

That your home
Is not
What it used to be.

And the boy said...

That he had everything.


So I gave him sight
And he became a man.

Poem for the wounded

When
the person you love
starts to
spend kisses 
elsewhere, 
when
death is a bull
amongst
your circle of friends, 
you will:
sit, 
ache in rooms, 
stare 
at walls and doors
and the spines of books, 
and not be able
to move
towards them.


You will look:
at the clock, 
down at your hands, 
into the mirror.
You will search them all
for meaning.


Sometimes
it begins
with
looking out a window:
you'll see
birds
glad for the sky, 
the night
opening
its book of stars, 
the neighbourhood
wise with sleep.
and you'll know
at last, 
that pain
takes you away from
your place in the world
and self-belief
puts you back.


And so
you move
towards the real.
Set flame
under a kettle
and just that
right now
seems
victory enough.


          - Peter Bakowski

Evil under the Sun.

The Sittaford Mystery.

The Sittaford Mystery studies.

Peril at End House studies.

Haven't slept since 4am.

Play Rickie Lee Jones.
Muddle with keys.
Talk to myself.
Little mysteries.

And some days I really miss you...

A lot more than I planned I should.
When everyone is gone and I want to call you, 
I remember that you cannot answer.
The time has passed, 
And I should feel a lot more grown up
Than I do right now.

T.B. Sheets

Happy House

Tea Tales.

And I’m thinking

I shouldn’t have had

That one too many cup

Of Irish Breakfast.

The Earl would be angry

If he found out.

I daren’t mention that coffee

As I’ll be back tomorrow

With less words strung together

Than I can manage now.

She drove me here...

But she ain't gonna take me away.

Whenever.

Wallflower.

Blank.

Black Pepper.

Overcast.

It was Sunday afternoon.

We sat in his overcast apartment

And he played a song –

Alone, jealous and stoned.

He sipped vodka. Straight.

Stared at the screen.

I smoked another cigarette

And watched his clouds

Articulate through his head

And spread up the wall.

Just another spider web.

Best served with red wine.

The first time I heard Leonard Cohen

(And knew that I heard Leonard Cohen)

I was sitting at that table

In the warmed wooden room of high ceilings

And constant stream of interesting conversation.

That night I wanted to wipe away my youth

So I too could be one of the old wise faces.

And even though I did not know who Marianne was,

Or why we should bid her so long,

A woman across me sang to come over to the window.

Dots Dots Dots.

Fringe.

To Ailsa Rock

Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is't since the mighty Power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid?
Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities -
The last in air, the former in the deep;
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies -
Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant size.

                                           - John Keats

I've seen the future, brother.

Illusions

That humans are a special creation, above the animals.

That the mind can exist separate from the body. (Why then would it need a body?)

That apes in outer space will find a fulfilment there.

That dreams are oracles.

That there is progress in art.

That the evil in human nature is caused by private property.

That abstracted shapes and colours make an efficient language.

That there have been works of art produced in Hollywood.

That despite their evolving with separate functions, the sexes have in all things equally matched abilities.

That the vanguard party exists in the interests of the working class.

That the Church is required as an intercessor between God and man.

That physical reality, which is always interacting, accruing minute differences, and collapsing into new forms, must be the work of a Creator.

That there is an ultimate simplicity.

That ‘if God does not exist, everything is permitted’.

That there must be a God to sanction what we value as morality and beauty.

That it is not actual things we perceive, in their uniqueness and subtlety, and with such surprise, but representations of them only. (As if this distinction could mean something.)

That economics can be a science (rather than its being merely the vagaries of public morale).

That if we create enlightened laws, a bureaucracy will see justice is done.

That the greatest possible happiness and fulfilment for the species lies ahead of us. (It may lie far behind, or just behind).

That rationality is other than a rationalization of feelings.

That in a perfectly benign society, there will no longer be discontent, dissidence, and revolt.

That there is a truth apart from the pragmatic method of science.

That having denied the artist’s conscious meanings and intentions, we can then appreciate the work of art (all of whose formal decisions were based on those intentions).

That this world is other than it shows itself to be.

That because ‘they once laughed at the Impressionists’, now everything in art that flaunts an innovatory mannerism must be good.

That post-structuralist theory is significant. (All it offers is an attitude of bad faith, and a demonstration that anything can be undermined and destroyed.)

That one should choose between the selfishness and complacency of the political right and the sentimentality and self-righteousness of the left.

That art is for art’s sake. (In its sensuousness and its care, art is what Nietzsche says, ‘the great stimulus to life’.)

That ‘Hamlet and Lear are gay.’

That a rote iconoclasm is the way to truth. (Only that which is held above us can lift us up.)

That art requires theory. (Bad art justifies itself with theory; good art is justified by its immediate sensory appeal.)

That the microscopic is fundamental (as though it exists without the macroscopic).

That ‘beauty is only in the eye of the beholder’. (Is vividness, or harmony, or gracefulness?)

That things are one, or that things are many.

That morality is spiritual. (Morality is physiology: the nervous system.)

That love is the reward for friendship. (Friendship is the reward for love.)

That the need to ‘make it new’ means we must overturn entirely. (Culture is continuity.)

That within the towers of the metropolis, the physical limits of our nature (which are its spiritual limits), as those evolved on the savannah, will no longer apply.

                                                                                          - Robert Gray

Dot.

'Repetition.'

Why are you here?

I see, 
Take a seat.
Not even
'It won't be long'.


Coming Up for Air.


The fluoro lighting
Only an office has, 
Stretches the floor
To the unmown nature strips
Of an outside
That could now be gone.


How long have I been sitting here?


An 'Oi Russell...'
'Oi Russell come sit here.'


They know each other's names
In this family of sorts.


I wonder if my name is obvious
As I sit there
Quietly
And shy back into my book.

Wish Me Luck

a fresh spiderweb

billowing

like a spinnaker

across the open window

and here he is

the little master

sailing by

on a thread of milk

wish me luck

admiral

I haven't finished anything

in a long time.

            - Leonard Cohen

Algorithm.

I open the book I gave you
Out of my own interest, 
And it's Euclid's algorithm
That you have marked.
The last page you turned
Is the one I want to read.


I close the book.

Ailsa Craig.

And my absence this morning...

Just put it down

To sleeping off an existential crisis.

Drowning myself in lavender

I was composed to leave the house,

But there were still so many unanswered questions -

My entertainment for the evening.

Life drawings (technicolour special).

 

Springtime filing cabinet.

from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even to-day, when shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood. 
   This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again. Even stopping for luncheon at a way-side inn, and going to a dark, unfamiliar room to wash my hands, the handle of the door unknown to me, the wall-paper peeling in strips, a funny little cracked mirror above the basin; for this moment, it is mine, it belongs to me. We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.
   And then I open the door and go to the dining-room, where he is sitting waiting for me at a table,  and I think how in that moment I have aged, and passed on, how I have advanced one step towards an unknown destiny.
   We smile, we choose our lunch, we speak of this and that, but - I say to myself - I am not she who left him five minutes ago. She has stayed behind. I am another woman, older, more mature...

Sad Jexy

The beginnings of a frustrated animator.

Sequence.8.5.3.

"This isn't much, couldn't concentrate"

More Noise Please.

And the past...

Is always with us,
But it looks different wherever I go.

Walking home

From the train before the last, 
The old man two houses up
Still falls asleep in front of the TV.


I'm glad his wife's not sitting with him,
She always draws the curtains.


I can see the football's on,
Some things never change.

I received my first letter today...

My name looks strange above your address.
It's not quite at home yet.


There was also a letter for you.
It's like we live together but never meet.

Everyday Electronics.

Unresolved.

Was it something I said?

Prime numbers are so square.

Rule 30 Mirror.

TWO flowers this morning.