Sunday 28 February 2010

Tourtre and Fright

The Old French for Passenger Pidgeon was Tourtre. I find this interesting because the bird is now extinct. North America also had a word sounding similar, Tourte. Weird the the English word torture sounds similar, given to this exstinct bird.

The last Passenger Pigeon was called 'Martha.' Poor girl.


I did my talk on Beckett and it went well, I think, although I came very close to stage-fright. I get stage fright, and this was talking to a small group of people, my friends, and I was so nervous I felt like running out. But I did it, and my mouth was so dry you could hear it. I think everyone is fed up with me talking about Beckett now.

Monday 22 February 2010

Skull on a Skeleton, Van Gogh

I won't do Between the Buttons, I will talk about Beckett. It's easier to present literature than music if it all comes down to literature anyway.

I've done no work on it. Except find some short films. I need a new job, I'm so tired, been up since 5am. I've spent ages on that small Hemingway book. I keep forgetting to write by hand.

I will slowly die and I'll look like him:

Sunday 21 February 2010

On Writng Short Stories

The process of writing short stories comes as one whole thing. I could spend either an hour or a of days and I'd always write something quite short, like 2 pages long, i.e. “short” story. I've been working on adapting a style of writing since 2005. But I only began to see this style around 2007 when I was being influenced by Hemingway, Beckett and Pinter. And using cryptic metaphors I'd find in Sylvia Plath's poetry and the dead-pan tone in Bukowski.

These stories were usually two-character narratives (which began as third person, but now mostly first). The characters play off one another and it is written like a play, but written in prose. The dialogue works its way to tell the story, such as a conversation between 2 people, of which is no one's business but theirs. They don't tell the reader enough on purpose. I hardly give characters names for this reason, and for the reason of identity. Saying this, the identity of characters is no ruined, per se, but altered to a sort-of sub-human or different human who have nothing but they lives and themes. And the one they talk to.

Imagine having a conversation with your friend. Why would you tell them your name mid-conversation. You already know each other.

My short stories don't go anywhere, in story and in place. The characters hardly move because they simply talk, and to build around this are these carefully crafted metaphors with the correct narrative that I'm always trying to get right. I like to write in metaphors, it makes the writing much more interesting, but there's always the risk of overdoing it and losing the whole narrative just by not making sense in that one line. It's like when I read Virginia Woolf and I began to write in these difficult lines that only made sense in my head at first and I couldn't justify them when I had to, so that made for a lot of deletions and edits. “The feathers of parakeets-their harsh cries-sharp blades of palm trees-green, too,” (Woolf, Blue & Green). The words cluttered my narrative and I never had a story, I was just trying to impress with poetic language into prose. Like the harsh, confessional words of Plath, I wanted more than I could handle, and I felt like I was copying – which I'd written in an essay describing the origins of my style at first originated through a type of stealing. (But, of course, all artists steal).

So the first instance where I found the style I wanted, I saw in Hemingway's Hill Like White Elephants in which two people talk to each other about an abortion, which is never stated anywhere in the story except for the word “operation.” Everything else is hinted at. However, the lack of Hemingway on my bookshelf meant that I couldn't possibly be so much inspired by him having read one short story out of so many stories and novels from such a great writer. (I've now taken to The Old Man and the Sea).

I've been told I write like Beckett. Or, at least, I try to. I hadn't read much of Beckett, except Malone Dies which is a novel, so how can you differentiate what is good and what is not from reading the prose of a playwright? I picked up some short radio plays to read, but it wasn't enough, so my tutor told me to watch them. I saw the short films of Not I, Play, and Eh Joe. The latter being the best I've seen. One man sitting alone and hearing a female voice in his head drive him mad. It was exactly what I wanted to write, and I loved it, too bad Beckett got there first. But with my story The Death of a Clown I knew, somewhat, of how to go about writing a story without a story.

The themes just come. Sometimes I'd already have an idea, but I never, or hardly ever, make a plan of the story. Stephen King once said that you can't plan a story, you just have to dig it up from your mind. After I've written the short piece, I'd read over it and see the themes, mostly hidden, and sometimes they'll already be repeated. I'd go over it and repeat certain images on purpose to drill in to the reader's skull what I'm trying to say, without saying it. After that, I finish. The endings of these stories are not endings at all, but just a sigh. My Scottish tutor from my University in Lancashire liked my writing, but hated how I overdid it all, and he's the one who told me to focus my writing. He said I was writing vignettes, little scenes that weren't stories at all, but scenes of stories, and that was my style. And the size was perfect to go with it.

Thursday 18 February 2010

Between the Buttons - between Bob Dylan - and Beckett




How do I show this album is better than Bob Dylan? I can't. But out of all the music I listen to, and I listen to a lot of music, it's the only album I like above Dylan. I'm a huge Dylan fan, I like Bringing it all Back Home, blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, The Times They are A Changin', and Bob Dylan LP. But I have to talk about something for a presentation in uni next wed, and I want to talk about music and it's effect upon my writing, but I can't stick to one thing with Dylan. So I thought I'd choose the only album that I'd consider calling my favourite album. And that's Between the Buttons by the Rolling Stones.

I can't talk in front of people. I hate it. I'm just not a speaker. I have to do it, tho, as compulsary for my course. I'm not looking forward to it.

My short story, Death of a Clown, was destroyed. Criticised to death. I hated it. I actually had high hopes for it, more than the last one I submitted. Seems that whenever I write something that I like, it's not good enough. I'm not going to write shit just so that it's accepted.

But I know how to fix it. I've been reading Beckett and Pinter like I was supposed to. I don't think I'll re-write it as a play, but there'll be more focus to it. I remember my tutor in my last University told me my main problem was lack of focus, and I think I let myself down by reverting back into that lack of focus again. Don't know why I did that.

If you read Beckett:
Eh Joe
play








Wednesday 17 February 2010

thought is sin, realisation is pity

Wrong Day - Lots of Books - And Nemo

I'm passed it, but still in Limbo. In Purgatory? I still don't sleep very well and I'll wake up and think I'm scared of the dark. I'm not scared of the dark, but I wake up believing that I am. Weird, no? I'm more afraid of this house in the morning; in the early hours, like 5am. I get paranoid and I heard a guitar fall against the wall and I jumped, I saw a pile of clothes on a chair and I jumped even higher.

I get up at 5am for work, but I've had some days off. I thought I was going back in today since I remember telling them I'll have 11th - 16th, but they'd given me the whole week, so I'm off 'til monday. Doesn't really account for getting up so early and travelling 30min train journey in zero degrees. But they said I could work that day if I wanted, but I said nevermind, I'll go home. And I did. Off 'til monday.

In uni today and they'll workshop my Death of a Clown story. I'm annoyed at some people, esp. people who don't reply when I'm trying to visit them. It's less my fault for not visiting after so long when I don't get replies.

I must remember to teach myself French and German. And some Norwegian. I only know what I write as translations in poems.

My room is filled with so many books. It's funny coz I never read at all in school. I have a Hemingway on top of a Pinter on top of poems on top of an anthology on top of papers on top of my printer. There is a pencil in the anthology, I think it's either bookmarking Lewis Caroll or Dylan Thomas. Next to that is a small pile of old videoes, mostly old Disney movies, I watched Sword in the Stone yesterday or the day before. There is a tall speaker, which I hardly use because I have music on my laptop, and I can't be bothered plugging it in, but on top is my work clothes. Under the clothes I think are 3 dvd's: Drag me to Hell, Silence of the Lambs, and Finding Nemo.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Another Unfinished Piece of Fiction

I waited for 1000 years, I counted precisely 1000 years, 3 months, and 6 days. And now I have lost my mind, but I'm still alive as you are alive in your skin. And I'm trying to be mental, my face stretched open my eyes, pulled skin open and explode – pieces of me disperse into the air. I feel like a nail presses against my skull into a vein, a nerve, the brain himself.

She is being touched. I look at where she is being touched. She laughs and shivels up, looking at me. Where am I? Holding back a laugh, face touches his face – she wants to move away. Her hair reaches down to her breasts, my eyes like a robot's eyes scan her face, throat, armpit, scar on arm, and the breasts I dream next to.

The thing is about her is what she never says. I'm looking into her eyes, these light brown walnut-coloured eyes; her eyes say to me: Come and get me if you want me. Get this fool away from me. Go on. Come get me.

Satan is in the background. The red skin is shiny. Black horns protrude from emaciated head of reptilian demeanour. She begins to grin and she has no soul. She kisses him and imagines the rest of the night. I try not to think too far ahead. Her fox-like mouth laughs at me now. Why aren't you on me?

She is in love with her body. So am I – hers no mine. I can see how her hair touches naked shoulder and spikes of wool. Eyes closed, she screams the song. One strap has falled carelessly off her left shoulder. She thinks she looks beautiful. Too bad for her. With a body like that she could have the entire male population of the country.

And all that ever derides her, the skeleton claws at her back, then the three cans of Carlsberg left untouched on the counter. Buttoned up, she grins and pulls her tongue out, arousing every man in the room; her horns stick up like red arched torsos.

Pancake Philosophy

latent pancake reality / am i a pancake? .. or aren't i? - if pancake is not here yet, surely i should be a pancake...

Monday 15 February 2010

Short Piece of Fiction - Unfinished

She is on my mind like a murderer. Stinging in the back as if the sting of a wasp sting my back, piercing the nerves with nails and teeth, biting and tearing away at me, clawing at my body with her claws of the devil. What is on my mind doesn't matter as I am singing a song in front of about a hundred people and I don't even know what I'm singing. Am I singing? I have to check, to see if there is a sound emitting from my mouth. There is. I feel it more than hear it. But I'm using it, my mouth is working on it's own. Oh my God, my mouth is working on its own. What if it stops halfway? I don't know where I'm up to.

I'm singing a Lead Belly song, I will soon begin to scream like Kurt Cobain did when he covered the song in 1993, a year before his death, and when I scream it will feel like this is a year before my death. As if it's a death scream, a warning before I die. One year to go.

She is on my mind and she shouldn't be, hanging on like someone feining suicide, and I am pretending, also, that I can sing. I can't sing. I'm using this weird falsetto that scratches from my throat so its like I'm singing with this weird anger in me. I can't sing. I have a singing voice. But I can't sing. My voice goes low and high. My eyes burst with salt tears as the force of the song pushes through the valve of my throat. She is sitting directly in front of me, leaning forward so that her back doesn't rest on the solid wooden back. She has her legs crossed. Her body is in a dress. Her body is slim and petite. Her legs make her look taller than she really is.

Sunday 14 February 2010

The Death of a Clown

My make-up is dry and it clags on my chin
I'm drowning my sorrows in whiskey and gin.
The Kinks


I leave the door open. My make-up is dry on my skin. It feels hard and tight like fish scales, and I can't find anything to clean my face with so I just sit down in a chair, facing the mirror, and wait. I see half of my reflection; I'm sitting a little off-centre. My mascara had bled a little and it looks like a crow has stood on my face. I lick my red lips tasting the wax. I am like a cartoon, as if someone has drawn me, my mouth is ridiculous. It's a massive thing over my teeth. My eyes are big; everything seems so big, as if it's all been magnified a hundred times.

I see fleshy light bulbs burning thin streaks of yellow light into the room. The lights around my mirror make me want to flutter my eyelashes at myself, and I do, but it doesn't look pretty. I look like a child has found it's mother's make-up and applied thick coats of lipstick over and over again and slapped layers of deathly-white foundation over the skin. I feel heavy.

There is an old sense of madness with this face, which I'm wearing on my skin for everyone to see. There is a cold draft coming in through the door, there is probably a face at the door, its sexless eyes watching like the compound eyes of a fly. I watch it change into a fly – I watch you change into a fly – you first take off your clothes, undressing with the slow precision of a toolmaker, dropping your thin layer of clothes showing muscle discharge and afferent in relation to slow moving articles of clothing like shedded skin. And you fly away back out of the door, with a silent buzz that rings in my ears as if it was a scream.

The door is open and I am freezing cold, I can't see or hear anyone, I can still hear the tiny buzzing of a fly, I sometimes see it, or I think I see it, flying around the room. I am sitting down. I am drinking gin. I am waiting for something, I can't remember what it is, but here I am, waiting. My make-up is solid on my face, my skin feels like it's made out of rock, I am made out of rock, it is why I am not moving. A fly comes in and buzzes around my head, a thin, sickening buzz screeching in my ear.

I find a cloth and wet it under the tap at the small sink in the room. I see myself in the mirror again, cleaning my make-up off like a woman. It melts. It looks like my eyes have burst and secrete black goo down my cheeks. My lips are swollen. The white skin wipes off with cold cream. I am so white I am a ghost. I can't finish. My arms are heavy and I feel so lazy that I could just sit back and sleep. I look terrible. I look ridiculous. My eyes are bloodshot as if I have been strangled, savagely cut in half, one part English one part alien. My stomach contracts. My hands seize and relax. Seize and relax. I feel … sick. I want to be sick. Am I wearing clothes? Yes, I'm wearing clothes. The door is open. There is no one there.

My make-up is ruined, I look ridiculous. I look terrible. I'm tired. I doubt I am here. There is no one here. There is a fly here, somewhere, it is you. Why are you so attracted to me? Like a magnet. There seems to be a strange amount of magnetism in madness. I turn and my spine cracks and there is the odd moment when my spine makes the only sound in the world, and it's like gunfire behind a pillowcase. I lean forward and bang my fists against the dressing table and the light bulbs jingle and everything rattles and the rubber chicken squeaks and one juggling ball rolls and drops to the floor with a muted thud as the fly flies around the room watching my every thought. I find the lipstick and apply a new coat of red over my lips until they are thick and swollen again, like a woman's, but I can't finish the paint without someone to help me. Where is the help? I need my paint. My mouth is distorted like seeing a blood clot in a broken mirror. I am tired. I … I am … this flesh-thing sits … face like some dead creature … face white … face like melted oils, morphed into animals and various creatures … I can smell the danger like a dog.

My clown make-up is cold on my face, my eyes see my face in mirror. The light bulbs light up my face as if I am an actress. I am a boy. A room like flesh, and horrible, terrible things – when boy asks what kills the eyes you reply …

My face … my make-up gives me an enormous sense of power, as if I am larger than I really am, magnified a hundred times under a microscope – an old, crawling thing, blue and white and red, and black, and waxy and old … my face sees my face in the mirror.

My body is old and dishevelled, it creaks and moans, she is like the scorpion's stinging tail stuck suddenly like a knife, and it doesn't hurt, more like it burns and there is a fly buzzing around me, I hear it, but there is no fly, the room is empty, I don't hear a thing. I am sitting on a chair. Something truly big comes in the room like a shadow. I am forced to stand up and led away. I smile. I do a dance. I attach my big red nose that squeaks when you squeeze it. Although I am innocent in all of this, away from my reflection at last, my other half is like the devil, and she protrudes like fingers and when I reach the door, feeling the cold draft on my damp face, like icy breath, you almost kill me, but by the time I feel the expected nothing, I fall against the door. It's like being another person, don't you understand I'm not actually you? You are laughing … you are laughing … I am laughing … the gin has kicked in … I fall against the door and spoil my make-up, I fall against the door and nobody needs clowns anymore. I fall against the door as it slams shut.

© Michael Holloway

Favourite translation Norwegian

Mann stiljaktar annen kvinne

translates roughly "Man stalks another woman" or "Man stalks other woman"

Saturday 13 February 2010

Untitled Poem in stanzas

Be not like me
I am not like you,
I am not I nor you
I do not like you;

Kill not I
I will not kill you,
I will not harm or hurt you,
I'm not going to kill you.

Love not I,
I will not love you
I will not love you,
I am not going to love you.

Hate not I
I will not hate you,
I will not hurt or harm you,
I am not going to hate you.

Be not like me
I am not like you,
I am not I nor you
I do not like you.


Wrote this just now in about 5 or 10 minutes after reading a poem called Be Not Too Hard by Christopher Logue. It's good because I don't usually write this concise, not anymore anyway.

Drawing

Nightmares - Mad Mary - and Mad Kids

It lies on human chest and feel heavy pressure on lungs. Throat closes. Skin freezes. Eyes do not open. Looks down on you as you sleep, sees your closes eyes sleeping, your body straight, arms are upward and reveals body, neck and ears to the open air of the room, as it lies on human chest watching.

I'd wake up in the middle of the night and forget what I'd been dreaming of and turn away from the wall and face the rest of the dark room as if there was someone standing there. The door would be jammed shut and you wouldn't be able to see a thing until pressing a button on the phone for a light. I wouldn't be able to sleep. I'd be thinking of people for the rest of the night. Drifting off for a few minutes and waking up again, driving myself mad.

There is a horse's head peeking thru curtains. The floor creaks, but I can't tell if it was in my room or on the landing. I'm telling myself the door is shut, but I'm scaring myself with thinking of apparitions walking thru it. My sister told me she hears creaks in her room. Maybe we're all mad. But I admitted that I was messing around a while ago saying 'Mad Mary' once or twice and telling my sister I was going to say it in the mirror. (I think this is our version of Bloody Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Hell Mary) I didn't say it into the mirror. I was beginning to think I'd brought a curse into the house, but I don't really believe in that stuff. I'm just looking for excuses.

Is it Mad Mary? We used to say that in Primary school because there was this ghost story of a woman who died by falling from the old bell tower (not sure if she killed herself or was murdered) and there were stories that this ghost had killed a caretaker or something. Us kids would be scared to walk the corridors alone, since it was a creepy old building. Some said there was a dint in the ground where she fell. Or, apparently, she'd landed on the metal spikes of the fence. The girls' toilets were supposed to be haunted and I think the girls would piss around chanting Mad Mary into the mirror and then run out screaming. Actually, we were quite mad as kids.

This Mad Mary must have merged with Bloody Mary. There are a lot of variations of the story, but one is that after chanting her name, she will kill you, or drive you mad, or haunt you. Or even, after testing courage, she'll reveal a deceased relative. If she doesn't kill you, then she'll haunt you for the rest of your life. Another version is that girls (is it just girls?) chant her name to see their future. A variation of this would be to walk up the stair backwards, in the dark, looking into a hand mirror and you'll either see your future husband or your own death. Which will, ultimately, drive you mad.

It's weird I've ended up talking about this, but I just found a Brazilian folklore called “a loria do banheriro,” which translates as “the blonde in the toilet.” Instead of the mirror, it's a toilet, and she'll reach out and kill you. Maybe that's why the girls ran out screaming from the girls toilets in Prinary School.

We were just kids. But we were so mad.

Friday 12 February 2010

Grav Domma Vit Aether

Black geometric shadows of houses
And priceless armies of women
Expanding like Lycra begin to sing
While batting eyelashes
Thru a concentration of rainbows;
World stops being soup of death
Becomes old veridian,

Love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces
Odd like pumpkins –

Or as impossible as
A baby whistling in the Arctic.


Poem drafted from earlier one 20/10/09. Title is in adapted Latin meaning something like: heavy (important/serious), woman (girl/mistress), life (way of life), universe (time). I've changed it a lot and the structure now stands like a vase-shape, the first stanza as geometric as the shadows. It shrinks; 7,3,2 in lines. The best image was the baby in the Arctic, which by moving to the end is more poignant. I think it's the best image of impossibility I've thought of. The only line I hate is the 'life stops being soup of death,' because the rhythm is different.



You can see how it's come to be this poem from the older ones:

20/10

Impossible things
Like a baby whistling in the Arctic;
Crucified freaks in pinstripes screaming:
I want to die,
I want to live thru oceans
Of red and purple clouds
Of hot evening sunshine –

Black geometric shadows of houses
And priceless armies of women
Expanding like Lycra begin to sing
While batting eyelashes
Thru a concentration of rainbows;
World stops being soup of death
Becomes old veridian,

Love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces
Odd like pumpkins –
I see above a mossy rock
Or an atom in the dust.


AND, this one 10/8, the earlist version, first written by merging two pieces of writing together, which I probably wasn't going to use. I can't remember, but they might have just been notes or lines or just discarded poems.

When I do not love the world I will be alive
And no one will see me awaken
Barefoot and bare like a bloody newborn
I do believe things are impossible
Like a baby whistling in the Arctic –

To love a world that loves no one
But its self loving another is crazy
Afterwards it was odd to be trained in certain
Ways these freaks in pinstripes crucified
Screaming 'I want to die,'

Meaning 'I want to love,' travelling thru oceans
Of red and purple clouds of hot evening sunshine –
Because what beautiful things
Are so beautiful they are possible –

Above geometric black shadows of houses,
And priceless armies of women expanding
Like Lycra begin to sing while batting
Eyelashes thru a concentration of rainbows

And this world stops being a soup of death
And becomes miles and miles of old veridian,
In you love hung like rubies in a cave,
Upside-down like bats their faces odd like pumpkins –

My heart beats thru its skin
All I am is skin, skeleton and a heart,
I am almost nothing; hot petals fall and burn white,
Forces the bells to recede,

Why am I given back the moments of your stillborn?
And no one but me can see miles above
A rock with moss, or an atom in the dust.

Another Dirty Trick With the Scissors

It subsided. I'm calmer now. I feel silly now, in retrospect, that I acted that way. It's like being dragged into Hell, or having your brain pulled out of your head and you're made to look at it as it's dragged into Hell - with your eyes still attached.
I was lying down all day yesterday after I finished my short story for uni called The Death of a Clown, which I'll post after I've submitted it to the workshop. And I texted my friend - whom I've known for 13 years - and said:

"Im depressed, will you stab me with some scissors?

To which he replied, after a long joke:

"Wat type of scissors?"

It was funny, but I couldn't reply because I had nothing funny to say and I was debating whether to go out in 3 hours, since I'd been invited to see a band in town called Dirty Tricks.
I went. After deciding if I should drink or not, knowing alcohol is a depressant, I got a double whiskey and coke. Twice. Then realising I'd spent £10 on 2 drinks I thought it would be good to stop. But one of the girls had bought the wrong drink, and after tasting it, realised it was the same as mine, so I took it. I didn't get drunk. It was fun and I left early to got the train home. I didn't feel so heavy anymore. Which was weird. I didn't expect that to happen. I thought I would have been down all night and ruined it and got worse. But no. I feel fine.

I have 33 poems collected to be published into a book. I'm thinking of reaching 40-50 poems. Don't know what to call the book.

I have about 10 short stories.

Thursday 11 February 2010

ghost madness

Ghost what am I a ghost am I am I a ghost have a ghost time 13:23 sits cross-legged temperature 4 degrees windows open cold as a ghost with no clothes on naked ghost who writes to ghosts with sick guttural voice and Poseidon mouth moves earth with quick shakes then stops as if earth-shakes never took place beneath him a man without arms woman without a head or that with skin so thick and intaglio-cut with chisel like Greek statue that screams with her bathing in bleach to clean herself in ocean all of mad sorts of madness that cannot sit still and still cannot talk and still cannot talk with a mouth like a ghost who has mouth sown up and pressed fingers against and murders itself and stares and stares and then calling the doctor asks for some pills and doctor says no cannot have them and so Poseidon moves on to alcohol poisoning to get what Poseidon wants and this happens ever so slowly and no one notices but the madness which looks like boredom and distraction the madness looks like boredom like boredom on the skin pulls no bearings that can see the boredom that kills the distraction and vice versa and burns in a horrible clammy atmosphere of hands that sweat over mouths covering up horse-like teeth that eehore and moan and kick backwards against toilet doors and fuck the women who stalk man mannen stalks annen mann and man kills man to get to woman and woman kills woman to kill man and so on and so on and so on and on and on on on and then killing all mersion of misery the car ride back home destroys instinct of life from eyes that are rotten with sleeps staggers home down dark alley avoiding piss-smells and murderers and passes a tree from childhood old tree from years ago stands next to construction site and down the road moaning and growling like a raving lunatic to self says like like shit shit shit that modern life broken soul and even moving house cannot fix and doubts travelling between countries and doubts anything and the doctor says no and inside house makes tea and midnight and cannot sleep and falls to sleep like baby and wakes up every half an hour to think in mad state as room melts burns colours like burnt painting and sees rabbits snarling and eyeless girls sneak up behind him lying in bed he cannot sleep he is haunted and mannen stalk annen mann and kills self to get to sleep and wakes up after half an hour and only half an hour has passed after madness lying in bed and dead relatives such as dad walks thru door and stands there staring at me...

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Painting no.5




I painted this some time ago. I used oils paints and emulsion. I stuck down two pices of newspaper of the British and American flags and the words at the bottom. I flicked green and white/cream emulsion from the wooden end of the brushes. I spent a couple of hours on this one and it's the best one out of the others. Ihung it on the wall.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Vox Dei




This is the poem I wrote recently, when I omitted 'E'. I also found the poem Vox Dei, not sure if it's on this blog, but the thing is that it's different than what I have on my computer. What I must have done is typed up half of it then forgotten it and when I came back to it I wrote something completely different just to get it finished. So I'll have to work on the poem since the original ending is quite good.
Vox Dei is latin for "The Word of God." The first half was taken from notes written in December, the second half was written all at once in January. The orignal one must have been written all at once in December.




Vox Dei


At last I am in bed, like a bed I am like a bed,
Undercovers where the warmth hums thru square mechanic lungs,
And I am just thinking – not even moving to
Move to write nor breathing to move to breathe, I am still!
I am Medusa's eyes, bearing down on me pricks like
The stabs of a pin cushion, and the
Taste of her eyes, look at me! Cannot see me –
Sees others ready for her – Not I done just yet –
At last O sweet death! I am concrete at last!
Lights blue green pink in front, she in front lights
Up blue then green then pink I go red black metal
Shines – or shone with wet ice as ice thawed and I
Sweat and shake from ice the last nervous leaf on a bare
Tree planted in concrete – even down here where
The shadows play in salt and ice and cold hum of rain burn
Thru skin until your thawed body naked flesh falls off
In fleshy clumps of muscle and skin into your hand –
You bony thing – peel off clothes, shed skin, you
Bony thing, you dance and cry like a mad siren,
You dance and cry in the street all covered in madness;
In the words: vox dei, vox dei,
Pulls hairs from arms all calm as Bhai Taru Singh will sing
And dance in bones, like horrific mobile – bearing down pricks like
This into skin, you wear your skin so snug and tight,
A woman of marble, eyes of a lioness –
Stabs like a cushion of pins and, where she cannot see,
The sin the sin the sin!
Ever down here where concrete tree planted blue green
Red pink in front pink taste body naked flesh pink
Red, pink thawed body ready for her eyes!
And me, Baba Budha wise, covered in madness –
It's like she never ends,
The possibility of ending her
Ends in endless possibility
Of ending ...

Monday 8 February 2010

Letter/Dream

Dear Person,

I have been having mad feelings lately, not dissimilar to my feelings 3 years ago when I had a different name and was drunk all the time and got kicked out of two places and had time to save a couple of lives, but not my own. What it is, is driving me mad because it's not quite there. This dog-like madness I get in my eyes and head, burns me like Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức and there is nothing I can do about it. There is no medicine for it - well, there probably is, but it's not for me. I move my body once and my spine snaps in two and I am two people and I ask my other half what I should do?

He says we should just leave our job next month and then go to France for 5 months. I say ok, I will. This is what I'm going to do, this is my decision, I needed someone else to make my decisions for me, and someone else did. I have one person I would go with, my friend I've known for 13 years, others might come, too. We said we'd do a 'Fear and Loathing' style trip to Amsterdam and kill ourselves, our actual selves, and come back one of two actualities:

1. Changed men. For the good. Proper men with enlightened attitudes and experience and happiness and whatnot;

2. Ultimate depression. The negative side is that it didn't work and we made things worse and one of us died or we just can't stand the sight of the country or each other coming back home.

I don't think the latter will happen. I don't even think the former, either. I suppose we may be enlightened, but what cynical man can find enlightenment? At least I'd be able to write the best poetry - no one reads poetry, why do I write it? The same reason I breathe.

I have recurring dreams of teeth falling out. I read a description of what this means: Anxiety of appearence and lack of power. Ok, I probably have anxiety and an inferior complex, feeling smaller than a dwarf, why would this mean I'd have to gum my way up to the top? I'm not religious, though I sometimes try to be spiritual, but I read that teeth falling out in dreams are about man putting faith in man not God. "God speaks once, yea twice in dreams" and I wish God would leave me alone, he's like an annoying child who speaks to you only when you've finally fallen asleep.

God says: Man, your teeth have fallen out.
Man says: God, go back to sleep, you are not a dentist.

"The God your God is a jealous God" because God, the bastard, cannot bear us to have the freedom in which we've chosen to have, but what freedom exists in a world where freedom is, ultimately, taken away by man?

Of course, the Chinese believe that teeth falling out is a sign of telling lies. A friend of mine told me I was a compulsive liar. I said I probably am, because it's more fun to lie than to tell the boring truth. It's like fiction. If I'm a liar then all authors are liars.

I could lie all the time until I forget what is truth. I have no idea what the truth is or what real is or what life is, I made the whole thing up. I am not real. I am no longer real because I made the whole thing up. I made you up. I must have depressed myself with making you up. Oh dear, I've forgotten, again, what was real.

Lipogrammatic poem

Lipogrammatic poem, omitting 'E'

At night cross-limbs low down
Mad with worry hits brain with fist
Should find in his vast family of pity
Nothing to bunk with him tonight –
Pillow similar to bricks –
Night is bulky; crawls into
Big old cataracts, much of that is
A good vision of damnation –
Girl in his mind is a blitz of all
Normal adult thought – turns to blank,
Think of how that day will ruin him,
Mad and thinking – similar to dying –


The letter E is, I think, the most popular letter in English and French, so omitting it seems to make the language sound slightly different, I think it flows either better or in a different way. It was difficult to write, though.