Some Thoughts on My Novels & Poems

Untitled Poem (from 21/11/11)

I have given it all married to my own mistakes,
Shaped to a tantamount of bruises to your early years

as a baby.

I am now pressed to a wind of desires,
Forever compelled to change every pregnant thought.

On this day I discovered myself for the hundredth time –
I am one hundred people whose few gestures tends to motion

the air.

I am a beehive of sleep, kept awake, buzzing with life,
It forms a solitary leader to fix its problems.

The king of death mutters in my ear about me.
At the window, a fog of howling moonlight.



It's possible to think that everything in literature is tantamount to perfect art, like I prescribe myself almost daily on the production of something, to strive to make it faultless and absolute. It's very difficult. To quote a friend last wednesday: "Writing is a pain in the ass." And it is. But only because the pressure of where we are (my friends and I) that were are Master of Arts graduates who ahould be better than the new load of students progressing thru the uni doors and yet miles behind a million faces of great literature, of which names echo around me that form such works that I have not even read.

One being Don DeLillio's Underworld. I have the book and I won't read it until I've finished Murakami's 1Q84, but even these two books I have mentioned are evidence that I'm seeing to great - living - writers, whose style I can't quite understand to be better than what I put on the paper. And so the learning goes on. So I go thru a number of instances of dictating another author's work and call it my own. Then I decide mine is my style, a completely new work of originality and of so consequence to anything else.

So the point being that I wouldn't not know how good I am until I'm out there is plain sight to be either lauded or chastised, and that's scary to think. I spent over a year on my first novel. I loved it at times and other times I loathed it. I finished it a few months ago and put it away. I began an attempt at my second novel being around 1000 pages like Underworld or Infinite Jest, but I stopped. I realised I was pushing myself to hard and it didn't work that way. Bukowski once said you can't force great writing, you just have to let it come out - to paraphrase.

I began novel three. A short novel. Stylistically like Burrough's Junky and similar to Camus' The Outsider. But the same dark comedy resided from my first novel that my peers had liked about my writing. So I suppose it takes another piece of writing to reveal style. My third novel is, at the moment, just over 15,000 words. The Outsider is around 35,000 and is up to 125 pages more or less. So that's a good sized novel or novella. I finished my first novel at near 50,000 words. I think I'll have it published in the next few months. Maybe I could commercialise myself and become a walking TV ad for my own existence.

It took three novel attempts to understand my writing. I read over my first novel yesterday I thought maybe it's not so bad. It just needs one more edit. The 1000 page second novel, my very own Infinite Jest (which I did finish, all nine months later as if I carried that massive book like a baby) I will have to spend some time on. I think Wallace only spent 5 years on that. Didn't Joyce spent 15 on Ulysses? Patience is a virtue but I don't have that kind of patience. I rush ahead and when I don't like it I move on to something else. My wiser self tells me to stop this. Joyce wrote three novels. Wallace wrote three novels. Kafka wrote three novels. So far, so have I, I'd like to join that club, but it's far too exclusive.


My cat under a tree. A cat appears a number of times in my first novel.



I've begun writing poetry again. I went to a reading in Blackburne House last wednesday. I read out a poem called Spanish Fly:



Spanish Fly

It's god bursts forth
Shouting and screaming at the television,

It's only female child loved religiously
Draws a picture addressed to itself,

It's high-and-mighty, selfish personality
Loves itself more than it loves you,

It's only love lasts hours
Destroyed only by an atomic bomb,

It's sideways hallucinogenic dreams of darkness
Once ended up on the outskirts of Kent,

It's only woman who knows nothing about literature
Finds herself victimised from the books she's read,

It's extraordinary delight in the past still and always will
Remain in the deep recesses of it's skull,

It's loud-mouth friend sometimes goes through a number of quiet bursts,
Which it finds disturbing to say the least,

It smashes a glass against the wall
Offering only the words: “No bueno,”

It then seems to hate it's friends
It's un chien andalou eyes roll back into it's head

Stands in a daguerreotype
Juxtaposed against it's parents,

It's parents smile blandly, petting a dog,
The dog is only a memory,

It once knew, at the age of 10, a young girl,
Who appeared in it's back garden, stepping over broken furniture,

It sighs momentarily then melts into the off-screen of reality
Positioning itself to be ready or not ready to talk to people,

It's devil bursts out and drinks and drinks
Whilst laughter of certain gods, who are drunk,

Watch flies kamikaze into the window
On the most un-memorable of afternoons,

It's body and spirit rises through the shit and aether
The glorious stays glorious as it withers out.



I don't get too nervous anymore, but I always get so self-conscious that I'm read ing what I think is good but believe it's not good enough. I hear other people read out. Their words tell things. Mine are, as they always have been, convoluted and weird. I always tried to calm down my writing. Bukowski helps with that.






I put together a long poem. I'm imagining The Waste Land and Howl. It new pieces stuck to old. I don't know if it's yet finished.






i
Nothing: November 16th 2011

What nothing floating over black cities, crying out for mother and father,
That nothing perhaps roots out of trees, where arm-branches and leaves
Of bodies in various shower shapes, that perhaps is nothing and forever
Wanting nothing, and is nothing, and loves nothing?
You only guess a number of times of people huddled in a downstairs café
Reading poetry until it's time to leave with a friend who cares nothing for these.
A night washes the vertigo inside and perhaps dies a little. There is a voice
I love you I love you I love you
Like almost a nightmare and fear is unfair and sadness lasting
Only hours until forgotten.

What unreal people I don't believe in kills its memory with a sting
Of death. It loves it's sister's night. It loves its sudden cold frost
Burning a winter's hand with white cloth.

We sit in a place on Hope Street afterwards and talk about books.
Then, like a collapse of time, streetlights shining oldly, a girl's cold
Words of friendship. Where she used to sit now cold and in the shape of her,
In London spirit distanced with laughter.

I walked home thinking of someone else, perhaps it is nothing?
Perhaps it is something? What is that sound? Cold flower dies quietly.
Frozen petal muted lands down near black iron-wrought gate,
Through which I walked twenty-or-so years,
Each time mesmerised by totally unordinary life until now remembering
As unordinary and beautiful and sadly missed like an old dog –
Pulls open gate as if the gate of night itself,
I was more and more tired and heavy, slowly like mercury,
Blood-coloured moon and cloud over dangerous apocalyptic weather,
Born from angelic navels glowing artificially,
Exaggerated from words spent years unsaid,
Loved for no reason and unachievable,
Beauty and wonder unearthed from beneath thousand year-old floorboards.

Not in the slightest long eternity invites us over are you still cold
Now in this weather?
And I am far from nothing, I am far from old –
I am one thing, you're another to be told.

Where you sleep – the bed you lay, the bed you sleep –
And that was us, or I, muttering at the wall
Standing 6ft. tall – one over you –
And I said show me an ounce
Of sanity in my eyes
And I'll show you the eyes of God.




ii
Black Cabs

Black cabs grabbed with thick fists in the dead of night,
Sat with women of wonderful mystery,
Stood at the doorways of your unachievable love,
Turning around and around, broken down crying wild
Intoxicated on whiskey and ecstasy from glass bottles
Pressed to the lips of Jehovah;

Nymphs in light of earthly streetlight shining orange flame skeletons
Sent sparks of light into their veins
And set their backs alight until they orgasmed in putrid fantasy
Of false hallucinations of this world and the next;

Forever each night beings of the night
Crucified their fathers in mass executions
On every street corner under the streetlight of your soul;
Who now become as holy as Almighty God in his underwear
Praying for forgiveness and more forgiveness and more –
In my head released holy angel into swampy mists of mystic night
A religious glow through heartless crowds of death,
moves and moves forever without a beat,
And moves until its feet begin to bleed
And moves until its skin is sore with the cold distance of love,
And moves while wishing for peace –
Motionless and absent from human skin
Forever moving and moving and moving

iii
Modern Life

The lives of my friends destroyed jaded mental bare naked and born
By circles of touch, solidified to human beings becoming themselves
Gilded and cross-stitched.

Morning each morning is lonely and cold
Rise early and eat and leave for work.
I saw each nuclear personality erupt beyond thinking red eyes
And botched lips. The ghost of lips the old ghost knows.
I hold the girls and think of their touch;
Come back to me each one of you.

The mortality of mothers is terrifying.

I've seen two dead bodies in my life so far –
Three including my cousin's nailed-down coffin –
Four including my father's coffin on my back
Heaving it thru long miles of graveyard –
I saw volatile people breaking bottles, windows, shoving car alarms,
Stony faces hooded violence and hate
Unnatural rebel the heartless conscience
Nasty screaming hateful bastards butcher knives
No beds for these, No beds for these;

I began my work at the end of June
When the stink had gone – my relative shark of time –
My fantasies for each dull cardboard year –
Go now and look for money,
Old politician bastards on their pedestals or thrones
Throw down bits of bread for us to eat.
Living in warm layered bodies burning anciently
Destroyed by the human forms another
Academic war-lords bang on the drum
My friends vanished and re-appeared as someone else,
Death and love becoming themselves
A slow & bashful taste becoming mindless
Musicians searching for a future,
Mindful washcloth; showers scalding,
Blisters bathed and nursed in white plastic rooms
Unnatural foliage, unreal people, crawling and dragging our bodies
Over long miles of hallow ground,
Hiding ourselves selling ourselves hinting
At nothing that exists between concrete,

Soaking floors glistening too much in sunlight
Sweat washed with rain over face,
The smell of half of my life
No money standing
Smoking calling the girls, frightened rabbits at every
Slammed door at dawn bearded sunlight,
Does not even echo,
Poetry to die for in purgatory
Illuminated nightmares
Keel over without eating for hours on end,
Ribs showing muscles still there soft
Atrophied shrivelled tongues being put
In the most natural of places
In Hell with everyone else.


iv
The Death of God: 19\10

I killed God with a knife.
I never prayed at all like I never did,
And now it's dead.
Father of soil now much longer a night can live.
I have always been scared like a fish
Caught onto a swastika hook.

A look of Yad-Vashem from either side you shadow a morning,
World cold, empty and normal, to buy things.
Fear hidden behind smiles frowns and shopping bags.

Grey movements bare claw branches dazzling light over Lion & Unicorn
Radiates power thru window globes of light – orbed like eye-lens –
An earth-explosion howls and speaks to me
The world flashes swells and bursts and reveals
Wet footprints bulge in “O” shapes
Thick shadows like sharp black tongues
Fish-hooked barbed wire anti-clockwise snail-greasy tracks
Trodden one foot on life,
Ave Maria frozen in the gutter
The window steams and outside a man falls to his death.
World dead and bright, garden tarpaulin pulled over – held down
By plank of wood – clean clean invisible air freezing cold
The glowing hysterical road – Dies irae –
Screaming incessantly as two people melt into the ground
Dancing the sky reddens softly

Broken the full moon drools sits and smiles on night
And morning the church is boarded up –
Spires shooting up like vines or weeds,
Chimneys on flat hills with the fullest of blue sky
And dead pastel green soil and sick icy road.
Then vanished from the air; marked wastes cold dark
The damp smell:
The ruined
Blackberry

Living thru the eyes of others
And I’ll refuse to pray
So I can no longer be damned

The air is whispering but the clock is talking,
Heartbreak I can’t change my violence,
Playing with the machine of creation:

See this bottle?
It’s not a bottle,
It’s a machine.

Will you marry it?
One of chief princes settles his violence
Red sky softens.

And I am less of a man
Now that I have no human body –
Now that I'm dead
Now that I've killed you and you are dead,
Now that the vulgar familiars
Of your family break away, and is dead
Like sea foam, is dead,
And I am a giant stomping the ground
Like a spoilt brat, or like a
Man annoyed that he's still not dead.


v
Machine

What brings together the bud of your existence?
An unending dog at every great white guru fleet;
It is only in your heaven your haze of not one woman
Who bore our excess of nostalgia of the doorman –
It is a distinct Ki, Swahili, in different dimensions;

My mind swells like a balloon blown up by a trumpet,
Above sand dunes lying down to the landscape;
I am brought here to destroy you.
I am in the 1980's off-camera, settling the authentic aroma of being
On camera. And this is you: begging to the preacher

Such a strange and desperate creature.

Lying down for hours in a slow rhythmic beating
A good solemn witchcraft by ourselves – while I'm sleeping.
Off to bed still like the woman before me,
Describing her features touching her smooth wintered face
Hard/cold nothing could touch this place.

The heavy not-so-glorious clouds my horizons,
Wet grass shampoo-smell, the glorious monument to our bodies is to drink,
The small microscopic antennae of the masses –
The mesmerising backsteps of anxious children
Sing into a lightbulb the light comes from my mouth,
Fades away a leaf floats in a black puddle,

Man is not like woman, where life may never end
In pools of clear bright and marble-like creatures similar to frogs,
And our depressed relatives look like dogs.
I lust to destroy you.

A great partition of days separate like oil in rainwater
Puddles in roadside gutter on way to school.
Great Atlantis vantage point from insipid cup of tea, sweet-weak.
This weak white morning froze ignorance in its grave;
Poor destruction already done suicidal version of creation,
I don't care about economy or astronomy or the death of a nation;
I just wanna know what brings you to me in your warning adept motion

Culmination the human form, Dog of Dharma,
In a shining world, where your actions are your best intentions,
But I feel the prize is perfection,
Perfect participation in the eyes of growing old.
Best lives will see a glimpse of everything:
Miniscule lives the alcohol raining
Ages of dining with dangerous gaming
Working for hours forever complaining
Always embracing the lives of Yogic liberation.

One who lies there all day, driving his headache to sleep,
Seeking the grey bathtub-water sky soaking
The patchwork wooden tiled floorboards
Of dawn of time dust asleep just waking up like an Indian God.

If I humped my physical gait to the highest light-surpassed
Mountain I would let the hard-nothing hard-summer
Half-light and unreal diamond my un-immortal mists of life;

This tarmac crossroad-black sky mixed light so
Frighteningly different, electric as my body –
Purple pink black – the sky changes,
And we are all in the sky, mourning the lost sexual angels.


vi
Perception

Perception leaps over our vision, inhuman as dogs, tongues out
Lapping up water-colours in state-of-mind love-houses.
Sundries and pretend to smoke, stubbing long, sensuous vampire fingers
Into ashtray, killing themselves in pointless suicides
Across countries and your dreams slowly arriving in mid-air
Heads throb in delight, dryness echoes, sweat like seawater
Evaporated on lose lone-beach rock, cowering at war-art and Bibles
Great grey tones leave us in dark clubs where saxophones play with Sachmo look-alikes.
Mists of eyes and bus-fog, we cave in by mere sights of love,
Holding on to our arms, the great masturbator sees us all,
Taking us all to the river; dancing souls in gaps of bruised smoke inside,
Cups down drinks like nothing. Lapping up like dogs.
Fearful of piercing ourselves on each other, we find no one so bad
As the ones in the mirror; left and slow within hummingbird flight,
It's feathers malted, two great strands of feather-hair; soft and thin.
These flattened in two-toned, new-era fashion.
The Great Eggfly copies the normal butterfly.
In all of such lonesome, nakedness inside clothing,
Where the only skin-touch, we touch breaking day at night,
Behind your closed doors, our apologies are not heard by such strangers
Who touch their eyes, for I can't even hold my mind for three weeks.

Please look me, please notice me, please know that I existed.
See me find myself in some infinite glory,
Watch me peel through the aether and find me.
Call me by my first name and smile.
Drink tea.
A cold air at 7:16pm, central-heated, the almost-darkness causes
Things to pause, the lack of faces in windows, a solar-light lights up
As I watch the cat under a garden chair, on a wet ground, by himself.

The great mystic night winged at its own breast.
Lips to the forceful microscopic sun and the bud between my fingers,
Slowly chokes, slowly flicks away ash into rain as grey as ash itself,
Grey as sick skin, intoxicated on pills and drinks,
The whirring sirens lull me into a timeless sleep.

The evening wind has no pulse. A great fire of anger burns London
Swinging pelvic thrusts into a world for a Dionysus vat of wine
To soak ourselves. I call the cat over. Smoke climbs out of me.
It climbs. It climbs like people climb out of a life they cannot live;
A rhetorical avenue of deceitful 21st century absent and meaningless individuals.

I could call out “I love you” – But she would not know.
Until infinitely gone into the next city and the next.
And I don't love anyone –
Not a soul in the world –
Taken away in a Faustian moonlight,
Looking for what girls I may love, to not love.
Maybe I'll go to Ireland, or Iceland, or India, or anywhere that begins with I.
And I get dizzy next to pale-white Buddah, smiling, hand on knee.
Ash in a plant pot.

Your hands are throbbing, hot, you ache to die or love,
Someone reaches out to you in the shape of helios,
Fingertips touch, you feel the heat pulsate like skin over the jugular,
And you wake up and see I am buried
With my baby in my leather jacket, jeans, boots,
Underneath the soil, too afraid to live, too afraid to die.

People snake and turn their backs into crooked Chinese symbols –
Their American counterparts are the same –
Their dreams are very similar to newborn babies' dreams.

The Art of Struggling

The art of struggling to achieve some success comes at a price of over exhaustion, lying down seemingly forever and unable to keep your eyes open until the day is gone, and all you had was some hours very early in the morning spent stacking shelves in a department store. Of course, this price may or may not be worth the outcome. Depending on what outcome you're after.

I, for one, am after at least some success with my writing. I'm struggling now because it makes me so tired and frustrated. That I don't know what I'm doing and that self-doubt, no matter how how much the rule insists that you avoid such a fear, is always present like a shadow.

I suppose it's with knowing every word and every sentence I've written of my novel so far. Like when you repeat a word over and over until it loses meaning. There is nothing else but what it is. I have nothing else but the words. And it's annoying when it gets to the point that I only have the words and other people who read it can see more into it. People who can tell me if it's good or if it's not good enough and in retrospect I then see it. It's like I'm staring at a brick wall and my friends look through a window.

I've written 27 chapters so far. That's about 40,000 words. It is in first person present tense. It was originally in present, I changed it to past, and I changed it back to present. I was going to change it back because I've read some people don't like first person present tense and that it's too intimate and almost suffocating. Terry Pratchett said this and I'm not a fan anyway. My friend said the present tense is much better.

The only books I know of in this tense are Fight Club and One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest. Also, Black House by King and Straub, which is a long novel and I read that ages ago, I'd totally forgotten it was written this way. So if I was to write in this tense I would be in a small group of novels that do have a kind of style to them. And another friend of mine, who is further into his novel, said that mine did have a style to it. The immediate voice, introspective and funny, all come from the immediacy.

It's kind of poetic to say things happening right now, though it is close to second person like most poems are written in. Most short stories are present tense. I do write like this naturally though. I like to write 'he says' or 'she says' and be so immediate and intimate as if the narrative is my actual thoughts. And I suppose some writers can get away with it only if they pull it off really well. And I think I'm able to. People can be deterred when told they're not good enough. Though, I wish I wouldn't tell myself I'm not good enough. Maybe I should stop re-reading my work so much.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (The Merseyboys)

This must be the rarest LP I own. It is a 1964 Merseyboys album composed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I don't know much about this record, and why they released it, since the first Beatles album was released in 1963. I do believe it was made before 1964 however, I only date it from the copyright date. It contains songs from Please Please Me, which is confusing because it seems like this would have been their first album had they not changed to The Beatles and took on Rongo as the drummer. It must be after The Quarrymen and before The Beatles.

In the top right hand corner is the word Decca, which is the studio that turned down The Bealtes in 1962. They were turned down by a number of record companies by this time. George Martin had produced studio recordings of their songs (this was with Pete Best who would be sacked from the band this year).

This album could be one of the original demos they recorded for Decca and was subsequently rejected because "guitar music is on the way out" and "The Beatles have no future in show business." However, The Beatles would later hire Ringo Starr and become signed to Parlophone, and would record from 1963 - 1970 twelve criticality and commercially successful albums and would become one of the greatest bands in history.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Beatles For Sale)

This is probably my second oldest LP, and also one of the rarer ones. It is an original from 1964. Their fourth album proves to be a turning point in their music, which was important to how they would sound in their later music. It still has that early 50's based rock n roll sound, but some bluesy sounding songs, such as my favourite off this album, Mr Moonlight, which is a cover of the Roy Lee Johnson song. It has Lennon singing with this scratchy, wailing sound, like wailing at the moon(light). I have used this song in my novel as the song playing when the narrator loses his mind, and subsequently argues in his head about the best Beatles albums.

This is one of the finer Beatles albums, which is usually overlooked for the 'greater' ones. I think it's the transition into a maturer sound that proves to be a quality to this album.

I'm a Loser is another fantastic song with blues-style lyrics, but with that quick-beat 50's style rock n roll. With both Paul and John on chorus "I'm a looooser," and then John singing the verses, he said it was him in his Dylan period, and I wish he'd kept it longer, I mean John Lennon calling himself a loser while blowing into a harmonica is just incredible. It was recorded the same day as Mr Moonlight.

The malpropism Eight Days A Week is the memorable melody, which I believe is used to signify this period The Beatles were in. The sound of strums on the guitar at the beginning and repeated at the end is the mature sound of four musicians who were, in their fourth album, becoming something new and big each time. Like The White Album, I don't play it that often, but when I do I just love the sound of them, this must be their best "early" album.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (The Times They Are A-Changin')

Bob's first fully original album (albeit his third LP) was proof of his genius songwriting when he actually attempted to be himself in his music rather than mimicking Woody Guthrie as he did in his eponymous debut. It his regarded amongst his early folk LP's, amongst the lauded Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which many believe to be better than Times, though I think I prefer The Times They Are A-Changin' for the simplicity of it, the rooted folk music so obviously learnt within the space of two years since his first LP. It not only works on a level of folk music, but acts as an instrument of social change throughout the 1960's, with songs about racism and poverty, it represents such a strong movement in human thought, for liberal thinking and a change in us as people.

Out of ten songs, the title track is easily the best, with its memorable poetic lyrics and ominous leadership sounding us to follow in the tide of change, and calling for us all to realise the change happening in the world and ourselves. With such a powerful message coming out of the mouth of a 22 year old, he was way ahead of everyone else, and is no surprise everyone hung at his every word.

The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll is another favourite of mine, with it's simple chords of C major, A minor, E minor, which was one of the only songs of his I learnt to play. It is a sad song with a story about a woman who was murdered out of a racial attack. I think this kind of song highlighted what was going on at the time, no one wanted to hear it, but they had to listen, because those kinds of things were actually happening.

I bought this album from Hairy Records in Liverpool. I had just started buying records and wanted a Bob Dylan one. I found this one hidden between Saved and some other one, which I have no qualms with (Saved is actually a good album) but Times is understandably an early masterpiece.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Goats Head Soup)

I bought this LP from Hairy Records in Liverpool, which was given to me quite cheap with a Best Of The Rolling Stones record, when I was looking for Beggar's Banquet and couldn't find. From Goat's Head Soup, I'd only known Angie, and as I bought it the guy behind the till said 'That's a bloody good album,' and I believed him as I walked out, slightly disappointed that I didn't get what I was after. But when I listened to it, I agree, it is bloody good, and there are songs on that album that will have you listening over and over.

Angie is such a good song. Kind of sorrowful but still optimistic about love. The song's title name is based on Keith Richards' daughter, Dandelion Angela.

Another song is Dancing with Mr. D, the opening song, and one which has actually given me some ispiration with my novel's character named D. D. in the song is supposed to be the devil, ie, "dancing with the devil," and what I'd written was meant to represent either the devil, death, or a doctor.

Hide Your Love reminds me of The Beatles song Hide Your Love Away from Help!, and I love both songs, with The Stones' song being more of a bluesy song whereas The Beatles' song is more folk rock. With Jagger's voice sometimes incomprehensible singing "How do you hide your love."

The whole album is a gem out of the many, just coming out of the longest streak of amazingly successful albums in concession.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Abbey Road)

Abbey Road is my next LP, which is an original print and this album represents The Beatles in quite a mature artistic presence, which is evident in the way it looks - suits, ties, no smiles, order. The ambiguity of the sleeve gives the album as much mystery as some of the others like Magical Mystery Tour, but this mystery is less about highs and more about experimenting with music.

The whole 'Paul is Dead' myth surrounds this album like mist and they played to it, as one of their jokes, because they found it hilarious. Each walking across the road in an Egyptian-style side-view, they represent mourning or a funeral: John = Preacher, Ringo = Mourner, Paul = Corpse, George = Gravedigger. The beauty in this art as a picture is equal to the art of the music it contains.

Come Together I think, relied on absurd lyrics and drum/bass sound that emerges the solo of George's guitar. It is a very well put together song, which lasts with John's gently wailing voice. A strange song whose lyrical ingenuity has as much artistic merit as the cover. I.e., the lyrics represent each member of the band: "he's one holy roller" allegedly refers to the spiritually inclined George Harrison; "he got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola" to Ringo, the funny Beatle; "he got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker" to Lennon himself; and "got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see" to Paul.

One of my favourite Beatles songs is Something, which I always state was one of George's songs (I had the pleasure of hearing Bob Dylan sing this in Liverpool 2009). Such a beautiful love song which isn't too mushy, but shows someone admiring from afar, being attracted 'like no other lover' and being moved by her love, there's just something about this certain person that you can't escape. (I have two versions of this song, one is not from the album but I can't remember where I got it, and is George by himself with guitar with no other sounds from the band, just brilliant).

Geroge Harrison wrote Here Comes the Sun from this album too. Shows that he's still my favourite Beatle. Some other songs such as Mean Mr Mustard (which I have two versions again) becomes these great Liverpool-style folk songs the band would know about with being from the place, and I know too, with being from here. They're similar to Irish folk songs, usually funny and witty. Polythene Pam is another one, it's like a joke in a story in a song, about Pam, "She so good looking she looks like man."

Abbey Road is a a cryptic album of hidden lyrics and music specifically engineered out more of jokes than art, but the Beatles couldn't help it, because they were so damn good.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (White Album)

Probably the greatest album created in music, The Beatles (The White Album) is a great collection of 30 songs, which most have some sort of artistic presence that have a timeless quality and preserve the actual creativity of the band, being such that no one (or not many) could match their creativity in music. Even one of the lesser songs of the album, Piggies which is a kind of annoying old-fashioned baroque sound with a harpsichord is an intelligent social commentary on corporate greed. Not my favourite of George's songs.

My favourite might be Happiness is a Warm Gun. It has a three-song structure, which contains a kind of misery and fury and love. It explodes now and again by loud/quiet rhythms along with the beautiful songwriting on the lines of happiness, which is either a sexual symbolism or in the grip of suicide.

Someone in work once said to me that the best song he heard The Beatles do was Long Long Long, which I wasn't too familiar with at the time. It, too, has a quiet feel to it which then changes so suddenly into a burst of sound. It's a strong but gentle sound, reflecting how good George was, I mean almost every song he made was good, and he didn't have to team up to do it.

This album is one of my favourite, though I do like the other later one's (Let It Be, Revolver). And I suppose it gives to music more than most things have given, being that essential creativity that lack now, and it existed the most when they made this album. This one I've got, (No. 0125403) is rare and is a statement to what music was and must be. I know I read articles now saying Rock n Roll is dead. I don't know. Maybe it died when John Lennon died, maybe it just got wounded and suffocated by the corporate crap that surrounds us now. As long as these kinds of songs still exist, then music will be fine, because we don't have to listen to new stuff.

I'm around new unsigned bands a lot, and I see some with potential (some I lie just to get my name as a writer heard) and most of the time I don't see the same power. No Morrison, no Cobain, no, Dylan. If people decide to treat music as an art again and make it disregarding what money could be made, then the love for music should return along with Rock n Roll. And The Beatles, who just so happened to be one of the earliest rock n roll bands, may or may no have been the greatest band on earth, but the fact that they lasted and they were wanted and were/are listened to, shows that they were doing something right.

The Hyperreal, Facebook and Zadie Smith

I am sitting in my bedroom and it has just got chilly and I'd been reading various essays on semiotics, notably the Hyperreal, which I was taken to by Zadie Smith in her essay “Generation Why?” in which she talks about mainly the film The Social Network and Facebook becoming a generation, but examining the the almost social-autism of the character of Zuckerberg (played by Eisenberg). Why did I get to this? Well, reading Zadie Smith has got me thinking on a new wavelength than I was previously, whereby her discourse is very intelligent but also charming and funny. The Hyperreal, she says, is conveyed in the way David Fincher directs, creating this compelling “real” world which isn't real at all, but to this generation it is very much real – 'it's music video stuff,' which has forgone the youthful MTV teenage generation of the 90's and has sunk deeper into a world where we are almost unable to get out of, probably like digging our own grave, and why would this be? Well, it's not real. It is fantasy. It is mixed (2 parts reality / 2 parts fantasy) and it is difficult to see the future generations with information far surpassed the wealth of knowledge and then drenched in the overpopulation of words, numbers, percentages and metaphors – a world of advertisements, buying and selling.

It's not about whether the hyper world should slow down and take a breath, buy why it should? Why should all the knowledge in the world be given up for, what? Morals and ethics? Don't be ridiculous, we're humans, ethics comes as choice. And knowledge comes as desire. Take the snake in the Biblical reference. It was desire to take the apple (or unknown “fruit”) to achieve knowledge, and now, with Facebook, we are overwhelmed with fruit of knowledge – cast out from the Garden of Eden, though still we built and learned.

I finished reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith today. I was going to write a review of some sort, but decided on these thoughts garnered by Smith and her works. White Teeth is written in a kind of archaic narrative, the likes I can only compare to the history-ridden characters of Wuthering Heights with it's huge time-scale. This “hyperfiction” I believe it is called, this style of writing that jumps from one time to another and one character's history to another is reminiscent of 21st Century life. Now I'm talking about knowledge and information; the Internet. Globalisation. Everything, the whole Earth, at my fingertips as if I am some evil genius from a James Bond film, but really I am a consumer and this is part of this generation. It's called “hyper” because it moves so quick, I am in England, then next Japan, then next Guatamala – discovering things without opening a book, without even getting up from my chair. But is this a bad thing? No. Not entirely. Knowledge is a good thing and everyone should have the right to learn. But us as humans soak up information like sponges, and so like some know-it-all kid will get it wrong, and something will go wrong.

But it's not real. How can it be? I never left the room. Really it is just a representation of the world, a picture, a shape. If they are shapes, then surely the information and knowledge must be too? It's worth thinking about that with all this information happening on and on and on all at once these days, why are we so willing to trust it straight away? It's hyperreality, it's both real and unreal, the world has become a theme park and we're paying to use it.

Like Zadie Smith says about Zuckerberg: he's too 'hyped on the idea that he’s in heaven to notice he’s in hell.'

Writing Poems - Meeting Carol Ann Duffy and Billy Collins

I don't think it's quite worth saying how relevant it is to write poetry from one point of view of the world, where the single purpose for said writing is that single and actual functions; though every time I write poetry - it will come about like some kind of celestial or biological function - I'll write about five or so "good" poems, and what I mean by good is that I choose not to throw them away and believe that with the one good line in them they'll be forever remembered as that poem he wrote, and thus I cannot throw them away anyway.

But I've always been one to read Sylvia Plath, I love her use of language and I've seen it in no other poetry so I subsequently mimic that causing me to have written something totally cryptic that even I don't know what I have written (this happened in 2007 after reading Virginia Woolf for the first time, I didn't know what I'd written, I've not read her since). So the polar opposite to Plath I believe is Charles Bukowski, whom I also adore, and they are actually similar in that they both write confessionalist poetry (which I've written in an essay before). Bukowski made me write gritty and often vulgar language, but together I see my influence from the two. But I don't think it's quite worth saying that I read only these two poets, since I do try to read others, and one recent influence is now Billy Collins.

I saw him give a reading with Carol Ann Duffy. I met Duffy and spoke to her, told her I was doing a Masters and she signed her book Rapture for me, which I still have, but I went and got Collins' Sailing Alone Around the Room because I like his use of language, very slow and meditated like his voice, and the message/story that I neglect to put into my writing.

I wrote a poem I've posted called Three Men With Suitcases. I wrote it after I came home one night and three men with suitcases where in my way, but I was thinking to myself about a short story I wanted to write which I never got around to (it was going to be called Conversations with the Vicar, and was to be quite violent). My thoughts then moved onto these men in front of me, they were very strange, like tourists at night. In my tired state of mind I began describing smells as colours. The poem I wrote switches from outside and inside; with three men in suitcases in the way and getting past them, and inside with a man seeming to be freezing to death somehow.

I wrote this:

The best thing I ever knew
Was not yourself or what you do –
It was that time you got the flu,
Sat and said achoo achoo,
Covered in a dangerous heat
A swelling down to your feet
Skin white as a sheet,
Tongue a lump of meat –
The best thing I ever knew about you –
Not your eyes (that were blue)
Or your left foot (with it's tiny shoe)
Or your presence (which sticks like glue) –
It was your sickness inside of you
That made you want to sneeze
To explode or pop
And fall at your knees –
It was you and the time you had the flu –
It was always you and the things inside of you.

This was just something that came to me after reading some Collins and the idea that, with being sick at the time and most other people too, we're more sick than alive. And the result being, I more likely fell for the sickness than the person.

Another one:

The heat of me burns,
I glow a shade of red,
Maybe crimson or rose,
I swell and fill with dread;
Then numb to the knee
(and numb to the arm);

My skin is dried fruit
Or rotten apple skin –
Eyes are heavy,

A shadow is slit along
White wall like yin yang –

I then burst into confetti
As I drift into sleep.

This was a small thing I did to get me to write when I couldn't think of anything. When this happens I just describe my physical feelings. The confetti bit was an interesting image that came to me, the reason I haven't included it in my "good" pieces is because the first part is too weak and the end is paradoxical since 'burst' is the opposite to 'drift into sleep.' It's one of those poems that can't really be edited since a change in the metaphor will be a change in the entire thing, which isn't really worth it in the end.

Time Out of Mind

I have been listening to Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind recently, although it wasn't up there with my favourites including Blonde on Blonde, Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61, Times They Are A-Changin', and John Wesley Harding. I stuck by his 1963-67 era music mostly.

Having listened to his later albums, and loving the blues sound to them,

indicating how much he has become his original idols of blues music, I wasn't as inclined to Modern Times and Love and Theft. (Though Together Through Life is a keeper). As I began listening to the haunting gruff voice of a love-sick man, I kept listening to it over and over. It's not a sad album per se but one of perspective and nonchalance.

I kept listening to Love Sick ("I'm sick of love, and I'm in the thick of it,

this kind of love, I'm so sick of it"), Standing in the Doorway, and Highlands, the latter being the only 16 minute song I can listen to all the way through 5 times in a row.

I suppose it's one of those albums that will keep you going because it's full

of words you're thinking, but not hearing so well. I'd love to get in that big mind of his, unfortunately I'm stuck in mine.

Why I Believe Infinite Jest To Be Following Me

David Foster Wallace has only recently come into my literary life, and has already become very important in adapting my style. I now have Infinite Jest, though only having read 25 pages of 981, I have notice his name has popped up a number of times before even knowing who he is.

My friend from Uni is a fan of DFW, and lent me Oblivion to read, which is by DFW. In this is a story called Incarnations of Burned Children which we studied for one class last October, while we were in Wales.

Before this, August 2009, I downloaded some e-books to read because I didn't have any money to buy any new ones. I found this website to get them for free, so I was getting the usual stuff I liked to read, plus some random names I thought I should give a go. One being - yes, that's right - David Foster Wallace. I'd only read some of this before Uni and did not remember the name.

But, further back when I was in University in Preston, my tutor in Creative Writing had Infinite Jest. I recently told her I had Infinite Jest and was about to start reading it, and she said she'd had it on her shelf for years (inc. the years she taught me) but never read it.

And now, flicking through Generation X by Douglas Coupland, which I bought before I even started Uni, I notice in the back it has advertised a number of books published by Abacus. One of which being Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Although books cannot follow people, I've come to the conclusion that this one does. I should start reading it soon, but it's the biggest book I've had to read. (I've only read 300 pages of 933 of Ulysses).

On Poetry and a Novel - Gainbourg Vie Heroique

The previous Poem, Two Mystics, was written over a few hours at night, after reverting back to Sylvia Plath's poetry, which I hadn't read in a while, and she's a huge influence on my poems. It is basically my experience around people and the actions between them. How I could give a person so much - feeling like I've "had to" give something - and then feeling like I have given not enough: "I have given you less than your smiles," and "I have given you hardly a thing."

I suppose it ends with feeling ashamed; with the obvious symbol of "red,"

which then bursts into flames. The title came to me right at the end of writing it, when the line "mysticalstill" came to me (forming one word is apparently Joycean, I got from a friend at our writing worskshop), and I decided to call it, not Mystical Still, but Two Mystics, making the two people seeming exactly the same, as they act so awkwardly around each other in the exact same manner.

Havva I got from Bob Dylan's song Hava Negeila, which is a Jewish song

of the same name. I wanted to put that word in, so I looked up it's meaning and it means "Eve" which I think fits perfectly.

I have begun writing my novel. I submitted the first section of the first chapter to the workshop and got some really good feedback, so I must be doing something right. However, the thing I was worried about was true, which was I wrote something impressive, and then as it went on, it lost the impressiveness to the end. It's like I've push out every bit of stylistic writing I have in one bit, and the next bit its diluted. But with the advice I received, I think I know how to go about writing it.

It's a 4 year old story. I thought of it in 2006 and never wrote it because I

liked it so much I was worried I'd ruin it. I told this to a friend back in May, as he'd already begun his novel, and he'd said to just write it and then see where you stand. But I hate that, when people say "just write." It's really not that simple. It's so comlex that it's taken me 4 years to adapt my writing style to be good enough, and I can now use the previous mad experiences I've experienced into which I can form a somewhat semi-autobiographical novel, which I think Hunter S Thompson used in Fear and Loathing which is called a Roman-a-clef; a story based on real events, turned to fiction.

Because a lot of things have influenced me 4 years after I had the original

idea for this novel, I wonder how long I should take with anything. So if I write and publish and novel and then see it some years later, I'd probably have some better ideas for it.

I'd been using David Foster Wallace, which a friend had lent me, as an

influence. And I was also looking between Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch as two distinctly different first-person narratives as influences. But I recently saw the French film Gainsbourg, which I saw after I'd started writing the chapter. The life of musician Serge Gainsbourg is illuminated through Johann Sfar's portrayal in this film, which uses Absurdist-like charactures, including a giant walking head of a Jew that comes out of the propagandist poster of Nazi-occupied France and walks with the young Gainsbourg. Another is La Gueule (The Mouth), which is a 7 ft. tall persona of Gainsbourg, with a long nose and long finger, very creepy to look at, but very funny as you understand that it's just Gainbourg's thoughts personified. This is something in what I wrote, in which the character is somewhat divorced from his own body. Someone had mentioned Beckett's Molloy, (though I'd only read Malone Dies out of The Trilogy). Someone mentioned to me that at the end of season 4 of House, there is another similar concept, in which House views his own mind in the form of a dead person. I will have to watch this. I will have to get writing this thing, having been reading up on more of Pinter and about to read Hamlet for the first time.

No Sleep - Myth of Sisyphus

I'm listening to Blonde on Blonde on a warm rainy morning, after I cleaned the room and found about 7 socks under my bed. I love the rain, it makes a morning. I could do without it being so warm. I think I'm so warm because I've been moving about, and the hoover heated up the small room, but the window – as always – is wide open, and I think it's 17 degrees today.

I'm tired a little bit; I woke up around noon. I couldn't sleep again last night, it's probably the same thing I had about 2 years ago in Preston when I had a big manic episode that lasted about a month and I hardly slept or ate and I just got drunk and wrote. I wrote a lot of poems back then, most aren't that good, but I still have some in my collection now, which I'm still working on.

Anyway, I was crowded with thoughts and trying to write my first novel, which I couldn't do and it drove me mad. I kept looking into Naked Lunch and then into Catcher in the Rye, seeing how two very different writers can write so differently in the first person. I was stuck with this terrible terrible piece of writing I just couldn't have in the novel, so got rid of it, leaving me with nothing again, because I keep starting again. And back again 2 years ago, with my dissertation, which drove me crazy, and I re-wrote the whole thing at least 3 times. I thought, forget it, I'm not writing it simply because I'm actually not writing it. I was sat there staring forward, and then the bad thing happened.

There's a poem I've written called 12:24 am, in which I travel 35 miles to see a girl. I began to think about her. (Because it was written about a real person). I then found on my laptop old MSN conversations that had been saved somehow. I read over them and it was a terrible feeling. We were quite close. And now we're not. Thing is, at the end of the poem I write something about her going to Falmouth, this was our plan, to go together and do our Masters Degree down south, but we didn't. Now I've found out, not only is she getting married, but she has the same plan with that new guy. To move down south with him.

I wonder what would have happened if we had gone. I mean, the Masters I'm doing now has improved my writing so much, I'm much more well read, and I have some new friends. I probably wouldn't have any of that had I moved away because I would have been drooling over her all day, whining about her all the time like a lonely puppy. Such an idiot. Still, I was thinking about the other people I knew in Preston, and it depressed me to think it's been 2 years since I've seen them, and they're all split up anyway, since Uni finished and everyone went home. All scattered over England like seeds in the soil. One girl has gone to Australia. One guy is now in Canada.

I felt like doing a Rimbaud and quitting writing altogether. 60% of the time I don't get much enjoyment out of writing, it's just something I'm compulsed to do. However, people do say writing is a method of relieving stresses and things like that, maybe it's the writing that driving me crazy. I know I'm not going to quit, I'll always have the compulsion to write something, because I'll always think of it. I suppose I should get my poetry published and then my novel, and then I'll think about it.



I read over some of Albert Camus, who wrote The Stranger (L'tranger). This is one of his novels, in which he talks in relation about The Myth of Sisyphus. It is about the Absurd life of man, and the acceptance of the Absurd as something to support the idea of life or living a meaningless life. So, to accept your life is meaningless, you in effect, accept the absurdity of your situation, and thus you are free to be contented.

Sisyphus was a Greek myth who put Death in chains so no human had to experience death, which defied the Gods, and therefore, angered them. Death escaped from Sisyphus, and so he had to die. However, Sisyphus escaped the Underworld, but as the Gods were still angry with him, they punished him to push a large rock up a mountain, once at the top, the rock rolls down, and he has to start over again.

Camus uses this Greek myth as an example of the Absurd notion that life is, indeed, meaningless, but if you only accept that meaninglessness then you are freed to experience contented acceptence. Just as if Sisyphus would have acknowledged the absurd situation he was in, he would be have been fine. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I think Camus also made three examples of absurd people, or “The Absurd Man.” The Lover, one who is a serial seducer like Don Juan. He does this because he lived a passionate life to the fullest, as he recognises life to be short-lived.

The Warrior is the man who sees life and death as one thing, and chooses action over contemplation; he wants to engage in human history and become something after life by laying down his life for what he believes in.

The Actor, one who becomes a number of different personalities to achieve fame. “Appearing creates being.”

Sophia De Mello Breyner

I found a note in one of my poetry anthologies for Sophia De Mello Breyner. It only said her name. It was a reminder just to read the two poems of her in that book, which I did back in 2006 or 2007 or whenever it was I made the note.

She was a Portuguese poet. She wrote these beautiful poems, which were usually quite short but powerful. They had these perfect one-liners that were quite brilliant, burning a poingiant thought in you, leaving you with a feeling not so dissimilar to sad, but with a certain power to it, as well.

I never knew she's died in 2004. A year before I was even in Uni. I only found out today. The one poem that sticks with me is Inscription.

Inscription

When I die I will return to seek
The moments I did not live by the sea.

Sophia De Mello Breyner

My June - My Poems - In The Casa

I went outside 20 or 15 minutes before I had to read it and paced up and down in my suit, I liked how odd I must have looked. I talked to my brothers friend (who was also my friend when we were kids, I'd seen him once in 10 years). I got a cigarette off him and we talked a bit. Then he went in. Soon my sister came out, looking for me, thinking I'd done a runner. I told her to go back in. I got ready, mentally, and I went in and did it. Never been so scared.
Too bad I promised my friend I'd read out some poetry at an open mic night in the Autumn.

So I'e got back into my writing, and it helps that I've taken a month off work, and now I'm reading about 7 books at once. (Not including the 5 or 6 books of poetry).

The last poem I posted was "What I Remember of Sunday 16th May 2010." I took this, as well as fie other poems, to the workshop last week. We sat in the back room of The Casa and we talked about them (as well as my friend's extract of his novel). We both got good feedback, and I was glad about this, having put off submitting poetry for the past 9 months, which is silly, being more of a poet than a writer of fiction.

This poem, though, was interesting because it was the most prose-like piece of poetry out of the other convoluted, absurd pieces. It was like a diary extract. That was the intended effect, to just show the memories in such a mundane and simple form - a form I don't usually use.

However, I've been reading a lot of poetry, and putting some poems together for publiscation soon, and having come across T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I realise what I want to do. I read The Waste Land when I was at University in Preston, but I didn't study it, so didn't know much about it. But I want to re-write my poem and try to adapt the simple diary-format into something not as weird and Beckettian as I do, but also not a pastiche of Eliot either, but to write a long (4 or 5 page) poem regarding one day in a strong poetic language, relevant to today.

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.

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.

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.

The Primitive Machine - why we are intrigued by the drunk

At quarter to ten he asked me the time, and I only had to look at the station clock underneath the train times to tell him that it was quarter to ten, not knowing if I should tell him it was in the morning not the night. He was short – up to my shoulder, like a little boy – and he had a long dirty white beard like Father Christmas, and he was mumbling something I couldn’t quite understand, so I said ‘What?’

‘I’m out of it,’ he said – as far as I could guess, that was as close as it got. And I know he was out of it from the numb speech and the glazed dead-look in his eyes I saw when he looked at me to speak. He stunk off piss so bad it was like a baby’s nappy change, or a public toilet with the overwhelming stench of ammonia caught in my nose and mouth. That yellow stink catching at the back of my throat. He swayed on his feet and when he steadied himself he was a step closer to me, shoulder to shoulder.

‘I need something to bring me down,’ he said – again, I’m paraphrasing.

‘You should go get a cup of coffee, then,’ I said. I paraphrase myself, now, because I can’t remember my exact words. But I told to go get some coffee, immediately regretting this in case he wants dome change. But he shakes his head defiantly, No, don’t want.

Yeah, don’t want none of that. I thought of him being in the pub all night – pint after pint. I imagined the first pint yesterday afternoon. I wondered when he pissed himself, or was he doing it as he spoke, maybe that’s why it smelled so strong. I looked down to see if there was a puddle coming to meet my shoes, but there wasn’t.

‘I need a bring down,’ he said, and I almost heard him say Man. I just need a bring down, maaan. I didn’t know what this was.

‘You don’t know what I mean, do you?’ he said. Obviously, I didn’t. What’s a bring down after a piss-up? Whiskey?

‘Drugs,’ he said. Oh yeah.

‘Haven’t got none,’ I said. No money, either.

‘Didn’t ask for any, did I?’ he said. For a second his tone changed and I’m expecting him to bring out a knife and slowly try to stab me, stumbling and eventually giving up, but the situation would be more frightening than it sounds. But he waddles off, with a thick trail of piss air behind him. I can’t help but laugh when he talks to a girl with bright red hair, who clearly ignores him, and he walks again, leaving the girl unable to even breathe a sigh of relief with the stink. He talks to an old woman, about his height, who gets off the Kirby train, and they seem to get in a conversation. She must be too polite to leave him, or a kind Christian who wants to help, but can only offer to listen. I don’t know what he’s saying, but a couple of people stare at him as they pass by, they should at least drop some coins in a hat or something.

He eventually got on the same train as me, and I got on the next carriage down, because he stunk so bad. It was like you could taste the hot liquid through the black felt-like jogging or sweat pants he wore.

He is like a Greek Tragedy, unable to avoid the disaster in front of him, while others – including myself – are just spectators of his life. But why are we fascinated by them? Because we are. We stop and stare, and if we don’t stop, we still stare. Wow, my life could have been like that if I never got a bath. Or, Wow, if I could drink all night, and do drugs in the morning, my life would be just dandy. Or, Dirty bastard, get away from me. It’s funny how close we are to being like that. I think we’re all self-destructive, it’s a primitive machine; what stops us being so primordial is living a non-animalistic life – How clean we are; how well dressed we are; Oh granny, what nice job you have... All the better to keep my life in order and pay for private accommodation away from any riff-raff on the streets.

We are all exposed to danger; we are all animals. What is interesting is how we refuse to know that we are animals. I’m not an animal, I wear pants! Sophocles’ Oedipus and Freud’s Oedipus was an intellectual man who exposed himself to the dangers of reality and has repressed yearnings of patricide and incest. We, as humans, carry the repressed yearnings of death and desire. Those two concepts may or may not intersperse, but both exist side by side; without death there is no life, without desire there is no life. Therefore, Oedipus the Everyman was the animal he fought not to be, and the drunk I saw in the train station was the animal he fought to become.

The desire for anything is in us all – as is death – and the most animalistic action is the desire to kill, as humans we do not want to kill and we don’t want death. What I’m saying is, the desires in life are for the good or the bad, you end up a rich New York stockbroker, or you end up a drunken old man in a train station smelling of piss. We are apart from animals in that we are the human instinctively primitive, with no control over our destiny.