A List of Poets

A list of poets that I read (inc. musicians).

Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Ted Berrigan, William S Burroughs, Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas, JH Prynne, Wilfred Owen, William Blake, Frank Turner, Robin Purves, Jennifer Moxley.

Rabbit

Something I drew a few weeks ago. Looks like a crazed rabbit.

Moving Jobs? - And Guitar

Over that last week of work I realised about 10 people have left or are leaving, which is kind of weird because I hardly know them, I've only been there three months. But what I'm thinking of is what new people they'll employ over the next couple of months. I'm going to be working there, maybe showing them the 'ropes.' But I only started there in July.

That gets me thinking of moving to a different job. I got told a couple of weeks ago on the train going into Liverpool that I should go after a better job and do what I'm good at. He said don't put barriers in front of yourself. I could write for a newspaper, but last time I did that was the University paper in Preston and I hated it so I quit. They never published my work. I don't know what writing jobs there are, but I sent some poems to some literary magazines to be not read. I'll write a book and publish a book of poetry soon - like after I've done my Masters in Liverpool. It'd look odd doing a writing course when already published.

I've picked my guitar back up. I started in the Spring, but I've hardly touched it since moving back home. I was talking to a guy at work who plays guitar and it got me thinking about playing. Maybe I could sing some songs - people listen better to songs than poems.

Transition

Silent stillness a heartbeat in the thick air your only
Pulse in the world at this moment in time mesmerised
By the tiny mechanical Clack clack of clockwork days
Recent surf going out and in a delicate Shh over thick
Heavy empty sand Starry slush in its eyes like the skies
It stares at all night; We remember driving like lunatics
Half-drunk freedom soldiers out to seduce the world
With our radioactive blood – A distant orange summer
Slick hot and golden and full of eerie practise
Of life and practising death by bottle screaming
Butterflies every now and then in some bold wonderland
With sharp enemy fronts held by our explosive eyesight
That never stopped starring, starring and seeing
The North held by South; A grass and a sky a soily ocean:
Everything wide-eyes and in a daze no doubt
Some unwelcome Vega to come and ruin it
And you said something along the lines of:
“What’s the fucking point?” I don’t know. Why don’t you know?
But you calmed down sometimes we took turns going crazy
Hidden from the country and the political death ray
Around us, sick bureau puddles everywhere;
I climbed a fence and fell off, then a tree
At 2 am in the South of England: I grew up you grew up we all
Grew up like children long friend dope fiend
Morning philosophy; eyebrows raised and set forward
On the horizon were “stuff” was happening –
Separate ways – there and then meeting again –
Fateful artificial deadly water lilies if we ever took serious
The new times: Happening now.
We pass the time around like a bottle of mixed cocktails
And where are you going with that gun
In your hand? Hey? Born victims jelly eyes:
Blackcurrant skies appear over there in wintery morning
Before work at 6:15 am, it’s a slow change you got there
Transition onto next raining slowly grinning.

Sunday Work - And Old Faces

Working on Sundays is always quiet, feels like you're not supposed to be there, feels like you could just stop moving and everyone would walk around you. I'll have a 12-hour shift over night on tuesday. That'll feel like we're robbing the place, like we've been locked in and all we can do is rob the place and throw all the clothes, toasters, and soap dish holders off the roof, so we can get it all in the morning.

I'm seeing old faces, you know from high school and that, and most of the time I don't want to see those faces, I mean, I went through years without seeing them and that was enough, and now they're popping back up like fucking weeds. You can't really get rid of those fuckers. I think it's because I'm living at home again, but some faces I don't mind having a look at, it's just I'd never accept that they were there again. If you know what I mean.

I need to move somewhere else. When I do it will be genius.

One Two

When you live
You will see the harsh
Complexities
Of life
Within life within dreams
Driving cars
Walking waiting
Wailing wearing shoes
Shoo-ing away pigeons.

When you die
You will hear
A voice
(Dark light)...
Tunnel?

On Writing - And Sleeping

One writing technique I like to use is this Surrealist or Dada technique (I think it is anyway) where you cut up bits of your one-line notes to make a poem. Burroughs used the cut-up technique a lot, and it makes the piece hard to read but it's ingenious in its own right. If used properly.

I thought of a technique of writing one word a day. Then over time you put those words together, but that would take ages. But it's all about having them make sense with no sense at all. I like to think I coined the phrase 'Song Line.' This is a line in a poem or a song that sounds almost exactly like the previous line, but with different words. (I found out it's a real technique called Mondegreen, Hendrix used it in Purple Haze). John Lennon could do that. You find it happening in songs, and sometimes it doesn't happen and you only think it does. EXAMPLE: 'Romantic young kissable lips,' from a Frank Turner song. I turned around to be 'Manic unkissable lips.' You see? Also, Kerouac gives the idea, not to cut-up- but to write as first intended. The first thing you think of is what you write. EXAMPLE 2: 'Gorilla lightbulb, hat sits down, lamppost bags paper plughole, wet frog night day lights pushy.' That came from the top of my head, it sounds rubbish, but a technique like that can be worked on if there's a specific theme going on.

Also, you ever get that weird feeling of loss when you sleep during the day? I did today, I slept for 4 hours (2-6) and I lost the day. I had been working all morning, though. I also got the feeling of being watched. There's a strange lack of peace in day-time sleep.

Give Me Money - A Free Spirit in Debt.

I figured it would take over a year to save up enough money to pay course fees and rent a flat in the city. But I've only got a year, and I'm going to work my ass off through all those months and not reach the amount needed. It comes at a time when everyone has high-paying jobs after graduating and even though I've graduated, I'm still only working in a shop. It's a lot of work for a little amount of money. I can't spend it, so I can't see anyone. So it's going to be a pretty lonely year, me thinks.

And I don't want to get a loan, but I might have to. I want to travel and see the world, and you know it's getting bad when the plans you make are a year and a half in advance. Kids like us are meant to be free. A while ago I wrote this line: 'A free spirit in debt.' It's happening more and more to us; you want to be a free spirit or not - take your pick.

Coming Home After Saturday Morning Work

Manic

Today tilts and screams out

Your life’s all your way!
Tonight we will apply our wills
And stand and shout that the world
Is laughing and the night
She’s full of the night
She’s full of the night while
It tilts Moksha! And inside
Wide-eyed our naked eyes
Are selling our souls the old ways

Of thinking,

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.

And I will Surrender –

The naked skydive;
It is the Maniac
And we are the Sun,
And yr own sun’s bein lazy;

And Sacrifice –

People remote so wishful inside

And I will remember how it used to be

Mukeshpuri the lives intact with yr loss forever

And I will remember

The half-hearted second thought,
Rubber arms pink elastic muscles
Move like agony sometimes,
One who lies there all day
Driving his headache to sleep,
Seek the grey bathtub-water sky soaking

The patchwork wooden tiled floorboards
Of dawn of time dust asleep

Just waking up like an Indian God

Now
Rolled over to one side;

And I will remember
How it used to be so great;
And turning to the old ways
Surprise yrself with a collection of books lives and music;

Hyper action for my own safety
From losing it

Again,

And I will remember losing it,
Visionary thinks the world of you
It’s all coming true
But it lacks a bit of essence,

And I will remember

Us waking up like Gods.

Delusion Calm

A fat ambush of *sparkling* people
Out seeking wisdom the Sun
Slipped into daze death crazy unstable
The able are able to go
But the lazy are able to stay;
Say why don’t you go?
Away from thick grime and sulphur
Eggy-smell of the old =railway= lines
=Parallel= minds a deuce doth go easy,
What? You say what?!
Go! Leave now and be gone!
Peace! Peace be with you – and all that,
Karma Sutra and Krishna –
Have a nice day, which way?
The order has left its un-artful courthouse
Of spiteful odours & wigs,
Plenty of those overzealous monsters –
Leave me alone!
Leave me the hell alone & find yrself
A spiteful harsh reality that spits out colours
Black pink green
Unseen in – No, always seen!
In sleep, we dream!
At night, we dream!
U n s e e n
Weird eyes skin cocaine-white
Slipping unconscious *sparkling* against granite
With the middle-karma, with dots, man,
With smudges on the windscreen, girl,
Wet wiry filaments in yr eye
Experiencing yr affections;
>
t
urn
<
Train is a long dream train
Short pain a plain pain to go all that
Way and it was a long dream along
A great ghastly obnoxious lovely sexy
Adorable profound sweet
Beautiful wonderful dream
Of everything of everything of everything of...

Cow in the Sky

There was a cow in the sky and I took a picture of him..

Untitled Painting 2

A mania is a mixture, really, like red and blue, fire and water; it's like one thing can lead to another and better yet, one thing actually is another. It's all really nonsense like bathwater in a whirlpool going down the drain all at once.

A friend once told me the best way to feel better is to run; I remember I ended up chasing him around midnight in some field in Cornwall because he stole my bottle of Vodka. When I caught him, we woke up some German campers, so we had to run away again. He ended up going to sleep in the tent and I went and climbed a tree, I remember sitting in that tree in the wee hours, so many miles from home.

Radioactive Bookshelf

Right, say, look this way at certain thing you bring
Then that way at next thing and thing
Turns to be no “thing” expected than what’s
In front of your radioactive bookshelf
That warble red green bloooo –
You will find the old radioactive bookshelf
And it will find its poems
Miles and miles away on some London day
Where a musical parliament hates the bass
Wall-voices – that could be us!
With our heroin socks miles and miles away
On some terrible day watching us go by
Kept divine by the best generations,
These demonstrations wake in morning –
Dartboard stomach shoots by –
Headache-stricken scarf wound hot,
Rock n’ Roll screaming red tongue
Sausage roll screaming tongue red,
We touch the Universe with callused fingertips
Tip: open toilet door with pinkie –
Feel voices remember like afterwords,
Forewords word words worming their way in;
And now the stark bright naked voices with a gun
Your parliament hopefuls are deaf next thing and next
To nothing the body kept divine by practise
Of darting away, half-used, half-abused,
Half a person in trouble
Hoping someone will call to me.

Untitled Painting

I painted this and it took me around two hours. I used oil paints on small canvas. I didn't know what it was meant to be, I was just putting the colours down; but I was going through stories in my head as I painted. Like the green at the bottom was the typical green fields of a normal painting. I thought the black and red looked like fire so I made grey smoke, then the blue-ish sky. There is a red sun at the top, it's the only thing that seems normal in a messed-up world.

Stoic

So it's like, Stoic the way you could be leaning to one side with a cigarette in one thin hand and rabbit ears, and you look to one side and then the other, deciding on your Karma or someone else's Karma and nothing goes so quick, only as slow as your cig; and so what the hell is all this stoicism about when the Fonze was much quicker than this guy? What I'm saying is, it's all about avoiding time.. you see? Is that Stoic? No, stoic is so slow that you end up watching the time, all the cool kids wear watches.