fool the coffee

What am I afraid of?
Trompe le monde,
What am I
A cup
What am
I coffee
Cup le monde
Afraid of I
Cup of coff -
-ee I le of
Afraid of what I am

poem 25/10

Hardly ever managing
To process the energies we find,
The danger of humans come
To you; hard like a brick
With your face on,

I saw someone
Wrapped up in a towel,
And we sat around in a circle,
The smoke constricting my lungs
Like a Peruvian Boa –

A dead man with a whiskey in his hand
A coffin with a whiskey on top,
Remember sitting around drunk
Dressed up dead from feet swinging –
Flames flickering like an epileptic candle,
Death with its glasses on
Takes off its clothes
And professes in the Indian Groves.

In a glowing Ankor corridor
We surpass tone-deaf muses
Their manner dragging knuckles and feet
To some kind of god damn tree-worship.

I hope she soothes the weather soon,
A turban to dry, a hand begging for tears,
A quick body – shoe-shaped –
Lying around in light of electric storms.

The rival full of doubt like a priest,
The death has always been machinery –
It crackles and explodes.

New Draft of Poem 10/8

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.

I am Become a Man / A God I am Not [title edit]

I am an old God that died,
I am become a man -
I have exist by powers alone,
The long-running fire burns silver dot -
An eye that winks that hardly exists,
I am a man a god I am not.

poem 13/9 no.2 - expeimental writing

Drink take pill
Political leaders
Sweet girls; Son of Man,
O let me burst
Your last legs?
Series of mechanisms:
“invention” (JFK, Khrushchev) –
Apparatus of production;
Devour our young,
Is there space in the space you
Space in having travelled quite a bit,
Never bring the dawn,
Face like biscuit
Burning fiercely
“it was really him that hailed” -


[Having looked at parts of JG Ballard's Short Stories vol. 2, Literary Theory: An Anthology Rivkin Ryan, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and maybe Apollinaire.]

*This poem was written fairly quickly using a sort of cut-up technique and appears as I first wrote it. I thought of using Berrigan's technique in his Sonnets, which I have. However, I didn't collect lines, I just glanced over random lines in books and used them. Turned into a nice little piece of experimental writing.

A little more work on that, and it would be a good piece of language.

** Also, the 'space in the space' line comes from Berrigan's line of 'Is there room in the room you room in.'

poem 13/9

Reflecting suns grow old now
Facing South days done:
I know I am dead already –
The dog at my knees,
His fur like thatched straw;

The Black Hole lets in no light,
King and prince dead in palace –
Murder by night,
The judge longs for peace –
His friends are burning on the wicker;

I am not dying young
Man is not here woman
Gone home, it is now night –

In daylight quiet bliss
Distracts death from entering –

Blog - MA - Writing - Mathew Street

Death is gone
Like a million rhinocerous
On the roof.


Have been neglecting my blog. I forget to write on it, and i forget to write on paper with having other things to do and other troubles. I tried to write but couldn't think of anything. I become conscious of my style. What is it?

I don't know if I'm better at writing poems or fiction. I used to get better marks for my fiction in uni, but it's easier to write poems. And poems are pointless.

Start uni again soon. Doing a Master of Arts in Writng. Thinking about moving out in the next few months. Planning a trip with my friend similar to 'Fear and Loathing' but in Europe. I've known him for almost 13 years. We're like brothers. He studied law and works for a law firm, and is just like me in that he hates where he is in life and just wants to get drunk. He said we're just in a rut. Need a place to live with 2 or 3 other people. inc. him.

Have arguements at home all the time. Almost got kicked out.

Is it possible to practise writing, guitar and oil painting in a day? There aren't enough hours. I have a canvas I've had for ages and don't know what to paint.

Went to Mathew Street Festival. (That's the street where the Cavern Club is, where the Beatles started off). I love Liverpool and our music history. Saw Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan tributes. Went to Cavern Pub (not the club) and saw John Lennon look-alike and some great music. I'm listening to The Bealtes now.


Mathew Street


Wall outside Cavern, each brick is the name of a band or musician that has played inside. Inc. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones...

Small Poem/Haiku Attempt

Sleep she thinks
Hairs grow on my face
Protective eyes are dark

Green like jealous frogs,
Toads stealing the waters
When lake empties.

Untitled 10/8 (mix of two poems written together)

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.

Automatic Writing 10/8

I am now the old blame
There is no more ale
There is no more pain.

The path he takes up there
A bar of organs
Internal flesh questions.


*** I did this using automatic writing technique with eyes closed. My little sister came up with some of the first stanza. The first stanza was scribbles at first. We came up with:

I am the
El blahe
m cd ale
a pain.

And tried again for:

I am the
G L blame
No and ale
O pale.

I then re-wrote it to what it is now and did some automatic writing to get the second stanza.

Anger

Raging Raging
Black fury burning
A fight;
I had arguments,
I had viewpoint from
Rooftop -
Oh, such beautiful anger,

Begin to drink
Than think;
Unable to eat -
Punch wall and break fist;
I wait for ladies
To atack me,
With thoughts of babies, stealers of toes -
Oh, such gorgeous anger,

Dying, burning,
Reeking of old energy
Fuming pores to ooze hot sweat
And veins like tunnels
Of lava;
No perfect silver limbo,
I am the rabbit-man,
Oh, such electric anger,

I burn inside-out
Upside I am fierce
I snarl and bare all
Whiskers flaring up and
I steal beauty
Oh, such perfect anger!

Metallica And A Cup Of Tea - And Poets

Heavy metal helps to get you in the mood for writing. Or that, it helps when your pissed off.. either way, I had Metallica on loud (with a cup of tea, lol) and I was reading some poems and sorting out the poets and authors I read.

I reaslise I am a fan of Plath and Bukowski. Also the beat poets. Two French poets. And some who are still alive. They are (other than the French ones) pretty much American and British.

Poets: Sylvia Plath, charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William s Burroughs, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Rimbaud, Guillaume Appolinaire, Frank O'Hara, Brion Gysin, Heathcote Williams, John Sinclair, Ted Berrigan, John Giorno, Harris Schiff, D.H. Lawrence, Wilfred Own, Siegried Sassoon.

I finished my story called 'Spider.' It's weird but interesting, and kinda crappy since it seems kind of rushed, which is the reason I'd be crap writing a novel, I'd just lose all patience and write the end.

I'm going to write some poems now. What I think is good I will post on here. I start my Masters at University next month, so I need all the practise I can get. I don't know how good I am, but I want to be better.

Spider - And Language

I'm in the middle of writing a short story called Spider, which will be longer than most of my pieces. It's about fear and the meaning of fear. I came up with it at work, I was looking at a girl who is one of the cleaners there, and I didn't have the nerve to talk to her. So I thought to myself "She probably more scared of me than I am of her," like a spider. And I began making notes on a piece of paper. The girl character becomes quite controlling, but fear and power keeps switching between the two characters.

Haven't written much poetry in a while. But I've been reading Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, and a little bit of DH Laurence. And I listen to some, inc. Frank O'Hara on www.ubu.com

Also, I had a weird comment on this blog today which said "I am not a child." Thought that sounded funny, becuase I didn't know what it meant. But at the end of my post I'd written "thanks for readin kiddehs." Kiddeh (kidder) or kid, is slang for friend. Like saying "mate" or "lad." That latter, usually for males, and can sound like "la," like the Merseybeat band The La's. Just thought it was interesting on the whole language barrier; ame language, different words. Kind of like poetry.

Camping Trip - And Writing Poetry

I've stopped giving my poems titles because I can't think of any and I just want it finished after I churn them out. So I'm just dating them. The last poem I wrote comes from pieces of notes I wrote while on (coming back from) a camping trip to Cornwall. We usually go there in the Summer, and I've had a couple of inspiring moments to write. Well not moments, just memories. I find it hard to write in the moment, if you know what I mean.

One being me and my best friend drunkenly running around the campsite and waking up some German tourists and nearly getting kicked out the site, while our other friend slep in his tent. This time we (me and my best friend) drank whiskey thru the morning after a night out, and play the "lying down game" (from facebook) and just talked.

Things have started falling into place recently. Things were falling aprt once again, but it's come together and hopefully by the Autumn things'll be good. I'll be in uni doing an MA Writing, and my Death Valley bike ride for charity is being moved to November, which I prefer.

****
Some notes on writing

Spend a long time in choosing one word.
Read as you write.
What you write is a skeleton at first.
It will never be perfect until you make it perfect.
Sounds are everything / almost everything - inc. sentence sound/word sound...
If you don't like the poem then the reader won't like your poem.
If you don't understand your poem...
Allusion. ie. allude to other things in literature/art/science/history/life/anything
Try to say something.
Try to speak.

Poem 18/7

You've got me by the roots of my eyes;
An air of hooks catch legs
Pulled up straight brain like putty,
Grey as guns, Babylonian skies,

Alive smells of wet wood and grass
Lasts as long as you or I,
And I am dead, and you are free
And we are mystics we blow out to sea

Without hope or rest;
Roads burn to a marriage of webs,
Our rainy tracks, rare and random,
Rain like smoke and dust and snow;

Under a bridge the rain explodes,
And lampposts stitch the sky;
I'm held together with glue and tape,
You pull apart my strands, piece by piece by piece.

Untitled Poem 4/7

He got a call. It was 12:24am.
He said Hello – He said Hello again –
She asked if he would come round –
He was 35 miles away –
He came anyway. It was dark.
There were deep roads of black tar,
Buildings with glass limbs – no men no women –
Packs of old dogs dragging their lifeless
Forms along the highway.

He walked the distance of 35 miles
That night to be with her. Just like she'd asked.
He passed a dandruff of junk,
Cannibal eyes from each new terrace –
He knocked on her door. There she was.

She had blonde hair.
She held wine in one hand
And a knife in the other. It was 12:24am.
Again she went thru the motions.
She slowly unbuttoned her dress.
She was blind – she covered her
Eyes with a tangerine-coloured bandage,
She had no clothes on –

Inside. The dust inside
Were galaxies in mysterious
Motion, deja vu like liquid –
She took off the bandage.
Her eyes were grey like his father's eyes,
She asked him about her eyes:
“I see everything I see
In you I see nothing at all.”

She was naked as the sun.
There was no sun.
It was 12:24am and she was
Going to leave for Falmouth in the winter.



**Wrote this last night. It's mostly imagination. I imagine walking from Liverpool up to Preston, where I went to university, 35 miles away. The girl is no one inparticular, although the blonde hair was taken from someone I knew. I expanded the second stanza today, I realise I have some imagery from Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which I recently read. I read some Frank O'Hara last night too.

I think I like this one. I don't usually write this way.

Body of Graves (new version)

Move my hands move my feet
Like a puppet in the street,
Be an act of violence
Be alive or be greedy
And steal money and steal emotion
Where the mind gives up
Where simple war ends and begins again
And kills in the middle of some
Sexual process their dreamy
Faces stuck like that for eternity,
And what they leave here
Is their senseless anger
And no feeling in words -

And no one worth saving
Is worth a thousand saviours,
I think,

And covered in sweat
You move me like a puppet
With no emotion with no music -
Be an act of violence
Be an act of living -

The process of giving
The priceless ohm,
The Vajra Mantra
The old Buddhist Vajrasattva
The fat Buddistattva -

Be an old begin again;
Take my life take my choice
Steal my money steal my children
And pray for Earth pray for rain
Your senseless anger and girth
Your senseless pain feels like shame,
Shall no one be worth saved?
Where another simple war
Comes to an end
And concrete pours over soldiers
Like dead men and women beneath
Pompeii the colour of guns,
And kills and killing in the middle
Of this new land of war
Brothers of concrete fighting alongside
Body of graves,
Boddistattva;

This that we are in
We slide out and in -
We stab and sympathise,
It is OK for you to murder
You are born again you are
Not even human anymore -

Shall no one be worth saved?
Save the words for someone who cares -
The concrete has been poured and
The rock is catastrophically set hard as Earth;
The process of giving
The process of killing
The process of dying -

The senseless simple war ends
And the process begins again;
With no emotion and
With no music you tower over
Me like a God of guns
With breasts and everything and world's
Sexual process begins and I die
And you die and kill me and
kill me
and kill me




*The structure is supposed to be one long-running piece with indents to show line-breaks, but blogger is being weird and I can't fix the html, so I've just broke the lines so it looks like stanzas.

Heavy

Her perfume smells of alcohol,
Eyes are black until white
Eyes of liquid spill onto carpet,

Smoke above and below
Heavy air hoods head,
Settle down heavy as stone,

This opponant's skin of cobalt,
Hard lustrous grey,
Produces a radioactive tracer,

Which moniters me all day,
Tonight I am dead -
Metal of gunpoint,

She glides towards door
Thick voices come uncalmly,
Motionless leaves me,

Air the colour of arsenic
Jilts her red dress
Until first of escapes,

Once again she's at the door,
She stretches upwards
And stays like porcilain,

She is blue and green dust
In Bronze age paints,
She will not come through the door again



**This is something I've just edited like crazy. I wrote it about october 2007. It reads completely different from the original, which is good because the original was rubbish. I wasn't going to do anything with it at all, but now got this poem.

It's about when I first met my friend whom I lived with in 2007/08. She'd just moved in the flat. I wanted to describe her and the atmosphere, but couldn't do it. Only now - a year and a half later - I can write something about it.

The cobalt image comes from two places (three including my head). The University interview 2 weeks ago where I was told to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy (which I am) and it's use of the image of grey and how he keeps up different images of the same colour. And 2, I just bumped into a Sylvia Plath poem that does what I was trying to do. In her poem 'Jilted' she has images of acid and vinigar and lemons, whereas I have cobalt and arsenic and metal.

I don't often put poems in stanzas. But I sort of like it. It will be edited again sometime. It's the 15th in a file of poems I've collected and edited. Of which will be halved and probably the end result will be my best poems.

Piece of Writing from few months ago.

He can't feel a thing. He lay down on the bed after removing his clothes and miserably gazed up at the milkly dots in the ceiling. He reached above his head and pulled a pillow out from underneath his hair. He put it over his face.

'Shit fucking place.' He stares upwards with a pillow over his face and then subsequently removes it, seeing the dot of the lightbulb.

'So the lightbulb hung itself.'

Just then a wet crash and a solid bang came from the room next door as if someone had fallen in the shower. He kept still, listening for movement, but heard none. He didn't get up. His stomach began to itch.

At that moment, his left thigh itched and the itch wouldn't leave. It felt like a burning in a pin-prick. The pillow, which he tried to suffocate under, was on his chest, making him a little too warm. In one instance he felt a slave. An itch on his left foot. A flashing light off to his right going on and off ...

It was only at the turn of nine o' clock that he could remove the pillow and sit up straight, stretching; cracking his bones into place and allowing a warm breath of radioactive air into his lungs.

Hypertext Production (Postmodern Poetry in Progress)

Hypertext Production

*Copy These Words*

The process of writing
Permanent rush
Premium muted lights;

Those lights fill skin
With thrill and decay
Horizon in my hand
Prism long plain -

The grass itself exists by sight alone

Again the process of killing;
Universe Karma loves killing,
I hear your little flavour of talk

You walk a slow drogue,
An assembly of writers

Uttering 'LIFE'
Time shifts < http://thehyperkarma.blogspot.com/ >
Time shifts again - Word: "HYPER" > hypersonic
Hyperspace, hypersurface, hypercube,

Greek prefix "uttep-"

Forward in time excuse the clear
Shimmer; excuse me my sweet your

Sexy clone of another ego
Electricity instead of blood

Again the glass light personalities
What we cannot believe is after we work;

21st Century paperkiller
a 'hell';
b 'o, w';
c 'orld';>

This tint of vile green plumage fills the waters,
Unclear grass ages the wrinkles
Swap beds and kiss gratuitously

Your God is buried with his or her

Laugher in his or her grave.

MA Writing - and Fascists

I got offered at place at John Moores University to do a Masters in Writing. After an hour long interview, and the guy criticising almost every word of my portfolio (which I'd written almost 2 years ago) he says he would like to offer me a place and I gladly accepted.

What got me down was all the stupid mistakes in my work (fiction) that I should have known about. And sentences cluttered with nonsensical metaphors that I used to use back then, which my old tutor got me to stop using. I've been re-writing my fiction portfolio so the wording is much more professional and readable. I'm keeping the stories becuase they were the best I'd written (which was the only reason I submitted them).

I won't submit them here. But I have shorter stories that I might post.

In other news, the elections have just finished here. Was for UK and European Parliment. I didn't vote. I usually don't because I always disagree with every political party. And the politicians make me sick with this recent expenses scandel, using taxpayers money for themselves.

The BNP won 2 seats in the European Parliment. They are the fascist nationalists that most of us are against. They talk about having a white country and kicking anyone with darker skin out the country, pretty much.

They didn't increase in votes. It was the decrease in non-voters and the percentage of Labour's huge loss that got it for them. So they should be gone by next year.

I saw a clip on Youtube (I don't have the clip) that has the leader of this party talking about white people being the founders of this country, while pictures roll past of black and Indian soldiers in WWII uniforms. My granddad was Indian and fought as a Ghurkah soldier on the front line in France, he ended up living here in the country he fought for. He married a woman from Liverpool (my nan). That makes me one quarter Indian, (and quarter Irish from my dad's side) which I am proud of. Now does this make me less British? No.

I saw a programme, I think it was on BBC one, and Robert Carlyle was in it. A politician rose in power after manipulating the public, after gaining success in the polls he took over as Chancellor. With this extra power, he let the public want him more and more until the Government gave in and let him become leader. That was Hilter and his Nazi party in Germany. No one wants this to happen again. Let's keep the fascists out of politics altogether.

Automatic Writing (Without Looking at Page)

This was a piece of simple experimental writing that I wrote last night, which can be quite annoying because not only do you not see what you're writing, when you do look you can't even read it. It's mostly scribbles and you can sort of make out a couple of letters.

What I got from it was this:

People the way
a dog a
a go g rag
Rog g and dande
Reaper up MR.
OEPt yur -

Your word
ler quickly there
Milk + + ho
Christina is now
him and (on) doorstep
Me of home.

I changed it just before to this, something that vaguely makes sense:

People in the way
Of a dog
And go a rag
Rog and a dande
Reader go up Mr.
Adept yur -

Your word
Is quickly there
Milk and who
Christina is now
Him on doorstep
Me at home.


** I found out "Dande" is a town in Angola, a place I've never been to, but another spelling "Dandy" is a flamboyant man. "Rog" is Hindi for Malady or illness, which is interesting.

I kept the spelling of "Yur" like that because it goes on to use the spelling of "Your."

Christina is a frind of mine, I lived with her for about 3 or 4 months last year. I like the two sentences in the second stanza. They begin to sound like this:

Your word
Is quickly their
Milk, and
Christina is now
Him on a doorstep,
With me at home.

I don't know who "him" is supposed to be. Why would she be "him"? I'm thinking it probably means the guy she was with the whole time I knew her and I was jealous of him. Or maybe the "him" means me.

http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway

Untitled Poem 30/5

To take the un-mechanic heat
Of bright blue days streaked
With the vernacular of a slut
Or the beginning of hunger
In a big faceless gut,

Is to slump home un-smiling,
A definite discipline while
The carbon monoxide of a teenager
Is the most tempting substance
To harden the average ranger,

And such tempting tasks
Asks my structure to bone
I moan and groan,
I still don’t know –
I still don’t know if I want to know.

**Wrote this in about 15 minutes from top of my head and haven't edited it or anything. It's how it looks on the page were I wrote it. I don't know if I want to change it.. don't know if I like it.

Ideas came from heat outside, then the miserble time coming home from work, and the last stanza is just words thrown together. "Tempting tasks" is probably what is about. Might make that the title.

faces #1

Some Photos 25/5/09

Automatic Writing While Listening To Manic Street Preachers

I could have been a million and one times the best before you as I can breathe revulsion as tragic shaking kids collapse making a killing, and me a delightful uncle in the stars were I can’t be blessed and more than often to see one more time I wouldn’t ask anymore, and I’d do it all another million and one times and smile and smile while the world grew up and grew down and locked itself away behind barbed wire with the freaks with no souls in the empty hole in the middle shining bright like suns then disappear like a nova and fading like old drunk memory and you weren’t here for me and you weren’t here for them – don’t! You run along, you’re nothing you’re a rat and I could step on you, Look at me – it kills me to see you like this and stand up as you are and collapse to the ground and I miss the old times when we’d have feet to stand on, just as well she can’t see me – I shine I glow – I don’t believe in God because I’m just as ignorant – I am a human animal – I need to see a human, this freak has no human here, finish –

Dream

I work in a library. I have no connections to anyone and I avoid everyone except one man I befriend. I use this man to talk to others for me. We become close-friends.

When a young man and woman arrive there, it annoys me because I hate new people even more than the people around me. I go out of my way to avoid them, so much that they don’t even see me around. I use my friend to talk to them. When the woman comes round a corner in the library and bumps into me, she stops, completely frozen and looks amazed or shocked, then hugs me.

Not knowing why she did that, I step back. The man comes over and looks at me. Suddenly they both look older. The man staring at me leans towards me and touches my stomach and it hurts so much that I scream a little and I have to push his hand away. There is a hole in my stomach.

They call me their son, talking to me like I am a child. It turns out that I had been dead for some time, and they were my parents. I had been stabbed in the past.



**This was an actual dream from 2 nights ago. I actually felt something like pain when the 'father' touched my stomach. The father also looked like Robin Williams when he changed to look older.

2 Discarded Untitled Poems

#1
This dog can’t believe a word you say –
At last desert calls to me cannibal
Music eats itself –

Squares of grass deploy machinery
Into air, they hear everything –
This dog feels waves of fear and power
(It looked like the sun),

This old dog has green eyes
And already has the evil eye –
Mysterious blood with history
And war and peace with no one to listen –
And I am a dog that sits
On Bermuda shores with sand in paws
And Mata Hari outside the gates of Eden;

The chill in the skin of my ear,
The air is a woman
Beside an old dog,
She weeps rose-water in the stars –

The dog sends her to war,
And there are no words to question
And the dog carefully nods
And this dog watches you on your way.


#2
Mozart and Beethoven
Laughing in the Eiffel Tower

They’re planting seeds in the headdress,
Reaping words the brains might flower,

Now the rusty actors in a cage
Praying for rainstorms and pain,

They’re inside the screens wearing their roses
Killing off all kinds of people in togas,

The slaves are hungry now, the prisons are empty
And oxygen-fat Henry riding the rodeo,
Inside the tin shed the beds are

Lying in a row,

I pocket all the watches
And lean against Pisa,
See the cavalry crying
And now the glosol is dying,

See the fat pumpkins
Lying on their sides,
Eating all kinds of fish,
They put coins into a dish and makes a wish.


**Don't think either have been edited, they appear as I wrote them down. I might have moved some lines in the first one for line breaks. First one might turn into something a little bigger, or mix it with something else.

#2 is just an experiment with rhythm. It is a lyric, but I wrote no music for it because I didn't want to.

These are pretty much an example of what I'd discard, simply because I don't like them and have no plans to touch them again.

Poets

Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Berrigan, William S Burroughs, Arthur Rimbaud, Guillaume Apollinaire, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas, JH Prynne, William Blake, Anne Sexton, Robin Purves, Peter Manson, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Jennifer Moxley

Musicians: Bob Dylan, Frank Turner, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed

**I have only read one poem of Robin Purves (he was my tutor at University). It is called "Dio Calm." He is friends with Peter Manson, whom I've read, though I haven't met him. They are both Scottish.

Robin Purves showed me a Jennifer Moxley poem. She is an American from San Diego, California, and I've never met her.

I've been influenced by the beat poets, even learning beat rhythm, but mostly learning rhythm from different types of music.

Bukowski helps get rid of that pretentiousness you might get in poetry.

The French poets are good for their imagery, and I love good imagery and metaphor, I was even told to tone down my metaphors at uni. I especially love Plath's imagery and style.

I can't play music or write music very well. But I listen to it constantly. Rock, Jazz, Punk, Folk... Bob Dylan is great for poetry in songs.

Blonde

With a face on you’d suffocate yourself
Screaming like harmonica skeletons
Silver like scowling moons
On Earth a god pulls your hair
And a man hanged from a yew tree
Is keeping an eye on you –
Strong-tongued fem
Digs the loam and hem places you inside:
Inside you scream like dogs
Being beaten by hysterical men
That betray you at your
Unwashed feet cracking at thorny brown
Grass beneath feet you shoulder thru
Gaps between myself and you –
Your bad manners place you on shelves –
Your blonde hair does nothing for you,
Each edible morning mattress of fog:
Easily a free heath –
Suckling stillborn, the screaming
Mothers just like you,
Dressed in white and blue
Your brown hair does nothing for you.

(Editorial note: Whole thing written and edited in 25 minutes).

**I like to think this is an angry poem.

Zygote

The grind of train wheels
Slick at the track,
Scares off the rats
That echo in their black waters.

A millennium of winters
Enters each whiskered girl
Which buys each white leg
Grown to charm snakes:

Or charm the charmer.

The bounce of sunrise in cold water
Frosted glass all reflections ghost
Most poppy beds rest tired heads;
Crow abstracts his thoughts absent daughter,
The mirror of fearful backwards man

Makes pseudonym into a grin,
And thanks him for the feast,
And she – a stalk – settles the score
Mirror reads: Tuo;

Our two tawdry minds
Distilled – we embark in single file –
And when songbirds rush to the pulp
Of this embryo, never existed anyway.


(Written in about an hour. Wrote one side of A5 paper of notes, typed up, then moved some lines around. Had a mirror in room, on floor leaning againt wall, and cold glass of water. Heard birds outside. Line: "Millennium of winters" came from Frank Turner lyric "She went winters without me," which I thought sounded like "She went ten winters without me." I just took what I thought, and changed it to millennium.

"Tuo" is pronounced "Two." It is the mirror reflection of "Out."

I also took the first two stanzas and put them in a poem of their own:

The grind of train wheels
Slick at the track,
Scares off the rats
That echo in their black waters.

A millennium of winters
Enters each whiskered girl
Which buys each white leg
Grown to charm snakes:
Or charm the charmer.

Poppy

A painting I did a couple of weeks ago.

Last Day Girl # 1 & 2

Last Day Gil # 1 (First Draft)

Wind sways Earth,
Hail falls to ground.
Scaffolding netting flags
The Earth set sail.
Mysterious winds push planet forward,
Harsh grey sky vanishes Heaven;
Drainpipes point upwards
The suicidal looks down,
A man amongst gods
The movement is electric
And full of very discreet yearnings.


Last Day Girl # 2 (second draft)

Wind sways Earth hail
Falls to ground scaffolding
Netting flags the Earth
Sets sail mysterious winds
Push planet grey
Sky vanishes;
Drainpipes point upwards
Suicidal looks down a man
Amongst gods the movement is electric
And of cautious craving,
I felt waves of fear
And power sensation of warmth
Looked like sun on mountain:
End of world is this really
Hell? The love of my life,
This dog can’t believe a word
You say you are machinery
Made of sparking nuclear eyes.

I haven't written much because I've been in training. I've written some songs just to see if I could put music to them, wasn't a complete failure, but I didn't care for them. This poem here I wrote in about 10 minutes and drafted in about the same time. It came from watching the wind blowing outside; it stupidly ended up about a girl.

http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway

Bob Dylan in Concert - and In Training

Saw Bob Dylan on friday and he was amazing. The way he sings now, it's hard to tell what the song was until you recognise a line and you're like "Oh yeah, that.." He did 'Something' by The Beatles, a tribute to the city, which was great, and everyone cheered when we heard the tune. Halfway through some idiot jumped onto the stage and was tacked by security before he interupted Bob, who didn't even falter. It was annoying that people were walking around, going to the bar or the toilet, having to stand up to let them past, as if they weren't bothered about Dylan at all. I heard someone shout "Play something we know" (also, someone told me that someone on the radio said there was booing, but I didn't hear boing).

Thebest part was the final song. After years of not touching his early songs, he does 'Blowin' in the Wind' and it was amazing. I couldn't tell what it was at first because he'd changed the song's rhythm completely, but it was so good to hear him sing that classic.

Afterwards we went drinking in my favorite bar. I snuck downstairs to see a band playing. I came back up to get my friends and we snuck back down. I got home around 2am. I got up for work at 5am. You can imagine how tired I was.

So now I'm in training for this bike ride across the desert. I've raised a couple of hundred so far. But need more to reach the target. I'm so un-fit right now, I ache after a game of football and 10 sit-ups. 4 months to get ready, though.

Poems - 'A Glance' (And Sponsor Me)

This first poem was first written I think last year when I was writing 200mph; when I could write a good poem and throw it to one side and write another and go get drunk and depressed and laugh my head off. Was a funny time. So I've collected 14 poems so far and edited them. Potentially they are supposed to be the best I've written, but I'm not sure. Still need my friends to read them.

The second poem I wrote 2 days ago while listening to music and probably watching tele. I was just putting words together, didn't change anything because I didn't feel like it, but the main thing was the rhythm because it was meant to be a lyric or something.

My poems can be personal sometimes, and sometimes I don't like this. Confessional poetry sounds too self-centrered. I'd read stuff about war and politics and changing the world, and I've got a poems about how I'm feeling. "feelin' fine." But I recently read William Blake and Philip Larkin (since I have their books, that I kept from school haha). Also read some Bob Dylan lyrics. And I have a variety of themes, inc. 'Our Nuclear Future' and 'Modern Life' (don't know if I put them on this blog), and three Postmodern experimental poems called 'Hypertext Production' 'An Examination of Earth' and 'Cubism.' The latter I'm quite proud of.

Last Note: Please Sponsor me on my bike ride for charit across Death Valley, Nevada: http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway

A Glance


At a glance, I am plain,
All salted and personal, the starving soldier,
Up against the wall, the small faceless joke,
It is impossible to tell when she is coming;
The fridge is empty, an aging imposter.
Our weary desire for people
Wears us out;
Everyone’s qualified, the impossible children,
Constant drivel, the outcry of incidents.
My friends, left alone,
Red-faced, she faces again;
She works the world, curled into herself.
Lit from underneath
I headed up generation to generation,
Perhaps our grace graces us all.
The half-decided days wanes into itself like women.
And me, tea-bags for eyes,
The slow baptised dog.




Untitled poem (written in about 20 minutes)

I am sitting here dreaming I
Was in another place different to here,
I’m staring at this painting seeing
Turn brightly I am a
Knight in shining armour,
There aint much use in calling
Out names forgiven forgotten
Outside I am a broken
Washing machine,
There aint much use in writing
Things are useless to me now,
The echo of our righteous
Plays on the negative
I am the rightful joker,
The mother tells the time like a clock
And these deaths couldn’t have been kinder,
I am here I have been shot down,
Someone screams to their mother
And I am not yet invented,
Now the days are boxed in
And it’s dark and it’s old in this North end of town,
And I’ll play this in A-minor.

Dare Death Valley

On 10th September 2009, I'm going to cycle across Death Valley, Nevada for charity. I've decided to do it. I'm raising £1,400 for Childreach International, which helps tackles child poverty around the world. There's a few of us doing it, so we'll raise quite a bit of money for a good cause.

I'm trying to raise money from anywhere I can, so any help would be very much appreciated! I have a Justgiving page here:

http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway


Anyway, I recently bought a printer and have printed and edited 10 poems so far. I think they're good enough to be published, but don't think I'll be doing that just yet. I think I'll collect a load together, staple them, then give it to someone to read. See what they think. If it's rubbish, then nevermind. If it's good then I'll get all self-assured for 15 minutes and believe I'm a famous writer, then forget the whole thing and go watch TV.

I do make it an aim for this year or next year to publish a book of poetry, though. And they will be good.

A Confused Protest - Anger and Communism

I wrote a song today after seeing the protests in London on the News. I wanted to be there, but obviously I'm not. I liked it and I agreed with it. But what was strange was there was about 4 or 5 different protests. It started with the financial protests outside the Bank of England and the G20 diplomats in London discussing it. So there were protests to get the message across that bankers are stealing our money while we're going poorer and poorer.

It was peaceful and carnivalesque at first. But there was a mixture of anti-war, anti-capitalist, and climate change protesters. Then these anti-capitalists mixed with communists with the communist flag (which is fine because I'm fine with some communism). But then anarchists with their faces convered started sirring shit, picking fights with the poice, which is pointless.

I saw a Chinese flag (probably for communism) and next to it a Tibetan flag. Some kid was interviewed on Sky News or BBC News and he didn't know what he was talking about. I saw a banner which read: "Consumerists Suck" and I thought, yeah, and where did you buy the material for that banner?

There was a 4 horseman of the apocalypse theme with the carnival parts. I saw a banner which read: "Capitalism isn't Working." Okay. Fine. I'm interested in Communism, I've studied parts of it, and was going to write about it (so this gives me good material) but to be honest, these people wouldn't last in a Communist state. There would be someone to take the lead, and then turn into a Fascist regime. There would be no freedom to protest. These are just kids who want to be naughty and smash up some windows and smack a policeman and then go home to their things they've bought within this Capitalist society.

So I don't know what I'm trying to say when sometimes I like Communism, but I just don't beieve all this. We don't need fascists, we need peace; and if you're going to overthrow the Government, fine, but don't overrule me!


They’re protesting to the world
They’re protesting in the streets,
And I want you to watch
Before they’re covered in sheets,

There is blood on his face
Screaming at the police,
The war won’t be won
‘Till someone’s on their deathbed,

They want you to leave
Stay or go away,
Capturing your image
In a peasant kind of way,

And who owns these streets?
They shout they are ours,
Smoking monkeys that watch
As they trample over cars,

And the idiot anarchists know
Not what they are protesting,
Just what a riot
What Union Jack are you protecting?

And I fail to see your point,
You are just as bad,
With Tibet and Chinese flags
And more police holding you back,

And four horsemen of the Apocalypse
Are strolling all around you,
Surrounding yourselves with graveyards,
I just don’t know if I believe you.

Untitled Short Story (experimental short story)

Your body says this:

Back in 1985 I was like a piece of meat in the fridge, wrapped in a blanket, a blank tablet, a blank bullet, bland skin and very tasteless. My taste in music was mild. My mild character was going nowhere, but I loved the smell out of hospital, like I smelled of milk and oats, I got the cravings for milk and oats – all I got was milk and mush. Milk was my main source of food. It began to leave a bitter taste in my mouth and I spit up some milk sometimes because my belly was so full of milk. I felt myself turning as white as milk. My skin at this age was dark-ish, like mocha, it paled over time, keeping a dim colour that made me look healthy even when I wasn’t.

Your body is made out of milk or coffee or whatever it is that you drink. Your body splits in two and your soul leaves you to hitchhike up the road.

Your soul says this:

I am leaving you because I no longer love you and you have only caused me misery and pain. It’s hard to live with such a person as you, and I’ve had enough; I’m leaving you to find someone else. Imagine that, your soul in someone else’s body. Me. In someone worth more. Imagine that, replacing Bob Dylan’s soul, or Katherine Hepburn’s, or Micky Rourke’s. Imagine yourself without me, and how hellish you’d feel. I bet you’d miss me, because you’re only half the person you are without me. Half a man. (Or half a woman, whatever you are).

Back in 1997 you were old enough to know things. Disgusting things, and I was ashamed to be a part of it. Ugly things your body found sexy. But the beautiful thing I saw, which your body found sexy aswell. There were two or three deaths in the family around this time, and I helped you through it, but would you listen? No.

You look like a prostitute without me. I think you could do better. I love you, but you could do better without me.

Your self says this:

Oh. Where am I? Damn, if I could touch her, I would. That smell of salt and water and death and hot vampiric sleaze. Black tight shirts and underwear left to one side. Dark rooms for me to develop and not photographs. If I could touch that, I’d touch it all over. I feel my body moving and swaying and begin to rotate.

This body is growing, still, and I am only young, still, but it’s old and toughened as if I’m 85. But back in 2007 I drank myself to death on my birthday with two friends and we laughed until we died and inside I didn’t know where I was. So I punished my body so much, and my brain still knew how to write and so I wrote things and it was good, but soon I began to feel empty inside. I thought I needed to love someone. I moved house and lived with some friends in the years to come. Married young with this sexy young kitten and she was ferocious; but I was worse. So we divorced after a few weeks and I still felt empty.

A couple of years later I would realise that every year that I drank myself half to death, laughing so much that I’d get a free workout, I realised that when I looked in the mirror, there was nothing to look at. Not really. I might have accomplished some things. Written some books. Poems. Songs. Painted. Played guitar. All that arty stuff. I’d be the greatest friend. The greatest love. The greatest conqueror of night by far. And the mirror would betray me like I betrayed my body.

I switch on the TV and see some actor winning an award for some beautiful performance in some mediocre drama, and I’d see a bit of myself in that actor. And I’d imagine being a famous actor. It’d almost be as if my soul had packed up and left, and gone into someone else; had left with a dream of Hollywood.

Back in 1985, I met my soul at the train station, and I’d promised I’d be good. But then I grew up.

Poem 24/3

The world sees me as a Waterloo Sunset
Sun is shinin, Boyo, summer is on its way;
The world is shining like a bomb-flash –
Bad flesh shining the world is on its way

Outside the world is speaking to me,
Bright glory days ahead of time,
The world says it’s going to murder me
That will be justice for my crime

And punishment are like Oedipus the Everyman
Fighting for what he knows could be wrong,
And all of the sexless patients
Are even writing up their own songs

All mistakes on Earth are all down to me,
Pulsating bacon of desire,
And humanoid satanic robots
Sleeping with blood in their wires,

We missed Heaven and land on Mars,
Or Eris, or whatever is left;
The sunset babies from 5 hours ago
Now a bomb-track with no breath


**Wrote this in about 20-30 minutes, haven't changed much of it, so like most of my poems, it is a rough draft still. Used a small bit of notes, such as "All mistakes on Earth are down to me," and "Pulsating bacon of desire," "Oedipud the Everyman," and "Missed Heaven wen to mars - or eris." The title was the last note left over.

Also, a list of songs written down as answers to questions, (sort of an exercise). I got Q: 'How does the world see you?' A: Waterloo Sunset - the Kinks. And Q: 'What do my friends think of me?' A: Bombtrack - Rage Against The Machine.

Because I was rhymimg, I was using words again, and changing them slightly, like Bomb-track and bomb-flash. Turned into a song, surreal images of nihilist world with a little sci-fi at the end.

Saoirse - and Are We War Mongering?

It's St. Patrick's Day. I'm not going out, unfortunately, couldn't find anyone going out on short notice, because I'd forgot with being hungover all weekend. Anyway, on the train home I found an Irish Republican newspaper (strangely, it was from december), that must have been left by some Irish guy coming to the city for Paddy's Day. I was reading it and it was quite interesting. It has a mixture of propaganda and anger fuelled at both the British and the Northern Irish. I kept the paper, keeping no sides, but knowing it is interesting that the British rule on Irish soil, and Irish Republicans hate this and also hate the other Irish for accepting it. I have a friend from Northern Ireland, but I can't remember his political views. He's a film maker, I'd like to see him make some sort of film on the subject.

You get confused about whose who. Dropping bombs as a method of protest is disgraceful; also using bombs to try and force whoever out of the country. I mean, songs from the 80's and 90's seem relevent now - one I can think of is 'Zombie' by The Cranberries, an Irish band speaking out against the bombing. "What's in your head, Zombie?"

With war still going on and no one listening to anyone, it's hard to get any kind of point across. People turn against Muslims, and Muslims don't listen anyway. There was a recent protest in London, I think it was, and British Muslims protested against the war by protesting soldiers coming home. Bad idea. Now, I'm against war, but I think you should never target a soldier as means of protest against war. It's like shooting the messenger. They're doing a job. I have a friend who is a soldier, and it was like he was defensive in case his job was insulted. Anyway, why is a soldier a killer and a politian isn't?

I keep hearing things like 'it's the sign of things to come.' That sounds apocalyptically bad. People are prophesising their own generation's tragedy. It sounds like the blacks in the 60's when racism was a social norm, and they had to revolt themselves to be recognised as human beings.

Are we going backwards as a species, or what? It just feels like our society is folding in on itself. Time slows down and we go back to how it was back then. The 20th Century had many terrible instances, I can't help but foresee more in this Century.

Liverpool 4-1 - and collecting ideas

Didn't go to Wigan last week, my friend, who is a semi-pro snooker/pool player, had a game. I remember when I lived with him and he let me down with going to his games, he'd come back and make it up by buying a load of alcohol and we'd drink all night watching stupid films and laughing at anything all the time. Can't do that anymore, since he's in a different city.

I was hungover all yesterday after I was out drinking all of Saturday. Thing is, I'd been in town since 6am (got up at 5) and I met my friend (who I've known since we were kids) at around 12pm. We watched the football in the pub (Liverpool v Man Utd) and we won 4-1, and I almost ruined my voice with shouting like I did last month at the Frank Turner gig.

I was never a sport fan, but I like the footy these days, I haven't got much so might as well have something. I love how the Liverpool fan are the most loyal of fans, and our team always end up around 4th at the end of the season. (Even though we are the best and most successful club in the whole of Europe). And the fierce fierce rivalry against Man Utd. And we've lost ont 2 times this season and we're only a couple of points away from 1st place (at equal 3rd right now).

Anyway, we sat in our favorite bar until around 9 or 10pm and we talked for ages. Just about moving out and getting a place to live, crappy jobs, holiday in Europe, which barmaid was hotter. I told him about the novel I was going to work on, which I haven't bothered with, and I knew I wouldn't do it, I don't have the patience or the attention span. But it doesn't matter. I'm still collecting ideas.

I'm not good at making notes on my laptop, I like to write by hand, but I don't even have a paper pad, I should remember to buy one. My ideas are ... well, secret. .... Actually, writing this makes me want to write that story now. Damn.

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.

Professional Drinking - Penny Lane - And Calego

Coming back home from work on the bus on Sunday, I overheard this woman talking quite loud on her phone. I started laughing to myself with what she was saying. Stuff like "He's a cronic alcoholic," and I was thinking, wouldn't you want to keep something like that a little more privite? This was as the bus was driving through the roughest part of the city, all buildings boarded up and filth in the streets and writing on the walls. I wouldn't walk through there at night unless you wanted some kind of drug. I think this woman was talking about her husband (or just a male she knew) and she said: "He might as well be my professional drinking partner," which I thought was clever. I had this in my head all the was until it was my stop.

The bus gets closer to where I'm getting off and it passes the Penny Lane bus (I think it was the number 62, I think it used to be the number 1). It's not a tourist bus, just a normal bus driving these people home. And I look at them on the bus and I'm wondering if they're Beatles fans. I mean, not everyone in Liverpool are Beatles fans, but everyone respects them to a certain degree. Most the old fellahs still like them. I was wondering if those people lived on Penny Lane, I don't see why not, I think there are still houses there. It's not really a tourist spot for me, just a another road to the South of the city.

It's funny because I live here. You get to say: "Bloody tourists." It switched round when I go on holiday and I'm amazed by a bank or something. My brother showed me this website thats sell American chocolate bars and sweets, he knew I'd like that from when we went to Florida in 2001 and we bought a suspicious amount of American sweets onto the plane.

I think I'm going to Wigan on wednesday. Going to see my friends I haven't seen in a year. I used to live with them in Uni. It's horrible that's been the quickest year of my life. I had the best time of my life in that flat last year. Got some good pieces of writing done.

Looking over last poem with translations, and I like these lines:

"Zal silences me."
"I am calego."
"Mannen stalks annen mann
mann stalks kvinne..."

Might just keep them in the final one.

Novel - Europe - And Railway Tracks

So here I am at quater to 6 in the afternoon by myself, watching TV and drinking a can of coke, and I'm thinking about writing a novel. I've had the idea for ages, I've had loads of story ideas that were noted down, but I've had one that I thought of in my first year at uni, and I want to write it. I've been leaving it becuause I thought I was too young to write it, but I'll spend some years on it. I don't know how my uni tutor would think of it; he'd be impressed, but he'd know I'd be rushing it as usual.

I just need to have something to do. Short stories and poems do nothing for me.

Still haven't left my job, but been looking. My mate at work, who studies law, likes reading and we talk about books sometimes. It's just one of the many conversations a bunch of us have there: Books, football, girls, drinking, music, films. He likes his non-fiction. I found it both funny and interesting that at 9:30 in the morning, when we finished work, he went into Waterstones bookshop to get a book on World War II and The Holocaust. (It got me talking about Schindler's List).

Anyway, the next day he's says to me, as I'm carrying a bunch of curtain poles, I should forget fiction writing and write a really interesting non-fiction book. I thought that was funny. We then got on talking about quitting the job and stealing a washing machine on our way out.

I'm going round Europe in the Spring/Summer. From here to France, then on a trip maybe through Germany, and ending up in Italy. It will be a three week trip and it's the only thing I've got to look forward to. I won't forget to take a notepad to write while I'm there. I suppose I need to travel to get my thoughts on writing back on track.

This is a painting I did a couple of weeks ago. Don't know what it's meant to be, I just like putting a load of colours together. My sister said it looks kind of like railway tracks.

Reading Between the Lies

I am sitting here at 9:33pm where small lamp is my eyes,
I am falling behind with many things – writing, sleep, and people –
The deep depressing rooms lived with me since 1991, each death
Built in mechanically. What ghost does is what ghost sees.
I am being eaten alive by fleas.

A hair on the paper makes a shadow of me –
I am forcibly rubbing my skin for clarity: my arm, my neck,
Regret silences me because the horror of memories;
Because Christina screams out to me!
Because now I’m thinking of three people:
Man stalks another man
Man stalks woman...
Trapped now in these terrible impact talks,

I make impacts – they are dangerous paradise.
It turns to 9:54pm; the hot buzz of the halogen warms the room,
My feet are bare and veins appear in my hands from heat.
The werewolf is angry and says ‘why are you such a stranger?’
The banana is so laid back;

I am the city, I am all around,
Gotta see this city to the end,
Stuck in job till Doomsday – back in work on Monday –
Beard ten-feet long and mounting pressure of waiting still.

Dylan Moran and Basho, gotta see it,
Bout 2:30-ish, if that’s alright?
She’s busy all morning, free in the afternoon,
Comes down with glandular fever, and we’re all doomed.

“TV is shit! I wish I
Ws gettin pssed.”



I got the title from the last piece of notes I had so just threw it in as the title. I don't like it, it doesn't make sense as the title.

[This following one is the same poem with translations to some of the words. Languages used are French, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch, German, and Portuguese. It was just an experiment to see what the words would sound like:


I am sitting here at 9:33pm where small lamp is my oko,
I am falling de balakang with many things – writing, sleep, and people –
The dalam depressing kamar lived with me since 1991, each death
Built in mechanically. Ghost, co nie jest tym, co widzi duchy.
I am being eaten alive by fleas.

Un cheveux on the paper makes a shadow of me –
I am forcibly rubbing my skin for clarity: my arm, my neck,
Zal silences me because the horror of memories;
Because Christina screams out to me!
Because now I’m thinking of three people:
Mannen stalks annen mann
mann stalks kvinne...
Trapped now in these terrible impact talks,

I make impacts – they are gefahrliche paradise.
It turns to 9:54pm; the hot buzz of the halogen warms the room,
My feet are bare and veins appear in my hands from heat.
The werewolf is angry and says ‘why are you such a stranger?’
The banana is so laid back;

I am the city, I am calego,
Gotta see this city to the end,
Stuck in job till Doomsday – back in work on Monday –
Beard ten-feet long and mounting pressure of waiting still.

Dylan Moran and Basho, tenho que ve-lo,
Bout 2:30-ish, if that’s alright?
She’s busy all morgen, free in the afternoon,
Comes down with glandular fever, and we’re all doomed.

“TV is shit! I wish I
Ws gettin pssed.”

Sooner I will come back
And irritate who I am
Some successful demon,
Individual afternoons empty rooms dim romantic light
Tell your sister
Its pointless trying
Tell your brother
I’m not even trying;
Lying down forever
And your spine fastens to the ground;
Lying in bed is torture
And these gorgeous horror evenings
Staring out the magazine window
Portraying a groovy book of sexy
Morose celebrity prostitutes
That hardly practise their sayings like:
Good game, that,
And me, practically born in a tunnel
Because evry place I’ve been
I’ve seen not even everything
But something lying down forever,
Evry polluted morning smells of fireworks a terrible aroma
Evry polluted woman giving me the eye
The body the look the practise turn around
And get –

Practically that tunnel
And strain and strain,
You see, no one dies until someone dies
And then all you get is the phone ringing
Wailing bawling like a baby;
And I sat down and wondered about this strain
Upon my perfect/imperfect vision –
‘Cause colours seem to change,
The high street gets taller like New York
And I close all the blinds in the house
And write these things to you
So you know that there’s been a death in the family.

The Only Snow in the North

19\10

The 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 one man almost falls to his death,
Dead and bright garden tarpaulin pulled over – held down
By plank of wood, heavy wooden bush, the wooden garden and

Clean clean invisible air freezing cold.
The glowing hysterical road – Dies irae –
Is screaming as two people melt into the ground
Dancing the sky reddens softly
And awful lights of yellow and blue

Dean Street explodes in cataclysmic white,
Lion & Unicorn fight in the street –
Everything set low, the world turns dark.

Broken the full moon drools sit and smile on night
And morning the church is boarded up –
Spires shooting up like vines or weeds
Graffiti plastic bags and empty empty flat

Chimneys on flat hills with the fullest of blue sky
And dead pastel green soil and sick icy road.

Standing around and trainspotting
Then vanished from the air;
Marked wastes cold dark the damp smell:
The ruined
Blackberry

Living thru the eyes of others
Angel eyes I’ll refuse to pray
So you cannot damn me anymore,

Guns sharp swords in the hands of young children,
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 rule of war begins.

My Methods for Writing

What I do is (when I'm in the mood or if I can put myself in the mood to write) drink very sweet coffee. (I drink tea most of the time, but that relaxes me, and I don't need to relax). I put music on loud, which can b something heavy to help me think, but I can also go for lyrical songs form Bob Dylan, The Doors, etc. Then I need to have some books out in fron of me; inc. what I'm reading at the moment (Dharma Bums), some random novels, books of poetry (all I have is Philip Larkin and William Blake and some anthologies, one of which has my own poem in).

With my glasses on and cross my legs sitting on my bed, make sure no one can come in, I get writing what falls into (or out of) my head. Write in notes and fit the pieces together, at the same time looking at lines of poems (not the full poem) from books and websites.

Poets that I'll definately be reading: Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski..

I think it's safe to say that I hate writing. But it's the only thing that keeps me sane. I remember sitting in a pub in Lancashire, talking with one of my creative writing tutors, and she asked me why I like to write, and I remember I said to her that I don't, but I feel lke I have to.

Who was it that said never create anything?? I'll look that up.. But I only half agree with that. It's one thing artists, mothers, and gods can do. "Playing with the machine of creation."

... Picked up guitar again. Bought some plecks (or picks). Missing high e string, so switched some round and have a lower sounding out-of-tune guitar.

Hate Writing - Citizen Kane - Bed Bus

I just don't feel like writing anymore - written like one line all week. If writing is my enemy then I feel better away from it. I seem to be writing in small bursts, I can't do it normally, if I write it has to be a proper piece. A great poem or story. Otherwise I hate it. I'm such a lazy writer, don't even know if I'm improving anymore. I should just keep what I've got, I mean Rimbaud gave up at around age 19. I'm just sayin'.

All I've been doing is watching films. Citizen Kane and Donnie Brasco recently. My music has gone towards The Velvet Underground.

Going to quit my job if I get this new job. It's hard to quit in a recession (some smart arse on tv says its now officially a recession), but a few of us got formal warnings for a number of things we've done and not done - being late, shirt untucked, name badge missing, talking and messing about. Don't get paid enough to be spoken to like a child.

Going to get writing over the weekend - even if it does seem pointless where I am right now. Here the note I wrote down yesterday I think it was: "Angel eyes I'll refuse to pray, so you cannot damn me anymore."

Had a dream last night that my bed was a bus. I was getting driven around Preston and I was avoiding the people I knew in uni. Then I was being driven around the streets at home, and I jumped off near my street. I think it cost me £1, which is cheaper than the normal bus.

A Fever - And Frank Turner Gig

My temperature is burning the paint off the walls. I'm not too well and this fever is making my heart go fast. Funny that I went into work this morning, felt myself getting dizzy as I walked around, but I laughed it off. Drinking Lemsip or Beechams and it stings my lips, and there's something on the inside of the cup.

Saw Frank Turner on saturday, and it was probably the best gig I've been to (maybe after the Dylan gig back in 2007). Me and my friend got really drunk. We shouted our heads off (which ruined my voice the next day). Frank was talking with the audience and starts talking about a bar he played in in Liverpool, and my friend shouts "Slaters!" (Meaning Slaters' bar) And that was funny. But then my friend looks at me and goes, "No I think he meant Hannah's bar." So it finished and we had some more drinks, and I wanted my coat back because it cost £50 and it was in the cloakroom for £1. We left and went to Korova, which was shit on Saturday and ended up back were we started. It was just about having a laugh with funny conversations with him and when we decided to leave, walking down the road, some racist starts talking to us. We're just going "yeah, is that so, mate?" until he leaves us alone.

We got the bus home. We had this conversation about music and musicians, and the music of 'now.' I mean everyone knows the great musicans and bands of the past, like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, but people now, like Frank Turner, are the musicans we're experiencing now. And when it gets to 30 40 years in the future, we'll look back and say were a part of that.

So I've been hungover and sick since then, but it was worth it. Anyway, I've been worse than this at uni. I wrote this short story the other day, but it doesn't make sense, but I think for me it's just practising my style.

Excerpt from 'Dharma Bums' - On Poets

'They were all meeting in the bar and getting high. But as they stood and sat around I saw that he was the only one who didn't look like a poet, though poet he was indeed. The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel-looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Rheinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin. And all the other hopeful poets were standing around, in various costumes, worn-at-the-sleeves corduroy jackets, scuffly shoes, books sticking out of their pockets. But Japhy was in rough workingman's clothes he'd bought secondhand in Goodwill stores to serve him on mountain climbs and hike and for sitting in the open at night, for campfires, for hitchhiking up and down the coast.'

(Kerouac, The Dharma Bums p.13)


I read this while sitting on the train going to work. I really like the different images of poets and the difference between the upper-class intellectual and the scruffy working class poet.

Tobacco Warehouse

It was cool because afterwards, when we headed home, the sun was going behind some clouds and we were swimming on our out-of-focus words. It was all unfocused by then, I mean it was always unfocused like the lens of a camera was distracted by something close-up or far-off.
We rode the train ten minutes before the sun showed itself again. When it did it shined delicately through the windows. I sat facing you. You said 'What stop we getting off at?'

'Waterloo,' I said.

'That's fine,' you said.

'Yes,' I said. 'I'll get there, my friend loneliness.'

'It's warm today.'

'Weather's fine. It's the people you gotta watch.'

'I'd rather not watch them,' you said. You folded your arms and stared out of the window, the light bristling off your face. The morning Summer light highlighted your facial features and you looked like someone else, like a child.

'I could do with a smoke,' I said.

'Didn't know you smoked,' you said.

'Yeah.'

'When we get back let's go the beach.'

'In the morning?'

'It'll be fun.'

'You're mad,' I said.

'Come on, it'll be empty round this time.'

'The beach is empty all the time,' I said. 'Anyway, I'm too tired with work.'

'Oh come on, what happened to wanting to be young again?'

'I grew up.'

'You only said that a couple of hours ago.'

'I grew up since then.'

'We're going the beach.'

'Peter Pan never went the beach.'

'Yes he did. He lived near the ocean.'

'Well this city is near the Irish sea, not the ocean. And fine, I'll go the beach. I'll like to smoke there, it'll be cool.'

I sweated underneath my workclothes. You looked at me and looked away and then I looked out the window, watching the world wipe past my eyes. An English boy like me doesn't see everything, only what I see, and even then I can't do anything with it but see it. Admire it and walk on. I saw a girl working in a cake shop today. I thought of her making cakes for a living. Eat your work, I'd say to her.

'Would you want to get off here?'

'Here? No. I don't live here.'

I'm sure you got younger on the train. I felt the distant change in people's bodies; all of a sudden bodies no longer seemed beautiful, they were just things. Like my toothbrush or socks. People own socks like they own their bodies, no one shares toothbrushes. I looked at you and liked you.

The sounds of the train were so clear, so loud and fast. The empty and lost feeling of locomotion and impending arrival to at least somewhere was a feeling always there. Something always always going to happen, but never never arriving. You stared for a long time out of the window, you sniffed once and I watched your eyes flicker from one moving tree to another. You were as immature as me sometimes. No one could touch you as we passed the Tobacco Warehouse on the docks to the West.

New Job - Bob Dylan - And Ulysses

Finished 'Naked Lunch.' I'm on 'Dharma Bums' now, by Kerouac.

I'm applying for a new job. It's at the university library, and seems the perfect job for me. And it pays £17,000 a year. That 4 times as much as I'm getting now. If I got that job I could finally get my own place. I've got until the 23rd jan, and my app seems good since I got a degree, but I'd have to put referees from my uni tutors, even though I haven't seen them in little under a year. Now way I'm using anyone from the job I have now as referees.

Going to see Frank Turner on saturday. Can't wait, going to be a good day. Drinking comes early. Bob Dylan's getting closer too, and I was talking to a guy at work (an older fellah) about Dylan. It was cool because he said he'd listen to Dylan in the 60's. Went to see him on London Road, and Joan Baez was playing too.

Watched 'I'm Not There,' which is an amazing film, can't believe anyone has the nerve to criticise it. Also been listening to Damien Rice, can't beieve I haven't listened to him before.

Got back into my reading of Sylvia Plath for a little bit. I don't know why, but every time I read something I end up copying that style. I know I do have my own style, but I do tend to mimic another style after reading it. I end up forgetting what I'm writing. It was like that with Burroughs and Bukowski, I've done it with Coupland and Kerouac. What I really want to read it Ulysses. I've got it some where.

Photos, 8th Jan '09

My Visions Take Me Slowly

Picture scene:
Rocking forth of complete talk on the mantle,
Day-green, its madness bolted to the floor -

Bolted stillness, well she doesn't talk anymore.

Another scene:

A bathroom with acidic stench
Of bile and salt booming music thru floor -

Sitting down on toilet vomit thru mouth and nose,
Hot terrible sick burning the brain and tongue and mouth roof,
Searching thru madness for a swallowed golden tooth.

Over the sand very smooth very quietly
Our feet glide mushroom cloud cool breath
Of cold plants, the shadow slides inwards,

I am turning silver; I am drained outwards;

When naked dreams are talking to me,
"Why don't you talk to me?" my dad screams,

I am become my own vision,
Inside the bronze sculpture is one of stopped,
Incomplete, the chiselled soldier and odd meat,

Now enter this world, universe of slow numbers

Moves your rook.

Tired - American Poet - And Short Story Thoughts

Been dead tired recently, that's with getting up around 5am almost everyday for work. Only working the mornings, but it's killing me. End up sleeping thru the day and feeling far too tired to write - and if I read then I'll fall back asleep. Must have some sort of iron deficiency or something. Not that tired right now, little bit of coffee helped.

Just read some Robert Pinsky, an American poet. Really good. Going to start writing more, as in simple notes because I don't even do that anymore, I'm too lazy to be a writer. Saw a girl at the train station today (she looked like a porcelain doll) and she had this little note book, writing stuff. I wondered what she was writing, and then I thought why don't I write while I'm out and about? I'm thinking up stuff all the time, but it'd just come out crap on paper. Even a mate at work had a notebook, noting down bits of comedy becuase he does stand-up. I thought about writing comedy, thought of some stuff, never wrote it down.

Not done anything on that short story. Don't want to. I just wanted to put it on here. I think I like it, but not sure. It's not religious or anti-religious (I'm neither), but it's just interesting to use religion, and mix it with the narrator's thoughts on socialibility. I know most parts don't add up, doesn't matter as it's a first draft. The last bit with him turning into a robot was strange because I was just writing off the top of my head, describing the metallic taste turning him metallic. It has a funny social-sexual theme going on; the final words were meant to be funny, though. Like, he's becomes a social robot and so does everyone else with socialising and drinking alcohol and taking drugs, and disregarding religion for whatever reason, and they just say to get him up. Whatever, it was a little like my christmas eve.

Untitled Short Story (unedited)

I am a social liability. I am inside everything like a God of alcohol. I am pehaps a physical being, restored to the point of destruction - and the voices ringing inside outside the greasy ear of mine call 'all the best boys,' and a rhythm of continual bathing in society begins. It's a chilly night... he has lost his voice... he has become the very thing he couldn't believe that when he cannot speak he cannot live. When he has no voice I can speak for him. 'Two bottles of Scotch, my friend.'

'Two?'

'What are you? Counting them out? Yes, two.' I say to the side, 'cheap son of a bitch.'

When every ounce of pleasure has gone we go to get some more. Pleasure measured in ounces is hard to come by.

There are now three of us. We have been talking around a table for 3 hours. An aging man of social responsibility hates the flag. A girl coughs behind me. Sounds of electric buzzing periferate the atmosphere below thin wafts of smoke from the sly cigarette before someone gets kicked out. I am an automated, never-before-seen man of destruction. A God machine.

'Have to get to church in an hour,' I say.

'Didn't take you for a church-goer man.'

'I'm not - '

'He's not.'

'I'm not. I just have to meet someone. I'll be back here if you want to wait for me.'

'We'll go with you.'

'No. You're pissed off your faces.'

'Nooo... We'll go in and... hail Jesus!'

'... It's praise isn't it?'

'I'm a Buddah.'

'No your not.'

'Yes I am. How would you know?'

'I know you. You don't do anything to be Buddhist.'

So we walk in the torso of the night and it's killing to be in this cold and everytime I'm thinking of selling myself some exquisite social idea brings me to the next place, but walking the mile down the road freezing in our psycho societies, we're shouting, we're burnishing our voices, we're trying to be giants.

'None of us can.'

'Look at them.'

'Who?

'None of us.'

'Those girls - gone down there now...'

'We're going this way.'

'We can't even get in at this rate.'

'Where?'

'The church.'

'Eer... you aint comin in... your too drunk...'

'So... I'll show that Jesus!'

Laughing I tell the other one, 'Don't let him come in. Please.'

Laughing, he does, and they leave me and my Jesus. Inside the exquisite corpse hung up, the son of lamb a walking disease too skinny and stiff up to his armpits. And where is my Buddah? And where is Mo and the the others. I don't know but I feel like I'm in a pool of blood, up to my knees, and this poor Arab eyes staring at me like a homeless man begging for change and my friend at my left begging me to sit down and I do.

The sermon went on for an hour. I left. 'I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow,' is what I said when I left and I ran back to South Road and the frosty air clamping down on my knees turning my bones to ice and icicles like swords protruding from my eyes. I am running like a barbaric man ready for meat. The sky is dark but almost the colour of gherkins and I turn a corner, running and panting like a sick dog, and I get home... I mean I get back to the pub and there they are. And one shouts, 'Here he is! Son of Man! The man himself!'

'Shut up you fucking pisshead.'

'Bar's closed.'

'Shit.'

He offeres me his Guinness and it tastes of metal like drinking blood and I taste it on the back of my tongue, and my tongue turns metal and my insides turn metal and veins to copper wiring with that red and blue plastic coating, electric soul and all fantastic sexual fantasies are metallic, a bad reaction to the beer I'm having a terrible social erection; what's more painful is we're more or less unchanging unless fighting for some cause.

'I don't have one.'

'One what?'

'A cause.'

'Did you know the onion is a natural aphrodisiac?'

'No I didn't.'

Weeds that smell of onions grow between inch-thick iron and Frankenstein bolt, shit-coloured rust and swollen obscene torsos shaped like guns when bent over. Nurse figures playing on the mind, shoving thermometers that don't read any temperature, my finger on her trigger. And on my own.

'What you need is something special, my friend. Your getting uptight.'

I feel like I'm screaming through my nose and through inches of steel and iron and the taste of rust is like scabs. It's gonna be alright. Society has taken me for a ride and it bled on my metal. I see fleshy atrophied lightbulbs gripping thin-bodied pallid celing, Wah-Wah sound in dead of night, un-living eyes staring down at me behind a million echoes of 'Get him him up, quick.'