Chihuahua

(Many moons ago, Niall O'Sullivan had the idea of starting a fanzine of terrible poetry called "Chihuahua", to run as a cheap and tatty, stunted idiot brother to James Byrne and Nicholas Cobic's rather grander, more upstanding "Wolf" project.  So that's probably where the basic idea for this poem started.


As for the poem itself - it's the little things that will get to us in the end.  The virus under the microscope.  The death by a thousand paper cuts.  Or a thousand rejection slips from poetry periodicals with tiny readerships.  Or - true case in point - I was once beaten to a pulp by some particularly terrifying skinheads in Southend in the mid-nineties, but the only time in my life I've ever needed stitches was when I tripped over a loose paving slab in Walthamstow and landed chin-first.  The poem isn't necessarily the most original idea I've ever had, but it just about hangs.  A bit like the flap of skin on my chin that fateful Monday morning).  

Don’t be fooled

by all this talk of

fight dogs in the news.

I am more than

you suppose.

My tooth in your leg

contains, written in

Braille, the number of an

old partner for

whom you felt only lust.

I cough up her name

when pulled on a

leash, and each pant I

puff smells like the

bottled breath of

pub laughter gained

from lazy jokes at

undeserving targets.

Complacency is inadvisable.

I’ll wear you down with

Unpleasant irritations.

My fur reeks of the stale

bathroom towel you

dried yourself on

before meeting a

lover, and the fleas

on my body are

miniature toy tanks whose

remote controls have

broken, and who have

issues of war with

everybody.

I can go on forever

without sustenance.

There is cactus juice and

fat beneath the pods of

my scaly paws.

My yelp detunes

guitars and throws poets and drummers

off-rhythm,

and just by thinking I am

better than you, I instantly am.

I am keeping my eye on

Your easy chair as we speak.

Whims, Follies and Fancies

Frequently, when I actually have the time to think about such things, I find myself strangely envious of Bill Drummond. Since disbanding the KLF, deleting their entire catalogue and throwing one million pounds on to a bonfire, the man has had enough money left over to indulge in all manner of ridiculous ideas.

Take MyDeath for instance. This is a website where you can register the way you wish to be buried, and what style you wish the funeral to take (http://www.mydeath.net). Not satisfied with setting that business non-starter up, he went on to do other things that were equally dead end - travelling to Norway to put a statue of Elvis in the northernmost lighthouse in the world to bring guidance and world peace, offering to do a tour of random stranger's kitchens so he could cook them soup, and even writing (perfectly good) books about absolutely nothing in particular apart from the ideas he's had.

Some people would argue the above is evidence of under-achievement or failure, and I couldn't disagree more. The fact remains that you have to be really successful in life to earn the time and money to indulge such ideas. Being able to cater for your most ridiculous artistic ideas and your most random night-thoughts is the last reserve of wealthy ex-pop stars (and sometimes, when money isn't an issue, art students who aren't too bothered about their final marks). The rest of us have neither the resouces or the time between our real ambitions, which normally revolve around financial security and (in my case) other more straightforward creative aims and targets that will probably never pay the rent, never mind a mortgage.  There just aren't enough hours left over in the day for pursuing additional pot-boiling projects.

Like Bill, though, I do frequently have absurd ideas which would seem to the rest of the world like follies. They most often occur to me last thing at night before I drop off to sleep, or early in the morning when I'm sat on the Victoria Line getting to work. I act on some of them to a point, perhaps bringing them up in discussion with friends, or hanging the hook to see if anyone bites. Some don't even get as far as that. They remain unacted upon, on the list of things to do if and when I retire in the distant future.

Among them are:

* Planning to launch a poetry publishing company called "Network SouthEast" for commuter-belt poets only
I planned this particular idea because at one point in the nineties there was an almost unhealthy obsession with poets from the North of England.  Named after the old British Rail service, NetWork SouthEast was going to be a Home Counties literary beacon producing work about home counties issues - offices, railway lines, industrial estates, bad nightclubs, supermarket car parks, abandoned trollies, ineffective by-passes and mini-roundabout traffic control systems, that kind of thing. If it ever became successful, I was going to use a worker's hut near Tilbury Docks as an office.
Our slogan was to be "If this poetry anthology is too crowded with bad ideas, please wait on the platform. Another one will be along shortly". 


I think I got as far as registering an email address for this before dropping it as being a joke that was likely to prove ridiculously expensive. And anyway, all the home counties poets were far too busy pretending to be sophisticated and urban to engage with it - who'd want to ruin their careers by realigning their work to fit in with my ludicrous parody? In the end, I just put out one very slim, cheaply produced pamphlet of my own, and made sure that "NetWork SouthEast Poetry Holdings" was clearly labelled on the cover, with accompanying slogan. That's as far as things went.


* Launching a gloomy, slightly warped and surreal poetry night called "The Rubber Room" in a dark upstairs pub space.
The live poetry circuit in recent years has frequently made a virtue of its status as being a training bra for audiences who might not otherwise come across the form, or might think "poetry" is a dirty word.  Audiences are encouraged to whoop, holler, support artists in competitive slams and generally be made to feel as if they're in a young, vibrant environment.  Overall, this is a good thing - it's a crafty and very effective way of hooking people on to an artform they might otherwise completely ignore, and the likes of "Bang! Said The Gun" (today) and "Walking The Dog" (at the turn of the noughties) have unquestionably been partly responsible for a shift in the image of poetry.  And that's before we even start to talk about "Farrago" and other slam nights.


"Yeah, yeah, we get it David, so why did you want to produce a gloomy, quiet little evening that was the precise opposite of all this?" I hear you cry. Well, it's like this. What do these audiences do once they've been hooked and want to take their interest further?  What happens when they no longer need to be coerced into listening and actually want to dip their toes into more experimental and odd material (in the way Radiohead fans eventually took out a subscription to "The Wire")?  


My plan was simple.  Upon entering the room, audience members would be greeted with a dimly lit space and some backing music of a disquieting ilk - Boards of Canada, sixties exotica, recordings of warped or damaged vinyl, peculiar instrumental B-sides.  Two barely working, black and white portable television sets would flicker either side of the stage area, possibly with cameras attached trained on the mic.  The evening's theme tune would be Porter Wagoner's "The Rubber Room", an echo-ridden country song about one man's breakdown and subsequent incarceration in a padded cell - and all this would be before the poets even started performing.


And who would they be?  Well, anyone unexpected or interesting who was prepared to push the boat out, who did live performances which were well-drilled but not commercial, or wrote material which littered the less mainstream edges of poetry.  I have my own ideas and I'm sure you have yours too - but ultimately, I wanted to get what I thought was a lost flock of people turning up to poetry nights again, the individuals who already knew they liked the form but didn't necessarily always want a rowdy night out, knew that the scene had eccentric and fascinating fringes, and also didn't necessarily wish to sit in an upstairs pub room for a plain, sensible reading with nothing but a mic and a bare wall in front of them.  


Could I have done this?  Well, I got as far as finding a venue I wanted to use, but realised I just didn't have the money, the time or the support to deliver on the plan.  If you want the idea, take it.  It's yours. I can help out on the door if you like.  

* Shooting a series of music videos for old sixties songs that didn't have videos
There were three flaws with the above plan. The first is that I didn't have a decent camera or video editing equipment, and no money to buy any with. The second is that Dave Lee Travis had already done exactly the same thing in the eighties and called it "The Golden Oldie Picture Show", and whilst DLT may be many things true and good, he's hardly the benchmark for cutting edge ideas. Thirdly, who would have given a shit anyway? Certainly nobody much cared when the hairy cornflake tried, and I wasn't about to martyr myself in the same way.

* Releasing a book about people who place peculiar personal ads
Back when I was going through something of a lady-drought, I was fascinated by personal ads. Although I never actually replied to any, I was amazed that so many people seemed to know exactly what they wanted. I could never be so sure of myself. How could I possibly know that what would work for me would be a person with qualities A, B, C and D? I thought I knew exactly what I was doing with each woman I went off with, but the relationships were always shoddy, so clearly I didn't. I envied the sense of purpose of these people who took out ads, even if I didn't especially want to swap for their love lives.

More fascinating even than these were the "I saw you on the 73 bus, you had blonde hair and were listening to Shakin' Stevens on your Walkman... please call me" adverts. These I found most sinister. These were from people who had seen somebody in a public place, and from looks, posture and listening tastes alone had decided that they'd found somebody who could only be "the one". Whilst I admired such confident thinking, I couldn't see how it would work. More to the point, I wanted to meet the people these adverts were about. Were any of them unattractive or plain? What were people basing their judgements on? Would anyone find happiness using such a weird bait?

To do this book, I'd have had to interview, research, call premium rate phone numbers, follow people around, and probably hire psychologists as well. Without an advance or for as long as I had a day job, it was beyond me. So I never did.

I walked into "Waterstones" some time after having this idea, and right by the front door was a book about Personal Ads. Not following the people behind them, just reprinting them in a "found" context, so we could all go "ahhh" or "ewww". I felt cheated. Somebody was thinking lower than me and winning. And more to the point... it proved that some of my more off-the-cuff ideas might be more valuable than the things I'd spent more time considering after all.


What's the point of this blog entry, I hear you ask?  Well, what's the point of any blog entry? It was just a flaming idea, that's all.  Go back to your web-surfing, all of you.  

Being English

We no longer speak of these things –

the spiders we swallowed.

What our lines are or

where they came from.

The invisible elastic rope

that ties us to the

bedpost of the past.

The cheap ticking,

plastic toy that remains

descended on cheap

melted glue from our

ribs to our stomachs.

We simply unplug the

television from the

wall at night,

distrust sudden

shouts of cheer from the

cul-de-sac outside, and

tie our shoelaces

neatly and tightly

so the loops do not

catch and drag the

feet of others

rudely along our path.

We are immeasurably,

utterly sorry for

every state of affairs, but

nothing must change.

The army burst into our

houses and told us we

were strong enough not to

deviate from this path.

Once they’d beaten us

sixty times and we didn’t

weep, we decided

it must be true.

Zone 4 in the "Morning Star"

This is just a quick update to let you all know that my poem "Zone 4" will be appearing in the "Morning Star" tomorrow in their "Well Versed" section.  In addition to my work there will be an interview with Ian Parks which makes this well worth picking up.  It's available from most good newsagents nationally, although for some reason it seems that agents of news inside railway stations tend to be the best stockists in my experience.

Sorry for the fact that this is just one more plug for something I'm doing rather than a proper blog entry as such, but I'll hopefully get on to producing something a bit more interesting tonight or tomorrow.  Everything in my life is a bit "noisy" at the moment. 

Forthcoming Gigs - 13 May and 1 June

Yes, it's one of those updates which begs for folk to attend events I'll be appearing at.  Every website has them, why should mine be any exception?  I mean, why are you here anyway?  Are you actually interested in what I do or not?  

Anyway:

On Sunday 13 May I'll be appearing at The Yard in Hackney Wick in London at 6pm doing a eight minute set (or thereabouts) of poems, during which you'll probably get the chance to hear some new material.  Also on the bill will be Jonathan Kemp, Amy Neislson Smith, Sophie Robinson, Roy Woolley, Siddhartha Bose, Raymond, the irrepressible Graham Buchan, Martin Esposito and Sunshine Faggio.  The Yard is located at Unit 2, Queens Yard, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, E9 5EN, and if you're a Facebook dweller you'll find the details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/404117639620330/404207376278023/?ref=notif&notif_t=plan_mall_activity


On Friday 1 June I'll be at Stoke Newington Literary Festival, but I won't be reading - instead, I'll be one of the DJs at the end of the show trying to inject a bit of garage rock, mod pop, psychedelia, funk and soul into the proceedings.  The venue will be the Mascara Bar in Stamford Hill at 72 Stamford Hill, London N16 6XS.  The Facebook details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/458449877503852/ Whilst it's free entry and the DJ sets will run from 10pm - 2am, you'd be well encouraged to view some of the poets who will also be appearing.  Niall O’Sullivan, Tim Wells, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Clare Pollard, Amy Acre, Anna Le, Chip Grim, and Sophie Cameron are among the acts featured in that bar across the weekend. 
See you out there in the real world, I hope.  

Memorandum re Louise

(A really odd one, this. It was written around a year and a half ago and aired twice at spoken word events, but eventually I shunted it to the back of my workfile, not being sure who would publish it or where it would fit, or even if it actually needed to be published.
  
At both readings, some people made the usual mistake of asking me whether it was based upon somebody I knew or was 'in love' with. Audience members do this a lot at performance poetry events and poetry readings - they'll assume that what you're saying is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as if presenting something at a poetry event means it's bound to be a biographical narrative.  Inevitably, this isn't some confession I've been desperate to get off my chest and is almost completely fiction, apart from the Jacket Potato bit.  There was a very vain Hoxton hipster type in one of the offices I worked in during the early part of the last decade who would often ignore me completely when we bumped into each other in the kitchen, and for a split second I had the mad thought that this would be an hilarious thing to do to get her attention.  Obviously my better judgement kicked in and it didn't happen, but I kept laughing to myself about the idea for days afterwards.)

I’ve worked opposite her for three years, but she doesn’t talk to me much.  I have received, in total, three tight, fake, rubber band smiles, and a weighty freightload of frowns and incredulous stares.

She doesn’t care for men much – is quite open about the fact.  She points out their aggression, childishness, and lack of compassion at any vague prompt she’s given.  The only man she ever befriended here was eventually jailed for Grevious Bodily Harm.  To all our criticisms, she sneered that we were just too dumb to understand that the trouble always came looking for him, not vice versa.  She told me this slowly, as if she were speaking to somebody who was too simple to understand that the whole world and its cat were prowling the streets looking for fights with enormous, tattooed man-mountains.

I have often thought of telling her I love her, not because I actually do, but because the repulsion in her response would intrigue me – I am almost interested to see if the word could be more feared than a weapon.  At lunchtimes, I sometimes have to fight the urge to scream it aloud whilst chewing on a mouthful of jacket potato.

If Louise ever sees what I’ve written about her on file, she will not be hurt or surprised – she’s beyond both.  She will just state, plainly and simply, that she always knew I was as vicious as this, that this was why she failed to bother with me from the word “go”, right from when I nervously walked through the office doors on my first day.  She can, she will point out, always tell what people are really like from first glance, and they always respond as she expects.  She will point out key words, stabbing her blunt fingernail at them as evidence of misogyny, bad character, and cold-hearted cynicism. 

She will finish by saying, with a slight smile followed by a horrified shudder, that my defence here in paragraph three is a blatant lie.  As usual, it will be my word against hers.

I do hope you will wish me luck tomorrow.