Wiping the Slate

(The basic draft for this was written as I travelled on a coach through the Australian outback. This may be relevant. Then again it might not.)

The light spikes out, a

fruit cocktail of neon

arching through city

streets, past rows of

buildings, wiping

through the concrete of

tired and fickle urban fashion.

It twists around fingers and

waists, curves down

suburban crescents,

knifes through the

snaking pasta of by-passes,

then points in all directions, a

compass giving no clues of

escape or renewed options.

One flash and it

fades with us,

leaving no trace of it or us.

The noise of trees

burning in its wake is

just nature, old,

arthritic, cracking her

bones but carrying on.

It has no concept of

committee, discussion,

debate or worth, cannot be

validated or invalidated, and

views these explosions as

periodically necessary.

It does not know, or care,

about you.

A Perfect Shot/ All The Hometown Friends You've Forgotten

Years and years ago I put out a limited run pamphlet of ten poems - thanks to the use of a Local Council work photocopier after hours - which was bookended by these two prose pieces, both presented in small print and italics at the front and rear.  I'm sure the decision to have them acting as opening and closing brackets for the collection made some sense at the time rather than being a peculiar random brainfart, since I actually spent far too long thinking about what was supposed to be a really basic, xeroxed publication to sell at gigs.  I've got to be honest, however, I didn't keep a diary or journal in those days and I've long forgotten the logic behind it. 


A few people liked "A Perfect Shot", but within about one week of printing the pamphlet I decided I hated it (I'm still not particularly keen) and never used it in any context again and only read it live once at someone else's behest.  "All The Hometown Friends You've Forgotten", on the other hand, still gets pulled out at live readings very occasionally, though I find the content of it to be less true these days than I once did.

A Perfect Shot

she didn’t believe she could be struck by lightning, and to see her laugh in the face of a camera flash you’d guess she didn’t fear more earthly terrors too.  It was picture perfect, each photo catching her radiance bubbling before it died.  Every shot for her was the picture they’d use in the paper for you or I if we were murdered, in the lonely hearts column if we needed to be held, in the missing person column if we inexplicably vanished.  Her face begged you to look at her, look out for her.  It was as if the lightning fork had found her on a distant plain, frozen in time laughing at the world, laughing at what was to come.  

All The Hometown Friends You've Forgotten

All the hometown friends you’ve forgotten can be seen on Oxford Street in the Autumn, rubbing their DNA on everyone you’ll never know.  They’ll catch your eye for a second like hungry pigeons before being sucked away by the crowd into the bargain electrical store.

You think these people are just the slightly fatter brothers and sisters of ex-friends and lovers, that their hair is the wrong colour, but you would be mistaken.  They’ve just got older and are hiding the grey with new shades, trying to stand out and get your attention.

You think there’s no conspiracy, no notable coincidence in bumping into ghosts in the busiest High Street in the South East in November, but you’re wrong.  They think this is where all Londoners shop.  They believed it inevitable you’d pass someday.  They’ve been walking up and down all year, cowering, crouching, their feet the roots of plants outgrown their pots, mangled toes twisting in their shoes.  You made them this way.  Your time will come to catch their eye.  They’ll make sure you remember them this time.

Starstuck

Of all the poems or pieces of prose I've written, this is the one which causes people to most frequently ask "Did that really happen?" It seems believable enough, I suppose - nothing much really happens in it, beyond a very cowardly and weedy junior office worker getting frightened out of his wits by a local hard-case.  In some small towns in Britain, you could be on the receiving end of this treatment several times a year.

Whilst I've been bothered by an average share of men with a point to prove before now - especially during my very skinny, speccy student days when I looked like a much easier target - it certainly never happened specifically as suggested below.  In truth, the basis for this piece of work was much more dramatic and eventful.  One night when I was wandering back from a pub in Rayleigh with some friends of mine, we were suddenly set upon (completely without provocation) by a gang of men who were slightly older than us and obviously just looking for a bit of a rumble.  My friends reacted swiftly and ran really quickly.  I did not.  I moved slowly, allowed myself to get confused by the chaos of the situation, and having been denied a huge war in a crappy small town in Essex the men set upon me instead, getting me on the floor and proceeding to give my head and body a thorough kicking.

People suspected that I'd write about this experience immediately - "Well, at least you've got some material there!" they quipped, after I'd luckily returned from A&E with no apparent fractures or brain damage - but I didn't.  The whole thing was probably over in about two minutes, and there's only so much you can say about such an event.  The pointlessness of it doesn't lend itself well to a short story, and violent poetry about street fights is a tough thing to pull off without seeming like you're trying to prove a point.  But one image did stay in my head for a long time, that being the "bulb flash" you get behind the eyes after a powerful blow to the head.  The last time I'd noticed it I'd been in a fight at school, and seeing it again immediately felt peculiar and a metaphor for the ridiculous situation I'd found myself in.  Years later, I finally picked up a pen and tried to rationalise everything, but with the threat of violence hanging in the air rather than the actual act of violence itself, which (as any hired thug knows) is usually a lot more chilling and effective anyway.  Hence, I am the man in the poem the "local star" got and is talking about in the past tense, not the person he's actually addressing his comments to in the pub.

This was both an extremely popular and divisive piece of work at live spoken word events, and I got so sick and tired of reading or performing it that I haven't bothered for a few years now.  This is partly me being bored with the work, and partly being tired of having to talk about it or justify it.  The content picked up admiration from some people who felt it was authentic in the way it approached the subject, but criticism from others who felt that it contained a Daily Mail worldview (which I don't think it does, it's a wee bit more detailed and rounded than that, I'd hope - small town boredom and Friday/ Saturday night culture deserves more focus than sneering headlines) and some others who just plain didn't like the violence contained within the poem and didn't feel it was what they'd come to a poetry night to hear (to which I would honestly say "Tough").  It was also a tricky one to pull off live, as I usually had to deliver both the man in the pub's lines and the feeble office worker's internal monologue, which meant switching back and forth between red-faced aggression and neurotic consideration every other minute.  It's also incredibly long - three poems could fit into a live set in the place of this one.  Anyway, it will probably make a return to live sets soon.   We'll see.  

In other news, you'll be pleased to know that I'm really, really quick at running these days, if nothing else.  

“Oi you.

Oi, stood next to me.

Oi.

Don’t ignore me.

My life is like a film.

You got that?

A film.

Are you listening, mate?

Well then I’ll tell you something,

there aren’t many stars in a small town

but I’m one of them.

I’ve seen you sat there,

lips smug as the arse crack of the Duke of Kent

but who knows your name?

Who notices when you’re here?”

(Don’t ask me how this conversation started.

I don’t know this man.

I was walking towards the bar,

my mouth dry from too much office coffee,

mucus clinging like pond algae

to the back of my throat,

when like a bird necked boy

I flitted into this space nervily,

jerkily avoiding his gaze.

Gazes are only friendly to some people,

and you can generally guess who).

“Ah see.

You looked at me then, didn’t ya?

You know,

it don’t make no sense

but I can tell how powerful I am

just by how many people in a bar

don’t look at me or say hello,

don’t return my stare.

I have that,

I’ve always had that,

and you can’t learn it.

Did you hear me?

You can’t LEARN that, I said.

Are you listening to me?”

(He only thinks I’m listening

if I look right at him

though I don’t use my eyes to hear,

and nature has taught me

to know my place.

I smile, I look, try to be on equal footing,

cowering, contemplating my

soft suede shoes,

raising my eyes just slightly,

and take him in, up and up,

notice his footwear is reassuringly

non-steel capped in its appearance,

his jeans are faded with continents

of lager splashes,

Australia on his ankle,

Greenland on his groin.

His Nike T-shirt delivers a tick

across a bear-like chest to

assure me he even meets

with corporate approval,

his hair is bristling over a

face dented and hit

like grey plasticine

with a wooden spoon,

his pupils pinpointed in

pure 360 degree eyes).

“You’d better be listening, mush.
I think it’s about time you knew a bit.

You don’t know shit, you.

Never spoken to me before, have ya?

Well I’ve never offered permission,

but I’ve made a few enquiries,

found out bits about you.

See, that slag you was with last night,

I’d fuck ‘er, me, given half a chance,

so naturally I wanna know more

about the bloke on her tail, and

I must say, I reckon

you’re a waste of space.

You reckon yourself some sort of

poet I hear? 

Let me tell you,

last week after the Lewis fight

we got tanked up,

looked for the nearest bloke like you,

got ‘im on the floor and

kicked him til he crunched, and

y’know that flash behind the eyes?

The one you get with a head punch,

bursting like a bulb in the

corner of your eye?
Well, that’s the press

shooting your defeat and another

victory for me

That, by the way, is also

poetry, which any tosser can do.

You can sit down now,

You’ve been warned”.

(I have turned into a ragged

shaking skeleton, rib cage hollow and

echoing fear, sparks and needles

replacing my internal organs

one by one, and I sit down, drink up,

and get out of this bar.
I caught only one glimpse but

his face is etched on my mind

more than any of the late night

TV hosts who gibber like chimps

for the after pub crowd that evening.

I feel as if I have just narrowly

avoided being star struck).

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.