91. A Recipe for Children

for you all

Little noisy children, then, aren’t
you nice?
          – just as you should be, yes
everywhere that we can think of
funny little creatures uncommitted yet
to all that crap we must believe & follow
adult masculine English, say
                             uncertain class & age
what commonplace delusions that you don’t
yet share
          of course now lots
totally fucked up & maybe even lost
but most alive & hopeful still
the future such a grasp of faith
actually here embodied
                       open & illuminating

So what do we need?
                    for more
little children to pass through
                                full
sometimes of life, sometimes of quiet
none of this easy & none of it a recipe
but what we’d need then is something like
                        an openness to your growing lives
                        & a way of adjusting all that is around
                        into your flourishing transformations
                        some sorts of food as varied & as comforting
                        as all that can be managed
                                                   & like too
                        spaces open and enclosed, full up & empty
                        you know, just every possibility
                        – someone1 needs to have produced these
                        & someone needs to carry this all on
                        somewhere to run & someone to turn to
                        softness & feeling totally assured
                        others just like when you’re bibbling & bobbling
                        & others totally unlike so you can learn good things
                                                        – whatever you need
                        time as well, to be on your own
                                                        staying engaged
                        & time to be caught up with others
                                                           a mad laughing mob
                                                           rolling down hills
                                                           little hills
                                                           giggling together
                        & words
                                good words attuned to you
                                           & about you
                                           engaging you in colloquy
                                           engaging you in nonsense
                                a constant gentle rain
                                language softened into mud
                                squidged up & scooped
                                                      all over you
                        & things for your bodies & things
                        for your eyes & things for
                        your ears & nose & your hands again
                        water & sand & mud & stone & wood & paper
                        plastic & metal & everything natural
                        & lots that is unnatural
                                                 stories & love
                                                 music & encouragement
                                                 peacefulness & challenge
                                                 & always
                                                          to listen
                                                          & to respond
                        Chinese feasts & barbecues
                        picnics & Christmas
                                            – all with as many others
                                              as you can gather
                        breakfast at Broadstairs or teatime in Coffee Corner
                        sitting on a sofa w/ everyone around or
                        just as many as fit
                                            on a mat out the back
                                            or even a large cardboard box
– this isn’t telling anyone
anything we don‘t know
                       but
just praising what is good
fall quiet now

Hullo?
       – are you alright?
this place needs noise now
needs everything said again
                            & done
whatever ceremonies are proper
that appear out of nothing
(like this whole ridiculous universe
                                     yes?
                                     & like us)
doing what you do to help the child
                     be what you are
                     & will be
                       a person
                       true person
                       playing yourself
                       as your self
                       just as you are
                       can be

This is
        a revolutionary demand I’d say
        to do this truly & fully
        rushing in as absolute & unforgiving
        like a sundog over Harlow2
        like the digging up of relics
        of who we could have been
        like a poem by Sean Bonney
        like an urgent summons
        on someone else’s phone
                                – oh my god it’s you
                                  that’s who they want
                                  you’re wanted now
                                  to help us all
make this much better
                                  if too late for us
                                  for all our children
                                  & yours for ever3

Thank you – this is
a start again to say
the same words really
(oh thank you constraints of form that chose me!
but I don’t care
                 – for what is good
we can say again & again
with no loss of balance, only
just to do better is a gain
our eyes will burn
unless we open them to this light
of the new world continually around us
utopian hope lurking even in unrented shops
& we risk losing it
letting the old drop onto it
suppressing it into what we are
actually bound here as we are
we think ourselves free still
we carers & we parents
we know that you must be
not as we are4
but as we could be
          should be
in a world that is as it should be
as nothing else will preserve our lives
                                & yours

[So much I must say, so much I must finish with, ending what isn’t a recipe, except as I say it is, disordered as late summer sun collapsing into autumn. We must dig out what we need from it, if we’re to get through the coming winter & you, our children, flourish – rooty-tooting like glad tapirs in an uncomplicated alchemy, changing everything we live within into what will sustain us, especially our children for ever. “Always a good time to rebuild, now,” we say, as we serve you this dish to enjoy & nourish

 

 

1 that is us, dear reader or dear audience

 

 

2 or Mortimer’s Cross or the someone else’s Bridge: cold & luminous anyway

 

 

3 The political is children; the psychological is children. Socialism is children. Everything else is profitable infanticide.

 

 

4 insipid ghosts

88. Enochian Translation #41

188 estrangelo treated copyNothing solid left to return to – that could be a relief. Everything that has happened is irreversible: it’s to do with entropy, rather than iussive poesis. Maybe the triumph of the bourgeoisie, turning out to be the zombie slaves of our new aristocracy (recte: kleptocracy). It is a return, but to nowhere. Think of it as being in hell forever.

Another thingy ran no process on. And what thingy was that? An improvisation of sorts. It can’t work any simple change: it wants the wonder of utter novelty, where something enters from the outside that isn’t there (they tell us). It is gross, disturbing, static in terms of here – in terms of there, a light, casual, generative verb: oh, to tapir, to gryphon, to bleeding head of a dog on a stick, to bird fly out & off at dawn, this dawn, the one that is now. An utter affront to the cryptic smear of events.

A homeless migrant out of nothing is all we are. There are no rights – only the duty of collaborative action to build ourselves a new home, preferably eternal. We’ve landed here, pushed off the boat, & struggled up through the mud & debris of this beach. The first thing we must do is hold a carnival on the quayside to celebrate we are here. Ignore the rain – rather, enjoy how our lights sparkle & waver. Such now is living.

What natural membranes outside to something? Think of sticky interfaces rubbing against your cheeks. It’s at the breaks & cracks, the splits & mirrorings, that something happens. Involutions of boundary layers establish new dimensions, new modes of being. These events form & multiply – OK? We are penetrated utterly through nothingness. What’s here, not here – what isn’t here haunting us & surrounds us. Time to dance thru the wet streets, each single one.

Always the same abased elements here – we don’t care. All our ideals are based on elaborate fakery – hunh? You want divine revelation? Only human, only ever human. Making it up as we go along – tauromachy upon the strand, incantations in the chambers, prayers & ale within the chapel. Bread of heaven, and the people’s beer. These the only materials we’ve got, here in Albion Street: up through the strait gate, turn left.

Again these brief warped children now. Who will they grow up into? Us, us and you. If you’re resigned to this – OK. Let it all breathe as the wind changes & we accept. A friendly cloud blots out the cruel sun. The children still play their violent games. Whoever survives shall be king; but the slaughterer will be the one remembered. It’s hard work, building a civilisation upon this brutish shore. The record is mainly one of massacres & betrayal: all the old giants, ones who’d helped us, put to death. Very well. Here we are. It’s never the right time or place or language. It’s what it is: one actual moment.

 

 

1 Out of the most vulgar of Old Sogdian, I’m afraid, and a very free rendering indeed. Translations do vary widely, especially as the MS is extremely worn & well-rubbed. There is a major alternative reading following.

86. Something Now We Can All Agree Upon

oh – all these memories then
pretty sloppy if you want what happened
they catch the shine, that’s all
nothing solid left to return to

no – not one thing (that
ended – just another – call it process
yesterday’s landing craft today’s tourism
but they still keep on diving of course

all this huge & thingy world then
a homeless migrant out of nothing
something like spontaneous fireworks
ending up with just what you are

natural language brilliant for fantasies
makes mud smell of nutmeg if we ask
though it may tell us nothing of here
existing too much likewise in its own right

lost on now some ridiculous plane
totally unsure of what is outside (more rain
always the same abased elements here
until the sky & land no longer know what colour

elastic in what? – I’d say warped & rotten
woven up wretchedly on the cheapest of looms
let’s start up again w/ Harlow & fun
gangs of noisy actual children – agreed upon this

85. 3 Poems Answering Possible Questions with Fresh Structures of Feeling & Sensation, and the Assistance of Mr Prynne

• oh – all these memories
                 debris after Lynmouth

                 that was a warning

                                    deliberate mistake?
                                    the Torridge
                                    pretty good, yeah
                                    pretty much
                                                proper country yet

     my father defending it
     during the War
     centre for landing craft
                amphibious assaults1
                entire craft
                lost on the bar
                                thank you
                yankee knowhow

hence we returned
then to Bideford Fair
fire eaters & boxing booths
tigers on posters
how do I know
except what I dream
              – sights
                shining like mackerel
                glorious to engage with
                (when you’re all grown up
                after the dark
                one day to return to

 
• all this
imperfect recall
                 you can’t
                 go there after

                 but perfect
                 conceptions:

                 ah, Jeremy
                 so the night-time:

                 with our eyes closed
                 things come together
                             then happen:

                             sparks & lights
                             veering wildly
                                            burst up

did I see fireworks?
                     do you?

                     a level of abstraction
                  is a level of deprivation

                     what you see
                  is what you are2

 
• lost on the sands at Westward Ho!
                                    again
                                    everyone called Peter
                                    smile and
                                    know nothing

what do you find?
                   dark & dirty
                   muddy depths
                   below it all
                   patches of oil
                   muck &
                   mingled decay

where do we go when we die?

                             can’t be Broadstairs anymore
                             too narrow a path up anyway
                             always traffic jams at the gate

                             just empty drifting
                             down depthward
                             minimal hold

                                           think how slow
                                                     it is
                                                     to be a bubble
                                                     burst

                             down depthward
                             what colour? 3

 

 

1 Remember the armoured ducks?

 

 

2 “natural language itself is generically conceptualised in relation to ‘what there is’, whether ‘real’ or not, elastic in upward dimensionality, almost indefinitely so; and this is especially true of poetic discourse constructions. Within such territory, often separated from lower levels by ascription as ‘in imagination’ or ‘sublime’, an arbitrary text-lexicon can be converted into a distinct vocabulary, and improvised rules for following a narrative or a performance can be formed by modification of lower-order practice, or can be newly invented in their own right.” J.H. Prynne, Concepts and Conception in Poetry (Critical Documents, 2014), p 15

 

 

3 Elastic in downward dimensionality? The poet, like most, wants to go upwards in a burst of light – her or his true path is darkness & destructive transformation. But, you, the reader? Let’s follow Mr Prynne a little further: “A reader may have a demanding task to interpret these ’rules’, but the process may be exhilarating enough to carry the reader forward with strenuous delight: ‘it must give pleasure’ (both Wordsworth and Stevens are agreed upon this).” Prynne, loc.cit. Yes?

84. Screen Memories Maybe of Bideford Fair

Not ordinary on the quayside
mongrels move across (we are they
of gryphons & tapirs & people &
all free creatures – not marred
we choose carnival & laughter
night-time suddenly sparks and shines
the dust smells of meadowsweet
we are fierce, miswritten humans
now opening history to the full at midnight

not triumphal – heavy struggle
we are devoured within
a buffet of profound perversity
irrationality of the non-human
always back in the old mud again
something brutish & smearing
home is the horizon – it glitters
somehow we are still wading up the beach
trust, intensified, one of our great truths