poets | A Second Life

48. & All the Silver Geckoes. . . 1

what do they dream of
we’re crossing the line now
to improvise power
briefly against or for

do they know more than the cats
leaping across the fenceways
a whole new geography
superior to our own

does our flesh know
accepting its comfort
whatever really
it might sleep after

we give to all vagrants
one single name
but every name different
every one so

like the gods much the same
all you’d imagine
centreless & white
then clear as a mirror

any escape will do
to get us outside
we blame & we love
out into wildwood

escaping like people
just denying this nightmare
let’s see what it is
really around us

the words are our wonder
yes we can learn
wander into these schools
& understand what is said

the year ends and
we’ll see then through vapours
the first glimmers
a new fragrant tone

our age doesn’t matter
does it Karla & Darrel
tenderly hand in hand
oh, this city now is ours

1 Crossing (or Xing) the Line reading series, organised by Jeff Hilson (with Sean Bonney), held, at the time of writing, upstairs in The Apple Tree, Mount Pleasant, Clerkenwell – the room redecorated in the summer of 2013 with a gorgeous wallpaper, black with silver lizards, as background for the poets (plus photos of Marx & Lenin – for the benefit of CWU meetings also we guess). Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/140494812663758.

45. A Recipe for the Commitment of an Imprecise Poem

for the Veer Collective, who spat out what was offered them¹

OK, no pressure, guys: your choice
is your choice & no one could think that
something this impaired could match what you require
publishing is hard but what you value I thought clear
but, well, I am reduced to talking snarkily just now
to say I find those values of commitment and precision to be
well, fucking inhuman – dead abstractions
orders from the mouths of disembodied heads²
I am disgusted by these words & turn
to where my attention is more upon the care of little ones
it isn’t that I believe in Liberty³ but
that comes from inside, yes? not
some retro Between-the-Wars Modernist^TM delusion
planning the relaunch of New Masses yet again
now that’s what I call real corrosive kitsch
I prefer the stuff people do in kitchens for
more revolutions start over food than verse

OK then, dudes, I hear you say
so what are you working on? what
‘s new out of Bishops Stortford? OK
the game goes on & we start
where we are:
so no food & drink, my friends
no bread & water
but stones & gasoline for you to throw – OK?

And then to list my ingredients all dutifully?
they’re around us I reckon in common human actions
not committed to separation & asylums
but communal, messy & just happening:
      loudly saying no
      & calling out wrong decisions
      joining together against these
      & at the worst⁴ some
      active stand in opposition
      even with the risk of loss
                            or wound
      & we’d take from that
      human fellow feeling to
      see how a new ordering
      can form itself, as
      utopian dreams get realised
      through kitschy rituals so
      this should be then made into
      something joyful & sustaining
      no I can’t give you instructions how
      but suggest feeling & emotion, good
      like in a poem, OK, imprecise
      & what it is committed to
      never externally determined or adopted

      And all the processes that affect us
      huge & frightening
      new high status elites
      bursting from the carcass of the old
      seizing in their mandibles
      all common necessities
      & making us then pay
      over our entire lives
      just to exist in this world
      they claim they’ve bought
      & demonstrate possession
      by making all that there is good
      funnel into them & theirs
      it happens continually
      it is at
               that moment of change
      maybe now to be upset
      but how to do so
      without smashing our own life support
      or not surviving the guns they have already hired
      rather more effective than our poems I would guess
      no, I don’t know how
      & if you think you do
      oh you precise & committed ones
      then try it if you like
      but we are done with leninism
      as it brings nothing
      but another new elite
      – don’t you know?

The presentation of our change
must be less obvious, less
cut off in self-righteous correctness
but engaged through our human actions
which must include for us our writing
as that is what we have to do and if
we commit to something other than what’s our poetry
I think we’d be wasting our own best efforts then
I know it’s not heroic nor what you’d call political
but that too needs some total metamorphosis
not repetition of past failures yet again
“keep the line, boys, keep the line”
no – this is not the field of status games
but the whole of our human life

In the southwestern sky
that sun of winter dies
nonetheless, though we hibernate
or fly, burrow underneath
forage dutifully amongst the rubble
we’ll work for what comes after us
not for the absolute precise but
just a better life somehow

[I got this just from what I’ve lived and seen. It cost me (& 80 colleagues) our jobs; looks like it’ll cost me publication too now. That’s all I can say at present. Sorry if it’s not adequate; but not if not found precise or not demonstrating some image of commitment. It’s what I have found more important than adopted stances, disembodied thought & the glee songs that built mass movements. Memo: write poems, find some better publisher[5], carry on with the care of little ones and the preparation of our food.]

1 “Thanks for submitting the work. Veer editors have read it and reached the decision that it doesn’t fall within the currently more precise and committed stance that we are adopting.” Email dated November 16, 2013

2 that means Charlie Marx & Big Ted, remember? & now Paulina the Staffie bitch

3 as you know, free Americans have pissed all over this word, like mice raiding a larder

4 usually that means usually

5 any suggestions, please? anyone?

43. The Clean, Conceptual, Corrosive Joy of Kitsch, or Mongrel Mess

Like, just what is this, & who and where? Some blurry mess come out of the skies to titillate & mock us? Sarah, I can see you are laughing, free of who you are, but then you don’t turn up anyway – you just invite all your snarky little friends. Oh how cute – look, they’re playing cybermen & werewolves, surrealist japes & cheap rip-offs. I can see why you’re laughing; but how can you avoid chromosomal damage under this inhuman pressure? IDS, for gods’ sake! why? why?

And you, Paulina, you pointless bitch – rip out rather than rip off, some sophomore gesture towards materiality and ephemerality of the image, hunh? I don’t need to respond to a bit of torn paper, or a few smears of inky patterns handcrafted on Olde Photoshoppe. OK, so we’ve had a thing about heads, for a long long time, and putting them on cupcakes will make us happier I don’t think. I eat.

My money’s on the vagrants. They’ve moved down out of the pass. Speaking as one who knows, I’ve been there. It’s cold, beautiful, full of the way out, hunkering down besides this fire.

35. Off We Go

So here in a low winter sun, to write
what the words are saying today. They
hear it all, really they do, even this far
past the absolute point where we all died.
First Mark D was shot, then the police laughed & lied
and it all took off, and then we crashed.
Nothing changed where we are – but what we want
no longer nameless. We can’t utter yet our future.
It sits on the chair and laughs.

Glad to have escaped Tone Vale. Its scars
the tokens of what formed us – imposed power
the Head Which Is Not in its dutiful pleasure.

Everyone’s story is the same. They haven’t
told it yet is all it means
decaff is bad, and missed deliveries
if you have a meeting on a monday
why not? at the granular level the balance
wavers & havers, you can’t tell or understand
go through with it, please, eyes open
it’s a pretty minimal joy isn’t it?
but it may be sufficient here
you’re so keen, then off we go.

A mouse, a mandarin, the talking horse &
the ever-bleeding head of liberty, removed
from underneath the White Tower, stolen out
from its jewelled reliquary in the basement of the Chapel
of the Opened Book.
This is narrative now
which I am glad the laws of avant-garde poetry don’t allow¹.

There isn’t any more consistency than this in anything
OK? with gods above and gods below, they allow

whatever sort of cake we choose to eat.

Shots of Our Gracie leading the mill girls dancing down the street
amazing what a sundog does for you once seen aright
optic effects our tokens of hope & delight.

And then they all sat down to tea.

After blue, red, the mouse decides
not to modulate, but shine
delight is clear, bright, we hope now open.

1 exceptions made for some Cambridge poets I believe

34. Behold Our KitschN;-) Gods Displayed

My head, the head which is not, the head of ancient liberty, staked on a traffic cone, my head which remembers always sundogs shining in the south‑western sky, my old head reads that scabs are rats, my head reads that art will fight & flourish, my head can never stop splashing & shaking. All excesses are mine.

Oh, my fingernails, the tokens of laborious growth, my fingernails scratch the text beneath, rearrange it as a game of go1, my fingernails exceed my flesh, they rake your flesh gently, & excited will pleasure you, clicking w/ laughter.

Ah, my mouth, the mouth with which to eat & talk, inhales, exhales, the nameless mouth, the mouth of disgust, the mouth that is tight & keeps its own counsel, unpredictable & cruel. More is more divine, says the mouth, less too, more blue.

What do mice2 do? Happen in amazement, stuck to this big conceptual mess. Blue & red modulate to grey & pink. Areas of white flourish variously. Don’t trust what you can’t bite or write.

1 weiqi

2 are you really saying this is a bear?