98. Sigillum Rei Publicae Gentium Albionis1

     U  POLISHEDRAALL
     SHOE OSMFRIEND
    WAETOOS AL EPDR   R
    HYROP SGLY  EAI   EACH
    ASE LIVEL S NWA   PLEASURES
    THOSE  T  T TNN   UB
    HGODSAID  R O O   BIBLIOPHILES
    I OUR O   A F T   LO
SOAPSUDDENESM N  BREAKING
    W   P SWOAG   Y   C
    A  JUSTORNE
    LMAYBERLNDN
    LWORLDOLIIE
    OAGAINYENRS
    W MUCHANGES  C
    S  TOF   CH  OWI
     SELFLASHTA CMHN
    GILDAND  ET HPOTTERIES
    FREELY   DTBOLLOX
    R   BLAMELESSEEU
  B EDELIGHT  R EX T
  LDE XTOLD T EGNIGHTLIGHT
  AILBURNOW H DLI  I
 SCRYL  OUTSIDEIG  S                     W
  KT USTART N  TH                        E
   Y TTHISTARS TT             L          R
     WHOLENTIREELS            O          E
   W    OLD N  R      M      OWLTIME    PV
   H   LOVE  J I      E   W   L         EE
   AGAINLETS O N  A   M   O   I         OR
   T GROSSMOKINGIRL   B   N   E  L   PALPIST
    RAYS   F NCOMEL  CRM  D   N  I SHINGLE
   FAILURE FTIMID G  AAE  EL  E  VLA ND E
  PLANETSFRAGMENTSE  NNIMPROVISATION KE S
  SURFACESCHLAFGESTALTEN   V  S  NSD  A
   N             THATH     E     GTRODDEN
   K           TIME BETTER

 

 

1 “And what this is here – I don’t think I can even talk about it. Let it just crystallise itself out, a thin scum of language fragments, faintly glittering.”

94. Poetic Thought: A Painful Crawl

Poetic thought – unbidden mostly & destructive
its truths so brutish they can’t work
English stuff I suppose, full skinhead rage
the old banal burden of what we are & speak

Filthy after it again – oh bless us!
the muscine after ooze of this disordered kitsch
marred and obvious as any screen memory
I want it to end now, please, please

And then I see that long war with ourselves again
free as gods, full members of a warband: weigh
this illusion too: like, fuck me, it’s autumn now
that smell’s the explanation: oh we are!

It’ll take time to crawl up this beach again
welcome back stranger! You know all too well this world
pounding the bladderwrack won’t help or prove fun
trust the crawling reflex even as we fade

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.

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

77. Some Sloppy Debris, Unabased, Yet as Tragically True as Everything Else

And then in a paradise of sea & boats
the surf ran its sloppy debris up
OK, not dark native mud, just sand
polished clean as words, as bones
we play upon once and ever

Cast up at Broadstairs yet again
oh, family things – you know, that compulsion
paint peels then slowly renewed
but the foreign students wander yet
                                – lost on the same maps
                      circumstances do come round again
edges softened & removed through rolling erosions
picked over continually by gulls & ravens
fr a late-blooming career at Thanet Cat Shelter
helping run workshops in the new Town Shed
yes! all boons to elderly gentlemen & blokes
the sea & the sun cast us all up here
daily patrolling The Esplanade w/ ice creams
childhood repeated more slowly this time
even français: oo-where is thee boating-poule?
please sirr? no matter
stick w/ the seagulls & do what you do

Let’s play on the bouncy castle first!
it’s a fine tall young giraffe we see
tenderly holding us & uplifting lightly
I could believe
                (if I wasn’t dead
it was just birth I’d come through not
all the slow mucky stuff at this end

Let’s catch the bubbles though!
they’re birds & worlds & words & brief
yes, like all of this, fat slippery
membranes holding nothing from nothing

Time – – no, not for nothing here
it’s all gone, long gone, a dream
that this wasn’t a dream, or that praise
will still buy us out from somewhere where
there isn’t an out:
                    the world here
alone & fragile now as always

Brutish it is, then brutish it must be
we can all start again at Totnes – oh
real mud along the Dart, smelling of nutmeg
are we lowly or just the dead giants?
yeah, both I guess & the mud not
as much spicy as oozily vital

Poets, you poets haven’t any age
not any more than tidal litter
it’s a grand life beached up here
planning on our next break through
we’re all food for sandhoppers, son
daughter, all the other people gathered up
is this the really The Esplanade?
at last & at here, attention then