wawa dam

the walk took one minute
and three hours
and laid it bare like the surgeon’s task.
the hill ran away from us, down itself,
the recomposition of anger.

upon that peak the sky broke into two
a spectrum of indifference
frayed white at the edges.
with vertebrae click we set off into
grey sketchbook landscapes and cut-out towns
afraid of the horizon and its protest but
full of greens, we grew infused, melting
with raw pavements and great slats of heaven,
our words dissolving into vats of weather
like meaning in song.

treatise upon criticism

criticism, an opinion, is inevitable, forever. the peculiarities of instance demand a reaction.

upon buying a ticket, the door is shut in my face.

i appear only to ask when i am able to return, and yet i am crudely asked to desist from my pestering ways and remove myself.

i feel my rationale breaking down, anger as enzyme.

i bought the ticket at cost.

to confer upon a person the singularity of judgement is not to be heralded as shameful. i dislike this man, for the moment. and it must be for the moment. he is a man i know and like and it is clear that he has simply not recognized me. i am not a violent person, so i shall take my dislike and walk away.

not without getting my money back, naturally.

the articulation of dissatisfaction must, within this instance, be taken up with the box-office vendor. during the act of criticism, in relaying a series of events that may or may not be true but are without doubt mine, i am also careful to allow the possibility for error.

to look at the process, as it processes.

i have my money back. but rather than reject my ill-feeling, i now hate the man. a simple dislike has blossomed into a healthy hatred. it is wonderful to confound one’s expectations, especially when the occurrence is without precedent or reason.

but of course, we only change an opinion in order to display the ability to change an opinion. the opinion itself is not the thing. it is the draw and sway of the current that pulls our mind, and our ability to fill each vessel, be it hate, love or an active displeasure, is the magnified virtue. one only enters into the world of criticism and validation in order to lose one’s way, to confirm that without reaction, the substance of reaction is invisible and an existence that is self-reliant is no existence at all.

besides, the film was apparently not worth seeing.

morning reveries

i sat naked, after the dream. i dream a lot these days. chekhov before bedtime.

the alarm woke me, and i rose from a quarry where i was sitting next to a sultry-eyed image beneath a frame of burnt timber. honeysuckle was entwined with the joints of the structure and the stars were just beyond, out of reach.

(i am, of course, therefore unable to contain any kind of personal inclination towards others that isn’t mutually exclusive or full of spelling mistakes, it’s all or nothing, the stark resonance echoing like timbres from a tomb, relationships laid bare and an essential loneliness, essential because reduced and necessary.)

i stumbled, covers wrapped, and experienced a falling away of consciousness into something else, but falling is perhaps wrong and right because something fell but i rose. there was nothing beneath. i reached up, exhausted, to meet the day. i wasn’t ready and i was still naked, hoping for post.

sitting and eating breakfast, another simple meal for another simple morning. there is a staleness about the house, a staleness of time. the food was finished, a shower was approached–the fallacies of routine! little lies written upon our foreheads in italics. yawning through and stretching out, the plans formed, the lines of enquiry spreading across the city, a pulse into hours ahead.

i returned to the living room. i looked to the kitchen and saw boiling water flowing over the sides of the pan and onto the floor, the smell of burnt plastic (unattended, again) and still no fucking post. i turned on the television and i began to cry at the complicated realities of television news. i looked down and was still naked.

it is more difficult at some times, than it is at others, to justify a return to bed.

clot

there can be no possibilities of having imagined a day like this.

coagulation begins with an injury to my shoulder, the injury itself becoming a result and cause no more important or significant to the order of things than the cascade of biochemical activities (the coagulation cascade) that stops the bleeding, that is to say it is crucial and its significance is only diminished through association with equals, with the other processes that make this unnoticeable. i form a clot from a mixture of the blood protein fibrin and platelets. once my bleeding is stopped, another blood protein dissolves the clot by breaking down the fibrin into fragments.

the only difference here would be if none of this happened.

today’s headlines

BONG

supermarket worker falls in puddle
pulling trolley of stock onto her, and
breaking her leg.
ambulance arrives, paramedic laughs.
song in background is bill withers’ lovely day.

BONG

discussions continue as to
best way to wrap presents.

BONG

cigarettes cheapest in wet markets.

BONG

chip butty not worth it if bread not buttered, says old man.

BONG

i lied to the bus driver.

BONG

that man keeps staring at me.
him, that one by the window.

BONG

more later.

miserable lament

on visiting a someone to return something,
a something he would use often enough,
i found you
asking me to move up.

i felt heartened that you left,
but wrong also
as though we splintered apart
before ready
like a torn young branch
reaching out for too much.

hunter becomes hunted

these are times.

hunter’s sky looms large as i watch a friend step out into the cold, more than a snap, and the friend is waiting, actively, living every inch of road between him and the impending bus.

the bus arrives and he departs, swearing, bitter at the cold.

what we need is a character to hold. i shall trick the friend into a madman, malevolent towards a past that neither gave nor received favors, only lessons. a madman reeling from punches and afflictions and adorations, the vibrant awkward handsome one. he’s inside his own head now, plotting a journey. we can’t see him, i can’t see him.

everyone i know, dies. everyone that dies, i know.

no one will stop. is it a symptom of age? i ask, not without hope and not without suspicion, to ask is the thing. i am clumsy in my thinking these days, my words clunk against each other, celebratory, without saying anything. perhaps i am fixed upon an era, i think further still, a dying generation: i have found love and reward in the terminal, a people that i can never reach. i encourage this. i, perhaps, encourage this.

the notion of respect swells with age also though. we cannot establish mere cause and effect. rivers do not run backwards, but our glances upstream do. i have been sketching too much recently, fine pencil lines, filling and hatching, darkening my histories. these people mean this, those mean that. i have no template; regression and reformation write the journals of past lovers.

there is no sadness. peerage and coverage. apt and fitting.

i read the news more often these days. also, my friends also make more journeys across town. these two deny a connection, according to reports.

three scenes

*
*
*
*

[in the kitchen, earlier]

a plate breaks. this discrete joy and driving fatigue hurts when laid against the fact of things.

it is my plate. definites, things if you will/want/like, have been contesting our little gauche truths for a while.

i’ll sweep it up. not the simple game of displacement (a leap to another), nor a concession to subjectivity, but rather the space allowed by the frame of you will never know.

put it in the bin. compaction is a resultant symptom of narrow vision, a petty denial.

i’ll take the bin out and go for a walk.

*

thought is an unexpected terrain, a cracked pavement and as i fall, i think of the plate and it cannot help now, not now as my knee impacts upon a concrete ridge. last night’s mini-storm is visible in the form of rivulets that run through my scalp while bluster touches at my cheeks and the containment of my philosophy has helped no one, but then it arrives, it really matters for a moment that could be forever and i don’t feel the need to get up or accept help.

*

[in the kitchen, later]

“you seem the same to me.”
“really?”
“yes.”
“not more–i don’t know, lucid and alive through an embrace with existence?”
“not really, no.”
“are you sure? no change at all?”
“i don’t think so.”
“look carefully.”
“i am looking carefully. i see no difference.”
“nothing?.”
“sorry.”
“it’s okay.”
“good.”

[a pause]

“i’m sorry i couldn’t see it, i really am, i can see that it is really important to you but, you know…are you okay?”

[a pause]

“i broke my plate.”

*
*
*
*