The Modern City

‘It may burst into life at any moment, often when it is least expected. This possibility is a vital flash of hope in the mind of the man in the mire of the macadam, in the moving chaos, on the run.’

From ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ Marshall Berman

Music Review

Forgotten Idols lay smashed and scattered across the floor. Dissonant undercurrents coerce a riptide of shattered beats as Duran Duran Duran speeds into sight and docks directly into your neurological pathways. 
Tracks swarm into your mind, effortlessly dismantling the techno mainframe. Refracted acid takes 'Sexus' to a place where famished ghosts leer at each other across a mist-infused steam room. Repeated listenings reveal new fissures, fresh layers emerge as we scrape away at the glacial enormity of this techno scree-face. Redemption is in sight as we take a final pasting on 'Marathon Man', a track so banging as to provoke a wry smile on the face of any seasoned raver. At its climax it literally screeches under the weight of its intensity flinging its subjects into a feral transcendence. 

Earnest young men trying to photograph the essence of the city

educators ask

“What’s an archaeologist?”

 the rush of polluted blood

The enthusiastic historian cracks on

Someone cackles

‘Ein jeder Engel ist schreklich’

While todays builders grind the city to paste

Gross Development Ideal

Chilled hopeless couples 

Silhouettes of birds,
Arctic Terns gather in a backroom of a bar
 some small town in the America of your imaginations

A hand grips the glass of bourbon, it goes up, and it comes down

Flickering neon

A cracked pianist
looping despair busted radio receiver

Great joy from those out of focus days

What is clear are the smiles

Walls collapsing under the weight of memory 

That guy on the saxophone once again

Every night the same

The lobby bar, the business folk drifting milling out of range

Chilled hopeless

Sorry for angry words kids

“Its not fair”

if time has lead you astray
then go berserk with me

if care worn dusty days have turned you grey
then sit in the garden
and have a cup of tea


with me

Lovers of Uneventful Music

Harvesting energy from the cortex of the universe

mentally degraded Aztec mystics take one year in a stride

all days and nights pass through in a few seconds

dreams stack up behind the smouldering closet

tottering comes a frontiersman a true gunslinger a fur trapper

all this

Fossils indicate multi faith settlements

Dryad diadem doughnut holes

Wine bar on the edge of the universe

Porsche wheels carousel bonus time

Frills and fancy ornaments

Thames side apartments very near the Greenwich peninsular

The meridian line goes through the coffee shop

That is overpriced and badly run

Have you seen Blow Up?

I haven’t yet I’m saving it up

Marion Park, early summer

You should go there

We could take selfies 

All my heroes are behind me

Action figures in a washed out wilderness

Don’t go that way boys

Its cold out here looking at the broken sky oozing multi-coloured rain

Up on the chill hill

Overlooking the financial district

Communing with our ghosts and friends and ghosts

Of friends

Strike up ribaldry

Strike up destiny

Straddle the DLR

Unlock its mystery.

Assembly Dance Anxiety

Inside the walled garden insist on forever

recoil at the angels faces

peering from the grotto

notice what you must in the geometry of the last supper

observe only most the brilliant aspects

that have existed in this moment

listen to music while you write

remember last night as we went to sleep

happy, under my heavy wine blanket,

knowing that the dull thudding of a sudden  downpour

would give the newly planted euphorbias

a watering they so desperately needed

it was kind warm rain

I hope that they have taken root.

the complexities of life flourish under pressure
you could feel as if you are walking on air
even if this can be defined succinctly
you have a vague notion
this is a correct mode of processing an emotion

maybe your at the bottom of a well
or stuck up a tree
in fact where are you
apart from an idea in space
an idea that can only be yours

so we are all just a bunch ideas
rubbing up against each other
in disagreement mostly sometimes it works out
like this morning on the gravel track beside the canal
heads down morning run
a voyage into the unknown once more
the idea of a journey
really?
new species? perhaps vast swathes of uncharted territory
a human wormery mulching on humanity
to produce liquid nutrient
the good stuff we need to survive

You Look Like a Bug

visionaries cluster

                                           look

an outpost

                   rhythm clusters                fortunes

gulls terns and swallows stay for a crumpet

she visits once more

 breathes life

                     into the failing museum.

come and cohort with my despair

clouds cream over the tumulus

           rag time won’t do it, febrile and stocky he is the scourge of the Combs.

puerile in a haven of hot folly.

play us a madrigal or something magical

throw arms into darkness, a bright penumbra

smoke out the idea or else use  primitive traps

like the wild old cold and  golden days

get swept up in the vacuum of infinity.
heart says no
intangible abstracts stack up violently, saying is this what we care about, this unreality?

so there it is 
still writhing

chess pieces lie scattered in a zero gravity chaos of divine loss. 

North Folk

Tribal negotiations on the wing

the pulsing of a bat bouncing out of the night

Jolly Roger the old folk sailor like a livid fish finger

Renaissance man of The Wash

Old house of antiquity you look familiar

I beseech you to begin pleaching the desiderata

wealth in a line of stones

(a hammering away next door, strong odour of urinals)

the Bedrock of ghost villages scattered across sand and flint

young eyes in an old frame

greasy liaisons fulfilled too fast

husbandry in accordance with status

proficiency is negotiated by rank

design directors gather together

take more make more

another frisson of batwings

stalwart geese guard the perimeter fence

the kind of stealth that gathers money in the darkness

a malice of kindness overdriven down winding lanes

plunging

undulating

speculating  

chances of survival, what rationale and run to where?

Battling the tides, The River Ouse has burst its banks

And there suddenly hovering over all is the heavenly sepulchre of

Ely Cathedral