'There is nothing to do and there is nowhere to go

There is nothing to be and there is no-one to know'*

 earth child

your names are many

 you broke a  promise

and now the 

Autumn smoke 

Slows breathing

the inside of your mind is shining

this mental cathedral
tottering
about to collapse or explode into fireworks ]that pour out of your mouth

In her eyes

Something to tune into

Waves emitted

Received

Emitted

With the purpose of a
European journey

A sojourn

Into the Marabar caves

With perambulators and vultures carrying

Sedan chairs laden with gold effigies

Of Victorian deities

One falls and tumbles and is dashed against the rocks

That line the rapid river’s edge

You see ghosts in the corridors at night

A book ‘Morphology of Landscape’ falls

Open at your feet

Over on the sixth floor

A tumulus of books on Heidegger is constructing itself

Books flit like bats torchlight strafes the dim light

The wind blows the flaps in the air conditioning units on the roof

It’s the perfect storm. 

*Thomas Ligotti

Day break light enamel coat bring out the gloss coated

Yellow spandrel Tardis he quoted not wrong I said

Nineties techno with remix potential to begin a high peaker

Make welcome at the time on the door posited between

Limbic rare fossil requiem speak closely in the shadow of a 

Ruined wildness it can be found up there up the spout.

Break out word rash slimline fiasco making the 

New dawn but at the same time opinion poll winner

Dark magnetic tracery in the noble DNA mantra chant

Hot stones hot runes inside my door there is a picture

Of him of it of her where to go next with this image PLUCKED

Rare writhing flex of terrestrial conspiracy meteor showers.

Immersion in the fire rise up to the man dust bowl

Fling chant upwards over the mobile home live breathing

Excessive and wooden currency bequeathed by west coast

Inventors of planes landing desert bound comes back

Over the memory vine silent response requested speak now after this

One door swings predicted exact match none you know

The growth at first sluggish but then full acceleration reached.

Smell the deluge upend time’s carcass now the grey light

Flickers . it’s because you thought it up lost as we were

Cars crawl speech slows down bubbles froth up inside the gullet

Small bubbles up of gas yellow liquids up and down the island

Friday night is relaxed and frenzied the sun responds with universal

Credit now waiting

It’s gone through the wall bends towards damp greasy sheen of paint over paint

Wait, what is behind the wall, flexing amorphous or amphibious

Drum beat skittering improvised old crust record shop dweller

Eyes light up in the mildewed racks of old rock and reggae

Solid gold in then out of the dustbin back on the shelf

Taboo glam rock bashers now take mdma flight

To stars reach gun-whales battalions of beatles rip off socks

Smashed kit upturned shopping trolly your better off without him they whisper

The acquisition of books

In a quest to find new space to breath

A question. A flame from a spark. These new smoke alarms are unforgiving.

If you form an alliance with the word, will it dance for you?

Will the accumulation of time spent and the blood serpent rising 

Lay calm this rampant host that governs the restless mind.

Carve out a ghost hollow. Listen with both ears. Make huge boasts of culture.

Unfulfilled but full in cups. Volcanic ear worm. Forest fires break out so fast.

Fascinating eddies, currents that are frankly disturbing in their invisibility and voracity.

The inability to cope with rural isolation and a bus stop cloaked in ivy and nettles.

Tea time in the post-war suburb. A drumming up only to be ‘taken down a notch’ once more.

In the minds deforestation the survival instinct says run, but burrow down further and the hurricane winds will pass. Soviet science fiction, keep knocking on that grey matter. Jumping over walls and fences to arrive. Pigs sleeping in blissful abandon wasps gather at their ears, looking for a tender spot. That yellow on pink though, we’ll have some of that, can’t even penetrate the fleshy layer.

So, come on let’s go, run for our lives. If we hold fast will Brexit just go away and leave us alone?

Time winds? It winds and whines like a shrieking turbine. 

Out at see the salt smoke rising. Killer whales distract and drown a seal. A heavenly host of becoming. Theorists gather in the forest clearing. Gleaning the broken semiotics from the factory floor. Blue tits knocking at my window. Uncoil the spilt wine of decades. If it helps recourse to suppressing drugs can kill the flame. 

Wounded staggering. Greasy mantle, iron fist held aloft. “We travel the space-ways”

Arctic frost first crack of ice. Turmeric sample. Beginning data resonance. Infernal rat problems.

Interstitial boat lanes.

“We travel the space-ways”

Not to gloat or jeer or sneer or snivel either.

But perhaps find a space where coexistence is possible.

Space gained

Relaxed pressure           NOW BREATHE 

IN THE NOW . 

Golden pavilions spiral into the air

Autumn creaks out its bones and you feel the

Earth sigh and crack 

And of relief 

For the time being we are here

Who knows when your time is up

Just heart heaving the blood round 

And status wealth knowledge all seem great at the time

The solace to shore up against what we don’t understand

That animals heed instinctively

They are alive with death

We are leaves to be kicked around or blown on the wind

The boys smile they are like animals to

They do not fear death yet 

What do they know of its darkening hand

And how it drives the pulse through the veins

Like tidal skeins filling out the dark black mud

Washing over all our thoughts and memories

Into an oblivion of infinite sunsets

Forever and never

In a remote archipelago situated just

Behind your eyes.

‘The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief in its formlessness.’[1]

Birth and death entry and exit into the formless

Reading this, a horn toot somewhere

Out over the roof tops

it is an essence 

in itself

that sound

---

[1]Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies(London: Calder & Boyars,1959), pp.198

Some thoughts on 

‘Crowhurst’.

 the boredom of being at sea, 

  family.

visual cues of the mundane baked bean 

we are aboard the Teignmouth Electron from the beginning.

Crowhurst deluded, selfish 

 in his heart a ‘good’ man I believe. 

Desperate to live up 

 the spirit of the age, or the spirit of Empire, 

essentially a suicide mission. 

 the twin polarities at work 

dogged determination and dare I say courage, that is set against his foolhardy abandonment of his family.

 and his own cracked vanity. 

 image of a floundering black fish; 

 during these moments that we feel the enormity of his terror. 

 the vastness of sea  the impossibility 

 terrifying magnitude low budget, 

             Crowhurst  in the gathering darkness on the prow of the Electron as it floats silently into the blackness, 

 the collective awareness of loss  experienced by his children as they wake in the night at the same time and cling to their mother for solace. 

 a reminder to us all to cling to those we love the most as the black seas swirl around us seeking to pull our lives on invisible currents into deeper waters than we could ever imagine.

                                  Sea cabbage   sea bee   see potatoes

                                                    winding lanes

                    Swarthy carpenter  extensive gift shop  replica weapons

                                                    divided self

                               Rotten walkway many wasps  English heritage  

                                                    mediaeval racket

                          

                                                  Up in the battlements

                                                  vertigo and wasps

                                                  challenge

                                                   our existence

                   

                        Sharp flint  plastic chainmail  expensive ploughman’s

                                                 extensive wasps .

Agile

Now with fronds

It burrows

Growls at you

Prehensile tail

Curls around

Moss covered.

Adept

At disguise

You wink

Under that mask

I see you

Do it 

Over again.

Uncomfortable

In the shadows

Move into the light

You say 

To yourself

And yet

You don’t.

 crisis 

A shadow 

Stop, a pellucid spectacle

A grimoire 

A grumble sale response

It deals in turmoil.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slime balls 

Ooze down the inside of your brain

A storm out to sea mid-Atlantic

Hurricanes crash together in broils of

Wilderness visions

No thanks and with that

I’ll take the path well-trodden

Taking breathes every step bouncing off

The walls here we go

Again

Old raggedy heron sits on the marsh sign

Three times I encircled him or her

Three times the watch-full symmetry

Almost stopped me in my tracks

Reaching for a camera that wasn’t 

There

Get up early before the day slips away

Like it always does

Instead of thinking about a master plan, why not

Think of a monster plan like those

Furry old films from Montauk

The overgrown wilderness of memory

Wow it looks idyllic

I bet it was

Rock stars jetting in, famous artist breaking eggs in old beach hut

It’s the perfect fantasy lie of 

Care free bohemia

All systems running parallel

the north Atlantic swell

and somewhere out there

the Teignmouth Electron

empty and broken

cargo long gone

in a watery desert

knowing that

this is how the adventure

ends.