the hiatus

between the 9th of december and today things have happened which, even with my relative anonymity, are hard to share. i'm sorry. this whole thing is for sharing thoughts and yet there are some thoughts which are too dark to share. i got back on the heroine. you probably guessed from my last post. i got back off the heroine. it was a blip. for how long only time will tell. i'm back now. and it hasn't been easy getting back. thank god its been quick. i feel as if i have been away on a strange island, playing my role in a rigged game show. truth is i feel like this all the time. as i'm sure you do too. but the last two weeks have had an edge to them that made me that little bit more conscious of my island surroundings. it will be christmas in 3 days. somebody once told me, in spain they don't really celebrate christmas until the 6th of january. that's when the 3 kings came with their gifts for the king of kings. before christianity came the pagans would have been celebrating something to do with the sun or the moon today. i'm sure many still do. today, the 24th, the 25th, the 6th, whenever you decide to celebrate whatever you're actually celebrating this time of year i hope you truly believe in what you're celebrating. and when you go out on to the ice-shrouded street to spend and spend, give a coin or two to a homeless man, woman or child. or buy them a cup of coffee and a warm meal and chat with them for a while. not because they have nobody to chat to. they probably have more honest friends than you. and not because you feel sorry for us and you want to prove just what a fucking saint you are. make them believe that whatever you believe in - whatever will drive you down into the pits of drunkenness and gluttony today, on the 24th, the 25th or the 6th, or any other day in between - will one day make this world a little less cold, just that bit more livable. i wish i knew you. i wish i could sit like a ghost in the festive room where you will be disappointed by your gifts but smile nonetheless, and quietly fight with your horny uncle and avoid your embarrassing aunt, skirt carefully around conversations about your dead father, or your parents' divorce, or your own divorce, skip the bit about the girl you fucked at the christmas work party, or how far in to debt you've sunk this year. and then? inevitably it all goes there. every road to a rome of ruins. this is all i believe in.

to those who have faith and never ask questions...

a turn for the worse.

things. everything as if drowning.

under and under.

beneath below.

oumou sangaré whispering sweet

indecipherables.

swoon. low.

and back up again.

but the lows are so sweet.

besides that.

what else but

a mess. brown and

a shimmer, a shimmy

of the wrist. some

tap-tap. tzat! the

burn as you, i, we

but i inject. and the

low so high. ouch.

i'm not sure why i did it. it's been two years off that shit. been doing so well. well, as well as things could be well. but things change when you get back on that shit, fall off the horse. wagon off the rails, all the metaphors. got a bit of cash after selling the old stereo and the books; early edition of a sinclair lewis book i never got round to reading sold for 50! and the park was cold. and ricky, the kid from cuba said i got some shit that will fuck you up bro. no! serious, you'd be crazy not to try some. i'll do you a ricky special discount. only a fiver. sweet grace, why? now down to my last tenner. spent and spent. 4 days in a daze. even the rhyme seems tender. the keys on this keyboard feel like frozen butter. only warmer. and yet they spill no warmth onto this screen, into the virtual ether. only the cold, hard words of a man who wants to prove he has even more left to lose. red vapours of unquenchable bitterness. but at what? but then what? when everything is lost. is it ever really? its all still there isn't it? the bones, this flesh, these dirty fingernails, these diseased toe-tips scratching the moist extremities of these old dead shoes, the alien veins, and if i concentrate hard enough even the seeds of my manhood cause some sensation of being indeed alive, here. still so much to extinguish and yet the junk only lasts so long, and yet stays so much longer. i've fucked it up, haven't i?

the chaos of a market: chasing a sentence

sigmund freud had a nephew apparently. well, i'm sure he had a few other nephews, nieces, whatnots. but he had a nephew, edward bernays. the man invented the modern consumer, its rumoured. his full name was edward louis bernays which is an anagram for "land was by our desire!". that doesn't really make sense. it shouldn't. but strangely enough while it took shape in my head today i had the feeling that it was starting to mean something. if you've never been to birmingham you wouldn't know the bull ring. maybe heard and know of it. but not know it. its one of those places that is at once singular and yet so recognisable, as if you've been there so many times before but with your eyes closed being led to a surprise. a huge shopping mall that sits on the site of an old traditional bull ring. its about 5 years old. before it have come other replacements for the original structure; places of laughter, for families, for selling things, for stealing other things, for getting lost, eyeing up 16 year olds with cruel intent and mournful sighs, making up stories about what that jacket would do to your self-image, and how that piece of plastic would liven up the living room, places for drunkards and saints and old women pushing their carts of trash into the abyss of eternal slumber, marble and glass intertwined as if married at birth; the designs so woeful they almost feel like the last stand of postmodern genius, places of congregation and dissipation, centres for the last thing you need that you just must have, syncopated footsteps dancing to the tune - coming through the omnipresent loudspeakers - of a song their owners surely must love (why else would they still be here after 3 hours of running around an irregular track?), places of passive exercise, and active mind-cleansing till the numbness forces you to buy something just anything to prove your trip was worth it. i could go on. the bull ring has been all these things and more... children have been abducted here, and young boys fondled by their fathers or uncles in the toilets: daddy'll get you that gameboy soon as we finish here ok? and it's a secret. mommy doesn't like me spending so much on you. you're my boy ok?. maybe i'm dreaming of the past. no, i was never fondled, never buggered, never touched. i was never touched. i imagine it would have been nice to have been touched, have the back of my neck stroked by a powerful fatherly hand. feel the warmth of god's fingers soothing the bruises on my shoulders. i needed a smaller bag. the hiking bag's straps have lost their padding. and my shoulders are red from the friction after each day of wandering. sometimes they bleed. so, get rid of some of the heavier past loves that are weighing the damn thing down, the old stereo i haven't used since the batteries ran out 2 years ago, the brick from the fence of my old house, the dozen or so books i no longer have use for since getting hold of this library card, discard these miniature white elephants and take the weight off a little bit. but a smaller bag, yes, for fewer things. the christmas traffic makes it easier to take stuff from the shops in the bull ring. and, i imagine, it is the same in countless other malls around the world. even in the arab world where they have replaced christmas with 30 days of alternating self-denial and king herod-like feasting. in the west, you prepare for the feast for two months, then are utterly disappointed by the result of your expectant exertions when the feast finally happens, and then you are forced to deny yourself of anything remotely excessive for the next two months because the credit card company says no!.

first, bring yourself to the attention of the security. ask a question. not just any question. something he (it has to be a he) possibly couldn't have an answer for, where is the best place to buy a self-cleaning douche bag?, for example. once he has admitted to not knowing the answer, lure him away to the information desk where he will do the questioning for you, and make sure the person he asks is female, sexy and chatty; they invariably are at information desks. you've achieved 3 things: lured the security away from your target store, made yourself seen with this security man by other security men so they recognise you but won't be suspicious next time they see you, and finally you've kept the security away from your target store. the actual steal is a stroll. walk in, take bag, walk out. did i really need a smaller bag? surely a bigger bag is more useful. and the truth is i've only really had bruises on my shoulders twice or three times in the last 3 years. but i saw this kid last night, on a skateboard. everything about him, the oversized trousers, the untied shoe laces, the NY hat slightly sideways, no jacket, just a t-shirt with "jesus loves you" across the front, and an eastpak satchel hung so low it swayed in the opposite direction to his body every time he curved around an obstacle. a ballet of rebellion. and all the kids had eastpaks when i was growing up. they would tip-ex or spray paint "nirvana" or "public enemy" or "the ramones" on them. and i had my grandfather's old leather briefcase. and nobody cared that i was the first with a gameboy. without an eastpak i wasn't in. a man my age should be building things, his only desire a plot of land on which to erect a place of his own, for the wife, the kids, the dogs and the cat. but fucking bernays. fucking bernays laying booby traps of things we never really needed anyway everywhere in our memories, want want want! 3 and a half hours being questioned for theft by 3 burly men in clownish hi-vis jackets, their walkie talkies going off like a war was surrounding the building, questions about motive and method and knowledge of the law, and for some reason when was the last time i took a shower, and why an eastpak, why try steal an eastpak and not any other bag?, they wanted to know. took some weight off the old shoulders, being in that warm secret room, they even made me tea, bought me a sandwich. the police officer showed up at last. with a thick brummy accent and even thicker mascara, her eyes bored and dropping, taking a deep breath every 15 seconds. cuffed me, walked me out, walkie talkied her partner once we were outside. yawned. then set me free before her partner arrived. bye!, she yelled after me.

some winter haiku

tree trunk without friends

how brown and dead alone now

snow will soon comfort

nick drake, rilke and the story of tiny gates: december

wrote to her today. my paris love. things haven't been making sense of late. consider the following and have fun looking into my thoughts: the rain submerged in white noise, cats wilder than the storm, fire ants what have you stolen from the rogue regime that they have not seen forsaking the past, fewer tunes than the last guitar string yet he keeps tuning, the odd ends and beckoning hollows, what felt felt felt felt the lonely silk worm, if such was the murderer's tally then perhaps we would all begin the journey south but not before the eve, not for some warmth to these tethered hearts, hanker for a man a fool a breast an aeroplane a swimmer's strength stop dead the tracks and live foundationless heck to heck with older fewer than the ancient have ever sold to dark mind, fly birdy founder the island next and call it takrit, wholare, beforu, maekkathore, anything for the foreign to see joy and rest pixelated and become full then fool, songthoughts i spoke jim morrison first as child then hung the blues from the ends of my heart strings before drake took me away to faraway islands, rangoon rangoon, rangoon, you old sod the bastard was born in myanmar, hardly an island not burma for the sisters in drag have they forgiven me i think there's a beach though, no? sense is hard to come by sometimes and maybe thoughts are better left without cause. read rilke today. a picture of him on the back of the book, his eyes were like marbles, gaunt face, shades of the nameless grey everywhere, such darkness it overcomes your apathy for anything, and you wonder how the mind behind it wrote of our happy endings... dancing tears. how such phrases could have made sense to a man whose face was so full of the night. i wish i could read german. i don't want to speak it; it would twist the curvature of my tongue which is so perfectly suited to english. i wish i had a better use for this language than this senseless vomit. never want a job again. all that work was too much strife for an illusion of respectability. i wish i had said other things to her in the email today. i used all the wrong words. i wish my french was better so i could make sense to her. how dreadful life is without her, "chagrin", "peiné", "l'amour", "concevoir" as opposed to "imaginer", "colère", peiné d'la merde: this worthless life. with words, but no expression, no way of expression, no route to her, but by zeros and ones, and even then the gates are too small for the chemistry to pass unscathed. rangoon, what language do they speak in your streets? have you space for another lost soul?