An (Accusatory) Crayon To Tar

Response to the statement: (paraphrased) "you shall not be remunerated for your poem about "money" BUT you will receive pride for having been published" Yes. Very much paraphrased. It was a lot more concise than that.

A careless mirage of crayon on the tar

strikes me like a snake-

I forgot the forceful minds that took me here

Who told me to write about “money”

And offered me pride instead of “money”

And were ashamed they had no “money”

To wash away the creep of it.

I seldom reach the grain that drew the spark

Out from the ground.

I like to whittle the edges,

Make a picture and

Picture it through the sound-

A rainbow on asphalt maybe, or

A pear shaped like a child.

These things make me happy

When I fail at really going to town.

DID YOU KNOW that soon there will be baby-shaped pears for £5 at the local supermarket? The most recent addition to the novelty fruit market, if you believe in such a thing. That's what happens when the birds and the bees and the pears get bored and let us play at it for a while.

I think Bukowski would rape them.There has definitely been too much of him lately. A scene of unexpected debauched anal rape springs to mind, which I read with the best part of Blue's refined family in the room. I felt dirty and plagued. Women that book is called. Charles is making me less articulate, I can feel it. Nevermind winning by manymanymany points at Scrabble recently. I should like to play the him at my new invention FONETIC SCRABEL. Swords out, pistols at dusk.

Hail, Misanthrop!

My mum said to me today that she hates students because they have a feeling of superiority she cannot abide. There was a boy, years ago, who met her while visiting me here. He sat on our balcony and told her how "we are the elite" and that "where we have been we have been taught how to be it." My mum didnt really do school and worked and worked instead. She is someone now. But having a boy who had it all thrust at him from angles unknown to her drink himself stupid on her balcony, throw up in her toilet and pollute his mind under her roof telling HER that HE was the elite struck a nerve and she did not forget it.

This elitism is a twisted trait to have as a human being- a using others as stepladders to make yourself feel taller, using yourself as a tool to fall into line with an ego who never was your friend. I think people are wonderful and I think i have always held them a bit in high regard. It ebbs and flows this opinion- I am not without my seasons. Well I think highly of them compared to others I've met who believe "90% of the population should be burned". We are sick and marvellous and should not be cinders. It is a child's view-a very short child's view. And who would the child be without this 90% that make it so happy with itself? We hate eachother and hate ourselves, we selfdestruct and selfindulge and my god is it good to do so- provided you know some obscure artists and bands to segregate yourself from the surplus population all about doing the same thing. That you try hard is a given, and that you are afraid. Doesn't matter if you would base yourself to lay with one of them just to feel your height, you my child, are one cut above the rest.

The people that I see in denner...I should by rights feel very stroked in my special ego place. I especially enjoy the bitching of the past-it older women in laguages I understand but with motives I do not. What drama that makes for.

Here are my top 10 daily-Dennerites:
1) Gremlin man. Yes you, with the huge droopy ears and frightening visage- who cough and splutter, run in panting like a wild beast to buy your 30p beer every morning 8am sharp. You are a punctual fairy tale.
2)Whiny girl and anorexic mum- I enjoy your straw hats/ straw bags and all your things straw. You are a peadophile's wet dream.
3) Junkie who likes to play with his false teeth- the suction noise it causes are so very sickening. I resist asking why you have a complete set of false teeth at the relatively tender looking-age of forty.
4) The obese lady who gets all the 50% off meat- you wear the same stripy top and leggings EVERY SINGLE DAY. You do not smell, but they are not flattering. I have some questions for you.
5) Mullet-man who enjoys tidying the shelves ferociously. You do help us, but you are a little weird. But I believe in sayings, so best not look you in the mouth, horse man.
6) The at-home woman who is astounded at finding the same toothpaste and things she has "at home" dwell at the shop also. I want to tell you there are many toothpastes of the sort. And you are quite mad.
7) The english-haterman.You screamed your disgust at the filthy "englis rag-pack" the "root of all modern and ancient evil" unprompted into the silent tram at 7am, and then turned up at m yvery own till 2 hours later in a white lab coat and bought 10kg of flour. Suspicious.
8)The clairevoyant. You are strange looking it has to be said, but your way of keeping your dog barking outside all through your sejourn at the shop so you know he has not been dognapped, is INGENIOUS.
9)Miss rollerblades- every daily shop in your roller blades. And you have never even knocked over any wine bottles. I have. 9litres of red wine look like a massacre.
10)Lady with the hair in traditional looped-roud-head plaits. You came in twice in two different dresses the same day to buy all the same things. I liked both of them.

Now who can look at this list and declare their hatred for humanity? Sometimes I am moved to tears.Sometimes I dream that I will go up to a group of strangers, ask for a light and imply a real one but really mean a metaphor, sit down and tell them everything about me. And then just leave and they'll remember me for not just being a failing monster.

Ketchup

kI have not written in ages, there have been too many things afoot.
1) The isles of Orkney where we drove 12 hours to see the whales I was determined dwelt there: they do not. Magnus and Magnus (apparently everyone is called Magnus) told us that Old Sam Jenkins or some such goes out on his boat everyday and in 30 years has only seen them thrice. O the disgusting lies of the Scottish tourist board.
2)Spain with Blue and famille. I met a tiny catling in a bar, she was shaven and missed an eye. I plotted all manner of things in my head so I could take her home, another one to add to the Miss-meow collection, having acquired the first as a reaction to my "swine flu". In the words of Lulu-love "the ultimate impulse buy".
3) Denner work. in switzerland. in their equivalent of asda.It is the place where the mad congregate; the OAA (over age anorexics) prostitues, the men who talk instead of thinking, the woman who does her shopping everyday in roller skates. I spend 12 hours a day trying to rise above, pretending the boxes of goods I open to fill the shelves are all Christmas presents and I am excited to see what's inside. I feel like I smell Denner on me, I even dream of my fly rescuing endeavors, where I try and save the ones who persist in crawling over the cheese/yoghurt in the giant fridge and freeze to death. It's their idea of heaven. As everything, they are ever determined to get and stay there.

Anyway, as I said I have not written in a while. maybe it's because some things are sacred and I feel like I would have to save up for years to have enough of anything-skill, thought, eloquence- to stamp it onto something. I think what I mean really, is that I wish I would write more these days; write it and feel it less. Switzerland is not treating me kindly, and I miss my Mr Blue. I couldn't really find the words to wring for the emotions that are just sitting on their little throne and at present wish me to suffer. But now, an itch in my fingers, a hum through me and TADAH I am a vocation.The breath catches purple when it has something to say, and I know my voice has changed.Changed itself, or been changed by a riot or really "feeling it" or something cruel. I don't know yet.
This preserving of thoughts is only an arrogant self-love anyway. And I do hate people who love themselves. Shouldn't trust people who fall in love so easily.

Mirrors In Switzerland

O a mirror! The delights thereof! Thanks to it everyone knows precisely what they look like, and have no idea who they are. And why should they, when they define themselves by their glass twin?

Mirror
I can stare at your bambi brown,
and return to my base coordinates;
stare at spiderweb capillaries
made from something strong enough
to keep the thoughts in-

I can't help but want for rain
to water me, and let me
grow roots. Then
I could have all the secrets spring up
around it, like mushrooms
in the bark:
there's magic in them.
Like when you listen to tears
and turn your world into a singing carousel;
or who you are when the chips are down and burried-

We spend our days staring at each other
centimeter glass and one dimension away from another
who we wish would know herself better.

Tonight back to merry london and my blue. I have done what I came to do,found and secured my job, which now I desperately need having lost many pennies missing many flights and being caught travelling black (swissism for being on public transport without a ticket).

The weather was the moodiest part of the trip, one second shining and smiling, the next thunderous. Although I know more than I did before about weather; walking through thunder and rain in skimpy sandals when it's warm can feel like holding your feet into an angry sea. It's quite beautiful really, the arrogant resilience of it. I think if it could only wipe Switzerland clean of it's people then this country and I could be very good friends. It was lovely watching it in the sunny rain. The light shone through the drops and lit them up like prisms. It looked as if God was sending us diamonds. It looked as if he might exist. There was a man with down syndrom sitting on a bench playing "My heart will go on" on a flute in front of a tent containing some art by the Bahnhof. A little kinder egg surprise of art in the middle of the city to watch, from my secret park&-green-tea perch. Like I said, Switzerland and I could be very good friends.

I even know it well by now: all it's public buildings smell the same- of stern authority and bleach- and flowers decorate every remote tram station in their pots. Sometimes it's quite unsettling to see them there so purposefully. They seem important signs somehow; flowers to commerate the dead. The suicides. There are many of them littering the tracks here.

But I like to think that they are there for all the people who wander their sterile streets thought-screaming "JUST FUCKING LOVE ME" into themselves. Sick with a needy virus.
I have their germ.

Make The Days Count

Well, here to the subject I originally wanted to deal with in my blog most.

I love writings (mainly Plath, Poe and recently Rilke) and I have written words for years and years. Notebooks full of them. All testaments to something a little more than disillusioned with how most of my hopes found me. Poems and stories hide me.

The most important thing about words is that they are about as subjective as you can get. And not a kind of subjective that you can ever explain. It's a kind of subjective you would not necessarily know of or tell of. It's hidden in the connotations; it's in how we build the words and their precise meanings for us. We learn all our words differently, and every time we hear them said we build on that meaning. It stems directly from our experiences; it makes them as personal and varied as secrets.

Here are some of mine:




Ignorance
For today, I'll have a soul
to
hear hoof prints in the musk,
And I will paint the whore before I see her;
A painted face with pointed tones,
she rides with bells on her
Toes
And shades herself from the sun
with her fancies.
I will soil that girl

I want to know one thing in my
Grammatical twirls
One thing that would be a fact
That could still iron it’s shirt at the edge of the world:
That would be a gentleman to
Never break my conviction
And be a savage; ruthless and always
Halve my belief.
I curl a page about my hair
And I wear it like a halo;
I suffer to silence
And suffer to hellos.
At the edge of my world I really know very little
And force out of myself
Repetition and rhythm and rhyme
And every refuge of wit
That danced off my tongue arm in arm
With doubt.
No one should believe the halves that perform on my stage;
All my shirts stay creased.




This is in reference to something my dad always liked to tell me. "You can tell the measure of a man by what he would do if no one ever found out" ; if you were stranded alone on a desert island and still washed your hair and ironed your clothes (with a heated rock or some such), kept your sanity with your hygiene and let that keep you human, you would be a little more than what everyone else is.
Here I am saying that I am not. Here I am saying that I really have no idea what the fack I'm going on about most of the time.

Make The Days Count
Faces in the rocks
like to smile, and stay smiling
and trace their shapes into the dirt.
Their races are silent with their permanent grins,
and I ask
why anyone would want to carve something
that stays forever;
that sings for no woman's ear
and smiles for each of her tears.



A smile will change you and how you see some person's action. That is something that really is quite worthless when you think about it, and it definitely is not something that you should try to hold onto forever. Forever is something even more worthless than that. So all I want really is to make the days count. Do something worthwhile everyday. The last two lines are just meant to show how emotions become irrelevant when it's coupled with the concept of eternity. I only say "woman's ear" instead of "no one's ear" as a bit of a feminist point. People still say "man" when they mean "people". This is just a bit of a sad dig at how our language turned out.

So here are two, not particularly special, poems of mine. But on the subject of feminism; I went to see Annette Messager's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a few days back. The main theme running through it was definitely very feminist, but the whole feel of it was something I could really relate to. She forces children's scary world into an adult perspective so well. She makes it creepy. She makes it angry. She makes it new. Even 30 years after she first made the art, it still feels very relevant and alive. And that is rare with modern art. The newer it is the quicker it seems to get outdated. A favourite: "Les Enfants aux yeux rayés" (children with eyes scratched out). She carefully put together a whole photo album of random children of different ages out of magazines and newspapers, until one day she couldn't handle all the unknown eyes staring up at her "testifying to her lie (lack of children)". She violently scratched out their eyes and now she says "they are truly my child".
Not every woman wants to be a mother.

The Pictures On the Wall

I like them there. I do not often like to see things in front of me, that throw reminders at me. But the pictures I put on the walls to see, out of choice or obligation, are the links in my chain and they keep me tethered down, lest I should fly off like a balloon and forget my places.

I say places, there never really was just one to call my place. There are so many people and pictures and houses and memories, and feelings I ought to feel for all of them; but mostly I do not, and I kind of like it that way. I am ungrateful and often I am unhappy. I have a lot of faces and I jump into every open arm and rock myself to sleep with anyone who'll have me, provided they promise me everything will be alright. And what's funny is that I HATE alrights.

I haven't written any poems in a while; although yesterday would have been perfect for it. I threw up terribly next to a bus stop in York, under the most perfect night-sky I have seen in a while. The clouds folded themselves over the moon like a protective blanket; as if it was his night off but he couldn't quite give up the responsibility and kept peeking through them to see if they were doing everything right. The guarding the dark. If I were the moon I would also loathe to abandon my post.

So, being up in the Yorkshire countryside, visiting "family"; breaking damns and making myself angry; losing at trivial pursuit; being reminded of being 15. That is one of my places. I have at least 4 pictures on my wall that make that place.
There is Switzerland, and there is also here. There are a lot of people who are very important and they live in these places and make them. I change what I want from them all the time, and I change what I want from myself. What I want to want. Second-order volitions make me a wanton; the strongest of them make me go with the options that will make me want to be what I want to be at that moment. It keeps changing.

I am a rainy day girl. I am someone who often just doesn't care. I am someone who is so deeply selfish but who would pack up all of my house of cards, move it on just to save something. I am one awful contradiction.

Why do we put pictures up? Why is the camera one of the greatest things ever invented? It is, but I want to know why. We get many moments and people and places, I am not alone in struggling to put all of that in order. But I think cameras make us greedy, they make us lazy. They make us able to keep our lives on a wall and lock it in a frame; make us exhibit everything we've already had and the people we've known and places we've been.

As if that's enough for a life. As is next time we change our minds about everything and everyone, and about us we'll really rip them down, learn our lesson and start again with our collection. As if our photo album of feelings is really ours for the collecting.

Waltz With the Monsters

There were protests in the city today.

People gathered to save their earth. They all came together to write witty signs, and dance and make promises to each other and everyone watching. I was curious to see it all. I don't think it was entirely what it should have been. People took out their iphones and took pictures of the revolution, to make their own news. April fools. Everything seemed to be waiting when I got there, and I read the word war too many times. The only person who tried to cover it up was Yellow. He was ashamed of that red tape with "Capitalism means war" on it. He said it's fine; everyone's a hypocrite, because everyone has to eat and work.

Our needs make us equal and they betray our causes.
Just like with the anarchists, who try to give back the laws they say they are not their own. But a society is not something you can join like a club. It's something you are forced into by truncheons and shields. I never felt more part of mine than today.


I had a nightmare a few weeks ago about being trapped on a bridge with thousands of anxious protesting faces all around me, but I didn't know any of them. Then out of nowhere disease descended upon the crowd. We were sent plagues and diseases instead of bullets to put us down and keep us down. I was petrified in my dream, just as I was today when the riot police came out of their walls and orders and trapped everyone in "their" street. This is called catteling, and they didn't care whether you were a hypocrite or someone who liked to throw stones from far behind the front lines for what you believe in, or whether you believed in anything at all. Every single one of them seemed angry, and their faces were set in the war that read on every sign and sticker. I think I would have liked myself to be braver and not have found gap in the wall to scarper through like a rat. Maybe one day I'll go back with the right kind of clothes and the right kind of attitude and really be a change in something. But getting that last part right just seems too difficult.

And it's funny how a self protecting mechanism caused me this cowardice; it's not a mechanism that usually works with me. But there's something in being reminded of my nightmares in broad daylight and being frightened of things I didn't even know existed for me until today. It made me feel really young; it made me feel really normal.

There are many things that are going wrong for me. I seem to tide myself over on my blackboard in white chalk, and I have my hand hovering over too much these days, ready to wipe it all off. I retract, and regroup. I make the riots, and I chant "new start, new me" at myself in the street, but I'm still missing the attitude. I deliberately refuse to know myself better and teach myself better. It makes me worry about everything all the time.

There are the exams, and a looming future, friends and families and and the fact that I kind of like to start in the middle and end at the beginning of everything. To be honest, I think I just prefer seeing life from over my shoulder.