HOLLYWOOD BOWL:

Soundcheck.
Ears deceive, head, ragged from trans-atlantic scramble,
broke sleeps, shaking stick-bones, time-zone sickness, miss
my brother, struggles to connect in the soundcheck, feel
the body shake it, brake it off, vibrating, collision, the team
closes ranks, wraps around, injects it’s love, compassion,
patience, tolerance, pulls one out the bag for each other & everything clicks into place.

Step one.

(K)

PARADISE AGAIN:

Awake at 4:00am washing t-shirts in shampoo, reading mails in bed
blurred vision, copy notes for the book from my phone, send emails
to myself, a new track fresh in from a Manchester boy, a friend who
should’ve been legend, he was always better than me, a cellphone in
the dark bed. Manchester reaches out, city I love, feel it’s dirty
street energy, it’s cracks breath, it’s rough hewn glory sings
the way the Roses did years ago when I was alone here in LA.
A throaty muscle car circles outside, I like the way it growls,
the aircon units whisper to its themselves, mine’s always off,
windows open, inhale deep between the dark sheets, watch the lights
up on subset through slatted blinds, traffic begins to breath on
La Cienega, then first birdsong. I want to sleep on the roof,
but I’m too tired to move.

(K)

LOS ANGELES:

All the boys are sparking, laughing mascara tattoos, crowd into the
back room, spreading energy, frisky & infectious. Night on the roof
with hot almond milk, faces pressed into the lights of the city,
sirens, helicopter searches, strolling cool eucalyptus boulevards
home between faux Spanish stucco & rococo security bars,
the luminous silver skins of crazy root trees lift sidewalks by the
light of a grinning moon.

(K)

ESSEX TO CALIFORNIA:

The lift stinks with the acid bite of too much aftershave,
I’m drowning in game faced suits pumped on testosterone,
who wouldn’t stand a chance in the pubs back home.
Found the porridge & a quiet table, though until I completed
the cocktail with a hit of black tea I’m a man holding his breath.
Another jump through the skyhole, leaving the sweet green curves
of Mother Essex for the blacktop snakes of Hollywood, diner time,
I love American diners, wheat toast, raisin bran & black tea,
note book keen for the pen dance – listening.
Back in the heartland of American Graffiti, Booker T & Green Onions,
Steve Cropper is still the man, telecaster scythe cutting grooves
with wire spikes of classic Fender tones. If it’s good enough for
Steve, it’s good enough for me, pass me mine, I need to funk,
JB on the headphones groovin’ ‘Payback’, all the way from Romford
to LA & back.

(K)

ELEVATOR OUTDOOR GIRL:

Here she comes smiling, warmer, better, Eco friendly.
On the radio they got their man, everything is ok,
everything is better, finger in the mouth, look around,
has anything changed?

(K)

WHEN THE WORDS ARE TOO CLEVER TOO LONG:

I got my porridge & tea. I got my car & radio, drive & surf
the airwaves, find a cafe, plot up & write every morning on
the way into the studio. I’m happy. I see Rick & I get happier,
I try & fail & it’s ok, because, tomorrow we do it again & it
all adds up. Some days something electric falls out, some days
sounds with no home to go to. The telephone rings & there are
only three people I answer on studio days with Rick.
I load the car with pedals & guitars, words written, inspired
by conversations with my mate. Sometimes we write them together,
it’s ALL ‘together’ to me, every conversation we have goes
direct into the bone, effects my ears, my choice of listening
as I walk the streets, the way I move my pen across the paper.
We work together, laugh together, get tired together, seven
days a week, planes, cars, buses, hotels, airports, festival
stages. There’s a look we pass between us, an electricity
transmitted in a grin, I have no idea where it came from or
what took it so long to get here, but now it’s got it’s own
front door key & can let it’s self in.
Essex looks beautiful today, like every day, smells good &
green & blacktop. I’ll miss it like I always do when we’re
away, but it’s too good to stay gone for long, hold my table
in the window at my favourite cafe, tell the waitress I’ll be
back, she knows my order, keep my guitars clean & tuned & ready,
when the plane touches down in London I’ll need to play them all,
no matter what the weather, I’ll be grinning, ear-to-ear –
keeping it simple.

(K)

WHO’S COAT IS THIS JACKET, WHO’S HEAD IS THIS BALLOON?:

Who’s body is this I find myself in, run over & squeezed
out of a toothpaste tube, throat ransacked by another flight,
the coughers & sneezers shower germ cocktails into the air
with limitless generosity – breathe deeply oh dearly beloveds!
Hit the ground running, unpack, load the washing machine, peg
your photographables out in the wind to dry along with all those
little discrete things that make the day swing sweeter.
Into the studio on the back of another porridge, tea & poetry
ritual, car loaded with guitars & pedals, words & cables, don’t
forget your sense of humour, driving the back roads of Essex,
between the nodding heads of green corn & barley, softening
mother’s curves as she rises between Hawthorn, Oak & Elm.
Radio on, riding the backs of blacktop snakes, clearing the head
of all preconceptions, no direction, open for anything, ready for
action, the first tea & laugh with brother Richard, press play,
listen, plug in & record.

(K)

ON LEAVING AARHUS:

No need to explain yourself, just do it, let go the rope,
stop pulling, move on. Honey tower, shaken hand behind the
curtain where no one can see. Who comes up to you, big hat,
grinning, talking too loud, crashing & dark rain?
Thank you for the juice, I hope your weather holds.
Your goodbye waitress smiles, tiny eyes, forever face,
no bandwidth here, dropped connection, time to climb back
into the sky-hole, Essex on the line.

(K)

NORTHSIDE – AARHUS:

In Denmark the breakfast is too complicated, cereal comes in
thimbles & you have to build your own teabags before suspending
them on wooden skewers on the lips of Zen white ceramic pots.
Build-a-breakfast, build-a-bear, save a life, save a love,
transmit. Relaxation is intense.

(K)

COMMOTION HOUSE:

Laughing cross-legged on the sofa, rising smile is the social
currency. Buy a line in Black & White, toaster head, androgynous
lepard. Evolution toolkit, dreamweaver feed, Society of pimps for
a single man. Jumping through the sky-hole again, Essex touches
Denmark.

(K)