TREAT A DOG:

In a tight summer dress, pink & white hoops, circus animal.
Head down, ashamed, watered, walked & fed, entertains,
provoking laughter. The click of the master’s camera,
fingers point, steps back grinning, keep walking.

Everybody Sunday drifting, coach parties & ice cream cone fists,
sulphur at the shrine. Ring the bell, toss the coin, bow, copper,
aluminium, iron. Immersed up to the knees in heeling waters,
leaves satisfied, accomplished, satellite cloud bus, air-con,
toilet, tv.

The river whispers in a black cut at the bottom of the valley.
Night, a voice at the end of it’s shift, walking home alone,
casually hands concealed in pockets swings, sings love songs
to the river, it starts to rain.

Look, a tooth-pick points this way, a cigarette butt points East –
a sign!

Patti Smith – ‘Beneath The southern Cross’

(K)

THE HAPPINESS:

The animals, here they come, a child’s tune played on a xylophone.
A broken phone, a voice from the past sighing at the breakfast table. 
Be happy, be happy & be happy.

Two fingers for the number two. 
Two people avoiding eye contact. 
Two ears in tears. 
Hands held. 
Comfort in twos.
Two hands raised to the sky. 
Be happy.

Stone electric leaving grins, returned to life.
Be happy
Baby get your money out, still looking for dirt, following the white 
line? 
Be happy.

Fluttering, blows in the wind, hands in pockets, all the time 
in the world.
Be happy.

How did you get so high? Don’t jump!
Be happy
All the cars are White or Black or Silver. 
Be happy.
Tears, a river runs through the valley. Lost & found.
Be happy.

Lights flashing, Alien in town! Fascination stares at weird thing. 
Arriving loaded, leaving. 
Be happy, be happy & be happy.

(Kitayuzawa Onsen – to – Usu-zan Volcano) 

Highway Star – Deep Purple

(K) 

ONSEN, SERENITY, NO WIFI:

Wanderer, drifter at the shrine of 7:45am, cruises offerings at the
carnival of weird stuff, shrine to the rising sun. Almond milk it’s
a new day, what you got between the ears?
Sat in a corner waiting for you to come, in walks Superman, a little
dazed, a little unshaven. In walks glass clown, cooled in the wind of
fanning fingers. A fork, a lemon, hand in hand. A Bag, self satisfied
is dressed in nothing but Red shoes & the Blues. And I’m feeling good
just the way I am, scratching paper with metal & ink.

(K)

RUST HIDING BEHIND FACADES:

A weed dancing in the wind, cables snake concealed –
what’s your name?
Cartoon Catbus, Flowerwoman, Bagman, lovers at tables for two.
The bowed heads of rusting vents hide behind billboards. Food
between the sticks arrives at lips. A silent crow, watching from
a tree, looks down on the world, sitting in judgement. Camouflaged,
dappled in sun fingered green, concealed beneath a rattling sky.
Shadow corridors shimmer. Murmured prayer beneath breath skulks,
clothed in cotton summer. Shoes removed before entering, bows,
riding silent to escape, caught in the corner of an eye, documented
leaving on the sly. Happy wheels, smiling cat-feet. Watch them dance
in black & white, all my melancholy memories.

(K)

COLD WATER FOR THE EYES:

A crow in the street laughing at a sleeping city. A tightrope
walker moving cautious towards the light. Buildings turn to face
the rising sun, sign their names on pavements, clocking on.
Stop thinking! Surf! Move around the bedroom without waking
sleeping bears, shower hairs.

Boyfriend’s Back

Robin Williams

(K)

DIRTY SKY:

Breaths, coughs, regurgitations of inner biologies, infection.
The air percolates, twelve hours straight, flying East to greet a
rising sun. Cooled in air-conditioned bliss shuttle bussing, between
sky holes, transferring sweat & herding scuffed luggage. Skimming
burbs roasted in 37 degrees of terminal heat.
Shepard sleepers slumped on brutal airport benches. Mind their
bags & watches, watch the time. Two hours sleep in 24, hallucinating
flat screen commercial loops. The same girl faking golf, the same
tempting image of a bed for hire somewhere near, the same doctor
pointing at the same charts, cutting the same hole in the same
faceless patient, only one of them smiling for the flash.
Then another another hole, another jump, the coughing & the sneezing
resumed behind cotton masks. Scalding green tea spilled down an arm
& bootleg Dylan #7 to relocate the world to the other side of the
bubble. Landing in air as cool as Essex on the sweetest day.
Walking out into the night, electric, hairs up on the backs of necks
& hands. Greeted by the waiting embrace of a friend.

(K)

AND FANCY-FREE:

How was your weekend? Happy dog? Normal? Got away with it?

Back page philosophers set the world to rights curb-side,
hair-loss, clutching cardboard coffees. Alive with a good
head is a sweet thing. In a storm a clean face, unexpected,
luminous. Following the sound of a voice, one foot in front
of the other into the light, using ALL the tools, liberated
from thinking.

(K)

MOTHER SCULPTURE:

My family has a long tradition of creating sculptures & assemblages
that I grew up believing was normal to every family.
They would, of course, all be considered the works of outsider
artists, as their creators never went to art school nor received the
appropriate documentation ratifying them as ‘proper’ artists.
None the less they were all profound influences upon one who did.
This is one of Mom’s, an artist more commonly accepted as a genius
with needle & thread, seen here experimenting with fibreglass,
plastic, ceramic, cork, stone & organic material – makes perfect
sense to me.
Alan Kaprow
(K)

UNKNOWN SUNLIT HOME:

St Petersburg in the rain, a street in words transmitted
to distant friends. Cocoons of amber light, water running down
windows, warm, dry memories of a safe youth.

A sure thing walks in, looks around, glances through panda eyes.
Yeah, thrill, so what? In the beginning we was stupid.

M Train – Patti Smith

(K)

BY THE LAKE:

Our friends Efterklang/Liima return with their By The Lake Festival
in Berlin this weekend. If I didn’t have to be here I’d be there.
You?

(K)