EVENTUALLY:

Happy in newmoon shimmer, I slept like a sleeper. The corn a
whispering moat, protecting the house. Woke up plugged in,
electric, nothing too much trouble. Drive, cafe, porridge, tea,
notebook. Bluesky words fall easy onto the page.

(K)

TODAY I AM MANY HATS:

There’s a butter-wouldn’t-melt woman sitting in the window
dressed as Picasso with a punnet full of Summer Berries &
ears full of wires. She doesn’t order anything, bobs her
to a latin beat with distracted eyes, taking pictures of
the street with her cell phone. Girls in floral shorts
walk past, as shaved headed men drop their jaws, oblivious
to me watching.Tourists wearing Union Jacks walk loud for
pictures in the sun as the woman in the window takes a
long time to deposit something she conceals in the bin –
suddenly leaving. I’ve finished the porridge, the notebook
has eaten, there’s tea in the bottom of the cup. But that bin
worries me, I have a premonition, a tingling sensation,
packing up fast I leave.

(K)

BODY IN FREE FALL:

Some kind’ve bugthing? Exhaustion? Lazy waster?
The body started rebelling as I rode the train
out’ve the Emerald City, deep-sleeping on the
Blue Velveteen. Dipping in-&-out of the flawed
yet still inspiring ‘Imagine’, identifying with
the’The Outsider’. Today, the corn glows under
slate grey clouds, coaxing light out of the sky
& bouncing it into the house as I write. The body
moans but the mind wants to dance. The-kettle-on,
my universal panacea, slows the world enough,
fixes everything.
Fingers dance across the keys, head sheds angst as
words form on the page in meditation.
Sometimes you have to leave to return, do the things
you’re too afraid to do in order to be free of fear,
comfort kills creativity, but for today, hits the spot
for a body in free fall.

(K)

TWENTY MILLION THINGS:

Dirty breathing in the Emerald City, dust stuck to sweat
in black & blue. Need a rest, a switch-off, a good laugh.
Trying to do too much, or not enough of the right stuff?
Stop, listen to the noise & chuckle. Up at 4:00am, scare
a pigeon off the roof outside my bedroom window, hooting,
inconsiderate. Well, if that’s the limit of all my troubles
I’ll take that as a bargain.

(K)

TO HEAL:

Every time we touch down back in England I chuckle, it’s spontaneous,
an involuntary action. Every time we cross the boarder into Essex
the face celebrates with a grin. Last night we sat out on the porch,
resting our ears, listening to the rain, the rich aroma of healing
‘Green’, soothing as calamine lotion after being ravaged, riding the
aircon gauntlet again. Moths dance around the porch light,
a supercharged snail crosses just in front of your feet, a beetle,
black as a hole, hurries back into shadow. We talk low & soft about
nothing & everything. I should be in bed for an early start, but
sitting here listening to your voice in the rain is the best rest
I’ve had in days.

(K)

DUB-STUMBLE TURNTABLES OF AFTERSHOW DJ’S:

What’s that jam stuff you got on your bread with cheese-eggs,
sausage-cheese, cheese-cornflakes? Seven black teas later I
eventually get the ‘hit’, feeling that first astringent bight of
the weekend. In the breakfast ballroom, where last night’s wedding
party still raged at 4:00am, I sit alone with my friend the giant
flower as far from speed-talking, leaning into the torrent from
each other’s mouths across the linen. They got control of the
flat-screen on the wall today, the morning infecting with poptastic
saccharin. The DJ’s & their girlfriends float in dazed, whispering
& clean, grazing the buffet of weird things. An old man presses his
face up to the window, cups his hands around his eyes & stares.
The waiter with the blue satin cummerbund opens the door to chase
him away, but he’s already gone. I Feel a fresh air kiss for the
first time last time before we tumble back into the sky.
Imagining the polyrhythmic magic of George Formby’s wrist.

(K)

THE ANGEL OF LEVON HELM:

Listening to Levon Helm to counter kick drum overkill
hammering across the fields at 7:00am. I doze for an hour
until happy adrenaline-hyped DJ’s come home laughing loud &
turn it up next door. Their girlfriends haunt the corridors,
shuttling sheepish between rooms, averting their eyes as I
head to breakfast. Into a vast & empty room, a sea of linen
& giant flowers. A banquet of untouched pick-ables beneath
a flatscreen tv. It pumps inane music videos into the morning,
jamming all my frequencies. My mate Malcolm walks in smiling,
makes the coffee machine hiss more beautiful than these rattling
poptones, but the waitresses are angels, they understand.
When I ask they smile & quietly turn off the music . Silence,
Hallelujah! Words form in my head & I remember who I am.
We laugh to the song of teaspoons dancing in cups.
There’ll be time enough for kickdrums.

(K)

BREATHE DEEP:

Air like dust, a paste that collects at the back of the throat
in the belly of the Emerald City. Catch the first train out,
aircon wind, dry you like a biscuit, cooked in the sun through
glass. Today we jump back through the sky-hole, London to Poland,
sucking on recycled wind, the breathes & dead skin of thousands.
The nuclear glare of another duty free microwaving us from
the inside out. A writhing mass, a jungle, a perfumed car crash,
trudging obediently through the haunted house of another hard sell
airport assault course. I’m sat here on the back step listening
to corn ripen, breathing clean air, feeling real wind on my skin,
feeling good. There’s a carpark at the back of a Polish hotel,
a patch of grass next to a fountain, a fire escape or even that
most luxurious of hotel facilities ..a window that opens!
That’s where you’ll find me, expelling the dirt, the dust, the
dead skin from the back of my throat, missing Rick.

(K)

DOING IT DIFFERENT:

Parking porridge & tea until I get to the Emerald City,
far from the curve of balls. Find myself a cafe where
they deal what I need, conceal this pen in the noise of
conversation, a little place where cell phones don’t work.

(K)

THE DAY STARTED:

Good, cool, overcast a little, but feeling right.I was looking
forward to a cafe alone with the notebook & pen, porridge & tea –
a return to routine. I was looking forward, then ‘all change’,
side-swiped into decline. I tried, believe me before a procession
of events came marching across the cool face of the morning.
I made porridge, ate it cold, cellphone pressed to an ear, typing
with the other hand answering two questions at a time. I made tea,
but don’t remember drinking it. The calm space of a morning cafe,
collecting words, gathering thoughts, lining it all up, the muscles
& the tendons slipping away. That feeling of peaceful connection
I haven’t felt for weeks, always on the go, within reach fading.
That ‘hit the ground running’ sensation returning. So that’s how
the day started, a mug of forgotten tea, chilled honey veins
oozing from cold porridge stuck to the spoon.

(K)