ESSEX:

Asleep in a jam on the M25, fallen out of the sky, folded inside-out, blood irradiated, a few less brain cells, muscles stuff & still alive, the kick drum still my dealer – dancing with thousands giving good energy in return. Yeah, trashed but smiling.

(K)

BERLIN:

It’s so nice out
Everything is perfect
There was a bar on the beach
I mean I love Chicago
And there was a bar with all these Chicago signs made me feel right at home I mean
If you’ve never been to America you should really go to New York I mean I love Chicago ’cause that’s where I live like if you go to LA that’s totally different I mean I haven’t had a burger the whole time I’ve been here I’ve been eating these little bread things with oils on I have to try a burger in Berlin can you recommend a place? Is there really good like design museums & modern art galleries is there like a war museum or something oh yeah I hear it’s like somber or something make me cry a little bit can you recommend coffee?
I’ve only had like cheap beer all week I could do with a little cocktail – what? Beer is cheaper than water? I was in a taxi in Barcelona and the taxi driver wouldn’t take the tip he was like ‘no I’m not going to take it’ and it was like only two euros or something so we dropped it in the front seat like ‘here’s your tip, we wanna give it to you’ you said, it’s the best pizza you ever had, better than Italy? We have it in Chicago too they like fly ingredients fresh in from Florence how much is a beer in Germany? You’ll be shocked when you come to America how expensive beer is and it’s not like even good – you’d have to pay like nine dollars for something like that. We only have four or five days so…
Is there a bus tour like an on & off?
Is it a bike city? Do they have good lanes and stuff?
So – no plans to go to America soon?
No – I don’t feel I’m part of the system

(K)

BARCELONA #2:

Drunks sing violent harmony, threatening fabulous destruction
on the street outside my bedroom window. I fall asleep, in love
with the melodies of their broken sculptures, ragged as
busted beer bottles, searching for a tune, come to eat the city,
a city without you & all the poorer for it, lying awake alone.
Choruses of geezers baying to get into a backroom bar,
Howlin’ Wolf singing ‘You’ll Be Mine’, Slim Harpo doing,
‘I Got Love For You If You Want It‘, shaking dust of pornbroke
guitars to the groove of a drummer with gone eyes as a skinny thing
slinks across an empty dancefloor, looking back across a shoulder.

(K)

BARCELONA #1:

Voivod, Tony Alan, mingle with Essex techno in the foyer,
clutch your water, fallen fresh out the sky from London,
skin caked in Sky grease, feel the dirt seep into you,
feeling drained from breathing re-cycled wind, the breath
from the lungs of your fellow flyers, legs numb from altitude,
everyone in black & flight cases checkin’ each other out.
Who’re the new boys with the short hair & Adi trainers?
This ain’t the bleedin’ 90’s, this ain’t rave, this is
festival, mixed bag of goodies & I’m in the right spot,
exactly where I want to be. My Mate Kiisti used to write
the lyrics for Voivod back in their day & I dream of playing
rhythm guitar, cycling on a groove for the king of Hi-Life,
Tony Alan & if I’m lucky, I’ll get the full strike, the set of
three, drifting off listening to Patti Smith transmit that
unique New York energy thing outside my bedroom window.
This is where I want to be, but I wish you were here with me.

(K)

SMOKE STACK TREMOLO LINEAR GUITAR GROOVING UNDER BREAKFAST:

Something weird in the generic chain cafe, Ska & Howlin Wolf
underscored my porridge, speaking to me clear as a bell, visions
of dusty guitars captured on old analogue recorders, vibrating
the airwaves in the room, generating visions, feeding me
direction, connecting me directly to the roots, exciting my
molecules like new born.

(K)

TICK THE BOX – SAVE A LIFE:

I’m not stopping what you love. What? – Five kids! Are they
all yours?!

(K)

DOG TAKES A PISS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD:

Talk to me dog, what you thinking, what’s the neighbourhood
come to? Is this Sex Shop? Jesus! They’ve gentrified the dream,
the glamour of the gutter gone! Hey wonderful, press the bell,
watch me drag my knuckles, me & the boys got oxygen cocktails,
got my eyes on the sky, watch me baby!

(K)

BANK HOLIDAYS BRING ME DOWN:

Peaceful, too peaceful, the cafe where I write is closed!
Lights on, nobody home, cheery in it’s exclusion of poets.
I glance, contain tiny explosions, panic, keep walking,
fake purpose, stride like a man who knows where he’s going,
through desolate streets, the sight of other loners disturbs me.
Sad lost poets drifting, a fellowship of hungry pen clutchers
searching for a corner seat. The dazed & downmouthed, harbouring
desperation for a fix, coming down from the termination of
clandestine rendezvous with muses.
Only ‘one’ cafe’s open, the ‘wrong one’, wrong tea, wrong mugs,
wrong ambience, wrong effusive clientèle & ‘no’ porridge served up
in cardboard with that little pot of honey & the Black plastic
spoon you have to wipe with recycled napkins before to slip it
in your mouth. She knows I’ll decline the little bag of dried fruit
every time she asks & yet she asks me every morning. The familiarity
of the ritual reassures me. I’m a visitor with pinhole vision,
stumbling around a planet, Mickey Mouse still crazy dancing on
the fronts of T-shirts drenched in sweat. She knows exactly what
she’s doing, restrains a smile. I glance around the room to see if
anyone’s claimed ‘my’ table, feel the panic rise, the thrill, the
chase for that spot before anyone gets it. The triumphant surge of
power as I slip a tray onto the table, the come down, the extraction
of the paraphernalia from the bag, laying everything in place,
peripheral vision, checking out the positions of the muses.
Note the mood of the music we’re being fed this morning, always
a little different, always a little the same. Makes me wonder what
algorithm selected it. The foot taps unconscious, feel-good gets into
the heads the coffee huggers queueing for more.
Now I’m dazed & shaking, find myself back in the car before time,
alone, staring through fly spattered glass, trying to recreate
the ritual of a ‘normal morning’. I’m coming to pieces, every muscle
primed to twitch & flick, locked into the groove of the pen.
I oscillate, vibrate, start to shake, frustration, shake it off,
it comes back stronger, a cyclone dog chasing it’s tail.
The note book languishes next to the ink pen in the dark at the bottom
of my bag, wondering what the hell is wrong. Cell phone primed with
electric poetry ready to be transferred, legitimised on paper.
I sit in stunned silence waiting for the phone to ring, numb,
without focus until the call, an interview with a European newspaper,
& I’m relieved when it comes. We’ve made it across the desert
& I have purpose again.

(K)

SUNSET SIMPLE:

Saw the best sunset in years tonight, Gold, Pink & Crimson
strips in ribs across the sky. Best drive home, radio surfing,
following the curves of fresh blacktop, snaking empty between
clean white parallel lines, Blackthorn nodding to the sun.

(K)

DARK ROLLING INFECTIOUS SOUL FOOD:

The BBC News is pumping fear out again as I turn on the radio.
I seriously ‘love’ the BBC, I get something good out’ve pretty
much everything it broadcasts except the news, the editorial
focus of which appears to be glued in one direction,
sending waves of fear & insecurity out into the world on a
daily basis. Strikes me as an odd thing to do, when everyone
else I know appreciates a bit’ve positivity in their day.

(K)