LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SUN:

An unfamiliar clock tick, striking the hours.
An unfamiliar bird call, close.
Waking on the floor of an unfamiliar room.
A familiar feeling in the pit of the stomach,
running low on options.

(K)

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SUN:

An unfamiliar clock tick, striking the hours.
An unfamiliar bird call, close.
Waking on the floor of an unfamiliar room.
A familiar feeling in the pit of the stomach,
running low on options.

(K)

NOTHING IS LOST THAT’S FOUND:

Last night, everyone in bed, sitting quiet in a back room,
lights out, alone, listening to the house settle on it’s bones.
Eyes closed, breathing, fall-out wreckage strewn up the road,
a debris of shattered glass words, regrets, but all of it
‘outside’, nothing in here. The house tic,tic,ticked, the pile
on the carpet exhaled, cushions relaxed as I let go, floating
on whispers. Out in the garden you’d left a candle burning,
something to light the way for the lost & abandoned, flame
dancing in a glass, skeleton wind, cold to razor cut you.
Spoke your name at your bedroom door, but you were sleeping.
Walked around the house with no direction, punch drunk,
following a beacon, an almost indiscernible sound calling me
away from the rocks, into open waters.

(K)

RIDDING A WOODEN PONY WITH RUBBER SPURS:

Dreamed I was playing a gig with a new band, faces I recognised,
friends I’ve worked with through 2014, all great musicians,
but all in the wrong places, playing each other’s instruments,
weird, but not freaky.
Leo Abraham was there, a great guitarist, incongruously on drums.
He settled behind the kit, pale blond wood shells the colour of
his hair, he looked across & nodded with that gentle reassuring
glint in his eye I’ve come to trust – chrome, no cymbals.
The room was full when we took the stage, the band was large &
buzzing, eager. I plugged in my guitar excited to be playing it
again, I love guitars. I’ve been thinking about Fenders & I knew
this one chimed like a bell. I’ve been watching Lou Reed on
youtube, drawn back to his lyrics & delivery, fascinated by that
stripped down sound, the wiry chime of guitars without pedals.
I looked down at the strings, the audience in quiet anticipation,
then I realised we didn’t have a setlist!
“Let go” – I thought
“Play what you feel – what do I feel?”
I imagined a pulse, striking the bass strings with down strokes
of the plectrum like Chris Stein taught me – the New York way,
in a steady 8’s repeat. I thought ‘Hawkwind’, but that wasn’t it.
I thought ‘Velvet’s’, too obvious.
Started hitting the strings, repeating, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
but it kept getting away from me, that feeling – looking for the
perfect 8’s groove, a series of repetitive 1’s on the downstroke
that smelled of new wire, electricity, light machine oil.
I couldn’t find the groove, so l looked across at Leo, a man who
always knows the right glue. I nodded for him to come in,
instinctively knowing this had already gone wrong, I couldn’t get
the opening groove right, so how could adding improved it?
He hit the snare drum,  nothing. Devoid of his trademark empathy,
it was derivative, dead, no character, no colour, standard edition,
we were playing cardboard, riding a wooden pony with rubber spurs.
He caught the snare with a second stroke, dull crack, something
dropped off & he stopped, leaned down, started fiddling, run out of
spark. I glared as he looked across with an impostor expression,
EVERYTHING was out of character, falling to pieces, rotten roots,
bad foundations. We should’ve done everyone a favour, packed up,
gone home, give them back their money, but we ploughed on,
making ‘normal’. I kept hitting the strings, ‘hoping’.
The rest of the band were watching, vacant, waiting for the nod.
I couldn’t ‘feel it’, chasing it, scattered in directions & none of
them good. I found finally found ‘something’, switched the guitar to
auto pilot, whipped out a note book & started to sing. Something good
emerged for the first time, the others felt it too, got the message &
began to play – it was a new sound, hallelujah! Five chunks of singing
felt enough. More would be over-egged. We looked one to the other,
grinned & nodded, stopped – heard that familiar incremental applause,
of the respectful, patient kind – the evening teetered on a knife-edge,
the audience watching to see if we’d fall or fly.
During the applause I turned to the tour manager,
“Did you pack my books of lyrics?
I need them to do the rest of the show”

“What?!!!…” he gasped.

(K)

THE PHANTOM HEADER OF TOMMY HUTCHINSON:

“Whenever I hear Johnny Mathis sing ‘When a Child is Born’
it takes me straight back to 1976, Coventry v West Ham at
Highfield Road. Coventry won 1-0 from a beautiful cross
to Tommy Hutchinson who headed it straight into the top
corner. I remember ’cause the crowd went mad. I’ll never
forget it ’cause it was my first boxing day match –
music is a trigger like that.”
He said, but though we trawled the net for ages neither
that match nor Tommy Hutchinson scoring against West Ham
turned up. Coventry lost 2-1 that winter & I could feel
the chill in the stands as that song echoed around the ground,
hope carried on the breath of penguin shuffling men & boys
escaping through damp woollen scarfs wrapped around their
necks & mouths, joining to form thin clouds that condensed
as low hanging mist, congealing with mangled mud & grass,
glistening on the heavy leather boots of steaming sweat soaked
players re-emerged from half-time tunnels with matted 1970s
hair & long stares.
You laughed,
“We’ll I’ve remembered it that way all these years,
maybe that score line changed over time?” you laughed
“The home crowd went mad – I definitely remember that.”

(K)

SHEPHERDS RISE WITH GUNSHOT & CROW:

Walked into the sun, skating blacktop frost in skimpy trainers
better suited to Hoxton than the fields of Essex.
Arranged broken-stick sculptures on frozen puddles for the
camera, capturing frosted Redbull cans discarded, standing
scarecrow silent in fields as solitary cars past, imagining
they couldn’t see me if I didn’t move or better still were
alarmed to happen upon such an unnatural sight. Give ’em a
thrill, the whole world’s a stage, don’t need galleries to
make art, it’s right here now, it’s whatever you want it to be,
just call it & it is. Scarecrow man in skinny jeans stands
rocksteady in a field of frost, discovered unexpected as the
car turns the corner the driver’s eyes thrill, dragging with
them a smudge, a memory of something out of sync on the way to
work this morning. The hiss of rubber, the low thud of distance
gunshot repeating, a cynic crow up close concealed in naked
branches, scratching records with a rusty nail.
Pull the sticks out of the mud, throw them down on the ice,
photograph them where they fall, all you’re allowed to control
is the framing. Leave them, move on, following a breadcrum
trail, capturing what catches the eye & giving it at name.

Johnnie Mathis was singing “When a Child is Born” in my head
when I woke up, so I dialled up The Monks from last night’s
gig to flush him out.

(K)

SEASONAL STUFFING:

On a flight from London to New York in the mid 90’s
I had the singular experience of drinking myself sober.
Do you think it’s possible to eat yourself ‘thin’?

(K)

POWERLESS AMONGST THE POWERTOOLS OF THE LYING DARKSIDE:

No one sees the madness concealed, the look in the eye,
the heat applied to the pressure points when backs
are turned. The freak-out & the melt-down reserved
for those special occasions when no witness is around
except for those who for years rebounded. Let it slip by
on the other side, pick up your broom to sweep your own
street. It’s not easy, didn’t say it would be,
under fire daily, hold it together for eternal love & vows,
promises made & meant back then that still are now.
Dark bomb destruction, mood swinger, face changer, bitter
tight lipped, cold stare look in the eye. Transformer, change
that face you love to dangerously unfamiliar, the warm light
turning cold ripples sweep the room, the house, the day,
rock you just enough & glitch you, stop the new groove you were
riding out from your own head,  stop your one’s & zeros dead.
Rhythm ride you, out of shadow whispered
drag-you-down-if-you-come-with-me, watching powerless on the
outside of your listening to the darkside.

(K)

ALONE NEVER ALONE:

6:30am, Christmas Day, alarm goes off. The place next to me
is empty, a memory of mornings like this a long time ago,
it twists it’s tiny knife. Look up at the sky for just
long enough, feel alive, fling back the covers & rise.
It’s waiting, silent on the bottom of the bed as it does
every morning, it asks,
“Ready to come back my love?”
I launch into Scrunter’s ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS‘, loud enough for
the household to hear & know my mood is good or at least
pointed in good orderly direction. It watches me, doesn’t
move, slight grin, pleased to be noticed. I get up swift,
it’s dark, pale horizon slit, skyfull of familiar
constellations, a solitary car nudging slow & steady between
the fields. Heart sinks for a second, has it snowed?!
knocks me back, the thought of digging out the car, salting
the road, precarious metal winding up in ditches, metal bent
with terminal thud.
It moves on the end of the bed, ready to receive, knows I
could go either way any day, it can still taste me, know I’m
worth the wait,
“Ready?” it whispers, “No one loves you like me”
I flick all the lights on, switch songs – ‘HAPPINESS‘ –
Ken Dod circa 1964, selecting clothes for a day in front of
family cameras, imagine how it’ll look years from now,
make it good or make it funny & funny is as good you want
scrolling back through their digital memories.
The bathroom’s cold, undress, it stings, the heating timer
set for later than civilian time, week time, timetable time,
rush & stress out time, this is weekend ease off a little
time, time between times, no man’s land where you could drop
your guard & let it in, fool yourself that was the voice of
reason you were hearing. The house, unprepared for my early
rise recoils, looks unshaven. I chuckle, remembering being
homeless, late 80’s, sleeping alone on the floor of an
industrial unit, South Essex farm stock. Sire Records USA
had advanced us the money to make what would be our last
record for them. We used it to build a recording studio
instead of flushing it down the hole, a squat mis-shapen box
concealed behind aircraft hanger doors, an industrial block
at the end of a dirt track at the back of a garden centre
with a paint balling tank.
With nowhere to live I slept on the control room floor,
newspapers, note book, three channel tv & take aways.
Stepped out every morning through those rumbling iron lips
to a chill bitten wind, stripped to the waste in an outside
toilet, barefoot concrete, cold tap wash basin. The water
stung on every cupping but warmed so fast it thrilled me,
made me want more, grinning, laughing, invincible
“Is that all you got!!!”
remembering Granddad washing every day this way in the kitchen,
gas cooker, pre-day shift at the pit, fat steaming kettles,
hands like gentle shovels, paddling warm milky water into the
coves of muscled armpits, fat heaving leather belt, shirt tucked
in by the tails, arms & cuffs dragging the kitchen floor.
I washed every morning, remembering him, laughing at the pain of
every scooped handful, gasping at each hit, inhaling that signature
disinfected piss that only belongs to our Island.

The radiators tick, the timer starts the pump, my hand
reaches out to close the glass, twist the smooth action
regulator & feel the hot sting, sing
“Happiness, Happiness, the greatest thing that I possess”
This cheese wouldn’t stand up to hardcore expectations of the
youtube generation, but maybe they don’t start every day with that
shadow on the end of the bed.
This song this tool, is a path, this route, out, up & into the light,
a kick start set up, a new leaf fluttering on summer’s branch.
The voice in the shower sounds like my Dad more every day.
Perhaps I remember hearing him through the stud wall of my
teenage bedroom singing the same song?

(K)

UPON THE EVE OF THE THURSDAY OF DECEMBER:

The Steels, I want to tell you everything, sheltering from
a storm of constant lips. You re-arange a bag to rest your
head & sleep. Park it, cover it, tie it up & float it, chain it
to a fence, wrap it in stripy plastic tape & start afresh.
A light, a glow, a giant comes lumbering over the horizon,
low & cold, casting thin shadows as you sleep between the rails.

(K)