TO THE CORE:

Before Iggy, before Townsend & Moon, there was Joe.
Rainbow tie-died, screwed up features, sweat soaked,
playing air guitar with a guttural abandon transmitting
a passion I aspired to. Gathered in the local flea-pit,
Black Sabbaths’s Geezer Butler sat somewhere way behind,
I leaned increasingly forward in my seat, closer to
the screen, to smell, to taste & ingest that passion
as ‘WoodStock’ the film played out. Santana & Ritchie Havens
gave me the roots of rhythm guitar, Sly gave me endless groove,
but Joe showed me how far you had to go if you loved music
to your core.

(K)

MEMORY OF WINTER YOUTH:

In a place where your head is numb with boredom,
you’re in your teens & parched for a thrill. You look
around for anything to get you started, ignite a
spark, hook you up with some real electricity.
Everything remotely resembling ‘great’ is on the tele,
in another universe away, a place you’ll never reach. You sit
in your bedroom writing songs that sound like everyone else,
but there’s something good in the feeling of making music
that you like, so you keep doing it. It’s not enough,
you walk around, you ride your bike, you look, restless to find
a kindred spirit or a clue, a way to reach that thing you crave
though you don’t know what it’s called or where to find it.
Your eyes keep being drawn back to stuff that everyone ignores,
the mundane, only to you it’s the only thrill in town though
you can’t explain why. These things you collect with your eyes
become ‘yours’, your ‘weird things’, not concealed with any
shame underneath your bed, but hidden out in full view – you’re
the only one who can seen them. You don’t know it, but they’re
your ticket, these poor cousins of high-art. Your songs continue
to sound generic, your art takes ages to make, belying how shallow
your knowledge is. Everyone tells you how good you are, but you’ll
get a real shock when you find out how much better all your fellow
teens are. It’s the best you can do, you scratch around
& take forever to do anything, but you keep coming back to these
‘weird things’. Somehow you happen to meet someone who tells you
there’s a place for people like you. Somehow you find it & they
let you in & when the money runs out somehow someone discovers
your town has set aside funds for people like you, so you can
continue to explore this ‘weird thing’ thrill.
You meet people who unlocks doors, people point to the map to the
road out of town, you’re told you should go in this direction,
but this ‘weird thing’ connection wont let you.
At the last minute you meet someone who gives you the courage
to go with your intuition & you change course, everyone’s shocked
& you like that feeling, confirming you chose right. Everyone’s
surprised when you get excepted at the place where they celebrate
‘weird things’. You meet someone who saves you from being kicked
out when you realise you don’t have a clue what to do or how to
manifest this obsession with anything more that talk & promises.
You find  your ‘thing’ & it’s the best thrill, even when she
leaves you for someone older. Now your have your ‘weird thing’
& nothing else matters, you’re connected to the national grid,
hooked up to source of all electricity. You go with this fabulous
obsession & it feels good.
You still sit in your bedroom writing songs that sound like
everyone else, but now you have your ‘weird thing’.

(K)

SUNDAY MORNING/MY BOOMERANG WONT COME BACK:

On the radio in the shower they’re talking in voices with suits,
tongues that taste of paper. They’re reading the dailies, fingers
smelling of ink, dust blown off the arid streets of Capitol City.
Black Cab upholstery, tube train wind singed by subterranean
electricity, smells like a long way from here.
Now a full stop, a new voice, rich & deep, with a chocolate helmet.
Here comes the Archers riding jaunty kilted accordions,
parchment yellow with diamante thrills. The Archers mutates into
Danny Kay singing,
“The King is in the All Together”
& it’s the 60’s, the radio on in the kitchen playing
Family Favourites, a smell of boiled ham permeates the house.
We’re gathered around the Sunday table enjoying Bernard Cribbins,
Tommy Steel, Charlie Drake, Lonnie Donegan, Frank Ifield &
The Deadwood Stage is still coming over that hill.
The future is a blank canvas, none of this has happened &
the radio hasn’t yet been invented that will hang in a shower
that hasn’t been built.

(K)

SITTING IN THE RUN-UP:

Wires to a Yellow Chair, camera in a Blue Room,
I won’t keep you waiting. See the numbers burned
into tables, are you drunk? ‘That’s’ the question.

(listening to happy)

(K)

WHAT’S THE QUESTION?:

Push the Buggy into crisp light beneath roofs of
shadow streets. Design life with little white lies.

(waking to the music of Haiti Direct)

(K)

BUILD A METAL SKELETON:

Walked in wearing tight grey leather -trousers?!
What you look like?! Rub your hands together,
hunch your shoulders, talk like a local – dressed
like that?! Cinnamon transaction with your hair
pulled back to make you go faster. Does it work?
Tiny impatient lips, with digital friends, reading
what’s on the screen aloud – keep moving fast, crashing.

Something hot while you’re waiting for the next call?
Exquisit Tattoo, Paper Bird, Paper Crown. Talking loud,
extravagantly happy, covered in Tight Leopard things.

(Just received ‘Demo Box’ from Motorpsycho, out in Feb 2015)

(K)

A TUMBLE OF SPOONS:

Shelter, silent, Bubble-man tree, freaked-out eye-liner Boy.
It’s a good day surprise, put your Head back round your eyes.
I saw autographed plates beneath his picture on the wall,
five orange sliced by a practised knife. All the lost keys
were found, take your coat off, sit down, this is your
Hot Chocolate morning, silence wrapped in plastic Green.

(K)

SUNRISE CHARCOAL PIES:

Traveller chilled encounter with a toothless smile.
Empty street, construction worker. Scratchcard queuer
with a jumbo can of fizz for breakfast.

(K)

MISSING A YESTERDAY:

I didn’t allow enough time to write this entry,
so sent the picture in advance & caught a train
to the city. I promised the text would follow,
but got lost in trawling the streets for poetry.
That turned into a series of meetings, music, art,
the wind up/down in the end of year wrinkle.
The journey out, as ever, was the nail in the coffin.
No matter how good a day it’s been (& it was a good one),
energy falls below empty, I’m ‘the Husk’, parchment,
dry as desert bone, playing with some mindless APP
to silence the head noise.
Got home, cooked, slipped into work ’til late
& woke this morning with that,
“I forgot something” sensation.

(K)

PRIVATE PARTY:

Up before the sun, Disney fields encrusted, heavy frost crunch,
singularly satisfying tiny destructions. Sugar coated impressions
of our comedy feet map duck-waddles (thought I was cooler).
A quiet & private world for solitary unwelcome cars
brandishing brash full beams, neutered in velvet black,
their cautious navigation muffled in sub zeros.
I feel safe, remote, detached from the noise of the wrinkle,
the rush of unharvested ambitions swept into piles at the end
of year. Let’s burn them, warm ourselves like chestnuts, get
a tan. The sound of our breath unfamiliar, exhale follow twelve
month after inhale. This time to think, this precious moment
in which I want you, call you, make the air vibrate with the
sound of your voice. We would designate it ‘ART’ & laugh, rub our
faces in the stars & shower in meteorite tails with no one to
witness our delirium.

(K)