Stuff I've written, what I'm reading, excerpts from books/poems I like, etc.
Anything uncredited is original
Reading list:
2/10/21>Excerpt from Neil Young's 'Alabama'
Oh, Alabama
Banjos playing through the broken glass
Windows, down in Alabama
See the old folks
Tied in white robes
Hear the banjo
Don't it take you down home?
30/09/21>On desiring delirium
Machinery, only a memory,
A coarse sphere.
Crossing, just fleeting glimpse,
A banded pole.
Turning cogs,
Jammed.
Flashing lights,
Too distant.
Let me back, so I may fix it this time,
Let me back, so I may reach it this time.
Fever, not for a long while,
A burning skull.
Visions, unreal and real,
A warped retina.
Absorbing phenomena,
Too regular.
Consuming media,
Too irregular, and yet also regular.
Should my neurofluid simmer, I should turn up the heat.
Should my eyes distort, I should make further shapes.
So close yet so close yet so close yet so close yet,
So close.
19/09/21>On returning to a nearby hill to find it overgrown
The people are not out today,
Nor have they been for a while, as the hill has not been mown.
They sky, the atmosphere, perpetually awaiting a storm.
The seats, of metal, wood,
And paint - both of builder and artist,
Now wade in the undergrowth.
How fast -
Should the common constitutions cease -
the breathing pelt of green does reclaim its dominion.
The Earth's hide returned, and unadorned.
The un-living byproducts of an age once so alive,
Occasionally surface the swells and lulls of the living sheet,
Before returning to the depths.
The rock, the metal,
Again deep in the ever-rotting carcass orb,
The paint of builders and artists now dissolved.
As the infinite possibilities of existence,
Once again offer up their bid,
For the next great un-living from the living.
16/09/21>Leonard Cohen's 'The Traitor'.
A beautiful song/poem about the experience of a physical, sexual, and yet also tired and loveless relationship.
Now the Swan it floated on the English river
Ah the Rose of High Romance it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
And the judges watched us from the other side
I told my mother "Mother I must leave you
Preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
It was half my fault and half the atmosphere"
But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
And the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
And if she withered I would be to blame
The judges said you missed it by a fraction
Rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back
But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralyzed my will
I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
That they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I'm listed with the enemies of love
And long ago she said "I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping
Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"
So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there, I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
And people call me traitor to my face
12/09/21>On recapturing a moment
I long for my memory to become a refrigerator
So as to taste this sweetness forever
Without it going off