Rimbaud

After a passable meal while nursing coffee cups; amid the detritus of the evening, the conversation took an unexpected turn; as I was telling her of my love for poetry and in particular the work of Pam Ayers, she suddenly interjected that for her no-one dead or alive could possibly approach Rambo in terms of sensitivity, poignancy and sheer joy in the possibilities of his language. Though initially caught unawares I quickly recovered and agreed that in my opinion few films had approached the textual minimalism and bleak social commentary of First Blood, in addition i remarked that: “at one point he actually punches a mans head off!” On hearing this her nose twitched and her brow furrowed as the brandy we were drinking flushed her cheeks crimson, making her instantly and to an alarming degree less attractive. Emboldened by her libatory degradation I continued: outlining the plot of the yet to be released forth installment of the trilogy and regaling her with a series of astonishing anecdotes concerning both the weaponry and tactics employed by the US Special Forces (an area of particular interest to me, having as I do a large collection of militaria, including a pair of socks worn at my lai or mylae!). It became apparent (as I propounded my particularly incisive and it must be said dense theory as to the actual tactical efficacy of the exploding arrows used in the second film) that in a bid to impress me this girl had raised a subject of which she had little or no understanding, as I continued she appeared completely out of her depth: visibly confused, her eyes intermittently flitted around the room as if to establish whether other diners were party to our conversation and if so were aware of her blunder. Consistent in my chivalry, I moved to a more general discussion of war and guns, but in doing so I only further exposed the ‘poor thing’s’ woeful lack of knowledge, laying bare the pathetic nature of her conceit in masquerading as my intellectual equal, and in doing so undermining any respect I may have held for her. She had by this stage become positively hysterical in her embarrassment; giggling uncontrollably into her napkin tears streaming down her cheeks as she repeatedly apologised for her behavior. I gallantly accepted her flimsy pretext and called the evening to a close, allowing her some small dignity at least; though as she left it was obvious that the sad creature was in considerable distress as she abandoned the table and ran from the restaurant.

"i'm sorry, could you step aside?...
i seek to avoid any misguided discharge on my part...
yes, disrupting what appears to be a vat of perceived social impropriety...
no thank you; just there: next to that ridiculous asymmetrical container of magnanimity."

lifer john (provisional and incomplete)

lifer john

he's lifer john

and as such

he is lifer john

defined by his

life

and doing life...

lifer john.

"fucking hell mate!"

the bishops fingering

"Me thinks the lady may require a beseeding!" riddled the saturated cleric as with a single swift movement he disillusioned the young maid of her copious under-coverings and mercilessly barricaded her whimpering motherage with the rake-balding of his pulsing heredity rod. the licentious and mal-appointed maiden: ruddy in both cheek and demeanor cursed her contrary accent through filthy tears of acquiescence as the good bishop bellowed in tongues; what our poor unfortunate could only assume to be the Latin rendering of her promised indulgence, though these spittled oaths would provide poor credit with that final divine usurer, little did she know that many a violated and dutifully poxed milker had arrived at those gates only to find themselves laughed down the stairs by angelic hosts upon the rendition of said sad soliloquy; tearfully they'd waddle to the furnace and consider the folly of a life spent en-whore, albeit at the hand of a most noble servant of god.

Gide and Celine

holocaust denying bishop
denies
his denial
as denial

his aphorisms echo
across the Vatican Cellar
and settle silently
on the ears of a long forgotten relic

Cuban heels
crack staccato
under the cassock of a Westphalian cleric
'a rearguard action against bitter reform'

for now
an equating
of liquidation
with abortion
has effectively halted calls for 'his' rehabilitation

sardinia

You biliously endowed
Augmented anxiety,
Back from casually cushioned pipes,
To an un-requested
Overly augmented cavity,
Suspending time
Between enzymic teeth,
Bridged with an accidental oblivion,
Ringed rose in a gum lost to many east of the Ganges

Conclusions shared
‘Regardless of cost”
Grape juice and petrol
‘…do the Commora reach this far west?’
Sanguine refusal on the lips
Of lapsed senators
Echo my own Saxon ignorance,
And so hopes for shared Latin roots
In Hippocratic texts
Fall into screams
And scant hypodermic relief

Dreams of an amply funded
And infinitely pliant-client-centered-anylgesicaly-liberal-streamlined-ergonomic-haven
Melt into old world machismo,
As the lead bites Trajan’s column
And Naples bins? Remain its streets,

Though the proscribers demeanour and polish attest
To a singular awareness of linear design and propriety

At this point I weep

I think

Perhaps

Though with so little fluid who can tell?

THE CAUSE OF THIS ILLNESS:
An out-outsidedness:
Removed from its exteriority and placed in another’s beyond,
Medicated to near destruction
And so found
Stereotypically circular,
And though not Dante:
The tenuous linguistic link is… as above dubious but sufficient.

And so tributes pour in,
Tributes seep
Leak
Stumble to a greater whole,
Epitaphs glide smooth
And cold, carved,
Adamant.

Harvested by the ton
From council creaking tomes,
Fractured, flimsy and inoffensive,
Atrophied,

Static, silent
On the lips of widows
And
The soon to kick and break boys

2.
Lauren placed the flowers on the grave of her
Youthful and tragically dead brother,
She read her own elegant eulogy
And burst into tears,
‘My god this is emotional...
'It' will never be this emotional again'

She will never so eloquently assist
In an early emerging dawn
Bereft
She will miss,
Not the agitating complexity
Of a very living Love,
But more: the helpless canape’d crying crises
And black gloved
Liberty of a drunken fleeting cortege,
She would never be this emotional again.

Difficulty in understanding exactly how the small blunt blade found itself in your leg and a fire escape cosh

Try as you will
To assemble a history
Noble and nostalgic,
Impose gallantry
On
Timid terrified sycophancy,
No,
True you cannot resemble heroically
The bestiary of a favoured fantasy,
Never managing
To accommodate linear morality,
In an adolescence at odds with decency,
I am sorry.

The Israeli chief of staff
Has on his wall a picture of Auschwitz
Nuclear ambiguity

RD Laing 'dealt' with schizophrenics


William Burroughs went to school at Los Alamos


All UK teenagers killed in gang violence loved sport


Particularly football

Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman never tarried past slumber
Shrewd
Though reclusive
He knew
That on a silent slightly Scandinavian island
Cold feet breed daemons
And short of talk or
Man or cat
Nothing on a wet day to distract
Incessant laughing/mocking choirs
Recounting from internal towers
Blunders gaffs the nasal twang of his voice

In addition he
Could decay
Without the
Worry of
Last night’s drunken proposal (proposition) admission
Dignity!
?
A mad bandy man runs naked alone in the cracking northern night
Cackles
Confesses
Two shrivelled sticks
Dance behind a sofa
As a tearful rendition serenades
The carpet’s geometric maids
Then
Not for him the sore head bed
But the stumbling
Shambling
Shaking
Hairy dog coffee morning
As quizzically
The carpets courteous courtiers
No longer vocal
Simply giggle wriggle and hum

literature should infuriate before it inspires transliterate, confound and confuse as it communicates. non of these is mutable or mutually interdependent; it suffices for text to to do any one of these. "seventeen billion buys a pair of shoes on a good day... twenty one on a bad one. church group may assist with the cost of dying; lead lined care framed"
unsigned.

in the after glow

short order: sentient and other-worldly and over wordy tendency. every city has its own nuclear bunker, that is a facility in which you or they may survive the Armageddon. the main problem with these facilities is that nobody now knows their whereabouts , that is whereabouts they that is the bunkers are. as to this: they did and now they don't. this lack is a reference to a presence of an unknowing, twelve men did but they don't not anymore. as with the red book of hergest(his spelling) king arthur awaits an awakening of a shadowy order; welsh nazi's occupy canarfon castle(no guess found) sapphic in the support they provide for both language and genocide.

what am i doing?

compounding the problems of the present he had realized that the inevitable waiting task and in preparation of or for that mission (his hyperbole) he found himself recourseing to extended non punctuated language.(his full stop) growing anxiety is or was and is emergency procedural procedure. she could and does realize who she is; no bitterness slash vitriol just a creeping sense of uneasy uneasiness and in this the root of his/her platitudes placating and in doing so emphasizing above inadequacy.

the thing is...

Attempted a philosophical exercise intended to release me from the universe’s ethical chains. It was in reality something of a poor version of crime and punishment; I stole some money and put it on a horse in the belief that the universe would conspire to make me win and so help me on my way to becoming a superman: no longer fettered by the chains of morality da di da… Raskilnikov went to prison and my horse lost. So it has gone with most of my projects of this kind, though in my youth I managed to subvert nearly all of my inherited morality; a process that has indelibly marked me with a deep distrust of youth. An attitude inevitably placing me at odds with a society that so venerates tight bald innocence. We are all given a moment in life when we may reform or erase everything grace has provided in that brief, eternal spell from birth to the first sticky sprouting of tufting aggressive indolence and self assurance. For me it was an impossibly angry blackness, ignorance tinted and flecked with Sicilian intractability, the fundamental problems with this project are painfully obvious in hindsight and hysterically accurate as my present analysis may be it does very little to ease my subsequent psychological distress. My psyche like a woman scorned; hates the part of myself rejected by my ‘brothers’ and hates more the brothers. Significant in this fractured narrative is an uncle who only showed awe in the light of my transgressions: pride in his nephew’s atrocities. At drunken wedding he would warn with glee the weak white progeny of his recent wife: “they will kick off your door while you sleep! Or even while you’re awake! They don’t care! They’ll do anything! Those boys… my boys… my boy.”
“Thanks dad”
But to be fair my dad is dead and would have singularly disapproved, disavowed and disowned all those things than are the preserve of the living. Unless you are Confucian. And it was perhaps for that reason; desiring direct interference from my ancestors, ancestor. I adopted a friend’s Chinese family: ate eggs filled with ducklings, dropped ‘l’s’ and gambled.

On Fugu

It was at lunch in a restaurant that shall remain nameless that I first tasted Rape Beef. The eatery in question was a -----/--------/---- brassiere specializing in said bovine delicacy. It is said that RB combines all the elements of our most popular meat based treats while at once addressing the desire in present in most modern men to transgress vicariously; it allows the diner to participate in a positive orgy of blood lust and depravity during lunch and without his needing to change shoes.
On request a diner could obtain a biography, of some poor beast; complete with a written description of its final days, or for a significant surcharge a video of highlights from the killing floor. It is not difficult to deduce the target demographic for this cuisine. What did prove surprising was the popularity of RB among the legions of progressively minded ethical consumers.

Inevitably things could at times become slightly over heated: usually at the weekends and during the evening service, this was mostly down to an excess of alcohol, but on occasion the meat or more accurately the meat menu was to blame; there were several instances of wealthy patrons being asked to leave after they were found to be excessively aroused by the whole experience. There was no malice in these expulsions and the disruptive patrons were inevitably re-admitted to conclude their meal once they had relieved themselves at a nearby facility, as such a degree of symbiosis existed between the two establishments it was decided that they should merge. This decision was taken exclusively by the management and initially met with serious resistance from both sets of workers. I am told that the ethical custom dropped off around this time. And though at the time this was of little concern in the burgeoning economic climate it can now be seen as a definite turning point. In time cross-pollination twixt the brothel and bistro (sorry) had led to the most controversial/progressive/illegal service: namely rape rape. As you can no doubt see; by the time I came to eat there the initial premise of my story had collapsed under the weight of inevitability that is I suppose a human inevitability. I don’t know when it went wrong was it when the men from the sex trade got involved? Was it when the ethical eaters left? Or was it all fucked the moment it started? Rape beef indeed!

an article too grounded in short fiction

Could you come down to the prayer room? We seem to have a problem.

The same problem?

Yes.

Is it another lay practitioner?

No, I’m afraid that this time it’s a novice. Classic case: as with the others he is showing external signs of some deep inner peace.

External signs… a deep inner peace?

Yes. It was the Wednesday meeting you see.

Yes. Has he anything to say?

Yes it’s beautiful really, enigmatic yet concise and relevant. Like a white flame; dancing before your eyes; captivating and consuming though illuminating…yes, beautiful.

Yes! I understand, but can you please try and keep yourself together. The last thing we need is for this to spread any further. Not again.

No, of course. I am sorry.

Have you left anyone with him?

Yes: one of the Cambodians.

Good, no danger there then.

Danger?

Oh yes. Sorry this is brother -----: he has been sent from our European office. To keep an eye and write a report.

Hello.

Hello. You said there was no danger. Cambodians: what did you mean exactly?

Well, it seems that they’re completely immune: something in their character maybe? They just never seem to succumb to the thing.

Guilt?

No, unfortunately not. I mean that’s something we can work with. No, this is different. Obviously we persevere with them, though they never make it beyond the level of senior novice.
Worrying.

Though they are invaluable in times such as these.

Yes, I should think they are.

And are we any closer to understanding what is at the root of all this?

It appears that we, who are native to this place- these islands are unusually susceptible to a condition resembling looking like; externally appearing to be something approaching an enlightenment.

Enlightenment!? This is what you want me to report? Surely we have not reached the point where it is necessary to resort to and in resorting to; to use this kind of emotive language? I feel I now perceive what is at the root of your and make no mistake when I say yours I mean our and by that I mean your problem. This language! How can one: anyone communicate adequately with what is obviously an overstretched and at times outraged populace whilst using language? And language like this! I see your problem. Enlightenment is that what you wish me to say?

I am afraid you may have to. For if we and by we I mean you and I and also other members. If we do not use language such as this to describe a condition such as this: one that demands a description such as this. If we fail to do this at this point; I that case I feel that is not just our presence on these islands that is in doubt. No I feel and by that I mean think our entire future may well be in question.

I’m sure you’re right and I feel as you as to the urgency of the entire episode as it is or as it may be. But (ominously) if we are to address this ‘crises’ (his punctuation) then I feel that we must feel out what lies at the root causes of the whole episodic whole. (The narrator having felt no need to intercede at last broke his silence to apologise for the turn that _____’s speech, or his rendering of it had taken.) Our group has long prided itself on the major role it has taken in maintaining and imposing of linearity, that is lines or the idea of lines on and through and in the minds of those cultures and people and philosophies lacking in…lines (his pause) or linearity. Maybe it has been the unparalleled success we have had over the years that has made us complacent; in any case we find ourselves now facing a race, and I feel that my membership of a race allows me to employ such language. A race so completely lacking in both linearity or indeed any form of lines so as to make our task nye on impossible. It is at times like these that we must truly question why we truly are what we are and do what we do! I do not! Mean that we should interrogate what we do: as to my mind interrogation is an abhorrent process akin to torture. Rather we attempt to glean from the line what its intention is in showing its or his self to us in such a curved manner.

So you think that it is a lack of linearity then?

Fucking hell! Do you not know anything? What else could it be?
Forgive me but have we not always been taught that: “our line is the line of understanding and humility.” And that being the case could it not be that these men have inherited a line of which we are unaware? Could it not be that the appearance of curvature is merely an illusion a perspectival trick?

I am fast losing patience with you? You know as well as I do that: “ the curve may appear straight until one gains sufficient distance. And so may appreciate at last it’s inherent deviance” this is the basis of faith! We know that it is ‘possible’ that linearity is merely an illusion but anything can be an illusion. Linearity is truth! If we start to question that then what the fuck have we got?

Of course I apologise.

Don’t apologise! Just help me to get a handle on this whole mess.