Concrete Sky

Slate grey sky pushing through my windows.  Bare tree claws stooping sinisterly over a coal tit.

The clock ticking is the only sound.. It seems to be burrowing through the wall.

In the bleak mid-winter a dead swan was frozen on a snow-covered lake.

The book case makes me feel lethargic. Accusatory spines glance out, neglected. A little fly keeps swarming around the sofa.

My neck is broken and the cushion is too real.

The TV is an opaque monstrosity. Its black face regards me indifferently.

The whiskey was too much but necessary, after the clitoris and the shower. My ears bled, so I drank.

Outside the canteen the school was eerie. Dead corridors and darkness. Walking into my classroom, wine-headed I held a whisky.

The colour-coded timetable looked ridiculous. A drunken lesson to an invisible class.

My feelings did not tally so I dispersed to the stair top to have a cigarette.

I know how Jesus felt. This is my cross and that which I must bear. But god. I hate them so. Her contorted face sour like a lemon cursing in my face

I must not let it filter through to my weekend, I must not, but still.

I woke up after a few hours of passed out sleep wide awake, and still drunk.

So I got up and watched Holiday Inn

Funny how the film is seen as a warm-hearted Christmas classic, best known for the fireside scene with Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas.

The hideous racist spectacle of the black faced white performers on Lincoln's birthday singing about slavery is all but ignored. Conveniently edited out and hilariously juxtaposed with the 'Freedom Song' for Independence Day.

Fred Astaire's fire cracker dance routine was pretty awesome though.

Then I curled up in bed with 'The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity'. Though the title may lead you to believe that it was about two drags queens road-tripping across the States, this is not the case.

It is in effect a mostly forgotten Bible book about Christian martyrs and Wild Animals.

A nice, pleasant read before bed time as you can imagine. Sent me right off.

The concrete sky is looking pretty unappealing right now, and the snow and the wind is adding to my unfavourable impression.

A trek into the city is distinctly uninspiring, even with the free cinema ticket.

But I may have to, otherwise I will melt into this tired old sofa,  my rotting corpse left for the deer I  love so much to feed upon.

The Dreamer

"You don't understand anything"

I tried listening to radio 4, some political debate. And I couldn't bear it. It was like being plugged in to this oppressive fear filled structure which hurt my head.

All these people arguing so cleverly about the state of The World. I can see why F is the way he is.

Oh but the way he slated me when we were talking about god. What can I say? I don't even know what I was trying  to prove. But I remember the arrogance, the self-assured contemptuousness oozing out of him like some black jelly, and I had to stop.

How could I even begin to explain?

Yeah, once upon a time I  had this weird dream where I went to Wonderland with Alice, and The World became this collective Dreamscape where I was somehow not only an actor but the creator, and I looked down and saw that everything had been leading up to this moment, and everything I believed was true, because I was the Dreamer.

And now I don't watch the news, or television, because I don't want to plug myself in to the Collective Insanity,  but I don't know where to go, how to rediscover that purity, or how to forget it.

Fear. That's what I got when I was plugged in. Fear, anxiety, frustration. It seeped out of the radio and into my body, and I had to turn it off.

And now I have classical music playing and I want to follow it somewhere else, to a realm hinted at by the stars and the silent lake and the deer sitting like statues in the garden, and the autumn colours and the moonlight. Like walking in to a painting and floating up to the sky.

There is so much beyond the surface. And sometimes I taste it and I connect to something much higher than me. And then it fades, and I'm back here in the show. In the game - suppress, suppress. So hard to be awake when everyone else is asleep.

Play your role to the best of your ability.

And when you try to convey it to someone else they can't grasp it - how could they? how could anyone?

No. Turn off the radio, turn off the news, and live like a hermit with the deer and the stars beside the water. Seek comfort in remembrance, drift.

Drift away on this beautiful music and leave The World to collapse in upon itself. Disappearing like a dream, eternal consciousness floating out through space.

Autumn Colours

Study full of sun, and folk music, and the water blue and rippled 

The image floats like a painting or a dream

I can't stop staring

I wish I was out on a boat

The autumn colours are so much more vibrant here. I had to close my window because the leaves were drifting in.


I'm so happy that I can sit here, at this vantage point, in this sun trap, looking out.

I guess if I was outside I would be cold. But in here, right now, I am warm.


I've done my marking. And I have a beer beside me and a night of Spanish food and socialising ahead of me.

Running the gauntlet, into the city. I am ready. I am ready, but I am so glad.

 Glad that I don't have to do it every day. Glad that I live here, in this beautiful space, beside the water.


My early morning walks home from nights in the city have taken on an almost mythical intensity.

That path, completely dark, empty, filled with stars.


I remember the last time

Two deer, the side of the road. Just looking right at me, the moonlight bouncing of our backs.

I had to take a deep breath, and stop. A moment or two. Standing still.

The bridge between me and them broken, like in that Robert Frost poem.

Alive, in a world of stars, and moonlight, and silver deer on dark country lanes.


But I must stop

My head hurts.  The sun is low in the sky and burning into my eyes through the old windows.

The music is an entity, floating on the insence swirling through my brain

And I am here, and the room is filled with sunlight.

Night Mirrors

I see you on the side street
Your eyes are lit up in the darkness

I hear the sound of a motorcycle

The lake is black
I can't even be sure that the stars are there
I am rocking gently in the silence

My hands are made of fire

I see you there sitting under the shade of a tree
A tree in a garden submerged by water

A young girl drowned there once

The sound fills my mouth until I cannot speak
There was a bar, I remember, where the dead people sat
The glass was frosted and snow hung gently on the canopies

After the frogs came, there was no point trying any more
Better just to sit, and not to speak. Because anything said was a lie
The truth cradles me in the dark, but I turn away to the window

 I look out at the street

It must be 3am. There is nothing
No cars, no sounds,
not even stars

The road is covered with snow. I watch it fall in a whisper

I am submerged
I am falling deeper inside myself

You are watching me

 I feel your eyes fixed on mine, beside the night mirror
that sits on my cabinet
Your disdain fills the space between my sweat soaked sheets and my piss pot

I hear a sound
A creak

I believe the couple in the painting come out and walk around the house when I am not looking.
They cannot stand forever, frozen on that nineteenth century beach

Her dress is flowing white. He stands upright. A little dog at their feet.
The moon is blue and they are gazing out at the sea

The creaking is too loud. It comes right through my door, into my bed
I can't breathe
Ever since the world began

My nails are too long

The sound of the clipper soothes my mind
When the red boats come too close I prefer to sit alone in this room

I am always sitting alone in this room.

There are three lights that I see across the dark water
They comfort me strangely, like memories of boats on beaches that never existed

I see a sailor somewhere, but he has no face

Helpless

Moments of pure undiluted bliss burst out after long periods of apathy and boredom.
Yesterday spent in bed, avoiding other people. Couldn't read, couldn't work, couldn't even watch TV. The thought of getting up and going into Stockholm cropped up several times but dispersed. Under my sheets it was warm and safe. I didn't need to think.

Then the sun went down and I came alive. The Doors on the radio, the yellow moon hanging over the lake. Insence filled the room. Something about that song, The Crystal Ship, made me decide to be alive again. I read somewhere that it represented the after life phase where you float as if in a dream. Whatever it was, I went outside.

It was pitch black, the garden full of shapes. I was not sure where I was going. But the cottage was lit up. It looked warm and comforting - other people were having conversations by candlelight, by the water. I was not alone. But I was alone and that was also comforting, to know that they were there, but also seperate.

And I sat, stupefied, like I always do when I make it down there in the dark. Too much. The silence, the water, the moon - yellow and partly obscured by clouds. There had always been this scene, and there always will be, and in the words of the 70s soft-rockers, Kansas, we are just dust in the wind

I remembered the last night of the meditation retreat. Me and the other guy in the room had accidentedly broken our vow of silence, and we had gone back to bed. Lying in the darkness, desperately bursting for more talk, more connection. Eventually we decided to be human and broke our silence. We went out - quietly, secretively, afraid of being found out. We went out to the balcony and we sat there for hours, talking against a backdrop of stars.

After not talking for such a long period of time I was overwhelmed. Like I had discovered god somehow - in a conversation, in another human's face.

But I have another memory of that balcony. This time I was alone. I had hit a wall in the day's meditation and had come head-on, face to face with my depression. No way round, no way to distract myself. What was the point of this struggle, this ridiculous, never-ending charade? I had never asked to be here. And yet I must continue running around, doing things, filling up time - why? How much better not to have been born, to have never become conscious in the first place. All the sadness, all the loneliness, all the broken things. Life was misery, the Buddhists had got it - life was suffering.

I had spent a day following this train of thought, and a day in a meditation retreat is like a month in the real world. So as you can imagine, I was not in a very good headspace. And to top it all, I wasn't able to sleep. So I went out to the balcony. And when I got out ------

I had to catch my breath. How can I describe how the sky looked that night? I had never seen stars like that before. Millions. Completely oblivious to my ego pettiness. I was silenced. I was face to face with god. Or so I thought. And then, as if in reply, a shooting star. I followed it across the sky and when it disappeared I collapsed down on the ground. I was nothing in the face of this beauty, this mystery. The veil had been lifted. There was only god. God simply was.

I remembered that again last night, as I sat down by the water. The yellow moon hung low and sent a trail of light across the water to where I sat. And I wanted to swim, to transcend this illusion, to swim across the water. But then what would it be like if I got to the other side? No. I realised it needed to be far away. Needed to seem just out of reach. Because here is where it counted. Here is where we could bring it back.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eye

Lanterns, or, The Vital Importance of Getting to the Bottom of the Garden

The sky was clouded over again, the fish on top of the ice. I broke through the kitchen table and made it outside. I breathed in the plants. They smelt jealous, like death.

There was a fire, beside the water. Or maybe there wasn’t. I can’t quite be sure. Anyway, I decided it was the utmost necessity to go there. So I put on my blindfold and gently tiptoed through the grass.

I felt something on my feet. It was snakes, or was it mosquitoes? They were biting at me. I became tattered, unsure and disorientated. I saw a bone. I scratched. I tore my skin of. Then I saw someone.

It was that Finnish woman with the bad temper. She stood in the middle of the garden. She blocked my way, her arms folded. Her eyes were cold and hypnotic. The blue sky made her look like cardboard.

She said that she was not, under any circumstances, going to clean my room. So I spat in her face and pushed her to the ground. I put on my boots and jumped on her head until it was a beautiful shiny red pulp.

I then took my skipping rope and started swatting the horseflies. They gather frequently, in this swamp.

...

It is now dusk and the clouds are turning pink. There are a few boats on the lake, but no-one is in the cottage.

The wood is getting rotten. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like, to be a piece of rotten wood, all wooden, and rotten. But then I get bored.

Sometimes my eyes sparkle like diamonds. Sometimes I have to pull them out so that I can hear better.

It sounds like Portishead. It smells like shit. The grass has tangled up the white chair.

Sometimes they drive me mad. I get this sad feeling in my solar plexus, like I’m going to cry. But I mustn’t. At least, not until I’ve got to the bottom of the garden.

There’s a light flashing somewhere, across the lake. Maybe it’s flashing inside my head. It makes me want to blink. I look up just in time to see an airplane.

...


“What did you say?” (We were standing beside the smoke under the tree).

“Well I can’t say really, because she’s my friend, but I had a dream about it”

Her skin began falling off. It was all rotten and smelt like the dog corpse I keep hanging in my bedroom. I keep it hanging there, just to remind me, you know, of mortality and brevity and such matters.

Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and hold it up to my nose. It fills me with the sweetest feeling of ecstasy, Like looking at the stars over a lake.

My lantern, my dream, my deathless trance. Nature running naked through my field of bluebottles. They stick to my hair and my face.

“But what did you see?”

“Well I really don’t know, but you know, if we were talking right now, in a dream it would feel exactly the same. So you look out for dream signs. You ask yourself several times a day – how do I know that I am awake?”

Then, once you are satisfied with your conclusion you get out your lantern, and you go outside and submerge yourself in the darkness.

You submerge yourself in the darkness and you walk down to the bottom of the garden. And then, you breathe in the lake and the stars.

You breathe in the lake and the stars, and the breeze and the night flowers. And you ask yourself again “Am I dreaming?”

And if you still do not reach a satisfactory conclusion you console yourself with the fact that you have, indeed, made it to the bottom of the garden.

Deckchairs

White hair gets people's feet tapping 
My brain is not a drug counsellor
Her trainers are Music sitting on mother's lap image
Groovy jazz music lady
Red lipstick, sugar, breasts.
Fat and gazing in the distance
A red-faced bald man adds poignancy to an otherwise voluptuous cappuccino
With an ear in silence he plays with his instrument
What cancer patient greets this fear?
Ladies glowing sapphire, whistling mysteriously behind tapping feet
“I like the conversation that catches when I sit on deckchairs”