The Tourist

By Hugo Hamper-Potts

Pantomime in the soil

They cut me free from the past, that crowd of voices, and enticed me wonderfully into the warm present. Amid tall and unfurnished grassblades, I sensed a swirling resonance of the sanguine which day-to-day forgets me. A perfect interval between the movement of their lips (soft, scented) and their unfurling melodies:

- Come, lie here, so I can flatter and decide, placate and confide, twirl nothing in my fingers in the peripherals of your eyes. Free the jocundity from your belly and adopt the speech of someone ready; I have palms soft to the touch, pleasing stream-like arms, a woodland of a womb, and hair that dances in the wind.

O.Wilks

The Kingfisher

A kingfisher darts downward, fervently, across the twilight canvas. Smooth muscles and pure instinct cause few waves to be created as he poaches his third meal today. Whacked against the perch, the powerless minnow withers into non-existence - much like my dreams being descaled indoors by the weary fishwife at the dining table.


Adam Thomas

Introduction to the book 'If this is a man'

Voi che vivete sicuri You who live safe
Nelle vostre tiepide case In your warm houses,
voi che trovate tornando a sera You who find warm food
Il cibo caldo e visi amici And friendly faces when you return home.
Considerate se questo è un uomo Consider if this is a man
Che lavora nel fango Who works in mud,
Che non conosce pace Who knows no peace,
Che lotta per mezzo pane Who fights for a crust of bread,
Che muore per un sì o per un no. Who dies by a yes or a no.
Considerate se questa è una donna Consider if this is a woman
Senza capelli e senza nome Without hair, without name,
Senza più forza di ricordare Without the strength to remember,
Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,
Come una rana d'inverno. Like a frog in winter.
Meditate che questo è stato Never forget that this has happened.
Vi comando queste parole. Remember these words.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore Engrave them in your hearts,
Stando in casa andando per via When at home or in the street,
Coricandovi alzandovi When lying down, when getting up.
Ripetetele ai vostri figli. Repeat them to your children.
O vi si sfaccia la casa Or may your houses be destroyed,
La malattia vi impedisca May illness strike you down,
I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi May your offspring turn their faces from you

VII.i. Florence (An Experiment in Parataxis)

VII.
i/iv

and though no delight is she to behold -
cold metal shackles shift below
          black velvet wrapping;
dynamos of African ivory and regal gold -
bright rings encircl'ng oblivion -
deep holes symmetric'ly punch'd on a slanted sheet -
tar trickl'ng behind a gaze beautiful enough to
melt my prickled lashes like chick'n spines in broth -
suh - suh - SUH - SUH - shh-ee creeps,
crippledly -
higgledy - piggledy
earthly -
unknowingly - towards that dry knoll
(with a point of a rustic thumb and forefinger; artlessly slim hands - hers, handguns) when the bell tolls and pilgrimage will cease and start and she will begin again -
a little dumber and half as dark.
---
and me?
emasculated - born still - castrated - circulation constipated by choked-up mule blood -
          I need only learn her silent dogma -
ancient Gamachean wisdom -
that black mama's creed -
theologian medicine to piss and bleed that colourless poison out -
osmosis on it's head through language and
paraphrased for ease.


D.B.B

For a Poet

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.



For A Lady

She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.

by Countée Cullen (1903-1946)

Laurie (November 2009)

Genevieve Johnson

Sketches by Hugo Hamper-Potts

Three Points

Nervously emitted from a blue sky mind,
Baby put across the third point not feeling inclined.
Delivered noiselessly, secrets as clear as cloud,
And glamorous kindness in ammunition,
Certain words not to be said aloud,
Dreamt ideas bereft of fruition.

Magnanimously admitted on paper and signed,
The first two points told unreservedly combined.
Without fear, just clear and concise,
Joined intrinsically over imaginary borders,
What is said now reiterated twice,
Two hearts united as love hoarders.


Adam Thomas

The year in half

That winter he was constantly startled by the early advancing in of darkness, effaced day after day. It hadn't been half an afternoon yet but the space of daylight was vortex-ed by the onslaught of last night's recycled blackity. It saw him getting into cars, whirling through swing-doors, kicking at the crowd before him. It caught him on the gradual gradient up from Underground above and alongside windows and dry estates. Constantly startled because the back of summer he felt was still propped up against him. Had the stilted months between then and now really conclaved this ill-fitted winter around him? How his handsome days of length were now swallowed up by Autumn's premature, gluttonous castration; it all traveled away too easily with an indicative reticence, into a reigning winter evening. Dry-in-seconds home towels were now the washing-up cloths in the local dryer, white wine (bottles of the stuff) became cosy still rum, huddled in groups on stones- now huddled in packs around invisible cylinders in passageways (six O'clock/the burnt out ends of smoky days). He looked at the change in company around him; in awe of the subtle specter of the quotidian. Smiles like facts, snatched from the damp sand that the somnolent tide of warm months had left to fade and dry.

O.Wilks

Dents

New scholar in non-aggressive shirt and cardy,
Latest Camel in a well-spoken mouth,
Outside the same building at similar hours,
Whirling mind gunned at by day-to-day diatribes
(Disguised by powerpoints and glances at the clockface),
All pale,
All huddled apart by room to think to digest it all,
Possessed of true regularity,
Reposed by near actuality,
And cursed by the common binary-
Popular and dull.

O.Wilks

BNP - Barely Needed Publicity

"Representing the North West of England in the European Parliament stands the BNP (British National Party). May it just as well be the Monster Raving Looney Party, or do the BNP really have something to offer Europe? No. They don’t.

The party’s recent local election success in Barnet and other UK white-frustrated hate-pockets, coupled with the pantomime-villainesque appearance of the party’s rotund leader, Nick Griffin, on the BBC’s Question Time has given the BNP and their voters a strong, yet ill-deserved sense of political importance.

As Griffin embarrassingly chuckled his way through serious allegations on Question Time, including his own Holocaust Denial, it was clear to see that this man was in no sense a charismatic political leader. However, the show certainly grabbed the concentration of the nation with a staggering 11 million viewers.

From his appearance on Question Time, it struck me that he was a man, fully aware that his beliefs and ‘morals’ were flawed, yet in a hyper-antagonistic manner found great pleasure in the controversy surrounding his views, and also the media frenzy that had arisen. Perhaps this was a pseudo-shambolic tactic pre-planned by Griffin for his appearance on the centre stage? Or was he really no better than a teenage boy reluctant to admit an obvious defeat?

Two things were particularly disturbing in the aftermath of Griffin’s Question Time appearance; firstly the percentage of young people who previously had never heard of the BNP who now knew who they were and what dreadful things they stood for, whom I believe were previously better off, and secondly, more disturbingly, the small fraction of young social-networkers that emerged feeling the BNP ‘weren’t that bad’ and that now felt no shame publicly admitting this.

Now, I’m not for one minute suggesting that changing your Facebook status to “I don’t mind the BNP” is an automatic swastika in the ballot box for the BNP come the next general election, or am I? After all the immense popularity of television shows such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Mock the Week, which are primarily targeted at a younger audience, prove perfectly that the most popular comedy is controversial. This mainstream contro-comedy and general rebellion against forced political-correctness is worrying as a small fraction of young, possibly first time voters, of whom have yet to acquire any interest national politics and affair, may see the ultra-controversial aspect of voting BNP as a good joke. The pure notoriety of the party itself, much expanded by recent press, provides a potent chamber of opportunity for a possible anti-political uprising.

It would be trivial to suggest our nation is on the precipice of the rebirth of Hitler, or that the Queen in future may end her annual speech with a palm-down fascist salute to an Aryan horizon. Yet, it’s important to observe the infiltration of such a party into the minds and thoughts of our nation, and maybe we should pay attention to 1930’s Germany- also in a time of recession, and we must learn from their mistakes, and trust in each other, to incinerate the hate and racism that is growing within."

-
a Big Bastard

It's all for the best

One of the most beautiful songs ever written

If the world ends


I just about managed to forget you
when you appear in a dream
and you're even more beautiful there than i remember you being
so I've come to decide that fate
is telling you to not go
and considering this
I want you to know

If the world ends
I hope you're here with me
I think we could laugh just enough
to not die in pain
if the world ends
it won't finish you
you're not the type they can capture
you flit like a fly catcher
they can't pin you down
can't pin you down

in my dream you're playing with
buckets of sand
and water was running through both of your hands
and I don't think I ever heard you speaking
cause i was too wrapped up in the dream I was dreaming

So if the world ends
I hope you're by my side
I don't think with you here
it will be too much pain

And when you cry
darling I wish you'd feel my love
your heart is way beyond capture
flitting like a fly catcher
they can't pin you down
no, they can't pin you down
can't pin you down
can't pin you down
can't pin you down


By Fyfe Dangerfield

Spot the difference

By our very own Hugo Hamper-Potts




By Manchester's very own Joy Division

A Private Dissection of the Public #3

Waiting for an aeroplane

Deep in concentration, the man sat opposite me wearing only a thin shirt, chinos, a few tattoos (visible as old experiences from the Navy), deck shoes; no socks and his ageing heart on his ageing sleeve.
I admired him as he looked up from his book, legs crossed - laid back. He searched the surrounding faces, then opened and flicked through to the back of his Pocket Spanish Dictionary, before beginning again his book from where he had left off.
Me, I just looked straight through him, after all my heart was somewhere else.

Adam Thomas

VI. A Strolling Drunk

i watch the mouth of heaven open
in yawning, flecked with milk -
fierce with teeth
i watch alleys bend
like grey flags of silk, caught by draft or by wind;
crooked roads trodden with
smiling daffodils at either end;
i hear saints weeping above me
and saliva,
strung together,
it's pathetic, really -
a very personal dissonance born of a very private melody -
there is a shrill note in the clap of my heels,
and as i keel over, admission spills
'let this be over',
quietly,
i plea,
          though no reply.
agitated by spittle on my knees
and bare feet,
i grunt and
i go inside
wherein a priest and a solider
are waiting to meet
me, their maker
fertile with conceit, yet
barren and dry
a mutiny of self
all deserted of pride.


D.B.B

The Nereid Monument

Partial battle, fallen glory,
The licked implications of this limbless edifice.
Taught yet headless,
The sense in dropping what capital gain
From relics encumbered by a glory fallen.

No arm to protract the blade,
Found wanting, protected snarling, or
Wispy headrush that retracts the swipe.
This foul vision of crestfallen might,
This hole within a whole that certain, might.

Once gods, look they were ethereal,
Now snapshots in the strange, flashy box
And reduced to passing awe,
The stoic impression like residue from
A history learn't but not gained.

Fleeting- here's 'another one', jubulant in
Memory, but if their heads remained
A snarl would surely on their faces be ingrained,
And like the dowdy imprint, fleshly made,
The torture of immortality duly fades.

O.J.Wilks

A Comedy of Deception

And what an end to a soul's companion!
This false consciousness was enough to kill
Marking two graves with deliberation
Setting the cradle of doomed news against the sill,

In the callous trajectory of cold regret
An odour that blemished all it knew
Somehow post-obsequious; bereft of rancour
Obliged to the faith it slew,

Propped upon passing entice is an
Evasion that unwinds the knotted rapport,
Eases a distance in like clay mud
Smothering the cracked dry floor,

Of fertility this tactile essence
Has quickly untaught itself
And is now a figure on a page 23,
Out of favour with itself,

In awe of some Gideon else.

A Landscape

Rising gradually, flames licking his prodigious body, he yawns; continuing to soar. Upon rising to his optimum height, Sun's steely gaze overpowers the sky's army of cloud. As if waves, they curl, roll recede and retreat. Gazing into every available space, leaving no stone unturned, or rock unraveled. Piercing through the trees, with twigs entwined like the limbs of lovers, the light sketches silhouettes onto the ground behind the bark.

Soldiers retract momentum;
To nature's battleground they sing,
Partnered by the birds below - composing.
Sheltering behind swords to shield them.

Bidding farewell and Sergeant succumbing.
Underneath the glinting leaves, running parallel to a clearing,
Whilst the symphony rises to a new tone,
Water runs over pebbles, as if skin over bone.

Damp soil brooding and bearing life; blades of grass claw themselves upward, protruding skyward. They cut violently into the air in desperation to fulfill their growth, spawned from their admiration for the trees above. Echoes pass the lips of the wind as it speaks sweepingly through the valley, causing the leaves on the trees to take partners and waltz; wearing shimmering raindrops as sequined dresses.

Reflections in the water,
Distorted vision; beauty dissipated.
The skin's current ever calmer,
Stillness obvious; peace invigorated


Adam Thomas

A Private Dissection of the Public #2½

It's funny how a small room full of people makes one feel lonelier than an empty auditorium. It's the noise. All the voices blend into one horrible noise that sounds like a poorly announcer sneezing down a tannoy. Victoria looked at me very fleetingly, slicing through the sonic shit with her eyes. She then escorted me to another smaller room down the hallway which was very bland and very airy. I nearly suffocated in all the air. We exchanged alot of petty conversation about how our half terms had been and about what we had done for Halloween and if we had seen any fireworks for Guy Fawkes night. I felt very much that I was wasting my time.

The door opened and the air rushed out as a woman with little glasses and plump legs walked in. She was Miss Illingworth. She was going to discipline me but all I could think about was her strange figure and how it would look naked and roasting in an oven. This was probably because it was nearly Christmas and because I was hungry. She surprised me and I didn't like it. For a start, I should have liked to had known who exactly I was to be disciplined by. I could have worked out how to lubricate them into liking me if I knew who they were. Secondly, I was surprised by how she was. All I had to go on was her name, which was alot bigger and prouder than she was herself.

She looked at me with alot of reverence. I thought she might call me sir or doctor and entertained the idea as long as I could without seeming distracted. She began using words far too long and intricate for her little head to understand and asking me all sorts of indecipherable questions. These questions caught me off guard on more than one occasion. I was very busy thinking about all the different ways I could cook her and all the titles she'd give me all the while. Whenever one of these questions came up, I would answer woo-ingly.
"How do you feel you're enterprising here?"
"I don't know really. I think I was quite naughty at the beginning, I think. I think that's changed now though. I don't think I'm being quite as naughty anymore."
My answers got me thinking about girls and how half the things men say to girls they say because they're not thinking about it. They're thinking about how the bitch'd look splayed out. How she'd look waiting for the stake. Maybe I was going to have sex with this fat little woman. I quickly shrugged the notion off as simple curiosity and masculine over-analysis. I blinked lazily and returned to the conversation.

Victoria was talking again and asking questions. I answered more coherently without thinking, though still stifled by the airy-ness of the room. They kept saying how intelligent they thought I was. Soon, the conversation was over and I thanked them both for the meeting and I told Miss Illingworth how it was a "great pleasure" to have met her. She said the same back and I believed her. She thought me a genius.

I left the building out the front entrance and entered the schoolyard. There were boys littered about and playing around and looking at them was like looking at a wall of televisions playing the same tape at different times and tempos. My eyes darted between all the different cliques, watching the warped sketch show that appeared to be the only thing on. The same boy in the same clothes under different skin. I had always been quite intimidated by them but the weather was cold enough now to bring out the reds and the golds of their faces. They looked like summer postcard characters without the sun and the sea and with scarves. I was almost even warmed by the strength of character in that old schoolyard.

***

I had to catch a bus home and when I boarded I found the bus driver to be a kind man. He kept telling jokes. I dropped my cigarette papers in front of him and he reached for them claiming that he thought them to be a twenty pound note and laughing and laughing. I joined in laughing, though, initially, I didn't know how to approach so gregarious and jolly a man. I struggled to produce my pass, managing instead to pull a handful of assorted identification and banking and library cards out of my wallet all at once. This provided ample stimulus for the man's sense of humour and wit and he offered me a game of solitaire. He laughed again and I did as well. He turned after that. He snatched my pass and almost denied me entry into the bus, not believing the little photograph to be me. I protested and he started to smile. I began to think he was mad. I told him that I had had a haircut and that the photo was dated, but he still smiled. I realised then that he was joking and he said that it was definitely me and let me on. I felt a fool for a little while afterwards but was certain he was mad. He was friendly though.

I was usually paranoiac on the bus, but was comforted by the numerousness of the elderly in whose eyes I saw an envy for (amongst other things) my youthful retention of warmth. I saw in their eyes, which flashed at me over and over, a hunger for youth and on their backs, layers and layers of thick coats. The burdens of age I thought, and smiled to myself. I felt happy to be young and alive and fell to sleep very gently on the bus.

D.B.B

Aquaplaning

"...and the dog started to lope alongside my car like a fat dolphin, but
he was too heavy and old, and very soon gave up.
And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with
the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears."
- Vladimir Nabokov

A Private Dissection of the Public #2

The place was not 'trendy' or interesting. It was shabby and dank. My feet were cold the whole day and the floor was tiled and dirty like a junkies kitchen. The people were as intelligent as the place was pretty. They were generous, however, with their coffee which prompted suspicion in me because of the surroundings. Everybody looked relaxed and young which also made me suspicious, even though some were nearly twenty years my elder. It's not as though I wanted them broken down but they were very non-chalant and queer about everything.

The man who consulted me about my English course was small but stately and was just as non-chalant as the rest. His non-chalance was charming though. He looked tired and slouched but spoke quickly and took alot of breaths, rarely looking me in the eyes though sometimes staring holes in my head or my feet or my hands. He seemed very bored by my questions until I used the words 'expatriate American poets' which seemed to prick at him and alert him to my smarts. He even made a joke about a poet named Henry James which I feigned laughing at because I didn't know who Henry James was. Words left his mouth like bullets from a machine-gun so I assumed he wasn't thinking about what he was saying and chose to ignore him, and whenever I stopped, he wasn't answering my questions at all. It wasn't even a conversation. At least he looked like an English teacher.

I walked away from the man, clumsily taking a green post-graduate leaflet and hurriedly swapping it for a red under-graduate one. I could feel his eyes on my head as I walked off, but I was confident in my steps and knew I had made a good impression. It was mutually understood between us that we would never see one another again and wouldn't lose sleep over it, but it was too late to say anything. He probably knew it during the interview, but didn't say anything. I'd known it all day. My place next to him had been assumed by another student and I didn't have to hope he'd miss me or regret not answering my questions. I was probably the brightest person he'd spoken to all day, not that it was any mean feat.

I wandered around for a little while and bought my second cup of coffee and watched the people in the cafe. Two Indians opposite me were embroiled in a debate about heritage and politics, overseen by a large, diplomatic Negro with a curly beard. Opposite them sat two kind faced white women who were discussing their evening plans and telling eachother how well they were. This made me smile because I knew that they were both probably very unwell. That if they had sense, they wouldn't be well. I couldn't blame them. The scar in the sky outside had swollen considerably since the morning I'd arrived and the clouds began to rain lightly, plashing on all the autumn outside and making little grey streams and estuaries of muddy water in the pavement. I watched water collect in the angles of crisp packets on the pavement outside and remembered being a cleaner and having my gloves dampened by pulpy water whenever I picked up a wet empty crisp packet. At the end of work after I'd removed my gloves, my hands would never be wet but would always be pruney and cold. The memory disgusted me a bit, especially with the influx of people into the cafe who carried a wet doggy musk with them and their coats. I stepped up to leave.

As I reached the exit I was stopped awkwardly by a stout freckled woman with a big smile and little eyes. Her smile was framed by convex cheeks that were very red, though a different shade to the other. Her accent was frankly unrecognisable but as broad and thick as she was and I thanked God I wasn't two inches closer to her because I imagined her breath to smell. After asking kindly and receiving my consent she began interviewing me for her website, although halfway through it seemed to me more like an un-confidential survey. I answered her questions shortly and dryly.

These were some of her questions:
"What were your expectations of today?" she asked.
"Erm, I don't know. I mean, I didn't really have any. I don't know what I expected. It exceeded my expectations though. My expectations have been exceeded." I replied.
"What was your favourite aspect of today?" she asked.
"..Probably, erm," I had to stop and think, "all the foliage at the back of the building. All those purple leaves on the wall. That was quite nice. Classical." I replied.
"Uh, okay, how'd you find out about today?" she asked.
"Online. On the internet." I replied.

I thought I was being very funny and I thought she might get upset enough to leave me to my leaving. She didn't get upset but did leave just as quickly as she'd appeared.

I began to consider the consequences of my flippancy and became frightened. I had ignored the students and people before, but now I didn't even notice them. I wondered whether the dean (or whatever they're called) would see my video and think me a smart bastard. He might find me somehow and reprimand me. Limit my prospects. Maybe the English teacher would see it. Perhaps he'd think me witty and give me a publishing deal through the university, though probably not. Maybe I would just look like a childish fool.

I tried to stop thinking about it but couldn't. I decided I would justify my rudeness to the interviewing woman by looking at the ivy behind the building I had half-lied about. If it was my 'favourite' thing about this place as I had claimed, I would certainly feel less like a childish fool. In order to get to the back of the building, I had first to walk past all the other buildings which were just as charmless and academic and dull as they had been before the rain. The rain actually made them more attractive, if only because they presented me with the option of warmth and shelter and light. I soldiered on until I came to the rearmost face of the main building and my eyes, though squinted, met the red ivy on the wall and immediately consented that yes, indeed, it was my favourite part of the whole building. It snaked about the wall as though it were breathing and conscious. It looked like bullock blood had been tossed against the wall and had dried like a fresco, the leaves like the bloody hands of it's many makers. An organic fresco quite detached from the rest the buildings. I thanked God I hadn't lied because I would have felt guilty and an idiot if I had. The poor woman didn't need it.

I left after this and tumbled over as I walked down the stairs.

D.B.B

Reason against 'further education'

"I paid no attention whatever to books or study and regarded lectures as a joke which, in fact, they were if you discern anything funny in mawkish, obtuse mumblings on subjects any intelligent person could master single handed in a few months. The exams I found childish and in fact the whole university concept I found to be a sham. The only result my father got for his money was the certainty that his son had laid faultlessly the foundation of a system of heaving drinking and could always be relied upon to make a break of at least 25 with a bad cue. I sincerely believe that if university education were universally available and availed of, the country would collapse in one generation." Flann O'Brien.

A Private Dissection of the Public #1

As my feelings danced


Come forward in waves, as friendship
Mounts the summit of a glistening mountain
And yet, increases far below
Under lights - across dance floors.

I walked back, dizzy in the dark,
Fell into my bed - spinning all the while,
For a matter of minutes I slept, then
You left (with big plans and a little emotion).
But I journeyed on with fresh faces,
Only time will tell if,
A feeling of emptiness will
Crush me ever so slightly... I journey still


Adam Thomas

V.

V.

Genesis 15:13-14
And He said unto Abram: 'Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

Pop
Small sloe seeds
lodged, undisturbed
in their mummies;

pudding tummies that swallow themselves

forced outwards
shot inwards, and outwards again -
          Can you smell that?

thick and still thickening -
day old black blood
ink and oil and clay
curdling
lying and disturbed in a petrey dish
overseen by a Scientist
a Thinker, a Jacob,
with pale shining hands
(gloved, of course) and how lean!

examining, cross examining, recording the scene
with pane blue pupils -
agate eyes without pain
and dull gold strands -
all sweat and hair

         So tell me then,
What difference is there between Savage and Man?
when
Curiousity adopts it's crueller face
and the only place to retire to
is a frightened mind, which, by design
is perpetually plagued by pale relics
and pale ghosts
          Never yours,
          mine.




D.B.B

One of my favourite paragraphs committed to paper in the past hundred years:

"I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the nightm sure that this was all and all and all and not caring, Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch, Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now."

No Trial

They escorted him to a quarry-
Physically, lackadaisically-
And knifed him in the yard,
in the heart.

Within his impervious glance a silent
Figure of a man, lifting impish hands,
Occasionally witnessed by the dying mob.

A beaten-blood dripping from his cankered toes,
Having walked endlessly for the past year,
Year and a few.

They delivered him to the air and
Screened his cloth for extra gear.
Last whimper of breath enclosed by
The nimble fingers at his throat;
Well, it's never the brave that easily go.

What life left absorbed into a
Seeping canescence, those haggard
Palpitations of a gormless victim
Dithering in the rot.

A sack of brittle motion still.
Heroic in the cowardly wind.

They knifed him in the yard,
In the heart,
And bought snow to cover him in.

O.J. Wilks

Upon a meticulous street...

Upon a meticulous street where I hang
The opulence of my tread, the hollow presence of
Arms, faces, legs,
Racing to the nearest
Lodging of cultural death.
The pace of a child’s wait dependent on the morning
Is like the skin of consumption, tirelessly drawing
Upon the garrulous drips of early sun,
Under which my senses run.

And pausing by the roadside in earnest absence
My watch is checked, my head is lurched,
I’m obsessed with each moment’s step,
Direction pert,
And smarmy in the safer light,
Always tinkering by the weekday pool,
Half naked under half my attire,
Smelling the splash of weekend fire,
Then clearing my eyes of it all-

In two clicks of the railway tracks
My mind has filtered that which it stored
And drained the excess to the dregs,
Leaving a sobriety as equally thin
As it is overly fed,
As equally wrought as
It is bored,
Squeezed of the essence of ‘when?’
Pumped with the stink of ‘what for?’

O.J. Wilks

And I miss you with a passion

You are the sea, forever spiritual, intelligent and beautiful.
I am a wave, lonely, but completed by you.
I continuously move forwards and backwards; away from you and returning to you. But next year the shore will no longer call me...Next year King Canute's command will be obeyed.


A.T.

A loving father, a difficult wife

A concrete Eden.
Pave the way forward,
Toward the lowly exit.
Trouble in Paradise lovingly overlooked,
Her eyes -
Just an organ, an organ.
He's playing to your tune no longer.


Adam Thomas

III + IV

III.
They wanted to scoop out his heart,
Stop him from ticking and from beating,
Between and amongst the faithless he darts,
A gold-grey man paralysed by the din of human bleating
The warring music of grunting, squealing, squeaking.

Squashed faces (like rotting fruit)
Feline grins and clawed waves - purile salutes
Staggering through human compost,
Technicolour seeping from culture lost,
Skinless figures, hairless figures
Barbed like jasper wasps.

And above us all, dormant under heaven,
The moon, our moon - crumpled as a paper plate.
Poisoned and alone, stars awash in brassy, urinal space,
A glimpse into Hell, reveal and revel the taste
Of a place shunned by Ghost, Son and Father's face.


IV.
And for all the neon,
And for all the light,
No electricity could I feel in the air.
As though, everywhere,
The bunched consciousness of man had disappeared -
Dispersed and fled,
Like cruel farmers leaving little piglets unfed,
Like cruel mothers (on trams no less)
Leaving sickly pink babes unfed,
Sore throated Man's thirst for baser instinct
quenched instead.

D.B.B

Misiminay

En Septmebre, je suis allé en Pérou, à Misiminay dans les Andes, avec vingt gens chouette. Ceci était notre expérience. Je l’ai écrit en quittant le village.

Misiminay

I live in a house built of clay bricks, that I made
I have to brave the elements everyday, in clothes that I made
I need to work for hours to make little return
I eat the animals I have personally reared and slaughtered

But I’m surrounded by views you can’t comprehend
But I see the stars, clear as day, every night
But I always make the most of what I have
But I am happier and more at peace than you will ever be

the schools were all busy like the prisons and the hospitals

- we weren't ill but, rather, made patrons,

and as patrons, we were made ill -

as full as the leather bags

below

mummy's eyes.

crucified en masse -

as though in mass

the reverend Beelezebub marks her third sermon

in some fusty hallway

a hundred years ago.

D.B.B

II

II.
Step backwards and lose your footing,

Clawing

at loose and looser grips;

Daddy’s long legs crucified

(clinging to what vitality is left)

your face not mortified, but perplexed -

Still alive.

Peeled lids and tardy pupils -

A spastic ceremony with bastard dancers -

You find yourself scrambling in the romance of middle time.

A bomb killed and filled everything but time -

still the wasp is humming the lines of Chaucer and Dante,

though burnt ears blur rhyme -

The music of cat paws pounce ‘pon your mind

like negro fingers fingering a dead piano in the lobby of a hotel

notes heavensent suspended hung,

lingering and up strung.

Blind, you step backwards and lose your footing,

yawning and yawning and yawning.

D.B.B

I

I.

Trailing wolf eyes half hide

his lolling brow -

The heavy gait of a blind man

dreaming -

Pacing

in his room -

Shame sheilded with a toothless baby smile -

No! Pride, masked

though, still, too afraid to ask,

he sung to himself all the while:

"The glow of lamplight extinguished itself

As I trampled the familiar breadtrail beneath,

Seeking relief from the crash of shore against sea,

Percussion like a cat o' ninetails

Percussion like the dash of jail-bells

Upon sobbing prop-er-tee.

Upon red-hot, black-blue men

Like me,
Like me."

***

And now,

Well now,

White noise spills from the lungs of little boys

Choking on the subtle funk of lust.

Putridity rising and rising from an invisible gore.

Taciturn leers go unreplied as his wolf eyes

Trail far more than before,

Hooked in the white meat of a fat back,

An obsidian egg, first, must burst and crack

as the numerals read nought above his back,

Blind to the disintegration of his own mortal almanac.

D.B.B

Grass unshaken

Like the rising of the sun or the changing of the tide, unoriginally, he draws his first breath.
Trees overhang his stream of consciousness,
Old farm buildings and the homes of the working-class Frenchman poke out from above the leafy banks.
Whilst islands of lilies bask in the brilliance of the mid-day light,
He journeys on, his strokes swift and monotonous.

Events make more than just ripples on the stream of his life; a strong longing for what is already lost as in Virginia Woolf’s
The Waves crash against his side, but he floats on – undeterred.
Chaque jour il n’est jamais seul, mais il est parfoir solitaire,
The wind is light; the bank is still but for the solemn passer-by,
An engraved St Christopher pendant on a thin silver chain can be seen running through his slender fingers

Dragonflies flit to and fro around his head, like mere acquaintances at a party,
Time will whisper to him, help him with his realization of the longing for the one with the beautiful colour, the truest flight.
His surroundings have a resounding affect on him, though there is anticipation for the unknown,
Peaceful thoughts.
The stream finally narrows as his drooping eyelids lead his body in the parade of sleep.


Adam Thomas

Diego Alverez

I am a tightrope walker leading an unbalanced lifestyle
I am a tannoy talker speaking softly to a sweetheart
Hear the lonely milk train thundering down the Boulevard St Michel
I won’t talk over you, but I have something to say

I don’t want to hear your stories, but feel free to write them down
We’re always on Christian names when we meet
Alone like Diego Alvarez
I will walk over you, now I have discovered you

Adam Thomas