National Geographic

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National Geographic

To be madly in love
On Sunset Boulevard
And be welcome to the wireless, pseudo connections.
You say, “I’ve seen the most amazing cities”.
That moved me more.
As natures forces mingle
Standing alone
No longer flights of fantasy.
Fish.
A photograph of Jupiter taken
Reconstructing the president
And taking no chances
At the little white chapel’s tunnel of vows
We discuss the fourth state of matter
In plasma view.
Tourist invasion
No invitation
Get arrested
A conference of the elders (and betters)
Life’s risks
Water for the few
Glad for the work they get
So we squeeze all the money we can out of them
Those so eager to learn.
Community effort makes for good neighbours
Rain barrier – adrift
Friendship in a dance
Hard living
Acacia clothesline
Where two worlds meet.
That cocktail of brain chemicals that sparks romance
Ice and few lone blackbirds.
An arched back and avid eyes, “some of us are looking for love”
They said.
“And I’ll do anything for you” (a whisper, a sigh)
“I’ll get you a Tweety bird”. Look me in the eye.
The most important thing in life: the opportunity to pass along your DNA.
Then the passion ends, spent. Nothing to hold back.
Giants under siege
Sparring partners, respect, trophy shot.
This cross fire threatens you and me. Long hooks.
A candle lit hall leads to the entrance; we launch the global scheme to learn,
Symbols and script, language and nuance, we are light footed.
Holy ground.
The very nature of what a mother is.
Bound by this fragile belief, in systems without an author,
Lies without guilt, tears without salt.
Eternal presence and lost heritage. Mountain stones.
Going downhill we capture the soul of man’s neighbourhood.
Connections. We though about the options of using voodoo on them. Not a commonplace solution.
This is a passionate devotion.

Driving in your car: Part 4

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Clear blue light

Blue light driving is a skill you need to be trained in, mentored in, allowed to mature in. It’s not “natural” driving it’s nor about driving from A to B quickly, it’s about delivering a fragile package on time through hostile traffic when under duress. My eyes are closed but I can see, I can see the ambulance roof, I can pick out the fabric design on the roof lining, cables and conduits, lights and flashes at the corners of my eyes, even though they are closed. It seems I have two sets of eyelids, working with and against my conscious mind. I am the blinded man who sees through the veil of sleep. I see the truth and the roof.

Dead men in ambulances, live men resting in hearses, smoking cigarettes, eating rolls containing flat sausage and brown sauce, blowing smoke rings shaped like skulls, secure and insecure and badly described. They are queuing up to take away my remains. Those in the wider world are desperate to perform a commemorative ceremony, they want to “say a few words” and write some meaningless drivel on cards they bought from a witless supermarket. They may make a donation to some charity connected remotely with the circumstances of my death, a big help to me now. Most of all they want my day of saying farewell to be over so they can get on. I don’t want a bunch of petrol station flowers attached to a fence post with tie wrap near the point where my car left the road. This is not a special or holy spot. It’s just somewhere between the road and the fields and there is a hard boundary there that I have now crossed.

When I joined the Army Cadets I really thought I could have a career in the army. I’d avoid the basic training and join as a junior at the ripe old age of fifteen and a half. I’d sign on for nine years for the extra pay and that would be that. I’d drink bottles of Piper Export, smoke, eat pies and fried eggs and do what I was told. There would be fear on my part, I’d be insecure, my naivety would be exploited but ultimately I’d come good. I may end up in Germany or Singapore. Perhaps if, despite my attempts not to shine, I did shine, I would be recognised and singled out, I’d be promoted eventually and get even more Piper Export.

I fight the white light that makes no sense. I throw down the cross of Jesus that I have refused to carry any more, I touch the silver chain that is around my neck, the one I have worn for eleven years. Everywhere in the universe there is magnetism, electricity and cosmic dust. I return to supp on the sap of the universe. I overhear static electrical celestial phone calls. Words, numbers and mathematical formulas flash before me as if to offer an explanation. A deep cut is made to sever the spiritual from the physical and I duck to avoid the final haymaker punch. Death is like being pricked by a drawing pin or sleeping in for an appointment or dozing after a heavy meal, falling asleep in the cinema, buffeted of a roller coaster, flying from the pillion of a fast moving motorcycle. Sitting at the bottom at the deep end. Hearing a conversation tail of without ever having really been part of it. Drinking two bottles of red wine. Hanging up the phone. Pressing the delete key over and over and over again.

Ah! the sweet smell of a pig farm. Peter O’Toole.

February

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February

The magic months have gone and left this husk in their wake. The deadest time of year, when the bleakest outlooks and weather patterns combine to tire you in a daily queue of the stickiest traffic jam.

Cold as ice sings the killer bee. Tub-thumping is tiresome and I wish you’d do the decent thing and turn down the microphone and shorten your songs. Tedium and opportunity make strange bedfellows and the whole wide world seems to think that it has something to say today but none of it is coherent or credible.

Last person to the bar buys you nothing good to drink or look at. Dirty, rusty taps pour more beer into scratched glasses that you drink from with your chipped lips and sandpaper tongue. Who are you?

A thousand lights flicker away to the North, the people pour out of manicured houses onto short driveways and go forth. To do jobs in warehouses and offices, at desks that are veneered and plastic, flat screens and phones, keyboards full of biscuit crumbs and coffee rings beside penholders. Read and hear the daily threats to life, love and liberty, cartoons that offend, religions that offend, politicians that offend, children and adults that are out of control. Sweat at the madness of frenzied extremists who sadly cherish their one-eyed view of nothing because it’s all they can clearly see. They say they love a God, one who tramples them regularly whether it’s in the chapel, the cathedral, the mosque or the ashram. Sow some more seeds and see just what it is your anger manages to grow for you. It may not be the happy children you dreamt of or the ones that the holy book promised.

Streetlights pick holes in the dark like small boys attacking their dirty noses with index fingers erect. Fog and smoke from the hell of the curfew bonfires sizzles and circles in deadly pockets. Old men fall from bicycles as if hit by snipers fire from some charcoal tree stump hiding place. Blasted blood pours onto the cobbles grey glaze.

Girls giggle some more and suck thumbs; eyeballs reflect the room light and the occasional camera flash to capture the moment and then drop it into the bucket of obscurity. This is a sub human zoo. Full to the lapping top with quirks and passers by, disconnected and uneven as a tightrope walk in the wee small hours. People sidle in, dropped and flopped into some austere common purpose of misunderstanding. Try to find a voice that doesn’t sound like a riveter’s gun and be noble as you can for those few moments of exposure.

Boy with tinfoil in his hair, thought he looked good when he left his house, but that was earlier.

People drown and lose themselves in this peaceful warfare, anywhere where the struggle is visible, most likely in your head only.

Down in the basement the rats crack their whips, the sailors dance hornpipes with cabin cats and blind companions. The city inspires this nighttime revelry, to creep towards and celebrate a dawn that breaks only in the sleepiest of chunks and filtered signs.

One strange day the sun shone through this invaluable, exhausted and choking mist and we wrote more songs. I got drunk on your writing and singing. My fingers became cold and hard on these hardwood fingerboards, the strings dug in and hurt, the old fingers ached even in following the most familiar patterns that this music dictated. I struggle with this geometry in my head, I try to combine the shapes and sounds and rhythms to match the patter of the tiny feet as the baby’s song spins up from his cradle. You smile a hundred times a day with twenty-five muscles exercising and kissing at the fresh air. If we could we’d cycle and whistle and perhaps have a pillow fight. The potholes in these roads make you take care but the roads will still take you out on this careless journey. How can we navigate when the leaves cover the track, there but never back?

We are all on the road to success and it all began with a simple push.