Blackest of the black arts

Politics: Darker than a black hole in a black hole at midnight down a coal mine. So called men of wisdom dabble in politics and power. Never had a real job or career, never had to feed a family or decorate the bathroom or cultivate friends. Perpetual students arguing about economics and philosophy while children starve in the room next door and dogs grip bones like they were family. Politics is the battle of wills and words, bordering on the absurd. One-upmanship and petty insults, parties and handshakes and the networks of the old boys, spit, polish and the revolution tempered by potential directorships and retirement plans. Such is the way of the no longer working man, wear a fine suit and argue with the breeze while you bring the country and the people to their knees, for your own ego and the good of your pension. Politics and integrity, two things you can't mention. Everybody is betrayed, sooner or later.

The unbearable...

The girl from Mars who turned out to be a devil woman is the lady in the picture, at a later age some say. Like the twisted plot of a hastily constructed B movie that you missed first and second and third time round, you then saw it on BBC2 as a teenager and were profoundly affected. It all came true but in a dream that was true but imagined as all the best dreams are. They never really happened at all because you made them up. So we discovered that the parallel shards of parallel worlds were not running true and the devil woman emerged and tried to contact you. What she said and what you did have not been recorded, sadly. But that was some time ago, in the days of monochrome, black and white and sepia and the early breakfast. Oh! how we laughed and oh! how you danced. Dating girls from Mars is highly risky, there is the chance of a terrible mismatch and the crossing over of ancient and sacred lines. I don't quite know the way that they run (these lines) but I am determined to follow them, at least in my own way and at a reasonable pace. That will probably be as much space exploration as I do this week but don't let me stop you.

The way of goodness

There is another way.

There is a way of reason.

There is a third way.

We do not speak of.

There is the way.

The way that warms the heart, sears the soul, dries the eyes and fills the hollow. Silences the inner voices and plugs the holes wet with doubt dripping down. This is the yet to be way, a chosen way that you have not yet chosen.

The blind see what they want to see. You have remained unsighted because of your own narrow view. Obscured. Fearful. Blank and angry. There is another way.

The best men and women marry only the truth, an expression of the ages and the void, a talent bought with time on this earth and then managed. A fairytale. You have to pay the dues and deny yourself shortcuts. No narrow way for the lazy man. No purchase of shares or peering over the shoulders of those who have learned. The golden book waits for you to be ready.

It is in the title, the way of goodness. Strange and simple.

Strange (to you now) but simple.

She was a doctor...

She was once a doctor. I was training to be a priest.

We married in July I think. Our happiness was released.

We breakfasted and fasted.

We slept in separate beds.

The Pope came with a pick me up.

"I understand" was all he said.

This marriage of the ideals was a divorce of heart and head.

She operated quickly and stitched with golden thread.

Her scalpel cut, she stemmed the flow, my head swam at high mass.

There was no respite or relief, there was no way to pass.

Religion is the death of me and medicine her life.

She was a doctor and I a priest. Her husband and my wife.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life. What's the meaning of life? The meaning of life. What's the meaning of life?

If you have been looking hard for the answer then be glad. I have it, I own it. I possess it. I am however willing to share it. The meaning of life is simple, as you might expect, yet complex, as you may have feared. It is close, as you may have hoped but far away, as you may have suspected. What shall I say then? Are you ready for the news and will you receive it well or will you back away?

The secret of life,and it's meaning is simple: learn to live it. Live now, in the moment. Do the things you want to do. Do not wait years or months, do not procrastinate, don't bother with struggle or turmoil, don't be bound up by stress or doubt. Live your life now and get happy, there is no second chance, there is no rehearsal. This is it. Make the most. You will not be sorry.

Paris in the spring

We were never so diverted, so related, so understated as in the spring.

The view from here is marvelous but where are we?

You bought a catalogue that explained everything.

I felt like I had been waiting forever.

This piece of work may be a sham.

I was momentarily distracted by a by-stander.

The coffee was the best I ever had.

And so on to some other city.

Paris in the spring.

Got it

Got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got got it got it got it.

Paris in the spring.

Get it

Get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it.

Paris in the spring.

Ex-monk

A Monk was once was me.

In a small monastery.

In Portugal a long time ago.

This career choice has granted me,

a few moments of purgatory,

a trip to heaven's gate,

some time in the repository of a grave,

and then the chance to shine,

on a dead wall, some way out of the sunshine.

I'm a public spectacle and a chance,

for the Holy Roman Catholic Church,

to make a quick buck,

from tourists and heathens alike,

pilgrims and faithful and those not careful,

with their cash.

It seems I now have the last laugh.

ZZ Top Shop

Why did ZZ Top stop?

Did they drop?

Did they get crocked?

Did their engine develop a nasty knock?

Did they run out of ZZ Steam or are the ok? Anyway.

Find

Find the cost of freedom

Buried in the ground

Mother Earth will swallow you

Lay your body down.

(Image by MotherEarthThunderbird - Words by various old hippies who are fatter and richer and still interesting even now. How can that be?)

five easy pieces and...

Apple, banana, grape, strawberry, melon. The first five.

Pear, kiwi, orange, plum, peach. The next five.

Thereafter you can try any combination - but not in a pie or in anything with sugar or pastry.

Or cream or custard or milky substances. This shall be the whole of the law.

This all sounds easy but in practice it is hard. As hard as unseasonal fruit. A particular dislike of mine. Keep it real and avoid the unexpected. Think hard about the benefits and digest your own answers.

Tricks of light

The sky is black tonight of all nights.

The path of the aircraft has changed to no path at all.

And when that happens.

Drinks are no longer available from the bar.

The best way not to sink is to avoid the water.

Swimming is the next best.

But your clothes may drag you down.

Live life as close to naked as is legal (and warm).

Ask a few questions of yourself.

But avoid using the marks.

Don't change the pitch of your speach.

And don't go looking for answers.

Soon your questions will be gone.

And you'll know everything.

Chemical wisdom and chatter in the margins.

Chemical wisdom and more types of well worn chatter in the margins.

People who tell you about themselves and all that they are doing, their family and so on for half an hour without asking you a single thing about your own life will try your patience. Who really has the problem here, you or them?

Sometimes in life you learn hard lessons, often unexpectedly and without warning, the lesson creeps up on you, you react, you hurt and you learn. Look upon this experience positively and take on what you gained from your mistake and use it.

Don’t get hung up on money and it’s perceived meaning, the cost, the price, the value, losses or gains. You will never pay all you owe and you will never spend all you have. Money is only numbers on a page, a screen or a statement, it can be power, and it can be ruin. See it for what it is in context.

Learn contentment despite yourself. If you choose to believe in Karma then practice it, if you do not it is of no matter as all acts have their consequences.

Creative restlessness is a gift that fuels the mind but uncontrolled will corrupt the soul, that is if you believe you own a soul or that a soul owns you. Some say that nothing is truly owned by anybody and it is true that all possession ends in death.

A soft landing in sleep

Falling flat on the softest of pavements
Cushions and pillows to elbow the statements
Made by the late and the great and the fragrant
Escaping the timepiece and switching the mechanism
Piling on pressure and avoiding the cataclysm
That is the perfect reality
Realized by someone else
Who hardly cares a jot
For the things we haven’t got
Or the humor we turned off
Quite in order or set with precise borders
Yet
It is so easy to dream and fantasize and forget
The essentials that other consider extraneous
The ideas that burn but at first seemed spontaneous
And now comes the gift of sleep
And my soul lays down but cannot keep
Silent
And then drifting away
The sense of drifting
Just drifting away.

A body cries

Why does a body cry out for milk (or salt)?
The cancer of laziness threatens my sanity.
Amicable and fair divorce: She got the house and all inside it, you got everything outside it.
When asked to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, do it. You’ll be a mile away and you’ll have some shoes.
Who was it that beat up the beaten track?
A black hole in the sky not visible from the earth but only via radio signal (eh?).
The driver now has a tracker unit in his van and so cannot tell a lie.
There is no victimless crime, or is there?

A cry in the dark heard only by the deaf.

These spaces are too large for their relative size.

Dangerous levels of you

Dangerous levels of you
A recipe is coming through and through
Intensity is reading past the blue
Contaminated cannot stay immune
Dangerous levels of you.

Intoxicate and breathe again
A crawling pain, seals in my skin
The fingers curl, the end begin
The love tugs more, a voodoo pin
My level best, I’m breathing in.

Dangerous levels of you
Dangerous levels of you
The course of nature on course, rest assured
Dangerous levels of you

Box of sleep

Box of sleep

Join me in this box of sleep

Heaven’s just outside

And we’re in deep.

Join me in this box of sleep

Take the long step down

Build the complete.


Build the complete, box of sleep. Build the complete, box of sleep.

Build the complete, box of sleep. Build the complete, box of sleep.

Facts, artefacts and things to retract.

I pick up the oddest items on my singular travels and triangular journeys, do you?

A metallic green Nissan Primera that once belonged to Eric Clapton.
A pair of New Zealand moccasins that once stood next to Princess Margaret at a grand opening ceremony.
The dried up red rose that Bothwell placed (romantically) in the bum crack of Mary Queen of Scots one warm night.
A short break.
A Mars Bar wrapper from the waist coat pocket of Mark Twain.
A box of sky collected at lowest cloud level on the Island of Skye.
A bag of frozen chicken and onion rings stolen from Dobbies in Dunfermline.
A lucky black cat bingo pen that allegedly belonged to Leon Trotsky.
An American Express card dropped in a Detroit Seven Eleven by Gore Vidal by the pizza counter.
Mozart’s special rag for wiping down his keyboards after a gig.
Edible chalk mined in the Andes.
A tearful denial from a guilty man with the gift of duplicity.
The swear box from a Royal and Ancient Golf Club and debating society in Dubai.
Tall tales told by medium sized dwarves in the Catacombs of Rome.
The deeds to a house not ever owned by Chic Murray.
Loose talk from the crush hall outside the main chamber of the Spanish Senate.
The notion that love will come around.
Coca-Cola bottles held prisoner by the Japanese for sixty five years.
Fossils picked up and then discarded by a tired Angelica Houston whilst doing the West Highland Way.
Distinctive farmyard smells captured and held in a golden phial.
Used crossword puzzles retrieved from a bonfire (just).
Sneeze clouds from the whispering gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral.
A snatch of clothes pegs sold in Falkirk by a young and inexperienced Sammy Davis Junior.

Please note that the final shape of your journey will make a significant difference to the items you collect both in number and quality. Plan carefully and make the best use of the time, angles and the relative bits of posturing you have left. Love will come around.

Oreo Worship

Why is there no monument to Oreos in this land?

If they’re good enough to eat, then they’re good enough to stand.

In every town and dull estate, in every street and thoroughfare,

A shrine should rise for Oreos, all round and never square.

Apologies (again) to Spike Milligan.