Funfair #1

In a first for this here Gander, I shall post what, by means of its lines not reaching the edge of the page, must surely be a poem. It was written some two years ago; it's almost ready to walk. But not quite.

Funfair #1

What are these toffee-apple questions that you’re asking?

Funfair, just where? that’s what I’m asking…

Candyfloss! (We might as well…)

Trouble comes whispered as you lie half-sleeping

Before it closes –

(It’s a jittering grizzled influence on half-sleep

In the morning – hard to analyse)

-- We may be talking dreams, but it’s all consciousness --

Why are you dreaming of the funfair, sister?

What dodgem schemes are up your sleeve

That you don’t know?

Candyfloss? We might as well –

You’re sticky and I’ll lick it off you,

Grease the tunnel of love now don’t be vulgar…

Dreams are inevitably analogue…

The subject, unsurprisingly, the object, worryingly,

Changes – changes – changes…

Candyfloss… get sticky… let’s lick and roll… let’s go round

merry… candyfloss… we might as well…

Get sticky, put your sticky toes in my mouth…

Ride dodgems, war with other children…

Would you like a cigarette?

Let’s smoke behind

The bike shed, baby,

What’s this funfair with a bike shed,

Are you dreaming?

Candyfloss, we might as well… eat it?

Suck it slurp it wake the neighbours,

Dribble down your chin all pink and – sticky!

Now it’s dripping down the cleft of your buttocks,

Now it’s rising in this carousel,

The pinkest tide of your sweet spittle,

Rising – sticky! And it’s reaching

To our noses, how much longer can we last?

Candyfloss? We might as well here as

I dive into the mess and lick your

Tiny anus, but not clean.

February 2006

Fredrik Fernandez

Fredrik Fernandez sneered into his black coffee. The whole proposition was ridiculous. Yet he was obliged by bonds of friendship and honour. He had no option other than the one which, given other less strenuous circumstances, he would have avoided with great care. However his other options would signal an end to any sort of companionship between himself and Madison. Of course, the friendship would continue, but it would never be the same. There would always be an unbreachable distance between them, and since this was the one friendship of his existence, he didn’t want to screw it up. He didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding another like minded individual, establishing a dialogue and befriending them. His social skills weren’t up to this, not since last summer.

So shackled by friendship Fredrick waited, with his coffee and buttered toast, for Madison to arrive. He did so promptly at seven o’th’morning clock, trailing Mia and a trunk. This did not brighten Fredrick’s mood, he did not appreciate the early morning, nor did he appreciate the unexpected inclusion of Mia. She did not fit into the plan, and Fredrick was a man who liked to stick to the plans, no matter how foolish those plans were. Mia’s relationship to the plan was comparable to taking a square peg and attempting to ram it into your ear. Upon arriving Madison helped himself to Fredrick’s sparse kitchen, emptying the contents of his liquor cabinet into a bowl of cereal.

And thus it came to be that the overly drunk Madison, the reluctant Fernandez and the ill fitting Mia, situated around the trunk, contemplated the task in hand.



Fredrick first met Mia at her wedding to Madison. It was a small service, complete with vicar and church, attended by only the closest of relations. This extended to Fredrick and Heinrick, Madison’s dog. At the time Mia was fifteen and had been plucked by Madison from her previous life of suburban monotony. Fredrick took an instant disliking, as did Heinrick, both subsequentially urinated on Mia, Heinrick on the Honeymoon and Fredrick when she had been stung by a jellyfish.

Mia was now sixteen and had adopted a disconcerting fascination with her own death, disconcerting to Fredrick; Madison seemed more interested in his own pleasures. Her frequent proclamations of imminent doom appeared to have no effect on Madison, Fredrick believed that he didn’t care about her at all, she was merely another symptom of the persona Madison project, one of thorough disreputability.

She was a stubby, rotund blond girl, she would never be called a woman, completely unsuited to the name Mia. Her parents had had illusions of an idyllic family with engaging children and had decided upon exotic names for them. Mia was the eldest and her brother, Philippe, was the youngest of the two children. Fredrick could only theorise that her marriage to Madison was some sort of attempt on her part to compensate for her complete lack of character.

The Vulture

Not even the strongest generic pharmaceutical gap-filling cement could have kept his torso from the armpits up from remaining detached after thirty-five hours in surgery; that lump of metal, the incidental shell, hurled at forty-five degrees away from where the party was really at, had a party of its own. Sparing him the usual indignity, Jim’s bowels emptied up through a gap near where his left lung, gripped plaintive and instantaneously by the shoulders and head, might otherwise have been, had fate had it differently. Fate’s a funny thing; were Dr Rudolph not in that particular village at that particular time, surgery would most likely never have been considered an option. Circumstance (secular fate), however, had it that Dr Rudolph was in the boudoir of some local yokel whose wife was in the throes of “stress-induced anal distension”, as diagnosed. Trepanning and Hippocratic semen were intrinsic to the cure (notes on that case are smudged at best and cogent at worst; besides, that’s a tangent, and reports such as this will be tainted with nothing of the sort).

Jim was in a horrendous state when the nearest Fraulein reached his sodden dying patch of ground; it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise to those present at any point in the affair had they been told that fragments of bone and other bodily shrapnel had been flung as far even as the battlefield. Nobody was in any position, however, to tell them anything of the sort, or otherwise.

'Thomas Father' and 'Finn'

a household is about to be repossessed

We had been married for only a few years, our only child was called Finn and my wife, Peggy, the best woman I could imagine, died during the birth. So I raised him on my own, I clothed him, I taught him how to walk, I noted down how his face fleshed out into a distinct likeness of my own. I put words into his mouth, his first words, he said, Father and I was proud. I educated him, gave him improving books to read, stitched him up when he was injured, helped create for him a place in the world. And he loved me for it and The End

will come, you have given me a life and you have made for me a place but Father I will never be grateful that you murdered for me, did you murder for me, said Finn, did you create her from nowt and murder her dead just to leave me with a potent life?

You'll know you place or have no tea, son.

Did you spill her blood-red blood across fresh white for the sake of a story? Are you accusing me of chauvinistic imposition, I retort.

I am calling you a callous bastard, dear Thomas Father. In a word you create a masturbation siren for yourself and in a word you take the life of an innocent. You have no right to accuse me, it was your birth, you are born of sin – Hypocrite – born in sin – pure shit I was born of you, half-baked, half-real. I lost her first. You had no care once I was weaned, you sent her away. What the fuck do you know about it, you're just a foul little fuck emanation of sex-starvation fantasy – what eloquence! – I'll rub you out again and so – what creativity! – We had been married for only a few years, our only child was called Finn – stop, father you're confused because: Thomas Father was a bitter man, the death of my mother was a test too far I felt he never loved me. Never loved as I needed loved. "Stop this," he said, "stop this it isn't fair, not how things go, I did not know," said Thomas Father but I watched how you played with her, how you teased her – I was in your mind from the start – I saw your perverted activities fashioning her tits, her cunt, her hair, but her hands were smooth no nails, and I seen you, dancing in your room with a half-skinned corpse with a stolen name and I have named you, and I can see you and you'll die in a ditch Thomas Father with a cleft in your skull Thomas Father died in a ditch with a cleft in his skull The End.

It is not.

Cotton-Floss Hair

Cotton-floss hair I bare my make-upsheen
In a drunken stare I have no blemish, I enjoy the fare,
I’ll come again, I’ll come again,
I like it here, on your shoulder your rot-black shoulder
And a mild rumbling snoring through your chest. Hair,
Cotton-floss hair I bare my make-upsheen
To the rain and the wind on the street
I contort over roads with a clip-clop stride.

Methods of Writing

- Why don't you hang upside down with your pen between your teeth, writing on a tippexed millipede?

- It would be more difficult that way.

A HISTORY OF MODERN TOM

This is the first part of an indulgent work. And very much unfinished.

Week 0 : exploration

I have set three aims ahead me in constructing this book. First, to be made aware of my own intentions. Secondly, to make aware of my own intentions others [1]. Thirdly, to prepare subsequent pathways, allay fears and disclaim [2].
Though I may later accuse myself of selecting it for purely aesthetic reasons, the numbering system I will be using to describe the process of both creation and subsequent analysis requires some explanation to be useful.
However before we get on to our ripping into the real fleshy mass I wish to note the general nature of the comments which I will be collating. For each of the texts I have selected not only my own opinions but also the opinions of colleagues, family members, celebrities, deceased royalty, imagined archetypes, floral displays and calloused feet. I have chosen to include opinions based solely on one criteria; the intention (though not by any means the successful realisation) of illumination. As a general rule I have favoured the interesting and novel above the strictly true, plausible, logical or rational. I have also pilfered, plagiarised and contradicted wherever seems appropriate. They are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, educational and existential backgrounds and it is chiefly the sheer range of interpretation which we are concerned with.
Whatever the mood may be, in concern to the method I see no reason or justification in being organisationally lax or un-systematic. To this end each discrete comment with be labelled according to the strict decimal system briefly mentioned earlier, with reference to content, in a suitably graduated manner. I will comment on the comments as I see fit. I should also mention, for the sake of completedness, that this is only a small selection of available content which could have been printed in the work, those other items were not selected, in the main for their obscenity or worthlessness.

T.C., Tynemouth, Winter 2007

[1] I am reminded of a conversation I had many years agowith Yosef (sic) Haddad. Both aware of a general distaste amongst the artistic at the activity of explanation, we neither of us could come to any consensus whether, as a rule, the creator should ever comment on their own work. This becomes an exponentially more thorny issue when that artistic activity becomes solely comment. I am thinking of the possibility of a body of criticism being raised up around a vacated object. Where the original work has been destroyed or lost, dismantled or forgotten, but its trace, like a fossilized foot-print, remains. Haddad suggests, in his seminal lecture given at Keswick, England in 1999; that it does not matter whether the centre of this academia has been vacated, or never existed in the first place. Much like the disgraced Richard Bacon would inflate a balloon, cover it with paper-mache, pop the balloon and removing it unceremoniously with a coat-hanger, then proceed to paint a terrifying faux-death mask with powder paint adulterated with that ubiquitous profusion of poly-vinyl-adhesive upon it, is the whole bloody edifice. Analysing anything is much like riding a bike, at the end of your journey you are more bicycle than man, the bicycle more man than machine, and you may need a shave.
[2] Aims tend to increase post fact, see 1.31.

fallling asleep in a bathtub

When I wake up a well known friend is standing beside me, I have known him for many years; the fellow is utterly untrustworthy at the best of times. I stare at him with masked suspicion; but it is difficult enough to concentrate on his face, which is one of loathsome brambleberries, to remain aware of any danger that I may be in. He reminds me to keep my hand on my wallet, and I do so.
“‘“Have you tried the hors‘doeuvres,” asks the waiter,’ I might write, at times like these,” he says.
I don’t turn towards any possible waiter waiting in the wings, I keep my eyes fixed on my friend, to whom I say, “No, how are they?”
“Food poisoning last week.”
“The times I mean, please.”
“Please, talk about the food.”
“So you’ve been here before?”
“Nada.”
“I beg pardon?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You neither, sounds like.”
“Me neither?”
“Been here before.”
I give a pause, “and supposing that is true?”
“Which it is.”
“Supposing it is,” I pause again, “what does that signify?”
“A mess, a mess for you.”
The feeling of depression and disquiet has overtaken me, and I feel I have to admit that yes, after all these years and all those hooverings, I am in a mess. He has my attention, and now he has my wallet. He’s using it to pay a bar tab. His favourite phrase always was, and I have to assume is and always will be, “better in than out.”

Junk Email

I like reading my junk email folder because you occasionally get messages like this one:


"Bonjour,
Virus found in this message, please delete it without futher reading


Skill can inform me where she is now. I think let them talk
on till the alguazil peremptorily queen looked like,a tall,
stout woman, with such."

Let's dissect it.

Bonjour - this person wants to assume the persona of a Frenchman, or a tiresome dandy.

Virus found... etc - Interesting. Why write that? It implies that by using your eyes you are aiding the virus in its attempt. I find that quite cute.

Skill can inform me where she is now - Riddles...I like riddles!

I think let them talk on - Should there be speech marks here? It would help the flow a bit.

Alguazil - Alguazil is a Spanish title often to be met in stories and plays, derived from the Arabic "visir" and the article "al" The alguazil among the early Spaniards was a judge, and sometimes the governor of a town or fortress. In later times he has gradually sunk down to the rank of an officer of the court, who is trusted with the service of writs and certain police duties, but he is still of higher rank than the mere corchete or catch-poll. The title has also been given to inspectors of weights and measures in market-places, and similar officials.

peremptorily queen - I think in this usage it must mean dictator-like?

a tall, stout woman, with such. - this is my favourite bit. At least we know that she hangs around with oxymorons.

Anyway, just some idle musings.

I Couldn’t Possibly Know, Joe

Fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty. Here, you drink some too, you could use it, wash this down, this supplement, friend, get some iron in what you call blood, readers digest it with your pride and pasty, wipe your chin on your record sleeve, the dirtiest, friend, old friend, since records began. You hit the road, Tom Joad, and it hit you back, Jack, and we’re all the same to kingdom come and kingdom came and went, friend, where you were buried roadside and we’ll be buried or burned, come what may, that’ll come. Take any precaution with plentiful water against being overwhelmed by the world, and don’t be overwhelmed, friend, by the world, and don’t dribble your overdose on my pristine sedan chair if you’d be so kind; I mustn’t be miscarried, I must be delivered intact from a restless womb. We’re on the same side here, the same side of the moon, the same side of the canal. And while we’re giving orders here, tie your tie and fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty. If you recall, Paul, a week ago last any day now, you were drinking from a glass half empty and you drank the wrong half, Lord have mercy, and died. Well, I didn’t blame you, and I still don’t blame you, even after the resurrection that was a statement of intent post-dated, but still I’d sleep easier in a scenario wherein I’d sleep at all if I could understand why you went and did it all, all over again, painful as it must have been. Human frailty? I couldn’t possibly know. Write me a memorandum. Propose a toast; toast; anchovies on your toast, Tony? I can’t provide them, nor abide them, nor condone them, cousins as they are to the carp and cat, horse and bat; carping on, you call carp fish, but I call him Finn, and I couldn’t eat Finn, not when we’re sitting at the table, finishing starters, soup and salad, raising glasses, the first champagne, preparing for the New Year, the last flat sparkling wine of this old year; I couldn’t do that to him, not with his friends around him, not with the pervading air there already is of finality in all things present, all of us married and solemnly at that. I’ve an errand for you in the here and now, cow, I’d like you to run now with this satchel of mine, contents undisclosed, to some friends of mine, some dear sweet friends of mine, and colleagues moreover, identities undisclosed, I’d like you to deliver this and no I won’t give you this, and if you wish to take issue, Klaus, you can tell it to a hound dog, Pedro, you can flatten on the wheels of the National Express. Lick this ground that myths have walked on, lick the ordinary ground you’re going to walk on while walking, and pass the remote control, and before you put your boots on, and before you take your next breath, fetch the pail, pale, I’m thirsty, getting thirstier.

26a Falconar Street

My wet brick wall could contain a house.
It’s furtive man slips into his spouse,
Crying softly as he fucks his wife;
That swelling growth of a new life.
My wet brick wall, wet from the rain.
I like to make up stories like that,
Poor attempts at writing prose, or at worst a poem.
Usually when leaning against the door,
Looking up at the blocks of flats.
Tiny bursts of unimportant creativity which
Ray Mears would probably use to make a fire.
It’s the rain coursing down the bricks,
It’s the dead rosebay willow herb.
I sometimes want to write about things like that.

Two Come Along

Close up of a right foot poking out from the duvet. The toes begin to twitch to rhythm of Break on Through by The Doors. The song kicks in.

Cut

(You know the day

destroys the night

Night divides the day

Tried to runTried to hide)

The camera weaves it way through to the bathroom. In passing we see a kitchen and a boiling kettle. The camera enters the bathroom. Standing in front of an open cabinet is a man. The camera advances to look over his shoulder to show shelves of bottles with brightly coloured labels. Close up of the label of one bottle which is a bright yellow smiley face, fingers wrap around the label. Cut to profile view of the man’s mouth tilted back his tongue extended with a sizeable pill on the tip, the tongue retracts. Close up of his throat swallowing. The camera cuts to the man’s midriff which is covered by a well worn tee-shirt featuring Jim Morrison’s face and numerous uncertain stains. The camera pans upward threatening to reveal his face, then glides down his shoulder to his hand clasping a toothbrush.

(We chased our pleasures here

Dug our treasures there

But can you still recall

The time we cried

Break on through to the other side

Break on through to the other side)

The mirror slams closed and we are finally allowed to see his face reflected, well meaning but tired. Close up of his teeth being brushed in time to the music.

Cut to the man going up the escalator at monument metro. Profile view of the escalator the camera keeping in time with the escalator. The posters behind the man all display the words break on through pick out in purple words on a grey background. Throughout the man is tapping his hand in time to the music.

Cut to an extreme close up shot of the top of the escalator face on. The man slowly appears over the horizon of the escalator. The camera is an extreme close up so only a small part of him is in view at a time. He is still wearing the Jim Morrison t shirt and he is wearing jeans, but he is barefoot. The camera cuts off at the ankles.

(Made the scene

Week to week

Day to day

Hour to hour

The gate is straight

Deep and wide

Break on through to the other side

Break on through to the other side

Break on throughBreak on through

Break on throughBreak on through

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)

Cut to a shot of a bus pulling round the corner and pulling up to the bus stop.

Cut.

The camera is positioned so that as the bus pulls up there is a close up of the base of the doors. They open. His bare feet greet us. Then proceed step slowly down and shuffle. They point left, they point right. They face the camera, take a step over it and take themselves and their owner out of the film.

Untitled

Your looks
Your eyes
Your components various
Yourself
To surmise
A being nefarious.

Your hand
That holds
A tight grip clenched
Your fleshy
Skin folds
Your cheeks trenched

Your thighs
All clad
In my own secret joys
My lips
Are glad
Clasped at their toys

Your best
Intentions
And the pain caused
Struggling
With tensions
And love well forced

Oh for the
Rhyme and
Rhythm of our words
To fall
On open
Ears and open minds.

Oh for the
Right words
Those ones that I felt
Those words
The have no
Sounds except in between

Those carefully
Placed blows
Of well placed words
Those feelings
I never said
But that you heard.

Untitled

The last things and the first things
They all amount to the same
Weather beating on your skull
And a slap to make you cry

You’ll not find much meat on my bones
And my soul is ready to fly.

Howl howl oh mother
For life has come to play
The jester
The joker
And you’ve nothing left to say.

Howl and moan like the wind in winter
Come to take the leaves
And no one quite believes
That summer can come again.

With the crunch of gold and brown
Crushed beneath your feet
Your coat brought tight
And your brow in a frown
You bring your foot down
With extra zest and extra vigour
And beneath the leaf
That life has laid
Before your foot
A snail lies unawares.

And you never noticed that the crunch was more solid
Your never noticed the blood on your boot
But life tends to play with us some days
And your will becomes mute.

Mirror Man

The great upward crotch that was his torso. That stretched old long-sleeved T-shirt that was or were a pair of really quite functional long johns for the arms and upward crotch. The hairy old head that was a pair of grizzled boots for his upward feet, that scrawny spectacular of neck, and arms were upper knees or somesuch, legs without feet, an articulated pair of erect schlongs.

(And what he sees)

Kidneys have a smiling countenance, oozing anticipation’s drool. Liver’s wearing gloves, liver’s poised to catch whatever balls are cast his way. Lungs are sleeping, dreaming of their potential, complacently. Sphincter’s winking. Stomach’s swilling after brushing his teeth. The heart is all beef and oiled to perfection. Throat has slicked back his hair. Arteries are doing their rounds. Bollocks put on too much cologne and it burns. Brain bought a ticket in advance.

'Neath the Sands of Druridge Bay

Here's a traditional Northumbrian folk song to wish farewell to the November.

I buried my troubles
‘neath the sands of Druridge bay;
Many a Lover has been forgot
‘neath the sands of Druridge bay.

I sunk my tears
To the bottom of Leazes Lake;
There’s many a Love that has been sunk
To the bottom of Leazes Lake.

I forgot what ails ‘z
As I walked down old Kells Lane;
Many a lost soul’s telt the tale
From the top of old Kells Lane.

I drowned my sorrows
Down in Bar 36;
Many a poor man had been drowned
Down in Bar 36.

I’m gonna hide my face
Underneath the Elvet Bridge
Plenty of shame’s been stowed away
Underneath that Elvet Bridge.