Pilgrimage

When you break the bread
- or it breaks itself,
splitting like stones in the sun,
overfilling, erupting,
core pouring, out spilling,
wrecking the calm surface,
upsetting the tray or shelf,
you make a good break,
a happy tragedy.
It is rendered new,
miraculous
and cannot be unmade,
un-baked, re-doughed.

My mind is the same,
a constant schism,
out out damn spot, damn speck,
damn seed,
out blood, out brains,
out guts, out greed.

You come from me like mould
or maggots, the tubor
reek of Keats' fruit,
swolen, heavy,
pregnant.
You come from me like mushrooms,
Little steadfast atomic clouds
Nightly exploding themselves
making pleasure havoc
casting pearly spells.

Throwing Up

I fell asleep in your lap, in your hands, on your knee.
You folded me like paper, like napkins, like cutlery.
You wiped me down on bread, lifted me to your lips,
Then placed me back carefully
As if to say,
Thank-you.
As if to say,
I’m done.

1930's hip hop

It’s just past midnight on a Sunday evening in the middle of the countryside. 2009’s Secret Garden Party is coming to a bleary, rainbow fairy-lit, slightly damp and decidedly quiet end. Party-goers (or ‘gardeners’ as they prefer to be known) are wandering from tent to tent, past idyllic lake and snake-head stage, hoping for more musical mayhem. Those who were lucky enough to find their way to the dilapidated Officer’s Mess will not have been disappointed. Through a tiny tilted wooden door you escaped the rain and the cold and found yourself in a scene straight from MASH, skull and cross bones flag, peeling posters of pin up girls and one or two sawn-off muskets. As four men in lion masks prowled about the DJ booth it looked as though Kate Bush through sodden speakers was all we were going to get. Then an unassuming man in horn rimmed spectacles, a tail coat and wet look leggings took to the stage as ‘King of the Swingers’ from The Jungle Book began blasting out behind him. What happened next was without a doubt everyone presents’ highpoint of the festival. The man could skat, and how!
Mr. Bruce of the Correspondents kept the Officer’s Mess jumping for the next hour, literally splitting the sides of the tent at one point as more and more gardeners tried to squeeze their way in. Grimey beats, squelchy bass lines, all from a man with a cravat who calls you ‘Old Bean’ and wouldn’t look out of place in a P.G.Wodehouse novel. The Correspondents make Jay Z look like the guy who sang ‘zipadeedooda’, get a life Grandpa! We’re dancing to beaten-up swing skat!. If you’ve ever dreamt of getting down and dirty with Fred Astaire or shaking your money maker with King Louis then these are the men for you. Like tap dancing on a tea cup spiked by Ugly Duckling, we are pulling up our spats and dusting off our top hats in anticipation for the next gig.

You Can Paper My Machine Any Time

Yes, it's true, I love Jacques Derrida. Second (or third) in my affections only to Ryan Atwood and Dara O' Briain. He makes sense out of non-sense and does things to grammar that make my toes curl and pupils dilate simultaneously. He is gloriously obtuse and disarmingly simple. He is the reason I can write things like this in my dissertation.

"Seth’s conception of the experience of mechanically reproduced music can therefore be seen to subscribe to Derrida’s theory of ‘hauntology’."

Pretty sexy.

this way please

The Coasters

He sees her face in punctuation.
Seeks it never for it follows him in the pigeons wing,
muffled against sky and pavement.
In the comma’s hesitant black, in the irredeemable blot of the stop,
I crush your ears in my hand and throw them away,
Touch your knee cap fleetingly,
I like to hook my toes in the hollow under your knee
And kick
As hard as I can.
I tick your freckles off on betting slips, darking out white squares,
Pressing down the point.
I pierce the paper.

I am reading COLETTE for the first time.

"In my room, hanging on the icy wall, there's a set of rules where all the brackets have the same shape as your upper lip: it's the only objet d'art which adorns the bareness of the place. My child, as I said, leave your old husband within the four walls of this refrigerator. It's the only way to treat fish that have lost their freshness."