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back Poems, kicks and dreamings. by Paul Garner, Peter Wilson Number of episodes: 10 Words of previous episode revealed to each author: all of story Written between 21 Nov 2002 and 7 Mar 2003 Whether it is projected, deflected, encased or otherwise stowed away for a rainy day, pain remains a pure and universal experience and yet it is very individual, uniquely percevied and concieved. Each person's response to it is flavoured by a multitude of factors that themeselves vary. Some people become addicted to it, some seek it out by unconscious, automatic habit. Some try to fight it, wherever they see or feel it, whether it is real or not - for as sadly often true: one persons pain is another persons gain. So some people come to be, or see themselves as rescuers, they in their minds-eye can heal the world of pain. "One man at a time, one at a time" - says the wise sage. "Heal yourself!" - an echo from Socrates ghost. I remember once reading the end of 'The Last Journals of William S. Burroughs.' There on the last page were his findings. I don't remember exactly how he phrased it, but it was something like: Love, love is the best pain-killer of them all. Pain. It will always be around. Maybe it's best to minimise it, as much as possible. Experience graced or garnered wisdom may very well be the how to, the method, for pain reduction. If love combats it best, then first things first - Love yourself. I have heard that once this is done and becomes not merely habit but revolutionary and self-integrated things can change. Dynamic, positive engendering rubbing off joy-glow change. Simple ease of life people commune feeling change. my love's in pain love's not in vain i can't find much time to think lately. i do the dishes from last night's party. get lost in folds of duvet. wade through the clothes on the floor. trying to do everything. i'm lucky, i know how to nip worries in the bud, i'm carefree. i worry about her. i can't help with her job, just help her not to do it. was it a good day today? i hope so. take care baby. i'll stand up and hold a little weight for you. we talk of pain philosophically but physical pain, it's a practical inconvenience. it wears you down. i'd carry all your weight if you'd let me. but then i'd be no good. i guess it's all love in the meantime, waiting for the lights to change. Don't wait. - simply living is the highest love - the world is beauty, a spring - Here's something I wrote down on the way home. I was trying not to consciously shape it, but just jotting down things as they came to me. I now get the urge to change the structure a bit, but it was fun and pure when I was doing it and I hope that feeling comes through. the ringing lest ye be judged with hair that goes down to her behind the way is a drinks machine walking down the steps steel on concrete how long did it take smile hands in pockets. subway lights backwards journey from where I came straight back white talking beauty symetry worn eye-lids cool breeze again the doors close clip clop yawn the exit smell mountain picture golf pants. arrows pointing key chain wood floor evening dress suit case, I recognise the logo transfer wood smoke green watch cross-eyed star thank-you very much hanging friend phone raised. lotto firing psychotic gaze gain focus check the L. E. D's Big ring push the girl pout and whine goodbye hello hello sit down. so i opened my head noise flooded in ate a gramophone for breakfast ate it too fast indigestion? i'm just spitting and dreaming dreaming and spitting washed up in alcoholic flood head above the water though swimming with and against the flow life happens Back on the subway again. The smell of fried chicken two children with Grandmother chuckling and moves for them to sit. The tiny old lady selling gum, she's all wrinkles, her hair thining. My back hurts, the ankle injury I sustained a year ago and then reinjured a month ago. Walking strange in constant aching pain. The little boy with Dinosaur carcass beside me, I wonder what child-thoughts he has, lip smacking savouries, teeth and jaw, hand in grease. He finishes and points out the window, teaching his mother a wisdom she doesn't hear, her thin eyebrows smile motherly control and patience. Making me wonder about changes, states of mind from little girl to mother - so focused and dull, sleeping still like us all. ...I've left something out... Outside now the afternoon sun lazers through apartments like wet towels, geometrics of ugly gray, tossed from some giant hand onto the ferment green land. New apartments being built, like skeletons stripped of flesh, not a beginning at all but the end. Little girl laughing world so small. No curves. I'm on my way to Coex - a giant department store - I'm going to see the fish. fish=wonder=happiness In Battery hen food hall All are free All are blind. yeah and here we are. she crystallised my love. this bread between us. it was waiting on the tip of my tongue / like a gift in the barrel of a gun /- but now we can't stop saying it. don't want to either. it is freedom and comfort. lately the days have passed in a haze... you know, you know, you know i thought i might not find this and yet it rapelled down out of the blue on such a tenuous thread of chance, now it's solid, here, undeniable. c'est la vie me old china. who am i to worry about what might not have been? hazy days and nights that last all night. what happened last night? drinks and details and what the heck did i have for dinner? it was good, i remember that much. she spoon fed me like a baby and put me to bed. the welsh did a study: guys who shave every day live longer. but lets not argue quantity over quality... Last night I was in M.A.S.H. I was bedding in The Swamp with Hawkeye and B.J. - the tent was a mess, they liked my ecentric kiwi humour, we quickly became chummy. I was worried what I would do when the wounded arrived, surely then I'd have to tell them I wasn't a Doctor. What was I doing there? - forgotten section - We were taking a trip around a Korean village - strangely it remsembled a Maori Pa, complete with Kor-Maori totem pole carvings. I was bursting with maniacal excitement, I started shouting out in Maori, screaming out to the villagers. Hawkeye and B.J. just watched me, smiling and bemused. They took it as part of my comedic routine - I pointed out: "They're just like Maoris!" Or something. I was elated, I'd made a connection, this was something I could relate to in this otherwise foreign land. We circled around the village, much of it was occluded, I don't know why or how - it wasn't a wall or trees, just that we couldn't see it, its dimensions or place in our dimension had shifted. Around the other side we peered in. The fields of grain (rice or wheat) had been harvested - what we saw was cylindrical, like they, the world was now in a tube - anyway, inside, the curved earth, the fields were organised somehow into patterns and painted. (although the colour was luminous and seemed to come from within) They were the most amazingly bright colours I have ever seen, in a network of criss-cross patterning and triangular work similar to what you see in a Maori meeting house - but not limited to red, white, brown and black - so many psychedelic wonderful colours, I was struck with awe, beyond words... My head feels heavy, clogged with junk food grease, I need an oil change. I recall a dream of New Zealand from some nights ago. In the dream it was like a caribbean pirate utopia... crooked, bright-painted buildings leaning drunkenly against each other in the jubilant sun as I drove, yes drove, through the streets, the street-party streets. People lounged out of grog bar windows, people I recognised; musicians, friends, colleagues, blues guitarists. It was a big welcome home party, but not for me, it was just the eternal party and I felt good to be back. Warm and good. Friday evening was cold, the real cold of a London night. I don't mind the cold. St Valentine's day. What we have is real so there was no need to observe it. The price of roses outstripped all inflations, consumer price indices, gross domestic productions. Everywhere turned pink and bulbous for commercial come-ons and flirtations. But Love's not pink, it's orange. Warm orange, like when you close your eyes and bask in the sun. It doesn't have frilly edges. Warm, enveloping orange, or sometimes blue. The cool morning blue of just existing in peace. Fridays aren't my best day. The week wears me down, though god knows I don't work too hard. Friday is relief, time to unwind with beer and wine. In that respect it's no different from any other day, I don't follow the calendar, wait for the weekend. That's why I'm like an out-of-phase insomniac... I spend the days a waking zombie, wishing I could sleep, the nights more alive. But Friday everyone wants to party. I want to party too but I usually wind up dozing off early. What am I talking about... this last Friday was fine, Saturday I flaked out. Nonetheless. I had a pint of Murphy's, couple of glasses of heartburn wine. My girlfriend prefers whisky, cheap whisky, as the good stuff doesn't go so well with Sprite. We bought some cheap whisky. She made a takeaway cup from half an Evian bottle, curled the edges over with a cigarette lighter and we took a bus up towards the old palace. The bus map was unwieldy, but wield it we did and it yielded a surprise: we didn't have to change buses, we could catch one all but most of the way there and walk the rest. That saved 70p. We alighted. I read the map, we set off. The route was unclear and the territory unfamiliar. She asked for directions. Once he realised she was with me and not a vulnerable woman alone the old guy at the bus stop directed us through the park. We wondered if it was dangerous, but decided we needn't worry. Fact was we looked kinda marginal ourselves, all wrapped up hermetically in scarves and hats, and second hand coats, trailing behind us a tartan shopping cart like old women use, passing between us the makeshift plastic pint-cup of whisky. The shopping cart was hers and was about as unglamorous an accessory as can be imagined. An old woman had admired it once in fact - it was a deluxe-model granny cart. It is practical though, and we always take it with us on our trips to the market. My girlfriend, the thrifty, lusty Spaniard, was determined to go to the market on Saturday morning as we'd missed the previous week. The market is a half-hour urban train ride away in a mainly-black East London neighbourhood. A trip to the market means me wheeling the cart amongst the bustle of big gaudy African-Londoner women while she finds the best prices and bargains with the Turkish sellers, loading the cart up until it's overfull and we have to tie the bags onto the outside. We buy onions, peppers, corriander, rosemary, broccoli, leeks, oranges, garlic, lettuce, tomatoes, cauliflower, ginger root, big one kilo tubs of the best houmus, broad flat loaves of great Turkish bread with its sesame and poppy seeds which we devour with the houmus when we get home. One and a half litre bottles of cheap virgin olive oil. Anything else that takes our fancy. One of these days I'm going to buy some okra, find a recipe, cook it up. Sometimes if we get there near closing time she's been able to get whole trays of mushrooms for a quid. The market is great, we stock up for the week ahead, save plenty of money. I find it a pain in the ass quite frankly, pushing that damn cart around on a Saturday and always get home exhausted and cranky, craving a beer. My girlfriend hates having to buy overpriced, shrink-wrapped vegetables from the supermarket though. So we're walking through the park on a cold moonlit night, holding hands, drinking whisky and trailing the shopping cart, looking down on the city in high spirits. I misread the map, sent us in the wrong direction. Her first reaction is to stop a stranger on the street and ask for directions, I find this irritating since mine is to plough on and try and work it out for myself. I am galled to see us playing out these gender stereotypes, as if we're a married couple on a roadtrip. We got to the pub just about closing time, met our friends - my flatmate and her boyfriend. My mind wanders though - now as I write this I mean - too many distractions, here at my desk at work, now, a day after I started this story, filling in stolen moments. Maybe I can't be bothered finishing. I want to be somewhere else right now. Anywhere else. Back home with my girlfriend perhaps. I feel out of place, tired. Recklessly pointless. I'd rather it was Friday night again, round at our friend's place, eating cheese on toast, drinking wine, already drunk, opening up the sofa bed. Producing, with unremarkable forethought a condom, kneeling beside the bed, bouncing on top of it, kissing, falling alseep, waking up with bent necks and dry mouths, lying naked in our friends' living room. Living. I should be working. I guess I'm just impatient, this job is just a means to an end and I'm impatient for the end... so many little big ideas - I'm going to make some of them happen, but in the meantime, waiting, all this tedious waiting. Dogs of war Back-room blackslapping Stormfronts of desire Are we worthwhile? Burning forests for photo-opportunities Open Opium dens A minds eye. Dirty feeling Confident like the Military. Bits of you Unaware of history Waiting in rooms for creativity, Welcome. It was quiet here without you You are the first to arrive Others will be here, Shortly, Would you like a cup of tea? Wide Awake In Love As God Intended Where Walls Break Electricity Fires And Time Ends. I've got a window on Eternity And it's me. I've got a doorway to the infinite And it's you. We've got creation now, forever now And it's us! I watch the stars descend Like a Chinese finger trap From which we're freed. Everybody is trying to get by, On minarets and tower bells The day hangs in the air. Coming home at night are Remembrances of the day, Like the mist round toes and dew on windows, A portion of peas and boiled potatoes, Everyday trying to get by. Strong breezes blow right through me These winter obsessive days. Memories fall into me, They're not real at all. I created Earth. A student just said. Thoughts are tainted Only real inside your head. Some people will smile at you Press their lies into your skin. On comes the new day Birthing horizon and quivering trees The shadows yawn in glass shard meadows The Lichen plots its toils. My window drips the nights perspiration A collection of dreams, a spiders web. The barbers of incongruity Sink into apologetic time. I know I'm right to make mistakes Right to dream to dreamers dream. AH, my flow My forest stream My ski-trip waterfalls Night trails Broken unconscious flows. It's the green grass I miss Not the Tui's tits and arse. It's the Tui's call The Morpork's haunt I miss Not the windows of deceit. The way the roads drift on forever (on a possums back) The purity of loneliness Grey metal roads, Air so clean it bursts your veins, Light-addled-headed you fall into the long grass. This northern land, with sex-swing-settlements and Concubine soul, Its coquette street starlets Thin rouge come pink histories of the knowing smile. Its days of antiquity, birth rights and claims, Building towers on bones, on blood-fields, Where no grass grows. It can't compete with my New Zealand of fearful primordial mystery, Nor with my meat pie memories and L & P school dreams, I miss home longer simpler slower life. Thousands of star-fruit Squeeze their pips of light Angelic constellations far off Near my heart tonight. Angels float past my window Outside there's thousands of stars squeezing angelic Light. The space so close far off My heart nearer tonight. Magical love, May your fear subside to love And trees of guilt fall Uprooted in storms of forgiveness Sudden and unexpected mercy Streaming away self-deceit. Seven paradises and Seven hells fancy for your favour. See them for what they are Twins falsely separated and your Blessings will outlast childhood. In a tent of grace, She's praying for the whole of the world. It seems we existed for the briefest moment, Riding the train. Light flickered in through the carriage windows, A lady shaded her eyes. I felt peace. Sugar psychosis Seratonin perhaps Sweet night nurse She comes at day Glistening white pill, Fever gourd brain. My love is how you made me Sleep with the cross-flowers Cages distort the man, Remember then was a cage too, of silent fear And isolation, remember energies build up and Strange forms burst from but energy is Not grace nor time, chewing on Insects know not of the plants on which they feed. The river motorbikes Burble and rumble The shadow leaves Dance on the concrete Caressing my, Infinite Inverness river. Asia Speaks like laughing children The fathers code so bright like the sun. I can barely see, Her faced bathed in light catching fish of the river beside. Random nonsense Incense holder smoke window Glistening diamond mosaic on Loch aqua paint flecks like light. A quality of the miraculous but Free form the black-awe Drain window and shutter cap It's natural. The rain softly blows In waves coming home via Italian oligarchies and Feudal lords, Names that read of self-death Long before the skin sag bone rot We know different Water and sugar makes the best films A pretty channel of eighties illegal blow-job form. This stuff doesn't get us down. Walking home through snow Is a miracle The motors drive slow At rest The turquoise-blue umbrella Walking No wind blows. Have you made your peace With murder Gotten used to killing people Like pixels on a screen They fade away from view As you rub quicklime Into your eyes. On the surface of building windows, thoughts from the minds eye. Until the end of time, a barricade around your heart Beneath the leaf litter You don't see lies through your cloned heart And make-up of self-belief Seventh generation evergreen poison law. This foggy day reminds of home. Mosaics of ice on the river this morning, like the ice on the subway I flow. Spirit learning to be human, Not symbiont machines. Watching the tricks of the magic show, Angels in never-ending dreams. Rouge is baloney, Time is pickled meat. Only kissing cousins, Have a need for deceit. Skeletons are viscous, Dust feeds on blood and sweet. So fat and congealed Bursting open like The blossom Like the lotus Like the rose. This city's a canker A hunger to feed Growing from a crack In Antiquity Bleeding fashion and greed. Today there's no-one to talk to And I'm all alone Walking on the smoky street The smoke, it fills my bones. So fat and congealed They seem to burst As they hit the road Exploding puffs of white. There is something there Some kind of attraction Through the just joking? Along the slightly longer glances But affairs don't just happen You make them and a choice To forgo love To make love instead Pride and loneliness A mischief of Late night creepings Loves guerillas in the mist --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - Like the ray-gun in the tree This morning has been so strange A man in a milk carton drinks from the drain I feel free and alive with all the possibilities The weathers chaotic bliss amounting to More than what is nothing. Like hate gets stretched paper thin The green-back gets underskin. I've barely touched the surface Only just dipped my toe Singing, Life is forever And we're already dead Pursuing wealth and power Aaahhh! we're already dead! None so blind Even those you respect as right Nuns, fine suited monks of busin-ess Dancing in waltz time. Yes, we're asleep And so deluded deep Love is in the guillotine Life is on death row. People read their magazines How to self-wealth Get rich schemes But loves in danger now! Some immoral off-shoot A blister in the sun Over-sexed and under-fed A dialect of money. Human-spirit dry-bread A lipid tasting wine The ultimate prize, of a million cocks In the reproduction show. The day after was Saturday. We were supposed to go to the market, then if we had time maybe join in the largest peace march the UK had ever seen. In the end we woke up slowly and late, then lounged around and had a full cooked breakfast until about midday. We waited for a train, got bored waiting and decided to take the bus. I misread the map again, looking for the right bus stop, and took us the wrong way. She asked for directions, I saw the train arrive and leave. We got on the bus and I expected it to take us right down the street where the market was. I hadn't looked very closely at the bus map and didn't check it again. It was hot and stuffy on the bus, my girlfriend fell asleep. The bus didn't go right past the market, we'd been near it but now found ourselves about to cross the Thames. We were miles off and it was late in the afternoon. The landlord was coming round in just over an hour. We took the tube home without visiting the market or the march. That was a couple of weeks ago. Then there was last weekend. It was Friday night and I went to meet my girlfriend at the pub where she works some evenings. This is London so the pub closes at 11pm. It has recently been refurbished inside, but not modernised too dreadfully thank god. Ornate plastered ceilings. Black and gold laquer on the outside. It looks classy on the whole, but epileptic gambling machines lower the tone inside. It's opposite Kentish Town tube station. For some reason the town planners set aside a small courtyard beside the tube station. Sometimes, during the day, flower sellers set up stalls there. Their stalls are like big plywood cupboards, painted pale cool blue, that they shut up and padlock at night. They are graffitied of course, but with a particular sub-brand of the art... stencilled, professional graffiti. There's one which says 'Save Or Delete?' with a cartoonish hooded executioner. I know where this comes from, it's part of a Greenpeace campaign, I also saw it conventionally printed on billboards about six months ago. It's appropriately sprayed in a dark pine green. The other is more mystifying. It says 'Real Revolution Means People Choking To Death On Their Own Shit'. It is stencilled in black. I wondered if it was some kind of manifesto, whether it had been spray painted all over the unsuspecting walls and concrete pillars in this big old city by a gang of underground unrevolutionaries. I wondered whether it was perhaps the first installment of a serialised collection of graffiti slogans, each less mystifying than the last. I wondered, so of course I searched the internet. Google only returned one site (one site, out of billions!) which referred to this slogan, which was a weblog by some other guy who'd also spotted it outside Kentish Town tube station. He posted a message to his site dated 27 November last year, which incidentally was Jimi Hendrix's sixtieth birthday, and in the posting he mentioned the slogan briefly, describing it as 'delightful', perhaps sarcastically. I find the slogan mystifying, not so much in the message but in the intent. Maybe 'real revolution' does mean people choking to death on their own shit, who am I to say. I had no idea that a real revolution was so imminent that someone would find it neccessary to stencil graffitied warnings around the neighbourhood however. Anway, the small barren concrete courtyard which was so thoughtfully placed there beside the tube station ("Hey, we've got this empty space by the traffic lights... let's stick up a couple of benches, some steps, some fold-away flower stalls, and some 'decorative' foot-high pyramid-shaped concrete bollards.") is a perfect spot for the local drunks. I've only ever seen old drunks there, ragged, red-nosed and bristly, sipping from cans of Special Brew. Rumour has it though that the spot is also frequented by desperate junkies who will pull you off your bicycle as you ride past and slit your throat just to steal your wallet. Sometimes the professional drunks wander through the black laquered doors of the pub and join the amateurs inside. Sometimes the bar manager throws them out, when they're too drunk to serve, can't pay or whatever. Funnily enough the bar manager is from Cambridge in New Zealand, just a few kilometres down the road from where I used to live. It's the cut-throat junkies my girlfriend is worried about, and to be honest there have been a handful of murders in the area over the past year. I don't follow the news, but local Police will put up big yellow boards appealing for information, giving the date and location and such. So whenever possible I go and meet my girlfriend at the pub, about a half hour before midnight, when she's finished work. Last Friday we walked back from the pub and stopped in at a bar near our house. She'd previously applied for a job and worked a night at this bar. She'd got friendly with a couple of the other staff there, who were Colombian, hence Spanish-speaking. There was a girl with hair like a skunk and a guy, Julian, who immediately invited us to a party at an address on Holloway Road. We opened a bottle of red wine, grabbed some plastic cups and decied to walk it. I'm getting used to the occasional night where everyone is speaking Spanish except me. Frankly I don't mind. Most conversation is waffle and filler anyway, it's as much about social bonding as it is about communication. You can get most of the enjoyment out of it without understanding a word, as long as people are being friendly towards you and acknowledge your existence from time to time. When we got there the place looked vaguely like a nightclub. There was short queue and a couple of bouncers searching people at the door. Turns out it wasn't a private party, it was more of a rave. No one was allowed in if they weren't on the guest list. Julian was supposed to be on the guest list, though my girlfriend and I weren't of course. We talked to the keepers of the list for a while, well Julian did, then we went up to the girl who stamped our wrists and let us in. I assumed Julian had smoothed things out for us, but in fact the wrist-stamp girl had just assumed that we were okay as we'd been talking to the guest list girl and then come to her. The music was thumping loud. We wandered around aimlessly and I felt rather too sober, then we met up with some more Colombians and headed upstairs to the main dance floor. We spent several hours there. I didn't really get into it, it was Friday, I was tired. After a while I decided I was fucking bored actually. I didn't have any energy for dancing. There was a big bubble tent at the back of the dancefloor where people retreated to sit in other people's spilled vodka & coke and smoke joints. The Colombians were all up for dancing through to six in the morning then going on to someone's place where there was a bottle of whisky waiting and the party could continue. My girlfriend was enjoying it. I tried not to look too miserable, but by three a.m. I felt like I had to get out of there. There was no way to escape the tedious banging of the music. At four a.m. we actually managed to leave and go home. I have enjoyed that shit in the past but what the fuck, just the wrong night I guess. Got to bed by, oh, five a.m., yet for some reason I woke up at nine-ish in the morning and just lay there, dozed lightly until about ten-thirty, cursing my idiotic body clock. Later that day our friend called to say she could get us on the guest list at Fabric, supposed to be one of London's best and coolest dance clubs. I figured I should go at least once while I was here since, as legend has it, the clubbing in London is some of the best in the world. I figured that as it was Saturday I might be more up for it. In the end it fell through and we didn't go out and I fell asleep around midnight. By Tuesday my girlfriend had procured a fair sized block of hash off Julian. Goodness help me if I complain I don't know where my time goes. So here I am, bright and early, frittering away the morning under flourescent lights. Drinking cold coffee from a plastic cup, I take my medicine for these heavy eyes. Writing, writing, anything to avoid working. back © All work herein copyright the stated authors.

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