Stretched 5am on Waterloo Bridge

20 MAY 2011

1967 six day war

1978 exuberant China

corrective ideal inevitable (give it two decades)

modern modern modern

meanwhile pop eats itself

burp after a chicken stir fry

catch a train.

freeflow deliberations… chemophysical a word from Damien

(a writing experiment)

Trucks that move in the night, massive biomass and earth substance that is like the invisible hand moving in involuntary peristalsis. Curtains twitiching with sharp tipped fingers like pointed pencils and cataract eyes that probe with curiousity and suspicion and dark edges that are like the rings under eyes.  Rings on fingers fidgeted with as the full moon halo deranges minds in a harder tug, wonderment and bedevilment.

Whetstones. Ten pound blades.  Bullets.  Test tubes.  Telescopes. Lasers. Brushes.  Pens. Chisels. Carrots.  Chickens. Ten pound blades. Whetstones.

Mixtures and potions and witchcraft and junctions where remembered conversations grapple away like competing rock-climbers on synthetic walls.  Concrete and brick and bits of granite and wood and plaster…

Don’t know how a rock face leads to a cul de sac. Logic is a zig-zag. It’s also a music progammme. Even at acoustic concerts now, I see macs.

Musical cul de sacs where strangers exchange tears, words, melancholy, uncontainable love, that tender instinct that to be real is the only way to be. To talk your rhythm into the night, listen to a voice you know you’ll never again hear, try make mind photographs but knowing that memory slips, only so much mind-space mostly occupied by dreams and insights and sadness that droops.

Culture is a wave.  Photos are things other people take of me. My photographs are words.

Bomb making factories, state and terrorist, I don’t know much about yin and yang, but if I’s publishing this in China I wouldn’t be so much liked.

Hope and commonality versus adversity.  Dancing to the disarranged birds that always sing away, drowning out the nightingale, don’t know night from day and often fall, with no warning, out of trees.  That’s city living for you. Paradise, ambition, profitable gain.  Morality that marches ten feet in front of you in the individual race. In the western world, I’ve heard, it’s less carbon intensive to live in the city than live in the countryside… depends, of course, on how you live in the countryside, and if you have a car, and if you have distant family…

Sediment collecting and pressuring down the insistence on the natural progression of the comedic line. Changes as good as holidays and perfection like lucky mutations and the texture of semolina.  Recipes pasted to the back of the inside of my head, put there with passion, anger, despair.  The views from mountain tops (or Highggate Hill) which make big possible, make mind maps take form and personality, fingerprints of your consciousness. Loneliness (solitude) – isolation versus companionship (union) and the dodging of direct eye contact. Street associations blended to understanding, spatial insight tenuously solid.

the picture on my wall

used to be when a wall was a only a physical thing

I think I heard facebook mentioned fifteen times today:  exquisitely sun-kissed, jasmine and orange blossoms merging, taking chances as if this is it, no rational reasons required.  All those times people have told me to live in the here and now… is this the first time I’m doing this, am I Jonathon Livingston Seagull? I’ve never been much good with rapid hand eye game playing, but with individuliatic determination and tunnel insight visions creating fragments that sometimes come together in a sentient way, other times jumble and beg the question of sanity, this creative impulse urges me to make what my friend Liza calls the abstract realism.  Then Damien introduced me to the idea of chemophysical insight.  How he says an emotion can’t be a chemical reaction, I’ll have to ask him to describe in a way that I understand…

Mashed potato and heavy cream. Parmesan cheese replacing salt as the best seasoning.  Taste and pleasure, presentation and forthright attitudes where conversation bubbles and fiction don’t exist. Tunnel vision.  I think I often mention tunnels.  I think I often mention individualism. I’m trying to make a point, but I don’t want to be too hard-nosed, too obvious, too bleeding heart, too computer intensive while I burn computer time.

Intensive leading from one paragraph to the next, the hospital lines, the competing interests that jostle for premiun attention only dirt poor excuse for mash in hospitals and bacteria in your wounds. Antibiotic anti trust, ongoing battle, lazy people  lying on lilos, or more obviously comfortable dirty couches using communication devices. Wars and fights take many lines.  Comfortable beds cost money.  Hospital beds cost more.  There are always bad people, even working in hospitals.  Profit motives leading research.  Exclusion.

Multitudinous anonymous existence thronging on the street…  Massive weights moving on the sea, confusing the whales, coal fires spewing away feeding the line that just gets longer and longer… cheap is good you know.  I know I like cheap.  I can’t afford much more than cheap.  Organic free trade lifestyles are very privileged, no matter how good they make consumers feel…

…giving way at the ticket barriers… unless I’m pushing through.

May 2011

REDEFINING DREAMWALKS  mass of solitude

(a look at  conversations that think about themselves) (for Ana)

(while listening to BBC News or BBC Radio Two– they’ll tow you along — so any plagiarism is the fault of the sound-waves in my living room)

Mariana,

mass of all my memories,

you’ve captured me,

the deepest place

I know of

(give me a metal

super-tight

submarine,

that looks

like a Subway Branch,

unique and

off the shelf,

weighted with

heavy atoms

how ever expensive

they might be)

you’ve sublimed

the rear of my

brother’s car

over the Limpopo

in his boots

with his mindframe

strong and fluent

in humanity

rainbow nation

stumbled

and the chameleon is the sand…

caught here

in the city

for all

eternal time

as herbs sense spring

and grow faster still

sunlight’s better than halogen

super

reinforced.

Continental drift

infused with

youth not like china

which if old

is very expensive

youth is rare

today…

don’t

matter about the

crime or the moon-line from the sexy guy who talked on genuflects

***

Muscular Liberalism

took a holiday

in the sun

as the streets filled with

people

cast offs with

wrobs

and probs

and why

can’t you

think about

us?

the individual

with the media

face

and homogenised teeth

narrated an auto-queue

and slipped in an ad lib:

I don’t think there”s

any man

who can think

about

 all of us.

And if it was so original…

would everyman

think about

him?

as more zoom shots drew in

Like “I’ve never thought about that before”… hmm.

***

CORN

corn

and fields

and acre yeilds

with moisture count

and butterflies

and the

sweetness

varies with spec   (take out your binoculars)

ulation

the hops

and the insects

that live in

the hops,

and the human

chemicalision

of all life

to kill

and the fast march forward

saying

grow fast

to a place which

don’t change size

dig deeper

on

an iron

planet

Mother

space in time

you’ve given me

but that end of the morning beer,

the choices at the bar

all in a row

unable to say

what you want.

Forgotten

the value

of A ruby

And the struggle

to get to

the DJ

and say how brilliant

that April moonrise

woz

repetitive

sunshine and showers

but not in the south east

best ever moon…

music you take my life away and i get so you’re all i can think about

Rocket man

eats a rare metals bar

and says

not so precious

only heavier

as his

stomach drops out

damn, those lee-ways

THANK YOU

GO WELL

IT WILL BE  damn that’s on the tail of a helicopter

who has that kinda money

as I brought tobacco late

on a Ruby

I said ruby

already and lose your mind if you can

for a little while

not forever…

you hope not forever

Time

You’ve expanded

my nervous energy

(making the air move)

breaking segments

on a naartjie

like a carnival ballon

when the red hair

of my family makes

me sit back

and wonder

on wot”s common

on who just looks like who…

camparisons

that make my mind tired,

the way a 36 year old,

looks at the world.

far out oblivion

becoming a

reason…

a real thing

what about the

south east

what bout the

north

what about Scotland?

God

save the queen

and god save

the conservative

intellect so much money

so much fucking money

and their field is

wide open

to the open

legs of

a mother

Mom, tell me how to be.

What to feel in the

time

How to while

away

a whole

360 degrees

there’s only

360 degrees

there’s only

100 percent

I wonder away again

from what I meant to say

and it fucks my mind that what

I might have thought to say

I forgot to

say

and then it went

away forever

a dull

thud

thudding at my head

like so much

electricty

Oblivion to the

post with

the Maypole flowers the street haze

and the way bicycle wheels

make wind

that winds the top

to

spinning

on a new coin.

Making mind pictures

that look nothing like

square pictures

hurts sometimes

faster

in the mud crawl nightmare

faster zoom

quick jolt back

look at this

it can’t be reality.

And I like the reflection your mind gives, like I love the up-glow light on concrete

My reality, that’s what I stop at and look at, the deep in the reality

reality there again

reality again I said

it’s the only reality

i know

it’s the only reality

I’ll let you live in

dictate to me all the time.  That’s all your everyman likes

as the reality

and the perception

sword fight

with pin sharp

precision

on an Avocado Pear

and equality likes

two sides of the same coin

perfectly

balance

two

scales on each side

of a self service

Tesco till

gotta balance

the muscular

money

luck

of the human

replacement

technolgy

I want people

to be people

not things

through

money  love

absorb

a passport

with the

flow

and rust

and newness

Fight against speculation

on what I eat…

That cow looks slow

let’s catch it

12 May 2011

Work in Progress

THE 2010 COLLECTION

IAN JAMES MCADAM

Butterflies don’t tumble

they beeline…

welcome to:

the philosophical waste track

**********

1)DEPTH OF EMOTION (OR SHALLOWNESS)

Gliding over the water, skimming the surface, leaving behind me a long elongated v ripple as my wake.

The dizzying heights, lucidly reeling with that prehistoric fear.

Deep in the primordial cave, a sense of being inside the essence of everything, everything in this one breath clarified (like ghee) and understood… the ancientness of time as stalagtites-and-mites yearn for limestone union.

2) THE LIGHT OFF CONCRETE

The fashion for up-lighting, in shades of pink and blue, and all the shades in between, is beginning to wane as in this recession the trend is for mad cheer day-glo neon lighting every dull coloured, but so seen to be at, place.

…but the moonlight

…and the rare hot sun

…and the pure snow white out.

3) LIVING THE LIE

It’s been a sleepless night.  So far, it’s been a guilt ridden journey, as at 4.25 am the hope and angst combine in a heady mix:  the hope that he won’t be found out, that the fantasy will tangle up forever, and the angst that the guilty verdict is obviously inevitable.

Flip side mercy, please make it gentle, he shivers.  Every time the eye contact is too lingering, he shivers.  Cannot maintain this.  Gonna break.

4) THE SHADES BETWEEN PINK AND BLUE

Where the sun dips, hazy behind-the-horizon illuminations shoot silver arrow mirages upwards.

Far up, the baby blue shades to ultramarine.  A gradation which, though it only takes minutes to pass into twilight, takes up hours of his mental thinking.  All these hints and hues of blue, with red watercolours permeating.

FACEBOOK DON’T DO ITALICS

But does a billion
incomprehensibles.

While hope is
the Northern
thing as illogistic
logicises
and makes perfect
sense.

Improvised
Expressive
Dealership @ Hoxton.

Rivets well hidden
by hand crafted veneers.
(Doens’t do to show
the rust)

Even if the belly
overhangs.

Acado truck want to
be
(a beefed up van).

Loose parterships
dominate.

I like that foot tap.

Give it to me.
Give it good.

Balloons floating past the pent hut!

There were lots of sirens that night!

ideology fixation

The angel half  lit

is my flagging imagination,

glinting in my eye

with bewildered infatuation

gradations of subtlety

to civil overdrive.

Expunging all in a

fit of regret

resurgence of the memory

I thought I’d reset.

 Super achievement a long

shadow hope,

a thing to lean on

when I cannot cope.

Deepness to the shallow

shore, an inching open

of an old oak door, a

levelling of an uneven floor.

AUGUST SPEEDING PAST

I started smoking again… I’ll try to give up again soon, but at the moment I’m enjoying it too much!  I know how bad it is for me, and I know how much it is costing me… But definitely by the end of this year, I’ll have quit the disgusting habit forever (Let’s wait till January and see if this is the case!).

That’s about all the news for now, just a very quich update.  More poetry will be along soon, as well as a detailed update on my new voluntary job.

YOUTHFUL OBSESSION

Our youth obsessed culture as is increasingly seen everywhere, flies in the face of our ageing western societies.  I think that this trend is sabotaging us as we head into the future, displacing perfectly adequate older people who, day by day, are becoming a larger and larger majority.  Older people are no less productive than younger people, and hold the advantage of life experience, which tempers there expectations.   Youth culture is full of avarice and self interest, and above that, more often copies from the past rather than creating real ‘cutting edge’ trends. Fashion, essentially, id cyclical, and to claim that youth culture is the great inventor of all today’s trends is to ignore the rich depth of our historical culture.

And the process this can bring out in young people — often creating body amorphism and other psychological disorders, adding to the pressure on our celebrity obsessed culture — differentiating between the media and real life can be difficult.  Constantly being bombarded with perfect photo-shopped images puts pressure on us all, leaving older people feeling excluded.  Something in this mad-cap media savvy world needs to give a knee-up to the older, frustrated generation, before we’re all too old.

The page leers at me…

My cross is borne

on slight shoulders

my rectitude forms

dung beetle boulders.

 

In this recycle

shadows at noon

I push down and cycle

the city, my cocoon.

 

My African snakebite

my familial in-fight

my magical starlight

my aversion is my blight.

 

I stand here

with lost fear

and strength

in my Samson locks

free flow strewth

must rhyme like

in books

and poets who were

real, like

i dream to be.