Where is love?

Amended again 6th August

To the north waves in barley, 

Mirror shadows heading deep 
Into Megdale, across grass

Pollen holding fast, against the air.

Tenuous life, ploughed into furrows

is committed. Deferring to the soil.

While on the barley fetching breeze
Scents, lost souls, machinery faults

Catch the larks and buzzards
Spiriting them free of my passing.
High above this private enclave
Cupped by low hills: enthusiasm

No longer mumbles in the barns. 
The light fading over common land, 
In common with all lands, warms
The heart before the chill begins.

Amended work in progress, 16th July:

To the north waves in the barley, 

Mirror shadows heading deep 
Down into Megdale. 'cross grass

Pollen held by nothing but air.

Tenuous life, ploughed into furrows

is committed. Caught-up in soil.

While on the barley fetching breeze
Scents, lost souls, machinery faults

And ......

So where is love in all this?



To the north barley waves ascend.

Where is love? Southerly shadows

Climb. Grass pollen, not yet ready

To fly. Cattle low behind the hedge.

The sun has moved across the sky.

Where is love? Elsewhere? Barely.

Hidden high above the heavy sun?

Likely not. Ploughed into furrows

Caught up in chalk soil. Committed.

Carried in the barley furling breeze.

I have rediscovered my blog!

It has been so long since I've posted, and I think I had forgotten my scribblings were still out there in the ether.

So I have a commitment to myself: I shall write more. If only for me. If only for you if you visit. I like the idea of putting down in words thing that may now last for an eternity. The universe could one day be full of thoughts left on servers. No claim to quality, no attempt at perfection, just some honesty and a bit of fun for me. And hopefully you.

Today I'm working form home. Working on some policy and procedure stuff for a new transport company. Happy to have the work, nothing earth shattering but it's good to be part of establishing something that will be used and hopefully enjoyed by its customers and employees.

In my office listening to Beach Boys Pet Sounds at the moment. Earlier Crosby Stills Nash & Young, next thinking of some classical choir from Harry Christopher and The Sixteen - Barber, Poulenc, Stravinsky and others.

Have (after many years of shilly shallying) got into digitised music: ripping CDs to FLAC files. Combining an old laptop as a music server, with a NAS drive for back-up, a fab little 24 bit DAC (available from http://epiphany-acoustics.co.uk/ if you are interested), played back through two vintage Sony STR 5800 receivers (one driving bass, the other treble), bi-amped into a pair of 14 year old Monitor Audio Silver 8i speakers. Wonderful sound-stage, separation of instruments and voices is so good. Tight bass with a warm mid and top. Really really satisfying. I've had the speakers from new and the Lenovo laptop was redundant model from 2008 or so). the rest cost me circa £400 and was put together from Ebay (the two receivers), Epiphany Acoustics (DAC), and speaker cable from a local supplier. IMHO I would struggle to do better without spending a fortune. I shall post some pictures at some point.

Office listening is a bit more mundane - Focusrite DAC I use for recording into powered nEar 05 monitors - OK but not stunning - and I want stunning. I have bought a half dozen or so vintage Sony amps and receivers and plan to get another DAC and use that to drive one of them into some new speakers. That's for another day and time though.....

Canary Wharf

A newly lucid awareness

Of beauty and youth

Falls in with my aching

Steps, as I pass by.

Happenstance denied
That that isn’t lost to me

While here in abundance

Exquisite and poised

That that is drifts on.

And I slip further out

To the margin

To the waiting

To what will be done.

Rework of 'A New Year's Funeral' - is it better?

The stumbling fool carries his prayer book

Confident up over the chipped stone step,

Torn pages doling comfort,

Smothering grief as required by His love.

Quoting custom, mumbling winter’s return,

Losing his way among the stones and psalms,

A young things’ modern elegy,

Covers with a veil maddening incompetence,

But he calls right the snow that will chill buried bones,

And cause the church cat to put off its hunting,

Measuring the days in life filled sleep,

Until it’s over.

20 Feb 2012

New Year Funeral

The stumbling fool carries his prayer book

Confidently over the chipped stone step,

From broken pages ministered comfort

Falls on grief as required by contract.

His supervisory over-sight, fails

Far from the coal-face, lets indolent words

Scatter careless thoughts, dumps soil by the road.

Mawkish young things in modern tears praised him

Placing a veil over others’ silence.

The fool said custom foretold fair and bright,

And while most unspecified words are false,

Winter has returned to chill buried bones

And the churchyard cat has put off hunting.

Of yesterday’s tomorrow, what remains?

Retrospective

Before a drunken night

He’d gone to the docks

Astray, in a landscape lost.

Beerily ferile together,

Gone the stilted indifference

Of earlier retrospectives

No longer sterile and alien.

The small together they share

Is intimate and isolated.

She, thin and profane,

Has gamine eyes,

Is fuckable.

Thomas

Thomas decided to begin his life at fourteen, what was before was forgotten and what followed he derived from an idea. Thomas was reviled at school for the wilful and indulgent way in which he set himself apart.

The idea that nature was pure and that as part of it he embodied purity became him. He reasoned the natural must be correct, whatever its end, however brutal its means. In the idea the prevailing landscape of brutality is demonstrably true and therefore he concluded sufficient. 

On this morning the soap he lathers across his body does not purify but it is necessary, as is the hard bristle brush and the scalding water. Red skin and the singing cuts on his hands and neck howl as he scrubs harder with a bullying efficiency, he punishes his body zealously, directing the shower full against his skin. His corona has a graze that is raw.

Thomas has never sworn, even though he can be angry and vengeful, Thomas has never loved though he can be tender. Thomas is lithe and well worked, superficially attractive, attractive to queers mostly and angry about their interest in him. There have been women but mostly there has been just him. Thomas is a harsh man, quick to judge but funny, he has had some success.

Drying himself in the squalor of the bathroom doesn’t matter but only one dirty towel does, he wishes he’d looked for a clean one before he’d got in but it’s too cold to wander wet back out now to see if anything had been washed and dried. And anyhow, he’s not one to want to expose himself unnecessarily and he'd long learnt that aftermath is no place to linger. His clothes are damp and cling unhelpfully when he pulls them on, light blue herringbone cotton collared shirt, three buttons at the top undone, the rest left in haste where they were before he’d ripped it off, trousers a little crumpled but of good wool, orange leather brogues over cashmere socks bought from an on-line discount store.

A stream of profanity crashes into him as he steps out of the bathroom, closing the panelled Victorian door and tousling his hair into something that resembles grooming. He keeps it short now as he often forgets to carry a comb. He likes to leave the fabric of things tidy, to maintain balance, the girl and the room are a mess of morning after disgust and resentment, despite her pleading there was no way he’d budge and help her.

Thomas picks up the phone and dials a number he’s dialled before, hands the handset to her, presses his fingers to his slightly pursed lips and turns away. The flat door is heavy and with an old Yale lock it sounds final as it slams shut behind him.

Where do I sit if there isn’t a seat?

Where do I sit if there isn’t a seat,
Your lap of ice with a moth-like sheet?
It  powders me with a fine silver dust;
Shift along, I can make do for now
this space is enough for a finite end.
Absurdly distant you make waves
over me, while arguing for God.
Casually restrained and precise,
Articulate even, but not nice,
a Net Present Value with a discount
for evil is no argument for death.
Once we sat in the sun, a train
Came and soon you waged war.
I remember we talked, Darlington
Ninety seven, your wings’ silvery
mark is on me and millions more.


Dec 13th, 14th and 24th 2010

Maybe chapter 1?

Strangely idealistic despite a record of under achievement Marcus still believed that he could make a success of life. Proud of the transition he had made he’d become a faithful man limiting his indiscretions to thoughts and gazes, but this self imposed discipline did not make him content. Moreover he now found it difficult to relate easily to others, well aware that his past had been the cause of unhappiness and that some including his daughters had not been able to express their disappointment in him for fear of doing further damage, the removal of lechery from his behaviour did not mean that the intent was not there and this disparity between desire and action created a nervous intensity in him that barred easy company. At an age when he should have been putting lust behind him one or two of his friends’ partners or chance acquaintances attracted him so that he couldn’t easily look them in the eye. It is as if some residual tenderness remained toward life and though he was never one to be afraid of being alone Marcus maintained a longing for the intimacy of others.


The little restaurant business that Marcus ran with his wife Sharon had a small but loyal band of regulars and a steady stream of tourists in the summer but its heyday had passed and despite some good reviews and fabulous evenings in earlier years its lifecycle had moved into its period of decline. Each week paying suppliers or creditors became a test of disingenuous virtuosity, missing a phone call to avoid a lie, persuading customers to pay in cash, giving chefs post dated cheques. Marcus was well aware that they were living on borrowed time but would still be generous with portions or a small whiskey at the end of a successful evening for his favourites. Late in the evening with heels burning it was particularly enjoyable to open one of the better bottles from the small but well chosen list and share a glass with the waiting staff. The opportunity to be suggestive with the young women who waited for money and had no love of food or service or to engage in cod philosophy with the odd well educated and interesting young man that fell into his temporary employ seldom passed Marcus by. The beautiful and the intelligent amongst these young people helped Marcus to forget much.

He would usually leave around eleven during the week or approaching one in the morning at the weekend. In the warm summer months he would often walk through the pleasantly safe streets of town stopping at the steps of the cathedral to sit and listen to the buskers who entertained groups of scruffily loitering foreign language students who stayed out making the most of warm nights close in character to those they would experience at home. On nights like these Marcus felt most alone, alienated by age he could only gain comfort from the repetitiveness of his isolation. The cathedral precinct was broad and surrounded by stone and the brick rented homes of those who hoped for secure tenure. Nearby Sharon would be asleep or lying in bed worrying about monetary problems that existed but which she habitually avoided. Although Marcus maintained his belief in eventual success, if not with the restaurant with some other endeavour she was of the opinion that bankruptcy, her many affairs and an essentially dysfunctional family were not the foundations on which happiness was built.

Marcus gazed out across the grass and through the medieval stone tracery and asked what would become of him if he kept up this routine. Avoiding home and pursuing a fantasy for the last twelve nights he’d waited until he was sure everyone had gone home or at least the timbre of approaching footsteps indicated that he would have sufficient warning of potential discovery before he vaulted the fence. The fence was black with a patina underpinned by decades of layered paint and it separated the secular streets from the locked cathedral garden. Behind the garden lay another fence and two rows of houses large and small, timeless in their protective cocoon. Crossing over yesterday at a little after twelve, close to an adjoining wall in the shadows his ankle had been scored by many jagged thorns of a rose bush. Tonight the scabs were tight, stretching the connected skin and each movement of his foot caused him to wince.

Winter's Arrival

Beauty speaks for itself and it is hard to define what it is in words.  So it's best I let it do its own talking.

Winter's arrival on the 25th November has been a somewhat definite affair in Kirby Underdale. These pictures are quite representative of its seemingly positive statement of intent. The forecast is for more snow over the next few days. Overnight temperatures are down to double figures or thereabouts. And my love of Jaguar cars has once again bitten me hard. Big engined rear wheel drive is pretty much useless in these conditions.

The window behind the trees is where I mostly write and Cassie is my walking companion.

A measure of my capacity to love

To impose order on the arrhythmic tick
Of our expanding metal
Or for threes and fours to fit the slick
World view you profess,
We have kindled, I have burnt much away,
Embers in the stove
Remain but order is not the order of the day.

I take pleasure if it comes in the night:
The singing edge
Of my hearing, metallic methane light
Playing in the dark,
Retinal wisps skipping at will while I listen
To strangled breath,
Until day comes and drowns the kitten.

I do love you though you are not mine
And I am not yours.
While you sleep, work or not, bring wine
Lilies, anxious fires or pets
I slip into something which may coincide
With your choosing,
Unsure of the fit and what it will hide.

Valentine's Meal

I have this brooding irritation.
Gut deep, it manifests as acid
That follows cold crawls of sweat,
Evidencing you under my skin.

Cowardly indefinite I decline
Valediction and circle you,
Elliptically erratic like dust -
I book a table despite me.

The journey allows us to vent,
For me to agree to drive home.
You'll have wine and cognac
I'll keep to a cliched whine.

Before we pick at the meagre
Degust of an oversold kitchen,
We amuse our mouths with bitterness
Exchanged like saliva or cum.

We spit olive stones into fingers
And order our parable, chosen
For morally bankrupt times:
Faux, pre-prepared and indulgent,

Over sauced, over seasoned and dull,
We eat and become under whelmed.
All the while all alone and encircling
Each other’s disappointments again.

Easy pickings for old crows
Covertly re-asserting their nests.

I Covet Perfection in all Its Forms

I hear loneliness when she saunters by
Or she’s blown with a mute’s brittle loss
Senescing gold colours autumn lets fly
Her beauty, wrought in naked perfection.

I covet perfection's myriad forms
The arc of a waist, the crossing
Of limbs athletically honed, but born
Into degeneracy I am flawed.

What questions define my purpose as man?
Those quiet Godlike ones haunting the night,
Silken spectres of a dismal lover’s hands
Or those that probe desired retribution?

These contradictions fill my heart at rest
Attenuate my world, provide respite.
And so diminished, plucked but unstressed
I am left unresolved, a hanging chord.

Where is hope when sensibility dies?
I’d rather longing than stabilised lies.

My beautiful home

I thought that it would be good to share some pictures of the beautiful part of the world where I am lucky to live.

Kirby Underdale is in East Yorkshire, about 15 miles east of York on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds. It’s an estate village, owned by Lord Halifax Estates. Mainly 19th century build there is plenty of evidence of the area being occupied for up to 5,000 years.   
It is truly a fabulous place to be. I hope someone enjoys the pics.

Another sombre moment before the door

Another sombre moment before the door.
It opens to expectation. My footsteps
Accompanied by a murmured discontent
Arc toward the dock. Shuttering applause
Flutters in the sterile room, butterflies
Of fear greet my centring breaths before
The defence begins. I look up to expectation
I see gratitude, my oratory bringing joy.
Poverty blighted these lives and yet my deeds
Simple and subtly enacted give them peace.
To regain my composure I reject my weakness,
A truthful voice contains more than is desired,
Give them the certain and logically correct
Their loyal reason will ensure the rest. Each
Impassioned belligerence, spittled from my lips
Each sweep of an arm, salutes and beatifies me,
Justifies our enemies rooted out, made to pay.
No judgement is being passed. Friends don’t.
We were one in our endeavours, my people
And me. The questions asked are uninspired,
Combat for lawyers, weak moneyed men, liars
Let them save a nation, they espouse cliché,
Protecting with dull and uninventive wits.
I am angry with their ingratitude. Shits!
And disrespectful ones at that, tire me.
I refused council, in recess time is mine.
Soon judgement will be handed down. They will
Not decide. I will have my victory tonight.

30th October 2010.

First Class

Alone yet juxtaposed
We triptych, around a
Table of four, whisper
Through an architecture,
Exchanging services,
Our impassively drawn
Faces tuned to deny
Unwarranted contact,
Rushing to commerce with
Other souls waiting while
We are hurled to temporary
Meaning, minuted life.

Amended 30th October 2010

Much, much, more

There have been moments in N’s career when rewards have come too easy. The discovery that often only a working knowledge of an organisation’s failings is required in order to make personal progress through its ranks has however made life less than satisfactory. It wasn’t always so. Most companies require commitment but are easily deluded. N learnt quickly how little work people actually do, and beneficial work is very rare; he knew the shocking lie that capitalism is efficient. It’s efficient at making sure capital resources are allocated efficiently, it’s that banal, but an effective use of people? A lifetime of experience told him that less is much much more.

N was thirty two years old and therefore a late developer when his enthusiasm for the task got him noticed, ideas and projects that he put forward coincided with the company’s zeitgeist, ephemeral and glib though it was. Before long he was putting in the required hours to be known as one of the ones to watch though those that conferred privileges also kept him at arm’s length. And so it went for a few years but the projects N submitted or was allocated rarely came to anything. N probably saw through the implementation of one idea across three areas of the business as he moved from role to role but as he did so he was getting further and further from what he saw as what mattered, the company’s customers and the employees who looked after them.
Like most people he came across N had stumbled into the industry. Some colleagues found railways fascinating but strangely they were derided within the company as much trainspotters are by the general public and jokers. N didn’t find railways fascinating although he had a quiet fascination for timetablers and engineers but like he wasn’t accepted by the Directors and most of the other senior managers he knew he wasn’t part of the company’s true meritocracy either. For a time he was a conundrum, recognised by many on the payroll of three thousand his name was known to pretty much all of them. Some admired his vivacity, some were quizzical about his success, and others were downright hostile implying with their ironic greetings and unreturned voicemails that they simply didn’t value his contribution and couldn’t work out why the company did either.

This was all fourteen years ago now. The senior team changed, new faces without any railway background came in and set about making things the same with an evangelical fervour. For a few months N almost pulled off the same trick but again these new managers were a different breed. The end was swift, mostly engineered by N himself he knew that clever those these new guys were they were also stupid. N believed organisational focus a fabulous concept it allowed him to operate in the Director’s peripheral vision and create a copper bottomed case for unfair dismissal. A cheque followed a few months’ gardening leave and he was free of economic ties but also free of means.

Half Truths

I create a dream each day. The draw of a wood fire is its breath, a fast machine ride therapy for a jumped up pantry boy. In this world of opinions and momentum there is no certain way. Man is not master of the forces he unleashes woman neither; she is as bored with her materialism as a popular actor with a new toy on his fiftieth birthday. No more toys for God’s sake. Intelligent design could not have got us here surely? The dream is a pathway of justification through each highly paid day’s fraud that I commit. I have what to most would be a perfect life. I am a bee with a surfeit of nectar, a sugar rushed lazy of a man toying with my rudder. Toying too much with it, bloody thing and the Internet, how the hell am I supposed to make sense of my life with so much distraction?

Still I have a girl with a beautiful haircut and a cosmetically unchallenged body to contend with. Her enthusiasm is my noire, her enthusiasm for meals, my generosity and me, I am a waning moon and on the cusp of being alone, she’ll deny all this but as I crouch over her and admire her beauty in silence I can’t help but smile at the stupidity of youth when it encounters wealth. My crotch aches and for a moment I consider turning her to one side, she asked me in the night as she curled into me if I would leave her, in my half waken humour I comforted her with ‘of course not, I couldn't be bothered', now I can’t but soon self protection will mean I must.

I ought to be friends with my family. I have left them scattered across the country. My mother is alive and I’ve tried to keep in touch with her, she visits but the coordination is fraught. She’ll want a lengthy visit so as to get best value from her discounted fare; I have to get whichever unsuitable companion is in my life out of the way for a day or two. I try not to make it any more than that; I think I’m an unfortunate son for a widow to suffer. She arrives at ten and Jana leaves at nine, off to a weekend field trip. It is five now. I have to write a paper for a company chairman, give her what she wants and condemn a few more workers to having to think about their future. It is as pointless to import Bordeaux during prohibition as to fight this particular firebird with words. To be caught in the squall of her capitalism would be the death of me no doubt, I am lucky to ride its up draught for while yet. Do I wish that I was still married? On days like these the comfort of being known to each other and corralled by vows and legal obligations makes visiting matriarchy more comfortable. She’s not daft my mother and she knows that I have lovers, and she knows their absence when she visits is a portent of a dark future for me. But I couldn’t stand the way my wife would make sure I sent cards and gifts, made me out to be something I am not. I am not friends with my family because after I insisted on keeping the flat and left her the country house and returned to my uncommunicative ways they realised she was the one who they’d been enjoying and I was the same introspective dreamer I’d always been.
I’ll never break with tradition and will keep melodies at the centre of the life I compose. Though I harbour visions of a self-less revolutionary fervour I am no doubt a conservative and reticent man.

Out of bed and through to my office. Coffee, smoke and toast; butter and yeast extract, butter and honey, one slice of each. I précis my thoughts into a scribbled map and gradually collate them into an idea and then I start to write. Words tumble out of my bleary head and struggle through the dehydration of a cask strength Rosebank, as old as my daughter. I always tell myself that each paper I write is a work of art. I re-present the truth but as they wish it to be see. I calculate each margin and ratio, I summarise the spreadsheet model that I made last week between fucking and porn and being frustrated. True I did re-learn the Hotel California guitar solo again after a twenty year hiatus. After a couple of hours I have something half-baked which wouldn’t stand up to so much scrutiny. I read it through, correct some grammar and add a couple tables and graphs for effect. It will come back with a mixture of spite and admonishment for my lack of progress. Then I’ll turn it round, I always do. The Chairman is my judge and jury but sometimes not that bright. I am aware of my hubris. I just don’t care. I press send.

Time to wake up Jana. I am often ashamed of my never ceasing lust for her. She must be sore to distraction sometimes. I know she'd be better off without me. I shall make her a coffee and let her decide about fucking, the field trip and my mother. If she decides wrongly I shall be anxious and hateful to her. My inherent deterrent is not an attractive side to me and it will probably be a main reason why she will leave at nine and one day for good. I won't change though, I decided not to, a long time ago.

My wife was completely disinterested in the Chilean Miners' rescue! I found it moving, she was unmoved.

I have to admit to a experiencing a strange sensation when seeing so many others from around the world expressing their happiness in public on the BBC website.

I have a friend who recently won an award and when it was reported in the local newspaper some people wrote in to make strangely incorrect and disrespectful remarks. The friend felt that people who had nothing better to do than to go online and complain were donkeys (my word not hers) and to paraphrase something very old: 'if you are kicked in the head by a donkey........'.

So, although it was a positive emotion that I expressed am I just a donkey too? Or a sheep following the flock? When Diana POW died I was appalled by the public hysteria and took no part in any public display of grief, although I did moan about it down the pub sometimes.

I think my wife's disinterest shines an interesting light on me and I find it's illumination not wholly flattering. My sentiment was good and it was a joyous rescue so why not take part in it's celebration? And after all not many people look at my blog (possibly one!) so it was hardly a narcissistic post but I guess that is my fear.

What an introspective man I can be.

Success is Beautiful

Seven hundred metres doesn't seem such a great distance when it is out of context, or the context is benign, but even a fraction of it can separate life from oblivion.

I can walk seven hundred metres and enjoy every moment, though if time is limited and the walk is part of a necessary journey enjoyment is less likely. It can be the setting out, the existential joy of motion, weather or setting, or simply what is at the end of the journey that matters. Sometimes seven hundred metres is not enough and a desire to go further and then further still can only be satisfied by getting away.

Watching moving pictures of the Chilean miners being brought to the surface is deeply emotional. To them during their incarceration every metre must have moved through many different psychological states. The depth of the rock summed across the earth's surface its mass bearing down, the technical challenge it represented, the barrier to love and loved ones, for the deceivers a protection against the inevitable consequences of discovery bought about by the all the remote attention they and their lives have received. Being trapped has many degrees of separation not just the physical. Knowing freedom can be derived from only one.

It is affirming to see the impact of the successful rescue on the faces of the rescued, the rescuers and most of all the families. If ever it can be doubted that we are born to love then these pictures are the antidote. So many people have been lost in similar circumstances over the course of human existence that it would be easier for us as a race to dismiss another group of trapped miners as a common place and not worth the allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps some did this time and thought it too difficult or maybe they just didn't care enough. But some made the effort, skillfully meticulous and diligent they have achieved a tremendous victory for humanity.

The rescue is ongoing. I am nervous that it may falter at some point. I think of others in similar situations who didn't make it, the Russian sailors on the Kursk, the many in the World Trade Centre, let us hope that this mission is successfully completed and let us give thanks to humanity for having the capacity to love so effectively.