Dream


Fields of protesters, streets of protesters. Inside school. I hide myself away as far back as I can. Climb among the beams. On the cross beams above one room are old papers, stacked. I pass on and on to a quiet room, hide.

A director of studies - Jo / Lady Deadlock - enters; a lesser member of staff too. She asks him for a paper. His mind computes how many rooms he will have to cross to get one. I say 'Don't worry, there are some above the ceiling, I'll show you.' He leaves the room.

In a car we drive out the front. To the left, where there were protestors, everyone is dead, sheep mixed among them, dead. The field in front of the school, the gate is open, some live sheep at the front, the field full of dead bodies. We turn right and a voice says 'Don't kill them! You'll have to kill them.' The road is full of live sheep, cattle, in our way.

Upstairs, in the classroom, the desks are empty. Simon is there, matter of fact. I open up the desk in front of me.

A gun, piles of books including 'Wet wet wet' an exercise book with a blurred photographic cover. Soft porn magazine with photos of a girl in a bikini, blue shorts bent over a chair.

Later, the situation unchanging, I go through each desk, the toy-like guns, the exercise books. I jump when I hear Simon enter.

LaPorte, Indiana (Paperback)
by Jason Bitner

Poetry News

Magma rejection: Acquaintance, Calling At, Between Stations, Evening Out, Delivery, Quilt


Day of little serendipity. Visited Yeovilton Air Arm museum. Great War era planes, like models themselves with big wooden propellors. The sea plane was fantastic.

Disliked the modern planes, the scale was less human.

Walked students to St Barts church, a military cemetary backing onto it. There was a notice for the five soldiers recently died in Iraq, including the first British servicewoman to die. It rained, the church was closed, I felt uneasy with the Qatari students mock marching and using mobile phones in the cemetary, as if somehow this was supposed to be one piece of land forever England. Some of the graves had nicknames: Smudge. Japanese students tried to fly a kite in the rain. Left my scarf on the bus.


Double-barrelled signal pistol
Weighted streamers - used for dropping messages to ground forces
A sweetheart brooch
Metal detector plates to wooden propellors of single seater tracker machines
April 1917 casualty rate high; life-expectancy of pilot about three weeks
Observer in front
Albatross DVa / Sopwith Camel
Armoured car
Strafe (v)- machine gun fire
Sopwith Camel fighter on lighter towed by destroyer
'The airship menace,' 'The new terror,' 'Britain's peril in the air' - could carry 20 passengers
Flying from ships
Heroism - Lt Richard Bell-Davies, Royal Navy
Shagbat sea-plane

He whom this scroll commemorates was numbered among those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten.

Newspaper advert: Fallen heroes will be honoured

This week, Crowded House has sounded right.

I bought Ahmed a copy of The Little Prince to read; fittingly, as his brother is Prince of Saudi Arabia.

'For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever.'

'One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneslf to be tamed.'

(Simpsons episode Johhny Cash - fox steals from Little Prince)

This book (LP) is the equivalent of Gosie's star to look at and hear bells ring and laughter.


Post - waiting to see if the last wave sent out went over the levee.



'This film (DaVinci Code) does not turn gold to lead, it turns copper to zinc.'



Dream

Climbing steps, young baby stood alone behind me fell. I was at cabin door of plane. 'Where's Georgina?' 'She fell. There was nothing I could do.' 'She's under the ladder.' Grief, that distance with nothing to break her fall. On board, MES plays gig. Second song in, all going well, plane briefly makes a stop. MES says 'Okay if I pop out for some ointment, cheers.' Passengers smile. Some of us pop out too. We drink in a lounge, Georgina on our minds until time has escaped us, someone comes to fetch Mark, we run after him. The lights are turning from amber to white and the thin plane begins to move. For a second we stand on the runway to block it, then step aside as people shout at us - 'signallers', holding their non-partisan ping-pong bats. We catch the next plane aware we missed MES's performance.



Spread your coat tails



A complex latticework has been in place - report of terrorist surveillance



Carrie at wonder
bread from her hands
falling about - sometimes onto -
the two ducks
that visit the sloping garden
below our flats.

They transport her
like the spell of their staying
is running through her body
and could be broken if she moved
too suddenly.
Feeling her whole body at once,
she levitates -
simultaneously grounded
and light.

Poetry

Frogmore Papers submission- Theatre, Cold Remedy, Thai, Summer School, Fable, Roll-call

Withdrew Agenda submission

New Magma submission (on 'inscapes') almost ready to go - Miso, Pier, Engine, Service, Adventures, Sestina

Rejection OWP - now available :
Language Class, Chicago, Come Over, Ichthus, Out the Window, Transformations, A Night Transport, Central London

To Grapes - Steve. His jacket 15 quid from e-bay, buttoned against the direction of my shirt buttons. His shoes - 3 quid. I suggested The George, 'Shall we go to The Dandy Lion?' I discussed Dylan mentioning Randy Newman's academy awards 'Shall we go to the Swan?' Sat at table, his conversation got us in to the circle. A guy called Hugo. Ridiculously attractive woman opposite me in braless white top. I could have sat there looking down women's shirts, into the pits of stoned eyes, listening to weighing coke stories; I headed home. Wrote this and these fragments tonight and yesterday at the bus stop:

Poetry

Rips a hand-out into squares
reaches a hand to cup the grey lit cloud rain.
Four gold flags follow the nudge of the wind
and catch the sun
at the top of the tower.

And everyone of the bus queue leaves
and with it the bus;
a street empty of traffic
and engines, the click of green high heels
the voice unrolled like a spring left to topple

silence



The world is yours to inherit if you just get out there
My mistake was buying in



Sheep cannot keep up with it
a field with sheep then
a field with seagulls
culled in their nests


Ones to Watch


A Woody Allen photograph:
poised with a cigarette, the smoke
a distance from her eyes.
Her china teapot before her on the picnic table.
Disconcerting her disregard / disavowal / lack of speech
her comments a joke under her breath
Thai
'Why should marriage be about settling down?'
Lulls you into speaking.
She used to work here.

A weird week - a weird wake (MES).

English for Professionals class:

'You should have heard Amy singing your praises' - woman at reception with large brown eyes. Milos, charmless, acrobatic skier.

Friday: Amy told me about non-committal boyfriend; she texted him to say she was homesick and he did not reply. She did not want a 'fling'. Beautifully said.

Thursday /Friday afternoons: disruptive Dutch kids, precociously fluent orally, but with poor grammar and spelling. Like The Turn of the Screw. Expected lessons to be like a conversation with their point of view as important as that of the teacher. One girl ripped paper into shreds before her onto the desk.

Friday: to art gallery. Camilla like an art prospector, catalogue in hand; enlivened it. She inherited an eye for a painting, espec engravings, from her father. One crisp, quiet painting, parabolas of fields, hinged together by brown building centre left. Went for lemonade with Jo, Chelly and Hannah in square, Ryan Adams and Jeff Buckley over speakers. Hannah, poised with cigarette, drinking tea from tea-pot. Nice to hear Jo laugh at Chelly's tales of talcum powder and sand: 'Too much information once again, Chelly.'

Drinks with all women ofIH. Spoke to Hannah vis a vis pornography, its promise but lack of fulfilment, like ads. She lives in The Circus. I asked if she ever finds it difficult to find her home. Talks decided me to travel. Broke this to Carrie, emotional evening.

Robert Minhinnick: 'Sand was ruler now. It lapped the altar-stone.'(PWales 41/4)

Next week one to one with Achmed. Take him to gallery?

Saturday - scrabble 8 letter word 'equality.'

Read V for Vendetta - Guy Fawkes terrorist. Macbeth and Magic Faraway Tree (Alan Moore was new father then.) Dylan circa Love and Theft.

Human Remains, Rob Bryden:

Friends - not even friends, but acquaintances - have said to me, "Life has dealt you a bad hand." Well, I'm pretty philosophical about that. If a life of turmoil, anguish, sorrow, doubt, fear, regret and longing ... is a bad hand, then yes, I've been dealt a bad hand. But is it?

I think it's abundantly clear ... that I'm not entirely right. But as they've all told me, there's no reason that I can't really make a crack at life.

Poetry News

September, The George:
Mystery-themed reading with Carrie, Allen, Karen.
Irish Night reading.

Bought Rebecca, 39 Steps and All About Eve.

Finished Jane Eyre; read some Donne. Started V for Vendetta, Macbeth-quoting. Great word vendetta.

Dylan's radio show :)

Things I want to buy - Blank CDs, Peel 78s, Dylan Encyclopedia M Gray, Dylan new album, Fall reissues, issues one and 2 of Dirty found (http://www.dirtyfound.com/).

Poetry News

Aesthetica has published 'Pioneers'.

Smiths Knoll have accepted a revised version of 'True', now retitled 'If People Think'. I am excited to get this into print, as I think it is one of my best poems to date.

Submitted pamphlet ('Watering') to the Templar poetry competition. Results in October.

Listened to Dear Heather by Leonard Cohen. That Day, a response to 9/11, is followed by Villanelle for Our Times which talks of a time of 'Commonwealth for All'. It stands up much better than I'm Your Man, from which I would cherry-pick three tracks.

I walked to St Tory chapel today, and looked out the window for a while. Then I sat in the chair and lectern there and read Proverbs 1 - 11. It spoke to me:

My child, if sinners entice you, do not consent.

Do not be wise in your own eyes.

If you listen to Solomon's words:

length of days and years of life
and abundant welfare they will give you.

it will be a healing for your flesh
and a refreshment for your body.

King Solomon does not like men sleeping with men's wives from neighbouring villages because it causes trouble:

Do not desire her beauty in your heart,
and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes;
for a prostitute's fee is only a loaf of bread,
but the wife of another stalks on a man's very life.
Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one's clothes?
Or can one walk on hot coals without scorching the feet?
So is he who sleeps with his neighbour's wife;
no one who touches her will go unpunished.

Those whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
You will be saved from the loose woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
who forsakes the partner of her youth
and forgets her sacred covenant;
for her way leads down to death,
and her paths to the shades;

It tackles the warmongers too:

What the wicked dread will come upon them.

and treats Wisdom as a woman. I was reminded of Dylan's 'Dignity'.

A slack hand causes poverty
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life,
but one who rejects a rebuke goes astray.

When will you rise from your sleep.

There are six things that the LORD hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
and one who sows discord in a family.

Then I read the beautiful Song of Solomon.