Tuesday 23 March 2010

Reboot - 2009 reworkings

When We Come

Luscious intrepidation of bitten souls; syllables blare.
Heavy heads of confused misunderstanding,
Catching feathers with rustled hearts.
Enliven yourself, a withdrawn smile
and the orange question of exit liberties
like the screaming countries of war.

Nightly penicillin, Absolut fucks and rehab deposits,
the inside job of vampire tickets
and arresting branded threesomes of the pub porn band.

A baby jacket bell jar and their heavy instruments,
the cocktail sharks that swarm goldened cages,
baiting blood which weeps.

Little despair brings the biggest joy, from the vantage of the disowned.
Where driven drumbeats push pauper kings and queens
through streets of jade-mongered thought cowards.

The settling dust coats conduits, a view of light encapsulated thorns
Like the constant faded reminiscence
Of gleams that catch the concave.

Seconds fleet eternal as black holes begin to absorb,
the cascading jagged fingers witter
Precious ideals, now trinkets violated

Bright lights always eventually dim
like lost vessels in the night
Devoid of any

inspiration,

everything

just


Not Level
You're a Liverpool Green Noodle Box
Just a white suit and chocolate wrappers
On Lovells' Snow Hill.

Spired bricks make cover
Non-stop recycled make off
An apple corporate.

Energy's not in service anymore
Where lazy piano keys play
And red bar circles follow.

Two weeks of assumption 
And a coffee cup walking by,
punching above their weight.

Tartan legs circle and
white labels blow, all nods
and mumbles inconsequential.

Questions and/or statements,
all they say is "...Hello..."
Steam clouds give reply.


The Dead Set
The Dead Set,
Honey lightning rod barricades him in,
Look up, says he
Numero faccio contare inverso,
The beasts of the taiga hiss and buzz
Heaven's spots of light are women
in the Holocaust.
But there are no Anne Franks here.
Thirsty toil takes tritiatation
Wake up Donnie, Go to sleep John
'Holdmust i hendur allur heimurinn oskyr' says he.
A smoked menthol swallow and
fly away, Morph to '92
where Power Rangers play
on top tiaga tribesmen roamed
Spots now light heavy watching
One day he will touch. Now he says
"I'd lose myself in clarity
and find myself in chaos"
Look down, says he
The still golden castle holding
him out in open arms




Don’t Leave Coco,
All the yellowed tickets and fairytales
Of the boys and girls of this Bricken’d Lane.
The Cushion Reindeer art, the vintage Polaroids strewn.

Samba Mexicana strained with Mother’s,
Mix matched Converse that wash by,
The staler smell of wet cancer sticks
Wear it down.

Taking broken bangles
And playing in the rain.
(Mis)Educated spirits,
There’s a lot of that going around.

Like plastic boats lining rivers,
Streaming down like corporate art,
Sunshine fruit and morning’s mud and
Paper tickets fly away.

Don’t Leave Coco,
Heavy lovemaker and wearied tendon,
Solar plexus and soul represses.
Be evermore an delusion intoxicated.

Update - March 2010 - Stuff I'm Listening To...


Ellie Goulding -

The album is Lights, and I was awaiting this little album a few days after mentioning her last month.  It arrived, I got it, and I've been listening to it ever since.  The album is fantastic, made up of a lot of tracks I already knew, and once getting past the reworked versions I just couldn't stop listening to this album, no matter how hard I tried.  Just listening to one track is impossible, it simply leads on to another until the whole album is finished.  Tracks of note - Guns and Horses, This Love (Will Be Your Downfall), Salt Skin and Every Time You Go.  This album has been slightly slated as being disappointing, and while I agree there has been some resting on laurels with the record company, this is only a first album and there is plenty of time to progress.  So long as she does, but I have no feeling that she won't, having followed her progress from early doors.  Catchy, poppy tracks that blend folk and electro in an interesting way - it's how good pop should be.

Two Door Cinema Club -

A great band that caught my attention a few months ago.  The album is Tourist History.  And whilst my computer is fighting with me about this one (it won't play some of the tracks when it doesn't feel like it), this album is a belter.  A great blend of melodies, now spiced up with the addition of a drummer to accompany the three (yes, count them, three) vocalists giving the music a bigger driving force.  Tracks to watch - Come Back Home, Something Good Can Work, Undercover Martyn, You're Not Stubborn.

Laura Marling -

The uber talented songstress returns with her sophomore album, I Talk Because I Can.  I was a bit sceptical about the return with the yuletide release of Goodbye England (Covered In Snow), but the track soon caught me singing along and finding myself caught inside another one of Marling's beautifully written and wise beyond her years songs.  Whilst Ellie Goulding might be accused of still possessing immature lyrics, Marling simply oozes the aged soul that can only come from growing up on the greats like Dylan and Neil Young.  And this album shows a more grown up edge, if that is possible.  Live performances now feature less the non-interactive, silent between songs girl who once took the stage mesmorising audiences to the confident and wonderful woman who holds court, all the while mesmorising new audiences, and old once again.

Alphabeat -

The album is The Spell, and despite the premise I find this album really disappointing.  I've never been the biggest Alphabeat fan, bar a couple of stonkingly catchy tracks and this album held much hope with me but once again they have fallen into classic terroritory with me.  Whilst some tracks are good enough, the others simply fall into Euro-pop drivel, only barely managing to encapsualate the sound of the early 90s they are trying to reminicise.  Tracks worth hearing are - Heart Failure, The Beat Is and The Right Thing.  Apart from that, this album has fallen into the pile of dusty one listeners never likely to be picked up again.

The Big Pink -

This album reminds me of old whilst managing to sound new.  Sounds weird but on listening, for anyone in their twenties or above it brings back memories of the sounds that were roaming around in the early 90s just as rave was fading away somewhat, or that was simply being ignored by those who preferred their music with a guitar and not just bass and synth or any other electronic device that came to hand.  The thing whilst maintaining this raw sound, there is a bit of a touch of that scene inscribed into the music as well, the influence of growing up in these days has certainly had an effect on the band.  'Dominos' was what made this band known to the wider public, but check out 'Love in Vain' and 'A Brief History of Love'.

More soon...

Monday 15 March 2010

A little note for you...

Hello there, dear reader.

If you come across this blog and decide you like what you see, please feel free to hit the lovely 'Follow' button on the page.  It just means that the likeliness of more people like yourself coming across the blog and more acknowledgement of my work.  This isn't just a hobby for me, and I would really like to make a livelihood out of this, so by simply hitting that button, you are doing me a big favour.  If you're on Facebook, you might like to become a Fan as well.  It just means I get a bit of a higher profile and more people get to read my work.

If you do like my stuff, then feel free to leave a comment.  If you don't, then feel free as well.  So long as its constructive, I'll take it on board.

Now I've pimped myself out, enjoy the rest of your day!

Much Love!

March 2010 - Bound

For JM.

The heat that approaches is frightening to me.

The auburns and the screaming tangerine swim upwards, snapping wildly, casting darkened lines across my face.  I imagine all but the gleam of my eye is visible, a solitary twinkle among the massing cover of light lacking.  It crawls like a lover into the form and curves of a body lying in wait, linking pieces forming like they should never have been apart.

An unruly imagination could liken the outlines and shapes to the monsters that creep around, waiting for the eyes of children to slowly fall shut, dreams of giant robots and castles in the sky roaming over rolling eyes.  I remember when I used to dream.

Of objects and moulds I watched through square voids that surround me, revealing gold streaked views of ever sprawling worlds, and at other times, silvered oceans that unfurled continuously.  A spy hole that swirled, never stationary, fidgeting without consistent form or thought, a shapeless mirage.

Without my coup, I could be free of these things, and be what I dream of.  To touch, to roam, to play, to love and to hate, to scream, to laugh and to cry and to die a little inside.  A pure wind unstoppable.

But now like tribes angered with vengeful hunger, I am trapped here with the peril that pushes forward, reaching out to me like the tongue of a lizard.  The ones that I have seen on the little box of light sitting darkly in the corner, that suddenly will burst into life, showing massive beasts that flow surprisingly graceful through worlds of blue and gray explosions through which arms throw themselves into the air, chaos surrounding.  And a thousand other things that flash - a crashing slideshow pausing for a moment to then be replaced by something newer, something brighter, and something better hungry and willing to take the centre stage.

The box lies dormant now, almost siding with the figures that wreak havoc in the black.  Allies to the fold.  I wish my legs would take it upon themselves to just run like the rest of me tell them to.  The heat draws itself closer and I feel like I’m beginning to melt, each part of me transforming steadily into sludge as I sink downwards into myself.  I’m paralyzed and isolated; all I can do is watch and melt away.  Why did I have to be here?  Stuck, and unable to save myself. 

If only my little legs could carry me far, far away from me here like Dorothy.  I wish that I could see the fields, the sea and the sky.  I try to close my eyes but my gaze is fixed.  I think inside myself, picturing it all and trying to block out around me.  The monsters are laughing at me now, I can almost hear them above the quiet roar that is building, spurred on by random explosions that spark suddenly and disappear even quicker like an afterthought of regret.  It was never a good idea to do this, they could think.  And then they could all change their mind, the tribe turning backwards and leave me be.

Blazes of kaleidoscopic colour run around my head, light and shadow is ambushing me and I don’t know what to do.  If I could cry, I think I would.  But all I can do is be still, the outside hiding what really is happening.  A torrent of pictures in my head, my own personal box of light strobing faster, edging closer like the mass around me, towering up and about to engulf.  And I can’t even scream aloud, every fibre of my being desperate for it.  Time feels like it’s at a brink, about to stand still.  So close, now it’s all over.

It.  Just.  Stops.

And go.

Like the click of a stopwatch, everything flows over me – the bright gold irking at the shadows, it has come fighting from my very soul.  They stumble back and I feel a rise of emotions so hard and unrepentant I can’t begin to start contemplating.  Black swirls and dim flutters of golden glitter dance then crash and fall, the roar replaced by a silent stillness like all that I show and the melody pleases my ears.  In the distance I hear crowing back and forth, a call in song and I watch as a sheet ripples off runways of green, brand new.
Inside I sigh.  I see it all through the holes in front of me and now more than ever I want to run, to skip, to jump, to dance over it all.  Why can’t I move?

I stare with a longing and will myself, waiting for the moment that I spring into life, racing forwards into a sea of light, of merging and separating again colours, to edges of worlds so I can see over the precipice, the next one revealing itself as the page of the scrapbook is turned.  I glimmer like the lights that fly above me, overseeing the changing of the tides, hiding from one before revealing themselves again in another.  I wait patiently, successfully managing to contain the excitement that whirls inside me like a roundabout that is out of control, gripping so tight, at any second about to fly off into another world that is new and untold.

And I count - one...  two... three.

Then I run.

Monday 8 March 2010

Rust - March 2010



Disengaged ensembles fall, torn like discarded words of a book long forgotten.
Plane tickertape fall, flakes frozen flutter, bind themselves misted starry blues.
Playgrounds circle, handlebars dance, only retold fable bring back dirty glances, broken frames.

Images travel fast in chilli winter gardens, where heat and cold intertwine
Inside long vacant rooms and guises, missing points and schemes blaze.
Through hair, through head unforget, faithful story unrest, a blurred vision’s discovery.

Tree branches stalk affliction, shadowed groans then sledgehammer
Home the pitted breath and hardened stare; words are climbing mirrored walls.
Disaffected days are all pushing inwards, conferring with bad rhyme and melody uncertain.

Barbed sparks warp and smores insignificant just grope the whitewashed walls,
The rough house feeling; colourblind centrefold and plastic letters
All that remains is the stealth disappearing, an empty stomach, rotten apple cores.