CosmiKnot

  Into the valley by The Skids   Driving past the village pond Perhaps we would have brought you here Though that chapter has ended The one that began with me crouched  In front of the B&W portable tv In your and mum’s bedroom Taping Into the Valley of the Dolls by Generation X Onto my very own radio-cassette The one with a five-pin din for recording LPs The end of an era  Was it on vinyl? Ready steady go - you’re not ready to go you tell us You would like a nice cold beer You want to look at a smiling face I can’t make any more analogies anymore To explain the hard-plastic oxygen mask  Clamped to your face Twisting it out of shape Nippy the friendly CO2 level monitor Bleeping and warning us as you struggle  To be understood through the membrane. The priest with his yellowing well  Thumbed liturgical guidebook Thrown in out of his depth A sage fisherman’s sweater clinging to his paunch Falling with us down the log plume I see your face as we are su...

  Oh let us go to Greenwich you and I And see the origin of time The place where seconds were first discovered Bubbling up like hic-ups in grey mud covered Up on that there hill  overlooking Olde Father Thames And later hours were found Once they had a powerful  Embroided large handkerchief To wipe the sweat from the brows  of nearby weary tradesmen whose job was to surface the roads; To help the passage of time  flow more seamlessly. Oh let’s go to Greenwich you and me Where the river tide flows out Towards the sea And the baby in its buggy Grows whiskers on her cheeks Whilst the museum assistant Makes sure no one speaks As he takes stock in the corner Who left him in charge Of the gold leaf flotilla And the funeral barge?  

Today I walked up Den Hill Past the museum with its historic recipe for gingerbread Through the Carfax with a memorial for the war dead I did all this whilst sitting still  Today I walked up old Den Hill Into the park where, as a child, I watched a re-enactment of the American Civil-War Down past football pitches where I longed a spectacular goal to score I did all this whilst sitting still Today I walked upon Den Hill Up past the Co-op that was once a Spar and before that a Vivo Behind the house where I grew up kicking a ball against a wall, a place we had to leave though I did all this whilst sitting still Today I took a walk up to Den Hill Past Waterstone's the bookshop serving coffee and posting handwritten recommendations  About life changing insights and transformative story-telling sensations I did all this whilst sitting still Today I walked up to Den Hill Down the Causeway towards the old Parish Church Through the golden daffodils in the graveyard where for ...

my hand with this pen this pen in this hand declares my love declares my love for you my love for you declares my eyes this pen perceives my love for you declaring for you my love declaring This love for you I feel Here on this paper I feel love for you Each looping letter on flowing Full of love and longing Your face and eyes I see with my mind's eye seeing As my hand moves My hand moves across the space Declaring my love My love for the blissful worlds within Your face reminds me Not to refrain from longing

The Dog and Bacon The green to whence I ran away (Rang home from the vanished red call box) Landing there again with A&R again today I saw the circular path that I had taken Just as I was crossing the road to the shop Looked up and there I saw The freshly painted sign Depicting in lush strokes the dog and bacon Butcher gaily wielding cleaver Dog with ham joint in its maw Me striding towards the coop To buy more butchers streaky bacon Boys remain on the green All long grass and butter cups Looking after Betty chocolate lab pup Borrowed from friends for the weekend And now she’s ours to pretend The moment never sours never ends The circular path that I have taken Back outside the dark and beacon Co-Op was once a Vivo next to an offi Now they’ve knocked it through Text alert - Don’t forget coffee It was here aged six I asked Lesley With long straight dark brown hair To marry me – wait for me She was a shop girl but now I’m ...

Invisible. Art about the unseen. This show at the Hayward is sublime. It is also by turns maddening and hilarious. It’s like your very own immersion in the joke about trees in the woods making a sound when no ones there to give a shit. Or like you stepped into a film delighting in the extended agony of art pretentiousness. Wear a polar-neck. It’s that good. It's also very like being in a sci-fi lunatic asylum. Right now that’s out of my system I can admit that I did come away thinking I will never make any art again. It’s like the world is too cluttered with culture already. I thought about the words of Salvator Rosa in his stoic self portrait, "Be quiet, unless your speech be better than silence". Despite the fact that this show is literally nothing except explanations on walls about nothing (spoiler alert) the same life/art dialectics resurface again and again. Teresa Margolles is a fully qualified forensic scientist who specialised in autopsies of victims of viole...

A hang over is a funny thing. I am in the dining room having eeked the last part of the maths homework out of my son and the world seems fuzzy. Not fuzzy as it did yesterday when I realised my left eye was struggling to focus (age and stress) but fuzzy in a way more suited to Sundays spent in an undergraduate bedroom. I never really let go at art college. By which I mean I was always aware that I might have to function the next day. Life was not an Alex Garland ed beach for me. There is probably a certain amount of obsessive compulsive control freakerery to blame for me never really disengaging from an approach of nervous trepidation. The old spectacles testicles wallet and watch is a joke that chimes with me on a number of levels - not least the repeated rituals that Catholicism seemed to instigate. Set off. I never forget the time my parents found me, aged 10, kissing the feet of the deconstructed crucifix that hung over our staircase. You don't need to do that they said gently...