CosmiKnot

 What's the inside of a third year chemistry student's house like? Like this you realise all o a sudden O would some power the gif he gi us Your son the 3rd year chemistry student is ushering you up the stairs towards his small but surprisingly practical bedroom Past the checkered laundry bags which will never know the comforting ever so slightly uplifting aroma of bold bio blue tinged washing powder And instead partially conceal hypothetical (never to be rebuilt) shelving units and well intended veg racks You're trying too hard a voice at your back reminds you as you briefly greet two healthy  tanned and confident housemates One of whom briefly assists you with assembly of your sons desk You have by now learned not to try and be funny Just get in and get the job done Not out of shame or ennui But Love and now though dost protest too much And this is the inside of a third year chemistry students house Behind the white stucco walls Of a third year chemistry student's hou...

The human brain contains The old chestnut That the outside world Does not exist unless He observes it This is the Lands End Of concrete specificity The model requiring that We keep stepping outside To check things Pass muster No we declare there is no such limit No lands end There is something in this Such is the sanctity of the concrete And perhaps  Leibniz was closer With the reckoning Of a miasma of Specific points of view Each a subjective position Defined by the point of view But even this requires Total faith in the misplaced concreteness Of simple localisation And who here is willing To commit the heretical act Of claiming the cosmos does not revolve Around the human brain?

  We three super kings   We three kings dispersed Over the kingdom’s surface Scratching our heads as we Gaze up at the same ceiling Our sheets damp with dew Undulating as molluscs perform Before our eyes We behold our return Back or was it forward? Ours is not to reason why There’s a cobweb on the cornice Cracked plaster edging Is this our limit? We chime Your hand my hand his hand Feeling for some cool sheet I was a terrible heir And I regret those statements I posited that you banked upon But now I’m left counting the stars One is so very difficult to keep Count of: don’t take your eyes off it You say looking straight ahead I love the smell and feel of sand Beneath the camels’ hooves I passed an old friend The other day Why isn’t he here? He’s busy keeping his hand in You say smiling Like a plaster matelot Will we make it in time For midnight’s mass I wonder? But I know the thought Is just grist As the mill thunders on And in the distance the sun Is rising over the bedframe ...

  Outcrop   This soon to be the heir to The skin stretched camping chair The wanderer above the lakes Cuts a distinctive figure Upon a dry-stone wall Plastic adventurer’s camera in hand Arise sir win-a-lot Reborn without cuticles Magnificent in discreet isolation Child man elect Ribbing the yellow gardens Of dawn’s early sitting Soot settling on your cheeks You will wipe that smile Off the escarpment’s Skittering fossil face Skimming one for luck Out of the corner of your Daddy’s eye For you are the daddy  Now and forever There’s no going back No looking down The view churns over leaf Bite sized reminders On the back of your hand You feel held Back and back we go Are we there yet?

 Oh M G Mikey G If I could write poetry yesterday I opened and read an email instructing me how to compose poetry kill me now it should have said Like I was like do you remember poetry like? Oh yes sort of I mean wasn't that something they used to do at Christmas? No you're thinking of funerals Ah yes i remember. Well Scientists have discovered how you do it Well you see its this weird thing you imagine a feeling thats beyond words and then somehow say it in words Then you think of someone you love Living or passed on and you write down all the things about them that cause them to be endearing But this must include their wonky smile Because their wonky smile shows how unique how quirky and truly deserving of a poem they are Then you go for a walk (easy now a days) either in your head of for real And you mix up the walk and the person And Bob's your Uncle And Fanny's your unremembered gate. Hey pesto you are a poet and you didn't know it. Are you telling me this is a...

  I’ve just watched Midsommar straight after watching Hereditary last night. This morning I wrote a poem about how it made me feel (wake up art I thought you were dead). Essentially the poem is about how I’ve noticed that art is a way we access the excess or the shadow in films. Think about all those serial killer’s sketch pads prepared by the film’s art directors. Hereditary had the sketch books of the Milly Shapiro character and the aesthetic of what turned out to be a cult of Satanists, whereas Midsommar took this much further into a whole complex ritualistic culture of a remote Swedish village. Anyone whose been near to my recent art making will have perhaps picked up my obsession with aesthetic ontology. I like to think that art can speculate about a culture that places feeling at the core – hence aesthetic ontology – this is what the village of Hargar in the film started to represent to me. In this realm, however, we do not abandon reason and our ability to problem solve usin...

Now that's what I call now   You have to admit that Gary Numan may well have had a point But that is the point isn’t it? Isn’t it After all, why should there be a point other than the total of the form itself? Perhaps we are required to listen to his song in the car to experience the fleeting infinity of mind body machine model immersion. Conveniently his single is a singularity in no dimensions And journalism is the calculus of the music world with paper doilies on Gary sings sung sang here in my car I feel safest of all. I can write that down Here on this page And it stops before my eyes The ink drying as I resist the temptation to smear the words Make them less sure of themselves. I did think it might be good to discuss this In the style of Sylvia Plath But that would be derivative Do you see what I did there? I planted a clue for the stalkers out there My fellow stalkers stalking the thing we call the point But you have to talk quietly and keep your distance Or it becomes an ac...

Rachel Searle of Blakefest suggested that as curator of the festivals's Corona Visions show, I respond to the ruling that Poetry will be optional in the next GCSE syllabus: This sylla-bus is a coach driving through the boundless Amazonian forest via the wilds of Siberia with a well-tended bed of specimens and flowers down each side of the interior. The people on the bus believe this is the limit of knowledge, after all you could spend a life time analysing the bus’s botanical cargo. Poetry has been a lifeline during the lockdown and presumably most people have accessed it via their computers and yet the reason given by Ofqual is that respondents to their consultations have “highlighted the difficulties for students in trying to get to grips with complex literary texts remotely”. What they mean is that there is difficulty translating the individual responses to observable measurements. You see there is a limit to what observable measurements can tell us otherwise why not just have ...

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