CosmiKnot

  And so you have passed your driving test whereas yesterday you were a learner driver today you are a driver. A wiseman with a clipboard asks you to read the number plate. He recites the words: I'm happy to tell you you've passed. The carcass of the prey lies flayed on the tarmac. Steam rising from its innards. The world around the shopping centre begins to come to life. I am a driver you think raising a hand to touch the blood smeared on each cheek. Clunk click every trip only a fool breaks the two second rule. Yesterday you were a novice driving with a scarlet letter and now you are a driver in charge of your own destiny turning the key in the ignition reversing off the driveway into the stream of life. Fuck you wanker Have some of that It's all second nature now The guilt gilded trauma the dashboard certainty it's all there waiting for you  to slip into neutral.  

  Oh Lordie troubles so hard, on the way to the hospital we listen to young Moby I mean he was younger when he had recorded the album in his New York apartment With what we might now consider to be primitive electronic sampling equipment And an anachronistic but quintessentially of its time electronic piano Perhaps, I speculate, it was this very primitivism that helped him to entangle with his terrain via the refrain, a milieu of the soul. He was  plundering  updating the field recordings of African American gospel folk songs My father loved Lead Belly and would sing me his version of Cocaine Blues along with the Dust Pneumonia to lull me to sleep My Father’s versions of these songs are my favourites and yet they do not appear anywhere on Youtube Lead Belly’s are the closest thing I can find I believe that the timing and social context of when you first encounter a song determine your qualitative processing of its value. On our way to see you on the respiratory ward we ar...

  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...

  Parents on trains with children   Independently filling in word search puzzles Obediently and as instructed This is hateful and Consistently turpitudinous A boot stamping on the face of Temporal substance and love

  The house is built for days like this I think as we step through the upvc front door and walk past two small hatch-back cars. You had been worried about your hay-fever and feeling sneezy. I tell myself that you will enjoy this when you get there but also remind myself that saying this out loud would not be helpful. In my patronising way I imagine I am with a horse that needs calming. Just get on the road I think and we do. Turning left out of the drive down the anti-clockwise curving descent of the crescent. Our home stands halfway around this arc. We pass the children’s chalk drawings reminding us to stay cheerful and happy. Then it’s on to the junction at the end of the road where a rich swathe of grass opens up. A football pitch where both of us played for teams and with each other. What’s your favourite memory of the seaside I ask inspired by the blue-sky breeziness filling the air? I don’t like the seaside remember? Oh but we had fun playing cricket outside the triangle cabi...

This programme “The One” distils or reduces love and human identity to a DNA codification. We seem to have wholly accepted, like evangelical science Christians, an idea that our perceptual sense of self is shaped by a code akin to the algorithm which conveniently shapes our human relations. The very idea that there might be other factors in the cosmos beyond the hard-wiring of DNA and the genes seems to be a heretical suggestion. The suggestion that that we are not individual units of power shaped by a numerical sequence is again akin to saying I believe in leprechauns or even God. perhaps the code has replaced God. I would say that this faith in the rational shaping of code is a clinging to the raft of Medusa as the ship of progress sails into the sunset. We apply our Botox whilst devouring each other’s limbs. It is faith we have in binary switching systems and we find it cleaner and more wholesome to believe that our one true love could be shaped by the pairing of our DNA-sequence st...

  I’m like a fish out of water Think about it for a moment Do you see a fish on a bicycle? Gliding through the medieval theme tune Of an English university town? Or do you perhaps see a dace? Glistening in the small pale wet hands of a 13-year-old boy Offering up the catch to the lens of his father’s smart-phone A grin spreading like mildew over a photograph in the attic J R Hartley remains stock still in his grave at this moment  A fish out of water floundering on the unhooking mat on the bank It is not necessary to use one but against regulations not to As I wake into each day I am such a fish Lured from the velvety depths of my freshwater natural habitat Dreaming of my other son’s desire to buy a sports car Or my own promotion to transgender Professor I flounder motionless under the duvet and gasp for something. Air? A reason? A light? My gills flap as I struggle to readjust  to my new circumstances in a world of actual pain. Living is the oxygen of pain see. My gills ...

   This instant   This instant she is Craning her neck Sight reading the starlings on the aerial She fears the sound of The ceramic glazed lustre A side dish of olive stones Exploding into the cosmic Void of the walk-in kiln Does the light go on? The bulb above your head Does the penny drop? The dripping alchemy Of this stickle brick universe Is somehow all wrong An inverted syrup Am I losing my hair?   Come here this instant Your escape velocity  Is terminal four The quick sand conveyor belt Is up to your neck in it Squelch went the dying sun She says sticking a finger in her cheek A plastic spade blade gamely Patting the top of the old block Plastic flag at the ready Seagulls whirl and crow Expounding obvious pride in The I told you so of it The that which every mother knows The new dog old tricks Pavlov’s bell ringing certainty of it Of it all of it all of it all   this instant instantly explodes a highly improbable moment   then this one then the n...

  God is in his cubbyhole  a place usually concealed the slatted chubb-lock doors are today flung wide open   like God’s man spread as he sits performing one-person show a couple stand before him for all eternity I too am invited to partake in a round   this much I gather from the array  of score cards, balls and anti-bac spray with cast-off selection of diecast putters  leaning invitingly against catering table   putting green shimmers with holy portent eighteen solar systems waiting each undulating around dead suns sucking down soft dimpled moons with   down the drain, death-rattle endings pastel draped couple stand ready moon scythes in hand before God discussing something beyond perception         In this vacuum of Summer I feel my chest fill with boundless hope fed by times spent inside finite models of the cosmos   didn’t ever want to fall off the edge of the putting green but knew I would find it waiting even before...

I once went to a funeral in Norwood of the neighbour opposite A widower who fought in the Korean War, lent me a book on Darwin as well as The Origin of Species. The vicar told the one about going to another room And I espied in my mind's eye the pale lime green shiney embossed wall-paper interior A water colour of a boat on the sea hanging forlornly on the wall Roy had had stomach pains for a while Try peppermint tea I suggested In my new father's alternative wisdom Nothing will shift it he says a month later It's cancer he politely tells us a few days after. His son, a nomadic young man, comes to stay When his father dies we hope he will remain. Take on the house but he doesn't want the bother doesn't want the legacy the what's its name? the responsibility. Is that how we do it then? Tell ourselves we have a responsibility to suffer? hello Mr Burden  I'm your responsible adult Roy's just gone to another room says the vicar forgetting that the whole conc...

The garden light is blinking Its power from the sun diminished Hearing aid bleeps dying signal finish Through clouds the moon is sinking Alert the royal astronomer I've never heard of such a phenomenon The end of our world will have been and gone before I can pass this news on to her So she can arrest said titanic projectile before it plummets into the ocean And I'll freely declare my devotion taking care to address her in the correct style The moon dives through a gap in the clouds That seem to stand so perfectly still On the air hangs a will that is fetid and ill Wrapping the earth in its shroud

  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 ...

 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’m glowing from my mid-June sea-swim God is in his cubby hole storage space A place usually concealed by slatted chubb-lock doors, which today he has flung open wide like his man spread,  as he sits performing a one-person show for the couple standing before him for all eternity. You are invited to partake in a round. This much I gather from the spread of score cards, balls and anti-bac spray with a motley selection of diecast putters  leaning invitingly against a laminate top catering table. The putting green shimmers with holy portent. Its eighteen solar systems each undulating around their dead suns, sucking soft dimpled moons into a comforting abyss. Announcing their demise with an edifying clonk, a down the drain rattle of an ending. A pastel draped couple stand ready Moon scythes in hand before God, discussing something beyond my perception. In this vacuum of Summer I feel my chest fill with an infinite optimism inf...