“…einem kleinen Kunstwerke von der umgebenden Welt ganz abgesondert und in sich selbst vollendet sein wie ein Igel.” - Friedrich Schlegel
February - the last shuttle climbs,
weary of this culture’s consolations,
slouching from the gravity well.
Below, where the wet drought oppresses
‘The thing to do is not to tumble it again.
It looks OK.
It is.
It’s OK.’
‘The beginning is nigh’, was what he said
Knobhead.
Ziffing in violet goretex boots and britches
‘And - look - I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed,
(or our hands dirty), but where there’s life, right?’
Adrift in fast cloud,
broken scree of the flat hill top,
Mist beading, boltjar fingers raking
‘On a clear day you can see.’
Through parchment undergrowth,
He had decided then, to have it away on his toes.
A wicked plan.
Two roads diverging in the snowsick wood
The hurcheon,
(you know what? He’s the hero)
trots them both
All bets hedgehogg’d
Quantum
Ready for either worst case scenario
The dead cat bounces
Both left and right
On each roll of the nuclear dice.
‘What could you do?
What could anyone do?’
‘Respond to moments with any one of five core emotions: smile, frown, gasp, laugh, and love.’
We will provide lifecots for babies
and lifejackets for infants
in the unlikely event.
I wasn’t a child but
That coast is where I grew up
Turning low, far out over the grey sea
These fragments I have shored against my ruin.
Or as we smaller animals say
You lose if you get angry
I keep dying in the darkness outside the shop.
You need a light source. One is provided and the game is fair.
Threw one last one
(for good measure)
But that was just a rubble bouncer.
With your massive fat shoes
and newspapers
Full of bile in a wilderness
Of brick and qashqais.
The slum of tomorrow.
Today.
A wicked plan
A salvage song
Sykesnarding through the leaves
He silkworms
Rustles
‘how do Russel?’
I am king of all the Rus.
This wealstan is wraetlic
and better than the emptiness
on Mars where all is rust
and there were never any hearts to break
no matter how fucking beautiful it is
(and it is)
come in
to this smiling crater and
under the shadow of this red rock
i am
king of all the rust
Rummaging in the bolt jar
hurts.
The bolts are heavy
do not move as they should
they do not move
To dig deep, to find the one you need
hurts
In the bolt jar of my mind,
I rummage until my fingers bleed
Britain has rulers and she has watchmen.
We love you all.
I was watching Wall TV
It was
All wall.
All the time.
He do the police {
and the thieves, {
the ones fighting in the street
}
}
He do them in different voices.
How do you like them
Apples from the barrel?
This is the language of the bolt jar.
Two apples.
0 errors. 0 warnings
Build complete
and spend your whole life
learning how to die
I took the lift
in case my bag broke
in case my back broke
And if one day
in the sky there is a sun
where there should be no sun
if there is the heat of a sun only
and no shadow to come into
there will still be fear
in the dust
a kind of fine dust
with a stark beauty all its own
that remains
when all else is broken
and the day the second one burned
i knew we would never get off the rock
and we would lie
one day
to a passer by
saying
‘it was like this when we found it’
That’s what you don’t do.
Nobody told me.
Nobody told me.
armstrong died and never told us
what it was like
to ride the left seat.
It looks OK.
It is. It is OK.
Fat gauntlet flexing
the armour fish
too wide for the looping craw
At the bottom of the apple barrel
The hurcheon
His spiny back against the wall
Seeking displacement
Sublimation
Or even just
A way out
But all you get is dial tone from a thin and brittle fabric
Is that all you’ve got?
Is that the best you can do?
Impaled on the two pronged fork you call the Condition.
Until
he
Becomes something else at last
grey snout turning towards the stars
There is tomorrow always
Whether you see it or not.
And the sun, where there should be a sun.
Always.
One day there will be a good day to die.
And until then
Shantih.
“An aphorism should be entirely isolated from the outside world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.’
[206] Ein Fragment muß gleich einem kleinen Kunstwerke von der umgebenden Welt ganz abgesondert und in sich selbst vollendet sein wie ein Igel.
Friedrich Schlegel
Seneca
Rilke - “turning his grey snout towards the stars”