The Pioneering Spirit

from Architect's Brother
by Robert & Shana Parkeharrison

i’m thinking how the creative urge lives best on the edges of the river familiar
away from the slow waters of the tried and tested
closer to the rocks
i’m thinking how this urge is what forms the river in the first place
applying pressure to the horizon; to the future
carving its name in the rock

The Invisible War

Sylvia Ji

The agents arrive at the corner of the building
Intelligence has led them to believe that I am not to be trusted
Across the world they’re waging war
And telling us nothing

The agents approach the revolving doors
I watch from the other side of the road
Across the world they rape and pillage contemptuous aloof
And tell us it is nothing

And the planes are in the air
Their image sometimes spectacular sometimes invisible
Depending on the agenda

The agents are on the stairs
Across the street the charges wait
Across the world they’re bringing down buildings
One more is nothing

The agents are in an empty room
The myth of trust has been slowly torn
Ripped from the world ear to ear
The codeword for Today is Nothing

Mental Spring-Cleaning in Autumn

Mick Knight

The Far Queue is feeling a little tired and in need of tidying. A number of the Babylonian links are broken and there are some new ones that need to be hung up. Here in the doldrums of a summer that said “meh” as it kicked its heels in anticipation of who-knows-what I find myself wresting with the Penumbra story and unable to produce much else creatively – perhaps this means I’m taking it too seriously and should loosen up and not give a shit. For anyone who cares (beside myself) I will get down to it sooner or later.

The Man Who Bought The World

Like an epileptic fit
Being suffered by a puppet
He strides across the room
As if the world owes him a living

Like the skeleton within
Who dancing a grim fandango
Strings attached to which he offers no resistance
As if the world owes it to him

But who am I to pass
These judgements dressed in stone
Are my strings as loose as I think they are
Am I am owed the world for nothing?

David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World" is woven into the fabric of me. As a teenager I was a massive (and obsessive) fan; partly for the way he looked - in the early seventies nobody looked like Bowie. all a copper haired and alien - but mostly for those songs.
"I'd rather stay here
with all the madmen
'cause I'm quite content
They're all as sane as me"
But The Man Who Sold The World (The song not the album) never quite delivers; it fails to reveal what is promised by the title.
The above poem thingy is what happenned to Bowie's enigmatic song after it has stewed in my subconscious for almost forty years.