Astro Boy at Absolute Zero

John Jude Palencar - Imago

Hey Hey they don’t prepare you for this; all is forgotten in training manuals, simulators, medical machines and all that burning thrusting firepower; the hissing and the thunder roar.
This silence absolute; this weight of all around unfelt - no wind in the hair since distance has removed all sense of motion.
I turn and turn my umbilical snakes the stars they call my name.
And ever there, immense and... round, the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, her cloudy face in slumber reined in white light clothed the inner out my world my everything.
And as for the mission duties and checklist checks...
...I could let them all go and look at her forever.

Cosmo Nought at Ground Zero

John Jude Palencar - Adult Rites

Oh and Oh how I hang up down and upside down the curve of my world below deflating void.
All is quiet breath bated the green shapes hover.
The light that white dawned so brightly there; white and bright and fill my head white light.
Tethered yet my feet together unable to kick
And at my middle mouth the feeding tube slithers
I take it in it fills me up I suck and suck my blood runs blue.
Take me back take me back I swing my arm to the resistance no longer close and dark and warm.
Here the air that rushes in cold and clean, here the space that holds nothing in, here my chest so razor thin
Here the air nowhere to go
Here my voice so suddenly born
Here the sound at once my own.

Chaos Fearie

Gerard Brom

Armed with minimalist pipe dreams
and dogmatic conspirator schemes
The duo lie low in ambush awaiting the downpour abating

Sister double deranger
green eyes ogle her pornographic burka
Her habit concealing the silicon stranger
Brother berserker
a yellow dog psychotic evangelic ranger
a cross-dressing deserter
from the army of attitude arrangers

Together they suck on the crucifix but don’t suffer the pretext
that led them to sleep on your doorstep
and lay down the laws (for a charitable cause)
and demand that you follow the leader

Law 1:
Don’t spit on the street or shuffle your feet
but maximise your returns at the station of dreams
and ancient pyramid schemes
While locomotives fish-tail a Cadillac-motif detail
On the retrograde moon
And cover those manholes
where girl guides shelter their cause
like the tarnish on your mum’s silver spoon
And the scratches on doors from marshmallow werewolf paws

Law 2:
The man from insurance broken
will leave you a redeemable token
a schedule of smiles and tax-deductible miles
a mask-painted face complete with tears of disgrace
for the laces entangled in toenail truth mangled
and fingers and thumbs for those cannibal drums
that threaten to eat the night sky

Law 3:
No naked flames, aeroplanes or under-dressed salad bars
No forks or no spoons dangerous objects digested
in the office where they manufacture the twinkling stars
for consumption by glossy-eyed passive page-turners
Whose only request is to be pissed on by the best
and to glow in the warmth of their passing

And who would have guessed that the very well dressed
would be soiling their nests
with the cash from your voyeuristic interest
While the rest of us danced to the puppeteer’s epileptic stance
so that the coins in our pockets did jangle
And the heart of the matter, the mind over clatter,
could best be observed from this angle

And try as I might to keep putting up a fight
I find myself tied to the rail
That hums with the strain of the oncoming train
and the black cloak of the ultimate station
Where freedom awaits, devoid of hope's pearly gates
or the horror of life everlasting.

And the words that you choke in the back of your throat
will fly from your mouth...
...like confetti at the wedding of wonder
and a lightning strike force, a final divorce
that will cleave all your atoms asunder
and send you to bed with all those books that you’ve read
but never bothered to open in wonder

View From The Treetops (22 July 2007)

Victoria (innit?)

Those of us born into the English language tend not to appreciate how complex and versatile it is compared to many other languages.
I watched Victoria Beckham on television the other night and marvelled at her minimal reading skills (“…mix to the consistency. Of Course. Salt.”) and limited vocabulary (What’s an intersection?”)
Of course Queen Victoria is an easy target (being either as thick as the atmosphere at Israeli/Palestinian peace talks or a very good actress) but she does illustrate how it is not necessary to use the language correctly in order to succeed in capitalist terms.
This diminished use of the language does not, however, deminish the language itself; on the contrary, it shows how powerful it actually is. Unfortunately, what is diminished is the level of communication that we now take to be acceptable - a world where our connection by language has become increasingly vague; where understanding is not guaranteed by correct use of language; where misunderstanding is compounded by inadequated comprehensive skills and by egocentric non-linear thought process.
Luckily, these considerations will never be a concern for Victoria Beckam

-----------------------------------------------------------

Damien & Tracy

Jam’s O’Donnel’s post over at The Poor Mouth got me going on the old ‘modern art is rubbish’ thang.
Personally, I would hold Damien Hirst in much higher regard if he actually got his hands dirty, so to speak, in creating the finished product. I suppose it is only fair, on his part, to cry off with the excuse that he would necessarily have to learn the prerequisite skills (embalming; dissection, jewelry setting) and this would therefore delay the creation of these particular works.
Perhaps then Damien should credit those who took part in the production; himself taking credit as writer/director.

All this aside, you just have to listen to Damien Hirst speak to realise that he is not of the same ilk as Tracy Emin. Hirst does instill depth into his ideas, and he does understand the the complexities of the creative process. In addition his works do have an intrinsic value and an aesthetic beauty, no matter how uncomfortable they do make us feel.
His latest diamond encrusted skull, for example, as well as being strikingly beautiful, immediately throws up all kinds of reflective and faceted questions; not least about value, quality and mortality.

Tracy on the other hand, has the kind of creativity that I would liken to a cat who has just hawked up a hairball and hangs around looking sneeringly proud of itself.
Tracy’s been around for years now and can’t even draw; not even vaguely well; her art rests solely on the word of the elitist bunch of wankers who collectively dictate artistic taste. On every occasion that I have heard her speak she has struck me as someone who is constantly under threat of being found out, trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare of lies.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Pablo Picasso Never Got Called an Asshole


With the exception of ‘Guernica’, I’ve never been a huge fan of Picasso, preferring the more immediate pleasures of some of his more representational contempories - I never actually ‘got’ Picasso.
I now believe this to be a glaring sign of immaturity on my part.
The other night I was struck by the blatantly obvious fact that Picasso treated his nude models with absolute respect. Not content to portray their bodies as open books, he fragmented them; returned them to the mystery.
I’m not sure if I have come to like his work any more than I did before, but I certainly have a greater appreciation for them as a rather more adult taste.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Gil Scott Heron ~ The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye

If you feel I’ve lost my spirit
Like some drunkard’s wasted wine
Don’t you even think about it
I’m feeling fine
~ Roky Erickson

Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye is a tribute album to Roky Erickson.
Roky Erickson hails from Austin Texas and was the frontman for the legendary 13th Floor Elevators.
In 1968 he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and sent to a Houston psychiatric hospital, where he involuntarily received ECT.
The Elevators were vocal proponents of LSD and marijuana use, and were subject to strong attention from police. In 1969, Erickson was arrested for possession of one marijuana joint in Austin. Facing a ten year prison term, Erickson pled not guilty by reason of insanity, which proved to be a mistake. He was first sent to the Austin State Hospital. After several escape attempts, he was sent to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was subjected to more electroconvulsive therapy and Thorazine treatments and held until 1972.

"If you have ghosts, then you have everything"

This Avatar

Steven Rooke – evolved African mask

This avatar
This cold grey mask
This, the face of another man
This, what I know is true
This, what I know of you
That is what I need to say
That is what I have to do
In the metaphoric uniform I’m forced to wear
This, a statement of intent
This, the smell of burning incense
This, the sum of a life experienced
This tepid pool of rain
This yellow wall of pain
This, the here and now for you to taste and swallow
These, the awful truths
The grit and grime of meshing gears
The sound of traffic in the night
This, the destination known
This, the garden overgrown
The shadows that lurk on leaf and stone
These the crimes for which I must atone
This, a moral kiosk, a stage whisper aside
Here the face of all that can be justified
This shimmering mirage the horizon heat shivers
This night of abject terrors
these the shards of glass that line the hall of mirrors
These, my fingers on the keys, my toes in my plastic shoes
The words that tumble forth like thoughts encased in gobs of glue
this the tarnished brass of past achievements lost
this the pitted sky where all the questions glimmer but refuse to yield
this the sound of man in anger toys are tossed
this the hollow caravan
of camels bent against the sun
these the Bedouin
whose eyes have watched the desert demons rage
these the Eskimo
whose teeth have torn the northern sky
their children tanned but never learned to fly
these the nations brave
whose sons have borne the brunt of empire
their culture torn like bark from tree
this the conqueror with bloodlust justified by bible black
This gold to gleam on the heads of king and queen
This the civilisation of the savage man
This the destruction of the ancients
This the birth of cool; the dance macabre of capital gain
This the anaesthetisation of learning pain
These cold eyes behind a mask of rain
These warm hands on your face to frame
This smile of pure regard and passion flame
This, my face in mirror weekend real
This, my life in moments treasured here to steal
This me
This you

The format for this is stolen from Brian Eno's elecronic chant 'This'
From his beautiful album "Another Day on Earth" They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

How Soon is Now?

Zdzislaw Beksinski

Silver service sugar bowls and china cups in flood
Prints from brown fingertips and philosophies of blood
Children of the empire born and left to ride the tide
Of anger held at bay by force; the coin stood on its side

Heads that roll and tails that turn your name in to the thought police
Men that can’t see past the dotted line that marks their trouser crease
Wading in with sjambok law and the wrath of Calvin’s vengeful god
burning pages of what might have been tomorrows lightning rod

Diagonal lines on maps decreed to be your natural home
By stripes of any colour chosen, by shining teeth of chrome
words and will ‘tween thought and deed and the need to be released
from the weight all the blood and bone by arrogance deceased

And struggle blind to no avail in the net in which you’re caught
to wave your flag for the new country but that which you are taught
Will send you home in a plastic bag and eyes more cross than nought
Your afterlife as solid as the god for whom you fought

In the name of all that must be obeyed by you and me and Michael
But not by those who ride the gleaming one-trick unicycle
Spewing forth great gouts of cash to the applause of drooling nations
Who cannot find the piece of mind to change the fucking station

Flip the dial and cut the cord that holds you to the motherland
And standing on the haunted hill look back - perhaps to understand
That all you are, and want to be, cannot be held by arbitrary borders
And those who’d have you believe in all those invented mental disorders

That keep you chained to the remedy, the bitter pill of patriotism
That keeps you and me on either side of the cumbersome cultural schism
And promotes the manufactured need for laws that rely on the sales of gun
And keep us on the spiral course to the centre of the sun

So burn your flags for the wicker man and tomorrow’s cold sunrise
And raise your crystal glass to the Empire’s slow demise
For it is in the period of decline that we learn who we really are
And the light is shone on shadowed fruit once hid in a jar

Strange fruit that hangs from that fictitious tree of Adam’s original sin
Putrid waste of national pride best shed like leper skin
A weight undead but best well read to ward against the future
A race of men whose patchwork skin does not require a suture

To see that he is just like me in anguish and in laughter
And the only god to be revealed lives not in the hopeful hereafter
But here and now in this bitter slice, this razor edge of time
That calls us yet to lift ourselves out of the primordial slime

And stare back into the eyes that have us chasing fairy tails
to wipe the dust from the lens that bends and ultimately fails
to deliver us from the fabricated ethos of ‘this is what you need’
and walk the path that runs between the house of honourable thought…
…and the garden of ethical deed.

Pinups #5

Lost my shape - trying to act casual
Can't stop - I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape - I feel like an accident
They're back - to explain their experience

Burn on the Fourth of July

YiiiiiiiiHaa!

Inner Statues Dust

This cosmonaut 5am in treacherous orbit decaying
Coming round the near side thoughts in black gestation
The goddess' gravitational skin for the green flaying
Tidal pools gleam in the mercury blue imagination

Fuck Pythagoras; the angles right align
Burning my ass on atmosphere serrated rim
thumb checking pulse for danger signs
and swimming in geometric illuminated sin

Right-angled left leaning hypotenuse core
Feeding from the bottom of the chlorophyll tank
Haven’t a clue what the struggle is for
The notes have been burned in Babylon bank

And through all the nights sleeping oblivious
feral footprints wet on cold cobbled bone
slap the prowling wind rictus delirious
writ a million years in darkness to atone



The title of this was born from a lyric on The Mars Volta's Cicatriz ESP.
What I (mis)heard as Erotic inner statues dust is actually Erupting in a statues dust
Fuck it - the former makes more sense to me...

...hello Mr Freud!