From a work in progress

There’s music playing and she’s on top of him. The room ornate or maybe just old. She’s going down on him and his cock is a lot bigger than you’d think it would be on such a skinny cute guy, and he’s smiling and holding her head gently while it bobs. He puts his arms behind his head and opens his legs a little a more but grins because I guess he realises that he probably looks a little too much like he’s in the middle of a porno even though this isn’t a real porn film just something they’re making so they can masturbate together at a later date. He moves one arm out from behind his head and it stops like it’s in freeze frame and he can’t decide whether to stroke her hair or put his hand back and just carry on looking dumb and self consciously porno like he was already.

There’s a chest of wooden drawers next to the bed with a glass full of beads on top; fake pearls and emeralds. The mirror has a fancy frame and the wallpaper is golden with embossed white flower patterns that repeat until they’re obscured by a large cupboard with glass doors that are reflecting something that stops you seeing what’s inside. His hands are behind his head again and her face is right in front of his and they’re smiling at each other. He moves his hands and takes off her underwear, slips in down her thighs until she has to manoeuvre herself and basically step out of them. They kiss and then move so that she gets to lie down with him on top of her, he takes off his boxers fully as they switch places and the song has either changed subtly or there’s an incoherent techno break kicking in that feels out of place because before that I’m sure the music was … country? I can’t remember so that means it can’t matter much.

Who am I talking to?

- Who am I talking to?
- Yourself.
- Fuck you.
- Sorry. Me.
- Heh.
- Definitely me.
- Yeah ok. Whatever.
- What are you doing.
- What am I doing?
- Yeah.
- No, I mean – what am I doing?
- ?
- What am I doing? I should have used italics.
- Are you making fun of me?
- Listen – can’t you tell … ?
- What do you mean?
- Listen to my voice. Maybe it’s only obvious to me.
- Nothing’s obvious. Well, not to me anyway.
- I don’t know what I’m doing.
- Oh.
- What are you doing?
- Just talking to you.
- I guess I’m doing that same then. Thanks.
- You wanna go? Am I keeping you?
- No. You’re clarifying things.
- About what? Are you ok?
- Yeah. Excellent.
- You seem pissed off.
- Argh – don’t be weird.
- I’m not. Sorry. Maybe I’m being paranoid.
- That should be me. I’m the one that’s stoned.
- You’re stoned.
- Yeah don’t you listen?
- What? Oh. OK. I think I get it now.
- Get what?
- ?
- Sorry. Just fucking with you.

JD Salinger R.I.P.

I just got home and read about the death of JD Salinger. Man, that's a sad one. RIP.

xxx

Make it sound like a tornado when you do it

Make it sound like a tornado when you do it,
Something that will confuse me as much as possible,
As much as you can. You’re capable of fires
Beyond these, more than anyone who knows you
Could imagine, could fear, cherish or lose.

In short: I want you to do whatever it is
That you think you should do,
And I want you to take as long as you need
And do what you need to do without
Rushing so that if you find
Something you remembered you were
Looking for, or something you never
Knew was there, then you might
Lose yourself in the way you’ve
Always wanted, but have never been able
To engage with without the ground
Wobbling and your eyes betraying you.

Please take me away from this place.
Please turn into what you want to.

heyy

heyy so iw as thinking about your last night
and thininiking that i’ve not seen you for a couple
of eweekss so maybe we should hang out soon. and
thath madee me think t that heyyy wahy don;t i jusat
fucking call you 2nite and see if you wa nted to hang
out becuz that way itd just get all a of teh awkwrd stuff
outa the way and we coudl just try to start from
scrattccch from before all that stupid stuff happened
last time.sooner or laterr we gotta do it so we mighta as
well jsut gwet it over with as sooner or later. let me know
what you thinkg becuz i really wanna see you i was thinkg
thinking that we could try some of that crazy stuff again
if you think that sounds like a good plan becux I know u
were into it but it just didnt work out or whateva becuz i
got too into it or whatever but I know you used to like
the idea of that stuff and listn I’m just really fucking horny
and i miss you and wanna try that shit again so get back
and& let me know what yr thinkingxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Glenn Branca

You need a couple of years sometimes

You need a couple of years sometimes. It takes time to be able to see something properly, no matter how much you like to think that you can trust your instincts and your judgements without worry. When I say you I mean I. I mean me. I mean my and I mean mine.


The day after I first slept with you I did very bad impressions of you or what at that point I’d interpreted you as being. I bought the same CD that we’d listened to when I was still wondering whether I’d get to see you without your clothes on. And I cooked the same meal that you’d made for us, only not as well. I had a couple of imaginary conversations with myself where I was you and you were you also.


I got confused. I think I let you lead me a lot further than the real you could have actually let yourself lead me or the real you was actually capable. At least that’s what I’ve got from the understanding I have of you at the moment.

ILLUMINATE/HINDSIGHT

Can’t tell what’s coming when faced with leftover clues
That illuminate your hindsight, doubled by sadness and
Faltering because the attraction comes for the wrong reasons.
Shit. Would it be crass to say I want to go back to when you were
Younger? Would it fuck stuff up to say that I’m convinced that
I could have made things better for you, that you might still
Be smiling the way that I’ve been forced to remember you?

The ascension

He lay awake
on the floor
listening
to the sounds
of the person
he was in love
with having sex,
being fucked,
moaning,
breathing hard.
He lay in the dark
trying to block it
out and listen in
at the same time.
He wished the walls
were thicker
so that
he couldn’t hear.
He wished the walls
were transparent
so that he could watch.

Justine

They chose to follow each other.
They were all girls.
They sat naked in front of puddles
Of rainbow oil spills.
They found rocks made of sand,
And made snow angel graves
Leaping from one night to a new one.
They hung from trees
In sepia forests and barely spoke,
Knowing every word was
Like another nail been banged in.

I'm writing a story about a photographer

Your heart is still dreaming (for Jason)

I hope your friends won’t mind
Me writing this for you.
I thought about counting the
Words that I wrote to you
When you were still alive –
Alive as in there to touch,
To read emails, to see, as
Opposed to the alive that
You still are, you know the
Not here but still here, still
Loved, still special, still intact
In the memories of those
Who were there at all the
Important moments that
You breathed in and saw;

There were
Probably less than 40 so I
Decided not to count. I
Feel selfish for feeling so
Bad when I found out
What had happened to you,
Like it was rude of me to
Take up any of your time,
Any of the grief left in your
Tracks, like I had no right,
And in some ways I’m still
Convinced that I don’t. So
I’m making this offer, kind
Of a private one, kind of a
Pointless one, but I know
That I want to make it anyway.
I’m going to dream about
Some of the photographs,
That you took, about heads
Coming out of drawers,
About blurred alleyways,
About light captured and
Twisted into shapes before
It has chance to stop you,
About twelve pairs of shoes,
About a beach and a sky
And what could equal
A million perfect moments
That I’m glad you got and
Glad you shared.

In memory of Jason Parsons (24.12.89 – 7.12.09)

In conversation with Pascal O'Loughlin

The wonderful writer Pascal O'Loughlin (who also has a splendid blog) recently got in touch to ask me a few questions about blogging. I quite enjoyed thinking about that stuff, so I thought I'd post Pascal's questions and my responses here.


What are your thoughts about self publishing in general versus conventional publishing via publishing houses?


I guess it’s hard for me to give a generalised answer about that sort of thing as self publishing could be used to cover a very broad spectrum of different things. For me, whether I’m thinking about my work or someone else’s, then the most important thing is exactly that – the work. How it gets into my hands or in front of my eyes isn’t something that I think about too much. There is a lot of great work coming from both established publishing houses and from the various areas of self publishing – blogs, print on demand books, zines, and so on. I like the fact that the increasing availability of self publishing as an option has opened an opportunity for more people to get their stuff (whatever it may be) out there. I also like the speed of it. Blogs for example offer a ridiculously quick way to publish work. If I want I have the option to publish a new piece within seconds of its completion. And also with print on demand books – they’re really fast. With the poetry books that I published using these services, I just wanted them out there fast, which is why I went for the self publishing option. I wanted to use the books as a way of expressing certain things at certain times and using POD publishers allowed me to do that. Also, I’m a huge music geek and I’ve always felt a certain affinity with underground stuff – noise bands making scratchy cassettes with handmade covers and people making fanzines (when I was a teenager I used to edit two different zines), anything like that. I’m very much a fan of the DIY ethics and aesthetics and the mode of thinking that often accompanies that sort of venture. So for me I often see self publishing as an extension of that or a literary equivalent of it. Having said that I think that it is important to not get into a binary way of thinking, you know, thinking that self publishing is better than conventional publishing houses or anything like that. In the past year I’ve read amazing stuff on blogs and in books that have been released by established publishing houses. Ultimately I think that it’s helpful to have both options.



Do you produce work for your blog and then work which you're holding back because you see it it as work for sending out to publishers/magazines? If so, do you use your blog as a kind of test area for your work, almost like a scrap book?

No not really. It depends what I’m doing at the time. For example: recently I found out about a short story collection that was looking for submissions so I finished off a new short story that I’d been working on at the time and sent it off to them. I didn’t put it on my blog because they were looking for stuff that hadn’t appeared anywhere else previously. If I hadn’t have heard about the short story collection that I sent it off to then I would have most likely put it up on my blog. On the whole I don’t write stuff thinking ok so this stuff is the stuff I can send out to publishers and then ok and so this stuff is the stuff I’ll put on my blog. I think that thinking like that can inherently lead to the conclusion that one of those avenues is better or more favourable than the other which isn’t always the case. I mean, some things are definitely more suited to my blog and indeed some things are written just for my blog – certain things that incorporate other features that are only available when using the internet (images to accompany the text, or different colours within the text or something like that), but that isn’t often the case. I think that the majority of the time when I’m writing something I’m just thinking about the writing, and not really putting too much thought into where the writing is going to end up – that’s a concern to consider after the writing is finished. I don’t have the mindset where I think the really good stuff I’ll send to magazines/publishers and the stuff that isn’t so good I’ll stick on my blog. I mean, there’s a short story I wrote called The Letter (at the time I posted it under the working title of Return to Sender) which I think of as one of my favourite pieces of writing that I’ve done and I put that on my blog as opposed to send it out to someone. To answer the second part of your question – yes, I definitely think of my blog as a scrapbook. Sometimes I’ll post pieces of writing that are still a work in progress, sometimes I’ll post first drafts of things. I’m not always sure why. There are a number of reasons – I like the idea of showing writing in progress, and I think that sometimes having the momentum of the blog (i.e. I post something every day) helps me in that it keeps me on my toes and most importantly keeps me writing every day, because I don’t want to see my work suddenly hanging dormant in cyberspace. A few years ago I had pretty much given up on writing, and starting again was something that I found incredibly difficult – probably one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, creatively speaking. So once I’d started writing again, and started to feel the things that writing makes me feel again, I realised that I never wanted to have to go through that again. So I figured that because it was so hard to start again, if I never stopped again then I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Doing the blog as regularly as I do has helped with that. I enjoy and benefit from the discipline that it has enforced on me I guess. And yeah having somewhere to showcase bits of writing that I’m working on or sometimes unsure of is helpful too.


Do you find the medium of the blog, I'm thinking of how simple and quick the process is; how it seems weirdly permanent in the sense that posts are archived for the long, foreseeable future but, also, the work feels kind of not there because it disappears ever downward, silently, into the past; also the way in which the online arena can function as an identity playground, do you think this has encouraged you to write in different ways?

Oh yeah I think so. I like how you described it. In some ways I like to think of my blog as a single piece of work, a piece of work that’s open ended and constantly expanding and being built upon. I also like the idea that despite the often disparate elements that it is composed of, the blog might have some sort of distinct singular voice. When I’m working on my blog I’ve often got the idea of this voice in my thinking. I’m interested in how anything that I put on my blog (not just the pieces of my writing but also the images and videos that I sometimes upload) might be filtered through this voice and yet also impact upon it. I like the idea that a new post could add to what has gone before it, but also potentially be able to affect the way that the previous posts are viewed in some way. It’s a fun thing to experiment with, even if a lot the time it’s only visible and/or interesting to me, haha. I love the idea of the online area as an identity playground too, and that’s something that I’ve definitely put a lot of thought into in my writing and also with the way that I use my blog. The internet as a whole has definitely been something that has influenced my writing, I’m tempted to say that on the whole more in terms of subject matter than the actual style of writing; although having said that I have written several pieces that have mimicked online styles of writing and communication so I guess in actual fact it has influenced both the way in which I write and the things that I write about to some degree. There are other more simple ways that the medium that the blog provides has impacted on certain things – for example, the length of things I write: I tend to keep the blog entries relatively short because I’m not a huge fan of reading long pieces of writing on a computer screen. So the pieces of writing I post are usually my shorted pieces. I’m sure there are other ways, I’m still thinking about them as I go. New thoughts about it crop up quite often.



Do you have an audience in mind?

Thinking about that always confuses me, so I’ll probably contradict myself a little here (but I’m constantly doing that anyway). When I’m working on a piece of writing I don’t think that I’m thinking about who is going to read it once it’s finished. With regards to my blog, I know that people are going to be reading it and looking at it because I get emails from people about things that I’ve posted. I used to have a stat counter on my blog, and I was pretty surprised with how many people were going onto my blog and also surprised about the spread of the locations of these people. But I ended up taking the counter off after a few weeks because I had this fear that somehow knowing exactly how many people were looking at the blog, or knowing about a definite audience may distract me in some way that could impact upon the way that I thought about the blog or used it, although I wasn’t sure how – it was just an instinctual thing. I’ve met a few people or been introduced to people and then found out that they’re actually familiar with my blog, which has been cool and surprising. There have been times where I’ve been talking to someone and mentioned something that has happened to me or something else as simple as a band that I’m interested in and the person I’ve been talking to has said “yeah I know – I read about that on your blog”. Sometimes I forget what I’ve said or put on there. When I’m putting things together for my blog or choosing what to post on there I generally think of myself as the audience – I only post things that are of interest to me basically, which probably sounds more selfish than it actually is – with anything creative I’m a strong believer that you have to keep things interesting and engaging for yourself foremost and worry about anything else afterwards. Which I guess is a long and very convoluted way of saying that I don’t really have an audience in mind, but then in some ways I kinda do. Ultimately I don’t think about an audience while I write.

Less light can get through (draft from a work in progress)

A mattress has been propped
Up against the window so
That less light can get through.

It is afternoon and everyone
In the room has been up for
Over thirty hours and it shows.

One girl is trying to sleep,
Curling her legs up and
Trying to make a comfortable
Bed out of her ex boyfriend
Who sits silently and taps
Cigarette ash into the top
Of an empty beer can. The
Girl makes tiny groaning noises
As she fails to black out, moans
Slightly like she’s trying
To second guess a dream.

Two people propped up
In the corner of the shrinking
Front room are talking fast
And loud, about things that
They feel really matter to them,
With an intensity that must
Not have occurred to them
At any point previous to this.
Their mouths are digging
Graves, throwing things in
And holding the service for
Them in rapid succession.

Someone is thinking about
Leaving, which they’ve been
Thinking about for five hours
At least, in fits and starts
In between the times when
They wish they could make
So many things better for
Themselves, because it seems
Like maybe two, maybe three
Years ago something definitely
Got lost and never showed back up.

#?

I have so many strange fetishes. Everyone has their own. I guess their fetishes seem strange too. I guess every fetish is just as strange and also therefore just as normal as the next person's. One of my fetishes is seeing people standing on public transport holding onto the rails near the ceiling of the transport that they are using. Generally when I think about this fetish I think about being on the Underground in London or on the Metro in Paris, as those are the two places that I have seen the sexiest example of the things that I'm thinking about. I love seeing people wearing t-shirts standing there with their arms pointed upwards, slightly tensed from how they are gripping the rails. I guess I'm just really turned on by how it makes their arms look. I ended up really spacing out once watching this couple both standing kissing each other while they held the rails. Their arms look really good.

We missed your voice

Still here

“And really – if we’re honest – think about the sleep deprivation.”

If we’re honest. It’s like he’s implying that we’re not always honest. I feel like I’ve been nothing but honest. I’ve been sincere to a fault. I know that it was just a simple turn of phrase that he used – that he wasn’t meaning to infer some sort of falseness in our exchange, and that I’m more than likely being oversensitive – but still. Maybe I need just need to listen more appropriately.

“There were so many things going on. We were fucked up. I mean, I certainly was. And I know from when we’ve spoken about this before that you weren’t going through a great period then.”
“Yeah.”

I think about how the telephone feels in my hand. It feels smooth and solid, pleasing to hold. I think about how inanimate objects can pleasure the senses in abstract ways in. My thoughts feel incongruous; even more so when I realise that I’m going to start crying.

“I know that I’m a lot happier now. And I presume that you are too. Well that’s the feeling I get whenever I talk to you about things. Am I right? Are you happier now?”
“Yes.” My throat hurts from the effort it took to hold back a real outburst of sadness.

I think about the colour of the wooden table that my legs are stretched out onto. It’s reddish brown, it looks deep or something. I take my feet off it and reach out the hand that isn’t holding the telephone and touch it with a couple of finger tips.

“Are you still there?” I must have stopped listening.
“Yes. Still here.”

There's blood on the porch

There’s blood on the porch.
Some of it is smudged,
fingerprints on the glass.
There’s more inside.
My dad is sitting in
the same place
that he always is. He’s
staring at the same TV
that he always does.
One of his eyes is squinting.
He hasn’t shaved and his
skin looks greasy. On the top
of his head it looks like
someone has drawn
the shape of a country
in dried blood.
Last night he fell.
He knocked himself out
for a couple of minutes
and scraped a chunk
of skin off his scalp.
The ambulance people
checked him out
but didn’t take him
with them.
I feel bad for thinking
things like – ‘there are
easier ways to kill
yourself than this’.
And I feel worse
watching him trying
to smile and make
light of what happened
like it was a mishap
that was unavoidable,
that would have
happened whatevever,
that it was the night
that chooses things
and nothing else.

Is this what it will feel like to lose you?

I'm gonna miss the snow when it leaves