Do they owe us a living?

Do they owe us a living?

Of course they don't.

But neither do we owe them our labour!

June 28,2011

Tuesday's last embers
wash the sky vermillion
shepherds sleep happy

Kick Over The Wall

That the rich and powerful continue to grow their wealth, while the everyday worker watches their own income diminish, is an insult that fuels the fires of contempt and should ultimately lead to revolt.

June 27,2011

Nighttime rain but an

Empty promise of thunder

So the heat goes on

Lakeside Sun Day (a work in progress)

This day!

From beneath a haggard shroud

a blazing cobalt eruption

pepper shot with cloud.

A time to walk

and see

and talk

and simply be.

As the waterfowl

and their ugly broods,

fresh to the earth,

lumber and intrude.

And a mackerel sky

mirrors the scaly denizens

and their haunting progress

below a bejeweled basin

Old boys and their toys

speed wire and polyurethane

with invisible fingers

over this shimmering plane.

A disarming young woman

with a dancing face

armed with a pad and a pencil

contemplates this space.

Where niqabs and bikinis

share the same crowded acre

and laughter washes

over our lake of verdure.

With my back against the bark

of a childhood friend

I wish for the babel hum

to know no end.

June 25, 2011

June 22, 2011

Another year passed

Yet she will forever be

My sweet summer girl

A Moment Of Dignitas

A few words in response to Sir Terry Pratchett's documentary on assisted dying.

At that ghastly moment
do we, with lucid reverie,
recognize the distinction
between sleep, oblivion adjourned,
and life’s quietus?

Strange Story

Some years ago me and my then girlfriend/now wife, Wendy, were driving across Beeley Moor in Derbyshire on our way to a little pub we used to frequent called the Devonshire . It was a beautiful crisp clear moonlit night and, as all good stories require, as we are traversing the highest, most remote, point of the moor the car ground to a halt. Wendy initially thought it's the traditional "oops we've broken down lets fuck to keep warm" ruse but this time it's was genuine.

Despite being totally inept when it comes to anything to do with motor vehicles I popped the hood and got out of the car regardless. I briefly looked around to see if there might have been any houses close by or another car coming down the road but there was nothing other than fields lined with miles of crumbling drystone walls.

I poked around under the hood aimlessly for a while, not having the slightlest clue what I might be looking for. Wendy by this time had the window open and was offering advice of varying degrees of uselessness when out of the dark a voice called out "Try wiggling the alternator"...”Good idea” I shouted back to Wendy, "What is?" she responded. I was, of course, having none of her denial but while I debating this with her a voice called out again "Try the alternator!" A shot of ice coursed through my body and I could tell from Wendy’s eyes that she was as scared as me. We stopped arguing and I leaped back into car. We’d seen the movies, heard all the urban legends about escaped lunatics and weren’t about to become the subject of a new one.

With windows wound up and the doors secured we looked fearfully around but there was nobody in sight. There was, however, just the other side of the drystone wall a shaggy white horse that seemed to be showing an inordinate amount of interest in the workings under our hood. Of course, there must be somebody holding the horse that has calling to us and we just didn’t see them but, the closer we looked it become very evident that the horse was alone.

I, rather gingerly, got out of the car again and, while I was walking back around to the front, the same voice, quite plainly coming from the horse, said "Try the
alternator". Now this sent me into a flapping panic. I waggled the alternator wire, screamed at Wendy to try starting the car and, when to my relief, it fired up I leapt back in and we raced like those proverbial bats out of the hot place down off the moors.

When we arrived at the pub, very, very shaken, we both had to rapidly imbue three glasses of whisky before the shivers began to subdue. The barman had, being one of the excellent kind, noticed our distress and he came across to the corner we had deposited ourselves in and, with genuine concern, asked us why we were so upset? Without a second thought I, in a breathless stream, blurted out the whole story…the fields the voice, the alternator, the damn horse. The barman listened intently, cupped his hands together and with his two index fingers protruding rubbed his nose, shaking his head making tutting sounds. When I had finished babbling he furtively looked around the pub, leaned towards us and beckoned us closer. In the gravest of voices he said "You know you were damn lucky that it was the white horse and not
the black horse!" The tension in me and Wendy had now ratcheted up off the scale and very close to losing control of our bodily functions we both stammered "Why?" to which he replied, “Well…the black horse knows fuck all about motor vehicle maintenance"

Nottingham...Wheee!

There is so much cool happening in Nottingham at the moment, it makes me sad that I can't afford to be there more often.
I was raised in Nottingham but our relationship has been a bit ht and miss over the last 10 years or so. The opening of Nottingham Contemporary and the raising in profile of places like Lakeside has me hankering to move back. Not going to happen in the forseeable (jobs and all that) but meanwhile I will have to take advantage of wonderful events like Wheee! at Lakeside yesterday.



The Luminarium (Levity III) was worth the wait




We lost a cuckoo somewhere along the line :)



Lego Men roamed the earth



And Dave was totally Fearless

June 5, 2011

Sloganeering
is
Soul Engineering

So Close The Fool

Escape routes in my mind were laid

and beds almost irrevocably made.

Then...was it conscience forbade,

or did fear now invade?

Once fresh hope decayed

and before me lay arrayed

every dream dismayed

by so foolish a charade.

Sea Ya

Today I needed the sea

but the sea didn't need me

it ran away...

to sea