Talking about Tavener, Tchaikovsky

or anyone, or anything, Patricia Hughes
was more than a mere
'continuity announcer'
on the BBC;
her voice was like a softly-squeezing
posh hand between the legs of my ears
even when she was reading
weather-reports or The News.

Listen to her here.

A certain kind of laughter

comes from the peals

of falling piles

of false smiles.

Morality and sexuality.

For prudes and patriarchs
(and their wives) every sexual
unconventionality is an abomination.

Thus: to rape a daughter,
son, sister or sister-in-law;

to force servants, employees
and au pairs to suck your cock,
and similarly hideous domination,

is not really worse than consensual
same-sex mutual celebration.

The most heroic are the quietest.

Mohamed Qomssan
grows vegetables in the Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza.

'Hope, like gambling',

wrote Jonathan Freedland,
'is a hard habit to break'.

Worse – it is intravenous.

The Blind Eye of History.

No nice Bums*
No nice Dogs
Few nice Women
in the Bible
All is Trivia
saith the Preacher
Never follow
any teacher.

*in both the British and American senses

Positioning the Filters.

Upbringings of different
qualities and calibres,
aspects and intensities
place veils of different densities
in front of eager eyes.

The crocodile's eye.

 

Enchantment and Bewilding.

A modern, lesser poet
has written that the great Rumi wrote
that the two
(why two ? why so few ?
why not five or eight ?)
important things in life are
beauty and bewilderment – though
(the not-good poet thought)
the seven syllables in English might
not be altogether apposite.

Bacon and Eggs.

 Enjoy!

 

Parasites.

Successful people

don't quite exist.

They just suck dry,

subvert

existence.

Evening in Kyiv.

 

Park Güell in Barcelona.

 

Us.

Many are measuring

No-one's preventing

Many are hastening

Most are ignoring

Some are trying to deal with participation in

Climate subversion

Bertolt Brecht's dramatic intention

to show audiences the absurdities,
blatant unfairness and crying
contradictions in our (and any) culture 

was inevitably dulled
by the essential absurdity of theatre.

One of the 'Arseholes of Nowhere'.

 

Tempus fugit, Monsieur Beckett.

It is impossible
to be avant-garde
for long.

In 1950s Belfast

we had quite a few visitors to our house.
Those who entered were friends of my aunt,
my mother, grandmother, and me.
The milkman came in once a week to be paid.
He had a leather satchel and a little electric van.
Others didn't come in:
the buttermilk man with pony and trap,
the pig-swill man with donkey and cart –

no, I'm wrong : he often (or always ? I can't
quite remember people I took little notice of)
went through to the kitchen to pick up
our bucket of peelings and leavings -
and then brought it back to be washed;

an old beggar-woman in black woollen shawl
who came every week and received a penny or tuppence; 

the knife-sharpening man, the Betterwear
brush-man came once a year, and sometimes
thin Witnesses, and smart well-fed Mormons...

the Electoral Roll officers, and, every ten years,
the people who gave out and collected
the census-forms.  Needless to say,
none of these now go to that house, or any.
Where I live now, apart from the firemen
selling their Christmas calendars
(whatever you want to pay), 
just one friend comes to visit
and only moths and shield-bugs come to stay.

Quite soon, a stranger
will come to carry my body away.

So who is surprised ?

 

Dish of the Day.

 

Lucernaria sainthilarei expressing themselves.

 

underwater photo by Aleksandr Semenov

New Tree Lore.

Trees as timber, trees as newsprint,
trees as kin:

'Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field' 

Wood-wide Web or New New-Age Fantasy ?

Baobab trees, Madagascar.

On eBay,

extremely variable postage rates!

It's 'all very well'

for privileged people like me
to sneer at and condemn
aspirations and ambitions –
but millions of people quite reasonably
want to improve their wretched
lives and living conditions.

Could they not have done better than this ?

My own private conspiracy theory:

what They call Tinnitus
is really my tuning-in
to Bad People
plotting Catastrophe.

The Hermit's Question.

'What have I lost
by losing my friends ?'

Coming soon

on Netflix
My Mind.

 

Fraudulent Free Travel on the Dole.

In the Good Old Days (long ago)
the BBC could afford to pay travel expenses
for competitors in different UK regions
to take part in 'Brain of Britain'
on the radio.

I travelled free 3 times from Belfast
across the sea to London by aeroplane
(where I stayed with friends for at least a week)
to compete, each time under a different name.

Misplaced ire.

I considered it an outrage that France,
alleged bastion of State Secularity,
sustains a Public Holiday
of the Christian Feast of the Assumption
of the Virgin Mary...

UNTIL, on further investigation I found that
a Roman Imperial festival, now called
Ferragosto in Italy, which celebrated
the assumption of Roman Emperor by Augustus
on the first of August, was moved to the fifteenth
by the Vatican for politico-religious reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferragosto

I had to tell

my new language-learning friend
cowering in Wildman's Bend

that Beat it! meant Bugger off!, not Masturbate!

and Bugger off! meant Scarper, Split, Vamoose, Get Lost,
Please Depart and close the gate.

Hitler may have been partly-sort-of-right.

Soft and hard (power) together :
the so-far-unbeatable combination.

Before the 20th century our Northern culture/ways of life were largely controlled by male white cruelly-heterosexual Christian leaders, especially kings, princes and popes.
But that has changed. 

Now the ways we eat speak play work think are directed by the USA, not least through cinema, tv and the world-wide web.

Lenin called cinema the most important of all the arts.
He meant, of course, that it is the supreme propaganda-tool. 

The Americans realised also that it was a wonderful medium for appeasement of the masses: creamy mind-sauce
in a thousand cinemas. It then morphed into television.

The USA owes most of this considerable Soft Power to a small number of Jews* who gathered in Los Angeles
because of the sunshine and less unfavourable social climate.

[rant follows] Images on screens reduce human attention to a fascinating rectangle from which it is difficult to escape : the little cultural box containing thousands of American 'movies'  which, through monopoly of distribution, have imposed ugly, sickly self-righteous/smug Anglo-American-French values (cultural and moral) across the world.  They have encouraged
and greatly helped to impose upon the world an empire
(accidental champion of Israëlity)
obsessed with competition for competition's sake,
obvious achievement, team-sport and sex/sexuality. 

*Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn) and Cecil Blount de Mille, whose mother was Jewish.

See also:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/hollywoods-first-major-film-company-created

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/23/cinema-peace-and-war-dw-griffith-charlie-chaplin

Now I'll go off and watch my movie by Tarkovsky.

"We must catch up [sometime]"

A certain swathe, kind or class of people
actually do say "We must catch up",
as if they're trailing in a marathon
or a tour of the Pinakothek...

Perhaps they meet and compare
children, jobs, houses holidays –
but if they add "sometime",
it means much the mendacious same as

"We must have lunch sometime".

Nobody has said either phrase to me,
though in the old days
I was frequently invited to lunch in people's homes,
even that of the Countess of Caledon,
in whose vast kitchen I made
a perfect green soufflé in 1969; 

and the elfin Marquess of Dufferin and Ava,
whose butler served us lunch as we sat
in chintzy armchairs.
I didn't know that he was queer,
and certainly didn't think that I was,
six years after my terminator friend
(the first person to bid me to take care)
'took care of' my doomed but glorious infatuation
with a gamine and eye-opening Dane.

It still pervades.

So, rare reader, why don't you
invite me for a delightful lunch ?
I love mange-tout peas and passion-fruit,
globe artichokes and custard apples,
gooseberry fool, caviare d'aubergines
and many other non-meaty foods. 
I don't like sweetmeats, cake or fudge.
You could catch up
on my slowly declining health and on
the fragmentary memories of my past
which are rising from the sludge

Remind me to wear my hearing-aids.

Without mentioning tourism.

We may not be quite
the most invasive species,
but we are the only one which introduces
other invasive species (including molds,
bacteria and viruses) everywhere.
"It's in our DNA" - or at least
in our seminal and œstral juices.

 

From the Handy Hints and Useful Tips Website.

Handy Hint and Useful Tip 768

following naturally on Tip 767:

How to piss in a washing-machine
during its (and your) operation:

Alexander Norman Pirie 1915-1996

I would have boiled his sperm in a twisted spoon
no matter
how many billions of synapses are in my brain,
no matter
that life itself is in love with pain
no matter
I'll be decaying matter soon
then
almost no matter

 

Today's photo,

a fallen ivy leaf.

 

Is it only my imagination,

or is the world being choked by

the deadly evanescence

of insatiable googletsy instafaboo-

tikish temuescents ?

Having lived most of my life in or near

Belfast, a new angle on the damned
Titanic is worth more than a single cheer.

Dark Prophecy: I Sing Of Shine

Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)

And, yeah brothers
while white America sings about the unsinkable molly brown
(who was hustling the titanic
when it went down)
I sing to thee of Shine
the stoker who was hip enough to flee the **** ship
and let the white folks drown
with screams on their lips
(jumped his black **** into the dark sea, Shine did,
broke free from the straining steel).
Yeah, I sing to thee of Shine
and how the millionaire banker stood on the deck
and pulled from his pockets a million dollar check
saying Shine Shine save poor me
and I'll give you all the money a black boy needs—
how Shine looked at the money and then at the sea
and said jump in mutha****a and swim like me—
and Shine swam on—Shine swam on—
and how the banker's daughter ran naked on the deck
with her pink tits trembling and her pants roun her neck
screaming Shine Shine save poor me
and I'll give you all the **** a black boy needs—
how Shine said now **** is good and that's no jive
but you got to swim not **** to stay alive—
And Shine swam on Shine Swam on—

How Shine swam past a preacher a-floating on a board
crying save me **** Shine in the name of the Lord—
and how the preacher grabbed Shine's arm and broke his stroke—
how Shine pulled his shank and cut the preacher's throat—
And Shine swam on—Shine swam on—
And when news hit shore that the titanic had sunk
Shine was up in Harlem damn near drunk—

Kursk.

Commentators have not remarked on the symbolism of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast (Province). 
The Battle of Kursk in summer 1943 was one of the turning-points of the Second World War, and the biggest single battle ever fought.

A huge, nuclear-powered submarine named after the battle and the Oblast got into difficulties in the Barents Sea and sank with its crew of 118 in the year 2000. 
Putin was criticised for a failure in leadership in dealing with the emergency.  In the end, divers from Norway and Britain were brought in to access the submarine, but found no survivors.

The capture of territory in Kursk Oblast thus strikes a chill to the hearts of Russians, especially Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. 

MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER PART OF THE WOOD,

The Russian anti-war activist and gifted classical pianist Pavel Kushnir died in prison after a hunger strike which was his final protest against the invasion of Ukraine.

He was seized and put in prison for releasing four anti-war videos on YouTube.

He had four followers.

WokaWolf

plays with a picture
and his conscience.

Enemies.

 

The Enemies of the Earth
are neither Russia, nor China
and certainly not poor, wee
starving 'nuclear' North Korea,
but the USA, the Nuclear Family
and the Abrahamic religions.

Doesn't she mean
The Old Testament ?

That said –
if my outrageousness offends –
my enemy's enemies
are anything but my friends.

Useless Scraps

of partly-decipherable writing
scattered on my desk

carparks in the sky
airparks underground

who owns what
who has money
who has not
insanity of property
[... immedicable*  ...] rot 

     ~

Of course there is no Now
just wisp of existence
a wavering suspension
between Ago and apprehension

     ~

riotous intersection
in the yellow world-weary wood...
a silver tie-pin-straight
sinatra way of doing good
in the expensive Hospice
of our civilisation

     ~

...hope's as thin as pus
despair's as thick as semen
majorities and silent mobs...
tasteful loinclothed crucifixion
(to hide Peter's botched attempt
at genital tattooing)
tortured euphemism

...we are still draping
gaping sexual wounds

     ~

When you forget routines
that are years and decades old,
your decline has progressed
from tentative to bold.

     ~

*a too-rare word
    

     ~  *  ~

[dropped into the waste-paper basket,
my resolute friend, standing by my desk]

Odour-map.

Still life with rotting fruit and nuts on a stone ledge
by Abraham Mignon.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.

"The smell of lily is closer to grape than it is to cabbage".
So, I suppose, depending on various factors,

the smell of willy is closer to lily than it is to sewage.

https://aeon.co/essays/odours

Wonderful, extraordinary

 painterly photo in a Rajasthani home

by Naveli Choyal.

I think I am learning

a new word every day.

Becoming senile,
I can't remember yesterday's
(also in The Guardian)...

but today's is audism,
whose adjective must be audistic

which is somewhat ironic
for this lip-reading kvetch,
telephonophobic
small-talk avoiding,
aspergerish and HoH.

Picturedrome.

When I was young,
films did not have Wicked Words
on sound-tracks,
but there were guns.

I closed my eyes
when two people
(strangely, never of the same sex)
kissed on the movie-screen.

The few times there was real violence
(not the cowboy bang-bang sort)
I left the cinema. 

Many movies now
have fuck and cunt and fucking cunts
peppering their dialogue,
and seem somehow obliged to show
entirely uninstructive
fucks and fucking,

plus (sometimes) mind-bruising violence,
presumably to bring in lots
of numbies and their dough.

Thanks to computers, the internet and P2P,
I can put on a film in the evening
and, if appalled, bemused or bored,
simply erase the file...

and up to bed I go. 

Still getting older.

It's terrible to relate
that when your 'motor functions'
are 'impaired', the letter m
is hard to write in cursive script
(the demon-word mnemonic impossible)

and it's difficult to masturbate.

O wo is mee! morover
on my laptop I hav problms
with the letter e.

"Minding his own Business" (1)

 

Krishna-Carlo in my bathroom, 1988.

The future for America*

At least a hundred million humans
(and most of their pets)
eating their fast-food fill
then swallowing a magic
slimming pill.

*and the greedy everywhere

As Paris hosts the 'inclusive' Olympics

without street-people,
and a different kind of people
torch mosques and refugee-hostels
in England and Northern Ireland,

I am amazed at
how much 'gardening' I do
without having a garden !

Bright Morning Thought.

Magnificent
dark strong coffee is a habit
just like heroin
though more tasty
and somewhat less
maleficent.

"Minding his own Business" (2)

portrait of M in my bathroom, 1982

 

Enough is...enough.

Like me, the poet
and librarian Philip Larkin
thought that solitude
was as natural as nakedness

and as often dressed and covered up
by 'company'.  Unlike me,
he bought into the background roar

that 'our virtues are all social',
and had pugnaciously to lock his door
so he could blossom like a sea-anemone.

(I, on the other hand,
am like a shabby, modest minotaur
with open house,
happy (enough)
that no-one wants to visit me.)

Post-boxes,

 Lagos, Portugal.

photo by Martin M. Miles

Smegman (for Malcolm)

washes his willy with Cif*
which pleases him more than a spliff

Let's not mention his arse or his feet
(which taste faintly of lobster-meat)
or even his socks
(perhaps harbouring pox)

He has to send himself e-mails
to remind him to tackle his toenails...

Sometimes senescence
brings unpleasant presence...

*A Unilever cleaning product which contains particles of gently-scouring plastic.

My heart is a stone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just leave it alone. 

 

Strange

that they hadn't thought of that before !

Stuff.

Trillions (yes, trillions) of tons
of stuff is sought after
stolen, amassed, fought over, 

often ugly, rarely essential to life – 
some of it actual life: animals, children –
just property, rarely respected
(not even art is respected)

for its beauty, elegance or design –
status-stuff bought, collected,

often increasing comfort – and stress –
and failing to fill the billions
of little black holes which coalesce
into the planet-sized maw
of our semi-consciousness.