Almost Full Moon. The Luxurious Voice of the Answering Machine

I finally located the Manhattan Research CDs along with the CD version of Metal Box. Pity I can't find the best of Bert Kaempfert cd anywhere but there you go.

I also found a large pile of poems from about ten years ago. Small sample follows :-

Arctic Logician

I am the ice-cold calculation,
the algebra of seeking out
pursuit,

possession of the complement,
a face to echo and remark on
such as this.

I am the pad of the lordly paw,
the fur that ruffles in your breath
and gaze,

gradual slice of animal intent
from speech that comes so slowly
now in grace.

I am the chase in the Autumn cold,
the kill of the innocent of wood
and field,

fear of the cut of crystal teeth
of me, the civilising influence
I have caught.

I am the wound in your routine,
ill logic in your engineering
fear of flight,

phagic darkness in the circulation,
chemicals to turn the mind;
desire lightened.

I just typed that while listening to Sprite "Melonball Bounce" on the Manhattan Research CD which was about as incongruous as you can get. Anyway, if you know my obsessions, you may be able to work out what this poem is based on or at least influenced by. I have also found a set of poems I wrote during the 1991 Gulf War one of which is a mini-play consisting of conversations between the various missiles in the news at that time. I am trying to decide whether to post it.

I hate the weekend when the clocks go back. It seems to throw my idea of time right out. Humans seem to have a great ability to estimate time passing but that maybe because we have had a lot of practice. What about absolute direction? I once read a novel called "The boy who span" about the first child conceived in space who grew up to have an inbuilt sense of the universe. he always tried to orient himself with some reference line so that he was continually spinning and turning somersaults. I cannot find any reference to this book but it was in our school library. If anyone knows of it then please write to me. I think eventually he was chosen to meet Aliens who had contacted earth. It was probably really naff but I only remember it being far more realistic than normal Sci-Fi.

I was thinking of OCRing all the poems I found but the thought of re-typing them seems better. I suppose then I would be tempted to revise them which is probably not a good idea. All I did when I typed Arctic Logician was take out a few semi-colons and replace them with commas. Anyway, poetry is what you decide it is going to be. Poetic Licence is just that. Then again, that leads to ee cummings doesn't it?

I have all this time to write and nothing in my head to writer about save these ancient poems. There appears to be no 'missing link'; the stuff I talked about a few weeks ago which is absolute rubbish seems to have no segue into the stuff I have just found. The only difference between this 1991 collection and the stuff I do now is the length of the lines. I was very into short punchy lines which conveyed short images and memories but now I seem to have gone a bit 'corporate'. Maybe I should try and return to the half-length lines. There is something that does strike me; that I never complete the image because I run out of specifics to do so. I want to go back to all these poems and re-do them but I am sure that would be a mistake. I am talking about these poems so much; I should really put down another one.

The Quantel Darlings

Bury them!,
Those with their black shirts
and black doors shadowing
the moon-sprung ideologues
with Brno dead.
They are elite
and vanishing,
following the moon to victory
in sulphurous skies.

Where the black and white
have spun together,
in sequel,
lost and planetary,
irrelevant to urban things;
this doggerel.

The rhythm of the high
had broken them;
the spiteful sparks of truth
we had.
They've cut their hair,
reduced to parody
and lied and spent their way
through lightness to destruction.

The city falls,
crushed with the weight of recall.
to a bankrupt palace,
with infantile angelics,
the Quantel darlings.
Quantel equals GOD.

I have been choosing short poems; some of them are three, four or even five pages long. Aren't you glad that I can't get it together to type any of those?