So it goes

Lit Pub article and an extract

2012-01-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Today, The Lit Pub published my article on Ana C. and Richard Chiem's 'Oh No Everything Is Wet Now'. The article is here:

http://thelitpub.com/oh-no-everything-is-wet-now-is-a-rebellion-against-the-standardisation-of-literature/

Read the book here:

http://magichelicopterpress.com/ohno/ohnoeverythingwet1.html

Extract from new novel

Backstraight and sunken, Robin’s canvas is laced with shapes: a fingernail moon; two heavy, sexual spheres; ribs of fine, long lines; blooming blotches; slow snailing trails; a trinity of stars; a pair of hands. Robin screams a nothing sound and dips the brush back to clean.

reshaping and rewriting

2011-12-26T04:38:00.000-08:00

new novel might transform a little, becoming a little more interconnected than originally intended.

seems that it will 'function' as a novel now.

think in terms of how 'A Visit From The Goon Squad' functions as a novel.

certain characters seem likely to become prominent, which I hadn't intended previously.

still very much exploring ideas & experimenting.

*

I add to The Prodigal around once a week. Feels like each session is progress. Feels like it is tightening up. I am cutting out anything that seems/feels lazy.

good news

2011-12-19T14:48:00.001-08:00

my follow up submission to PANK has been accepted.

editing

2011-12-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

i keep finding parts in The Prodigal that seem really poorly written.

editing seems to be the only way to salvage the book.

forgive me.

i am trying hard.

i am still learning.

btw bbz

2011-11-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

i'm writing a collection of essays on the subject of virtual ontology.

each essay/article (w/e) will look at a text/book/ebook (w/e) and explore how it has some bearing/relevancy (w/e) on the construction of an ontological self/presence (w/e) within virtual space.

it's called Virtual Ontology.

literary criticism is the shit, yo.

news

2011-11-16T00:36:00.000-08:00

first chapter of new project received a very encouraging rejection from PANK.

an article by me will be published in December in The Lit Pub.

new project

2011-10-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

is laying itself out for me.

i am learning to be patient with ideas.

to let them spill out as draft, not product.

i hope i have improved as a writer.

i hope i can go on improving The Prodigal between now and its publication date.

i want to offer you a wonderful experience.

my novel

2011-10-07T12:48:00.001-07:00

as Beach Sloth noted in his review of the first draft of The Prodigal

it is a very interconnected book.

sentences play off other sentence that may have been 50 pages before.

i put a lot of effort into making these connections seem natural.

because it is such a short novel, there is some joy to making it sing to itself.

the work seems interconnected on account of the way the story is told.

by a character driven text, written in third person-present tense, i was able to jump between times and in/external monologues with a degree of believabilty and continuity.

my novel

2011-10-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

while i'm going through the editing process, this might become a series

of how i perceive The Prodigal.

as a comedy, it is not a witty novel.

it is more likely to make you LOL that titter to yourself in a self satisfied way.

it is asinine and base and relatable and foreign.

it is all these things because it is a character based book.

the novel isn't driving towards an ending.

lots of novels i like do that,

but lots of novels that i like go out their way not to.

the novel is geared around some guys.

the novel hangs in a middle.

it might feel like a sketch show.

i tried to track a balance between thinking and actions

and internal and external monologues.

this was the biggest challenge.

this is where most of the editing has been taking place.

this is where i hope to make it a better experience.

this is where i want to make myself as invisible as possible.

my novel

2011-09-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

isn't complex, sophisticated or revolutionary.

it is challenging, experimentantive and honest.

it is also quite funny.

i hope you buy it in 2013.

oh

2011-09-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

it seems to me

that the worst thing

is to be cruel.

i have been cruel many times.

i will try to minimise this.

i believe that i can be a better person.

October Reading List

2011-09-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

Term is restarting and I have two manuscripts to edit. This might be slow going.

Action, Figure - Frank Hinton
Nouns of Assemblage - [various]
Us - Mike K.
In Great Company - Mike S.
EVER - Blakey B.
Wild Abandon - Joe Dunthorne
No Hellos Diet/Hurt Others - Mr. Sam Pink.
My Eyes Saw Your Unformed Limbs - Jacob Steinberg

another exciting bit of news

2011-09-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Circle/Line is due to be published as a chapbook by The Red Ceilings Press.

Projected for around Christmas time.

my novel

2011-09-14T16:14:00.001-07:00

'The Prodigal'

has been accepted for publication in 2013.

basic semiotics in Batman Begins

2011-09-13T14:56:00.001-07:00

'as a man i'm mortal. i need to be a symbol.'

today

2011-09-11T05:50:00.001-07:00

i submitted a book of poetry to 'Plain Wrap'.

interesting

2011-09-02T16:00:00.003-07:00

might write an extended essay on discrimination in Police Academy.

news

2011-09-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today has been spent completing my poetry collection, titled 'Inconclusive Results' & beginning research for next major work of fiction. 'The Prodigal' and 'Circle/Line' are complete and awaiting submission feedback.

Circle Line is complete

2011-08-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

Around 4500 words.

Short of the original estimate, but it feels tight.

I am looking to launch it as a chapbook.

Contact me with any offers, idk.

update

2011-08-26T19:03:00.001-07:00

Circle/Line has hit 4k words.

It feels like I have been writing this forever.

One press has expressed serious interest in The Prodigal.

Sample Chapter of Circle/Line

2011-08-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

Evening

Drinkers come swathe on swathe.

Light footed and bow legged, they josh and jerk, jimmying doors for yet another comrade.

The crew spread themselves over the city’s hollowed reprieve.

They swill filth about in an absent dilemma, barking triumphs and soliciting conquests.

These drunkards paint from a jovial palette, making sure to pave every surface and sense with their detritus and abuse.

Tipping and swaying, the vice brigade keep poor balance and worse judgements.

Priding and falling, they wreak and rack from stop to stop, willing forwards, onwards, upwards!

Their pockets clug with change and freshly acquired numbers.

Unfolding themselves about the cage, they barge at the limits of audacity, parading their tarnished faculties into every other neutral face.

Their shrapnelled spittle flecks the walls, rich with bile.

Deep into London, the vulnerable ripen to their eyes.

These unfortunate innocents must coil up their limbs, wary of becoming a focus.

During mid-tunnel pauses, their faces leak all expression.

When the lights stammer, they are marooned on a suburban jetty.

Around them, the wasted hiss about in sudden deflations, liberated by the anonymity of strobing darkness.

They seem determined to cramp life up to the limits of their fleshy receptacles.

A team of parts, they lock arms to keep balance.

Only one sits alone, beside himself.

His deep pity weighs the atmosphere’s swaying scales.

Cushioned between work-calloused palms, he wears his fatigue like chainmail.

Sleeping in profanities, he rides an internal beast and groans like a well-oiled fool.

The tube sways, slurring its efforts, restless for rest.

When the lone man is reared up by Temple, he wakes in a gaudy haze, his mouth thick with spit.

By close, the less fortunate vow another never again.

Outside, the clay sky is lashed with saffron electrics.

Serious Ethical Post

2011-08-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Isabel encouraged me to write these thoughts down after I expressed them vocally.

My moral theory is based upon the fact that you as an individual are entirely pointless.

You are nothing.

Your contribution to the human being, as a species, is likely to amount to nothing.

Even if you were to influence the whole of humanity

and therefore your 'being' could 'live on' through others,

ulitmately it does not matter.

The human race will die.

Planet Earth will be nothing.

The universe will be nothing.

This must be accepted as the primary predicate.

The secondary predicate follows directly on.

For if life has no meaning, then meaning must be created.

The meaning to life is the basis to all ethics.

It is simply, 'be nice'.

Be nice to others for the sake of being nice.

Not out of duty,

nor out of consequential concerns.

Just be nice.

This is the only way that you can make your life valuable for the short amount of time it spans.

It is the only way that people can matter to you.

Interpersonal relations function only when you are an example worth following.

You must make their lives worth living also.

More than that, it lets them enjoy their lives.

It makes your part in their life of real value.

'Treat others as you would like to be treated.'

This principle does not imply that you should treat others as kings, simply because you would like to be one.

It requests that you show respect for another human's dignity.

Vonnegut wrote in Rosewater: "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

I might set an online class

2011-08-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

The reading list would be 6-10 short stories from various collections.

Who would want to take it?

I think it might be fun just to design anyway.

Circle/Line is coming on nice and slowly. I have genuinely thought about every word in there so far.

new title

2011-07-11T11:00:00.001-07:00

is

Circle/Line

touching on 2500 words. most of the previous 2000 have been re-written/cut/re-ordered.

it is a 'Novel in verse.'

I am thinking of some cool ways to present it.

starting to take shape now.

Depth Charge has been changed

2011-07-02T22:40:00.001-07:00

i've had a rethink.

it wasn't working as it was.

i'm reshuffling.

things will probably flow more smoothly now.

the title will change.

thorough

2011-06-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

2k into Depth Charge. This is the slowest that I have ever written.

aforementioned work has a title

2011-06-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

second novel is currently titled 'Depth Charge'.

new book

2011-06-10T10:55:00.001-07:00

I am writing a long work of 'experimental fiction'/'prose poetry' set on the Circle Line. I am only 1k in. I expect it be around 10-12k.

The Prodigal is done

2011-05-11T04:29:00.001-07:00

wooo

tired

2011-05-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

done about ten hours of editing over the last two days.

two different publishers interesting in picking up The Prodigal.

broke the 20k word mark on the novel

2011-05-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

feels good bro. i figure i'm around half way through the man hours i'll have to put into the creation. feeling positive.

what happened to quitting

2011-04-30T10:50:00.003-07:00

you're fucking worthless sometimes alex allison

you really fucking are.

two exciting bits of news/publications

2011-04-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

a poem by me is up for 1627 on Crispin Best's 'For Every Year'

http://www.foreveryyear.eu/2011/04/1627-co-alexander-j-allison.html

and two poems by me are up on Frank Hinton's Metazen

http://www.metazen.ca/?p=7118

an ebook by me is up on Pangur Ban Party

2011-04-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

check the shit out of it.

alexander-allison-pbp.blogspot.com

http://www.pangurbanparty.com/

love dj berndt.

poem up on red fez

2011-04-13T15:19:00.001-07:00

check it out here: http://redfez.net/redfez/SubPage1.php?page=SubPoetry&ID=1297

news

2011-04-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

i have written something for crispin best's website, 'for every year'. my year is 1627.

o i 4got about this

2011-04-11T09:22:00.001-07:00

thought catalog published this 'piece' by me: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/ipod-sociology/

title

2011-04-10T17:37:00.001-07:00

my novel is titled 'The Prodigal'

news

2011-04-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

if my novel is complete by July, i may have an agent for it.

news

2011-04-07T08:04:00.001-07:00

due to have a poem published in Red Fez

news

2011-03-30T16:08:00.000-07:00

a poem by me is due to feature in EveryDayPoets second 'Best Of' annual.

two things

2011-03-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

a short story by me is due to appear in June's issue thirteen of kill author.

+ another poem macro on let people poems: http://letpeoplepoems.com/2011/03/28/alexallison-docx-by-alexander-j-allison/

three new things

2011-03-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

one poem on let people poems:

http://letpeoplepoems.com/2011/03/26/disappear-here-alexander-j-allison/

two works on steve roggenbuck's internet poetry:

http://internetpoetry.tumblr.com/post/4110627808

http://internetpoetry.tumblr.com/post/4009334540

thought catalog published a 'piece' by me

2011-03-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/tramp-chic-an-empowering-style-guide-for-the-apathetic/

three of my poems in separate entries on Let People Poems

2011-03-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

http://letpeoplepoems.blogspot.com/2011/03/poem-made-of-titles-from-poems-which-i.html

http://letpeoplepoems.blogspot.com/2011/03/romance-during-1990s-alexander-j.html

http://letpeoplepoems.blogspot.com/2011/03/enjoy-this-poem-i-wrote.html

i know how my novel is going to work

2011-03-17T17:30:00.000-07:00

it is going to be about a rich boy being careless with his money and thinking about what he feels. it will be written in the present tense. i feel that i can keep my phenomenological style (with its often verbose description) in place and have a simple, convincing internal monologue run concurrently to it.

Popshot issue 5 available to pre-order

2011-03-17T08:47:00.001-07:00

http://popshotpopshot.com/magazine.html

Here are some sample pages. My poem is mentioned on the homepage as part of what you can expect.

another project done

2011-03-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

an eleven story ebook by me called 'Hi everybody!' will be published on one of my favourite lit journals after Easter.

good clip on bad faith

2011-03-15T18:17:00.001-07:00

i have trypophobia

2011-03-15T16:01:00.001-07:00

and always have done.

never google that term.

this article

2011-03-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/a-phenomenology-of-the-image-on-127-hours/

Made me think about this film also.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459/

It is phenomenologically relevant. An exploration of the verisimilitude a cross section of life can represent. The illusions of happiness that we wish to maintain [circa, American Beauty success], the way we archive our lives and the disharmony to suburban existence. All these things are of interest to me.

It appears to me that the psychologically unsettling aspect of the 'situation' is the voyeurism of the viewer in being complicit with the protagonist [Robin Williams].

I might think about this more another time.

this is cool

2011-03-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

Dalton Ghetti pencil sculptures

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/7916457/Pencil-sculptures-miniature-masterpieces-carved-into-graphite-by-Dalton-Ghetti.html?image=2

okay

2011-03-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

my worst feeling

is when i have no right to be unhappy

but i am very depressed

and uncontented

and disillusioned.

this very self centered feeling seems a little ridiculous

then i'm not just unhappy,

i'm guilty too.

this is a common feeling.

this is nothing new.

done

2011-03-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

40 page manuscript of 33 original poems complete and sent for editing. I'm knackered.

new tattoo poem [first draft]

2011-03-09T17:17:00.001-08:00

The Parlour

Though outwardly plying no trade, he’s
Patriarch of a surface centred sub-culture,
he keeps a boisterous surgery:
managing patchwork men and their menace,
alongside more impulsive patrons
who seek to novelise his art.

Granted bodies in hazy faith,
he exudes clinical pride
from the grip of his surgically sterilized gun
(note the canine tongue protrusion,
the mark of his zen).
He makes a grace of scarring.

Managing poised empathy and false simpatico;
trawling through a private arsenal of platitudes,
he acknowledges their muscle spasms,
mouth contortions and general whines,
with the assurance that every commitment
is a suffering.

new projects and ways of thinking

2011-03-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

i have ~8-10 more poems to write before my manuscript is complete.

after i have finished by first book of poetry, i will be working on a book of short stories about gambling.

this idea came out of a composite novel which i feel is too ambitious to attempt at this stage in my 'career'.

i plan to self-publicise my poetry collection through a highly active online presence over the next year. i am currently working on writing 5+ articles for thought catalog. one (?) of these may feature in the short-story collection.

another revised work

2011-03-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

Piccadilly Line

Our best times together
were the sweats each summer:
and that glorious moment
where mid-tunnel,
I'd be hit
by a flush of fresh air,
and all the carriage would squirm with delight
as I turned four more pages.

revision of an older work into something more readable

2011-03-08T18:38:00.001-08:00

Intense

Sometimes,
in our bathroom mirror
through some thick precipitation,
and damp panicked marks,
I’ll catch sight of a man

and he’ll look back, blinking with me,
holding an expression of dull familiarity
and sound judgement;
seeing a boy grown too old,
too quickly and too soon.

read this with the song on

2011-03-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

‘Everything in its right place’ - Radiohead, 2007

‘We all hate home/And having to be there’ – Philip Larkin, 1954

Even in the deepest chaos,
when the universe conspires
against my every will,
where all is present and
in reference to me

there’s still that informing
order. The disquietude of
a reality outside of me.

Up to the edges of my being,
this thought fills and fulfils
the places of every object
and book on my shelf.

It subtly justifies memories
of unknown origin – my mother’s
voice, or that hand through
the dark, and the last cigarette
of the very last packet
I will ever be allowed.

the job of an artist

2011-03-08T11:21:00.000-08:00

is the hardest in all the world:

to ask people to stop

and just look

for a little while.

here is a link to my thought catalog article

2011-03-08T09:38:00.001-08:00

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/small-talk/

published

2011-03-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

It is likely that I will have a 40-45 page book of poetry published by Xplosive.

published

2011-03-06T16:52:00.001-08:00

Thought Catalog are due to publish a 'piece' by me.

i feel very low today

2011-03-05T10:32:00.001-08:00

on the verge of depression.

i want to stay in bed and read the books i've had delivered and write the articles for thought catalog i have planned.

a new poem [first draft]

2011-03-03T12:32:00.000-08:00

This way up

A tartan of marine bruises
identifies your history of numbed submission.
Their still fresh sheen
shines like an honour,
a gift without receipt;
reaquaintance of self.

A bland reality of reheated arguments:
warmed through like affection
for your fleshed out repent.

Expressions churn
out disgust from disgust,
like concrete mixers on a foreign bile.

You warn that faces
may stick in changed winds.

published

2011-03-02T15:25:00.001-08:00

Frank Hinton has accepted two of my poems for Metazen, due to be published April 22nd.

more often than not

2011-03-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

[forgive the cliche title]

i don't like things so much as i like the idea of things.

there are lots of examples: some base, some cultured.

of course, there are also exceptions when the two are comfortably united.

these are the things i like best.

maybe once i have thought about it more i will give a fun list of examples.

not too complex an observation

2011-02-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

some of the most popular television characters on high-budget, semi low brow kitsch entertainment are 1.5 dimensional.

by this i mean that they are a one dimensional character, who will occasionally disrupt their prototypical behavioural tendencies in a writer's effort to make them 'endearing'. sometimes this might be 'achieved' through a psuedo-supplementary [and often fairly arbitrary] back story, adding layers to their character until rough the end of the episode.

examples include the 'bitch' woman off Glee; the narcissist doctor of Scrubs; Peter Griffin.

in contrast, characters who gain critical acclaim and genuine lasting value are the entire opposite: Homer Simpson/most the cast of LOST/others I'm not interested in.

good

2011-02-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-be-a-writer/

This rather good article

sort of made me consider

maybe the hypocrisy

which weighs me down so often and so heavily

is better thought of in terms of Keatsian 'negative capability'.

this could be a good way to retrain my thought patterns on this subject.

taken from my notebook

2011-02-26T19:36:00.000-08:00

'[...] I hope they're a [...?] phenomenological hyper-realism'

'I hope my poems identify feelings of foreigness in familiar spaces. This [...] disquiet is the prototypical emotion of my experience of the postmodern [?] period.'

'[...] abstract button hole, [...]

Fun new poem published on New Wave Vomit

2011-02-26T18:45:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Ana C.

http://newwavevomit.com/newwavevomit.com/191.html

alcohol poem - first draft [first ed.]

2011-02-24T14:57:00.001-08:00

Merits of Deconditioning

In a sensual swagger of primary pleasure,
he manages the giddy liquid ascent, bringing forth
ebullient rhetoric; evidence of the suppressed poet.

For the sake of a cheap trick, he,
(amongst the most entertaining) will feign comfort with flexibility,
unwittingly engineering a revival of that old leg twinge.

In this state, he knows but one story
(though knows it bloody well - punch
line by punchline; ritual by ridicule).

Around him, there's a remarkable range of reaction:
one will comfortably self-identify their genius,
where the other only warbles litanies of garbled insecurity.

At worst, there’s a ‘piercing of strange relations’
- the foreignness of her chilled pillow,
and the sober, daunting walk to come.

here is a 'This is water' inspired poem

2011-02-23T14:59:00.001-08:00

Perspective

Just off the highway intersection,
get hit by a car or two. In six weeks time,
share the anecdotal evidence across various online sources.
Receive mild mannered sympathy
from a range of acquaintances.
Every experience is to be shared.

Traumatise a single mother.
Compound her bonnet, shatter her windshield with your pelvis.
Smear your filling over her dashboard,
let some flecks of your flesh dapple her face.
Destroy the just-paid-off vehicle;
make the local news.

people appear to have stopped 'hating' me so much

2011-02-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

i don't know what to make of this.

i am not really making anything of it.

i feel i should be affected.

I am very addicted to gambling

2011-02-23T14:06:00.001-08:00

I might start using this blog to explain my struggle with online gambling and what I'm feeling as I try to resist.

No more online gambling.

Good.

Stay solid to that please.

Social gambling [poker] is a very different thing.

'Worst Kiss Ever', a film by Alexander J. Allison

2011-02-22T14:33:00.000-08:00

Worst Kiss Ever from Alex Allison on Vimeo.

this is not a public blog

2011-02-18T07:31:00.001-08:00

King of Limbs was released today.

Here is a poem

Festive

Christmases, past your second dozen, have the emotional haziness
of a 4-4 comeback, or ‘I know a shortcut.’

Your brother’s new spouse gives her inaugural address,
as conversations track the ‘One day I’ll’s and ‘Just what I wanted’s.

Your mother, a principal advocate for positive thinking,
bore sophisticated predicates of hospitality into your milk teeth,

you manage to accomplish a receipt-requesting congeniality;
it’s all in the smile – (batteries not included).

European kisses come in flurries; impersonal cards line windowsills;
a month’s recycling works its way over the tapioca-linen tabletop.

Cousins set up their premiere hangovers,
laying the foundations for a midlife crisis at seventeen.

The elderly commandeer sleeping spaces early on,
their dysphasic tipsiness is spiced with a charming bigotry.

A dramatic tension simmers, perched on the edges of frayed
patience. There’s a disgust at varicose bulging.

This too shall pass

2011-02-17T16:04:00.001-08:00

by OK Go

Worthy of my phrase.

hey i'm alex pt. 1

2011-02-17T01:30:00.001-08:00

and i'm a human.

sometimes i get ill

and sometimes i will be having sex whilst you are reading this,

sometimes i need my hand held to feel better

i have two hands though and sometimes the other hand feels jealous of when one hand is getting all the attention.

sometimes i don't feel very human at all

i feel loose in definition

i feel desperate for definition.

i get tattoos to make me feel like i am being farcical about permanency and ephemerality.

i smoke because i enjoy it, sometimes i think of consequences and feel a little scared.

sometimes i desire to not be alive, but i know how to work through these thoughts now.

i think a lot when i decide to start writing about sometimes. most of the stuff i write about i don't feel strongly about. i like to feel a detached passion that makes me feel more human. i think poetry should be written from the perspective of a person who is watching a person read a poem of someone who wrote the poem, standing in the same room watching them read that poem and gauging their responses to the poem.

as much as i'd like to, i can't write in the way that Tao Lin and Noah Cicero write, so i don't really try to imitate them. that'd just feel silly.

sometimes i feel very british when i am writing.

i feel like i will come across people who want me to become part of 'movements', but i don't really know what i'm moving towards. i feel like i would much prefer to float in a deadspace: an unemployed deadspace, free of the pseudo-responsibilities of adult life.

there is a big and popular myth that things should be hard in life. i don't know what i think about this myth most of the time. it's a hard myth to like. perhaps it's tautological. i quite like tautological things.

buy this

2011-02-15T06:00:00.001-08:00

http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/current.php

Issue 67 of Willow Springs featuring a poem by me. My copy arrived this morning. It is gorgeous.

i would like this poem to be as good as i want it to be [first ed.]

2011-02-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

Arrivals Hall

They wade through the emotional density of ‘Arrivals’.
Heavily voweled names are loftily extended on simple placards;
Water is priced at two pounds sterling and noses nestle in trash fiction;
for the most part, it’s a smile free zone.

Heavily enforced regulations map the walls
and floors bear Yellow legged warnings of permanent wetness.
Mechanical thunderings are ambient here,
a comatose delirium tries hard to seem real.

Asphyxiated by unpopped eardrums,
still nursing complimentary cramp,
they move with a security haggard fear
where even limbs appear to yawn.

Too surreal to be home, yet...
this is a space for phones to be rebooted; underwear subtly readjusted.
Just off camera, in poignant tableaux, there's a hugging of others,
to mark the coronation of their 'new' beginnings.

Cocooned under zipped hoods and buttoned collars,
some winkle open Tetris-Block cases for Queen faced bank notes.
Cheeks deflate at limp punchlines on
e-number rich Plane based gastronomy, tans, road sides.

The uncollected maneuver past these caustic reunions
with an attentive professionalism; smokers dash at any exit.
One flight attendant beams a morbid glee,
secretly lambasting life in vitriolic mutterings.

i had been unsure about posting this, previously.

2011-02-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

Laying Flowers

for Kurt, Richard and David

Every so often
(feeling more prepared for it),
I will visit their section - V through Y,
pretending there might be something new.
Upon finding only familiar blurbs
and conquered girths,
perhaps a re-issue, film edition - ? -
My affection's reaffirmed.

this is water

2011-02-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

I have a new tattoo. It is a band around the top right of my arm bearing DFW's dictum, 'This is water.' See below:

Or the full text here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction

It is a speech in favour of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. In the video, the audience don't really get it. It's not a comedic speech. It is a dictum on how to think, or rather, how to re-think. It's not moral, it's practical. It is scientific. It could even train the imagination, though, not conceivably to David's heights.

In other news, Charlie Brooker's series 'How TV Ruined Your Life' has been brilliant thus far.

poem [first ed./[final ed.]]

2011-02-07T05:26:00.001-08:00

Morning on a Foreign Farm

The universal accent of a Cockerel's salutation
dresses pastoral dawn with grand premonition,
like newsprint before disaster.

Some Ancient Spirit rattles at woodwormed windows
with smacks of freshness, like lungs shocked by panting
from a pre-breakfast sprint.

Knots of sod produced by hypothetical worms
are dragged into the domestic sphere;
not unclean, a hearty dirt with mineral richness.

My musky suitcase is thinly spread with home comforts:
teabags, novels, medicine. Someone mumbles 'larder' downstairs.
Gulls strike a flawless sky in their own annunciation.

something important

2011-02-07T04:16:00.001-08:00

I hope my poems evoke strong feelings of home.

Home is an important word. It is a base. It feels very whole. Very familiar. Home is the place of poetry.

exciting news

2011-02-02T08:40:00.001-08:00

School Toilets will be published in April's edition of Popshot Magazine. It is also being illustrated.

o btw i finished infinite jest a while ago

2011-01-19T11:36:00.001-08:00

LOOK AT THIS ORIN FANS:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3360832/Dogs-dragged-to-death-by-accident.html

yet another poem

2011-01-18T19:17:00.001-08:00

La Boheme

Three streets away
(near where Lenin lived),
the Royal Opera’s lead soprano
gears up for the evening,
defenestrating her voice
to one handed applause.

Her aria to a foreign dusk
has the decency not to
disturb Top Gear re-runs,
or the neighbour who,
with semi-professional aspirations
serenades his bath water
through domestic acoustics.

another poem

2011-01-18T19:12:00.001-08:00

Full English Breakfast

Defenestrating ash and spittle over the balcony (Neo Gothic, lightly weathered),
he blandly surveys 09:22. Two horsebacked policemen arcanely strut in single file.
The market is already a living mosaic of polyethene, fretted with tartan patterns
like an awkward puzzle. Crew cut men pluck at disparate potential customers with a ringmaster’s furore, appealing in shattered grammar to basic gastronomic needs, brandishing amorphous vegetation to gesticulate in a disquieting sexual vigour.
Behind, she enters unannounced, returning with fullfat bluetop milk for their tea.

a poem

2011-01-18T19:02:00.001-08:00

West End Saturdays

It is sale season again. Menially scanning objects
bearing their own unique variety of unarousing value,
staff courteously abstract grimace to smile,
pillaging tills for copper shrapnel souvenirs to each purchase.

They, the preservatives of what was barely a tertiary industry
slip furtive glances to the wage-winding wall clock,
moving stalely, with a latent discomfort.
Rusted gears in some arbitrary mechanism.

Minds to rent for minimum wage, they amble down thematic isles
as patrons allow their covetous fingers to stalk through case racks
lined like grave stones, each bearing a kitsch epitaph,
some a sticker stating hygienic discounts on outmoded discs.

Promising quality assurance in place of illegal convenience
with heavily eroded conviction (‘You wouldn’t steal a car’),
they appeal to a palpably British patrician sensibility.
The store will be closing in ten minutes.

back in york

2011-01-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

here is a song about living in london

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmmYMwFj1I

it is about vice magazine.

lots of stuff coming up soon.

the people i dislike most

2010-12-17T19:54:00.000-08:00

are the overly political

wonderfully cautious

remarkably informed folk,

bristling with positive intentions

and high ideals

who attract fellow-minded company

to have holly-jolly activities with

so that they may exist in a closed off,

blindly ignorant,

stupendous hypocrisy,

living out their daddies dreams.

there is an abundance of difference between having a natural curiosity for the political arena

and the compulsive 'opinionising' of everything.

cemented in a fraudulent sheen of 'self-awareness'

they wear their capitalistic/neo-conservative/Objectivist [self interested - NB, See Rand] bias like a medal of honour;

the diametric opposition to open minded debate.

they indulge in a self-aggrandising microcosm of assumed expertise,

where an authorative voice is worth more than considered opinion.

indeed, how much opinion (as opposed to judgement) is actually involved?

[Rhetorical - (Seemingly marginal quantities)]

destined to be clique like [and therefore incestuous]

the tribe will flatter their self-importance indulging as a group in what Mill would recognise as activities designed to stimulate only the 'higher-pleasures'.

the make-up of these activities will have little variance, and promote conservative and typically reductive, gender-polarising roles.

cunts.

Also published in Zahir

2010-12-11T16:53:00.001-08:00

Check out my [poorly edited] flash fiction on page 18.

http://issuu.com/yorkzahir/docs/zahir61

Drfitwood Review Issue 8

2010-12-11T16:41:00.001-08:00

Available online now. I am on p.7. It will be ready for purchase soon:

http://issuu.com/driftwoodreview/docs/issue_eight?mode=embed&layout=http://skin.issuu.com/v/dark/layout.xml&showFlipBtn=true

of course, editing will follow

2010-12-07T19:15:00.000-08:00

Please Refrain

Overwhelmed by prohibition
in an instant, I commit to distressing formal modus.
Puncturing the private sphere in freckled force,
I extend a daring limb across velvet meta-fortifications.
Mother conspiratorially woos the guard
with a fraudulent (as-though-typed) laughter.

Illicitly caressing the cleaved marble,
an anarchic vocation swells under my fingernails
(the daring reprobate, a black sheep for slaughter).
But the cavalry sounds, blaring in taut fever,
as five authoritative shoulder-bound digits clamp-down
with stern severity
and the spatial rupture scabs back over.

i will be coming back to this to edit it a little.

2010-12-04T19:18:00.001-08:00

EDITED [RE-EDITED. IT HAS BECOME SEMI-ACCEPTABLE EMO(ish)]

Diagnosed with Sanity

Having never been ‘part of the gang’,
the news of your passing
appears some tasteless conspiracy,
developed to amputate all the compound resent.
Yesterday's newspaper seems freckled with premonition.

There are nine-hundred and forty-two
people on Facebook sharing out your name.
Our past flares within the memorial jpeg,
bearing a date to resemble one shattered phone-number.
In it, you smash murky water
with delicious amateurism
in forgotten Wellingtons
so lacquered with revoked meaning,
that the absurd rupture disrupts my frown.

I move back to bed, as though stumbling through waves,
as everything I should have felt
sifts through
in flaccid epiphany.
Reverting to a foetal position
(ostensibly struck by some archaic malady),
I wear only the arms laced about me.
Loose faucets pound porcelain one metre away
and a digital ticking beats.

i have submitted to [aprox] seven places

2010-12-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

i hope for one positive response. i am working on a book to be ready for January.

this makes sense to me

2010-12-01T19:45:00.001-08:00

On DeLillo and Wallace

…restrictions to the confines of thermodynamics and gradation of infinities now weigh no bearing on what has come to be understood as ‘culture studies’ [Citation, Adorno]. Since seeing is process [collective acknowledgement – Marx?] (affirmative of the most rudimentary suspicion [fundamental, almost], that perception is an aura, systematised, so as to quell the sheer impossibilities of a real existence [Heideggerian Phenomenology being of questionable academic standards within necessary analytic structure]), where each fraction of our polymorphic sexualities is open to adverse [sic.? – perverse] affect, the redemptive urgency within these texts [NB titular references] must be interpreted as catalytic to catharsis [debatable once negotiating the implicitly required relativity]…

revisiting an old idea with two more years worth of poetic experience

2010-11-30T16:12:00.000-08:00

Facial Hair

Nobody is here to teach me to shave.
Behind the new gruff maturity
is a hesitant child,
freckled and chaste.
Unlike rehearsal beards in lathered bubblebath
(perhaps penned pirate ‘tash),
this is dread genuine pubescence.

Approximations for correct technique
are borrowed from advertising,
where polished sportstars unveil their smoothness
by measured downward strokes.

The epidermic margin of error runs under blemish,
as sudden torn capillaries exaggerate their suffering
in a masculine menstruation.

pleasant revelation

2010-11-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

because i'm not studying teleologically,

i don't really care about a degree.

i thought i should do, but i'm struggling to.

i'm not really interested, engaged by or suited to the subject.

i'm at university because i enjoy learning,

if i feel i'm not learning any better than i could be at a public library,

i won't feel so bad about dropping out.

it would save me a lot of money for sure.

i'm not saying i'm going to drop out,

i'm saying i wouldn't feel bad if i were to.

i feel i would be able to justify my actions.