pre-millennium poem

you were my friend Jib, i was yours,

from when we first met studying performing arts

at Wakefield College, year one, ten years after

1984, time of Nirvana, Howard Marks, Woody Allen

overload . . . 

we left the scummy city,

went to France, ate cotton-pink-candy-floss

by the Seine, pretended they were beards, drank in late-night-

reservation-bars, Cap d’Antibes, Cote d’ Azur, playing pool,

with long distance runners, who ran around snow-capped

Alpine peaks, while we lazed it up on pebble beaches,

and the soft sands of Nice -

cheating-on-ugly-girlfriends, who cheated on us back home

with ugly men  . . .

we walked through the Indiana Jones style snake-pit

together journeying back to a Lost Ark of a shambolic-insectoid

woodchip-walled Knotla bedsit,

safety zone,

that wasn’t safe at all . . .

watching The Wall, Pulse, a Tarantino film

surrounded by creepy crawlies - 

3 Holes Lane, trippin’ on LSD, after late night

Liberty Park      Nightclub,

sometime soon after Fev chick took your virginity

away, and away again . . .

those f*****g slugs eh? that night!  yuck!   yuck!   yuck!

visions

in seeming-simultaneously-syncopated-reality . . .

i had a dream about you -

once,

once a month, every week, sometimes,

every once and awhile,

once and again,

if i’m honest,

you’re still there in here, you should pay rent

it’s been that long, you really should have you know?,

free loader you to boot!

what became of you?

still putting baccy into Rizla skins?

smoking your old man’s Old Holborn?

rolling soft squidgy black in-between brown

stained thumb and forefinger?

longish mop of burnt siena hair?

heavy alt-rock?

still a c**t?

sexy bambino? i bet . . .

this one’s for old times sake,

i know we wouldn’t get on now, like we stopped

doing back then, but you’re still here . . .  in here,

like the guys in Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher.

i wrote a poem about you, years ago,

blogged it on Moco for others to see,

i guess this could be another one, with room

for reasonable doubt, amongst the literary purists . . .

no doubt . . .

i listened to Rage Against the Machine tonight

on youtube, f**k you i won’t do what you tell me,

f**k you i won’t do what you tell me,

f**k you i won’t do what you tell me,

that one, and people of the sun, NoFX’s

don’t call me white too.

thought about you, took me back,

to those long summer drives across the Yorkie

countryside, getting high by the Humber Bridge,

driven to just for the view.

swimming in natural water quarries too,

as young men somersaulted off white metallic roofs of Ford Tranny vans

with dark tinted-glass front windows, before Major made them illegal,

and Spitting Image made his skin boring grey,

before he called for general election with raised Columbine torch,

on rose-red-labour-day,

then acted all surprised when he lost . . .

seeing those leeches sticking to island rocks

scared the s**t out of me and Al

and we farted Linda McCartney lasagnes 

with quick-arched-over-arm-strokes back to comfort

of shallow shore, clambering over rocks, before deep declivity,

drop, drop, drop.

and only some of us fell!

that bee on your face brother, my brother!

attempting to pollinate perspiration marijuana skin, Dave’s disbelief

as you freaked for assistance, he was always a little dumb,

a little slow, we thought . . .

“EHH?!”

“BEE!!!!”

“SEE?!”

 . . .   but he had the car to taxi us around, to play the theme signatures,

the Floyd, the Rage, the Weezer, the underground sound,

the Sonic Youth to spit out of dusty windows with two-fingered slingshot

salutes at Michelangelo’s Goliath, the system, and it’s lies and hypocrisy

that were as old as old pyramids themselves, built for Kings by Slaves.

we knew, but couldn’t define with pre-Haralambos minds,

and conspiracy theories just a notch above X-Files tv mass-media-entertainment

with its alien grey Strieber like semantic hallucinations,

that just didn’t interest me,

but got you.

the nit-wit hoodwink drug policies we assumed we were part of, but were

unwritten, unprinted, unspoken, clandestine socio-Pavlovian experiments

organised by government, or whoever, on us . . . 

the guinea pigs, the Mitsubishi kids,

models for future ages to fall back on with maybes and maybes and more

maybes on maybes . . .

lighting up in the back, Bogarting joints, dressed like Kurt Cobain

and born to be wild in green

grandad cardigans, with skater’s pumps (styles i still wear), and long chains

(styles i didn’t wear), that dangled purposelessly, (all-showy-offy), before even they

became brands and sold in main high-street-stores.

Russ . . .  (saint-of-the-time-and-to-the-course) by your side,

who gave me Mckenna’s rave culture prophecy,

and Dj Shadow’s pre-emptive strike,

and years afterwards, Mr Scruff’s keep it unreal, telephone wired to the “ones who know,”

at the very centre of it all . . .

a shamanic trickster, he, chosen one, he, singled out for personal tuition,

like a young Alexander the Great by natural selection, becoming Raven

on Odin’s strong arm

with Elvin grins amongst the Hobbits and Magickians, of the Shire.

and i remember you and he met Irvine Welsh, Pat Smear, Dave Beer,

went to back-to-basics, Mint,

and we danced at Leed’s TnC to Daft Punk bombed on paste, wired on pills, and

saw Foo-fighters with uni-people on goodness knows what, before Charlie and the towers of elitism shifted his spine

to Muslim men in black-leather-coats,

flashy Gucci shoes and Valentino shirts,

and only God, or Allah

knows where he ended up?

the spill of choco-milk over sleeping-policeman-bumps,

nug-burns scattered like wild-pellet-gun-fire over shirts, chests, sleeves,

“i didn’t do it . . .  it was Dave!”  back car seats, down narrow side lanes, from Wakey, Fev, Crofton, Ponte,

with trademark-slit-eyed looks, joints passed around, widdershins,

long tokes, held in, with musky scent of Asian herb filling hollows

of calm seated space, inside and outside, swollen in thick

hazy miasma fog, with c**k twitch, “i’d f**k her” alternative guy pouts

and poses at fuckable blondes and brunettes that walked by,

winks, and nods of agreement all around . . .

and hetro-flowers opened up on arrival in fields of shagging green

with Storm Thorgeson trees -

where we lay, near running rivers and brooks and craggy bays

all scenic and beautiful like . . .

with memories of free festivals buzzing intensely in high minds,

in tents of free thought, where backpackers were intoxicated in the pursuit of independence, individuality                                                    hedonic      happiness,

as we watched Dali birds hypnotically double-trip-tracing

in tryptomine-trance-flight blue eyes and skies overhead, over ancient

Hinduic-bio-electronic-soma, sight . . .  love, drama, histrionics . . .    hipster cowgirls

with first generation lip rings, tongue rings, eyebrow, n****e piercings,

dreadlocks, red hair, blue hair, orange hair, pink mohicans, Celtic tattoo bands around smooth skinned limbs . . . 

in our arms, on our arms, red-headed Emma all aflame,

Marion, intellectual classy and game, (too damn hot . . .

and too damn smart for me) . . .

Katherine, what could have been, what could have been?!

Louise hmm (before the nose job), you always looked

beautiful to me honey . . .   why didn’t we f**k that night?

Lauren “hi”,

i could say the same, a sticky index finger’s just not

enough . . .

Juliet . . .      get out of my head!

swapping teenage kisses on lips with blow-job smiles

before teenage stories swapped notes of blow-jobs, with smiles

on handjob embankments where Garbage played garage punk,

Skunk Anansie thrashed it out before they sunk, and Salad, Sleeper,

Buzzcocks, et al, et al . . .   i forget their names now . . .

it was Leeds.  nineteen  hundred  and  ninety  six -

fun, fun, fun,

in tight-gripped-heat, warm-and-moist, like vagina puddings,

for our minds, and bodies, hardons, and hearts,

the summer sun, penetrating coloured-Kandinsky-skies

with solar pricks of i’m coming soon ecstatic light show, delight,

and the laser effects that came on a night, wide-eyes, wild eyes,

tv-throw-out-crowd-roars dancing with Moksha V-shaped peace signs,

mops moshing to daisy-chain-guitar songs ground out with visceral energy

and raw passion,

sometime before Lewinski inhaled . . .  and Clinton didn’t,

before Allen Ginsberg’s mother death, father death, Tim Leary’s

last trip, and before Bill Burroughs was buried,

before DVDs replaced videos, before smart phones became standard in every inside pocket, and home, before text messages, twitter, facebook, and energy drinks,

when cassette tapes

were still sold in HMV,

and somebody somewhere may have mentioned Britpop,

and Teletubbies, Trainspotting, and Channel 5 tv,

before labour got in on the back of an e-culture rave anthem,

and things didn’t get better . . .

before Diana’s death, when no one talked,

and when they did, they were sectioned . . .

before Millennium Dome, London Eye,

before touchscreen jobpoints at the dole hole,

before smoking bans came in . . .  from Scotland and the States,

before Floyd’s Live-8 London reunion in Hyde Park,

before Bush claimed the voice of God told him to do it,

and social workers still voted for him . . .

and before 1998 when the big shock darkling phantoms of Batley, (near Batley Bats),

at Bob Brown’s bachelor pad, shattered my beliefs, 

somewhere left at a crossroads with robots and Voodoo dolls and collage art . . .

Jessop’s Mill, Kirklees . . .

before i’d read Blake, Zarathustra, de Sade’s Justine and Juliette, 

before my dark globe departure, before Russ caught you wanking, before

you heard me f*****g jellied cash machine slot between flab thighs,

before our goatee beards grew . . .  before Amsterdam, before i left for London,

the day the shuttle blew . . .    one     two    three 

, before . . .

our fight! 

our fight!  our fight!

when temples throbbed, fists ached, and sorrow etched into forehead lines

from the karmic thrum of    thump      thump      thump

retribution,     isolation,     desolation,

payback . . .

and i sipped mount Meru coffee, cold, to keep me awake from

the horrors of sleep, in a youth hostel with junkies, and mugs,

where things start getting

out of context if i mention them here . . .

i loved you -

as a brother, Major Tom’s ground control!

we were students of brain change with mind-alteration head tests,

living for mysterious molecules i called sacraments, thought sacred,

and holy . . .

and living on illusions, and looks,

the pretence of immortality, of coolness, of being cool,

dss payments, housing benefit handouts, f**k the system rhetoric, 

charisma - sometimes there,

and sometimes coiled with the sleeping serpents of splendour

and self-realization tingling in the bases of spines,

slinking toward “ah yeah” satori,

samadhi, sahasrara,

sponging natural magick in semi-spiritualistic neo-paganistic

highs, with pack unity, unity itself, neuro-physical, cosmic, and otherwise,

like John S Bell’s non-local bell-chime vibration through voided bubble of

silly-putty-space,

synchronicities, propinquities,

like Wilson, Jung, Pauli, Joyce,

Lilly’s cosmic coincidence control centre, from technology

of species specific plants,                   synthetics -

bliss-filled bodies, and brains, making star-shapes with

triune heads tete-a-tete lit under street lamps, like lamps, on some nondescript road,

near late-night-party-planet, overhearing the Dylanesque jingle jangling

and background bopping

pow-wow-drum sound, light laughter reaching us at the gate of the house, after munching 24 hour garage Scooby snacks

inside   Mystery    Machine, 

hoping for Hoodoo gods, for the call, for the-something-other-than-what-we-were

under Sirian star,

and Arabian moon -   

as Earth sat poised

under canopy of arched-back-night and

big and brilliant goddess-of-emollient-oil-poured-into-vessels

of now old-skool-youth,

brotherhood and rebellion, revolution,

questioning . . .       questioning . . .        questioning . . . 

authority, power, control . . .

we were tenacious teens conjuring up graphic images of double entendre and meaning

from glossy pages of acid-art-books, with intricate and complex Alex Grey faces, on our faces, bodies, and worlds,

and Pablo’s abstract dimensions unlocked and missing from flatland perception 

of ordinary linear life that we saw, available to us  . . .

these were student days,

dazed in Dave’s dumb-koff-junk-off-coloured-red-car, always breaking down, always

breaking down, however how near, however how far, “for f**k sake Dave!” you’d 

thunder Jib with sharp voice

of stern steel,

Russ would laugh -

as though possessed with some secret Erisian knowledge,     stoned!

and i’d agree, patiently, parenthetically, like Dorothy, after whirlwind,

“why stress it?”                               “stay cool” 

 

 

you were my friend Jib, you were -

 

 

it’s been 13 years now,

since i last saw you,

 

 

and i know Mr Barrett never did rejoin the band,

i don’t really blame him though,

 

 

 

 

 

or them!   

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Leslie Philibert]

This is a good poem, I like poems with stories and lot of very real background, I felt it had a kind of Beat poet/ Kerouac feeling, lots of youthful energy.Good work.

[Emily B]

I'm proud to call you poet

[...]

. this ... i believe ... is your magnum opus, monsieur ... i simply don't have any words to describe the power of your words in this piece of absolutely overwhelming poetry ... it's a vivid and captivating slice of life ... and is completely and absolutely unforgettable ... and yes ... pink floyd can't be blamed for anything ... except great music ... :) ...