Angling

The muse has gone
Leaving me nothing but a tin opener
And a can of worms.

Opening the can
I take up the fattest, juiciest .
Snag it on my gaudy hook.

Trawl it.

Trawl it through the bars
Trawl it through the clubs
Trawl it through the pubs
Of Notting Hill
Trot it down Portobello road
Tesco disco
The Globe
Finches
Electric
Ravenous
Mau Mau
The Star
The Gold

Patiently angling for the muse.
　

Smoothie for a lost weekend.and its side effects.

Rusty came round for a beer. We skirted the subject of nurse.

With nothing else in common we got to talking about food. Rusty mentioned the smoothie for a lost weekend.
I asked about that.
He replied that it contained 15 kinds of fruit, a pint of yogurt, a pint of milk, some honey as well as concentrated multivitamin powder. It makes about half a gallon; difficult to get down but once you got it inside it was your 'five a day' for three days.
Enough time to get lost.
Lost in what? I said.
Oh heck anything; Fishing for that fabled carp, learning tap dancing, a sexual binge or even getting drunk in bars.

And what do you do during the lost weekend. I asked.

I stay pretty close to the lavatory. He said.

Rusty, I said, Rusty I am too old for exciting bowel movements.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/30887/yogurt_smoothie_recipe.html

Clogs, Ronnie Hilton and Michaelangelo

I have been thinking about the phenomenon known as the CLOG (cult blog).

Who decides 'cult status'? Is there a points system?

Wanting attention is different from having something to say: Wanting attention is a streaker at a football game, Having something to say is Michaelangelo's David. That to me sums it up.

A clog is also a wooden shoe used solely (forgive the pun) for dancing on cobblestones to 'Old Amsterdam'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fg7w49UnGA

Bukowski and the American nightmare

I met 'Chuck' bukowski back in the sixties; I had the apartment above his for a while and would occasionally have to go down to tell him too keep the noise down...
boy could those american women kick up a fuss,

I asked him one night if I should read his work. he said NO. You would be better off spending your time drinking and fornicating.

Having now read his work I can honestly say he was right!

He had a couple of good poems and a good short story in him (in that little space not filled with booze) but that is about all. He suffered from the malaise of most mid 20th century Americanliterature, especially the 'beats'.

Washington State

Did you know that Washington State is known as the evergreen state.

It is named after a Barbara Streisand song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmuF3jiufww

You don't get cheesier than that.

Osmosis between blogs.

I find that this directly references one of my early blogs; 'Milking a goat in a thunderstorm'. I think Tristan might be nicking my material. But hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Is'nt it?
It is from:http://tristanssecretsofmagic.blogspot.com/

Why the middle child?

When I was a child we had a goat
The goat was called Pumkin
We had a goat called Pumkin because my sister had ecsema
And couldn’t have dairy products
One of my jobs was to milk that goat
So my sister could have goats milk
And avoid dairy products
And avoid the humiliation of the betnavate
She is cursed by the memory of betnavate
A storm tormented Shropshire that summer
Lashed about Pumkin’s shed
Thunder boomed, like Nabokov’s dinner gong, bronzily
Lightning lit up my fear
As I attempted to milk that damn goat
How I shudder still at the memory of those distended teats
How Pumkin shuddered with fear and with loathing
At my amateurish tugging of her dugs.
The milk squirting into the timid pail
And I thought why the middle boy
Why me
Surely we could just plug my sister onto those teats
And let her suckle like Remus and Romulus like
And I imagine the unknown and unfabled
Older brother of those Italian twins
Who bravely milked the she wolves in their lairs
To feed his baby siblings from a bottle fashioned from bull horn and pigs bladder
And who vanished one night
The night that the twins were weaned from milk to meat
And tasted their first morsel of human flesh.
Flesh tenderized by lupine jaws in a darkly mountainside cave.
Lit occasionally by a flash of lightening and called to dinner
By Nabokov’s dinner gong.
　
　

the times when we, as a nation are at the greatest peace with ourselves is at times of war.

In the land of the learned the autodidact is king.

Listening to paint dry.

I met her at a party. she asked me if I was the hosts brother.

I laughed and said no! I'm his father.

She said you dont look old enough

I told her that I had impregnated his mother when I was 15 years old.

She looked concerned.

I said it's all right, we get on well and he gives me a cupboard to sleep in upstairs and feeds me scraps from the kitchen.

she looked concerned.

I told her it was alright. I was lying.

She said why do you lie.

I said it is what I do for a living. I am a poet.

she then held my hands and quoted strindberg in swedish.

I have had more fun listening to paint dry.

Paragliding between peaks.

He came over for a beer this evening, he was depressed and listless; post event blues he called it.

I said why do you do it.

he said it is not a matter of choice any more. I have to do it. but each time it gets easier.

How is that I asked.

He said: Each event is like a hill. at first a small hill, steep but not very high. you climb to the top and it is a struggle. you spend a couple of hours at the top of that hill and then fall, tumbling down the other side. Landing with a bump. you look behind you and all you see is the wall you have fallen down, you look ahead and all you see is an endless plain but there is no option other than to start walking.

eventually after a few days you see in the distance a purple haze which in time makes itself known as another hill; larger this time and more challenging but your pace quickens and you relish the challenge of climbing it.

But again, after a couple of hours on the peak you fall to the plain on the other side and the long trudge repeats itself.

After a number of ascents and falls you learn to take a paraglider with you and instead of falling to the plain below after an ascent you glide towards the next peak landing closer and closer with each flight. Eventually you soar from peak to peak making good use of the thermals that rise from the plain below.

As long as you refrain from soaring, Icarus like, too close to the sun you can maintain this momentum... A series of ecstatic flights between heights, your ears filled with your own whoops of joy.

Nothing gets better than that.

An imaginary overheard conversation

"She never uses my name. I will phone her and she will never use my name. she will call me darling or sweetheart or love but never my name. it is as if she cnnot be bothered to use my name or she has forgotten my name."

"Thank god we have never spent a Christmas together; imagine the horror of recieving a gift with a tag that says: whatshisname or the bloke I live with. Imagine your lover ringing your friends to ask the name of the man she sleeps with. Imagine her phoning your mum to ask her the name of her son.

I would love her to use my name just once.

but she won't

She hasn't forgotten it... She just didn't learn it in the first place."

The reason perhaps for shoes lost from bridges.

http://tristanssecretsofmagic.blogspot.com/

the lonliness of the long distance blogger.

In blogging regularly one creates a rod for ones own back. one becomes a slave to the blog.

It is a lonely, thankless task (occasionally brightened by the odd comment from a reader).

However it is encouraging to note that this is read in far flung corners of the planet and that people return to it regularly.
Feel free to comment or even email.