Memory. I Remember very little of this.

Memory

I wrote this 40 years ago. It hasn't improved in time.

Memory will go.  That is what life is about, the future relies on the past and the past relies on memory and as memory diminishes so the future becomes less…less what, I’ve forgotten.

How I got to Judy’s house I cannot remember. I was 18 and fucked on amphetamines dope and alcohol and looking for a bed. I turned up with a bottle of scotch and a hold all.
She had a terraced house, a husband in prison, a young daughter and a drawer full of drugs. Oh! Yeah she had rats in an aquarium. We drank the whiskey, tried many sorts of her dope and some of her liquid LSD and laughed a lot and laughed a lot more and then she showed me the stairs to my room before showing me her bed: she said you can go up there or stay down here…I was 18, fucked on amphetamines, dope, alcohol, LSD, the pheromones of a middle aged woman and the scent of fear from caged rats. I chose her bed. Less steps to climb. We eventually sublet my room.

We sublet my room to a fat single mother whose baby I often mistook for a pig whilst melting into the soft furnishings on paranoid trips.

For a lot of that time I did not know whether I was toothpaste or cornice moldings or both.

Judy had admirers who would come round and cook her crap meals without knowing that we were shagging in the downstairs loo and laughing and then laughing about that. 35 years later I can I don’t blame her.

She had a Mini clubman, green, British racing green. Fuck... I had to go. The husband was coming out of prison. I could not (would not) fight. We went for a picnic on cleeve hill as some sort of goodbye thing. The child Rosie was with us as we lay under the elephant trees and talked of what might be or might have been. The beech trees were monstrous with bark like grannies elbows and she told me she loved me through a gap in her teeth. I was closer to her daughter’s age than hers.

I went into the woods for a piss, as I stood micturating against a tree I sensed something and ducked; a sock full of nuts bolts nails and screws clouted into the tree just where my head should have been. I managed to wrestle the weapon from Judy’s grasp and force her to the ground. Needless to say she was loud.

Subdued she seemed pleased to miss. I asked her what she had intended and she told me that she wanted to kill me and then write obscenities over my body… She opened her bag, it was full of lipsticks… I cannot remember how this ended. It is true but I cannot remember… I’m alive so she didn’t kill me.

She said she didn’t want me to leave her.

Her husband had been imprisoned for stealing among other things underwear from washing lines. When he was arrested he was wearing it. He had curly blonde hair and a heroin habit. It was 1973 and David Bowie said everything was possible. But I didn’t think a ménage a trios with a middle aged mum and a cross dressing junkie was anything like probable let alone possible.

I may be wrong.

Rusty McGlint on American politics..

Rusty writes from Lizard Bend. Idaho:

Tristan, scuse the french but it is fucking hard being a parent.

Me and Babs have bought this Lesbian Gay Transgender thing hook line and sinker but when it comes to getting little Duke into a dress he says he ain't no girl no matter what we says and when we says that he ain't got no say in the matter he points his AK at us and tells us to turn off that goddamned K.D.Lang rekkid and look at his dick.

His brother Duane is sick of the fighting cos he reckons it messes up his concentration on his embroidery he is doing for his latest frock and can we turn K.D.Lang up and why ain't he got no front bottom.

Babs reckons we should bully Duke into being hetero and Duane into being gay but I say that ain't how the liberals want it. The liberals want us to do contrary to what we want to do and if we do that it makes us liberal.

Babs says that that nice Mr Trump don't want us to do nothing but stay in the trailer and teach the twins to shoot Mexicans.

I said. Babs you is a Mexican.

She said. So shoot me.

How we laughed at that Tristan.

Ginsberg's cougher

I am one of Ginsberg's coughers
I sing in my dreams, sleeping
alongside the woman, who,
dreaming of the truth,
never remembers on waking.

Facebook.

The village pump long run dry
village stocks
ducking stool
plastic sword of damocles
imaginary friends

Imaginary enemies

Insincere like box
soap box
joke box
juke box
poke box

Dunbar's number run amok
ego massage
ship of fools
virtual Achilles heel
bridgeless trolls

Fairground hall of mirrors
tunnel of imagined love
misdirected darts
in a goldfishes back
bearded lady bearded

Non stick glue
abrasive grease
kittens
photoshop photorealism
paedophile paradise

Tomorrows lunch
yesterdays dinner
Fifi's cat
ugly babies ugly babies
ugly babies
pictures in the attic of ugly babies

Sober barflies, drunk vicars, honest liars and lying politicians.

Oh. and me me me me me me.

I will come to call you friend.

Unwelcome guest
pleura squatting
rattling marbles

marbles filched from the attic

Chestcat
of second infancy
breathe deep

I will come to call you friend.

David Cameron admits that he does not benefit from the trust of a single person in the UK.

Cameron came clean today and admitted that no-one trusts him. But he went on to say that: 'Amongst his cronies and peers, no-one trusted anyone so nothing is not as it should be and a corrupt government would be foolish to consider trust to be an important part of it's job fleecing the country.

Interesting Easter Egg hunts.

The postman rang twice the other day. I answered the door and Asked: Why the urgency? He asked if we had a baby in the house and when I said yes he said that's ok then because this parcel is rattling in an urgent kind of way.

It turned out to be a package from Rusty:





A box of Rattlesnake eggs.

There was a note:

Tristan. easter greetings and Eggs from lizard Bend. Idaho.

Babs and me were kinda regretting buying the twins pink AK 47's for their third birthday so bought them  a box of these to compensate.  The boys now spend their time in the trailer eying the eggs, aiming to shoot the rattlers when they hatch before the critters get them. It means that Babs and me can move about a little easier knowing that them AK's ain't aimed at us constant like.

Anyways. Here's a box of eggs for your little one... they make for a mighty interesting egg hunt on a warm spring day.

Rusty.

Thousands of housewives guilty of money laundering (even Mrs. Cameron) shock.

According to documents leaked to me from Panama over the past couple of days It appears that housewives throughout Britain are regularly laundering money accidentally left in trouser pockets. Even the Right honourable Mrs. Cameron has been guilty of the offence.

Tories to legalise cocaine shock.

I am reliably informed by my friendly 'jeweller to the stars' neighbourhood coke dealer that, when he was delivering to the cabinet office yesterday he overheard Cameron and Osborne discussing the legalisation and subsequent taxation of cocaine in the UK. Osborne's objections were, apparently, that it was only going to penalise themselves and was therefore counter to everything they believed in.

Cameron apparently replied: 'Rack em up George and tax the poor'.

Petition fatigue.

Somebody please start a petition demanding an end to on-line petitions. Two or three arrive in my email each day beseeching me to support this, that or the other cause. On social media I am confronted by petition after petition demanding that I sign the fucking things.

All that this is doing is devaluing the whole bloody process of protest. Petitions demanding a change in Government behaviour are pointless, legislation is in place to ensure that petitions may not be filed if they question the government in any way. Many other petitions resemble nothing more than Nigerian scam emails offering a share of millions of dollars requiring laundering. Petitions have become the modern equivalent of the sinister, threatening chain letters of old.

Stop this Now.

The High Street Wars according to Euripides.

All lived in Harmony until Tescos the Greek stole the marketplace with his '3 for 2' offer which pissed off the Trojans no end. Aldi of Troy marched on Tescos with a '2 for 1' deal hidden in the belly of minced horsemeat and all hell ensued.

Back in Brittania John of Lewis got wind of this and marched in stating he would undercut them all or by George he would refund the difference.

Israel dabbled in the melee under the banner of St Michael but could not really compete while brave Woolworth of Winfield shot himself in the foot with a Poundland bow and arrow before he even got off the ferry.

The Vikings from Iceland led by King Ikea remained aloof and stuck to what they were good at while King Harrods looked on smirking while fleecing everyone who entered his kingdom with gold.

Young 'Barter of Online' won it all with his cloak of invisibility and a bogus 5* rating.

Murray Lachlan Young has written a book.

Murray has taken time out from writing and performing in order to put an anthology together. Click on the 'support this book' button and Murray will tell you about it himself.



As a schoolboy I was bored to tears by the poetry I was obliged to digest (apart from Betjeman) It took a visit to the Roundhouse to hear Brian Patten (he published a poem called: 'Tristan waking in his wood panics) in the 70's to spark an interest in the art form and to understand that it is, after music, communication at its best. Murray is, I think, one of the best practitioners of the bardic art (stories well told with gallons of humour, alliteration, rhythm, intelligence and out of the box nous). I am happy to rank him up there with Patten. I bought into this book, not to stick it unread on a shelf and say: 'I know him' but to take it down off the shelf to read to my children in order that they see how much fun poetry can be. Go on, buy one, get one, free your humour ducts of Auden clogs.

Cheap Red Knickers.

Rusty called from Lizard Bend. Idaho.

I said hello Rusty how is your Christmas?
He said Tristan it's good, Babs has taken the triplets to Montana and left me home alone. Home alone I can de-frost the fridge, clean the kitchen. do all the washing in the house, clear out the kids rooms, polish the floors and stuff like that.

I said Rusty that sounds like a great present for Babs.

He said No. All she ever wants is a pair of red knickers and an ill fitting bra from Anne Summers.

After all Christmas is just about cheap red knickers.

I said NO Rusty. Christmas is about demonstration of wealth. Buy her expensive red knickers.

Rusty said there ain't no expensive red knickers in Lizard Bend Idaho.

I said rusty buy a cheap pair and then make out you are giving them to someone else, suddenly they will increase in value.

Rusty said thanks.

I said you're welcome Rusty. Happy Christmas.