CUT TO: INT. THE PRESIDENT’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

[Dean Martin song playing in background]

Love me, my love
And say you’re mine
Kiss me and hold me tight

BARTLET
I don’t want to intimidate you, but it turns out I’m the first Democrat in twenty years to make a clean sweep of the Plains states and I’m not just talking about Iowa and Nebraska.

ABBEY
Are you trying to turn me on now?

BARTLET
Yeah.

ABBEY
All right.

Surreal

Over three decades at ten past ten
his shtick still sticks, a moustachioed
smile to greet after the prised lid.

It was surreal anyone bereft of
calling it what it is – a real absurdity –
regurgitates having heard some

other gush on experiencing an
experience: a contemporary yapper’s
embalmed, received apocalypse

spoken like someone also dead.
So much lost over the years – the wow of
real surprise in life, or a drooping clock.

From today’s Guardian: ‘Experts who exhumed the body of Salvador Dali to collect samples for use in a paternity claim have revealed that the enigmatic artist’s trademark moustache still graces his face almost three decades after he died.’

NB Later today: this ISN’T surreal, but I think uncanny – I’m watching a programme on the 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. It was dubbed The Ice Bowl because of the freezing temperature where, taking in the wind chill factor, it averaged -38 degrees centigrade.

A variety of players and others provide running commentaries on the game and conditions, and one, Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboy Receiver, is describing the fans’ breath as ‘frozen vapour’ so ‘prevalent’ it was hard to see them in the stands [a nice slice of nostalgic hyperbole, but we get the picture, especially as there is footage!].

He then says – and this is the uncanny link to this posting of mine today – ‘it was really a kind of surrealistic Salvador Dali type of ambience’.

When driving by his house
I always slow down
to have a look,

and when I do,
there appears to be a carcass
hanging in the window.

I could, but I am passing
late at night, and the inside
is only lit by a burning fire.

It is the dim glow of a flame,
in fact. By that time, it’s just
embers, nothing more.

I could, but I am also passing
on a very steep hill.
Parking would be a risk

and I’d have to slam the door
hard – another consequence of
the incline –

this forgetting the fact I
need to get home to my own family
to say goodnight.

It could be, of course,
and the outline of a carcass
isn’t ingrained by experience,

yet I’ve passed a butchers too,
and seen those trucks that
pull up outside, unloading.

Yes, this is true. But
in my experience, the authorities
ask too many questions.

I will. But only one more time.
After that, I am taking
another route.

And I should have said
only for
the last two nights;

at other times
it has been carcass free
or the curtains drawn.

I have always enjoyed
driving at night,
but not lately.

A good friend recently sent me a link to an article about the writer/painter Tom Phillips and his artwork for the King Crimson album Starless and Bible Black. I had no idea he had done this.

Being a huge fan of Phillips’ work A Humument, I immediately ordered the vinyl that has now arrived and from which I am posting images here.

I do highly recommend Tom Phillips’ book A Humument: it is a found, subverted new text taken from the Victorian novel A Human Document: see how to order and explore other amazing information and examples of his wider work here.

When teaching English and creative writing, I always introduced humuments to students to read and as prompts/inspiration for devising their own, the latter usually from the torn-out pages of disused novels and other school texts, and have over many years enjoyed making my own, again from novels but also the emails and documents and other paraphernalia I encountered as a teacher, both internal and external. I am most proud of the set I produced which subverted the first National Curriculum in English document, mine telling the story of lish [Eng lish] and his attempts to get laid at the age of 19: I should have said ‘corrupted’ as well as ‘subverted’, and I know it was a puerile creation, but it made me feel upbeat at the time. When I left my teaching job nearly 7 years ago I removed this set from my office wall where it had been on display but I have been unable to locate ever since. I must search, find and post here some day.

It is interesting now to check out online ‘experimental’ poetry sites – and there is a rich and wonderful variety – and to see so many writers using the technique created/popularised by Tom Phillips, from the selection of text within another text and simply blotting out the unused original, to those more artistic encapsulations of the way Phillips not only generated new textual content but produced original artwork to cover/conceal/remove the unused original text.

If the above descriptions do not appear to make sense, then I urge you again to check out the great man’s site. Here is an example from the back of the KC album,

Sur mes cahiers d’écolier
Sur mon pupitre et les arbres
Sur le sable sur la neige
J’écris ton nom

Sur toutes les pages lues
Sur toutes les pages blanches
Pierre sang papier ou cendre
J’écris ton nom

Sur les images dorées
Sur les armes des guerriers
Sur la couronne des rois
J’écris ton nom

Sur la jungle et le désert
Sur les nids sur les genêts
Sur l’écho de mon enfance
J’écris ton nom

Sur les merveilles des nuits
Sur le pain blanc des journées
Sur les saisons fiancées
J’écris ton nom

Sur tous mes chiffons d’azur
Sur l’étang soleil moisi
Sur le lac lune vivante
J’écris ton nom

Sur les champs sur l’horizon
Sur les ailes des oiseaux
Et sur le moulin des ombres
J’écris ton nom

Sur chaque bouffée d’aurore
Sur la mer sur les bateaux
Sur la montagne démente
J’écris ton nom

Sur la mousse des nuages
Sur les sueurs de l’orage
Sur la pluie épaisse et fade
J’écris ton nom

Sur les formes scintillantes
Sur les cloches des couleurs
Sur la vérité physique
J’écris ton nom

Sur les sentiers éveillés
Sur les routes déployées
Sur les places qui débordent
J’écris ton nom

Sur la lampe qui s’allume
Sur la lampe qui s’éteint
Sur mes maisons réunies
J’écris ton nom

Sur le fruit coupé en deux
Du miroir et de ma chambre
Sur mon lit coquille vide
J’écris ton nom

Sur mon chien gourmand et tendre
Sur ses oreilles dressées
Sur sa patte maladroite
J’écris ton nom

Sur le tremplin de ma porte
Sur les objets familiers
Sur le flot du feu béni
J’écris ton nom

Sur toute chair accordée
Sur le front de mes amis
Sur chaque main qui se tend
J’écris ton nom

Sur la vitre des surprises
Sur les lèvres attentives
Bien au-dessus du silence
J’écris ton nom

Sur mes refuges détruits
Sur mes phares écroulés
Sur les murs de mon ennui
J’écris ton nom

Sur l’absence sans désir
Sur la solitude nue
Sur les marches de la mort
J’écris ton nom

Sur la santé revenue
Sur le risque disparu
Sur l’espoir sans souvenir
J’écris ton nom

Et par le pouvoir d’un mot
Je recommence ma vie
Je suis né pour te connaître
Pour te nommer

Liberté.

I’ve criticised the Mail online for its juxtaposition of news reporting [this in itself usually deserving criticism for right-wing invective] with its salacious side-bar scroll.

Today’s Guardian online, whilst not sinking to a similar, intentional level, should/could have been more sensitive to this incongruous, to be polite, pairing:

How delighted I was yesterday to pick up these two Mitchell collections from an Oxfam shop.

Even more so to find Old Age Report in the collection Ride the Nightmare,

I used to read/share/teach this poem with students a lifetime ago. It was anthologised in a book I can’t remember, probably themed around Age, but I am not sure. What I do recall is the large number of anthologies or themed English subject collections where poetry was such a feature: excellent, varied poems for reading. Yes, just for reading. There were working/writing suggestions based on these, many creative, if you wanted to use, but it was genuinely a rich time of educational publishing that first and foremost featured literature to read and share and teach for pleasure. I’m talking early ’80s, so books of that time and obviously the 70s. And of course, poets like Adrian Mitchell had made poetry fun and accessible and also meaningful across a wide range of themes, not least war and poverty, to name two enduring ones….

In media res
with the bullshitting it
for 45 minutes,

one question
to answer
in that cluster –

question one, a
mistake,
whatever:

the reality of war
as opposed to
effects of war?

Must remember
AABB rhyme
is fucking shite

if you are at war.
Running and lugging
his gun

is assonance?
Or is ass
thing to do,

the sibilance
ssssing
piss?

No, this is a
piece of piss
his exam and

I wouldn’t have minded
if ‘he’ –
personal pronoun –

took it himself.
No, a single charge
is a piece of piss

compared to the
six hundred
yet I proper good ignored

that part of the
comparing poems
[chaos can’t be

contained].
War poetry in my mock
got 28/30 –

piece of piss.
I did London with
Ozymandias in

Bayonet Charge,
to fit the
abruptful adjective

‘suddenly’
into the running:
three poems better

than two.
That was the prose?
:(:(:(:(

Pleased to receive my copy today, a 50th anniversary celebration of the iconic newspaper. It is sad to receive also so soon after the death of Heathcote Williams, a weekly contributor to the online magazine and cited as ‘Editor at Large’ for this newspaper edition, as well as an article included about him:

It is an engaging read of contemporary and nostalgic articles/images. I have always enjoyed the privilege of having the occasional poem printed in the online version.

There are poems in this edition from the likes of Michael Horovitz and Adrian Mitchell, and fittingly, as well as poignantly, from Heathcote Williams with his There has to be an Afterlife.

You can order your copy here.