Journal

I'd been carrying a dog-eared Surfer's Journal around purchased from the excellent Pilgrim Surf Supply in Williamsburg. I like to sustain the journal and this one was stashed in my backpack through a costa rica jaunt (pics to follow). Having pored over it for a good two hours in Houston Airport I concluded I'd read every word, when in delight I discovered a whole missed spread... including one of my poems, Killala. Stoked! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deadcourt

I have been the marchers, seen them fall and picked their bodies up

Been the waiting devils with bloody mouths
I have been the smashed glass in the pavement cracks and the man that breaks the bottles
Heartbroken and the breaker of hearts and the beating heart itself
The savage, the learned sage
The jester, the vexed
The hard-shelled crab and the soft interior
I have been the touched and the untouchable
Been Snyder, been Thoreau, been the shit on both men's shoes
The blessed, the damned and pronounced damnation
Spoken in tongues, with fervour, like a man possessed
Been the stopped heart and the stopped clock
Raised the sacrificial knife and squirmed in terror in its shadow
Been the victim and the perpetrator of crime
Been the numinous, been the base
The machine, the ghost in the machine
I have been death, the destroyer of worlds
The harbinger of doom and the dove of peace.

I have been the dream shaman
The capitalist, who cannot see his dick

The thick thief and sick as a dog
Been the gentleman, been the bum
The waves and the fleet figure that rides upon them
Eaten the archetypes, drowned in stereotype, cackled at the forgotten sun
Lost and won and won and lost, and lost and won
Been the blind, anaemic dawn and the faces in the black earth
The rough hands that snapped a neck and cried with a body in hand
I have borne the wounds of time and laughed them by
Shared dual conscience, drunk the soul dry
I have been dismembered and put back together, bone by bone
Sunk beneath the quicksand, sat upon the throne
Been heart's sorrow, heartsease and Parsifal himself
The lowly coward and the warrior brave
The traitor and the judas paired, Janus-faced
I have been a paragon and often a disgrace
Been the squaw, the surefire steel that saves the day
The new wreaths on an old tomb
The unworn baby's shoes in the bin
Been the start, been the fin
I led the awful wrath of the mob and I have campaigned for justice
Been in love, lust and felt disgust at both
Been a soldier, been a deserter and fought through
To live in nightmares, dreams
Clutched the bare seat of a fugitive reality
Been chaste and chased new beginnings with an awful thirst
Been my best, been my worst
I have wallowed in sin and begged for her cold touch
Taken it all, way too much
I have stretched long limbs and glanced sideways
Been found, still deep in the maze
Broken a yawn at the dawn of our time
Forgotten the best, remembered the worst and cursed it all
Hated the moments and loved the years
Feared the incoming message, feared the daylight, feared the beast, feared the night
Lived for and detested and yawned at the fight, yet fought on
For without fight fallen we, and cursed
The hunger with swift hatchet

 Buried in our thirst

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks out doors and keeps on walking
Because of a church that stands somewhere in the east

*Rilke

 

A poem of mine, Beyond the Scars, was shown on Channel4 the other night...

 

 

Roots

 

This is the wave I grew up surfing, Walberswick. The village has become a kind of Farrow & Ball pastiche of the countryside. Now and again the beach is worth a look on a longboard or a big storm. For some reason running across the marsh and up to the jetty elicits a childlike sense of expectation and excitement.

There's an old church nearby with a hidden room looking over the marshes. It's one of the best places to sit and think. 

 

 

1/10 *The Height of the World

The Height of the World
(for Mark)

You have the capacity to feel each microscopic injustice
To dwell on it, to make their pain your own pain
To force the horror your eyes see through processes, revisions
That you can do this and create optimistic work is a staggering thing
Your dichotomy is in this sensitivity; this gaping vulnerable heart inside brute body
With the capacity to kill, to kill
At points I imagine the scale of the pain twists you
It becomes agony
Only in your pursuit of harmony does nature relent her burden, lower her guard
Then you become part of her and the blood on your hands is forgiven at last
At these points you become non human - part fish part bird
Keep your hope, for your path is truly the height of the world

 

 

 

 

Getting caught totally off guard is rare nowadays, even on a shore as fickle as home. Mastering the art of the windsea takes long commitment... I'm not even close and I got surprised with no wetsuit and bittercold water. 

Whilst the wind raged through the night I dug through a cupboard of wetsuit detritus. Two odd boots, a battered 3/2 and a thermal rashie. Merino wool longjohns completed the cobbled-together outfit. The next dawn there were trees down everywhere and just Michael at the beach with a pair of 7mm mittens for me to borrow. Fast moving swell ran oblique up the coast creating thick, hollow rights breaking close to the shore.

After scoring hard in the last few months and fresh off the back of a good Scotland trip this kind of flukey windswell still gets me so excited. Grey dawn, pissing with rain, Michael navigating on a lovely John Wesley board, trading little tubes... all unexpected and the sweeter for it. Surfing always feels lucky, the more variables the luckier I feel. 

And the cold? Brutal. Finisterre make great thermals, wet or dry. I was also grateful to be sent a hat by a company called Grannies Knits recently. Hand-woven, by grandmas, it helped avert hypothermia today during the numb post-surf change.

The session set me thinking about what it was like before the Internet, what we gain and what we lose. Back on the beach the tide drops out and the swell recedes. Just like that, 15ft@6 seconds is driven away on the offshore, whipping away to light up some Norwegian left, to surprise someone else.

The gulf of tomorrow's time

 

In the breach left by stripling aggregate

A maw, grinning ghastly, yawns

Upturned the lick that, dodged, retreats

With an audible smack fed

Dribbled delusions of safe harbour

Gone*

Any port in tomorrow’s storm

Of spermicide droplets

For there is form in the fog

Appreciable destiny in the collide

A whispering lament

Of apathy, sweet apathy

And children unborn

 

*You are a triangle, torn through the mouth of a square, something fantastic beyond mortal comprehension. You have no equal, for you do not exist anywhere but my heart. There you remain forever, undeveloped, immaculate. 

Mjsty

 

Songs

Blueblack Supermoon Girl - Paper walls - When I never see you again - T. Duncan - Contact high - Tiger Now - Hej! Hej!

 

It's good to play and record some music again and work towards the realisation of the EP that has been kicking around my subconscious for a few years. More soon... 

 

 

One from the Winter

Note 12

There was a time when I saw you
In the smoky corners of
Crazy slap rhythm bars
Emerging from the haze
Sashaying between
Groups of fixated men
Like a haze licked dream
And you laugh then, and now
As but the beautiful can
We started to exchange
Glances
Stolen looks across crowded floors
And the doors, Gracey,
The doors we had to open
Just to talk
You shied at my suggestions
And cried unashamedly
When they died
I took you in my arms
and smiled inapproriately at the sky
We moved through the years
The bars became smokier
It was harder to breathe
That stale air
Peacock feathers and cards
The faces always changing
And Gracey laughing at time
The lines, the lines we had to swallow just to ride
You were my prayer, my dream
The luck I had to spend a second at your side
Decades tricked by
All has changed but the notes of fickle laughter
High, clear invitations
To a beautifully private joke
The bars are paved beneath a road, that crazy strip
Over-written
And the laughing days are rarer still
Like a fill was leavened
The cup drunk
All those years of tipping arms, swallowing, exhaling
I find you here, at times, looking out over the busy road
Looking at the past, I think
Then I call to you:
You are not the caged bird, the cage is in your brain
And the corners of your mouth go up, knowing, uncaring
Just plain stubborn in the face of it

I stand alone at the road and watch the cars race by
I do not cry, for you would not approve
Hell runs in the grooves of life
But the heaven we held is ours.

 

 

 

The iselmen

Beyond the night
Out where light races
And the dog-driven carts
Burn traces
There are watchers on the road
Shrew-faced with keen minds
sharp pupils
Dog faces, the horse pulled carts
Clatter through dawn's faces
Dull-eyed pacers of the path
Do not slow
From the shrew-cunning watchers
Wrath may flicker
Snicker go the dogs
The horses wicker
The sky burns as the road races
Iselmen in the shadows
Teeth glinting in the gloom
Do not stop
From the tombs come scuttling forms
To paw, gently first
The Iselmen
Horse-headed tarry they
Blunt molars grinding
Claws on their fingers
Incisors needle sharp
The cart clatters on
'did you see,' She remarks
'in the shadows, something glint?'
Her companion squints
Shakes his head
Behind,
the unheard hissing of the dead