Single White Soulmate (Maximum Length 500 words)

I got off the train one stop early
and followed her down the busy platform.
She was wearing a patterned dress over thick tights
and a pair of loose-fitting flat-soled shoes that made her
shuffle a little as she walked towards the escalators.
Her shoulder length hazel-coloured hair
looked like it had been spun in a poppy-field
and then left to dry in the wild wind for a week.
Her cardigan had small holes in the elbows.
Her cheeks were lightly flushed.
And she was carrying just the right amount of
excess weight around the bustle and the corselette.
I followed her towards the fluorescent Way Out signs,
through the barriers and out into the glare of the streetlights.
And then she was gone. Consumed by a shoal of oily fish.
I never asked her name. We didn’t even make eye-contact.
It’s certainly possible to pick faces out of a crowd.
Godfrey Reggio’s film output is proof enough of that.
And so I continue to live in hope. And so I continue to let my gaze wander.
I’m looking for someone wearing Grandma’s hand-me-downs.
I’m looking for innovative use of multiple
hair-clips and designer spectacle frames.
I’m looking for a piercing too many about the ear
or the nose and maybe even the bottom lip.
I’m looking for lips recently stained by spaghetti gravy.
I’m looking for freckles in hard to reach places.
I’m looking for someone who scribbles
reminder notes on the back of their hand.
Someone studying the yellowing pages of a dog-eared
Picador or something published by Blacksparrow Press.
A girl you can imagine telling your darkest secrets to.
A girl you can imagine finishing all your sentences.
The kind of girl you’d dream about naming a distant star after.
The kind of girl you’d look forward to sharing a sleeping-bag with.
The kind of girl who could play the kazoomaphone
or knit herself a woolen beard. Preferably both.
But oftentimes, what we’re looking for turns out
to have there all along. Sat right beneath our noses.
Which is another way of saying, girls are a lot like philtrums.
Which is probably why the Ancient Greeks considered
the infra-nasal depression to be one of the most
erogenous spots on the human body.

I Lie Here In A Strange Girl’s Apartment (After Brautigan)

I lie here in a strange girl’s apartment, reading
a poem called ‘I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment’,
written by an American man called Richard Gary Brautigan
who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the year 1984.
And you have to realise that I didn’t plan it this way. Not at all.
I mean, you have to realise that this is a case of purest serendipity at play.
I simply opened the book (first published in New York City 41 years ago),
turned over the page, and there it was; 14 lines long
and printed on paper now slightly mottled with age.
Lying here in a strange girl’s apartment while she takes a shower,
I find myself listening to the sound of the running water, and imagining that
it’s the sound of the Pacific ocean that I can hear coming from the other room.
I imagine the black-green kelp. I imagine the seagulls shrieking overhead.
Richard Gary Brautigan’s ‘I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment’
is dedicated to a woman called “Marcia”. But what I don’t know,
and probably never will, is whether or not this Marcia
is the same Marcia as the Marcia who Brautigan
dated for a time, and who turned out to be the last person
he ever spoke to (on the telephone), before pointing
a loaded .44 Magnum at his troubled and quixotic head.
That Marcia, so the story goes, tried calling back later,
but repeatedly got Brautigan’s answer-machine instead.
“Hello, as you can probably tell, I’m not here right now,
but you can leave a message for when I am here,
after the beep” are the words which Marcia heard.
Over, and over, and over again.

Richard Brautigan page at 'Old Poetry Dotcom'

Land Of The Midnight (Or Black) Sun

One day, not so very long ago,
She invited me to spend Midsummer with her,
across the waters, on top of sunshine mountain.
Amongst the juniper and the toadstools and the green birch.
I looked into flights. I booked the time off work.
I read Tove Jansson and watched Tartovsky’s 'The Sacrifice'.
And then she stopped returning my calls. Even when she was drunk.
And that was the end of that particular chapter.
And so when, in years to come, people ask me
where I was when I heard that The King Of Pop
had died, I’ll be able to tell them only this much;
I was out in my wooden garden, in just my underwear,
drinking a cup of redbush tea in the moonlight,
and thinking about how much closer
to the Arctic circle I should’ve been.
How I should've been counting cat’s hairballs
and collecting rain water in coffee jars.
Watching a country house slowly become a bonfire.
Watching a dry Japanese tree transform into a maypole.
Maybe next year instead? Before I turn 40.
Before the frogs start growing their ears back.

Banned 'Midsummer' Ikea Commercial

Sugar On The Mound

I don’t know much about baseball,
but I do know that it’s far-and-away the most
popular sport amongst the people of the Dominican República.
Nothing else even comes close. God, Fatherland, Liberty, Baseball.
Makeshift diamonds on every empty parking lot. Jumpers for bases.
Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is 19 years old, and a rookie pitcher
for the Quad City Swing in Davenport, Iowa. He’s a young man,
a long way from home, with an uncommon ability on the mound.
Smokeball. Curveball. Knuckleball. Okie-Dokie. Backdoor slider.
His all-time favourite ballplayer is Roberto Clemente;
a Puerto Rican who won 12 (twelve) Gold Glove Awards,
made 3,000 career base hits, and became the first Latin American
to be elected into the prestigious MLB Hall of Fame. Posthumously.
Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is played by Algenis Perez Soto. He’s been
playing baseball since he was 9 years old. ‘Sugar’ is his film debut.
Writer/Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck took a chance on the kid.
And the kid doesn’t let them down. He keeps his eye on the game.
The infectious sound of the bachata music follows him wherever he goes.
It’s only as the end credits complete their upwards roll
and the lights come back on, that I’m reminded
of the fact I’m sat here all alone in the cinema stalls.
But hey, it's not like this is a new experience for me or anything.
She’s stood me up before, and she’ll no doubt stand me up again.
9th inning. 2 strikes against. Oh say it ain’t so, Joe.
Go on, Joe, say it ain't over till it's over.

Official Website for the movie 'Sugar'

Filmed In Mexico In Panavision

So there’s me, Chuck Heston,
Richard Harris, Jimmy Coburn Junior,
Warren Oates, Rodeo Slim Pickens,
L. Q. Jones, Cannonball Taylor
and Robert Golden Armstrong.
Out on the High Road, pursuing renegade Apaches.
Out on the High Road, pursued by French Irregulars.
Bloody Sam's trademark catsup red
staining the arroyo and the whinstone
and the waters of the Rio Grande.
Claymore and Colt and mini-howitzer.
Mules and buzzards and howling prairie wolves.
Mariachi guitar, south-of-the-border harmonica
and some of that old-time bareknuckled sucker-punching.
I know they don’t make them like this anymore,
just as surely as I know that
my heart is broke right now.
It needs time alone in the hot white sun.
Time to wallow in the charcoal of old cookfires.
For she is my scar tissue. And beyond doubt my Achilles Heel.
Leaning forward, I spit into the dirt,
wipe my mouth with the back of my hand
and, taking up the trailing reins,
ride up through the low juniper
to rejoin the column
as they turn and ride on towards
the crumbling walls of Durango.

Trailer for Sam Peckinpah's 'Major Dundee'

My Own Private Guernica

Snow falls upon the Sierra de Guadarrama.
Shadows lengthen in the afternoon sun.
I could have gone to see Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ today,
but I just can’t face that capacious canvas right now.
I’m not really in the mood for abstracted strategic bombing.
I feel shot-thru with enough symbolic shrapnel as it is.
Instead I’m stood here, watching the street-walkers on the corner.
Counting the number of imported cigarettes smoked.
Counting the number of tricks turned.
The bull is just a bull. The dying horse is just a dying horse.
The inverted hidden harlequins are just inverted hidden harlequins.
I could have gone to see ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ triptych.
Or ‘The Black Goyas’ (painted at home by a half-mad old deaf man),
but best I stay right here, partly hidden by the heavy curtains.
Collecting dust on my eyeballs. Slowly bleeding out.
A lemming on a clifftop.
A kitten in a gunny-sack.
I open the sallyport and close
the first door firmly behind me.
My white flag is unfurling.
I can feel my toes beginning to curl under.

Pablo Picasso's 'Guernica'

Pass Me The Melatonin Please

It was early when I first awoke that morning.
A cold north wind was whistling around the high-rise.
Whispers of the Munsee Indians
who once laid claim to these lands.
We’d flown in Air India just the night before.
Lost 5 perfectly good hours in the process.
I remember she had her back to me;
wearing Sony walkman headphones
a sports bra and nothing else.
Running on-the-spot. Silhouetted against the glass.
Her bare feet pounding the parquet flooring.
Her Circadian Cycle all shot to hell.
It was early when I awoke, alone on the inflatable mattress.
Way too early. Far too early. Beaucoup much too early.
Outside, the snow was piled-up on the sidewalk hip-deep in places.
I sat there in shallow silence a while, propped up
by a pillow, eyes still wet with milky morning dew,
hypnotized by the veduta di fantasia illuminated behind her.
Dawn light burnishing the brownstones and skyscrapers with gold leaf.
Eldorado rebuilt on bedrock. Atlantis risen anew from the ocean floor.
A tangled mess of inlets and islands
on the very edge
of The New World;
conquered and colonized
and bent to the will of mankind.
This city of cities. This metropolis that Mammon built.
Kublai Khan’s stately pleasure dome made steel and concrete.
Putting a pot of cinnamon coffee on to boil,
I managed to persuade her to rejoin
me back beneath the crumpled sheets.
We made love like ancient Minoans;
cracking open our outer shells
and letting loose our astral forms
to roam amongst the space dust
- whilst 20 floors below, the background
vacuum-cleaner hum of Manna-hata
built gently towards its Gershwin crescendo.

The Sport Of Tomorrow

In the future there will be no war.
In the future there will be only Roller Derby.
Faster than frisbee disc golf.
Sexier than competitive eating.
More violent than dwarf-tossing.
Not as Flemish as vinkenzetting.
A kind of British Bulldog on wheels,
Roller Derby is a game of Blood-and-Thunder.
A game of Pluck-and-Fidelity.
A game of Style-over-Substance.
A game of Razz-and-Matazz.
6 Blockers 2 Pivots and a couple of Jammers in the rear.
Three periods of between eight and ten minutes in length.
Each period divided into a smörgåsbord of two-minute jams.
And inbetween? Plenty of good clean unsportsladylike conduct.
Ministry of Neo-Burlesque meets Queercore riot-grrrl.
Rockabilly meets NWOBHM meets Beastie-Girls meets Cybergoth.
Kiss-curls and Monroe piercings.
Polka dots and desert camouflage.
Coloured gumshields, fishnet burn and Betty Page tattoos.
Welcome to The Thunderdrome true believers.
Welcome to Do-It-Yourself Third Wave
Skate-Punk Feminism in all its glory.
Caution: Do not interfere with Rollergirls who skate out-of-bounds.
Remember: Getting a Rollergirl in your lap
is not a right
but a privilege.

London Rollergirls official website

Official list of Rollergirl names

No Commercial Value. Non-Pornographic. For Cultural Use Only.

So, there’s this short film I made
which has been travelling the world.
It lasts for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Except, occasionally, it lasts for 19 minutes and 3 seconds.
Depending on the speed of your projector.
25 frames-per-second as opposed to 24.
For the record, I’ve never had a Scandinavian girlfriend.
That part of the film’s narrative is entirely fictional.
But much of the rest of the film’s storyline
is inspired by things that really happened.
I guess “based on a true story”, is how the
freelance tagline writers of the world
might choose to describe it.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
You know the score.
Thing is, somewhere along the line,
this offbeat little romantic comedy of mine
also began proving itself to be
somehow wonderfully miraculously
prophetic too. Life imitating art, imitating life. Or somesuch.
The girl came back. Just like she does in the movie.
If that’s not giving away the ending too much?
She sat next to me in the darkened auditorium yesterday.
Her hand-in-mine. And she saw the
heart-on-my-sleeve dedication to her
up on the big-screen for the first time
as the credits rolled, white text over black.
The screening lasted for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Not that either one of us was counting.

"Pop-Promo" from 'English Language [With English Subtitles]'

Waking The Gods

The Godheads are sleeping.
It’s their divine Siesta time.
At the appointed hour, they will be
awoken by the resident sadhu monks;
who will bathe and feed them
and dress them in today’s choice
of creamy silks and crimson robes
- ready to greet their adoring public.
That’s when the piped music will begin.
Shlokas will be spoken. Lamps will be lit.
And the doors to their golden shrines will slowly open.
There, beneath the luminescent limestone pinnacles
cross-legged in sockfeet upon the milky marble floor,
I will give thanks to Lord Vishnu for bringing her back to me.
I will give praise to Lord Shiva for giving us this second chance.
I will offer my blessings to Ganesh and Hanuman
for granting me the strength to form those
three-little-words
in my gullet once more.
Om Shanti my friends. Peace be unto all.

Neasden’s Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: Daily Murti Darshan

On The Way Home From The Jeffrey Lewis Gig...

With a dozen fresh bagels tucked under my arm,
I wend my way home from The Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters gig.
Flames burn outside Hawksmoor’s exalted Christ Church.
Hoxtonheads queue for ale outside the notorious Ten Bells.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m in no rush to reach the tube. I’m in no rush to get to my bed.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play, he started with a joke.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play, he brought
along his painted guitar, his girlfriend Helen,
his younger brother Jack and his Uncle Louie too.
“Professor” Louie Lewis, no less. Who provided support.
And things were no different tonight I’m glad to report.
The joke, the girlfriend, the younger brother and the uncle;
all were present and correct. Why change a winning team?
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play,
he appeared to be thinning badly at the crown.
Truth be told, his hair looked like it’d been falling out in clumps.
Clogging-up the drainage system on the Lower East Side no doubt.
If anything, Jeff’s tonsorial troubles have
escalated since the last time I saw him play.
Has he ever considered plugs, I wonder?
Or cosmetic transplant surgery?
Or some finasteride? Minoxidil? Mane-For-Men?
Chinese knotweed? Aerobics? Or a little Syrup-Of-Figs?
I wend my way past Rough Trade’s new flagship store,
where earlier this evening I chanced upon an impromptu
live performance from Alt-Country freak-a-Billy Jim White.
I wend my way down a sidestreet where once I bought
a tinfoil carton of brown Liberty Cap magic mushrooms.
Back when it was legal. Back when there was a loophole in the law.
It really wouldn’t be too much of a diversion
for me to wend my way a little further Eastwards;
past the blue door behind which dwells the girl I still adore.
Maybe I’d find the courage to take a deep breath and knock.
Maybe I’d find her at home, and maybe, just maybe,
she’d invite me in for a while from out of the rainclouds.
We could slice the bagels in half, pile them up,
and place them carefully in the freezer compartment.
It really wouldn’t take me too far out of my way at all.
But the two of us haven’t spoken in such a long time.
And it’s been even longer than that since last we communicated.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m happy for the drizzle to fall upon my long face.
If I'm lucky, it might just wash me into a storm-drain,
along with the rest of the flotsam and the jetsom
and the chancers
and the have-nots
and the oh-so-might-have-beens.

Quality Food Served All Day

The New Piccadilly Café Is a Soho institution.
They broke the mould after they built this place.
She’s a true landmark. The last of her kind.
A veritable Tasmanian Tiger amongst Pret A Mangers.
The Rosie Lee is stewed. The rice pudding is from a can.
The mashed potato is instant and the lasagne comes with chips.
It's true, the medieval cusine won’t be winning any Michelin stars,
but that's all part of The New Piccadilly’s charm.
That and the pink enamel espresso-maker.
That and the Festival Of Britain inspired formica table-tops.
That and the well-loved Thonet chairs
and and the horseshoe-shaped menu board.
All originals. Not a reproduction amongst them.
I know I've been neglecting her of late, but I have my reasons.
I've had other old-school eateries to frequent:
huevos rancheros and freshly-squeezed OJ to order at
Keedy's Fountain & Grill on Highway 111, Palm Desert,
a 10-inch stretch chili dog to stand in line for
at Pink's stand on the corner of Melrose and La Brea.
When The New Piccadilly closes her doors tomorrow evening
and the red neon “EATS’ sign is extinguished for the last time,
Mr. Lorenzo, the padrone of this Cathedral Of Caffs,
has vowed to take a sledgehammer to the place.
He wants to smash apart the antique
fixtures-and-fittings with his own two hands.
He’s worked at the counter-top here his entire adult life.
For some 50 years or more. So who can really blame him?
It’s very much his royal prerogative.
Amongst the many regulars in their widow’s weeds
is a girl I had an infatuation with back in the Springtime of 1997.
She always had a thing for older men. Older men than me.
She was sweet 19 when we first met, and would prove
to be a something of a template for what was to follow.
She wasn’t the last precocious little upstart
I fell for, oh-no, but she was certainly the first.
Sent down as a warning which I failed to heed.
She joins me in my booth and orders a cup of hot coffee.
Her hair no longer bottle blonde. Her wonky smile still intact.
Since last we met, she’s been training to be a shaman.
She's spent time in the Amazon rainforest
with the Cofán Indians of Santa Rosa de Guamuez.
Journeying to grand cities past and future.
Witnessing the primordial origins of humankind.
Developing both her Inner and Outer Raindow.
She finishes her hot coffee and orders a bowl of peach melba.
For the final time of asking.

Today's Special: New Piccadilly (Short Film)

Little Miss Kidnap Yourself

The mighty Hawk sees all from 10,834-feet.
From far above the dry desert floor of the Cahuilla Basin.
Perched on-high atop San Jacinto Peak,
he trains his nimble eyes upon the Inland Empire below.
And in the darkness, he sees the lights
of the resort community at the northwest end of the valley.
He sees the rental car parked opposite the Mexican restaurant.
He sees the two figures slumped against its hood.
He sees the tequila and lime dancing in their eyes.
I've never "made out" with an American girl before.
This is a first. And truth be told, it tastes a little salty.
Though that may have something
to do with the unseasonal humidity.
Tattoos of the original serpent run the length of both her arms.
Her eager tongue feels like it’s been pierced with a barbell.
Little Miss Kidnap Yourself is charming me but good.
Little Miss Kidnap Yourself is benumbing me but good.
I can sense my pineal gland slowly expanding.
My mouth filling with cordite. Teeth vibrating. Lips pulsing.
Muscle cramps, dizziness, temporary blindness.
She’s threatening to drag me back to her Joshua Tree adobe.
She’s threatening to take me to her ample bosom
for the night, eat me alive
and leave my pale English bones for the coy-otes.
The mighty Hawk sees all of this, but keeps his beak closed.
The mighty Hawk sees all of this, but keeps his wings clipped.
For the heat does funny things to folk
and the mighty Hawk knows this. He knows this only too well.
Instead, He shifts his gaze elsewhere;
Out towards the Western shores of the Salton Sea.
Out towards the furthermost edge of the world.

Just Another Wretched Sunday Morning

You'd think I might be used to this by now.
My head all alone on the pillow.
A carpet of last night's bourbon on my tongue.
You'd think I might be used to this by now, but no.
I've been behaving like a puppy-dog chasing it's own tail.
Like a fool.
Like a chump.
Like a patsy.
Like a motherfucking shmuck.
There are simply too many people in London and not enough space.
Bottom line. There’s no way around it. It’s just the way of things.
We live all ontop of each other; stacked corpses in our private catacombs.
On some mornings, the walls and the ceilings feel paper thin.
I can hear the neighbours breathing in the flat upstairs.
I can hear the neighbours in the flat next door slurping tea.
Above and to the left of me I can hear my neighbours laughing.
Through the wall. Through the ceiling.
And it feels like they're laughing at me.

Some Of The Very Best S-E-X That I Ever Did Have

Some of the best S-E-X I ever had
came as a direct result of reading Bukowski.
She sat on the unmade bed
in the corner of the bedroom, and read aloud to me
from the pages of Hank's third published novel (1978).
It was a Friday afternoon, and that's what got it all started.
That’s what got the juices a-bubbling.
Boy, it’s hard to beat a spot of afternoon S-E-X.
I find myself growing to love Bukowski
more and more with every passing year.
I find myself seduced tirelessly
by The Old Sot’s genuine self-loathing
and his weary disdain for his fellow man.
And I have nothing but admiration for his
constant striving for purity-of-expression upon the blank page.
I’ve had S-E-X whilst on prozac. And the S-E-X was good.
I’ve had S-E-X whilst on psilocybian mushrooms.
And it was good S-E-X.
Really good S-E-X.
Some of the very best.
But only once have I had S-E-X fueled by
the words and the grammar and the sentence structure
of a pock-marked 71-year-old drunk from Andernach in Germany.
Rest in Peace Chinaski.

Do You Remember Britpop?

I've spent most of the day beneath the bedsheets;
trying to recover from a mild virus of some kind.
And now? Well, now I can't sleep for toffee.
Trawling through the multifarious digital options
on my remote, I happen upon an hour-long documentary
about the making of Pulp's anthemic 'Common People'.
Was that really over 10 years ago?
Have they really gathered together various "experts"
to talk with sincerity about the reasons behind
its lasting impact on the musical landscape?
Jarvis Cocker is sat, all alone, at a booth
in the New Piccadilly Cafe on London's Denman Street.
His hair is somewhat longer these days, but he's
still buying the bulk of his clothes second-hand.
He smokes a cigaratte whilst they show clips
of Pulp headlining the Glastonbury festival in 1995.
They show footage of Jarvis revisiting the
Town House recording studio and Saint Martin's College
and the band's old rehearsal rooms situated above a pottery.
There are shots of Sheffield for good measure.
And even some old family home-movies.
If you look closely at Pedro Romhanyi's iconic video
for 'Common People', you might notice a buxom girl
riding a chopper bike in the background. Her name is Julie.
And she doesn't look at the camera throughout.
Julie did the wardrobe on that video, aswell
as on several other Pulp videos of the period,
including 'Lipgloss' - in which she also appears,
wearing a cheap blonde wig and a babydoll négligé.
Julie also did the wardrobe on the video for Blur's
equally anthemic 'Parklife'. Just for good measure.
Jarvis, reputedly, wrote the song 'Acrylic Afternoons' about her.
It's a song which appears on Pulp's 1994 long-player 'His 'N Hers'.
I happened to be passing Julie's house on the bus last week.
It was a warm and sunny day in the Wormwood Scrubs area;
reminiscent of that time we first kissed
over the embers of a disposable barbeque.
I thought about getting off the bus a few stops early,
walking up to her front-door, ringing the bell
and asking her if she ever thought about me at all.
Y'know? In that way I sometimes find myself thinking about her.
But I was running late for an appointment.
The wheels on the bus kept on going. Round and round.
To be honest, I'm not sure I'd remember the house number now.
Though I'm pretty sure I'd still be able to recognise the wallpaper.


Video for 'Lipgloss' by Pulp

Lyrics to 'Acrylic Afternoons' by Pulp