half a sermon | pearls before

Last week I found a bristle growing out of my ear. Standing straight on top of it, where it might taper up and out. If one were a pig. It must have been two inches long. The barber - an unfeasibly sweet young woman - had missed it. Or left it there to make a point.

This, and the missing front tooth between two yellowed tusks. And the hair one more porcine reminder on the slab of my neck. I am too tired for this shit, the wallowing in it.

Too old to be a father, maybe, to an energetic tangle of limbs and questions at three and two thirds. That preoccupation with building and taking apart. The indefatigable urge to deconstruct.

And I can't pass a charity shop these days without snuffling after leather. Stretched blistered hides. Uneven aprons, creased and smoked like ripe aged cheeses. It is unflattering, this reaching out for thrice shed skins, it would be better to be a snake. To be born anew.

A damn sight cheaper too. Than hurling coins in the fountain.

Waiting for those licensing hours to coincide that I might up and leave for the chop.

But that is what I quicken for. The wait. Counting out cigarettes between one empty bottle and the impoverished thirst to start from scratch. To bathe under citrus slants. To conjure up jibes from dry heaves all through Autumn.

Time, please. Fares.

Shuttling back and forth between the pointless and the unnecessary. Gnawing on pork scratchings.

Marinating.

Well. Bukowski, it is said, advised to do nothing. Step out and kill it only when it pauses on the pedestrian crossing. Just what it is, is another matter. A lot of innocent jaywalkers have been dragged under the bus. Still, it is better not to be overly cautious when trying to really nail it.

So they did for that Nazarene kid. Twice over, at least.

They got him in the end.

And rolling away the stone, of course, all that was left was a jigsaw puzzle. A Luger and two dice. A Maltese cross. A hot cross bun.

Those Nazi fucking swine never even tried to cover their tracks, you know. They were adept in the art of slaying it. Goose-stepping, genuflecting sons of bitches. Proficient at it, even now.

Of course, at this point I am one third through an agreeable enough bottle of Colombard Sauvignon. Quite too pale to pass for blood. Last night I dreamt of Mexican drug cartels. La Regla de Lukumi. Machetes.

I have a tendency to scarf down anything heaped upon my plate.

It's time to make like Richard Clayderman, brothers and sisters, while the gentry buckles up for war.

▼ JAMES BROWN: GET UP (I FEEL LIKE BEING A) SEX MACHINE (PARTS 1 & 2) from "PROMO" 45 [King (6318)] 1970 (US)
▼ JAMES BROWN: SUPER BAD (PARTS 1 & 2) from "PROMO" 45 [King (6329)] 1970 (US)

▼ JAMES BROWN: GET UP OFFA THAT THING from "GET UP OFFA THAT THING" 45 [Polydor (14326)] 1976 (US)

no uk' in ukelele

And so, it was fear.

Of the unknown. Rebuke. Siblings. A hesitancy to wander too far outwith the chalked silence, in the end.

Of smudging perameters and upsetting tarts.

There was a coffee stain on my polling card. It reminded me of home. Even as I stepped in to the booth, I knew it must end badly.

I put my cross in the box and waited for someone to shout, no.

Performed by Cayce Lindner, Glenn Donaldson, Shayde Sartin.

▼ FLYING CANYON: DOWN TO SUMMER from "Flying Canyon" LP [Soft Abuse (SAB016)] 2006 (US)

93.33% clarity

Engineered by Mike Ross. Produced by Cyril Smith, Mervyn Conn. 

Strings arranged by Keith Mansfield.

▼ THE PEDDLERS: ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER from "Three in a Cell" LP [CBS (CBS 63411)] 1968 (UK)

careful with that acke, esbjörn

Recorded at Studio Decibel 1971 by Torbjörn Falk.
Macbeth is introduced headlong to the Underworld, by way of The Third Ear Mage.
Acid Aromatics, Floyd Fondants and pure Lysergic Drops.

▼ ÄLGARNAS TRÄDGÅRD: TWO HOURS OVER TWO BLUE MOUNTAINS WITH A CUCKOO ON EACH SIDE, OF THE HOURS ...THAT IS from "Framtiden Är Ett Svävande Skepp, Förankrat I Forntiden" LP [silence (SRS 4611)] 1972 (SWEDEN)

santa, butcher ii

They leave the tree out on the pavement. One January. Well. They leave it lying there until the weather turns for the better. Bringing flies and aphids. Ants.

Those needles go marching. One by one.

So one fine day in August I notice they have finally gotten round to lifting it. To be dropped in landfill at last. Odd, I feel, that its sudden absence bothers me more acutely than its amputation.

When the madness is fast upon me I follow the angle of it. Hacked-out root to naked prow. It seems to point straight at a basement flat I lived in thirty years ago. On the other side of the street. Painted lorry tyres, planters, nursing chrysanthemums where once there was nothing but dog leavings in front of the little window poking up from its recess.

A coincidence, granted, but it makes me start.

Each time I pass that tree I pause to look at the ogre's door. Incredulous I ever held a key to it. Vigilant. On the prowl for workshy elves. A lurking goblin.

Or Richard Dadd. Hyde to every passing Sikh.

I come awake in the middle of the night - this morning - on a memory so tangible I can smell it. It is Christmas 1966 or 7, and I am with my mother in a shop in Glasgow. The bell rings over the door and the heat is on us. An odour of tissue paper. Sawdust. There is a sentence of words strung together like parcels tied with string that is somehow important, but even if I could remember it I don't suppose I would write it down.

It is not for sharing, perhaps, or it would mean nothing to you if I could. My father is not there with us. But he is close by. The man behind the shop counter is bored but feigns interest.

My father died long before my sons were conceived. Like his own father before I came into this world. Bloody but mute.

I  stand there, count five, waiting for something to happen. All the while listening to whispers behind drawn curtains. The kind of whispering which marks one as a nut.

Months later, a year perhaps, I stop again and say to my three-year-old son,

See. Daddy used to live in that house. A long time ago. Isn't that strange ?

My son looks at me as if I am still crazy. Pointing at the green door right beside it, deadly in earnest.

Well. A long time ago, when I was very old. I used to live there.

I look at him. He is not joking. One eyebrow raised, daring me to contradict him. Just like his mother. Brother. Me. Just like history repeating itself.

genre fiasco | fear of psycho

I am hurtling past rooftops, chimneys in the company of Jesco White, Hasil Adkins - heads lolling, spooling drool - when we hit a fork in the path ahead. A box elder stump with a 7 ½ lb axe embedded straight through its knotted heart.

Spitting feathers. Gravy. Entrails.

The ghost of last night's Chicken Pathia.

Well. I just about piss myself when White hops up on that bleeding peg and proceeds to dance. Flat foot, bounce and shuffle; the soles on both stockings kicking up a frightful mess.

I fall back in a stupor. Painted soapbox listing in the ditch with its left door hanging. The antenna bent. Beyond repair. The radio pushing in and out.

Adkins sets to cackling.

This is it. There is nothing between the floors in my skull. The soundproofing is so abysmal you can hear a carpet beetle fart in those unoccupied rooms upstairs.

Well. Let me tell you this, cowboy. If you have have a problem with me, bring it on. Come on over here and I'll jam my foot right up your motherfucking ass, you pansy jackass Roy Rogers wannabe.

Got something to say ? No ? Well, shut your fuckin' mouth. Someone has stopped taking their medication, and that someone isn't me.

That unhinged sound again. A scraping set loose among the shavings. A scrabbling on shit pocked corrugated tin.

When I come to they are gone.

There is a disembodied whistling. A beating of pygmy breasts back there only.

I jump down in the ditch and make a decision to strangle the gospel on the vine.

The spirit is wasted and my stomach is hurting. I sit the bottle on the tree stump. Vomit in the ditch until my gut is emptied too. My eyes smart. Bulge like yolks pricked on a plastic fork. I find a half smoked cigarette in my pocket and smoke it down, glad for that. I can feel an insect, some kind of fly, lapping at the sweat between my neck and shoulder.

A truce then. I have no heart to swat at it. Chase it away.

A vehicle passes on the way to somewhere else. It smells of farm. A smear of a face peering out at me. Two raisins jammed in a sullen tray of lard. A tongue like a dog. I fold my chin on my knees. Make the hair in front tumble low as a wing.

Move along. There is nothing to see.

Well. Twenty minutes or of this and I am ready to straighten out.

I climb back down in the ditch, pop the trunk, and the girl is pretty much as I left her.

Hair the colour of yard leaves, rust, the skin of arms and legs dusted with freckles. A mole, a birthmark flowering, above the bunched up panties. The flesh so pale it is almost blue, and with the sky beginning to bruise it is hard to tell if she is still breathing.

I listen to a crow sing on the wire running overhead and stab her with the kitchen knife - that taut space at the back of the knees - and the body flinches. Just a little. Enough. She moans. Into the parcel tape wound all the way around, twice. Three times. Maybe I ought to loosen it. Rip it away. Let the murmuring flutter up.

What's that ? I can't make you out, what with all this quiet.

The blade on the knife is bloodied from earlier. A preliminary carving. The blood is not red, not even where it coagulates, it is dark. Muddied. The colour of split bark. Caramelised onion.

Juices sweating in a skillet.

I am very tired. And the ride can not be salvaged.

It is not too far, I don't think, to make it on foot. When I am done. If I am considerably more cautious than I have been up to this point, let's face it.

If I make it home in one piece, I promise to avail myself of healing. Maybe splash a little water in that cup of gin.

Some Quinton Claunch. Bill Cantrell. No more hot dogs.