16 Jul 2013

Two hundred dustbins




It is the hottest day of the year
There are 200 dustbins to walk past
Every morning
On the way to sit down and work so I can get paid
And one day live somewhere there is less garbage

Crushed mint
Vaseline
Music of the gods

And a 14th moon is found
Out there where the lack of air is a gift
Where the closer to the sun you get
The further away from breathing you are
And you need one more line for balance

Space
Time
Absolute quiet

But that line never comes
So you grind teeth and swallow bourbon
And sit in the sun and bake
Trying to see past the burning light
Without actually
Ascending

I turn up the volume
Push up my sunglasses
Look up to try and find moon 14.



12 Jul 2013

Bye bye CBI


[chromechrome.jpg]

A quick post to mourn the passing of a great blog - the Chrome Ball Incident has been logging a serious amount of real skateboard history for a long time now. It was bound to end, as all good thinigs do, but the site - not to mention the integrity with which the posts were written and handled overall - remains truly indispensable.Good work.



4 Jul 2013

Lost cat


A sign on the tree outside the house
 - Lost cat -
Cute photo
Etc
I think we saw it yesterday
I think, maybe
So I call to say ‘don’t get your hopes up – but I think…’
Etc

Been there, done that
So I call, let her know what I saw and hang up

When I look at the photo a second time
I see the picture is of my face
I little greyer
A little fluffier
But it's me no doubt about it

I check my pockets
Count ten fingers and ten toes
And am pretty certain that I am not lost

So I walk down the path and in the front door
A moment later there’s a knock
I turn and open it and am greeted by a large woman
Holding a small porcelain horse

you called she says
In a vague eastern European accent
            can you give me more info she says

I couldn’t but tried anyway
Been there
Done that
She thanked me and left

I closed the door and went to the bathroom
Washed my face and checked the mirror for signs of cat
Nothing
And nothing much else
Really

I look down
Ten toes
I’m not lost
I’m right here
Right?

21 Jun 2013

7 Jun 2013

Conflicting advice



Gentle voices have of late
Been telling me to kill
Or perhaps that’s too distinct

They have whispered the blues to me

Warm breath on my neck
Reassuring me that there would be no consequences
Fire in my throat
A clear mind

There is little more terrifying than a clear mind
Not much left to fear after pure love and security
The true sign of life for some
Is the true sign of the end for others

When joy is weighed down by the shadow
When you only ever laugh while in company

But then

The screams
Bourbon soaked and
Arms scarred
Shouting for you to rise
To fight for everything
For everyone

Ice down your back
The biggest joke of all
Looking to the end of the world and seeing the edge
That really does exist

And you are surrounded
Hands taking and souls giving
Souls or something
But you are far from alone
And whom do you reach out to
When all these words all make so much sense

Though the voices are all at once black and white
They’re the first truth and the last lie you’ll ever hear
This is the reason you sing songs
The reason you drink and write and
Bang the drum.

30 May 2013

Reverse creep while the goddamn television keeps me down again


Genius idea 1;
I figure
If I log three things at a time
Maybe one of those will save time
Grab someone
You
Them
Condense correlate
Aggregate

Life is like this
A rambling haiku of misspelling
Non-linear
Constant asides
Accidents forgiven
Mistakes forgotten
Love remembered
Someone else’s guitar
While your voice sings along
Albeit silently
A secret well known to all
This late in the game

Nothing linear
If anything
Experience and actions become reversed
Perfect and symmetrically opposite
A crippled symmetry
Here I am alone
Red all around
Flowers and
Wine and heavy curtains that she bought and got made and
Hung

Here I am alone
Pretending I am young though not wanting to
Be
And any focus or point or anything of something that once there was
Long since left me - for sunnier climbs no doubt

Genius idea 2;
Sit and force it to come
Back
The words are here
there somewhere

Light up
Pour
Swallow
Close my eyes and lie about the page having an end
About there being rules and facts and a real world
Just outside somewhere

Even with this sky as light as it is now at nearly 9pm
I see the reality through the gap in those dark heavy curtains
How long before we all end up just coasting along a path
Because that was the easiest thing to do
The safest thing
No one to follow anymore
No one left to lead now
What a predicament

How are the others dealing with this I wonder…
Do they still have each other
These thoughts are laid down in too abstract a fashion
Too camouflaged to be considered (I am aware - I am not stupid)
An intentional wasting of my – and your – time
So why bother
Because ‘one day’
One day they’ll all wake up
And who knows
Maybe I will too

But until then I now have this responsibility
Then and now
My opposing forces
Mirrored and so unaware of each other

Countdown is beginning
- has begun
My mistake
The morning birds now sing outside
Into the nighttime clouds
So at least I am not the only one in the wrong
Here
And I remember that I used to do that
And far from lamenting that time
I am glad to miss it
I shed not a tear for the naivety of our youngest nights
Full
Stop.


21 May 2013

1939 - 2013



http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2013/05/20/RAY-MANZAREK.jpg

The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you're free.

16 May 2013

WWIII

'World War 3' is a working title. This is the start of the start of the beginning of a short story I'll probably never finish... peace.




Ours is a small story, told from inside a far bigger one. The biggest story we’d ever been part of – and the biggest there would ever be.

The house was merely shell. Orange brick turned to white chalk. Fragmented and abstract. Blackened, charred. The bright smouldering long since cooled. Luckily for us the layout of the small 5 room building was such, that when the last of the big blasts came, the shockwave passed the south east corner of the house in a kind of slipstream. This left the large rear bedroom more or less intact – structurally at least.

We had the 3 beds for the 4 of us to share, a luxury that we’d told the children not to let on to anyone outside the family. The small stove worked fine and what was left of the bathroom was still attached to the inside wall of the bedroom so the toilet was workable most of the time.

Running water hadn’t been anyone’s reality for I think about 3 months by that time. It was hard to know for sure. We knew the date from the radio broadcasts, but the events of the period overall, were all just blurred into one another. The important thing was that the 3 remaining exterior walls were mostly intact also, forming something that still resembled a home. Or at least what strangers and scavengers could recognise as having been a home, once upon a time…

We had managed quite well for the year since last winter – the one they named ‘the dead winter’. We had seen neighbours leave in the hope of settling somewhere more populated, seen others perish. We had watched as those who had retreated to the countryside and outer suburbs - returned only to fade away weeks later. Meanwhile the decision was made that we’d stay put – wait it out. What we expected to happen wasn’t entirely clear, but we felt staying in one place would be safer for the kids.

We were wrong.


9 May 2013

Quote of the day


"Skateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming pool, they thought, ‘Let's take a swim.' But I thought, ‘Let's ride it.' When they saw the curb or a street, they would think about driving on it. I would think about the texture. I slowly developed the ability to look at the world through totally different means."
Ian Mackaye 

8 May 2013

Quote of the day


I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful. Vincent Gallo


Ray Harryhausen 1920 - 2013


Ray Harryhausen



I won't even bother to explain the obvious... article from AintItCool here.


24 Apr 2013

22 Apr 2013

Day to day



A while back I was trying to explain to someone how skateboarders see the world on a day-to-day basis. Literally the differences in what we focus on walking down the street or looking out the train window... They didn't really get it and I guess that's not their fault. Unless you've been doing something pretty much constantly for 15-20 years there's no way of identifying that this random outlook just becomes - not even second nature - more like 'first nature'. It's just who you are.


19 Apr 2013

people of earth...





Quote of the day


And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into. Dave Brubeck

16 Apr 2013

Hardly news



Yet another sideways mood
            overtaken at sunrise by it
contemplating the core of it over
a bowl of granola

Awoken with it lying in bed next to me
On my pillow with me
Looking into my waking eyes
The simplest desire of all humankind
The one universal truth other than death
The single most shared emotion and resentment
On Earth
Is the one of having to get up every morning
And go to the job

I don’t care how good the job may be
and I don’t care about those who love their work
like their work colleagues
their co-workers

Even if my career involved waking up at noon and
Hanging out with international rock stars
Even if I could stay in bed and interview world-famous
Actors and actresses
Over the telephone for a few hours a day and
Thousands of pounds a week -
I would come to  r e s e n t  it

There is no time for work
WORK -
To assist another in attaining a final product that
As recently as a few years back
You had no knowledge of whatsoever
So really how much can it all mean

Sick of it all again
Sick of red wine
Red meat
Sick of bleeding hearts and liars
Sick of both the demands of life and the lack thereof

Work…
There is no reasonable justification for this
I have far too many other things to figure out.


15 Apr 2013