"Red River Breath" spoken word vid

NEW EBOOK

Here's the link to my latest ebook, "Break it up we'll run screeched again whattayasay Harry?"

GEt it HerE

The porch, the garden, the field, the fireplace

Going through old notepads looking for writings and found this little rant. Made all the more fun by the fact that I now have an old rickety porch to sit on.

All poets ranting of moons, angels, galactics, destinies... I just want fried eggs and beer breakfast from now till the day I die. 

***

Good lord is it ever just enough to sit and be? I guess we tell ourselves plenty of time for that when we die’ and rightly so, but to vacate, to escape - even the life I love to lead and am very much leading - just to cruise a little in the separate for a while - to tell a stranger a different story - to not think of how today will be tomorrow and then you look back it’s what’s there to show yadda yadda...

total small town community thought i guess, how easy to not help enough, to not give enough, not donate. When dead we are ash or worm food either way we stop talking and start just unselfishly giving. 

It’s living that kills us. 

I’m not being down in the dumps here I’m in a good mood but just writing the truth. One day things will be enough. One day there’ll be a day when it’s too late and the weight will lift because there’ll be nothing you can do about it anymore. 

On this green day i’ll lay back and think only of the now and forever that will be the case. I’ll eat fatty taste food and drink beers with chasers and wallow with laughter on porches as the world goes by - and the world will go by and look at me and say ‘oh there’s old man Lidster, drunk again, such a shame, such a waste’... but little will they know the ecstasy, I’ll be saddened only by the fact that they may never get to know.. and whether they’ll see it or not I’ll tip my hat and toast my glass their way and wish them well. Life will not be dramatic because all need for the dramatic will have died. 

The porch, the garden, the field, the fireplace - wherever, will be my hard rock candy mountain. I’ll strum guitar and banjo strings singing along not in so much tune but with huge passion. 

I’ll tap my feet and be overcome like gospel singers in my own personal way, and people will walk past and say ‘old man Lidster, such a shame’ but I won’t hear them. I’ll finish up, with old back and legs, open the front door and get me a fresh batch of beers and whisky or tequila, and I’ll go again. 

A clip from my diary

Ginsberg I caught you reading my diary last night

somewhere in my dream 

between some parables of acupuncture 

raiding through the twists and wisps of 

scattered no thought pours...

And I thought a little instance of broken,

like my black bile was about to be shared

and there’s me

having written these perverse wonders

an anchored photo for a moment

but then realizing that

it was you, yes YOU!

that wrote 

“If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything”

and washes of

empathetic nature of you poet

made right the possibility of two heads

knowing this 

that I’ve only lately known to be

true through streams

and vein odysseys 

all relentless. 

And so I’m casting me, the me, afar -

letting the carbon talk a while

where in this bowl of precious human birth,

where we meet beginning beginning again,

growing the changes of chances,

joking to me that I can cast me, the me, afar

any further than can be implied in waves, 

or drowning in them, 

but the then sudden wonderment 

of clean air. 

Ah, why do I let myself fester on worry,

everything’s ending, everything is changing

and growing and shrinking, 

the two people sleeping on each side of this room

are getting older and dying.

We are dying. 

The colossal conjunction of human sadness is dying,

happiness is dying,

I am dead born and you are dead born 

and we are just going to be dead again

so why would I fret over such secret words Allen?

and why punish ourselves for histories 

and why wonder about my body pains

and why cry about the scope of death

and why let impact impact at all?

So, we’ve known we are just a ring of flesh

pumping through itself 

that craves the shit of the world

in a frantic effort to embellish our windows 

and that is the booster for our 

gloomy gloomy winters

that will pass it will pass it will pass

it will pass it will pass it will pass it will pass

and this body that we are

is just the eyes of the thing we are looking at

but can’t see

the universe needs us to see itself

we are not us

we are that - that “”””around”””” -

accepting our result is not

accepting our result

because it is not our result -

is this giving up and excuse?

it is not our giving up or excuse to give up or excuse.

All we can do is not understand and

sit back and let it happen

and drink our tea or our wine with

every temporary enunciation valid

to air to the earth

the earth we know but don’t know

don’t feel, can’t feel -

insane that we are all kinds of upside down

but we are not upside down

we are everything but upside down

and our filling invisibility is all that is needed

for anything -

any idea of love or illness

to be existent though not real not real.

It is my simple cleave incision 

into the ways of the world I see

that I seek forever to understand

and more so maybe the ways

the world you see,

all reflector and reasonless,

I want to read through your eyes,

to work through your mouth, 

to vigil with your thoughts

as they pass and deliver onto

the next saving grace,

a double helix of us 

cordoning the galaxies

one at a time

on violin string theories. 

No one is immune, Allen.

How teasingly we are told this

by layer lessons

listing the malleable meanings 

of veins we wrap when wanting

and never looking to undo

until the only words to run by are 

Moon’s:

“No yesterdays on the road”.

So read my diary as you will 

while I sleep through the day or night, 

and you will learn a little river

or two before I type

and my fears will be met 

by the warranty 

of simple

dark

truths.

Gland Parables is go!

I've finally got around to getting this book out... there's a good few years worth of poetry in here, ranging from crazed paranoia nights to jumping madmen nights out seeking anything and everything and back again to big travelling nights or stuck inside nights. A compendium of everything so far.

It's a compilation of 5 previously unreleased volumes, totalling 75 poems.

"All poems written with light fuzz in mind either among bedroom looms/train station drags/airport listenings/rivers on wine/backs of cars/seasides/irreversible wallet paper scraps/kitchens/doorsteps/bars/mostly 3am's thinking sometimes too hard but mostly letting fall out about paranoia, dramatics, storm-chasing, Li Po, R. Crumb, people dying and people living."

GeT it HeRe

cover for my poetry book "Gland Parables"

WALL excerpt...

Here's an excerpt from what'll probably be my first actual novel, tentatively titled 'Wall'. A 'psychedelic-coming-of-age-modern-day-western'... or something...

The sun was setting in the midst of a vacant sky over the corn fields that travelled for miles. The tranquility of emptiness was met by the afternoon silence that followed the end of day tourist rush. It was the best time to breathe. The sky would swell to a purple hue and the dainty stars would begin to work the night inwards, like saintly watchers coming to ease the time of those who longed for lights out. In the Mid-West summer night the sky is a ceiling dome womb, a blanket that, just for those short settling hours, lives just to shelter the world at large. It tucks you in like a childhood dream, and you float on into the night. 

Shelley found herself lost for a moment before coming back to the grass on which she lay. Her tendency to drift into her own thoughts was well established amongst the residents of Wall. She could sit alone for hours dwindling the day away while 3,000 tourists shoveled their feet before her. It was a great place to have an active imagination. Layer on top of that a hefty dose of lysergic acid diethylamide and there’s a recipe for new maps made for each moment. 

She could feel the wonder start to work now, and looked around to see how the others were doing. 

Eat Rain.

Subtle Advice

It is with a heavy heart that I write these words. 

My touch lamp burns away next to me at this 3am morning as I lose myself in that night at sea feeling. 

I imagine the loneliness that one would experience at this time of night out there, somewhere under only the eyes of God swimming between all the mysteries of the deep beneath. The vast unseen darkness traveling more than our evolution has allowed us to know. There, alone on the still and gently swaying waves, eyes at half mast, breathing full lungs of salt cold air living only on memories and wholesome fears. The want to just dive in and abandon, to swim down until you are able to sink and at your last moments’ lucidity perhaps, just perhaps, you will be met by the sights that no man has ever survived to see and you can pass onto the next land with just a light and brushing smile as Earth’s water delivers your waterlogged body to the noble abyss of lost at sea souls. 

But you don’t jump. You just know that you could. 

That is enough to send the shiver of tears through your bones, the type that makes you pray for the caul of childhood blanket and fetal curl with closed eyes to luxury dreams, but you don’t. You stand out on the bow and hold on with your shivering hands to the blistering wood, worn through valiant journey histories, you stand there and hold your chest up high for yes, everyone is a child, but you have paid your dues, you have taken a hold of your troubles, you have worked through your pains and you have taken those lessons holding onto your life then just as you are now. You are experience and you are proud that you have survived. And so you stand there ready for the full power of the black and blue night, and you pray for more, you hope that in any second a giant whale the like of which beauty you have never seen or your eyes have never been able to truly comprehend might just make its own voyage to the surface of the sea and dwarf your boat to merely quiver in its miracle shadow which, though making the night ever darker, breaks your soul to a new realm of light the likes of which you will cry to tell your grandchildren of. That moment that will never escape you. The likes of which you will dream of and wake up elated again and again, just thankful for the grace of being born, again and again. 

But no whale comes. But still, you sail on into the unseen ahead. 

The moon and stars are the only lights that dare show their face here in the middle of nowhere world. Time has forgotten you and you, have forgotten time. The wind picks up. The moon pulls the waves as the boat rocks gently more. And more. And then you feel the rush of peril pour through your veins as you know what could come. And still you stand there. You just want to watch death come for you, to die with your eyes open. Not to miss a moment. The waves begin to crash and pound as the wind picks its pace and slowly the hit of rain becomes apparent on the back of your neck. You are not about to leave to take shelter, oh no. This is the all or nothing night under which you have laid your sins, confessed to the old heroin moon that you have wronged and caused ill too many times and reckoning must prevail. This is your christening moment whereby your judgement will come and yes you will submit to the word and the consequence. Crash the waves more. Hail the storm more. Darken the skies more. Hide the pale face of the moon away now, let not its innocence be sullied by this hell about to be unleashed upon your mortal body and Heavenly soul. 

And still you stand at the bow. Still you dig your nails into the now damp wood, carving your fossil for the moment. The ship she sways back and forth, spewing her guts for dear life. Not afraid at the bow. Welcoming and eyes open wide. Let the only light be lightening and let the thunder attempt to drown your bellowing heart as it pours ferociously from your barrel chest this night. Shake the existence of this good ship. Test her bones and break her flesh should that be Gods will. You stand inviting. Accepting. Allowing with absolutely zero resistance in any morsel of atom or saintly tail as your feet are lifted from the ground with each giant sway. Images of sea creatures of horrifying sizes reaching out with their tentacles to pull you down to the watery depths of death hallucinate vehemently through your failing limbs and still you will not surrender or succumb to fear. You are here. She is you. This is it. And all the night in all of the world will never know of your blood red horror and anguish on this voyage to the grave but at peace you will be and this you know more than anything. Seething through your last goodbye comes all the images of childhood, mothers, lovers, heroes, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, pets, families, dances, moments, photos, writings, scents, tunes, sugars and warmths that you have ever been fruitful enough to grow and at the crescendo of joyous and exuberant ecstasy now washed by silent and lost calls of ocean murmur. There, you lend your goodbye. There, you bid your grievances to the wind and lay back to the worry of the world as it patters away from your last moment toes and there, under the wing of the oceans last wave, you die, alone, and you were not afraid.