He that keepeth his tongue keepeth his life; but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction

Proverbs 13:21

Niklaus Manuel Deutsch's Enterprising Death

A quotation from the program for the NT's production of Simon Stephens' Harper Regan (an atrocious play that I walked out of in the interval...)

"The more we are registered on surveillance systems, captured on real-time monitors, the less we are here. Ghost selves performing their mimes - walking, driving, standing on escalators - are tranquilised zombies or potential threats. Are those young men, waiting on the platform, backpackers or untriggered explosive devices? If you challenge this microclimate of sub-erotic voyeurism, by lifting a camera, you are suspect. How many times have I been hassled for the treasonable act of photographing cameras that are photographing me? How many times, beside perimiter fences, by cargo sheds, on private golf courses, have I been pulled over by an unmarked car. 'Don't you know there's a war on?'"

© Iain Sinclair

Epitaph of a Soldier.

I laiye, a Shaddow of my previous selfe,
Here in the Chilling Darcke, the Frostie Canyon.
On all sides Darcknesse, and no Globèd Wealth
Of Peonies nie to comfort me with Sweetness;
No flowering Almond Bloomes to give me Hope,
No Jun'per wreathes me round Impermeably,
No Love have I, like Clytie's Heliotrope,
No Lilly of the Valley restores my Smiyle.

Above my head there sits a shiny pebble,
A drop of alabaster on the road,
And on the stone there balances disheveled
A rootless Dahlia, gray from lack of care.

A Thousande years agoe, in this Polluted
Concrete Sarcophagus where now I lie,
A mason laid a limestone block, uprooted
From subterranean Pluto's Sumptuous lair.
Inside that Block three Seedlings, Silent, Waited
For this instant in time. See how they Thrust
Their way through Mortar, Dust, Earth. Now they've sated
Some Devil's Dark desire to see me mocked.

A goat stands silent behind a broken pane, staring down at me from his height. He shifts his hooves, letting the deck of cards tumble back to earth. They drift down on me. I close my eyes.

Ako & Haruna

I need to find a room,
Somewhere for my friends to stay.
Blackbirds in the cold.

After Strindberg I

Trudging once more through dark, polluted night,
Remembering that fleeting moment: "day",
I thought I caught, Or seemed to catch, a glimpse
Of amber-orange rust and peeling paint.
Paint blacker than the night through which my spirit
Continued wearily to make its way,
Or blacker than the spirit I dragged homeward
Yearning once more for long-awaited day.
The canker-bitten metal which I'd noticed
Pertainèd to a looming iron stove
Resembling a silhouetted man
Who solitary stood among the crowds.
There stands he, dressed in black, with a tall hat,
His penetrating eyes are shining bright
Like hot coals crying out for oxygen,
The fire at its death, losing its might.
What age is this my vision, old or young?
Oh, tired as I am, I cannot see
With normal clarity; instead, a veil
Diaphanously shelters you from me.
But peering through the smoke I just make out
Your face - a white smear, misty through the dark,
Of ash, the thumb-work of our short lives' artist,
The misanthrope, the sadist's lingering mark.

Already I have here a poem written,
But it was not of quality, I am sure;
O'er Shakespeare's metre had I harshly ridden,
And for its clumsiness I had no cure.
Why can't my head be filled with inspiration,
With bounteous fruit made pregnant and replete?
Why, when I write, does my imagination
Dry up, leaving my poems incomplete?
I know th'imagination must be given
All the time that it needs to spark ideas.
They say that it won't work if it is driven
and doing so confirm my im patient fears.
For now, I'll leave it, and come back refreshed,
And hope my thoughts will not be so enmeshed.