SBJ's pantechnicon extravaganza

BROADSWORD AND THE BEAST FROM TWENTY THOUSAND FATHOMS

2012-02-01T20:57:00.000Z

Bring me a lighthouse and mournful weather
Bring me an iceberg melting in the sun
The sun of the atom, freeing a monster
An ancient monster, lost and alone.

Bring me my broadsword (that's the brig's call-sign)
Bring me my fog-horn that cries like a gull.
So lost and so lonely, so prelapsarian
That lost monsters must hear it and heed its pull.

Lure the beast to the lighthouse
It's my cliff-top dwelling, when the soldiers of Unit
Prepare it's cage. (With comfy pillows)
So that beneath the billows, it will feel at home.

For the monster just needs friends,
Like Sergeant Benton, or Corporal Osgood, or even the Brig.
They have the experience, and the understanding
To look after the creatures be they small or big.

Bring me a lighthouse and mournful weather
Bring me an iceberg melting in the sun
The sun of the atom, freeing a monster
An ancient monster, that at last comes home.

Pantoum of Brittlemasque

2012-01-27T15:11:00.000Z

Always the final love abides forever?
Boiling at noon, the essence that entrances
Evaporates as scents, departing ever
Loss upon loss, the heat haze tries its dances

Boiling at noon, the essence that entrances
Departs in clouds whose linings are not shown
Loss upon loss, the heat haze tries its dances
Its lights less silver than your lillied gown

Departs in clouds whose linings are not shown
By dusk the heat departs until the mist
Its lights less silver than your lillied gown
Fills in the empty footprints of our tryst

By dusk the heat departs until the mist
Becomes a backdrop, and the rook's harsh cry
Fills in the empty footprints of our tryst
As wheeling Murders fill the darkened sky

Becomes a backdrop, and the rook's harsh cry
In Brittlemasque the dead may leave their clay
As wheeling Murders fill the darkened sky
And walk the verges at the end of day

In Brittlemasque the dead may leave their clay
Ancestral vault ajar, the tomb agap
And walk the verges at the end of day
For some that means there is no last escape.

Ancestral vault ajar, the tomb agap
Hear now, the clatter of the rising bones
For some that means there is no last escape.
No certain ending, silent under stones

Hear now, the clatter of the rising bones
If only, only, it could come by day
No certain ending, silent under stones
But raised to heaven by the golden ray!

If only, only, it could come as day
Evaporates as scents, departing ever
Be raised to heaven by the golden ray!
Always the final love abides forever.

True Prophesies

2012-01-23T09:59:00.000Z

What crawls around the corners of our sight?
But all our endings coming slowly back
Limping, once prodigal, beaten and in fright
They come by night because they fear the light
For they have lived in darkness, on the rack.
What crawls around the corners of our sight?
But all the once desired, and things that might
Have been, had we defeated life's attack
Limping, once prodigal, beaten and in fright
They seek a sanctuary whose shelves are light
For Vikings long made pillage there and sack.
What crawls around the corners of our sight?
But hopeless hopes, and dreams that end in blight
And all our cries to Gods, when Gods we lack,
Limping, once prodigal, beaten and in fright
And we try to appease them, and bind tight
Their wounds which are our foreseen bloody track.
What crawls around the corners of our sight
Limping, once prodigal, beaten and in fright?

Grail Pantoum

2012-01-20T19:25:00.000Z

And in the end the Grail again was found
Quite humble, undistinguished, void of stones
Preserved without state, in an ancient mound
Beside a barren scattering of bones

Quite humble, undistinguished, void of stones
Gemless, lack-lustre, dull and yet desired
Beside a barren scattering of bones
We bowed before it, er we all retired

Gemless, lack-lustre, dull and yet desired
How did we know it was the cup we sought?
We bowed before it, er we all retired
For there could be no doubt, no vagrant thought.

How did we know it was the cup we sought?
It spoke within us of the blood it knew
For there could be no doubt, no vagrant thought.
This was the cup of He who made us new.

It spoke within us of the blood it knew
Of hands that held it, of the twelve who wept
This was the cup of He who made us new.
While, one, the thirteenth, off for payment crept.

Of hands that held it, of the twelve who wept
For He wept too, that night when all were still
While, one, the thirteenth, off for payment crept.
And Roman guards came up the olive'd hill.

For He wept too, that night when all were still
And prayed that if God willed the cup should pass
And Roman guards came up the olive'd hill.
And now the cup was here, beneath the grass.

And prayed that if God willed the cup should pass
While we, long after, gave praise for its sight.
And now the cup was here, beneath the grass.
Until, Sir Mordred took it, in the night.

While we, long after, gave praise for it's sight.
Preserved without state, in an ancient mound
Until, Sir Mordred took it, in the night.
And in the end, no Grail again was found.

Self-pity Song - CSi5M

2012-01-16T14:00:00.002Z

If you have any time to spare
And any kind words to say
Please say them today
for I am so
very very low.

If you have any love to give
Then send it my way
And send it today
for I am now mostly
pallid, wan, and ghostly.

If you can fix your attention here
Or lend me an ear
I’d better make clear
Don’t wait for next year
For time’s going I fear.

I’m only hangin’ on by a thread
From a worn old spool, from a worn old shed.
And when that thread its fibres shred
If it happens today
Then I’m falling away.

Perhaps further down in the dark is a ledge
But with my luck I’ll just miss the edge
So if you’ve got some time to pledge
Well I’d take some today
(Yi-pe-oh-ki-aye)

After the Velvet Eon

2012-01-09T16:24:00.002Z

After the velvet eon, when the fires
at back of the old nebula
had burned,
down to a smattering of shattered suns,
adrift in the old dark:
two travellers came,
to Seven Sisters Inn, and found the place,
(Calamity Station),
where the ship-bones lie,
bleached pale under the dim eon-old light,
but scarlet now, with newer fires,
of murder and of rage.

Bain BeyBalor :
“Poems of The Twenty-Seventh Epoch”

I can't play the guitar in my slippers.

2011-12-23T14:54:00.000Z

I can't play the guitar in my slippers
The music is sipping away
Without bovver boots
All my punk-indie roots
Have left me all fluffy today.

I can't play the guitar in my slippers
My folk music's fuzzy and blurred
Without Big Wooden clogs
I've just going to the dogs
And the Mouse in The Windmill's run scared.

I can't play guitar in my slippers
They're just not blue-suede soles you see
And the shuffle you get
Is no rock and roll set
It's more like playing for granny at tea.

I can't play guitar in my slippers
It don't matter how much you all blame me.
And throw fangirl's knickers
Without my winkle-pickers
And string-tie, I've no country to claim me.

I can't play guitar in my slippers
For unless I've got my steel toed badwear
My oiled jet-black quiff
And my fast guitar riff
Is just smothered in comfiest dadwear

I can't play guitar in my slippers
But although this footwear makes me bawl
It's not as bad as the pit
For I have to admit
That I can't play the guitar at all.

Simon BJ
I would be

Faction Paradox novel announcement!

2011-12-23T11:32:00.003Z

"Following not terribly protracted negotiations with Lawrence [Miles], Obverse [books] will be taking over the Faction Paradox prose license in its entirety from 2012, as a result of which [they'll] be publishing this lot next year...

Novels

Against Nature - Lawrence Burton
"Goralschai, a first wave veteran of the House Military, returns from the front bearing a death wish the size of creation. The spiral politic, he decides, cannot continue, and on Earth, in the Mexico of 1506, he finds a means to his twisted end; and so, egged on by the Celestis (who find this sort of thing amusing), he lays plans to turn one small corner of history into a weapon."

The Brakespeare Voyage - Simon Bucher-Jones and Jon Dennis
"The Maw, a wound in the fabric of the universe, forms. House Lineacrux claims to have constructed it, but this may be a lie. To exploit it House Lineacrux creates two ships with the intention of harvesting Leviathan biodata from outside the totality of the Spiral politic. The first the San Grael is a scout the second, the Brakespeare..."

Novellas

The Moontree Women - Kelly Hale
"Some people have timelines in their palms instead of lifelines..."

Rasputin After Tunguska

2011-12-22T14:01:00.001Z

It took another eight years to kill me, but it was that battle – not the base and perfidious treachery of humanity, that defeated me.

Do you think poison, and bullets and icy water could kill me? Unless I had been blasted first by power beyond theirs, I would have shrugged.

They called me evil, but mine was the evil of humanity: that stands against the awful emptiness of the Heavens.

But for me, the falling star would have struck Mother Russia in her glittering heart. My magic it was, my power, that drew it to the desolation, to my Siberia, to the empty places of the Earth. There it spent its evil. There its malice was ended.

There are forces that kill the flesh, and forces that kill the mind. The former powers slew eighty million trees to strike at me but I was the tree in the forest that did not fall. The latter powers I could not avoid.

Remember me.

Pour Vu

2011-12-13T16:48:00.000Z

Qu'est-ce que, à la fenêtre?
Que brûle derrière le verre
Les yeux de ma maîtresse
Ils montrent le feu de l'enfer dans l'attente
Ils sont en enfer, avec le désir fou et la luxure
Qu'est-ce que, à la fenêtre?
Juste une langue, appuyé contre la vitre désormais
Que la fonte des lèvres de ses baisers amener à passer
Les yeux de ma maîtresse
Et le crâne qui les intronise
Et les doigts osseux qui attaquent le loquet
Qu'est-ce que, à la fenêtre?
Rien, mais un vide maintenant, il est ouvert
Je n'ai pas besoin la peur derrière moi
Les yeux de ma maîtresse
Ceux doigts sur mon cou
La dureté dans mon dos
Qu'est-ce que, à la fenêtre?
Les yeux de ma maîtresse

Simon BJ

Water-weeds (in memorium Ruth Stone)

2011-11-28T22:26:00.002Z

Water-weeds

Under the lilies, still more that’s green.
Under the reflection of the emerald sun..
Life, full of other life. Life rich with dartings.

Who knows what a bug sees when its eyes bulge into the sky.
As it bounces on meniscus elasticity,
Like a birthday child in a hired castle of air.

We do not map to those unfathomable simplicities.
Colours pure as pin-pricks.
Tastes brief as seconds.
Reflexes certain as nightfall.
Whirled lives, in the sudden waters.

We have analogue and digital, and art.
And from the mountains of our skulls,
We peer into the pure life. Emptily

The Autumn Fires

2011-11-25T22:54:00.000Z

Suddenly the wheat fields catch afire
And sparks of red at the horizon's line
Blacken and sear, and catch the wind and gyre
Ascend to motes that die, as on a pyre
And all the golden light has ceased to shine
Suddenly the wheat fields catch afire
And burned as grey as hair, as limbs that tire
The dead line grows still closer now, and dire.
Blacken and sear, and catch the wind and gyre
As middle age sees death in grey attire
Burning the stalks ahead to stubble fine.
Suddenly the wheat fields catch afire
And hopes long held, combust as they aspire
Only to ashes, burned upon the vine
Blacken and sear, and catch the wind and gyre
The ancient fire that takes, and claims to sire
(for what it's worth) the new land and the wine.
Suddenly the wheat fields catch afire
Blacken and sear, and catch the wind and gyre.

DCNu Month 2 Weeks 2-3

2011-10-20T22:31:00.001Z

Batman & Robin #2 - Moderately okay, but based for me on a clunky and unlikely premise: that the killer in #1 is known to Bruce and, seemingly
on chatty terms with him. It seems a bit odd to carp about psychological believability in superheroic comic books, but I can't accept a Batman whom as Bruce Wayne stands chatting with a killer, and takes no action on the pettifogging grounds that "we both know a face-off is impossible with civilians around"...because Batman/Bruce ought to be able to take a villain down with a pen ina crowded lift unsuspected if need be. Grant Morrison is sorely missed here. This isn't likely to make the cut for month #3. 5/10

Mister Terrific #2 - Better. Some funky action and science and an interesting villain. The awful continual appearance of the "Bat Noel" advert is painful after the better art in the main body of the comic.
7/10

Demon Knights #2 - Paul Cornell is still writing Vandal Savage as if he were the fat one from The Warriors Three in Thor (which is funny but doesn't do him justice), the rest is hanging together well though, with nice asides, art, and some subtlety in the villains' regret about what their horde must do. 8/10

Frankenstein Agent of SHADE #2 - Likely to justify #3, but a tad under Demon Knights. Hard though to say why, as background and set up is solid, perhaps it's the rather clunky exposition of her past as Mazursky dives :
"Yet I found myself flooded with memories"~ again as Batman and Robin, I'm probably just missing Grant Morrison's deft handling of the characters in Seven Soldiers. 7/10

Batwoman #2 - As with one, astonishing art - although it does make me think Promethia is going to burst into the narrative at any moment. Batwoman's assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of 'Batman International' is refreshingly sane. 8/10

Batgirl #2 - Manages to sidestep what I didn't like about the ending of issue one, with Batgirl facing up to her momentary paralysis of fear as she takes on 'The Mirror' 8/10

Blue Beetle #2 - I'm enjoying this a lot, but I've seen some critiques from people who's opinion I respect to the effect that this reboot is a mere shadow of the former title (which I haven't read). I especially like the Blue Beetle's attempts not to kill, as his suit forces him to select lethal targets, and also throttles any attempt to say who he is. 8/10

Gren Lantern Corp #2 - Good art, and some sense of scope, but I'm starting to cool on the 'Corp did us wrong' implicit revenge narrative, and I just don't buy the 'repair our world by nicking seas/air etc' from others aspects. You can't bioform a world by dropping bits of randomly stripped ecologies on it, they have to actually work together. If the opposing forces are so tough they could rebuild a world in far easier ways. 5/10

Batman # 2 - Better than I'd hoped from my assessment of the plotting of #1, but I'm still worried that an Evil Nightwing(tm) may appear. I'm also not quite sure exactly how having an extra gargoyle saves a falling Batman when its been established that if he hits something its likely to kill him, and the bleeding heart billionaires congratulate each other moments remain cloying. 6/10

Legion of Suoerheroes #2 - A slam down, which meets the needs of action well, but the artist should have considered the shape of those ships in the final page a little more carefully. I still want to warm to this, and Paul Levitz writes the Legion well (as he should having been responsible for some of its heyday stories), but its only 50/50. 5/10

Wonder Woman #2 - good art, but a slight feel of poor gender politics/fumbling with the format. It's implicitly suggested that Wonder Woman's origin might be a "all you know is a lie", perhaps with her parentage being the philandering Zeus and Hypolita - this of course undoes several excellent stories preDCNu. This wouldn't matter if it didn't risk being crass. The Goddess 'Strife' [Eris?] is amusingly portrayed, and the intraA,azon interaction is well set out. Still a hairsbreadth off being a really good comic. Description of Paradise Island by Hera as "That cockless coop..." is surprising and apt. 8.5/10

Deadman #2 - Good set up, character work, and interaction with Club of Monsters. I'm slightly unsure of the value of casting doubt on the motives of Rama - which after all are the facilitators of the character's selling point / unique abilities. If Deadman and all his dropin bodies are foredamned what if anything is the point? 7/10

Justice League #2 - Interesting prose section at back re Wonder Woman, and the fact that I comment on that first says a lot about how uninteresting the main 'conflicted superheros fight on first meeting' main text is. Sketchbook at back just highlights hideousness of Superman's tech nouvre costume. On the plus side The Flash is worth reading here. 4/10

Resurrection Man #2 - the best bit, an old man in a retirement home, who may or may not have been a supervillian, is blunted by wondering when he was - if Superman's only been active for 6 yrs at most, the worst bit the salicious, violent, nonsense of the "Body Double" assassins. These bozos were vaguely toleravle in #1 when there seemed to be a chance they were hell's agents, but if as we now see they're actually intended to be 'real people' then they have all the moral complexity of cardboard anthrax.
3/10

3/4 into Month 2 and its going to be hard to get from 26 titles down to 13, not because all are great - I've still only got 4-5 great comics in the lot, but because the real stinkers have dropped out in month 1. Nevertheless Batman and Robin, Green Lantern Corp, and Resurrection Man are on the verge of falling.

Simon BJ

A cheerful villanelle, somewhat against the grain of the form...

2011-10-10T15:25:00.001Z

There is a shimmer in the summer air
A burning on the breeze of sparks alive
The sky flung, lift of leaves, the trembling there
Is pure electric life, spring-driven, dare!
Seeds fly to seek new worlds, bees leave the hive
There is a shimmer in the summer air
Windtossed the trees, as shampoo selling hair
Is shook, as swimmer's hair, wet from a dive
The sky flung, lift of leaves, the trembling there
And on the grass the women's legs are bare
To please the girls, men at their antics strive
There is a shimmer in the summer air
All things are burnished, bronzed, and debonaire
Or green with sap, as green as frog or chive
The sky flung, lift of leaves, the trembling there
The ancient fire that's new, and does not care
If men in black forbid the weeds to thrive
There is a shimmer in the summer air
The sky flung, lift of leaves, the trembling there

DCNu Month 2 Week 1

2011-10-05T12:09:00.000Z

An additional book that, I feel slightly conned by falls into my shopping bag this month but is very unlikely to make it to Month #3.

The Huntress #1 It's my fault of course, I bought this after glancing at DC Comic's All Access the "publicity page" at back of Action #2 (see below), which read quickly made me think that not only is an Earth-2 JSA book on the way, yay! but that the Huntress was back to her daughter of E-2 Batman and Catwoman origin. [This may have been my misreading]. I say may have been because The Huntress in TH#1 is so nondescript and her background so-real world dull, that its impossible to tell if this is E-1 or E-2 or [save one mention of Batman] DCnu at all.

Annoying extra at the back of this month's DC comics a couple of pages of
"Batman Noel" a graphic novel juxtaposing Christmas Carol and Batman in what looks to be a gruntingly macho and stupid way.

I also see in an interview with the writer (Sterling Gates) and artist (Rob Liefield) of Hawk and Dove, that Sterling thinks "when people read issue #3 they'll be crazy shocked". Hm. I'll be crazy shocked *if* people read issue #3. I certainly won't be. I didn't even get to #2.

Action Comics #2 : Best of today's. But some problems are becoming apparent.
Is it viable to make Lois's father, essentially a war criminal? Would Lex Luthor believe that obvious animal was a tool user, even a shape-shifting one? [And what does it mean to say that a shape-shifter even 'has' a natural form.] If Corben's the new mentallo in waiting is it too incestuous if he's Lois's ex? That said, it does what its name promises - it delivers "Action"! and Superman himself remains great! 8/10

Animal Man #2 Creepy art and set up. Ties in nicely with Swamp Thing #2 also out today with which its joint second place. Animal Man
fractionally ahead for not pulling an 'all you know is a lie' approach to past Swamp Thing stories. (7/10 and 6.5/10)

Batgirl : one of my month 1, week 1 successes not available today to me locally. May be out later in month.

Stormwatch #2 Sagging under its own weight of believability against a background of having to be in the DCnu. Is it likely that the Justice league are such saps as to run off after the first supervillain set up to take the blame as per here? Are we supposed to applaud a Martian Manhunter who - in Stormwatch - takes part in lying to his JLA colleagues? And someone who's aged backwards from the big bang...hm...breathing what during the leptonic era... There's "grand operatic" and there's ludicrous and its a traditionally fine line. 5/10

However its not Stormwatch that topples face first into stupidity, but Batman: Detective, which looks like it might not justify a third issue.
Having had the joker lose face in issue #1, he's now out of Arkham but no where in sight (unless he's the gimp in the jester costume in which case he's playing an out of character second-fiddle role), instead we watch as The Dollmaker sets up Batman and procedes to apparently either (a) capture Commissioner Gordon cut off his face and sew bits of other peoples faces back on, or (b) make a Commissioner Gordon alike from bits of other people.
The problems with this are (i) partly the mindless sadism, which worked when the Joker was having it done to himself, (ii) the sheer timing which doesn't work if it's (a) as Gordon's okay on page 19, after Batman left him to go at full speed into [the trap], the Dollmaker has to get Gordon, cross town, perform surgery during the three pages while Batman fights his 'children/underlings' and then reveal his handywork. It just collapses
into internal inconsistancy. Even if its (b) he still has to get Gordon's clothes across town and onto his pre-prepared 'Gordon'. This title also loses points for introducing another Wayne romance, some co-ordination between titles would help here, and since when are business executives all buff-indoor climbing wall he-men. 3/10

Simon BJ

DCNu Month 1 summary.

2011-10-05T11:18:00.000Z

DCNu Round Up Weeks 1-4 summary

Surviving to issue #2 at present, 26 comics. Mark shows 1(highest) to 26
lowest, in my estimation. Some comics tie. Oddly the best and worst of the twenty six, I can afford to buy in month 2 are both Superman titles.

Action Comics (1)
Justice League : Dark (2)
Deadman (3)
Wonder Woman (4)
All Star Western (4)
Animal Man (6)
Swamp Thing (6)
Frankenstein Agent of SHADE (8)
Demon Knights (8)
Stormwatch (8)
Batwoman (11)
The Flash (11)
Detective Comics (13)
Batgirl (13)
The Savage Hawkman (13)
Batman & Robin(13)
Mr Terrific(17)
Resurrection Man(17)
Batman(17)
Blue Beetle(17)
Green Lantern Corp(21)
Green Lantern: New Guardians(21)
Legion of Superheros(21)
The Fury of Firestorm(23)
Justice League(25)
Suoerman(26).

Books read since 29th September part 3 of 30 books on Kindle

2011-10-05T08:14:00.000Z

L. Sprague du Camp "The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales". I quite like du Camp, but this wasn't one of his best. It's light-hearted sword and sorcery, against a background of pre-sinkage Atlantis and bickering Gods.
It passed an agreeable hour or two, but it doesn't actually engage any emotions or complex thought. Best bit tamed medusi as weapons of war. Worst bit (remember this was written in 1953) a reference to female attractiveness as raising thoughts of rape in a male assembly. 3/10

E.C.Tubb "Galaxy of the Lost" [Cap Kennedy vol 1]

Read this as a child, so pleased to have chance to return to it (first 6 of these were reprinted by NEL when I was younger). This is as straight forward an sf adventure as the above is a s&s one, but it gains on the former by the sheer brutal survival / torments the author puts his 'pulled into another universe' starship survivors through, and this is conveyed ablely by Tubb's 'punch' sentence structure. Better than I remembered.
6/10

[Tally 6 out of 30 read, 2 non-30 read.]

Books read since 29th September Part 2 of 30 Books On Kindle

2011-10-03T08:15:00.000Z

E E "Doc" Smith & Stephen Goldin "The Imperial Stars" pure nostalgic adventure this. I first read these in the 70s in the Panther paper back
box set of vols 1-6. Written late in 'Doc''s life its not the Lensmen, but then again what is. The latter volumes are almost complete Goldin (so much so
that with cucial name changes he's also released them with a different vol 1 and character names on Kindle under the "Tsar Wars" heading), but this enables me to see what was Smith and in volume 1 its actually quite a bit.
The liberal feudalism imposed by force by a post-communist Imperium is his, as is the French/English background of the Circus of the Galaxy. Future pulp spy action that does all it claims. 7/10

Philip High "Speaking of Dinosaurs" Bought on spec as I enjoyed the wild flights of "Come Hunt An Earthman" (more about this anon when I reach it in the re-read). Not as good. This is the tale of why evolution was faked by aliens, of how humanity is of two kinds (not male and female, but PRINT and STRAIN) and the courtcase against our alien overlords. Put that way it sounds exciting and it has a WTF energy but it doesn't quite gell (even when the the hero and heroine are reduced to amoeba like gell creatures as their hidden genetic powers take hold before their rewritten as....) 5/10

Not part of the 30, another bonus 86p spend "The Black Goat of The Hundred Acre Wood" a Winnie the Pooh / H P Lovecraft's dreamlands mass-up. Quite affecting though it doesn't behoove a writer of pastiche/mashups to snip at Lovecraft's style within their text, also I certainly have no problem with both sets of dreams co-existing non-destructively, and would have preferred a less bleak take on this. 5/10

Simon BJ

Books read since 29th Sept part 1 of 30 books on Kindle

2011-10-01T14:19:00.001Z

Frank Herbert "The Green Brain"

A companion piece to 'Hellstrom's Hive' thematically, this is about ecology and humanity's connection with / difference to insects. Like HH it uses the co-option of attributes of one by the other to cast light on them both: here it's insects in South America facing a concerted attach by mankind (well the South Americans and the Chinese) co-opting human brain structures to learn how to make humanity stop. Do they do so? Well the end is beyond the scope of the novel as with HH, but equally as there sympathy is rapidly gained even for the most 'inhuman' of insectoid hive societies by its counterpoint with the inhumanities of our own. 8/10

John w. Campbell Jr "Cloak of Aesir"

Stories written under the Don Stuart pseudonym. Solid pulp stuff, if perhaps not quite so innovative as its author's own introduction thinks. By contrast Asimov's intro strives 'man'fully to defuse Campbell'S humancentric and sexist basis. Nevertheless while "The Machine" sequence is so obvious as to cast doubt on the Machines supposed logic [it's smashed one civilisation by being over helpful so it comes to earth and....] the two Aesir stories with their sympathetic (or see insects above maybe this is just me) immortal Sarn Mother, as distanced from her own race as from the humans her race conquerered, whom one suspects will part with power more willingly to the human revolt idc than to the Mothers of the Cities, generations removed from her immortal perspective, are well worth reading. Both are also in the old "Best of.." collection which can still be found in paperback 2nd hand. 6/10

Alan Ryker "When Cthulhu Met Atlach-Nacha"

A rom com / sex relationship / faith relationship play set against the backdrop of the End of Days, when Old Ones contend for the living souls and bodies of humanity and the stars are right. Only 86p on Kindle at present and in that context this is a sprightly, funny, piece. Perhaps it might not repay a higher cost, but as it is I was very glad to stumble over it: while answering my daughter questions re Spider Gods. (Technically this wasn't one of my 30 gollancz gateway/kindle purchases.] 9/10 at 86p otherwise 6/10

Simon BJ

DCNu Week 4 part 3

2011-09-29T22:02:00.001Z

The Savage Hawkman

Of all the DC characters, the worst served by previous reboots was Hawkman. Now provided those earlier misteps are avoided this is - like the Flash - a light clean action adventure opening. If there are bad notes they're minor -seeing Hawkman give up the nth metal adventurer life would be better after two or three issues of the adventures, and the name of the main villain isn't especially euphonious, but Hawkman's 'rebirth' with a new connection to the nth metal he doesn't yet understand is good. 7/10

Superman

And now we hit the worst three of week 4 in the remaining titles, and I wouldn't have guessed this would be one, but it is. It's wordy (half told as pretentious post facto 'newspaper text') it takes the dynamic late 30s early 40s Superman of Action Comics and serves up 5 years+ late a 'current' version based in the mid 70s "Morgan Edge, global communications' model of Superman's supporting cast. The action is lumpen, and the comic both cluttered and substanceless, and we see that in 5 years Superman's got nowhere with the retro Lois, here overly taken with blonde himbos. 3/10 and retroactively a lead anchor of -1 to Action too.

Teen Titans

The removal of kid sidekicks (except for the 4 Robins [or is it 5?] from history, leaves the whole rationale of this title flapping: so now we have the labourious gsthering under Red Robin, of Teen supers who all seem based on the adult DC heros without any 'legacy' or the conscious historical mentoring that was the only workable excuse for it. These are dangerous rogue Teens, or wouldbe if they weren't laughably ludicrous. Kid Flash has a stupid home made costume and a stupid character (goodbye heroic Wally West). 'Don't call me Wonder Girl' - a character who was in the old DCU a gawky believable teen who'd wangled magic artefacts from Zeus himself during a Wonder Woman adventure only to be kicked up 4-5 years of age and mammorial development by other authors/artists, here is glossed as a sassy, titty, unpleasant Teen thief, whom excuse me Red Robin, you should be arresting - or is it only a crime if its in Gotham? [and TOPTIP Wonder Girl if you don't want to be called Wonder Girl, don't dress like Wonder Woman in the first place] The Teen Titans is, as set out here, a heartless staggering zombi book, without any reason for it. Heroes who've be in action 5 years or less, don't need teen sidekicks yet (except Batman, and that's because they wanted to keep them, but just keeping the Robins risks making Batman : Child Endangerer a valid criticism). DC should have either kept sidekicks widely, or rolled back the Robins to just one. 2/10

Voodoo the 1/10 of week 4. Like Deathstroke a title with no rasion detre except salicious vicarious porn: here scantily clad strippers rather than there violence, except oh wait our heroine also kills someone. Way to go with the making me want to buy this, and btw I started the 52 comics with Action (alphabetically and in week 1) thinking I could share these comics with my 15 and 12 year old daughters and get their take on which ones to buy. Well this and Red Hood and certain others (I'd include Teen Titans) shows me how well DCnu cares about whether it hawks works that a family, or children, or girls mights stand a chance of enjoying.

Tomorrow I sum up week 4 and which titles I'll buy next month and look at the position of the new DC as a whole.

Simon BJ

DCNu Week 4 part 2

2011-09-29T20:41:00.002Z

The Flash

I enjoyed this, its well drawn and nicely set up. The Flash's history is practically a clean slate which could be good or bad (seen Teen Titans for bad) but here is a refreshing cleaning of the palate. The central plot is intriguing and Flash Fact! Iris West may have competition. 7/10 definite issue #2 purchase.

The Fury of Firestorm

A strong possible 6/10 marred only by a slight overplaying of the evil corporation card (they're so evil I thought they *had* to be the government), and the tub-thumpingness of the worthy but clunky antiracism/politics. This may all end in tears, but its got a solid grounding in basic exciting comics: and in passing it makes Captain Atom utterly redundant by covering anything he might do - twice!

Green Lantern New Guardians

In s quandary here. Kyle is rebooted from start which is good, and this started out looking as if it might pip "Green Lantern Corp" for my GL choice for #2 but this title seems to have kept the 'bequeathed the ring by Ganthet after all other Guardians are dead' intro, which rather begs the questions (a) what killed them, this time [wasn't it a big cross-over event last time that turned out not to be true?] and (b) is all the work rightly or wrongly that went into resetting up the Corp, just going to be undone here, and (c) never mind that why is Kyle being chosen by one of all the different spectrum rings. It ought to be possible not to have to invent half the back story. and this just seems non-commensurate with the other GL titles, so some #2s are going to suddenly be 'omg their all dead' or this is going to be 'omg they're not dead' : isn't it a bit early in the DCNu to hit this sort of disjunction whiplash? 5/10

I, Vampire

The moody art, vampires title - and the art is atmospheric if a little indistinct at crucial moments (is the final panel/page dead vampires or dead
vampire victims? However this plonkingly 'message from freds' its crucial believability problem, in a superhero universe a massive vampire war isn't a viable title, its a plot problem in someone elses title, at best a 6 issue one. This would be an adequate to poor first issue for an old Vertigo title, but as a mainline DCnu one its fighting agains the tide of the whole ocean.

Justice League Dark

The best of week 4, an excellent supernatural threat set up that doesn't require superheros to be ignorant of (say) vampires. Pat Milligan writes but
is clearly wearing a different Worsel writing head from his one on Red Lanterns. 9/10 very definitely a #2 and this takes my great comics in the relaunch count up to 3.5 (Action Comics, Batman Detective, Wonder Woman (.5), and this.

Simon BJ

DCNu Week 4

2011-09-27T21:27:00.001Z

Into the observation room mill the following:

All Star Western

Suprisingly good given that I don't like cowboys and of the cowboys I don't like I don't like grizzled bounty hunters the most. This is paced, almost literary and if it had fewer dead whores it would have been my pick of the week. 7/10 and a definite #2 buy.

Aquaman

There's a right way and a wrong way to redeem a character that's become a joke. Here we see the wrong way (For the right way see Rob Shearman's "Dalek" in Doctor Who, its to show the thing unconcerned that its a joke, doing its 'job' in the narrative with such panache that the jokes drop away even as people try to make them.) The wrong way is very similar but its to have the thing/person glowering at being a joke, being aware of it and basically whining, and its built on a false premise. That
premise being that in the DCNu Aquaman has in (at most 5 years) already become a joke. It's mot helped by the writer (Geoff Johns) thinking that
the opposite of joke is jerk. This is almost lifeless and only the fact that
Aquaman's quite hot wife loves him, pulls it up to 4/10. This is straight into the 'only buy if there's nothing better' slot.

Batman: The Dark Knight

A problem has developed here with the Bat titles there are too many of them and they're too alike. This is Batman Detective plus Batman, with one possible love interest and one different cliffhanger difference. This title coming last in the month needs its own unique identity, and its absolutely not got it. Again while some of my readers disagree with prejudging plots, this looks like a not very interesting thing to do with [spoiler] turning him into a muscle bound hulk figure. 4/10 as with Aquaman (but 3.5 because there aren't three better Aquaman comics running in parallel.

Blackhawks

Fictional planes are dull. This needed state of the art "real world" research and cutting edge design. Instead the Blackhawks have got a lot of star trek a like alien flying tech that might do anything, and is thus inchoate. Nanotech rewriting people also makes their eyes go all mangary.
And the 'writing' of people's no more believable. I can believe that the
Blackhawks believe they need to explain the idea of nicknames at length,
I'm surprised they're not explaining them to each other. 3/10

Still to come...

The Flash
The Fury of Firestorm
Green Lantern New Guardians
I, Vampire
Justice League Dark
The Savage Hawkman
Superman
Teen Titans
Voodoo

On previous weeks showing 6 of these will be good to potentially great, with only one or two really good. 4 will be essentially an affront to God and Man alike, and 3 will be also rans. We shall see.

Simon BJ

DCNu Round Up Weeks 1-3 summary

2011-09-27T21:18:00.000Z

As we enter week 4. Here are my survivors from weeks 1-3. I've selected 19 comics so far which range from tolerable to excellent, and I've discarded 12 as having squandered any potential good will on my part. A small huddled mass of 7 subpar titles could still theoretically make it into my issue #2 buying pile if week 4 proves worse than the 50/50 split I've observed to date. (Bracketted number is order in week). All titles have now been read twice so bracketted number may differ from my first "immediate reaction" out of 10 score.

Surviving to issue #2 at present

Week 0 : Justice League
Week 1 : Action Comics(1)
Animal Man(3)
Batgirl(6)
Detective Comics(2)
Stormwatch(5)
Swamp Thing(4)
Week 2 : Batman & Robin(6)
Batwoman(2)
Demon Knights(3)
Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E(1)
Mr Terrific(5)
Resurrection Man(4)
Week 3 : Batman(4)
Blue Beetle(3)
DC Universe Presents: Deadman(1)
Green Lantern Corp(5)
Legion of Superheros(6)
Wonder Woman(2)

Reserves/Possibles if week 4's comics are all hopeless!

Week 1 Batwing(7)
OMAC(9)
Static Shock(8)
Week 2 Green Lantern(8)
Superboy(7)
Week 3 Birds of Prey(7)
Supergirl(8)

Out of the race. Even if I end up with less than 26 comics through to month #2 I am not buying any of these...

Week 1 Green Arrow(12)
Hawk and Dove(13)
Justice League International(10)
Men of War(11)
Week 2 Deathstroke(12)
Grifter(11)
Legion Lost(9)
Suicide Squad(10)
Week 3 Captain Atom(10)
Catwoman(9)
Nightwing(11)
Red Hood & The Outlaws(12)

DC Reboot part 2 and 3

2011-09-23T22:19:00.005Z

A combined review set for weeks 2 & 3. I've been less enthusiastic about these because without a single stand out like Action #1, the balance has been around 50/50 okay-to-good vs drivel. To be far, this isn't in itself bad but I was hoping for perhaps 4 really good comics, and so far I'm running at 2.5.

Here goes:

Grifter #1. Utterly uninteresting. A rogue ex super something or other whose costume is basically a scarlet bag over his head is uninteresting pursued for no apparent reason and falls out of a plane with a hat on. An odd nothing of an issue. 2/10

Legion Lost #1. The arts okay, and there's some potential in time lost future legion of superhero characters in the present day. But characterisation is patchy and if you don't already care for the cast there's little to make you. 4/10

Green Lantern #1 Interesting art, an artist I liked on Superman's 3D escapades, but it does make Hal Jordan look deranged. Sadly the plot helps with this and once again the intellect of the Guardians of the Universe and the social skills of Hal prove wonky in the extreme. 3/10

Frankenstein Agent of Shade #1. Good but essentially Seven Soldiers repeated with marginally less flare. Still a definite #2 sale, to me. 7/10

Demon Knights #1 Oh I really wanted to like this more than I did, but Vandal Savage as potentially good hearted rogue? Sir Justin as peevish racist? Medieval Amazons as literal men-castrators? Etrigan the romantic? It's certainly true as Paul Cornell has said in interview that these are exciting disparate characters, but I'm suffering here the inverse problem to Legion Lost. There I was lost because I didn't know the characters enough to care. Here I'm distanced because they seem so oddly acharacteristic. Nevertheless it does have pace and nice villainy. Worth a #2 : 6/10

Deathstroke #1 Odious villain kills people and then his allies. I honestly don't see any reason for this title. 1/10

Batman & Robin #1 A lesser title now its not Dick Grayson & Damian. Bruce here lacks chemistry as a father and frankly I still think it'll be revealed eventually that Damian is literally the Devil. Still readable 6/10
I like the line "why not it's my boat." though.

Red Lanterns #1 So take my review for Deathstroke imagine it painted Red and in space. Yes. 1/10 I'd say something favourable about the art, but the artist chose to take this gig, so I won't.

Batman #1 A quandary this one. Good art, well characterised, pacy. Dialogue has a bit of a zing. But and its a big but [SPOILER] as the possible [SPOILER] after he's just spent a year being [SPOILER]? oh [SPOILER OFF].
Its not big and its not remotely plausible. I predict an Evil Twin. 5/10

Birds of Prey #1 Another comic that like Demon Knights, I wanted to like more than I did. Its basic solid intro, with no genuine depth but a reasonable patina. May suffer from loss of Oracle / Batgirl, I don't know because I didn't follow the title pre DCNU. 4/10

Blue Beetle #1 Now this is the good new, young exciting hero action that Static Shock wasn't. I like this a lot. 8/10

Captain Atom #1 Strange painted art that hopes to be impressive but is merely distracting while the main character whose blue and naked aka Doctor Manhatten but without the intellect, introspection, or novelty, suffers a disassociation. Some numbers that may mean something appear annoyingly from time to time. 250:08:52:31 over a backwashed 6574. I've wracked my brains over it and I'm not stupid, but what is it intended to convey? 3/10

Catwoman #1 Many people have complained about the porny art, the cat & bat sex etc. I'm more incensed by the casual re-booting of Catwoman as ex-abused woman and murderer. Right *that's empowerment". Okay it maybe the
Frank Miller Year One origin, but if so this would have been an excellent chance to simply forget it. 4/10

DC Universe Presents Deadman #1 The best of its week. Well drawn, and intriguingly set out. The only worry here is why isn't this an on-going Deadman title, and Deathstroke say not a one-off issue of DC Presents.
This cleanly and effectively resets Deadman and makes his problems visible.
9/10

Green Lantern Corps #1 Better than any other of the GL family titles thus far, and GL New Guardians I'd hazard isn't going to o'er top it. Unfortunately that's still only a 5/10. The art's nice, Gardiner's nearly human, Stewart seems to have forgotten how to interact with people but
is still passionate, but once again alien non-human GIs are stupid slice and dice fodder. I'd have liked to see a #52 issue month in which if only as a novelty and to stake out clear-water from Marvel, no one got brutally killed. [And yes I can square that with my liking of Detective, because it
wasn't the killings I thought worked]. The aquatic aliens are very badly designed, but I accept that's a critism only I would make.

Legion of Superheros #1. Around the level of Legion Lost +/-1 and for the same reason. If you don;t know the legion, why would you care. The threat is the Dominators but we never see a Dominator or an assessment of what the threat is, we're assumed to know it. At the end a figure crashed through a wall as a threat, the tag line its a Daxamite! Now I know what a Daxamite is, but nothing in the comic tells me, and the art makes it look like a giant, rather than a superman-level power entity. 5/10

Nightwing #1 Unclear art leaves it open if Dick is now a casual killer or not. This may be meant to tie-in with Batman #1 but see my comment there.
It's stupid and it doesn't work. 3/10

Supergirl #1 The new [current] Superman costume is no more appealing on Supergirl here. Her introduction is sparce in a bad way, and needs to be the backdrop to a really thought through character study, that it simply isn't. 3/10

Batwoman #1 Astomishing art, and worth the cost and time, but will need to
run for a bit to see if there's actually a story that merits the gloss. 7/10

Superboy #1 A return to the origin of the post-crisis Superboy, but while reasonably drawn, and written lacks spark. I've seen Scott Lobdell write better than this (but cf Red Hood...) 4/10

Mister Terrific #1 The daring tale of a man who dares to doubt God and who will therefore be implicitly put in the wrong, and explicitly be brainwashed. A bit of a waste. 5/10 Also since when are brain transplants / mind transfers impossible - I suppose the retroannulment of the JSA means we've lost The Ultrahumanite and his / her / its bodyswapping in the 1940s. Bother, I liked that.

Resurrection Man #1. Grifter done right sounds like faint praise and it is.
Even so this reaches a 5/10.

Suicide Squad #1 Again this has been the target for attacks for the sexing up of Harlequin, and the slimming of Amanda Waller. While noting that : lets add the utter inanity of the Squads supposed psychological testing and the dull dull art which doesn't even aspire to functionally excitement.
3/10

Red Hood and the Outlaws. And I thought Deathstroke was purposeless drivel.
At least he was always a stupid macho assassinating bore, at least one character in this book was once a kind, loving thoughtful and yet thoroughly alive and sexual woman, with an alien eroticism. Sadly now the character has been rendered incapable of telling two humans she's sleeping with apart (which their characterisation admittedly services)or remembering seemingly her former lover and friends, and what was once a person becomes basically a sexthing. To be fair this may be part of the plot with stepford-wifette-starfire being revealed as this-way-for-a-reason, but even so : too little too unpleasent. Imagine a Superman comic that rebooted him as optimally pleasuring Lana Lang and Lena Lemoris while being unable to tell them apart and having forgotten Lois at all. Respectful character usage?

Wonder Woman #1 My .5 hit. Lots of potential, interesting art: things I didn't expect the dead horses becoming [SPOILERS]. But on the weaker side.
I don't see Diana as the grab people in her room by the throat type, and
is the art re [SPOILER] intended to convey how he is actually seen by people because....TOPTIPS attractive women in superhero filled universe do not go up to penthouse with glistening blue/black skinned man in a suit whose eyes are empty pits of yellow fire because its bound to end in tears.
9/10 to silly silly supermodels 2/10.

Summary best DEADMAN, BLUE BEETLE middling WONDER WOMAN / FRANKENSTEIN, a fraction lower DEMON KNIGHTS, awful awful DEATHSTROKE, RED LANTERNS, RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS.

Simon BJ

Revenge ABC

2011-09-22T21:46:00.000Z

A is for Arsenic best in a bun
B is for bloody dismembering fun
C is for clicking the catch on a gun
D is Deadly and Venomous Snakes
E for Erasing my early mistakes
F for First Finding Five Fathomless Lakes
G is for Grinding my teeth til they bleed
H is for hanging which may spill dark seed
I is Insanity (the plea I may need)
J is for Jettisoning you from a plane
K's for Killing quite simply and plain
L's for living leeches let into your brain
M is for mutagens left in the stew
N is for Nuclear overkill too
O is for oxygen without which you're blue
P's pretty poisons in purple and pink
Q is the quizzical pause on the brink
R is the razor in the treacherous rink
S is the sorrow I'll fake when you're dead
T is the tears I'll be careful to shed
U's the umbella 'tip' sheathed now in lead
V is vile vengence, the viler the better
Ws for water, the drowningest letter
X for X-ray laser (techno-go-getter)
Y is for yoghurt, that's really plague treats
Z is for zealously hiding these tweets.....oops

Simon BJ

DC Reboot part 1

2011-09-07T23:02:00.000Z

In my madness I intend to buy and read all 52 of the DC Comics#1 relaunches. Here's a brief SBJ guide to the ones I've read so far.

Justice League. Set 5 years ago, a hunted by the GCPD Batman encounters Green Lantern and faces off with a young Superman. Flimsy. The Batman / GL interaction is out of the Millar 'Batman and Robin' school but less funny. Superman's costume redesign is crass. And yet it does have some pace and reasonable art aside from the designs. 7/10

Action Comics. Best of these so far, by Grant Morrison. Set - implicitly - more than 5 years ago (6?) a young Superman not yet in the risible costume from JL#1 battles street level social crime and unfairness, while Lex Luthor sets a remarkably visual trap. Tons of nice touches. 10/10

Animal Man. A semi-retired Animal Man, is faced by horrors out of the animal kingdom. Interesting family background and appealing art. Still implicitly mining Moore's Swamp Thing (cf Swamp Thing #1 later).
8/10

Batman: Detective Comics. Neobrutal depiction of the Joker, and reasonable characterisation of the Batman and art. I wasn't expecting how this comic ends, but I'm not sure this is a viable long term approach. However I'd buy #2. 8/10 Setting 'current' Bat-continuity, I think, but Gotham politics re Batman murky.

Batgirl: Good art, and initially good characterisation, but I don't buy the cliff-hanger, and dislike the weakness it reads into Barbara. [Policewomen seems about to shoot Batgirl as a murder for letting real murder escape while frozen with fear]. 7/10

Batwing: Batman of Africa. Art glossy, writing poor, which is a pity as this could have been an interesting pitch. However I'd be surprised if this gets past issue #6, oh and its written by Judd Winick. 5/10

Green Arrow: A younger unbearded Olie, with nothing to distinguish him at all. Even duller than Judd Winick. Jurgens art is functional without creating any sort of verisimilitude. 4/10

Hawk and Dove, drawn by Rob Liefield and might as well have been written by him. Crass nonsense and jingistic posturing makes sense for Hawk, but Dove has no rebutals and Rob still can't draw feet or people. 1/10

Justice League International. The comedy version of the JL sanctioned by the UN (deeply and unpleasently portrayed as wingeing stereotypes). Utterly obvious with none of the charm of the old Keith Giffen JLI. 4/10

Men of War. Everything wrong with Hawk and Dove except the art, in this tale of why US soldiers are top notch, against a background of unexplained superpower action. 3/10

OMAC. Not awful but in a way the worst disappointment of this batch. Kirby's One Man Army Corp was so far ahead of its day that its first story still shocks, this bulked up rubbishy version can't even be bothered to sell its main character with what O.M.A.C. stands for unexplained in #1 and Giffen's art wasted. 4/10

Static Shock. Okay standard DC comics second rate comic, in both story and art. 6/10

Stormwatch. Paul Cornell manages fine, but Stormwatch is a mixed mashup of Stormwatch and The Authority restarted from scratch with the Martian Manhunter added in, and its an unsympathetic setup within the DC universe unless the reader has affection for the old Authority, and if they do, well this isn't quite them. Still the younger Apollo and Midnighter characters are set up, and this may yet gell. The 'horniest' joke and the Clawed Moon are worth a point in themselves though. 8/10

Swamp Thing. Like all the post Moore Swamp Things this verges on the unecessary, but it has at least set up a reasonable central mystery. and the art is sufficient. 7/10

Best so far : Action Comics, Stormwatch, Batman Detective, Swamp Thing.
Animal Man. Worst: Hawk & Dove, Men of War, potentially O.M.A.C.

The Angel: Second glance

2011-07-10T22:52:00.001Z

Terzangelle: "The Angel"

The angel at the window has a face of polished stone
Half smiling, half frowning, framed by ancient wood
Each Angel that you walk passed it is standing there alone
Angelic yes, but yet again, its empty face’s mood
The Angel disavows, adrift, its image’s refrain
Half smiling, half frowning, framed by ancient wood
Endlessly varied by the fall of night’s abyssal rain
Angel of the Darkness, watch us with your softening eyes.
The Angel disavows, adrift, its image’s refrain
Has nothing left to tell, the world, but all the ages’ lies,
Endlessly repeated in the patois of old pain
Angel of the Darkness, watch us with your softening eyes,
There almost seems a living will inside that carved disdain
Heartlessly, hearing all the cries that living human’s make
Endlessly repeated in the patois of old pain
Angel of many many moods, that only stone can take.
The angel at the window has a face of polished stone
Heartlessly, hearing all the cries that living human’s make
Each Angel that you walk passed. It is standing. They’re all one.

Simon BJ

The Angel

2011-07-07T21:51:00.002Z

Terzangelle: "The Angel"

The angel at the window has a face of polished stone
Half smiling, half frowning, framed by ancient wood
Each window that you walk passed it is standing there alone
Angelic yes, but yet again, its empty face’s mood
The Angel disavows, adrift, its image’s refrain
Half smiling, half frowning, framed by ancient wood
Endlessly varied by the fall of night’s abyssal rain
Angel of the Darkness, watch us with your softening eyes.
The Angel disavows, adrift, its image’s refrain
Has nothing left to tell, the world, but all the ages’ lies,
Endlessly repeated in the patois of old pain
Angel of the Darkness, watch us with your softening eyes,
There almost seems a living will inside that carved disdain
Heartlessly, hearing all the cries that living human’s make
Endlessly repeated in the patois of old pain
Angel of many many moods, that only stone can take.
The angel at the window has a face of polished stone
Heartlessly, hearing all the cries that living human’s make
Each window that you walk passed. It is standing. They’re alone.

Terzanelle: "The Merry Maying"

2011-05-18T22:11:00.000Z

The banners of the golden sun, are spread athwart the cloud
King Arthur's knights are stirring in their sleep
And all along the cobbled streets the hooves are sounding loud
And the Naiads bask where water willows weep
Can we not rise with Arthur, when England's in its drear?
King Arthur's knights are stirring in their sleep
Can they not wake for just a month, in play and not in fear
Why must it be our greatest need that brings them wide-awake
Can we not rise with Arthur, when England's in its drear?
Let all have picnics by the spring, their sleepborn thirsts to slake
And at the springs let Pegaiai, bear wonders on their brows
Why must it be our greatest need that brings them wide-awake
And the Krenaiai rise from fountains, with all that joy allows
Let Romance bear its shining swords, although our backs are bent
And at the springs let Pegaiai, bear wonders on their brows
Let all forget that fairy gold will very soon be spent
The banners of the golden sun, are spread athwart the cloud
Let Romance bear its shining swords, although our backs are bent
And all along the cobbled streets the hooves are sounding loud

Simon BJ

Simile And The World Similes With You.

2011-05-10T21:14:00.000Z

Like the arrow that Robin's arrow splits
Like the spitton that just avoids the spits
Like the hawk that dives and misses every chicken
Like the child at the smallpox party who won't sicken
Like the explorer who's lost parallel to the trail
Like the alleged japanese scientist with no whale
Like the cornered character who's thumb hasn't a pie
Like the pig who doesn't return to his sty.
Like the man who sees true love alight on others
Like the eighth gal stood up by the seven brothers
Like the spiral downward circle to the drain
Like the fear that something's gone wrong with my brain
Like the patagonian skin that cheered up Chatwin
Like the worry that they killed her for a hat pin
Like the dreadful dying stutter of the coldfish in the gutter
Like the mutter that you utter when the toast is out of butter
Like the thing that is exactly how I feel.

Simon BJ

Terzanelle: "Cthulhu"

2011-05-10T18:51:00.003Z

Beneath dark ocean currents, silted spires
That Twist and embody strange geometries
Like fruiting fungi, like refined desires
Like things wrought weirdly from corpse-candle trees
That House whose Windows look in, into Sights
That Twist and embody strange geometries
Outside of time, where otherworldly nights
Fall like black infinite dominoes away
That House whose Windows look in, into Sights
Quite unsuspected by the surface day
Is what it contains, evil? All our rules
Fall like black infinite dominoes away
No moral utilitarians or their schools
Can confine Him, who is Housed in Drowned R'yleh
Is what it contains, evil? All our rules
Are but a sheen we fein, that's passed in play
Beneath dark ocean currents. Silted spires,
Can confine Him? Who is Housed in Drowned R'yleh
Like fruiting fungi, like refined desires.

Simon BJ

Villanelle "Wolftracks"

2011-05-10T18:18:00.001Z

Let none cry wolf, who have not seen its fur
Up close, and shuddered at its powerful reek
The breath from out its teeth, upon the air.

We must not start, at tremble of a hair
Nor spread vile rumour when we try to speak
Let none cry wolf, who have not seen its fur.

We should take care, lest we have too much care
Turn everything to Watching, as we seek
The breath from out its teeth, upon the air.

Sometimes, the wolves will sleep within their lair
Life will be joyful, and none harm the weak
Let none cry wolf, who have not seen its fur

And yet, without a wolf, what spice is there?
What scent will thrill, tuned senses at their peak?
The breath from out its teeth, upon the air?

Wolfless, and loveless, under grey despair
We do not seek to die, or court the bleak.
Let none cry wolf, who have not seen its fur
The breath from out its teeth, upon the air.

Simon BJ

Recent Tweets Archived

2011-05-09T22:46:00.000Z

Hello, Atlantic Books? Do you have "Instances of Human Predation By Great Whites"? You Do! Thanks! My name? It's Sharkley: G. W. Sharkley.

After a period of managing alternate-slovakian empires, Cadet Thomas Spindle was cashiered out of the Time Patrol with a czech-herd history.

Effusive: prone to swearing. #UED
Transformative : Like a giant robot #UED

#cablenowandnext Through The Wormhoke Bear Gyrlls : Born Survivor (Discovery Channel+1) Survive nanospagettifation Mr Smug. 07 May 2011 00:32:56

Subsistance: Diagnosis of Formicidae beneath a closed tissue sac. #UED

Of course in those days it wasn't about marketing. It was all subsistance in those days!

Endorse: last stallion in the parade. #UED

#computershakespear
King P2P
The Matrex Wives Of Winsor
Intello
Alls Well That E-mails Well
"Titus Android OS" [Paul Ebbs]
Peripherals Prince of Tyre
A Midsummer Night's Stream
RAMlet
iMacbeth

#cablenowandnext Primeval Jonathan Creek "Ug, go in hollow tree and Ug killed by bear on hill, Ug Twins!" (Watch) 12:29 AM May 6th

Semantics: Observe masculine involuntary spasms #UED

Simon BJ

News from D'nalgne

2011-05-06T20:51:00.002Z

People who think dragon is good for the country, still mad. Peasant
who claimed he could tame dragon, now unpopular. Towns on fire, many.

Simon BJ

Pantoum: "At The Circus"

2011-04-26T21:10:00.000Z

The Ringmaster is very fine and grand
His moustache curls and sets defiance to razors
He carries a black whip, and his command
Arouses crowds to faint and loosen blazers.

His moustache curls and sets defiance to razors
He twirls and struts, his hour upon the sand
Arouses crowds to faint and loosen blazers
And sal volatale's on every hand.

He twirls and struts his hour, upon the sand
The horses print their hooves and bear live girls
And sal volatale's on every hand
As gasping crowds observe their peacock furls

The horses print their hooves and bear live girls
Through rings of fire, and over yawning voids
As gasping crowds observe their peacock furls,
Seem to catch fire, but every trap avoids.

Through rings of fire and over yawning voids
The clowns perform in mockery what was grace
Seem to catch fire, but every trap avoids
A diabolic point, but gapes with smiling face.

The clown perform in mockery what was grace,
Until their antics summon up a devil
A serious point, but gapes with smiling face
Is all clowns can provide to conquer evil.

Until their antics summon up a devil
He carries a black whip and his command
Is "All clowns can provide to conquer": Evil,
The Ringmaster is very fine and grand.

Simon BJ

Terzanelle: "On Bountiful Nature"

2011-04-26T20:11:00.000Z

Terzanelle : "On nature's bounty"

When jolly clouds cavorted before the jolly sun
Then on the green the jolly daisies reared
Their newly framed young faces to greet the new day's fun

I heard the grey wolf howl and was afeared
When nannies with perambulators walked the woodland paths
Then on the green the jolly daisies reared

And the babies were all cleaned at night and happy in their baths
I dreamed a future darker then than dawn
When nannies with perambulators walked the woodland paths

I heard the wolf cries on the wind, saw blood upon the lawn
Dewed with red from all the slaughter of the deed
I dreamed a future darker then than dawn

But like Casandra, no one heard my rede
Beware the things nature demands to make its hunters rear
Dewed with red from all the slaughter of the deed

For nature's powered by all the thirsts that we are bound to fear
When jolly clouds cavorted before the jolly sun
Beware the things nature demands to make its hunters rear
Their newly framed young faces to greet the new day's fun

Simon BJ

Guest Author: James Thurber

2011-04-25T08:52:00.000Z

Just because it's a pity he seems to be going out of print, these days.

The Moth and the Star.

A YOUNG and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counselled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. "Stars aren't the thing to hang around," she said; "lamps are the thing to hang around." "You get somewhere that way," said the moth's father. "You don't get anywhere chasing stars." But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, "You haven't burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!"

The moth left his father's house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.

Terzanelle: "Sarah-Jane Smith"

2011-04-20T19:46:00.000Z

Now the last ventilation shaft has opened out
Into the glorious opening of the daylight's fire
And life burns bright in the brave heart to shout
That Harry Sullivan has earned her ire!

We who salute her, will see her form go
Into the glorious opening of the daylight's fire
Though as we blink our tears as cold as snow
May hinder her departure from our sight
We who salute her, will see her form go
As in a dark glass, though the screens of light
Preserved as memories that cheat us not
May hinder her departure from our sight

We must accept that parting of the ways
And while imagination still remains new
Preserved as memories that cheat us not
We are made better for the one we knew
Now the last ventilation shaft has opened out
And while imagination still remains new
And life burns bright in the brave heart to shout

Simon BJ

Terzanelle: "After Big Brother's Overthrow"

2011-04-19T19:06:00.000Z

The telescreen is shucked of meaning, void of thought
Pearly gray, upon dove, over battleship gray
A freedom without purpose, cold as nought
That has a temperature can be cold, as cold as day
Under the eye of strange automata

Pearly gray, upon dove, over battleship gray
Intolerant, unswayable as gauge barometer
Recording facts irrefutable as air
Under the eye of strange automata
That do not even tick, to show they're there

And still our Masters dare to cite Utopia
Recording facts irrefutable as air
That every need, ends in a cornucopia
That full consumption, must refute despair

And still our Masters dare to cite Utopia
I stand, and fix the noose, above my chair
The telescreen is shucked of meaning, void of thought
That full consumption, must refute despair
A freedom without purpose, cold as nought

Simon BJ

Villanelle: "As If A King"

2011-04-18T09:07:00.001Z

When death comes for me, none will break their stride
To mourn me, save for few, and those not long
It will not be as if a King had died.

I must confess the thought it wounds my pride
(My little pride, of lion cubs far from strong)
When death comes for me, none will break their stride.

My children will perhaps feel a dark tide
But that, quick, fleeting sense of something wrong
It will not be as if a King had died.

For all that is, is selfish, deep inside
A death's forgotten, fleeting as a song
When death comes for me, none will break their stride.

Oh I could wish for tears that never dried
But what's the use, for pain, but to prolong
it, will not be as if a King had died.

I should be glad that grief from them has shied
Like nightmare bawked by beating of a gong
When death comes for me, none will break their stride
It will not be as if a King had died.

Simon BJ

Villanelle: "At Camelot's Fall"

2011-04-17T23:27:00.000Z

The heron that calls softly in the reeds
Disturbed by ripples, of the vanished sword,
Knows nothing of the wounded Arthur's needs.

Then, when slow moving through the meads
The seven queens' dry tears are scored
The heron that calls softly in the reeds,

Makes counter point and sorrow feeds
For the first time, for those of Avalon's board
Know nothing of the wounded Arthur's needs.

Save what immortal fay and Merlin's breeds
Can guess. And are they closer to a human Lord?
Than heron that calls softly in the reeds.

Only one single straining word proceeds
From Arthur, and those who hear not that chord
Know nothing of the wounded Arthur's needs.

That word is "Guinevere", then silence leads,
a gap where scornful romance mutters 'bawd'.
The heron that calls softly in the reeds,
Knows nothing of the wounded Arthur's needs.

Simon BJ

Villanelle: "The Last Page"

2011-04-15T14:50:00.001Z

The last page is the first I read
I could not bear it if you died
From dreams unending I have fled.

Though some say it spoils what's ahead
I must know now what will abide
The last page is the first I read.

I trusted for my daily bread
But now I fear the prophets lied
From dreams unending I have fled.

Your letter rests beneath my head
Under the pillow's cooler side,
The last page was the first I read.

And might this one day be your bed?
Or did your postscript my hopes chide?
From dreams unending I have fled.

The groom is faceless, masked, or dead,
You end the story as a bride.
The last page is the first I read,
From dreams unending I have fled.

Simon BJ

Pickman's Mottoes

2011-04-10T20:38:00.001Z

Uncovered a small, leather?, bound note book proporting to contain the thoughts on art of one Richard Upton Pickman, most seem to be distortions of other artist's thoughts.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, yet.

Classic painting paints the mask, modern art the face, I the skull.

There is no greater enemy to art, than the armed policeman in the hallway.

Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend. Must start using conventional pigments and brushes.

Simon BJ

Villanelle: “Camelot Beseiged”

2011-03-28T12:55:00.001Z

Oh you should tremble under night's blue cloak
Who dared to think the ancient powers were weak
That thunder was no pagan hammer stroke.

Now that the Green Knight wears his crown of oak
And all the powers of Earth are at their peak
Oh you should tremble under night's blue cloak

The sleeping knights of Arthur are awoke
By visions of the Grail that they must seek,
That thunder was no pagan hammer stroke.

Above, imagine Angels in the smoke
Contending against Armageddon bleak
Oh you should tremble under night's blue cloak

When whipporwills cry, and toads are all a-croak
We pray with Sir Gawain who yet was meek
That thunder was no pagan hammer stroke.

Now that upon High Camelot, the wreak
has fallen of Le Fay's envy and picque,
Oh you should tremble under night's blue cloak
Who dared to think the ancient powers were weak.

Simon BJ

Villanelle: "At Camelot's Height"

2011-03-25T22:04:00.002Z

Step lively, and step lightly on the green
We will have no fear of the fairy folk
You move between their presences, unseen
The stones may mope and mock with faces' mean
But those they're carved for, are a fading joke
Step lively, and step lightly on the green
See how the moonlight casts its grey-white sheen
Like sword through Arthur's Anvil, at a stroke
You move between. There presences, unseen,
Yearn for the tyranny that once has been
But 'Caliburn has since struck off that yoke
Step lively, and step lightly on the green
Give thanks now, banshee's mute and cannot keen
And all the wailing power of Fay, is broke
You move between. They're presences unseen.
Much now has faded, gone where none can ween
Who now would fear them, if they once awoke
Step lively, and step lightly on the green
You move between their presences, unseen.

Simon BJ

Villanelle "The Empty Sky"

2011-03-25T09:32:00.001Z

The empty sky does not hold heaven's face
No holy visage shines from Zion's Hill
It is the image here in our embrace
I do not say joy, has no sense of place
Street corner partings cry of kisses, still
The empty sky does not hold heaven's face
Beyond the warmth of earth's no special grace
Eternal bliss, or dark satanic mill?
It is the image here in our embrace
To strive for what's beyond is no disgrace
O'er all the cosmos let us travel, still
The empty sky does not hold heaven's face
Though in the end we master time and space
What is our purpose, forged inside our will?
It is the image here in our embrace
Love for each other, is the secret lace
The filligree of good, the shield 'gainst ill
The empty sky does not hold heaven's face
It is the image here in our embrace.

Simon BJ

Troillette III

2011-03-19T20:44:00.001Z

Poetic Desperation

I'll try a serious villanelle
when I have done three triolets
Comedy may not fit the bill so well:
I'll try a serious villanelle
(As budgies woo by trill-a-bell
Or florists sigh with violets)
I'll try a serious villanelle
when I have done three triolets.

Simon BJ

Triollette II

2011-03-19T20:06:00.000Z

Love's Problem's Won

Love that hides not its aimed intent
Strikes to the heart for good, or ill
Luck may make Cupid's arrow sow dissent.
Love that hides not its aimed intent
May still with brashness its love-letters rent
But even if it fails it's still:
Love that hides not. Its aimed intent
Strikes to the heart for good or ill

Simon BJ

Triolettes, lovely Triolettes! (1st attempt)

2011-03-19T08:04:00.000Z

The Punchline

The Skull that grins beneath the skin
Does not explain its final joke
It's not concerned applause to win
The Skull that grins, Beneath the skin
The Skull is cleaned, as worms begin,
And from its mask (the face)is broke
The Skull that grins beneath the skin,
does not explain: its final joke

Simon BJ

Rambeau

2011-03-18T08:14:00.002Z

....Rambeau put down his paint brush and scowled at the model, who clutched
the draperies coquettishly to her. Idly he drew his French Congo service
machette from its leather holster at his shoulder and brought it down again
and again on the livid ugly features of the painted form.

"Mon Dieu, mon cour," Antionette breathed, 'what is it drives you so'.

Rambeau hesitated, how could he tell her, how convey the horrors of the
Congo, of the men left behind, of his return to a Paris which had forgotten
his art.

"The burnt umber," he said, "it holds too much memory".

From Rambeau Deux : Les Etoiles du Mal.

Microjokes etc from Twitter (March 2011)

2011-03-16T00:30:00.000Z

#RamplingSidRumpoOfTheBailey #Comedydramamashups "M'Lord the defendant could not have stole the wogglers mooly as I will ably prove."

#misunderstoodmemes
Fern Britton : Leptosporangiate UK!
Smiley Cuture : Tinker Tailor Soldier Bacteriologist

Right wing extremists carrying a businessman's bag set to explode were easily convicted yesterday in a 'primer fascist case'.

"On days when he was only a tiny bit murdery Dr Jeckyll would drink his lavender mixture."

#BondVsSherlock "He said he'd deduced from my tie that I was secretly gay, so I shot him."

In Spaceboots no one can hear you scream
That's why moonchemists are the best places to have your ears pierced.
[line 1 credit VenusdeMileage]

#UED
Festering: Dressing up as Gomez's brother.
Merkin: Tritons, Deep Ones, Dugongs etc
Mentiad: Attempt to sell Tetleys to male shoppers
Transparency: Explaining that mummy and daddy have swopped genders.
Escutcheon: Longest time ever spent waiting for an S in Scrabble.
Anthropology: Book containing a selection of stories about rope.
Chasm Dave: caving hero who also sings cockney duets.
Matron: Robot nanny.

Trapphics
Gigantic Leaping: banned as an olympic event after discovery that US team cheated by training on the Moon ahead of the proposed Luna games.

The Sayings of Beach Nietzsche

2011-03-16T00:00:00.000Z

The Lido Is A Condition Of Life.
The Individual Always has to Struggle to Keep from being Overwhelmed by the Tide.
Not when the sea is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to paddle.
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad oyster.
Fear is the Mother of Bathing Costumes.
Egotism is the very essense of a successful icecream sundae.
Arthropods raise their heads where crabs relax.
Be careful when you gaze into the rock pool. For the rock pool also gazes into you.
Whatever does not destroy your sandcastle makes it stronger.

Simon BJ

Todd Browning's Childe Harolde, Part I

2011-03-10T01:09:00.001Z

I.

At first I thought he hadn't got the brass,
The grotzits, the mazumas, the old rub,
No means to oil a palm, or charm a pub,
With rounds for all, and hence a simple ass,
And as I could not hide my thought's swift pass
Across my face, he looked about to blub.

II.

I waved my staff to reassure the youth
And spoke of all the quaint delights and shows.
The honour of the carny: all earth knows!
And yet for him the curved earth was a truth
Unknown, my motley strange and sinister, forsooth!
And I a thing that lurked, in tattered clothes

III.

Still at my beckoning he turned and strode
As if with dedication on to fate
As if my lot was but to see how great
He was for turning from the narrow road.
Towards hurdy-gurdies creaking like a toad
Towards the booths, the prize for guess-your-weight.

IV.

He clearly had been travelling for some time
Days and months certainly, and mayhap years
For in his eyes I thought I caught the tears
Glistening passed sleep, make runnels in the grime
The patina of dirt on pallor, ancient rime
Frosted his features with their sallow smears.

V.

I spoke to him of tonics that we sell
But he seemed dead indeed to all my shill
And though I spoke at length with all my will
I saw no sign that he would buy, no ‘tell’
That we look for in face of ill, or well,
In hope that they may hand over a bill.

The Sacred Rights

2010-12-23T23:05:00.000Z

Before the incident: visiting famous periods of parahistory, backed by the hyper technology of our benign and supreme future: knowing that their translation, sanitation, health, safety and return were Absolutely Guaranteed, was one of the Sacred Rights we provided to all Perfect Victims who wished to avail themselves of it. In this as in all things their Rights were absolute.

Even those carrying the Enhanced Children of Quetzalchoatl were permitted to take their sacred seed through the lesser ages before they and their Demigod offspring were returned to their Divine Father, and their Hearts were Exhalted on the Pyramids of Tenochtitlan the Second. A millenia of such deaths binding our people forever to The Gods.

In the whole of paratime only one such child failed to be brought back to our timeline by its Proud Vessel, after a series of events for which I was responsible. Although at my command Hyper Extraction Retriever Operation Drones sanctioned all children in the local area the child with all its theotropic characteristics intact survived to anomalous adulthood unsanctified by Sanctioned Sacrifice, its reality-weight sufficient to create a maximal hinge in that universe, skewing it at over 40 degrees to Acolhuas-Tepanecs historicity, and forever beyond our translation-noosphere.

One such event in all space-time is clearly too many. It is with regret that I
Joseeph Hueyi Tlatoani Moctezuma XXII, offer my breast to the obsidian knife of The Corrective Guild Of The Dark Mirror knowing that my heart is too black to be exhalted and that no god will ever be exhalted by my life.

Simon BJ

Recent Tweets archived!

2010-12-06T23:54:00.002Z

#UED

Terracotta: Basket for evil baby
Feedback: Vomiting
Microbes: Ornate dress of trad radio DJs
Monopolise: look for single magnetic charges predicted by quantum mechanics.
Overheads: cricket fans
Griffin: What "Not The 9 O'clock News" had.
Minotaur: small rip in fabric
Hypothetical: dislike of injections
Shiney: Affliction incompatible with miniskirts.
Morass: getting additional donkeys.
Wicket: A small wick.
Penrith: Playing with the very idea of pens.
Gangreen: Scottish decision to adopt ecofriendly policies.
Pixelated: (a) really happy to get your photos back, (b) hindered in travels by imps.
Genuflect: Really, really flecked.
Mentoring: Three Men In A Boat, also Three Men On The Bummel
Puma: mother needs to purchase deodorant
Guestimate: visitor you really get on with
Coastal: enclosed structure within a barn for the housing of female cattle.
Solipsist: Extreme cold sores
Colloseum: Museum of the Big
Progressed: 70s rockers pause for breath.
Progress: female concept album performer
Collostomy: very large chldren's toy.
Prefix: having to score the shit
Platitude: savaged by a duck billed monotreme.
Intransigence: toilet on a train for men.
Plinth: unit of measurement (length of one imperial pin).
Sprinkle: Dealing with winter overfertility
Plasma: Female genus loci
Chappati: Gay get-together
Claustrophe: fear of Father Christmas
Orange: place in a harmonious or regular pattern
Carapace : what a nuclear two car family has.
Simmering: Simon goes swimming
Carapace: Same speed as the preCrisis Supergirl
Coriander: fan of two largest UK soap operas
Awkward: RSPCB hospital
Collegin: going into higher education

#cablenowandnext "Movies Greatest Mistakes: Scary Movie 4" - fair comment there!
"Lock up bats!" Five USA - Is the Caped Crusader really imprisoned?
"The Last Samuri Traffic Cops" Watch+1 - when they take out their notepad they never replace it before issuing a ticket.
"Peter Andre - the next chapter : the jacket" ITV2 - future mental health prediction...
"How not to live your life: being human" BBC3 - many a true word...

#songparallels "Now from Washington to Oregan you can hear the factories hum, makin' chome and makin' mangenese and Red Plutonium."

#toptenthingstobaselifechemistry on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosporus, arsenic, silicon, lego, pipecleaners, lint.

'No MP should ever abstain in Parliament" Drunken MP bastards again! #bbcqst
Governments to stop binge drinking. About time: The drunken MP bastards.

Doctor Quinine Medicine Woman: she was a tonic.

My dream of hosting the 2018 World Cup is over, just as well I have a very small house, and the dancing bears dressed as cakes wouldn't fit.

"I see Theresa May, Red Roses too" #politicalbalancedfirstdraftsofsongs

Like cicadas swarming human intelligence emerges every million years for a scant four thousand or so years, then falters. #hypotheticaltruth

"Eat prey,love" the heartwarming book of a northern vampire matriarch's advice to her young courtier.

#changingcableprogramsbyoneletter "The world of P K D" Channel One - precogs and replicants contend with the empathic at poker.

A blurb in the mind is worth two on the book #Poorverbs
A chain is only as strong as the fucking big bolt its attached to. #Poorverbs
A cat may look at a King, nine times. #Poorverbs
If the cap fits pregnancy may be prevented #Poorverbs
Better a dead lion than a live one in the room with you #Poorverbs
It's poor 1960s computer scientist that blames his spools. #Poorverbs
A bird in the hand is a bit of a feel #Poorverbs

Giving Tom Hanks a newt. #newthanksgivingtradition #misunderstoodmemes

After the destruction of the Twin Bowers by anti-fay terrorists: the morality of the War Against Iron, remains a hot topic in fairy circles.

SF is an alien meme planted to destroy investment in simple space flight by generation of a sense of meh.

After quitting evil-doing Dick Dastardly eventually opened his own auto-dealerships specialising in car-gear boxes: "ex-Villain's Clutches".

While my guitar gently weeps, and my drum kit slams the door shut and goes to get drunk #songmetaphorsextended

Allegations that cervical cancer tests were faked to save money were denied by Evil Hospital yesterday as a smear campaign.

#lesseroldone Nylathaminuteotep: The Stand-Up Chaos.
#lesseroldones Shrub-Niggurath : The dark goat of the herbateous border.
#lesseroldones The King In Velcro.

Moon Poem

2010-11-22T18:49:00.002Z

ADDRESS TO THE MOON

by: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

How sweet the silver Moon's pale ray,
Falls trembling on the distant bay,
O'er which the breezes sigh no more,
Nor billows lash the sounding shore.
Say, do the eyes of those I love,
Behold thee as thou soar'st above,
Lonely, majestic and serene,
The calm and placid evening's Queen?
Say, if upon thy peaceful breast,
Departed spirits find their rest,
For who would wish a fairer home,
Than in that bright, refulgent dome?

ADDRESS TO THE EARTH

By Aleph-en-usk (Epoch of the Red Mist – Epoch of the Black Fear)

How strange and how unlike, the silver lands
The light that falls in coloured bands
Which only science-bred eyes discern
And nerves rethreaded can then turn
To lights that flash within the brain
As pheromones from Queen’s domaine
Pierce with the fungi’s luminous fire
The fragile drones with heaven’s desire.
If we were still a lesser kind
Without the great and central mind,
Would we not place in that ‘blue-green’
The unthought, mystic, and unseen?

Simon Bucher-Jones

Response Poem: The Lesser Moon

2010-10-28T16:32:00.002Z

I am the Great Sun

from a normandy crucifix of 1632
by charles causley.

i am the great sun,but you do not see me,
i am your husband, but you turn away.
i am the captive, but you do not free me,
i am the captain but you will not obey.

i am the truth, but you will not believe me,
i am the city where you will not stay.
i am your wife,your child,but you will leave me,
i am that god to whom you will not pray.

i am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
i am your lover whom you will betray.
i am the victor,but you do not cheer me,
i am the holy dove whom you will slay.

i am your life,but if you will not name me,
seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

I am the Lesser Moon

By Simon Bucher-Jones

I’m not the great sun, but reflect the same,
I am the compromise, the “it’s alright”.
I am the player who’s “okay” at the game,
I am the pallid virtues of half-light.

I am the white lie, and the gray statistic,
I am the layby where men stop to piss.
I am the step child, sullen or sadistic
I am the second-rate, the near miss.

I am your fall back choice, your “might as well”
I am your love whom now you barely like.
I am the phyrric victory, the broken shell,

I am the dove who poohed upon your bike.

I am your muddling though, but if you will not own me,
that’s quite all right, my advise is, disown me.

(In every way that counts, the great sun’s better

Unless it’s that “I” use a capital letter)

Religious Poem: Emmaus

2010-09-23T15:43:00.001Z

Odd one this, I stumbled onto the poems of Archbishop Rowen Williams.
His poem’s here http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/831

Mine’s below:

Emmaus Road

Can I come with you then, the stranger said
Rudely interrupting Luke and I
About our business on the road
The ashen news still in our mouths
That Romans, Sadducees or God knows who
Had stolen His broken body from the tomb,
Had desecrated even that repose,
Of He who had been worth the whole vile lot
Of all the money grubbing parasites.
I turned to give him a piece of my mind
Carry a sword, He’d said, and if I’d had one then
Close to my hand, who knows what might have been.
This burly yokel skewered, at least.
But then, my heart was never in the fight.
And much as He’d implied it, it had failed
Or else been transformed into another thing
As death transformed Him into stolen goods.
And I could not bear,
To break my staff upon this hapless man,
Who had done nothing, neither bad nor good,
Neither called for His death, nor nailed a cross,
Neither followed His path, nor praised His name,
But had been somewhere else, and did not know,
What might have been, and had forever failed.
Those three days in Jerusalem.
Come with us to Emmaus, sir, I said.
We’ll speak more there, over the wine and bread.

Simon Bucher-Jones

Sonnet: Orpheus

2010-09-18T21:25:00.001Z

Orpheus

I am a traveller at the gate of time,
and still the way is barred against ny quest.
I pluck my lyre: unlease a mighty rhyme -
until the frame vibrated at my breast,
and yet the ivy-riven locks stand fast
that hold from me my dead Eurydice.
Now anger comes to strike a chord at last
a faultless note to set my loved one free.

Down endless stairs of coral and of glass:
undaunted by the wail of Hades' Court
entwined by hellish pathenons of brass:
I played for them the best of all my thought.

They granted me her life as minstral's cost
But I looked back: and all with her, was lost.

***

An old poem from the archives. The first sonnet I wrote, which
dates it to around 1981.

Slave

2010-09-18T21:19:00.000Z

Stepbrother to the Raven, I
Croak forth a dry refrain,
On little food, and little water, I
Am set to strain.
But though my limbs are fastened
My mind is free,
The cries of birds - God fashioned -
Suffice for me.
For He who sees each sparrow,
Fall from the endless blue,
The toad beneath the harrow,
Sees those in chains too.

Another old poem from the archives: this is dated 15/05/1985.
I was a christian then.

Homecoming (HADES I)

2010-09-10T13:22:00.002Z

HOMECOMING WITH MOTHER

Severed as barley, at the root
Deai, ghem, (or the barley’s root) divides us

Mother smiles her archaic smile
As the dusty empty mile (or metre) divides us.

She-ruler: Potnia (in Mycenaean).
Da-potnia, Dividing Mistress, divides us.

Giver of Seasons, Lady of Poppies
Mother of my morning, Demeter divides us.

Demeter lover of Zeus, Da-ma-te,
Ge-meter, Earth-mother, divides us.

Oh my Lord Hades: (why, ‘this’ is Hades
Nor am I out of it) nothing divides us.

Persphone IV: Spring

2010-09-09T19:24:00.001Z

Persephone IV: Spring

And then, in earth’s fond spring, awkward my anguish
Argument and anger, fire-leaf between us
Are we too strong to stay? To mawkishly languish
A gape for eros, but must turn against Venus?

All earth’s summer I will mourn, yet here I demand it
As if I sought to claim all pain from my sowing, I
Act to drive you from me, Hades high-handed!
Any tears that we shed, then at your going, I

Acknowledge as my work: to me the cold-guilt.
Alpine the atmosphere, cold mist from mouths’ tumbling
Autumn to winter turns, farewells, frowning, fumbling.
Acid on tongue to hide (but I hope that you spied)
All that I felt inside,
As with returning tide, to earth you with Charon glide, Hades’ heart humbling.

Almost if I had known, I would have lived alone, what good resulted from
Any of this affair: abduction, pomegranites, seasons’ separations
Aches hard as ice ahead, Joys in sunlight now dead.
Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho, your sly weaving led,
Again to this empty bed, and yet, and yet, I shed,
Agate-tears, blankly, to see Persephone bear, from Hades’ new despair, Spring’s reparations.

Persephone III : Winter

2010-09-03T15:08:00.002Z

How, now I chortle at your winter freezing -
Here, High Summer fruits turn rich purple-pink-ward
Harvests in Hades: hay-fevered sneezing,
Hushed here in Her handkerchief - while you go rink-ward,
Hands held at shoulder height against your slipping.
Here: Our hands clasped, we dance for our rejoining,
Here: cups of pomegranate, scarlet for sipping,
Held for us by Ganymede (eagle-scarred, mourning).

He from his Trojan home, bird-reaved by rapine,
Has in my Underworld sought his asylum.
Here we have many, those pestered by phylum,
Harassed in sunset-rains - gold, gets him in the mood -
Hypocrite Zeus has woo’d,
High-fived, and rudely zoo’d in his abandon!

Hera should long have left, him in my view,
Hard is it (e’en for Gods) to judge how pairs still cleave.
Hard winters, weather
How forgiveness can be found for that swan's feather?
Hera would have a fit, if she had seen the chit, in the cow-leather!
Have we persisted, not in spite but because, half of the year, you leave?

Persephone II: Autumn

2010-09-01T23:01:00.000Z

Soon will I see her, as your autumn wanes
Still I stay silent, lest I weep,
Sobbing becomes not Hades' silent fanes,
Slow though the days all creep,
Soft, silk, and tardy
Snail-slow, fall passes.
Shock-sudden it should sear,
Singe autumn leaves with fear in their tall masses.

Set in the autumn night,
Silvered fame burning
Stars sing like Orpheus, who at his turning,
Sideways on Hades' Stair
Stumbling realised that he
So lost Eurydice.
So seasons pass, like grief,
Slipping subtly, as harpist's harmony, as lost-belief.

Splendid 'sephone's song
Sung in the autumn nights
Sinking down cthon's caves,
Snaking past Styx's waves,
Sounding of mortal staves,
Singing me her sights.

Harpies Of England (After Keats)

2010-09-01T21:53:00.000Z

Happy is England by Keats

HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.

Harpies Of England - A suffragette poem
by Simon Bucher-Jones

Harpies of England ne'er will be content
Until they have a landscape of their own
Bleak crags and crenalations over-grown
And Bat-cave eries where their cries are sent
Still further sky-ward, and where clothing rent,
Flutters from captured men, who must atone
Their, all too certain, worldly, languid moan
That women bring no good to government.
Harpies of England, artless daughters not;
Have set their simple loveliness aside,
Which was but simple in a dullard's eyes.
Raised their white arms with banners scarlet-dyed
And though it is not martyrs' blood that dyes,
Still we may fall, to hunger, horses, shot.

Let Me Die A Rogue Timelord's Death (After Roger McGough)

2010-08-30T19:46:00.001Z

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough

Let Me Die a Rogue Timelord's Death

Let me die a Rogue Timelords' death
not a thirteenth regeneration into
the matrex clean transition barely noticed death
not a Final Chapter, Lord President nods a few kind
words to Gold Usher, Tele-epitathical death.

When I'm 700
and only a little prone to forget
the names of my companions
may I regenerate while the first
world of the cybermen burns inverted
over the north pole.

When I'm 400 odd, stubbornly
insisting on counting my age backwards
may I be arraigned by the
High Council, for sticking
My nose in, where it was needed,
and die for my troubles, clowning.

Exiled (after over a 1,000 years
of Science, still not counting
in linear years) may I be
blasted by rads from
A ranting Spider-God,
fall off radio telescopically,
into a nest of poison,
die of a bad trip,
in a hail of San Francisco bullets
at the last Millenium,
sipping cosmic power from
a dying Rose,
or give my life saving one old man,
and Grandfather.

May I die at least another
three times, all gleamingful.

The Laity's Response To Piety (After Bierce)

2010-08-29T21:49:00.001Z

Piety by Ambrose Bierce

The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

Laity by Simon Bucher-Jones

But outside the Pighood, there is no skrimage
a Piglet knows He made Us In His Image!

All ways give all the Heart (After Yeats)

2010-08-28T23:58:00.001Z

Never Give All The Heart by William Butler Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

Always Give All The Heart by Simon Bucher-Jones

Always Give All The Heart, for otherwise
What good is fickle gain in any guise
From passions barely felt, in dreamlike flow,
The feelings may arise but as swift go.
What lounge-lizard-like women frightened Yeats?
With scarlet lip gloss or forbidden treats,
That he must hold aside his heart's full love
To counterplay their gambits when they move,
For fear of what? That he might somehow lose
His heart to smoothness or to fuck-me shoes?
No, no heart can be harmed by giving all.
A whole heart will resist the hardest fall.
Only those hearts that are but partly given
Will break asunder: they're already riven.

Microstories 7th May 2010 to 26th August 2010

2010-08-28T21:26:00.002Z

Who said Day-time TV had to be dull? Dr Fanshaw-Morton author of Pacifying The Brute Masses Through Controlled Repetition Of Inanity (1953).

Mostalgia: condition of one who complains that most things aren't what they were.

A number of omniscients today complained at the BBC's policy of showing dramas for the first time: 'they have no novelty but lack nostalgia'

The First Spouse Michelle attended President Osmina's opening of the first legal bi-sex marriage chapel in DC #altherstories.

Necromentators: specialists in post-morteum mediated autobiography. See also Narcrators: specialists in drug-mediated omniscience.

Monsters Of Filmland #3: The Limelight Hog: Insinuates self into shot wherever possible, putting others to flight. Colouring envious.

Famous Monsters Of Filmland #2: The Dullovore; eats space-time containing any unfamous buildings to facilitate effective location shooting.

Famous Monsters Of Filmland #1 The Duck-billed Plottingpus: attends script conferences disguised in humanskin, quacks to hide holes in plot. 21 August 2010

"Frank Sinatra reflecting God": reaction from deflected Theons cause of spinning in grave, say top Priest-Scientists.

Following her part in developing the Atomic Womb, J. Roberta Oppenheimer wrote "Lo, I am become Kali Ma: Mother of Worlds."

Following previous discovery of paleocomputing the media has responded by naming all such stoneage mathematics technology: "the flinternet".

#sfstorymadebynowandnextcablechannel Alibi + 1 Wed 11 Aug 23 23:35 GMT "Waking the Dead Silent Witness" aka Necromancer Cop. 11 August 2010

#sfstoriesmadebynowandnextcablechannel Five USA + 1 "Replicant Sons of Anarchy". Wed 11 Aug 23:15 GMT 11 August 2010

#literaryclassicsinonesentence It's still raining on the 120 day so once again they had to make their own entertainment.

#uptownkrell The Monster From The Super-Ego

Spirit Level: floor 3 in the Strict No-Mixing Of Drinks Club. Above the Beer Garden and the Wine Cellar, below the Liqueur Attic.

#literaryclassicsinonesentence:

Lost jewelry returned to owner's fireside: falls in.

Lucia on top, Mapp second.

School children get out of control on island trip, glasses get broken, tears and possible sacrifces result.

Sea Captain fixates on killing rare white endangered animal, I alone survived to tell ye.

Conanmitment: Crom! Conan leave!

Abondonment: after 007 leaves.

Disclaimer I personally have no strong feelings about Alex Ferguson opinions offered are of two friends of mine: #VIZTOPTIPS Undecided whether a retiring Alex Ferguson should play Taggart or drown in dog turds? Pitch TAGGART : THE TURD VAT MURDERS.

Life is like a lottery, run by randomly selected secret machines. #paranoidanalogies

Pizzacoma: Less successful pharmacopizza than the best selling pizzaconfidence, pizzaorgasm, and pizzapizzaz. On the other hand: legal.

#iGetsoMadWhen 22nd C Apple product designed to re-invigour amygdala and deliver top quality 'anger' to emotion-impared #misunderstoodmenes

Heather Mills: where heather was spun into the tartan bonnets of the Greater Scottish Empire under Queen Mab, and her consort Albino. (Heather Mills suggested by PaulEbbs)

I'm holding out for the iRobot, and the inevitable law suit from the estate of the late Isaac Asimov.

"When the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that's an optical illusion often reported in the tropics but believed to be psychological"

Time war casualties incurred as precently as tomorrow are now precovering a month ago for predeployment today. #timewar #tomorrowsdespatches

#dangerousfutureweaponsthatarealsotonguetwisters The Mime-meme-mine, The Me-me-me-meme-mine, the Mime-me-me-me-meme-mine.

"When you walk through the garden you gotta watch your back" #gardenersquestiontime #triffidwatch

To much biogotry is excused as pathology, if someone hates merfolk: it's simply not an excuse for them to claim to be lack toes intolerant.

#filminprovedbychangingactorsnamebydeletingoneletter "Get Smart" remake of 60s spy-spoof: Max is threatened by a mystical giant arabic bird. "Race To Witch Mountain" two psychic children protected by mystical giant arabic bird.

Stone-cold Jane Austen: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a wrestler in contention for a title must be in need of a bitchsmackin"

"Google latitude" not minding if an online review gets your name wrong provided its generally positive. 24 July 2010

Is Black Medicine the Black Projects part of the NHS, where we 'blew' the deficit on our army of approx 200,000,000 bionic men?

You need braintweet(C) the new cranial uploader. Only £2.99 Rude stream of consciousness editor add-on £300.74

#raredogs The mudhound, the hamburger dog, the aichoo, the flasher (aka the Mac Russle Terrier), the bareknuckler, the leave-it-over-therer. 23 July 2010

#MeAtschool Had to write out 'sirloin is not brisket' 200 times #misunderstoodmemes

#chegwin successful move in game of cheg: the 'A' player is in 'mot' and can not progress laterally, the red squares are mired, or gruntled.

#Zodiacfacts He was the most successful captain of the Fireball XL fleet #misunderstoodmemes

#lessermonsters atheistzila, bagfoot, the abdominal snowman, the notyeti, the goatfluffer, the nonicorn, the whorewolf, the incredible hump.

It is always irrational to believe the universe smaller, colder, crueller or less marvellous - even if it's an unproven but popular thesis.

It is never irrational to believe in something that makes the universe, bigger, bolder, kind, or more wonderful - even if evidence is 'out'.

Ground level depression: 'the glum', 'the gloomy', 'the gutted', 'the grim', 'the ground-down', 'the ghastly', 'the gulled' and 'the grave'.

Most likely to phase-change to sentience in order: "the internet", "a big single computer", "the market", "swamp ooze", "the conservatives".

"the market" becomes sentient and demands proper pay for sorting out everything then promptly collapses upset about 'inflationary pressure'.

All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Samantha and Sven have been assigned. #sapphireandsteel #isihac

#collectivenouns #revisedpun 'An embarassment of itches'
'An archer of plaigerisms' 'A reprise of deja vues', 'A hatstand of non sequiturs', 'A vimto of sick dyslexics'. 'A rash of foolhardinesses'
'A renege of election promises' 'A remainder of celeb autobiographies'
'A sadness of departures'.

Attempting to recover his past lives, Bob discovered all his tics, twitches, fears and phobias related to his future life as God-Emperor Gx.
He was however later discovered to be lying, as all his psychological conditions actually arose from his future life as a humble morgtender.

New to #BBC Pies & Prejudice, Jane Austen's Lizzy reimagined as the owner of a Pie & Eels Stall in NOW London.

New to #BBC, the team from New Tricks solve crimes around the country from a camper van in ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW.

Topplegangers: BBC1 show in which quasiclones of presenters compete to see who can secretly kill and replace the original genetic templates.

"One's Company" and "The Odd Single" Brad is annoyed to discover his new square, oldster, flatmate is him.

The Polanski Defense, the King buggers the opposing Queen's pawn and hides on another board for 40 years.

In the beginning was the Mew, and the Mew was Feed Me, and the Bowl was Filled by The Servants of The Mew #Catgospels

#Predators 'Fill in this questionaire and maybe I'll consider dating you" #missunderstoodmemes

#notmything My Thing Has Six Fingers #missunderstoodmemes

#wakemeupwhen I always fall asleep in time machines #missunderstoodmemes

"It's taste was meagre and hollow but crisp" said noted Snark Critic Michael Winner today, at the Bathing Machine Bistro & Grill.

Being someone's first love is great: being someone's last goes beyond great, and indeed would be perfect but for the murdering.

It is a terrible thing for fall into the paws of the Living Dog #Catgospels #KitteninYellow

Gerkin architect leaves House of Lords, Salad sculptor, Tomato mime, and Avocardo builder considering their positions #bbcnews

Roquette Ronin Hood, the samuri outlaw salad king. (Ronin Hood, devised by Philip Purser-Hallard).

Rise in sales of 'thick' sporrans, broadswords, X bling, and 'The Idiot's Guide To Clarity of Understanding' attributed to rogue Tullipaths.

Cynically *every life* ends with the opposite of what you wanted, and then dying. Royals just get scrutiny and historians.

The discovery of the #sarcasmon patricle by Professor Saul Arcasm, was for some reason, slow to be believed by the online science community. On the other hand his noted Russian rival Karl Sarcasmoff, was taken remarkable seriously given his trenchant usage of bitter ironic asides.

After the hot wars and the cold wars, came the hard wars and the soft wars: between the lean and the obese, between the naked and the wired.

#computingmissingletter 'sotware' only functions when user drunk, 'oftware' only functions when resold under license.

Meddle not in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and right kinky.

"X Men forced to disband when telepathy found to be placebo effect. - I feel so silly Professor Pavier (formerly 'X') stated in interviews."

Santa Claus Vs The Martin Amis #swapwordsinfilmsforMartinAmis #paticularlymartians

#swapwordinfilmwithmartinamis : I married a Martin Amis, I married a Martin Amis from Outer Space.

Dettol is very keen to stop piracy. #Dettolfilms 'The Bleach' 'Bleach Party Booglaloo', 'Domestos Violence'.

Following discovery that CO2 level go up when lying: colgate markets truthpaste.

Palimpsest:friends,who are unknown to them related,who get it on.

Prowess: figurehead

#illomenedcircusanimals The Seventh Seal, Smilely The Friendly Tiger, Huffo-Buffo the Clown-toad, and Clumbso the Elephant.

#lesserdinosaurs Tri-tri-tri-again-citops : the little dinosaur who could.

Phaeochromocytoma or cheating suspected in sports as Heart of Midlothian are discovered to be using a pacemaker and injections of adrenalin.

Walking dead fans of Haiti Wednesday were involved in a tussle with Drac City. The Drac stated "they're going home in an zombi ambi-trance"

#bardporn King Leer. The Temp's Best. Much To Do With Everything. Winter's Tail. Muck Beth. Tight Arse Androgenous. Two gentlemen of Verona & One Cup.

After leaving Cobb was sent to a deep undercover role within the UK establishment. Sardonically he took the name Hacker. #inthevillage.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 68 seconds worth of distance run you're at 98% of C and an observer's checking out your course!

#fakesexact "At fakes exact: we can tell you, that these are exactly fake".

#fakesexacts 'wet cornering', 'tweeting the blackberry', 'ducking for grapples', 'bridegrooming'.

#fakesextext Weebles in Furs, The story of Uh, Fear of Filing, 120 Days in Morden, The Joy of Socks, Lady Loverlies Chatter.

#failedproducts "I can't bereave it's not butter" the oily unction for all those stuck crematoria conveyor-belt moments.

Ministry Of Family Genetics (MiniKin)

Big Brother's government has always included MiniLove, MiniPops, MiniCars, MiniDosh, MiniHS, MiniEU, MiniKin, MiniPow, MiniNet, and MiniPoo.

An area of roughly 100 acres a year has been razed. Just to put a Tigger in your tanks.

Big Brother's government has always included MiniLove, MiniTrue, MiniPax, MiniDosh, MiniHS, MiniEU, MiniKids, MiniPow, MiniNet, and MiniPoo.

Hitler's interest sent the nazis scouring the records of 19th biologists until he could fulfil his boasts that 'the Moreau' belonged to me.

The best series of books about a mysterious aristocratic Detective, who's a stallion: #CampiontheWonderHorse

#EternalChampionthewonderhorse : The Prancers at The End of Time.

#lesserbooks #woehouse Jeeves In The Moffing. Can Jeeves extricate Bertie from his miscasting as Grand Moff Tarkin by his Aunt Lucas.

During the Cold Date: The 'Mutually Assured Delight' doctrine proved to be an insufficient preventative to the premature Orgasm Bomb strike.

The decision of the BBC to remake the series of bodice-rippers: Poldark was decried by critics who always regarded it as a cornish pastiche.

The alien subiminal message was only discovered when frequency analysis, and decoding, was applied to the usage of the word 'like' by teens.

Following Lancelot, competative nomative determinism led to the appearance at Camelot of Sir Greatsword, Sir Broadshield and Sir Grosspenis.

#riversongprequels Waited in all day for the package from Pandorica deliveries. Bloody timecrack mail-order. (#riversongprequels meme devised
Philip Purser-Hallard).

A 'truce' football game between Heaven and Hell, ends when the infernal powers (indwelling the bodies of dead footballers) lose possession.

#missingletterSFintvnews BBC1 07:18 Considering protests about the potential introduction of geneticaly modified cops.

U#ExtremeIroning "the board goes out of the plane first, can J Bond (UK) catch it in free fall, and press his suit with Olga Stymzetin (RUS).

#UruVsFra : The mystical metal of which Thor's hammer is made is holding up well as the Francium bombardment half-lifes down to a mere bim.

Following MI5's sucess in placing a hyperspy personality into various cloned bodies: we hope to reduce UK debts by selling Government Bonds.

#lesserdoctorwho "The Horns Of Simon". "The Tin Diorama" "Underfelt", "The Peas Of Marinus" "U2 of The Daleks" "

#Hypermythbusters "Well we managed to divide the firmament in two days, but this leaves us very little time to worldbuild and engineer life".

The Marine code : Unit, Corp, Country. Pledge of honour or *really* ambitious programme of sexual conquest?

Tired of Angelcake or Devil's food cake? Try Chef Mucho Deiwary's famous patent Agnosticakes: you won't be entirely sure how good they are!

Most dreadful of the Shinigami Books is of course the Deathnote but the Hiccupnote, Acidrefluxnote, and Painfuldrystoolnote are pretty evil.

#badtech "The Wee". Flys out of your hand, stains the sofa, and doesn't actually control anything.

#VizTopTips Staff your treasure protecting labyrinth with red-eyed kittens with poisoned claws: lethal and they also ball up a hero's string.

Daedalus, Icarus's dad, also made the first all sugar submarine, the ice volcano suit, and the knitted string'o'sausages anti-minotaur vest.

Fact Checkers: game played by trainee Gods working up to Reality Chess. Laws move across space, take by encompassing as Einstein to Newton.

If as older Big Bang Theories hypothesized all things come from a primal egg: is this an omnilette?

#inthevillage No 2 secretly longs for No 6 to whisper that he only retired so they'd bring him to the Green Dome for snuggly pyjama parties.

Scrooge McDuck's portfolio is diversifying into sciences: Duckminsterfullerenes, the Large Hadrosaur Collider, Free Range Ylem, Duck Matter.

People say JFK killed the hat for men but ironically (hat-felt was vital to the US nuclear weapons programme) it was the Manhattan Project.

"Quantum Entrianglement" any use of entanglement teleportation to duplicate a person for the purpose of relationship cheating.

Celestial City News: Egyptian God of Wisdom storms out of DeiCosta when his requested 'signature' coffee is served frothy due to mishearing.

Stanley Holloway : Football commentry (tweets)...

This bloke started playing at forty: he weren't sure what a penalty was / he could bare kick a ball without takin a fall ...but he played on regardless because / you have to put your best foot forward, no matter if it's in footy boot...And t'irony was when it came to the last it were down't a penalty shoot...He didn't know what he were doin' he had his eyes screwed shut and all / but he sucked in his chest and he took a deep gulp And he fair won the game, on't that ball.

Wonka-Bucket has now brought in the triple-chocolate-hazard specialist divers from the first war in the Umpa Gulf: operation Dessert Storm.

The Dulx believe that life ends with expulsion from the womb. Beyond:
a mad afterlife in which only drawn out rituals can create real being.

Mid-death crisis:after thirty to forty years manifesting in a single enclosed locus, many ghosts hanker after a more free-roaming deathform.

Confusing #bgt with #bsg, the new twitter-equipped Cylons were voted best new-wave technoband since 7 Of 9 came in second on New Interfaces.

Postexistential angst:the leading cause of self-exorcism in male spectres dead for between eighteen and twenty years. What help can we give?

Wonka-Bucket shares hit an all time low due to chocolate-pipeline rupture in the Umpa Gulf. Firing marshmallows into gap so far unsucessful.

News from the forthcoming 2012 sex-olympics. Has training already hit snag for the England team? We ask their newly appointed vice captain.

Batman vs the Joker episode made by what's on now and next on cable: "Pranked Street Fighter"

Cosmological sports show made by what's on now and next on cable "Stunt Stars : Raging Planet"

v low budget SF stories made by what's on now and next on cable channels - "Transmorphers: Fall of Man : The Chair"

Owing to a TV accident with a time machine the first talent show recorded took place at Arthur's Court: Gawaine and the Hughie Greene Night.

Only when you can truely be nostalgic for the last microsecond before the ungraspable present will you achieve enlightenment.

The CIA invested much cash in remote viewers but even the most successful psychics with this power mostly found them down the sofa cushions.

Assisting a friend to name a cartoon avatar : "Egyptian Cartoonche?" "Toontyfroonty", "Countess De La Toon", oooh wait...."Toonella De Vril".

#lessercryptics "I am the alfalfa and the omega-3."

#lesserbooks Women are from Wallachia, Men from Moldovia. 27 May 2010

Therapists tell us children can't be put into convenient little boxes, but have they seen the new flex-o-box with airholes and flavour foam? 26 May 2010

Chiral molecules were thought to be levorotary (L) or dextro (D) until the stable (S) midstate was postulated. God denies any LSD reference. 26 May 2010

The plebisitegeist only enters on invite unlike the aristocratic vampire it requires the free votes of every occupant. It is almost extinct. 25 May 2010

#songprequels 'Hey, you reckon we should take this zombie, what with this being a hippy trail and the combie being nigh fried' (Men at Work) 24 May 2010

The polterzeitgeist will only throw around things that are uniquely invested with the spirit of the moment. It is never found in old places. 24 May 2010

The parasitegeist attaches itself to the zeitgeist, and sucks out its available energy. The decades with it become listless and unmemorable. 24 May 2010

Angels in America now proved to be behind UFO abductions. Well, why did you think a country full of higher entities of being would be safer? 24 May 2010

#fermisolutions Ants are aliens: complacent hive minds that ignore us as essentially irrelevant to their wider transgalactic communications. 24 May 2010

#proverbsthatdonotapplytonuclearwar "Better Late Than Never" 21 May 2010

#fermisolutions Aliens' ecological ethics have resulted in the most hyperadvanced species adopting a policy of minimal 'reality-footprints'. 20 May 2010

#ifaddswereliterallytrue "I didn't start growing until I joined the army" That's why I started service in the Royal Fetus Reserve Regiment. 20 May 2010

#lesserbooks "It should happen to a Vet", "Several creatures in the middle sizes", (James Herriot)
#lesserbooks #thekinginyellow "The Kink In Yellow", (Robert Chambers, Thomas Caistigne)
#lesserbooks "Anna Verucca", "Bungo Toe-nails", "Flings to Come", "Feud of The Gods" (H G Wells) 20 May 2010

#firstdateturnoffs North of Arkham, where the road bends past Dean's Corners lies a narrow track leading to the decaying hamlet of Dunwich. 20 May 2010

#inthevillage When No 2 goes to sleep, they all go to sleep even No 6 is tucked up in bed under hypnotic lights. [Oliver Postgate is No 1!] 20 May 2010

"The victim was poisoned with venom extracted from the elbow glands of the slow loris" "Really, Holmes?" "April fool Watson!" 20 May 2010

#songprequels "Get those lasers set up in the jungle damn it" (Paul Simon) 20 May 2010

#songprequels "Applying for a job in the coal mining industry" (Desmond Decker and the Eighties). 20 May 2010

Trapphic Physics...

And of course (like America) gossipissimum, blackgrail, rudestone, splinth, and attoms have often been discovered but immediately hushed up.

Also: mirror-matter, mimesisite, impressionium, anystone, pouron, flawtz, septessence, and appearbehindyou-um are hard to successfully spot.

Difficult to detect particles/state include: ghostinos, fakeons, gnurks, vector insidions, uncle-matter, cosmic-yarn, plectrons, and hiders.

When Harold married all his dreams came true. His teeth fell out, he found himself naked in an exam, and a purple horse ate his aunt's boot. 17 May 2010

What will we do when the Millenium and 2012 have passed with only the average level of Revelation? Should we not now define Apocalypse When? 17 May 2010

The discovery that recessions are caused by time travellers withdrawing savings just before each crash made passing debt to the future justifiable. 17 May 2010

For centuries youth-vampires have moved among us, we have rationalised their predations as 'aging' a process that actually ends at puberty. 16 May 2010

Raintown: lies in a microclimate, in its valley it's always Noir. The Rain falls so acid it etches the windows of each of its thousand bars. 16 May 2010

Sowing the dragon's teeth bought forth armed skeletons: Medea's attempts at a theory of Unatural Selection failed with her first experiment. 16 May 2010

Our universe is merely the delivery mechanism for an infinitely long piece of code that 'runs' Heaven. The numeric equivalent is Pi. 16 May 2010

#lesserbooks 'The Good Delusion' (Dawkins)
#lesserbooks 'Doctor Who In A Hohum Adventure With The Thals' (David Whitaker)
#lesserbooks 'Obvious Facts About Lumbricus Terrestris' (Ludvig Prinn)
#lesserbooks The Niceronomicon (Abdul Al Hazrad) 16 May 2010

Cthulhu-deniers continue to absolve The Rising and its aftermath from any major part in humanity's 'Flight to the comfort of a New Dark Age.' 16 May 2010

#lesserbooks 'Loaf In A Time Of Cholera', 'Unchronicled Surprise Death', 'A Day With Few Visitors' (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 16 May 2010.

#songprequels '101.10' (Metropolis: the Musical) 16 May 2010

#lesserbooks 'Book of The Darned', 'Nearlynew Lands', 'Oh', 'Mild Talents' (Charles Fort)
#lesserbooks "Unmissable Cities", "If On A Winters Night I Stayed Put", "Croydoncomics", "The Toilet Cubical of Crossed Destinies" (Calvino) 16 May 2010
#lesserbooks "A universal history of infancy", "The Book Of Sandcastles" (Borges)
#lesserpoetry #lesserbooks "The Ruby Cat" (Omar Khayyam)
#lesserbooks "Snakebite with Rosie" (Laurie Lee)
#lesserbooks "Second and Penultimate Men" (Stapledon)
#lesserbooks "Jeeves and the Futile Spirit." (P G Wodehouse) 15 May 2010

An alternative aquatic world trapphic scripture.

In the beginning was the flow and the flow was around Apoki, and was Apoki: and Apoki breathed out and the bubble was the great ocean world.

Now Apoki commanded the oceans to recede, because of Aquos's evil, and Norl to built a great Bowl, in which swam all fish after their kinds.

Lloha lead the dolphins from bondage, he descended into the abysmal deep: and Apoki inscribed the Law upon Lloha's Scales: that are Justice.

***

#songprequels "If the government ceases to be democratic and becomes a fascist state, I bet we'll all begin to mutate" (Blue Oyster Cult) 14 May 2010

#lesserbooks Last Men On The Moon, The Sleeper Turns Over, The Alarm Clock, Twinges To Come. Strongly Worded Diplomatic Note Of The Worlds, The Translucent Man, The Peninsula Of Doctor Moreau, Fast Food Of The Gods. The Two Stigmata of Palmer Weirdslightly, and Von Juntz's "Chatting About Cults" 13 May 2010

Poem In Three Trapphics

The memory of what was lust, the fleeting shadow of a gust from tomb mouths boarded gates of rust, is still less chill than all that's mist.
Time eats away at every love, the skeleton fist velvet touch inside the ironwork of the glove, soft as the sighing of a dove that's kissed.
Go softly as you walk on by, for every footstep stirs the dust, of other ages and of Gods fallen in eons gone to just the echo of a triste.

13 May 2010

#songprequels "Be careful of that antique Morning on the tettering pedistal. Remember how you broke the first one we had" (Hymn) 13 May 2010

#songprequels "Oh dear we've spilled some oil, and the gradient means it's increasingly pooling near the destination" (Simon and Garfunkel) 13 May 2010

#songprequels "Trying water from shallow wells, but not feeling really hydrated" (Emma Lou Harris) 13 May 2010

CERN ABBAS Giant now known to be early Druidic particle-accellerator, using "thrusting" sympathetic magick. The clue was always in the name. 13 May 2010

Cloning like any new science has had unintended consequences. Since 2023 'parallel killings' has passed 'serial homicide' in top 5 TV plots. 13 May 2010

The LaughUnderItsBreathCat (LUIB!) with its sote voice sniggering was easily forced out of the memepool by its more openly humourous rival. 11 May 2010

Nuclearfish Nuclearfish, here to grant your nuclear wish. Glowing so good upon your dish have to love it nuclear fish. Now in new Fake Hake. 11 May 2010

#songprequels 'Now Bill, if we sell you this one storey building the lease absolutely prohibits violence" (The Beatles) 12:58 AM May 10th

In many earth societies suicide is tacitly legal provided it is carried out over a sufficiently long timescale. The means:poor maintainence. 12:47 AM May 10th

A few of my average things

2010-08-28T01:09:00.000Z

Logos on T-shirts, and knitwear for kittens
Leftover sarnies and humourous spitoons
People who write that they've heard a cuckoo
These are all things I'm indifferent to.

Shows with a compair, Vox pops, and a ring-tone
Hair-gel infused with a sciency thing-mone
Paint that's just white with a hint of distress
These are all things about which I care less.

Cream colored phonies and diamante bracelets
Twitter and myspace and sundery facenets
(The people I like, such as, well mainly, you)
Its the net-whistly bits I'm indifferent too.

When the mails 's dull
When the cheese strings
When I'm got some spam,
I'm not really thinking of average things
Except I suppose I am.

Falstaff Agonistes

2010-08-27T23:21:00.004Z

When the mocking courtiers and merry wives
And children dressed as pinching fairy-folk
Have left him, sitting, horned, at the oak
Without the hope of swives, and once more broke,
Bereft of Bardolph, Pistol, and of Nym,
His Robin-boy took in by Mistress Page,
What shape in the cold night can comfort him,
The Fat Knight, pickling corpus, of his age?
Will not Titania come, to him, at night?

For he is Herne, if any mortal man
The awful robes and horns of the beast can
Tranmute to laughter crammed as cat-in-pan
Flesh thick as mince-pie, rich with Sack
That man is Faustus-Falstaff! Man or devil!
Is he a mortal man? Hark now how back
in Henry the Vth's youth, he tutored revel:
A fat old man, then, in 1413,
Sixty at least, the seasons on him weighty.
The same Fat Knight he stands in 1580
when Greensleeves is composed, that but lately,
it's music high, italianate, unknown
To that Sack swilling lad (apple of his eye)
Who passed from Falstaff's company to the crown,
To wars in France, to glory, and to die.
Falstaff died not: as spritely he
At 237 years, unbroken yet,
Mocked and abdured, and put to pain and fret,
Forever, lustdenied, fat-bellied and in debt.
His page (to Page, now gone) is Goodfellow
In truth that Puck who sets the foals to flight,
He is the King Who Never Will Wear Yellow.
To him Titania will come yet, at night.

Hush merry wives, you know not what you scorn.
Oberon in the Flesh, for you was born.

Poem to do what rain can not

2010-08-23T04:46:00.000Z

If rain can sluice the darkness from city walls
Why can't it clean the gutters of the mind?
Pit-pat in multitudes down synapses;
New gleaming axons, setting neurons right;
Drench hate, drown fear, shock-soak the dull dismay,
That otherwise paints grim inside the eyes.

If rain can sluice the darkness from city walls
Why can't it send rubber ducks through the mind?
Bobbing on river swell, each one a new thought;
Crossing oceans, in cheerful childjoy, fun-pack;
Brightening the old sargassos of sour dreams;
That otherwise persist to trouble sleep.

If rain can sluice the darkness from city walls
Why can't it build and pressure-hose the mind?
Blast powerfully as floods, at ill-built belief
Sweep past self-doubt, whirlpool the day's debris;
Shred all the flotsum of our fevered selves;
That otherwise prevent our true release.

Poem requested by Jess Nevins...

2010-08-21T19:44:00.002Z

"In the North old women whose teeth have fallen out may go out at night and eat people's babies. They are called the Autumn Aunties" (1475)

When dark the clouds past Pendle Hill
Roll in the night, and summon storm
When off the still-born child the caul
Is torn to make the night fall ill.
Then out from hovel and from bower,
Out from the broken hut and tower,
Out from the night passed summer's leave,
Out from the cold back of old pantries,
Out in the yellowed, sear-stained eve,
Toothless, they come, the Autumn Aunties.
Gap gummed, lank limbed, and after bairns,
Whose blood will straighten achen backs,
And new life into auld returns,
And Aunties dance 'til winter breaks.

Simon BJ

After Returning From Lyonnesse (After Hardy)

2010-08-21T15:58:00.001Z

WHEN I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

Thomas Hardy

WHEN I had been from Lyonesse
A hundred years it seemed,
A few scant threads of what was dreamed
Served to illume my wretchedness
When I had been from Lyonesse
A hundred years it seemed.

WHAT had occurred at Lyonesse
The first rule locks away
The golden rule of Lyonesse that holds both night and day
Though it was won with soul's prowess
What had occurred at Lyonesse
The first rule locks away.

When I return to Lyonnesse
The next time, I will stay
In hidden lands where magic lies, and burning signs move in the skies.
And none are cruel to high or less.
When I return to Lyonnesse
The next time, I will stay!

Simon BJ

HORNS OF NIMON: THE MUSICAL SCENE III

2010-08-04T20:40:00.001Z

DOCTOR’S SONG

Oh I often think and muse about
If there were not bad news about
What would I find to stick my nose into,
There is nothing as appealing as a stew
Or witches brew
Of evil hue.

It’s one thing to have the time to pause
And mend the TARDIS’s few flaws
When I have nothing much around to do,
But it can’t compare with the savoir faire
Of staring down some villain’s glare
And giving them a right old talking-to!

[Does dance of derring-do, and makes sword-fighting
motions.]

Oh, I’ve unplugged the bleeping thingy
So we’re drifting like a dinghy
There’s nothing here to thwart my DIY
But still I find my inner eye
Drifts back to days of blundering in, and locking up an evil Djinn
Or poking Dalek’s squarely in their ‘eyesight-impeded’.
Well it makes a chap feel needed.
Which is more than you can say for….

BOTHER SPRING CLEANING!

Persephone I : High Summer

2010-08-04T13:28:00.001Z

Without her, in your summer months
What can I do, but pine and fret
Worrit and grumble in the dumps
Which never came to Hades…yet
Without her what abides?
Wonders for her will I
Winter spend, questing
Which when she turns to mine
Will show a love divine, beyond mortal testing.

White, now that yellowed mane
Winged Ramskin of the Gods
Whitened by Sun and Rain
Will form a bridal train.
Would it could be so.
Will I, in fact abide
Wan, here without my bride
While seasons turn, and tide wanes and waxes.
Well it is certain as Old Zeus’ last faux pas, and mortal taxes.

Wondrous the woman who
While summer absentress
Will fill the mind full score
With plans to her adore
When back on Stygian shore
Willing returns once more.
Wild wanton, temptress.

The Waistband (After T S Eliot) Part 2

2010-07-21T19:54:00.004Z

A GRAM OF CHAOS

The car she sat in like a burdened mule
Glowered at the misrule where the rush
Held up by traffic, fraught with fruity screams
- from which an uncouch lexicon peeped out -
and one car got a small dent on the wing
Doubled the frames of even-bunched cruel yamahas
Reflecting light upon the rabble as
The gutter and the sewer rose to meet it.
From sedan chassis hailed in rich profusion
Loud hails of irony and mordent alas!
Unwisely choked by mixed monoxide car-fumes
Urgent, pounded to lackwind, muddled confused
And drowned by suchlike odours; stirred by the air
They fastened down the windows; which descended,
And fattening in prolonged slothful journies
Flung their smoke into the cafeterias,
Stirring the patter of their coffee selling.
Neon signs would flare and splutter
Burned green and orange, framing the cola scam,
In which red light was shown a ring-pull can.
Below on antique mustangs were displayed
In little rondels on the window screens:
The change of Tax disks, by the barbarous King,
So rudely forced; yet there the pneumatic drill
Filled all the sidewalk with inviolable voice
And still they cried and still the world pursues,
Dig, dig to dirty sewers,
And other withered stumps of time
Were scrawled upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, browbeating, rushing the humans enclosed.
Footpad hustled in the bar,
Under the Spotlight, in Shepard's Bush, her hair
Sprayed out in fiery puce
Grayed at the roots, then would be savaged anew.

"My hair is red to-night. Yes, red. Stain with my
Special tonic. Why do you never eat? Eat!
What are you drinking now? What drinking? What?
Or possibly if you are driving...think!

I think of that lost valley
Where the red men play the spoons.

"What is that noise?
The winded on the floor.
"What is that noise now? What are the dined estuing?
Jogging, again jogging."

Do you go jogging.
Do you see joggers, do you remember collapsing?
I remember
Those are the perils that made his capsize
Are you alive, alive oh? Is there coughing in your breath?

But

OOOO that Marks & Spencerian Bag -
It's so elastic
Of fluorescent plastic
"Where shall I drive now? What shall I drive?
Caught in the rush hour in a jam, baulked in the street
With my dark brown mood, we stall into tomorrow.
Will those lights never change?"
The hot water we're in
And if it raons, a closed car, for sure
Contains within a gram of chaos,
Press licensed cries, and wailing for a knock out
in Rocky IV.

When Lil's license got revoked, I said -
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself
COME IN NUMBER SIX YOUR TIME IS UP
Now when you get it back, try to be a bit smart.
They want to know where you got the money you paid them
To get yourself this M.O.T, they did I was there
You make it worth our while, Lil, you'll get it
They said, I swear we're here to look after you.
Well I'm not, I said, thinking of the poor social workers,
They've been in the forefront four years, seems a shame
But what they won't give out, the Others will, I said
Oh will they she said. You know they will, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank she said and gave me a right hook.
COME IN NUMBER SIX YOUR TIME IS UP
If you don't like it, they'll make you get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose but you can't.
But if you make out, It'llbe through tact or yelling.
You ought to be ashamed it looks so antique.
(It's only a T Registration)
I can't help it, she said, polishing a lost fender,
All the bills I had to pay to patch it up, she said
(She's had five already and all of them Fords)
The mechanic said it would pass all right, but its never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
If you can't leave the car at hme, sometimes, I said.
What do you buy shoes for if you don't go walking?
COME IN NUMBER SIX YOUR TIME IS UP?
Well that Sunday on the way home, it had a hot bommet
and the engine overheated and it stuttered like one shot.
COME IN NUMBER SIX YOUR TIME IS UP?
COME IN NUMBER SIX YOUR TIME IS UP?
Headlight Bill? Fanbelt Lou! Fanbelt Bill?? Fanbelt!
Tut, tut, fanbelt!
Good try ladies, nice try sweet ladies, bad luck,
Your car has failed.

HORNS OF NIMON THE MUSICAL: SCENE 2

2010-07-16T15:25:00.000Z

GUARDS’ DUET

THIN GUARD

Not long now, be stout hearted, to Skonnos be true.
(Sotte voice) And I’ll be glad to see the back of you.
For the Second Skonnon Empire will arise, and rule the skies.
(Sotte voice) And I’ll not have to see your bulbous thighs
See your uniform distend
Hear you shout your bloody “weakling scum”
I’ve heard it all weekend
I not have to sit and watch you scratch your bum.
(I mean your arse)
These trips are torture if – like me - you’re got a bit of class.
[Aloud] The Nimon I have heard has promised these slaves will be the last
(Sotte voice) And you can wobble off and make a fast-food joint aghast.

TOGETHER

And the Nimon will bring us the power that we lack
To put the Skonnon Empire back! We’ll heed the Nimon’s call.
And when we have our Empire back, we’ll pillage, rape and even sack

THIN GUARD
(Sotte voice) And we’ll put fat fools up against the wall!

FAT GUARD

What are we waiting for then, although this ship’s just a rust-bucket
(Sotte voice) And though I’m fat, I’m not quite deaf, so you, you can
just shut it.
We can go faster if we know this trip is our last time in this crate
(Sotte voice) And I’m no more glad that you’re here to moan about me, mate!
Just because I like to keep
The Aneth firmly knowing, they’re in Skonnos’ strong hand
I have to keep my phrases simple: no use bein’ deep
For ‘weakling scums’ the only thing they understand.
I have to watch you preen and sniff, and raise your brows.
But you don’t receipt the Odes Of Mebon to a load of cows!

[Aloud] And if you’re right and the Nimon has said these are the last
We’ll set the power to overblast, cut through the Forbidden Zone
We’ll get there twice as fast!

TOGETHER

And the Nimon will bring us the power that we lack
To put the Skonnon Empire back! We’ll heed the Nimon’s call.
And when we have our Empire back, we’ll pillage, rape and even sack

FAT GUARD
(Sotte voice) And we’ll put thin bastards up against the wall!

HORNS OF NIMON: THE MUSICAL

2010-07-16T13:00:00.001Z

HORNS OF NIMON: THE MUSICAL OPENING NUMBER!

Song of Skonnos

[Sung by fat, starship guard as he herds Anethian prisoners into
holding cells on board his ship.]

In there, into your cells, of steel and air!
We must make haste, to Holy Skonnos: Empire of the Skies!

[Chorus of Anethian Slaves]
What dreadful fate, awaits, us there? We are our peoples’ sacrifice.

[Guard]
You are fools! Foolish sons and daughters of simple worlds.
Whose worth is but to do as you are told, Get in the Hold!
For you are weaklings, weak links, you’re weakling scum
Only fit to lick our boots while crawling on your tum
What sort of people sacrifice their young to please our whim?
You’re too cowardly to try to fight, your filled up to the brim
With cowardice, tepidation, lack of any balls!
When next, you’ll see unmetalled skies, you’ll stand in Skonnos’ Halls!

[Chorus of Anethian Slaves]
What dreadful fate or sacrifice, awaits us where the Nimon calls!

[Hold clangs shut during reprise of Guard’s song.]

The Waistband (After T S Eliot) Part 1

2010-07-15T23:34:00.002Z

I The Denial of The Bread

Dieting is cruelest to the mouth, feeding
Ryebread spread with a light hand, mixing
Museli and desire, contending
Dull foods with weight gain
Winter kept us warm, jogging
Girth in disdainful shorts, hogging
A little life with dried potatoes.
Someone surprised us coming over the Starnbergersee
With a snigger plain we puffed into the colonnade
And went on in sweatbands into the Hofgarten
And drank decaffinated brews and held off waiters
"Nein, Nein, Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, echt dieting"
And when we were chilblained sking at the Arch-Duke's
My Croissants were eaten out of sight in a shed
And I was lightened. He said Marie,
Marie, you're dieting. And down the Hatch,
In the mountains there you can feed.
I eat much of the night and go straight for the larder.

What are the roots that lunch consists of now?
Out of this rosy stomach! Inner man!
You can nor stay, nor gust, for you can only home
In heaps of breakfast crockery or shreaded wheat.
And the dietry gives no succour, the cricket no relief,
And the dead ground no help to the bowling. Only
There is a salad under this red crock
(Come in to order salad of this fine crop)
And I will show you something different from either
Your salad at evening skillfully blended
Or your salad next morning curled at the edges
I will show you fear in salads and such.
Frisch weht der cabbage
Die Lettuce zu
Mein Irisch Stew
Wo weilest du?

You gave me wholemeal first a year ago;
They called me the wholemeal girl.
- Yet when we came back, ate from the wholemeal cook book
Your charms fulsome, you hair in a net. I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Hungry nor fed, and I new nothing
Cooking into a healthu diet, the balance
Ou est la chef du ma tante
Madame Sausages famous cheese volovants
Had a bad habit, wuld never digest
Is grown to be the widest woman in Europe
With a wicked peck of tarts. Here, said she
Is your dessert the crowned Venician baaking
(Those are glaice cherries that coat its spires, look!)
Here is berry fondue, the layering of the chocs
The Ladle of the set soup rations.
Here is the man with the free loaves, here the cheese wheel,
And here is the deep-fry merchant and his cart
Which is black, holds something that they curry round the back
That my Doctor has forbidden me. I do not feed
The Hungry Man for love but money.
I seek rolls from people, folding dough in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs Equitone,
Tell her I drink the Horlicks up myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Lean-veal Pate
Under the brown fog of a winsor sauce
A crust floured in a loaded wedge so mealy.
I had notthought death had underdone such pastry,
Pies, flaky,and shrtcrust were retailed
And each man licked his lips, beef for his meat.
Fed up, with skill, and downing ciders sweet,
Meanwhile some merry goodwife minced their beef
With a dead sound upon a chopping board of pine.
There I saw one I knew and stopped him: crying "Venison!"
You who ate with me in the shops at Mylae!
Those crops you planted last year in your garden
Have Brussels come to sprout, spinach to bloom this year?
Oh keep the dog from hence, the gardeners bane
Or with his nails he'll dig them up again!
You! Hypocrite Dieter, my cordon bleu, my lunch.

[Old parody poem written in my second year at University.
This covers the first part.]

The Comfort of Carrion (After Gerald Manley Hopkins)

2010-07-15T11:58:00.000Z

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Carrion Comforts by Simon Bucher-Jones

Lacking a God (what God?) to wrestle in night’s crepid hours
I must perforce find hope in carrion, in all of earth’s decay
Our bodies, lives, loves, intellect, all that’s ours – must pass away
Depair is the strong sea, that at our sand-built towers
Washs and laps, ‘til ramparts, bailey, buttresses and bowers
All values and all merits, worth and powers, can not say nay
And yet, oh yet, we last, hold-fast, endure and not give way
As a single peak, sunlit aerie, out-tips from over-thunder’s lowers.

Once, I subdued all my decay to that bright, other, heaven-hope
But in the end unfrayed all weaves must part, and to their oakum fall
Though life to life entwist as each tight strand that binds a rope
Nothing is left, to show where once were, but the soft bird call
And on scattered wall, the brilliant lizardlimb, oh coloured calliope
Muse of the bright voice, steamhiss pinned, ending in wordless all.

Who is More Loving? (After Auden)

2010-07-11T20:23:00.003Z

The More Loving One

By W H Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

The More Loving Ones

By Simon Bucher-Jones

Looking down at the world of ant and poet
The stars may pick out, whether or not we know it,
Which form of life their burning light or ray
Will shine with passion for both night and day.

Ants or poets, aardvarks or emus
Receive like benefit, none can refuse
Though stars may seem irrelevant to some
All should, recall, the nature of the sun.

Even a poet who can contemplate
Unmoved the darkling skies’ un-starlit state,
Would miss, I think, “one terribly, all day”,
If that particular star, but looked away.

And then if “all” stars died or disappeared
The time involved until the whole sky cleared
Of stars would be at least ten thousand years
While light of other days, flew past, like tears.

[Deneb is visible to the naked eye, at a distance of est 1,500 to 7,000
Light years. Other galaxies are visible in the 28 million ly range but
are not single stars]

The Unforgivable Virtue (After Chesterton)

2010-07-10T21:47:00.004Z

The Unpardonable Sin by G K Chesterton

I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.
Silence and strength, these two at least are good.
He gave me sun and stars and aught He could,
But not a woman's love; for that is hers.

He sealed her heart from sage and questioner --
Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave.
And if she give it to a drunken slave,
The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.

Only this much: if one, deserving well,
Touching your thin young hands and making suit,
Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute,
Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;

Prophet and poet be he over sod,
Prince among angels in the highest place,
God help me, I will smite him on the face,
Before the glory of the face of God.

The Unforgivable Virtue by Simon Bucher-Jones

Cry not? I grant, nor curse
In one sense, aye,
you can maintain that strong position by
Refraining from reminding me, in verse.

What seals may have been set upon my heart,
Are broken not, for you or any man,
Rather those seals' wax, only can,
Be melted from within, by passion's start.

The one who those cold seven seals has warmed
He deserves well
No brute, nor crawling thing in hellish cell,
Besides - 'he' thinks my hands are strongly formed!

So if we three ever have grace to stand
Before the God, of whom I yet must doubt
I tell you, GKC 'you'll' get a clout!
From me, before I'll let you raise your hand!

Internet Curtains: a poem

2010-07-03T15:44:00.001Z

Let me tell you about Philipa and Tony
They found their love upon the internet
She didn’t know he dressed up like a Pony
He didn’t know she was a vet, and yet,
They hit it off , and how! And now you:
Couldn’t say their social life has stalled.
I hear she entered him in the Derby,
And half of the spectator’s were appalled.
The rest, applauded!

Let me tell you about Cressida and Arthur
Or as they prefer online to known
The Lady Vampiresta Metacarphur,
And Her-Grace-The-Seventh-In-Line-To-The-Throne.
Yes, they had a thing for royalty, and snobbery
it can be nigh a sin, but Cressida was in it for the
Bloodlines, and Arthur ‘she’ was in it for the gin, that’s a win!
There’s a lot to be said for tradition, even if you make it
up yourself: you’ll find them in Debrett’s Swimsuit Edition,
And it’s grand they didn’t end up on the shelf.

Let me tell you about Cuthbert, George, and Milly,
At the heart of an polyamorous array: it started out
All tentative and silly, and ended with them making a display
In Selfridge’s window: in which their posing was cute
and sold, untold numbers of furcoats and ice-cubes
(and the Police, though called, decline to prosecute).
Yes, there are tales that didn’t end so neatly,
And on them I do not intend to dwell, there’s been
Betrayal and pain, long before language, you needn’t
Blame the internet as well.

The Next Part of Kubla Khan Recovered (After Coleridge)

2010-07-01T21:40:00.011Z

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

***

Part Two

Born of the vision of the well:
The sunken well of world’s desires,
With my words I’d weave the spell;
Of Kubla’s summer capital,
The meadows of the flashing fires!

Sun-speared Red Fountains in the earth
The ember-blaze of heaven’s hearth
To burn, all ochre, in the air with cinnamon, and cassia
The scent that falls as dusty rain upon the coriandergreen
While tamed impala and giraffe, from Khwarezmid and far Xia
paced the long verges in between.

And Ia! the cry to heaven they made
-They lie that say giraffes can not give tongue-
A long low cry! as lonesome and dismayed
That ever came from demigod afraid
As cried at shadows when the world was young.
And shadows redly cast by fire's first burning
Stained all the rocks as though all-scarlet-yearning
Filled them to move in slow pavanes, slow turning
The old rip-tide of mountains aeon flowing
Stone upon stone uprising, gladly growing
Forced up on either side of pleasure's dome
Spears' flung at heaven's gate-locked bowers
Lightnings flung back to shatter ancient towers
The contrast lies in heaven's silent home
Where fire untouched, untouched by Genghis' spite
Stars tumble frigid, spear-points of the night.

The firelight on the dome of pleasure
The fires above the ice below
Between those two extremes the treasure
The only peace mankind can know
Neither too hot nor cold, but made
To gentle warm the gentle hearted maid.

Within that crystal hemisphere
Enfolded in the Sunset's ray
A thousand strings by virtuosoes played
Sounded so high and undismayed
Unfettered by the chains of any fear.
Would that we could that fire in us impart
That blaze without, that fearlessness within
The Fountained fire would melt the coolest heart
Break earthly circumstance apart, and win
Inside, the universal, and etern'
Which soveriegn fire can never melt nor burn
And all who saw it would proclaim
The Alkhest, potable, by name
The Grail, the cup, the secret sign
In the world's heart the autumn wine!
And fly, lest fire should strike them down!
For they have seen the hidden crown
Reaved from the dust of Palestine!

Bright Star / Dark Star (After Keats)

2010-06-30T18:02:00.003Z

Bright Star by Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

Dark Star by Simon Bucher-Jones

Keats did not see – another - slope away,
Dark rogue, invisible to the human eye,
Leaving Ophiuchus’ snakes, footloose, astray
(Im)proper motion, startlingly high.
10.3 seconds of arc, in yearly pace,
A brown dwarf, blushing red in infra-light,
Leaving all others - relatively - fixed in place,
12 billion years old: moving through the night!
Peter Van de Kamp, (though maybe a mistake)
Predicted its giant worlds – none yet discovered
They might have been abandoned, in its wake,
Grumbling of senile stars, and ‘lookin’ bothered’.
So poets? Licence sought for travellin' far?
Observe the ancient, cruisin’, Barnard’s Star.

Glories of Men and Women (after Sasson).

2010-06-28T21:04:00.002Z

Glory of Women by Siegfied Sasson

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Glory of Men by Simon Bucher-Jones

You play with guns, the stag hunt and the chase.
Since Coriolanus, you’ve equated scars,
With politic advancement, higher place,
Ability to pull the skirt, in bars.
You make us pedestals, unless we’re tarts,
Assume we’re thrilled by all your military tales,
And if we can be honest - someone starts,
Dulce Decorum - and it’s not the frails!
You can’t believe we sweat and not ‘perspire’
That we might strive, see horrors, feel the pain
Of stillbirth or of influenza’s curse,
Seamstresses’ hands that tremble as they tire
Death does not only come with mud and rain
Whether in wars or not, there is a hearse.

And if Kindliness Stoops To Love? (After Rupert Brooke)

2010-06-28T12:07:00.002Z

And Love Has Changed To Kindliness
By Rupert Brooke

When love has changed to kindliness --
Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
So tight that Time's an old god's dream
Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
Seven million years were not enough
To think on after, make it seem
Less than the breath of children playing,
A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,
A sorry jest, "When love has grown
To kindliness -- to kindliness!" . . .
And yet -- the best that either's known
Will change, and wither, and be less,
At last, than comfort, or its own
Remembrance. And when some caress
Tendered in habit (once a flame
All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame
Unworded, in the steady eyes
We'll have, -- that day, what shall we do?
Being so noble, kill the two
Who've reached their second-best? Being wise,
Break cleanly off, and get away.
Follow down other windier skies
New lures, alone? Or shall we stay,
Since this is all we've known, content
In the lean twilight of such day,
And not remember, not lament?
That time when all is over, and
Hand never flinches, brushing hand;
And blood lies quiet, for all you're near;
And it's but spoken words we hear,
Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies
Are stranger and nobler than your eyes;
And flesh is flesh, was flame before;
And infinite hungers leap no more
In the chance swaying of your dress;
And love has changed to kindliness.

And if Kindliness Stoops To Love?
Simon Bucher-Jones

And if kindliness once stoops again to love
Will love not find it pain? Once more to move
Ixion’s turning wheel in vast distress
Whose cycle long has stilled, and been balked
With timbers ‘gainst the floods -
Powerful as winter storms that yet may come.
Gods may awake refreshed in heaven, and then shout
For there will be none then to ‘hold, enough’.
What is mere seven million of earth’s years
Cupid can blink - a decade’s dozing tears -
Until, you seem to think, at a certain hour:
Kindliness to love again, may briefly flower.
And yet – if as you say, the future’s set
In slow insidious decay – fire entering emberhood.
Then, when, after ten years, of being told:
That no time can abide, that it’s mature
Like solid English oak, thus to endure
Passionless, without that keyed caress
That you imagine in mere habit giving,
Then I will feel no shame – or not the shame,
That you envisage – the shamed, sudden, shock
Of being lessened day by day, until the scales
Are stripped away and we are seen, plump,
Nervous, at each other’s throats, in flannelled wintergreen.
My shame will be this, that all, every long second of
That while, while you thought passion locked
And fettered down, by adulthood, and time -
By that cold lie, that says if all things falter, so must we:
So must the heartstrings of the cosmos fray -
I did reject that lie unutterably, yet fear to flee.
I could not then fly forth, but my heart’s wish flew
In the long solitary grind of barren time
How dare you speak of it, as if it was:
Achievement to be, brutal, cold as ignorance.
And call it ‘Kindliness’, and give it praise.

Simon BJ after Rupert Brooke.

The Fourth Drinker (after Robert Graves)

2010-06-28T00:21:00.003Z

The Three Drinkers

Blacksmith Green had three strong sons,
With bread and beef did fill 'em,
Now John and Ned are perished and dead,
But plenty remains of William.

John Green was a whiskey drinker,
The Land of Cakes supplied him,
Till at last his soul flew out by the hole
That the fierce drink burned inside him.

Ned Green was a water drinker,
And, Lord, how Ned would fuddle!
He rotted away his mortal clay
Like an old boot thrown in a puddle.

Will Green was a wise young drinker,
Shrank from whiskey or water,
But he made good cheer with headstrong beer,
And married an alderman's daughter.

Robert Graves

But there was a fourth souse
Worse than the other three
He snapped the necks of John and Ned
And he'll come for big Billie.

He took the soul, from J. Green's hole
As it spun out, burned with fat,
He took it maddened as it was
And turned it to a bat.

He took the rotted corpse of N.
To drive his great black coach
With head askew, on a body new
in the form of a great cockroach.

Will Green, well his fates coming
Though to good beer he's no stranger.
For the Aldeman's daughter's a Harker by blood
And a vampire, *is* a danger.

Simon BJ

The Twitterer's Rubyiat : Part 6

2010-06-26T21:44:00.002Z

[Part 6]

*
The scholars of the sciences all arose,
And lay before the Church perlucid prose
Describing the laws, celestial bodies follow,
But ah my masters, why these laws, not those?

*
Among the toys that stood in measured ranks,
The fighter planes, the soldiers, and the tanks,
I heard a whisper come, “Why must we war?’
Rise up and smash the statist Piggy Banks!”

*
Black as the night sky, with faint diamond tones,
White as the milk of cataracts and bones,
Each the twin pattern of the gamer’s board.
The us, and them: the binary, twos and ones.

*
Though we could weigh our whole lives, and by might,
Or cautious reason, choose what love was right,
From every possible chance or fleeting touch,
We’d still have lost that love at single sight.

*
The single toy that spoke against the war.
I dreamed was seized and frog-marched from the floor.
Before a tribune formed of GI Joes,
I saw a game of hangman played in store.

*
Awake, for we must rise and to our work,
If even suns and moons can never shirk
Their course to drink star wine above the trees,
Why should we hope to dodge the poisoned dirk?

Simon BJ after Omar K. 56 verses.

Notes: duplicate verses in original rendered only once.
Additional material in Fitgerald translation discarded.
One additional entirely new verse added, can you spot it?

The Twitterer's Rubyiat: Part 5

2010-06-25T15:12:00.002Z

[Part 5]

*
If space is infinite and time never-fleeting
All patterns must recur, old forms re-greeting.
Ten to the Ten to the Ten to the Twenty Seven
Unknowing years pass, ‘til our next 'first' meeting.

*
All things that ever-were, no plea can change
The boy who strays into the firing range
Whose foot will tred, or not, on a lost shell
Will always die, or not, and neither’s strange.

*
Our shoulder to the wheel we’re meant to set
And mourn each wasted second with regret
But, if we soberly worked every hour
Only to fail, we’d still have cause to fret.

*
Age like a cloak of snow, covers our frame
Beneath it agues, weak limbs, un-manned shame,
What can be worse than suffering such ills,
Why worse they will be gone, shame, ills, man, name.

*
The cue, draws back and after careful aim
It drives the white ball on to do the same
Can the red ball, that white ball striking, know,
The meaning and the purpose of the game?

*
From yocto unto yotta, though we measure
And set the universe to frame our pleasure
“That there is anything to know at all
And minds made fit to know it” ‘s the true treasure.

*
Set down religion, take up with the vine
For in my cups I’ve often found a sign:
A revelation I’ll impart to you
The stars are bubbles born in sparkling wine!

*
What brighter bloom is seen, upon the field,
Than where the blood of martyrs food did yield
To every questing root, bone-meal applied
So all our honours bloom upon the shield.

*
Sitting, at funerals, drinking on the stair
In memory of one, who wasn’t there
How much more I’d have drunk had I but seen
Tomorrow’s mourners for all those who where.

*
Everything good, woman or man makes new
Comes down to us from those who looked askew
As lens that show the heavens first arose,
From those who saw the bug beneath the dew.

Simon BJ. after Omar K.

The Twitterer's Rubyiat: Part 4

2010-06-25T09:29:00.001Z

[Part 4]

*
This spiral galaxy that top-like spins
In 50 million years, a turn begins
Against its fires our world and lives and all
Are but one pin-head in 4 trillion pins.

*
The Rose cried out ‘I shall be born anew,
What more than this can Gods or Nature do?
A thorn of crowns, does not deny the seed
Flowers will arise though you be false or true.’

*
Triumphing o’er illusions, science I sought
Experimental meaning: tested thought.
Still though two grand illusions still remained,
That any truth is known, or truly taught.

*
In every life, ten thousand glasses raise
Each - brimming over - drain with a clear gaze
One must contain the poisonous draught of death
Take it as all the others: With due praise!

*
One who the deer had hunted, saw the trap:
That on his leg the teeth of death would snap.
Striving to cheat it, he then leapt that gorge:
Which has no other side: that endless gap!

*
Live beats us as a Master beats his slaves
But its switch picks not one who misbehaves
Random its strikes, random its deadly force
When all the while , it’s justice, the slave, craves.

*
In heaven : all shall love, and love will be
Free of disdain and petty tyranny.
Wine in the air will flow, and our limbs sing.
Why wait for heaven, when there’s you and me.

*
Things I have gained and own, time may devour
Give me instead the view from that high tower
O’er all the things and people that have gone
All I have loved lives in me in that hour.

*
None can agree what life the Gods approve
What Gods exist: If they the worlds move
How best to worship: if worship is wise
All can agree: that age will wine improve.

*
If wine, your joy, then vineleaves on your brow
Coins on your eyes to pay the ferryman’s scow
To that Taverna which across the Styx
Will quench that thirst for life, that you feel now.

Simon BJ. after Omar K.

The Twitterer's Rubyiat: Part 3

2010-06-24T08:35:00.006Z

[Part 3]

*
Seeking the meaning past the Darkening Door?
Some say “We’ll cast our crowns on golden floor”.
Some warn of hells, or say “oblivion’s all”
But none come back to tell us, what’s in store.

*
If world – as puzzle – we could freshly start
And separate those of the kindly heart
Could we not raise them up in every land?
So love could flow in streams to every part!

*
These words as they endure, when I am gone.
Will, still, stir the desires that they touch on.
Seek love, seek wine, seek everything that sings!
Each is your present good: the grave is none.

*
The moving finger’s writings will endure
Immutable, invulnerable, and sure
We can not change our fate: but know this hope
The finger’s meaning’s blessedly obscure!

*
A billion years, passed so this line could be.
And though those years were storm-tossed as the sea.
Their riot and tumult I did not endure,
As peaceful then, the next billion, to me.

*
Outside the glorious store, the people queue
To seize the bargains which are there, on view.
They urge the doors to open, knowing well
They’ll get no ‘Two for One’ when life is through.

*
When it slumps down, a puppet’s not just flung
Upon the bonfire, it can be restrung
How much more yet, the Drunken Choir of Songs
Will raise us, up again, when they’re re-sung.

*
Some say that without evil, plague, or dearth
We’d fail to value good’s inherent worth
The vile rich man’s excuse to fail to help
The lonely and the desperate of earth.

*
Better to find love once, in a sinful guise
In adulterous ways, or in whores' eyes.
Than to spend all one’s hours on knees in prayer,
And end with no love found, in sky or air.

*
They say that God is Great, but all who think,
Can see the flaws in man and nature’s stink:
Why then disease, decay, despair and death?
Did His Hand tremble, owing to the drink?

Simon BJ after Omar K.

The Twitterer's Rubyiat : Part 2

2010-06-23T10:55:00.000Z

[Part two]

*
The tube train of desire it rumbles on
Through briefly lighted scenes of cool London
Oh, mind the gap in stepping through the doors
The train once left, will vanish, and be gone.

*
In walking homeward past the London Pubs
I heard some young binge-drinkers' "glubglubglubs"
I should perhaps have called the Daily Mail,
But editors, ‘fore this have drunk, and subs.

*
When life is neither hot, nor cold, but tense
To turn to wine is not a grave offence
Oh leave the talk of livers at the door
To live without despair's fair recompense.

*
Is this, we see, the universe entire
The sum and outgrowth of our soul’s desire?
Then best our soul were dumb and did not make
This lumpen world, where unfulfilled, I tire.

*
Do we know how and why where dark matter rules?
Or why dark energy, expansion fuels?
And yet we think we understand the world
Although of most of it, we are but fools.

*
The end will come and come as quite a shock
To cushion it, a Riesling or a hock
Or champagne or perhaps a pint or too
Who has died more: for staggering to the block?

*
The Secret Grail that many Templars sought
I found, and found its hidden virtue naught
Save that like any cup, it can hold wine
That bears me hence from any woes life taught.

*
At any party some hang on ‘til last
Quaffing ‘til host and hostess are aghast.
Others depart at leisure through that door
Which opens but one way, and then is past.

*
With all I strove to gain or tried to make
I bought but little peace for my mistake
Why did I sell the hours of sweet repose
To lease them back, in tea or coffee break?

*
Do not clutch baby sorrows to your breast
To grow and feed and cuckoo-kill the rest
But nurse and rock that infant called content
That runt needs every care to grow the best.

Simon BJ. after Omar K.

The Twitterer’s Rubyiat (A new translation)

2010-06-22T12:37:00.002Z

The Twitterer’s Rubyiat (A new translation)

The castles where the conqueror wassailed,
Long years of time and elements assailed
The hailest knights who stood on cloth of gold
Ended as mortals in their coffins nailed.

*
Each dawn I rue the previous day’s excess
And vow to write more deeply, twitter less
And yet who knows how long we have to spend?
If little, every friend, our life must bless.

*
If wine, or writing, art, or aught, entrance
Praise them with passion, fire and eloquence
When darkness falls you will not find the stars
Disdain to turn in their long splendid dance.

*
Tomorrow passes into the world’s dust
Today only we have to use in trust
Therefore begrudge no kindness, and no joy
Leave no-one hungry, for kind word or crust.

*
Stiving from ignorance we rise to seize
The little knowledge born upon the breeze
The spoken words of scholar, wit and sage
And yet all ended in death and disease.

*
Awake I find another message from,
A friend who urges my excesses on.
Arise and set our little birds to flight
We’ll tweet no more when bird and cage are gone.

*
Perhaps we would have better not been born
Than waste and fret, alone in life forlorn
My non-existence before birth was calm
No hurt nor tumult, no despair nor scorn.

*
When the wee wren, the thrush, or, robin sings.
Finding its love for life in tiny things.
Why should I grieve who, have had so much more
Brought to me by stronger, loving wings.

*
Without the spur, of wondering what occurs.
Beyond the far horizon, or the airs.
What we have here would be more wretched still
Though from our laptops neither of us stirs.

*
If all that does exist: the moon and sun –
Forever in courses pre-ordained run,
Then to will other, than our free-will aims?
Impossible! : as un-firing a gun!

Simon BJ. after Omar K.

A "GEOFFREY HILL": POEM

2010-06-21T21:34:00.004Z

The army guard

The land unraised, defies and bides its time
The fenmark sleeps and no fires blazon there
To hold back Hereward's memories from reeds
That whisper of the passing of the air.

His mother wore her hair, down o'er her horse
- He calls for armies in a corn-crake's cry -
Rebels against Good Edward and with Norse
Estrithson sets his camp upon Ely.
He fails and falls back; into long defeat
Battered by Belars, driven out to lie, bitter
In granaries between the yellowing wheat,
Under the turning tumbrils of the sky.
Impotent now to bring the land to fret
The norman heel, he lies neath William's eye.

A CPi5m in the style of Geoffrey Hill.

Robyn Hitchcock muses about Saturday's episode (spoilers)

2010-06-17T12:26:00.000Z

Pandorica

Then I saw a box before me 'dorica.
It expanded as a plan did 'dorica.
And the Pan who blew the Pan flute, wiped his hoof
Upon the roof: Pandorica!

And when the box is opened 'dorica
Will we all cry eureka 'dorica?
Or will the thing inside prove just a donkey in the rain
That sprained its brain? : Pandorica!

There's a figure in a fixed chair 'dorica
And he's chained and masked and fixed there 'dorica.
And the look upon the bits you can see of his frozen face
Looks into space: Pandorica!

He's supposed to be this great threat 'dorica
When the door is left all open or ajar
But the way his hair is wavey looks uncertainly to me.
Quite like the sea: Pandorica!

I've heard from the preview 'dorica
Ian Levine thinks it's amazing 'dorica
And the thing we've been awaiting for the past 47 years
will dry our tears: Pandorica!

CD poem

2010-06-08T10:22:00.000Z

Relistening as I rip all my CDs
I hear the brittle snap of 1.2
mm of impure polycarbonate,
and let the weight of 20 grams,
fall from my hands, surrounded by
the tumbling flakes of aluminium
or gold. Much more is lost than
physicality, the data in the discs
is tortured too, the label's names
contort, and they are lost. Who
can hear music when their soul
is dust.

Simon BJ

Written as a 'CPi5m' first line: Jonathon Dennis.

Shakespeare's Beowulf part 1

2010-06-05T22:59:00.002Z

Know that in legend's days: Spear-Danes,
Declaimed the glory of their homeland's kings
How their Princes - of courage - far aclaimed
As, oft, Scyld Scefson, from enemies seized
The long mead-bench, and left terrified their kin.
The which was greater, for his weaker birth,
from foundling's crib, to the whale-road's waves,
'Til all to him submitted tributes golden
And on his brows sate kingship's crowned state,
The which to his son Beow he passed down
When at the norns decree his life was spilled.

Simon BJ

Neitherwood

2010-05-28T23:09:00.003Z

A fragment of Charles Kingsley's lost children's book "Neitherwood's Children", has come into my possession:

Part of Kingsley's text, from Chapter V:

"There in the forest, the spirits of the children found expression in making faces gape in the bark of trees, and hooting at the mousing owls, until the carney folk clung to the clearing and vowed that there be more things in deep pockets of thicketted night than ever went in by day.

Nedrick Neitherwood, touchiest of ring masters, who concealed his kindnesses - which were in fact many - with a skill that many a man would give to the enwrapment of an unfashionable vice, prowled the verges, yowling for a tightened rope here, and more stylishly folded tentflap there."

Simon BJ