Stuffs

Mourning Earle

What queues were they? (s’hard to say)
Queues from dreams my mind replays
Kept hidden for dozens of yesterdays
Winding rigid like fisher price snakes or some such and you hold them by the tail and they point out and not to floppy be
but waggle and so mechanically-
Remember? Do they have a name? Those plastic snakes waggly rigid almost magic like they propel themselves to sway and waltz in thin air, the body and head all linked segments. The queues though.. for a display, maybe a museum in the sinister partitioned town. Later on I acted an age and ran from each scene in the dream to another, in full QPR kit.
Oh chicken… meaning my love not coward (or bird) (although saying that..)
I can read between the lines, and can reckon with misunderstandings and faux pas etc as well as the next fella…but what got me and in the gutty way I hate, was the way her brother made a joke out of what could never be a joke. A murder – a murder of a teenager – a murder and a family home burnt to the ground, and a toddler shot dead and police corruption, used to illuminate cheap puns and how thoughtless mostly is that?
‘Don’t be so fuckin uptight Pete’ was his response. Yeah, alright PAL, excuse me while I throw up all over
Harlesden’s black or afrocarribean or how is it proper?) community rallied round that afternoon. Families who were sworn to loathe one another over ancient pettiness and babies and rival dealers were arm in arm on New Road.. Crowding the churchyard and sweating out their grief beneath heavy suits on a muggy summers rainy day

the thin legs of two of her outcasts are what this paragraph clumsily cops a feel for…Strangers to each other: voodoo eyed sp’rew stainy mystics scuffing the gravel by the garages dancing. Two men with beards and tins of beer – impossibly they never met before or after the day of the funeral.. Their oblivion is genuine,
‘wa gwa?n tha lor showmercy evatime.
Takes all a England twenty years to wake up to a idea me show yoo clippin a saven
Yoot wi gons shootin . me no reason boy

It was a day all on its own, in gloomy isolation from the rest of the calendar, from the rest of ever all time. Clouds spelt out E A R L E and crowds swirled ghostly and whispers shreiked through streets like speeding cars suddenly slowing down and silent as they disappear forever
Within rage and regret and guilt and bleak bleak sorrow. Without any excuses, announcements, ideas for the future.
Unpleasant as this is gonna sound now …generally me and Old Joe, who were on grave duty that month, were quite buzzin about funerals because we got massive tips from the grieving families as we rolled our sleeves up and filled in the graves with soil. On this occasion we were both numb and wanted to be a million miles away. At that time I had just finished my A-levels and was kipping on my nan’s sofa in her Dollis Hill council flat, working at Willesden Green cemetery. Trying to suss out what the fuck to do, university in September? What about hooking up with that Carlos fella my sister knew and getting a band together. He was such a good guitarist and England was starved of the kind of songs I somehow knew the pair of us could craft. Wasn’t I saying all this before to some girl? I stopped at one point and asked if she minded me rabbit on and on about my past. She said no, she loved to hear me talk.. but how sarky she sounded.
How genuine are
these birds draped about the albion rooms, many of whom pretending not to know they’re roundabout beautiful and desired and present themselves in mock shocked monologues when confronted with many a variety of man’s vulgar or charming or subtle or sickening show of that desire. From phwoar suck such and such to poignant lyrical serenades, all of mankind has a go from time to time.
northern girls and proper London girls seem a little more on the ball but make it hard work ….you have to shovel acres of sarcasm and confrontation and accusation out of the path before they show their true sweet affectionate selves sometimes
Anyway where was I, right here I suppose, rambling nothing to type whilst mourning what never was in my heart. Timeless boohooing about biggles not being my mate. Never does owt to reach out to me, loves me but doesn’t like me. No birthday pressie or even message or anything since I left dressing room at Brixton on Sunday. But this is normal and so why now let it upset me? Because.. well it’s obvious. Are we making an album? Either way I’m gonna make some records this year, with or without.
The one true horror is that if I was to be true to myself as an artist, as a man, as a Libertine, I would not work with the band as it stands anymore. The release and the liberty of the other path ie babyshambles, peter Doherty solo whatever is immense I can feel it from this side of the barbed wire, like in the cell in Wanno last year. Like a weight off me poor old boney shoulders. But so many young and old desperately keen on the four of us and how wonderful to give that rare pleasure. I was wrong in hoping, as we entered into plan A, that me wandering off as I fancied would be encouraged, given my constant lyrical melancholy and rage about the whole artifice – ‘its eating, chewing me up.. the scene is obscene’ and what have ya. Hmm. I need to speak to the boys before I go nuts. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe they know how I feel but are holding out at whatever cost. We have a good thing going etc etc , but fuck me he’s a difficult man to love and he gives me nothing. I go through each day and am twisting up, when I finally, fully unwind it will be furious, disastrous, dangerous, spectacular..

Found some scribbling diarylike from ages ago: what do you think?

Peter: “So”
Crosses legs, belt undone.
“What did you say to Lisa?”
Glances sarcasm
“Go on, tell us”
Nadine: “Erm, we talked about [pause] Katie, erm just you know sort of small chit chatty, people we know really, sort of regaling tales, laughing at stupid stories. The time at the monarch. Me, Rose and Hannah. She was like:
“C’mon girls, party”
And I was like:
“No I wanna go home”
I’d been up for days. It was good to talk. Girly conversation. I’m so used to people dismissing my comments, I’m more of a listener though. Your sister was nice though.
How about you mister?”

She comes over to me, in short shorts and an “I love NYC” vest, stroke head and sweet kisses. She sits on the on the chair’s arm, I press my head and hear her heart beating.
She sings:
“And I…. beginning to wonder.”
Gently rubs her finger against me. She was a cat some life ago and stretches, prowls to the bed, glances at herself in the mirror.
“I can’t believe I always used to wear shorts like these.”

The room is gloriously tacky deep red, my blotted senses blunt must be to beg so heartfelt of the girl on the bed that tonight as I sleep, would she suffocate me?

Window shaped mirror. She is innocent, naked astride me and the covers.
A pipe results in smoke clouds and a wee cough.
Catlike she’s on and off the bed for water.
“I’m losing my voice – again”
Coughs.
“I don’t sound like a man do i?”

In profile her face, collar bone, all her body dark skin orange and black in the electric light. I like it when she patters her lips.
“I feel like a cat more often than not”
And often is, softened the dark hearted mood by her touch, and so warm her long body, deep brown unsolved eyes.
“I could have sex all day long. All night. All day.” Yeah, I’m sure.. sorry love..
Just a bit too curious she says, which is the thing that killed the cat.
Inside her, old and new shadows, my breathing roaring tides distant to sound like nothing from this distant.. For the first time I wanna pack it in. I’m dying, kids!
No matter how open minded you are… oh no, it’s how to dismiss certain stereotypes.
She’s round my shoulders, you couldn’t act if you had those stereotypes.
Girls don’t want me to get my haircut, words create memories and emotions. Timeless and ambiguous, transcend. Any time, any era, a good haircut like good writing.

The more we are exposed to, the more cynical we get.
Being an artist one has to use ones imagination.
Transported somewhere, if its effects affect you…..

“Some are very deep, some for the moment only, different uses for different art.”
Gestures, altogether she embraces the mirror.

“I’ve stopped now, I’m at the end of my ramble, come to the end.”
Geyser lying dormant then erupt or volcanic to mean the heated explosion all in flow…

I see her upside down, newgates knocker, black hair curling down, beautiful hands gesture long finger as she talks of Prague. Hand on hand. She is stood behind me on the bed bent forwards.

“and you mister, wouldn’t you wish to change anything about yourself?”
“Sometimes I have a haircut.”

“Lets go strolling.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Actually, we’re really near Little Venice. I love it down there in the summer. Boozy and Gin”

I stretch and sigh.
“That’s quite a questioning sigh.
You’re like a magpie. You pick up things, everything around you you draw into yourself like a child when it’s learning.”

I think funny (or is it) thoughts.
Her sight without contact lenses is either:
“A soft focus porn film or as you focus a film camera just before the focus sharpens or the old church cathedral statues, made out of limestone, like at when acid rains, like poured down on them. You can still tell the gargoyle’s a gargoyle, you can still see the features but everything’s worn, weathered and just like, smooth or like a Monet painting. You see that it’s an flower but not in a lifelike way, smudged…Or looking through a car window covered in (like) dust or through a fog translucent, like smoked glass.”
“What’s translucent?” Ask I.
She tells me.

Sleeping with eyes open, she speaks of.
I think of her asleep, lids flicker and the whites of her mince pie webbed lightly with blood, bring to me fear and terror there to lay in bliss and imagine horror when she sleeps, eyes open slightly.
I wonder, does she think it strange of me writing like this as she speaks or sits silent knee splendid bent unposed smiling on the squeaky bed.

I remember another who lived the poetry that no other man dare even to write unless it was just imagination or genius with bills, indulgences, etc. Whilst others wrote poetry they never could live, perhaps I am the latter. Or once was. Or later to become.
Or to write the poetry one lived, unnecessary this or impossible to write as one lives.

Upon reflection, I did not know myself but became vague or almost familiar with the darkening shadow.

I have her phone now for days and days, bought it back off ___ after being surprised to learn that ____ had swapped it for a rock or so.

“Have you got that little bit I gave you before?”
“No I wouldn’t do that!”
“What?”
“Oh right…Yeah, I thought you said I’d done it.”
Agreements on calamity.
“I’m deaf. I’ve been going to gigs since I was 13.”

_____ knew the accents immediate,

P.D x

rambelings of the man

~ by strychnine on May 8, 2006.