Iceskaters
Belly of a man, face of a child. Drunk and high.
Refraction is the bending of light. Light bends when it travels from one body to another. Sex is when light travels through a glass. Lately I've been thinking about ice rinks.
Lately I've been thinking about animals. Panicking and rodents preserved in ice. Schizophrenia and snow globes, computer chairs and wrenches. Dust encased in dust or dust encased in resin.
Lately you’ve been thinking about concealment. Carpets and rodents stuck in ice. Still in their coffins, neat, brightly coloured rows. Cynical and carved into a pond, spherical and far down. There is mountains and there is crickets. Dirt and grasses and Getting Dark.
*
I wanted to tell you about a dream I had back in November. I was back in my old high school. Shiny faced. The teacher had gone rogue and was sneaking a bunch of us on a tour of one of the disused school buildings. It used to be the janitors house, but had been boarded up since the 80s. Must’ve been weird living right on the school grounds. His shirt was sticking to his back and he was grinning like a kid (impish). The vaguely onomatepic feeling when you say the words “abandoned buildings”.
I spent most of the dream talking to a boy I had known in primary school. He had brought his latest artworks with him- replica wikihow pages written in an openhearted cursive. The wikihow logo looked funny done in pencil. The works were titled clear, poetic phrases like “How to Skip Stones” and “How to Sing”. Instead of instructions, there was dense paragraphs of odd, idiosyncratic poetry, always unrelated to the title and usually formatted as a single run on sentence. They didn't make any sense. They made me feel strange and excited. Each piece was written on copier paper and slotted into wooden frames he had found in a skip. The frames were dark and ornate and looked pretty worse for wear. Termites had picked around the edges. He was telling me about a series of paintings he had been planning. He wasn't sure how to portray the idea he had. The idea was captcha images of carsickness.
I watched him hang the frames around the interior of the building. I watched his hands and I watched his trainers and I watched the dust on the floor. He talked about underpasses and motorways, cars going by. The noise of the cars outside your bedroom, three floors up. What passing cars sound like from the top of a tower, top of a castle. He told me he thought a lot about the value of the pathetic.
He stopped talking. We came to a strange room. It was a bowling alley, a football stadium, a bingo hall, a Wetherspoons, and an amphitheatre. The air was thick and the curtains were still. A hyena crawled out from out from under the floorboards.
Vehemence.
Maybe in another life we were ice skaters.
All roads lead to this.
Walk the cow.
Hair doesnt. Hair is dead so it couldn’t.
Walk the cow.
While walking the cow you may encounter thumbtacks. Direct these at your tree stump. You may also encounter roadsigns. Turn these on their head. Mark them with your penknife. There will be the velvet curtain. Close and heavy (((cloying))). Direct this wherever you'd like.
You walk the cow. One road leads to cotton, the other leads to pond-netting.
Hair to scalp to spine. Walking.
All roads lead to this.
Do you remember the cut velvet?
The river tells me hes trying to speak
less and less everyday.
He wants fizzy sweets and silence.
He wants wheelchairs.
He wants car crashes and he wants
calypso’s. He wants wheelchairs like magic.
He's closing the door.
execma
We came to a strange room.
It was an old gym hall, a football stadium, a bowling alley, and an amphitheatre.
The air was thick and the curtains were drawn.
A hyena crawled out from under the floorboards.
there is nine year old girl with execma on her hands.
she is in the bath.
she reads a book. she eats a plum.
an angel lies on top of her and falls asleep.
the girl lies very very still. she does not want to wake it.
her finger turn pruny.
its chewsday, innit.
I’ve noticed men like to
We went out on a nightwalk. You’re looking at tree bark and I say it looks like corduroy (the thick type) (old man jeans, young woman waist) and theres the distance (conniving) I remember being eight and believing I was bleeding heart and/or brave idealist (pining) and across the park someone is telling someone else about the guy we both heard about (the one who killed a guy) taking his clothes off, burying them in the woods, digging them up, putting them back on again. And who can blame him (shaking the leaves off). The senselessness of how a life unfolds.
In the airport there was a paper airplane in baggage reclaim. Hadn’t seen a paper airplane in so long before then.
The river and its submissions. Sweet, too close to cloying. The guy (I'll just tell you who it is. Its the guy from Burzum.) abandons buttoning up his shirt, gets down to business unfurling red carpets down onto dirt roads. The roads set off from a single centre point then go off for miles in each direction, way off past the horizon. A dozen-pronged dust star. The rolls of carpet were too big to hold casually and had been hastily ravelled, unspooling too quick in his hands, making a fool of him. It would be easier if you helped but he’s too prideful (he is a metal guy, after all). Pretend you dont notice, look at the tumbleweed passing by. Don't want to embarrass him.
Is there a proper name for the points of a star? I think I’ve heard them being called limbs. Personally, I'd be happy with arm (or possibly spoke). The outworks of a castle; one of the four parts composing a cross; the spur of a mountain range… Four-pointed stars also appear in the symbols of the Subaru car company and Philips corporation.
Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but some biologists and geologists might still use stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Funny how words go out of fashion, age gracelessly, no merciful death. Poets, too, have looked to Stella. Poets like to steal things. In heraldry they are referred to as “rays”. A ray of light. A glass.
Cant run away forever. Shouldn't want to. Running water in the next room.
Seven angels. Nearly six.
Belief is what makes things real.
Chop wood. Carry water.
When the horse was young things glittered. The tarmac was still hard (the tarmac has always been hard) and the glitter was not always to be trusted, but there was wheat and there was locusts. There was enough to go around.
The horse chewed wheat and was thankful. It stood staunch and handsome in the grass. It rolled in mud and it swam in shit. It was happy.
Time passed, as time does. Soon, the sun set upon the horse. In the hush of nighttime, pestilence set upon the land. The wheat grew scarce and the locusts fled. The horse fell silent. Its gallop slowed and its mane unravelled.
The horse lay down. It shrank into a coin. Its eyes fell out and rolled around.
When a horse becomes blind, there is no thought. Revelations become distances. Measurements. Wheat to stable to fence.
What it takes to get small again.
The Lambchop was Eating Pizza
I saw the lamchop the other day. We went out for pizza. Conversation came across the river. We had both met up with it not too long ago. I said that "its good that the rivers going out with people from work" , as "it seemed a bit lonely". I mentioned this offhand. He didnt look up from his plate.
"The rivers always been lonely".
This was spoken as if it was a given, as if it was something we had both spoke of plainly many times before. We hadn't. Of course it was true, had always been true, and we had both always known this. But I thought we had agreed upon half truths. TV dramas and skirting around the topic. Side stepping. He went on eating. I didn't say anything.
Back in the day the lamb chop made watercolour paintings of all the birds he saw on his flower. They weren’t the most technically proficient, and he even traced from his nature books at times, but they had a lopsided charm which went down well with children (always a good sign).
These days he’s moved onto acrylic. Right now hes working on a series of a genteel West End couple walking a doberman. In each painting, the couple walks down an uninhabited rendition of Byres Road. There are no shopfronts, only old tenement buildings. These are rendered from different angles, my favourite being from that of a small child peering up the couples noses. There was a sense of good humour in this work that I failed to see in his other pieces. Stylistically he's kind of ripping off Alasdair Gray, but I know to keep this observation to myself. Yes, the lambchop has came a long way in terms of technical skill, but he seems he has lost his heart. Showing me around the studio, he makes a gesture towards the dog. This attention never stays in one place for long.
"The doberman was bought as an affectation."
Conversation at the Bus Stop
1: Hiking shoes in the city?
2: Nods Rainbow reflection in the buses ass
1: Bitter smile. Looks away. Pause.
And so the countryside grew stiller.
Looks to the side.
2: Nods. Looks away.
Long pause.
Yeah. Pause.
So sad about the Guinness harp.
the throat
it gets quiet.
when it gets quiet you find yourself back in the old country.
you watch a man (he is wild water fishing). the water is nearly up to his chin.
beyond the river but before the monument. turned away and below a bridge.
beyond the river. before the monument.
the fish leap up.
just past the throat.
When you die
When you die
you go to a kitchen.
This kitchen will be small and windowless. The floor will be linoleum and the lighting will be fluorescent. You will not mind the fluorescence. The kitchen will be filled with all your scrappiest, most pockmarked friends. Outside of the kitchen there is nothing but minecraft ocean as far as the eye can see. The minecraft ocean is a harp. It holds the kitchen above the horizon.
You will arrive at an unusually spirited time in the kitchen. Usually the kitchen sits primly as its inhabitants are off adventuring. Engaging in Hijinks.
Such a lifestyle gathers (tumbleweed). Such a lifestyle gathers souvenirs. An example of this can be found when your friends teeth were exposed to nuclear radiation. This gifted them with a funny story and the ability to make a room glow neon from their laughs.
Your friends will sit on countertops. They will swing their feet. They will immantise the echelon. To immantize the escahton is to make that which belongs in the afterlife happen in the here and now.
A miniature horse pads around the kitchen tiles (showboat). It is silver and self indulgently solemn It cant be more than four inches tall. You will watch as flecks of dirt fly off of your friends swinging shoes, and you will grin as the dirt pirouettes straight into the horses mouth, shocking it out of its solemnity. Dirt is very good at diving. Dirt is like Tom Daley.
Sometimes all a horse needs is to be reminded to laugh. Its funny. Everyone laughs.
The room turns neon. Strange, beautiful. Neon on black hair.
Thumbs up. Excellent. Class.
Heaven Part 3
Lately I’ve been thinking about heaven. Wondering how to shoehorn Glasgow in there somewhere. Sneak past the guards, hop a fence.
The attempt at thought. Its old butter. Its underpasses. You take pity on them.
Lately I’ve been watching street cats. When street cats play they do so gravely. Behind all joviality, a certain restraint,
almost a fatalism. A hovering sense of red theatre curtains, spectres, manning each side of a stage, the electric charge
of their stillness just before meeting. A soundtrack. Its almost imperceptible, but its there. The sound of violins.
Lately I’ve been coming up with classifications for heaven. I’ve decided that heaven is sometimes young,
oftentimes dried mud. Heaven is kind but not easy. It is large in mass and unwieldy in attitude.
Heaven refuses to make itself small.
The empty road. The long walk home.
All I know for sure is that heaven is not a hypothetical because life is not a hypothetical. Life is not
something you can go at alone.
Heaven is troublesome.
Heaven is a verb because heaven is walking.
Heaven is graffiti because graffiti is gumption.
hi.
been thinking about
Is holy
Too
Maybe
Dunno. I dont have the answers.
Anyway gotta go just wanted to say whats up how’s it going and thanks for all the angels.
P.s. lol imagine god throwing up on new shoes. Hahaha. Jokessssss jokes dont hit me. Hahaha.
Heaven
In heaven you are being serenaded by a beautiful stranger
You are lying on a couch
His mouth is close to yours and your not you, your someone else
and your laughing and yeah sure ill be your beautiful girl.
In heaven you are dancing on broken glass
You feel really high eventhough your sober
And your talking really really fast.
In heaven theres so many charli xcx/icona pop I dont care (I love it) remixes.
Almost too many
In heaven no ones heard of poppers
(ghastly contraptions )
In heaven the wine is water.
Or maybe heavens just one big beautiful glasgow, stretching off into forever.
The end of the minecraft map, those diamond blue planes of water.
In heaven theres no horizon.
You keep walking.
You keep walking.
In heaven your guardian angel wears lipgloss and Amy winehouse eyeliner and no tights.
In heaven I want you to come find me and you do.
You know that when I die, you die too.
In heaven everyones all talking and laughing.
Everyones all talking and laughing.
In heaven.
Every good boy
Every boy is a good boy.
A good boy is a mutt.
My boy is a good boy.
Every good boy deserves young and dried mud.
My boy takes the scenic route.
My boy deserves young and and dried mud.
Good boys stumble towards salvation.
A good boy is a mutt.
This is not real fun.
Real fun is a pond.
It is frozen over and there is dust in the water.
There is dust in the water and you can hear the crickets.
You can hear the crickets and you can hear the wind on the mountains.
Sincerity.
Miscarriages.
There is a pain in every chest.
Seven angels. Nearly six.
Awful used to mean awe now it means something else.
(The dream began the middle.)
I have never seen a horse out in the country, but I am familiar with the horses of old.
(Horses contain pathos.)
Horses were a key figure in the time before. They were of honest nature and held in high prestige.
Horses were used in war, in hunting, and as a means of transport. They were commonly depicted in ancient art and storytelling,
often with great insight and empathy.
The townsfolk all agreed that bronze horses signified death. This did not mean death in the literal sense.
This meant knowing when
to leave.
When peace came over the territory, the horses were put away.
Girl Giant
Girl giant walks. She walks and she walks alone. She and the gods are all that are left. She remembers the time before. It was not always like this.
She walks.
She walks
through canyons like winding forest trails. The view is lost on her but she likes the way the dust colours
1. The air
2. The soles of her feet.
Pastel on paper. A gift (she takes the sunrise with her).
Girl giant comes to the desert. Cicadas loom. This is a place of mourning, but not a kind one. There is no dignity is midday sun. She passes quickly.
The giant slows in what they once called rainforests. These are her favourite. The god here treats her well. Wines and dines her. On taller trees, waxed leaves brush slow against her cheeks. Humidity clings. What a tease.
Sometimes girl giant still speaks. Sings. Dances. It is important to pretend you are still capable of action.
Night falls. Girl giant has grown weary. She comes across a cave, grey and cavernous. The grass is dark blue and wet on her hands and on her knees. She is just small enough to crawl inside.
Curled up tight, she lies down on her side and looks out into the quiet. When she is still she can feel the life underneath her. Loose earth, rising, falling. A little world all on its own. Charming in the gap-toothed way, sweet like stop-motion animation.
Waiting for sleep, she performs her rituals.
Turn the world over in her mouth.
Tuck it under her tongue.
Ignore the pain in her chest.
Think of things that
do not still exist.
Eye infection may lead to blindness.
I was slipping staples when I remembered the spice rack in the old kitchen. Once you start looking you find it in everything.
I saw on tv that when flies keep getting in their eyes horses will line up like alternates, understudies, facing one direction or the other. Your head, my ass. Tails will swat at irises (pansy) in perfect harmony. The symmetry of it is pleasing. Humans enjoy symmetry, butterfly wings/ horror movie twins.
Cut it out.
Was it ms paint that gave us that gift? The gift of symmetry. Split the pixel down the middle. Every cake is sharp and equal. No, I think it was something else. I loved doing that. On the school computer my password was my hamster play dough. When he died I typed him a poem. Got it printed out and everything.
I lied when I said swat. Its a lot more gentle than that. The tails move slow and steady and try not to touch the face. If a horse is unliked by the group no one will help it. It has no choice but to resort to other methods.
A mournful roll in the mud.
Eye infection may lead to blindness.
2020 Thoughts on Heaven
In heaven I am walking through Glasgow. I am walking through Glasgow and I have tree branches in my backpack and shells like overgrown fingernails in my pockets and it is a sunny day. It is a sunny day and I decided to be in love with life and so I was. T-shirt loose, acne happy. Glue-on Primark acrylic nails. Scavenging.
Leering at strapping young men through halloween eyes and transsexual lashes (Laughing). Picking dirty scraps up off the ground. Breaking into a run just because.
There will always be roadside blackberries to clay at shirts to stain, shoes to scuff.
Danger makes me hard. Surprise gets me off.
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