NB: so, me and thelasttraintoarcady went to see the new Michael Landy exhibit at The National Gallery today:

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http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/michael-landy-saints-alive

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It got me thinking about how history/ cultural hegemonies of various kinds reclassify our understanding and interpretation of behaviour. For example much of the fanatical devotion ascribed to saints would seem today to be plain crazy… Anyway, that’s the whyness of this.

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Living Saints

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Alone for a long time, nursing

a shortwave sainthood, the man

was slouchy and stark mad.

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On Sundays the sound

of his customary raving

would climb the cabin-

fevered walls of our dinky,

two-ply clubhouse.  I heard

him pounding himself

with rocks; I was afraid

of his sad, scant, punitive joys,

the peek-a-boo holes he poked

in his hands.

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We knew we shouldn’t

approach him. We had never

been told but we knew. A cut-

throat confessor whose lank

daughters didn’t visit anymore,

their demure spookiness

lending a parching charm

to the scrub grass garden.

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Little footling Eden in a mulch

of cacky autumn leaves. His

cracked-bell voice a grammar

of chagrin; a pain like a corn,

like tooth ache; like knowing

that shoddy, scraped-together

house for your own.

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Quite alone, arranging

his Achilles pleasures

in order of service

to the Lord, propping

up his icons, their portable

shockwaves of glory glowing

brighter than Brasso; tiny

Jesuses saddled with shiny

hefts of gold, their kiddywink

heads nodding under the weight.

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I coveted this stunned wreck

pious booty; snuck to the window

and snooped inside; saw him

rocking himself while Mary

phosphorated in the corner,

and Christ, the All American

lawn of his head, picket-fenced

with thorns, posed like the Levis

Jeans guy, svelt, marooned,

elegantly wasted.

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It is not enough to say unhappy.

A discontent, beserk with crosses.

Around his light-bulb moths

would flit and slam; finally fall

to the floor like clipped coupons.

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He stared ahead, exhausted,

a tender biped that had spent itself.

One of God’s creatures.

Late June

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I’m not going to class this week,

and we have tasteful arguments

about money. How do I tell him

that the problem is really you,

dropping like a kestrel

with that special sullen

swiftness into my thoughts,

my belly, the gritty baize

of my tight, dry mouth. Oh,

I am gross with clacking

melancholia, mad in the auld

stylee. It has less to do

with being sad than the fanciful

jangle of nerves too stripped

to cling. And I don’t want love

anymore; don’t want this buddy-

picture of a marriage anymore.

I am too spiky for night,

when his body becomes

an urgent slab, and presses

on me like a bag

of frozen peas presses

on a boxer’s swollen lip.

I don’t want the love

that rustles up inside of me,

a rough-cut length of dusty lace.

I want you, full of your usual

glad-blabber; that feel-good

fawning rapport you use

on city girls. I am a city girl now,

down to my dye-job and mobile

phone; the dogtooth checks

on my pencil skirt, the way

I move through London’s

shunting jungle law. I know

now, what I’m doing, how

the splayed creepers riddle up

and form some sort of map.

I have learnt this but I have

forgotten shaakr, spurkera*

and the dim indigo light between

the poppies and the pylons. Love,

unmake this model-village me.

My voice is an ill-fitting gibber, it balks

at English words. I become disgusting

to myself. He says to sort it out.

My fingers, twisting into grip

around the coffee cup, the choicest,

choking word; a smidgen-lie: all right.

But I cannot. I only polish

nonsense ‘til it shines;

can only fold myself over

you, a milk tooth wrapped

in a paper napkin. I am not

going to class this week.

I cut my fingers on broken plates

And watch T.V with the sound down.

…

*’Brother’ and ‘Lover’ respectively, in Shelta.

Sara Ahmed: Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)

That this is on my dash is a good omen for an otherwise pissy day.

(via elisabethworkman)

Saxon Hoard

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It was one of those hot and costly summers,

when the moist air sucks you like a bagless vacuum

and the gardens of stately homes are rampant

with Tango-addled wasps; when your God children

tell you they hate you, when you fail to fork out

for a king-sized chocolate mock-doubloon,

and when the parking is ample, but extortionate.

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It was the kind of summer you hate, not love

to hate, just hate, the whole twitterpating

sizzle of it: you hate the girls going brown

like bruises in fruit; the boys peeling P.V.A

patches of skin from their freckly Donegal shoulders.

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It was a summer you tried to spend indoors

and ended up crying a lot, lip-syncing sadly

to the audio tour, because no one else cared

about garnet brooches as big as chicken drumsticks,

ugly with red glass pustules; a cameo Christ

with beady eyes.

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And you wondered, where was your culture?

Where was your trove, you ditch, your jewel-

bedevilled bean feast? You wanted to clutch

at something because the room felt very big,

the world felt very big, and you felt yourself

slipping. The air conditioning up too high,

the kids outside in Tudour dress, knocking

seven bells out of each other with rubber lances,

contentedly munching their chubby-cheeked egg and cress.

thepastilla:

Graffiti Artist L7M Creates Amazing Birds

Brazilian artist L7M is the one behind these beautiful murals that seem to transcend beyond the negatively looked upon art of graffiti. His murals on birds are astounding; the deep, stark lines representing speed and elegance, eyes that glisten in the sun, and colors that scream at onlookers, all to create a master piece devoted to beauty. Even his signature eludes from stereotypical graffiti artist, with a minimalistic “7″ asserting his claim of this wall space. (viaStreet Art Utopia)

Posting for Steev.

(via tsisqua)

A review of Flatrock online:

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http://rockcru.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/some-new-age-women-poets/
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Not sure how to feel about that. I think it’s a fair review, over-generous, even, in places. I certainly recognise the weaknesses it identifies. Hell, I think there’s plenty the reviewer missed. And on the whole it was very complimentary, but…
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I don’t know. ‘Flatrock’ was the book I needed to write at the time, but that’s not where I’m writing from these days, and it bothers me that it’s all I have to represent me, out there in the world. Actually, there’s something disturbingly surreal about being reviewed at all, about being asked to see the the book as some sort of abstract cultural artefact, rather than a squirming, squeamish extension of self. It’s odd to imagine ‘Flatrock’ as something that contains ‘technique’ or ‘intention’, that can be analysed, interpreted, critiqued, understood, liked or disliked even. It’s not a ‘thing’, a solid object, not to me, it’s more like a process, or set of processes. To have an opinion about the book, good or bad, is to decide that it is solid, that it is definite, definitive, finished. And that… bothers me.

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Stupid, I know. I mean, a sensible person would be more embarrassed by the gauche passive-aggressive posturing of my ‘biog’, and by the grim, insistent shittiness of the past I persist in evoking. Note me, though. Okay, it is a little cringe-worthy, and had I my time over, I wouldn’t feel the need to assert this picture of myself quite so forcefully. It’s only at the time I felt I needed to. I didn’t (I still don’t) know anything about ‘The Poetry World’, I just knew that I could see little to identify with in it. I knew that I was constantly being told to normalise or tone-down or apologise for being who I was, to ‘move on’ from what I was, to learn the rules, to play the game, and a million other well-meaning slogans that generated their own meaninglessness after not very long. Either that, or ‘play up’ to my past, become some kind of novelty act. The book exploded out of me with the pain of being pulled in two directions at once, and my erratic slipping and sliding between poses and registers, that’s all part of that. I wish I could explain better, but I can’t, so I won’t. And anyway, that isn’t what bothers me. What bothers me is that other thing, ‘Flatrock’ in the world. I wrote it to ‘get it out’ to push it away, but the longer it’s out there, and the more visible Fran there is to attach it to, the more solid; the more real it becomes. I honestly thought that at some point I would have the luxury of abandoning Flatrock, but I see the impossibility of that now. It’s like I wrote but didn’t realise all the time: in my clothes like the smell of second-hand smoke. It’s that tell-tale snapping back of a vowel, it’s the way I carry myself, hold my pen, can’t stand looking my ‘betters’ in the eye. It’s written through me like a stick of Brighton fucking rock, and it is never going away. Great.
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Also, I have to be honest, I’m not sure I’m thrilled about being described as a ‘new-age’ woman writer. I’m just me. Myself alone. The idea of being categorised scares the shit out of me. I suppose ultimately, I’m frightened, as I always am, of losing control.

Anonymous on survivorrat.tumblr  (via queerbeen)

Thank you, whoever wrote this. I’ve struggled sometimes because most of the descriptions of PTSD symptoms I’ve read talk solely about visual flashbacks. Not that I’ve had cause to doubt the PTSD itself, since I have almost every single symptom on most lists. But I’ve had a hard time recognizing my flashbacks as such because they’re almost always body memory, sometimes auditory, almost never visual. They’re scary, and it really helps to understand what’s going on when I feel like past trauma is happening again.

(via evelark)

Yes. Thank you.

(via womanontheedgeoftyne)

jammerlammie:

and i have seen this dude (whom i thought was a woman AT FIRST,and then i was like “Wtf should i reblog a dude saying shit i can say myself with more validity?” ) make rounds on tons of reblogs. i’m glad i never reblogged any of his shit.

men need to stop using Feminism to…

I really want to share my own experinece of this kind of dickery in action. But I can’t because the duche in question is still in a position of power over me and has the capacity to comepletely fuck up my professional life. Nice going, capitalist patriarchy.

by all means feel free to wank and dribble on about father’s day, because I am in no way finding this topic of conversation distressing. Fuck-wits.