9 Nov 2010

Poetry Openned - new poem!

Hello Readers! Some of you were lucky enough to see me and Francis Crot providing anarchist situational site-specific poetry gold at the intersection of white corridor a and white corridor b at the excellent relaunch of the Openned poetry reading, 27th October, Corsica Studios Elephant and Castle. Justin Katko made a gruesome video of the same (all up in my grille he was, both flattering and slightly shy-making, even for a seasoned performer like me!) For those of you who FAILED to attend, here's a poem from which I read on the night. Of course it was a collaboration so many of these lines were missed, intercepted or radically re-worked, so even if you were there this will be highly illuminating. xxx

lEEDs radio 1xTRA

if you want to know where the party is follow the search lights
and if you want to know where Leeds is
follow the search lights
and if you want to be close to me, well, I can't relax
while next door's floodlights cast your erection's shadow
across the bed and up the wall like greenhouse gases
it's not me
it's the planet i'm thinking about
don't hate on me if i ask you to express yourself less
or express less of yourself, i have stuff on, to get through
before the night comes and i take my daily nytol
perhaps my period will be over by then
the slit gunk that cleaves my mystery from you like the beef from its Wellington
the choice to dress everything i feel in mucous membranes is intriguing
but ultimately distressing
during his twilight crumbfast Tim Westwood introduced me to a more radical urban experience than i
had in ten years living in Brixton
now i live on the two red lips on my inner thigh clearence
we live in a small house
are charged tuna for rent
stapling milk to bread and through the postal vote i say
we should save ink and spend Thursday finding flowers
according to my coordinates there is samphire in Fort William
scratching the shore like deep fat, the row that will never erupt,
the significant ideological shift that is occuring right now but which I just don't, like, feel in my guts,
we both accepted the pretext that he was the Crow while you bit his head off
make a bullet hole in my heart for next door's bass player to rest his plectrum
i know what happened to the bees they are buried on Lindisfarne
an ad hoc braille for honeymooners feet from the earth's core that says
hey, tread soflty for you tread on my
treadmill
women, beware women,
wear distressed denim and tight skirts
and riot for other people's pensions and avoid crash diets
live breath and die on candles, moonshine and white wine
give me a good dress allowance, tight lace and breathing space
let me upstage grime core djs and slip up on grammar school euphemisms
for people who aren't like, black white straight or gay
i'd have to say that my greatest poetic influences are Sister Nancy
the Presidents and the lines i steal from Jow Lindsay
like
baby, play those sexy tunes and get that birthday sex
like
baby, call the doctor, all my arms are legs
(hey, Mike, you think it's fucked up that today's anticapitalist twenty-something poets were
tweenagers when SClub7 were storming up the charts? Well, you were probably like 25 when McCauley Culkin got lost in New York,
how fucked up is that?)
backhandhing a bankerite across threadneedle street i note
a deleterous effect upon the crimson surfaces her dread steps expose
the incandescent finale to my protest the fleck of her eyelashes across the wax on
wax off taxpayer my flash mob rallied
it's not our domain they're mastering it's our friends they're slashing
it occured to me today that my aunt and that pervert in the cafe ARE the undeserving poor
gosh, i thought, that's sad but don't let them trap me in conversation
i am not dead while my bones are translating some of your vibrations
into a set text
your celebrated singularity invigorating the essayistic practice of great artists i know including chloe and bex
turn a new page, do the ps & qs, get righteous
open your neck and let me siphon two poisons for my thighs are glass rock
rob reed composed three hundred pages of moving poetry while travelling to norwich
he took the megabus via poland and now he's back in shoreditch
turn up bedtime at the corners
change the tampon, let it be
ask rob reed what he saw
by ipswich's golden mile
did the urbsurburbs break their banks
and weep barely forty minutes into their trial shift
some chance
cheryl cole has done all the crying
you'll ever need to do geordie girls
reed turns in his sarcophagus, why,
even now he is trailing in the polls