Commercial Break

anyone who wants a pdf of The Commons (draft version), get in touch. It'll be published on paper later this year, and will have gone thru a few metamorphoses by then, probably.

The Commons // finished

anyway, now we were centuries
sort of had faces / we encircled
- dreamless, muted decibels -
- our treaties / the visible -
we scratched our faces off
our references, lines of credit
- a kind of glow remains -
- a kind of dignified singing -
- blank -
meanwhile, in the drugstore
- blank -
we are your border
- bright -
- inaudible -

The Commons set 3 // 38 - 41

Nah, just kidding / with fire
& we noises -
it is still 11.58 / we are
- not gravity -
- not flowers -
but filled with cars
& burning pearls.
Hello, it is 1979 / or dogs
- insert frightened persons -
- or the average landlord -
- insert Woolworths -
- & on the gallows tree -
yeh, dogs
- were bound in iron bands -


or the split territories of
- example -
from the narrative fumes of
- anyway, as I was saying -
because this cosmology is
a hyena & a vodka / its
- & shrike -
here in the multiplex
we are your dutiful cities
- so, this is a documentary -
- several glittering taxpayers -
- an entire string section -
- we are speaking quite clearly -
- we ripped your bellies out -


this lecture was brought to
by typical silence & gold / it is
- you know, like a hyphen -
- I’ve robbed your poor -
Anyway, in 1649
- your poor pockets -
not alphabets, fissures
- yeh I know, broken -
- your silver & gold -
“on sundays often strolled
to have their fortune -
- this lecture has been -
- in these wild deserts -
weirds had warped us, so


we closed / we are inside
- your opinions -
- your membranes flashing -
we are compliant & broken
we are gardens of silence
- the dead, so politely -
- in our petticoats -
- in our ballads of -
“got the devil in my soul”
“& I’m full of bad booze”
- the stillness -
- such sparkling flight -
history is those who
the seagulls / the

The Commons set 3 // 36 - 37

but / here in socialist realism
its musical ferrotypes / its
its reversal narratives / its
- as in -
“in London where we dwell
is a burning we know full well”
- its ancient transpositions -
those noises flaming / in birds
notes we were squealing in
- cuckoos & birds -
as in the alphabet’s bandits
- its centrifugal windows -
- cells, sections, groups -
- its official parents broken -


posterity / landlord / spheres
swarms / jobsearch / wind
- wow, laws -
eclipse / reverie / slaves
magnetic / scholar / finks
o millivolt / o globe
- this is a -
FLASHING like
we are ringing geometrics
a tame & trickling noise
curfew / playback / disks
singing like violence
my true love
my black & speechless bone

The Commons set 3 // 34 - 35

according to dubious tradition
of weirds & scroungers -
“woe! my face in the -
my feet burning from me”.
This, I dunno, kind of happened
&, predictably, edited
here / inside world history
noises / brain snap.
Anyway, this has been a story
they say they were singing
but how we know that
“the doors & windows -
“burning & secure -
“enter the language & -


no meanings swarm / into
complicity etc: so, when
the weary smoke began to
rise / likewise the boiling -
heat, of course / has been
& of exile / totality is -
no meanings swarm / &
“who here can speak
the language of the dead”
emerges from music &
professionals / princesses etc
- fumes, narrative -
“golden bands / your necks etc
inc. ‘below the world’. lenin.

The Commons set 3 // 31 - 33

anyway, eclipse, as I was -
although we live in the city
- so -
they wouldn’t arrest us, their
astrology / starkly inside us.
It was a contented era, a
justification. They could not
arrest / their threads & names.
anyway, I owe this reference to
- certain international events -
- certain conformities -
it was 1974 / a ballad recalls /
“the life which once I had
by law is now controlled”


yeh, it was a contested area
- moderation, NGOs etc -
Listen, rather than suck
& with a turquoise chain
- like -
what is public knowledge is
WHACKED. Degree zero
- we were citizens of -
listen / a supreme vodka /
- merely the value that -
- sirens, as in commerce -
- & we encircled -
As law is anything or nothing,
is bended by / & like a twig


like a twig, the official position
& indigenisation / or what,
within US imperialism, gets
- as in, absolute antagonist -
or / the absence of the dead
- as in, an irradiant -
my true love, as I was saying
- we were buying weapons -
- as in, living standards -
- down to the drugstore -
or, because we don’t exist
- down by possessions, & -
- down by the gun / saying
like I was, my true love -

(after Rimbaud)

september 2003. we were wondering why the poets were silent
we: children’s books, whisky, record shops
bombed orchards, paracetomol, refugees, circuit boards
the sun, god of fire
there we have a series of verbs. they pass to & fro as if no-one had seen them.
they go in and out of random houses. signal towers. border towns.
the course of study is that simple
the legality & opacity of poets
the noises scratched into them. real constellations: beggars, economy, detonation
december 2009. a review of the year
a hell for the hands, for the hair, for the mouth, for the law. an entire symphony
360 degrees. supernatural sobriety of discontinued nouns
the reservoir at dawn
direction multiplied by velocity. glimpses of improbable harmony