Document //// any minute now

My new book Document is now at the printers and will be available from Barque Press in about a month. Its narrative runs from the London suicide bombers through to Blair's resignation. Around 90 pages, fully illustrated.
PLUS//// I'm reading on the 18th June at the Parasol Unit, 14 Wharf Road, nr Angel, 7pm, with DOMINIC LASH on bass. Free entry, come along, its gonna be great . . . .

College of Negative Poetics

consider these two quotations from 20th century composers:
"I have nothing to say & I'm saying it" (John Cage)
"a statement should be made . . . without saying it" (Duke Ellington)
how do the possibly incompatible worldviews encapsulated in the above relate to the unbridgeable chasm that exists between differing ideas of what is, in the early 21st century, still called poetry? which of the statements is useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands within poetic criticism?
&
for those of you who don't dig jazz / an alternative question:
discuss the possibility that what is still, in some quarters, rather quaintly called the 'avant-garde' in British poetry, is actually the mainstream (answer with reference to Percy Shelley, John Milton, Aphra Behn, the Pearl Poet, John Donne, Mary Wroth, Abiezer Coppe)
&
for those of you who would rather go to the cinema
suggest three alternative uses for the following London landmarks:
(a) the Natwest ATM Machines, Walthamstow High Street
(b) the ZOO
(c) the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden
answers, not more than 5000 words, to be sent to me at the usual address. sensible responses will be published by yt communication. get on with it.

The Commons 2 (concluded)

we are geometric problems
in the slots of loveliness
magnetic cores, for example
there goes Thatcher again
inside what I was
ancient & elementary
slaughter the fascist BNP
I know, its obvious
to live in it like a language
that whistling, the law
in the privacy of our
threshold values, this serenity
- you know -
inside the hysteresis loop


"you have now reached
to put into practice
the knowledge you
you have acquired ghosts
in short, are ready
work / crime / magic
secret history number
the properties of ideas
put into ourselves
sorry, local residents
this is how you talk
the body’s acoustics
structurally / tearing
your playhouse down"

The Commons 2 // 40 - 41

nobody knows who I am
my combustion narrative
your meta-knives, clicking
- an alphabet of taxes -
- speaking in runes -
- local residents -
- burnt gust globes -
meanwhile, back in poetry
I have eaten the rooms
the housing cluster
voices clicking inside you
the cracks that you ordered
cobalt / iridium / plutonium
iridium / radium / americium


hello, you are the decibel
what’s speaking, right,
to our ring of ‘curses’
sorry, I meant ‘persons’
the jerking provincial street
roaring in our darkness
we dogs / listen
sign em, they are distressing
this speaking, for example
the word ‘waterboard’
some kind of sincerity?
a tone control, closing?
“not a soul would look up
not a soul would look down”

The Commons 2 // 37-39

there is no one way
to pay it back
i.e. the ‘rich’
that union of familiar
finitely familiar crackles:
the planet crumbles
inside them
the structure of torture
the purpose of
torture is
to enter the language
a provincial street
a biological decision
the enemy citadel


or perhaps just exchange
words / ‘why’, ‘ok’,
say the word ‘number’
ha / say ‘why’
the word ‘interrogate’
the word ‘disrupt’
sounds like
'here’s a pill for your'
-rogues & bandits-
but obviously, what we
-night / animals / work-
-police / crime / magic-
but obviously, what we
in the privacy of our


in the privacy of our
careers / we are eating
zombies, livid ones
oh I don’t wanna
oh I don’t / 'friends'
but, 'haunting europe'
- music / movies / games -
bright magnetic streets
our ancestors are
like safe now.
ok, forget that
o burnt frequency
the dead, so brightly
digging up the dead

The Commons 2 // 35 - 36

it may be distressing
this learning / but may
but can I assure you
we have taken steps
that some laws are disks
are written / on the face
of the dead / inside
echoes / or fraudsters
bright magnetic residents
your personal details
written in red / but may
that we have identified
you are crows, curses
yours sincerely, your


listen / recent research
your city is quite simply
incomprehensibly glittering
-we know its distressing -
- all / fun / people -
due to the nature of
- a thermal pulse -
incomprehensibly / hey,
did you bring me the silver?
did you bring me the gold?
- sorry, we meant to say -
recent research suggests
- a burning ring of -
respectfully, a gallows pole

Communique 158

some advice for the incoming poet laureate
---------
meanings swarm into the forbidden language // ie latent content // to discover previously hidden zones of mind & reality // hahaha // official assertions that meaningful dissent is always welcome, provided it falls within the bounds of legality, are frequently a smokescreen obscuring the invitation to aquiese in oppression // but poetry exists when there is a short circuit between the image it proposes and the one humanity makes of the world and itself // and the poet is of no more use than what is rather quaintly called a RAGAMUFFIN // and the ultimate destiny of poetry is to multiply itself, dialectically, into the bare force of a crowd // but this is a nation which is at war. a nation which is fighting an unjust and a dirty war. you can't slaughter the citizens of Afghanistan without it reflecting itself in some aspect of your cultural experience // and mainstream poetry is a minor component of the state's coercive apparatus // not that anybody is listening anyway // but poets who collaborate with the government should be shot // ie with fear and hecatombs of broken hearts // ie there's something running across the red road now. their voices are silent, but the chains are clicking // from their loud abysses, through a city and a solitude . . . .
----------
stolen, in some cases slightly detourned, from Frantz Fanon, Rene Menil, Angela Davis, Archie Shepp, Ed Dorn, Voltairine de Cleyre, Shelley