Songs in the Night

Part of a special generation of boulders, he did well for himself. See here those accessories found at the glacier's bazaar. But unresolved age drips from his brain - his brain that looks like a flitch of bacon - and neutrinos languish in the monastery of his lungs; and he longs for a fortune fish to curl up on his hand, or to make light by touching the base of a touch sensitive bedside lamp. He would choose to turn it on just one notch, establishing the light that Dante describes dying on the trees.

Preaching to generations that follow, he tells the parable of Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, who on feeling sorry for prospectors rode into the mine on a motorbike and presented them with a gold disc. And he gestures to these generations that they are off course, leaning a statue of a woman, like a spirit level, on the trig point of his lapis lazuli helmet. Or is it blue john?

I have these brainstorms and then I write to Job Crocker,
Or I write to Nicholas Currie.

The coterie behind Goblio for rag week ‘79
Got their education for free
And later missed an opportunity
To give Brenda from Sky Star Search her own series.

I strove to be a boom operator in the film industry,
And once cast a shadow on a child actor's forehead,
But the sprawling shadow made by the promontory
Baby boomer generation swallowed me
And swallowed that shadow on the child actor's forehead.

I have these brainstorms and then I write to Job Crocker,
Or I write to Nicholas Currie.

Easements by the Ringwood Line, detourned by dérivistas affined
To sable cleats in the
Situationist movement, were coarsely
Marked with slogans pertaining to the old theories:
“Serendipitous, The Solent Mob Roams”;
But these radicals, 30 years on, own holiday homes
That I can only visit using the psychogeography
Of Google Street View.

I’m in the workshop, alone,

Nine miles from the River Itchen’s source,
Listening to a reel-to-reel of John
Hilton’s meta piece “A Talk on Talking”
And interviews with Horace Maybray King.
The received idea that there is a “right” and a “wrong” Hitchens
Is as freighted as love’s expression, epistolaries of desire,
Though neither side of the debate would piss on me if I were on fire.

Whilst my self-pitying letters to Job would disgust Peter Hitchens
And his brother, I wonder how John Hilton or Southampton Itchen’s
Non-vociferous MP would view them, if either were alive today,
Since they come from an era before rag week boomers did away
With buttoned-up Victorian notions by using sledgehammers to
Smash pianos. When Horace Maybray King sang Three Blind Mice he would do
Actions to accompany the words, little actions that delighted
His own grandchildren and the many other children he invited
To his rooms when he was Speaker of the House. Might he see my missives
To Job in context, my potential as trapped as the enzyme that lives
In unpasteurised vinegar, the Mother waiting for a sanguine
Annunciation; potential not just to exact the vulgar “win”,
But to be a catalyst for the growth of future generations?
Yes! How presumptuous of me, that I should crave all the sensations
Of being useful and helping my children beyond making them laugh!
My letters are shaped by desire, for whilst my guts are spilled like a calf
Flopping out of a cow, and I reduce myself to asking favours,
It is just because I desire to help; and Maimonides avers
That Job could not, in the throes of his own agony, reply to me,
But I still feel my nose out of joint when I don’t hear back, finally.

Gen Y writes to Gen X and X to the Boomers –
A galling chain – and the rumours
Of my inadequacy are true; of my
Abjectness are true; my liberalness
When it suits; and I applied to be a policeman.
Can you imagine me as a policeman?
Generation ill, I know what I am:
Bad husband,
Bad son,
Bad uncle,
Bad friend,
Bad singer,
Good dad.

I believe in love. There are songs in the night –
Sung for me in the Enochian language.
The angel guiding the children on a bridge
In Fridolin Leiber’s painting is of light
Approximate to my own intercessor.
"Lullay, Precariat, crossing a lesser
Tributary of the River Test; lullay,
Precariat in the culvert, I will pray
For you eternally!"

Generation ill – I Write to Job Crocker

ttps://soundcloud.com/roganwhitenails/the-workshop

"Earth Master" conceived by Gabriel Utley, drawn by Billy Delines