Saturday, 26 May 2012

An ickle story

Some scruffy type on his guitar
all bust up from the Nineteensixties
is singing Frog went a-courtin’
outside Poundland. 17 starlings fly
down his throat and then eat him
from the inside, bursting out with
their tiny knives from the worn out skin
into the very hygienic light. They leave
the remains behind, spread out
on the pavement; here’s what you call
a stinking antidote to History. His dog,
licking the pallid lungs, stops for a moment,
turns to me and says, Are those his wings?
I say, Who cares? Where do you think
he’s going to fly to now?

2 comments:

  1. And to think he might once have been John Bloody Mayall.

    History always eats everything and everyone from the inside, there ought to be some sort of law against that.

    But to attempt to enforce it would be so... Historical.

    Am put in mind of the garbled account I only vaguely processed via a hesitant Peter Bradshaw, of the Ridley Scott Alien post-prequel latterly having been Cannes'd.

    I believe PB lamented a loss in transmission of the mythic romance (I paraphrase disrespectfully).

    Really those decadent descendants of Philip K Dick can be found huddled upon a cardboard pallet at night in every doorway hereabouts, including the doorway of the building where Dick voluntarily induced in himself all the (Historically premonitory?) nervous system alterations that provided the architecture of All Those Replicant Worlds.

    Where here on the same city streets now it's just the continuing dismal imperial collapse display, anxious redundant defensive wealth flaunted in the face of grinding poverty, dread and every third huddled rough sleeper has that dog, with that kerchief tied round its neck, with those great longing eyes bespeaking a judgment beyond any we (or History) could ever render.

    In short, gracias, WB.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a world it is. I'm afraid to talk about judgement.

    The strange thing for me is that increasing sense of the horizon having been painted in. Is there any news from nowhere to be had anymore?

    http://tinyurl.com/7dnbtut

    ReplyDelete