all threads will fray

my friend ended it
ripped up their life
like a rejected contract
and their clothes, thriftily
were hung up
on facebook

i inherited a pair of red shorts
and I wore them every week
gave them a new life
the static fibres bristling on my skin
i walked, ran and trained in them
i loved them

but the threads still frayed
coz that's how it goes
all the things that hold us together
that connect us
wear thin

it can happen
as sudden tragic tear
or the slow fading into distant obscurity
but we all eventually wear

i naively think
i've come to terms
with entropy's arrow
and my own decomposition

because

what else are we supposed to do?

I love you so much I accept with open eyes the pain of losing you

omg, I just remembered
you're my best friend
and you're the one of my life
and we make each other so happy
and we're going to be together forever
unless one of us dies
which is going to happen
which is so shit
I just remembered

cardiogrammar

instead of a kiss-o-gram,
perhaps a cardiogram?
my heart, written out
as stuttering toothed calligraphy, worn
on a slip of sleeve
for you to hold
and fold
up in your chest
pocket, where it maps
the gone-but-not-forgotten
beats of my excited muscle
that promised, in its time
dilating, diastolic way
to stay, to stay

Venus as momenti mori

according to NASA
Venus may have had a shallow
water ocean and habitable surface clime
for up to two billion years

which is a very long time

long enough for geochemistry
to become biochemistry
to become cells
become organs
become "intelligent"

i like to think
that intelligent beings did roam on Venus
made languages and tools
built empires and tech
but then fucked it all up
and turned the planet into a dusty wasteland
having got carried away
by inclinations for novelty
and convenience
and the desire for power

so i think that, perhaps
when we look to the stars
and see Venus, fossil-like
alarmingly bright in the night
that we might be looking
our fate in the face
a world-sized skull
that stares back at us
with ocean-sized eyes

but don't cry
it's only the end of a world

kh like khummus

"kh like khummus" by Bazeed is the winner of the 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize

First they send in the girl soldiers.

They look better
not the soldiers themselves, I mean
no, no; the optics-
than sending even a tiny battalion of boy soldiers
to peel the old woman
off her son's grave.

Ruth Eglash, writing for the Washington Post
Has an article on the rise in the Israeli army
of voluntary orthodox girl recruits:

"Within a few weeks of starting their military service,
many Israeli women head to a tailor

to have their oversize uniforms altered
to be more form-fitting [...and] fashionable."

Army cum gender equality cum runway.

 

If you hover over her name,
Ruth Eglash, a helpful little box comes up.
It tells you Ruth is a

"reporter covering [for] Israel
and the Palestinian Territories." In
other words, colonialism's her beat.

Cuz that's part of how you steal a country, dontcha know,
right from under its indigenous inhabitants' feet:
Proper nouns turned adjective-
Israel as "Israel" is a nation-state,
Palestine, as "territories", pile
of black caviar on a plate,
ready for eating.

Have you ever been to territories
in the summer?                          I hear it's lovely
                            this time of year!

Keep up with that kind of thing,
and you'd very likely stand to win
the very khummus out of the bowl
with its traditional blue & white [star of flowers]
motif.

 

¹ this poem is in response to this video, showing a Palestinian mother attempting to halt the demolition of her son's grave in Al Yusufiyah cemetery in occupied East Jerusalem, to make way for an Israeli theme park planned in its place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N jGFb3Yyv0

Birthday Poem

Dearest John,
It's the day that upon
You were born, so small.
Now you're many times tall.
Congratulations on your height,
And may your birthday be delight.

Dendrite

We grow
and branch
and bud
and vine
    through the warp and weft
    of space and time
        with magnetic pull
        and electric charge
        that shape the stars,
        these forces, twined
            like fabric woven,
            so aligned.

A threaded thought starts to enwind
and stir the neurons of my spine;
    it pulses through cerebral brine
    until we both can hear it chime
        the bells that ring
        and so remind,
            these mirror minds
            of Noam and Quine
            that need no semiotic sign.

I think of you
and start to pine
as evergreen desires shine.
I count the numbers,
naught to nine,
and look into the eyes of thine
and know you know i know that i'm
forever yours
as you are mine.

#1

My one
and only
the #
one, wherein some of my earliest monoxide breaths were huffed,
coughing and sneezing and gumming,
my mouth all over the metal rail.
stop!

Later, the windows would pay witness
to many a messy and formative journey, including once
no less than a series of increasingly violent kebab shop scuffles
that served to punctuate the route
with a free punch-up at every fast-food landmark,
one Saturday night,
while out chasing cock and bull
and getting it.
adult daysaver, please

The one
that takes me, harrowingly late,
all the very little way
from me to you.
From mine to yours,
from Acocks Green,
from up by Roger's,
up by the Purab, up by Jav's, by Bal's, by The Silver Hake,
by where ages ago the grocer's used to be, what's his name?
up by all the other dead shops
that have risen and fallen so bravely, so courageously,
in the tiny realm of Fox Hollies,
on that desolate landing strip of petty bourgeois dreams.
Never shall we forget them!
next stop, mate

Down Shaftmoor Lane,
where a couple of drinking holes still gurgle
over the Cole of Sarehole,
where the rambling vision of Tolkien's ghost
stands on the edge of the no-go zone
as sacred tyres skrrt the fringes
of sparkplug Sparkhill and suspension Springfield,
where green cross codes have long been broken
and unindicated intentions collide.
cheers, driver! 

Into B13,
on this two-tiered
double-decker vessel of Bourneville
fondue trickle-down accumulation,
whose wheels just keep on turning
Forward.
On Theseus' oily forever raft,
each constituent part is replaced
and sourced locally, from the magic money tree of collective will.
Oh, but when the bus breaks down,
the public purse always seems so tight-lipped.
Please, reinstate the gravy train, by popular demand.
all aboard?

Then awake, green road of Moseley,
with the bog people at one end and elves at the other,
in the altogether greener pastures of privilege.
Green road, home to the habits of old money heirs,
with their irridescent, stained glass souls.
They slave away, remotely,
in tall, condescending, Victorian houses,
where the mice nevertheless lay amongst the ivy
that creeps and crawls up limestone walls.
not my station

Past the All Services Club,
where in my teens i once drunkenly pissed
and where many years later i would marry
my one, my love, my best thing ever.
Past Hard-ons Fish Bar*,
that was always lovely lovely,
and whose superior chips were indeed as cheap as proverbially promised.
I once saw an acute 1am shop assistant there, sharp as time,
fill up half a cone, salt it, shake it about
and then continue with the second half, again,
salting and shaking,
and i thought, my god, the man's a fucking genius.
Get this man - get this man a damn medal this instant.
For years I'd ranted and raved about "first" and "second" saltings
and now, manifest destiny, this humble angel of grease was lighting the way.
And yet...
i've never seen him before or since.
Alas, only once
would my chips be so mindfully salted
- a glimpse of a world that could be.
A brief miracle, revealed only to those who passenge
by the dark glow of dilated moonlight.
one eveningsaver, please

To the side of the cross
at the crux of Moseley nightlife
lies the fabled triangle
of Bermudan prophecy,
of rosemary, rat tails and rain.
There, far away from the squares,
the triangular pagans gathered in their masses:
Nathan, Jimmy, Pete the Feet,
Planty, Belcher, Palms.
People whose internal angles refused to make 180 degrees,
but who knew how to sing and to riot and to dance.
The embers of those wilder days have long petered out,
having succumbed to the sanitising, pseudosecular protestations
of liberal, middle-class capitalist collaborators.
On the hill, parked cannons of demolition loom.
next stop: final stop. all change

Over the Bristol and Pershore,
grazing cricket and university grounds we go.
It could all be botanical, but no.
In rude privations of Winterbourne and Tally Ho,
the sights are for one sore eye: the asshole
drawing illuminati symbols on the backs of the seats.
This is where as a teenager i would be found
upstairs, standing in the aisle, arms surfing, spliff in hand,
riding the waves of the lurching bus,
one way and the other, a cheap rollercoaster thrill.
Back when you could smoke on the bus.
Back when it was still tolerated,
despised and encouraged in equal measure.
Back when going into town meant adventure, danger and intrigue.
Back when getting kicked out of a shopping centre by security
meant adventure, danger and intrigue.
this is me

Number one,
i've known you since i was so small.
In some ways, you still make me feel small, and still
you take me
to my one and only, still
you are an artery. Stiff, but you're major.
You take me,
from mine to yours
and yours to mine,
but i've never really forgiven you
for being late all the time.
sorry, this bus is out of service

*It was actually "Haroon's Fish Bar", but the apostophe was absent and the styling made the middle "o" look like a "d", so it read as "Hardons Fish Bar", which kept local school kids giggling for generations.

Cell Biology

I love every one of your little cells
working away at being you.
Great work, everybody.

Web

Smug (sonnet 26-02-24)

being with you is so great
it's like having a cheque for a million quid
right there in your back pocket

like, you get caught in a deluge
and someone says something mean about your hair
and you feel sad about it

but then you remember
you've got a cheque for a million quid
right there in your pocket

and the weight of the world
loosens into a shrug
and i think

what's a drop of bitter rain, eh?
what's a bit of twig and pebble?

Sonnet 16-02-24

your love is actually the best though
that special under the counter shit, bro
the stuff you can't even find in store
the stuff that they make you work for
they're not just giving it away
not even for pay
coz it has to be equal
worth a bunch of sequels
  i catch every one of your popcorn thoughts
  and you mine

Big Bren is Dead

Big Bren's fucking dead.

Birmingham is dead
and Poetry is dead.

Shopping is dead
and Fucking is dead.

Every day is fucking dead.
Even death is almost dead.

Big Bren's Combo

After Zephaniah passed only a matter of weeks ago, I just heard that Big Bren (Brendan Higgins, the Bard of Yardley) has sadly died. Another poetry mascot of Brum lost to time. In his honour, I dedicate the following story, which I was prompted to recall, formalise, and commit to text after hearing the upsetting news from my good friend Santa, who was also there on that fateful and formative night, on which we both came of creative age.

I first saw Big Bren at the Lamp Tavern as part of "Big Bren's Combo" supported by The New Jerusalem. Santa and I had found a flyer that piqued our interest, stuck to a wall in one of the music shops (Swordfish, perhaps?) The flyer had been so badly photocopied that the black and white inverted image of Bren's face was severely stretched, and the address was mostly cut off at the bottom corner, forcing us to do some forensic triangulation to narrow down which pub might be the venue. Some of the address was still visible: "Barf--d st", and half a post code. A few words on the flyer served as decorative scripture. "Impure freak jazz scum noise ace". That sounded like only good things could come from it. In the face of all likelihoods, the message had reached its intended audience, and so we committed to checking it out. With the help of an online A-Z (google maps did not yet exist), we eventually worked out it was most likely The Lamp Tavern in Digbeth. Neither of us had ever been there before and it was hell to find, buried as it was deep in the belly of Digbeth back alleys and heavy industry.

Santa and I were both underage, so we wore our leathers to make us look older. We'd brought some supplies with us so we could tank up before getting to the venue where booze would be expensive: a couple of stubbies each and a cheap stick of hash from the Nellies. After going down a few wrong roads (you had to find new places by memory and intuition back then), the pub eventually emerged at the end of a street by the corner of a deserted car park. It felt like the end of the world, a concrete dead end. It was twilight and the pub was tall and impossibly thin, giving the facade an eery and imposing character, medieval almost. The Lamp Tavern may well be the thinnest pub I've ever frequented. It certainly didn't look like any gig venue we'd ever been too.

We downed the bottles that had accompanied us on the journey and gingerly made our way into the pub. It was a classic case of entering a local, stirring the contents like a gust of wind disturbing the dust. All of three people looked up in half-interest. I distinctly remember feeling that the only reference point I had for such a situation was the surreal TV sitcom The League of Gentlemen, which only added to the weirdness. The musty room was narrow and poorly lit, but I could peripherally make out an array of wall-mounted decorations that I didn't have time to take in, but which gave the place a presence of being both busy and humdrum: home-like, as though we had intruded on something private. Santa and I looked at each other, clearly in mutual agreement that we must be in the wrong place. At the very least, it felt as though we were in the wrong place.

I gestured awkwardly towards the bar. On reflection, I had at this point in my life so infrequently been an autonomous free agent in a pub, that it wasn't obvious how you were supposed to behave. I was still at that stage of adolescence marked by "adulthood" being something you imitated, rather than inhabited. I had no protocol or template for seeking adult attention or making enquiries at such an establishment. As I shuffled barwards, an old man emerged - chameleon-like - from a wall of savoury snacks behind the bar. Had he really been there the whole time?

"Is there ...a gig here?" I asked, sceptically.

"In the back" came the response from the withered caricature of a bartender. This was a great relief. Being young and poor, the bus fare into town had already been a noticeable expense and we were both worried we would never find it and it would all have been for nothing. Everything in the process of getting this far had been markedly esoteric, so we half-expected there to be a code-word, a burnt offering to give, a shibboleth of some sort. The interaction at the bar was consequently graceless and stammering as I second guessed myself in anticipation of not getting served. In all likelihood we were also stoned out of our gourds, which wouldn’t have helped lubricate the situation. I had enough money to buy a single pint and eventually managed to summon enough of the act of manliness to order a guest ale called "Saints and Sinners", whose label I had been drawn to because it bore a cartoon of a nun with her tits out. I'd never had an off-brand pint in a pub before. It was tasty and novel: a real ale, back when it was much rarer than it is today, in this hoppy goldrush in which we live.

Feeling like we had passed the adult test and were now initiates of the pub, Santa and I made our way through a set of double doors, grinning at each other as we entered a small foyer where sound was now audible. It was really quite impressive how much those double doors isolated the sound, as only moments earlier we had heard absolutely nothing. The impish frame of Mike Hurley met us with a heart-warming smile at the second set of doors, from which a menacing and compelling noise was emanating.

"Two students", he infered. "That's £3 each. Have you been before?"

"No", I said, handing over my fee. Mike grinned at us mischievously, like someone about to share some particularly potent contraband with a friend. "Excellent. Enjoy", he said in a hushed but excited tone, before opening the door and ushering us inside.

The room was tiny, the size of a living room, with a defunct bar taking up a corner. Ten to fifteen people were hunched around on tiny stools, sipping beer at equally tiny circular tables, and nodding to a non-existent beat. Most were dressed in a shaggy assortment of earthy greens, greys and browns, with a smattering of denim, leather, and corduroy. Memorably, one man wore a set of bright gold, reflective clown shoes with blue laces that did not otherwise match his outfit at all, a sartorial choice that screamed "I'm fucking eccentric". As far as I can recall, there were no women present. I wasn't there for the women (whazup jazz sluts?). We took the easiest seats we could and looked up to watch Jimmy Fantastic stamping on an electric guitar with several strings missing as he played cassettes of what sounded like quotes from the Dalai Lama played backwards out of a boombox, while shouting at the audience through a megaphone. Jimmy, then under the stage name of The New Jerusalem, would become an unlikely friend and inspiration to us both over the next few years.

"I WANT PEOPLE TO DANCE AT MY PARTY!!" he screamed, over and over, until it became a mantra, all the while still stomping the guitar, occasionally stopping to pick it up and then unceremoniously drop it onto the floor again, where it would crash and wail in overdriven cacophony. Jimmy rummaged and rotated the tapes, revealing an eclectic collection of material that was to be abused. A radio was tuned to various states of half-static to fit with the buzz and clang of the guitar, harmonising together in a truly disgusting and cathartic fashion. 

 

This was followed by Big Bren's Combo, consisting of Bren peforming his unique qualia of poetry over the top of discordant free jazz, supplied by a backing band which may or may not have included the great Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders. I'd heard some free jazz stuff before, through Frank Zappa and the burnt crispy ends of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but I'd never given it a serious listen, let alone seen it performed live in the flesh.

"SHOPPING SHOPPING SHOPPING, every fucking day! SHOPPING SHOPPING SHOPPING, get out my fucking way!" Bren yelled, clutching what looked like his entire back catalogue of poetry in a biblically enormous office folder. Bren really launched the lines at the audience, spit in the air, stumbling forward into the lines with emphasis on conviction and urgency, rather than on fidelity of phonics. It was the first time I'd heard poetry read like that. I'd heard some spoken word, but this was different. The band got more and more intense as Bren's proselytizing became wilder, squealing brass and wind over the violent dirge of words. The drummer was really beating the shit out of the kit, like he had a demon to purge, bashing and scraping at the cymbals with a whole assortment of torture devices, percussifying the snare with blocks of wood and shrapnel. In the close-enough-to-touch environment of the throbbing living room, the whole thing felt altogether anarchic, closer to punk or danger music than poetry and jazz.

This was it, I remember thinking. This was it. We had found the underground. No more was it tales in magazines and the trickle-down elders' embellishments of oral tradition, through which we had to vicariously experience rock and roll heroism. This time we were part of the story. From there we got information about other gigs, poetry nights, open mics, which preoccupied us for the coming years. More easily pinpointed than most epicentres, that night at The Lamp Tavern with Big Bren served as a joyful springboard into Birmingham's beer-soaked creative underbelly that lived and breathed in Digbeth.

Fizzle, the loosely-formed promoter of those free jazz nights at the Lamp Tavern, is still going, albeit in a more slick, conservatoire-adjacent guise. Virtually everyone present at that gig will have hundreds of creative attributions that I could never do justice, but certainly I saw Bren perform many times at the Sunday Xpress events at The Adam and Eve, as well as at other pubs and events, having, as he did, the habit of turning up all over the place. Bren was the kind of person you'd go to tell someone about and they'd go oh yeah, i know the guy, he did a poetry workshop at my school or some such anecdote. The Sunday Xpress, which Brendon ran, was the first place I ever performed my poetry and its hodgepodge of characters, unpretentious atmosphere and anything goes attitude provided fertile ground for growth and development. The first time I got on stage I was so nervous I could hardly hold my notes steadily enough to read and felt the need to apologise for not having all my materials with me. "Never apologise!", an older skinny punk of the John Cooper Clarke persuasion told me as I got off stage. It's exactly what I needed to hear. Friction Arts, Ikon Eastside, Vivid Cinema, The Custard Factory, Beats not Bombs, The Wagon and Horses, Rooty Fruity, The Anchor and The Spotted Dog were other places that were very important to me at the time, at which more of this sort of tomfoolery would play out. Santa is still in touch with Jimmy and I was lucky enough to see Mike Hurley's klezmer-punk band and Destroyers-breakaway outfit Mama Matrix perform at several memorable hoedowns, not least the free Moseley-Folk fringe event in the Prince of Wales, hay bales and all.

Brendan was great at pulling people together, which is easy to write in a sentence, but really difficult to actually do. Everyone who met him will instantly have recognised his humble, disarming charm and his embodiment of the city's creative character. After countless poems, parties, and performances, a Bren-shaped hole now sits at the centre of Birmingham.

Rest in poetry, Bren <3