pinball (25/April/18)

light falls aching from the heart of the sun
bleeding, feeding
space is open for business, in-filled,
filling in the blanks and gaps, oozing it clogs the arteries, almost,
wrapping holes in tangible veils, trails
of streamers, streams of trailers, traffic jams,
no room for errors, no country for old men, random
nests scattered orderly in canopies
to the left of me
the right of me
stuck in the middle, tolerate thy neighbour a branch away
branching out it sways disconcertedly in solar winds,
solar sails, solar plexus puffed up in mock display
chlorophyll fingers of yellow and green, green to gold, brown
to dead for everything a season, reason, rhythm
and rhyme, rock ‘n’ roll long-lived aging bark as
night falls aching from the heart of the moon
and all too soon it’s all over now baby blue when
it had only just begun
and it’s not even June
wane, wane, done and dusted, ash to ash, hand to mouth
time stubs its cold remains out on a convenient arm, a scar
regarded as a spoil of war, a brag, a boast, a toast, boiled
in oil a sky pours down like mercury another century and
we’ll be born Methuselahs, sensory overload infiltration, bloated
deprivation, expectations dashed, a pinch of salt
over the shoulder
off the shoulder
off the cuff
over the cuckoo’s nest
ends are lurking in beginnings, loaded guns, unexploded bombs,
day falls louder than the ear can ever hear,
that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure played
a mean pinball.

© 2018 robert greig

early worm (9/April/18)

it must be morning…
the random blackbirds rambling song is here again, all on its lonesome again… the first bird… even before the robin and that’s saying something… surely he deserves the worm… black singing in the dead of morn’….. more than anything else that’s how I know it’s morning and closing in on getting-up time, I don’t even have to open my eyes, my ears seem to be open for business 24/7……… he begins most randomly, clearing his throat, or so it seems, trying out sounds and notes like someone trying to find the right shape to pose the lips to whistle a happy, or otherwise, tune… except the blackbird doesn’t have lips, it’s all in the throat, the syrinx, something we don’t have…… he’s uncertain at first, the same every morning, as though grasping for a memory although it was only yesterday he did the very same thing, though not exactly the same but similar…… seeking out his own ear-worm… or maybe it’s about a worm, the early worm the early bird hopes to get…… they like worms, and slugs, but that’s going to be another song sung another time… even random blackbirds, with a taste for random worms, though I suppose they’d eat a purposeful one too, they aren’t over-fussy…… the song now kindles with randomesticity… comforting, predictable, expecting nothing in return from me although I listen he doesn’t know I do and it’s not for me anyway… I’m incidental to his schemes and compositions, his indulgent musicality as he scrabbles through piles of notes like they’re fallen leaves hiding tasty snails to find one and then another and another to arrange and eventually hang them out to dry on the mornings inevitable afterbirth……

© 2018 robert greig

books, Buffy and global domination (4/April/18)

by now I’m well-ensconced in my new book.. reading that is… started last week now almost half way’ish through… a new adventure… reading a book is just that, an adventure, names, new ‘faces’, characters, entire worlds, even when I’m out and about walking around not reading it it’s there, in the background, back of my mind, sort of still reading, or re-reading what’s been read, barely subconsciously sifting and sorting through the plots and turns and pondering where it’ll go next…. all the time leading a double-life, the one in front of me and the one between the pages of the book sat on the bedside table back at home patiently waiting for my return…… they can make the world outside more tolerable, knowing I always have somewhere to retreat……

… talking of retreating, I just found my mind catapulted  back to the 1990’s and realising in so many ways what a different world it was and not that long ago, the affectionately-known, or not so affectionately, pre-millenium… move over Cro-Magnon man, enter Pre-Millenium Man…… surely that deserves a signature tune that annoyingly bursts forth every time I enter a room……

… thinking back to the 90’s makes one realise how not-so long ago it was computers began their golbal domination and how, in such short a time, we’ve surrendered our souls lock, stock and sanity to them… in 1991 the world wide web went live, with the Internet a scarily and rapidly-growing dot on the horizon… the Berlin Wall had only just come down… the first ever Playstation invented a couple of years later in 1994, the same year the first ever Internet-only music track, and can you guess by who?…. Aerosmith!…… Grunge was busy gunging up the music scene with sounds akin to wading through slurry…… a huge sea-change in UK politics in 1997 when the 18-year reign of the Tories monster mash-machine finally came to a staggering end and we thought everything would change, but, you know what they say about change?… the more things change, the more they stay the same…… and poor old Ask Jeeves went the way of Betamax when Google appeared in 1998 to become, well, you know now what happens with an unchecked corporation with whims of world domination?…. they get there in the end… X-Files (1993), now lost the plot entirely; South Park (1997), the best giggle and cringe-fest; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), pure unrecognised genius;  Midsomer Murders (1997), still plodding after all these years… I won’t go on as most are just an embarrassment and I’ll be here forever and a day, as they say, though where this extra day comes from after forever (good name for a band, oops, there is one already) has run its course I’m surely baffled by… unless it’s like a leap year, which would be even more baffling…

… television’s never done what books can, provide this other life in your head running parallel, that no one else can see but you… and when that book’s finished just open another and whoosh!……

© 2018 robert greig