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              TREES, mimicking their leaves, fall softly, taking their time to this-way-and-that, hammock of wind for once and, touching down, the ground won’t wait around, not forever, it doesn’t care much for the weightlessness of this or a feather. and the heather looks ugly this spring. my goodness, seasons end and begin in the blink of an eye. what will these daisies sing to me on my birthday? the sound it moves me so—on sundays mainly—church bells ring as warnings of expression and abstraction, refraction of intent, slightly bent so as not to be seen as meaning what you meant, lest the scent of try and effort is identified along with eagerness who hunches and sniffs—and what a crass perfume. and the dying flower beds final words of encouragement, nourishment for the skulk of foxes that hang around a lot these days, crooked and corrupt mediators putting themselves between nature and myself—I am a mere client with a desire to procure some of this nature I regard as folklore—but it’s more than that...

 

the foxes do not speak for us!

 

             did you hear it or was I daydreaming sonically, hushed as breathing a sorry course through the uncertain night aching joints and recurring echoes of a desperate bird in its attempts to take flight, sounding like a drum roll that begs for a retreat or announces fear or repeat. it may have been bird call and I won’t answer, he’s no longer a friend, his absence speaks volumes, at least it did before the volume cut out again and we were left with just spoons to flick on our knees and tap against table legs. we were born/est. circa second revival, hedging on the art of just about survival with morbid highs, and be able to stay up past 2am or all night, nostalgia wraps me tight and keeps me a reasonable temperature.

 

             now what of this broken violin, you can’t sit on one! the aphorism goes or at least how the first act of the tragedy begins, yet here we are with a shattered bridge and the bow is crying waxy stuff, because of the swelling 19th century wood, cut by Kant, and arguably Paul will argue with the wall finishing with a chivalrous bow—you may throw your flower stems now, thorns and all I’m of fortified mettle, (no longer will I wallow in the ceremonious parachute jump of petals. love didn’t introduce itself, nor a soul to a soul, it left quietly in the middle of the night unencumbered by the awkward stiffness of bedclothes. I once heard it tapping the window of a house, saying I’m back, I’ve finished deciding).

 

             when the flagon of ale is empty, it’s emptiness looks up at pensive Iven whose body and mind are still catching up with his cooling hands, we all saw the magic show, slowed it down on video but we still don’t understand because what instrument was he even playing? it was like automobile traction, polygon wheels. a much needed distraction from the tedious leaps of faith of the everyday, of life on the beam, a score near perfect yet somehow I feel the pull of a spectacular dismount. I am just human, I have nothing but human needs and catherine-wheel-hands. when Iven sings you know it’s going according to plan whilst Edd stands, never sitting, every bit of him fashionably in-sync. swinging and ticking, a sharply dressed pendulum lately, time does not wait for trees to fall nor for night to fall or the morning’s call, with spring loaded readiness and the urgency of mousetraps, fingers rolling, cable-like strings  suspended mid-air, there’s a silence that precedes musical low-frequency violence, but as performance and art, but who would admit to such a thing, we all heard something like aurora borealis, undulating beneath the high ceiling, the room shook like a Russian palace.

 

              my feet I moan feel heavy, invariably concrete holds on like a child, not a tantrum, but it’s just the memory of a uncomfortable dull pain, right where they say the heart is found, feelings bound by circulatory laws, a flaw in the ventricle wall that wakes you mid-fall, damp and light as the ghost of a ghost of a ghost. when I leave after a year’s worth of hesitation, clouds linger briefly. some never form but instead become the ice of an idea that endlessly melts, shedding tears breadcrumbs to sustain the light years to come on its journey that settles on circling the belly of Saturn. I am tentatively reciting don’t you change your mind, meditation of a kind, decisions are tough to make and convictions are hard to find, enemies of truth! says the mocking bird on top of the roof, blinded by the sun yet freely mocking aloof intellectuals, hiding behind spectacles and beards that tickle the air with wisdom, to consider the memory of every hair, every sound wave that falls softly there.

 

              it’s hard to say what it is with us—it’s a kind of whisper but from a mountain, or a badly plumbed fountain with flourishes of exhibitionist water-droplet-acrobatics, it’s the sound of a rock that rudely rolled off the cliff after years of polite restraint, floodgates and dams and locks and algae—that scent recalling mischievous behaviour or an untuned radio with something to play to you. the orator who wanted to push himself is speechless, quiet grunts and twitches of confusion flash and spark, his spotlight is stolen by the bombay who earlier removed his head and replaced it courteously, timely displays of nonsense etiquette with his head out the picture he understood the breadth of it, the nut of point, the bow of the dock, the fingers of the clock, buttoning up his socks, unlocking his door and leaving it open for the wolves to come and howl the paint off the wall.

 

              the conductor with his coattails that won’t iron flat, is gesturing to his insubordinate herd with eyes that read and discern the ink-splashes of music as if words, with Italian verbs, guidance in defiance of their conductor and his ill-fitting outfit, shrinking in silence, they know how to play it why don't they? Charlie doesn’t bother though with all of that, he once played a timpany from a great distance, he ran a wooden spoon against the railing and Neal Cassidy screamed the show must go on! Paul shifts his weight to the other foot, sigh and is waiting my slice? waiting in the key of C#m but we changed to the finer key somwhere between E and Eb, and that was that we get on with our lives and Charlie plays Tubular Bells with fish-knives blunt and flats and sharps and in seven, then eight, twenty five minutes/two separate rotations on the victrola plate, our music is the sound of twenty five minutes late where the dragged-through-bush-backwards nattering is silenced by a throaty cough and the accidental harmonic (that happened to be an accidental) the fiddle has secret wishes to break free of its waistcoat and trilby and join a philharmonic orchestra.

 

             this is music in whatever key you kind-of-want-to-hear, except you would usually be hesitant to press play or let the needle fall because it stirs up memories, and feelings the Greeks didn’t have a word for, catharsis when the tuning has started, the bathos goes no way towards placating the crowd who are in the mood to throw their date or partner across the room to show them that they are young and reckless. meanwhile we’re the feckless individuals who let themselves believe they can steer this walty cutter, the hollow stage echoes of gallows and where words are meaningless, every flutter of doubt was screaming out but this is not how it usually goes. not how it usually goes since the orchestra in the loft suffered a mutiny of sorts, ghosts took their brass and the grieving living ridiculed the viola-players' outfits until they said he can't sing!, no more! or stage lights and mid-song-switch from banjo to mandolin with an added interrobang 

 

              what has been prepared:: it was never aired, some cruel celestial dictator, cutting room layabout edited all the good bits out and so the strings will snap and microphones will droop and people will leave, going home to their soup and the comfort of an unpleasing reflection in the television screen, checking their parting when it loses reception and the universe says something microwave but doesn’t it always. we’re only here tonight and then we’re off to where the lions are drinking the filthy thames and slurping doom, deep water rarely pretends but a drop of the Mississippi once landed in my eye, how does a voice carry such a thing so far and yet my vigil will go unheard because it’s irrelevant and a fear of the sea is prevalent in those who have lived so deeply inland.

 

              but sometimes some sort of syzygy puts an end to uncertain movements and utterances, and misery opens the tone knob, the music snob act is dropped and someone—there must always be  first—sits back and something like music, the whisper that descended, shrugged off by the shoulder of Helvellyn, creates a feedback loop in harmony to the baring-all, confessional, dream-tainted and faint memories of fainting excessively, expressing the feeling he swears someone else felt. once. in a parallel universe.

 

              and in this parallel universe we must be something, the music must be something meaningful. we’ve had a taste of acceptance, our momentum is seasonal and summer is nearly here...