Three Estates Renga - some pictures

Pictures from Nikki Pugh of the last Three Estates Renga at Kings Norton

10 seconds

They always leave of course.

Atomic

If you split an atom, and release all its energy, you'll obliterate a continent in one go.

The human body is made of billions upon billions of atoms.

No wonder I'm angry all the time.

RuKsaK

Moorland

Moorland by RS Thomas

It is beautiful and still:
the air rarefied
as the interior of a cathedral

expecting a presence. It is where, also,
the harrier occurs,
materialising from nothing, snow-

soft, but with claws of fire,
quartering the bare earth
for the prey that escapes it;

hovering over the incipient
scream, here a moment, then
not here, like my belief in God.



(Photograph by me, poem by the old misery-guts RS Thomas who can be read about here.)

New Blogger

I just switched to the new blogger. If any of you got cut out and still want to be here, email me at cruelvirgin@gmail.com and I will set you up.

...

discharge

Play Golf On The Moon

'for a better world play golf on the moon'
this work by Paul Conneally links up with artist Tim Wright's 'play golf on the moon with david bowie' - we had hoped to install an actual moon golf hole in the gallery but not this time - my feeling is that most golf courses are environmentally unsound and so i urge you 'for a better world play golf on the moon'

Graceless Sermons

With stone joints she bent over. Grinding into the movement in frenetic thrusts. What she sought. It was on the floor. Always had been. But never this far away. She always thought one day she'd find the bottom above her. She still thought she would someday as she stiffened her hips to brace for the pick up. Of this something she only saw when it was dark. After she had pushed everyone away. This something she had always wanted. This nothing that she'd always had.

The menthol fingers of lovers done still scraping at her throat. Dividing every breath into strands. Bliss and regret forming braids in her chest. Breathing. In pictures. In stabs. Breathing through the stone. Bending down. Reaching for something that was never there.

Coffins in the taste of every kiss.

ziphat

silence

An absence of sound like stillness in a void.
Stars come crashing down.
Random colours and contours split apart like atoms.
Flimsy, fragile, tragic.
There is a judgment of trees more solemn than saints.
A moment when time spins into illusion.
Ride the illusion.
Ride the chaos.
Continuity warps as fingers of expression twist the pysche.
Malable and magnificent, a utopia of self.
Breathe belief.
Believe.





words byCocaine Jesus

Two versions of Narcissus

The Plot by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by Boyer / Morland)

To make his horror complete, Caesar, pressed to the foot of a statue by the impatient daggers of his friends, discovers among the blades and faces the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, his protégé, perhaps his son, and ceasing to defend himself he exclaims: "You too, my son!" Shakespeare and Quevedo revive the pathetic cry.

Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants, symmetries: nineteen centuries later, in the south of the Province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is attacked by other gauchos. As he falls he recognises an adopted son of his and says to him with gentle reproof and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read), "Pero che!" He is being killed, and does not know he is dying so that a scene may be repeated.

- From Dreamtigers (1964)

again and again

they slay me.
people with clean sentiments. the way they dress it all up pretty pink and flushed.
as if their worlds are really like that. as if pain and bruises don't touch them. just the plastic formica they inlay over their being. a fuck up like me just drifts past their vision like roadkill.
or a nasty rash that some cream gets rid of if applied quick enough and regularly enough.
nice families of 2 plus 2's.
with green lawns and hedges.
and debts.
and corrosion in their souls for the amphetimine rush of everyday working life only lasts a fraction of time and its kick back is a grim realization that the drugs don't work.
not even television acts as balm.
not even the shit they pump out on the radio.
just endless years of empty rhetoric and the thought of democracy.
give me a break.
giving me a fucking break.

Bad Movies

There are tv shows to fast forward. Foul plastic surgeries to unbandage. Little elephant men painted on the liquid crystal canvas.

And babies to have. In the pliant reality that is addiction. Words bite the panties away from rigid vaginas. Its ceramic lips cast for a kiss that isn't coming.

So many people to ignore. Where do I begin? Poised on the skeleton's hips. Dressed in a beautiful gown of long lost skin. And splintered bones. Wearing the world around my neck. A tourniquet of faces kill the wounds that I used to share with him.

There's a bad movie in my head from the moment I wake up until the second that sleep absolves. I watch them choke out on hungry faces about to orgasm. I taste them in the odor of casual sex. The way it permeates the room long after we've forgotten the ghosts we had to become to find each other. The price of heaven hiding in a stray hair on my pillow.

Shit. Sky. Sunset.

1.
‘I’ve travelled and I can tell you, the more people get shat on the more they shit on others.’
‘So, why do you treat me like shit?’
‘I’ve been shat on a hell of a lot.’
‘So, where does that leave us?’
‘Spiralling.’

2.
‘It’s gorgeous.’
‘What is?’
‘The sky – full of blue.’
‘Yeah, but, you know.’
‘Know what?’
‘If you look closely, you’ll see it’s getting smaller.’
‘Eh?’
‘Just don’t look for too long. It’ll make you cry. I know.’

3.
‘I’ll see you later then.’
‘I’ll say I hope so, but that’s because I can’t bear to speak the truth. It murders the core of my soul that this is your sunset.’
------
Humour me. Pick one. Tell me why.

RuKsaK

Fair Flamingo

Fair Flamingo flies a word in stop-
motion animation
and is captured in a frame, square set
as silenced, struck opinion.

weed

/bark bark bark

classified as a humble weed
a beauty in a field of feed
held on through winters early frost
still holding to your seeds not tossed

i turn the key the bush hog cranks
i've come to cut your soldiers ranks
cut and slain you now lay prone
to dry to brown and die unknown

i'll see you soon when the sun arc's high
you'll shine against the summer sky
a queen of the field of which you reign
until i cut you down again

/grrrrrrr

salir des anges avec les jolies visages

discharge

salir des anges avec les jolies visages

apple

Rusty Nail Lovers

I'm new here.So I hope I can contribute something unique and justify my invitation. Anyway, on with the show.

oiled streets in calm disregard. pleated footsteps sweeping away. or attempting to. color in the shadows as they stalk. dirty sneakers on the feet of dime store princesses.

dancing with the dirt between her toes. broomsticks in the snow. looking for fingers. shovels in the ice. missing the wind. tracing the blizzard with glassy fingers. diapering the dead children of so many moments that never could.

remember. any of the shit. or piss. you wiped off of their red, red asses when they were as helpless as you are since.

the treble of dustpans gathering fallen skin. like a ring waiting for someone to answer. the bass having already taken a new lover. only their voicemail to tell you it's over.

I love you's as comforting as a tetanus shot.

daring utility flying fish yippies

^ cocAine jEsus^doRiandRa sMith^stiCKleback2^rAven^matiNa^miA mAlkiA^

thiErry tilLier^porCElain skull^Peter ciCCariellO ^docTor anThony doNOvan^

tHE nEw brOOm on tHe blOG

Jill gets Jacked.

"Jill?"

"Yes Jack?"

"Fuck you."

"What the hell Jack?!"

"I just felt like it Jill."

"I am not some piece of meat Jack! I will not be treated this way! I have the Women's Charter! I have the feminist movements! I will not stand to be treated this way!"

"I'm sorry Jill, it just came out. I didn't intend for it to be like that. It just came out wrong, and I'm sorry okay? I am really, truly, sorry. Want me to beg?"

"That would be nice too. Just make sure it does not happen again Jack."

"I promise it will not happen again Jill."

"Good."

"Just one thing though, Jill."

"Yes Jack?"

"Shut the fuck up, stop being a cunt, and fetch me a pail of fucking water, before I bitchslap the Women's fucking Charter out of you."

mindful

don't talk to me in platitudes
about love and peace
or some schmaltzy new age hippy shit,
it ain't gonna happen.

new year?
what new year?

tell that to the dying
starving
homeless
impoverished.

here we go again
blazing a trail of corporate glee
unmindful of the others
as we focus on ourselves.

will we never learn the lessons taught us?
will we always place the same crosses in
the same old boxes?
will we forever more be captive to commerce?

silver and gold and tokens of guilt.

the new year brings change
so let's live it
live it like we mean it

this year...

I WANT SOME FUN.....!!



dum dum dum by dum dum dum
paul conneally bill buchanan andy fulks

Cracked spine

One un-posed photograph.

They didn't gather and didn't smile. But they held close together to support the one with the sore back, the broken spine that insisted No, I need no help, just leave me be. Some believed it; some still kept a good hold on it in case it crumbled. And far too much hassle to call out an ambulance, some mumbled to themselves. Especially on New Years Day!

There's a crack, that's for remembrance; pray, / love, remember: and there is a spine, that's for thoughts.

happy

happy new year to all you nice peasants and god bless clifford duffy too