sadmanbarty

Well-known member
two things ben watson's great as, sending drawings of his knob to people in career crisis and reading luke's poetry. it's what he was born to do. he get it.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah there's some weird magic that happens. It brings out something in him that he doesn't otherwise draw on.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Spring. The primroses are out
and the worst has already happened.
The Threshold has been crossed. There
is no longer any Inside, any Out. No
Sanctuary, no Stronghold, no Escape
no Hiding Place. Horror
beyond endurance and here,
we endure. Hell.

And as they ate, scorpions appeared in the dust about their feet.

as i was saying in the other thread, luke was at his most genre fictiony during this time period. his most accesible and immediate.

i love the post card/film poster nature of the references. primroses. hell. scorpions. things that have easy to grasp symbolic and aesthetic resonance to us. we know what primroses and scorpions mean by the time we're six. it's very immediate. not obscure at all. scorpians are cool. like some ninja assasin clan or a wrestler's name or something. it works on that level.

luke has talked to me before about his poetry (or at least his poetry busking) being rnb and not indie. it wears its heart on its sleeve. shamelessly emotional. there's no coyness in it. this era of luke realises that so immediately.
 

luka

Well-known member
Once a few people have read this one I will put up the one I wrote at Christmas. Which is a bit different again. Then I'll write a new one one make the plague disappear
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Collapse of all boundaries and all discrimination. Mind shredded. Bone grinding against bone. Mind shearing. We are broken. Nothing coheres. Nothing is allowed to cohere. No separation, no sanctuary, no hiding place.

simple. direct. love it.

i think that's why the earth suit line from veg emp has become so popular. it works on that level
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Before a thing can form it is torn apart. This is what it means to be expelled from The Circle.

Scabrous entanglement barbaric legislature. Time captive how here in time captive quicklime help us direct intrusion into earth affairs bolt of lightning
and nothing ever
the same again. We move through the
passages. and changed.

grotesque imposition struck sent sideways reeling with the impact not again.
April. And the primroses are out
pallid yellow petalled in the lawn.
Parade of idiots file past the grimy window. Shell oil. Dull paramour. Dumb anguish
Not again. Wicked is the mistletoe
Wicked is the oak. Sturdy is the cross
rooted in
the honest earth.

Vagrant moment passing breath lost, another breath lost
Closer to the end. Cooked goose gathering, not again.

it's great that the shape of it all goes all wank after the line "Before a thing can form it is torn apart".

it's also a nice touch that amid the geometric derangement these lines conform to far more conservative stanza structures:

"April. And the primroses are out
pallid yellow petalled in the lawn."

some elderly middle-engalnder trying to maintain a sense of social order in their tidy bungalo as they see the world going to shit around them.
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't generally try and be difficult. I try and be direct as a rule. I like catchy stuff.
 

luka

Well-known member
Stuff like

Pallid yellow petalled in the lawn

Of

Cup of sorrow sobbing harbinger of tears

Are basically jingles.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
We are permitted a meadow. Thick, slow sunlight
grasshoppers. Something entirely sensual, the body pleasured
and purring. Grass tattooing the skin. The Vale of Beulah. We are permitted
buttercups. Daisies.
Primroses. Dandelions. Trees musical with gathered birds.

this poem's luke at his most romantic (and i presume it was the romantic poets who are the poetry equivalent of pop). nature as this serene salvation consoling you from the onslaught of manmade ugliness:

Steel rod shattering the skull. Gather drunk bellow. In the very ugly brutal
in the very mean it is, the very mean. Not just yet, no, no, not just yet, leave me here,
in sin with the sinners, neon over the shadowed doorways and we're here again
getting it all wrong again, alive again, and with the tiniest of miscalculations, we're here again, in Hell.
 
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