A SPELL TO MAKE A BAD HOUR PASS - Adrian Mitchell

Unfold your hand
Place all of the bad minutes in a circle
in the palm of your hand

Close your fingers slowly
To form a gentle fist

Slowly turn your fist around
And let your lips pass slowly
Over all the surface of your fist

Slowly
Tighten your fingers
Slowly
tighten your fist

The fist is clenched
All the minutes are inside it
The fist is clenched
The evil hour is vanishing

Slowly, slowly
Unfold the fingers of your hand

The palm of your hand is empty

Rest the back of your hand
Upon your other hand

Look into the palm of your hand
Look deep into your hand

Your hand is full
Your hand is full
Your hand is full of life

Wikileaks - Mirrors of their website.

Currently under attack here's a link.

http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html

PROBLEM - Harold Pinter

The phone rings. I ignore it. It persists. I'm not a fool. The strategem I
employ comes easily to me. I lift the extension. I say nothing. Silence too,
at his end. He replaces his receiver. Remarkably harsh dialling tone.

After seeing to a few odd jobs I decide to make a telephone call. I lift the
phone. Dead silence. Unprecedented. The telephone system in my area
normally sans pareil. At the report of the slightest fault telephone
technicians arrive post haste, on the dot, to correct. But in this case
problem palpable. I can't phone to declare the fault, the fault is so vast, so
pervasive, it so consumes, is so final, as to obstruct, without a chink of
hope, aid.

Silent phone. Dead night.

The extension? Phone off the hook? The extension phone off hook? I
investigate. Extension secure, with a certain indolence, on hook. I am
nonplussed. Not only that. I take one of my seats and sit nonplussed.

Nonplussed. No tone. Dead night.

It rings.

I leave the library, go into a phone box and dial my flat. Number
engaged.

Someone is trying to do me in.


(1976)
From Transatlantic Review, June 1977

OLGA MARTNOVA (b.1962)- Night unwraps the true stuff of the world

Night unwraps the true stuff of the world:
Poorly clothed houses, shadows in a back street,
Lorries and lime trees on the boulevards-
All sleep under the rain: their black and white
Faces show bewildered discontent. What still holds
Of their comfortable life? Is this new look
Deception or reality? Electric words
Suddenly flash their alphabet. Night
Moves, lit only by itself. And until
The light of early morning, you can
Repeat the letters of the night-time world.
Now a sign flashes in a passing headlight,
Then somebody's whisper, menacing footsteps,
God knows what else - as the black scene shines.
Day clothes this nakedness and
Hides the evidence of it within our flesh.
Language turns into babble, and then,
Sitting on a bench in the boulevard,
You try helpessly to remember what remains
Once night has gone, more than
A worn out negative of how things are
Under the heels of the rain.

Translated by Elaine Feinstein

Therapy Room - Bill Lewis (1/8/53)

Joe's making a stool
i'm weaving a basket
someone's making coffee
Dee says I can sing
and she does.
Jane won't make an
ashtray
Arthur's sulking because
the priest wouldn't re-
christen him Jesus.
Jane still won't make
an ashtray, instead
she becomes a dog
ggrrr Woof woof WOOF!
Dogs don't make ashtrays.
Dee's singing the
national anthem
Arthur blesses me.
Sydney hasn't spoken
all morning, or yesterday
or the day before
gggrrrr Woof Woof!
Shit said Joe
I'm going to disharge
myself from this place
it's driving me mad.

realising what he had
said, he starts to laugh
i also start to laugh
the man on my left
(who didn't hear Joe)
starts to laugh as well.
we all laugh.
except Sid who wants
to die (and means it)
then we had coffee.

Bill Lewis - God is an an athiest she doesn't believe in me.


Bill Lewis is a poet, artist, storyteller and mythographer, since being hospitalsed in 1976 for clinical depression he has made a career as a writer. He has read, lectured and published on both sides of the Atlantic. He was also founder member of the Medway Poets and the Stuckist Art group along with Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. He was later found teaching Myth, Magic and Spirituallity at Kent Childrens hospital.His work explores the whole human shadow encompassing themes of madness, individuallity, spirituallity, sexuality and politics.
He has published numerous books of poetry and short stories and was included " The Grandchildren of Albion" edited by Michael Horovitz.

I admire his work, it offers a triumphant realism.


The above poem is from " Rage Without Anger, " Lazerwolf/Hangmans Books (1988)





http://www.stuckism.com/lewis/index.html





Personally speaking
i used to be a support worker,
who then became a user,
now live in state of limbo
inhale a lot though
some of it illegal.

Gaef stiw gerwinder teifidancer/ teifidancer Winter austerity stew.

Preselis West Wales.

At the moment it is time to keep our bodies and heads from cold. Time to go into the kitchen for some apothecay, try and keep warm, heating bloody expensive I know, better wear some warm clothes, try and keep merry in company, best not mix with tories.
Heres a nice hearty meal thats nice to share ( Suitable for vegetarians) as CoNDem policies become increasingly surreal, mean and destructive ,this meal is at least affordable and will pehaps disract a little. It might sound like a right old mixture but I think is very tasty and quick to make. Hope you enjoy.

INGREDIENTS

3 Potatoes - diced into half inch cubes

cup full of frozen peas

2 onions - finely chopped

2 cloves garlic - crushed

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

2 chillies red or green - deseeded and finely chopped

Lg Tin of Baked Beans

1 and a half pints of vegetable or chicken stock

half a pint of ale

3 grated carrots

125 g mushrooms - roughly chopped

knob of butter.

Boil potatoes seprately for 10 mins, meanwhile fry onions, garlc , chillies for 5 minutes in knob of butter. Drain spuds and add to large saucepan adding rest of ingredients .... onions, garlic and stock etc. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper anda couple of dashes of worcester sauce.
Simmer for half an hour and there you have it.
Oh and at end you could stir in some cream and if required grate some cheese and serve with some brown bread.

Samuel Beckett (13/04/06 -22/12/89) - FIVE POEMS

1

DIEPPE

again the last ebb
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
towards the lighted town

2

my way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end

my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts

3

what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where evbery instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmours die
the paintings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and rhe day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
that throng my hiddeness

4

I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me waling the streets
mourning the first and last to love me

CASCANDO



why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed
it is not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
yhey will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want slplashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
for nine months
for nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times f begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
peatling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you