Aurora Australis (the Southern Lights) - JLG Clift

Aurora Australis falls from a divine and unearthly chalice made of materials so precious that there is no word in our language to gauge its splendour there never will be either because how can our slumbering fumbling syllables of sound encapsulate how profound what we're seeing is? She now soars across our unworthy skies past my unworthy eyes stringing bright streamers of red and green and blue to be seen and admired by the thinkers and the dreamers amid the screaming malice of the modest the mundane and the insane that rule the roost of life from booster chairs wearing bibs below bespoken blazers and throwing bottles motherless children one and all turning out identically cruel; her strands have made me a star gazer today I looked up mythology and space weather and found out so many things I never knew before I memorised facts that would usually bore me to my core but that was me before I saw her lying in the dullness of the night it was like seeing a miracle taking flight I didn’t feel like I deserved to have her in my sight after all I had not been looking for her I had not been waiting for her call I’d been staring at the ground listening to the sounds of the world my mind boxed in behind red brick walls miles thick where I had so often dwelled but above the chaos of the ice turning to sludge while on a cruise to nowhere which I excepted begrudgingly because a friend at Thomas Cooke had offered it to me I bitched and I moaned and I groaned as I boarded the plane that took me to the train that took me to the boat I wanted to get stoned I wanted to be alone and on the deck alone I was when I saw her beauty swelling I felt like yelling about her glory to all that were near enough to hear and after a few drinks I did I truly tried to lift the lid on what we were seeing and how harrowingly free beings like me start to feel when kneeling below her colourful cords.

How small do I look to her? I wonder whether or not it even occurs to her that I stare it’s hardly rare for men to look when her astral flares begin to tear up the lackluster sky that has always made me too tired to try anything but she excites me and entices me to be something before she makes me sigh with a mix of awe and wonder she’s soft as snow powerful as thunder she’s thrown my beliefs asunder I don’t fall for things too often my heart has never softened for anything really merely for family and occasionally friends I never thought one entity would bend my mind this far from myself and my reasoning but she has and I can almost hear her singing in the silence of the sky drifting by I know she’s small to her someone the sun but he’s got none of her attraction nor her finesse he’s boring and annoying always prying me from my snore strung fantasies seizing my time teasing me his baking heat in a lifeless blue sky always dry always hot failing to care about his subjects beating our necks with his rays until they’re raised and red and practically bloody all the way to the top of our heads; if I had my way Man would protest his rise indefinitely so that we could forever be basking in my impossibly unchangeable and unattainable loves caresses that catch our eyes from above her curls unfurling limitlessly lingering endlessly sending my heart and my speech into stutters and my passionate roars into boyish mutters I’m in awe forever my jaw tethered to the floor my mind left to stir in the unrealities of what will probably never be but that doesn’t stop me dreaming because she’s still gleaming somewhere out there and although she doesn’t care for me as I for her I don’t think I still stare at her never blinking so that I don’t stop drinking her sultry solar display in; true the unattainable aspect of this all does fill me with an unusually painful brand of dismay that will surely remain no matter where I stay or how many girls I lay in a million lifetimes she’ll always be there flowing behind my rhymes like Maude for Yeats only minus the bitter hate that that old failure felt the radiant nature of her florescent curves swerving so smoothly through the atmosphere has melted my mind into tears leaking through my longing eyes but I don’t cry half as much  as I would if I were unable to see her swirling in the dark night of the sky and igniting it with her endless glow that spreads across her baying body head to toe flowing going everywhere she can so that all men may be inspired as much as she has inspired me wiring her priceless wares throughout the sky.

It is for selfish reasons that I cry because I want to be the only man that sees her occurring her body curling beside mine in the night as I lie on my mountain top tears stripping sleep back from my bewildered eyes; it saddens me that she'll never try to stay with me but what saddens me more is that at sunrise I'll have to see her die again and that is surely a sight that humbles all sane men.      

Beware: Live Dog Roaming Free in Hadley - JLG Clift

Fires burn to make things darker it’s a camp side jam tonight the show stealing fingers of the flames fingering the air which is tearing apart like dirty pads of cotton wool tainted and painted by the fads and the fraying ropes of smoke that the ginger digits have provided; these people have confided in the forest; this is where they play and drink and smoke and chat I’m turning off my phone watching the low res glow go completely so my mum can’t reach me to ask me where I’m at because I don’t want to say I want to stay in my tree top where the leaves are already turning from green to brown in the long frown of the sun at sunset before the ket came out; we’re raving in the middle of a heat wave and the trees are fast becoming hangers for the leaves and their fruit to dry out and die on the leaves and the branches are crooked and breaking the tree was shaking as I climbed up but I didn’t care I like being closer to the sky I always stare at it’s always black it’s always still and it always will be there’s a serenity in its silent colours and its dandelion moon that’s blooming fully tonight but its glow will soon slowly flake and flutter away as the day encroaches or the crowds of rowdy clouds much darker than the bark beneath my floating feet;  dry twigs shout in an unknown naturally grown language they crunch and crumble under Creepers and clumsy couples fumbling on the crackling floor and under bottles that have been launched from scrawny hands at the night but they never quite make it and instead hit the ground and shatter and with a clatter they fade into the tawny sticks and the leaves brown bottles disappear better than the rest but the rest vanish too in time; there’s almost a mind to the woods that makes it cast its haggard hood of aged foliage over the broken and the decayed smoothing out the fraying edges we have made not with the neurotic neutering of hedges like the housewives in my cul-de-sac do but merely with a pile of leaves that have never spoken in their lives to me before tonight right here and right now.

I listen but I do not understand the words of this land anymore if I ever did and that fact makes me sore deep down but I scaled up from the ragged jagged roots rising from the ground around an old oak tree to the tip to the top moments ago not to converse but to see the sights of these people in the lightless night and now I’m watching a group of girls in Topshop onesies drop for the first time and I’m seeing their eyes light up staring at a sullied plastic cup; we’re well beyond the static of the fire now and free from its shadows though these onesie wearers don’t belong here I’m afraid they were never to see the cup that’s being displayed on the dark of the marked up floor left here by a toddler before sunset god knows how long ago back when the children used to go here when they were small.

 Now they’re big and they’re here again but they’re still so small from where I sit a lit cig in my lips rum in my hand hand on my heart I swear to god I don’t think they’ll ever truly depart from this place not really not nearly as much as one thinks they could or should depending on the person this cup and this drop will still irk them decades from now when they’ll be wondering how and why and when they let themselves go crying in counselling sessions a repeatedly resuscitated recession still piling up around their ears sensorium overload towed out all those reluctant emotions and all those teenage notions so much that they’ll start to see the stability of their existence as a crutch and they’ll throw it aside to try to clutch to what was but they’ll never quite catch it because it’s not them anymore and that realisation will rot them to the core.

I’m back from the curls of the canopy to the flaming sea amid the logs that are being flogged by the whips of these cocooning waves tripping into and lipping everything in reach constantly;  there’s a girl with no face close to the flames her hair blowing around the dark of her jaw (the one who I think arranged this jam) who’s talking about this guy she scores from now and how I should tag along to pick up a few grams for the next time we meet here on her birthday which I think I’ll skip on not because I hate the girl but because I just don’t want to drop with these guys I’m going to pop my MD cherry with my oldest friend who spends his weekends on New College ferries discussing literature and life over cheddar and sherry.

At least that’s the stereotype that some people here would have you believe from my own personal experience I can tell you the hype about Oxbridge kids and their unhealthy amounts of wealth is a farce for the most part they don’t all watch Wimbledon from centre court they don’t all snort their savings away through 50s the ultimate distortion these people seem to have treading and threading through their heads is that all Oxbridge students have a fortune to squander on drugs in the first place it took me a while myself to face that fact it was hard to except that I was wrong and that’d I’d placed my faith in the wrong sources that often course confidently throughout my life but that fear is long gone now and I’ve divorced myself from the slithering source. I’ve been wrong about so many things the idea of my words being false doesn’t raise a bead of sweat to my brow and that’s freeing, being free to be right or wrong being free to be here and gone from minute to minute merely riding with life not trying to win against it life’s a competition that I cannot deny however I don’t need to constantly try curb stomp it into submission I can just sit and talk and walk with it and see what it has to say.

 There is a sense of the real of the here and now and how it could all go at any moment the fire foaming at the mouth rabid the opposite of languid even in its dying days the flames starting to head south down the logs into the dirt they’ll extinguish soon no longer able to flirt with and hurt the air; sensible thought is dwindling we’re all too gone to find more kindling so we walk up into the commons and we lie down under the scars that we call stars; there used to be cows mooing here decades ago I’m sure but now there are cars honking and booing on dark roads freshly paved their lights making slaves out of the black of the night as they slice through it around my fearful ears. I don’t like the noise I feel like the last boy of the forest to be honest I’ve painted my jeans and my blazer in its bark and it’s mud although it’s too dark to see the marks right now and I feel alone I feel like I’m the only one tired of seeing cars and trucks and road drawing blood and swabs of visceral vegetation from the veins of this part of this nation in their motorised mobs; they’re the fires don’t let the suits and tan fool you they may be human but they’re hands are spanning outwards to tear the world down like the flames do when hidden in their mounds of smoke and only cowards refuse to see it.

The girl with a shadowed face is still talking now about this article from years ago about the disgraceful displays of child pornography at Neverland that never happened or existed to my knowledge she goes to a sixth college I think but I can’t be sure and don’t want to ask because I don’t want a drunken girl with no face to take me to task on the fact that I’m not paying proper attention; I’m just thinking of the clouds and the fact that they’re not there to hide the stars like they usually are and it’s bizarre that they feel we deserve to see their twinkling crinkling shimmering display; I know I should feel dismay after all they die so that we can see them and it’s depressing in theory the idea that in order to be seen as stars they have to corrode and implode because that’s what people like to see but the feeling of awe at the sheen of their demise won’t leave me be and it’s funny that it doesn’t even sadden me at all. I remember being young in summer in Swaziland and living to catch a falling one a kamikaze star raking glitter across the tar of the sky shooting down into the world it died to lighten and enlighten angry tired burning frightened it landed with a crash but it barely made a gash on anyone’s heart or soul apart from mine.

I meet a girl hand outstretched upside down she was on the ground her hair rustling in the farce of AstroTurf grass the cricketers put down to keep the brown of the soil off their cricket whites I study the red on green the green on red the colours colliding about her feathered head and its foxy features that remind me of the creatures that used to live; where we blaze and gaze out when we should be looking in they grazed on this spot but now they rot under the black of the tarmac trying to reach even after death through the cracks to the sky only to find there are no cracks just the absolute of industrial motorway black. She’s here though, she’s alive, she thrives she strives for more than most here no fear for the future to put sutures or her world view to steal the hues from its spectacular sight; her association to an elegance and her irreverence towards the scorn of the norm are qualities I thought caught fire and died out long ago the fact that she still possesses them makes me want to know her some more so for the first time tonight I speak candidly and she replies. We rise and chat legs cross on the green of the ‘grass’ the sounds of other conversations have been getting in the way all night but not now even when the other voices start to tower into Empire States and Shards I don’t find it hard to ignore them. We talk about film and futures and features we hope to make together and her plans and mine I didn’t think I’d find someone who saw something the same way as I did at a place like this in the mist of these people that used to meet under the All Saints steeple but that now fool around in the forests instead.  

It’s been a night and this girl has definitely been the highlight it’s nice to find someone you didn’t expect to find from time to time to keep life liveable we go our separate ways at the bus stop I felt like we could have talked the moonlight away but we don’t this time but we will another fingers crossed I usually get the feeling that friendships will be lost eventually but not on this occasion.

I board the bus blissfully bored by the nothingness of the N20 there’ve been plenty of sights tonight I won’t write them all down in one sitting because for the most part I’d be resubmitting stories that I’ve already told stories of drugs and drinks and wild egocentric suburbicidal kids that never think and the horrors of house parties and nauseous tendencies of neurotic neon lights and cautious cowards throwing trembling fists in pointless fights and sudo-Bateman-ites and boring songs about the throngs of unjust despair that the Little Man pretends tear his lazy little life apart accusing everyone of being in the wrong. I don’t want to repeat myself there’s a wealth of material to be found and I want to be bounding through it eternally.

I turn the key in the lock and walk into my flat there’s a clock ticking the second hand flicking by and by swatting clotting into the pure of unrecorded time I think back as I kick back in my room about what I saw on my way back from the fumes of the fireside jam but before I was caught on the camera of that late night bus, about a sign I saw walking back from Hadley with the crowd I sat with on the fake of the floor.

‘Beware: live dog roaming free in Hadley Lodge’

 I spotted the old mutt black from face to tail through his gut sagging dragging himself along barely to a shoddy shank of lamb through the B of the sign on the gate he was being kept behind and it racked my mind that they could say this dog was free when he was so clearly being held captive from B through the L through the D through the R through the F all the way to the E and well beyond and above thick black lines on against the sugar shaded sky composed of cloud now lock out the world and block him inside. The dog was slow to respond to my whistle and when he did he didn’t come to bark or to charge and merely continued to gnaw on the gritty gristle of what could be his last meal. I felt a connection between us I wanted to call him over I wanted to feel close to another animal just like me. But I couldn’t. They told me not to stay, they said I’d miss my bus and sadly instead of speaking for myself I listened and I obeyed.

The Night of Cultureless Vultures and the Mourning Nature of Mothers - JLG Clift

We’re on the roof and the sun’s rising feels like it’s apprising slash describing something to us wings of birds flap hollow beaks wrap against the trees and the ground and the mounds of mud thud after thud until a grub is taken from the ground and wolfed down by a mocking bird that’s antenna bound now; there was a time when it used to sit on the brows of the furrowed old willow to the left of this view eschewed by a red brick school and several other structures creating a skyline that looks like fractured fragments of scar tissue on the fading face of the Base Mother of All lamenting endlessly resenting the construction even at this junction right now but repenting is out of the question for us because this is progress and Our Mother’s stress at the site fails to faze us even in the slightest.

The willow comes into sight when I tilt to the right it has leaves that remind me of a torn up pillow gutted and flung about strands still spinning reminding me of the strange fruit that was hung back in Mississippi the strands look like men women children in places at angles in shadows as the sunlight arrives and begins to dart through the foliage in parts when we’re off our faces either bodies or ratty shoe laces from an old pair of All Stars like the ones I saw in an Oxfam window a while back the black in the logo the same black that’s being sewn across the powder blue shroud of the sky by the bird a proud beak leading late sunset in colour out of place at this great sunrise the mocking bird’s cries and chirps echo and die trying to usurp the silence of the morning. The bird’s flying east and will become a thin black crease in the distance soon enough.

I think back as the beating black of its wings that have already started to sack the yolk of the vocal rise from the sky fade away into the sky that’s not yet grey but will get there soon I imagine.

There’s a chasm in Victoria I cannot possibly fathom or describe in its entirety that throbs and thrives from Pacha like a gash all the way to Southbank the evening sank quickly for us arriving at twelve miners were we mining drinks from 20 something’s acting like the moronic minors we’d meet on the 134 later that evening this place was teeming with spray painted prats fat and bloated ‘locked and loaded’ ‘rocking out with their cocks out’ boarder-line knocked out on the vulgar vinyl sofas by the overpriced booze.

"so Pacha’s shit"

"and Proud was waste as well"

"fuck Aquila and their dry prize draws"

"mate I’d have more fun on the Moors with the Wests than I'm having right now"

After we were done sweeping drinks we broke the link in our VIP pisstake wristbands and propelled them into the air with our hands watched the florescent strands twist before they landed of the ply board roof of a burned news stand not as planned but nothing’s planned I don’t understand the point in planning time spans itself randomly through our lives instances of chance dancing in enchanting trances daunting haunting flaunting hope and beauty that moves me and makes me think of the instances of chance as salmon swimming upstream scales glistening I’m always at my best when listening to their movements and swimming with them in the hems of my existence.

We tried haphazardly to reach the London Eye because it was big and blue and distant and on and there but we didn’t care for the sight really and were happy for the city to get in the way of the jumped up Ferris Wheel that never made us feel anything but contempt and confusion about why people go there and why they care in addition to a touch of despair over how much they spent to have what is miss-sold as the finest view in London. We found the finest view of London last night with no sights to been seen and no tourists to be found a place people pass by caught up in the rat race never looking properly. Well we did. After we took a piss on Parliament and threw a happy meal Big Ben’s way a half-eaten quarter-pounder splattering with a patter just short of his face as three came around without a sound and I’ve heard at least fifty different ways people can ask for a fag or a drag of yours if they were feeling less cheeky tonight; there was this one woman who was a tangle of fraying edges no distinct form (thanks in part to the drink I confess) just old carrier bags and a withering shape not blubbering at all but not smiling either beyond the surface disjointed from the appointed society wandering about in the wealth of the city all doors closed to her the tape holding a ruler in place as a splint on her forearm made my mind stir with questions about how and why and where and who if there was a who but I didn’t care for the truth I never do; I make my own. The blur calmly asked for a drag but I gave her the whole cig she smiled a toothless smile eyes glinted like a worn-down-washed-up-rinsed-out-wild-child in the tawny tar of the fag on fire and then she departed disappearing down the street with her bags now in her rig which was a shopping trolley from Tesco decked out with a broken brolley on the left side and a flag being dragged back in the black of the wind that used to say something, maybe, but the design was so moth raddled it was hard to tell I hoped she’d do well on the streets I hoped she kept shoes on her feet I hoped the sleet and the sheets of snow that will blow down onto this town and this city in less than a year would take pity on her because although I have little sympathy for are-nows or have-beens when things go awry I always hope it works out alright for never-weres who always tried and failed.

We found our view at the foot of a man who died Nelson on his column solemn eternally a well-dressed golem without a hunch in his back without fangs of stone protruding from his mouth poised for fevered attack on passers-by waiting to make their dry throats wet with their ruddy blood and his slithering saliva; there were drivers in dark cabs and night buses honking at us as we scaled the platform to see the norm of the city the torn tips of my boots grating against the corroding granite fashioned like a buckle over this section of planet; we paid no mind. 

His jowls were hanging loose even in bronze and on my way to the top platform I thought briefly back to DJ Gonzo at Pacha who’s set was actually pretty decent recent music mixed in nicely with the Ibiza sounds of yesteryear I went to the second floor to the top tier to the bridge of glass walls and chesterfield doors and saw the roaring people passing looking like locusts that were soon to be lambasted Loca People playing loud these people strutting their stuff proudly but despite the labels and the lifting miniskirts and the unbuttoned shirts and the lights the sight was dull cultureless vultures vying together on the dance floor and over Zippos outside and neon fish bowls like scavengers hollowing a gazelle into a hide turning the herbivore into horror taking her core out by the beak-full until nothing remains but her skin and her stains on their claws and the bits stuck between bleached teeth lurking in their sculpted jaws. I looked down and saw the quaking crowds in strobe light alcoves defined by ropes it’s hard to cope with anything when looking at people with everything waste it all and in the glass wall at the breakdown of sound the lights changed in range and tone from reds and greens to whites and blues and in the brightest of hues they disappeared from site and were replaced by myself staring down at all that surrounded and me. It dawned that there was nothing to see. Not really.

Nelson and the site at the square however were enough more than maybe as crazy at it sounds there was nothing exceptional about the view two musty buses and a staccato flow of traffic and black tarmac between the whites of the midrise Victorian and Edwardian buildings with the moonlight’s gilding for decoration we’re a nation of people in the dark until they see this side of the cityscape some rooms off some rooms on it looked like masking tape had been draped across the buildings’ faces in perfectly random places. Nelson never tires of this hence the mirth on his mouth this is a victor's view in its truest form just as stunning in a different way to this lawn at this sunrise. We went no further south than there and took the bus home and heard these teenagers ranting about race and the murders in Woolwich digging a big hole for themselves in my book talking about it as a travesty with undoubtedly it was because all death is tragic who wouldn’t weep at the idea that the magic of thought is ending but the reason this conversation is trending at this moment on this bus is because it happened close to the home of these guys covered in the paste of a foam party show-offs with nothing to show that know nothing blowing suds onto the windows and writing messages Gillette got to block the stars in the night from my eyes tonight.

“Tony was here”

Whatever, it’ll be rubbed away soon like it was never there.

We got off the bus with a couple of cusses as my foot hit the crust of the curb with a crack it was cold but there was a crisp cobalt sky starting out at 4 roaring colour around the mint green of the small clock tower on Woodhouse Lane that stopped working long ago at a time; I found it hard to read; we got back to my mates and watched documentaries on nearly mute we saw some menacing monologues this Northern glory hog his mog covered in mattered beard he’s good but I don’t know why he’s revered as much as he is but he’s good enough to enjoy when behind a rizzla packed with the nicest of vices the device flickers in front of me in 1080 Dee-Pee depicting a sisa man fanning his light bulb bowl with a paper to get his crack coals glowing in Athens with the smoke growing in the pipe and the black tripe forming around the cream of the rock I think of glaciers melting in the Artic the interviewee tells me through the camera the recent rise in drugs is because of flailing market but sadly this is the only sense his mouth dispenses between his bouts of hopping fences and fending off the mobs of men that function as death squads behind closed doors I’m sure. The laptop ran out of battery but to be honest that didn’t matter to me because I wanted to go out on the balcony to see the canopy of sunrise roll out to be honest I was getting sick of Youtube advertising which has been rising in its frequency for a while now as if I want to see some boardroom of bile bound men using sex appeal and slogans tout their wares. Since there was no balcony the rooftop had to do so we climbed through the window and sat on the slats of rooftop to mop the disgrace of the club and the majority of the places we saw tonight from our minds.

It did and now I’m rid of it all.   

It’s all done it’s all passed and it was worth it because at last I get a second chance for a better view the blue of the grass and the green of the blue bells and the writhing red of the trees and the indigo of the iris and the violet of the roses in their naturally striking poses I got those colours mixed up I suppose but it doesn’t matter because they’re merging together and the beauty of their combination through my widened eyes makes the sight even better the petals are wet the scene feels set in the glow of the sun soon to run away perhaps but at least it has wrapped its hand around the garden to soften my hardened heart concreted by defeated notions and bitter emotions about my loss of Romantic ideals I feel the colour, particularly the teal, it feels healing what I thought were bodies in the shadow of the willow are now peeling back to reveal what they really were just Willow’s leaves in lustrous locks stirring in the breeze. I think of the nature of mothers and think of the sun as the offspring of a mother and her lover estranged loneliness made the Mother mangy it wasn’t our building or our actions that made her eyes hazy with tears entirely it was the years of constantly piling fear that she would never see her sun who’s come back to cast his shroud but at the same time lift hers but nerves will get the better of him soon and his hand will retract and the black and the grey and the gloom will return. I don’t know when he’ll come around again, but I hope he stays for breakfast next time I hope he can last longer I hope his will gets stronger. And I hope I’m here to steer my eyes towards the reunion and their fusion. One day, one day, I pray he stays so that I may witness the rays Romantically again.

The Strange Town - JLG Clift

There’s a child chasing change into the strange of the midnight moonlight town where the clowns strip their smiles with their tears and tell their fears to the Sisters smuggling G-strings and G cups beneath their peeling habits shedding as red lights go on maggots writhing on their beds in their bread meds managing their meta-morphed minds to make time seem faster to make life less lasting as the men lament into their loins sympathy by the hour dead flowers in a homemade vase on the sill practically pettleless the boy staring through the stems still waiting for those bills to come down from the black of the sky like a swarm of dry leaves died mint green but he doesn’t think they ever will. They’re gone.



Between the thorns fornication begins torn linen sheets housing bodies flailing like fish out of water someone’s son someone’s daughter now ruins rutting in a rented room fumes from Camels rising into the dampened ceiling sexual healing blaring from the strip club across the street Mother Moon casting down a cruel crimson heat that makes the boy imagine his feet are sealed to the spot like he’s standing on a road wide soldering iron left on by mistake the sensation rising up his legs into his gut he’s sweaty he’s fused to the concrete the Sister and her patron glistening like chunks of cooling solder smoldering in the sweaty sheets.



And then they’re gone, and the next man comes in this one losing his lunch and his boxers to the bin skid marks dark against the faded white he cums and goes like the last his shallow shadow follows slowly in the dullness of the Sister’s light. More enter and exit just as fast until the last man leaves in the sunrise his priest collar tight against the skin propping the double of his chin up.



The boy watched it all through that musty screen of glass pinned to the wall. His mother called but he was hypnotized by the sights horror reaching up like a virtual virus clawing like a vulture greasy talons blunting in the hollows of his gut and his mind binding him to the spot; seeing pious preachers giving in to sin put a whole new spin on right and wrong for him and now he’s changed.



All of the holy rollers roll out with the sideshow clowns and boy follows the no-muss-no-fuss exodus from the strange of the town but what he’s seen doesn’t leave him. His shadow has sticky stains running through it thick chords like oil slicks pulsing on the pavement in the waves of the darkened heat. In the sun the money in a swarm continues to run but starts to tire and starts to rain across the land in the strain of the wind it spreads.



The scene in the window with its curtains closed reminds passers-by of a TV thick quilts of steel wool blanket look like sputtering static dead air nothing left to scare the boy anymore until the watershed begins again when the sun goes down and once again the strange town tends to open like clockwork and goes on to drive the minds of men and the mouths of busy body mothers’ berserk.



A 50 hits the curb at the city limits and looks around and sees that the world is limited to it. There’s nothing but sky and grass and trees and leaves and life beyond buildings ahead and the thought makes the note crinkle in disgust and in a gust of wind it rides back to the world it always wins in where gas goes through chrome chimneys that glisten like tin so bright they eclipse the sunset. They’ll all be back to the set to get their kicks soon now that night’s looming. Or blooming, depending on where you stand.

Suburbicidal Thoughts - JLG Clift

Suburbicidal tidal thoughts ride high as us tonight; no BPM on the tracks a glitch I suppose because the tracks play away just fine blue hues of drops to come and drops that have been that look like a skyline split in half by its own reflection in a water front or feature the sights catch my eye while discussing Hemingway and Kafka and Burroughs in equal measure with this guy I’ve just met but no matter how interesting the conversation is for some reason my eyes are still tethered to the cityscape sound’s reeling rippling as a razor of a thin red line scalps the writhing static of fluctuating colour tumbling with a rigid flail into the darkness the red line’s scalping has left behind.

Rinds from a half-eaten tangerines in grand reams look like ripped ribbons around the deck and a couple of cans of Fosters and Carlsberg’s; ejected seeds resting on the rim of the can at the back good shot but not quite in the black of the hole; looking up from this I see exams and Oxford reminders bound by twined tape to the mantel with reminders for this and that distributed evenly surrounding. Everything’s in its place and its place is everything. There was a family on the wall earlier but they fell and no one’s up them back up yet glancing down ears back I see the set still going hue by hue; no stars in the deep mauve of the sky tonight just sunset jets of a darker shade chasing strips of cherry red from the head of the sunset along with the purple until only the ash of the anti-colour remains. House bleeds black there’s a crack more like a clatter on the patio two forty-somethings doing nothing but drinking the woman’s heel sinking into the pure of the AstroTurf she stacks and with a crack a vase comes to a pile of pieces varnished by the veneer of the porch lights and the fairy lights barely glowing anymore beside the shards a dilapidated 20 deck trampled into the soil with some unwanted crudités and some foil coiled into chunks in the mud and the grass; down the path in the rows of flowers crumpled cans grow and glow louder and brighter than the plants the party reflected on their surfaces in distorts like fun house mirrors the party quivering from seeing itself but going on. There’s a conversation about children and futures and commendations on the torte that we apparently have to try but I meet these people’s drink induced enthusiasm with hedges faux pleasantries and after they’ve left earshot sighs. I’m not into drinking or tortes, I just get high.

There is a god.

We got the score, we’re in the room Munich’s on and before my mate’s set’s over downstairs in the dining room turned dance floor the game is gone the score’s been removed from the draw and the zoot’s rolled - it’s cold outside on the street near the secondary school we hopped the fence to cotch under a nice grove we saw in the distance we’re drunk and giggling and semi-stoned and the sudden urge to pick up my phone and call home comes and goes leaning on the willow high on the lowest trunk my mate on the highest branch his flannel shirt’s billowing in the wind about his torso like a blank flag; out of sorts briefly we discuss the girl he’s courting who sounds wonderful, better than the last from what I gather but this conversation passes quickly and we discuss other things and I think about the lost boys in their tree, and how free they were and the image of us right now in the greased reflection of the canteen door does make my mind stir with links between us and them – summer’s come around quick with a sickly speed as I smoke this ganj and it’s approach makes me think about the Falange movement but I don’t know why never mind soon enough in a plume of smoke that train of thought is gone too; tonight I keep thinking about where I belong every song every word every drink every bird I’ve chatted to tonight all the sights I’ve seen teeming in the serene suburban sheen of the house party on the quiet street the idea of placement perturbing nothing around but me and I get down, because the only thing to see is suburbia in its semi-detached display period houses tiled rooftops look like they’re fraying when the moonlight hits them they look like they’re splitting like they’re bleeding and I find myself inwardly pleading for more than what surrounds.

Why do I exist, what’s my place? On what mantle do I sit?  

I exist to get pissed and block doorways and spend my days chasing fiction waiting to be kissed by an inspiring pair of lips thumb outstretched hitching more than states, more like whole tectonic plates away from the path everyone seems to have a laugh on.

Roads less travelled bare such burdens but such wonders if you can plunder them successfully. That’s who I want to be, I want to be one of the lucky ones that not only plunders but whose mind and whose journey thunders into infinity I don’t give a shit about this girl back on the balcony rambling about her bracelet from Tiffany’s. People just aren’t seeing that all these brands are making the hands of language viral, transient, these lusty labels and tedious fables about an escapade at the shops or a stint of underage drinking at the Locke or whatever spiralling through the rooms making me feel weathered turning the rooms into tombs where the trivial thrives and brilliance dies.

 I’ve had an epiphany tonight, sights have changed but stayed and once the playlist’s been played by the morning where I’ve overstayed my welcome quite possibly I leave the house that seems to have been hollowed by the party lifted no wash no shower the beer cans still glowing among the trampled flowers that used to tower above the litter before people with a few pints of bitter in them came along.

We belong to belong in the world where labels, where sight, where earth, does not exist to cloud our vision and only the search for self-improvement persists in a world of no lows just highs and with no suburbia or city to block our eyes from the sky.

My phone goes.

“hey wanna get pissed again? There’s another party tonight”

 It’s sad that already I know what my answer’s going to be.

The feeling returns in the dimness of English daylight that I am doomed to have this suburbia cloud my sights for the rest of my mornings and my nights at this rate.

"sure"

'There's This Girl I Know or Don't Know...' - JLG Clift

There’s this girl I know or don’t know depending on how you view things blonde hair black roots hanging low down past the blades of her shoulders to her waist or thereabouts flowing in fine feathered streams that I remember her preening until they were gleaming no matter how dark the day was.

I remember her looting through ethics books searching ever little nook and cranny wafting through articles about world wars global warming and the Vatican’s opinions on trannies among other things for some quick fix knowledge to scrape though another past paper her book was new and fresh; mine was old, taped up tapering and tattered at the edges I can still hear her nattering away at the back with her mates about the state of marvellously meaningless things.

I don’t recall whether she acts or sings but I remember her filing away to drama once a day occasionally I’d pass and catch her saying something about nothing to her fes wearing thespian eternally equestrian pal with a jaw like a loose pes dispenser dispensing a frankly dismal rendition of Hamlet’s grand soliloquy misquoting constantly so badly sometimes that I was sure they’d been toting joints between frees she had no interest in jobs or degrees I don’t think; she was all mouth all looks all smiles all winks all drink all drugs all hugs charming and disarming in equal measure - Or maybe not.

 I can count our conversations on my fingers yet she’s managed to tether herself to my thoughts all she’ll still linger for years to come her name from time to time ringing in my ears if I run out of ideas:

Where’s she now?

Where won’t she be?

Well that’s the beauty of her I don’t know and never will she could be anything or everything or nothing a blank canvas to paint a story on untainted by cold black fact that likes to hack away at my unrealities gracelessly gleefully ceaselessly. Her existence is a peaceful reprieve in a way she’s given my writing a new lease on life yet she said nothing and is nothing to me or for me but reason’s relentless baying is nothing but an unsuccessful attempt at treason against the powers of inspiration.

Today I write about the girls hair blowing in the wind down the street in spring in my head returning from a shift at GAP or maybe an arts and crafts store she owns or works at for or maybe a bar or a lunch the people around her are hunched and dark in bright clothes material rainbows reaching head to toe going back and forward to a soft focus nothingness a cityscape of soundless shudders like shadows or in rippling streaks grey scale tail lights high exposure their trails repeating over and over into the distance around the girl who’s extensions and dye are stripped like dandelion flowers back to her roots in her breath that's blowing back on her. She exhales the winds of change that change her and me led lifted from my mind leaving me to roam the endless stories of what the girl in pearl studded Uggs with a smug thug on her arm in one story setting off smoke alarms nonchalantly consciously unconsciously for fun in another rebelling ideas of what she could do swelling endlessly over the brim of my psyche – all these stories of what she could be rattle on listlessly as lovers in the rungs of discovery.

And I might be right I might be wrong but regardless in ignorance I carry on telling stories through her about her; to her; it doesn’t matter that she won’t know about the seeds she’s sewn that have grown into lush green ivy with golden brown leaves the gold leaving the beauty of the brunette behind blossoming throwing stones away that blocked a path I wanted to travel down. If she ever found out she’d probably laugh – or maybe not.

I don’t know and won’t know but in my mind it could go either way. In ambiguity I plan to stay and play with this pen and paper occasionally charting the capers of that girl I sort of know, or knew now I guess, and her tie dyed locks that love to shock.

Or maybe not.

Leavers 2013 - JLG Clift

Leavers of 2013 exit here drunk delirium no fear showing grey skies wind blowing hard outside earlier today there was no sense of times changing of tides raging no real sense of despair Dub Step colliding with Retro beats and synthetic snares lick the air repeatedly in the common room.

The prospect of a barbeque blooms and then to the Locke where the real party begins beer whiskey and gin flow briskly the real party starting quickly since everyone’s fucked and fucked is fun then after the sun falls down, down drunk into the night where we are soon to follow I’m already hollowed out over a bin form my G&T and a few Bacardi and Cokes too many the tonic stings my throat still, there’s a couple of equally fucked students to my left arguing about whether Dre ever did better than the Chronic on a flaky bench. I sober up when someone’s tearing up to my right a melancholic mnemonic that brings it all home.

I know some of these people don’t want to go because what is there beyond this day and this last call for the academic flailers for the nai-sayers this afternoon pogo-ing in roll up slacks his gold tie torn twisted in a knot around his cube shaped head right now trying to bind his gloom with a few more drinks. Kings today peasants tomorrow for them I feel sunrise comes with shears to shed hair from their heads the future comes with dissatisfaction for a withering wedding bed it brings endocet it brings debts and steals the wet from your water on a dry summer day straining against youth-less skin clotted with age with no sage like Wismon imbedded in those wrinkles you dreaded.

Or maybe it will be good maybe the fears that arrived tonight are misplaced who’s to say that in 20 years I won’t look around and see a year of smiling faces gleams in their eyes from the shirrmering victories of making dreams realised.

“I want to be a scientist”

“an accountant”

“a singer”

“an actor”

“an astronaut”

“I want to see Venice”

“I want a mansion with a terrace in the countryside”

“I’m going to drink I’m going to fuck my days away with a guitar in my hand and a mic in my face”

“I’m going to let my luck lead the way and see how that goes”

These dreams and wants gracing the air tonight are like streamers and banners multi-coloured never ending bending but not breaking in the sternness of the bleakest breeze an icy veneer stalking the Locke and the party and the sky. Who’s to say what we want won’t be? Who’s to say we won’t bring fate to its knees and get it to let us do as we please?

I don’t hear anyone, even after the celebrations are over and we stumble slightly humbled by the gallons of booze consumed I don’t even hear a mumble of doubt in the rising sun marking the hangovers overcoming us all.

They’ll still be talking about us to 6^th formers in that hardwood hall in years to come do not mark me words but remember that you have seen then and let them leave traces in your mind.

We are dismissed and loosed onto mankind, at last.