I write

I ryt!
t*i bizum bEtrAz mE

w*it dA yi mEn
ya big jesA

mic*tA mE
a replyd

yi kin mic*tA mE a yi want
s*e sed
but yir nO gonA mak onA merk On mE
sO yi betir s*ut yir gegA
or al s*ut it fur yi.

At t*at a nyo* a wiz lost
an gEd up

My Art - a tentative and probably temporary attempt at an explanation and justification

I like to do certain things that some folk would consider art, others pretentious, others crap.

They tend to be associated with three recurring elements: unfinished or seemingly rough work; the idea of fading away, decay, including shadows and reflections; and the idea of automatic creation, fast, aimless.

I have no idea where the attraction in these things came from. But right now, typing this on my laptop in my wee office at home the sun is coming through the window and casting shadows of the vine leaves and branches that have grown up and over the window there. As the sun's light diminishes with a cloud in its way, the sharp, quite focussed shapes of the leaves and branches turn into a foggy blur, and when the clouds are thick, they disappear.

I like the quite focussed shadows, not totally sharp and distinctive, enough vagueness about them to be interesting to me. And I like the much blobbier ones when the lighter cloud intervenes. In addition I like to observe the process of change from one aspect to the others and the return to the original. I don't know why.

That's where the opinions come in from others.

Artistic. Interesting. Really like that.

Very arty-farty. God-awful pretentious. I'll never understand why you can call that art.

Crap. Fucking waste of space. A con.

I'm now comfortable enough within my skin about all the things I do, and why I do them, that opinion - praise or criticism, rejection or complete unawareness, is all OK ie, indifferent, to me.

I could theorise or play amateur psychologist to try to explain my work. There are obvious things. Unfinished work could symbolise the infinite cycle of change that is life or the universe. Fadings surely represent death, old age, dying, maybe sickness, which in turn could be a political metaphor for social sickness. Reflections could be another metaphor, symbolic of a mirror-image way of seeing things, parallel lives, parallel universes, multiverses. And the automatic art could be indicative of a view that sees all life as art, therefore anything, a brush stroke, a piece of wood cut in half, or as classically done, just stating that an object is art, as Duchamp did, anything therefore everything is art.

But in reality as far as I can see I just like these things and I like the process of "making" them.

and so the art

and so the art
is supposed to come through
and sometimes doesn't

the sky is supposed to be clear
and is often clouds

the world is supposed to spin
but instead turns upside down

the clouds become the sky
upside becomes down
art becomes unart

the light still shines
even on the non-existent

Blackbird on the rowan tree

blackbird on the rowan tree
nest-building
keeping an eye out for ancient aliens

He knows they exist
he's been abducted before
took him days to be released and get back to his nest work

Now he's gone again
Hope he's at his nest
doing his craft, his joinery, his tailoring

Hope those damned ancient aliens
haven't taken him away again.
They really should be more considerate.

different dreams

different dreams he said
as he wandered into the night
different dreams
as if asleep inside a tree

different
like an axe chopping the waves in two
different
like Hannibal changing course and heading for Largs

different dreams cannot change
the reality that life is but a dream
reality cannot change
the dream that we are but nomads
on a desert floor

like the salt removed from the sea
we dream of different paths
not knowing we have already arrived

Nothing to decipher

Nothing to decipher
nothing pure to hold
nothing here to die for
nothing to be told

everything to unlearn
everything to say
everything you still yearn
everything at bay

Collisions in my nightmares
Explosion in my home
People saying fright prayers
Caesar's killed in Rome

Caesar's killed in Rome all right
Tyrant bleeds to death
Tyrant takes his throne all right
Tyrant steals his breath

every breath a lifetime
every step a mile
every path a life of crime
every grief a smile

I Don't Understand

What if the space-time continuum is wrong?
What if it is in fact a time-space non-continuum?
What will we all do then?

Probably much the same as we do right now I guess.

Eat chips
Easily resist the temptation to start smoking
Write a report for a dull meeting

Or

If the universe ruptures because we've got it all wrong
Then we won't need to do anything
Because we won't exist

And this poem
if it is a poem
will serve no purpose

which it probably doesn't do now anyway