alone in the wilderness

Weight ball in chest – and then vivid (so viv) daydream of a tome (black and white cover, thick type, the smell of electric must) full of Kerouacian words all jittery skitter writing and wonder, inspiring another journey – there on the seafront watching the gulls hover in the gale whilst the brown North Sea churns and foams at the foot of the wall, their legs dangling whilst they try to gain a hold on the wind and move forward but not able to beat the power heading them off, amazing – the dead remain baffled by the day – some New Yoik punkette on the threshold of my imagination stands up in the rain and exclaims (circa 1976): ‘I’m so tired ya know of everyone tryin’ to define punk rock/new wave, I mean, gimme a break here,’ (this she’s telling to her friend the singer Charlie Ember here on these shores, not Manhattan, despite it all) – there was full moon over my birthplace (apparently two full moons in one month) and I was swept up into nostalgia for a time I can’t even remember, a time of myth effectively, related apocrypha and what I recalled was the pounding, thrumming noise of the earth, that’s what I heard out there in the garden for days in the sun resting in my pram/cot with the bees stinging my fingertips -