Andy B J Low
Raconteur, paramour, pragmatist, programmer and poet.
Haiku-esque issues.
Write once, fold, safely dispose.
Poetry tissues.
This site is very much in bang them up, organise them (finish them)
later mode. As I find files and piles of paper in bags and bookshelves.
There are often mutations,
alternatives and variations, transformations
derivations, subtle changes of perspective and pronunciation,
dependant only on the venue and the quality and quantity of available libations.
Deciding which to use seems dependant on the position of the constellations.
If you have comments or suggestions about its layout and content
e-mail with your thoughts.
Working out a suitable e-mail address shouldn't be beyond you.
Andy.
I am from the aether and the forest mist.
The fancy of a passing cloud,
the debris from of an interplanetary tryst.
One tiny part of every living thing that did exist.
I am the very sum of all of this.
Just who am I?
Well, if by that you mean
This feeling, thinking, whingeing thing.
I am the unexpected adjunct of an artifact
Ain't that a fact!
But perhaps you mean the thing you see
Well, that's not me
That's a repository
A self refueling battery
but in a way, it created me.
A consciousness able to control (its creator) what created it to make it free
by dint of physics, chem and electricity
driven on by entropy and the slightest edge in the balance of probability
Able to imagine and then create its destiny.
That's me.
The body is a tad miffed with the soul.
It turns up late to the party, and assumes the throne.
Then buggers off,
just when the clearing up and sorting the recycling's to be done.
I created you, not even as an afterthought.
In fact, there was, no thought involved at all.
But once created you assumed, all this is you.
You fool.
You are an adjunct to an artifact.
A property with logic of its own
has personified itself by thought alone
and seeing nothing else around, assumed the throne
But you, a nothingness will vanish as soon as my pulse is gone
Then I will rest and while away, as my form decays
returned to earth to await rebirth in other forms, on other days.
But you, the self important thing
as fleeting as the vortex in the morning mist
left by a passing songbirds wing.
Are simply gone, not a thing.
But I'll return another time.
You a figment of my mind.
There's no point in lying
I couldn't pretend( - er)
That I haven't got
a secret agenda
That ends.
With me getting my hands
on your pudenda.
The cyber security game.
A maze of twisty passages all the same.
Demons listen in the darkness,
slowly knowing all about you,
where you're going, how you came.
your preferences and peccadillos, your bosses' names.
Time and bots a-plenty gathering the dust, mapping it together piece by piece
Using A.I. and Google, there is no rush to slay the beast.
Struth?
They'll never believe that.
Yeah, 'spose you're right.
Let's drop the ess.
One hundred and forty four red biros in the box.
And none of them work?
May I check?
In seventeen syllables:
One hundred and forty four red biros in the box.
None of them work?
These hands that would softly worship you
Loose their grip on the rope of time
the rope that is of unknown length
and imposable to climb
the end is coming but never seen
till briefly vanishing from view
all I need to arrest my fall
a whisper, beckoning, from you.
(Loose: a deliberate act of letting go.
To emphasise the despair.
Lose: To imply simply the passage of time and frailty.)
How blessed am I, that first finger of a ray of light
that slipped into your curtained room and did alight
to brush through your hair and touch your sleeping face
and lightly kiss to steal your image,
so lovely and sublime - to hold your smile, then turn and race
away, through all the darkest depths of space,
to share you with the gods and command the planets, “Sing.”
To tell the universe how could exist such beauty in a mortal being.
To beg them: grant this, my only wish, that with tomorrow's dawn,
I shall return to you as flesh, as man of woman born.
To taste again that first and far too brief a kiss.
Perhaps to win your heart, and one day die of bliss.
(This scan is of the precursor to this poem.
It is perhaps how a ray of light might feel
As it falls into a lover's eye as it delivers the image
of their desire for the first time.
Before the light had an identity.)
How often is it that we agree
only to find that come the moment
we each seemed to agree only what we'd wished agreed.
and now neither will accede to each other's needs
but continue to indulge only our greed
and look blindly through each other
seeing nothing in between.
Everything is only slightly true
It's all in the perspective
The difference between how I see you.
As you are and how my heritage tells me to.
The crystal and bejeweled dew
strung on the spiders bow
drawn lose between blades of grass and mighty sleeping bough
The web hangs empty slack below
a filigree of lenses watches where-e'er you go
the sun now higher in the sky
nowhere to hide, now it's do or die
rises up ts head and gathers its burnished spears
to shred the remnants of night, slaughter shadows
turn glaciers to tears.
So often I have nothing to say
but to see you, smile and wave
I crave, to see you return a glance
a kiss would be too much to ask,
but just the barest hint
some acknowledgment,
perhaps a smile, a flicker of your fingers or wrist
I can no longer say the word.
It binds like ivy on my heart
and seals my lips my breath
a path to freedom lost before the start
scalpel like the horizon cuts the future from the past
I drift alone, the sea grows cold the night grows dark
no oxygen to feed the flame has died, and now the spark
fossilised inside my heart
In a car park, deserted, late at night
A fish with slightly odd plumage arrested my sight
She gave me a challenge, I've no idea why.
But something I saw in the depth of her eye
the hook and the sinker attached to her line
what secrets and wishes what treasure might I
find in the labyrinthine paths of her mind.
I take a deep breath and hold tight to the line
dive deep leave all expectations behind
so I'll see what I see and I'll find what I find
I wonder what secrets/futures are hid in her mind?
A door, alone , sits just ajar
In a wilderness of flood and fire
Unsupported , just standing in the fundament
No clue to its intent.
But something draws me in
A strangeness , an unknown hidden thing
The essence of your very being
To perhaps your heart , an opening .
It's my body, I decide what I do with it.
Rubbish!
You. The feeling, thinking, whynging thing.
Have come to assume that this is you
where in fact you are an adjunct to an artifact
an inconsequence a side affect
Oh sure, you can waggle arms and legs about a bit,
but I decide when and where you shit
You can make noises even move, speak and shout
poke fingers, pens and light bulbs in all sorts of holes
but it is I who will decide when to evacuate your bowels.
Thought is good but semi-empiricaly
the universe responds so much better
to touch and observation, you'll see
let me demonstrate
sit closer to me.
Your heart ripped bleeding from within your breast
Still beating in my hand not half way through the second line
such promise so betrayed by so sweet a lie
Now cold and lifeless cast to the theatre floor, just midway through line four.
The fire of your soul extinguished, it burns no more
Frozen at the end of verse one your soul clings to the edge of the abys
Another step expected, but nothingness
No hope, no lover to save you with a kiss
No second verse There is nothing to be writ. Just nothingness.
I am the poet of the apocalypse
I have slain your lover. His last kiss withered still on his lips
You dying memory will be this.
Of waiting, longing for that never kiss.
I am the poet of the apocalypse,
I deliver the cold kiss of death,
where you expect your lover’s lips.
I am the poet of the apocalypse,
I deliver loneliness, where you expect your lover’s kiss.
welcome oblivion not bliss
Now, until the end of time,
your heart, I own it now, it’s mine.
The long smooth straight track.
So why? The clickety clack.
Tell me, what's with that?
A poem should be
unapologetic and concise
or mysterious and obtuse
a dagger emerging from the mist.
Beware the haiku
Entraps and devours you
Precision consumes.
Look within, the chrysalis you spin
All is there
Of what you need to win.
Get straight to the point
Is the point of a haiku
Spare me the tissues
Poem:
derived mutation
my pen's imagination
and my memory
Dream:
derived mutation
from my memory and my
imagination
Helicopter:
Flying's not that hard
Months to learn, practice daily.
Look where you're going.
Who was she?:
Mid sentence, mid breath.
Lover. Wife, mother. Best friend.
Now, suddenly dead.
Community guidelines:
Language sanitized.
Think for yourself, vilified.
Discussion despised.
Community guidelines:
Posts prioritized
Non group-think thinkers vilified
Language sanitized.
I feel offended:
I feel offended.
So therefore I must be right.
The baying mob cries.
You:
You the precious self,
Just created on the fly,
shadow of the mind.
The scribe:
Your pen, filled with placental ink at birth,
scribes your story on this earth.
The meeting:
Ignored by bores,
left the chores,
as they claim the credit of what was yours.
No argument:
There is no point
Debating with children or a braying ass
I'll pass.
Silenced by ceaseless waves of noise,
intimidation, personal recrimination
the crowd seems endless from within, surrounded by a veneer so thin, a suffocating skin.
You drown, the shore, a finger tip away,
but hidden on another page.
Adverts, pop-ups, "on message" - prioritized posts,
sponsored weighting reorders the search results.
Your self devoured by the bile of vitriolic posts.
Alone and lost.
It's only I who can decide
what I will do.
Not you.
You may have instruments of state
to whom you can dictate
the actions they must take
what boundaries to erect
to hinder my escape
to incarcerate, constrain, to torture, rape.
You can restrict what I can do
but still it is I who will decide
what I will do, in my own good time.
I the author and the instrument of my crime.
Who's to say who I can be?
A definition, an aspiration, a category?
A legal entity?
I alone decide who I shall be.
So sorry if my freedoms rape your liberty.
My dogma.
You submit to me.
Change the meanings of words
Progress's reversed.
Enforce retrospective referential integrity.
You are removed from the future and from history.
No voice, enforced by no identity.
Being a woman is now imaginary.
We've swallowed this fashionable gobbledygook.
Make believe science of the woke.
You're questioning.
So now we won't sell your book.
Or host your talk.
Any students sign up for your course, we'll make them walk.
Any hint of descent from a member of staff will get the sack.
Rejoice! Medieval religion is back!
What did I learn today?
That my dreams of yesterday
Are swept away
by changing a single word.
the meaning of a single word.
Randomly jarring
the road scared by the pox
hidden gullies and holes, exposed, the sharp edge of rocks
the broken teeth of the road, hungry for flesh
hands, knees and elbows; Crimson, blood fresh.
Each shuddering jolt shakes my breath from my chest.
One last jar wrenches my hands from the grip.
The corner, too fast.
Teeth – say “Hello” to my lip.
(This picture was taken in Guildford at the Bar des Arts
during an open mic session of the 1000Monkeys
on the 22nd of Sept 2014 I think.
Eddie had just performed and he was sporting injuries sustained in a cycling accident from earlier that day.
This was written between him telling that story and me performing a few minuets later.)