The HyperTexts publishes nine of my sonnets

 The Hypertexts is a very well-regarded online journal specialising in formal and formalist poetry. To be inculcated into its ranks is a real honour, and I take this opportunity to thank its primum mobile Mike Burch for seeing fit to add my name to the roll.

The nine sonnets which the Hypertexts published this morning are from two sources: Arabic numerals denote sonnets from my completed 155-strong cycle the 'Sonnets, Mostly Bristolian', whereas Roman numerals denote sonnets from the 'Odes, Epigrams, & Further Sonnets', which is an ongoing accumulation. 

Five of the selection are published for the first time, and four have been published previously.

In particular, XVII is the English translation of 141, which is my solitary French sonnet and was published about three years ago in the French Literary Review. 

Here's a link to my Hypertext page.

An extract from Helix Folt the Conservative

 Bristol’s resident Ozymandias is personified in the form of Squalor. This gentleman is theorised in some academically not unrespectable quarters as a (grossly) decadent descendant of the ur-deity Skǖǚllǚǖ, which functions as the chaotic antithesis of the organising principle Llog in the Brislington Book of the Brute. Whatever the truth of the matter, Squalor is by comparison to his peers an easygoing fellow. There is no permanent shrine to him as such, for his church is to be found wherever he is. To this purpose, enthroned on and taking his ease in a supermarket trolley, thus is he wheeled about hither and thither by his hierophants. These holy unredeemable wretches supervise the erection unto his glory of ephemeral shrines - great tottering ziggurats of mildewed cardboard and crushed cans, against which is piled all manner of liquescent and noisome trash, which like the great dunes in the desert is subject to the caprices of zephyrs, and on this account gradually changes over time, sometimes petrifying into gnarled and abhorrent shapes, at other times liquefying and flowing hither and thither in those great tsunamis of toxic sludge which are among the veritable wonders of the age.

The genius loci himself is a quotidian presence in our town, and is at all times to be espied either insensible in his trolley, or reeling about all bemerded and festooned with cans, from which he frequently drinks. This agreeable gentleman makes no objection to being propitiated if it’s rilly not too much trouble, but is not at all particular as to the precise details. Gore is perfectly welcome of course, but so equally are the several other fluids, colloids, cheeses, stools, pukes, the several modes of ethanol, micturitions, and other essences, which go into and come out of that mighty engine, man.

Most wisely and truly is it said that those upon whom Squalor visits his benediction never ultimately profit by it. And this immutable, adamantine, definitional, iron law of nature admits of no exception in the petty case of Ms. Minerva Ledwitch. This afternoon finds this irreproachable matron taking her repose in the domestic Charybdis which, ever egregiously in want of a clean, has bubbled away these numberless years in the back garden of the bungalow in Mangotsfield. Reclining with what grace she can muster amidst the mineral deposits and the algae and the slime, Ms. Minerva Ledwitch assembles and with some deftness maintains upon her head’s frontispiece the several elements of maxillo-facial muscle operation which, when correctly concatenated, convey to the observer a sublime contentment on the part of the observed subject. It scarcely bears remarking that the effect in the present case is supremely horrifying.

The bungalow’s backdoor opens now, and extrudes Mr Don Quicksotte, who commences a furtive sort of scuttling across the lawn to his shed. Drawing level with Charybdis he looks up and, in the act of assembling his own features into his signature watery smile, is turned to stone by the rictus on the Ledwitch face.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going into your shed for,” says sharply that excellent gorgon, without the least alteration to her expression, “the moment you sit down, pound to a penny Cheseham will come to the front door, and you will have to get up and go all the way back through the house.”

“I know dear,” gabbles the booster of wind, “I just thought, you know, the windmill I promised the Inhalis is at rather a critical stage in its assembly, and I rather thought, you know, just snatch a few secs to …”

“I cannot be expected,” says Ms. Minerva Ledwitch with majestic finality, “to traipse through the vestibule in the nude.”

“No dear, of course not.”

Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, not to be deterred, elaborates upon this new theme

“I do sometimes speculate,” says she, “I do sometimes speculate, Quicksotte, as to whether the explanation for your pusillanimity may not be found in Candaulism.”

“Why no indeed dear,” says Quicksotte blinking rapidly, “it is only the Inhalis’ windmill you know, I …”

“Ghastly old pervert,” thunders Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, lifting her form sufficient to expose above the turbid waters a singularly majestic bosom, “go,” saith she pointing a weed-bedecked arm, “go back within and attend by the front door.”

The Aeolus of Mangotsfield smiles then his forlorn, wretched smile and, sighing, about-faces and betakes himself back within the bungalow. This outcome appears to satisfy the Crews Hole Pegaea who, resuming her ecstatic attitude, subsides once more into the moiling turbidity, suffering the mammalian protuberances aforementioned to dance like clashing rocks.

RIP George Craven, exemplary black cat.

Sad to relate, my cat George had to be put to sleep last night. He was an awesome feline and will be greatly missed. Sonnet 26 was written in his honour three or four years ago, and is reproduced here in his memory.

Sonnet 26

What art thou, Puss? Shining nonentity,

thou space where photons go like hope to die.

Fix not on me those heartless compound eyes,

nor compass me with swart plasticity.

‘More kibbles!’ ever was thy vacant plea,

and susurration of the beast at rest.

Betimes thou murther’d rodents, raided nests,

perchéd inscrutably in random trees.

Thy rapine’s circuit latterly contracts,

thy depredation’s lately not as bold;

wherefore, my surmise Puss: thou dost grow old

and ought most leisurely repent thy acts;

which I, for all thy roguery, dispense

despite thy manifest indifference.

Odes, Epigrams, & Further Sonnets XXIV

I thought I had better leaven my late flurry of non-literary postings with a sonnet. I wrote this one the November before last following a long weekend in Paris visiting my friends Kim & Mika and their adorable 9 month old daughter Lila.

XXIV

Sonnet Concerning a Banlieu

Ivry-sur-Seine is difficult to love.

The revolution’s curdled here; St Just

has loaned his name to the tabac. Above,

the chimneys belch their Promethean dust

into the cold hard blank November sky.

The matchstick men from Mali and Algiers

trudge past the concrete cake mix, and the pie

of unfinished apartment blocks. No tears

were shed for beauty, no Lautréamont

has milked this abscess for its clotted crème.

La France Soumise spunked dry for Mélenchon’s

bijou apartment in the 10ième:

Versailles’ most elegantly velvet fist

replaced the Marquis with a communist.

A Brief but Slightly Traumatic Episode of Food Poisoning, and the NHS Sincerely at its Finest.

 On Thursday evening, when I ought to have been hungry, I prepared a small meal - for decorum's sake as much as for anything - but found myself strangely repulsed by the sight of it, and could only bring myself to swallow a couple of mouthfuls.

That night, around 1am, I started throwing up. Reader, much as I would like to be able to vouchsafe that I had chundered every whar, I was in fact quite fastidious, and directed my chundering very much in the direction of the usual receptacle. This phase lasted until Saturday morning.

Even though I was beginning to get better, I still thought it would be a good idea to ring the NHS on 111. Based on my answers to a series of questions, the woman at the other end very suddenly announced that she was going to despatch an ambulance which would arrive in 18 minutes time. This was really quite surprising to me, since as far as I was concerned I was beginning to feel much better. I acquiesced, however; a consultation with some paramedics certainly wouldn't do any harm. I actually spent the intervening time in doing what I could to rectify some of the more egregiously squalid evidence of my deficiencies as a homekeeper.

When I let in Jessie and her colleague, whose name I'm ashamed to say eludes me, they remarked that they hadn't expected me to be walking so readily up the stairs. In my bedroom, they took my blood pressure which was high and hooked me up to various monitors which showed my heart to be slightly arrythmic. They said this was on the borderline of insignificance, but offered to take me to hospital for further tests anyway. They were very equable when I declined, and said it was a good thing I was keeping liquids down, and very helpfully added that the home remedy version of taking glucose tablets etc was to add sugar and a pinch of salt to the water that I was already drinking.

After that, they and I quite naturally got down to talking about philosophy, and it turned out that one of them had been friends with my old MA supervisor before I knew him.

When they left, I don't think I thanked them fulsomely enough, which I very much regret. So thank Jessie and her colleague, and thank also to the operator who despatched of you. You embodied the NHS at its finest.

The improvement in my condition accelerated after they left. I vomited no more, and was able to swallow a mouthful or two of toast now and then, and to drink quite a lot of water. Unfortunately I was prevented from sleeping on Saturday night by the older teens in the local party house shouting mindlessly in their back garden from 11.30 until 4am. 

So that by this by this morning I had not slept or had a square meal for three days. It's Sunday evening now, and I'm more or less back to normal. I even drank a half-litre bottle of beer - 250 more calories can't do any harm! But I'm left to reflect on the events of the last 72 hours, and it really was bit traumatic in some ways. I haven't weighed myself, but one or two people have remarked that I have lost weight. This is actually the first time I've been genuinely ill since my appendectomy as a 17 year old. It's been a chastening experience, however I'm a dickhead and won't learn anything from it.

A photograph uploaded to commemorate my banning from Waterstones

 Waterstones woke millennial staff objected to my repeated reshelving of their favourite racebaiting hate book.

Sonnet from my ongoing accumulation, "Odes, Epigrams, and Further Sonnets."

IV. 

Regarding A Conservative Bohemian

With ill grace, hoydenish almost,

warm Spring now cedes to early Summer chill:

sky pallid, gales; a hypodermic rain.

Now Aquitaine, that jaded roué, lurks

within, upon that spavined couch of his,

all melancholic, greasy-faced, unbathed,

listlessly lending ear unto what rumour’s borne

fetidly fresh, through insulated tubes

warping the data with distorting lens,

pertaining to the latest nigh approach

of race-baiters, a rabid Maoist cult

all anti-semites, rancid sociopaths,

to levers which the commonsensical

would fain were kept from grasp of lunatics.

A sonnet I wrote about three years ago, with modern relevance

Sonnet 17

They took the left hand lane to Lala Land:

smugness combined with nothing in the shops

except some pilchards from the Red Sea, canned;

the countryside all mobs and failed crops;

some hamlets pimped in the Potemkin style

with pansyons for foreign Fabians,

all useful idiots, easily beguiled

if kept away from stuff involving nuns.

On TV, specious masquerading cant,

the Sorbonne logic of the killing field

delivered in a truly epic rant.

As revolutions will, this one congealed

into a dirty bureaucratic grey

and a parade upon the first of May.

Lines on the exoneration of Cardinal Pell

I never liked Cardinal Pell

Why this should be I could not tell

But now I know, and know it well

I ought to like Cardinal Pell

Extract from ch32 of Helix Folt the Conservative

A claw, lacquered, is extended, grips the Folt tie - a silken dream of white polka dots against a navy blue background - and pulls the attached personage over the threshold and into the vestibule of the House of Buggery, wherein nothing has changed, and all is as dirty and as nastily beige and as beigely nasty as ever it was, and thence into the lounge of the House of Buggery, wherein the analogous truths hold, with the bust of history’s second greatest mass murderer staring impassively over the oozing, undulant Sargasso of female nether garments, the garish polychromaticity of which rather serves to exacerbate the underlying beigeness and, yes, nastiness of everything. 

 They perch on the greasy, spavined chaise longue, Mrs Roger Buggery spreading herself across the middle, and Mr Helix Folt clinging manfully to the foot much in the manner of Rogue Male hanging from his cliff edge by his mutilated fingertips. 

     “Shto!” says Mrs Roger Buggery, sidling kittenishly towards her guest, “is why you come to see me when stupid husband Roger not here is?” 

Mr Helix Folt feels his face reddening as the claws of the lady unknot his tie. 

     “One did rather think to avail you of the intelligence that the clamour in one’s neighbourhood appears to have somewhat abated.” 

Mrs Roger Buggery manifests the tokens of delight. 

     “You are such nice Tory Chew, not like nasty homosex husband who say like like like,” and, assuming decidedly businesslike tones as she commences the office of easing the gentleman out of his jacket, “shto! You want to obtain rubbeeng, yes?” 

     “Golly!” says Mr Helix Folt, and “crumbs! One does not for an instant suppose that you have as yet found the opportunity to apprise your husband of the fects of our … er … ahem … thet is to say ... the state of … ahem … affairs? One feels positively wretched for the fellow.” 

Mrs Roger Buggery, beginning to undo the top buttons of the gentleman’s shirt, smiles at this. 

     “I tell heem everything. I tell him you want to obtain rubbeeng and we go to bordel, and I laugh at heem and say he is not real man, only stinking English homosex who say like like like.” 

In response to this intelligence, Mr Helix Folt looks very downcast. 

     “Oh dear. One rather thought that a certain discretion might have cushioned the blow. Quite apart from not wishing to hurt the poor chep’s feelings, it would be better for all parties if he were not to be provoked into a display of vindictiveness. One would wish ultimately to avoid being named in a case. The association of one’s name in a metter will be quite exquisitely mortifying.” 

     “Shto!” snorts Mrs Roger Buggery, “why you care, is only stupid English homosex. He not care about other husband that is old man Henchop.” 

Mr Helix Folt is somewhat taken aback at this. 

     “One had vey little idea that Roger was your second husband. A Muscovite, this Henchov, one assumes?” 

     “Nyet. He is old English lordy men, wary wary reech, who like to take banya with boxing man and dancing girl and running horse. Is when I am in USA.”

Excerpt from ch24 of Helix Folt the Conservative

The familiar black Lexus bears Mr Roger Buggery down the long and winding drive, past the breezeblock folly, past all the sedulously faked neoclassical sculptures, past all the fibreglass hermit grottoes, and under the glazed redbrick arch into the quadrangle, where Mr Roger Buggery is put down like a turd. “That door,” says Mr Jagtar Singh, indicating one among many, “is where you must go.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery uncertainly and also nastily, “like I like thought like the like salon, yeah?” and “peace.” Mr Jagtar Singh, ignoring Mr Roger Buggery’s protestations, drives the familiar black Lexus off to be fumigated. Mr Roger Buggery watches nastily as it glides away beneath the glazed redbrick arch and disappears. Then he opens the one door among the many, and suffers himself to be subsumed once again into the bowels of Luncheon, which is just nasty. After a great deal of traipsing up and down an immense number of striplit corridors, and trying the handles of an immense number of locked doors, and bearing the affronts of an immense number of disconcertingly tall under-footmen, Mr Roger Buggery at length finds himself in a sort of large hall, filled with benches, ill-lit and fetid with the exhalations of those of the Marxist fraternity whose birth and breeding sufficiently offsets their scrofulousness. Certain of these gentlemen are of Mr Roger Buggery’s acquaintance; Sir Gerald Inhali, for instance, is to be observed chuckling satanically over some witticism laconically delivered out of the side of the mouth of Mr Milton Djugashvili. At the front of the hall is a low dais or stage, whereon has been set a plywood veneer desk behind which Mr Tad Curmudgeonly whispers into the ear of Lady Luncheon. Among the personages seated along the benches placed in rows in the middle of the hall, Mr Roger Buggery espies and flinches at the sight of Ms. Amelia De’Ath in the company of Mr Rex Anusol and the Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott. A few rows back, alone presumably having chaperoned thither her brother, Ms. Minerva Ledwitch attends to her knitting. Three or four seats along from her, Lady Inhali is deep in fatuity with two or three of Stokes Croft’s most unhygienic poets and - horror of horrors! nastiness of nastiness! - none other than Mr Roger Buggery’s own dearly beloved wife. Mr Roger Buggery’s head whirls. His whole future, that creaking and maggoty edifice constructed from a lifetime’s expenditure on subterfuge and mendacity and fraud, is in the balance. He cannot allow Lady Luncheon, still less Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, to condescend so as to notice his wife. Meanwhile, the day’s business is at hand. Time and tide await no cunt, yeah? Of Sir Ezra Tertiary-Syphilis, there is as yet no sign. Mr Roger Buggery extends his scaly neck from his brown shirt’s greasy collar. His villainous head swivels nastily on that stalk. The measures thus undertaken avail him not. Woe! Woe and thrice woe unto him! “Chill,” he mutters nastily unto himself and, just as nastily, “peace.” He fishes out the invitation, greasy with the maculations of a fortnight in the Buggery pocket. There it is in black and white. The opportunity to denounce either Sir Ezra in se, or a proxy of the latter’s choice. Or a proxy of the latter’s choice. How much fraud in the dissembler’s glib phrase. Mr Roger Buggery steels himself, draws a deep breath. Ms. Amelia De’Ath scowls at the sidling, insinuating approach of Mr Roger Buggery. Likewise Mr Rex Anusol. “I hardly think this is the occasion,” murmurs the latter gentleman, “for making an exhibition.” “I hardly do neither,” says Ms. Amelia De’Ath pursing her lips, “it ain’t not proper, genteel refined folk being put to the necessity of mixing with uncultured persons what don’t not know how to conduct their selves.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery nastily, “like who like fuckin’ like arx like you, yeah?” and “peace.” The Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott, having plastered across his face a polite wince, is so good as to intervene. “I rather think,” says he, “that the business of the gentleman is with oneself.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery nastily, “like I’m like sposed like to like be like denouncing like the like Channel fuckin’ Islands cunt, yeah?” and “peace.” The Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott plasters across his face an exquisite, inconsolable grief. “Sir Ezra in se was the arrangement, I rather think,” says he, “or, failing that, a proxy of his choice.”