but ever since privatisation
since we’ve been paying more to achieve progressively less
no-one kept their eyes on the maintenance of quality of track
they’d stopped performing all their checks & tests

so the first wheels went over it just fine
travelling down the lesseter known stockport-edinburgh line
but then the rust steel collapsed + a derailment occured
luckily with just two casualities, and they weren’t badly hurt

don’t look for problems when there aren’t any
hyperchondriac fantasies?
leave it alone it might heal itself
just get it away from me

the man watches through the window
when i know that he’s not there
he closely follows my every move
i can always feel his stare.

i can’t ignore him he hates me
i can feel, he wants me dead
so when i’m dead remember me
remember what i’ve said

tall dark man, hat, holey gloves.

(stalker watches me
trails me home
watching waiting
til i’m alone.)

– started writing this 2004-04-11, I guess it shows. I still like it, though.

– yes, you too have little evil Russian scientists running around your head. (Not that I’m casting aspersions on Russian scientists, there. Pleae don’t blow me up.)

– I found this fragment just before, dated 12th February 2004. That’s almost exactly three years ago now.

– truth.

So, on a photography-related slant, I’ve just bought five rolls of 120 film for my new Holga. Here they are, in all their glory:

• Ilford XP2S ISO400 B+W
• Fujifilm Neopan ISO400 B+W
• Fujifilm Superia ISO400 CN
• Fujifilm Reala ISO100 CN
• Kodak TRI-X PRO ISO400 (B+W)

Expect notes (and hopefully photos) on how they compare. This is my first adventure into non-DSLR territory, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about yet, but hopefully I will soon…

1. Assume God.
2. If God has always been, he has been for an infinite amount of time.
3. Real infinites do not exist, so 2 is false, thus God cannot always have been
4. If God has not always been, then there was a time when there was nothing
5. Nothing can come from nothing, so something must alwas have been; we call this God.
6. See 2–6.
7. Thus, God cannot always have been, and cannot not always have been.

we stay together more out of habit than of taste
hoping things will improve themselves so we can save face
thinking every moment — is this when it’s gonna end?
half hoping that it is, to save this downward-spiral trend

i stay awake at night with your body next to mine
half repulsed and half knowing and almost totally resigned
to failing to say or speak my mind
i worry and think and hope that you’ll be fine

i’d still like to taste your lips
savour the texture and tang of your kiss
feel your hands run over my neck
as mine stroll down your chest.

– some words stolen from hit the street, an earlier poem by moi. this one’s turning into a song, though.

As someone who does not believe that religion is necessary, I am … free to pick and choose what portions of various religions I am inclined to imitate, and which I wish to reject: this is because I believe religion does not have to be taken as a whole, and that components are not functions of their sum: thus, ignoring religion, I may agree with the Golden Rule and disagree with the Book of Revelations. I may appreciate the beauty of the Psalms, the simplicity of the Proverbs, and the eros of the Song of Solomon without soliciting their references to God. I may give my regards to the courage of Abraham yet disdain the blindness of Isaac. I may walk the Middle Way without seeking nirvana and respect my ancestors without lighting incense to invoke them. I may believe that the royal son resurrects the imperial father through ritualized revolution without expecting that he rules the dead and makes the plants grow. I may anticipate futures and ponder histories without expecting human beings be taller in those times. And I may chart the moons and stars in the sky without predicting apocalypse during a dearth of sacrificial virgins. All this I may do, because I do not need religion.

– Michael Chui

Once upon a time, I was a real hoarder — the mantra was “never throw anything away, never let an idea go”. I realised that I ran the risk of keeping too much stuff and not having the room for it all.

These days, I like keeping the number of clothes I own on the low side, because it makes it much easier to decide what to wear on a given day. At any given time, my wardrobe is like a “best of” of all the clothes I’ve ever owned. If I get something new and I don’t like it as much as something that’s old, then it tends to find its way to the charity shop quicker.

When you have eighty-five pieces of poetry, it’s like having a cluttered wardrobe. There’s some stuff that you really like, some that you don’t like much, some stuff that you used to like now but wonder what you were thinking, and so on. So, with clothes, I try keep only things that I really like by doing a periodic cull. But when it comes to art (whether photos or poetry), I just don’t feel right getting rid of it. It’s stronger than that, actually: it feels wrong. On the other hand, I also feel like some of it just cruft cluttering up the world.

I have no idea why this is the case. Do I worry too much about keeping a record of the past? Would I really be losing anything if I went back and clicked “delete” on old poetry which doesn’t mean anything to me anymore? On some level, is deleting old poetry or unfinished ideas which will never be finished the same to me as deleting my past or my potential in the future?

I’m considering putting together “best of” categories which link the poems thematically or chronologically together, but even if I do that, there’s still that feeling of some of it just being cruft that might as well get chucked out. I wonder if I’ll ever find a solution.

(I’ve been meaning to make this a real blog for a while. That means linking to other sites, writing regularly, acquiring regular readers, possibly using a spellchecker, and perhaps posting more than just poetry. This post represents the beginning of trying that, though I’m aware I’ve done none of the above except the last one yet.)

i hastily keep walking
as i ponder how it fell apart
the money went, and with it my life
i shudder as i breathe in the dark.

then — i recall a house nearby
i walk up and knock on the door
it’s the one place left before i go to my rest
– i step inside, stand on your floor.

your face lights up like a firework
and you warmly invite me to drink
the living room glow, it diffuses so well
and soon i’m happily unable to think.

eventually time comes, and i walk out the door
i knew that it would have to end
and as i lay, back home, before my permanent sleep –
i remembered you, my last true friend.

your lungs are wheezing, your spark is leaving
but your voice still carries on
the things you’ve said i won’t forget
even when you’re dead and gone.

– what’s this one about? maybe an old relative, a grandparent, who told you stories. he smoked and you see now how close he was to death, but it didn’t seem to stop him. now his stories which you thought you’d never forget are fogged over, maybe never to be heard again.