Chasing The Dragon

‘By 1950, the 'arts' were firmly grasped by academics in the privacy of university tutor rooms. The ecstasy of poetry was supplanted by careful shapes and forms, produced in sterile environments for other academics. Poetry had nothing to do with the language of the nation - it became a closed cipher understood and initiated by a minor coterie of so-called intellectual adherents. The working-class, who had done so much to revitalise the nation's culture, were forbidden by these mafia clubs from participating in one of its most beautiful, potent and useful parts. Happily, by the late fifties, poetic controls began to shift back to the poets who practised their art.’ (from the South East Arts Review, Spring 1979, p.33) On the one hand, the situation has turned full circle; writing is, again, yanked out of the public domain and picked bare in the seminar room where those with the paid time to do so can root out it's deliberately abstruse references (MacSweeney's own recent work has been made to suffer this type of negation); again it is written by academics for academics, only now, at the end of the millennium, it is done so with a knowing smirk. On the other hand, some writing is chosen to be made accessible to all through media promotion and corporate sponsorship but at the cost of worthwhile writing itself - God forbid that Murray Lachlan Young is demanded by the public rather than built for us. Either way, there hasn't been much improvement since the '50's, despite MacSweeney's careful hope; those who control the print-space still tell us what is and isn't poetry, or art, or even valuable.

Yet there is a light in all this; Scotland, especially, is now producing many writers whose work manages to be both accessible and worth reading, followed by Ireland and, now that the Amis-aegis

has finally been shed, England. Here, though, in this land of 'pugnacious little trolls' (ain't A. A. Gill lovely?), the trail is still being mapped out and charted by the small press; nothing at all wrong in that as long as these presses are supported, used, and contributed to. They are antidotes to academia, small forums for bedsit scribblers to speak through in this small land of 3 tongues (and incidentally, apropos of the 'Scenes. . . ' contained herein; scenes from bedsits in Swansea, Rhayader, Wrexham, wherever at all are much welcomed. Try to keep them down to a couple of paragraphs). They are where the real writing begins, where authentic expression is offered a toehold. Tonics to the monopolisation of self-articulation.

So here's another one. Buy, read, contribute poems, stories, reviews of books, films, music, anything. Just voices. Improvements and progress can only be made through response and feedback. I know this wee nation isn't as apathetic as it's made out to be.

Apologies for the lack of women writers in this issue, but at the time of going to press, only one had responded to our advertisements and we can only use what comes through the post. Hope to rectify this in issue 2.

That's all. Read and write. Ta.

Letters to the Editor

The advert inviting correspondence to an ‘Anglo-Welsh’ magazine took my eye in the concourse of the History Department, or rather, to be more precise, the concourse of the Department of History and Welsh History. That Welsh History appears as a separate entity within the department is curious. I am in no way detracting from the worth of studying specifically Welsh history, I myself am studying for an MA in the Economic and Social History of Wales. That the historical development of Wales and the Welsh should be considered in a capacity other than as a mere adjunct of (English) British history is indeed admirable. The compartmentalisation of Welsh History into a separate subject from ‘mainstream’ History is surely retrogressive, however. Welsh history is an integral part of British history and should be considered such; siphoning it off into a separate arena may result in its disappearance from ‘mainstream’ British History. For Welsh history to thus become a novel, intensely parochial, interest would surely be immensely damaging. That Welsh History strives for such independent recognition seems to betray a chronic insecurity on the part of a significant section of Welsh society. Such tensions are not merely at work in the world of scholarship, they are obviously apparent in Welsh society at large. The stress placed on the distinction, indeed seeming dichotomy, existing between Welsh and British is complicated further by the distinction made between ‘Anglo-Welsh’ and Welsh (proper). Awareness of this distinction has perhaps increased in recent years due to the effects of a resurgent Welsh language movement and wider cultural renaissance (of sorts), as well as the political developments engendered by the coming to power of ‘New Labour.’ Such developments have resulted in the notion of ‘Anglo-Welshness’
receiving greater currency and may, unwittingly, have lamentable consequences for the Welsh nation.

The split between ‘Welsh Wales’ and ‘Anglo-Wales’ was all too obvious on the morning of September 19^th last year. That English speaking Wales is so ready to distance itself from Welsh speaking Wales is no surprise. Welsh society is racked by the mutual animosity evident between (elements of) these two groups. Great swathes of English speaking people feel alienated and threatened by a Welsh language movement that is perceived as being elitist and aggressive. The fear (whether rational or otherwise) of an elitist Welsh language group controlling the Assembly, dictating terms of education and nationality, is a real one amongst Welsh people. Such concerns exist in areas that would surely hold no fear of the existence of a Welsh Assembly in itself. It is this kind of distrust that mars the creation of a durable, all-embracing sense of Welsh identity. The perception that opposing Welsh and English speaking camps exist retards the formation of any meaningful sense of Welsh unity (which could be represented in a Welsh political structure). Wishing to express an individual identity should not be a matter of imposing an uniform culture/language, or any other defining feature upon people (or a people), and any attempt to do so would surely be self-defeating. My Welshness is a reality that is not subject to the definition or modification of others.

Dylan Murphy

No Sign of the Man From Hay!

‘Red Poet’s Society’ (aka RPS): an annual magazine of socialist poetry almost entirely from Wales.

‘Red Poets’ Society’: a loose collective of rebel poets, many of whom are also members of Cymru Goch, the Welsh Socialist party, who financed and instigated the whole thing in the first place. Not since the Sandinistas … to join Cymru Goch you don’t have to fill in a membership form, just scribble a lampoon on the appallingly reactionary policies of one Tory Blur (sorry Damon!) and his cronies. One atypical weekend in the life of the Red Poets, performing side that is:- On the Saturday at Clwb-y-bont in Pontypridd we’ve got a social for Cymru Goch at the end of our cyngres-congress and to celebrate 20 years of our paper Y Faner Goch, the only monthly political paper in Wales (which, incidentally, publishes a poem every month).

Many poets have been invited and even more turn up. Everyone agrees it’s one of the best gigs ever (or have we al drunk too much? … again). New poets read, like Dai Cozens from the Amman valley, a life-long Communist and campaigner, tow women from up the Rhondda, Gill Brightmore from Cardiff and a woman from Cheltenham who admits to feeling like a Republican in Ballymena up there. The variety’s amazing, from John ‘Maesycymmer’ Davies’s mouth-harp to Penny Windsor’s SS form on bonking. As always, under-rated poets like Peter Read and Mike Church are on top form. RPS gigs are a good laugh as well as being punchily political. It makes a change doing one for Cymru Goch, after recent benefits for Swansea Drugs Project and against opencast mining. We seem to collect new ‘members’ as we ravel, while others drop out ot grovel up Kim Howell’s left (I mean right) trouser-leg, or even become staid councillors in places where Labour have behaved like Tories for decades (no Old and New in the Valleys).

On the next day, it’s a St. David’s eve gig for four of us athe Conway in Aberdâr. We are definitely a ‘loose’ collective, because one has dropped out due to the runs and two others are suffering. It’s a tricky one as many of the pub regulars are obviously poetry reading virgins and one barmaid gives me the critical eye and says she’s doing ‘A’ level English and is preparing to "analyse" our material. Jazz from Penywaun is the local boy at the microphone and, therefore, compere. He does his poem Giro City louder than ever, almost shorting the system!

It all seems to go down well and we’ve been invited back. Kate, who helped organise it, has other gigs planned in the near future and is even talking about an Aberdâr Poetry Festival (while sober, honestly). Oh, and the Man from Hay never turned up as he’d promised. So much for becoming luvvies.

Anyroad, can’t wait for the next one. Wrecsam beckons and, who know, Aber are well. We are available and don’t wreck rooms!

Mike Jenkins: Co-editor ‘Red Poets’ Society’.

P.S. I’m looking for poems for our next issue (s.a.e. essential).

'A Right Chopsy Cunt': A Few Paragraphs About Lloyd Robson

1: "lloyd robson's wide poems and prose explode the constrictions of urban arteries, the entrapment of cameras, surveillance, the punishment-obsessed grey men. . . [his] voice is authentic: unillusioned, forgiving. . . [his] poetry shines all around the clock."

(Chris Torrance's blurb for Lloyd's first book, City & Poems).

2: A poem by Lloyd Robson:

outside the bar past the last order peal

terrace tragedy

dry

;crwys; extract of cardiff

punchin out tha lights

speed diary: 10 -11 july 94; 10 entries.

edge territory

song for double b

reasons for modern living.

hiding out, herefordshire

5 til 2k ad:

It is difficult, in limited space, to do justice to such compression of expression which challenges full explication, but there is a need to respond to this piece, and an invitation to do so in the concreteness of its referents; free from abstraction, the words offer us stirrups, rungs on the way to possible interpretation. It begins by immediately thrusting us into a situation of need and frustration, thirst unassuaged (the 'terrace' sets the scene, probably alluding to football stadia in which alcohol has recently been banned), 'dry'-ness, barrenness, sterility - the state of being bereft, which is a 'crwys' (Welsh for 'cross', 'crucifix') to bear, compounded by the notion that Welshness, the language (and maybe the symbology of the supposedly forgiving ideology to which it points) has been drawn out ('extract'-ed) from the country's capital city. Thus need again, or rather loss, a terrible one - a country's native language is not spoken in its capital city, its seat of commerce and government and publicly-elected legislature. Line 5 then seems to be an expression of anger, significantly in the demotic, at this state of affairs, also perhaps a reference back to line 1(the bar's lights, or the floodlights of the football pitch, being extinguished) and the evocation of the descent of cultural darkness, obfuscation in general, another step towards the year 2000 ('2k ad') in a catalogue of events which the poem tersely chronicles (indeed, it can be read as a 'speed diary'; 10 lines, or 'entries', long, excluding the line which tells us what it is and metastasises the writing). We are on the 'edge' here, the edge of the second millennium, the edge of experience (or maybe Wales itself is the 'edge territory', the rim of Europe, land appropriated and territorialised, in Steinerian terms, by a foreign power); yet this evocation of universal portentousness is slightly undermined by the personism (pace Frank O'Hara) of the next line - the poem is also a 'song for double b' (assuming these are initials), perhaps pointing to a close personal relationship which, for the poet, is a 'reason. . . for living' in the threatening, awry world already examined in the previous lines, which sense of threat and protective urge leads naturally to a wish to 'hide out', significantly in Herefordshire, a border county proffering the liberatory and spiritual rewards of liminal experience (which alludes to the 'crwys' again,

that symbol of redemption through suffering). The final line, reminding us in 'Yuppie-speak' of the imminent millennium points out the commodification of an event as momentous (for the Western world) as the end of an aeon and perhaps, in Yeatsian parlance, the termination of the government of a Godhead - a chiliastic reading reinforced by the terminal colon which takes us back yet again to the central 'crwys', of which the reiterated referencing gradually centralizes the word, making of it a crux, the fulcrum on which the whole poem swings.

The oblique language of the poem, the twisted syntax and peculiar punctuation demand multiple readings. The lack of any pronoun not only suggests a certain commonality of experience but also de-centres the self, which prompts an exploration of the idea of identity in a political climate which undermines selfhood through conformity and a world in which we are taught that everything traditional and trusted is about to come to an end. It is a short poem, but a rich one.

Except it's not a poem. It's actually the contents list of Edge Territory, Lloyd's second book. Ho ho.

3: I'd never read Lloyd Robson's work, apart from one or two small bits in the Red Poets anthologies, until steered Letter from Sissi-wards by Angharad James in the Planet offices. Beginning 'so we landed OK didn't crash ina sea warm air blowin sweet inta plane past stewardess grins and into ar lungs supreme! holiday time! this is what i means when i sez natural high!', with its marauding typeface in big black letters on bright white unnumbered pages, it was a revelation; immediate energy, instant exuberance, proof, if any were needed (and it was, is), that the kind of writing coming out of Scotland (Rebel Inc. etc.) and England (John King et al) had a much-needed counterpart in Wales. It was ace (and if you're after the kind of anal, empty critical writing parodied in paragraph 2 above, look elsewhere). The energy was infectious. Instantly open, instantly accessible, it tells the 'story' of a young lad (Lloyd himself, probably) and his girlfriend on a cheap holiday in Greece, a longed-for break from the drear and drudge of their disrnal lives in Cardiff,

to which they dread returning as the book closes: 'heavyduty stressridden home? we doan wanna go/don't wanna be burdened by tha fuckers at all. . . all we wanna do is get on wi aar lives without havin ta justify ta every cunt that comes along'. The defiantly anti-intellectual stance was (and is; tense change now) a bolted tonic to the over-cerebrality of much contemporary writing, which tends to focus on either quietly-rhymed personal revelation or on an unhealthy obsession with Theory (which, like didgeridoos and crap cocaine, tends to turn the over-educated into loud arseholes). No mere journalese, though - Lloyd appropriates various experimental devices - twisted syntax, play with typeface, punctuation, etc. - and manages to open them out and make them approachable, as in the 'found' components of his unpublished 'Tour Notes' (the titles of war comics) or in individual poems like 'Speed Diary' (lines taken from Jimmy Cliff songs):

no great hit as yet jus a lotta snot an sizzle

bitta burn down throat backa mouth

bitta yaba in sal

can't sit still

the search for stimulus. . .

really v v excited yes-i serious-i

watching jimmy cliff swim his many rivers

"ana harder they come/as sure as the sun

will shine"

ana bitta speed rubbed in me gum to add

a little to me run

"i'm gonna get my share/what's mine"

This is a poetry not based on theoretical or philosophical esoterica; it simply delights in language and the expression of experience, in slang, in dialect, in the adventures in typography available on computer keyboards. It delights in all the bits of one person's world, a wide world which it insists on facing: 'munch munch munch munch/battle with relish absorb' (from 'Sense of City Road'). Eat life is the imperative, a hunger which roots out the quirky, which defamiliarises and renews: 'a shirt arms raised pleads at the door for hell to stop' ('Laundromatarama'); 'semi-skimmed defying dates in ways fullfat can't comprehend' (Reasons 4 Modern Living'). This isn't Martian, because it has the feel of connection with a lived world and palpable experience, of living within the minutiae of quotidian existence, which is worlds away from the trembly voyeurism of Raine and Reid etc. It doesn't intellectualise; it just looks. And sees. That's all it does, and it's great.

4: And what matters now, in 1998? What concerns most of us? Not aspirations to conform to or obey a middle-class consensus of taste and ideal (difficult to avoid, really, being as it is the principal dynamic of cultural life in these islands); not the brow-furrowed fretting over cafetieres in the conservatory, obsessing over perceived personal shortcomings; not the ivory-tower questioning of linguistic heurism or the jargon-riddled analysis of some epistemological quandary which the writer starved to get down on paper. Rather, what concerns most of us are domestic chores, the threat of personal violence, police harassment, how to get drunk on a budget, how to cope with the horrors of an amphetamine comedown, the problem of casual sex (or lack of it) in these days of STD's and prevalent (occasionally even necessary) emotional detachment. From Lloyd's story 'City':

They had sex & Carl used a condom. . . not so much against pregnancy or AIDS as to ensure no emotional recourse to him in the cold unloving future. Carl liked Annie and Annie liked Carl. But Carl felt he needed an escape from good as well as bad.

None of which means, I hope you realise, that Lloyd's work is a dumbing-down, a Bill-&-Ted-izing of common experience. Far from it; it's just the rhythmic articulation of event and impression, a ferreting out of the 'poetry' that lies within contemporary colloquial speech: 'chilled fora while pulled upa smile an sucked ona straw fulla sprite: didn wanna get too tight too early. savin it up for tonite/didn wanna be surly staggerin to me table first evenin, chucked out befor i gess started' (Letter from Sissi). This is writing in which the only signs to be pointed out and examined are those in high street windows which say 'OPEN', 'IT COULD BE YOU', or which depict the two arrows of a needle exchange. Like, say, James Kelman, Lloyd's concerns with language focus not on semiotics or the ahistorical self-obsession with circular referentiality, but on the innate political power of dialect to articulate the travails of the chronically disadvantaged who get shat on and shat on again and to stage an attack on the highest registers of Standard English in which smugnesses and snobberies breed and are nurtured. He is, deeply and in the very best way, a right chopsy cunt, an attitude which, when combined with an insight into the hypocritical chicaneries of self-serving party politics (as seen in the Bizz, a drug-awareness and harm-reduction mag which Lloyd co-edited, sadly now defunct), can only lead sensibly to a recognition of the paranoia inherent in a contemporary urban setting:

& we all wear ar tshirt/sticker/pinbadgebinge announcin bollockall that could be seen that small on monitors plugged into aar activities into a side road vicinity into

a bank of CCTV visionary hq room

4 bigbrotha privatised securityfirm to observe how we serve our nocturnal preserves

or personalised obscenities

(from '5 til 2k ad')

We know it's dangerous, but we still do it: 'absorb absorb/life and [its] risky exuberance' ('Sense of City Road'). We have to. Don't we?

5: A patois; a Welsh Lallans. Lloyd himself, Mike Jenkins, Dave Hughes, Topher Mills (the last two, if you're reading this, send some stuff in). Strong words to capture a scene, a place, a mood:

The front room blared Saturday morning telly and house mates discussing last night's beers and necking; out front pavements cracked with kids squabbling footballs and bikes; the back yards and gardens housed beat thumping hammers and angle grinders cutting their voices on hollow concrete blocks, churning their acrid dust and bitter reek down the throats of the street's thick spittled smokers (from 'City').

And the sex-thoughts in a man's mind, a lascivious ladder: 'disrobe/divulge/devolve/devulve/

revolve/revulve/revulver/revolver/revulva/revolva/revulva/RE: vulva,/reload/reloader' (from Letter from Sissi). Echoes, even, of Dylan Thomas: 'dredged up & nevadowned tramtracked & taffestuarytowned brotherm of the land' (from 'Outside the Bar Past the Last Order Peal'). Lloyd's readings, as well, the power of his delivery, his machine-gun stutter. Spot on.

6: Too often, and shamefully, a doggedly small-press output will, in time, drift out of sight. Don't let this happen: 'if u wanna continue to have a quality choice in reading matter/support new writing to take us inta the next millennium/promote the continued growth of our written & oral culture/glory in the artistic output of this bizarre fucking nation you gotta put your hand in ya pocket an support the small press scene financially. you gotta buy small press. . . if you wanna see jeffery archer or edwina currie held up in the future as the written cultural output of the nation in the 1990's that's fine, honestly that's fine, just do me a favour and get the fuck outa my book (from 'Statement' at the end of Letter from Sissi).

Enough said. Except: Lloyd's output so far constitutes a radical departure from the prevailing literary norms of the last few years. And that's an accolade. A big one.

Lloyd's Bibliography

City & Poems, 1995, black hat

Edge Territory, 1996, black hat

Letter from Sissi, 1997, black hat

Tour Notes (unpublished but will appear in issue 2, hopefully)

Taped Territory, cassette of Lloyd reading, canarant, 1997

All available from: 40 Ruby Street, Cardiff, CF2 1LN

Lloyd's Autobiography

lloyd robson was born in/blah/renounced as/blah/published/blah/including/blah/city/edge/& letter/blah/black/cana/territory/blah/&/blah/performing. reputation as a/recently took a/never got past the/blah blah/right chopsy cunt/stammering. available for readings.

Hello I’m Keith Morris

Keith Morris is a free-lance photographer, specialising in the arts/performance/media. He is a member of Gweled, the association of, and for, Welsh-language visual artists; member and former Chairman of Ffotogallery Wales - the only gallery in Wales dedicated to the presentation of photography in all its forms.

In this issue, Chasing The Dragon is fortunate to be able to present part of Keith Morris x Keith Morris x 71: a project exploring notions of personal and national identity by photographing all the people in Wales with whom he shares his name. We are showing only a handful of these.

Scenes from an Aberystwyth Bedsit #1

He won’t go. What am I to do? He’s asleep on the bed and I’m terrified to move him but I have to go out shopping and to the launderette and if he wakes when I’m not here he’ll wreck the whole room, I know he will, he’s mad. Wild. He’s just lying there spread out on my bed, big and black, making peaceful little growly noises but I know from past nasty experiences what he’s like; as cute as he looks, he’s crazy. Insane. He’s sent me hobbling to the doctor’s before now needing stitches in my leg. What am I going to do? Why did I let him in? Because he can be lovely, that’s why. I always let him in because he can sometimes be affectionate and sweet and I think I love him but then he’ll turn and attack me without warning. This is not a good situation to be in.

I open the window onto the yard and, carefully, reach out and shake his leg and then quickly step back. He doesn’t stir so I do it again and he slowly raises his head and looks at me, his eyes piercing green. His pink tongue licks his lips and I catch a glimpse of his white teeth and my heart skips a beat. I’m scared. But there’s no-one around to help me so I’ve got to do it myself so I can’t afford to be scared; he can sense my fear and he preys on it.

- You have to go now, love, I say, softly. - C’mon… I need to go out shopping and stuff… please go… please don’t be angry…

He stares at me and his eyes are so green, so beautifully green. He lays his head back on the pillow and is quickly asleep again. I can’t move him. He looks so peaceful and calm when he sleeps, so gentle and content, it would be a shame to move him. I’ll leave the window open and let him lie there and hope he’s gone when I return. In case he’s not, though, I’ll buy him a tin of tuna, his favourite, to tempt him outside with, so I won’t have to touch him. The memory of his claws slicing my ankle to the bone is still too painful. I feel like a battered wife. Stupid cat. But what can I do? Sometimes he’s so sweet.

Short Reviews of Some Recent Stuff:

In No Particular Order

Peter Finch, Antibodies, Stride: A return to experimental form after the more conventional Useful. Elevated above the usual run-of-the-mill language-game stuff by Peter's irrepressible sense of humour which, after 30 years, is still going strong (an achievement). Playful, irreverent, entertaining; '500 Bob Cobbings' presumes, of course, that we're familiar with Bob Cobbing's stuff, but it's unmissable if you are. Dead funny. Sample quote: 'oh my little Cobbing/my lovely Cobbing/my soft sweet Cobono'.

Mike Jenkins, Wanting to Belong, Seren: Teenager-orientated collection of stories about a group of schoolkids in Cwmtaff. Spots, self- and substance-abuse, suicide, joy-riding, all the palaver of pubescent years. More absorbing, probably, if you're a teenager, although it's undoubtedly filled a gap. Personally, I'm waiting for Mike Jenkins to present a collection of stories in the vein of the scant couple included in Graffiti Narratives. There's space for that, too.

Will Self, Great Apes, Penguin: Nowt to do with Wales, but dead, dead funny. Bohemian London artist gets wrecked, wakes up as an articulate chimp in a world full of the same. Hilarious, disturbing, sad and at times nauseating, it sets you slightly askew in the world you feel and hear and look at. Which is never a bad thing, of course.

Kevin Sampson, Awaydays, Cape: What it was like to be one particular person in one particular place at one particular time - specifically, a Tranmere Rovers scally on the Wirral in 1979. Strap-over trainies, wedgies, Odgies, scallies, bevvies, Judies, barneys, and Stanleys. I remember it well; foppish, effete young men with long dyed fringes flopping over psychotic eyes. A strange time in a strange place. Worth reading, but not worth spending a tenner on.

Wil Owen Roberts, Pestilence, trans. E. Roberts, Seren: Good, imaginative, fin-de-siecle stuff; medieval setting, plague, horror, collapse, giraffes on the Welsh mountains, the love between a leper and his goat and, at root, an examination of the birth of modern capitalism. Rich and unusual, but. . . well, maybe something was lost in the translation, but in this novel eyes are 'pools of mystery', skin is like 'alabaster', the moon is 'obscured' by 'wisps of cloud'. . . I mean, cor-ny. Still, English isn't the language it was conceived or written in. Before you read this, or even if you don't, try and check out Wil Roberts' essay in Peripheral Visions (U Of W Press, Cardiff), edited by Ian Bell; it's great.

John King, England Away, Cape: Last and poorest in a loose trilogy begun with The Football Factory and continued in Headhunters. Gobshite Londoners on a trip to Germany for a 'friendly'. Best bits are the old geezer's flashbacks to the war, and King's treatment of the militant machismo bred into today's males. On the whole, though, the book's fairly dull; if you've read the other two, then it's just more of the same.

Scenes from an Aberystwyth Bedsit #2

They’re driving me fucking insane. They moved into the flat above me three days ago and since then I’ve hardly slept or worked; all day each day it’s fucking Oasis or Radio 1 full blast, their feet shuddering my ceiling, and when I finally do manage to get to sleep when they turn the music off just before the birds start singing I’m rudely awoken at 7 by the frenetic morning activity of children. They have a dog, as well; I can hear its claws click-click-clicking on the bare, varnished floorboards which make up their floor and my ceiling, my shelter, my rented security from the wind and rain.

I hate them. I haven’t even met them yet and I hate them. My eyes are sunk in black bags; my hands constantly tremble. My mind boils with thoughts of carnage. I hate them.

What way is this for a young man to be? And that they have made me so damns them even deeper.

Of me it will be said: He seemed like such a nice young man. Kept himself to himself. Would never have dreamed in a million years that he’d ever do something like this.

Taff Trail

The Taff Trail section four put the

Car at Coed Penmaen Road where

the wheel trims will be nicked

and bog along the tow path half

of this field the other overgrown

banks mostly full of car wreck and

blown Asda carrier emerge

by the slow water Rhondda Cynon Taf

operatives path clearing one rotorvating the

other leaning against his broom sucking a

fag this section is labelled Albion Industrial

& quiet a maze of dogs and workless owners

emerge the guide says a short metalled

stroll actually two straight miles up the

blistering A4054 wailing cars and belched

artics sod this bold health enter the

Masons Arms a pint and then two

others remerge raining grey rags road

sprayed by a tanker throw the guide

in the hedge back on the bus.

Peter Finch

The Dragon wasn’t dead , only sleeping.

The Line Up

The money is gone no one did it.

I ask the children, who took it?

I line them up, no one speaks

We are hidden from the sky for hours,

the youngest leaning forward, a ball in

his hand and nothing on his face, no one breaks

Denial is an affirmation of self

pouring among us, there is no relief.

They do not need the world,

their cell is inviolate.

They wait for end or sleep or the money

to come back. It might.

The day wastes. Who? I ask again.

I plead with them to take this from me

but with such investment they can’t.

In the end I select one at random and

let the others go, rushing for the air

on pumping feet. This one, he bends.

I can see something in his

eyes now, a long way distant.

Why? I ask.

Sorry, he murmurs, impassive,

listening not to me but

the blood in his ear,

family blood that let him slip.

Didn’t mean to.

It’s all he says.

Peter Finch

The Problem Of Regulation

Systems that exhibit eternal return are in general only moderately complex. Such complexity allows for repetition. We get up and we do it again we are not that complex just take a look. Time evolutions come back again and again close to where they once were. We foul up we say we know the error we are straight as a die now honest judge watch me then unaccountably we do it again. Is all this restricted by regulation mechanism or does it lead? We are fog we say we can't help ourselves inside we think we choose the fog is fiction but actually is fact. Try and stop me I am taking this cigarette machine apart with my bare hands this jump hot-wire this break this rip this woman up I don't care I do what I want. At low levels of technological development we expect periodic oscillations may occur. At higher levels we see a superposition of two or more different periodicities analysts have indeed seen such things. At the top end technological development high we may have turbulence with irregular variations and sensitive dependence on initial condition. One may argue that we live there now. The upbringing no ebb and flow of culture the fire is on but the love is out for the night. It is not their fault. This historical and

complex system macroeconomy cannot be analysed convincingly you back a horse. The poor dear downtrodden give them good carpets and new starts. The glitter of shatter glass beauty. We do not need to know the past the shit awful violent and the victims a collective responsibility. Suppress the barriers and make the field free everybody is better . These darlings we are as guilty as them we made them do it they love us now. They won't do it again they've told us I saw them swearing a new world no fog. We love these social engineers ah god we do they save us yes they do they do they do.

Peter Finch

Scenes from an Aberystwyth Bedsit #3

She knows when I’m cooking, I’m certain of it. She’s 200 miles away, and I know how she does it - telepathy, spies, hidden cameras, whatever - but she knows.

- Hello?

- Derek? It’s your mother. I’ve been trying to get through for the last half hour.

Oh good Christ. She lectures me for 20 minutes on the importance of eating well and budgeting my money while a burning smell begins to waft from the kitchen on top of a sizzling, crackling sound. I pretend that there’s someone at the door just to get rid of her and run back upstairs to the kitchen and take the pan off the heat. Ruined. All the water evaporated, the pasta shells like flakes of soot. And it’s my last bit of food, too, no rice left, no bread, no spuds, and giro day still two long, hungry days away. I pour a tin of tomatoes into the pan and take it into my room and sit there watching University Challenge on my portable black and white, cursing my mother and crunching my pasta.

She knows. I don’t know how, but she knows. She spoils everything.

In what Shakespeare play does the character Hostilices appear? Easy: Timon of Athens.

Cambrian Coast

bog path back out of aberaeron

dolloped with polystyrene flotsam

blue yacht rope plastic tub oil

some bladder wrack twists of

fibreglass fabric sir geraint's bungalow

used to be his looking on from

behind the fat storm beach pebbles

a bloke in a quilted jerkin & binocs

complains to me this is the welsh

for you bloody hell no doubt they have

a stupid word for it yes I say spwriel

y saeson up ahead the track

climbs and then the mountains

Peter Finch

At the Poulterer’s

Wild duck on the slab in a per-

manent shiver/skin picked out in pi-

mples where the quills were rou-

gh-plucked/after all its endeavour in the mar-

shes it looks like the chickens/ra-

w/ready for a hot shower and lar-

king about/lots of whistlings and laugh-

ter to exploit the echoes of the concre-

te walls/in the baths where everythi-

ng’s had to be paid for and the fun’s contextu-

al among naked males/I hover/(I shoul-

d buy)/(I don’t)/remembering mallar-

ds plashing in water hidden by ree-

ds and their Mr-Punch-laughter/a-

nd eider far out at sea beaten and ha-

mmered in the choppy light/ex-

ercising patience/making habits out o-

f needs/there’s nothing like a bir-

d drawn from the oven with the glis-

ten of fat over crisp skin/tha-

t’s why I’m here at the window ea-

ch winter/to peer at the bodies in a poo-

l of light as darkness draws dow-

n over the saltings and the river ru-

ns into the gut-flow of the ti-

de/ducks gathering in groups of li-

ving stones to wait the night out.

John Barnie

A Toast

Have you seen those wor-

ms that dehydrate in Antarc-

tica to be blown almo-

st weightless by a deser-

t wind/until in a spo-

t with a touch of moistur-

e/a degree less cold/the-

y rehydrate and carry o-

n in the regolith/that’-

s adaptation/ada/p/tatio-

n/where my brain and y-

ours would expand with I-

ce (have to) and the eye-

s two crystal balls on ho-

ld/so here’s to the nema-

todes/desert-disaster-wi-

nd-blast-survivors/t-

ectonic travellers livi-

ng because they have to be-

cause they have to five mi-

llion years in the cold.

John Barnie

A Crumb of Soil

A crumb of soil where som-

e say god hides and only scien-

ce looks/where the scanning elec-

tron microscope throws projec-

tions on a screen/the bac-bac-b’-

b’-bac/bac/teria free from cuddli-

ness and hope/and we hear oursel-

ves breathe/as in a bathysph-

ere when the killer-mug with a la-

ntern over its jaw appears/"goo-

dness! this is like a dream!"/pa-

n back and the crumb is nudg-

ed aside by a myriapod’s whisker-

y jitters/that hole is where a w-

orm ate through to another pla-

ce/ate-ate the world we were loo-

king at before..) (well/that was a th-

ought I had/raking up leaves/st-

uffing them in a bucket for the co-

mpost heap where they’ll break d-

own/dow/d’-d’ down/brea/k/d-

own over the winter when I’m indoo-

rs and it’s cold/and blackbir-

ds and robins as if in a ra-

ge fling aside rot to get at the ti-

dbits wriggling in its shine).

John Barnie

New Man

He went into detox/and what they

did there/came out a new man, diff-

erent human being/wouldn’t say much,

the modesty in him come up hard

against something/without words/and

blank as all the days he didn’t think

would be there to come/the magnox

clean they say, thanks to him and

his team/where are they, stand up, stand

up/at parades and special days/the man who

made it safe/who made it, never to tell/

sitting up straight at dust, propped

by a blue silk cushion/blue as caesium

in dreams/watching the screen, watch-

ing the stream of blue particles of

light/ this is what it is/being safe.

John Barnie.

Scenes from an Aberystwyth Bedsit #4

And people DO disappear, don’t they? I mean, they just go; they nip down to the shops for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread and they are never seen or heard of again. The world just swallows them. Suicide, alien abduction, murder, accident, falling through a worm-hole in time… they just go. They vanish. Leaving nothing but greasy smears like ink-blot tests on the walls and headboards in anonymous rooms, splashes on carpets which could be wine or blood or oil. Snarls of hair in the corners like scribbles on air. That’s all.

And I know nothing of them, these people I’ll never meet, these canvas faces that I pass on the street and glance at once and look away and never look again. Even though I sleep on their stains.

The Cannabis Candidate

you can’t avoid

the fuckin’ perils

he said, wagging

his finger at me

puffing marijuana on the public bus

however idealistic you live, did

you know I was jesus h christ

I bed that surprises you

I bet you didn’t know that

puffing on the herb

then letting a larf

a fleck of spittle

in the sun’s ray

shadowing me into my seat

on the almost empty bus

you gotta face

the fuckin’ perils

just like anybody else

you know he’s smoking it

with the seeds in, so there’s

explosions now & again

they’re expert these busdrivers, they’re

marvellous don’t you think? What

d’you do for a living not much,

I replied staring prayerfully

into the pages of my Guardian

the largactylised punk

mooches down to the other

passenger on the bus, would you like

a puff on the pipe of peace lady?

She was cool, turning it down,

"I’ve been ill just recently love,

& I don’t want to talk."

then he was back

sliding into the seat

beside me, have one

of these pills the doctor gave me

a hopeless bum, behind him

a labyrinthe of busts & police &

hospitals & institutions, scarcely

the ideal cannabis candidate I thought

gratefully watching his

departing back at Aberdare. Chris Torrance

The Least Likely Buddha (After Kerouac, "I am the Buddha called The Quitter")

Full moon badness madness frutration grumble paranoia

I am not

that Buddha called The Quitter

I am the Least Likely Buddha

I am 3 rotties on one leash

I am a snake-toothed corgi on a housing estate

I am a murder of crows

pecking eyes out

I am a

70 ton bulldozer

razing an ecosystem

I am a necklace of traffic cones

strangling the articulate motorist

I am a jagged tin can bringing tetanus

I am a government

brought down in orgasms of prurience

I am hellfire

spewing out bloody violence

I am prime chaos poised

pendulum of eternity

I am a butterfly wing I am

The Least Likely Buddha

Chris Torrance

glacier haiku (for bill)

both pens running out

fast how get the

poem writ down in time?

by oily

tarmac alongside

buttercup: hay rattle

mass: a

dark suitcase

lost in the void

the broken rucksack:

a winebox too far

a cold summer morn:

the ice-eyed maiden, clear-eyed

unapproachable the ice-eyed maiden

seen in a moment

- pixels of illusion

Chris Torrance

Scenes from an Aberystwyth Bedsit #5

The last thing I remember is Paul opening the whiskey, crushing the top under his boot into a thin silver disc and saying "we won’t be needing THAT again". And now I’m lying nude on my messed-up bed with the pounding on the door matching in ferocity and volume the insistent thumping my head. I feel spectacularly sick.

BANG BANG BANG

- Who is it? I manage to croak, and hear a muffled voice in reply:

- You know who it is! Open this door you dirty little wanker!

I recognise the voice - it’s Laurie, the fit drama student, who lives in the room belwo me. Pure gorgeous she is. But she sounds really angry about something. Why? What did I do? I don’t remember a thing.

BANG BANG BANG.

I drag myself painfully up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed so I can get dressed ‘cos I’ve always had the hots for Laurie and I don’t want her to see me like this - naked, pale, grey, scrawny - and as I bend down to retrieve my boxers from the floor I see it, over in the bay window on the sloping floorboards I see it; a splash, no, a puddle, no, a veritable POND of spew. There’s loads of it. You’d get your knees wet if you were to wade through that. And what’s worse, what’s absolutely, vilely, stomach-punchingly worse is that it is oozing slowly across the sloping floorboards towards those holes which I’d drilled directly above Laurie’s bed last summer so I could watch her sleeping in the nude and draining through them like dirty water down a plughole. Oh Christ.

BANG BANG BANG.

I curl up in bed and pull the duvet up over my head. I am in so much trouble here.

Anglo-Welsh

Let’s bury that term finally

let’s bury it along with the Labour Party

and their servile Brit mentality

to what’s left of empire and monarchy.

Let’s fill nuclear shelters underground

with its quaintly dangerous colonial sound

of Wales attached to a petrol company

and a chorus of ‘We must not offend!’

Let’s bury it with titles and garden parties

where we duly perform our songs

and Lord Quango of Plaid Cymru

sports his PhD in Hypocrisy.

Let’s bury it in the borderland

of that strange country Wales and England

and float it out to sea

on Brittania soon to be empty,

so children climb its wreck on the sand.

Mike Jenkins

Safe

Down at the bus-station late night

someone’s screaming it’s like

the ward of a mental hospital

before the pill-trolley, he volleys

a strangled wail down plastic tubes

of shelters. I stare ahead

New York subway survival kit,

till out of a shop doorway

a no. 1 hairchop girl hops

in front like she lived

in a burrow down sewers

"Fiver for-a burger an-a cuppa?"

hardly older than my daughter

but eyes ringed metallic -

two steps more a boy appears

squeezing out of a pavement crack

stepping around and sparring

"Only a coupla quid! C’mon man!"

My two coins and it’s "Safe!"

and they’re gone, not a breath

of booze or a mad grin, just two kids

and that word stammering

across every sleeper home -

safe as houses, money in the safe,

safe with them, no waste,

my meagre gifts, their cups

cradled and cooing steam. Mike Jenkins

The Eco-Warriors

Dreadlocks and hip dogs

spaced-out gazes and Frosty boxes

roll-ups and military maps

of Celtic Energy’s manouevres,

soft voices stream, but wiry tension

with mounted cops approaching,

tents among cash crops

the Bog Queen rehearsing,

talk of companies killing

with their packets of poison,

tribal benders with aluminium chimneys,

nommes de guerre harmless as Ray,

children silent as saplings

in the shade, tiny oaks

from Brynhenllys potted yet wilting

on an island by the old opencast

water pumped into a lagoon,

theatre on forestry paths

as kids follow loud energy

of Toxic Waste Man

against the grain, while bluey

Water Spirit’s all alone,

police on horses track our procession

across land where seed will be dust

and coal filch the berries’ gleam.

Mike Jenkins

Carn Take Theyr Beer

Seen em there, off it,

outa theyer eads

like a Rugby Club on tour:

with a wooden prick,

toyin with it,

dippin it in froth o’ stout

an lickin it off,

idin it in a girl’s bag,

usin it t’ play pool with.

Look at tha fool

pinchin women’s bums

like ee collected em,

them ones playing maginree guitar

an singing darft songs

oose words go "Duh ra duh ra duh.."

See em fightin like closin time,

one woman leapin on-a back t’stop,

like bullies in-a yard,

blood in ketchup dollops.

Look at em burnin farts,

droppin theyr trousers

t’moon at-a camra,

snoggin anyone with genitals

includin the pub mongrel,

puffin like Smokies Corner.

Der! Them bloody teachers,

‘ey carn take theyr beer!

Mike Jenkins

Shop Boys

them boys, them shop boys

they’ll nick yewr breath,

yew got any glass eyes

they’ll ave em f’ ball-bearin’s,

they’ll have yewr gran’s dentures

an make em inta lock picks.

They’ll ave yewr wigs

t’keep theyr Rottweilers

nice ‘n’ cosy at night,

yewr aunty’s Woman’s Own t’roll

out giant spliffs with.

If yew’d go by bike,

make shewer ew chain it

t’yewr legs or else ….

An if yew d’go by car

make shewer-a rust’s so bard

it falls apart arfta 30 mph.

Don’ park yewr baby-buggy

f’more ‘an 10 seconds

or yew’ll find little Lisa

rollin with all-a coke-cans.

They’ll nick yewr boots

t’ewse as flower pots,

yewer tooth-braces t’dust

theyr knuckles with.

Them boys, them shop boys

with baseball caps and baseball bats:

even-a pigs give up

when ‘ey ram-raided Raji’s

with-a ten ton truck.

They’d ave yewr flesh

t’skin up, if ‘ey could find

knives ‘at were sharp enough.

Mike Jenkins

And Finally…

Right, that's yer lot. Issue 2 out after Christmas sometime - whenever we have enough stuff to put in it and enough energy, time and money to produce it. Submit; women especially, my God, there must be women writing out there. And always enclose an SAE, cos if you don't, you won't get a reply, whether we want to use your work or not. Money’s too tight to mention. Support your small presses. Enjoy yourselves. Pray for Liverpool to win a trophy (any bloody trophy) next season. Play hard, establish a Kick the Shite Out of A. A. Gill Campaign, look after yourselves, and write. Books for review, submissions, letters, money, tasty cakes etc. to be sent to the editorial address.