CRYSTAL WINDS!

Life is not an infinite series of opportunities for self-development. Its moments and its grand scenes and its hopeless gestures where the most emotional seismic shifts occur are not like the anodyne blue doors in some crystal corridor of mirrors.

Understand: what this is I can't describe, but nor does it fall within the mediocre and familiar realm of druggie poesie. They shred through all sensation like crystal winds. Poetasters like me only blurt through grinning masks, sleep-deprived, forever running, a question of an hour late? How we punish those who betray us with smiles. We, the multitude, we, small-minded arsewipes condemned to onerously thinking - about what? - oh love, absolutely nothing. Hence the anxiety of being. Constantly being this schmuck with the name me, I. The responsibility of waking up and leading this life - it's yours, it's yours, it's yours. Oh mother. What am I supposed to di with it? Get a job? And when I've got one, then? Be purposeful? But what if I discover all will to be deceit? And the anxiety returns.

And yet the beautiful winds noted in the title of this piece suggests a fleeting sensation (but have you seen CRYSTAL WINDS!? - you may. Look out for them. They crush you like the wisdom of children). You beautiful scallywags know from all your fascination with ignoble sweethearts and pioneering teen films that life's most moving sensations are not fleeting perceptions but obsessions, long-lasting, residing from the bliss of caress to self-denying combustion.

Anyhow. Stalking through the rinds and cat-skins of suburban pavements, oppressed by chewing gum, unwanted adverts and fliers, taking on various forms, hey - now I swagger like a scarab beetle: now I hide my body into my coat, each lock exchanged causes stress or followed by a sharp sad pain, a donkey no less, perhaps. He paces ahead, brutal nike trainers and jutting elbows, arranging plans with a man in town. Or I glance quietly into her steely blue-grey eyes, dear silver, impossible to read when unlit by any copper winter sun. Each of these encounters of intimacy between strangers or unlikely friendships, the harpoon jolts, you feel as you talk talk common-place philosophies, and you see deep within yourself, amongst the cod-philosophe claptrap, you see THAT THERE IS A MILLION DIFFERENT YOUS, a million ones you have been, devoted in monuments that dream like you, teaming at their toes with flowers dedicated to you or your sister, no less.

But these encounters are just electrified connections, exposed parts finding a quick union as sacred as mutual masturbation, conjugal coitus, as natural or frightening as anything you might spot through a brief scan through the trees of your local park.

All my problems spill out of me. I have too many holes in my head and sides, and when I drink I start to leak all this rubbish. The worst of myself, the unresolvable conflicts of repressed desire and feeling, come on stage! Express yourself! In an age entirely lacking in understanding of what might be sincere feeling or desire, what is the most abject self-denial and prostitution than clambering on stage and expressing yourself? When will people realise that life cannot be understood without spending a significant amount of time in your birthday suit?