Dym, obviously.

Try Again

O, Concrete Mother Commons

So one time I sat around like a stupid student drinking beer with my dear friend Alex. We played Worms and listened to people reading difficult poetry. It is actually a really happy memory and a really sad one. I miss him a lot today. R.I.C... Anyway, we got onto listening to Karl Waugh's album 'Concrete Mother London', and somehow ended up listening to Sean Bonney reading 'The Commons' at the same time. Though the two things seem pretty disparate there is a connection in their tone. Both are semblances of negative energy dragged through cityscapes, very lonely, fragmented and alienated. Both disorienting and relentless in their approach (attack). I've finally got round to putting them together, and I am rather pleased with the outcome. Please have a listen.

http://soundcloud.com/ashleyfrench/o-concrete-mother-commons-demo

No wonder!

Band

Band

Ode

Staring out of long parks and forty four
windows opposite where only the
bravest show their heads. I’m asking
how magic projections can answer
localised weather systems, saying
nothing so obvious as I’d like.

Today is softened, and in a roundabout kind
of way the starlings are demonstrating
illusionary deceit/ where to go this morning in a street
and search for a face called ‘Rose’, to fix

these physical incarnations to
kindly lids, they never peered across
our border/ I’d like to share that with you.
This is no longer an empty hemisphere

but a rich trip of silence that we drive out of
in giggling secret and map somehow blind along
to the song along to the song
which can’t really matter, this flattery tastes
light and doesn’t carry seismic impact.

I can’t hold this forever, but
do my best, and write ‘plinky plonky
music’, not so well. We can both hear an owl but
I had it first/ and the evening blankets me quicker, worse

off to be confined in weak plaster again but all that
is innocuous, and we play Houdini, ineluctably. It is
sublime at the distance I stare longingly back.
Crammed into one small space the word is purple and
other common ground/ stood on a mud bank riveted to sounds

that make so much sense and wonderfully barrel on.
Remember how fine it was to watch a crocus trouble soil?
Fixed side by side in half blankets you worry over
grinding teeth who give the game away, and we
sleep in snatches.

It’s no wonder you came panicking down and
how to be grateful? I would have taken your hand or let you fall
into this open neck. Always asking in muted miles
if we can’t elope at this late stage?

SEBO

Is undoubtedly the best vacuum cleaner I have ever owned. Also enjoying Tetrion Fix n Grout. More on this later.