Songwriter David Gray has announced a special Irish tour, focussing on small venues, in part to return to his roots [Gray first found an audience in Ireland, before his massive hit album White Ladder] and in part to try out new material from his next album. While the tour has been announced – in a […]
Billy Bragg‘s debut album, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy, gets the anniversary re-issue treatment this month. Cooking Vinyl release a remastered version of the original album and live recordings from Bragg’s London Union Chapel show in June 2013. The album comes out as a CD, housed in a snazzy replica vinyl card sleeve, […]
I’ve broken an arm, right at the elbow, where it seized. I’ve torn out ligaments, burned a hole into my wrist with an iron that still shows up bandage perforation and always will. Scars run like tributaries along kneecaps, triceps, ankles. I even bear the forceps marks of birth. None of that is strange. Everyone […]
Our baby is crying and I wonder how Victor can sleep through. ‘My dear, the baby is awake.’ He opens his eyes, ‘Will you?’ Yes I’ll go, you sleep through, you useless shit. I suppose you don’t hear him calling for his papa. And of course he calls for him. I cannot sleep anyway, feeling […]
These “suicide-prone” epigones Gather to drink from The Marian Shrine. And shout taunts at those They’ve already insulted online . They only go mob-handed At those they have fought, And are literally better fed than taught. Trailed-up on the protein-rich diet of kings; Their mothers’ gave everything Within and beyond their means. This Spides’ agoge […]
In the snap, confetti the guests fling were the scales from the butterfly’s wings. Coventrating not cleaving the air that used to make it soar – became a simulacrum – an electroscope flapping in a jar, charged and discharged by an electrophorus of despair – the diaphragm applicator: Only it, and the picture, are still […]
The youth I know are angry drones Appeased by a certain smoke alone. Their function done: their queen bees Ascend to forensic matriarchy. But it’s futile to speak For these smoke-dazed drones – “The Armed Struggle’s” ASBO epigones. They only want to get away with it And so be left alone.
Oft have I heard the chymes of midnight In adjacent flats or in the streets. These materialise, like Balla’s lamp In the morning under my feet. I awoke to a peal of beer bottles And white-cider tins Tintinabulated by OCD winds.
A young derelict with a baleen beard, In which every drink or meal he’s had adhered. Traversing headlights lifted this stone I practically hurled on the way home.
