Al Stravinsky’s brilliant blog

Jessie

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:26:16 +0100

Black and sleek and quick as fire,
Lively as electric wire;
Sparking in the sun.
Leaps and walks the towering fence;
Imperious, in every sense
Queen of her garden.

Creatures cower, become her game;
Lazily she earns the name:
Dispassionate killer.
Yet time escapes her wicked claws,
Never feigns death in her jaws -
And slowly takes her.

Angular bones in a moulting sack,
Matted fur on her bent, ridged back -
Frightened eyes plead to me.
Slowly struggles to her feet,
Anytime is time to eat -
Always, always hungry.

Today she’s too tired to be fed,
Stumbles back into her bed
Pleads again, fights to breathe.
Weeping flesh and sores that run,
Time to sleep, my darling one -
Goodbye, Jess. Forgive me, please.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Vacancy

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:41:13 +0100

Who will send the spinning stones
Across the chaos of the road
To tumble through the slotted jaws of hell?
And who, with perfect measured stride,
Will step upon the other side
Before the killer crow can pass the post
And cast his dread satanic spell?

Who'll enumerate the railings' bars,
Approximate the speed of cars
By counting seconds till they disappear?
Whose finger-snap will always coincide
With kettle switch and - if they've tried -
Old Big Ben's chimes? Who'll conjure rhymes
That split her face from ear to ear?

Who'll tally bricks and estimate
A buildings volume and its weight
And time a rock's descent into the sea?
And who will check the altitude of birds and planes,
The height of trees and weather-vanes
If not me? There's a vacancy...
Oh, and they'll need

A needle eye to unpick the random tapestry
And sew her silhouette into their memory -
A stitch in time saves one -
And a pearly shell to catch her observations,
Gleaming drops of conversation,
Fresh as dew, transparent, true...
Who'll do these things when I am gone?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

'postrophe

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:53:29 +0100

I did my bit to oil the tongue

And make it an informal one,

But if I’d known what I’d begun

I never would have started.

The ‘wi’ from I’ll, the ‘o’ from aren’t

Are AWOL with the ‘no’ from can’t

And e’er again I know I sha’n’t

See letters that departed.

The ‘v’ from ne’er gesticulates

And ‘ha’ from they’ve laughs in my face,

While I - that’s me - hang in their place,

A stitch between incisions.

The b’s’n on the fo’c’s’le stands,

A pile of letters in his hands,

Perplexing lubbers on the land

With five extreme omissions.

The Hilton houses ‘i’ from it’s

While ‘i’ from he’s hides in the Ritz;

I pull together all the bits

They readily deserted.

A crescent moon in lettered sky,

A prick in alphabetty pie,

I turn away, a winking eye

And chaos is averted.

I scratch then scribe the sheet to show

Where absent letters used to go

And thus let everybody know

That something’s missing for my pains.

Contractions brought about my birth,

‘twixt font and grave I’ve shown my worth:

To scatter symbols o’er the Earth

And free them from their paper chains.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Siamese son

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:45:26 +0000

Celtic cross

‘I’ve learnt so much, please listen, son:
Don’t waste your life as I have done,
And don’t lose games you should have won
Because you weren’t prepared.
I fooled around, I missed the bus
And failed to do the obvious,
Now time is up for one of us…
I always was too scared

To put my neck upon the line
- to err was not a mode of mine -
I ummed and ahhed without a spine,
Now learn from my stupidity.
I lacked the nerve, shied from the fight,
I frittered days and squandered nights,
I did what’s easy, not what’s right
And blew each opportunity.

Oh, God, I wish I could go back -
Regret’s a huge ungainly sack
To carry ‘round upon your back,
Especially when you’re old.
Mistakes are light, evaporate
With every new success. Don’t wait
For other souls to choose your fate -
For once, do as you’re told.

I was young, like you, but life is cruel
And hard and quick - I know that you’ll
Not be a disappointment to all
Your family. I’m so sorry…’
‘Thanks, Dad, but it’s too late - I’d be
A better man, but don’t you see
That, Dad, when you die, I do too
For I’m the boy inside of you.’

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Uni-verse: a one verse poem about...

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:23:08 +0000

... well ...the diminishing cyclical nature of everything: from washing-up, to the creation and dissemination of sound; from Newton's balls, to the journey of an atom of water... actually, it started with a drop of water, and quickly expanded its horizons to the final running-down of the universe, when all energy is (is it? I'm no physicist) equally dispersed. It flowed through me so it’s mine, but it's flawed too, so I keep cutting, grafting and pruning: still needs a bit of work here and there; stutters a bit too, but so do I, so what would you expect; a work in progress, much like everything else around here.

Uni-verse

This

came from the washing-up -

wrote it down before the bubble burst.

It created its dripping self and ticked

in time with the unfolding universe,

then referenced my mundane task,

cycled forwards and in reverse;

wrestling with energy -

like Newton's balls:

equilibrium-cursed -

till gravity and the

cords that hang

us to the frame

of reality

showed

them

-selves

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Earthquake Archie

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:21:02 +0000

I could have been a professional footballer. The road to stardom split, fragmented or reached a cul-de-sac so many times that I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it all slipped away from me. Maybe if I’d had those snazzy boots for my eighth birthday, or that 32-panelled plastic-coated football I craved the following Christmas… I lost my place in the school team through injury and then there was my cousin’s ill-timed wedding that robbed me of the next game in which I was selected... I was small for my age too and got pummelled by the older kids who despised my on-ball artistry. All those things – and more – knocked me off course. Individually, they were minute, barely noticeable deviations on the golden road to Wembley, but they eventually added up and contrived to cast me into the ditch of occupational triteness. But surely, with a bit of fortune, I could easily have clambered out?

I carried that conviction into my early twenties, turning out as fullback for a fairly successful Sunday league team. Professional scouts were known to cast their lines into those turbid waters and sometimes spotted a prize catch weaving effortlessly through the waves of mediocrity. It was just a matter of time before I would leap from the fetid ditch of the commonplace into the silver, sparkling waters of sporting excellence. Then I met Archie.

There are a lot of professional football teams in my corner of the globe; some would say too many. Most languish in the lower reaches of the league; unglamorous, unfashionable, yet still plodding on, a knot of faithful followers providing just enough backing to keep them afloat. Archie was of this world. He was a journeyman professional, doing a stint for most of the local teams at some time or other. I’d derided him, even booed him along with the rest of our long-suffering fans during his short time with my team. He appeared slow, both in mind and body. Often caught in possession and rarely doing anything creative, it was often a mystery why he was even on the pitch. He had no ‘artistry’ and was, at best, a destroyer, earning the nickname ‘Earthquake Archie’ for his clumsy crunching tackles. I could do better than that. My gran was better that that! He did the rounds, sank into non-league obscurity and I’d supposed that, when his legs had finally given up, he’d called it a day.

Another Siberian Sunday morning. Icily cold. The bristling wind that always drove down our valley and swept the smoke from the steelworks, was numbing my knees, fingers and nose as we trudged up to our elevated pitch. Once there, we were bitterly exposed. Clouds of condensation whipped from the mouths of hunched and shivering players. We kicked about in the muddy goalmouth while the ref called the captains to the centre circle for the coin toss. Our captain, Pete, came back to us, rubbing his hands, looking excited.
‘They won. We’re staying at this end, lads, kicking into t’ wind. Hey - guess who their captain is.’ We all looked again at the short, balding tubby bloke who’d just picked ends. I shook my head, but someone spoke up.
‘Well, bloody hell… it’s Archie… er… what’s-his-name, isn’t it? Christ, he must be forty something.’
‘At least. But look at his legs – they’re like bloody tree trunks!’
I was perplexed. Archie? What good would he be? He was useless when he was young – but now? I wondered for a moment if he might be doing a bit of undercover scouting, masquerading as a player while keeping an eye out for talent. Clever…

Straight from the kick-off, Archie got the ball. Well, it sort of went to him… seemed to love him. And he hardly ever looked at it, instinctively knew where it was; his head was always up, eyes darting everywhere, looking for the pass. That pass, between me and the centre half and onto the toe of their right winger who, according to the report in the local paper, ‘…seized onto Archie’s slide-rule through-ball and rippled the net with a powerful rising shot’. Our players bounced off him. He was very strong and, despite his appearance, still extremely fit. Every pass from either foot found its target. The pitch became a giant wheel. He was the hub, his passes were the spokes, and his feet alone applied the gas or the brakes. It all revolved around him. They got a free kick, about twenty-five yards out. We made a wall but it was ineffectual – the ball sailed over us and into the top corner. OK, Archie had the wind behind him, but he used it brilliantly. There was no elaborate celebration, only a wry smile as he turned to walk back into his own half for the restart.
‘A superb strike from outside the box gave The Blue Ball a commanding 2 – 0 lead at half time.’ Their players patted his back reverentially, nodded their heads at each other and smiled in satisfaction. What a player to have on your team. What a player! He eventually scored three without breaking sweat. They won 5 - 1.

The final whistle was a seismic blast. The earth shook and crumbled. Grass sods tore. Straight, limed lines distorted, stretched and vanished in the mayhem. Crossbars cracked like gunshots. A chasm opened. All of the pitch and all of me was consumed by the simultaneous dual destruction of solid ground and airy ambition. I suddenly stood at the bottom of a deep canyon, barely able to see the sky, and realised straight away that I was never getting out of there. This was my realm: only the gods walked atop. A short, portly figure stood on the edge looking down. He didn’t boo into the abyss, or say I was worse than his gran; he was quiet, respectful, reached down a long arm and warmly shook my hand.
‘Well played, son. Good game.’
It was only later that I realised Archie was standing in a canyon of his own, looking up at the likes of Bobby Moore, Alan Ball, Billy Bremner, Bobby Charlton…

‘It was a fantastic display by a consummate player, who, despite having retired from league football ten tears earlier, devastatingly highlighted the massive gulf between the professional and amateur games; the gulf that separates the truly gifted from the wannabes.’ I finished my regular weekly match report and posted it through the letterbox of the local paper. I didn’t even give myself a mention that week. It was all about Archie. Earthquake Archie.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Capo d'astra

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:31:13 +0000

Capodastra: A small movable bar placed across the fingerboard of a guitar or similar instrument so as to raise the pitch of all the strings uniformly.

If a thing can call, then it called. Or maybe he just happened to be standing in the right place relative to the thing and the sun. The clouds played a part too, opening at exactly the right time to allow the photons through. The packets of light completed their eight minute eighteen second journey with a joyous bounce off the polished metal and a silent splash into the back of his eyeball. Inside Ezrric’s brain, a sentinel, programmed to look for such a change amid a sea of stillness, sought out the source of illumination and asked three questions: friend or foe; food or poison; shield or weapon.

Sounds clattered and conversation rattled around the high, white walls of the hall. He moved toward the gleam, but it suddenly faded and his eyes fell on just another groaning table, covered in the detritus of several house clearances. Bodies pushed in front of him. A river of them flowed in through the ornate mahogany doorframes, swirled between the tables and, eventually, out again into the street. They swept up the silt of tatty goods from the tabletops and threatened to carry him away too. Beyond the tall smeary window, the clouds parted and again the gleam pricked his eye. He concentrated on it, pinpointing its position amid the clutter. The object had the semblance of something he recognised, but was constructed in such a way that its purpose could not be certain. Seated serenely amongst the chaos, an old gentleman lifted his gaze from the book on his lap and Ezrric caught his rheumy eye. The young man’s left hand pierced the crowd and lifted the object that had silently called him, all the while being aware of the old man’s stare. He turned the shining metal implement over in his palm. It was cold and much heavier than it looked. The old man’s fingers closed around the smoking bowl of his pipe. He slowly drew in and breathed out, the ensuing cloud momentarily obscuring his unshaven ruddy cheeks, hooked nose and raised bushy brows. A small, round, white sticker told Ezrric all he needed to know. £12.

‘It’s old. Older than you or me – though I know that must be hard to believe.’ The old man’s lips curled and displayed a twisted and yellow graveyard of a smile. ‘Give me ten – it’s the least I’ll take.
‘Is it a…’
‘You know what it is.’ He motioned to Ezrric’s calloused fingertips. ‘You play. Don’t waste my time. I’ll take ten.’ Unreadable eyes fell back to the page; the ancient body sank back into the folding garden chair. Ezrric saw the man’s worn shirt collar, his crumpled and creased tweed suit, yet noticed he had the accent and easy bearing of one accustomed to wealth and position. Old money fallen on hard times. Ezrric couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, even though he seemed to have many years of privilege tucked under his tightened leather belt.
‘Twelve it is then.’ The old man smiled at that and this time his eyes half closed in curiosity as he studied the younger man’s face. Ezrric avoided the gaze, dug into his jeans’ back pocket and soon held out the two fivers and the two pound coins. They alternately wafted and rattled into the rusty, blue biscuit tin that the old man proffered. Ezrric stuffed the thing in his pocket and let himself be carried along by the human current, till he was deposited on the delta of the vast paved square, out beyond the megalithic hall’s huge doorway.

He locked the front door behind him. After switching on his old valve amp, he picked up his guitar and slumped onto the couch. A couple of strums, a gentle turn or two of a machine head and she was tuned. The hard lump in Ezrric’s back pocket had called to him on the way home, but he’d ignored it. Only now did he take it out, run his eyes and fingers over it. It had a sheen like brushed silver, was covered in minute intricate markings and consisted of three joined and jointed bars. The longest one was about 5” in length and was bent near the centre to make a reversed number 7. The other two were attached by hinges in such a way that a rough letter E could be formed. The central bar was curved upwards, while an inch-long screw speared the bottom bar, half an inch from the joint with the upright. Every edge was ground to perfection; the two pivot points were without lateral movement, yet seemed frictionless. It was surely a capo - a device placed on a guitar neck to shorten the strings, to raise the pitch and so facilitate playing in other keys – but Ezrric couldn’t see how it could work. He placed it on the guitar neck in various ways but just couldn’t fathom it. Then it caught the sunlight - as it had in the saleroom - and momentarily blinded him. When his vision cleared, the device had fallen into position. The top bar of the E pressed the strings down against the fretboard and the central curved bar rested behind the neck, hinging to fit its shape perfectly. He levered the bottom bar in towards it. The smooth screw tip resisted, but then slid silently along the curved central bar and toward its hinge. With a little encouragement it then passed a fulcrum of no return and the thing was locked in place. It was so simple, so majestic. Unlike the capos he was used to, it had no elastic and no springs. The reverse 7 shape in the metal itself was the spring that held it in place; it was a perfect blend of engineering and geometry.

Ezrric knew that a vibrating string produces a fundamental note. Shorten it and the note is higher in pitch: that’s how guitars of six strings can produce many more than six notes. A capo raises the pitch of all the strings at once, leaves your fingers free to play the patterns and chord shapes of songs you know, but in a higher key. The notes seem to shimmer and sparkle like gold once a capo is added, return to dull, base metal when it is removed. He began to flip through the myriad songs in his brain, searching for something to play, but stopped as he recalled Kurt Cobain singing live on MTV just a couple of nights before. One of the songs he’d heard performed suddenly itched in his fingers. ‘On a plain’. Ezrric released his new capo and arbitrarily repositioned it at third fret, still marvelling at its simple, elegant beauty. He rested his fingers on the strings, closed his eyes and began to play.

It was angelic. His guitar rang like a harp and each note resonated through him. The sound was surrounded by a halo of harmonics that carried the song through every cell in his body and every room of the house. Now Ezrric opened his eyes. What he saw amazed him. Colours began to shift, scrolling through the rainbow. His old, red Stratocaster guitar bled into orange, yellow, then blended into turquoise. Blue wallpaper turned to indigo, then glowed violet and simply vanished into blackness. He watched his faded denim jeans pass through the same process, while his green T-shirt shifted through shades of deepening blue and purple. Intricate red patterns glowed on the black neck of his guitar, then the heat of his fingerprints fluxed slowly into orange and slid into yellow and green. He felt the skin on his face begin to tighten and prickle as if he had been out in the sun too long. On and on he played, the simple chords and melodic picking somehow creating a heavenly symphony. His thoughts escalated too and his emotions became tangible objects he could view from all aspects simultaneously. He was suddenly filled with a deep understanding. The capo. It’s the capo transposing everything. Sound, colour, thought, feeling.

The room ascended slowly into blackness. Only the sound from his amplifier remained. Across the giant sound wash he created, he recognised the colours of his room as they swept upwards and disappeared in waves of static. First the walls. He sensed their form, understood their encirclement of him, then they were gone. His jeans strode across the soundscape and they too vanished into the ether. The red guitar played itself into aural existence with a sunburst of white noise. Lastly, the amplifier gave the heat of his body audio form. He saw it with his ears, captured its dance in his mind and soon it too was gone. Impossible beings – fiery salamanders and dragons, elves and fairies, angels and demons - materialised and cavorted before him then disappeared into atoms, transforming and reshaping, dancing and playing. When all had passed upward and into darkness he heard the voice.

‘Stop, Ezrric! I command you.’ His fingers froze and the song faded. A single open string rang quietly but then began resonating, feeding back in an expanding loop as its own energy, pulsing from the loudspeaker, encouraged it to vibrate even more. Growing in intensity with every cycle, it slowly focussed into a pure and brilliant white note that illuminated the space around him. Yet the voice dazzled him more. Drawn up from the depths of his consciousness and tuned in by the capo, it simultaneously filled Ezrric’s heart with overpowering love and dread. The conflicting emotions swirled before him, encircled him, salved and tormented him and then stepped aside.

‘So, Ezrric. Mmm… You transmute music into a flow of electrons and amplify it. This was not foreseen. The power of the capo d’astra was never meant to be used this way.’
‘But I… I know you.’ Ezrric was in awe. ‘You are always here when I play. I can sense you, but can never quite see or grasp… like a leviathan moving in the depths beneath the notes. I have spoken to you before, but always in shadows, never like this...’ Ezrric’s words emanated from him in multicoloured solids that he could shape and paint with extraordinary feeling and meaning.
‘Yes, Ezrric. You have spoken to me through music. All humans can speak to me so. The capo was created so that I could converse with you. On its plain, we can truly meet and meditate together. Only a select few ever mastered it, but then the chain was broken, the capo was lost...’
‘How does it work? What happened to the light?’ He paused, stunned by the magnitude and clarity of his thoughts. ‘Are you…?’
‘You know who I am. You play. Listen to me now, Ezrric! My thoughts traverse star systems and encompass galaxies. They have a wavelength of billions of miles, far lower and deeper than anything you could sense or understand. As you play to me, I always speak to you, though I am mostly unheard. But tuned by the capo d’astra, my words can touch the minds of mortals. The capo transposes my voice so you can hear me. Sweeping up through the spectrum, it tunes to your frequency range like a radio dial, enabling us to link our minds, share our thoughts. However, I never imagined humans would so quickly harness electricity, and apply it so. Like radio waves but much longer, my thoughts too drive electrons through cables. Recycled by your amplifier, my thoughts fed back into the guitar where the capo transposed them once more. They were again amplified and this cycle quickly spiralled upwards, out of control… radio waves turned to microwaves, then heat and light waves, bouncing off everything around you. As they proliferated and shortened, X rays and gamma rays tore your physical being to shreds. Your body is no more. All earthly bonds were broken, all impurities were miraculously stripped away. The knots are undone, the roots are extinguished. You are free. You have transcended and reside only in this note, this one pure, perfect note. Ezrric, you have bypassed millennia and, by a cosmic leap, have reached enlightenment. I welcome you to Nirvana.’

The car park is full of stalls. Each is pored over by a bedraggled multitude. An elderly gentleman sits calmly behind his own table laden with junk. He counts the contents of his biscuit tin, draws on his pipe and blows a cloud of smoke into the cold, damp air.
A long-haired young man examines a small yet curiously heavy metal device, drops twelve pounds into the blue tin and hurries home.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Away in a manger

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:20:38 +0000

Away, be a stranger

Al Stravinsky

It's that time of year again. I don't like it. I remember opening the last of my presents, casting the paper onto a heap of similarly shredded festive wrappings, looking into the deflated pillowcase and wondering...

'Is that it?'

Not that I didn't get much because, for a kid in the early sixties when plastic was a novelty and a Mars bar cost 6d, I got quite a lot compared to the rest of year. No, that hollow feeling in my gut meant,

'Is that it?' as in, 'Surely, Christmas is about something else?' At least, that's what I interpret it as now.

I'm not a Christian. Jesus probably existed, was probably - no certainly - a wonderful chap. But 2,000 years later and look at us. Planet poisoned. More and more ways to kill ourselves and others. Arabs, Jews and Christians still at each other's throats. Kids starving, dying for the want of a glass of clean water. Preventable diseases running amok because arms are prioritised above drugs. And here we are in a 'credit crunch', bemoaning the rising cost of water, gas, electricity, oil and food when half the world have easy access to none of those things. They don't even know if their children will live to see another day. Can you imagine that? Whether ours have the right colour Nintendo DS in their sack of goodies is not really something we should be concerned with at all. 'Away in a manger...'

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Underwearld

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:42:05 +0000

Wonder where

Dead underwear

Goes

When it’s cast asunder, dare

I risk a social blunder in

Assuming Satan’s plundering

Our nether garments for his

Underworld?

In Hades,

Maybe,

Ladies’ negligees he saves

From lacy graves

Of course!

It’s corsets

That he hoards, it’s

Y fronts, boxers,

Thongs and socks – are

Socks a

Fiendish

Fetish in his

Underweary world?

So,

Old Nick nicks our

Knickers,

Steals the

Kinky drawers of vicars,

While the

Fallen angels frolic -

A black mass of diabolic

L y c r a, leather, latex lingerie

For his Satanic Majesty.

Amongst the fire and

Brimstoned halls - where

Canny souls wear Camisoles, some-

-times Rosemary’s baby-dolls -

The thief of briefs torments our smalls,

Bras, s h i f t s and vests and

Chemisettes.

The

King of Darkness

Always gets

Our

Dear departed

Under garments

For his

underwearld.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Acrostic Carol

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:14:14 +0000

Christ the Saviour, born today,
Holy infant - so they say.
Rise up angels, sing to him,
In the town of Bethlehem.
Shepherds came and three wise men
Travelled far, their gifts to bring -
Myrhh and frankincence and gold,
As the Bible has foretold.
Say a prayer for this little boy,
Christmas is a time of joy!

Can’t recall when I last ate, they say
Half the world is in this state.
Really miss my family
Is there no-one to help me?
Starving children everywhere, you’re
Too wrapped up in greed to care.
Many more will die today
As you stuff the food away.
Say a prayer for this little boy,
Christmas is a time of joy!

Unacrostic Chorus
Say a prayer for you and me,
Christmas is a travesty.
Sing it loud and sing it clear,
Try to change the world next year.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend