Biography

ICT specialist with management/ICT background and a wholly unrelated love of poetry. Kind of like a modern Novalis, if I may make so bold.

I am very interested in reprising traditional forms of literature. However, I firmly believe there is nothing wrong with extolling Traditional Heroic virtues in art, and my work is not satirical but taut with existential sincerity. To live nobly in pursuit of honor, dying gloriously to leave an everlasting fame - these define the heroic life, and the urban underclass alone embody those values in the modern world. This is why I write about them in epic terms - truly, they are our Homeric heroes. Why should the State have a monopoly on violence?

I am very interested in Traditionalist, anti-bourgeois thinkers like Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola and Rene Guenon - men utterly at odds with contemporary civilization. I am also greatly interested in the aesthetic analyses of Martin Heidegger, who considered poetry to be the key to Being itself, and the poet a kind of seer.

I like Homer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Stephan George, Holderlein, Novalis, Josef von Eichendorf, Goethe, Longfellow, Chatterton, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats, Ezra Pound and a little Philip Larkin. My poetic taste is conservative and Traditional, with little time for formless self-expression:

Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
The base-born products of base beds.

Samples

'Game'

Come live with me, and be my love,
For I am upper-middle class;
I can provide the best for you
Until your blooms of beauty pass;

I will buy you a silver car
Whose burnished bonnet blinds the sun,
That prowls the road with leopard grace
And never leaves a race unwon;

You will not waste your youth in work,
But steep those tender years in wine;
You must not grow outworn by care
Nor old and stooped, before your time;

Since private healthcare shall be yours,
These pretty pleasures long should prove -
So take them while you’re young and still
Can live with me, and be my love.



'Honestus'

All Rome demanded bold resolve
From those about to die:
One must consult with fortitude
The Colosseum's cry

He must not shun the stooping blade,
But meet it with his strength
And savor like a lover's kiss
The coldness of its length,

And in the cool release of death
Should sink, with honor bless'd, -
Like some contented traveler
Reclining into rest.



The Chaviad

Oh gods, how shall I sing of Loco-man
And violent dispute in the cloudy bourn
Of Offerton? Oh Muse, arraign my pen
And fill my fervid vision full of lines
With force to match my hero, and my theme.

One Easter weekend, tired of cheerless work
Did Loco-Man arrange a trial of might
Involving sturdy chavs from near and far.
His famous Boot-Boys, pride of Offerton
Received his call with loyalty and joy.
At Woodbank Park they gathered, one and all,
And waited in the pearly light of dawn
For Loco-Man to shape the coming strife.
Their muscles rippled to the call of War;
Their bright tattoos of noble football crests
All twitched with manic passion. Then it came –
The ruddy advent of the summer sun,
Infusing all the world with glowing gold.

Bold Loco-Man roared up in savage haste,
His Ford Capri a bolt from Heaven’s bourne.
Then forth he leapt, his valour bright as day:
With shaven skull and fine designer clothes
And spotless Nike trainers on his feet,
He looked each inch a prodigal of war.

“Oh peerless Boot Boys, pride of Offerton –
You matchless braves have all you might desire –
United Season Tickets; comely girls
To suck the salty sweetness of your wounds;
The fastest Broadband; quick and shiny cars
And all the other things that make for bliss.
Yet what are these without the thrill of war?
A man must seek the violent edge of life,
And beard the savage bandog in his lair;
There is no joy in miserable peace –
For danger is the tonic of the soul.”

With one great voice, the braves of Offerton
Proclaimed their peerless leader to the skies.
Long seconds passed; than minutes; then an hour,
But still their fabled rivals did not show.
A sense of tense relief afflicted them,
There on the greensward at the edge of dawn.
Then of a sudden, swift a van drew up,
It’s tyres of terror screeching on the shale.
The doors gaped wide; two dozen chavs leapt out,
A sheaf of weapons in their manly fists.

“The hordes of Hyde!” cried fearless Loco-Man,
“The chavs that like their fighting hand to hand!
Prepare yourselves to die or win acclaim, -
This shining chance will never come again.
Now, where is one with heart, a Boot Boy true,
To ask these chavs of Hyde why they are come?
To face us is to risk a gruesome death
And yet these strangers flash their Stanley knives.”

A Boot Boy known as Terry sallied forth:
A knight of truth, the idol of the hour.
Ah, then what vile injustice! Like pitbulls
Loosed upon some hapless stray
To flay and rend with fang his writhing flesh,
The chavs of Hyde surrounded swift their prey,
Unleashing vicious kicks into his head.

But Loco Man perceived the hero’s fall:
He cried aloud, and smote them like a storm.
A chav of Hyde – young Bradley was his name
Was first to feel the onset and the pain.
This Bradley was a peerless City fan,
A season ticket holder. Once he had
Defied all Millwall at the Cold Blow End
With errant songs, and lived to tell the tale.
A pitbull pelt across his shoulders slung
Made Bradley look like Tozzer, god of beer.
Yet Loco Man still smote him like a storm.

As when a bandog meets a rottweiler
And savage strife ensues in park or pit,
So was the combat then. Young Bradley kicked, -
But Loco Man, more swift than Dyno Rod
Now ducked beneath the boot that came his way.
A punch, a butt – and Bradley smote the ground,
Unlovely dark descending on his eyes.

Two packs of pit-bulls than at odds they seemed,
Contesting for the right to rend and roam.
But ten sharp minutes, and the fight was won;
The chavs of Hyde retreated to their van
With all their maimed and wounded. Then they fled
Back down the dusty road to distant Hyde.

Bold Loco-Man surveyed the bloody field, -
The victims lying prone, their senses dashed
By fist or knee or foot, in combat close.
Though Offerton had claimed the victory
The price of it was higher than he cared.

Forsooth, he donned resplendant oxblood Docs,
A gift from dreaded Kevin, god of war.
In all the glory of his hardy youth
He looked a mighty bandog, in his prime,
Who knows how fine and full of strength he is:
And there he goes, across the rubbish-tip
To all the bitches’ haunts of idleness.
Arrayed thus in accoutrements of strife
Bold Loco-Man stood tall, supreme in might.

Then warlike cries beset his eager ears
From out across the car-park, to the west.
His heart beat quick; and in his ears the blood
Roared like the raging furnace of the sea.
His eyes beheld the masterful advance
Of fifty chavs from all around the place –
From storied Brinny, Burnage and the rest.

“Reform your ranks!” cried peerless Loco-Man,
“To arms, to arms, as quick as my Capri!”
Unwearied still, the braves of Offerton
Regained their feet, though all seemed likely lost:
Outworn, outnumbered, and with countless wounds
They braced themselves to fight with raw resolve.

Bold Loco-Man leapt forth, a god of strife, –
Pursuing cruel catharsis, as he must.
Like some stalled Astra in a traffic jam
His first opponent froze, quite terrified.
And thus, poor nameless man, you met your end.
But better to go down in youth and strength
Than languish in this world for grim old age:
Young men in death are clean and beautiful,
And suicide is better than decline.
‘Do not grow old!’ That is the only law
That all who would be heroes must obey!

Beside the flooded reservoir they fought,
In close contention, hour on bloody hour -
Swift Loco blazing like the morning star,
A savage in the mood to kill and rend:
His Boot Boys striving for their native soil
Like golden heroes seeking bright renown.

At noontide on that fabled day of war
The Boot Boys struck together, in a wedge
That swept their fell opponents from the park.
The foe was broken: to their waiting cars
The shattered schiltrons fled, with frantic cries,
Their beaten banners drooping in the wind.
Swift Loco-Man surveyed the stricken field.
His braves were gasping, spent of manly strength, -
Like dogs enwearied by their lonely watch
In some dark crackhouse on the Gipps Estate.

A crate of Crucial Brew was handed out
To slake their thirst, and quicken weary limbs;
It kissed their souls and set their spirits free
So soon, their brave accomplishment was clear:
Against great forces seven times their strength
The Boot Boys had defended well their fief
For five long hours of combat, rich in blood, -
But richer yet in glory and renown.
Down to the pub they staggered, one and all,
To drink and sing and boast the day away.

But now the Muse departs my graphite point,
So we must leave our heroes to their prime;
I thank you, lords and ladies, for your time
And pray the gods will grant you wealth and grace.


Chaviad Glossary

Bandog – Cross between a Neopolitan Mastiff and an AMERICAN PITBULL TERRIER. Often used to guard CRACK HOUSES. The world’s most dangerous dog.
MUFC – Manchester United Football Club.
Crack House - Urban stronghold used for refining and selling Crack cocaine. Often guarded by BANDOGS or PITBULLS.
Crucial Brew – high strength lager.
Dyno-Rod – Drain clearance company.
Cold Blow End – MILLWALL FOOTBALL CLUB'S home End.
Millwall – Millwall Football Club.
Offerton - District of Stockport, demesne of the Offerton Boot Boys, led by Loco-Man. Their rule extends from Bosden Farm to the Strawberry Gardens public house.
Chav – Lumpen Proletarian Youth, usually shaven-headed and often sporting cheap jewellery.
Astra – motor vehicle.
Hyde - Cheshire town, known for its bold, sturdy CHAVS.
Capri – Motor Vehicle formerly popular with CHAVS.
Pitbull – American Pitbull Terrier.
Brinny – Short for Brinnington, a CHAV-infested suburb of Stockport.
City - Manchester City, a football club renowned for its violent supporters.
Burnage - a deprived South Manchester district.
Gipps Estate – Council Estate in Leeds renowned for CHAVS and crime.



My Shipwreck

I’ve seen that bloody river, foam flecked, dark
With horror in my troubled warehouse eyes
And known the secret place where childhood dies
Amidst the screaming slurge of clotted deeps
In frantic terror, to be heard no more;
But I beheld, not long ago, in sleep
Beset by winter waves, yet quite secure
Rolled berthless into raging midnight war
Where exiled ghosts of vanished childhood weep,
A crowded vessel mighty as the sea
Of such a kind had not been seen before

The boat set sail beneath a stormy sky
Heavy with thick clouds, a frozen face
It sought the vision of another place.
A shower fraught with shadows blew us by
And tossed the tresses of the waves to white;
The rolling waters sighed no lullaby
But gazing hopeful from the lookout’s height
The countless vessels passing in the night;
Until at last I saw a city rise,
With countless shining wonders; bright as flame
The crowd rushed out and lost themselves to sight,

But no ship came again to native lands
And so my life was left to pine, and die.
I drifted through the changing phase. Why, why
Could such a vessel, served by eager hands
Be dragged from windward to a silent grave
While mewing flocks of seabirds wheeled nearby?
I stand upon the dock, too late in vain
And watch the sinking sunlight blood the waves
By rusting scaffolds at the edge of day;
But never will that fateful ship return
For she, returning homeward passed away.



Agoraphobia (After Spenser)

I stand half-blent upon these lofty walls
And gaze across the world; wayting weare
A welkin breeze touches the woxen leaves
That crawl, fast-dight, over the stones below;
Trinal stormcouds gather from the south;
The snaggy wooded hills transmew dark green
As sandstone, swept by stound and thrillant winds
Throws sulleyn sky-dust over thrusting snubbes.
The moat stormed by habilliment of ferns,
Its watch of hardiment now forgotten:
Then griesly fear hews grenning on the wind –
The blood within my chest grows hartlesse chill –
The fields afore a carpet far below,
Unfolding far exanimate away
They move into horizons ghostly pale
And alchemed others lit by summer sun.
A scruzed feeling like to lust-sick love
With shend, eddying tides of vertigo
Then makes me quav’ring think that I could fall
Amate from off the suface of the world;
Those surviewed, distant, bright and silver fields
Beneath the suborned sun merge with the sky
And randon I as they y-melt away
Into the maugre cloudes, into the world,
Into the perlous storm, into the rain
That freshly argent now begins to fall.
My feet are hazardize froze to the grass,
My trembling hand is clutching at the rail,
As unrecoyled I cling onto the world
That I, like hills, and ruins in the grass
Might never fall away into the sky
From off my fraughten, whirling, heady height:
And only more I fear the trussed storm
Will strike me from the aer’s enlofted perch,
That wyzled winds will grow and ever blow
And, grinding at the castle with their teeth
Must cast me off into their sweep, or down
Far down and dreaming all the hurtlen way
To smash myself forespent upon soft grass
And rolling hills, among the grazing cows.



The Shield of Marc Lepine (After Auden)

She looked over his shoulder
For planes and tanks at war,
Pronouncements by dictators
And arbitrary law,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
A modern family courtroom
As spiritless as lead.

A court bereft of justice, cold and bare,
A place reviled of honour and of truth
Where welfare workers spoke of ‘love’ and ‘care’,
With all the stark naivity of youth
(And no regard for honesty, or proof);
The schizoid Judge in judgement took her time,
Considering no evidence, imagining a crime.

Then out of air a judgement shadow-deep
Declared him guilty, and his children hers;
And all his hard-earned assets hers to reap
Or he would sup in jail, or somewhere worse;
His unbelieving lips could not yet curse
Unless ‘contempt’ be added to his ‘crimes’ –
A tired addendum to these troubled times.

She looked over his shoulder
For vast atrocities;
For Dachau, and for Belsen -
For moral mysteries;
But on the glinting metal
Where these things should have been
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

An ageing cougar, bondless and alone
Surveyed the wreckage of her fifty years,
Bewept her youth and beauty, long since gone
With eyes beyond the misery of tears,
And felt the chilly clasp of primal fears;
Why would a solvent partner take her on
With all this baggage, and her face undone?

The string of thugs that ploughed her furrow fair
Now lay in jail or under marble cold,
Or in some cell of underclass despair
Consumed by drugs, and prematurely old,
The willing sheep their dealers bought and sold;
Her sons were feral savages, so wild
She cursed the very concept of each child.

She looked over his shoulder
For killers and their crimes,
For Nazis and for Stalinists
In strife-tormented times,
But wide amaze remade her eyes
For on the shining shield
His hands had set stark winter skies,
Above a muddy field.

A savage chav with sharply-shaven head
Surveyed the scene, with predatory eyes;
He longed to find a child, and coax it dead -
Feast deep upon its shrill and frantic cries,
His long, dark drink and sanguinary prize.
His father was a thug he’d never known,
Who’d tried his mother’s bed, and left alone.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To grace the cold, hate-strong
Woman-killing hands of Marc Lepine,
Who would not live long.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

Last blog entry

The Pit

Posted on Saturday 6th March 2010 11:50 am

Some fragments:

 

"The Pit is such a place, where peerless deeds

Are writ with potent wyrd, and heroes wild with passion

Stake all on their steel-resolve, certain of God's grace."

 

"You must have drained a dog ere daring that, you cur!"

Said Loco-Man - the leader, called the Lord of Pain.

"Now heed, who has not heard the hoary truth:

We fought a fearsome force of feral chavs,

Steel-thewed and sturdy, as steadfast as a hoary apple-tree

That stands in solitude, scattering the days."

 

And brawny braves with biceps iron-strong

Forgather'd in their fiefs, with fierce resolve.

 

Like the wicked wolves of winter's cloak

They frantic fought, fearlessly striking

The Suicide Squad's strong fighters.

Not for nothing had noble Loco

Come, his killing kicks and punches

Heavy, hard and hateful to the foe.

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