Midsummer.

Posted: June 21, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Meteorological, Public Announcements | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Midsummer.

Sunset seen from Crystal Palace. © David Secombe.

Peadar O’Donaghue:

I wish to die on

A Summer Solstice night with a fish and chip sky,
death kissing me slow and taking me quick
under salty stars speckling the seaside malty dome.
Fuck winter when nothing more can be said
to make saccharine of what’s gone before,
I’ll quit while I’m ahead,
not washed out, wasted,
wistful for lost wishes, words and cadaverous dreams.

Let the tolling bells be
drop dead gorgeous midsummer night dead-ringer brunettes
or doppelganger blondes, light-headed in rosy oblivion.
May my life be lost in space, and earth’s other worlds,
let all meaning be beeps and dots and dashes and x and o’s.
I’ll check cheques and balances on the tightrope
of unequal parallels like comet tails in midnight flight
flashing listless lights bright across the beauty of barren skies.

Shooting words like fish in a barrel
sending messages of blood shaped craft
in drunken elevation of life and quantum delight,
as heady giddy twirling unborn space-age masses might
shift the warm succulent truculent air
in the shifting drifting shape of yourself,
as you are, as you were, as you will be,
in a world without end or beginning.

You who are not alone, are all alone.
You who know well that
those who are dead are gone, and not gone.
All that is, was.

The ghosts are the breeze that push you,
through the darkness they guide you,
their warm voices cannot forget you,
shouting loud while the lost world sleeps.
Tonight the cosmos ponders large
on everything in nothing
‘til the yawning chasm claims life,
in sweet embrace, leaving death alone,
soft surrendering as day to night in the
licentious vicissitudes of inexorable desire.

© Peadar O’Donaghue 2017.

There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out.

Posted: June 4, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Catastrophes, Conspiracies, Funereal, London Places, Markets, The Thames | Tags: , | 3 Comments

Tate Modern, Bankside, 2002. © David Secombe.

A Londoner writes, 4 June, 2017:

Obligatory Post-Terrorism Status

Last night I felt some level of fear for the first time with these attacks, simply because I knew a lot of people within the direct vicinity of where an attack was apparently occurring at the time. It was a weird feeling, and I resent that I was made to feel it, but I think while it’s normal for people to feel fear in these situations (well-founded or not), the important thing is the interpretation of, and reaction to, said fear.

There are a myriad of threats far greater than terrorism, including mundane things like the fact that around 40 people die every year from TVs falling on them. However, the nature of these events and the subsequent media frenzy sends people into a state of panic. I’ve already seen enough people online calling for all muslims to be deported, or sent to Guantanamo Bay, or to close our borders. These people are terrified – they fear for their lives, and they are letting that fear drive them to these statements about urgent action and retaliation. This is the manifestation of the “terror” caused by terrorism. It means it was a success, when by all measures it really shouldn’t be. These people are fragile little flowers, quivering in the hot winds of the tabloid.

 

Banksy stencil, Park St., SE1, 2003. © David Secombe.


The way to deal with this shit is to carry on with your life as normal. Disregard the absurd actions of a handful of fucking nutters as exactly that. Don’t be a fucking pussy. Go buy a grilled cheese sandwich in Borough Market. Take a walk along London Bridge, hold your head high and realise there’s nothing to be afraid of, since the simple act of walking down the street is literally more dangerous than terrorists. You’re a fucking daredevil.

 

London Bridge Station, 2003. © David Secombe.

Text © Emil Smith. Special thanks to Katy Evans Bush.