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State of Affairs
Posted in art, Politics, war
Tagged Anthony Howell, art, chaos, destruction, flattened city, murder, radiation bombs, watercolour
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Lost Children
A thousand and a thousand more again,
These little waves roll in along the shore,
And constantly appear and disappear
While mothers tear their useless hair.
Calling, calling one more time:
Each vanishment abruptly noticed
With a sick chill, either when
A pater familias heads for a car-park too soon
Or when Akela stoops to examine
A traction belt too long at the steam fair.
Awful to end up so far ahead of the others
At the Pitch ’n’ Putt, only to discover
Your chums have already abandoned the game;
Worse to be left behind at the toboggan run.
x
And so one calls and calls in vain
Where knee-high marram hides a kink in a track
Up through the dunes where the wartime
Pill-box daubed with obscene requests
Pronounces them bludgeoned or,
No, not yet, they must turn up,
Blistered merely by the Wild Parsnip,
At the Lifeguard Service Point, not under sand –
And then the odd one, the simply forgotten,
Missing, but not missed, ekes out an existence
Trawling for bottles on deserted beaches.
*
An early poem of mine, first published in the TLS. Peter Pan is of course the archetype of the lost child, and I am reading J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens” which, though published later, must surely have preceded the West End popular play featuring Wendy, Captain Hook and Neverland. This earlier version is a surreal masterpiece, tragic, and hauntingly written, and with the strangest of all Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to accompany the writing. I plan to write an essay on it soon.
Posted in art, Poetry
Tagged Anthony Howell, J.M. Barrie, Kensington Gardens, Lost Children, Peter Pan, poetry
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A Dim View
We are witnessing a phenomenon: a process that magnifies space.
Whatever enters its zone will enlarge – as did Alice
After she ate that very small cake, on which the words
“EAT ME” were marked in currants. However, in this case,
There’s nothing to drink that could make things diminish. Everything
Simply gets bigger. A midge becomes a mammoth. A spat an open war.
A minor irritation an upset that threatens your life.
An underage girl an ogre’s wife. You walk into it
x
And there is just no way of getting out of it: the exits
Are too small. Worst of all, that which has grown
Continues to grow: malign as a cancer – and certain to end
In a big cloud that will radiate annihilation soon.
So what’s to be done? Well, nothing. So far as the situation
Is concerned. Though, like Voltaire, you can tend your own garden,
In your imagination – a garden where the flowers shrink,
And the blown rose grows ever so pink
x
And becomes a bud, then less than that, and age is reversed
So Armageddon never actually gets reached.
Of course this is all a figment. We must prepare for the worst,
But what’s to prepare, Amigo? Our defences have been breached.
x
Posted in Poetry, Politics, war
Tagged Alice, Anthony Howell, Armageddon, despair, poetry
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GREY SUIT ARTS MENTORING SERVICE
I am currently offering mentoring in Writing (prose and poetry), Art, Time-Based Studies (including film, video and installation), Performance Art and Art History.
Contact: open gmail and then send a message via editorial@greysuiteditions.co.uk –
This mentoring can be at The Room – https://the-room.org.uk/ or online via WhatsApp –
There is the possibility of showing performances at The Room – but an extra charge of £15 an hour will be applied for hire of the space.
My fee will be negotiable, depending on the needs of the person requiring feedback. That is, if you want me to crit your poem I will do it for less than I will charge for reading your novel.
Tango Tuition is also offered.
Fees may be waived in exchange for gardening services or transport help.
For more details see General Enquiries on the Room website contact page.
Biographical information here
*
Posted in art, Dance, Key Links, Performance Art, Poetry, Tango, Uncategorized, Video
Tagged Anthony Howell, art, art history, Grey Suit Editions, Performance Art, poetry
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The Meaning of Nowhere
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It started out as such a nice day
But then a cloud crept up and the day grew overcast.
Your spirit clouded over too. But ‘nowhen’, we don’t say.
Perhaps we should. It’s best to hit upon a process
Rather than a plot. It’s not a matter of cause and effect.
Nowhere – the space that time forgot.
x
It’s the elephant in the room leaving no room
For us others. Its presence is absence – a disgrace!
But why make such a fuss out of not being able to locate it?
Some wade in until they are out of their depth.
Others are just dropped into the deep to flail about.
Maybe they flail in a landward direction. Then again, maybe not.
x
As for nowhere, many poems get there
Lickety-split, without a clue to its meaning.
Plato hated poets and devised philosophy
To counter Homer’s lies. He would be appalled, I’m sure
By today’s cos-play homilies tarted up as verse
Whose freedom’s a curse contaminated by some petty simile.
x
I don’t feel that this poem’s getting anywhere.
It is not a painting of night, not a cloud above a wood.
Not a woman looking back at the sunken boat of her virginity.
It can accumulate line after line,
But is it any closer to being understood?
It should have been written by John Ashbery.
x
Another Kiev engineered False Flag!
Christ! I get so angry with the ignorance that wrings its hands while accusing Russia of attacking that Lavra cathedral in Kiev. It is complete and absolute bullshit that Russia bombed this cathedral. Russia is the defender of the Orthodox faith. Everyone with any knowledge of what is going on knows this. The Fascist tyrant Zelensky has committed a false flag blaming Russia of course, but he has been harrrassing priests and kicking out monks and destroying sacred spaces since 2014. Russia began the SMO to protect Russian speakers from the tyranny which begun with the US/UK orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014 – guided by Victoria Nuland and her PNAC Nazi organisation. After that Zelensky banned Russian from being spoken and attacked the orthodox religion supplanting it with an artificial and false religious alternative. If World War three begins by us defending Kiev Nazis and Globalist power from the BRICS multi-polar world which is inevitably taking over from the European Colonialist bandits who profit from arms sales and dead Ukrainians, then we will be fighting on newly armed Germany’s side, and we will be on the wrong side of the war and of history. We have a nostalgia for World wars in the UK because we feel we won the last two. This nostalgia is misplaced. In the last war it was the Russians who beat the Germans and the Russians who suffered the greatest number of casualties. Only the banks and the billionaires want war, and use the media they own to lie about what is actually happening; and they are the only ones who will gain from it.
Another piece of evidence of Zelensky’s guilt in the supposed “shelling” of the Lavra is that there are photographed preparations for the staging. The camera tripod and preparations for filming were carried out BEFORE THE LAVRA WAS “SHELLED”. Photos show there is no external debris either, so rather than a shell, it was a device detonated INSIDE the building.
Posted in Politics, war, Whistleblower Lit
Tagged False flag, Kiev, Lavra, Russia, Ukraine
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Paintings and Drawings of Paris
Over 100,000 views!
Very pleased that my journal has now had well over 100,000 views and over 65,000 visitors. Thank you everybody. This encourages me to continue evading niches. Most views were for my poetry, then for my art and then for my politics. So it is proof that you don’t have to restrict yourself to one box.
Posted in art, Poetry, Politics, Uncategorised, Uncategorized
Tagged Anthony Howell, art, Performance Art, poetry, Politics
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To Sir Charles Sedley
x
Tame as we may appear to be, Brits are good at
Anarchy. Much appreciated are the japes
Perpetrated by St Trinian’s and the training
In revolt offered by that riot-prone establishment.
x
The Pistols got it right, and rough music
Spurs our charivari on – epitomised by Punch
And Judy. Fuck the system. Turn things upside-down.
Beat your pots and pans. Go rampaging
x
Through the streets. Scandalise the magistrates.
Model your role on that “Merry Gang”
Which included Rochester and Sedley.
From a tavern’s balcony in Bow,
x
Sedley and a pair of kindred spirits,
Shocked and delighted a crowd below
With blasphemous and obscene antics.
Sedley “showed his nakedness” – wrote Pepys.
x
As if he were from thence preaching
A mountebank sermon from a pulpit,
Sedley said he was there to sell such triturate
As should cause all the cunts in town
x
To run most hotly after him.
To prove it, Sedley chose to masturbate.
That being done, he took a glass of wine
And washed his prick in it.
x
Then drank it off, took another and drank
The King’s health. Nothing protects
Our emphatic right to be eccentric
More than our juries. They can acquit who they please.
x
And while some Lord Chief Justice
May opine that it is because of wretches
Like Sedley “that God’s anger and judgement
So hangs over us,” me, I don’t give a toss.
x
So hangs over us.” Me, I don’t give a toss.
x
Posted in Uncategorized
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Ode on Conflict
x
Conventional once more, Warfare can nevertheless
Take the world as her stage. A period piece perhaps,
Featuring asymmetric tanks. Nostalgic gear
Of the Great War – what the Napoleonic ones were
To the Victorians. There in the national memory.
We thought nuclear deterrence safeguarded us
From another world affair. But we were wrong.
Anywhere can be the next proxy. Similar to the memory
Of abuse, the memory of war fascinates
Its victims. So should war be viewed as a trauma
The species suffers from, is indeed driven by?
x
Boots on the ground. The martial poetry of it all.
Now we have entered the labyrinth knotted for us by Thucydides.
We’ll lose the next. And most of us know it.
The Rakshas are the mob. They run things.
And they’ve taken over our votes, ridding us of our rights
As they might strip some starlet of her modesty.
War is a racket, yes. And like most rackets
Built on lies. Deterrence is too vast to put a stop
To missiles though. Back to the trenches. Now plus drones.
A murmuration of them fills the sky.
Why are we so driven to make enemies?
x
It’s the economy, stupid! Capitalism is based on
Consumption, and built-in obsolescence
Means you dump your fridge or stove or car
Or trainers, but what more quickly gets consumed
Than a bullet? Why, its very aim is to be fired.
Munitions are the best dish the system ever tasted.
No excuse. They have to be replaced.
To get Warfare started, you invest in propaganda.
Fear must generate nightmares for folks to get
Behind the effort necessary to ignite her.
So feed their paranoia, one flag at a time.
x
It gets to be addictive. We monitor its theatres:
Parasitic vultures peering through our screens
While people actually perish. Ah, but that’s
Entertainment. Killing enthrals us. Flight or fight
A mechanism which affects our animal reality
So that we move in lock-step towards some massive sacrifice
Believing that our puny act will bring the beast down finally.
It’s a bit like running a gambling joint filled with
One-armed bandits. Those guys and gals
Tugging away at their levers, they have to truly believe
x
That the jackpot will fulfil their wildest dreams.
As for the boss and his staff, they know their bonus giveaway
Is as nothing compared to what these bandits reap them in.
War is very chummy, see, with banditry,
Basically she’s ushered into play by the State behaving
As a criminal. And this keeps happening because
The State itself is staged. Yes, it’s a Shakespearian scenario:
Politician puppets glove the hands of the crooks
Who wield the actual power, endowed by the gains
From previous heists committed maybe centuries ago
By ancestors of those who stand to profit most from mayhem now.
x
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