Archive for 2009

Sans

Fame puts you there where things are hollow

This morn­ing, I woke up, wiped the sleep from my blood­shot eyes, and decided that I was going to be fam­ous. Now. Now I’m fam­ous. There. I became fam­ous in the same moment that I typed the word ‘now’. At this pre­cise point in time, right this minute, I am a legend. A legend in […]

From the pen of Mr Chen

Gosh, that rhymes. Any­one would think I liked writ­ing or some­thing. But clearly not much. Any­way, enough about me. Really. Enough about me. This is an import­ant pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. If you haven’t yet ven­tured into the world of Writers’ Bloc, why the hell not? You should do. It’s good. Bet­ter than cheese. Almost. Where […]

World domination is all a matter of interpretation

They say that I need a plan. Who­ever they are. I say that I have a plan. A twelve-step plan, I say. They ask if I am an alco­holic. I recon­sider my reply. They say that I need a plan. Who­ever they are. I say that plans are for career­ist swine, for cap­it­al­ist scum, for faceless […]

Self-publicity or nervous breakdown? You decide

If you think my writ­ing is impen­et­rable, obscure, even pre­ten­tious, then standby for a rev­el­a­tion, for I am about to speak plainly. Or should that be write plainly? I don’t know. Indeed, I prob­ably don’t care either. But whichever it is, I will be plain and simple and straight­for­ward in the deliv­ery of what I […]

Like therapy, minus the Freudian overtones

With an unchar­ac­ter­istic degree of self-confidence that briefly lulled me into think­ing I might be a ‘some­body’ in online writ­ing terms, I let Ryan Man­ning ask me a series of deep and mean­ing­ful ques­tions for his inter­view site, thunk. Good luck read­ing to the end of all I said. I was clearly labour­ing under the […]

Dead people’s things for sale #4

Kill all angels

Ima­gin­a­tion is a whore. A filthy yet fickle whore. Comes to me and for me, spread-eagled and pout­ing, offer­ing up everything on a wooden plat­ter. Then she with­draws, closes up and turns away. A frost des­cends. She’s ice cold, white and drained. yes i know you want fuck­ing angels and more fuck­ing angels and all […]

Three-ring circus

Down on my luck, with a few scrap­ings to my real name and even fewer clip­pings to my vir­tual one, I took myself off to the end of that slow and once grace­ful meander, where the well-heeled lux­uri­ous palaces — built in styles of archi­tec­ture bear­ing their regal inspir­a­tion and car­ry­ing blue plaques pay­ing testament […]

From fecund to feckless

I’ll try and speak and shout and scream above the sirens for you, dearest. Raise my faded energy loss voice and alco­hol addled larynx above the soused spec­tat­ors on the streets out­side and down and dead. So, yes, you should be warned that there’s one stink­ing shit­load of Fri­day night fren­zied fuck­ing and fest­iv­it­ies going […]

The sickly smell of sacrifice

Jesus had been hanging around on the cross for three long days. Frankly, he was get­ting rather tired of it. His arms hurt from all that stretch­ing, the strain was tear­ing them from their sock­ets, and he had bloody great holes in his hands. As for what all this expos­ure to the ele­ments was doing […]

Hoisting my Jolly Roger

If you like mess­ing about in boats, might I recom­mend dress­ing up as a drunken sailor and then drop­ping anchor at Six Sen­tences, where you will find my frig­ate fly­ing its flag of con­veni­ence. Or some­thing. I think that’s one too many dread­ful sea­far­ing puns, so I’ll stop now.

So speaks the voice of experience

Turn left. She is all polite­ness, but laced with the venom of palp­able men­ace. Turn left. Don’t want to. You can’t make me. Turn left. But I prefer the river. You can’t. You can’t go in the river. Why not? I could be quite the most expert of drown­ers. I could suck up city effluent […]

Sounding the life cycle

Stay silent, stay prone Recum­bent, even Under this late-flowering can­opy Dead-headed to pre­vent fur­ther Infest­a­tion, molesta­tion To pro­mote new growth Of tell-tale green shoots Split open, then, to stop the telling Of plants talk­ing back Through mouth­ing leaves Stay silent, stay prone Open to the touch Of these tender traps, if you let them grasp […]

Dead people’s things for sale #3