Monday, November 30, 2009

Hong Kong – First Impressions

This place is tall.

I am on the seventeenth floor and there is a road above my window.

It's a technologically advance place, maybe one of the most on the planet, but they still have old style ring pulls on drinks cans, how 1980's

The supermarkets have lots of greens.

My chop stick skills led to a fork been brought to my table.

Two of my best shirts have splatters from dumplings or chicken legs plopping back down into soup or curry.

The roads don't seem very bike friendly.

The satellite villages have sky scrappers, cloud itchers.

The beer is good and cheap.

Concrete, so many small, tall apartment blocks. Every bit of flat land expanded upwards.

My washing detergent won all the independent tests apart from 'milk/blood'.

Christmas mania.

Roaring, flaming cooking fires, flash cook beautiful fish.

Bustling market, fake, cheap copies.

Car horn impatience.

Gambling island Las Vegas.

Portuguese mo pad, yellow and red building influence.

Long working hours. Silent lift accents.

Pollution burning lungs, underground the world on the MTR.

Hong Kong - The Journey To

Aeroplane engine hum.
Familiar lonely song.
Suspended between worlds.
Worlds which are only
A few seas apart.

The vibrancy of change
Which strikes bolts of fear
And love
Through hearts.
An ode to the engine,
Hum, song.
The shrinking world.
Grand bass of my life.

Ripped from tender,
Post uteric.
Loving relationship.
Ripped and kicked far away.
Time zone change.
Internet phone account.
Frequent flyer discount;
Privilege cards in glittering
colours.

Global personna.
Lonely and lost.
Craving I no longer know
What?
It was until economies melted,
A two up two down.
A Georgian brick terrace.
My lover and a garden.

Now any excuse to work.
I need money for pens.

Hong Kong, before.

The second flight away in less than a year, where am I going? Leaving Squid behind, what I am doing? Moving to Hong Kong, the lure of The East, the corporate east this time, not the jungle and mountainous of the remote east. Dim sum and glass sky coffins. Tropical skies and associated deluges. Reading shows and people speak of Hong Kong's many faces, sleazy, capitalist, diverse. Hunting ground for the dollar, prostitution, Buddhism, Christianity, Cantonese, suits and ties.

Britannia turned this island in the 1850's from farming and fishing villages to global economic quarterback, a banking axis with Shanghai, HSBC, red and white now sits on many a countries street corner. Neon lights, I suspect the outward normal sprawl, flickering signs of suburbia, missing 'el's from the Hotel advert. The modern center, the renovated, the places that move with times, a trait of capitalism to adapt to circumstance and environment, the dragons mouth, breathing fire.

Hong Kong Island, expatriate haven, Chinese refuge, mixing bowl, east meets west soup on a tropical island with surfing beaches, serpents, electronic music, banned Falun Gong, discotheques and chop stick handling skills. Will these pre-conceptions be true?

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Emigrating Today

New Places,
The confusion of
The unknown to
The excitement of
The exploration.

A heart beat,
A new phase,
A different page.

Like any step,
Fear and sadness.
Lost and found.

New people with
New hair cuts.
Ever more
Distant hands
Waving goodbye.

A change bridged
By love.
Beautiful connection.
To beautiful to loose.

I probably should
Be packing.
Not writing poems.
Procrastination?

What will this change
Begin?
What will this change
Relieve?
I don't know,
However,
The easy road is usually
Wrong.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A secret location, no dress code.

Underneath a railway arch,
A car park or a disused warehouse.
One night only, blue neon lights.
And a distinct bass throb.

Milling people stand, huddled.
A steaming impatient queue.
Security and cloak rooms,
Apprehension and excitement.

The bass hum now phater.
Built upon with middle and treble.
Lights escape from hidden arenas.
Groups of people meet; great and smile.

Corridors open onto dance floors.
Strobe lights, beats and moving feet.
Musicians play the crowd,
Like a pumping Bavarian accordion.

Luke cold cans of overpriced beer,
Chemical enhancement,
Could be anything.
Hugs and silly hats, laughing faces.

Beats, notes and samples make rhythms,
Moments evolve, drop and decay.
No longer trapped on an Apple Mac.
0's and 1's turned to synaptic pleasure.

Different rooms, different roots,
Different cities, different languages.
Different decades.
The same love for
The electronic.
The digital.
The Dj
The producer.
The dance.

Sunrise at a bus stop.
Ringing ears, in need of a shower.
Milk delivery woman acquaintance.
The real world?

Friday, November 13, 2009

Umbrella Aside

So it’s dark in the evenings now and wet in the days; I was forced to spend £6.99 on an umbrella to keep my woolens and impermeable skin dry, I didn't want either shrinking. The next problems was the new and frightening world of umbrella politics. Mainly a tool of social conscience developed in the late 60’s, it is designed to prevent eye loss of passer byes and provides an introduction into the mathematical fathoming of moving 200 opened umbrellas through a river of central London Worker Traffic (LWT), whilst getting only the scruffy wet. Needless to say I am new to the tool so my umbrella had eye balls and even a small raven stuck to the points after only a few meters. In the end my umbrella was confiscated by the wind and I got wet. Well that was £6.99 well spent.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Zombie Revenge

Inspiration:

People – Squid (always looking beyond the obvious)
Blogs - http://www.thecleanwhitepage.com - offbeat incentive
Books – Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong – Animism and the big ones
Music – N-Type, King Cannibal & Joker (bass heavy madness)

It wasn't long after I got bit, perhaps only ten or fifteen minutes, that things began to change. Looking back now, I guess the main change was in my feelings, my friends, well I call them friends, the people who escaped together, ran together and attempted to 'survive' together; they were my fleeting friends. In our minds I assume we all felt the same; it would work out like in the movies, we'd be hero's, fall in love; fuck to dying cinema lights across the world. We never considered that 'fatal' bite to be a lucky card.

For most people before us, death meant a sudden change, a loss of memory and a new innocent life - what ever was appropriate. But for us, death was a protracted process, a journey that would make us understand and value every future breath. A chance to be part of the living dead.

It was the sudden loss of identity, narcissism and person. This hit home hard at fast. Groups of people suddenly began to act as one, an evil one I admit, but a short lived collective one at least. There was so much death and human consumption that all our preconceptions of a world evaporated. I admit a greed filled us to consume and I think posses, but suddenly the mind was attempting to leave a body with deserted eyes, it was trying to find the next stage, but had time to glimpse the previous whilst knowing there was a next.

It was this moment, when the old human conscious was erased, questions were answered. No one had predicted this outside of the b movie cinemas, there was no plan, no army on stand by, no safe zones or escape. It consumed humanity and brought it together. Gradually we sat down to stave and thought, we prepared for the next – together. And yes this is where we ended up, jumping passed a few steps.

Scribbler Award

Wow, thank you Jamie Nicole (reasons to forget) for the award & certificate. It really made my blogging month....

So i have to post the rules and select my five favourite blogs. Well some of them may well have been awarded an award before, but two shouts can never make someone sad.

The rules:

-Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass the award on to five most deserving bloggy friends.

-Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author and the name of the blog from whom s/he has received the award.

-Each Superior Scribbler must display the award on his/her blog, and link to The Scholastic Scribe, which explains the award.

-Each blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr Linky List. That way, they'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives this prestigious honour.

-Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Number One in my world, Squid - scribblesquid her sereal art and words rock my world.

Not just 'cause she gave me the award, but because reading her words is like standing in the torrent of life. Jamie Nicole (reasons to forget)

Since i read the first sentence i was hooked by the honesty and realism of the words here, Stacey Sidebottom, My Brain In Blog Format

Some great poems here, they constantly evolve too. The Reticent One pOETIC aDVENTURES oF tHE rETICENT oNE

Just came across this one Tina Lonergan The Clean White Page and it's brilliant, it's off beat.

So that's my five, maybe i needed ten.

keep up the great blogs.

mark

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Autumn Sky

Influences – Train ride to London reading Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong

Autumn evening skies are black with night, an almost comforting black, the kind that proceeds the cold of winter. In the early purple evening, stars wake up, companions to walk home with. Later their beautiful litter seeps through closed windows as the world slips into night. All this after a late afternoon sun set, a tepid pallet which highlights the enormity of the sky, scattered clouds perspectives slashed with aviation trails.

A gentle cold that condenses breath to white cloud wonderlands. No summer sun to stew the jogger, just that morning autumn air, not yet cold enough to burn lungs but cold enough to create those mysterious wonderlands. The winds breath a sudden bite after it's summer caress.

It's the commute home for many, stranded many lane motorways, clogged with lights both red and white. Like serpents that writhe across fields, passed skeletal trees and huggled thorny bushes. Asphalt loneliness and dreams of a warm dinner. Possibly lasagne or stew and dumplings or roasted squash soup with chilli and bread. An embrace for the lucky a microwave for the lonely.

Hedge fruits, red or black or oaken and hovering birds, rodents collecting for the months ahead. The last of summers elegance caught in the orange and yellow and purple memory of leaves. A temporary death, a hibernation of green, a spiders dream whose web glistens with morning dew in slanted dawn light.

The death of summer is beautiful, a last breath of grace before the barrenness of winter, whose desolation is so complete it can breed hope of the spring and summer to come.