been storms, wind shredding trees and scaffolding and tearing the sea up by the roots, and making a raw, savage mockery of the smug and easy glide of commerce, of commuting. (infrastructure? pah! pick yer way through this fancy iron tangle) i just go to and from work passing through the waterblasted city... i like living, besieged by the elements; it seems like there IS life and i’m o. k... i don’t have to besiege myself. i went and visited my friend Steve in Brighton and recorded some music: acid-fried Chrome-disco, anyone? anyone? oh, fuck...

... briefly exempted from the work stupor, one of the Italian guys in Banqueting gave me a glass of wine when i went to make myself a coffee, one of those little touches of conviviality that remind you you’re a human being, dammit....

dappled the footpaths passing
under
broad daylight’s rusted
superstructure

the gasometers:
giant vats of mauve cloudy
foam emissions gilt scum
and burst bubbles swirling

in the cuttings flash
autumn iron tracks
hoarse gravel and leaves...

death’s sodden ochre missives,

which needn’t trouble you now;
they’re not addressed to you;
not yet, anyhow.

after Karin Boye:

(it is edenic, here in the suburbs)

ichor-cola

green and savage buds upon the boughs

first crisply bitten, rosy glass of appleskin

shimmers like broken mirrors

of course it hurts...

breathe in

i’ve been learning some wonderful Scots expressions. A whisky can be a “wee goldie” or a “nippy sweetie”. To be “capernoited” is to be irritably or peevishly drunk, to be ‘blootered’ is to be totally pissed. ‘Perjink’ is ‘just so’, ‘spik and span’. A ‘stooshie’ is a fight or commotion... also, i was talking to a French friend last night, Magali, and she was trying to think of the term “wild fowl” and came up with “savage chicken”... AD’s coming round for dinner tonight... Jayne and i went to an amazing exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, where i used to work. It’s called “Spectacular Bodies” and examines the historical interaction between art and the study of anatomy. My favourite work was a piece of sculpture by Katherine  Dowson, called “Pia Mater”. It was a giant spine made out of blown glass, backlit and suspended in a darkened stairwell. It was so simple and elegant, so pure and icily luminous, emanating little plashes of refracted light like the aurora borealis, a ghost cathedral, surrounded by calm, vanishing traces of stained glass. It was majestic.

... also in that exhibition i went to there was an installation which utilised footage of open-heart surgery. To be confronted with the actual organ, severed from hazy notions of its heroic indefatigability, was disturbing. In the flesh, exposed, it’s repulsive. It looks like a squirming, blind alien THING, mindlessly humping (sic). Fucking. Fucking what? Nothing. Just fucking. Gross.

Paris is ace. We both want to live there. An osmotic education in refinement; aperitif... digestif... of course, how else would one dine? Went to the Pompidou; personal highlights were: Joan Miro’s studies in ‘blueness’ in a room w. a couple of Jackson Pollocks, Gerhard Richter’s room, Yves Klein, and a collection of Andre Breton’s ‘stuff’ (collections of insects, a stuffed Pekinese, photo of beautiful woman (beloved?), African fetishes etc.). o. k., more later.

Cameron Bain is a poet and guitar-worrier of the sublime who works at the Royal Automobile Club because they have a black marble bathroom and are unlikely to spring him for anything important. He thinks he lives in London in extenuating circumstances.