My annus horribilis, 2011 resolutions & a poem for you, Because I almost died.

It's been a bit of a shit year, to put it mildly, one month of it spent in hospital. Here's what happened:

January: Knackered, Winter, erectile dysfunction.

February: My 30th birthday funeral a success but exhausting despite my only having to lie there. Joined Archway gym to try and get back in shape. Migraines. A threesome fails to appeal. I think I have a chest infection.

March: More migraines, breathlessness, phleghm. Brain scan (negative). Turns out I had heart failure, blood clot on the heart and a chest infection.

April: In hospital for about three weeks in total. Almost died. Failed. You can read about it here: http://www.utterspokenword.com/news/?m=201004 Moved back home with parents for a bit. Mother... confused. Back on benefits.

May-June: In lots of pain walking. At least I lost lots of weight. Regained weight, in fat. Muscles flimsy. Phleghm creamy. Working on Free Fringe Spoken Word, of which I am Director, helps give me a reason for living.

July: Up all night hacking. Go to hospital. DO latitude festival despite being exhausted and in pain, after all, it might be my last chance. Pretty depressed, unable to cry. Looking at mobility scooters. In hospital (again) for three days. Put on new drugs. Begin to get a bit better.

August: 'Utter!' spoken word at Edinburgh Free Fringe. Manage to get through it, great audiences and performances with support of all involved, especially James McKay and Niall Spooner-Harvey. Housemate, flyering for us, which I was grateful for, is disappointed her peformance doesn't lead to instant fame and stops talking to me. Spoken word at the Fringe a great success, we don't lose money on the show. Full report here: http://www.freefringeforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=911

September: Erectile dysfunction ends. Failed love affair.

October: Unceremoniously booted out of houseshare. Housemates refuse to say what I'm supposed to have done, but housemate from Edinburgh accuses me of being 'homophobic' and 'sexist', which will come as a surprise to most of my friends, especially female and gay ones. Paranoia can be hurtful not just to those who suffer from it. Thankfully, echocardiogram reveals heart has shrunk and ejection fraction back up to 27%. Bought painting of an Indian chief executed by a retard.

November: Back at home. Becomes increasingly obvious my Mum's memory problems are much more than depression, arthritis, and bad eyesight, though she has these too.

Dad inadvertently reveals he has ankylosing spondylitis, degenerative back condition, which can be hereditary. He has known for all of my life and has never told me or my two sisters, or been to the doctor with it in that time. He doesn't even realise/accept there's anything wrong with this behaviour. If untreated the vertebrae of the spine actually fuse together, causing paralysis.

ICD goes off on dancefloor of The Planet nightclub, Wolverhampton. Two more days in hospital before I find out there's nothing (new) wrong with my heart. Was trying to impress girl who turns out to have boyfriend. I have bad ear wax.

December: Do fun workshop for Harringey Disability forum then go off on well-deserved holiday to Cyprus with parents. Winter sun welcome. Back at home, pipe bursts and house floods. Many books, walls, ceilings, destroyed. Turns out, after much fretting, that we do however have insurance. See in the New Year in a B&B in Wolverhampton.



It's a good job I'm on drugs which, by limiting my heartrate, also make it physically impossible to get stressed. Lucky there are these positive side-effects, as I'll be on these drugs for the rest of my life!

I have been reading quite a few self-coaching books to help me cope with all this shite, but I suspect that what I take to be a mature calm about things may also be a resignatory self-detachment in which nothing means anything.

But I have been trying to 'turn positives to negatives'. I've managed to condense this year of misery through the fractional distillation process of poetry into about fifty minutes of amusing philosophical material: my first one-person show 'Richard Tyrone Jones Has a Big Heart.'

And in a year like this you really find out who your true friends are. So thanks to all of you who've been so supportive, and stuck by me despite my being low. You know who you are. Those who haven't can continue to enjoy how their their petty small-mindedness limits their own lives.

I was determined not to let illness defeat me, even if it could kill me. So a few small pricks certainly haven't got me down. If my own heart couldn't finish me off, at least for the time being, next year will be all about getting around the country, doing gigs, earning money doing what I enjoy, and all the haters can fuck off. Life is literally too short. So here's my New Year's resolutions: if I fail, then at least I fail trying.

Health: Get back to normal walking speed & stamina. Walk daily to work up to finish the Offa's Dyke walk in Spring and walk Hadrian's Wall in August/Sept. Lose half a stone. Reward yourself by watching all of Twin Peaks.

Wealth: Go back to self-employment: tour show, do more workshops, tours etc. Aim to earn £10k next fiscal. Reward: one month's winter sun.

Personal: Find a nice girl, by fishing in the right pools, not just the poetry circuit: one show-off in a relationship is quite enough... Its own reward.

And learn to drive (possible as long as your ICD hasn't gone off again). Reward: Plan driving holiday for Spring 2012.


Here's to hoping we all have a Happier 2011 than my cunt of a 2010 has been.
Here's a poem for you from the show, which I'll be doing at 'Utter!' sickness on Feb 1st. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=169035279801641. Please do give feedback!


Because I almost died

Now every tenner feels to me
as if it's worth a million
Now every song's a symphony
(except for Robby Williams).
Now every time I'm tired I think
'at least thank god I'm breathing!'
and every time I lose my breath,
at least my heart's still beating.

Thank goodness I can walk,
although I can't walk very fast,
for every step's a giant leap
because it's not my last.
Some folks say 'you've been really brave',
but the reason I've not cried
is that now my life has meaning
...because I almost died.



Now every price tag's ASDA price
every slum's a mansion
each poem I write's a masterpiece
despite its dodgy scansion.
Each B&B's the Marriott
each 'not to be''s a 'be'
Each poet I meet's a laureate
and Everyman is me.

Every splinter is a relic
every measure is a bottle
Every poem is an epic
Each short story is a novel
If life's a search for meaning
I think mine might have arrived
For now my life has a narrative arc –
because I almost died!


Now even the centre of Luton
seems a quaint historic town
All my clothes are Louis Vuitton –
because they're not medical gowns.
Now every open mic's a gig,
and every gig's a festival
and every meal's a gourmet one –
because it's not in hospital.

I thought I was going to be in pain
for the rest of a shortened life -
But as my health has been regained
every girl's a potential wife.
I've retarmac'ed my libidinous parking space
yes, I've got back my sex drive (groan)
but it's sacred now, to feel profane
...because I almost died



Each example is a paragon
Each pot noodle is a feast
Every stroll's a London marathon
Now the acute abdominal pain has ceased
There's a meal in every morsel -
every crisp a whole potater -
I feel practically immortal!
Due to my internal cardiac defibrillator.

Though I sometimes feel like an old man
I'm still too young to die,
I've been through the slough of despond, and
come out the other side.
When things got tough, I'd once get low,
hold thoughts of suicide –
but now I never shall, I know,
...because I almost died.



Yes, every pasty is a Ginster's
Every heckler's a mere wag
Every frog's a princess
and every car's a jag
Every dwarf's a BFG
Each lag's a loveable rogue
Every Summer love's Eurydice
each tramp's ...that bloke out the Pogues?
Every mountain is a molehill
Every puddle is a loch
every sunset makes my soul sing
every ham slice is a hock
The Bill's become The Wire
Every mullet is a mane
Each damp squib's a roaring fire
Every Plan 9's Citizen Kane.
And even if I lose my breath
Each gasp's a laugh in the face of death
I'm shit at chess, so screw you, death
Because I'm still alive.


Yes, If words were bullets I'd be a gatling gun
If hopes were bees I'd keep a hive
Though now it's time I stopped prattling on
about how I'm still alive,
because a lot of people who've had heart failure/been in my position...aren't.

THE END.


Thanks for reading all my moanings.

Poem from when I was 17:

Zopiclone's possible side-effects include 'untrue beliefs' and 'floppy infant syndrome'

A dinosaur looks up and tries to think of a major theme for this poem;
but there can be no major theme for this poem, it is about dinosaurs.

An agrarian scialist looms from his loom to gaze forth
at a future that has been, I'm afraid, long discredited.

And these days postmodernist free verse seems like a good idea,
I shall have my teeth replaced with rust
and sell the real to the rich.




Zopiclone, (brand name Imovane in Canada, and Zimovane in the UK) is a non-benzodiazepine hypnotic agent used in the treatment of insomnia. I've given it the title from a note I made on it underneath the poem. I think I was on it at the time. Probably wrote this late at night like much of my writing throughout my life.

The genetic conditions song (WIP, feedback & suggestions appreciated)

The Genetics 13.10.10 version

(with apologies to Tom Lehrer and Gilbert & Sullivan)

Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgFh6IAQoDA


There's cancer and porphyria and hypercalciuria
adrenal hypoplasia, dystrophia myotonica
and hypochondroplasia, 5 Leiden thrombophilia
And hyperoxaluria, methemoglobinemia,
Classic Galactosemia and sickle-cell anemia
ataxia, hemophilia and beta-thalassemia
propionic acidemia hyperphenylalaninemia, (gasp)
and otospondylomegaepiphyseal dysplasia.


There's Cerebral autosomal dominant ateriopathy
with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy,
And obesity, acrocephaly and compression neuropathy.
And dilated, hypertrophic, and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.


Chondrodystrophy and D-glyc'rate dehydrogenase deficiency,
and nonclassic type demyelinogenic leukodystrophy,
hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase deficiency,
Adrenoleukodystrophy, and just muscular dystrophy.
And Bourneville phakomatosis, perioral Lentiginosis
Tay-Sachs disease and also type 1 neurofibromatosis
Craniofacial Dysostosis, and just plain cystic fibrosis – gasp, gasp, gasp
Dermatosparaxis and Mucopolysaccharidosis


There's cretinism, dwarfism & hyperandrogenism
pantothenate kinase-associated neurod'g'n'ration
colour blindness and idiopathic pulmon'ry hypertension
and fragile X and triple X and XXXXX syndromes.


And these are just the ones that have had write-ups in The Lancet -
So if you're expecting perfect kids I don't fancy your chances....

[This is supposed to come near the end of the show and say 'Hey, we're all genetically screwed up in some way. So let's deal with it and not worry too much.' And also to ensure I'm out of breath by the end.]

Drugs rap finished. Let me know if its bad enough.

http://wretchedcycloneofbones.blogspot.com/
I may have to lose the last verse, as the emollient and co-codamol aren't technically to combat my heart failure, but its knock-on effects.

I do drugs! (Drug rap)


I'm on drugs, I'm on drug drugs
I'm on drugs, I'm on good drugs
Drug dr dr drug dr drug dr dr dr drugs
Dr Drugs dr dr drugsdru dru drugs dr drugs druuuuugs

There's Eplerenone to block aldosterone
a normally useful steroid hormone
But it increases kidney reabsorption of water and sodium
and their secretion of potassium
Thus increasing your blood volume and pressure
and meaning heart failure can once again getcha
But Eplerenone stops this, lessening blood volume sufficiently
That the heart pumps less blood but it pumps it more efficiently

I'm on drugs, I'm on good drugs
I'm on drugs, I'm on blood drugs

Next, a beta blocker called Bisoprolol
lessens effects of adrenalin & other stress hormones
and thus calms my atrial fibrillation,
social anxiety, and water reabsorption
(Ie it also does the same things as Eplerenone did)
But also knocks nocturnal release of melatonin
So though it's calming, if you take too much in error – / you'd better warn your carer
it can cause cold extremities, fatigue, and NIGHT TERROR!

I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!
I'm on drugs! I'm on BLOODY SCARY drugs!


Now Warfarin's usually for poisoning rats
but in my blood it's an anti-coagulant
to stop clots causing strokes or heart attacks
Each day I take enough to kill a elephant.
And I can't take St John's Wort or ingest any cranberries
or drink much and I gotta watch out for red or for black faeces
I get the runs and bloodshot eyes and I'm prone to bleed quite badly
so for the next half hour please don't anybody stab me.

A foxglove-derived glycoside toxin?
that must mean I'm on Digoxin,
Digitalis of old, which primes the heart with calcium,
increasing contractility in the myocardium.
It too slows the heart, improving hemodynamics
and also makes it physically impossible to panic.
Though it might've caused Van Gogh's Yellow Period blurred vision
and may increase the chance of death (but luckily just in women)

I'm on drugs, I'm on drug drugs
I'm on drugs, I'm on sexist drugs
Drug dr dr drug dr drug dr dr dr drugs
Dr Drugs dr dr drugs GAUGIN I MISS YOU drugs druuuuugs


Without Furosemide life would be gruesome
hacking up litres of bubbly thick sputum
Caused by water in the blood not being pumped
out the heart, and instead being forced into the lungs
So without this lung-clearing diuretic
Life would be breathless and pathetic
There's only one problem that can spoil it -
All day I have to stay quite near a toilet.

Ramipril, goddamn I'm ill, is an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor,
and if you want a description of what that is I'll give it t'yer,
by metabolising to Ramiprilat in the liver
it slows the production of angiotensin,
thus relaxing arteries so they're wide as a river
and carry more blood easily. But it's a dandy old wellspring
of side effects: you'll know you're on no placebo
if you get a dry mouth, dry cough or dried-up libido.

I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!
I'm on drugs! If I think I'll get away with rhymes like that!


I need skin creams too, not Vaseline from petroleum
but Poundland's own-brand aqueous emollient
I use it as a lube, but don't take the piss
as it's not for my ass but for my ankular psoriasis
And Co-codamol, that's paracetamol and codeine
which metabolizes in the old liver to morphine.
Though I don't take it cos it's an opiate
but for its side-effect: it firms up my shits.

I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!
I'm on drugs! I'm on bum drugs!


That's a wrap of my accurate rap description
of the seven drugs in my prescription
And if it sounded like it was all in Egyptian
Just email me later for a typed transcription.

Cos... I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!
I'm on drugs! Good blood drugs!
I'm on drugga drug bum blood druggy drug drugs
drugga drugga drug good blood bloody good ddddddddrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggsssssssss!!!!!!!!!


The bad thing is I'll be on all these drugs for the rest of my life, the good news is that if I memorise that rap, whenever anyone at the hospital asks me what drugs I'm on, I could just burst out with that rap, as if life is a vibrant hip-hop musical. Or more likely a Dennis Potter.

WIP from 'Richard Tyrone Jones has a big heart': Drugs rap

Every performance poet that does schools should have a rap about drugs.

Mine's pro-drugs, of course. Here's a sample. WIP. Think I should cut each verse down to 8 lines?

Without furosemide my life would be gruesome
hacking up litres of bubbly thick sputum
Caused by water in the blood not being pumped
out the heart, and instead being forced into the lungs
And though it can cause reduced mental alertness
severe dehydration, and sometimes jaundice
Without this lung-clearing diuretic
Life would be consumptive, immobile, pathetic
There's only one problem that can spoil it
All day I have to stay quite near a toilet.

I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!

There's Eplerenone for Tyrone Jones,
an agent to block aldosterone
That's a normally useful steroid hormone
as you all know, for renin-angiotensin control
But by increasing kidney reabsorption of water and sodium
and their secretion of potassium
Thus increasing blood volume and pressure
it means that heart failure can once again getcha
But Eplerenone stops it, decreasing blood volume sufficiently
That the heart pumps less blood but pumps it more efficiently

I'm on drugs! I'm on good drugs!
I'm on drugs! I'm on blood drugs!
I'm on drugga drug drug drug druggy drug drugs
drugga drugga drug good blood bloody good drugs!

15 favourite films (off the top of my head, via Danni Antagonist)

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen films you've watched that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends including me, because I'm interested in seeing what films my friends choose. (To do this, go to your NOTES tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.)

oh, and btw: in absolutely no particular order.

1. Funny Games (original)
2. Time of the Wolf
3. Dancer in the Dark
4. Come and see
5. Bladerunner
6. eXinstenZ (yeah, I know, not his best, and Jude Law to boot, but great ideas, visuals and supporting characters)
7. Dawn of the Dead (original)
8. Total Recall (and proud of it)
9. Aliens (see above)
10. Dune (see number 6, replacing 'Jude Law' with 'Sting')
11. Europa
12. Care Bears' adventures in Wonderland
13. Crank. (Hilarious. Crank 2 is a bit far-fetched)
14. Aguirre, Wrath of God (shits on Apocalypse Now).
15. A Kurosawa. Probably Seven Samurai just to be unoriginal.

I will of course change my mind, or perhaps you'll change it for me. I wanted to put 'Shoot em up' in there for pure lols, Terminator 2 or Die Hard 3 for pure Hollywood Action and Sin City because it's the best cartoon film ever, but....

I'm not a fan of Citizen Kane. I know it's because every film since it has copied it that the form seems less than breathtakingly original, despite being the original, but still...

I was joking about 12. Dr Strangelove.

Tree poem, feedback welcomed

I suppose I could make it rhyme more. Just a first draft though.
From my blog http://wretchedcycloneofbones.blogspot.com

Tree poem

Let's hear it for trees!
Most die as seeds,
or shoots eaten by sheep,
to then wait there, patiently
up to 900 years.
They don't take a year off to go backpacking
They don't move house every few months
saying they can't stand the way those Dutch Elms
steal all the sunlight
and wouldn't the riverbank be a much nicer
place to bring up our saplings?
They don't squirm at the prospect of pollarding -
limbs hacked off and stuck in a truck,
oozing sap – half as much as we do
at the prospect of say, redundancy.
If they get chopped down they don't fight back
All they make is wood and conkers
and they're happy with that.
All they eat is dirt.
They don't complain in the rain, all that can hurt
is a chainsaw or hurricane; all they do as they die
is creakily sigh.

They're quite happy to go fuck themselves.
Apart from a few weeks of coming petals,
tens of years of boredom and patience spent
as sensorily deprived as hostages – but
you'd never hear them on Leafbook bitching
about losing their chlorophyll each year
or 'I'm so old, I must sway a bit more,
get rid of some of these rings.'
The cold, the wet, the dry, the heat
they endure. Now make like a tree
and TTFU.

Bully's special prize (or, why Bullseye really got cancelled) (Poem, feedback invited)

Bully's special prize
(or, why Bullseye really got cancelled)

At first, they hardly noticed the slips,
like when Jim asked one couple if they often went to church,
the producer snapping 'we'll edit that out.'
Or when they hit 'Faces' asking them, in banter,
if they thought the Turin shroud was real.
Maybe it was like speaking in tongues, 'cos
in the green room, Bowen denied all knowledge, but
''Stay out of the black and into the red,
you get nothing in this game for two in an extra-marital bed"
was what slipped out, the producer sweated
'we'll edit in last week's audio and the cameras on the audience.'
By the last round, when they revealed the prizes on the board,
it went: 'Iiiin one!' - “The Father”
'Iiiin two!' - “Son”
'Iiiin three!' - “and Holy Ghost!”
when it was plainly a crystal drinks decanter.
When Jim asked the winners if they wanted to gamble,
he said “You've got the time it took our Lord Christ to resurrect
to decide.” But what took the biscuit was when
“Let's take a look at what you could've won”,
and instead of a caravan or a speedboat, the board
revolved to reveal the very Kingdom of Heaven,
with angels, doves, clouds, Bernini sunlight, St Peter,
a caravan and a speedboat and a tankard,
glory shining all around Bully as a seraphim,
bellowing his beefy clarion down a heavenly golden horn.

Only then did the Producer take off his cans, put his head
in his hands and said 'No, this whole episode is going to be unusable.'

http://www.ukgameshows.com/p/images/5/50/Bullseye_bullies.jpg




(NB: Jim Bowen once described Bullseye as "the second-best darts-based game show on television". There were no others.)




This one is about how I started feeling religious while in hospital and almost almost on the point of death, but how it doesn't really fit in with my self-image and career choices. In this poem, Jim Bowen is my objective correlative.

Feedback welcome.

On a day when it rains so hard you can't do anything (poem/mood piece in progress)

I want to hear the whining of rusty fans and the grinding of a ship's hull reverberating through the factory. That's my idea of a holiday.

I need a peeling dancehall in the cordoned-off season, seabirds nesting in the flying buttresses. The salt in the air preserves nothing. It's like Doom Jazz.

I want the sleet to slip into bed. I need the world to be the room my head is. I want the shattered attic to look out on an overgrown garden and a sodden cardboard stage.

I hold the broken cistern and nineties porn fading on the walls, I want mere corrugation. I need to be the quietest applause in the audience. The middle sister, the stillborn mouse, the pirouetting spider-husk. I could stop all this now with a coffee or snack but I won't. I'm not emptiest yet. I'm just dusk.

All your ex-girlfriends as Soviet statue park (poem, w.i.p.)

All your ex-girlfriends as Soviet statue park

The first has been decapitated. Her severe eyes, colour gone,
could stare out seas or deserts, but instead gaze over a sliproad
to the retail park. This one's legs, which your current squeeze
poses inbetween for a digital photo, not a polaroid,
are still shapely despite the mould. That one's almost still whole,
I think she holds a discus, or is it chips? She's too far away. That one,
the short one, her pointing wrist now buried in the ground holds up
just her head and torso, like a paraplegic breakdancer. The one with a bob
hefts a thick book, and longingly surveys a flat on the run-down blocks.
Drizzle hunts your eye from some far-up granite rill.
The martial one looks up and out for planes, will never meet your gaze,
and the one you always overlook is just an unsmiling bust. It's ironic,
what you now have to pay to see what was once immanent.
Your current's in the gift shop so your artistic eye can't size her up.
Suns set. Atoms swap. Whichever hands hewed these megaliths
from the porphyry, pumice, basalt, held too much memory of lust.



Slightly based on George Szirtes' Busby Berkely in the Soviet Union, and not actually based on any specific ex-grrrrrlfiends at all, no, not one bit so don't go looking. Feedback welcome, comrades.

Poem: The Ages of Print

Tomorrow's chip wrapping is the first to go
yesterday's dead already coddle my roe.

Then there's the leaflets for food so fast
The green bin has gobbled them before they've hit the mat.

Porn, crumpled under holly – abandoned pups, dirty eggs laid dead of night,
cunts torn out, blacked out or worse, moustached and goggled. Scorched minge; glorious half-life.

Next, those that last through being overlooked.
Christian comic books. The Women's Library's unfiled tracts.

Annuals which hibernated teenage years to adulthood's irony.
Hardbacks cannot be chucked. Illustrated Treasure Islands

heft the same taboo as Reader's Digests, damming up the chazzers.
Signed Histories of the English Speaking Peoples, yellowing

duodecimally in fire-alarmed cellars. Ciphers as yet unconjectured.
Value these: Dead Sea Scroll, Euromillions winner, love letter.

Now, we place this poem. Bonfire, museum. I trust your soft clean hands.



----

I wanted to write something about all this printed material we're surrounded by, how we sort it, and maybe what it feels about itself without knowing it. I'm quite happy to have written a poem that's not facetious. But genuinely, let me know what you think.

(Diplomatic immunity) There's fucking in the dorm

and you can screw in your earplugs, but you can't turn off
your curiosity. He imagines the French girl murmuring
'Yes, circumvent my Maginot line, steal through my
Ardennes,' and as the German pistons in, recalls the
Spanish girl gyrating her drunken arse near his face
as he pretended to snore, heart palpitating, how he'd had
to wait till she and her friends had all collapsed, sleeping
the wedding cake reek of Amaretto, before stealing to the showers
to crank it out just to grab five hours before the morning train.
'I'm too old for this shit, Riggs' he quotes to himself, thinks
'as these kids won't have even heard of Lethal Weapon, so
that quote is its own proof. I am here for the renaissance,
but they are closer to their birth than I am to my puberty;
my death may be nearer still.' He topples an empty
Liebfraumilch on his way to the bogs.

Some kind of Voyage up my own Arsehole

Leap! raw red piles like a bouncy castle threshold
There the sweetcorn of self-doubt
A trapped bolus of indecision (like a Haywain)
The black scabs of burst hubris,
Five undigested meals cooked by dead girlfriends.
a Hungry Hungry Hippos ball
sprouts of despair
fat fat fat &c.
Lampreys and tapeworms tying themselves in slimy sexy knots.
Dante and Beatrice, both voiced by David Jason.
Duct tape all up one side
An appendix with its own appendix (?)
Pancreatic lipase dunked
in a bit of yellow feather.
Moonraker panel,
a different obscure reference.
Bit that looks like lichen,
like compost, like Quaid,
lego man's hand,
caving in bit,
dense black bits,
A key.

My thoughts, such as they are, on TV panel game shows.

I didn't really have any thoughts on TV panel game shows. But then the Evening Standard asked me if I had about 150 words of them. Actually, to my great surprise, it turns out I have approximately 200 of them (197 to be precise). So here, before they get edited down to 150 again, they are.


TV Panel game shows may not be cheap but they are certainly safe. Frankie Boyle is exiled, the speaker in Stephen Fry's ear will never run out of facts or quips and anything controversial or just plain unfunny will be edited out of the hours of recording.

And why so many celebrities on the shows? Unless celebs are having the rise ripped out of them, all they do is show how actual less famous comics, like that little beardy bald dwarf guy, are actually good. It's through questioning celebrities on We Need Answers that the talented Tim Key and Alex Horne have really broken into TV, but I'd rather see them developing their own material in sketch or themed shows than dicking about with Kelvin MacKenzie. That programme's host Mark Watson is often on panel game shows, but has himself commented that the bear-pit atmosphere doesn't let comics with a self-effacing style get a word in.

Come on TV executives, even if they're getting more clever, and generate instant repeat fees on Dave, let's have less ephemeral, celebrity obsessed panel shows – develop more seminal, lasting treats like Paul Merton's 1990s show, 15 Stories High and Cowards.


Richard Tyrone Jones will be hosting Stony Broke Fridays at the Cross Kings on Friday.

Twitter: @rtyronejones

I'll be blogging on my funeral soon but I have to go and take the coffin back tomorrow, so the story is not quite yet over....

Events leading to the death of Richard Tyrone Jones.

Dear friends,

it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of Richard Tyrone Jones, and to invite you to his funeral this Thursday, 7pm at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Http://bit.ly/rtjdead


As some of you may know, the troubled poet, performance artist, Director of 'Utter!', 'ringmaster of spoken word' at the Edinburgh Festival's Free Fringe and absent biological father to > five live birth events had been ill for some time, but we thought you may wish to know a little more about the events leading up to his sad demise.


Recently Richard had returned to stand-up comedy with nights run by the website Sickipedia.org. Unfortunately he got one word wrong in his routine, and this threw him into a terrible perfectionist fug. This can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsPUV1nUGE


A recent post on Richard's personal blog, http://wretchedcycloneofbones.blogspot.com appears to point to the fact that Richard had once again been suffering from another bout of his recurring, debilitating, yet romantic depression. Certainly writer's block had set in, with Richard only completing one poem in January 2010, www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=268611091993 ; it is possible that the comment 'Sestinas are shit' may have pushed him over the edge. This depression led to Richard suffering from intense back pain caused by the slouching concomitant with despondency, and an alleged reliance on the painkiller co-codamol and muscle relaxants which even Pilates was unable to halt. Sales of Richard's book Germline http://is.gd/8nedY had also been slow, with only 13 of the over five hundred so far sold being vended on 13thFebruary 2010, when he particpated in a final event discussing Poetry, Science and the Social sciences at LSE litfest with Mario Petrucci, Michael Blackburn and Simon Jenner, the day before his death.


The circumstances surrounding Richard's demise are still unclear. Some friends point to Richard's increasingly reckless behaviour in the months leading up to his death, including many late nights spent in the bordellos of Archway, frittering away his benefits playing high-stakes snap games and chlamydia roulette. Others maintain that Richard had in fact recently been thinking about converting to Catholicism after a recent trip to Rome, and that he overdosed on Graham Greene. Some find the date of his death, St. Valentine's Day, significant and maintain that Richard, inexplicably single, died of a broken or empty heart. However, the truth is, that, whilst looking at coffins for his planned mock funeral on Thursday to celebrate his 30th Birthday, a heavy mahogany casket slipped from a high shelf in an ironic manner, hitting on the back of his head and crushing his lovely ginger skull.


Certainly, whatever the truth of the matter, we can hopefully all join in commemorating the sad loss of a man whose talent, vision, and modesty were far too expansive for the world to contain. A man who turned hubris into an art form. The most ghetto ginger brother we knew.


During the funeral, while he peacefully 'sleeps' in a bamboo coffin surrounded by flowers, the life and work of the man known as 'RTJ' will be commemorated by poetry, hymns and tributes from some of his closest celebrity friends and admirers including uplifting poet Paul Birtill, filmmaker Robert Sears, newspaper columnist Tom Phillips, and those fans who feel they may wish to contribute an appropriate poem or song.


The funeral will be officiated by the Reverend James McKay, and will include the anticipated reading of Tyrone Jones' will, a selection of his work and a message of hope to his children from beyond the grave. It will end with a wake at nearby pub the White Hart funded by contributions to the poet's benevolent fund. It's what he would have wanted.


Mourners are encouraged to send flowers rather than giving money to charity. For more publicity photographs see facebook event: http://bit.ly/rtjdead For interviews/features contact 07912 539 098 / www.utterspokenword.com / whitechapelgallery.org


Whitechapel Art Gallery, 80 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. 7.00pm prompt – approx 10.00pm, on Thursday 18th February 2010. Nearest tube/overground: Aldgate East / Liverpool Street. This event is part of Whitechapel Art Gallery's free 'lates' series, and the gallery will be open during the event.


NB There is, of course, a small chance that Richard may resurrect after the funeral due to a) being a time lord b) being a Cylon or iii) returning as a God, as many emperors do (indeed Will Self once, perhaps presciently, and certainly unironically, referred to Richard as 'an Adonis').


If this, through your prayers (potentially to RTJ himself), should prove to be the case, then Richard will be hosting Fri 19th February's UK Antifolk Festival, @ the12 Bar Club, Denmark St WC1 - £6/£10 for tonight and the Saturday, from 7.20pm, and featuring 7:40 The Fauntleroy band
8.20 mertle, 9:00 Spinmaster Plantpot, 9:20 Filthy Pedro & the Carthaginians,10:00 Simon Breed
10:40 Thee Intolerable Kidd & Friends, 11:20 One Man Destruction Show, 12:05 Nat the Hammer
12:45 The Wizard, 01:45 Hello Babies
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269232185761&index=1

and also

Fri 26th Feb - Guest compere at Stony Broke Fridays, Cross Kings N1, with Nick Helm and Rosie Wilby
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=196223755010

and further

Sat 6th March, 11am-1pm: Workshop for 'Utter!' writing group on writing fiction, £4/2/0 if you've not been before...Community Room, Teenage library, 2nd Floor, Wood Green Library, Wood Green High Road London N22,


and not forgetting


Thurs March 18th - 'Utter!' Fiction at Cross Kings, York Way N1 0AZ w. Joe Dunthorne, Stewart Home, and in the PAID GIG CONTEST: Megan Bradbury, Abi Palmer, more tbc. Http://bit.ly/utterfiction though by then he may start to pong a bit and have a hunger for human flesh.


Please accept our thanks and condolences at this difficult man.


The estate of Richard Tyrone Jones

How to cope wth depression

What I do when I'm feeling utter despair is, I look at it and assess how much of it is mere desperation. Sometimes desperation can make you feel like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, and feeling like Michael Douglas in Falling Down is slightly cool if not pleasurable. Then I look at how much of it is ennui. Ennui is quite cool in a Dorothy Parker / Jean-Paul Sartre kind of way. So maybe my depression isn't all bad. Then, when you look at ennui, some of it might be melancholy. Melancholy can be cool, like Acker Bilk. Maybe about 60% of that melancholy could be wistfulness, like a yearning for a beautiful Summer sunset with a girl you once loved, or playing in the fields as a child. Then you have successfully transferred your mental state into nostalgia.

This is a little like a CBT version of the bit in the Muppet show where Statler and Waldorf, the two miserable old hecklers in the balcony say 'Boo! That was rubbish!' 'Awful!' 'Actually, there was a bit of it that wasn't so bad..' 'Yeah, there were some parts of it that were quite good!' 'Yeah, actually I loved it!' 'Bravo!' 'Encore!'

And then I see a man with no limbs in a motorised wheelchair being brave, or a beautiful child about the age that mine would be now, and I burst into floods of fucking uncontrollable tears.