Footprints in the sand

Footprints in the sand by Richard Tyrone Jones

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was only one.

This bothered me because I noticed that, during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from pain, anguish or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. So I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the hardest, most trying periods of my life there has been only one set of footprints in the sand. Why Lord, when I needed you most, did you abandon me?”

The Lord replied, “Oh my son, but at those hardest, most trying times of your life... be fair, you were being an annoying, self-pitying, sniveling little arsehole. Can you blame me for fucking off?”

“Yeah, fair enough mate,” I agreed.

An old review from 2002 - V/V-m & Jansky Noise, Techno Animal

V/V-m and Jansky Noise, Techno animal, (& Stockhausen and Walkman?) 29.3.02 medicine Bar, custard factory, birmingham

In flip-flops, white creased slacks, pointed collar, crushed velvet jacket and fedora the louche jazzman wields his trumpet and slumps on a stool. He fiddles with the microphone interminably, always only about to speak, a John Lee Hooker impatient with the failings of junior technical Angels, his Freddy Kruger mask oddly unincongruous. His mouth opens and emits a voice so synthesised the speech patterns of humanity, as still-discernible as the words themselves are not, are a cruel parody of conversation. After the chatter of chaos, the trumpet is lifted to lips; cheeks expand and an unending barrage of noise bursts forth like the music of Stalin’s organs to the ears of Berlin, 1945. It too, is nevertheless still-recognisable as a song; this, like our host’s oscillating helium soaked/robotic/growling chatter, a few clichéd words (….. ’the great sir Elton John’, … ‘to all the ladies’…) discernible, is an awful satire of the nature of what we think of as music. This is not m.o.r. soft rock ‘put through a blender’ as my mate had it, so much as Vic Reeves’ not just singing a song in the style of a club singer, but providing the whole instrumentation as well. During a hiatus in the assault someone shouts ‘Very poor.’ Comparisons with US performance artist John McCarthy or E4 tech-comics Noble & Silver are perhaps more pertinent.

Funnily enough the tracks V/v-m rape throughout this, and their second set, when they adopt latex pig masks, become more recognisable as the night goes on. Perhaps we are becoming used to the ‘sound of nausea’ (John Peel’s description), or perhaps the ‘crackliness’ setting on the speaker stacks has been turned down from 11. The sight of an entire crowd waving their arms and lighters in the air and singing along to the puke-inducing ‘I wanna know what love is’ makes me wonder if by midnight it’s booze that has made most of the crowd see the joke. One of their number tells us they’re just filling a gap in the market with their endless sick renderings of everything from lady in red to love will tear us apart, and will continue to do so until someone does the job better than they do. Perhaps they should market the application of their techniques to different spheres of music as a franchise.

The djing in between V/v-m and techno animal is a little disappointing – flying between twin stools of arty continental noise/gabber and electro, and crashing. But when Techno animal eventually start, all is forgiven, as the icebreaking Titanic pleasureboat of ‘demonoid’ crunches into harbour, 65 years too late. Their jackhammer groove is not so much underground hip hop as cannibalistic Morlock funk which it is difficult to imagine on anything other than the mille plateaux label (their new lp, ‘Brotherhood of the Bomb’, is on Matador). The thickest strawberry smoke ever is the subterranean fug from Dante’s hookah. I throw wild shapes on the dancefloor to ward off the beady eyes that loom from the gloom. I have lost my glasses again.

I was deep in antidepressants when I saw this. I think I write music journalism like Paul Gambaccini with a pillow over his face.

Procrastinator

Procrastinator

He was quite peckish
but equally in need of a poo
He couldn't decide which need to satisfy first.
Four four hours he sat there in stasis,
days, weeks -
at the very moment he starved to death
he shat himself


I wrote this one while in the big house. My next book but one is going to be a doozy.

07/07

Interrogation. (A sketch/theatrical piece).

Interrogation.

"What am I here for?"
"That's a philosphical question. Criminals aren't supposed to be philosophers. So I don't know whether to chastise you or let you go. It all hinges on whether you are a criminal I suppose. So let's find out."
"What am I here for?"
"I'm the interrogator. I ask the questions. I ask all the questions. Save one. which is 'Do you have a cigarette?' That's the only question you're allowed to ask."
"Do you have a cigarette?"
"No. It'll set the fire alarm off. Interrogation rooms are public buildings too. But here are some nicotine patches. Enough to last a 5 year jail term. Think of them as an incentive to confession. And I'm going to turn on the cassette recorder too. But only to stop your asking me to. Because you're not allowed to ask any questions. This does not affect your statutory rights."
[He turns on the tape recorder.]
"It is a... specific time on a specific date. I am interviewing a specific person as regards a specific crime."
"For the tape, the suspect, having realised it would not be the done thing to ask a question, has raised his eyebrow quizzically as if to say 'you're doing everything by the book then, and no more? No appendix, no second volume explaining the calculations that underlie the cliometrics?' I pause. Yes I am, and I don't like your tone."
"I haven't committed any crime, specifically or unspecifically".
"The suspect seems to have spent some time thinking about this denial and the terms in which it is because of this quite comfortably couched."
"The interviewing officer stated, as if for posterity. This isn't a speaking book, you know,"
"Proffered the suspect, impertinently. It is now... (looking at watch) a specific time, a letter after which is either an a or a p, m. I am turning off the tape to smack the suspect around the chops.” He slaps the suspect extremely limp wristedly. He went to turn on the tape again, but didn't. The suspect said nothing. He turned the tape on again.
"Ow!"
"Shouted the suspect."
"He just slapped me!"
"Lied the suspect, for the tape. Put a brave face on, lad, this is an historical document."
"Mollified the corrupt police. This won't stand up in court, for I have a revisionist lawyer, said the suspect, in a ring-modulated voice."
"Denials won't wash with me, Speer-boy, said me, then, at a specific time, your honour, with delivery akin to that of Alec Guiness, I said. Your two accomplices, acting as the two requisite primary sources, have offered testimony that grasses up your ahistorical version of events and reveals the language used in your denial to be too inflated for your time period and social class. They also maintain you ‘done’ the specified crime."
"Can I have a cigarette?"
"The suspect asked, obviously perturbed and playing for time to think."
"Is my testimony, in your opinion, then revealed to be wholly unreliable, with everything I say to be regarded as historically inaccurate?"
"Asked the suspect, obviously beaten. But of course, I replied, condescendingly."
"Then I confess to the specified crime."
"He admitted. (...) Fuck!"
"He ejaculated, whilst the suspect chewed nicorette."
“Get yo’ fuckin’ tambourines together, an’ lets party!”
“My name is Tjinpo Balasanky, and I like the Stone Roses. Very much.”

April 2001

Consistency

Consistency

'Better to make a bad decision, then stick to it,
than to put it off', my father told my brother,
Kreon and I.

Later, he returned to my mother
as she lay dying of cancer.
Weak-willed worm.

Sky jellyfish

Sky jellyfish

As if on nitrous they float, whip, eddy,
twice-eye level, jerking winter-ravers.
They live on nothing,
twirl, tarantella, tango,
brush tendrils with the winter twigs,
which let go. Then, like they've just seen Alien,
abruptly flip, slap, censor-sponsor
an old man's face.
No matter how high they soar,
our beauty belongs to Tesco.

Kittens with leukaemia (a lament)

If anyone knows of any cat poetry publications or competitions I can enter this into under an old lady pseudonym I'd be very grateful. I can't decide if this should go in 'Richard Tyrone Jones Has a Big Heart' (the book) or 'Crush All Liberals'.

Kittens with leukaemia (a lament)

Poor leukaemia kitties, will no-one stroke them?
Shivering in the cold, no hair to cloak them
If you ask what feline leukaemia is, here's my answer.
it's an immunosuppresant retrovirus which causes cancer
of the white blood cells and then the lymph
it does not affect the dog or the water nymph.

From poor coat, skin infections and weeping lesions,
these kittens suffer, and also seizures.
They cannot eat what's in their bowls;
these cats are not cats that give many lols.
But bald as they are, they can still purr -
you can still feel affection with manky fur.
Touch the poor moggies, then, feel no fear
man can catch nothing from their sad diarrhoea.

They caught it during their gestation
Their mommy never got her vaccination
their owner was guilty of procrastination
the poor kitties will get no compensation.
I curse the heartless God who has made
both a separate leukaemia, and a separate AIDS
for our feline friends.
They near their end;
Hush now;
don't miaow;
sleep, little kitties, you will feel dreamier
For there is no hope for kittens with leukaemia.

I'm off to have a crank.