Barney Ashton-Bullock – Fevers of the Mind

Poetry Showcase from Barney Ashton- Bullock

Arraigned Excelsis in Suburban Winter

The boundary of infinity, its horror void contained in an anthrax picture frame,
This archetypal death in life, this concrete in motion, this conjoined voyeur,
This tundric countenance,
This obfuscation of reclusive handsome,
This recent aversion from habitual preen, pick and comb in the hallway mirror,
This slipshod, wall-grip, trudge-drudgery,
This thaw to laugh at his fails, fall and falter;
Don’t destroy yourself in a little bit of snow.

The pocket crumb memoirs of long chomped snacks afloat in streaks of mustard mastic,
The micro-discordant, cyclonic schluppety of coked nose,
The hunger it staves,
The breaking of background nations and foreground hearts, 
The amplified ice-crack-alike of the shoring apart 
Of the two sides of a pre-sliced frozen muffin.
Home is a hope for the future and a surety lodged in the past:
I’ve been thinking of you all my life 
But, you’re not what I’ve been waiting for;
Don’t destroy yourself in a little bit of snow.

By This Or That Street Or Bench Or Gate

by this or that street or bench or gate,
privet channels wrought by the stomp and trample 
of kidlets en route to dens within dens within the density 
of municipal park boundary delineating thickets;

by this or that street or bench or gate,
eschewing the ‘No Ball Games’ cul-de-sacrilege, 
the ‘No Cycling’ signs hammered aloft 
by the ‘Bureau of Cut-Throughs’, 
the riven floes of summer Sunday mirth overspill, 
on overspill Estates… 

just as that brazen, criss-crossin’ o’tit-bits and the rat-a-tat of jaw-jaw 
are now recalled as the molten motion of a golden age,
so are the freeze-frame, discoloured, Disc-Camera photographs, 
35 years on, reclaimed from dusty bottom drawers 
for the mantle of a ‘Northern Heritage’ exposé

in which we were the crust and core; 
cut adrift, thencefrom, the coltish, kiddy-clan, brick-built bucolics 
by the severity of severally meted teen-gang fist’n’flicks 
from which I still, in mid-life, twitch from the witness thereof,
by this or that street or bench or gate…

incoterms     (poem also in Bare Bones Writing Issue 1)

There are no incoterms for smuggled, cut narcotics;

You’ll pay in bouquets of necroses 
And spindle-pinscher, tweezer-tease 
Of scabs where syringe pricks hath pitched and roamed 
To foam the cauls of laced, iced, blood on fire.

Each draw a dull microcosm of ‘endgame’
That disequips motion from churning stases of belligerence;
Have you noticed no encore called for you,
Or your presence, or your bore-jaw; ne’er no more. 

And, if your teacher smacked you in the mouth 
For a verbal rout with the pastor in ’84
As he cupped your puber balls 
Calling you out for indecent exposure. 

Some o’erseer suit’ll write your ma ‘n’ pa
And say you’ve been wanking in class
And then the beatings will alternate
Betwixt centripetal and centrifugal force majeure!

And the wavering flesh turns sclerotic 
And the trackmarks anthracitic 
And the mind to a doughty blancmange
The flavour of which is undiscerned:

And the ‘base-mix’ powder tamped 
And the groundswell gullies of comedown earned
And the hackling hawkings of crows unknown
Slow in their circlings, swoop in predate to confirm

There are no incoterms at all.


Bio: Barney Ashton-Bullock is the poet in the hybrid poetry/pop projects Andy Bell is Torsten and the Downes Braide Association. His poetry is widely published in cult journals in the US, UK, Eire and Canada including in Travesties, Queerlings, Poetry Bus, both of the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthologies to Leonard Cohen, the Dreich pamphlets ‘Famous’, ‘Ismism’, ‘Pop’ & ‘Response’, the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the Broken Sleep Books Aphex Twin anthology. His recent pamphlets are ‘Café Kaput!’ (Broken Sleep Books, 2020), ‘F**kpig Zeitgeist!’ (Cherry Red, 2021), ‘Bucolicism’ (Cherry Red, 2021), ’Geopoliticus, Pupsy!’ (Red Ceilings Press, 2022) with his latest collection, ‘Cul-de-Sacrilege!’ due for publication by Polari Press in October, 2022.

Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle

Cover photo by Paul Brookes of Wombwell

Bare Bones Writings is an extension of http://www.Feversofthemind.com . Themes we are Looking for Poetry/prose/articles/other styles of writing are for Adhd Awareness, Mental Health, Anxiety, Culture, History, Social Justice, LGBTQ Matters/Pride, Love, Poem series, sonnets, physical health, pandemic themes, Trauma, Retro/pop culture, inspired by music/songwriters, inspired by classic & current writers, frustrations. Artwork. Music, Poetry, Book reviews.

Issue 1 includes tributes to poets/writers that contributed to Fevers of the Mind in the past including Kari Ann Flickinger, Scott Christopher Beebe & Dai Fry.

A Fevers of the Mind Musician Spotlight on the albums of Marissa Nadler.

Short Interviews from the Quick-9 interview series with Khalisa Rae, Ron Sexsmith, & Shaindel Beers.

Poetry/Writings from Kari Ann Flickinger, Dai Fry, Scott Christopher Beebe, Paul Brookes, Bill Abney, Ankh Spice, David L O’Nan, Robert Frede Kenter (with poems about Lou Reed), Glenn Barker, Rc deWinter, K Weber, Robin McNamara, Elizabeth Cusack, an art/poetry collaboration between Lia Brooks & Phil Wood, the first 5 poems from Hiraeth Series by Kushal Poddar, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Spriha Kant, Jennifer Patino (with a poem inspired by Audrey Hepburn) and artwork by Maggs Vibo, Matthew M C Smith, HilLesha O’Nan, Lily Maureen O’Nan, Ken Benes, Jessica Weyer Bentley, R.D. Johnson, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Norb Aikin, Andrew Darlington, Liam Flanagan, Christina Strigas, Lorraine Caputo, Conny Borgelioen, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Colin Dardis, Petar Penda, Helen Openshaw, Matthew Freeman, Christian Garduno, Eileen Carney Hulme, Colin James, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Marisa Silva-Dunbar, Kate Garrett, A.R. Salandy, John Chinaka Onyeche, Doryn Herbst

Links:

https://tinyurl.com/ypax2vte United States

https://tinyurl.com/54datkad Canada

https://tinyurl.com/mt2h72aj Australia

https://tinyurl.com/ye5mvrfh India

https://tinyurl.com/mvcuxe8c U.K.

https://tinyurl.com/54sjsnxv Spain

https://tinyurl.com/zesshx9a France

https://tinyurl.com/28h47hdd Italy

https://tinyurl.com/4a8ta8f5 Mexico

https://tinyurl.com/mrya4uww Japan

https://tinyurl.com/yvuz8thd Netherlands

https://tinyurl.com/y65mt5c3 Poland

https://tinyurl.com/5ee9dh3b Turkey

https://tinyurl.com/2v26mwuj Sweden

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

Poem re-post by Barney Ashton-Bullock : L’anti-arriviste est parti

L’anti-arriviste est parti

Even within the abhorrence of absence
is a marked aberrance of pulsing joy;
we are left conveyancing the wounds –

We are abeyant to their melodic seep;
your intuit repertoire of counter-hex,
your quasi-bittersweet loll of lyrical intrigue –

Here, a sallow heart inflates with hope,
there, a hollow mind tolls in outreach;
we are all but trough-laden, sod-bound arrivistes,

Cusping it, winging it, drowning in it someday,
therein be the tragedy, the mystery, the mirth;
the orientation is the destination –

For when, to a sailor, the sea is as mildew in motion,
its wonderment worn to slicken sick liqueform veldts ,
its waves puckering in indigest, vomiting for revolution –

For when, to that sailor, the ambics of trussing waves
testify in their throt of malaise; their unchewed tether
of gruelly variegations lap ‘round slung, trash-forms a-ripple –

Pollutant detritus, deleterious of such seafarers’ safety;
sizes serried from swirling particulate to the lumpen, sunken,
dumped ‘white goods’ sea-bed bedrocks of corrosive causticities –

We, shoreline blind to this immersed bind of junk cluster,
ever await for a hallowed sunset, imbuing it with miracle,
with the cure, the penance, the forgiveness; a prophecy –

Just as you soothsay sang it, mister;
residuous and resonant,
in shalom and amen.

Poem from Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art inspired by Leonard Cohen (2019)by Barney Ashton-Bullock “Yet”

Bio: Barney Ashton-Bullock, is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ music-theatre-poetry collective and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. He is the founder of Soho Poetry Nights. He has poetry published, or pending publication, in a wide range of cult poetry journals**, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in the Dreich pamphlet ‘Famous’, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the ‘Soho Nights’ anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020.
(**the Wellington Street Review, the New River Press Yearbook, SPAMzine, Re-Side Magazine, -algia Press, Scab Mag, Pink Plastic House Journal, Lucky Pierre Zine, Poetry Bus, Neuro Logical Magazine and the Babel Tower Notice Board)

A poem called “blizzed” by Barney Ashton-Bullock

this poem is inspired by this Rockwell Kent painting ‘The Trapper’ (1921)

blizzed

your remnant shred of cleaved sentience,
its integral winnowing downforce; whorling
from pioneer skittish flakes to full-sketch sophomore,
from freeze-dried petrichor to bombrush, snowfield fuzz
eddying in fleeting, fitful plenitudes ‘midst our want for more -

your intercession; awed exfoliant of tepid vacuities -
your tufting micro-ministrations mush sombre vastnesses;
your crystalline emboss/deboss of serene, splayed splenetics,
your fluffy flux of fractious loads that witter down
the last winsome aspects of icicle throtted flora -

we await our snow-capped causeway’s re-emergence,
we approximate the wherefores of the tufted tracks
we trekked the day before within these subsumption
frontiers of distal, mulched horizons you’ve presently
so presciently blurred; you, slawing radiant as

a brilliance of moonbeam, as distill, as a manifest
granularity smunched, in desiccate compact of frenzied
flurries seemingly cemental and yet, so soon, so sunlit,
flailing, expiring, revealing that now’s all is muchly more than
the fallow-followed, drear furore of bored, workaday before -

renewed point and purpose to that watchful, lapping shore,
your selfless blanch to meltwater and our hallowed eyesmeet;
its ice-break whip-crack of quench and thaw and that’s when,
dear friend, we’ll go rafting again, our buoyant brusque laughter
in spindrift skim on those much missed lakes of deep azure.

Bio: Barney Ashton-Bullock, is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ music-theatre-poetry collective and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. He is the founder of Soho Poetry Nights. He has poetry published, or pending publication, in a wide range of cult poetry journals**, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in the Dreich pamphlet ‘Famous’, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the 'Soho Nights' anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020.(**the Wellington Street Review, the New River Press Yearbook, SPAMzine, Re-Side Magazine, -algia Press, Scab Mag, Pink Plastic House Journal, Lucky Pierre Zine, Poetry Bus, Neuro Logical Magazine and the Babel Tower Notice Board)

3 poems from Barney Ashton-Bullock in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020

Mass Grave #58

The bloodrot rooting
Over the rise that hides the pit,
That mallow mound that salves the flatlands vista.

From outré putrefaction, the wilder roses bloom,
Their pungent spumes of spiky fumes,
Fragrances that flounder in dead-hand dealt air,

A stasis that unstirs the shrill, still sadness,
Staunches the undertow flow of the unforgiven
Charred and hidden in the sods of soil despoiled;

Limbs oiled in its threadbare muddy mercy.

The irremediable blue

in ten years time you might retire,
you might come back to Blighty,
we might return to Port Isaac,
we might have time again
to ride again our bicycles,
from Cornish coast-to-coast again.

wannabe wayfaring,
we might loll laughing again
on a wafeted, scrumped tat
o'tartan rug again
on a dot-dash of distal headland
in the mizzen drench sea-mist
of a "Fogust" again

and brush fingers again
and have, again, the intent of a kiss,
not and never had,
but ever much onwards missed,
again and again, since then,
old friend,
when we'd talk in a distinctly
distant flannel;
we swarding swatches aswirl
within this still vast vista
of irremediable blue...

the last laugh never came to pass

crackling, crackhead rapidity of speech,
in a cack-handed matey tempo
spackled with infomercial riddlings
and pseudo-psychoanalytical patter
about the love in every one of us
being all that really matters

personality types as if purloined sachets
to add a touch of bitter or sweet to the mobby broth
whose vibrant, rolling broil of events
are tampered/sieved/blent into spuzzy negatives of denials
all misfiled into microfiche mêlées of confusion
in a filled-up soup of psyche (with its linger of crouton tumours)

oh, then, to defrag these fleshy coils of cortex
to promote more systematic recall
a crumbly softness arcing through
the spindrift spun trace remembrances
of cogency condensed to illegible;
slapdash jottings made with leaky fountain pens
on absorbent flays of blotting papers
and in there, somewhere, the specifics
of what you'd dare to recall
clogged in five years of such mulching, moulder of drippage
and when, and if, ever discerned, decrypted as
mere juvie, virtue-signalled, naïve jibberish
with no stanchion of good will or best wish
for this unanchored flail of flatline future


Bio: Barney Ashton-Bullock, is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ music-theatre-poetry collective and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. He is the founder of Soho Poetry Nights. He has poetry published, or pending publication, in a wide range of cult poetry journals**, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in the Dreich pamphlet ‘Famous’, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the 'Soho Nights' anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020.<br>(**the Wellington Street Review, the New River Press Yearbook, SPAMzine, Re-Side Magazine, -algia Press, Scab Mag, Pink Plastic House Journal, Lucky Pierre Zine, Poetry Bus, Neuro Logical Magazine and the Babel Tower Notice Board)