Barefoot in Babylon with Dog

Yes, it's that bloody woman again!

It occurs to me that as there is an ass, some stars and a cafe (that no doubt serves tea) in the picture they indicate the name of the woman - AsStarTe(a) = Astarte.

Can't explain the dog, or the idiot with the balloon, though. Perhaps one of you clever people can?

10p for a cup of Tea?

This picture and the following poem are pretty old, as they refer to days when you could actually sit down in a cafe and have a cup of tea for 10p - unless you were a tramp.......

10p For A Cup Of Tea.

Who dares 

Ask questions like that?

Man with twigs in hair

Spittle in beard

Whose out-thrust paw

Has mushrooms growing

Between the fingers

And dead rivers crossing the palm.                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                      He asks more than we can give

                                                      And he makes the town look untidy

                                                      When all we want to do is live

                                                      Not forgive.

                                                      BUT HE COULD BE ME.

 

                                                     Don’t say that my children –

                                                     You don’t know where that thought has been.

                                                     But come with me down to the shore.

                                                     I have a plastic bucket,

                                                     A spade as well.

                                                     Come bury me my children

                                                     Before the tide comes in.

Poetry Workshop

People have asked me why I have such a down on so-called literary folk and say they are appalling people.
This picture is one of the reasons. They are for the most part ill-mannered, insolent, and self-opinionated pigs who put down people like Wordsworth and Shelley. Will they be remembered by anyone in two hundred time like these great poets?  Somehow, I doubt it!

 

Heard at a Writer’s Workshop.

Your poem has too many images.

It doesn’t say anything to me.

I suggest you cut out all

the images except this one.

What you do with that is your

problem – perhaps you could write

a completely different poem

(we will be kind enough to believe

  it came from your own head

  and was not rammed down your throat

  by Us), and then we can play

the game of Spot the Cliché.

    By the way,

               I liked your poem

Grunt Monk in all his Dubious Glory

OMIGAWD!

Someone I know, once knocked at Grunt Monk's door at an inopportune moment.

She was disgusted - not so much by his wedding tackle - but by his skinny hairy legs!

The place was infested by rats at the time.

Jill and the Box-Kite

Jill and the Box-Kite

Watch the girl in the blue skirt. Her name is Jill, and a few years later she will become very important to me when I discover something called sex! Wonder what she's doing now?

Soccer in Lota Park

Soccer in Lota Park

Lota Park is in the Welsh town of Fishguard, which is the only town or village in Wales I've come across that has TWO Gorsedd circles.

Mermaid

Mermaid

Something fishy about this picture!

I originally called it 'The Mermaid of Zennor', but someone who knows Zennor well pointed out to me that the place depicted in the picture doesn't look anything like Zennor. Sod it!

Little Tin Soldier

Little Tin Soldier

 

 

 

 

I got the idea for this from a rather soppy song recorded by Donovan in the 60's.

The Stone

The Stone

During the 70's I wrote a poem called The Stone. It was about a young boy who found a  bright and gleaming stone on the beach that he thought was a 'star stone'. Alas, when the holiday was over and he was back home, he opened his suitcase, and found his 'star stone' was just a dull lifeless pebble.
The poem was well received when I read it at a local folk club, as was the picture I painted to accompany it.

Both poem and picture are lost to me now, but here I have tried to reconstruct the picture from memory. Perhaps I'll do the same for the poem someday, and bore you nice people with that as well!

Jung Consciousness

Sermons to the Dead

I did this one after reading C G Jung's Gnostic treatise Seven Sermons to the Dead.

ABRAXAS.

In Gnosticism the Great Archon.

The god above the Judeo Christian god and devil - combining all opposites into one Being.

What the hell is an Archon, you may ask. Archon was originally the Greek word for king or ruler, but the Gnostics used the word to denote the seven lower emanations of the Godhead - demons if you like.

As I understand it, Abraxas was called the GREAT Archon because he/it was supposed to embody both good and evil.

I.A.O. (see Abraxas' shield in my picture) is an abbreviation of Jehovah, with the original Hebrew characters changed into Roman equivalents as follows:

I = Hebrew Yod

A= Hebrew He

O= Hebrew Vau

On the sleeve of Santana's 1970 album Abraxas is the following excerpt from Herman Hesse's Demain:

"We stood before it (referring to a painting of Abraxas) and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas...."

ABRAX-ASS

Now, although I find the Gnostic texts interesting - I love their imagery, and also love Herman Hesse's novels, Jung (who some believe to have been a latter day Gnostic), and the music of Santana, I have to say that on reflection they seem to me to be basically nonsense - or as I put it Gnostic gnonsense. Hence Abrax-Ass, or in English: Abrax-Arse.

Of course I may be wrong - it may be that one of the other evil Archons has got possession of me and has blinded me to the 'truth', whatever that is!

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

In finding out more about Abraxas and Gnosticism check them out on Wikki. There are also a number of Gnostic Sites on the Web. But don't look for Abrax-Ass there - you won't find it!

Night Journey with the Chief

Sailing across a lake at night with a Red Indian Chief stood up in the bows like the figure in Arnold Bocklin's Isle of the Dead. Did I dream it, or did I read it somewhere, does it matter? Who cares, anyway?

Alchemica Deus Ex Machinan

I had this crazy dream that I had painted this picture, and someone said to me "Oh yes - that's the old Alchemica Deus Ex Machina". Later, when I was awake, I actually created the picture from my dream.
I have no idea what, if anything 'Alchemica Deus Ex Machina' means, or indeed the picture itself - possibly something to do with my obsession with C G Jung...

The Jungconscious

Sometimes it all crowds in on me: Angels with swords, piles of stones (The Me Angless Pi Leof Stones), white knights, fiery wheels, the worm bodied ruler of this world, faceless idiot scarecrows, stone idols, stone phallus dei, step pyramids, love goddesses in aspic, human sacrifices - that old Jungconscious, or just more of my bullshit?

Babylonian Moon Goddess

I must admit that this one is not all my own work. I adapted a photograph from a book about Jung.
The original photograph was black and white. I provided the colours.
I believe the woman is Astarte or Ishtar. But I called her Moon Goddess because of the repeated crescent motif.

The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society

I found the original CD inlay for this album somewhat uninteresting - if not boring. So I designed this to replace it.

The Garden of Hermes

Got the idea for this from a Joni Mitchell song.

Biker's Pigtail Protection

I did this for a biker I know, who has an impressive pigtail, and who thumps anyone who refers to it as a ponytail. Luckily for me, he appreciated the joke!

Smokin' Poet

This was a tee-shirt design that didn't come off.

Temple at the World's End

Well, I had to call it something!

Look! The world Ends Over There!

Sometime in the early 60's I was with a girl somewhere in Kent, and I pointed to the reddening horizon and said to her: Look! The world ends over there! She wondered what the hell I was on about!

The End of the World As We Know It.

It was the end of the World as we knew it in 1968, when the Old Kent Road I knew and loved was demolished to make way for new roads and 'modern' buildings.

I remember seeing a newspaper seller trying to sell his papers outside a gutted shop, and an old woman standing at a bus-stop where busses no longer ran.

Earl Aubec

This was based on a short story by Michael Moorcock about a knight who wanders through
the world turning the chaos stuff that has claimed most the world back into solid earth with his sword.

Don't Look Back

My take on the legend of Orpheus and Euridice

Cornish Legend

I saw this television play about an old man and his dog who keeps reappearing in a Cornish town through the centuries.

Other Assorted People

Christine

Born agen Christian bitch who wore a polystyrene chastity belt. Less said about her - the better!

Beat Poet c.1959

I remember in the late 1950's when I was deep into Rock 'n' Roll and the Teddy Boy culture, I once saw the light of a jukebox through a pub window in Soho, went in and found it was full of bearded wierdos in black duffel-coats - some of them were pretty old - in their 20's and 30's! 

Something called Dave Brubeck was coming from the jukebox, and when this was turned off, one of the 'weirdos'  stood on a chair and read a poem that didn't rhyme.

I exited there pretty fast, and went to the old Freight Train coffee bar in Berwick Street!

Assassin

This is what comes of reading too much Graham Greene!

Ageing Hippy

 There are still a few of these about. Perhaps I'm one myself - but then perhaps not, as I never got into cow-bells and flowers in my hair (which I still had in the 60's!).

But the music was good. I've still got my Bob Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Incredible String Band and Jimi Hendrix records.

More Grunt Monk Pictures

Grunt Monk (AKA Doktor Doom) once asked me to do a picture for his Twitter Account, and I came up with this. He used it for a while, but dropped it when he realised how insulting it was! Twat!

This is him 'going off on one', a thing he does quite often!

This is him in his second hand bookshop, in which he also lives. Note the potty!

Themis

Themis was the Ancient Greek Goddess of Divine Justice. She also did a stint at the Delphic Oracle.

The star sign Libra (which happens to be my own) is another incarnation of Themis.

I've depicted her AS the scales rather than holding them, because if she was holding them in one hand, the other hand could only be holding a sword, as is depicted on some representations. But as I understand the myths about Themis, her Justice was benevolent rather than coercive.

The Storm is Howling Through Tiflis

There’s a poem that goes with this:

A FOUND POEM. 

Entrails can be strung

Across centuries of crime

Illustrating

The appalling pedigree

Of spineless humans

Bobbing past

On the currents of convenience

Until they are sucked

Into the vacuum

Of the moon's eternal womb.

  

September 1980.

(Found in the first volume of Neil Oram’s ‘Warp’ trilogy).

Notice;  I wrote this poem in 1980, when I still believed in my ‘poetry’.

(Wrote – that’s a laugh, when all I did was take a short extract from Neil Oram’s prose, and chop it up into lines! But other people get away with this, so why not me?)

The first volume of the Warp Trilogy (which I found mostly pretty boring) was entitled ‘The Storm Is Howling Through Tiflis’. Tiflis is in the Georgian Republic, and is the birthplace of Josef Stalin.

Stalin is long dead, and his Soviet Empire expired over 20 years ago, but I fear that old storm is still howling through the world!

As you can probably tell; I was pissed off in 1980, and I’m still pissed off!

Doodlebug

I do not remember Doodlebugs - the Nazi flying bombs that devastated London during World War II,
but my parents used to tell me that when I was a baby in a cot, I squalled like hell when one came over.

Homage to Dali

Is time curved like space?

The Water Tower on Shooter's Hill, Kent

Quatermass

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a space pilot when I grew up. Then in 1953, I saw the BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment. It scared the shit out of me, and I had dreams of Cactus Men coming through the ceiling of my bedroom.  So I shelved all my plans to explore the deeps of space.

Below is a clipping from the Radio Times of that year:

And then:

Two years after the Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass II was telivised, and once again the shit was scared out of me, and cactus men started coming through the ceiling again!

In this serial those humans taken over by the aliens sported a horrible looking mark, Cockney families pick-nicking on the beach were machine gunned by Zombie soldiers, rebellious  construction workers were crushed and stuffed into pipes so that blood dripped from the joints, and a reporter fell into a vat of alien slime and appeared on a gantry screaming: IT BURNS, IT BURNS!

Good clean family entertainment in the 1950's!

Lyme Regis Incident - 1973

Watch the black dog. It's evil!

Drystone Wall on the Lyke Wake Walk, North Yorkshire.

Long Sexless Days on the Wall

Walkin' the Wall, just Walkin' the Wall

In 1971 two friends and I walked the length of Hadrian'sWall, and I discovered Newcastle Brown Ale.

Chollerford

 And we had our evening meal at the ruins of a Roman bridge abutment at Chollerford, opposite the Roman bathhouse on the other bank of the Tyne

In The Park - 1971

This is illustrating a poem of mine. I'm told it is a good poem - not sure I agree. Anyway here it is, for what it's worth:

 

IN THE PARK 1971.

Two purple‑gowned virgins

With page­boy hair stand

Motionless by the dried‑up fountain –

A pair of pawns

Holding it In check.

A dead sparrow lies

Between them ‑ one wing missing,

But there is no blood ‑ just a torn

Whiteness. I could swear

Its beak is plastic.

Me ‑ I'm reading Pascal.

But I've backed the wrong horse

God's a no runner again.

The bet wasn't worth placing

Without Him.

An acne‑faced youth walks by

His eyes searching the sky

Where someone's scrawled across

The sun's ragged disc: “Hail Eris

Queen of Discord!”

Park‑keeper arrives

With leper‑bell, chain

And larger than life lock.

Behind him hovers a vague figure

With sword held aloft.

He turns us out

Into concrete maze, locking gate to ensure water

Does not slink back to fountain

During the long night that's coming.

Childhood

The Granada Cinema, Welling, Kent

When we were  kids, the Granada was indeed our Palace of Dreams. Sadly this cinema no longer exists.

Canal Land

A childhood fantasy about a piece of wasteland where we used to play. It had a hill with white ruins on top, and lots of dirty streams we called canals.

What My Dad Did Not Tell Me About The Jolly Fisherman

Marylyn Monroe

While we were not yet old enough to have wet dreams, we were still dirty minded little bastards!

The Lady Next Door

Painted in acrylics

The Lost Holy Hill of Childhood

Childhood Landscape No. 634

The Star That Fell Down Our Street

A childhood fantasy

1951 Collage

1951 - The year of the Festival of Britain with its Dome of Discovery, and Skylon (which I thought was a rocketship). We had a radio that resembled a toaster,  and stamps bearing King George (He of the Kings Speech) the 6th's head, and our parents smoked cigarettes from packs that had no health warnings

We played with toy soldiers (which was then still considered a respectable things for kids to do), and were astounded at the spacemen's slow motion jumping in the film Destination Moon.

Ah, happy days!