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Barney Ashton-Bullock
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the poet
Barney Ashton-Bullock is the poet and librettist in the Andy Bell is Torsten music/theatre collective, as well as the narrator of his own verse on Downes Braide Association albums. Barney's poetry has been published in a wide range of cult poetry journals, the Avalanches In Poetry tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, Broken Sleep Books' poetry tribute to Aphex Twin, and Pilot Press' Queer Anthology Of Healing and Soho Nights. His most recent books are Café Kaput!, F**kpig Zeitgeist! and Bucolicism.
the poems
apoplex-perplex-complexities
bicarbonate frenetics; the genesis?
multi-generational, tape-to-tape
deck dubs, their foamy flumes of
playback hiss as rattly, miscued
mixtapes mis-struck in bonkerz
flanged brushstroke percussives
of amp-max gated smash o’snare –
metronomic melismatic wonk,
polychromatic sub-glottal alien
sprechgesang aligned to time
signatures noodled in varispeed;
in fraying flays o’dubsy drubbin’
vectored beatz. nu-alt clubbin’
zeroed in on decorous glitchin’
and ad hoc, thereof, repeatings
as if spiked reportage to mux
a retro cha-cha stomp distort
to crunching churns irradiate;
to arcing, vaulting interference
compacting in a vice of abstruse
its apotheosis to gungey grunge –
maced in such displace, an aura;
billowed streaks astray in strobics,
we all, thrift of light limb, aflail in
apoplex-perplex-complexities.
Aphex et al in the cans, sofa-slothing
in Glaxo infused confuse of veiled
glissando drippage, arrhythmic
mallow sonics of opaque,
oracular, aural twistesse;
irregular polygons transduced
to audible, to choriambic
vassals in vibrato sensoria,
splice-spruced micro-loops,
re-up sampled to peak infinities
flippering as fractals in mid-air …
Village
These dew dashed Ballard Downs at dusk,
Their flannelette filtered translucency,
Their ethereally gust thwacked sparsity,
Their muted refractions of wheatsheaves asway,
Grainy as y’like in the drawn light;
We, mere pinpoints a-prance,
Free-styling in the flashlights
‘Midst their giddy levity …
Our scruff of signature left in the stomped crops trample.
We vortices of loneliness
Eschew the coital co-substantiates
Of a GPS iPhone app engineering freelove
Betwixt such brittle strangers …
Who melt for lust and pour for sex.
The top road through which we, as e’er, shuffling exeunt
To the 09.07 market day bus;
The rusting hoops of stanchions of the withered
Wreck of shelter in which ‘first time’ memories were made …
Cigs, ket, stout, cide, hash, snog, blow, laid, vom, chuck.
On that trusty bus immemorial, now, only e’er on a Thursday,
Sometimes, silently, without word or intimation,
Through the wanding wonk of cattle pong that sands the breeze,
A youngster won’t return
And an aged farmer’s wife in well-versed, mock concern
Will glintily gliss ‘er tamps o’goss …
'Dreckly, all spuddlins hath ped off thru d’dimpsey of a yoretide eve
Dey’ll match an’ hatch as t’were e’er thus; ’cordin’ t’dis eye, ’tis ne’er a goodbye!'
As, in absentia, all flaxen fledglings were wont t’do
As, in perpetu, all sylvan nestlings e’er ‘av and must …
'Afore the byre’s been tromped to mere dander dust.'
inferno al forno
(impact +3 days)
Cobalting cinders in soot-storms
A blanketing-dust graphite
Dead-black clinker spun
Back into nightfall
With no morn, nor star
You said I was ‘telegenic’
Until my taste for ash
Until the bankrupt shop units
Were hulled to make befilthed
Lino lain concourses
For various novelty vending machines
Purveying massprod sundries of a sexual nature
With a comedic saucy bent
Until the rebellion, until the bootstomp
Until the hefty cruciforms borne by looters
Had wireless CCTV nailed to each axis
Arcing each orifice
Our wan limbs shackled by bracelet and anklet tags
Our movement shadowed by weaponised tannoy drones
I have no coins to spend or insert
All long since smelt or dealt
All pockets full of oxides …
I’d rather have been pilloried and cook-pot quartered
Than be in this scourge of rootless, retroid reminisce
Recalling when urinals and not welted legs
Were lacquered in perma-drip masticity of piss
And your soul, and my soul,
Miles adrift, miles apart,
Cankered in a centrifuge of dead, dead sparks …
Publishing credits
Apoplex-Perplex-Complexities:
You’ve got so many machines, Richard! –
An anthology of Aphex Twin poetry (Broken Sleep Books)
Village: Bucolicism: Alt-lite verse for a post-pastoral
England (Cherry Red Records)
Inferno Al Forno (Impact +3 days): Response (Dreich)