One Poem by Nick Ingram

 

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This was the summer of new hopes, new seeds,

new growth: a search for a new life – so this

is how it feels to finally live at

the end of the world.

                                   I refuse to be

barren of joy which you try to take from

me within this quiet sense of social

dislocation.

                    I said to her: ‘I don’t

want your charity, I just want your love.’

                                                                    Can I do this job these days after the

freedom I have tasted on her lips?

This is nothing other than a middle-age

ruin: the immediate sense of the

present.

              This is the case: if this works, it

works, if this is all there is then I shall

die – it sometimes feels like I live under

a different sun.

                          What happens if I’m

submissive to what you want?

                                                  I am not

ironic, but have become irony

itself: he was an amorphous mess of

stewing contradictions – the curtains are

closed on this winter day and the lights are

off.

        I have to work everyday just to

cut through the noise, having become death

haunted.

               This was meant to be freedom, a

new adventure; a new sound; a new me;

a new improvisation: all of this

is just a different kind of melancholy,

boredom.

                 Here’s to all the glittered showered

stripper poets on New Year’s Eve: I come

looking for some new kind of euphoria!

                                                                 The holidays are over, all the mince

pies and clotted cream have been

consumed.

                   These days he only ever went

to bed early, without seeing anyone

in the day, meaning sometimes you are

neither poor enough or rich enough – yet

you fall through the spaces.

                                              Maybe I’m

already dead and died years ago, and

all that walks now is nothing but a cipher,

an echo and ghost of what once existed.

                                                                  I’m not feeling rather now! I feel like

I want tomorrow, but I wanted it

yesterday – is this form of asceticism

a form of flagellant decadence?

Everything will be alright!

                                           The crescent

sickle morning moon sits in the grey sky

like lovers lying in warm beds on cold

December mornings: sometimes it is better

to write some lines than let nothing fall

from the day.

                       The slowness and the emptiness

of these days begin to grind gears with

entropy, as I live this ghost infested

life, with these four walls which try to crush

everything from the hollow case of my

crown – and now I’m drunk on life, even though

today I am alone.

                              He listens to

Nico’s ‘Chelsea Girls’ far too much – this city

will bleed me another, another

chance, or I shall bleed from the inside,

as I stand before the gates of a new

dawn, with Copper Clarke silhouetted in

the distance.

                      I have the urge to get blind

stinking drunk, lush, and decedent – I just

want to misbehave - a ragtag band of

malcontents unable to do a job

properly, but wanting golden stars, but

all they got was this dead sea salted

albatross.

                 I am reborn, but what as

I am unsure – this July, at least, he

rose every morning with still a slight hope

in his heart, the weakness of the ghost within

the machine.

                      Maybe, I’m choosing a new

matrix of ideas and have yet to set

them down: we aim for the universal

and all we get are square limited boxes.

                                                                  Once again, as I’ve recited many

times before: I refute entropy, and

the dawn shall banish the stars and this night.

                                                                           This year I intend to be the exorcist

for these several demons: today I have

fallen into the lion’s den, as I

sit here drinking green tea on a grey

December afternoon ten days before

Xmas.

            The light flashes in the living

room.

           God, I miss good conversations

over bottles of red wine – at last I

can look outwards towards another world.

                                                                      This becomes wider than the lion’s den,

only the rhythm of my heart will remain,

emptied into the ether.

                                      He begins

to watch film again!

                                   This is a new section

of this Venn Diagram, I bring rose and

firewater, while I keep getting this

feeling that it’s only 10.01am

in the morning, then you reach a point where

existence becomes so surreal to be

believed, having discovered a sound world of

exquisite banalness, running continually

through my ears.

                              This new revolution begins

these forms of old words and long walks.

                                                                     There is one piece of a sum I need to

pull apart: I hear tonight distant echoes

of past rock’n’roll like a younger soul

is trapped within my skin – there is something

about this place and the other (place.)

                                                               You could say I’m already growling

for next year: an algorithm change’s

the tempos of life, hapax legomenon,

the unknown, lost translation, unknown,

unremembered.

                           Marianne Faithfull

stated: “‘… [He was] … already ripe for

the picking? He was ready for absolutely

anything! He was ripe. Just like I was

ripe, and just like you yourself were ripe for

the whole experience. It’s just like what

happens when an apple gets too ripe to

hang on a tree. who knows how far it’s

going to fall.’”

                          This will now be my

solitude – this room – these ideas – so I

listen to the music I listened to

when I was sixteen, and everybody

was still alive, with the exception of

the poets.

                  The mould encrusted stilton,

washed down with port, slides down my gizzard:

I think I need imagery and new symbols?

                                                                    Colombine can eat me, making Pierrot

jealous – although Xmas is only once

again two weeks away, time feels elastic

and jumbled as the masks we have to wear

over our faces and chins muffling

our voices.

                     I read books of dead young poets

whose styles never had the chance to mature,

still stuck in their young confused nihilistic

mode – we’re going to dance this crazy joy around.

                                                                                      …And then nothing happened…

                                                                                                                             how did this

romantism become so baroque?

                                                     The metaphysical calligraphic

theological meridian

inscription on the walls and ceilings of

the temples of the mind: I want to plunge

a steak through my heart even if it is

medium rare.

                         It is on November

days like this when you begin to think that

it’s all over, finishing as grey as

a winter sky: I have enough faith to

begin dancing again.

                                    Once he wanted

joy, now he has to settle for this ostracism –

everyone left home, at last I am free.

                                                              This is where my skin peels apart and my

breath becomes, Nubya Garcia sends

a shudder down my spine, as Nico

whispers in my ears – make tea, put a CD

on.

       Remember silence and be thankful

for it, for these are the empty days,

therefore, I shall fill them with these words.

                                                                         The aesthete hammers upon a new anvil:

I have never lost a game of rock, paper,

scissors – the world is performed, austere like,

as I sit here listening to the music

of someone else’s life of the soul.

                                                          They are still telling me I have to leave

through the walls: so much for my prognosis –

he could never obtain the silence he

once had, all was spoken noise. Is this the

point where I begin to feel again?

                                                       The

ribbons rot, but there will always be this

noise – this was meant to be freedom and life.

 

 

 

Nick Ingram is an Artist/Poet/Writer/Performer who operates out of Plymouth, England. His work is rooted in the ideas of montage, collage, cut-up, and language. He has a consistent record of publishing both locally and internationally (poetry/prose/columns/essay) in various media and working in the arts over the past ten years. His recent short story ‘Research Towards an Understanding of the Performance Artist and Film Maker Emily X,’ appears in The Opiate, Fall, 2021, Vol 27 (Paris.) As well as this he has published poetry in various media outlets for the best part of a decade. On top of this he has published two volumes of his work ‘Dionysius Williams & Other Southwest Observations (2014),’ and, ‘Some Notes from a Small Dent of an English City (2016.)’ Nick has a great belief in grass roots arts and believes that the idea of place is a great motivator to creating and anchoring grounded work, whether that is either in writing or image making. It was because of this he became a founding member and director of Plymouth’s spoken word and performance collective ‘WonderZoo.’ His artistic practice also extends to image making in various media and has been involved recently with local Plymouth art collective: ‘Plymouth Artists Together.’ This Curriculum Vitae contains examples from his image output over the last ten years, as well as a full publishing history of all his published work and activity over the same period. He is looking forward to developing new projects over the coming year.