Year Zero

Year zero, like moment zero, output zero, countdown to nothing zero, arbitrary zero.

Horrendous in these moments, long hanging-on moments, sinking down inside, not thinking about nothing. There seems to be no output from imagination. I just can’t push out of this.

I switch the buttons
Adjust the eyepieces
Year double zero
Colours
Triangles
Colours that fall between colours.
I fade out to let the flickering take over.
This is what they call Lifetools.

I am in North Beach, praying to Burroughs and Ginsberg.
A sign on the park says No Unaccompanied Adults.
No Loitering.
On the internet I run a search on my own name. Nothing comes up.

RTS, Trafalgar Square. It felt like we were dancing in the ruins of their culture.

Some months ago I was constantly channelling Burroughs; I needed some sleep, so I visualised a shelf, with a pen and notebook and candle. And I said write it down, stop bothering me, I’ll read it in the morning. I’ve not written a word since.

I’ve got a wooden dish of silver coins to pay the ferryman.
I been across the river Styx.
I looked into the mirror at the end of Hades Hall,
I read the hieroglyphs imprinted on your brow.
I’m just shaking, shaking,
Spiningly
Ripped bare, naked spiritually.

Year zero
And what have I got to show for it?
A handful of myths and a bucketful of morals and a trail of persecution and betrayal.
And in the Exploratorium a live locust is wired into a monitoring machine that records its electrical impulses when a child frightens it, endlessly. When one locust dies it’s discarded and replaced by another. The only legal locusts in California said the scientist.
So No, No,  I don’t see nothing to celebrate. Nothing to gain.

I tried Hinduism in the pall-light of an almost forgotten memory of a bar in San Francisco.
Maybe I read it in a book.
Where to cut out, where to cut in
Frozen stiff from the aridity on The Golden Bough.
Fire worship – an eternal wish.

And please send some of the remembering away.
Something sickening,
Some sickening memory
Where I am being loud and hopeless again.
Red and blue flashing lights
Herald a crystal skull
Clouds of verbiage
Flaming orange at 24Hz.

The sound of a pneumatic drill in the street.
I think it’s in my head.
My eyelids snap open.
And the sound stops.

I gaze out of the window, winter night falling always too early. Neon turns the colour of cars sickly in their own light-beams. (1999)