…

a three-pronged muck-up of a yesterday

the second, a fall in the river

the third, a heavy fall in the street

but first

a can’t-go-forward, cant-go-back, scenario

where my only way out is

maybe

a 5-6-7 k river gorge

in some remote mountains

i can’t know i can get safely through

and where there’ll be no people

...

all in all

a proper schtuck to get oneself in

another hairy descent

...

the way South

...

at this point i think i’m obliged to mention

the next Pour

into The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

is very imminent

...

33 new pieces

will be added

for the 1st of June

...

six months after it first went live

it will now be 799 pieces in all

presented at total random

one after the other

at a pull or refresh of your screen

something no-one ever did before

...

ideas stories poems gags one-liners

fragments verses choruses ditties

and more

...

some folk have made it a daily part of their life

to have it up on their screens

for constant or occasional perusal

a permanently available stock of new thoughts

old quotes

comic stories

and left-field ideas

...

the undoable way forward

…

...

back to my predicament in the mountains of Ladakh

which occurred after

one hard-trekked day of leg-aching ascent

in the bleakly beautiful, stark rocky mountains and valleys and gorges

on the winding trails from Likir to Yangthang

on the three night Sham Valley Trek

the easiest available trek up here in Ladakh

...

and so

after a nice night in a Homestay

room, dinner, breakfast and packed lunch

not bad for 1500 rupees

i started the next day with a steep descent

down to the river

with the bigger steeper climb visible ahead of me

yet when i get down there to start the ascent i

can’t do it

go up that is

because ... altitude sickness

in the form of dizziness and a physical uurrgghh in my carriage

and

after three attempts at just twenty metres of climb

each making me feel weak, woozy and terrible

i realise i

errrr

can’t go forward

or back, up

or right, North, which is just a rock face

i can only go left, South

down the gorge of the Tokpo River

while the only real remedy for altitude sickness is to go down

so that’s what i have to do

turn left, go South, down

except its an unknown

barely mapped

...

yet

do i have a choice?

especially when, as long as i’m not going upwards

i feel good

and hey

its an adventure

could be brilliant

an off-piste wander

while i have a litre of water

and the packed lunch

so, why not?

yet

i don’t know if its doable

...

...

while thinking now, next morning, achily safe in Leh

i guess i coulda got someone in Yangthang

to somehow get me a taxi

but that woulda taken hours

and been failure

and no-fun

whereas trying the deep river gorge is not failure

keeps the adventure rolling

...

…

yet i don’t know what’s in the gorge

and there’s no internet anywhere here

and the Maps.me App cannot be trusted

for things that do exist aren’t on the App

while trails that don’t are

so i don’t know if its dangerous

stupid

impossible

perilous

i can’t know and i don’t but

keyly

its down

and down i have to do

and down i can do

is the chief thing i can physically do

except, after i make the decision

and begin

the tarmac road soon disappears into a stony trail

which disappears

so, yes, Maps.me is wrong
…

and so i start making my way along the rocky stony bottom

right next the thin, shallow, gently descending, winding river

the Tokpo river

as i enter into its deep gorge

of colossal high rock-faces yawing way above me

of jutting geological striata

some twisted back on themselves

of huge rocks defying gravity

and its bottom of boulders and river-rounded stones

with a scree of tiny slithers on every side

often a slope of scree hundreds of metres high

while there’s little chance i’m going too see anyone

and there must be 5k of this to do

but its not even eleven

so i got plenty time

to pick my way

then stop to breathe it in

to enjoy the stark splendour

plus i’ve no exhaustion in the legs

and any dizziness has gone with the descent

like its supposed to

...

while this, here

i shoulda said

this is one of the bleakest landscapes i ever saw

while everything seems pulverised

broken into bits

by time and gravity

as i dicily pick my precarious way down

and down

the shallow gorge

stepping on

or on the sand between

these ankle-busting stones

and crossing the river five, ten times

not one of which is easy

on the smooth stones

as i find my slow way

stopping now and again to drink in just how

desolate

bleak

this beauty is

where the Southern horizon is high snow-covered peaks

then, ahhh, falling off a slippy stone into the river

half drenching myself

but rescuing my tablet

then soggily eating my packed lunch

while looking at a pair of tidily-set small trainers on a stone by the river

surrounded by scattered ragged clothes

???

…

progress

…

…

while, all the time

i cannot know if this is doable

if there’s a waterfall?

if the gorge thins, with cliffs both sides

so there’ll be no way through

and i’ll have to go back up

which is the one thing i can’t do

so i battle and pick and struggle

and ascend a little slope to a car-wide trail

flat and easy

with old car-tracks

which is a sign of reachable civilisation

and thus good

yet the track then disappears

has fallen, sloughed, been washed-away

into the river

which is not good

though there are then two thoughtfully placed cairns which

if i pass between them

bring me to the lip of a doable slip-slidey path

back down to the river bottom

where i descend for one river bend of rocks and stones and crossing

and then ascend again to another flat easy trail

which again, after one long bend

disappears, sloughed away once more

while i’m forced by the winding of the vast valley-side

to again cross

and recross the river

with a growing sense that this is doable

this is a great thing to be doing

that this is about as good a Plan C as i am going to get in a hurry

and that soon i’m going to come to...

and i do

with, first, a concrete irrigation channel on the left side

which i walk on

then see an abandoned house

and, up the other slope, a crumbling white stupa

[Buddhist shrine]

then a decent trail on the right side

with motorbike tracks

recent ones

which means i’m safe

i’m good

and then

as i hoped it might

but kinda hoped it might not

for it means the real tricky bit of the adventure is over

then, after say 5k

of the intrepid perilous know-nothing river bottom

there’s a proper road in from a gorge to the West

the one on Maps.me

which i guessed was real

and tarmacked

and is

wending down the valley

so the walk now becomes a sunny stroll

a saunter

as i see some poplar trees

which are the sign of a fertile patch

which is likely the sign of habitation

as i descend into the green

to pass the Rizpong Buddhist Nunnery

where there’s a fleet of government SUVs

?

and head on down to the National Highway

to the village of Uleytokpo

have a chai in a friendly cafe

and another

then get my thumb out for the lift back

from Uleytokpo

and wait for half an hour

my longest roadside wait in Ladakh

where often the very first vehicle has picked me up

yet in the end its one of the fleet of government cars

not an SUV

which takes me the 60k or so

back up the beautiful and starkly majestic valley of the Indus River

yes the Indus

the one i’ve been intrigued by since the age of seven

to Leh

...

where i just have time to get one more crashbangwallop in to the

succession of ballsups

because my stiffening limbs are so unwieldy i

get a sudden cramp in the thigh getting out the car

and fall very heavily on the downslope

in the busy Leh street

and am very fortunate not to bang my head

or get hit by some form of traffic

after which

more than disappointed by the cutting short

the failure

of my first attempt at a trek

the easiest trek available

i

get back to my guest house

where i left this laptop

and lie flat and still on the bed

so that nothing else can fuck-up

fall-over

feel wrong

flatline

or fuck-up again

...

...

…

safety in Uleytopko

…

…

…

by the way

i do have a history of unwise and hairy descents…

…

one week till the next Pour

33 new pieces added to The Bucket

from 766 to 799 total

June 1

...

presented to you

as ever

at glorious random

...

with no piece over 100 words

or more than13 lines

...

with a few ideas and wordings i’ve had for

ooo

ten twenty thirty years

but never used in a show

...

and including

...

a poem i wrote in 1985

which must be one of the first five poems i ever wrote

and which not one person has ever seen

...

one story from ‘97 i never dared release in any kind of print

[quite easy to not do when you don’t publish anything]

...

stand-alone fragments from poems i did in shows

in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2025

...

a quote from Veronica Franco

...

a cheap gag from 2001

...

a piece about a rare monument to the atrocities of the British Empire

which prison i visited twice this April

...

a homily

an aesthetic position

an inkless inkling

...

and more

…

all of which will be accessible

behind the paywall

here at The Bucket

...

…

image has two of the new pieces
two of the original

...

meanwhile

its been a mighty leap from sea-level to 3000m

from Chennai to Leh

from South India to its very North

from stifling-slum humidity to thin air

from jungle to “cold desert”

finding my way between three extreme seasons

swelter, Monsoon and ice

...

where i’m currently brushing the edges of one season

the very last of the Ladakh winter

for its snowbound here nine-ten months of the year

and, though the real icebinding cold has passed

it’ll be notably warmer next week

...

and before this i landed full-square into another extreme

easily the most likeable of the three...

the last of the highest Chennai swelter

and therefore avoided the third

the South-West Monsoon

while another coming Monsoon

way out East on the Andaman Islands

drenched me twice, only twice

before i boarded ship and sailed West

...

experiencing some kind of climactic extreme was inevitable

so this is not bad going

...

and all this has brought me to the

thin air of Leh

a town of 45,000

with a high-mountain culture

more Tibetan than Indian

...

where hundreds and hundreds of empty-ish hotels and homestays are

stirring for the imminent short-summer Tourist Season

...

where its pale blue above

and one form or another of grey below

grey-white stone

grey-trunked thinly green trees,

grey-brown stark valley-sides

grey-black roads

albeit with many white hotels and homestays

and some very white whitewashed stupas and gompas

...

where it’s cold

but not glove-cold or woolly-hat cold

with snow-capped peaks and furrier dogs

where it’s a mix of old and new

crumbling stupas

and just-built guest-houses

with intricately carved wooden awnings and balconies

...

...

so i

two eyes

in a head

on shoulders

above two walking legs

am choosing to stride my rhythmless jig

in this meandering zagzig

to pace the

back ends of the

back alleys, boonies and backroads

on my slow

planless and solo

goalless and just-so

stop-start-go

...

...

so i’m trying to not feel like i

threw myself out of paradise

as its more like i was forced out

by the Rainy Season

...

yet it’s been quite a series of transitions,

from white coral sands and greenest green jungle

on Havelock Island in the Andaman Islands,

to three days on a passenger ship, the Swaraj Dweep

carving through the gentle blue-grey waters of the Bay of Bengal,

to Chennai, Triplicane district

heaving brimming and generally full-on

a swelter in the sweatbox,

to the non-time of an overnight flight,

to here

the northernmost state of India

...

where Chennai to Ladakh is

as much of a change in geography as one could maybe ever manage

without crossing a national border

from as urban as urban gets

to cold-desert mountains

...

...

i knew it was going to be a huge change

yet, as i usually don’t worry about or research my destinations too much, i

simply get there and enjoy dealing with

whatever newnesses it throws at me

yet it was, and is, a way bigger difference than

anything i hazily anticipated

...

so i’m physically feeling the all-change

the cold and, especially, the altitude

...

for any sense of triumph at successfully avoiding the worsts

got tempered by altitude sickness

which has now, after four days, finally lifted

it was not genuine-problem Altitude Sickness

just the ordinary ungood symptoms of acclimatisation

mixed with missing most of a night’s sleep en route

yet still

muggy-headed-ness, terrible sleeping, slowness

...

...

so here we are beneath the sky

looping loops with an easy eye

wandering with softly treading feet

over stone and brick and grass and root

and concrete

for you have to be somewhere

and we were there

or near

before we were

here

where thereabouts

and whereabouts makes

hereabouts

...

...

where, as Leh is only so attractive

i will have to get out of town

and actually do stuff

which means a trek

while i’ve been doing a lot of walking

but not loads

and have only climbed one hill in months

a shattering morning of semi-accidental tropical canyoning

behind Radhnagar Beach on Havelock

so my thighs are not fit

and i’ll start with the easiest

the “Baby Trek”

the Sham Valley Trek

two or three nights in homestays

and 58 k from Leh

which should be great

but does mean i have to acquire some gear

wind-proof jacket, woolly hat, etc

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

my attempt to walk along the fabled Indus River

was a no-fun stroll past commercial buildings and broken rock

with the grey clouds growing over the snowy peaks to the South

though this region is actually a “cold desert”

doesn’t get a lot of rain

and the huge clouds huff and puff but don’t do much

so, when the light but cold rain came in Akling

i took the fortuitous appearance of a direct road for the 5k back to Leh

and thumbed a lift in nought-point-five seconds

with a friendly guy playing Pink Floyd

...

so we’re stop-starting in thick traffic back to town

when the driver-guy points to a sudden double-rainbow

and says

“hey, we’re listening to Pink Floyd and there’s a double rainbow”

...

...

so its

out of that and into this

Chennai to Ladakh

from metropolitan swelter to mountain chill

...

so its

next step the next step

from the shadow of the imminent Monsoon

to the coming blazing sun of the two-month Summer

...

and its

next stop the next stop

from Chennai

at its swelteriest

just before the Rainy Season arrives and

ends the long-building intense city heat

to, now, the morning cold of mountainous Leh

at the very Northern roof of India

...

so that’s an all-change for me

from sweaty streets to “cold desert”

from baking to thawing

from rammed crammed and brimming

to bare stark and stretching

...

from sea-level

to way way on high

...

from bustle and throng and jam

in thin alleys and leafy lanes and stretching flyovers

to the bare rock-walled lanes

and grey-brown valley-sides

with, beyond them, the stark rocky slopes

backed by snow-capped mountains

...

from the verge of heat-stroke

to the risk of altitude sickness

...

from an unknown,

now known

to an unknown

soon to be...

...

from filthy to bare

from cheap to cheaper

from a population between 7 and 13 million

to a population of 45,000

...

from Hindu temples and mosques and churches

to many, many, big and small, Buddhist stupas

...

from the call of the mullahs in the towering white minarets

to the chant of the old black-shawled woman circling the intricately-coloured stupa

turning its single huge prayer wheel

...

from a very Indian colossal mega-city

to somewhere that doesn’t feel like India

feels more like the uplands of Nepal

like Manang or the Mustang Valley

and is, i guess, culturally Tibetan

...

so that’s next step the next step

from the dying coral and the lushest of jungles

to the deck of a passenger ship…

from the cabin bunk

and the water swilling in the oblongs of the ships corridors

to the tight South central neighbourhoods of vast sprawling Chennai

Triplicane and Mylapore…

and then from that utter sweatbox

through the non-time

and successive line-ups of

airports

to this mountain world

with its stone-walled alleyways

its square white houses

its white-dusted horizons

and its gigantic sky

...

so here i go

quite the leap

seven weeks in this mountain world

seven weeks of i’m not quite sure what

yet all will unfold

as i learn more...

...

...

Ladakah is only really accessible two three months of the year

around June-July

so i’ve never been able to travel here before

as i always been mighty mighty busy

in Ontario and Manitoba

come June-July

and one of the reasons i decided to take a year off the Fringe Tour

and be a not-quite-broke poet wandering in South and South-East Asia

was it meant i could head for this total unknown

this long dreamt destination

Ladakh

...

and here i go

swapping shackbox

for cabinbox

swapping cabinbox

for sweatbox

and, now

sweatbox for icebox ...

a melting icebox

...

so here i go

to the high meltwaters

now flowing down the legendary Indus River

...

so here i go

in search of some kind of trek that

ISN’T STUPID to do solo and semi-fit at 63

...

maybe begin with the Sham Valley Trek, aka the Baby Trek

or the Markha Valley Trek, a bit less baby

?

the first i guess

but not for a couple of acclimatising days yet

...

...

...

in other news

the next Pour of The Bucket approaches

June 1

33 new pieces

...

...

...

meanwhile

my thigh-muscles sense these high treks are coming

they know they are not used to climbs

and they know it shall hurt

so

the very sight of Leh Palace

way up and stately on a huge rock above the town

is enough to get my semi-fit thigh muscles twinging

…

…

these photos are by way of

complete contrast to anything down South

…

…

the M V Swaraj Dweep

passenger ship, full

1200 people

elemental

brute

old school

...

vast metal in white blue and orange

backdropped by vast rising falling sea

...

mottles, flakes, rust

...

where strangers meet

and chat vociferously for hours

as we heave through the dark-blue grey

the relentless churn of the sea

for three or so days

from Port Blair to Chennai

my longest boat journey ever

...

where my question

when do i get seasick?

became

is seasickness inevitable?

became

no?

became an answer

no

...

on uneven barefoot lurches updown the damp corridors

or lying on my bunk

in my cabin of six

a family of four

with two extra lively boys, eight and ten.

and one tiny grumpy grizzled old man below me

playing loud tinny Bollywood

...

so i’m the only white person on the ship

and all have been pretty helpful

yet language is ever an issue

with the ship’s second officer

the radio officer

the training manager

and three marine biology students from Rameshwaram

who say the Andaman coral is all sick

has declined over their two years

plus a young Hindu errr, pilgrim

is that the word?

on his way to preach near Delhi

where the general air is lively, gregarious,

edged with fatigue

as this old hunk of metal carves through the waves

East North East

where, at my destination

and my departure

the Rainy Season has newly arrived

while, en voyage, we’ve had some light and middling rain

so there’s damp

and swilling puddles

yet its

generally clear

with flat low grey ominous clouds always visible somewhere

with their curtains of sheets of rain

where the calmest spots on board are

on deck in front of the engines

and easy slow hours can be lost

staring out to the leeward North

...

back in the day, the 70s

before there were flights

this was a fabled journey for travellers

ten or so days in a bunk or hammock

or sleeping on the deck

and its still the cheapest journey

but not for me, as foreigners pay more

yet i had to try my longest sea journey ever

while my only nights on ships have been on lakes

Lake Van, Lake Victoria

or in the Med

...

while i quickly mapped the confined space

corridor upon corridor

square stairwell after corridor after square stairwell

top-deck chai-shop, slow, very slow

where food for cabin-class is from an upmarket cafeteria

booked and paid for after boarding, decent

and where the ungood toilets could be worse

much much worse

...

meanwhile

“plenty of cold in Ladakh”, says the chummy guy

for that’s where i’ll be in a week

after another all-change

for i’ve gone from highest heat

to Monsoon

to big Boat

where next its Chennai in the Rainy Season

and then a flight way North

Leh, in Ladakh

the very top of India

which is 3000 km

to a real unknown

...

did not know it was going to be so far…

3000 k!

…

while the early-riser guy says

this ship is old and heavy and slow

and against the current

where heavy means less heaving

less updown

less seasick

which figures

yet there is low-pressure near Chennai

so its likely gonna get rougher

yet for now

the clouds have cleared to the East

and we are heading into light blue skies puffed with white

...

where i have no real idea what to expect from Ladakh

its so high that altitude-sickness comes into play

especially if you arrive sudden, by flying

and i guess it will be cold and empty

for which i am not prepared in any way

beyond one woolly jumper

so will have to get shopping

for warm clothing

and will also have to form a plan

for i have six weeks up there

and have an idealised notion of walking

with bag

from village to village

or bussing

and staying for a day or three

like i did in Jan-Feb in Maharashtra

yet i don’t know how practical this is

and will, as usual, deal with it

roll with it

go with it

find out what’s possible

and not stupid

when i get there

...

...

...

in other news

no wifi

[so this is sent apres voyage]

yes, three whole days without wifi

so its been old Italian movies

Visconti’s Senso

and

Rossellini’s Paisan

neither as good as i hoped

Senso not as good as, the comparable, The Leopard

and Paisan not as good as Rome, Open City or Bicycle Thieves

plus McCabe and Mrs Miller

even better than i remember

...

Warren Beatty, for all the Hollywood lore

is an unusual and understated actor star...

...

next

The American Friend

but not while Old Grumpy below is playing his shrill tinny racket

which is his revenge on the boys for being boys

so the father of the boys is playing his own racket

to make the old guy stop

which hasn’t worked yet

so here i am

stuck between battling rackets

...

“the human race

don’t you just love it

yes i do

its the only way to cope with it”

...

...

...

in other news

...

a slogan for Farage

“everything comes to we who hates”

we who hate?

.,,

...

...

…

in further news

an update

Chennai ain’t the Monsoon

Chennai is an absolute sweatbox

for an unwise afternoon stroll

from heaving lively brimming Triplicane

to pleasant leafy Mylapore
…
…

did i upload myself onto the Internet

into the Digiverse

the Hive Mind

by creating this

The Bucket

?

...

by uploading the hundreds and hundreds of ideas

each a product of my cerebellum

have i accidentally-on-purpose

digitalised myself?

..

haphazardly flung myself into digital eternity?

...

and could this have consequences?

...

for, perhaps

in the no-so-far-off future

like an extinct creature might be recreated through its DNA

The Bucket

because it contains so much

has so many facets, agenda, modes

in the hundreds of pieces

the ideas poems stories jokes

histories conjectures

couplets verses choruses fragments

and ideas again

where this very breadth

might allow an extremely well-read

and well-trained

AI to recreate my brain

not my physical being

just my brain

...

and because

across the 766 pieces, soon to be 799

The Bucket is so deliberately huge in scope

from bigs to littles

macros to micros

personal to historical

comic to not

ephemeral to scatological

poetic to crude

and everything in between

...

and so, because of this very wide range

the AI will therefore have more to go on

which could allow a more detailed picture than most

of the workings and patterns of a cerebellum

of what my brain knows

and where that knowledge came from

of how this brain functions

...

800 slices

or slides

of my head

for a microscope?

or a lantern show?

...

where, perhaps

the approximated reproduction of my head

statistically optimised [whatever that means]

could therefore be more accurate than most

...

...

though i have to say

that the Bucket is so utterly unsexual

i mean

there might be some idealised romance

some sentiment

yet no sex

so these recreated cerebellum

will be pretty sexless

...

boooo

...

...

an Anglo-Indian guy i met in The Sahara, Jack

he said

“do you mean a purely digital recreation of your brain, jem?

or are you talking about some further future

where brains can be created in a lab?”

...

so, do i mean an actual physical recreation of my brain?

good question

i dunno

which do i mean?

...

...

another question might be

why, when humans are no longer the number one computers on this Earth

are the second best computers around

would anyone or thing want to recreate one?

i mean, AI is going to be much better than us

not just a bit, but much much

...

perhaps AI might like to recreate a human brain as a tourist curio

as a steam-punk heath-robinson evolutionary wonder

a corporeal exhibit in a digital freakshow [?]

for AI agents to marvel at

or mock

...

...

and maybe Jack

one day

too-soon

someone will be able to physically recreate a brain

[imagine James Joyce’s

after all, he revealed a gazillion sides to himself]

...

so imagine a supremely sophisticated 3-D printer

one capable of not only printing living human flesh

but of copying and reproducing a functioning human brain

...

or even

as a further leap

imagine a global network of 3D printers producing a mass of living brains

which are then surgically implanted in the heads of...

bodies...

cloned bodies?...

accident victim bodies?...

or...

i dunno

...

an army of me?
uurrgghh

...

and this idea, by the way

is getting worse

imagine an extra and perhaps unnecessary me

or a Donald Trump

or a Dalai Lama

or my mate Venki, now called Bholebaba

...

imagine a host of mes,

or Donalds,

or Dalais,

or Salmans,

being reproduced all over a town,

or a country,

or the world

...

imagine that everywhere you go i’m there

or more likely, Donald is there

...

imagine me, legion

you, legion

JD, legion

...

now that’s a scary notion on a Monday morning...

...

...

yet, on a more practical but not entirely practical note

i am wondering if i have

through this aesthetic burning to create the Bucket

inadvertently attempted to throw myself into

digital eternity

?

...

THIS IS NOT HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE

i’m a performance poet

where everything is fleeting then gone

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

here on Swaraj Dweep, a.k.a. Havelock Island

the weather has turned

for The Monsoon is not just close

not just flickering in distant lightning in the evenings

growling in the darkness

not just curtains of sheeted rain out to sea

not just spitting in precursor

no

the Monsoon is here

not fully full-on

not cranked up to max

yet here

for the air has cooled

the wind is up

the clouds all have grey in them

and the Rains are upon us

...

...

...

...

in other news

did i ever tell you about

how i tried to book myself into a prison?

...

back in 1990

in Downtown Kansas City

i was looking for a hotel

and this building had “hotel” written on its side

in old fading and flaking letters

and there were people going in and out

so i

tried to book myself into jail

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

clowns

more clowns

...

a pair of clowns so together as stage partners

so quick with each other

so consummate in their aplomb

that

the best explanation is

those two particular clowns exchange

bodyparts on a regular basis

with complexicated surgery performed by

performed by

who’s worst?

performed by

hand up

a poet

...

meanwhile there are creatures

a species of ctenophore

Mnemiopsis leidyi

which can fuse bodyparts

damaged pairs can share digestive or nervous systems

...

and likely they share DNA with clowns

...
…

Swaraj Dweep ...

a many many splendoured place

beaches, coral

yet particularly

the jungle

the rain-forest

the rich greens

ten thousand of them

with the trees

the unique high trees

reaching up, beyond

in deep, tall swathes of green

...

below its the lianas and vines

the eight-foot serrated grasses

the huge leaves, the fronds, the ferns

then, above them

its the many kinds of palm

and the banana trees

plus the Banyan, Baobab and Peepul trees

each of which is still enough to make me stop

yet its, especially

the yawingly high

bare-trunked trees

found only here

the Andaman Redwood,

Bulletwood and

Gurjan

...

while it has

wonderful beaches

Radhanagar Beach,

Elephant Beach,

Secret Beach

...

and great coral

some of it, on Elephant Beach

the most easily accessed ever

...

yet most of all

its the jungle

particularly more inland

away from from the samey coastal woods

...

its the most amazing rain-forest i’ve seen outside the

Columbian Amazon

and what makes it so gorgeous

is those Redwoods, Bulletwoods and Gurjans

each unique to these islands

and rising hugely high

higher than any tree in Europe [?]

and giving an extra dimension

to the rain-forest

to the very varied vistas and banks and roadsides and ridges

of the most greenly green greens

...

all making for wondrous wanders

sometimes semi-lost

up down and around the jungle trails

...

and if not lost then

certainly not

found

…

with patterns next patterns

shapes on shapes

vines behind vines

greens in greens

thicket beyond thicket

...

where much of the jungle floor is wreckage

organic detritus

fallen coconuts, the husks of shelled coconuts

fallen branches, fallen boughs, fallen trees

in a browned underworld

of soft browned earth

and crunchy brown leaves

and rotting wood

plus the bushes

including the thorniest thorn-bushes i ever got ambushed by

while above the walker

or the idle stopper

or the tree-trunk sitter

are the layers of green

often thick green

rising to the reachingly high canopy

of leafy branches above those starkly outlined trunks

...

while

on an inland walk

where i quickly become a

single drop of sweat with a

human being inside

the winding trail will take you around then

updownup

and downupdown

through it

amongst it

in its all its ebullience and richness

its thickness and closeness

its rich reaching lushness

...

...

while i get around by hitch-hiking

which often takes thirty seconds to get a lift

and i just got a lift from a guy from Nagaland

who told me about a trail near Radhanagar

so that’s Thursday morning

earlyish

after Parotha breakfast

before it gets too hot

...

...

...

...

while

yesterday

i did get myself in yet another jungly pickle

somewhere inland

and got surrounded on all sides by dense thickets of extra jungly jungle

where the only way i knew there must be a way out

was that i had

obviously

somehow

found a way in

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

i just did that walk the Nagaland guy recommended

or tried to

because it wasn’t a trail

or if there was a trail i lost it soon

and it was a dry river

i clambered up

and picked my way down

where, in this highest of sweltering heats

it was tough

am shattered

came down and drank two litres of cold water in ten minutes

...

still don’t know where i was

will never know

in that riot of greens

found nowhere that felt like anywhere

just jungle

no building no path no clearing no vista

just jungle

...

there was no trail

just jungle

yet there were machete cut vines and branches

reassuring me

until suddenly there weren’t

... was i lost?

had i missed the tree with

a machete in it

and a skeletal hand grasping that machete

?

...

until

in the end

i did one last steep rocky branchy rooty clamber

hoping i’d be somewhere but no

no path no clearing no vista no break

just jungle

so when the woozy headyness abated

and sensing a possible downpour

which would make retreat distinctly tricky

i went back down

which was not easy

...

...

...

...

in other news

am hitch-hiking a lot

and the only reward i can give the driver or rider is

a winning smile

yet my winning smile has yet to lose

“Everything Is Beautiful”

is a thought and line and attitude I’ve tended towards

for over three decades

…
while I was first taught that

everything might be beautiful

by hitch-hiking in my Twenties

by getting stuck

for who knows how long

on any old random roadside anywhere

in England or France

from standing there at slowly increasing length

losing my frustrations into the distance

by finding ideas thoughts phrases definitions beauties

fascinations

in whatever turned out to be around me

as i started to turn three-sixty

and look

at the messy

and the elegant

at the conventional beauties

and at what some would consider the ugly

the mechanics’ yards

the edge of town sprawl

the slip-road dead-space

the garbage the rusting the half-built the half-fallen

the random roadside anywhere anyhow

...

hitch-hiking also taught me patience

something I certainly did not have before

...

and I also got the idea

Everything Is Beautiful

from a book

Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon

from 1926

where Aragon describes at huge length, for a whole book

if I remember correctly

a single small Parisian street or passageway

one about to be demolished

and relishes in finding and describing tiny details

and then details within those details

finding beauty and enthralment at every level

...

(i seem to recall that, decades later, Aragon

a poet chiefly

flew from France to communist Czechoslovakia

especially to ensure a “Trotskyist” poet got executed

though this ‘fact’ has disappeared from Wikipedia)

...

and then there’s a line I got from Brian Eno

though it’s maybe someone else’s line [?]

which kinda went, I think

...

“...a forest is fascinating at every level

from the aerial view

to a microsection of a leaf observed through a microscope”

...

for at EVERY level of scale

a forest a tree a branch a twig a leaf

whole or in fragment

is a fascination

...

while if you yourself try what Aragon did

it never need end

you never finish describing anything

all details lead to other details

all stories lead to other stories

...

and now?

the sterile organised space of the supermarket?

enthralling

the windblown alleyway?

captivating

the flat emerald plain of paddies stretching off to the south?

beautiful

the large dead cockroach on the stairs?

amazing

the tailor at his sewing machine by the step of his shop?

compelling

his shop?

wowing

...

for almost everything is beautiful

in its own way

of course

and the lesson

of course

is to find that way

...

and there are million ways to be beautiful

a trillion

...

so this is a relativism

a more localised, perhaps, democratic sense of beauty

and requires a multiheaded view of the world

rather than

one-view-fits-all

requires taking everything on its own terms

rather than your own fixed samesame terms

...

so

in this logic

a “liberated” head is one which has freed

is freeing

itself to be able to see things in many different ways

...

while me I walk a lot

ten miles or so a day

and frequently

I just walk

choose a direction and go

...

like I do here

in Sri Lanka

where a purposeless march can be a comedy

for, as I have posted before

here, the great cry of the locals to the foreigner

especially this striding ambler

is

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

which I get all the time

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

it’s the first question which comes into a Sri Lankan head

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

and sometimes it’s even partially aggressive

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

every outside hour of many days

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

I’ve even been asked it while sitting

yes sitting, as in stationary

on a bench by the lake

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

which is a telling question for me because

often

often often

I do not know where I’m going

am very rarely lost, proper lost

but I often do not know where I’m going

am planless more than aimless

striding more than ambling

...

while

the side road, the back alley, the river bank, the bridge

enthralling

captivating

enravishing

the smeared, the distending, the rubble

beautiful

...

with the eternal call

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

...

my friend Kate Noakes

told me about

“situationist walking”

which is to just walk in a straight line

and which term I kinda resented

for it is what I’ve been doing for decades anyway

and I didn’t want an encapsulating term for it

an ism, an ist

for it, the thought, impulse, decision that

yes, I’m gonna go that way

and just keep going no matter

and if I have to detour around

because of a railway line

a builder’s yard

a ...

well, I will

...

and then there’s the idea of a “flaneur”

which is yet more old-school French over-definition

...

“The flâneur may therefore be characterised as a deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savouring the multiple flavours of his city.”

...

Baudelaire and all that

which does seem to be a worthwhile way to enjoy the urban differents

...

and which aesthetic kinda got excellently rebirthed by Iain Sinclair

(Lights Out For The Territory, and all that)

and the psychogeography school of writing from the 1990s on

which definitely have Louis Aragon as a distant antecedent

along with Andre Breton’s excellent book Nadia

...

just a reminder

this was written in Feb 2022

in central Sri Lanka

yet never seen by any but one

...

while yesterday i got kinda

lost

in the corrugated iron lanes of the

crowdedly busy fishing village in South East Jaffna

Tamil and rather Christian

and quite the poorest place I’ve been in a long time

though the locals are quite well dressed

yet the shacks, the numbers of people and the

extreme skankiness of the mangy skeletal dogs

speak volumes

fishing folk tend to be the poorest in many countries

like here

a people who, lest we forget, lost a brutal war

...

yet few seem to apply the logic of the flaneur to

a place like

a Sri Lankan back-road

the last car-repair place heading East out of Carcassonne

the pile of cow heads behind the butcher’s market in Ende on Flores

the back alleys of the Plateau in Montreal

the corridors of the immigration office in Karwar, Karnataka

the sterile aisles of a supermarket in Estrella

or Bracknell, or Vancouver, or Mostar

the seats of the battered bus south from Campeche

...

they are all beautiful

if you try

if you let them

...

the rotting tomato in the hedgerow

the hedgerow

the humus under the hedgerow,

the grille on that abandoned car

designed by someone

made by someone else

and done that exact way for an exact reason

though that reason may well be long lost…

...

while this post was begun in

a place which rhymes with itself as it goes along

Anuradhapura

famed for the Buddhist shrines

I couldn’t be arsed with

...

so I chose instead to enjoy the leafy green lanes

the riverside ambles

the quiet bridges

the levees of the many lakes

the ten mile plus march, stroll, saunter, limp, stagger down and down green green country lanes just to get the bus straight back because, by then, i was way too knackered, and new-shoe foot-very-sore, to climb the actual hill to the giant stupa i had come all this way to go see

...

so i

two eyes

in a head

on shoulders

above two walking legs

am choosing to pace the

back ends of the back alleys, boonies and backroads

on my slow

planless and solo

goalless and just-so

meandering zagzig

across this country still new to me

kinda killing time in the Lankan limbo

after the Indian afterlife paradise

...

because

EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL

and it’s all good

because

it is

...

...

...

...

at some point I will have to try to link these ideas with

the idea from my Camino chum, Marina from Bari

that, on the Camino Di Santiago

…

“you find metaphors on the way, as you go

and in those metaphors you find lessons”

...

and with the idea that

you can understand the whole world from considering a grain of sand

and understand a grain of sand from regarding the world

...

and so I go on

singing

not singing

Ray Stephen’s song

“Everything is beautiful, in it’s own way”

...

its more a liberal Christian song

than a hippy-dippy piece

Everything Is Beautiful

...

...

so all the above was written in Sri Lanka

Jaffna i guess

and for some reason which eludes me

i never posted it anywhere

...

and i’ve come back to it because

i have some big ideas percolating around my head

...

...

firstly

the might-be Brian Eno quote

which i’ve been mulling over for decades

and which is actually

...

“A forest, seen from the air, is complex and interesting.

A single tree is equally complex.

One leaf, even one molecule is endlessly fascinating.”

...

which is a most rewarding way to think

...

...

plus

the idea that everything is fascinating

is coupling with my quote in The Bucket

...

The Human Brain Is Built For Fascination

...

...

plus a piece from The Bucket

which was in last year’s show

...

“Almost everything in this world

Can be seen as beautiful

Yet far less can be seen as ugly.

And so, it simply follows

There is an arc in this world

Which bends towards beauty”

...

...

while The Bucket also has the line

...

This world, i been around,

And again,

And you know the main

Thing i found?

Everywhere is fascinating

Everything is a comedy and

Everyone is ridiculous

...

...

and another line i’m thinking about at great length is

that most of the world is best seen at

walking speed

not all, but most

and almost anything detailed, full of humans

is best experienced at walking pace

...

...

plus there’s Marina’s idea

and there’s the grain of sand

...

...

while after all this

i’m not sure i wholly believe

Everything Is Beautiful

yet i do believe

Everything Is Fascinating

...

...

so at some point soon

on a beach in the Andamans

in a Muslim semi-slum South of central Chennai

or on a Himalayan hillside in Ladakh

i’m going to have to syncretise these notions

...

...

...

...

in other news

got myself in a pickle in a dense jungle

i couldn’t find a way out of

where i had to remind myself

there must be a way out of here

because, obviously, duhhh

i found a way in

…

…

posted from Govind Nagar

Havelock Island

in The Andamans
…

…

finishless

and

wholeless

startless

and goalless

...

without cycle or order

centre or border

...

a readerly text

purposed for infinite

permutations

open to the many

interpretations

for
slow browsing

and for

concatenations

...

a dance of chance

designed to be playful

for one piece a week

and for a dayfull

...

...

for The Bucket is not this site

The Bucket is

766 separate short pieces

nothing more than 13 lines

or 100 words

...

ideas poems stories jokes histories

verses choruses ditties fragments

online

and coming at you in wholly random order

...

something nobody ever did before

...

so The Bucket is not like a normal Substack

for you access it at this Substack site

yet, behind the paywall

you will find a pinned post

called HOW TO ENTER THE BUCKET OF UNUSED IDEAS

...

and in that pinned post

you will find the link

to our site

and the password

which will take you straight in

to your first piece

which is brought to you by Nick Fox-Gieg’s randomising programme

...

and you simply have the piece up

until

when you are ready

you pull or click or refresh

and a wholly different piece appears

at pure random

...

and again

...

and again

...

for as long as you like

...

something nobody ever did before

...

...

While every three months or so

we will pour in some new pieces

and the next pour into The Bucket

of 40 or so new pieces

will be May 30

or thereabouts

...

...

...

me i’ve made a living as a performance poet

for decades

yet i always avoided the world of published poetry

which always seemed notably unexciting

compared to performance

which is and was utterly thrilling

and captivated me for gleeful decades

...

and where there is no bullshit between performer and audience

its raw, immediate, honest and naked

...

so, publishing nothing

i had an ever-burgeoning number of unused ideas

and poems

of unusable stories and jokes

and lines and passages and verses

which i doubted i’d ever use on stage

yet which came back to me

and back to me

with their power

and poetry

and originality

...

for hundreds of them are ideas or facts or stories

i never read anywhere ever

...

and this host of notions

many the product of extended obsessions

grew and grew through the years

till i had so very very many ideas

and fragments

and pieces

i had to do something

...

it was like a colossal piece of baggage

i was dragging through the years

and across the world

which would add to constantly

and read through every few months

and refer to for ideas

and which

eventually

demanded too loudly

i do something

...

yet i didn’t want a book

a book would be just like everything else

and not compelling enough to make me go through

what it takes to go through

to get something out

...

and me

i wanted it somehow random

i’d wanted something random for decades

something startless and finishless and

i thought

near infinite

...

until, in the summer of 2025

i found that my friends, Nick and Rebecca

whom i had known for decades

i found that they could make it happen for me

and ...

and...

suddenly...

shockingly...

it was doable

700+ pieces

at random

...

and, excitingly,

it was something unprecedented

hundreds of pieces

at random

...

...

...

...

...

in other news
Havelock Island

very like the nearby and smaller Neil Island

where i monthed

and where the cerulean waters

and white-sanded beaches are as nice as Neil

or slightly less so

yet the jungle is stupendous

the best, the lushest, the greenest

the Andaman Islands are famous for their trees

three of the biggest being unique to here

the Redwood, the Bullet-Wood and the Gurjan

and these are enormous trees

majestic, grand, capacious, towering, beautiful

plus there are banyans, baobabs and peepuls

which are amazing trees i still stop to look at

so the lush jungle

with its vines, its lianas, its bushes, its mangroves

its ferns, its fronds, its super-sized serrated grases

its ten thousand greens

is made all the more striking

by the high bare trunks yawing hugely above

and by the highest of high jungle canopies

all fabulous to find a trail through

...

like this morning

where i

accidentally repeated a walk i

accidentally found on Monday

when i hitched a lift on a motorbike

and the friendly bloke said “secret beach”

and i’d never heard of Secret Beach

yet i instantly got the idea and said

“Secret Beach”

so off he took me

way past Kalapathar Beach

into the verdant or farmed interior

till he dropped me and

pointed me at a scrawled sign

which read “secret beach”

so i wandered along

assuming he was coming behind me

yet never saw him again

but soon found myself on a well-trodden path

up down and around

through the jungliest jungle

where the tree roots are steps

where the shade is cool yet the sun is screamingly hot

and where i picked my way

over trunks, round tree-falls, across streams

revelling in the bestest of the best

the greenest of the green

yet not quite sure if its the right path

i mean, its a path but it keeps climbing

and beaches aren’t usually up anywhere

while the sun is so high it gives no clue to direction

so i can have no idea if it is

or isn’t

the right direction

or how far it might be

while i can’t hear the sea

or see any tell-tale expanses of blue below the green of a horizon

when i can see one, a horizon that is

and so

when i did it

the whole walk

again

this morning

after letting today’s guy who picked me up

decide my destination

which was, first, a chai

with a kind of crusty cake

he wouldn’t let me pay for

and then the path again for Secret Beach

yet when i did it this time i had zero worries

about wrong-path

or wrong-direction

or the path abruptly or slowly disappearing to nothing

or too too long for waterlessness in high high heat

or crocodiles, for that matter

so when i repeated i was much more a saunterer

a free ambler

slower and less purposeful

sitting on trunks or rocks reading Sapolsky

finding my snaking way

down to a beach

which might or might not be Secret Beach

yet certainly is secret in the sense that there’s no-one on it

bar one old fisherman with a hand-throwing fishing net

and then,

heading back on the gentle flat trail behind the beach

where coastal paths have much less varied and attractive jungle

than the hilly inland forests

wending my easy but, finally, leg-weary way back

to Kalapathar Beach

for, first, a chai

and to then find my ride from this morning has a coconut stall

and well, this is a great chance to pay him back

and so, a coconut it is...

...

...

...

in other news

i cannot make tea or coffee while reading the Sapolsky

and why?

because “Behave” by Sapolsky

is a 1000 pages

and i need three books

as a pile on the chair

to put my kettle on

so the lead will reach the socket

otherwise its

no boiled water, no coffee, no tea

so the 1000 page tome makes all the difference

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

there doesn’t seem to be a word

“somethere”

what would it mean?

…
…

and, now i’ve seen it

its so obvious

so needs-to-be-done

...

and it won’t be hard to do, to write

it’ll be a rhyming poem and rhyming poems are fun

fun to think up

fun to write

and a great challenge to make work

...

the kind of challenge you can relish approaching

because you can be pretty sure its doable

achievable

resolvable

...

the English language is fabulous for rhyming poetry

an endless trove of potential

there are six or more words for most things

so with archness, and rulelessness

and fooling about with phrasing and word-order

you should be able to make almost anything work

all you need is time and thought and a sense of fun

...

yet

how come i never saw this could be a poem twenty years ago?

i’ve had the key line all this time

...

images are a non-sequitur
the mud volcanoes near Shyam Nagar

on North Andaman

...

while rhyming is much easier for performance poets

for performance poetry

which allows huge flexibility with time and timing

and the stretching of vowels and syllables

all making a perfect rhyme considerably easier to achieve

...

and those lines and rhymes might look terrible on the page

like execrable

but who cares?

its a performance piece

its for the air and the ears

its for lyrical surprise in the right now

...

...

poems with poor or flatly obvious rhymes are

almost always

a sure sign the writer hasn’t spent long enough on the words

for with time and thought

with a circumambulation in the approach

and a sense of fun and lightness

one really should be able to get it right

...

like i should

now the obvious idea has leapt out

saying WRITE ME WRITE ME WRITE ME

...

...

how did i not see this before?

its plain as day

i’ve not just had the idea for years

i’ve had the last line of every verse for years

...

where the chief rhyme is going to be with the word “LESS”

so the chief issue i can see is not

accidentally

turning into something which resembles a certain poem

one of the very best performance poems of them all

ever

Johnny Clarke’s

“You Never Get A Nipple In The Daily Express”

...

off the “Live At The Electric Circus” 10 inch EP

which i had for years until i lost it

at The Libertines gig in Edinburgh in 2002

where me and Jenny Lindsay were the support acts

...

that poem

“You Never Get A Nipple In The Daily Express”

is very probably the first performance poem i ever heard

and loved

and got knocked sideways by

and considered at great length

in its wit

its politics

its gorgeous adept language

...

though i already knew

and loved

“Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”

which is supremely free and funny and smart

...

...

rhyming poems are so much fun

that i have trouble explaining to myself

or anyone

quite why i’ve written so few

when i’ve thoroughly enjoyed the writing of

“Clanger Man”,

way back when
and

“The Man So Acutely Vulnerable He Brings Out The Vulture In Everyone”,

in the years before 2025

and

more

but not enough more

...

...

for me the gods of rhyming poetry are

Johnny Clarke
Cole Porter... e.g. Anything Goes

Chuck Berry... e.g. Nadine

Bob Dylan... e.g. Hard Rain

and a trillion pop songs
e.g. “you’re gonna need an ocean
of calamine lotion”

...

while the one thing i shouldn’t do

so it doesn’t set me any patterns

is YouTube the Johnny Clarke poem

which i haven’t played for well over a decade

yet i can probably remember EVERY LINE

...

so here i go

i have a rhyming poem to write

here i go

fun to come

here i go

having climbed a hill for an easy roll down

here i go

but not quite yet

...

i think i’ll let it ripen

will conjure some more issues to keep

juggling the notions a

few days more...

...

Ana heads back to Europe in four days

and i’m gonna go exploring Havelock Island

so i’ll wait till Radhanagar Beach

...

while the nature of the idea

chunky, political

is going to open up a whole host of possibilities

so its not like i’m going to be milking one idea

i’m gonna be having bags of fun grabbing ideas from all over

from the personal, the historic

the specifically now, the timeless

the literary, the pop

...

though i don’t actually need the piece

for a new show

until next year

as i’m taking a year off

so i got time

...

yet the key thing is to write the first draft

and then, however long it takes

fast or slow

get to a version i’m happy with

and then, through the months,

slowly muck about with it

have fun with it

let it rise with the yeast of chance

ferment with the sugar of time

...

for me, now i have the core idea

its gonna be about the cultivation of the notions

as they stretch themself ever fuller and wider

and i get the chance to

idly and / or determinedly

consider the petals

and stems

of the many growing

and flowering

possibilities

...

...

so here i go

after Kalipur Beach

its Aerial Bay

for the mud volcanoes at Shyam Nagar

then the ferry to

Port Blair

for Aberdeen Bazaar

and Cellular Jail

then Havelock Island a.k.a. Swaraj Dweep

for Radhanagar Beach, a.k.a. Beach Number 7

to catch all the balls
a-juggling in my head
and finally write a poem called

**[words to be created]** Harder and Longer For Less

...

here i go
…

the mud volcanoes are near Jol Tikry and Shyam Nagar
which we journeyed to pretty much by accident
after being stymied in our Plan A for the day

…

never seen anything like them
yet they are not easy to get to
and took two buses and a jeep

…

if you look at the second clip
that mud is very slowly moving

they were apparently dormant for twenty years until February
and are not volcanic

are, rather, organic matter decaying somewhere under the hill

Mr Rushdie
doncha just love him?
I do
he must be my favourite living writer in the English language...

...

And you know what i think?
when i turn another page

after a page of delights
I think,

Hooray

its Salman and he’s off again
But i also think,

O Bloody Hell

its Salman and he’s off again...

On some beautifully measured flights of lyrical fancy

Because its great and i love him but, but...

Doncha just wish that he would calm down a bit sometimes?
Doncha?
Cos why does everything have to be so up? Why can’t anyone be normal? Why do they all have to be so bloody extraordinary?....

O there’s an enchanter and he’s the most amazing enchanter there ever was, and O there’s a woman and she’s the most beautiful woman in all of Asia, and there’s a scent shop and O, its full of the most wonderful and treasured and scents giving Salman any unneeded excuse to rattle off another long and marvellously written list of the ingredients of ancient perfumes
Which he probably did in his last book, or was that stuffed animals, or alchemists tools, or, whatever?
Whatever, who cares? Its Salman and its always marvellous
But O, there’s a temple builder so he’s the best temple builder there ever was...

You get my drift?
And O, there’s an engraver and, you know what, he’s the most amazing engraver you can imagine there ever was without using adjectives
He knows so much, that Salman, the knowledge keeps coming at you till you’re floating awash in a lyrical delirium growing within for as long as his ever-extending semi-ecstatic sentences...

And he either does know a hell of a lot, or he’s brilliant at making it seem like he does... Probably both
Cos i don’t know if Salman has ever had a character of an Egyptian Observer of the Royal Bowel Movement but, if he did, the royal priest’s mother would have been the most beautiful and enchanting woman in all of Egypt, his father used to make the clouds scatter purely by opening his mouth and letting out the lyrical beauty he was famed for on twelve continents in his youth but which unique gift he lost when he fell in love with the most beautiful glassblower ever, ever, who etc etc, and his sisters would weave the most perfect carpets ever heard of anywhere ever, ever, which began as childish art, curiously mimicking every known style of cave painting ever, ever, about which of course Salman seems to knows everything, so much so he can make knowledgeable jokes about it in a way which even ignorami like us can get, but which tapestries became Egyptian with puberty, Greek perspective with marriage and which, amazingly, foretold every artform there ever was and ever could be, ever and ever, so there...
O Salman, you are the dog’s bollocks but can’t you just calm down a bit and write something more imaginatively restrained in that beautiful matchless style of yours?
Not all the time, heaven forbid, and long may you live, and many books may you write, and prosper may you errr do, but just once, less lists and less bloody superlatives...
Why not?
Err... please
A very long list of all the words which have ever meant please in every language there ever was, kind of please...
...

...

...

First time i was in India i read three of his, Shalimar the Clown, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor’s Last Sigh...

And loved them... Shalimar the most ... [the writing]...

And the second time i motored through the Enchantress of Florence, which was then his latest... and somehow i was surprised by how marvellous it was

And i not long ago read Victory City... his latest

...

...

...

While a couple of decades back i made a list of my favourite living writers in the English language

And seeing how Phillip Roth and Toni Morrison and JG Ballard are now dead

its Salman

...

...

...

Salman, he doesn’t go up to Eleven

Salman begins at eleven

...

...

...

THE JOYS OF SALMAN

...

the lilt

the cadence

from left to right and down

left to right and down

...

to turn the page

and stand the eye above the

downward roll of language

the eye-mind a little daunted at the

unbroken paragraph of the

long passage of words to come

for the eye-mind knows already the

long fluid sweep of the lines

as they lilt

from left to right and down

left to right and down

with a language so beautiful it needs not rhyme or meter
in a cadence

a sweep, a surge, a pulse

with each image a verbal incandescence

one following another following another

from left to right and down

left to right and down

a rhythm in the succession of motif

a sustain in the pursued idea

with a fluid lilt, a deft cadence

and a phrased precision

with the beauty insistent

the intelligence persistent

and a gently rocking in the line

from side to side and down

from side to side and down

with a billowing in the fleshing out of detail

and an exacting in the paring down to the

pertinent

in a gentle lilt, an easy cadence

rolling the eye-mind

from left to right and down

left to right and ...

up and ...

across

...

...

...

in other news

last evening on Neil Island

tomorrow a ferry to Rangat

up the islands

for a bus to Mayabunder

on our way to Diglipur

...

...

…

in other news

a metaphor the key

to unlocking

the door to

a passage to

a whole new realm of though

t

To slide between the shadows

and become as one with the dark

To enfold within the waves

and become as one with the sea

To filter in with the haze

and become as one with the air

To vanish into the sun

and become as one with the light

To sense the dark the light the air the ocean

and be as one with the ever

…

To word oneself in the air

and become as one with the silence

To move fingers at the skin

and become as one with the touch

To feel the heart in rhythm

and become as one with the blood

To know the world in motion

and become as one with the flux

To unbond every atom

and become as one with matter

To sense the evolving ever

and be as one with the all

…

…

…

…

...

...

...

in other news

Port Blair again

the utter swelter box

the streets a bath in heat

the soggiest shirt in every street

...

with lots of pleasant ambles

yet, for obvious reasons,

the best are along the cooling water

from here, on Marine Hill

around to Dignabad fish market

and maybe on to the Aberdeen Jetty

or from here

past the Port just down below

all the way round the sea-hugging Foreshore Road

out over the sea bridge

past the Chatham Saw Mill

the last of the once-many saw mills

British-built and enduringly destructive

past the mill

to the ferry for Bombooflat

across the bay

[tomorrow]

...

...

...

in other news

next thing to do

Tuesday morning

is Cellular Jail

Colonial nightmare

designed by the British specifically to be fearsomely brutal

scene of multiple martyrdoms

and most certainly very forgotten North of the English Channel

…

…

…

…

in other news
…

I want it, the rattleless fit

want, bit by bit

to shrink and smooth myself down to it

the rattleless fit

want blocks within blocks, grey within grey

time within time, shade within shade

snug as a brick in a block

a line in a grid

a note in a wad

I want it,

to fit easily

inside the me

i used to be

and, bit by bit

shrink and smooth myself down to it

the rattleless fit

…

…

…

…

in other news

...

first the bad news

i don’t know where the bus goes

then the good news

the destination on the bus is in the western alphabet

[unlike in, say, Maharashtra]

then some more bad news

the destination is

Garacharama

and i’ve never seen that word

and don’t know where it is

yet further bad news is

i need a bus

it was a long walk here

out to what seems to be called Chatham

and i am very VERY hot

because it is very VERY hot

an absolute swelter

hotter than it ever gets in England or Canada

yet the good news

maybe the best news i can have

is that i am, Chatham is, at the end of a head

so the bus can’t go anywhere too far from the centre of Port Blair

though i can’t know how far that might be

and my mental map is sketchy at best

and the other news is that well

i’m gonna get on the bus whatever

and see what happens next

...

...

the further good news is that when

eventually

i get off the bus

guessing it would now veer away from the centre

a smiling old woman said

“where do you want to go?”

and i said

“the centre”

and she said

“its a long way to the centre

but its back up there

and down the hill”

...

the more the world gets bigger

its the trig-trig-trigger of the next trip

e-even bigger

for the more you move, and the more you see

the more the world becomes, not smaller

but wider longer deeper taller

...

for there is so much to enjoy

for every girl and boy

yes joy to be had for

joy to be glad for

so much whirl and joy

for every girl and boy

...

as

when the next, breaks the context,

the detail will derail

and for you, the zagzigger,

the digger with vigour

the not-known next is now
richer

and reachable

as, for each blank page in the world,

sketchily filled in,

five more are unfurled

its the trig-trigger of the next trip,

e-even bigger

...

and so

in the strive

to be alive

to get yourself somewhere new

where you

are suddenly unused to

being unused to

and to have to get used to

being unused to

and this too

keeps the mind athrive

...

[can i invent the clumsy word

“athrive”

maybe...]

...

for over every border

the world gets deeper

broader,

so i’d rather

the farther

when the smooth of the

move

and the tough of the

rough

are more than

enough

to put you

in the

new

...

cos i

gotta be somewhere

and why not there?

because ahh yes

ah bless

there is so so much joy and whirl

for ev-every boy and girl

joy to be had for

joy to be glad for

so much joy and whirl

for ev-every boy and girl

...

its the trig-trig-trigger of the next trip,

that the next, breaks the context,

as, for each open page in the world,

sketchily filled in, more are unfurled

for the more you travel

the more the world gets

wider deeper

bigger

its the trig-trig-trigger of the next trip

e-even bigger

...

...

...

…

...
and hi

from my sudden repose

after varying kind of hairiness

on savage shore

and in thick jungle

because out there

at low tide

on the South-East of this island

Shaheed Dweep

it is the weirdest harshest landscape

is a moon of lichen

is a petrified coral bed

is a peek into unknown crevices maybe only two decades old

is stark and elemental

because

next the beachless sea

its fifty a hundred metres of smoothed lumpy rock

a sand and green algae colour

with pools

with three kinds of sea slugs

and brittle stars

and goldfish type fish

and feisty crabs waving their claws at you like they

want a punch up

with living coral of gold and purple and yellow

and one like blue heather

yet inside that outer seaside ring of smoothed

its fifty a hundred metres of greyed dead coral

pointed, bladed, serrated, coarse

where if you fell over you would cut yourself a hundred times

and another hundred getting up

so i really had to take my time choosing where to cross it

while this whole landscape must be unusual

over the aeons there must have been many places like this on earth

yet maybe not always

for this is the creation of the earthquake that caused the

Great Tsunami

which uplifted this island by

ONE TO TWO METRES

exposing the coral

which slowly died

withered

greyed

and so here we are

in all its harsh monochrome petrification

though the sandy green stretches make me wonder if

this is what the planet looked like three billion years ago

when algae and lichen ruled the Earth

while in the outer layer

nearer the sea

there are crevices and underwater passages

angled, thin, uneven

some maybe six feet deep

which are probably young

twenty years old

caused by the one sudden shock

and colossal subductive upwrenching

while this whole walk

which i just got back from

was caused by the fact i forgot my goggles

and when i got to Sitapur Beach i thought

well i can’t go swimming and looking for fishies and coral

so i might as well see what happens when i go right

and that is what happened

the lush green jungle path brought me out to the coast

its outer-ring of smooth lichened sandy rock

and then, further round, to where the inner-ring of harsh begins

so it was a

slow

precarious

ninety minutes

in unwise flipflops

marvelling in the colours

the fierceness

the clear crevices

the cactus-like coral

the seaweed like peas

which explode white in the sun [?]

are sea grapes or sea caviar

and it turns out i could have eaten them

while i could maybe have sat down

to read The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck Up

which is of course the only English book

on the shelves of my current abode, The Garden View

yet sitting down anywhere would hurt

and might get bloody

and anyway

its a self-help book

even though its pretending not to be

and i can’t be bothered with self-help books

particularly when i am in this unique

and fascinating

and colourful

and stark

weirdscape

and particularly when i feel pushed out to the waterside

by the scrapey gratey slicey slitty petrified coral i

still

somehow

have to get across

which makes me again

relish

and savour

and enjoy

and revel in

and soak in

the singular weirdworld i find myself in

so i pick my way back to the sea

while stepping over

round

into

the water

until i decide that the places where the

mangroves jut out from the jungle

will be easiest to cross

are shortest

and with mini-valleys of relative smoothness

so i do, and i’m right

it ain’t so hard

except

the mangroves are impenetrable

have huge grasses serrated by thorns

so i struggle along the jungle-front

fail on a first break into the thickness

and so, on the second

i just keep going

over, under, round

sweeping, swiping

stepping, treading, kicking

caught in lianas, grabbed at by vines

freeing naked feet from thick grasses

and battling into some kind of forgotten banana grove

simultaneously wondering and

not thinking about

What Lives In Here?

and

What Made Those Holes In The Ground?

so calling

and clapping my hands

to warn any cobras, or whatever

till i come out

before a large square well

or tank

and a pile of rubble

and see a guy in a dhoti in the distance

and realise

hey

i’m out, again

and i’m fine, again

while it turns out i’m near the Garden View

so ten minutes later i’m delaying my much-needed shower

because i’ve been given two mangoes

where Indian mangoes are the BESTEST

are peaches from Heaven

and well, there’s no point in me having a

shower and then

eating a mango

because mangoes get messy

and after i eat a ripe mango

i’ll need a shower

after all of which i

get under the mosquito net

the liberating mosquito net

and write this

summer off

year out

will eke the poetic pennies in South-East Asia

...

...

there’s Ladakh

the very farthest northern region of India

i’ve been hankering to go to for years

yet its icebound most of the year

and only practical two months

June and July

which aren’t Fringe compatible

so i ain’t ever been

...

yet...

this year...

Ladakh, Leh, here i come

the high cool empty, here i come

the blue-and-white yonder, here i come

some kind of Himalaya, here i come

next step the next step, here i come

upstep the upstep, here i come

...

...

...

...

will miss many many Canadians

yet...

the high mountains beckon

...

...

...

other incentives are

...

South-East Asia cures my gout

gout doesn’t get cured

but mine did

by the diet

...

...

while creating and putting up this

The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

was shattering

...

especially as it got followed by long-Covid brainfug

from the Covid i believe i caught from Madani

a nomad in the Sahara

...

yet, if you want to get some of me this year

you can always subscribe to The Bucket

5 bux CAD gets you a month

...

...

while, Ladakh aside,

the biggest motivation is

that i really liked last summer’s show

Adventures In Canadian Parking Lots

yet none of it was purely a product of the preceding winter

2024-25

most of the ideas and writing i’d had for ten years

...

i might have put together

finessed it

in the Spring of last year

but none of it originated then

...

the arising logic being

a good show now takes more than a winter

and while i have probably over half a next show already

i likely need more time

...

and can now spend many happy months

directionless

thinking reading and writing whatever i like

...

...

whilst often bending the mind towards The Bucket

...

...

...

...

in other news

sickly sweet perfume of fermenting mangoes pervades my world

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

back to Neil Island

for nine whole days

of super-cheap living

to think about poems

and what might be for the future Bucket

...

jungle

coral

high trees

...

parotha

masala dosa

fleshy coconuts

biryani

thali

...

and at high-tide

my longest swims in years

right out

over the atoll

to the coral

with goggles

for the underwater coral show

...

and low-tide

flipfloppily picking one’s way out

across the coral

living and dead

to the atoll

...

and at any tide

picking one’s way out along the Mangrove line

the rich greens

the harsh rock

the dead coral

the white sand

...

with

Laxmanpur Beach

and Sitapur Beach

and Ratnagar Beach

and more jungle strolls

...

...

so here we go, here i go

next stop the next stop

next step the next step

upstep the upstep

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

made a new pal

Stephen, lives in Wales

...

here’s a dialogue

...

Stephen

“i’m a carpenter”

me

“you never said you were a carpenter, Stephen”

Stephen

“carpenters never tell people they’re a carpenter

everyone got something they got needs fixing”

...

...

not me though

no possessions

no home

no wood

...

If you don’t count the time in the late 80s when

25-ish year old me

rented a table at the Anarchist Book Fair in Holborn

and sold cut-out paragraphs and lines at 20p for three.

...

Which is certainly unusual

and now seems to me like Conceptual Art

though at the time it seemed the

obvious

next

artistic

writing step

...

It was a long crazy day in Conway Hall
in a roomfull of stalls

selling Bakunin, Debord, Vaneigem, Marx, Blake

Class War and more

plus me

…

I had a box full of a couple hundred pieces

typed with a stone-age Underwood typewriter

the kind that features in Moulin Rouge and other movies

where the “o” would punch a hole through photocopy paper

where pieces were one-line, five lines

three words, fifty words

...

I talked my face off for seven hours straight

in unceasing and

ever-improving

self-justification

and aesthetic theory

...

And had to keep restraining myself from interjecting

“that bit’s not good enough”

...

While making myself a decent fifteen quid

enough for a night in the boozer for me and Carole

...

Yet the Anarchists

rather unanarchistically

all thought me a “nutter”

and treated me like an idiot.

...

...

So, at the age of 63, with The Bucket

here i go again

selling

a

bunch

of

ideas

separated

from

each

other

…
The Bucket

766 or so digital pieces

where there is no set order

where each comes by pure chance after the last

randomised by Nick Fox-Gieg’s special-sauce code

...

So its yet another lost virginity

when its quite late to be losing any virginities

...

...

There were of course

some very nice and open folk i met that day

yet it all rather put me off anarchists

who i’d thought would be my natural home

yet seemed somewhere between

an establishment

and a tribe

...

...

While the idea of cutting up the bits

of being anti-book

anti-narrative

anti-completion

was an aesthetic step very much inspired by anarchism

and surrealism

...

And i went away feeling “too anarchist for the anarchists”

...

Thinking about the prison-house of language

...

And certain that, as one of the pieces in The Bucket says

“freedom is a language yet to be invented”

that the limits of our language limit and inhibit our freedoms and thinking

that a revolution would necessitate a revolution in language

and that without that revolution in language

true freedom

and a revolution

would not be and is not possible

...

...

While a true revolution in language is much easier said than done

and quite what it would involve has been

and is

a deep subject somehow always

eluding me

...

...

Yet it is rather a shame

to be making such a first venture

monetising

now

in an age when so very very many people

are monetising EVERYTHING

podcasts

websites

youtube channels

go-fund-mes

all of it

...

There are even folk monetising their hobbies

while i’m rather late to the game

and am now monetising over four decades of hard thought and writing

yet am just one in the swelling mob

yelling “me me me ...”

...

Where my yells of

“its unique

“wholly digital, wholly random

“no-one ever did this before

“it could be a new literary form...

“look at me, me, me... “

are rather lost in the white noise of a million yells

...

“me, me, me...”

just one drop of human pixel

in the expanding ocean of ...

...

...

...

...

In other news

bizarre six a.m. conversation with Stephen

Portsmouth / mid-Wales, 61

talking about 70s music

because, very strangely

he can quote one long convoluted verse of

“Plastic Bag” by X-Ray Spex

which i thought was a never-noticed and long-forgotten album track

yet he can quote one verse

and i can quote another

...

Which is a pretty random coming together

at 6.05 a m in the Andaman jungle

...

I remember a verse as

“my mind is like a plastic bag

with crossed and tangled lines

contented with confusion

that is plugged into my head

i don’t know what’s going on

its the operator’s job

not mine, i said”

...

As a teenager

i found that album lyrically amazing

and the most-interesting of those years

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

a nice routine is evolving for the days

...

a long swim out to the coral at high tide

whenever that is

to float with goggles

and to marvel

...

a long walk out at low tide

whenever that is

six hours after high tide

and almost an hour later than yesterday

to pick my way and watch

and marvel

...

at 6 a m

or half an hour after whenever i wake up

a table outside the unopen restaurant ten minutes away

because they have internet

...

at 7.30 a m

parotha at the Grumpy Dhaba in the village

as soon as Parotha arrives on the menu

...

...

How Often Are You Deified?

turned into God?

not often enough, i’m sure

...

maybe watch this and be turned into

...

G

o

d

...

?

!

...

...

...

like i say

this could be described as

Industrial Strength Sycophancy

…

…

…

ASTOUNDING UNUSUAL BEAUTIFUL EXTREME WEIRD

COASTLINE

...

how unique is this waterline?
well its unlike anything i ever saw?
yet how uncommon is this on this Earth?

...?

...

and what the hell, i wondered, is this? are these

these shells are in the rock, the dead coral

that’s not sand its in, its stone

how?

...

...

so its...

Shaheed Dweep

a jungle island

with the white sand of a coral island

and gorgeous mangroves again

...

yet much of it is tidal dead coral

which, i believe

was raised out of the sea over twenty years ago

by the same earthquake which caused the great Tsunami

and which earthquake which was epicentred off Sumatra

not so far away from here

Shaheed Dweep, aka Neil Island

one of the Andaman Islands

part of India but nearer Myanmar or Thailand

...

where, over the twenty years since

the coral, underwater half the tidal time

has died

and gone grey and light brown

though a little coral has come back

with flecks and bands of colour

pink and gold and blue and orange

yet most has has eroded and corroded

both into smoothnesses

and into the jagged and bladed and sharp and coarse

extending for tens of metres

which makes quite the harshest terrain i have ever come across

so if you fell over and rolled around you would

flay yourself

...

and it makes me wonder

how long will this last before the relentless ocean has its way

and this stone wears away

and maybe new coral grows out beyond where the edge of the atoll was?

how long?

a lot has happened in two decades

yet, how long

a hundred, a thousand, a million years?

...

so, i wonder

is this coral the old pre-earthquake coral still dying away

after twenty-five years?

or is it gradually returning?

i guess its dying away

but cannot say for certain

...

while, at very low-tide

its like an extra-rocky Martian surface [see photos]

making walking difficult

especially on flipflops

on the uneven, the higgledy-piggledy

into and out of the low water

and the rockpools

with their brittle fish

and orange-speckled black sea-slugs [see photo]

and, weirdest of all

those shells, which are somehow IN the rock

that’s not sand they’re in, its rock, or coral

though as you approach they have a deep dark blue fleshyness

which shrinks back, and in, as you approach

and are like wiggly-lined dark-blue mouths in the coral

...

while i also saw a couple of goldish ones [see photo]

which also didn’t make sense to me

...

how can they be IN the rock?

as i asked myself

while picking my slow way out there in the flat destruction

along the waterline

and then back to the shore

where the lush fronded bushes are backed by the vast trees

their bare trunks rising to their high green

...

to then head into the

lush lush verdure of the jungle

which also has an aspect of wreckage

with its filled space

its broken beams of sunlight

its vast trees

its bushes like an eruption of green from their centre

its serratedly bladed grasses

its looping and tumbling vines and lianas

its fallen branches and fallen trunks

its crumbling logs

and damp brownness and rottingness

and out-of-place white white fungi

and busted-ness and knottedness

its chaos of living green and dead brown

...

with some of the thousand greens picked out by the angling sunbeams

while its bursting with life

and cool to the breath

and constantly changing as one walks

is maybe the nicest jungle for a walk i ever went in

as nice as the Brazilian or Ecuadorean Amazon

as nice as the Californian Redwoods

...

speaking of which

these islands have some indigenous trees

which make for a glorious high canopy

with some huge and towering indigenous trees

like the Andaman Redwoods

and a couple of others

with stark high branchless silverish trunks

Gurjan?

and Andaman Bulletwood?

while i think its the Redwoods which have...

errrr

and this is difficult to describe

because these roots have an extra dimension, a second

with triangular roots in undulating planes

while there are also Banyan Trees

often ornamented for their holiness

...

and all this is a fascination for the eye and ear

above the lightly pacing feet

slow-motioning up the thin faint loseable path

with the sunlight dappled through the high canopy

with the kxgszgcx call of the couacal

and the tweet of the myna birds

and unseen coos and hoots and caws and squawks

while the feet and eyes wander on and along into

next

...

...

...

...

...

and so

where there were first 719 ideas

poems

jokes

stories

fragments

anecdotes

one-liners

couplets

verses

choruses

and ideas again

there are now 766*

...

and they come at you

with the refreshing of your screen

one after the other

for as long as you choose

at pure and glorious random

...

nothing over 100 words

nothing more than 13 lines

...

...

so here we go

The Bucket went live three months back

and this is our first addition

first deepening

...

its 49 new pieces...

comic

lyrical

poetic

historical

personal

political

hard

sentimental

silly

blunt

obscure

conversational

chunky

dumb

double-dumb

and more

...

...

pieces have very different intents

styles

feels

agendas

...

and, as with all The Bucket

the accent is on the new

with many an attempt to say the unsaid

...

…
next pour in three months, i guess

...

...

while me

i’ve been making a living as a performance poet

for something like twenty-five years

and this is being the first time i’ve properly published ANYTHING

...

so i’ve had plenty of time

decades

to generate a huge quantity of ideas

of pieces of writing

and to assay them for quality

and originality

...

The Bucket was born from a huge digital file

filled with hundreds

and hundreds

of the lines i’d never said in a show

because too poetic

or subtle

or complex

or mad

a file which just kept growing

and which, for years and years

i was perpetually grading and assaying and sifting

moving the ones i liked best to the top of the file

...

so that i often scooped off the cream of the lines

and used them for poems

or one-liners

or titles

or blags

or something

...

yet only when The Bucket was becoming a thing

back in Gokarna in 2019

did i also add many many lines i had used in poems and shows

to assemble something vast

...

...

at some point soon i might write a post

answering

why?

why The Bucket?
and chiefly, why random?

...

...

in the meantime, i feel obligated to point out

that as The Bucket is unique

in that no-one has ever done this before

A Giant Number Of Pieces, Completely Randomised

then, of course

no-one has ever added to that giant number

so then this is another first

...

while me, as i’ve said

i believe first

and unique

and original

all go a very long way

have a significance in their own right

...

though i might add that i’m really not sure if everyone i communicate with

is terribly impressed by the weight of the originality

...

...

yet folk, writer-friends, have said

and do say

and i guess they are right

that what most matters is

HOW GOOD ARE THE PIECES

writing-wise

laugh-wise

original-wise

and wise-wise, i guess

for there’s the rub

the old old question
How Good Is It?

...

...

...

* [as we took two out]

...

...

...

images are

two of the new drops in The Bucket

three of the original

and Sitapur beach

in our world now

goes a long way

has a value in itself

demands to be pursued, made, done

...

so The Bucket is 766 original ideas

poems stories jokes anecdotes quotes verses choruses fragments

and ideas again

digitalised and randomised

...

where nothing is over a 100 words

or more than 13 lines

...

and they come to you

random one after the random other

for as long as you like

...

and this, it would seem

and many writer friends concur

has never been done

...

...

and it is this prospective uniqueness

which compelled me to break my dogma of decades

my strict avoidance of publishing

and go for it

this

...

for i’ve done around 3000 shows

but published nothing

written and then toured 17 or so shows

but published nothing

i’ve had 45+ five-star reviews, 200+ four-star

but published nothing

i’ve been around gazillions of poets

including some very good ones

all of whom published something

yet me, i published nothing

i’ve been briefly famous in Scotland

and “Fringe-famous” in Canada

but published nothing

and i’ve made a living purely from the door money of shows

for decades

but published nothing

...

it

poetry publishing

was a world which simply did not interest me

while my world

performance poets

storytellers

comedians

and clowns beautiful clowns

was a fascinating world

brimming with newnesses

which wholly absorbed me

...

...

while the Bucket is 719 pieces

and after Sunday it will be 766

...

which is a very large wagon-load

of kegs of powder

to have kept so dry for so long

...

who else might have such a stock

of seven six eight hundred unseen pieces

amassed over three or four decades

they could do this with?

...
anyone on earth?

few, if any

...

...

i always knew it might not be unique

after all, our world is old

and someone might well have done it before

on a similar or smaller scale

...

so i asked a bunch of poet-friends, who might know

who all said they had not heard of such a thing before

yet all said that it would be the quality of the pieces

not the uniqueness

that would be what makes this work

...

...

so this excitement at creating a possible unique

combined with the excitement from so many of the ideas

gave me an aesthetic drive

which was, to my surprise

more than enough

to tip me over the edge

and get me to change the habits of a lifetime

break my aesthetic principles

my dogged dogma of decades

and burst me out of performance poetry

into poetry

...

though this doesn’t, of course

have to be categorised as poetry

and is simply

literature

...

...

little is new in our world

which is not a product of new technology

...

though i certainly believe the new is possible

and disdain the old old saw

There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

for i believe human beings have only

scraped at the surface of the possible

ideas

stories

words

...

yet the newness of The Bucket IS a product of technology

that one can have randomised digitalised pieces of writing

one after another on a screen

though this has probably been possible for

errr...?

over twenty-five years...?

...

yet for as long as there has been paper

one could have had a box of pieces of paper

and take the pieces out one by one

...

...

...

and i did do this

as part of the editing process

cut all the pieces and keep them in a box

...

and what was the upshot?

the upshot was me

pursuing bits of escaping wind-powered paper

as they got blown across a Cambodian hillside

...

...

The Bucket awaits you…

someone said

“Loving the bucket, Jem! I am consuming it extremely slowly - but each bite a delight so far. Congrats on making this a unique new reality!”

...

Enjoy…

is that we can simply add more

for its 700+ pieces

700+ short ideas poems jokes stories verses fragments choruses

and ideas again

...

and so we will

March 1st

...

...

so its ...

what’s the word...

a renewal

a relaunch

a second edition

a next version

an extended mix

and more

...

what’s the word?

...

SLOSH

“To move liquid around, typically randomly or haphazardly”

?

...

...

and, we guess, this is another first

for if no-one ever created anything like this

hundreds and hundreds of original short pieces

digital and randomised

[and extensive research does make seem like they haven’t]

then they won’t have been able to add to it

...

its a minor first

yet a first is a first is a first in this world

...

...

SPLASH?

...

...

so its 46 or so new pieces

meaning one sixteenth of the latest Bucket will be new

with one taken out of the original 719

because i can

...

as before

nothing is over 100 words

or more than thirteen lines

...

so it gets a new ISBN number

a new front page

and here we go

...

i thought we’d do this every six weeks

yet the first launch was quite the cataclysm

so i got over the finishing line

coasted and posted for two weeks

and then sank into

long-Covid brainfog

…

so maybe we’ll have a pour every three months

...

...

...

...

meanwhile

have landed on the Andaman Islands

Neil Island

into serious heat

messy filthy friendly lively

same same but different

yet hotter

and, seeing how this is only February

its gonna get much hotter still

...