A DANCE OF CHANCE
the bucket is
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?
…
…
