TO BE A POET CAN ONLY EVER BE AN ASPIRATION
Mulbekh, where the Maitreya Buddha is a statue of a Buddha to come
here it is
THE NEW POUR
into The Bucket Of Unused Ideas
...
33 spanking new pieces
added to the 766
so its now 799
ideas poems stories jokes
fragments verses choruses ditties oneliners jingles
online
at pure random
...
...
performance poetry
...
an
artform
where
the
paint
is
always
wet
...
?
…
...
while me?
a performance poet?
for almost thirty years
i never went anywhere near the poetry publishing world
despite offers
i was wholly and utterly PERFORMANCE
lost into the fabulous new possibilities of a medium
where so much seemed undone
and where i saw many many great acts do amazing things
...
...
Embodied Poetics
text voice face
breath body space
...
...
yet i was always writing
generating lines and ideas
most of which could never be used on a stage
and this huge array built and built
and built
for decades
until...
i had to do something with it
...
yet a book was out
ordinary was out
and i’d always been fascinated by the random collision of ideas
chiefly to be found in rock’n’roll’n’rap
the concatenations
plotless, narrative-less, ideas
ideas stripped of everything but themself
pure
...
so
a huge number
of disconnected
digital pieces
coming at the reader
at total random
seemed a doable way
to achieve this
...
and here we are
and here it is
...
...
if artists are outsiders
and poets are the outsiders among artists
and performance poetry the outsider of poetry
then i’m not sure quite how I ended up
on the outside of the outside of the outside
of the outside
...
but i did
...
...
the nature of the bucket
a huge number of pieces
wholly randomised
means that, of course
no-one can be sure they’ve read them all
what was 766
and is now 799
...
so when we add more pieces
the Dear Reader cannot know if a piece is new
or if it has been a possible all along
and they simply have not encountered it
...
yet this, Dear Folks
is a the nature of the Beast
the Thing
the never-done-ever
the Bucket
...
...
and here it is
all my eggs in one bucket
a high high heap of powder my
anti-publishing dogma
has scrupulously
kept dry for decades
my one and only shot
a very loaded cannon
The Bucket
...
...
accessed
behind the paywall
here on Substack
at The Bucket Of Unused Ideas
...
...
...
...
from my window
...
…
…
IN OTHER NEWS
...
here i am, in Mulbekh
west of the Fotu La pass
on the Leh-Kargil highway
...
an extremely friendly place
...
famous for a Buddhist Monastery
on the hill above
...
and a thirty foot rock-cut relief of Buddha
the Maitreya Buddha
8th Century
carved into a huge rock
in the Gompa
just over the road from my simple room
[see photo]
...
the Maitreya Buddha is a Buddha to come
which is an unusual concept
...
a Buddha
a King of Love
who will arrive
when the teachings of the original Gautama Buddha are
forgotten
neglected
...
...
...
while
some of the Buddhist music
playing for hours and hours
sounds VERY like a low and gentle Christian choir
...
then twenty oldish women
in heavy ankle-length skirts
with head-scarves or woolly hats
and braided hair hanging down their back
all crowdedly circle the prayer-wheel
then enter the tiny temple space
as the music turns into a sermon reminiscent of
a very drunk drunk
getting hold of a microphone in a pub
and bravely but failingly
attempting to sing an old Irish or English folk song
...
...
...
...
in other news
...
a novel so full of cunning,
so brimming with sly sneaky,
that as i lay on the settee,
laughing and turning the pages,
my knives sharpened themselves in the draw
…
…
A perfect description of you , Jem - the ultimate outsider but connected to so much, so many.