tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25085639236343927032009-12-15T05:08:42.348ZDave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.comBlogger317125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-75757151907257957912009-12-13T11:29:00.002Z2009-12-13T11:32:08.617Z

Like fingers flicking over books with eczema (ancient books with leather bindings, in the main), the car lights seem to hesitate on each erect or leaning London plane - the odd one leaning, reeling maybe, from the weight of all that learning locked inside. The spines, so smudged with soot and halogen, betray no titles. Patched and scaly sages, they remind us of the boundaries that nature

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-84743883525096101282009-12-09T15:28:00.000Z2009-12-09T15:28:40.530Z

One of the first things to catch my eye last week was an article in The Guardian about the signs that burglars leave for potential burglars outside your house. Chalk marks on the ground, usually. I had known of this practice before, but seeing the examples given and their meaning brought it home afresh - pun not intended. In case you missed it, here are the examples given. Now here is the key

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-54703282693789136892009-12-06T11:22:00.000Z2009-12-06T11:22:43.030Z

He spoke to me of darkness, and his speech became a psychic force. A boy, untroubled still by any hormone rush, I could not, not for him, not for the gifts he gave, nor yet for threats of greater darkness, embrace his. His was a world of great malevolence; unspeakable diseases, hell-hags, ogresses and nightmares. But the evil was the devil was all women - and even as he'd speak they would be

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-46753513528594989792009-12-03T14:22:00.000Z2009-12-03T14:22:20.550Z

The discovery of one of my Mondrians at the bottom of a pile of magazines when turning out a cupboard took my mind back to those pioneering days of steam computing. And that is the reason I am posting it; not because it is important or interesting in itself, but for the back story, which you might enjoy. In the very early 80's the government, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that every school in

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44799102540683265552009-11-29T10:00:00.004Z2009-11-30T09:21:03.430Z

Sometimes the house will breathe for me, like an iron lung. It happens at the panic point of some new poem, often late at night or on a summer's evening when the lines have grown asthmatic and the thought is numb with fears of what the words might come to mean. It clunks and grinds, immobilises - keeps my ebbing forms afloat. Sometimes the house will be my ears, will listen like a bug an

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-54427142445075383442009-11-26T12:23:00.000Z2009-11-26T12:23:54.852Z

As is my wont, even when all at sea.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-53058538058621005792009-11-22T10:52:00.000Z2009-11-22T10:52:34.702Z

Fade in from black to forest scene and sound of chainsaw, thump of axe. Slow track through undergrowth between dense trees towards the distant sounds and to a clearing with a lumberjack. He swings the final blow, the redwood topples. Cut to tree-top, looking down, earth rushing up and... Cut to black. Fade in to river scene and jam of tree trunks piling up. Zoom in to logs as wood made flesh and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-62048016190328343462009-11-18T14:24:00.009Z2009-11-19T12:24:42.828Z

How many very beautiful objects can you think of? And how many very ugly ones? For objects read things, entities, items, doodahs, whatsits, whatever comes to mind as long as it is non-human - let's not get personal about this! Spend a couple of minutes on each and see what you come up with. Or see how long it takes to find three. Whatever suits. If you have the time to spare, do that now, before

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44641442604313452872009-11-15T10:32:00.004Z2009-11-15T12:23:55.927Z

It was six men of IndostanTo learning much inclined,Who went to see the Elephant(Though all of them were blind),That each by observationMight satisfy his mindThe First approached the Elephant,And happening to fallAgainst his broad and sturdy side,At once began to bawl:"God bless me! but the ElephantIs very like a wall!"The Second, feeling of the tusk,Cried, "Ho! what have we hereSo very round and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-60909328560949045802009-11-12T12:44:00.008Z2009-11-12T15:16:33.428Z

When Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall won this year's Booker Prize, by all accounts so convincingly and deservedly (for I have not yet read it, though I am about to put that right), there arose a persistent rumour that the judges had unofficially placed Simon Mawer's Glass Room in second place. It caused some commentators to raise again the question of whether it wouldn't be better in future to split

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-54614449760723503232009-11-09T09:04:00.001Z2009-11-09T09:07:53.460Z

Sea swell and gentle roll,but in the on-board swimming pool,a giant tsunami.From the sea, the sun's glare.The wake of an inflatabledrives shards of darkness to its heart.Small tugs nudge a massive vesselinto leaving its safe havenfor the open sea.Thick smoke to starboard...as if the crew had needto simulate disaster!Night orchard now, the sea'swhite blossoms brush the windows.Unseen branches jar

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-32885830192847363442009-11-06T12:04:00.010Z2009-11-06T15:17:24.824Z

Well, finally I did disappear (see Going, going, gone 20/10/09). We disappeared, Doreen and I, more in the way we had hoped and less in the way that I'd feared. We had, long ago, I can now reveal, booked ourselves on a cruise to coincide with the refurbishing and alterations to chez nous. The reason that I would not speak of it before was a fear amounting almost to a certainty that it would not

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-47050717747481757662009-11-03T12:00:00.000Z2009-11-03T12:00:01.822Z

Back in February I re-posted a much older write-up of an exhibition I had seen of the later work of Victor Pasmore. My post was called With Eyes Tight Shut, for the images exhibited were a selection of those seen and painted by Pasmore with his eyes closed. I had known Pasmore's work many years before when he had been a very different painter and I was immensely impressed with these later

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-41349600113602100362009-10-28T10:21:00.001Z2009-10-28T10:21:00.763Z

Edward Hopper's famous Night Hawk canvasHe felt the weight of prairie vastness in the urban space,the loneliness such sparseness of expanse can bring,the seep of grassland into city wariness, the waygreat distance can be squeezed into a downtown street.He saw the spaces infiltrating neighbourhoodslike wedges prising could-be friends apart, or solid hedges,impenetrable, keeping people in. For

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-75031217644346270222009-10-23T11:56:00.000Z2009-10-23T11:56:00.629Z

He appeared on the hill at first light. The scarp was dark against a greening sky and there was the bump of the barrow and then the figure, and it shocked. I thought perhaps the warrior buried there had stood up again to haunt us. I thought this as I blew out the lanterns one by one around the pen. The sheep jostled and I was glad of their bells.He came down towards me, stumbling down over the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-72948490530528933892009-10-20T07:46:00.003Z2009-10-20T07:46:00.363Z

Caitlin Moran in yesterday's Times cried Goodbye, cruel world. I'm off to live on the internet. Not for me, such luxuries. My cry is Adieu Fair web, I'm off to re-engage with the unpalatable real world. Or maybe it will prove neither cruel nor unpalatable. I shall write more on that anon.For now I remember how I used to speculate as a boy about what it would be like to be one of those medieval

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-21272731096415320502009-10-17T09:46:00.000Z2009-10-17T09:46:55.253Z

Henry Darger's Me to the MoonBack on the 3rd of April this year I posted a poem of mine looking back to an obsession I had in childhood with a make-believe world of subterranean tunnels, caves, vertical shafts and the like. I had dreams about this world. Indeed, although I can no longer be sure, I think it may have all begun as the result of a dream. The world became an essential part of my my

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-31392598745542778952009-10-14T05:15:00.000Z2009-10-14T05:15:00.497Z

Well overdue, I thought, for a digital doodle.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-87634055052703357472009-10-10T10:38:00.003Z2009-10-10T11:04:30.571Z

As Antony Gormley's One and Other 100 days project for the fourth (empty) plinth in Trafalgar Square neared its conclusion I found myself, like many others, wondering what it would have been like up there for the 2400 participants.The weather's not been very conducive of late to the rearing of poetry blooms, so here's another forced in the greenhouse of nomuse.The Empty PlinthI felt I was great

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-64691066109740314492009-10-07T08:37:00.004Z2009-10-07T10:03:14.639Z

Cross countrySix runners at the tapehad runtheir six unequal distances,had covered groundas different from each otheras a Haiku from a fableor a vignette from a sketch;had traversed landas varied as ploughed fields and grass,as meadows, moors and bogs;some with the benefitof spikes and shorts,some in their normal togs.Yet still they found a winner.Congratulations to Hilary Mantel - and the judges.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-61086393255333288982009-10-05T08:20:00.001Z2009-10-06T08:05:36.950Z

I have been struggling again of late to keep up with my visiting and commenting etc. The latest inroads into the time available for the keyboard have been made by our grandson reaching the grand old age of 21 - and a very special football match. When he was a toddler and not much more I began to take our son to see the local football, which at that time was Gillingham - the one in Kent. When we

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-89767678089639878462009-10-02T05:02:00.000Z2009-10-02T05:02:00.135Z

First draft - made late evening before retiring..On Eating a GrapeIt was not meant for this,but to tumble into slime,to rot - men say to die -to mingle with the soil,its seeds to germinate,initiate new life.I stroke its skin,touch it with my tongue.I use the dampness of my lipsto burnish it,then hold it in my teethand kiss its fervent blackness.Then finally bite into it.A stinging jet.Acidic

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-43720177151640104872009-09-28T05:00:00.002Z2009-09-30T14:35:40.191Z

When the apple tree turned over a new leafit began producing plums.When the pear turned over a new leafit brought forth grapes instead.When the cherry turned over a new leafit found acorns on its branches.When The Book of Life turned over a new leafa skeleton crawled out.When the woods turned over their new leavesa million tiny creatures saw the sun.When these turned over the dead leavesthe dust

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-72701259148190272402009-09-25T05:05:00.002Z2009-09-25T07:57:37.673Z

Are you one of those for whom time always seems to be moving at the wrong speed? When we are bored it slows and drags, when engaged in some exciting project it flies by and there are not enough hours in the day or days in the week. Lying awake at night it almost stops. At my age it is increasingly lethargic. For those unfortunate enough to have such problems, the depressed find that it crawls and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488davidalexking@googlemail.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-67095122545340290922009-09-22T08:17:00.005Z2009-09-22T12:10:48.161Z

Nude Descending a Staircase Marcel DuchampSlowly the ball of her right foot descendsto press down gently on the stair below,rolls like a marble on an endless track,seeks out the spot - the only spot - that does not creak.Slowly her weight transfers to it.Slowly the left descends to add its weight,she feels the pace of life take a new leash.The house is full of echoes: voices, rasps and groans,she

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