Hugo Docking

The Cow, the Banana and Me.

Hugo Docking Photography - BoomTown Cornfields 1

The red-headed cow, the banana and me,
Sailed away through the moonlit leaves.
We pranced and jumped and hid we three,
From the world of the tungsten sleaze.

Hugo Docking Photography - BoomTown Cornfields 2

It was warm that night when we all took flight,
And the corn glittered gold and free.
We were out of sight, where the cats couldn’t bite,
the cow, the banana and me.

Hugo Docking Photography - BoomTown Cornfields 3

The cow shouted “Moo! There’s a bog-boom bug!
Right there, as small as a flea!”
It smiled as it gave us the tiniest mug
Of snail and wonderland tea.

Hugo Docking Photography - BoomTown Cornfields 4

The cow took a breath and looked straight in our eyes,
“If we stay here forever, we’re free.”
We nodded blankly and stared at the cold moon rise,
The cow the banana and me.

Smile.

 

(This is a spoken word poem. The audio file can be found below this text. The background music is the song “Mantra” by Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Trent Reznor for the album “Sound City”. I do not own the copyright to this.)

 

We are all just walkers walking round the word which is turning turning in an opposite counterbalance counterclockwise counterintuitive direction. We make sense of this innocuous ridiculous swimming against the current, getting caught in the reeds madenning mindset when all we need all we really need is to slow down. Stop. Stop walking. Take a breath, take a breather, have a cigarette, play a game of fucking monopoly. Chill down, sit out. Sink down into the current and let it take you to back  to places you’ve been before and places you’d never think you’d see again. Let it take you further. It’ll take you round the long way, back through the past and up through the future. Enjoy the ride.

The problem with marching on and on and on and matching the pace of everyone else and the universe is that the world is round and it is turning the other way, you are under an illusion of positive progress with your suites and your ties and your mortgages and your wife and two little screaming fucking kids ‘hey honey, lets have another baby, let’s keep up with the Jones’, let’s do more.’ Do not do more. Do less. You are walking the wrong way. You are going up an escalator that wants to take you down. Let the escalator take you down. That is its purpose. That is your purpose.

Life does not have to be an uphill struggle do not trudge on there is no holy grail there is no light at the top at the end of the tunnel there is only more hill. Relax. Stop. Roll. Roll all the way down the hill. There is no rock bottom there is only rocks at the bottom. They will kill you. They are death. Don’t be scared of death. There is an end to everything. Nothing is eternal everything will die. Get used to it, get clued in, enjoy the roll.

Take solace in your own mortality. We are all swamp creatures. We are slime and decay we are not enlightened beings. There is no god and there is no virtue. Self-destruction and self-fulfilment are the same side of the same coin. Do not strive for higher purposes the world is chaotic and the chaos is beautiful, look around, take stock, appreciate that you have no stock. We are flavoured by uncertainty and unknown knowledge. Do not let this scare you. Do not let any of this scare you. Let it fill you to the rafters with comforting bliss. You do not matter. This is not nihilism this is freedom. Do what you want, when you want. Embrace the swamp, get off the treadmill. Care less about your health and what other people think of you. They do not matter either. Stop walking. Drift downstream.

Smile.

Memory

(Written for a friends soundscape project on the topic of memory. He wanted me to capture the atmosphere and confusion of substance-induced memory-loss.) 

 

*Gasp* What is this twisted place.
One eye fused shut I’m stumbling up
The room is swimming there’s blood on this pillow
This place smells of weed and seaman and
Fuck where’s my clothes still can’t see gotta open the fuckin-
Cock! That’s too bright, gotta leave, this rooms fuckin spinning me out,
Grab a sheet, wrap it round, I must look like that guy-
What’s his name? I forget. With the cross and the thorns made of crown-
That’s not right, what I said. I’m the wrong way around,
Gotta leave, this room’s fucking spinning me out.

 

Outside now. Don’t recognise a thing,
I’m stumped. How’d I get in maccy-D’s?
I’ve a coffee some chips and a plate of-
What? I got changed? These aren’t even my clothes,
Life’s just spinning faster than a spinning top on a turntable which is sitting on a –
What’s those things that turn with horses playing music like a circus?
Wait what? Where am I? How’d I get in Maccy D’s?
This shit’s weird, what’s the time what’s my name,
Shit- what the fuck is my name…

 

I’m outside by the bins, had to leave,
That room was fucking spinning me out
Have a line, tow the line
Between fun and confusion,
This shit’s weird but I love it its giving me the shingles.
Shingles? I mean pringles, no tingles! Fuck me,
Words are all jumbled, are all jumbled, like de ja vu,
Time is fucked which came first, am I seeing this right?
We’re inside and the music is blaring, but they’re chucking us out
We just got here! Fuck it, that room was fucking spinning me out.

Organic Man

Cashier. Socialite.
Weary with the weight of words and life
                                     Doesn’t quite fit with his
   Expectations.

 

Eyes grown impolite.
A glazed monotone man in an electric box
Of metal and wires and plastic, bags
Under his eyes from mind-wandering nights of
Better places.

 

He dreams of freedom to roam
To run away from the mind-eroding ‘how was your day?’
Day-to-day drool of making sure the woman with the fancy car
And the swimming pool only used when the
Grandkids come round for two weeks in august
Gets her 50p off for buying two carrot cakes instead of just the one
And insists it must be something he’s done to rip her off
The money grabbing son of a gun behind the till.

 

To escape the abuse and the same after same he
Crawls inside, ponders time and fate,
And wanders if things would have been the same
If his life had gone a different way,
And he’d got a different job, in a different town,

Made of different stone.

Probably.

 

Wherever he went would be a version of the same
The same picture with a different frame
And no matter how hard he could try to keep things fresh
He knew that society would never fail to
Bore him.

 

To get away from the minimum wage, and

Live in a cave, that’s real, and solid,

 

And fire-lit snug, and live off the earth,

 

 

And look up at the stars every night, would be

 

 

 

Bliss.  

 

No more

Dead-in-the-eye fake smiles.

No more

Charging the battery with soul reserves.

No more

Buzzing cell of electronic life.

 

 

Organic man. At peace.