T-shirt (May)

NYC. Abbey Road. North Queensland Cowboys. Calvin Klein Jeans. I Should Come With A Warning Label. Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë. Authorized Dealer. I Am Here Because You Broke Something. St Martin of Tours Rosanna Non Recuso Laborem. Superman. Murray River Houseboat Just Cruisin’. Heterofriendly. We Run This Shit. Curves 800. May Day May Day. Keep Calm And Carry On. Prague Czech Republic. Esso. Louis Vuitton Paris. AC/DC. Tigers 1885 Football. Harley-Davidson. I’ll Have What He’s Having. So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. Fcuk. Nike. Vote ‘No’ on Daleks Stop ‘Extermination’ Today! Venezia. Miles Davis Bitches Brew. Your Text.     

R-Mark (May)

No patent on the sky, on immemorial elms, on black stone or the month of May. Plenty on objects humans took to the moon. Fixed stars bounce information back into yards and screens, copyrighted. Our comicbook world of cars and appliances, computers and clothing, shaped that way by R-Mark. R makes it real. Cost is no obstacle in the making of money. Configured and singled out, the world bent to suit R. Nature, ready to blow our R-World to kingdom come. Creation reveals an endless source of forms. We copy right and call them ours, registrations gone with the wind.

S-bend (May)

Whether for January blaze or May rain, gravity built the roof. Men drive miles every day to dig a hole to fit a building, gravity being multi-storied. A chair is only as good as the weight it carries. The heart tug in the astronaut film is the gravity of Mother Earth. This Saturday the airliner flying over Rosanna has gravity written all over it. Even the lorikeets in autumn trees below laugh and trick for good reason. Leaves spiral downwards in the time-honoured fashion. Still life with apple. Heavy thoughts at the bowl are eased by assumptions of an S-bend.

V-neck (May)

“Surviving is keeping your eyes open” writes U.A. Fanthorpe in ‘Portraits of Tudor Statesmen’. “The literal painter set it down… mail, ruff, bands, beard, anything, to hide/ The violently vulnerable neck.” The language of ties inflects our age. Politician’s straight lines may second as a handy noose. Mind your peace and cues. Open collars declare their Adam’s apple’s free to do what it likes, though appear too casual and they’ll get it in the neck. Dinner ties, anonymous as movie stars. Plunging necklines equal abandonment of the concept of suggestion. Tattoos, a dead giveaway for independent thinking or loose living. 

G-string (May)

Barely discernible, Air on the G String sounds from after-party windows of May: candelight, firelight. Clonks and imperfects add to the feel. The Air’s temperament, never devolving into melancholy, is discerned through scratches and aged bumps of 78. At 27 the thread tug-clicks inside crappy cassettes, slowing to a whine before massing in brown tape clumps. Bach’s mathematical manner rarely obtrudes on his verve, though perfection’s taken to new extremes on compact discs of scintillating sameness. Thus habituated, musicians online outgrow compactness. Elongated ambience and you-tuba versions intrude. An artist performs the Air with a large ensemble of filmy g-strings.

Z-Head (May)

Pushed into survival’s world from a rosepink dream, roundedness showing already, head and body cry out for air. Differences are less apparent than beauty incarnate. No alphabet comes close, meaningless maze of loops. A child walks along a wall balancing a cup on his head. A girl holds the moment, stares down perfection. Form and balance get up every morning. Booming city gives no warning, the rapid influx of Everything. Senses measure overload, differences less apparent than repetitions. Concussions are all reddy. These formed English manga punk Z-Head, hair a salute, mouth not cute. May issue, ‘Forgotten Entrances’, out now!

F-Key (May)

My personalised function keys. F1: Foretells the future. F2: Gauges my mood and selects long-playing record of appropriate music. F3: Stops all incoming nonsense until I’m ready. F4: Translation of all known languages into Jamesian English. F5: Reading of same with Jamesian tone and delivery. F6: Supplies precise word needed in my current sentence. F7: Diacritics without tears. F8: Publishes my latest collection (“May”) in selected font with original artwork, soft binding. F9: WWJD F10: Activates shutdown of all nominated time-wasting distractions, e.g. Facebook, newspapers, Google Image. F11: Sets to full screen. F12: Converts computer into a large metallic flower.

L-Graph (May)

April is the hottest month. Bumpy line starts in the L–corner and rises like Bolero to April 2016 in singular crescendo of inexorable bumps. Lurid reds and yellows assist the effect. What to do? Turn off the computer? Mild May persists with its warm regards. Weather is unusually blowy. Life is hardly L-graphs, linear time but one set of references. No one started in a corner, wiggle-wiggle, reached a bumpy pitch, declined and fell like a roaming empirical. Yet the round world’s imagined corners contain our singular existence. Change is met, just as things go bump in the night.