HOT SPOTS

Revelation comes in a cardboard box, delight in a gasp.
Until you have sussed out security, there's no point
crossing the line. It's a rundown outpost. It's a dog

that's never asleep. Short of tearing up milestones, a
single malt's all there is to pass the time. Is there a
rush? An expedition that warrants quite such a blitz

on the source? It's a dizzy resolution; a whisper out
of nowhere. Some even dare to think the reinvention
of chance, but proper answers don't arrive in offcuts.

Whatever happens, be sure the past's ongoing. Look
out Galileo; Darwin beware. A love-hate relationship
isn't all that keeps us sweet. In every pore there's a

committee for hotchpotch. Every gene you can think
of wants its rough night out on the tiles. Menagerie
management's all about agnostic speculation inside the

pantheon of a squad of gods. So. Steal away omens
of ill repute. Try making a trifle of ... making it up,
as you go along. Bubbles won't take you to the top.




PEAK VIEWING

A red-hot, new trend in exhibitions? Nowhere
near it. Names haven't always weighed heavily
on our thinking. The visual layout has much
in common with bulldozing attitudes to thermal

gain. We can't help asking priests to intervene,
when there's no earthly need to ask questions.
A fleshed out format speaks volumes and candle
power leaves us feeling brighter, less alone. If

the proposition identity is indivisible remains a
stumbling block, then desert skies are bound to
bang on about facing east. Patterns come and
go, but what else could we expect? Vestments

offer little in the way of transformation: one's
existence in the public consciousness, fabulous
or otherwise, depends entirely on quick change.
Energy leaks away from animated colour, even

faster than from deathly, so squandering light,
residual or otherwise, just adds a minus to our
sum: we can't, I suppose, have it all? To say
who we're not and why kills all the allegations.

Gaudy and gauzy, ghostly and whole, that's us.




COSMIC PLAN

It's ordinary, everyday insomnia, the kind that
runs aground at the hint of weather. Night's a
redundant geometry, a vessel tracking home to

a drizzle of wings. If edges do slip away, the
cliff's still manageable. Even when it doesn't
quite change its story. Where I'm from, is a

well-appointed question. Yes, I've weighed up
the need, the regular refits, but things won't
do when a beach is empty, no-one manning the

winch. Waves slant in and thoughts slant out.
Everything now is long on discourse, short on
acquisition, real acquisition, and what's that all

about? A silver speck for a plane, look at it,
trailing sky. No sound, and no acclamation;
a near myth (here on the soundtrack) heading

back to base. Intelligent mapwork, a deviant
sign? Remember, the terms we are coming to
are nicely raised. Devotion could use a sleep.




ONLY FOR KEEPS

Afterwards, so it happened, he put away books
and bookish things to strike a pose. Truth, the
troublesome spirit, preyed on whoever came by.
It was possible he actually called it up; next to

doing worse, there was always the feeling better.
Observable phenomena? The high street seemed
exactly right: reduced to traditional packets and
jars. None of those prettified marvels of doubt.

Inflammation, indeed, a final critique. But don't
wait up, consumers that hear the lark aren't for
killing the goose. They're up, and running. As
a means to a certain, conceptual end: factotums,

jacks of the pack. But, which of us got to hear
the last? Who'd thought of granting that wish?
It was so much fairground excitement. Not real
abandon, loss of some wondrous, decisive illogic.

I threw up parties in the shadow of a warehouse.
No unthinkable reason, but he couldn't read why.
Belief's a retrospective application; I liked a deal
well struck. Bel canto. Wordless like his drum.


© Peter Dent 2009