Simon Huggins - Poetry

Life is not a "to do" list or is it a necklace of goals? Stepping stones of second-placers' bones? Pearls shimmer, enticingly manifold. Let me cut the string, watch you chase to one hundred places at once. You have become, in one stroke of unluck simultaneously directionless; A stalemate of just too many bucks and too many ill-wishing second placers to convincingly duck the spattering shot as past-pellets and scattered pearls are all the ground left to tread upon. - Simon Huggins, 6th May 2003

Your pinprick punctures my jugular Does it spray like an overkinked hosepipe? These fountain heights are warm as day As the dust-spray from a handbrake turn. Nose-pressed youth with spittle spraying Strain a song of "I told you so" So you smoke your pipe, tobacco sprays. Take your pipe-cleaner out. Tell one more lie. Simon Huggins, 22nd April 2003

For years, it seems only a plughole for the sink the body pulls urgently to distract one into an awareness of functionality. And then it speaks of pleasure; Scritchily wakeful when awareness of other bodily functions come. And so a time of testing arises from the flaccid sponge-spout to the emergent shine of blood- engorgement, making sensory self-awareness immediate. Shoot out. And thus the mess starts. As hairier it becomes probing of entranceways to flesh and souls. Its pungency wells up inside: A pleasure-plunger. A cheap aside. And this is invasion or possibly the ultimate sharing of life. In this moment of selfish pleasure when the self is lost and Life is passed, Death is passed and I circulate, pleasure-trodden I have filled one more hole. Another hole, another loss I fill a space where through chemistry a life may be. Simon Huggins, 14th April 2003

What is the mix? Three two one four two what What am I doing, this first first patio I build? Thirty-six slabs delivered in piles of concrete-in-buff, solidified dust. And the mortar is mixed in an old baby bath four-two-one seeps into the grass through a disused plug-hole. The ground levelled-out to a juxtaposed mound; Thoughts of a skip prevail tamping down. Spirited levelling, a hop of ridiculous; Stamping a shuffle, perpendicular I shuffle I measure I stamp, and Shout. And the mortar slowly dries but hosed-down, cement dust flies an air-dance seeking my mucous out; I may yet solidify to an ill-matched statue: A feeble beacon of constructional ineptitude. The sharp sand scuffs my knuckles up. Sweat now beads, scuffed from pores by a now-old shirt. My trowel slaps on the first slab-bed, ripples out air pockets. I'm so professional. And the first slab is laid, and the next, and the next. And soon the spirit level and mallet are discarded in favour of edge-levelling and twisting, stamping. I move faster when my sub-methodology succumbs to the ranks of amateurdom. Two days of scuffling mud, mortar, slabs around and brushing in drymix for the wind to breathe out: My patio is done, though not quite perfection -- The corners meet mostly in slab genuflection. - * - And ten years hence, I finally give in. The patio has shifted, it always looked shit. It was home to a table and four plastic chairs that whirled in the eddies of hurricane air. My hair carpets everywhere now but my scalp It's tough now, to bring this sledgehammer down. Today, the patio seems surplus to requirements I will grow instead my own vegetable needs; Eschew where I can internet deliveries -- My wife hated computers, and thus my obsession; Loved greenery, overcome by sweet compulsion that was never fulfilled. Never Shropshire-filled. I am done. Our paid-out house, my windswept thoughts hurt still. And this, our little patch of Uricon. Simon Huggins, 14th April 2003

None may enter this page but from the faltering sieve that is my brain Grey to white; White space curled apart by these spider italics. Art is part of it. The art of the hourglass where the sieve is a singleton hole. And I can turn one away from the other, but always: The sand blisters down --- Granular words stream on until the container ends. Then we recycle communication from our brain. Registering a different sieve hole from the same place to here; A different but similar page. I let my sieve silt-sift, hoping not for spaghetti, but gold. Simon Huggins, 31st March 2003

You mound of splay: Roadkill Finally, key turned, engaged brake I step out, look back inspect the red tread trail from me to you I follow the red line back, slip Right myself, definition scuffed You wait, unsettling you stare at me, eye poppingly spent I peck at the insides, around Gristle-wrestling foot-slide You hide underfoot lubricated turn, I grind your parts into ground-pebble crevices, cracks your retreating self, a part left behind, I drive away. You: Finally driven down. Simon Huggins, 28th March 2003

Oh, the devil took me to the bus-stop early He tapped his watch and lo! Time was gauged The Demon Organization sent me hither And I was here. Minutes before my time. The regulars strolled by (eventually) Rent agape, their mouths screamed sin! sin! sin! I must be the one to flag down transport I must be the one that heads the queue. Two signal arms synchronize out Usurper and aged comb-eschewer The righteous fight for line-control Swallow out obedience - the devout will follow. There were three in the queue; The old, the burgeoning new And the neutral gazing on. From bus windows we glaze, mute. Threads indifferently gone. - Simon Huggins, 28th February 2003

Small children, in mud ankle-deep A dramatic scene, a caravan, I blink the scene gone. This bus trundles onwards to work, whilst memory clouds, quietly condensation quits the roll air-con makes us comfort-controlled. The slatted wooden structure alone, gathering rain, grime footfall avoider, acutely nowhere away from reason; the friendly hut. So children trudge ankle-deep mud-inspired to wistfully despise that aloneness, useless bridge in potential, visible. Lost. Simon Huggins, 10th February 2003

The first photos were taken Revealing roughly haired dunes that self-compressed, formed tunes that sung "Why have you forsaken me?" [wobble wobble wobble] It's bad; worse than a mild berating; The rear shots the worst of all: Where fat meet sheets that fall to form white plains, undulating [wobble wobble wobble] I shade the areas of *other* interest compressed onto brave web pages. To show the grotesque stages from bad to Ok; breasts to chest. Not [wobble wobble wobble] And next month folds and creases may hang a little less. The potential may emerge. And then, eventually, When binging almost ceases, so will [wobble wobble wobble]. Simon Huggins, 10th February 2003

And we start with a hair: Stray, blonde, human curled fragile blending defocusing focusing not-quite-2D piercing reality defocusing back fore through nothing dropped lost again to complexity. Simon Huggins, 6th February 2003