Forum Comments

Thanks OTT, what you've said in this and the others has really cheered me up and I'm glad it makes some sense to you. Just keep on truckin' and things will turn out right if you let them. I'm nowhere near a state of serenity but I can laugh at myself today, which is a revelation! How bad is that? We're on the right track, no question there. All the best Richard

There's nought wrong with hippies, Pia, and I like you, too. Shit, does that sound hippyish? All the best Richard

I like to think that if youre good in life, you get to come back later. If youre bad in life, you get to come back later. But if you made no difference in life, you get nought. haven't got the foggiest, though, obviously, cos I'm not dead yet, I think, but it's a great topic if interest for writing purposes. Always trying to cook up a good, meaty afterlife story.

Captivating. I've only read this once because I have to go and wanted to leave a raw, first-sight comment for you. Like so many others say, your work becomes much clearer after a few reads. (I thought it was just me that thought that.) It's very filmic; I really could see you in your mind's kitchen. Surely you need to come and read some of your work at the upcoming evening in London next Tuesday. I asked Tony to see if you could make it but still no reply... What do you say? Is it time to exhibit your work more often. I think it is well time. One teeny weeny thing; is it 'on reserve' or 'in reserve'? It's about 20 lines down. I'm not a poembuff and I might be missing the hidden meaning but I instantly hauled it out when I saw it.

Hi Pia, I sympathise with John too, but it's not only racists that cause trouble. Those 'yobs' (who have been dispossessed by the system, in most part abused by their guardians, failed by their teachers) feel so unwanted that they choose to live by their own rules. Having been misled, they wrongly see foreigners as easy targets to relieve their pain. They blame them for taking jobs, and they realise that there are no worthwhile jobs available to them. A lot of council estates are very similar to open prisons, albeit without the same police presence. Anything goes. A recently added story called Big Society was posted on this site and I think it explains the situation really well. Try and find time to read it. It's not just foreigners whose lives are blighted every day; that's utter rubbish. It's every decent person if they happen to live in a jobless environment where the police only come in an emergency, because this country is filled with anarchy right now. The welfare state is the only mechanism that keeps the status quo going. It allows the rich to keep ploughing through us. About Germany, I do think I have forgiven what happened but I would be very unwise to forget. The right wing extremists I know very little about. If it's about racism, I'd ask why the Norwegian bloke killed students from his own country. that would suggest (to me at least) that he had had a very traumatic time as a student himself and wished to get his own back on them. I haven't been following it, and the surprise I find only too revealing is the utter absence of news coverage on the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Africa. Little children starve and die evry minute, yet we seem to find the death of one pop star worthy of more relevance. I can only assume that a Norwegian or a pop star is far more worthy of life to the media and the world community, or perhaps a societal genocide is too difficult to confront. All the best Richard

Slick and oh so true of the fumblings of the sexes, pitifully entwined by missed threads caused by sloppy handling. This should be POTW for its professionalism and deftness. It's certainly ticked my box and I don't have the faintest what half of the musical terms mean. Music teachers could learn something about definition from this brill poem. All the best Richard

Hi Rachel, If you need any help with printing or you'd like to use my little publishing firm as a way to get your book ISBN'd and onto booksellers shelves/stocklists, I can help. I wouldn't need any dosh but you'd have to get it as you want it to look. I know a good, cheap litho printer who does little one-offs. I have a few plans myself for a book but not mine. It would be a compilation of my favourite work from Abctales but I'd need to ask Tony first. Oops, just let it slip , and shit I just pressed 'submit'. Best get onto him now All the bez Richard

Wow, well done for this. (I'm actually green with envy and red with anger that I may never write something as ethereally wacko as this!) The sign of a good writer is shown to me when, once I've read enough to know that the story I'm reading is brilliant, I start to imagine what that writer looks like and what shaped their thoughts. This story would deserve the accolade of Story of the Year in any short story competition. If you would, please read We Are But Smoke in my collection. I'd love to know your thoughts. Best wishes, Richard

Sausages. I'll have to look that one up in my book of psychotropics. They sound pretty addictive and I know I like them alot but I've never given it any thought as to whether I might actually be addicted to them. Seriously now, I think the link of 'soft' drugs leading to harder ones is very pertinent, only the meaning behind the link is still not being seen by many people. Look at my experience, which is not dissimilar to alot but certainly not all of my buddies at the time. As a teenager, I wanted to indulge myself and to take away the pain of reality (parents divorce, three older sisters, no brother, society, apartness, boo-hoo). First stop was cannabis, because it was quite socially acceptable among even the most 'normal' teenagers. Whispers in sixth form college for a cheeky smoke, and the not too delusional effects could be handled with a few giggles and dopey eyes in the next class. All my buddies experimented with cannabis, it was the unsaid ritual and proved we were searchers. It was trendy, therefore the perfect introduction to the vicious world of drugs. At parties, people might find an older guy scurrying into the loos with a girl. They'd come out laughing and enquiries would be made. What had made them so special in my eyes? I wondered. Usually it was coke. Then, at festivals, while I was toking on a chillam like a true pro, I'd see people going awol, totally enraptured by music, and I wanted a piece of that. Some of my buddies looked at these people in other ways, but me, I wanted in. By the time I was an acidhead, speed-injecting, speedball-smoking skeletal fragment of myself, it was all too late. To be totally honest, I got high on acid before cannabis but that was because I wanted in from the start and also because I just couldn't get high from cannabis. Very weird. Depending on how my friends were brought up and how they handled their childhood experiences, people dropped out of the scene or stayed in. It was interesting to see that the ones with stable backgrounds and those that emulated/got on with their parents well had little need for experimentation. They were happy with their lot, so why fuck with it? The ones from broken homes, like me, chose one drug or another (it was by and large cannabis) and this started their drug/drink odyssey. Those above average intelligence seemed to find it more difficult to resist or see a way out. Maybe it's the thought of powerlessness being so omnipotent while in the grasp of addiction, the lengthy distance of an alternative and the desperation of their past that makes them so pessimistic about recovering themselves. I also wonder about the word addiction. It is becoming more ambiguous to me as I remain clean and sober. The long and short of my argument is that cannabis leads to harder drugs because it is generally seen as a teenager's rite of passage, a garden through which he/she is bound to enter one way or another. How that person interprets the garden is wholly dependent on his/her view of the world coupled with the treachery of their past experiences. If the past had not been properly resolved in their minds, and life seemed too treacherous without stimulants to cope, the garden will be viewed and enjoyed (at first) as an oasis. The problem lies in the staying at the oasis and not venturing back out into the desert to find more fertile land. The longer ones stays at the oasis, the more he eats the fruits to exhaustion and drinks the water dry. Then he is set upon the task of finding more fertile land, but his physical state has deteriorated, through lack of fitness, and his chnaces of making it across the desert are much less than average. A wise dealer will start a teenager on cannabis. Thereafter, all they have to do is wait to see if the user will want to test more profitable drugs.

Love the so there. Oh, go on then, have the last word! Anyway, you're doing just fine in my book. I'm working on two stories at the mo, one's about a stranger who shares at AA meetings and gets everyone to go back to drink, like a pied piper, the other's about a gambler who bets on how many teenagers get killed in the year, with devastasting consequences, of course. Rehab's a drain but sooooooo good to be clean. Doing lots of voluntary work and keeping as busy as possible to keep the monkey off my shoulder.

I got a shiver down my legs when I reached the end of this story. From a firm believer in the afterlife for many good reasons, which I'm going to write about this week. Thanks for stirring my mind. ps. I do think that this'd work better with continued lines, but it's entirely up to you.

Like Insert, I enjoyed the comments under this heated quilt of steamy sexual torment. There must be something about Emin's work that really set something off inside you. Your apparent identifictaion with her work shows a raw anger and dissatisfaction, like it's been a ticking timebomb inside you for so long. This is written almost as if it's coming from her and not you, though, which may be that you aren't quite ready to take the big step forward yet. Small steps are good. That you have looked down at the abyss and written about this part of your psyche is gallant and brave, as you have told me about a recent poem I did. Writing that wasn't difficult but it's nowhere near how it really feels, just the tip of the iceberg, but it was something I've kept in for so long that felt right to let go of. Small steps that will thaw me out. Emin has marked her territory as a leading modern artist by being plainly honest about her past and the insufferable torment of being a woman, which she has laughed at in the face of society. There's so much mystery to what goes on in a woman's mind and it's hardly ever let out, as if there's some secret wish to keep everything inside for fear of being ridiculed as a sex, that I found her take refreshing when she arrived on the scene, but I can't help thinking that this honesty may have receded in her work. Maybe I lost interest when she started hobnobbing with the state and the art elite. I find that distasteful, weakening the strengths of a true artist, like Bob Geldof sucking up to Prince Charles at Live Aid. What I'd like to see is you going all the way and owning your own thoughts for what they are, the really dark stuff that we hold in and keep to ourselves because we believe that no one else has these thoughts when we know deep down that they do. Feel that fear, write it down as plainly as possible, and that will be the making of you. 'Another squelching wet-patch of an artist's woe' is a great line full of comedy. I may be totally offline with my thoughts here, but I'm just trying to be constructive because I think there's some really explosive dynamite to come from you. Keep the faith, believe in yourself and discard any destructive fear that may get in the way. Some fears are good, like looking for traffic before crossing a road, but a whole host of fears are detrimental to the cause of a true artist. All the best Richard

As usual, your words make a smile possible on this otherwise tired face. Sexy and insightful, buttons are pushed and sighs relieved from that layer we imagine that no one sees. Shaded by concrete child denial systems, fused with metallic mental blocks, fenced in by our own inflated view of ourselves, what we think of ourselves is far from the truth. If only we knew how naked, how apparent our fragility is, how transparent we are, we'd laugh our socks off!

You can't get random unless you go overom, and you can't get throughom unless you go underom.

Hi Mark, It's taken a long time to self-correct my emotions and feelings, which were never really mine in the beginning. Blame is such a useless thing. It deflects until the truth is so far away it can't even be recognised when it's staring at us in the face.

When writing covers so much of the width and breadth of human emotion and our failure to comply with life on life's terms, as this does, you're bound to get one or two who diss your work, Sid. There are only one or two reasons for this type of response. One is denial dressed as outrage and the other is jealousy dressed as incredulity. If you're going to write, and my word can you do that, you're just going to have to live with the consequences, which I truly believe can bring you a life beyond your wildest dreams (as a writer). I can't wait till you get to that part of life when you start to return to yourself in earnest, leaving behind regret and anger. The way you dissect feelings and thoughts is astounding. It's like you're in my head. I don't suffer from jealousy but I can see why certain folk poke holes at your work, because it speaks to them in a way that they aren't ready to accept and they hold you responsible for the feelings that rise in them. It's not their fault, and reading the impossibly truthful will help them in the long run and can speed their own fight against denial, so it's definitely win-win. I really hope you send this in to the addiction profession. Those who take time to read it will be very interested, i can assure you of that, and if I'd been able to write this, it would be in the post already. Don't give up. That's too easy. And don't bloody delete it!

Really good poetry, undeniably straight from the heart and generously served to the page.

had a feeling as i scrolled down that would be a facebook pick because it's gritty, honest and real. Thought about putting this in for the lets start again comp? I loved the bugs bit especially but it's all good. Best Richard

Thanks Chasing, That means a lot to me and I appreciate your words of hope. Unlike the British legal system, kids aren't stupid. All the best Richard

We need a new political system entirely, and that means starting afresh without government and army, smashing modern myths and returning to honest moral values. The system has sucked all the intended goodness out. The problem is that no one is prepared to start afresh. I suggest starting an apolitical party called Nota ('none of the above'). If enough people voted for Nota, this would show that the electorate no longer believes in the present system. We don't need courts and lawyers and barristers; we need repected elders. We don't need ten water suppliers; one's plenty. We certainly don't need an elaborate banking system; we don't even need money! True socialist values; equal for all. In short, we need a miracle.

Great stuff, Rachel. A real lullaby to tender togetherness, which is probably number one in the Best Free Feelings In The World top-ten. I respect your stance as to whether this form of writing is this, that or t'other. If it sings for you, it'll sing for us and that's what counts. The construction seems to be lazily put together, which warms me to it, and I bet it looks good on a page. In this highly combative world in which a slight adjustment can make or break an idea, it pays to use physically appealing tactics that please the eye. I like the word prosetry because it uses both in the best possible way (for me, at least); looks like poetry and sounds like prose. all the best Richard

Good going. I know; I'm a vane pig when it comes to writing and the almost was well picked up. Glad you like Sshtchwong'. You know when you can see it when you're writing it; that one I could see like it was me. Maybe it was, I don't know. Read Bukowski's 'Ham On Rye'. It's going to kill you. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll send it when I get back to Blighty. It's right up yours. All the best Richard

Democracy brought about globalistaion, which priced our own products out of the competition. The govt enjoys imports for economic reasons, happily forgetting that our own people take the fall. If a product from say China is bought in bulk by a British retailer at say ten pounds and sold to the British consumer for say fifty, the VAT on that product is taken as usual while the retailer makes a good profit. If that product was made in the UK, it would cost more to make and therefore the retailer would be less inclined to charge the same retail price as the Chinese product, aware that he would be hard pushed to sell it for more. By using foreign products, the govt has no need to involve itself economically with the manufacturer (why let a manufacturer trade when it costs the govt money?) and incurs no costs, while it reaps more taxable income from the profits made by the retailer. As for food prices, look at what Goldman Sachs are doing with the full support of our democratic govts. Looking closer to home, beef is so cheap in the shops that farmers actually lose money rearing their cattle. Democratic capitalism is strangling the world's poor, buying up crops in advance of yield for a bargain price, squeezing the poorest of the poor for all they're worth, and then trading on fear of adverse weather conditions and stock (which they have already secured) to justify bumping it up at the tills, which conveniently increases the VAT take and retailers' profits, which in turn allow for govts to squirrel more tax, mostly used for war and other forms of deception. If no one has the guts to own up to the glaringly obvious fact that so called democracy is to blame for ALL that's wrong in the world, who is to blame? Bin Laden? Gaddafi? The Teletubbies? God? The devil? How many other scapegoats do we need to see that we are the problem for not doing anything to stop the wholesale injustice of democracy?

Wow! angsty morbidity personified. This has a hypnotic rhythm full of relentless regret and remorse. As a piece of poetry I think it works very well indeedy. I know what you mean by the end (I think) by saying 'I have become a stranger' but would 'I am my own stranger' be more chillingly remote? This poem reminds me of looking into my pin-eyes in the mirror as a teenage speedfreak coming up on a hit in a bog. Well hard! Richard

thanks for the guidance on this, Maggy. I feel a little less thick now and read it again to get closer to the crux. Great stuff as always Richard

the hyphen/dash/whatsitcalled/the - factor. You know. You two do make me laugh.

I need to read more uplifting stories like this if I'm to regain that freest of all emotions; joy. Thanks. All the best Richard

Pretty Polly has the spunky nouse to articulate what I really feel. I want a nice, meaty forum topic that inspires thought and not pettiness.. but I can't think of one. I've had it up to the gills with gender-faffing! Let's just be happy with what we've got, which is a lot. Must go, I feel like singing and cleaning the house.

Thanks, Capt Tony. That's made my day.

friend of mine has a really good trick to screw the bookies. Try it for me cos I've given up. you can't lose. If you bet ten pound on a chosen football match, Ladbrokes will give you five pounds to play a machine free. So, you wait till close to the end of the match and if it's say 2-0 to a team with seven minutes to go, put your ten pound on the nwinning team at 1/200 or whatever crap odds they offer. Then play the roulette and stick 10p on each of the 36 numbers (£3.60) by placing 20p between two numbers, ie. 10p for each number. Then with the remaining £1.40, place seven 20p stakes between 14 numbers. The least you get is £3.60. If it lands on one of the 14 better numbers you get £7.20. Take the slip and cash it in, then wait a minute or two for the team to win the footy match and earn 5p from your ten pound bet. I should have been a financial advisor, damn it.

The only truly perfect author in the world today is God. He/it/she does plots and twists that you and I could never imagine, let alone write. All other authors are bland, mere mortals crowing to a higher calling, and while they fill holes in lives, they don't really challenge in a deep, life-changing way. Sure, read The Secret and all the other formulaic bestsellers. Shakey's no better. Purity of inspiration, which is limited, comes from knowing how incredibly imperfect we are (only then do we come close to identification of the self), while the impurity of inspiration defines the reality of excellence as 95% hard work and 5% inspiration. God doesn't even need to lift a finger! I'm sure Shakey was in a world of his own when he did his bit, but many believe 'he' was actually many men, which smacks of biblical treatments. Jeffrey Archer was a brilliant crime writer. I loved Not a Penny More and Kane and Abel; classics, but there again he didn't write them.

Got to agree with Barry. This is classic Maggy material: childlike, unashamed, real and trademark witty; a giggly, playful angel one minute and a seething, glum-faced tyrant the next, which reminds me of the fairy in Peter Pan. What was her name? That's who springs to mind when I read little gems like this. All strength, Richard

What d'I tell ya! Had to goggle at your words again for a laugh and saw Tony liked it too. Well done, again again.

It's definitely an apology, even with a 'but' after it. Taxi drivers are great, though. They don't need bad press. It's turned into a world where no one trusts anyone because everyone's a potential threat or a terrorist or a killer or a rapist because one in ten million did something really wrong. Of course they're all the potentila perprators of violence and insolence are male, but where's the flippin' fun gone now that men have been all but castrated? It's the loss of everyone if we continue to be beady eyed and wary, and why bother going out in the first place if everyone's so horrible and you're likely to be raped in a cab on the way home? I just don't get what's so good about this poem but that's an opinion and I'm allowed to air an opinion. The thing about society is it's lost the plot, lost its reason for being, and needs complete revision. With the government unaccountable for the financial/social disaster that it invented, the law system continues to corrupt, criminals get away with murder, banks steal and cheat, and honest people get trampled on for being honest over a discrepancy. If that's 'society', then we may as well be in hell.

When will people just admit that the present system is based on deception, deceit and disgusting behaviour? Anyone who's happy with that shit, you're welcome to it. I don't think you deserve it. I just think you gave up long ago on the human spirit. Watch out, though, it eats from within!

There are a whole lot of comments here say this is better than you give yourself credit for. A quick tidy up here and there, maybe mention moving on at the end (although the fireflies are a fab send-off, you could write an alternative to following them down the black alley), five quid and it's done. If I'd written something as good as this, it would definitely be in there for sure. And surely your dear employers don't care a hoot about your past so long as your future looks bright. Go on, I dare you. It's not about the winning or the winnings. It's about starting again. There's one day to go.. All the best Richard

Hi Rachel, I've asked Capt Tony about my little idea and he's very happy to let me at it. Busy the next few weeks but will start to compile a list of all the brill writers on Abc, of which you're one, with a view to publishing a collection of shorts and poems. I just hope the vast majority are happy to give me permission. We'll see. Fave bickies are Rich Tea but that's only after I've had langousine lavished on me! Now I've got Tony's ok, I'm going to start devising my cunning plan. Any input/ideas welcome. An ISBN code is the digital number of a product and it's visible as a barcode. Having an ISBN allows a bookseller to request copies automatically and when people buy things, the barcode is scanned to identify the product. Let me know what you'd like to do for your own book by sending an email to me when you can. You'll find it in my Abc account. All the best Richard

Hi Scratch, Maggy has this strange knack of snucking under my skin without me realising it. By the time I've finished reading, I'm giggling like a kid or smiling my head off. The way she puts poems together always transports me to my carefree hippy days. Her work is carefully woven but it seems like she's just sat down for a sec and written it with a quick ciggie. That's how Amy winehouse wrote. She needed the demise of a relationship to conjure the mystical and meaningful but it's the bittersweet cheerfulness of Maggy's images that facilitates my dreamy escape. There's a constancy of self-awareness and love that endures in a way that sadly eluded Amy. I should always try and write something after reading her but a comment always seems to be the best tonic. Sometimes it's good just to sit in the moment. Those times are few and far between.

Hi Pia, No disrespect but I'm not asking you or anyone to agree or disagree with me. All I'm doing is sharing my own experience in the hope that it may ring true to some people. Depression's different for everyone and I can't express how others feel about it or judge how people deal with it. All I know, for me, is that it's an inside-job, ie. a pill cannot help. Hi Julie, Walks in nature and interacting, getting out of self and seeing what's around us. Yes! but doctors can't tell which pill's right for a person suffering depression. I know of people who have suffered convulsions, gone crazy and committed suicide as a direct result of Doctor's Orders. There are massive incentives for doctors to put patients on pills, which are heavily subsidised and cost the taxpayer a fortune. While these pills can freeze depression, they cannot solve it and therefore the patient remains sick in the main.

Hi Maggie. Just read this again and wondered if you'd ever heard Mezzanine, an album by Massive Attack. Your work really reminds me of their lyrics, especially on this album. Sorry not to have able to meet you at the last Wheatsheaf evening. I really wanted to make your acquaintance. Are you still moving to London in September? I have a music project with a friend and wanted to ask you if you'd consider putting some of your poetry to music. It's only in the pipeline at the mo, but we'll be starting the project in a couple of weeks.

No doubt about that, Andrea. I reckon life must be a bit of a tease as an atheist; a bit like waiting for footy results when you know that the score won't make a blind bit of difference to your life. God's work is unbound and his books are free, unlike the bible.

Massive Attack, Burt Bacharach, Hawkwind, Killing Joke, The Clash, Nirvana, Andy Weatherall, Sasha, Can, Ennio Morricone, the theme from Rhubarb and Custard, rare groove, funk, disco, house, rock, classical, techno and Faultline, which is none of the above, but music doesn't do it for me like it used to, especially when I took acid or mushies.

oil leaks, information leaks... they're all soooo insignificant to the power elite, like water off a duck's back. A blackened bird flapping here, an egomaniac 'freedom fighter' incarcerated there, an insane terrorist blowing himself up in Sweden. I have more sympathy for the bird than Assange. The students are making me a tad uppity at the mo. A bunch of rich kids smashing up town for a jolly just isn't the way. Don't they know that there aren't any jobs for 'marketing characters' and trainee bloodsuckers anymore? A degree in bio-chemistry is useless now that the rich have emerged as super rich. Grads are ten a penny, so welcome to the world of supermarket shelf-filling, sucker! I feel sad that young people won't be able to afford their own place any more, though. That's what they should be fighting for; their right to have a roof over their heads and a decent job, not for the right to waste three years picking their noses and networking at university so they can walk over the less fortunate. Only when man is desperate enough will he come out and fight for the right reasons. Till then, no amount of wickedness leaked to the public will make a damned bit of difference. Ever seen 'Wag The Dog'? They're not the puppets. We are.

The point is; if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. It's like football practise. We only get better if we try as hard as we can. If we fall away, it's no wonder we don't get any better.